The World Before Domesday: The English Aristocracy 900-1066

THE WORLD BEFORE DOMESDAY

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The World Before DomesdayThe English Aristocracy, 900–1066

Ann Williams

Once it used to be that people and the law went by ranks, and the wise men of the folk (þeodwitan) were entitled to respect, each according to his station, whether earl or ceorl,

thegn or lord (ge eorl ge ceorl, ge þegn ge þeoden).

Wulfstan lupus, Archbishop of York: Geþyncðu

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Copyright © Ann Williams 2008

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First published 2008

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 84725 239 5

Typeset by Pindar NZ (Egan Reid), Auckland, New ZealandPrinted and bound by MPG Books Ltd, Cornwall, Great Britain

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Contents

Illustrations vii

Preface viii

Acknowledgements xii

Abbreviations xiii

Introduction: Defi nitions 1

1 The Upper Crust: Ealdormen and Earls 11

2 The Service of the King: Stallers and Thegns 25

3 Friends and Neighbours: Local Communities 39

4 Lords and Men (1): Households and Warbands 63

5 Lords and Men (2): Land, Tenure and Service 75

6 Displaying Status (1): The Rich Man in his Burh 85

7 Displaying Status (2): The Trappings of Authority 105

8 Living like Lords: Aristocratic Pursuits 123

Appendix 1: The Assessment of Land and Wealth 139

Appendix 2: Count Eustace’s Divorce, 1049 141

Appendix 3: The Earldom of Hereford 143

Appendix 4: The Antecedents of Wihtgar 145

Notes 147

Bibliography 217

Index 237

This book, begun in the year which saw the sixtiethanniversary of D-Day, is dedicated to the memory of all those

who have given their lives to defend and serve this country.

Illustrations

Figure

Figure 1.1: The family of Ealdorman Æthelweard 12

Map

Map 1.1: Outlying lands of Tewkesbury and Deerhurst 14

Tables

Table 3.1: The Kentish shire community, c.960–c.1000 40

Table 3.2: The Kentish shire community, c.1000–1030 42

Table 3.3: The Kentish shire community, c.1030–60 46

Table 3.4: Kentish magnates in 1066 54

Table 6.1: The lands of Ælfric parvus 102

Preface

In 1939, an astounding discovery was made on ‘the windswept plateau overlook-ing the estuary of the River Deben in Suffolk’, an intact ship-burial, full of such splendid artefacts that it had to represent the last resting-place of a seventh-century king of East Anglia.1 The subsequent fame of the Sutton Hoo treasure has printed an indelible picture on the minds of many (many, that is, of those who think about such things at all), a picture of ‘Anglo-Saxons’ decked out in gold jewellery, enriched with cloisonné garnet and blue and white millefi ori glass, wielding pattern-welded swords and crowned with spectacular dragon-crested helmets. Nor is it Sutton Hoo alone that concentrates popular attention on the early years of what (in modern convention) is called ‘the Anglo-Saxon period’.2 In 731, the Venerable Bede published his great Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English People’), which was copied, re-copied, translated and imitated throughout the mediaeval period and into modern times.3 Bede’s skill both as a propagandist and as a teller of tales has had the same effect as the Sutton Hoo treasure on the popular imagination, and his picture of his contemporaries has been taken as the paradigm for an entire era.

It is easily forgotten that the distance which separated those English earls and thegns who went down fi ghting on the fi eld of Senlac in 1066 from their forebears as represented in Bede and Sutton Hoo is the same as that which separates us, their remote descendants, from the England of James I. No-one now wears padded Jacobean britches or starched ruffs; nor (alas) is the everyday speech of the Authorized Version familiar to modern ears. Of course the twentieth century has seen changes in culture, custom and taste far surpassing anything previously experienced, so that the difference between Earl Godwine of Wessex and the Northumbrian ealdorman Berhtred, who led the army of King Ecgfrith to raid Ireland, may not have been as marked as that between James Villiers, duke of Buckingham, and Gordon Brown.4 But difference there certainly was, and in many respects Earl Godwine had more in common with his contemporary neighbour Duke William of Normandy than with his seventh-century ancestors. The similarities have been obscured by the thoroughness with which the ruling élite of pre-Conquest England was expunged by their Norman supplanters, but many of the supposed differences between the two societies arise from an

P R E FA C E ix

unacknowledged comparison between eleventh-century Normandy and an England which had by then long passed away.

I have written elsewhere about the fate of the English aristocracy after the Norman Conquest; in this book I want to present them, as it were, in their prime, the tenth and eleventh centuries.5 I suppose that the picture which most will have of the English thegns on the eve of the Norman Conquest is of brave if backward warriors, always to be found on the losing side. The picture has some literary foundation. The anonymous poem on the battle of Maldon, fought in 991, tells how the hearthtroop of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth fell to a man around the body of its slain lord, while Gaimar, writing in the 1130s, records the last stand of Hereward, surprised while sleeping, and cut down to lie within a ring of enemy corpses.6 More prosaic sources can tell a similar tale. The English historian, Orderic Vitalis, laments the fall of Earl Edwin in 1071 in circumstances very similar to that of Byrhtnoth in 991; betrayed by three brothers ‘whom he had trusted most’ and trapped on the banks of a river by the rising tide, he fell with 30 faithful companions (equites), ‘all fi ghting desperately to the last’.7 Most disastrous of all was the battle of Hastings, fought on 14 October 1066, which saw the fl ower of the English aristocracy left dead on the fi eld.

The title of this book refers not only to the doom which befell the Old English thegns, but also to the fact that one of the chief sources for our knowledge of them is Domesday Book, produced at the behest of the fi rst Norman king, William the Conqueror.8 This brings us to one of the chief problems relating to the understanding of Old English history. The early twelfth century saw a resurgence of historical writing in England, unprecedented since the appear-ance of Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica, which was indeed its chief inspiration.9

The writers of this time, many of them English or half-English by birth, saw themselves as rescuers of the traditions of their conquered people, re-creating for the new order the illustrious history of the English nation. The most prominent among them was William of Malmesbury, who played such a crucial role in the transmission of the pre-Conquest past that much of what has been presented as the history of England and the English between the death of Bede and the Norman Conquest has been infl uenced, both in content and in presentation, by his Gesta Regum Anglorum (‘The History of the English Kings’).10 All the twelfth-century writers, however, had their own agendas, which affected their attitudes to, and presentation of, earlier events to which they were not direct witnesses. It has been claimed that they had access to original sources which are now lost, but there is little to suggest that such material was plentiful. Indeed in their attempts to produce a coherent narrative, the twelfth-century writers seem frequently to have resorted to inference to fi ll the gaps in their knowledge, and, where inference failed, to have used popular myths, folk-lore and, when all else failed, gossip.

P R E FA C Ex

We are not entirely reliant on these twelfth-century reconstructions, for, though scanty in comparison with later periods, a considerable body of written material remains from the pre-Conquest period, which can be supplemented by information from other disciplines, chiefl y archaeology, onomastics and numismatics. These strictly contemporary sources are patchy in their survival, so that even today the seventh century is viewed largely through the eyes of Bede, and the late ninth century through those of King Alfred, whose educational and cultural aspirations produced a wealth of material, including Asser’s ‘biography’ of the king himself, and the fi rst redaction of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. After this there is a dearth of historical writing, though the Chronicle continued to be kept up sporadically – it is a contemporary source for the reigns of Æthelred unræd (978–1016) and Edward the Confessor (1042–66) – and a group of ‘family biographies’ was composed in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries.11 Such literary works say little about the structure of Old English society, but diplomatic sources, law-codes, legal tracts and charters are more revealing.12 In what follows I have tried to draw directly from such contemporary testimony, and to use later sources only for comparison.

The subject of this book is the aristocracy of tenth- and eleventh-century England, between (roughly) the accession of King Alfred in 871 and the battle of Hastings in 1066. There is a long literature on the words ‘aristocracy’ and ‘nobility’, and how far they may be applied to the social strata of early mediaeval Europe.13 Of the two, ‘aristocracy’ is the less specifi c, and, unlike ‘noble’, it bears no connotations of legal privilege. In what follows, therefore, ‘noble’ and ‘nobility’ will be employed only in quotations from other writers, while ‘aristocrat’ and ‘aristocracy’ will denote what contemporaries would have described as ‘better men’ (optimates) or ‘chief men’ (proceres), as distinguished from burgesses, free men, peasants and slaves. The fi rst three chapters introduce the various layers of aristocratic society. Chapter 1 begins at the top, with the earls and ealdormen who occupied its pinnacle.14 The best recorded are the great earls of Edward the Confessor’s day, Godwine of Wessex and Leofric of Mercia, and previous research has naturally enough been concentrated on these two families.15 Godwine and Leofric are, however, unusual, and my exemplars, more typical because less wealthy, are Odda, briefl y earl of the western shires in 1051–52, and Ralph, earl of the ‘middle peoples’ from 1050, and of Hereford from 1052, until his death in 1057. Both men were related to King Edward, and their lives interlocked at a crucial moment in their royal kinsman’s reign, but Odda came from the old-established aristocracy of Wessex, while Ralph, though his mother was the king’s sister, belonged through his father to the continental hierarchy of northern Frankia.16 Chapter 2 concerns another group of royal offi cials, those who served in the king’s household, the greatest of whom (to judge from their recorded wealth) were the stallers and their tenth-century equivalents, the pedisequi

P R E FA C E xi

(literally, ‘those who sit at the [king’s] feet’). As with Chapter 1, some individuals have been chosen to represent the rest; Osgod clapa and Tovi the Proud for the eleventh-century stallers, Wulfstan of Dalham for the tenth-century pedisequi.Chapter 3 covers aristocrats further from the centre of royal authority, whose wealth and power was more localized, but who dominated the shires and regions which made up the kingdom of the English; the paradigm is Kent, since it is for this region that the material is most copious. After the dramatis personae come the more interpretative chapters: two (Chapters 4 and 5) on the factors governing the relations between lords and men, and two more (Chapters 6 and 7) on status and how it was displayed. The fi nal chapter (Chapter 8) provides a brief sketch of some of the occupations and pastimes of the Old English aristocracy on the eve of the Norman Conquest. Some matters, of technical but limited interest, have been relegated to appendices.

Acknowledgements

Many friends and acquaintances have given generously of their time and expertise to bring this project to completion. My grateful thanks go to Barry Ager, Stephen Baxter, Celia Bennetts, Timothy Bolton, Stephen Church, David Dumville, Dafydd Edwards, Val Fallan, Takako Fujii, Mark Gardiner, Paul Harvey, Robert Jones, Simon Keynes, Rob Liddiard, Gale Owen-Crocker, Ian Peirce, Daniel Pett, David Roffe, Naomi Sykes and Hirokazu Tsurushima for their help and support, in advice, discussion and the provision of published and unpublished articles, and to the staff of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, at the British Museum, who provided me with invaluable assistance on a number of the artefacts discussed in Chapter 7. A special thank you goes to Tony Morris, who not only persuaded me to write this book, but also came up with its title.

Abbreviations

Note: the Old English law-codes are cited according to the convention established in MEL.

