Cumnor according to Dugdale is derived from Cumanus, second abbot of Abingdon, who died _circa_ 784, but Dr. Buckler, author of "Stemmata Chicheleana," and keeper of the Archives of Oxford University, who was vicar of Cumnor for twenty-five years, suggests St. Coleman or Cuman, an Irish or Scottish saint, who lived in the sixth and seventh century. As early as the year 689, Colmonora is mentioned in a Latin deed in the Abingdon Chronicle, twenty hides of land there being conferred upon the Abbey by a Charter of Ceadwalla, and again in a similar deed, being a Charter of Kenulph, dated 851, in which is an illuminated portrait of that King. An Anglo-Saxon boundary attached to Eadred's confirmation Charter to Abingdon in 955, mentions Cumnor, as does also a subsequent charter of Edgar, 968, which also has a carefully defined boundary attached to it, and the biography of St. Ethelwold, who refounded the Abbey after its destruction by the Danes, 240 years after the original foundation of Abbot Heane. It is very improbable that these documents are authentic. They may possibly be copies, but are more probably forgeries, made for various purposes in later years, based in many instances doubtless upon the fabulous history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who died about 1154, leaving what was professedly the translation of a work in the British tongue made at the request of Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford. It contains perhaps a modicum of fact, but is not dependable; it has been largely drawn upon by later so called historians and romancers. Nevertheless there is every reason to believe that Cumnor from the very earliest times belonged to Abingdon Abbey, its name in early documents being written Cumenoran, and the Church is known to have been one out of but three spared by the Danes, when they ravished the district around and destroyed Abingdon in the reign of Alfred the Great.