THE MAGNATES 91 



small borough of Seasalter pertained to the kitchen of the 

 Archbishop of Canterbury ; 1 the profits of the borough of 

 Sandwich were applied to the purchase of clothing for the 

 monks of Canterbury. 2 



There were twenty-eight foreign churches holding lands of 

 the King in England in 1086, and a few held of the magnates. 

 Edith, the Queen of Edward the Confessor, had given Periton 

 in Somerset to the Church of St. Peter at Rome ; 3 and 

 Edward the Confessor had suppressed the rich Abbey of 

 Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, and had divided its possessions 

 between his new foundation at Westminster and the Church 

 of St. Denys at Paris. 4 The Conqueror himself had been 

 lavish in his gifts of English land to the Churches of St. 

 Stephen and the Holy Trinity at Caen ; but with this excep- 

 tion and that of Battle Abbey, his gifts to the Church were 

 few compared with those of the earlier kings. Altogether the 

 lands of the foreign abbeys which were held of the King 

 employed only 666 teams in 1086, less than I per cent, of 

 the cultivated land. 



One gift of the Confessor requires a little more notice. 

 He had given to the Abbey of Fe'camp the large estates 

 of Brede in East Sussex, and Steyning in Mid-Sussex ; but 

 Brede included the rising ports of Rye and Winchelsea, 

 and Steyning was close to Shoreham, and it has been sug- 

 gested that he made these gifts to a foreign abbey to secure 

 landing-places for his cousin William when he should come 

 to claim his own. Harold, however, had his suspicions as to 

 the meaning of these gifts, and confiscated Steyning during 

 his short reign, so that Domesday Book records him as the 

 owner "at the end of the reign of King Edward." 5 But 

 yet a third Sussex port was practically in the hands of a foreign 

 ecclesiastic. The Confessor had granted the wealthy Church 

 of Bosham to his Norman chaplain Osbern, whom he afterwards 



1 D. B.. I. 5 a i. 2 Id., I. 3 a i. 



3 /</., I. 92 a 2. 4 Id., I. 1 66 a 2. 



5 Id., I. 17 a 2. 



