A number of miracles are said to have taken place involving him. He did so, and because of his devotional qualities, he became famous, and attracted large numbers of pilgrims, and with them money. He visited the Pope in Rome, who instructed him to found a monastery in Cornwall. His wisdom and religious dedication earned him admiration from the monks. He preferred to perform his religious devotions privately, and he later went to live an isolated life in Cornwall, near the village now called St Neot. Born in the first half of the ninth century, he lived as a monk at Glastonbury Abbey. W.Neot (died 31 July 877) was an English monk. Lloyd, A History of Wales from the Earliest Times to the Edwardian Conquest (London 1911), 226-8 All points at issue are discussed and the text established in the definitive edition by W. in 1731, and the interpolations of editors, among them the notorious passage about academic disputes at Oxford, inserted by Camden to prove the antiquity of that university. Study of it has been made difficult by the burning of the one old MS. It was clearly never finished the last date mentioned is 893, but the annals are not continued beyond 887. The life is a strange mixture of chronicle and personal memoranda, written in the stilted, rhetorical Latin of the period. All this is recounted in the life it can only be added that later he became bishop of Sherborne and died in 909.

Alfred found his new tutor indispensable he heaped favours upon him, which culminated in the episcopal care of Devon and Cornwall, then part of the great diocese of Sherborne. The see was much exposed to the attacks of the local prince, king Hyfaidd of Dyfed (died 892), and it was hoped that the bishop's friendship with Hyfaidd's overlord, the powerful ruler of Wessex, would put an end to this trouble. Welsh politics provided one reason for his acquiescence. Asser was not easily detached from his episcopal responsibilities, but, after a delay partly due to a long illness at Caerwent on his way home, he agreed to divide his year between the court and S.

Thus it came about that in or around 884 Alfred, in his zeal for his own education and that of his people, enlisted him in the royal service. In due course, he succeeded to the see and therewith acquired a reputation for scholarship, which spread beyond the borders of Wales. Davids, where he was brought up and educated, being a relative of bishop Nobis, who died in 873. He belonged to the clerical community of S. He is known almost entirely from what he tells us of himself in his life of king Alfred. Area of activity: Religion Scholarship and LanguagesĪuthors: John Edward Lloyd, David Myrddin Lloyd

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