Wilton Abbey

Wilton Abbey was a Benedictine convent in Wiltshire, England, three miles from Salisbury on the site now occupied by Wilton House. A first foundation was made as a college of secular priests by Earl Wulfstan of Wiltshire, about 773, but was after his death (800) changed into a convent for twelve nuns by his widow, Saint Alburga, sister of King Egbert. Owing to the consent given by this king he is counted as the first founder of this monastery. Saint Alburga herself joined the community, and died at Wilton. King Alfred, after his temporary success against the Danes at Wilton in 871, founded a new convent on the site of the royal palace and united to it the older foundation. The community was to number 26 nuns.

Wilton is best known as the home of Saint Edith, the child of a "handfast" union between Edgar, King of the English (944-75), and Wulfrid or "Wulfthryth", a lady wearing the veil though not a nun, whom he carried off from Wilton, probably in 961. After Edith's birth, Wulfrid refused to enter into a permanent marriage with Edgar and retired with her child to Wilton. Edith, who appears to have been learned, received the veil while a child, at the hands of Bishop Æthelwold of Winchester, and at the age of fifteen refused the abbacy of three houses offered by her father. She built the Church of Saint Denis at Wilton, which was consecrated by Saint Dunstan, and died shortly afterwards at the age of twenty-three (984). Her feast is on 16 September.

Saint Edith became the chief patron of Wilton, and is sometimes said to have been abbess. In 1003 Sweyn, King of Denmark, destroyed the town of Wilton but we do not know whether the abbey shared its fate. Edith of Wessex, the wife of Edward the Confessor, who had been educated at Wilton, rebuilt the abbey in stone; it had formerly been of wood.

In 1143 King Stephen made it his headquarters, but was put to flight by Matilda's forces under Robert of Gloucester. The Abbess of Wilton held an entire barony from the king, a privilege shared by only three other English nunneries, Shaftesbury, Barking, and St. Mary, Winchester. Cecily Bodenham, the last abbess, surrendered her convent on 25 March 1539. The site was granted to Sir William Herbert, afterwards Earl of Pembroke, who commenced the building of Wilton House, still the abode of his descendants. There are no remains of the ancient buildings.

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