A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



of Earls Edwin and Morcar, we shall be able to explain the strange absence in 

 Leicestershire of any lands which we can prove to have been possessed 

 by former holders of the Mercian earldom, though if this were the case 

 Domesday, according to its customary practice, ought to have named 

 either Earl jElfgar or Earl Edwin as the owner of these manors in King 

 Edward's time, for there is every probability that Harold's marriage did not 

 take place until after his coronation." This difficulty, however, is not insuper- 

 able, for there exist other cases in which Domesday has given as the pre-Con- 

 quest owner a man who did not enter into possession until after the Confessor's 

 death. Moreover, a manor of the type of Barrow on Soar, with its great 

 extent of dependent sokeland, would be more likely to be found in the hands 

 of an earl than in those of a private subject, and it is not improbable that 

 Barrow had been a residence of the early kings of Mercia. Unfortunately 

 the description of Earl Hugh's land bears marks of having been written in 

 extreme haste, and we are left in doubt about so important a point as the 

 value of the several manors of which it was composed. Apart from Barrow 

 on Soar the most interesting of these last is Loughborough, which had been 

 held freely by five thegns before the Conquest, and had been sublet by Earl 

 Hugh to as many of his knights, one of whom bore the English name of 

 Godric. Among the earl's tenants elsewhere there appears no less a person 

 than Roger de Busli, the lord of Blyth, but the passage in the manuscript 

 which describes the holding is so corrupt that it is impossible to discover 

 the vill in which it lay. 



Mr. Round attaches some importance to the position of Earl Hugh's 

 fief as illustrating the construction of Domesday. It is entered in its right 

 place in the list of fiefs at the commencement, but the scribe forgot it when 

 its turn came, and thus made Hugh de Grentemesnil ' xm.' Thenceforth, 

 the numbers do not correspond till we come to the fief of Roger de Busli, 

 who is ' xvin,' both in the heading and in the text, but this is because, 

 conversely, the heading omits but the scribe inserts the fief of Robert de 

 Buci, which precedes Roger's. The numbers remain even down to ' XLII,' 

 and then the fief of ' Earl Hugh ' has to be entered a second time in the 

 margin of the heading, so that the scribe may insert it on the last folio, and 

 thus repair his omission. But even this was not all. He appears to have 

 detected a final omission due to the practice for this county of entering the 

 lands of a baron's tenants together after those which he held in demesne. 

 The lands of the count of Meulan's tenants had thus been overlooked, and 

 were now entered as ' XLIIII' in the second column of the folio. Lastly, 

 on the same folio, at the foot of the first column, there is crammed in the 

 duplicate entry " of the lands of Robert the doorward (hostiarius), which 

 had already been entered in their right place. 



From a consideration of the Norman tenants in chief in a county there 

 is a natural transition to the relation between the social order which pre- 

 vailed on their estates, and that which obtained ' on the day when King 

 Edward was alive and dead.' The study of this matter in Leicestershire is 

 affected by the fact that the compilers of the county survey have held them- 

 selves at liberty to give or withhold at pleasure the names of the pre-Conquest 



14 Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii, 625. 



" They have been printed side by side and discussed in Mr. Round's Feud. Engl, (26-7). 



298 



