POLITICAL HISTORY 



obscure. It lay on the border-line between East Anglia and Mercia, and 

 there is no direct evidence to show to which division it belonged ; but the 

 evidence is in favour of connecting it with East Anglia or Essex.** 



Of the internal life of this shire in the loth and i ith centuries we know 

 little, but from the monastic records we learn something of the doings of 

 king and bishop, and of the relations between Saxon and Dane in Bedford- 

 shire and its vicinity during the reign of Cnut. The English were timid in 

 their dealing with his Danes, as they feared to offend the king,*" while the 

 Danes suspected their English neighbours of secretly plotting against them.*° 

 ^thelric, the English Bishop of Dorchester, who held the see during the first 

 twenty years of Cnut's reign, was on friendly terms with the king, so intimate 

 indeed as to call upon him at night, interrupt his game of draughts or 

 chess,^^ and borrow money from him,'* and he used this intimacy for the 

 benefit of the church. Shillington, in Bedfordshire, had been granted of old 

 by King Edgar to the ealdorman iEthelwine. His son Ailward had fallen 

 at Assandun in 1016 leaving no heir, and Cnut had granted the vill to one 

 of his own followers. Bishop vEthelric, prodigus venalium venator, found that 

 the Dane was homesick and suspicious of his English neighbours,'' so he paid 

 a high price for the estate, got his title confirmed by the king, and gave 

 Shillington to Ramsey.'* Ailwin, surnamed Swart from his hue, a wealthy 

 Englishman of old lineage, left to the same abbey Clapham, Kempston, Card- 

 ington, and Cranfield, all in Bedfordshire ; the gift was contested by a relative 

 in 1049 on the ground that it had not been sanctioned by the king, and 

 Abbot Alfwin paid 20 marks of gold to King Edward and five to Queen 

 Edith for a confirmation.'* Of Ailwin Swart's gift Cranfield alone remained to 

 Ramsey in 1086, but Domesday records that the hundred testified that 

 Clapham had belonged to the abbey in Edward's day. Of the other property 

 the Ramsey chronicler could but conjecture that it had been wrongfully 

 entered upon in adventu Normannorum ; " he tells how Count Ralf, ' whom 

 King Edward had brought back from his exile,' demanded the tenancy for 

 life of Cranfield, which was to return to the abbey after his death with his 

 lands of ' Cherletona ' "' and ' Brunstanethorp.' 



'" Freeman discusses the history of the earldoms ; Norman Conq. ii, App. G. From 1 017 to 1 04 1 Bed- 

 fordshire was part of Mercia, if Mercia is to be understood 'in its widest sense'; from 1 04 1 to 105 1 it 

 probably formed part of the earldom of 'the MidJanders,' then detached from Mercia (see Freeman's map, 

 ann. 1045) ; from 105 1 to 1057 it appears to have belonged to East Anglia, which under Harold (J 1045- 

 53) was of very wide extent, including Norfolk, Suffolk, Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, and 

 possibly Middlesex. In 1057 Leofwine received an earldom roughly corresponding to the 'home counties,' 

 while Gyrth held East Anglia, now confined to narrow limits, with Oxfordshire. Freeman ' cannot speak 

 with any certainty' of Bedfordshire, but in his map (ann. 1065) he assigns it to Gyrth, while he gives 

 Bucks, to Leofwine. The fact that from 1 125 (and possibly from the Conquest) till 1575 the two counties shared 

 a sheriff, and that they were in the same diocese, is perhaps against their separation, while if Gyrth held both of 

 them Oxfordshire would no longer be a ' detached ' portion of his earldom. Another complication was intro- 

 duced by the annexation to Tostig's Northumbrian earldom of the neighbouring shires of Huntingdon and 

 Northampton, which later formed a separate earldom under Waltheof Mr. Round discusses the evidence of 

 Domesday on the subject {F.C.H. Beds, i, 203-4). To what he there says it may be added that the Beds. 

 Domesday suggests that Waltheof did not succeed to the earldom of Huntingdon at the Oxford gemot 28 Oct. 

 1065, but at some time after Edward's death, 5 Jan. 1066, though Freeman (op.cit.ii,498) implies the contrary ; 

 and further that while Gyrth held the important manor of Kempston, Leofwine held nothing in the county. 



"iJaswq; C/}«». (Rolls Ser.), 132. » Ibid. 140. "Ibid. 137. "Ibid. 135. 



"^ 'De Anglorum fide diffidenti et solum natale invisere cupienti ;' ibid. 143. 



»«Ibid. "Ibid. 169. '"Ibid. 172. 



" Doubtless the ' Cerlentane,' Charlton Manor (now Moggerhanger), which is entered in Domesday as 

 held by the wife of Hugh Grantemesnil, and passed with the Leicester properties through Mellents and 

 Montforts to the earldom of Lancaster ; Feud. Aids, i, 42 (1428). It did not pass to Ramsey. 



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