The Abbey of Waltham owes most of its celebrity to its connexion with the last of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs. Our early forefathers were distinguished by their attachment to the pleasures of the chase; and the vast forest with which this district was covered must have been a favourite resort of the East-Saxon kings, as it was, after the subversion of their independence, of the thanes of Essex. One of these, named Tovi or Thovi, who held the high office of _stallere_ (or steward) in the household of Canute the Dane, built himself a hunting residence in the rich meadows on the banks of the Lea, in the same neighbourhood where King Alfred had drawn away the waters of that river in order to cut off the retreat of the Danish fleet. This hunting-house was the _weald-ham_, or residence in the wood, from which the town afterwards received its name. The “weald-ham” was a favourite residence of Earl Tovi, and was soon surrounded with the houses and huts of his retainers, thus becoming gradually a village, occupied, as we are informed in the early half-legendary history of the place, by threescore and six householders. The erection of a church followed as a matter of course: although the monks of the Abbey afterwards built there published a wild legend--how a cross, miraculously discovered on the summit of a hill in Somersetshire, then called Lutegaresberi, but since known by the name of Montacute, which was also the property of Tovi, was no less miraculously conveyed to this spot, and gave to it the subsequent appellation of <g>Waltham Holy Cross</g>.[207] Tovi (who was lord of “Enefeld, Edelmetone, Cetrehunt, Mimmes (?), and of the barony which afterwards, under the Normans, passed into the family of the Mandevilles”) placed in his church two canons, endowed it with lands in Waltham, “Chenleuedene, Hyche, Lamhee, Luketune, and Alwaretune,” and gave to it the sword with which he had been first girt when he was made a knight. His wife Glitha, a very pious woman, added to these gifts a crown or wreath of pure gold. Their son Athelstan did not, however, inherit the virtues and wisdom of his parents; for, shortly after their death, he lost the manor of Waltham, which, with others in the neighbourhood, appears to have been forfeited to the Crown. Edward the Confessor gave it to his brother-in-law Harold.