A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



tuent hides, for we never can rely on Domesday Book giving all the ' hundredal 

 rubrics ' that it ought to give, and the Worcestershire hundreds were subjected to 

 rearrangement before the day of maps had dawned. An intimate knowledge of the 

 county might achieve the reconstruction of the old hundreds. But, as it is, we seem 

 to see enough. We seem to see pretty plainly that Worcestershire has been divided 

 into twelve districts known as hundreds each of which has contained lOO hides." * 



The History of the Worcestershire Hundreds is one of much 

 obscurity ; ^ but when they emerge into the light of day in the 1 3th 

 century, we find the Bishop's triple Hundred of Oswaldslaw still in exis- 

 tence ; the 300 hides belonging to Westminster and Pershore represented 

 by the Hundred of Pershore;* Evesham's Hundred of Fishborough con- 

 verted into that of Blakenhurst ; and the four Domesday Hundreds of 

 Came, Clent, Cresselau, and Esch amalgamated in that of Halfshire, while 

 that of Dodintree retains its name. As there are sometimes found 

 parishes of which the outlying portions are accounted for by their repre- 

 senting the former possessions of some religious house, so was it even 

 with some Hundreds. More than half of Worcestershire had, under the 

 English kings, been divided into Hundreds consisting not of geographi- 

 cal areas, but of the scattered possessions of certain religious houses. 

 And, stranger still, these possessions were older not only, as we see, than 

 the Hundreds, to which they thus gave shape, but even than the county, 

 as it stands, itself. A glance at the Domesday map will show that its 

 outlying portions consist mainly of lands bestowed upon the church of 

 Worcester, and that parts of Gloucestershire or Warwickshire may find 

 themselves in Worcestershire to-day as the direct consequence of some 

 gift made to the monks of Worcester a thousand years ago. 



But even private lords could change, or procure the change, of the 

 boundaries of a county. All Halesowen was in Worcestershire at the 

 time of the Norman Conquest ; but the mighty earl of Shrewsbury, who 

 secured its chief manor, succeeded in throwing his part of it into Shrop- 

 shire, at a period subsequent to Domesday, and this has only been restored 

 to Worcestershire in modern times. I cannot but suspect that Forthamp- 

 ton, at the other end of the county, may have originally belonged to 

 Worcestershire, by which it is almost surrounded, and have owed its 

 inclusion in Gloucestershire to the fact of its forming part of the great 

 Tewkesbury lordship of Brihtric the son of iElfgar. 



Domesday throws some light on a loss that was certainly suffered, 

 for a long while, by the county. The story told by the monks of 

 Worcester, to account for the sheriff of Staffordshire ' farming ' Tarde- 

 bigg and Clent in Worcestershire with Swinford in Staffordshire, was 

 that, according to St. Wulfstan's statement, a certain ' dean ' there, 

 iEthelsige by name, prudent, wise, and enjoying high favour at court, 

 bought these three vills from king iEthelred for 200 pounds of silver, 



* Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 455. 



* A valuable list of them, giving the vills (with the number of hides in each) in the 

 Norman period, will be found in the opening fos. of Vesp. B. XXIV. 



^ There is reason to believe that Pershore Abbey, long before that of Westminster Abbey 

 was founded, had certain rights over this triple Hundred (see Domesday, fo. lyS''')- 



238 