Ælfric’s Colloquy G.N. Garmonsway, Ælfric’s Colloquy (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, revd edn, 1991)

Æthelgifu Dorothy Whitelock (ed.), The Will of Æthelgifu: a Tenth Century Anglo-Saxon Manuscript (Oxford: Roxburge Club, 1968)

Anglo-Saxon Charters A.J. Robertson (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Charters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 1956)

ANS Anglo-Norman StudiesAntiq.J. Antiquaries JournalArch.J. Archaeological JournalAS Chronicle Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas and Susie

Tucker (eds), The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Revised Translation (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1965)

ASE Anglo-Saxon EnglandAsser, Life of Alfred W.H. Stevenson (ed.), Asser’s Life of King Alfred together

with the Annals of St Neots (repr. with introduction by Dorothy Whitelock; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959)

Attenborough, Laws F.L. Attenborough, The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922)

BAR British Archaeological ReportsBattle of Maldon D.G. Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon (Manchester:

Manchester University Press, 1981)BCS W. de Gray Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum (3 vols;

London: Whiting, 1885–99)BNJ British Numismatic JournalCanons of Edgar Roger Fowler, Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1972)Charters of Burton P.H. Sawyer (ed), The Charters of Burton Abbey

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979)

A B B R E V I AT I O N Sxiv

Charters of New Minster Sean Miller (ed.), Charters of the New Minster, Winchester (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)

Charters of Rochester A. Campbell (ed.), Charters of Rochester (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973)

Charters of St Augustine’s S.E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury, and Minster-in-Thanet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)

Charters of Sherborne M. A.O’Donovan (ed.), Charters of Sherborne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988)

Chron. Æthelweard A. Campbell (ed.), The Chronicle of Æthelweard(London: Nelson, 1962)

Chron. Ramsey W.D. Macray, Chronica Abbatiae Ramesiensis (Rolls Series; London: HMSO, 1886)

DB iv H. Ellis (ed.), Liber Censualis Vocati Domesday Book, Additamenta (London: Record Commission, 1816)

Domesday Monachorum D.C. Douglas (ed.), The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church Canterbury (London: Royal Historical Society, 1944)

ECEE C.R. Hart, Early Charters of Eastern England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966)

ECNENM C.R. Hart, Early Charters of Northern England and the North Midlands (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1975)

EHD i Dorothy Whitelock (ed.), English Historical Documents c. 500–1042 (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1955)

EHD ii David C. Douglas and George W. Greenaway, English Historical Documents 1042–1189 (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1953)

EHR English Historical ReviewEncomium A Campbell (ed.), Encomium Emmae Reginae (Camden

Classic Reprints; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

Excerpta Augustus Ballard, An Eleventh-Century Inquisition of St Augustine’s, Canterbury (Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales, 2; London: British Academy, 1920).

Exon Exon Domesday (see DB iv)GDB R.W.H. Erskine (ed.), Great Domesday Book (London:

Alecto Historical Editions, 1986)Haskins Society J. Haskins Society Journal

A B B R E V I AT I O N S xv

HE Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (eds), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969)

Hemingi Chartularium Thomas Hearne (ed.), Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesie Wigornensis (2 vols; Oxford: e Theatro Sheldoniano, 1723)

J. Med. Hist. Journal of Medieval HistoryJnW R.R. Darlington and P. McGurk (eds), The Chronicle

of John of Worcester (3 vols; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955–)

KCD J.M. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici (6 vols; London: Sumptibus Societatis, 1839–48)

LDB Ann Williams and Geoffrey Martin (ed.), Little Domesday Book (6 vols; London: Alecto Historical Society, 2000)

LE E.O. Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis (Camden Society, 3rd ser., 92; London: Royal Historical Society, 1962); trans. in Janet Fairweather, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005)

Liebermann F. Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols; Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1905–13)

MEL Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, vol. 1: Legislation and its Limits (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999)

Mem. St Dunstan William Stubbs (ed.), Memorials of St Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (Rolls Series; London: HMSO, 1874)

Mem. St Edmund’s Thomas Arnold (ed.), Memorials of St Edmund’s Abbey(Rolls Series; 3 vols; London: HMSO, 1890–96)

Monasticon W. Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (6 vols in 8; ed. J. Caley, H. Ellis and B. Bandinel; London: Longman, 1817–30)

NDNB New Dictionary of National BiographyOE Old EnglishON Old NorseOV M. Chibnall (ed.), The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic

Vitalis (6 vols; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969–80)

P&P Past and PresentPoems of Wisdom and T.A. Shippey (ed.), Poems of Wisdom and Learning inLearning Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976)

A B B R E V I AT I O N Sxvi

Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland P.H. Sawyer (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Charters: A Handlist

and Annotated Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968) [update available via <www.trin.cam.ac.uk/kemble> (accessed 1 March 2008)]

Robertson, Laws A.J. Robertson (ed.), The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925)

Select EHD F.E. Harmer, Select English Historical Documents of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914)

Symeon, Opera Omnia Thomas Arnold (ed.), Symeonis Monachi Opera Omnia (Rolls Series; 2 vols; London: HMSO, 1882)

TRE Tempore Regis Edwardi (the time of King Edward [the Confessor])

TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical SocietyTRW Tempore Regis Willelmi (the time of King William I)VCH Victoria History of the Counties of EnglandVita Edwardi F. Barlow (ed.), The Life of King Edward who Lies at

Westminster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1992)

Wills Dorothy Whitelock (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Wills(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930)

WmM David Preest (trans.), Williams of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England (Gesta Pontifi cum Anglorum) (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002)

WmM, GP N.E.S.A. Hamilton, De Gestis Pontifi cum Anglorum (London: Longman, 1870)

WmM, GR R.A.B. Mynors, R.M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (eds), William of Malmesbury Gesta Regum Anglorum(2 vols; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998–99)

Writs F.E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1952)

www.trin.cam.ac.uk/kemble


Introduction: Defi nitions

My thegns are to have their dignity in my lifetime as they had in my father’s.

KING EDGAR1

In the early middle ages, status was largely a matter of custom, much of it unwrit-ten. The concept of the three orders, which divides the ideal polity into those who pray (oratores), those who fi ght (bellatores) and those who work (operatores), is sometimes called into play to describe early society, but the orders are not primarily social distinctions.2 They concern function, not rank, and relate to the processes of ideal government; the concept of the three orders fi rst appears in England in the context of King Alfred’s refl ections on the resources which he needed to control his kingdom.3 Social standing was primarily determined by birth, specifi cally the rank of the father, and an aristocrat’s offspring, male and female, were ipso facto of aristocratic status, but the defi nition of that status is a more complex matter, involving wealth, lordship and that peculiarly mediaeval association known by its German name as Königsnehe, ‘closeness to the king’.

Defi nitions were rarely recorded in writing, but the codes of the early English kings did specify tariffs for the payment of wergeld, the compensation due to a family for the slaying of one of its members.4 Wergeld was not only paid for male victims, but also for women, the rate of whose compensation was determined by the rank of their fathers and brothers, and was unaffected by marriage, even to a man of lesser standing. A thegnborn woman who married a ceorlborn man retained her thegnly rank, but the converse also applied; an unfree woman who married a free man remained a serf unless freed by her owner.5 Wergeld applied even to the unborn, for killing a pregnant woman incurred not only the wergeld of the woman but also half the wergeld of the child, reckoned according to the father’s status.6 By the time of Alfred, the tariff in Wessex was set at 200s for an ordinary free man (cierlisc mon), with two higher grades, of 600s and 1,200s. By the early tenth century the 600s wergeld had fallen into oblivion, and men were divided into two groups, 200s men (twihynde) and 1,200s men (twelfhynde).7

Slaves, being classifi ed as property, had no wergelds, though their masters were entitled to compensation for their loss.8 There are no wergeld tariffs in codes subsequent to Alfred’s, but it is clear that the same basic distinctions applied

T H E WO R L D B E F O R E D O M E S D AY2

throughout the tenth and eleventh centuries. Around the fi rst millennium, the homilist and lawmaker Wulfstan lupus, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York (d. 1023), collected the customs of the Mercians and Northumbrians, which reveal that the wergelds among the former equate precisely to those of Alfred’s Code: 200s for a free man (ceorl), 1,200s for a thegn.9 The wergelds given in Norðleoda laga, which relates to Northumbria beyond the Tyne, are somewhat different: 8,000 thrymsas for an ealdorman, 4,000 thrymsas for a hold or a king’s high-reeve, and 2,000 thrymsas for a thegn.10 The thrymsa was equivalent to 3d in the West Saxon currency, so that the thegn’s 2000 thrymsas equates to a 1,200s wergeld in West Saxon terms, while the sum of 266 thrymsas owed by a Northumbrian ceorl is specifi cally equated with the 200s wergeld among the Mercians.11 The chief difference between the Northumbrian tariff and those of the southern kingdoms lies in the subdivisions among the aristocracy. Though the categories of hold and high-reeve look a trifl e archaic in the eleventh century, they still existed; Thurbrand hold played a key role in the early establishment of Cnut’s power in the north (see below), and ‘high-reeve’ was the former title of the earls of Bamburgh.

The wergeld tariffs reveal the subdivision of the free (as opposed to slave) population into ceorlas (ceorls, free men) and þegnas (thegns, aristocrats). Such simple distinctions could be used to embrace everybody, or at least everybody who mattered. In his First Letter to the English people, King Cnut addressed ‘all his people in England, twelfhynde and twihynde’; for the king and his entourage, thegns and ceorls made up the whole English nation (Angelcynn).12 In practice, of course, matters were much more complicated than this tidy legal fi ction implies. In the uncertain years of the tenth and eleventh centuries, it was easy for free men to slip into slavery, either by the formal act of selling themselves and their families in order to gain a master’s protection, or by attrition, as landlords gradually increased services and customary dues until formerly free peasants became serfs.13 The ranks of the ceorls thus included men teetering on the edge of serfdom. Upward mobility, however, was also possible, and some ceorls might aspire to the ranks of thegnhood, so that it was no easy matter to distinguish between more prosperous ceorlisc men and less affl uent thegns. The only thing which all ceorls had in common was that legally they were neither thegns nor slaves. It is for this reason that ceorl is better translated as ‘free man’ rather than as ‘peasant’, for not only has the latter acquired pejo-rative associations, but it is also clear that not all ceorlas personally worked the land; some were themselves landlords with dependants who worked it for them.

It was upward mobility which occupied the thoughts of contemporaries, especially Archbishop Wulfstan. One of the clauses of Wulfstan’s most important tract on status, the ‘Promotion Law’ (Geþyncðu, ‘honour, dignity, rank’), describes

I N T R O D U C T I O N : D E F I N I T I O N S 3

how a ceorl might attain thegnly status. Since frequent reference will be made to this tract, it will be useful to cite the main clauses here (in translation):14

(1) Once it used to be that people and rights went by dignities, and councillors of the people were then entitled to honour, each according to his rank, aristocrat and free man,15 retainer and lord. (2) And if a ceorl prospered, that he possessed fully fi ve hides of his own, a belhus and a burhgeat,16 a seat and special offi ce in the king’s hall, then was he henceforth entitled to the rights of a thegn. (3) And the thegn who prospered, that he served the king and rode in his household band on his missions, if he himself had a thegn who served him, possessing fi ve hides on which he discharged the king’s dues, and who attended his lord in the king’s hall, and had thrice gone on his errand to the king – then he [the intermediate thegn] was afterwards allowed to represent his lord with his preliminary oath, and legally obtain his [right to pursue a] charge, whenever he needed. (4) And he who had no such distinguished representative, swore in person to obtain his rights, or lost his case. (5) And if a thegn prospered, that he became an earl, then was he afterwards entitled to an earl’s rights.

