THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Essex, and in both counties manors are found, down to a far later time, 

 owing the service of castle-ward or the money commutation for it to 

 his castle there upon the Stort. That this ' castel ' was standing at the 

 time of the Domesday Survey is proved by a charter of the Conqueror, 

 addressed to Peter de Valognes and others, which gives to Bishop 

 Maurice the ' castel of Estorteford,' as held by Bishop William his 

 predecessor. 1 The bishop's castle reminds us of his position as a tenant- 

 in-chief holding his great fief by military service. One of the difficult 

 questions raised by Domesday in Essex is its application of the phrase 

 ' fief of the Bishop of London ' to a portion only of his manors * the 

 earlier portion being headed ' land of the Bishop of London ' a 

 distinction emphasized by its repetition at the head of fo. 9.* One 

 might naturally suppose that the bishop's 'fief was that portion of 

 his lands which was held by knight-service; but even in Domesday 

 it is clear enough that both portions were so held, and the valuable 

 lists of the bishop's knights in the twelfth and the thirteenth 

 centuries* make it certain that this was so. We must therefore seek 

 elsewhere the meaning of this distinction. It is found, I think, in 

 certain entries in the Domesday Survey of Hertfordshire. 4 We there 

 read of Bishop Stortford that 'it belongs to the fief (est de feudo) that 

 Bishop William bought ' ; of part of Wickham, that ' this land is of 

 Bishop William's fief (feudo); of an estate in Throcking, that 'this 

 land is (part of) the purchase of Bishop William ' ; and of Thorley, 

 that ' William Bishop of London bought this manor of King William, 

 . . . and now the Bishop of London claims it.' With these clues we 

 return to Essex and observe at once that what is there styled the ' fief 

 of the Bishop of London ' is entirely composed of lands which had 

 been held by sundry lay owners under Edward the Confessor. And this 

 was not the case with the ' land of the Bishop of London,' all of which 

 had been held, at some period, by his see, except the first manor entered, 

 of which the previous owner, a free woman, may have bestowed it on 

 the church. It may therefore be inferred with much probability that 

 the ' fief of the Bishop of London ' had been acquired by Bishop 

 William for his church during his long and eventful tenure of the see 

 (1051-75). 



Bishop William had enjoyed the favour of the Conqueror as of the 

 Confessor, which the former showed by giving him the manor of Warley 

 as an old possession of his see, by restoring the vast estate of South- 

 minster, which Cnut, says Domesday, had taken away, and by enabling 

 him to prove the right of his church to two manors in the Layers. His 

 most valuable manors, taking them in order, were Clacton, Orsett, South- 

 minster and St. Osyth (' Cice '). Turning from the bishop to his canons 

 we find Domesday, as usual,' inconsistent with itself. In Middlesex it 



1 Dngdale's History of St. PauPt, pp. 304-5. * See pp. 413, 437 below. 



3 Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. 186-7, 54'-*- 



4 See the Victoria History of Hertfordshire, i. 279. 

 6 Sec the Victoria History of Worcestershire, i. 245. 



339 



