A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



priests on his lands at Anstey and Barksdon in Aspenden," and had lands 

 also at Layston and Wakeley ; Lemar, a man of Archbishop Stigand, who 

 had priests on his lands at Bygrave and Caldecot, and had lands also at 

 ' Hamstone ' and Graveley," and some others would tend to show possibly that 

 there was beginning to be a rearrangement of estates. The evidence, how- 

 ever, of the existence of a priest on one holding only of a thegn or other 

 tenant, presumably his residence, is so regular that the system of building 

 and endowing manorial churches by such Hertfordshire thegns and others 

 on their demesnes cannot have been in force for very long before the time of 

 Edward the Confessor. The only date for the building of a pre-Conquest 

 manorial church by a layman in Hertfordshire is that for Studham in 1064, 

 but the architectural details of the churches at Northchurch, Walkern, West- 

 mill, Little Munden and Reed suggest a date of building some thirty or forty 

 years earlier. It is, therefore, safe to suppose that the system of the erection 

 and endowment of manorial churches by thegns and others began in the 

 county towards the end of the loth century and was most active in the i ith 

 and 1 2th centuries. 



We may perhaps see something of what Professor Maitland refers to 

 as ' the communal action ' in the ownership, and consequently in the erection 

 and endowment of churches on the holdings of the sokemen of Hertford- 

 shire.'* At Boreson in Little Hormead,'' and at Wyddial," which were each 

 held in the time of Edward the Confessor by nine sokemen, and at Barley," 

 which was then held by five sokemen, there were priests, and therefore 

 apparently churches,™ possibly founded by the communal action of these 

 independent sokemen. 



The following table shows the number of churches in each deanery in 

 Hertfordshire, according to Pope Nicholas's Taxation of 1291, and in hke 

 manner the number of priests entered in the Domesday Book (1086) : — 



This table shows a diminishing proportion in the number of priests entered 

 in the Domesday Book going from the north-east of the county to the 

 south-west. In the deaneries of Braughing, Hertford and Baldock on 

 the eastern side of the county the lands were held principally by laymen, 

 while in the west in the deaneries of Hitchin and Berkhampstead much of 

 the land was held by monasteries, and in the archdeaconry of St. Albans all 

 the land was so held. Although in the western side of the county the land 

 was far less settled than in the eastern part,*" and some churches in the west 

 were probably served by the monks of St. Albans — in fact, we know that 

 the three churches at St. Albans probably so served, then existed — yet there 



'2 y.C.H. Herts, i, 321. " Ibid. 311, 325, 336. 



'4 Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 144. '' F.C.H. Herts, i, 322. '« Ibid. 340. " Ibid. 339. 

 " Compare the Domesday of Essex, where under StifFord it appears that 30 acres of land were given to 

 the church by the neighbours in almoign {F.C.H. Essex, i, 458). 



" Pope Nki. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 18, 20, 36. **> See Domesday Map, F.C.H. Herts. I 



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