Commentary on the text will appear in the appropriate contexts in what follows, but for the moment the important thing to notice, apart from the ‘thriving ceorl’, is the threefold gradation among the thegns; the thegn who prospers to become an earl, the thegn who serves the king and has other thegns in his own service, and those lesser thegns themselves. That these categories should reappear in the heriot tariffs laid down in the Secular Code of King Cnut is not remarkable, because, like Geþyncðu, Cnut’s code is the work of Archbishop Wulfstan:17

(71) And heriots are to be so determined as befi ts the rank: (71a) an earl’s heriot as belongs thereto, namely eight horses, four saddled and four unsaddled, and four helmets and four coats of mail and eight spears and as many shields and four swords and 200 mancuses of gold; (71§1) and next, the king’s thegns who are closest to him: four horses, two saddled and two unsaddled; and two swords and four spears and as many shields, and a helmet and a coat of mail and fi fty mancuses of gold; (71§2) and of the median (medumre) thegn: a horse and its trappings, and his weapons or his healsfang18

in Wessex; and two pounds in Mercia and two pounds in East Anglia. (71§3) And the heriot of the king’s thegn among the Danes, who has his soc (rights of jurisdiction): four pounds. (71§4) And if he has a more intimate relation with the king: two horses, one saddled and one unsaddled, and a sword and two spears and two shields and 50 mancuses of gold. (71§5) And he who is of lower position: two pounds.

Geþyncðu and the heriot tariffs introduce fi ner distinctions than those for wergeld. Men who acknowledged only the king as their lord owed the highest heriots, and earls owed more than king’s thegns.19 Both groups are distinguished from the median thegns, the men of lords other than the king, and it is notice-able that so far as this group is concerned, the tariff was higher in Wessex than in Mercia and East Anglia; in Wessex the payment in war-gear could be


commuted for the healsfang of 120s (£2½), whereas in Mercia and East Anglia the sum required was £2.20 A further distinction was made between West Saxons, Mercians and East Angles on the one hand and Danes on the other (the ‘Danes’ in this context are the Anglo-Scandinavian inhabitants of the former kingdom of York, which incorporated not only Yorkshire, but also the modern shires of Lincoln, Huntingdon, Nottingham and Derby). Here and here alone two kinds of king’s thegn were found: ‘[he] who has his soc’ and ‘[he] who has a more intimate relation with the king’. The distinction may not have been preserved, for by 1066, according to Domesday Book, a thegn with more than six manors owed a heriot (relevatio) of £8, payable to the king, while a thegn with six manors or fewer paid £2 to the sheriff.21 The lower sum is that due in Cnut’s code from the thegn ‘of lower position’, but the higher is twice that of the thegn who ‘has his soc’, and since it is paid direct to the king it may represent a commutation of the sum paid in cash and wargear by the thegn ‘who has a more intimate relation with the king’. It was presumably due from those described in Domesday Book as having sake and soke over their lands.22

No more than ceorls did earls and thegns constitute homogenous groups, and legal pronouncements offer no more than a basic benchmark to social distinctions. Other determining factors of status included the possession of land. The aspiring ceorl of Geþyncðu had to possess ‘fully fi ve hides of his own land’ in order to qualify for thegnhood, a qualifi cation which re-appears in Norðleoda lagu, where the ceorl required fi ve hides ‘on which he discharges the king’s dues’, with the proviso that ‘even if he prospers so that he possesses a helmet and a coat of mail and a gold-plated sword, he is a ceorl all the same’.23

This property qualifi cation had to be maintained for three generations: ‘if his son and his son’s son prosper, so that they have so much land, then the offspring is of gesith-born class at 2,000 thrymsas’, otherwise ‘one is to pay at the ceorl’s rate’.24 Landed wealth seems also to have marked a cut-off point within the ranks of the thegns themselves.25 When Guthmund, brother of Abbot Wulfric of Ely (1044/5–66), was negotiating a marriage with the daughter of ‘a very powerful man’ (prepotens vir), she rejected him because although he was of aristocratic status (nobilis), he ‘did not hold the lordship (dominium) of forty hides of land’, and thus ‘could not be counted among the chief men’ (proceres); only after Guthmund’s brother had leased him enough of the abbey’s lands to bring up his holding to the required amount was the contract agreed.26 There is no other reference to a ‘property qualifi cation’ for the greater thegns, but in his study of King Edward’s aristocracy Dr Clarke used the 40-hide principle, transmuted on a ‘pound per hide’ basis into land valued at £40, to distinguish the 90 richest thegns below the rank of earl, suggesting that such men, regularly styled proceres (‘chief men’), optimates (‘best men’), duguð (‘elders’) and the like, might have been numbered among the earls rather than the thegns.27 It is true that the words


eorl, eorlisc never entirely lost their older meanings of ‘high-born’, ‘noble’.28 The heriot regulations, however, do not speak of eorlas but ealdormen, and there is nothing to suggest that ‘ealdorman’ was ever more than a term of offi ce, though clearly promotion to ealdorman enhanced the status of the recipient. The words ‘earl’ and ‘ealdorman’ were beginning to coalesce in the tenth century, when ‘earl’, presumably translating ON jarl, was used fi rst of Scandinavian and then English offi ce-holders; in the ‘Peace of Edward and Guthrum’, which despite its title was composed by Archbishop Wulfstan, eorl is used in the sense of ‘ealdorman’ and in The Battle of Maldon, which is roughly of the same date, Ealdorman Byrhtnoth is consistently called eorl, and the term is employed of no-one else.29 The proceres,who may as well be described, albeit anachronistically as ‘magnates’ are thus not ‘earls’, though they may be eorlisc as opposed to ceorlisc.

Guthmund’s dependence on the generosity of his brother, Abbot Wulfric, brings us to another determinant of thegnly rank, the status of the thegn’s lord. The word þegn originally meant ‘servant’ (Latin minister), and never lost its con-notations of dependence and service. In this regard, the distinction was between king’s thegns, who served the king, and median (medeme) thegns, who served other lords. The ‘service’ qualifi cation cut across the ‘landed’ qualifi cation; most proceres were probably king’s thegns, but the west-midlands landholder Vagn, whose 55 hides of land in Warwickshire and Staffordshire would have qualifi ed him as a procer, was in the service of Earl Leofric of Mercia.30 Conversely, not all king’s thegns possessed large amounts of land. Domesday Book reveals that Cynewig chelle, whose rare and distinctive name allows for the identifi cation of all his estates, held only 28 hides of land in the west country, but was nevertheless a king’s thegn.31 In landed wealth, Cynewig was matched by Ketel, who held the equivalent of about 25 hides of land in East Anglia, but Ketel was a median thegn, the man of Archbishop Stigand, to whom he rendered his heriot.32 Ketel’s maternal uncle Eadwine, however, was a ‘household thegn of King Edward’ (teinus dominicus regis Edwardi), even though his recorded wealth amounts to only 15 carucates and 45 geld acres of land.33 Small though their landed wealth might be, the status of such taini regis was elevated by the eminence of the lord whom they served.

It might be asked how men like Cynewig and Eadwine could afford the heriot of a king’s thegn, which was just under half that required of an earl, but it seems that the rate was abated for the less well off. The customs of Berkshire, as recorded in Domesday Book, set the heriot (relevamentum) of the ‘thegn or king’s household retainer’ (tainus vel miles regis dominicus) at his weapons and armour, two horses, one saddled and one unsaddled, and his hawks and hounds, if the king wished to have them.34 This is well short of the heriot of a king’s thegn as specifi ed in Cnut’s Secular Code, but more than that of a median thegn. It should also be said that royal service allowed its agents to accumulate


other kinds of wealth, notably cash, by both legal and illegal means; complaints about the rapacity of royal offi cials were commonplace and largely disregarded.35

Guthmund’s story illustrates the key role played by land in perceptions of wealth, but cash, bullion and moveable goods were also highly desirable; in the reign of Cnut a Herefordshire lady announced a bequest of ‘my land and my gold, my clothing and my raiment and all that I possess’, and it is one of the failings of the available sources that such wealth can never be properly assessed.36 The later tenth century saw a shift in the connotation of the word rice, originally denoting power and rulership, into its modern usage of ‘rich, wealthy’, refl ecting (it seems) ‘a time when those in authority were conspicuously rich, and when their wealth seemed the most striking thing about [them]’.37 Wealth in this sense may have become even more important during the eleventh century, when the gaps between rich and poor, and between wealthy and super-wealthy, seem to have increased.38 The initial refusal of Guthmund’s intended to accept his suit could be read as evidence of snobbery among those at the top of the tree towards others who, though technically ‘equals’ in rank, were less affl uent in terms of possessions.39

As the West Saxon kings extended the bounds of their kingdom in the tenth century, the exigencies of royal administration may have produced an increase in the numbers of aristocrats of modest wealth, who owed their rank to par-ticipation in their lord’s service. Domesday Book reveals the existence of a large number of minor thegns holding directly of King Edward in the heartlands of Wessex, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, close to Winchester, the chief seat of the Old English kings and the centre, insofar as there was a centre, of their administration. Some of these men, or their heirs, continued in the service of King William, and by 1086 had been joined by others, the vast majority identifi able as English, many identifi ed as royal offi cials like chamberlains and huntsmen.40 The holdings of these taini regis, as Domesday calls them, resemble the sergeanty tenures recorded down to the thirteenth century, small amounts of land granted in return for a specifi c service.41 Not all Domesday’s taini regisare of this kind; in the northern shires, the category looks more like a catch-all for those Englishmen who after 1066 succeeded in retaining or acquiring land held directly from the king, rather than from some foreign incomer. It includes, for instance, Forne Sigulf ’s son, a landholder in Cumbria as well as Yorkshire, whose daughter Edith was one of Henry I’s lady-friends, and whose son became the ancestor of the Greystokes, and Earnwine the priest, a taini regis in Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, who held land in Bedforshire as well, who gave testimony before the Domesday commissioners in 1086, and may have been one of the jurors of Lawress hundred (Yorks.).42 The northern equivalents of the West Saxon taini regis may be those thegns with six manors or less who had owed a heriot of £2, paid to the sheriff. This was the sum required in Mercia


and East Anglia from median thegns, but by 1086 the former holdings of a number of northern thegns were appended to the royal lands (terra regis) and though this could be a post-Conquest development, they may always have been ministerial tenants of the king.43 Across the Pennines in what was to become south Lancashire, the thegnly tenants of the king’s land in West Derby hundred also owed £2 in heriot, as did their counterparts in the neighbouring hundreds of Newton and Warrington, who are called drengs.44 Thegns and drengs continued to be associated with the ancient, non-manorialized royal estates in northern England and southern Scotland; they were royal offi cers who collected the king’s dues and performed a wide variety of services in return for their holdings.45 They represent an era of extensive lordship, which in southern and central England was passing away.

