Traditionally the history of Evesham abbey begins in the year 701 when Æthelræd, king of the Mercians (674–704), granted to Ecgwine, third bishop of the Hwicce (693–704), the place æt Hamme (Hethomme). Out of a mass of pious legend, uncertain tradition, fraudulent invention, and ill-recorded fact, this is probably all that will ever be known beyond reasonable doubt. This hamm was a piece of land within the great loop of the river Avon that was later to contain the church, conventual buildings, and medieval town. According to the twelfth-century historian William of Malmesbury, there may have been a small British church on this site, a possibility unrecorded elsewhere. The historical core of the jungle of fact and fiction, legend and tradition that makes up the purported early Evesham documentation is likely to have been of the utmost simplicity. Desirous of founding a monastery, Ecgwine, bishop of the Hwicce, secured a site and adequate endowment between 701 and 709, when the new buildings were consecrated. For the remainder of his life Ecgwine may have spent much of his time at Evesham in semi-retirement, until his death on 30 December 717. Over the centuries, and especially during the eleventh century, the character of the founder was magnified and sanctified, the size of the initial endowment was grossly exaggerated, and papal privileges were added for good measure. The Evesham known to Ecgwine was no doubt a humble establishment, with a compact block of territory on both banks of the Avon and an outlier, Ombersley, in the Severn valley north of Worcester.