THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



hides of Pershore ; and lastly, the 65 hides, in Fishborough Hundred, of 

 Evesham. This gives us a grand total of 759 hides as held by the 

 Church out of the 1,200 hides at which the county was assessed. 



Taking first the possessions of ' St. Peter,' the patron saint of the 

 Church of Worcester in Old English days, we find its whole fief in the 

 shire (fos. 172(^-174) entered under the heading, 'the land of the Church 

 of Worcester.' As this heading has given rise to some misunderstanding, 

 it would seem desirable to explain that ' the Church ' means the Bishop 

 and monks between them. In the adjoining county of Hereford we 

 similarly find the heading, ' the land of the Church of Hereford ' 

 (fo. 1 8 1/^), but the corresponding entry in the schedule of names (fo. 179) 

 is ' the bishop of Hereford.' In this, as in many other matters, the 

 practice of Domesday was not uniform. Sometimes it spoke of the fief 

 as the Bishop's, and sometimes as that of his church ; in one case it 

 would group together the manors of the Bishop and monks, and in another 

 it would treat them as distinct, and survey them, accordingly, apart. In 

 Worcestershire the peculiar privileges attached to the triple Hundred of 

 Oswaldslow belonged to the Bishop, as its lord, alone ; but, in the words 

 of archdeacon Hale, ' the beneficial occupation, if we might so speak, 

 was shared between the Bishop and the monastery.' ^ The learned writer 

 reckoned that, of its 300 hides, 82 were assigned to the monks, while the 

 Bishop retained the rest.^ If the Domesday text be studied carefully, it 

 will be found that, within Oswaldslow, the manors in the Bishop's hands 

 come first as usual, and are followed by those held by the monks, 

 beginning with Overbury. Outside the Hundred of Oswaldslow, 

 Domesday does not enable us to distinguish the manors of the Bishop 

 from those of the monks, except in one instance. The Henry I. Survey, 

 however, does enable us to do this, and shows them holding in those 

 manors an equal number of hides.' 



The great fief of the Church of Worcester, comprising, as we have 

 seen, in hides, nearly a third of the county,* is headed by a formal record 

 of the Bishop's special privileges in the triple Hundred of Oswaldslow 

 (fo. ij2b), as deposed to (Domesday tells us) by the whole county 

 (court).* Heming's Cartulary contains (pp. 287—8) a version of this 

 return, with some slight variations, which is followed by a statement of 

 the highest importance for students of the Domesday Survey. We are 

 there told that the county (court) made this return on oath, exhorted 



* Registrum Prioratus Beata Maria Wigorn'iensis (Camden Society), p. iv. 



* ' Of the fifteen manors of which the Hundred consisted, eight were held by the Bishop 

 and seven by the Monks. The division, however, was not so equal as at first sight appears ; 

 the eight Episcopal Manors contained . . . 225 hides; whereas the seven which were in the 

 hands of the Monastery or church contained only seventy-five. . . . The Monastery also 

 held of the Bishop as " De Victu Monachorum," parts of three Episcopal Manors, amounting 

 to seven hides ' {Ibid.). 



^ Feudal England, p. 174, and p. 326 below. 



* The monks claimed other manors as having formerly belonged to it. See, for instance, 

 pp. 238-239 above. 



' See translation of Domesday text below. 

 245 