King’s thegns, then, might include not merely men who were themselves rich and powerful lords, but also minor estate servants, and though median thegns in lay followings are less well-documented, the same variation in status and wealth probably applied.46 Whether royal or median, the line between less affl uent thegns and more prosperous free men is not easily drawn. It is possible, for instance, that not all the ‘king’s household retainers’ in Berkshire were of thegnly rank; some may have been free men, who because of their service to the king owed a thegnly wergeld.47 The heriot codes do not specify payments from ceorls, but in the immediate aftermath of the Norman Conquest, a villanus on the royal manor of Kingston (Surr.) paid a heriot (releva) of 20s on the death of his father, and it is probably signifi cant that he was an estate offi cer, charged with ‘the collection of the queen’s wool’ (codundandi lanam reginam).48 Heriot was also paid by burgesses, not all of whom were of thegnly status; at Stamford (Lincs.) it was not only the 12 lawmen (the urban élite) who owed heriot, but also the 77 sokemen with property in the town.49 Nor is there any suggestion that the heriot-paying men of Archenfi eld (attached to Herefords.) were thegns, though this seems to have been true of the men ‘between Ribble and Mersey’, another frontier district (attached to Ches.).50 In a world which envisaged that a ceorl might have a helmet, a mail-coat and a gilded sword but remain ‘a ceorl all the same’, heriot-paying free men need occasion no surprise.51

A thegn’s offspring, male and female, were ipso facto ‘thegnly’, but it was sometimes hard to decide in individual cases whether a man was of aristocratic descent (þegnboren) or simply freeborn (ceorlboren). In 1066, a carucate of land at Little Melton (Norf.) was held as a manor by ‘a certain free man who was also a thegn’ (quidem liber homo teinnus etiam).52 Ælfweard of Longdon, commended to Earl Odda, is variously described in Domesday Book as a thegn, a free man and a radman (‘riding man’, a mounted retainer), and his colleague Merewine appears both as a radman and as a thegn.53 It could, of course, be argued that Domesday Book was produced for Normans who neither knew nor cared about English


social niceties, but most of those who provided its underlying data were English, as was the scribe who wrote the bulk of it, and they presumably had some idea of what they were talking about. Similar ambiguities are found in pre-Conquest sources. The Kentish ratifi cation of the laws of King Æthelstan runs in the name of ‘all the thegns of Kent, thegns and ceorls’ (omnes Cantescyrae thaini, comites et villani), and a writ of Cnut confi rming the privileges of the archiepiscopal see and drafted by the Christ Church scribe Eadui basan is addressed to ‘all my thegns, twelfhynde and twihynde’.54 The sort of men envisaged in such passages probably included the nine named individuals who attested a Kentish memorandum of 968 as rustici.55 The precise meaning of rusticus (if it had one) is uncertain, but since some of the other witnesses are specifi cally described as thegns, it presumably denotes a free man, like the rusticus Æthelric who held 8 hides on the River Kennet in Berkshire in the later tenth century.56

The rank of the lord clearly affected the rank of the follower, but the general signifi cance of Königsnehe, ‘closeness to the king’, as a determinant of status has recently been questioned. Since virtually all the surviving source material emanates from the circle around the king and his court, it has been argued that what we are hearing is ‘a stridently royalist interpretation’, raising not only the possibility that ‘aristocratic status was not solely dependent on a connection with the king’, but also that ‘many powerful aristocrats were indifferent to the ways such a relationship could affect their social standing’.57 The fi rst assertion may well be true, though the nature of the surviving evidence makes it diffi cult to know. Yet even if we admit that Königsnehe may not have been the only determinant of status, it does not follow that royal connections were a matter of indifference to aristocrats, however wealthy or locally powerful. Royal infl uence was certainly exercised in different ways in different areas. The centre of kingly power was in Wessex, south-west Mercia and the south-east, and it is here that the king and his court can most be often found.58 It is true that this picture is distorted to an unknown degree by the imbalance in the surviving sources; the royal diplomas upon which we rely for our knowledge of the king’s movements are most numerous for southern and western England, since the agencies most likely to preserve them, the reformed Benedictine abbeys, are concentrated in these regions. Yet the general picture is still of a court centred in southern England; William of Malmesbury remarked that kings, whether English or Norman, ‘are known to stay more often in the south than in the north’.59

In an age of peripatetic kingship, it was hard to maintain control of regions peripheral to the royal itinerary, and since royal visits to northern Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria were rare, the thegns of these regions would have had little opportunity to attend meetings of the royal witan. The aristocrats of northern and eastern England are thus much more remote fi gures than those of Wessex, Kent and south-west Mercia, and their activities are largely concealed


from us, except at moments of crisis. A particularly illuminating glimpse of royal relations with the thegns of the north is provided by a diploma of King Æthelred, issued in 1009, in favour of Morcar, one of the leading thegns of York.60 Its long witness-list represents ‘an unusually large assembly … which must have been summoned to deal with the crisis’ presented by the eruption in the same year of Thorkell the Tall and his ‘immense raiding army’ upon southern England.61

Present were Bishop Aldhun of Durham, making his only appearance as a witness to King Æthelred’s diplomas, and a number of lay witnesses whose names suggest a northern context: Wither, Fredegist, Thurferth, two men called Asketel, Kata and Swafi .62 None of them are more than names, but three of the remaining witnesses, Sigeferth, Styr and Thurbrand, were prominent fi gures in the politics of the north in Æthelred’s day. Sigeferth, whose name is given particular emphasis in the diploma’s witness-list, was Morcar’s brother, and in 1015 the pair were described as ‘the chief thegns belonging to the Seven Boroughs’, that is, York, Stamford, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham and Derby and (probably) Durham.63 Styr’s name is uncommon, and he can be identifi ed as Styr, Ulf ’s son, who attended a royal council at London in 989 or 990.64 The post-Conquest Durham tract known as De Obsessione Dunelmi (‘the siege of Durham’), which recounts the history of those church estates which formed the inheritance of Bishop Aldun’s daughter Ecgfrida, describes how her fi rst husband, Earl Uhtred, repudiated her in order to marry Styr’s daughter.65 The marriage was probably prompted by King Æthelred’s promotion of Uhtred, already earl and high-reeve of Bamburgh, to the earldom of all Northumbria in 1007, and its intention was presumably to provide Uhtred with allies south of the Tees. De Obsessione describes Styr as a thegn of York, but he also held land in Northumbria; in 1014, he granted Darlington (Co. Durham) to St Cuthbert, in the presence of King Æthelred, making a rare visit to York.66 De Obsessione also has much to say of Thurbrand hold, another York magnate, whose son and grandsons were prominent landholders in Yorkshire down to the Norman Conquest.67 It was Thurbrand who at King Cnut’s behest killed Earl Uhtred at Wiheal in 1016, and was himself killed by the earl’s son and successor, Earl Ealdred.68

Clearly such men, whose lands and interests lay in regions far from the centre of royal authority in Winchester, would not only be less likely to receive the king’s patronage, but also less likely to desire it; Uhtred’s kin had been high-reeves of Bamburgh since the days of Alfred, and had no need of West Saxon patronage to maintain their position.69 Yet what little we know of the thegns of Northumbria suggests that even they were not immune from the enticing glamour of the king’s court and circle. It could be a fatal attraction; Sigeferth and Morcar, having been the recipients of royal patronage, were murdered at a witenagemot held at Oxford in 1015. The crime is laid at the door of the ealdorman of Mercia, Eadric streona,but since King Æthelred immediately seized the brothers’ property and arrested


Sigeferth’s widow, the ealdorman clearly had the acquiescence (at least) of his royal lord.70 Royal favour was not granted for free; the king expected some return on his patronage, and if this was not forthcoming, or if circumstances changed, his goodwill could be withdrawn. Access to the king’s court could bring wealth and power, but loss of his favour could spell disaster.

The relations between King Æthelred and the magnates of his most distant provinces suggest that the ‘king-centred’ aspect of the surviving sources is not wholly fl awed. Doubtless many of them, in particular the legal codes, represent what their composers thought desirable rather than what was actually the case. Not all, however, are prescriptive; Domesday Book, for instance, though not a simple description in the modern sense, is at least based on an attempt to gather real information, albeit information relevant to royal interests.71 Though the text is by no means transparent, the social distinctions which it reveals must bear some relationship to contemporary reality, so it is of some importance that not only does it reveal the gradations of rank among free men and lesser thegns (including the shadowy line which divided one from the other), but also that a little digging can reveal the extraordinary variation in landed wealth between men who shared a thegn’s wergeld.72 It is axiomatic that we need to take careful account of the sources of our sources but we do not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

1

The Upper Crust: Ealdormen and Earls

And if a thegn prospered, that he became an earl, then he was afterwards entitled to an earl’s rights.

ARCHBISHOP WULFSTAN, Geþyncðu

In 1016, the Danish army won a decisive victory over the English at Assandun(Essex), and in the aftermath of this disaster, King Edmund II Ironside met King Cnut at Alney near Deerhurst to negotiate a peace.1 They agreed to divide the English kingdom, Edmund taking Wessex and Cnut Mercia and the north.2 The site of their meeting was then an island in the Severn, now marked by a triangular piece of land known as the Naight (a corruption of eyot, ‘island’); the Severn still fl ows to the west, but the eastern arm of the river dried up long ago, its ancient course marked by that of the former Naight Brook (now also dry).3 The Naight is only a few minutes walk from the modern village of Deerhurst, site of a minster dedicated to St Mary. The manor of Deerhurst, whose central core included land both east and west of the Severn, was probably part of the original parochia of the minster, which had been in existence since the seventh century.4

By the middle of the eleventh century, about half the manor of Deerhurst had been appropriated by Earl Odda, who built his manor house within the minster precinct; its site is indicated by the small church built by Odda in memory of his brother Ælfric (d. 1053).5 If Odda was already in possession of Deerhurst in 1016 (which seems at least possible), this might help to explain the choice of Alney for the momentous encounter between Edmund and Cnut, for Odda was related to King Edmund; he is later described as a cognatus of Edmund’s half-brother, Edward the Confessor.6 The degree of kinship cannot be established, but Odda probably belonged to the best-recorded junior branch of the West Saxon royal line, that of Æthelweard the chronicler (d. 998), a descendant of Alfred the Great’s elder brother, King Æthelred (see Figure 1.1).7 Æthelweard was patron of Pershore Abbey (Glos.), and was made ealdorman of the western shires by Edward the Martyr in 977.8 Odda too was a patron of Pershore, and was made earl of the western shires by Edward the Confessor in 1051.9 His patronage of the abbey which Æthelweard favoured, coupled with his tenure of the offi ce which Æthelweard had held, suggests their kinship, especially since both were related to the West Saxon kings.

* persons addressed or described as royal kinX1, 2, 3 generations between King Æthelred and Ealdorman Æthelweard conjectured relationship

*Ælfgar of Devon

*Æthelweard mæw = Ælfgifu

Ælfgar mæw

Brihtric son of Ælfgar

*Brihtferth

ÆTHELREDALFRED

EDWARD

Æthelmær Æthelwold

X2

X3

X1 (= ? dau, m. Odda, ealdorman of Devon

EDMUND

EADWIG = Ælfgifu

Æthelweard = Æthelflæd

Æthelmær of Hampshire

Ælfwaru Ælfweard *Æthelweard

Æthelmær

Æthelweard

Æthelgifu = ?

Figure 1.1: The family of Ealdorman Æthelweard.

T H E U P P E R C R U S T : E A L D O R M E N A N D E A R L S 13

Odda of Deerhurst was probably also related to the family which held the neighbouring manor of Tewkesbury. The early history of the minster church of Tewkesbury, converted into a Benedictine house in 1102, is preserved only in the fi fteenth-century Tewkesbury Chronicle, much of which is hopelessly garbled. Its claim that the church was founded in the eighth century is certainly false, but what it describes as a re-foundation in ‘the days of King Æthelred and St Dunstan’ (978–88) probably represents the community’s genuine origins.10 The founders, Æthelweard mæw and his wife Ælfgifu, also established a monastery at Cranborne (Dorset) some time before 1000, when Æthelred unræd confi rmed to Cranborne Abbey the gifts of Ælfgifu, widow of Æthelweard mæw, the founder.11

Æthelred’s diploma records the assent of Ælfgifu’s son, Ælfgar, who some years later made further donations to Cranborne, describing himself as the son of Æthelweard mæw.12 Ælfgar attests several royal diplomas in the years 994–1014, occasionally being identifi ed by his byname mæw, presumably inherited from his father, and his son Brihtric held both Tewkesbury and Cranborne on the eve of the Norman Conquest.13

Tewkesbury was a college of secular priests, while Cranborne was a Benedictine abbey, albeit on a minor scale.14 A man rich enough to found two substantial churches must have come from a wealthy kindred, and the Tewkesbury Chronicle claims that Æthelweard mæw was ‘sprung from the illustrious stock of Edward the elder’. It is tempting to identify him with Æthelweard the chronicler himself, but the name was common at the time. Æthelweard mæw may have been a member of another branch of the royal kin, whose earliest identifi able members, Ælfgar and his brother Brihtferth, attest a diploma of King Eadwig in 958. They can be traced among the thegns (ministri) who witness subsequent royal diplomas until 962, when the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports the death of ‘Ælfgar the king’s kinsman in Devon’; the date of Brihtferth’s death is not recorded, but his attestations continue into the reign of Edward the Martyr (975–78).15 Ælfgar’s name is a common one, but his association with Devon suggests that a younger member of this family was Ælfgar ‘the Honiton man’ (se Hunitunisca) who attended a royal council at London in 989–90, and who may be none other than Ælfgar mæw, whose son Brihtric is later found in possession of a substantial estate in Devon.16

Since the families of Æthelweard the chronicler and Æthelweard mæw were both kinsmen of the West Saxon kings, they must also have been related to each other. A degree of kinship between Odda and Ælfgar mæw is suggested by the topography of their respective manors of Deerhurst and Tewkesbury, as revealed in Domesday Book. Both were composite estates, with a central core of land to which outlying tenements (berewicks) were attached.17 When the various elements are plotted on a map, it emerges that not only are the central cores contiguous but also that wherever we fi nd an outlier of Deerhurst, an outlier of Tewkesbury lies adjacent or nearby (see Map 1.1). The pattern suggests that

Map 1.1: Outlying lands of Tewkesbury and Deerhurst.

