A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



describes his tenure is noteworthy, for it supplies an early example of a 

 technical distinction which later became of immense importance in English 

 land-law. We are told that, ' Edith the queen held these lands. Now God- 

 win has them of the king at farm. But Dishley he holds of the king in fee 

 (in feudo) ,' and the record goes on to state that Godwin also holds 2J hides and 

 4 carucates in Shepshed of the king in fee. This case has been noted by 

 Professor Maitland, 25 who remarks that ' as in general a farmer would have no 

 heritable rights,' Godwin's occupancy of Thorpe Acre, Saddington, and Wad- 

 borough would be terminable at the king's pleasure. The case of Shepshed 

 is also noteworthy for another reason, for Odo of Bayeux in the time of his 

 regency had ordered that the manor should pay 6 ' for the service,' that is, 

 probably, the military service, ' of the Isle of Wight.' Why a manor on the 

 edge of Charnwood Forest should be required to contribute towards the de- 

 fence of the Isle of Wight may not be very apparent, but the fact illustrates 

 the way in which Domesday often reveals the existence of an unlikely con- 

 nexion, fiscal or otherwise, between widely separated parts of the kingdom. 



The small fief of the archbishop of York, on which the most important 

 manors were in Langton and Lubenham, is chiefly remarkable for the ex- 

 ceptional subinfeudation of the latter vill. Lubenham as a whole was held 

 of the archbishop by a certain Walchelin, and under him by a tenant named 

 Robert. But a nameless knight held 3 carucates in Lubenham of this 

 latter Robert, so that the five villeins and one bordar who cultivated the soil 

 on that portion of the vill had four lords in ascending sequence between them 

 and the king. This fact would be in no way remarkable in the thirteenth 

 century, but it is exceptional in Domesday for more than two lords to inter- 

 vene between the king and the peasant. 26 It also may incidentally be noticed 

 that the carucate which the archbishop held in Tilton was assigned to the 

 ' alms ' of the collegiate church of Southwell in Nottinghamshire. 



From the lands of the archbishop of York the survey proceeds to deal 

 with the fief of the bishop of Lincoln, within whose diocese Leicestershire 

 lay. The bishop's estates fall into two divisions : the first, regarded as be- 

 longing to the church of Lincoln rather than to the bishop, consisting of land 

 in the borough of Leicester, and a manor of i 2 carucates in Knighton ; the 

 second comprising a number of manors which before the Conquest had been 

 held by almost as many separate Englishmen, 27 and therefore representing 

 rather the personal estate of Remigius of Fecamp than the lands of the see of 

 Lincoln. Whatever possession may have belonged to the see of Leicester in 

 the old days of the Mercian kingdom had been swept away in the general 

 ruin occasioned by the great Danish settlement, and these few personal 

 grants to Bishop Remigius contrast strongly with the handsome endowment 

 which he possessed, largely as a result of the Conqueror's favour, in Lincoln- 

 shire itself. 



Peterborough Abbey possessed in Leicestershire the two manors of East 

 Langton and Great Easton. The latter, with its appurtenances in Glaston 

 (Rutland), Drayton, Priestgrave, and Bringhurst, had been given to the 



14 Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 152. * Ibid. 170. 



17 All the bishop of Lincoln's predecessors in Leicestershire appear to have been quite unimportant people 

 with the exception of the Bardi who had possessed ' Haliach.' He had preceded the bishop in a number of 

 Northamptonshire manors and had been a considerable landowner in Lincolnshire itself, where he had held the 

 great estate of Sleaford. 



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