A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



three Hundred-courts, and at the same time to form for them scattered 

 and artificial Hundreds out of the 300 hides selected for the purpose 

 from the monastery's lands. The whole then formed the privileged 

 district of Oswaldslow. 



What the privileges were that the Bishop claimed within this 

 district is not absolutely clear. It is certain, from Domesday, that the 

 King's sheriff was excluded from exercising any jurisdiction within it, 

 and that all the profits of the local courts and other royal rights in the 

 district went to the Bishop. But much obscurity surrounds his rights 

 with regard to the Danegeld within the district and to its quota of 

 military service known before the Conquest as ' expeditio ' or ' fyrd.' 

 As to the former, the Bishop, I hold, did not enjoy, like St. Petroc in 

 the west, or St. Edmund in the east, the special privilege of retaining for 

 himself the money paid as Danegeld,^ but was entitled to collect it 

 through his own officers and to receive the penalties, if any, incurred by 

 its non-payment. As to the duty of military service, the Bishop's Hun- 

 dred of Oswaldslow was, similarly, not exempt from it ;^ but its quota 

 was led by his own officers, instead of being under the sheriff, and any 

 fines for neglect of the duty [fyrdwite) would be collected through his 

 courts. 



Military service was due to the King not only by land but by sea; 

 there was scipfyrd as well as landfyrd? This is a point of much im- 

 portance in connection with the Hundred of Oswaldslow, for the dis- 

 puted charter speaks of ' naumachix expeditionem, qus ex tota Anglia 

 regi invenitur,' and constitutes the triple Hundred in order that the 

 Bishop, with his monks, may have a separate ' naucupletionem quod 

 Anglice " Scypfylled " vocatur,'* Recent research has favoured the view 

 that there was some arrangement of Hundreds in threes with a liability 

 on each group to provide a ship's crew.® And even the term ' Scip- 

 socne,' which is applied, in the same charter, to Oswaldslow, is paralleled 

 by the application of ' Sipe Socha ' to each of three Warwickshire Hun- 

 dreds in 1 170.* But what is most noteworthy is that we have actual 

 mention of ' Eadric who was, in the time of king Edward, steersman of 

 the bishop's ship and leader of the bishop's force {exercitus) in the King's 

 service,' as present at the great trial between the houses of Worcester 



composition of this Hundred receives some further illustration from a survey of the Evesham 

 Abbey manors in Cott. MS. Vesp. B. XXIV. fos. 49^, 53. A marginal note describes as 

 ' T.R.E.' the hidation which is there given, and which seems to be occasionally in excess of 

 that recorded in Domesday. 



* See, for this privilege, my paper in Domesday Studies, I. 126-8, and Feudal England, 

 p. lOI. 



^ Compare Hale's Registrum Beatte Marite JVigorniensts, p. xxxiii. 



^ The duty of ' expeditio ' by sea is referred to, in Domesday, at Exeter, Malmesbury, 

 Warwick, Leicester, Stamford, etc. 



* Hale's Registrum, p. 23^. 



® Ibid. p. xxxiii. ; Stubbs' Const. Hist. (1874), I. 105-6 ; Earle, cited by Freeman in 

 Norman Conquest (1870), I. 647 ; Vigfusson, citing Steenstrup in Eng. Hist. Review,!]!. 500 ; 

 Canon Taylor in Domesday Studies (1888), pp. 75-6). 



* Pipe Roll, 16 Henry II. pp. 90-91. Compare Stubbs as above, p. 106 note. 



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