WORCESTERSHIRE WARWICKSHIRE

OXFORDSHIRE

HEREFORDSHIRE

Tewkesbury

Deerhurst

The manor of Tewkesbury

The manor of Deerhurst

Lands held by men commended to Beorhtric0

0

1

1

2

2

3

3

4

4

5

5

mi

km

R.

Severn


the two had once been a single unit, perhaps for ecclesiastical rather than for secular purposes, for the original parochia of St Mary’s, Deerhurst (the area over which its priests exercised parochial care) seems to have included Tewkesbury.18

Æthelweard mæw’s foundation of a secular minster at Tewkesbury meant the division of the endowment into two parochiae, and perhaps into two manors, one of which passed to his son Ælfgar and the other to Odda.19

The families to which (it seems) Odda and Ælfgar belonged had an ambiguous relationship with their royal kinsmen. There seems to have been some estrange-ment between King Æthelred unræd and Æthelweard the chronicler’s son Æthelmær, which in 1005 led to the latter’s retirement to the monastery which he had founded at Eynsham (Oxon); he emerged from seclusion in 1013 only to lead the submission of the western thegns to Æthelred’s enemy, King Swein Forkbeard of Denmark.20 Ælfgar mæw himself, according to John of Worcester, actually fought for Swein’s son Cnut against Æthelred’s son Edmund at the battle of Sherston in 1016.21 He was not the only Englishman in the Danish ranks. Eadric streona, ealdorman of Mercia, also fought for Cnut at Sherston, and though he subsequently returned to his allegiance, he is accused of starting the English rout at Assandun.22 It seems that opinion in the west of England was divided, some favouring Edmund, some Cnut. The choice of Alney, in Odda’s manor of Deerhurst, for the peace conference suggests that it was in some way neutral territory, whose owner not only had connections with both parties, but was also of suffi cient wealth and rank to host such a gathering, of crucial importance for the future of the English kingdom.

Odda’s role in the Alney agreement is conjectural, but his part in a later royal crisis is well documented. In 1051, Edward the Confessor exiled the most power-ful man in his kingdom, Earl Godwine, with all his family, and confi scated their lands and offi ces. Wessex was divided, the king taking the central and eastern shires into his own hand, and reviving the earldom of the western shires, defunct since 1020, for his kinsman Odda.23 In 1052, Earl Odda was appointed as one of the leaders of the fl eet mustered at Sandwich to defend the coast against Earl Godwine, who was gathering ships and men at Bruges. Odda’s co-commander was the king’s nephew, Ralph, who had received an earldom in the east midlands (see below). Despite their efforts, Godwine effected a landing at Dungeness, and when the royal fl eet set out against him, he withdrew to Pevensey in a storm so violent that ‘the earls could not fi nd out what had happened to [him]’. The ships returned to Sandwich and thence to London, where ‘it was decided that other earls and other oarsmen should be appointed to them.’24 The dispersal of the fl eet allowed Godwine and his sons to return in force, and compel the king to receive them back into favour.

Despite the restoration of Godwine to the earldom of Wessex, Odda was not demoted; he appears as ‘Earl Odda’ on the foundation-stone of Holy Trinity,


Deerhurst, consecrated by Bishop Ealdred of Worcester on 12 April 1056, and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls him ‘earl’ when recording his death later in the same year.25 More tellingly, he attests as dux a charter of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester, which, since it is also witnessed by Earl Harold, must date from after Godwine’s return in 1052, and, if Harold attests as earl of Wessex, after Godwine’s death on 15 April 1053.26 Odda does not, however, attest royal diplomas after 1051, and the restoration of Godwine’s lands and offi ce must have curtailed his authority over the western shires. He may have retained the title of earl without comital responsibility, or perhaps he continued to hold the western shires as Godwine’s (and latterly Harold’s) subordinate.27 He died on 31 August 1056 and was buried, like his brother Ælfric, at Pershore, having been received into the community as a monk.28

Even before his elevation to the earldom, Odda had played a signifi cant role in the political life of the English kingdom. His attendance at the councils of successive kings is demonstrated by his attestations as thegn (minister) in royal diplomas, which begin as early as 1013. Many such diplomas relate to land and recipients of land in the west country and southern Mercia, where Odda’s known estates lay.29 Of the nine diplomas in Cnut’s name attested by Odda, the three earliest are all concerned with the west country, as are four of the six which date from Cnut’s later years.30 A similar pattern appears in King Edward’s reign; of thirteen diplomas attested by Odda between 1042 and 1051, fi ve relate to the west country.31 But not all Odda’s attestations were to instruments concerned with local affairs. His fi rst attestation is to a diploma of Æthelred unræd granting land in Essex to Sigered, probably a Kentish thegn.32 Odda attested another diploma relating to Kent in King Edward’s time, and the same king’s grant of Berghe,possibly Bergh Apton (Norf.), to Tovi comes.33 The remainder of his attestations, to diplomas relating to Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Wiltshire and Oxfordshire, show him attending meetings of the witan in the heartlands of Wessex.34 It was probably at a witenagemot held at Winchester in 1043 or 1044 that Odda attested a lease of Bishop Ælfwine and the community of the Old Minster; the witnesses include King Edward, Lady Ælfgifu (his mother, Emma), both Archbishops, the Bishops of Ramsbury, Worcester, Wells, Hereford, Dorchester, London and Selsey, the Earls Godwine, Leofric, Siward and Swein (Godwineson) and three laymen, Ordgar, Odda and Ælfgar, as well as ‘many good men, both ecclesiastics and laymen, whose names cannot all be recorded here’.35

Bishop Ælfwine’s lease is a reminder that it was not only royal patronage which was dispensed at meetings of the witan. A lease of Bishop Lyfi ng of Worcester, which can be dated to the years 1044–45, was concluded ‘in the witness of the king (Edward) and all his witan’ (on ðæs cyncges gehwitnesse and on ealra his hwitena); the attestations are those of King Edward, the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of East Anglia, Hereford and Lichfi eld, the Earls Godwine, Leofric, Siward


and Thuri, the Abbots of Evesham, Pershore, Winchcombe and Peterborough, fi ve named members of the Worcester community, and Odda and his brother Ælfric.36 An earlier lease by the same bishop, dated to 1038, was also concluded before a witenagemot, for the witnesses are King Harold I, Archbishop Ælfric of York, the Bishops of Hereford, Wells and Worcester, the Earls Godwine, Leofric and Thuri, and three thegns (milites), Odda, Brihtric and Edwin.37 Yet another of Bishop Lyfi ng’s leases was concluded before a witenagemot of 1042, presided over by Harthacnut; it is attested by the King, the Archbishop of York, the Bishops of Worcester, Hereford, Wells and London, the Earls Godwine and Leofric, Earl Harald (not Godwine’s son), who was probably earl of Worcestershire, the Abbots of Evesham, Pershore and the New Minster, Winchester, six named priests and two named deacons belonging to the community of Worcester, and 14 named laymen, headed by Odda minister.38

Not all such transactions were agreed before the witan. Two other leases of Bishop Lyfing, both witnessed by Odda, were made at meetings of the Worcestershire shire-court.39 This seems to have been the venue for a grant of Lyfi ng’s successor, Ealdred, in the years 1046–51.40 Although it acknowledges the consent of King Edward, the king does not attest the lease. The ecclesiastical witnesses are the community of Worcester, Abbot Mannig and the community of Evesham, and Abbot Ælfric and the community of Pershore. Among the lay witnesses are Odda, his brother Ælfric, and Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, accompanied by the Worcestershire thegns Æthelric, brother of Bishop Brihtheah, his son Godric fi nc, Ceolmær, Ælfric of Comberton (Worcs.), and ‘all the thegns of Worcestershire, both Danish and English’.41 Odda must also have been a member of the Devon shire-court, and appears as such in a Sherborne lease concerning land in Devon, concluded ‘before Earl Godwine and all the shire’.42

Odda’s career illustrates the double role of the great thegns, who were not only members of the king’s court, from whose ranks his councillors and offi cers were drawn, but also local magnates. Odda’s inconclusive performance as an earl represents only part of his value to his royal kinsman, and his position as one of the leading men in the south-west was as (perhaps more) important. It is noticeable, for instance, that when Earls Godwine and Harold returned from exile in 1052, it was only when they moved into Sussex and Kent, the traditional heartlands of their power, that men began to rally to their cause.43

Despite the many valuable estates held by Godwine and his family in Wessex and the south-west, reaction to their appearance in this region was very different.44

When Harold and his Irish allies came into the Severn estuary, ‘the local people gathered together against him out of Somerset and Devon’, and despite a battle in which thirty west country thegns (‘apart from other people’) were killed, Harold could not effect a landing.45 The presence of men like Odda of Deerhurst and his kinsman Brihtric Ælfgar’s son among the leading fi gures of the west must have


something to do with this resistance. They belonged to what Professor Keynes has styled the ‘Old Guard’, thegns whose attestations to Edward’s charters are clustered in the years before 1050.46 Of the 11 men in this group, six – Odda, Brihtric, Dodda, Ordgar, Ælfgar and Ordwulf – can be connected with the shires of western Wessex, and a seventh, Ælfstan of Boscombe, held in both the old West Saxon shires and the east midlands.47 They were not only members of the king’s court but also the leaders of their shire communities, the ‘best men’ (optimates)of the Wessex heartland, whose collective decisions determined local affairs, and whose loyalty was essential for effective royal control.48 The optimates of the south-west were particularly prominent in the king’s entourage, partly because some of them at least were royal kinsmen, and partly because the region belonged to the ancestral heartland of the West Saxon kings. Similar groups of wealthy thegns are found to the north and east, in lands which were brought under West Saxon control in the course of the tenth century. As the rule of Wessex expanded, successive kings tried to bind the men of the newly-absorbed regions to their own service, both by royal favour to the local magnates, and by patronage of local churches and cults.49 They also encouraged men of their own following to acquire land and establish ties in the new territories, a process illustrated by the career of King Edward’s nephew, Ralph.

