A HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE 



destroyed before the end of his reign, and at the date of Domesday lay in 



rums. 88 



The displacement of the original landowners of the county after the 

 Conquest was very thorough, no doubt aggravated by the resistance of 1069 

 and 1070. At the time when the commissioners of the Domesday Survey 

 visited the county something like half was woodland, and generally speaking it 

 was thinly inhabited, incapable of ordinary taxation, and badly stocked. At 

 this time the greatest landowners in the county beside the king were, first 

 of all, Robert de Tocni, afterwards called de Stafford, who took his name 

 almost certainly from Stafford, of which he was governor. All that he held 

 in the county had belonged to its last Saxon earl, Edwin, and he was the 

 largest lay owner. He was the younger son of Roger de Toeni, the hereditary 

 standard-bearer of the Conqueror, but in spite of his descent and his great 

 possessions he was not granted the dignity and power of an earldom. This 

 Robert de Stafford was the founder of the great house of Stafford, whose 

 descendants in the fifteenth century became dukes of Buckingham, and 

 perhaps the greatest landowners in England. Next to him came Roger of 

 Montgomery Earl of Shropshire, one of the four great palatine earldoms. 39 

 Then came William Fitz Anculf, the owner, among other fiefs, of Dudley 

 Castle, of whom nothing is known except that his entire barony came into the 

 possession of Fulke Paynel, who probably married Fitz Anculf's heiress.* 

 Henry de Ferrers, who built Tutbury Castle, was one of the commissioners 

 of the Domesday Survey. His estates were more compact than those of 

 most of the great nobles, whose holdings were split up partly by the policy 

 of the Conqueror and partly by the scattered nature of the lands of their 

 Anglo-Saxon predecessors. Hugh de Montgomery, one of the sons of Earl 

 Roger, and Richard Forester also held estates in the county. 41 



Some lands still remained in the possession of Saxon thegns, and eccle- 

 siastical landowners had a goodly share, the Bishop of Chester being the largest, 

 while the others were the abbots of Westminster and Burton, the French 

 abbey of Saint Remy at Rheims, and the canons of Stafford and Handone 

 ( Wolverhampton) . 



The castles mentioned at Tutbury and Dudley were most probably like 

 other castles of this period, of very simple construction, and the name does 

 not necessarily imply even the use of stone in their construction. 



After its terrible experience in the early part of the Conqueror's reign 

 Staffordshire had peace till 1102, in which year the great house of Mont- 

 gomery was in arms against Henry I. Robert of Belleme, another of the 

 sons of Roger of Montgomery, forestalled Henry's summons to answer for 

 his share in Duke Robert's invasion the preceding year '* by gathering an 

 army of Welsh and Normans. With these he and his brother Arnold laid 

 waste part of Staffordshire, and thence carried off many horses and other 

 animals and some men into Wales. 43 



At this time we find Stafford Castle, evidently a successor of that which 

 had so short a life in the reign of William I, in the hands of the king under 

 William Pantulf as its governor ; and the castle, garrisoned by 200 men-at- 



13 Freeman, Norman Cmq. iv, 318. M Stubbs, Const. Hist. (ed. 4), i, 294. 



40 Coll. for a Hiit. of Staffs. (Salt Arch. Soc.), ix (2), 6. " Eyton, Staffs. Domesday, chap. 4. 



" Davis, Engl. under Normans and Angevins, 124. Roger of Hoveden, Chron. (Rolls Ser.), i, 159. 



222 



