THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



would' (fo. 3 a). 1 The meaning of the passage is at first obscure, but 

 the tenses used seem to me to imply that Leofgar had held the land in 

 his own right, had been free (as it was then said) to choose his lord, 

 before he had commended himself to Harold. 



Of the old English tenures of land we have glimpses also in the 

 alodiarii villa who, at Cuddington, held ten out of thirty hides, and who 

 could betake themselves (that is, choose a lord) with their lands where 

 they would (fo. 31^ 2). Partible inheritance, more familiar under the 

 name of gavelkind, occurs on several Surrey manors. Leofgar, we read, 

 who held Ditton, divided it, at his death, among his three sons.* Wan- 

 borough had been held as ' two manors ' by two brothers, Swegen and 

 Leofwine ; their Norman successor threw the ' two manors ' into one 

 (fo. 36). Of Shalford we read that it had been held by ' two brothers,' 

 and that though ' each had a house of his own, yet they dwelt in one curia ' 

 (fo. 35<), a word which suggests that the two houses stood within the 

 same enclosure. Tadworth had similarly been held by ' two brothers ' 

 (fo. 31^), and I cannot but suspect that the equal division of the great 

 manor of Beddington had its origin in the same system. Weybridge 

 supplies a case of tenure by coheiresses, for we read of it that ' two sisters 

 held it in the time of king Edward' (fo. 32). 



Apart from the vast changes effected in the ownership of land by 

 the confiscations and the fresh grants that followed on the Norman 

 Conquest, there were cases in Surrey, as in other counties, of mere lawless 

 seizure. Again and again we find the jurors from whose returns Domes- 

 day was compiled deposing that they know not by what right the tenant 

 in possession holds the land. Indeed in one case the scribe allows them 

 to say this in their own persons ' nescimus quomodo' (fo. 36). The 

 usual formula is that the jurors, or, as they were termed, the men of the 

 Hundred, have never seen a writ from the King placing the tenant in 

 possession, or any officer of the King authorized to give him seisin. 

 There were cases, however, such as those to which I have referred above 

 (p. 284), in which the King had simply placed one of his followers in the 

 shoes of an English magnate. In these cases the jurors, when they 

 questioned a title, did so on the ground that the stranger's predecessor 

 had not held the land. It must be remembered that in William's eyes 

 all territorial rights were acquired by a grant from himself, and, there- 

 fore, any seizure made without such grant was not so much a wrong 

 to a native as an infringement of his own prerogative ; it might have 

 deprived him of land which would otherwise have been at his disposal. 

 Sometimes his own interests were more directly affected, as in the case 

 of the Southwark dues, in which his grasping brother, bishop Odo, was 

 charged by the sheriff with wronging him. At Guildford also bishop 

 Odo was alleged to be holding houses which ought to have been the 

 King's ; one of these was held by the reeve of the bishop's manor of 

 Bramley, and ' the men of the county [court] say ' that the Bishop has 



1 ' sed quo voluisset cum terra ire potuisset.' 

 * 'Quando obiit hanc terrain tribus filiis suis dispartivit' (fo. 31). 

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