Ralph was the younger son of Edward’s full sister Godgifu (Gode), by her fi rst marriage to Drogo, count of Amiens and the Vexin. The match was arranged by Gode’s kinsman, Robert of Normandy, but both he and Drogo died in the course of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1035.50 Drogo’s elder son Walter succeeded to his continental possessions, while his widow married Eustace, soon to become count of Boulogne. Ralph seems to have attached himself to his maternal uncle. He may have accompanied Edward to England in 1041, but does not attest royal diplomas until 1050, when he appears as earl (dux).51 His earldom was probably that of ‘the ‘middle peoples’ (mediterraneorum), the folk of what had once been eastern Mercia. The earldom’s extent is uncertain, and probably fl uctuated, but it had been held by Thuri until 1045, when it passed to Earl Godwine’s nephew, Beorn Estrithson.52 In 1049, Beorn was murdered by his cousin, Swein Godwineson, and it seems that King Edward took advantage of this rift in the Godwineson ranks to promote one of his own kinsmen.53

Ralph may already have had some connections in the area, for Domesday Book reveals that his mother, Countess Gode, held land assessed at 142 hides in Buckinghamshire and Middlesex, as well as in Dorset, Gloucestershire, Surrey and Sussex.54 It is possible that King Edward assigned lands to his sister soon after he became king, but she may have received her English estates only after the dissolution of her marriage to Count Eustace in 1049.55 In either event, it was probably to provide Ralph with additional support in his new command that King Edward arranged his marriage to Gytha, a woman from a wealthy


east-midlands family, who by 1066 disposed of an estate totalling 94 hides and ten carucates, extending into Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire.56 Some may have come from her husband or his uncle the king, but the general distribution of Gytha’s lands suggests that she was a kinswoman of the rich east-midlands thegn Burgred, who with his sons held in excess of 160 hides in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire.57 To give a single example, Gytha’s manor at Higham Ferrers (Northants) included sokeland at Rushden, Irchester and Raunds, but in 1086 the sokemen who dwelt there asserted that they had been Burgred’s men, and the sokelands were claimed as belonging to Burgred’s manor of Raunds.58 The division may be refl ected in the archaeological record; the tenth-century ditched hall beneath the mediaeval manor of Furnells might represent Burgred’s manor, while Gytha’s sokeland in the vill perhaps became the twelfth-century manor of Burystead.59

Burgred was a man of some local eminence. The monks of Peterborough remembered him and his unnamed parents as the donors of Barton Seagrove (Northants).60 Burgred also attests three charters relating to St Albans.61 One, a lease of land at Great Tew (Oxon) dating from 1051–52, records a transaction before an Oxfordshire shire-court, attested by Bishop Ulf of Dorchester, Earl Leofric and his followers, the portreeve of Oxford, and a group of local thegns, the most prominent of whom were Burgred himself, Leofric Osmund’s son and his brother Leofnoth, and Azur Toti’s son.62 A second agreement, concerning land at Studham (Beds.), was fi nalized at the dedication of the manorial church, before Bishop Wulfwig of Dorchester (1053–67), Bondi the staller, Ælfstan wicgerefa,Burgred and his son Edwin, and Leofwine of Caddington.63 Of greatest interest is the third charter, since it is also attested by King Edward and his mother, the bishop of Dorchester, and Earls Siward and Thuri. Burgred’s name may not appear on any of the Confessor’s diplomas, but this charter is evidence that he attended a royal witenagemot on at least one occasion.64

The witnesses to this little group of charters provide some idea of the society within which Burgred moved. Bondi the staller was a royal servant, with land in Wessex as well as the east midlands, as was Ælfwine wicgerefa if, as is usually supposed, he is identical with the wealthy thegn, Ælfstan of Boscombe.65 Most, however, seem to be local thegns, of varying degrees of wealth. The sons of Osmund, Leofric and his brother Leofnoth, held over 100 hides of land in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, while Azur Toti’s son held 62 hides of land in Buckinghamshire, Northamptonshire, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.66 Less wealthy but locally important was Leofwine of Caddington, son of Edwin of Caddington whose will disposes of land in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and (perhaps) Oxfordshire.67 It was on the support of such men that Ralph would have to rely if he was to fulfi l his duties as


earl, and his marriage to a woman from a prominent family among the ‘middle peoples’ was intended to provide him with a base of operations. It also drew Gytha’s kindred and friends closer to the royal court.

Ralph’s career, like that of Odda, bears witness to aspects of comital authority other than those usually emphasized – the overweening power and alleged indiscipline of Earl Godwine and his sons. In making earls of two kinsmen, one of whom was already well established in his locality and the other easily integrated into a regional affi nity, King Edward was pursuing a long-established policy, for his tenth-century predecessors had also promoted their kinsmen to ealdordoms, and encouraged them to put down roots in their local communities. Nor did the restoration of Earl Godwine change royal policy; when Swein Godwineson’s earldom became vacant, after his death on 29 September 1052, the king did not re-grant it to another of Godwine’s sons, but bestowed the core of it, comprising Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, on Earl Ralph.68 It was only after Ralph’s failure to stem a Welsh attack on Hereford in 1055 that he was supplanted in the west by Earl Harold.69 He died on 21 December, 1057, and was buried at Peterborough, of which he was a patron. He left an infant son, Harold, not a common name in eleventh-century England, which raises the possibility that the child was named after Harold Godwineson, even (perhaps) that the earl was his godfather.70

The distinguishing characteristics of earls are rarely addressed in contempo-rary texts. The thegn who ‘prospered, that he became an earl … was afterwards entitled to an earl’s rights’, but those rights are not specifi ed.71 Since the heriot of an ealdorman or earl was more than double that of the highest-ranking thegns, wealth must have played some part in defi ning an earl’s position.72 Thanks to Domesday Book, which, despite its earlier term of ‘the day on which King Edward was alive and dead’, frequently refers to the lands of those who departed this life well before 5 January 1066, it is possible to make some estimate of the landed wealth of Odda and Ralph, even though Odda died in 1056, and Ralph in the following year.

Earl Ralph’s holding presents fewer diffi culties than that of Odda, since he left an heir, Harold fi tzRalph. He cannot have been born before 1051, and may not have been of age in 1066, for although 16 hides of land in Warwickshire and Worcestershire are credited to him, his manor of Ebury (Middx), at 12 hides, was in the hands of his great-aunt and guardian, Queen Edith.73 The lands entered under Earl Ralph’s own name, assessed at 136¾ hides (or the equivalent) in the shires of Bedford, Berkshire, Buckingham, Gloucester, Leicester, Northampton, Rutland and Warwick, were perhaps being administered on his son’s behalf, but it is also possible that they were in the king’s hand (see below). When the lands of the earl and his son are added to those of his widow Gytha, the family’s total holding can be estimated at 256¾ hides in 11 shires.74


Odda’s estate is more diffi cult to reconstruct, since he died without heirs. Domesday Book describes Longdon (Worcs.), assessed at 30 hides, as ‘Earl Odda’s manor’ (manerium Odonis comitis), and Poltimore (Devon), assessed at half a hide, as ‘Odda’s manor’ (manerium Odonis).75 Mathon (Worcs.), assessed at fi ve hides, had also belonged to Odda, for the hide of the vill which lay in Herefordshire had been divided between Merewine and Ælfweard, each of whom is described as ‘Earl Odda’s thegn’ (teinus Odonis comitis).76 The nine-hide manor of Upleadon (Herefords) held by Odda’s sister Eadgyth should probably be included in his estate, for it was held in 1086 by the royal chaplain Albert the Lotharingian, and may have passed, like other manors of Odda, through the hands of Edward the Confessor.77 It can be presumed that Odda had held the 59 hides of Deerhurst which the king subsequently gave to Westminster Abbey. The rest of the estate, assessed at 60 hides, was held by the minster of St Mary, but since Odda was the church’s patron, it should probably be counted in his holding; after his death, the king gave the minster and its property to the abbey of St Denis, Paris.78 Edward also gave to Westminster 200 hides out of the 300 which had once belonged to Pershore Abbey, and since the king’s gift included ‘Earl Odda’s manor’ at Longdon, the whole 200 hides had probably been held Odda, who was one of Pershore’s patrons.79 In all, this would give him an estate assessed at 333½ hides, comparable to that of his kinsman, Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, who held something between 338 and 371 hides in Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Wiltshire.80

The wealth of the greatest earls far exceeded these totals; Earl Harold (the richest) held lands assessed at approximately 2,400 hides (or the equivalent).81

The disparity of wealth between the great earls and the rest has often been remarked. It was Maitland’s opinion that ‘the enormous wealth of the house of Godwin seems only explicable by the supposition that the earlships and the older ealdormanships had carried with them a title to the enjoyment of wide lands’.82

The concept of land which belonged to the offi ce rather than to the offi ce holder certainly existed. Some lands, for instance, were attached to the kingship (regnum)rather than the king; in Exon Domesday, the Devonshire manors belonging to King Edward are described as ‘the king’s demesne belonging to the kingship’ (dominicatus regis ad regnum pertinens).83 The same concept appears in Little Domesday, where the royal lands in Suffolk include ‘the king’s lands belonging to the kingship’ (terrae regis de regno), and the manor of Sporle (Norf.) ‘belonged to the kingship’ (fuit de regno).84 It might be argued that these notices apply only to post-Conquest arrangements, but land was set aside for the use of both the king and the æthelings long before 1066; a diploma of Æthelred unræd refers to ‘the lands belonging to king’s sons’ (terrae ad regis pertinentes fi lios), which he himself had received when his half-brother Edward became king, and the ‘royal lands’ (regalis terrae), to which he only succeeded after his brother’s death.85


When it comes to ‘comital vills’, attached to the earl’s offi ce, not all have been convinced of their existence, at least before 1066.86 There is, however, a strong possibility that reeveland, recorded with some frequency in the eleventh century, was land attached to the offi ce of reeve (and later that of sheriff), and if reeves held such lands, then so too might earls.87 Maitland’s position has recently been restated by Dr Baxter, for whom ‘the speed and frequency with which the structure of English earldoms changed during King Edward’s reign is more readily comprehensible if it is assumed that the “comital manors” in each shire could be transferred by the king from one earl to another with relative ease’.88

The evidence is not unambiguous, but just as land belonging to the kingship is occasionally distinguished from land belonging to the king, lands belonging to the earldom seem on occasion to be distinct from those of any particular earl. In Staffordshire, for instance, Domesday Book records that William fi tzAnsculf had four messuages ‘of the earldom’ (de comitatu), attached to Penn, ‘a manor of the earl’ (manerium comitum), previously held by Earl Ælfgar.89

Comital manors are also found in the south-west. In Exon Domesday’s account of Somerset, the sub-heading mansiones de comitatu occurs in its description of ‘the king’s land which Earl Godwine held, and his sons, in Somerset’ (terra regis quas tenuit Gowwinus comes et fi lii eius in Sumerseta).90 It appears towards the end of the section, at the bottom of folio 106v, but is probably misplaced; folio 107 begins with three manors held respectively by Gytha, Godwine’s widow, his daughter Gunnhild, and his son Harold, followed by a passage relating to the earl’s share of the revenue from the Somerset towns (Ilchester, Milborne Port, Bruton, Langport, Axbridge and Frome).91 It seems likely that the sub-title mansiones de comitatu belongs here and refers back to the description of all the lands once held by Godwine and his kin. If so, Exon Domesday’s association of ‘comital manors’ and third-penny dues would parallel the account of the earl’s perquisites in the twelfth-century Instituta Cnuti, which consist of ‘the third penny of vills where markets are held and of the punishment of thieves, and the comital vills which belong to his earldom’ (tertius denarius in villis ubi mercatum convenent et in castigatione latronum, et comitales villae quae pertinent ad comitatum eius).92

The third penny represented the earl’s share of the profi ts of justice and trade, and manors to which the third penny is attached may fairly be regarded as comital manors, held in virtue of the earl’s offi ce. Such ‘third-penny manors’ are widespread. The third penny ‘of the whole shire of Dorset’ (de tota scira Dorsete) was attached to Puddletown, a manor formerly held by Earl Harold, and in Warwickshire, the third penny of the pleas of the shire (placitorum sirae)were attached, with the borough of Warwick, to Earl Edwin’s manor of Coten.93

