Evidence from charters show that Æthelred and Æthelflæd supported religious communities. In 883 they freed Berkeley Abbey from obligations to the king's "feorm" (payments in kind), and in 887 they confirmed the possession of land and transferred manpower to Pyrton Minster in Oxfordshire. In 901 they gave land to Much Wenlock Abbey, and donated a gold chalice weighing thirty mancuses in honour of its former abbess, Saint Mildburgh. In 903 they negotiated a settlement over a former monastic estate which the bishops of Worcester had been trying to recover since the 840s, and Bishop Wærferth wrote "we never could get anywhere until Æthelred became lord of the Mercians".