210
NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. x. SEPT. is, im
Isaac Rebow, M.P. for Colchester, who died
1734. See Essex Review, July, 1902. Where
can I obtain information as to the John Price
mentioned above or his family 1
P. E. CLARK.
32, Shaftesbury Avenue, W.
JOHN MOORE, BISHOP OP ELY. This pre- late married Dorothy, only surviving child of William Barnes, of Sadberge, co. Durham, and widow (1) of Michael Blackett, third but second surviving son of Sir William Blackett, Bart., M.P., and (2) of Sir Richard Brown, Bart., of London. The bishop had three sons viz., Daniel, William, and Charles. Surtees in his 'History of Durham' states that the first two died s.p., but makes no reference to the third. Could any of your correspondents inform me what became of him? H. R. LEIGHTON.
East Boldon, Durham.
DUNWICH OR DUNMOW A BISHOPS SEE.
(9 th S. x. 44.)
THE discoveries of the day are truly alarming, and many pleasurable tradi- tions have been rendered untenable as the result of modern research, but I venture to question the validity of the claim of your correspondent MR. EDWARD SMITH on behalf of Essex for an honour which clearly belongs to Suffolk. Is it not strange that the claim for Dunmow should be made for the first time after the lapse of a thousand years from the cessation of the bishopric in ques- tion, and that Morant, who had the Jekyll and Holman MSS., with a vast collection of ancient documents relating to Essex, numbering, as he states, 400 volumes, should never have given a hint of the ecclesiastical dignity of Dunmow in ancient times ? I find I have nineteen variations of the spelling of the Suffolk place, taken mostly from records.
Dunwich is in Saxon Dunmoc, or, as it appears in the Saxon annals, Damuc, and in Bede Dommuc, later known as Dynwyc or Dunwich, from dona, hilly down, and wye, a fort. In Anglo-Norman times the name ap- pears as Done wye. The place was at a very early period the capital of the Iceni. It was the capital of the East Angles at the end of the sixth century, and became the epis- copal see in 631, and there the successors of Felix, the first bishop, continued for 200 years.
The church of St. Felix in Dunwich was probably the cathedral till carried away by
the sea, and then successively St. John and
St. Nicholas. In Palgrave's map of the " Terri-
tories constituting the Anglo-Saxon Empire
and in -Gibson's map attached to his edition
of the 'Saxon Chronicle' Dunwich is marked
as Domuc, but Dunmow does not even appear.
The East Saxons who inhabited the counties
of Essex, Middlesex, and part of Hertford-
shire were converted by Milletus (consecrated
n 604), who established the bishop's see in
London, then the capital of that little state.
The kingdom of the East Angles as defined
3y Sammes was
'bounded on the east and north by the sea, on the south it bordered upon Essex and Harfordsrnre, and on the west it had a ditch called St. Edmund s Ditch for its principal limits."' Britannia Antiqua Illustrata,' 652.
Now Dunmow was included in the kingdom of the East Saxons, and was in the diocese of London, and it is not very likely that the see of the bishops of the East Angles should have been in an obscure place in another kingdom.
When in 787 the sees of Worcester, Here- ford, Leicester, Sydnacester, Elmham, and Dunwich were for a time dismembered from the province of Canterbury and put under the newly created archbishopric of Lichfield, would MR. SMITH seriously contend that Essex was touched or the diocese of London in any way interfered with ]
Felix was undoubtedly the first of the bishops of the East Angles, and his great work was the conversion of the East Angles under Sigebert, their king. On the other hand, Sebert, King of the East Saxons, was converted by the preaching of Milletus.
In the 'Liber de Archiepiscopis et Epis- copis Anglise ' of Bartholomew do Cotton, a monk of Norwich, who did not survive 1298, referring to Felix, the first Bishop of Dun- wich, 630, and his successful labours in the dominion of Sigebert, it is said : .
" Hie scolas litterarum opportunis locis constituit, et in civitate Donmoc sedem habuit quse nunc Filchstowe vocatur [?] super mare in oriental! parte Suthfolchiae. Hie cum xvii. annis ecclesiam rexisset, sepultus est in Domoc, civitate sedis suse ; set! postea inde translatus est apud Seham, ubi aliquando secundum quosdam f uit sedes episcopalis, quae est villa juxta stagnum Elyense, qui locus postea destructus a Danis, corpus ejus qusesitum^et repertum in Ramesiensi coenobio humatum est." Fol. 266, ed. Luard, p. 38.
See Wharton's ' Anglia Sacra,' vol. i. pp. 403- 412.
Gibson, in his edition of the ' Saxon Chronicle' (Oxon., 1692), identifies Domoc with Dunwich "in agri Suffolciensis ora maritima," and he adds :
"Hanc certe corijecturam plurimum confirmat quod deAlfhuno episcopo in his Annalibus traditur.
