Sulcard

Sulcard was a monk at Westminster Abbey from around the 1050s and wrote a history of the monastery. He may have come from Rochester in Kent but nothing is known of his family. According to a history by a later monk John Flete, Sulcard was buried in the cloisters of Edward the Confessor's church and when Henry III rebuilt it from 1245 onwards his bones (together with those of Abbot Edwin, Hugolin and Ethelgoda, wife of King Sebert) were moved to the new Chapter House and placed in a marble tomb near the entrance on the south side. This no longer remains. Flete gives the verses on a lead tablet below this tomb, which can be translated as:

This little place holds and encloses twice two bodies: the first, yet youngest, wife of Sebert: the illustrious Hugolin his skull broken was recently transferred here from the cloister: Abbot Edwin, and the monk Sulcard, Sulcard being the elder, may God be their helper...

The inscription goes on to talk about Abbot Edwin.

Further reading

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004

John Flete. The history of Westminster Abbey edited by J. Armitage Robinson, 1909 (translation of the Latin available at Westminster Abbey Library)