Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Waldhere

725042Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 59 — Waldhere1899William Hunt

WALDHERE or WALDHERI (fl. 705), bishop of London, succeeded Bishop Erkenwald [q. v.], who died in 693, and about 695 gave Sebbi [q. v.], king of the East-Saxons, the monastic habit, receiving from him a large sum for the poor. He was present at Sebbi's death. He received from Swaebraed, king of the East-Saxons, a grant dated 13 June 704 (Codex Diplomaticus, No. 52). In a letter written about the middle of 705 to Brihtwald [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, he speaks of a conference that was to be held in the following October at Brentford between Ine [q. v.], king of the West-Saxons, and his chief men, ecclesiastical and lay, and the rulers of the East-Saxons, to settle certain matters of dispute. He and Heddi [q. v.], bishop of the West-Saxons, had arranged that the meeting should be peaceful, and he was desirous of acting as a peacemaker at the conference; but the archbishop had decreed that no one should hold communion with the West-Saxons so long as they abstained from obeying his order relating to the division of their bishopric. Waldhere therefore laid his desire before Brihtwald, deferring to his decision. He must have died before the council of Clovesho in 716, at which his successor, Ingwald, was present. The grant to Peterborough attested by him and Archbishop Theodore [q. v.] is an obvious forgery (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, an. 675, Peterborough).

[Bede's Hist. Eccles. iv. 11; Haddan and Stubbs's Eccles. Doc. iii. 274–5, 301; Dict. Chr. Biogr., art. ‘Waldhere’ by Bishop Stubbs.]

W. H.