THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



of London ' is entered in Domesday as giving Tooting to Westminster 

 Abbey. The true form of the noble's name is given by Florence of 

 Worcester, who tells us that ' ./Ethelnoth of Canterbury ' was one of the 

 leading hostages whom William carried off with him to Normandy in 

 io67. 1 The bishop of Bayeux secured his lands with those in Kent at 

 least of another Kentish noble, ' Bricsi (or Brixi) cild ' ; but the latter's 

 Surrey manor of Stoke was obtained by Richard of Tunbridge. But the 

 one English landowner who appears as distinctively a Surrey man is one 

 to whose pecular position Mr. Maiden has called attention, Oswold, 

 brother apparently of Wulfwold abbot of Chertsey. His land at Worth 

 in the forest to the south had passed away to Richard of Tunbridge, who 

 allowed him, however, at Mitcham, to retain as an under-tenant the 

 land he had held, before the Conquest, direct of the Crown ; while at 

 Effingham he actually held of Richard a good estate which had belonged 

 to a dispossessed Englishman. He also held of Chertsey Abbey another 

 estate at Effingham, which, under Edward the Confessor, he had held in 

 his own right. But it is as a thegn of king William that his position is 

 most remarkable ; at the close of the Survey we find him holding, in 

 that capacity, four estates, two of which he had similarly held direct of 

 king Edward, while in one earl Harold was his lord. The fact that 

 another Englishman, ' Seman,' had actually commended himself to 

 Oswold ' since king William came into England ' is a proof of the 

 favour he had found in the eyes of the Norman King. 



Huntsmen, as might be expected, were a class who contrived, in 

 places, to keep their lands when other Englishmen lost them. Four 

 huntsmen, under the Confessor, had held land in Surrey ; and, although 

 two of them, ' Elmer ' and Coleman, were no longer holders of land in 

 1086, Wulfwine retained the small estate he had held under the Con- 

 fessor, and Chetel the land at Littleton which had then been held by his 

 father. With these retainers of the court, perhaps, we may class 

 Theoderic the goldsmith, who held Kennington under William as he 

 held it under the Confessor, and who, in the words of Professor Freeman, 

 'doubtless owed the favour of William to his skill in an art specially 

 adapted to enhance the splendour of a king's court, an art for which 

 both natives and sojourners in England were specially famous.' 



The remaining instances of English landowners are introduced to 

 illustrate the scattered nature of their possessions. Osmund, who had 

 held in Surrey Loseley and Worplesdon with Burgham, can be positively 

 shown to be the same Osmund as he who had held in Hampshire Penton 

 Mewsey and North Houghton, and in Wiltshire, as Osmund the thegn, 

 Milston and Eaton Mewsey. 2 For not only had they all passed to earl 

 Roger of Shrewsbury: they had all been also bestowed by him on a 



1 ' nobilem satrapam Agelnothum Cantuariensem.' Ellis, unfortunately, followed Kelham, who 

 relied on Hasted for identifying ' Alnod ' with Wulfnoth, a younger brother of Harold (Introduction to 

 Domesday, II. ^\). 



* This is doubtless the reason why Loseley was found, some two centuries later, to be held of Richard 

 Seymour ' as of the manor of Eiton Meisey in Wilts ' (Esch. 45 Ed. III., n. 4) ; and it identifies 

 positively the Domesday manor of ' Ettone (Wilts).' 



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