TOO THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



Somerset, Gloucester, Yorkshire, and Lincoln ; Osbern Gifard 

 succeeded Dunne in Gloucestershire, but the shire said that 

 his title to Aldbury was doubtful because " it did not belong 

 to the land which Dunne formerly held ; " 1 Geoffrey Alselin 

 succeeded Tochi in York, Lincoln, Notts., Derby, Leicester, 

 and Northants ; and Hugh of Grentmaisnil succeeded Baldwin 

 fitz Herlwin in the counties of Gloucester, Oxford, Warwick, 

 Northampton, and Leicester. It is therefore clear that the 

 custom that no man should have a compact block of land in 

 any county dates back before the Conquest. 



There were a few fortunate Englishmen who retained 

 possession of their ancestral estates after the Conquest, and 

 some, indeed, who increased their wealth. But the latter were 

 men who had been prominent as opponents of the house 

 of Godwin. Turchil of Warwick succeeded to his father's 

 estates in Warwickshire, employing forty-one teams in 1086, 

 and had increased them to 22 8 J teams by his gifts from the 

 Conqueror and his encroachments on smaller freeholders ; 

 and Leofwin of Nuneham retained possession of his property 

 in Bucks. But such survivals were few. Not one per cent, 

 of the country was owned (i.e. held of the King) in 1086 by 

 the same men as had owned it in 1066, or by the sons or 

 widows of the previous owners. Such survivors are most 

 common in Hampshire, including the New Forest and the 

 Isle of Wight ; but they were owners of very small properties, 

 and the lands owned by forty-three such survivors employed 

 only sixty- two and a half teams in io86. 2 Sometimes the 

 Englishmen remained as tenants on the lands they previously 

 owned. " Ailric holds four hides in Marsh Gibbon of William 

 fitz Ansculf. . . . The same man held them T. R. E., but now 

 holds them at farm of William heavily and miserably (graviter 

 et miser abi liter)"* And the English owners remained as 

 tenants on seven or eight of Turchil's estates in Warwickshire. 4 



1 D. B., I. 168 b i. 2 See Table A. 



3 D. B., I. 148 b 2. 4 V. C. H., Warwick, i. 284. 