In Somerset, the third penny of the royal manor of Milverton was attached to Brompton, held by Earl Godwine’s wife Gytha, and the third pennies of the


royal manors of Carhampton, Williton, Cannington and North Petherton were attached to Earl Harold’s manor of Cleeve.94 The dues from specifi ed hundreds might also be attached to particular manors. In Herefordshire, Earl Harold’s manor of Much Cowarne had attached to it the third penny from three hundreds, and both the earl’s and the king’s share of the customary dues (consuetudines)of Newark Wapentake (Notts.) were attached to the manor of Newark, held by Earl Leofric’s wife, Godgifu.95 In Devon, the third penny of three named hundreds was attached to Molland, held by Earl Harold, and the third penny of Teignbridge Hundred to his manor of Moretonhampstead.96 Manors not assessed in hides and whose renders were expressed in terms of the night’s farm (fi rma unius noctis) must also be regarded as ‘comital’ estates, for the night’s farm was an ancient render, notionally the amount of produce which would support the itinerant king and his household for a single day.97

It seems likely that many (if not all) of the west country manors in the pos-session of Godwine’s family had been comital manors, which raises the question of who held them during the family’s exile in 1051–52. In Herefordshire, part of Earl Swein Godwineson’s earldom in 1051, the manors of Burghill and Brinsop, the former a comital manor to which the dues of two hundreds were attached, had been held by Osbern Pentecost ‘when Godwine and Harold were exiled’ (quando Goduin et Herald erant exulati).98 In Huntingdonshire, part of Earl Harold’s earldom of East Anglia in 1051, the shire jury testifi ed that ‘King Edward gave Swineshead to Earl Siward with sake and soke, and just so Earl Harold held [it]’; the date of Siward’s tenure can be deduced from a Huntingdonshire writ addressed to him as earl, which probably dates from the years 1051–52.99 It seems that during the exile of Earls Swein (of Hereford) and Harold (of East Anglia), Osbern Pentecost received some of the comital estates in Herefordshire, and Earl Siward some of those in Huntingdonshire. The obvious benefi ciary in the south-west of Earl Godwine’s temporary fall is Earl Odda, a circumstance which throws yet more light on the lack of support for the family in the south-west.

If a substantial part of the earls’ estates consisted of manors held only for the duration of their offi ce, their relationship to the king, the essential dispenser of patronage, takes on a different complexion. Though Earl Godwine staged a successful comeback, the fact remains that he was expelled in 1051, in a dramatic expression of royal power. The king’s ability to shuffl e shires into different constellations is also worthy of note, and not just as evidence of royal authority; the transference of shires from one earldom to another, and the creation of new combinations, demonstrates the fact that Old English earldoms were not territorial principalities, like the Frankish counties which (in some ways) they resemble. Since there was no level of local administration higher than the shire, there was no ‘comital’ government. Earls received a share in the profi ts of justice, and of any mints in their earldoms, but they could not themselves hold courts or


mint coinage; the shire-courts over which they presided were held in the king’s name, and minting was a royal monopoly.100 They could not raise taxation; geld was levied and collected by royal agents at the behest of the king. Nor could they issue diplomas; Earl Harold’s re-foundation and endowment of Waltham Holy Cross required a royal diploma.101

Unlike thegnhood, the rank of earl was not hereditary. The sons of earls might receive, and increasingly expected to receive, their father’s offi ces, but they became earls only by the action of the king; the sons of Earl Godwine attested King Edward’s diplomas as thegns (ministri) until he appointed them to earldoms of their own. Of course it was regarded as a mark of prestige to have an earl in the family; in The Battle of Maldon, Ælfwine Ælfricson boasts of his grandfather Ealhhelm, ealdorman of Mercia, and in the more mundane lists of Peterborough Abbey’s estates, his near contemporary Æthelsige is identifi ed as ‘the ealdorman’s uncle’ (þes ealdormannes eam).102 But eorlisc kin did not bring eorlisc rank; the descendants of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth were still locally important on the eve of the Norman Conquest, but they were not earls.103 Nor did the earl’s wife have any special status.104 The widows of King Edward’s earls are regularly entitled comitissa in Domesday Book but this is a retrospective promotion; in pre-Conquest England, their style was merely ‘the earl’s wife’.105 Rich they might be, and powerful, but the earls did not as yet constitute a social class; they were still the servants, albeit the greatest lay servants, of the king.

2

The Service of the King: Stallers and Thegns

… a seat and special offi ce in the king’s hall …

ARCHBISHOP WULFSTAN, Geþyncðu

Ealdormen and earls stand out in the social hierarchy because of their closeness to the king, and the wealth and power which this brought them, but they were made, not born; a diploma relating the fall of Ealdorman Leofsige of Essex describes how he had been raised from ‘the rank of a satrap and promoted to the summit of a higher dignity’.1 The meaning of satrap is not entirely clear; it might denote some offi ce in the king’s household, or merely be a synonym for ‘thegn’.2 Since, however, the word ‘thegn’ itself had the root meaning ‘servant’ (minister), Leofsige may have been one of King Æthelred’s household retainers.3

The king’s household included both undifferentiated ministri and men performing specifi c duties.4 King Eadred (d. 955) made bequests to various royal offi cials in his will, and judging from the sums involved, the highest-ranking laymen were the disciferi (discðegnas, seneschals), chamberlains (hræglðegnasor burðegnas, latinized as camerarii or cubicularii) and butlers (byrelas, latinized as pincernae), to each of whom the king left 80 gold mancuses.5 To each of his stewards (stigweardas) he left 30 gold mancuses, and the same sum went to each of the other servants ‘who are in my household, in whatever offi ce he is employed’. Eadred’s will does not specify the numbers in each category, but a diploma of his nephew Eadwig, dated 956, is attested by three disciferi, Ælfheah and two men called Ælfwine, one of whom may be Ælfheah’s brother.6 A fourth discifer, Ealdred, attests a diploma of 958 in favour of the propincernarius Cenric, whose witnesses include the regis picerna, Ælfwig.7 A diploma of Edgar, dated 968, is attested by three disciferi, Eanulf, Ælfwine and Wulfstan, and Eanulf is among four disciferi who attest a diploma of the same king in 971.8 A diploma of Æthelred in favour of his scriptor Ælfwine, issued in 984, is attested by four disciferi and four pincernae, but the witness-list has been truncated by its copyist and none are named.9 One of them was perhaps the pincerna Wulfgar, to whom Æthelred granted land in Berkshire in the same year.10 The vernacular text of Æthelred’s diploma for Christ Church, Canterbury, a forgery but of early eleventh-century date, is attested by Æthelmær mines hlafordes discðen and Leofric hrægelðen.11 Chamberlains are less frequent witnesses, but they appear


as benefi ciaries; in 962 Edgar gave land in Wiltshire to his cubicularius Titstan, whose title is rendered burðegn in the diploma’s endorsement.12 In the following year, the same king made grants to two camerarii, Æthelsige and Wynstan, and Wynstan received a further grant in 972.13

Just as royal chaplains might expect to be promoted to bishoprics, service in the king’s household could lead to even higher offi ce; Ælfheah, King Eadwig’s discifer, was made ealdorman of central Wessex (959–71), and Æthelmær, discðento Æthelred unræd, became ealdorman of the western shires (c.1013–c.1016).14

Both were royal kinsmen; Ælfheah was a brother of Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia, and Æthelmær was the son of Æthelweard, ealdorman of the western shires.15

From the time when they fi rst emerge clearly into our sight members of the king’s household included men of rank. The maternal grandfather of King Alfred was Oslac, the ‘famous butler’ (famosus pincerna) of Alfred’s father, King Æthelwulf, and a descendant (allegedly) of the Jutish princes Stuf and Wihtgar.16 Obviously his duties did not include personally cleaning the family silver or decanting the port, though he presumably oversaw those who did perform analogous tasks. Such lesser servants are rarely recorded, but can be glimpsed in the account of a feast provided for King Æthelstan at Glastonbury, when, by praying to the Blessed Virgin, the hostess Æthelfl æd ensured that her pincernae were able to serve the assembled company with copious amounts of drink in all manner of containers throughout the day.17

The potential rewards of royal service are most evident in the case of the stallers (stallere, steallere), whose landed wealth placed them among the richest thegns below the rank of earl.18 As a group, they seem to have been particularly close to the king. In the summer of 1042, King Harthacnut attended a bride-ale at Lambeth to celebrate the marriage of Osgod clapa’s daughter Gytha to Tovi the Proud. The event is recorded only because it was the venue for the young king’s death – he ‘was standing at his drink and he suddenly fell to the ground with fearful convulsions, and those who were near caught him and he spoke no word afterwards’ – but his presence shows the standing of the groom and his father-in-law, both of whom were royal stallers.19

Osgod clapa, who attests from 1026 to 1042, is usually assumed to be a Dane who followed Cnut to England. He was, however, remembered as the donor of seven carucates at Pakenham (Suffolk) to Westminster Abbey, raising the pos-sibility that he was a naturalized East Anglian, descended from Osgod Eadulf ’s son, who received a bequest of land in Pakenham from his kinsman Theodred, bishop of London (d. 951).20 Osgod clapa’s name is not especially common, but without his distinctive byname, it is not easy to identify him with certainty. He might be the Osgod commemorated, with his wife Æthelswyth, in the Liber vitaeof the New Minster, Winchester, a house closely connected with the royal court, and also the Osgod to whom the bishop of Winchester leased land in Adderbury

T H E S E R V I C E O F T H E K I N G : S TA L L E R S A N D T H E G N S 27

(Oxon) in 1043–44, in the presence of King Edward and his witan.21 Most of Osgod clapa’s known associations, however, are with eastern England and East Anglia; in the early 1040s, he witnessed the will of Thurstan Lustwine’s son as a member of the shire-court of Norfolk, and his name appears in the Liber vitae of Thorney Abbey, followed by that of Tovi, presumably Tovi the Proud.22 At Bury St Edmunds, by contrast, he was remembered as a despoiler.23 Osgod clapa was also associated with London; in the 1030s he attested a writ of Cnut (of dubious authenticity) in favour of St Paul’s, at the head of the lay witnesses below the rank of earl, and he is addressed in a writ of the Confessor for Westminster Abbey, which (if genuine) must be dated 1044–46, appearing after the bishop of London but before the sheriff of Middlesex.24 He may have been commander of the stipendiary fl eet, whose home-base was at London; in which case his land at Lambeth, which had probably been a royal manor, was perhaps intended to support his authority.25 In the Bury chronicle, Osgod is styled maior domus regis,‘master of the king’s household’.26 The two offi ces are not irreconcilable; Esger the staller, grandson of Osgod’s son-in-law Tovi, attests royal diplomas in the early 1060s as the king’s seneschal (regis dapifer) and as procurator of the king’s hall (regie procurator aule).27 Esger also seems to have had a particular connection with London.28 Royal government was not yet systematized and thegnly services were still fl uid, so that the same man might at different times perform various functions, as and when required.

