SS Mary and Hardulph Breedon

The lovely chap who's spending his retirement blogging about Great English Churches has a good post on this one, so I'm not going to describe it (much), and he's got plenty of nice photographs.  There's another good post on Leicestershire Churches.

Photo: Archaeodeath

Breedon is one of a number of Austin priories with Anglo-Saxon foundations, like Bodmin or Plympton. (There's a whole thesis you can read on this here.)  Breedon was re-founded in the early 12th century with canons from Nostell, and seems to have been a cell of Nostell, with only as many canons as you could count on one hand.  But it kept its Anglo-Saxon minster sculpture, and its dedication to St Hardulph, though now, of course, accompanied by the BVM (although from the looks of this sculpture, she was already there!).

Hardulph was probably Eardwulf of Northumbria.

At some point, one of the priors tried to get independence for Breedon from Nostell.  He resigned.

Now, the seal (no picture, sorry).  An oval at 7/8 x 3/4", this seal is on the small side.  It's from 1377, and shows St Peter standing beside a tree, with a book in his right hand and two keys in his left hand.  I'm not quite convinced by Birch's transcription of the inscription - SAVN…PETR’ - I don't know what he thought 'savn' means, but I've not seen the seal, and he's usually pretty good.

I don't know any other depiction of St Peter standing by a tree.  I am, ahem, intreegued.