A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



others, as by their values under the Confessor receiving the same treat- 

 ment, while those of the three estates annexed by the Conqueror are 

 entered as ' renders.' In other words, although these lands had all alike 

 been held by Harold, Risborough, Swanbourne, and Upton are recorded 

 to have ' rendered' 10, i IQJ., and 15 respectively ; Wooburn and 

 Ellesborough are entered as having been 'worth' >C X 5 an d ,<) As 

 Domesday uses the two words carefully and by way of distinction, one 

 is tempted to suggest that the three manors differed in character from 

 the two, the more so as there is reason to believe that in the adjoining 

 county of Herts the lands entered as Harold's had really been Crown 

 manors. It might, again, be suggested that the three had really been 

 ' comital ' manors, held, that is, by Harold in his official capacity as the 

 earl. Professor Maitland indeed has said that 



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 . . . The greater part of the land ascribed to 

 Godwin, his widow and his sons, seems to consist of comttales villa. 1 



Mr. Freeman, however, considered that Buckinghamshire was 

 * probably ' within the earldom of Harold's brother, Leofwine, a belief 

 which he based largely on the number of Leofwine's ' men ' within it. 2 



So far as the lands they held are evidence, there is nothing to tell 

 us which of the brothers had been earl in this county. Leofwine had 

 held six estates as against Harold's five, but their annual value was about 

 13 less. Those of Tostig, the third brother, were only three in num- 

 ber, but were worth rather more than those of Harold himself. It is 

 worthy of notice that while the Bishop of Bayeux had obtained, as in 

 Kent, Surrey, and Hertfordshire, the whole of Leofwine's land, save only 

 Halton, this latter had gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury. For 

 in the adjoining county of Middlesex Leofwine occurs as having held 

 at Edward's death the vast manor of Harrow, which had similarly 

 passed to Lanfranc in io&6, and had done so, clearly, because it formed 

 part of the possessions of his see. From this we may conjecture that 

 if Halton passed, unlike the rest of Leofwine's land, into the hands of 

 Lanfranc, it was because the see of Canterbury had claims to its pos- 

 session, and that this was also why Lanfranc obtained the important 

 manor of ' Nedreham,' which had been held by Tostig. For Godwine 

 and his sons are accused of being apt to encroach on the lands of the 

 Church, and Tostig is charged in the English Chronicle with having 

 ' robbed God.' Turning from the lands of the three brothers to their 

 ' men ' within the county, we find that, as Mr. Freeman observed, Leof- 

 wine had a good number ; but Harold had almost as many. On the 

 whole, therefore, one cannot say that Domesday affords much evidence 

 for the tenure of the earldom by Leofwine. 



1 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 168. 



2 Norman Conquest (1870), ii. 560, 567. 



