THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



No apology is needed for these extracts from a passage which gives a new 

 and a living sense to the words of the Hertfordshire Survey. In that 

 survey we have entry after entry of lands held by those who are the 

 ' men ' of some one above them, and in at least three instances we can 

 trace the process a step further. At Munden a manor was held by 

 Leofwine, ' a man of earl Harold,' who ' could sell ' ; while ' Sutrehelle,' 

 which was appurtenant to Munden, was ' held of Leofwine ' by Torchil, 

 who 'could not sell without his leave' (fo. 139). In Eastwick 2 hides 

 were held by ' Wulfwine, a thegn of earl Harold,' and in Stanstead 

 adjoining it half a hide by ' Bettice, a man of Wulfwine of Eastwick ' 

 (fo. i4o^). 1 The third is the very interesting case of JEAfric ' blac.' He 

 had held lands at Datchworth and Walton ' of the abbot of Westminster,' 

 and at Watton, in turn, half a hide was held by ./Elfmaer, ' a man of this 

 ALlfric ' (fo. 133). But the Hundred Court is careful to explain that 

 ./Elfric had no power to alienate these lands from the abbey, although 

 ' for other lands he was archbishop Stigand's man.' The entry of these 

 ' other ' lands follows, for, clearly, what had happened was that arch- 

 bishop Lanfranc, when he secured the lands that Mlfric had held of 

 Stigand, annexed also the lands belonging to Westminster Abbey because 

 ./Elfric was their tenant. This was the way in which religious houses 

 frequently lost their lands at the time of the Norman Conquest. 



The position, as revealed by Domesday, of archbishop Stigand in 

 the county is one that has scarcely received the attention it deserves. 

 The actual manors held by him were scattered Standon and Broxbourne 

 in its eastern half, Pirton and Redbourne in the west. But what strikes 

 one most in the Hertfordshire Survey, as in that of Cambridgeshire to 

 the north, is the number of holders of land who had been Stigand's 

 ' men.' This may have been due only to his power in the period 

 preceding the Conquest, but it is worth noting that the Ely writers 

 charged him not only with obtaining possession of four manors belonging 

 to the monks of their house, 2 but with taking other abbeys into his 

 hands, St. Alban's among them. Mr. Freeman observed on this that he 

 could not ' find any mention of an incumbency of Stigand in the local 

 history of St. Alban's.' 3 Domesday however tells us (p. 315 below) that 

 Stigand was holding Redbourne of St. Alban's Abbey at the death of 

 Edward the Confessor, but had no power to alienate it from the abbey. 

 It was thus that he had obtained possession of the Ely manor of Snail- 

 well, Cambridgeshire, 4 while he had also secured from the monks of 

 Bath their great manor of Tidenham, and from those of Winchester that 

 of East Meon, 6 in both cases to their ultimate loss. 



But for Hertfordshire history it is of less interest to trace the cases 

 in which lands were held by ' men ' of archbishop Stigand or the earls of 

 the great rival houses of Leofric and of Godwine than to identify the 

 chief local landowners whose ' men ' are found in Domesday. Foremost 



1 See also below the case of Edzi, a ' man ' of Godid, who was herself a ' man ' of Ansgar. 

 * See Feudal England, pp. 460-1. 3 Norman Conquest, iii. (znd ed.), 64.3. 



4 Domesday, fo. 199^. 6 See the Victoria History of Hampshire, \. 416. 



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