RIVAL CLERICS were not the only powerful groups with which Æthelwold's circle had to contend. They also dealt extensively with lay elites, as major landowners and as participants in local and royal governance. The circle needed nobles’ support, or at least non-interference. However, gaining this support was complicated, since the circle explicitly sought to redefine churches’ relationships with lay elites. As discussed earlier, they wanted to make their monasteries financially and socially autonomous from wealthy and powerful patrons, and they also wanted to influence lay peoples’ beliefs and behaviours. This situation was further complicated, the following chapter will argue, because the circle's relationships with lay nobles varied between their different houses. Even the same individuals – such as the leading ealdorman, Æthelwine – could be hostile to one of the circle's monasteries and a major patron of another, even though those houses were staffed with some of the same monks from Æthelwold's earlier refoundations. There was no single ‘anti-monastic reaction’ by nobles, nor was opposition to Æthelwold's circle limited to a single segment of the nobility.

Once again, supra-communal veneration seems to have been a key way the circle pursued its goals. As the circle's relationship to some key nobles varied, so their approach to supra-communal veneration also varied, at least during Æthelwold's lifetime.