speaking of them and of the Manor of Butcombe Thrubwell, I 
think I cannot do better than use, for the most part, the words 
of Mr. Bere one of my predecessors, as recorded by him in one 
of our Parish Registers; wherein, by his lively sallies, he has 
rendered amusing what might to some have appeared a matter of 
dry legal or historical detail. “Butcombe, he says, is thus 
entered in Doomsday Book.”—“ Fulcran holds of the Bishop 
Budcombe. Edward held it in the time of King Edward, and it 
gelded for 3 hides. The arable is 3 Carucates. The demesne is 
one Carucate and two servants and eleven villans and four 
cottagers, with five ploughs. There is a mill of twenty pence 
rent, and ten acres of meadow, and thirty acres of wood. It was 
and is worth four pounds per annum.” 
“This Bishop, of whom Fulrcan held Budcombe, was Geoffrey 
of Coutances, a Norman by birth He was elected Bishop of 
Lincoln, A.D. 1048. On the invasion of this kingdom by William 
Duke of Normandy, in October, 1066—this son of violence, a 
bishop ! joined his countrymen, the Bastard, at Pevensey—and 
so wielded his spiritual, or rather carnal weapons, at the deadly 
Battle of Hastings which bestowed on William the title of 
Conqueror, and the Crown of England, that, for his services (which 
from his remuneration must have been pretty considerable) he 
received from William 280 Lordships in England—was made Chief 
Justiciary of Ireland—and President of the great trial held at the 
County Court of Kent at Tenterden, between Lanfranc, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, and Odo Bishop of Baieux. We find him in the 
year 1070, denominated by Ordericus Vitalis, Magister Militum. 
In 1074, he marched with the other fighting Bishop Odo, to 
suppress what these pious, modest, Norman Bishops were pleased 
to call a rebellion, into which the poor people maddened by vile 
oppression were driven. The natives, under the command of the 
Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, were defeated with great 
slaughter. 
Bishop Geoffrey then detached his forces from those of Odo, 
