^ HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



Conquest, must on no account be confused, as it has been by Professor 

 Maitland, with the liability of the Bishop, under the system introduced 

 by the Normans, to provide 60 knights (or, as he maintained, 50) in 

 respect of his entire fief extending over three counties.^ If he had to 

 send 60 men — and this total is only a conjecture — to the King's fyrd 

 before the Conquest, in respect of his Hundred of Oswaldslow, that total 

 was wholly unconnected with the quota of knight-service due, after the 

 Conquest, in respect of his entire fief.^ 



Dealing, however, with what he terms ' Feudalism in Oswaldslaw,' ^ 

 Professor Maitland attaches very great importance to bishop Oswald's 

 letter to king Edgar * recording the terms of his land loans, which ' is 

 for our purposes the most important of all the documents that have come 

 down to us from the age before the Conquest.' But if we cannot accept 

 as genuine, in its present form, Edgar's charter constituting the Hundred 

 of Oswaldslow, we must also, I think, view critically ' this unique docu- 

 ment.' ° For its only existing version is at least later than the Conquest, 

 and it seems to me to proceed clearly from the same mint as ' Altitonan- 

 tis.' ^ The clause on which Professor Maitland would specially insist is the 

 condition enforced on those to whom the lands were granted ' ut omnis 

 equitandi lex ab eis impleatur qus ad equites pertinet.' They are, 

 ' above all,' riding-men, and must fulfil ' the law of riding.' The im- 

 portance of this, for the Domesday student, is that the Professor finds in 

 ' Oswald's riding men ' the predecessors of ' the radchenistres and radmanni 

 of Domesday Book, the rodknights of Bracton's text.' The class entered 

 in Domesday under this mysterious name is almost wholly confined to 

 the counties near the Welsh border from Gloucestershire on the south to 

 the modern South Lancashire on the north, and is well represented in 

 Worcestershire. The entry, perhaps, which most favours the view that 

 riding was the essence of the service due from these tenants is that, under 

 Bredons Norton, of Leofwine having held 2 hides, ' et inde radman 

 episcopi fuit ' (fo. 173). But the actual charters of bishop Oswald 

 granting lands for three lives make no mention of this service ; ^ and on 

 Westminster Abbey's Deerhurst manor, just over the Gloucestershire 

 border, we find several small estates, from half a hide to two hides, held 



^ This is particularly well seen in the return, temp. John, of the 'Servicium debitum 

 domino Regi de episcopatu Wigornie' {^esta de Nevill, pp. 41-2). 



* See my paper on ' Military Ser\'ice before the Conquest,' in English Historical Review 

 (1897), XII. 492-4. The point is of much institutional importance. 



3 Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 303-313. The Professor seems to have based his 

 argument on the belief that Oswald's letter applies only to his grants within Oswaldslow, but 

 it covers his grants in other places, such as the Gloucestershire Compton, so that the terms of 

 his grants must have been unconnected with his special position within Oswaldslow. 



* Codex Diplomaticus, I. xxxv. ; VI. 124. Heming's Cartulary, I. 292-6. 



* Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 312. 



^ For instance, the ' Dunstanum archiepiscopum et venerandum Athelwoldum Wintonie 

 episcopum et virum magnificum Brihtnothum comitem ' of Oswald's letter echoes the 

 ' Dunstanum archiepiscopum et Athelwoldum Wintoniensem episcopum et virum magnificum 

 Brightnodum comitem ' of Edgar's charter. It should further be observed that Oswald's 

 grants range down, as the Professor observed, to 992. But Edgar died in 975. 



' Heming's Cartulary, passim. 



250 



