A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



may refer to this latter time as a general rule, the words quando recepit 

 being incidentally added in the instance given above. The case of Burbage 

 may even help us to a rough date for the period in question. The vill had 

 been granted to Coventry Abbey by Earl Leofric of Mercia in the latter part 

 of the Confessor's reign, 18 so that the words quando recepit cannot refer to 

 the abbey's first possession of the estate. At the time of King Edward's 

 death, the abbey was under the rule of the famous Leofric, the pluralist 

 abbot of Peterborough, who was mortally wounded at the battle of Hastings. 

 The fact that Abbot Leofric had actually taken part in the great battle would 

 enable the new king, without undue straining of the law, to take the 

 possessions of the abbey into his own hands, and there exists an original writ 

 of the Conqueror 17 in which he restores the temporalities of the abbey to 

 Leofwine, Leofric's successor. This writ can only belong to the latter part 

 of 1070, and there is therefore a distinct probability that this is the year to 

 which the first value given for Burbage really refers. But if the Leicester- 

 shire 'valuits' in general refer to about the same time we may not improbably 

 connect the wasted condition of the county with the Conqueror's march from 

 Warwick to Nottingham when he suppressed the first revolt of Edwin and 

 Morcar towards the close of 1068. 18 And if we may make due allowance for 

 the general poverty of the county the distribution of the wasted area agrees 

 well enough with the supposition that it was harried in the first instance 

 along a line extending from High Cross, the point at which the road from 

 Warwick to Nottingham would enter the county, to the Soar at Lough- 

 borough. If we indicate on a map those manors which have increased four- 

 fold in value between the date at issue and 1086, the point where Watling 

 Street and the Foss Way meet becomes a focus of devastation which extends 

 over the western half of the county to Barrow on Soar and Loughborough, 

 and also along the Welland Valley as far as Slawston and Medbourne. The 

 latter district would readily be reached by raiding parties by way of the 

 Watling Street and Upper Avon ; but Framland wapentake, the part of the 

 county most remote from William's line of march on this occasion, was also 

 the part where Domesday reveals the smallest variation in general value. 

 But whatever the validity of this explanation of the depression of one county, 

 we cannot well refer the Leicestershire ' valuit ' to a date anterior to the 

 Conquest, and some at least of the difficulties presented by our portion of the 

 survey become more intelligible on that hypothesis. 



The last question to demand discussion at this point is the meaning of 

 the Leicestershire * team-land.' The phrase ' there is land for x teams ' is 

 always ambiguous, for it may refer to the amount of arable land actually 

 under cultivation in a manor, or to the cultivated area plus unreclaimed 

 waste, or even to the latter quantity alone. Also in certain counties with 



16 See his reputed charter in Man. Angl. iii, 191. * 7 Facsimiles ofMSS. in Brit. Mta. 



18 Professor Freeman (Norman Conquest, iv, 196-7 [ed. 1871]) suggested that Leicester borough had under- 

 gone at this time ' a doom . . . which might ... be spoken of as utter destruction.' He derived this 

 suggestion from a misreading of the History of Leicester Abbey, printed in Dugdale's Monattieoa (see Round, 

 feud. Engl. 456), and he regarded the displacement of the English landowning class in the shire as almost 

 complete, taking no account of the Englishmen who in 1086 were holding land of Norman lords. But he 

 does not seem to have realized the peculiarities of the Leicestershire valuit and valet, and if the former are due 

 to a devastation of the shire it can hardly be placed at any other date. It cannot be laid to the charge of the 

 northern insurgents of 1065, for Leicestershire was part of the Mercian earldom, and Earl Edwin himself led 

 a detachment of the rebel army. 



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