A HISTORY OF SURREY 



estates of which the total assessment was over 50 hides were held 'of him 

 by others. Omitting this last category, we find that exactly one-tenth 

 of the assessed value of the county was in the hands of Harold himself, 

 while the rest of his family held nearly half as much again between 

 them. In Sussex, of course, they had absorbed between them a far 

 greater proportion of the county. It has been weightily observed by 

 Professor Maitland that 



As with the estates of the king, so with the estates of the earls, we find it im- 

 possible to distinguish between private property and official property. . . . one of 

 the best marked features of Domesday Book, a feature displayed on page after page, the 

 enormous wealth of the house of Godwin, seems only explicable by the supposition . 

 that the earlships and the older ealdormanships had carried with them a title to the 

 enjoyment of wide lands. That enormous wealth had been acquired within a marvel- 

 lously short time ... a great deal of simple rapacity is laid to the charge of 

 Harold . . . but the greater part of the land ascribed to Godwin, his widow, and his 

 sons, seems to consist of comitales 



Whether Harold's Surrey estates were connected or not with the 

 earldom (as in the south-west of England), they point to a time when 

 his influence was distinctly greater in the county than that of his brother 

 Leofwine. 



The landed settlement, under the Conqueror, was materially affected 

 by the existence of these estates of Harold. In Surrey, for instance, he 

 reserved for himself the whole of those which his fallen rival had held in 

 his own hands, except Wotton, to which Harold's title was questioned 

 by the Domesday jurors. Of the manors that William thus obtained, 

 he gave Battersea and Pirford, in exchange for Windsor,* to Westmin- 

 ster, and bestowed Limpsfield on the abbey of his own foundation at 

 Battle ; but all the rest he held in 1086. With the manors 'held of 

 Harold by dependent thegns it was different. Tadworth and Little 

 Bookham, which had been held of him by ' Godtovi,' were bestowed on 

 William de Briouze (' Braiose '), while Oswold retained as a thegn of the 

 King the Wisley estate he had held of Harold. The remaining five 

 estates which had been held of him by various persons went to swell the 

 fief of Odo bishop of Bayeux. In Surrey, therefore, there would seem 

 to have been a certain method in the disposal of Harold's lands. 



Next to the house of Godwine we may place ' Alnod cild,' whose 

 important manor of Bramley heads the fief of the bishop of Bayeux. An 

 English noble, who was also known, from the chief seat of his power, as 

 ' Alnod ' of Canterbury or of Kent, his wide possessions reached not only 

 into Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire, but even into Oxfordshire, Northants, 

 and Bucks. The Domesday scribes, who, as in Surrey, spoke indiffer- 

 ently of William's predecessor as ' Harold ' or as ' earl Harold,' were 

 similarly careless of the styles of dispossessed Englishmen, so that the 

 ' Alnod ' who had held the great manor of Banstead may well have been 

 the same man. His name, however, was not uncommon, and an ' Alnod 



1 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 168. 



2 It is only from the Surrey Domesday that we obtain this information. Under Windsor itself 

 Domesday gives us no hint that Edward had bestowed it on Westminster Abbey. 



282 



