History of Glastonbury

Like Glastonbury’s chronicles and the saints’ lives (many of which were produced at the behest of medieval abbots), the surviving charters are often far from reliable sources.  But the earliest of the Abbey’s medieval chroniclers, William of Malmesbury, was a careful historian by the standards of his time, and his work, De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Glastonie, which was written in the early 12th century, is a valuable historical source.