DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Baiocensis.' This is an interesting example of that record's diversity of 

 treatment. And Oxfordshire presents yet a third variety in the case of 

 an estate at Baldon, similar to that at Shefford, which is placed under 

 the fief of the bishop, but is held of him by Robert and Roger in two 

 distinct moieties which are not even entered together. On the other 

 hand Robert and Roger had extorted jointly from the abbot of Abing- 

 don three hides on his Oxfordshire manors, 1 and are duly entered as 

 their joint tenants, under his fief, in Domesday (fo. 156^). Robert's 

 great position in Oxfordshire and office as constable of Oxford castle 

 made him a formidable neighbour to the abbot, but he repented at the 

 last and found burial within the abbey walls. 



A somewhat curious feature of the Berkshire survey is the number 

 of great barons who held but one manor in the county ; there are at 

 least ten of them, while others hold only two or three manors apiece. 

 Among the smaller men one may note Aiulf the sheriff (of Dorset) and 

 his brother Humphrey the chamberlain, the latter of whom had been 

 advanced in the service of the Conqueror's Queen. Of Turstin Fitz Rou 

 the predecessor, in all his Berkshire lands, was Brihtric, an English 

 thegn, whom he had also succeeded in some of his Hampshire, Buck- 

 inghamshire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire estates. Reimbald of 

 Cirencester, King Edward's chancellor, retained the estate at East 

 Hagbourne which he had held of that sovereign, and had acquired 

 another at Aston. He was the wealthy pluralist who held so many 

 of the Crown livings, 2 including those of Cookham and of Bray in this 

 county. With him we may class his fellow-clerk, Albert (of Lotharin- 

 gia), 3 who appears as tenant-in-chief of a small estate at Ded worth, 

 which had belonged to King Edward's chamberlain, besides holding 

 some land at Windsor, which points to his attendance at court. 



The Berkshire survey, towards the end of the list of tenants-in- 

 chief, affords a good illustration of Domesday's want of system in deal- 

 ing with the King's Serjeants and minor officers. For the same man 

 will in one county be separately entered as a tenant-in-chief, and in 

 another be relegated to the group of thegns or Serjeants found at the 

 end of the survey. Hugh the steersman, who may have been a serjeant, 

 held that manor of Hampstead (Marshall), the tenure of which was in 

 later days supposed to carry the marshalship of England. The appear- 

 ance of Bernard the falconer suggests hawking on the Berkshire downs. 

 The goldsmiths however are in this county the most interesting of the 

 King's dependents. One may here quote Mr. Freeman's words : 



And with these we find the name of a man of unrecorded nationality, who doubt- 

 less 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. Five Berkshire estates, four of which had been the property 

 of an Englishman named Eadward, had passed into the hands of Theodoric the gold- 

 smith. He was doubtless one of those craftsmen from the Teutonic mainland whose 

 presence in England had been encouraged by a constant tradition going back at least 



i Abingdon Chron. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 25. a Feudal England, pp. 421-6. 



3 See The Commune of London, pp. 36-8. 



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