92 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



promoted to the bishopric of Exeter ; but Osbern was brother 

 of William fitz Osbern, Earl of Hereford, who was of kin to 

 both the Conqueror and the Confessor ; and Bosham was itself 

 a seaport, and it was thence that Harold started on his ill-fated 

 voyage which finished in the dungeons of the Count of 

 Ponthieu ; and Bosham with Thorney Island command 

 Chichester harbour. 1 



We have noticed that William was not a large benefactor 

 of the English Church, and it should be remembered that the 

 foundation which proportionately lost most property under the 

 Conquest was Harold's one foundation of the Holy Rood at 

 Waltham, whose possessions at Lambeth and Streatham passed 

 to the Count of Mortain. 2 Sometimes the Church lost pro- 

 perty which had been granted on lease to a tenant who was 

 also the tenant of a third party ; and on the grant of the for- 

 feitures of this third party, the Church was, perhaps by in- 

 advertence, deprived of its land. Thus Alfred Black held lands 

 of the abbeys of Westminster and St. Albans in Hertfordshire, 

 but for other lands he had commended himself to Stigand, 

 Archbishop of Canterbury. After Stigand's death, all these 

 lands passed to Lanfranc, Stigand's successor, and so were 

 lost to the abbeys. 3 



Two other points in connection with the large estates of the 

 abbeys require notice. Possibly it may be a sign of the deeper 

 religious feelings of the eleventh century, when we find that 

 the Commissioners for the eastern counties often recorded the 

 saint to whom a monastery was dedicated, as the actual owner 

 of the lands of that monastery. Saint Bene't of Hulme, Saint 

 Benedict of Ramsey, St. Etheldreda of Ely, and Saint Edmund, 

 are all in so many words stated to hold land in Norfolk. Saint 

 Edmund was entitled to the sake and soke and commendation 

 of certain freemen in Suffolk ; 4 and in one passage Saint Paul 

 is actually represented as a trespasser at Navestock : " Sanctus 

 Paulus invasit." 5 



1 F. ., 320. 2 D. B., I. 34 a 2. 



3 /</., I. 133 a 2. Id., II. 365 b. 5 Id., II. 13. 



