DOMESDAY SURVEY 



freely.' ' From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 2 we know that Brand had to 

 purchase this concession and his own recognition as abbot with 40 marks 

 of gold, but for our purpose it is more important that the above charter 

 confirms nine manors by name to the abbey, and that on turning back to 

 Hugh Candidus we find that he states every one of them to have been 

 given originally by Brand and his three brothers. It would seem, there- 

 fore, to have been a main object of the abbot in obtaining this very im- 

 portant charter to secure from the new king a detailed confirmation of 

 all the grants which he and his family had made in the doubtful time 

 between the death of Harold and William's own coronation. Incidentally 

 we may note that all this is welcome as confirming the general accuracy 

 of Hugh Candidus, whose twelfth-century narrative becomes important 

 from the facts which he alone gives as to the revolt of Hereward in the 

 summer of 1070." 



After describing the ecclesiastical estates with which we have been 

 dealing, the survey at once proceeds to the possessions of the greatest of 

 Nottinghamshire landowners, Roger de Busli. Powerful in many counties, 

 he had no rival in the wide expanse of wild and largely forest country which 

 lies between the Idle and the Don, a district which included his castle of 

 Tickhill, Yorkshire, and the priory which he founded at Blyth (Notts.), 

 within two years after Domesday. ' Famous in Domesday but nowhere 

 else,' as Mr. Freeman said,* very little is known about him and his 

 family. He seems to have derived his name from Bully-le-Vicompte, 

 near Neufchatel (Seine Inferieure), where he appears some two years 

 before the Conquest as selling his tithes to the abbey of Holy Trinity, 

 Rouen. 6 That he was infrequently in attendance on the king is proved 

 by the extreme rarity of his attestation to the writs and charters of the 

 reign. He died towards the close of the reign of William Rufus, and as 

 Roger, his only son, predeceased him, his lands, which formed a group 

 described indifferently in feudal documents as the honour of Blyth or of 

 Tickhill, escheated to the crown. When found, in virtue of re-grants, 

 in the hands of Robert of Belesme, in 1102, and of Earl John in 1191, 

 they play an important part in Nottinghamshire, and, indeed, in general 

 history, but one which lies too far from our present purpose for it to be 

 described here. 



The Domesday map marks the general distribution of Roger de 

 Busli's estates. They were scattered over the whole of the county with 

 the exception of Broxtow wapentake, in which he did not hold a 

 single manor. As might be expected, they became more and more 

 compact as we approach the Yorkshire border ; indeed, the only exceptions 

 to his tenure between the latter and the River Idle were some fragments 

 of the king's sokeland of Bothamsall and Mansfield. 



Most of Roger's predecessors in this large territory had been quite 

 undistinguished men. It is equally uncertain whether the ' Morcar ' 



1 The charter is printed in the Monasticon, \, 383, and discussed by Mr. Round in the Commune of 

 London, p. 29, where its date is determined. 



1 Sub anno 1066. * See also Feudal England, 163. 



4 English Towns and Districts, p. 363. 5 Round, Cal. Doc. France, 23. 



223 



