DOMESDAY SURVEY 



queror retained in his own hands when he apportioned the county to 

 his followers. At the time of the survey, however, he also held Rother- 

 field, which had belonged to his unruly brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux 

 and Earl of Kent. This estate had also belonged to Earl Godwin, 

 and although only assessed at 3 hides was of considerable extent 

 and included a park, in which some writers' have seen the explan- 

 ation of the king's seizure of this one item of Odo's great fee, which 

 was otherwise intact in 1086, though the prelate himself was in dis- 

 grace. The economic importance of the smallness of the Conqueror's 

 estate in Sussex lay in the resulting fact that Bosham was the only 

 manor of ' ancient demesne,' and that consequently when the villeins of 

 Brede, Steyning, Laughton, and other manors attempted, as they did 

 occasionally during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to claim the 

 special privileges which attached to manors of ' ancient demesne,' their 

 claims ' scrutato libro de Domesdei ' always failed. 



Next to the king came the ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief, beginning 

 with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who held extensively in the county, 

 his chief estate being the manor and hundred of South Mailing, which 

 formed a broad strip of land reaching north-east from Lewes to the 

 borders of Kent. It had been rated at 80 hides, but 5 hides had been 

 annexed by the Count of Mortain — who had also taken away i| hides 

 of the archbishop's manor of Wootton ; — it is said to have been leased to 

 Godfrey^ at £()0, but as the value of the demesne thus leased was only ^jo 

 and had been as low as £30 previously, it is not surprising that the lease 

 had terminated. Wootton, Stanmer, Patching and Tarring formed links 

 carrying the chain of Canterbury manors into west Sussex, where the 

 archbishop held East Lavant, Tangmere and Pagham ; to the latter was 

 appurtenant the church of All Saints in Chichester, ' which pays 64 

 pence,' either from tithes, church scot, etc., or more probably from 

 rents from houses in the peculiar of the Pallant in Chichester. 



The Bishop of Chichester, who in or shortly after 1075 had trans- 

 ferred his ' cathedra ' to that town from the village of Selsey, where it 

 had first been established, held Selsey, Sidlesham, Wittering, Alding- 

 bourne and Amberley in the west of the county, and Henfield, Preston 

 and Bishopstone in Mid-Sussex, but had lost the two manors in Hastings 

 rape which Alric his predecessor had held. Bexhill had been seized by 

 the Count of Eu when he received the ' castelry ' of Hastings, but had 

 been recovered by 11 66 when Bishop Hilary made the return of his 

 knights.^ ' Haslesse ' in Ticehurst had also been lost, but as the Dean 

 and Chapter held land in this parish in the thirteenth century it is 

 possible that part at least of this estate was recovered. The only other 

 loss recorded was four hides in Westbourne which Alric had held ' ad 

 monasterium.' In view of the service of four knights by which the 



• E.g. Mr. Round in Suss. Arch. Coll. xli. 50. 

 ' Possibly Godfrey de Pierpoint. 



3 Red Bk. of the Exch. (Rolls Ser.), i. 200. Domesday records the hidation as 20 hides, but 

 according to the 1 166 return the bishop only claimed (and recovered) ten hides. 



373 



