A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



Melton Mowbray. It is clear that these 102 carucates must have been 

 distributed over an area much wider than that of any single manor, but 

 it is very difficult to discover to what they were really intended to refer. 

 It will, perhaps, be safer here to attempt no guesses on the subject, but 

 merely to remark that the doubtful attribution of this large number of 

 carucates should be taken into account in any statistical study of the Leicester- 

 shire Domesday. 49 



At first sight the Leicestershire fief of Geoffrey de Wirce appears to 

 have been composed of the estates of a number of unconnected English- 

 men, but it is really probable that here, as in other counties, he had 

 originally been given the land of a single native landowner, the Leofric 

 son of Leofwine who had possessed Melton Mowbray and its depen- 

 dencies. We are not given the name of the former owner of Geoffrey's 

 manors in the south of the county, but it is noteworthy that he is said 

 to have received his land in Stoney Stanton, East Norton, Newton Burdet, 

 Little Dalby, and Withcote, from King William ' in exchange for the 

 vill which is called Thurcaston.' Thurcaston is duly surveyed under 

 Hugh de Grentemaisnil's fief, and its former owner is given as ' Lewin,' 

 whom we may reasonably identify with the father of the Leofric who had 

 held Melton Mowbray, and we may also assume that Thurcaston had 

 originally been given to Geoffrey with the other possessions of the vanished 

 English family. We do not know why King William should have inter- 

 ested himself to make the exchange in question, nor why he should have 

 bestowed Thurcaston upon Hugh de Grentemaisnil, but the latter grant must 

 have been made before 1081, for the church of Thurcaston is included 

 among the gifts of Hugh de Grentemaisnil, which the Conqueror confirmed 

 to the abbey of St. Evroult in a charter of that year. 60 As Geoffrey is known 

 to have married an English wife 61 it is very probable that the bulk of his 

 lands came to him through inheritance rather than by the dispossession of 

 their native owner, who must, however, have disappeared before 1077 when 

 Geoffrey endowed Monks Kirby Priory out of lands in Leicestershire. In 

 the foundation charter of the latter house there occur several names which 

 we may confidently assume to be those of Geoffrey's undertenants recorded 

 in one portion of the survey, but unfortunately they are not described with 

 sufficient precision for us to locate them accurately among Geoffrey's Leices- 

 tershire manors. We may, however, be reasonably certain that the man who 

 bears the somewhat unusual name of ' Buterus ' in the charter is the same as 

 the tenant of that name who held the important manor of Pickwell in 

 Domesday. 



The estates which are described upon the succeeding folio of our survey 

 for the most part represent mere fractions of larger possessions outside the 

 county, and do not call for special notice here. These small holdings are, 

 however, immediately followed by another estate of great importance, ' the 

 land of the Countess Judith.' This lady was the daughter of Count Enguer- 

 rand of Ponthieu and Adeliza the Conqueror's sister, and she had married the 

 unfortunate Earl Waltheof, to whom a considerable part of her Leicestershire 



49 Allowing 1 5 carucates to Melton Mowbray, the total assessment of Geoffrey's land in Framland 

 wapentake amounts to 1 1 5^f carucates. 



50 Ord. Vit. Hist. Eccles. (Soc. de 1'Hist. de France), iii, 19. " V.C.H. Warwick, \, 275. 



296 



