A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



it to Archbishop Oskytel of York. This latter seems to be genuine, and 

 is one of the very few similar documents older than the eleventh century 

 which relate to the Danelaw. 1 Apart from this the manor, the sokeland of 

 which is only described in abstract, does not call for special remark. 

 Blidworth, which is now part of the manor of Southwell, stands by itself 

 as a manor in Domesday, with parts of Calverton and Oxton as its 

 dependencies. Oxton, indeed, is entered as a separate manerium, desig- 

 nated as such by the symbol M in the margin, and assigned to a pre- 

 Conquest owner ' Elnod.' But at the end of the entry we read ' the 

 king has one bovate of this land, the rest belongs (iacet) to Blidworth.' 

 Accordingly, we have here an instance of one manenum dependent on 

 another. 



The possessions of the bishop of Lincoln all lay in the east of our 

 county, and were entirely dominated by his manor of Newark. Although 

 only styled a manor in the survey, Newark possessed fifty-six burgesses 

 (whose existence is only revealed to us through an interlineation), and 

 has, presumably on this account, been included in the small class of 

 boroughs which were situated on private land in io86. s Whether a 

 borough or not before the Conquest, Newark must have been very recently 

 under a lord of comital rank, for it was given, together with Fledborough 

 and Well wapentake, Lincolnshire, by the famous Countess Godeva, wife 

 of Earl Leofric of Mercia, to the bishop of Lincoln and his monastery of 

 Stow in Lindsey. 3 



The Conqueror confirmed the grant/ and Newark became a 

 favourite residence of the bishops of Lincoln, especially after the founda- 

 tion of its castle by Bishop Alexander (11231147). But to the 

 Domesday student the chief interest of Newark will consist in its soke 

 and the rights which the bishops of Lincoln possessed over it. At the 

 time of the survey the bishop exercised rights of jurisdiction over three 

 wapen takes, Newark, and Well and Lawress in Lincolnshire ; the 

 first two being in virtue of the above grant of the Countess Godeva. 

 However, the rights conferred over Newark were not quite the same as 

 those which the bishop enjoyed over his two Lincolnshire wapentakes. 

 Thus, in the Lincolnshire (West Riding) ' clamores,' we read : 



' Super forisfacturam de (Lagulris) ' De omnibus tainis qui terrain habent in 



wapentac hab(uit) S. Maria ii partes Welle wapentac habet S: Maria ii partes et 



soc(ae) et comes terciam. Nunc Rex. comes terciam. Similiter de heriete. Simi- 



Similiter de heriete. Et si terram liter si terram suam forisfecissent ii partes in 



suam forisfecissent S: Maria ii partes S: Maria et terciam partem in manu comitis 



habuisset et comes terciam.' hunc habet rex.' 6 



The grammar of these passages is not above reproach, but we can see that 

 only the king's two pennies, and not the earl's third penny, were in 



1 Birch, Cartul. Sax., iii, 249 (not in Codex Diplomaticus). 

 ' Domesday Book and Beyond, 213. 



3 See the documents in Man. Angl. iii, under the heading of Eynsham Priory. 

 * The text of the charter is preserved in the Eynsham Register, which will shortly be published by 

 the Oxford Historical Society. 

 4 Dom. Bk., f. 376. 



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