Abstract :
Many of the minsters founded and generously endowed in the fi rst century and a half
of Anglo-Saxon christianity were evidently failing as effi cient managers of their estates
by the late eighth century, if we judge by the actions of the bishops in whose dioceses
they sat. In the diocese of Worcester bishops can be seen transferring the administration
of the lands of such minsters to the cathedral community, and then seeking
ratifi cation from the Mercian kings whose direct ancestors or royal predecessors had
often been involved in the original acts of foundation. When ninth-century kings were
acutely short of land, they alleviated the problem by engineering forced loans of the
lands concerned from the see of Worcester. These processes are well exemplifi ed in
the history of the minster at Hanbury (Worcs.) and its landed endowment, for which
particularly good contemporary evidence survives.
