98 THE BURTON CHARTULARY. 
is strengthened by the fact that Wulfric’s “will” was drawn 
up and confirmed by the King when the testator was in 
the prime of life, and still more so by the circumstance 
that the massacre is stated, by one of the chroniclers, to 
have commenced at Marchinton, in Staffordshire, which 
was one of Wulfric Spott’s manors. The King’s confirma- 
tion of Wulfric’s grant is the first deed in the Chartulary, and is 
dated a.p. 1004. The Church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary 
and to Saint Modwen, an Irish female anchorite, who had dwelt 
for many years on one of the islands of the Trent, near Burton. 
Like all the Saxon foundations, Burton was greatly shorn of its 
splendour by the Norman Conquest. Of seventy-two manors 
named in Wulfric’s will, there remained to the monks at the date 
of Domesday thirty-two only, and seven of these had been given 
to them by the Conqueror.* 
The great reduction in the revenues of the religious houses of 
Saxon foundation after the Conquest, was not owing so much to 
the rapacity of the Normans, as to the policy of the Conqueror. 
These monasteries had amassed enormous possessions during that 
superstitious era immediately preceding the close of the eleventh 
century, and these were held by them for the most part free from 
all secular obligations. 
The Conqueror, with a view of increasing the military strength 
of the kingdom, which had been greatly impaired by the alienation 
of so much land to religious uses, subjected the monastic posses- 
sions to the feudal law, and compelled the monks to furnish a 
certain number of knights in time of war, or to relinquish a part 
of their endowments. The monks of Burton appear to have 
chosen the latter alternative, for none of the tenants of this 
monastery after the Conquest held their lands by military service. 
In this they probably acted wisely, for monastic bodies derived 
little or no benefits from lands in which military tenants were 
enfeoffed. The feudal obligations, such as the aid on the knight- 
hood of the eldest son, or on the marriage of the eldest daughter 
* See Confirmation by Pope Lucius, folio vii. The list in Domesday is 
incomplete. 
a 
