A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



who had held Gunthorpe was the earl of Northumbria, or whether the 

 ' Tosti ' who had held part of Bingham was his dispossessed predecessor 

 in that earldom. Elsi the son of Caschin, who is stated on folio 280^ to 

 have held sac and soc over Worksop, duly appears on folio 285 as the 

 former owner there, but this seems to be the limit of possible identifica- 

 tions. On the other hand the fief supplies us with some extremely good 

 examples of the division of vills, not into parcels of sokeland, but into 

 distinct manors, the former owners of which are usually specified by 

 name. When this is not the case they are invariably described collec- 

 tively as ' thegns,' a fact which is important, for the majority of these 

 people must have been of very lowly rank with little except their per- 

 sonal status to mark them off from the larger class of sokemen around 

 them. Moreover there are some valuable entries in which we read not 

 only of the thegn but of his hall (aula). Thus we are told that at Eaton 

 ten thegns, at Carlton in Lindrick six thegns, at Headon Godric and six 

 other thegns had each his hall. 1 Such cases are interesting, for it is to 

 the hall that we must look if we wish to find the old English equivalent 

 of the Anglo-Norman manerium ; 2 while on the other hand the estates 

 on which these halls were seated might well be considered far too small 

 to admit of anything resembling the later manorial organization. Thus 

 Eaton and Carlton in Lindrick contained only 4 plough-lands each and 

 Headon 53 ; at Normanton upon Trent ' five thegns, Justan, Durand, 

 Elward, Ulmar, Aseloc, had each his hall and ii bovates of land each 

 (assessed) to the geld,' and in the neighbouring vill of Weston, ' Elmar, 

 Elwi, Osbern, Grim, Edric, Steinulf had each his hall and 6 bovates 

 between them.' However faintly the fiscal responsibility of the manor 

 may have reflected its real capacity, no allowance reasonably to be made 

 for this will materially increase the size of their units ; Normanton had 

 been worth 10 shillings as a whole, Carlton in Lindrick and Headon 4 

 each, and if Eaton was estimated at 6 before the Conquest this would 

 only give an average value of 10 shillings for each of its manors. Other 

 small but seemingly independent estates from the same quarter of the 

 county occur at Rampton and Gringley on the Hill, where there had 

 been seven manors, Misterton and Wheatley divided into five, Ordsall 

 and Fenton into four. The account of the latter is important, for it 

 shows us the existence of private jurisdiction on one of these small pre- 

 Conquest manors. Three of the four manors in Fenton are surveyed 

 together, but a separate entry is made of the fourth, which runs : 



Ibidem habebat Speravoc ii bovatas terrae et ii partes unius bovatae ad geldum. 

 Terra i carucae cum saca et soca sine aula. 



This may fairly be quoted as a counter instance to Professor Mait- 

 land's Cheshire manor which is said to have its pleas in its lord's court; 3 

 for if the latter passage suggests that it was an exceptional thing for a 



1 At Epperstone and Woodborough in the fief of Ralf de Limesi, the scribe after giving the names of 

 Ralf's two English predecessors has added the words ' non aulam ' over the second name. 



' Domesday Book and Beyond, 109. 3 Domesday Book and BiyonJ, 91. 



224 



