Ælfwold was a
Benedictine monk at
Glastonbury Abbey[1] before he was elected to Crediton between 986 and 987. He was succeeded by
Ælfwold III in 1008.[2] He died between sometime before a time frame between 1011 and 1015.[3]
Will
Ælfwold's will is still extant, and the hand drawing up the will matches the hand that drew up a charter of 997 from King
Æthelred II to Ælfwold.[4]
In his will, Ælfwold freed all the slaves that had worked on his estates, suggesting the existence of slavery in
Anglo-Saxon England, was tempered by the need to free such slaves on death.[5]
^Chaplais "Royal Anglo-Saxon 'Chancery'" Studies in Medieval History p. 45
^Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger: The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium, Chptr 2 February, Little, Brown, 2000
ISBN0-316-51157-9
References
Chaplais, Pierre (1985).
Mayr-Harting, Henry; Moore, R. I. (eds.). The Royal Anglo-Saxon 'Chancery' of the Tenth Century Revisited. Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis. London: Hambledon Press. pp. 41–51.
ISBN0-907628-68-0.
Fryde, E. B.; Greenway, D. E.; Porter, S.; Roy, I. (1996). Handbook of British Chronology (Third Edition, revised ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN0-521-56350-X.
Knowles, David (1976). The Monastic Order in England: A History of its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 940-1216 (Second Edition, reprint ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN0-521-05479-6.