A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



at ' Laure ' (Lawern) and in other lands which I suspect to have 

 been at Elmley (fo. 174). But in another quarter we find him, as 

 ' Kynewardus de Lauro,' witnessing the charter granted, in 1072, by 

 Robert de Stafford to Evesham.' If, as there is no reason to doubt, 

 Kineward held Laugherne till his death, it is obvious that the story 

 told by the monks throws back the great plea between Worcester and 

 Evesham to a date several years earlier than that of the Domesday 

 Survey. 



If Worcestershire is remarkable in Domesday for the amount of its 

 church land, it has also a peculiar and dominant feature in Droitwich 

 and its salt industry. It is not too much to say that Droitwich pervades 

 the survey of the shire. The actual ownership of the place was divided 

 in a quite peculiar manner between about a dozen tenants-in-chief, 

 who had, each of them, fractional holdings. But, in addition to 

 this, the tenants of many scattered manors possessed there ' burgesses,' 

 saltpans, or rights to a supply of salt. The clue to the Domesday 

 assessment of Droitwich is found in an entry at the foot of fo. 176, 

 that Ralf de Todeni 'holds in (Droit) wich i hide, out of 10 hides 

 that pay geld.'" A special survey of Droitwich, which was found 

 and printed by me,^ and which seems to belong to the latter part of 

 Henry I.'s reign, is headed ' Hee sunt x bids in Wich.' We have 

 then to recover from Domesday the constituents of 10 hides. They 

 seem to have been as follows : 



Westminster Abbey 



St. Denis' Abbey . 



Coventry Abbey 



St. Guthlac of Hereford . 



St. Peter of Gloucester , 



King's Hall at Gloucester 



Ralf de ' Todeni ' . 



Harold, son of earl Ralf . 



Roger de Laci 



William, son of Corbucion (in Witton) 



Urse d'Abetot (in Witton) 



10 100 



This would give us exactly 10 hides for Droitwich, a quarter of which 

 (2I) would be in Witton.* 



* Salt (StafiFordshire) Arch. Coll., II. 178. In this charter (which is known to us only 

 from an Elizabethan translation) his name is followed by that of ' Harlebaldus,' a leading 

 result under-tenant of Urse. The sheriff Urse also is himself a witness. 



' This is the entry that Professor Maitland misunderstood (see p. 241 above), with the 

 that he assigned 15^ hides to (Droit)wich and 2| to Witton. 

 ^ Feudal England, pp. 177, 1 80. See also p. 330 below. 



* It is right, however, to observe that Domesday states of Westminster Abbey's hide 

 that it had never paid geld, and that the later survey, though headed (as above) ' these are the 

 10 hides,' accounts for iif hides. 



268 



