Excerpt from book: CHAPTER lIl. AT THE ABBEY OF CEBNEL. An old tradition of Cernel' in Dorset relates that Augustine, the first missionary to the English (597-604), converted the people of that neighborhood, gave the place its name, and when it was time to baptize the converts caused the needed water to spring forth from the rock at the very place where the well is pointed out, even at the present day (1898). This story, which is told by William of Malmesbury, is doubtful in all of its details, and Augustine probably never visited that region. A later tradition makes Cernel and St. Augustine's well the scene of the hermitage of Eadwold, brother of Edmund, the king of the East Anglians who was murdered by the Danes (870). This tradition, though somewhat obscure, has perhaps a basis of fact. The third important event connected with this place, the founding of the abbey of Cernel, is well authenticated by the foundation charter of King Ethelred, which is still preserved." This abbey, said to have been begun in Edgar's reign (959-975), and as a memorial of the pious Eadwold, was finished in 987, and dedicated by its founder, Jilthelmser, to St. Mary, St. Peter, and St. Benedict. This -JUthelmser, and his father, Ethelweard, are so closely connected with the life of Elfric that it is worth while to say something here of their character and position in the England of that day. Ethelweard the ealdorman, there is no good reason to doubt, is that ealdorman whose name appears as such in many lists of witnesses attesting charters from 975 to 998.3 1 Now Cerne Abbas, five miles north of Dorchester. x Dugdale, Monasticon. II. 621; Kemble, Cad. Dip. A.-S. III. 224. 3 Elfric's friend Ethelweard was ealdorman in 990 or 991, when the first volume of Catholic Homilies was issued; according to the si...