In 1046, Osgod clapa was outlawed.29 No reason is given, but his fall marks the culmination of a series of royal actions against the surviving adherents of the Danish kings. In 1043, the king’s mother Emma, Cnut’s widow, was forcibly deprived of her property, though she was allowed to remain in Winchester.30 Her disgrace brought about the temporary removal of the recently appointed bishop of East Anglia, Stigand, ‘because it was suspected that she did as he advised’.31

The following year, Cnut’s niece Gunnhild and her two sons, Thorkell and Hemming, were driven from England to Bruges, where they stayed for some time before returning to Denmark.32 The estrangement of the English and Danish kings is demonstrated by Edward’s refusal to help Swein Estrithson against the Norwegians in 1047 and 1048, and it may not be coincidental that a Viking raid on southern England and Essex is recorded in the latter year.33

Osgod made his way to Bruges, where he left his wife for safety’s sake.34 He himself collected a fl eet at Wulpe, near Sluys, whence he mounted a raid on the Naze (Essex), but as the ships were returning with their plunder, all but two (or four) of them were destroyed in a storm.35 John of Worcester claims that Osgod then sought refuge in Denmark, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle merely records that he died ‘suddenly, as he was lying in bed’ in 1054; whether this implies that he had returned to England is a matter of opinion.36 No children other than Gytha, Tovi’s wife, are recorded. His lands had presumably been confi scated on his


outlawry; certainly Pakenham was given by the Confessor to Bury St Edmunds, while Adderbury had reverted to the bishop of Winchester by 1066.37 Lambeth, however, passed to his son-in-law, Tovi the Proud, who gave it to the Church of Holy Cross (Essex).

It is as the restorer of Holy Cross, Waltham, that Tovi the Proud is best known, and much of our information about him comes from the chronicle composed by one of its former canons between 1177 and 1189.38 It opens with the discovery of the Black Rood, a life-size crucifi x, on Tovi’s manor of Lutgaresberi (Som.), and its removal to Waltham (Essex), which is described simply as a hunting-lodge.39

Excavations around the present church suggest, however, that it was an ancient minster, with a parochia including Edmonton and Enfi eld (Middx), as well as Waltham itself.40 It may indeed be the site of the double burh built by King Alfred in 895, an undertaking which involved diverting the River Lea.41 The minster was probably in decline by the tenth century; Edmonton was certainly in royal hands by the early eleventh century, and may have been given to Tovi by Cnut.42

Tovi’s ‘hunting-lodge’, possibly represented by the bow-sided hall whose footings were found north of the present church, was perhaps intruded into the minster precinct, as the hall of Earl Odda was intruded into that of St Mary’s, Deerhurst.43

After the Rood’s discovery and translation, Tovi refurbished the church, provid-ing livings for two priests, and lavishly endowed it; the house chronicle records that Gytha, Osgod’s daughter, provided (among other things) plate commis-sioned from the king’s goldsmith, Theodoric of London, which, if true, shows the family’s connections both with the king’s circle and with London.44

The Waltham Chronicle describes Tovi as ‘the fi rst man in all England after the king, a staller and a royal standard-bearer’ (totius Anglie post regem primus, stallere, uexillifer regis).45 Some exaggeration of the founder’s status is to be expected, but it need not be doubted that Tovi was a staller; he is found in Cnut’s reign attending a shire-court in Herefordshire ‘on the king’s business’ (on þæs cinges ærende).46 He is probably the Tovi associated with Osgod clapa in the witness-lists of Cnut’s diplomas between 1026 and 1035, but his name is common, and he cannot be identifi ed with certainty among the thegns of Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor.47 His last certain appearance is as a guarantor of the will of Ælfric modercope, an east-midlands thegn, in 1042–1043, though it is possible that he is the Tovi comes to whom King Edward gave two hides at Berghe (perhaps Bergh Apton, Norf.), in 1048.48 The date of his death is unknown. His heir, according to the Waltham Chronicle, was his son Æthelstan, who, since ‘he lacked his father’s astuteness and wisdom’, lost much of his land, a large part of which (including the patronage of Holy Cross, Waltham) passed to Earl Harold Godwinson.49

There is no record of a staller called Æthelstan (Adelstanus), but he may have lost the king’s favour too soon after his father’s death to make any impression in the surviving sources; perhaps he was implicated in the fall of Osgod clapa in 1046.50


Æthelstan’s disgrace did not hamper the career of his son Esger, whose estate of over 300 hides of land, scattered over nine shires, made him one of the richest thegns in England.51 By the 1060s he was one of the leading men in the king’s circle, attesting diplomas as seneschal (regis dapifer), staller and procurator of the royal hall (regie procurator aule).52 Esger also seems to have been on good terms with Harold Godwineson, to whom he gave a manor at Leighs (Essex).53

Tovi the Proud, according to the Waltham Chronicle, was ‘a man of great wealth’ (prediues), acquired not only through inheritance and the king’s largesse, but also because his special relationship with the king enabled him ‘to benefi t or harm anyone he wished’. Not all of his land passed to his son Æthelstan, but ‘only that which related to his stallership’ (stallarium), defi ned as ‘the land which is now held by Earl William [de Mandeville (d. 1189)]’, heir of the Domesday tenant Geoffrey de Mandeville, to whom King William gave the inheritance (hereditas) of Esger the staller.54 This is the only reference to land attached to the offi ce of staller, and the lateness of the source is not encouraging, but Geoffrey de Mandeville, like Esger (and perhaps Osgod) held offi ce in London, where he was portreeve.55

He also held three manors which had once belonged to Esger, and before him to Tovi, namely Waltham, Edmonton (with Mimms) and Enfi eld, though the force of this is lessened by the fact that the Waltham Chronicle appears to distinguish Edmonton and Enfi eld from the Mandeville barony.56 It is not to be expected, however, that such a late source would preserve accurate details of out-of-date arrangements, and all three manors are likely to have come to Tovi by royal favour, perhaps when he acquired ‘a seat and special offi ce in the king’s hall’.

Enfi eld and Edmonton, with Mimms, are among the named manors attrib uted to Tovi in the Waltham Chronicle, along with Lutgaresberi (Som.), Cheshunt (Herts.) and the estates with which he endowed Holy Cross; Chenlevedene(unidentifi ed), Waltham, Loughton and Alderton (Essex), Hitchin (Herts.) and Lambeth (Surr.). The chronicle adds that he had ‘much larger [estates] than these’ (multo his ampliora) but does not name them.57 The Waltham Chronicle asserts that he had a residence (domicilium) in Reading, but Domesday Book does not include him among the (admittedly few) holders of property which it records there.58 He may have had lands in the west country; indeed it has been suggested that Tovi the sheriff, who held some 15 hides of land in Somerset on the eve of the Conquest, was a kinsman, though the only evidence is the coincidence of name, which is not rare.59 A more promising link is with the west-country landowner Esger contractus (‘crippled’), for in the Carmen de Hastingi Proelio the same byname is applied to Tovi’s grandson Esger the staller, who led the citizens of London in resistance to Duke William after the battle of Hastings in 1066.60 The lands of Esger contractus, mostly in Devon but including a manor in Somerset, passed after 1066 to Walter de Douai; perhaps they had once belonged to Tovi the Proud.61 It is not easy to assess the extent of Tovi’s estate, since the only available


fi gures are those of Domesday Book, compiled some 50 years after his death.In 1066, Edmonton (with Mimms), assessed at 35 hides, and Enfi eld, assessed at 30 hides, belonged to Esger the staller, who also held Waltham, assessed at eight hides.62 The canons of Waltham held two manors at Loughton, one assessed at four hides and 20 acres, and the other at 2½ hides. They also held a manor at Alderton, assessed at 4½ hides and ten acres.63 Lambeth, which the canons held of Earl Harold, was assessed at 6½ hides.64 These lands, which can confi dently be identifi ed as Tovi’s, amount to 91 hides. If Esger contractus was indeed Tovi’s grandson, then we can add another 23¼ hides.

The other estates are diffi cult to identify. If Tovi’s Lutgaresberi is identical with ‘Bishopstone’ (Som.), where the count of Mortain built his castle of Montacute, it was assessed in 1086 at nine hides; the pre-Conquest assessment is unrecorded. Before the Conquest, however, it belonged to Athelney Abbey, with which Tovi has no known connection.65 Cheshunt (Herts.) was assessed at 20 hides, but had belonged not to Tovi, but to Eadgifu the fair.66 In the absence of any defi nite evidence, neither ‘Bishopstone’ nor Cheshunt have been included in the total of Tovi’s lands.

Hitchin (Herts.) presents a different problem. It was a huge multiple estate, whose central core was assessed at only fi ve hides, but it was clearly preferentially assessed, for with its numerous berewicks it rendered £60, plus another £40 from the soke which belonged to it, both paid at face value (ad numerum).67 It was part of the Terra Regis in 1086, and though held by Earl Harold in 1066, bears all the hallmarks of an ancient royal vill. In the pre-Viking period it had been the focus of an ancient territory, and by 1066 it was a hundredal manor, with extensive berewicks and sokeland extending even beyond Hertfordshire.68 Its minster, mentioned in Domesday, goes back at least to the tenth century, for the Hertfordshire landowner, Æthelgifu, made a bequest to it in the closing decade of the fi rst millennium.69 If Tovi had indeed held Hitchin, it was perhaps as a consequence of whatever service he owed to the king; in other words, as part of his stallership.

Ermington (Devon), held by Esger contractus, bears comparison with Hitchin. It was the central manor of Aleriga Hundred, otherwise known as Ermington Hundred, preferentially assessed at three hides, though with land for 20 ploughs, and in 1086 it rendered £36 in weighed and assayed coin (ad pensam et arsuram), a form of payment associated with royal estates.70 It also had a network of dependent vills, at Fardel, Dinnaton, the other (altera) Dinnaton, Broadaford, and Ludbrook, each of which owed 30d and ‘the customary dues of the hundred’ (consuetudines hundreti).71 By 1086 these dependencies had passed into the hands of the count of Mortain, and the dues, which included the profi ts of the hundred court (consuetudines placitorum) were withheld.72 It is possible that Esger contractus (and maybe Tovi before him) had held Ermington as belonging


to his stallership, but it is perhaps more likely that he was reeve of Ermington, administering the manor and hundred on the king’s behalf. Property attached to a particular offi ce is not easily distinguished from lands managed by an offi cial on the king’s behalf, and the line may have been a fi ne, not to say a permeable, one. What is clear is that for the duration of their service, in whatever capacity, Tovi and Esger had access, albeit temporary, to many estates and revenues, which (as the Waltham Chronicle frankly admits) they could exploit to their advantage.

The origins of the staller’s offi ce have long been controversial. Since the strictly contemporary notices concerning stallers date from King Edward’s time, it has been suggested that he introduced it, as an English version of the continental constable (stabularius, comes stabuli).73 If so, one would expect that most if not all of King Edward’s stallers would be incomers from Frankia, but, of the nine recorded, this is true of only two, Robert fi tzWymarc (a Norman) and Ralph, who, though of Breton origin, was English-born.74 The names of the remaining seven are either Scandinavian, in the cases of Bondi, Esger and Tovi, or insular, as with Ælfstan, Eadnoth and Lyfi ng; Osgod clapa’s name is an anglicization of the Scandinavian Asgautr. This suggests rather that the staller’s offi ce pre-dates the reign of the Confessor, and L.M. Larson regarded it as a Scandinavian introduction: ‘the stallership is Norse in name and origin, and … came to England with the Danish host’.75 So far as the name is concerned, Larson was surely correct; the word stallari is found not merely in the saga-texts, which (composed no earlier than the twelfth century) are unreliable guides to the tenth and eleventh centuries, but also in the skaldic verse embedded within them, usually regarded as older; it occurs, for instance, in the works of King Olaf ’s skald, Sighvatr Thorðarson.76

A new name, however, does not necessarily imply a new thing; the title stallari,in its OE form stallere or steallere, may have been applied to an older offi cial, as the OE word ealdorman gave place to the ON jarl (‘earl’), without change to the duties and status of those who bore it. The earlier existence of offi cials analogous to the eleventh-century stallers is suggested by a passage in Geþyncðu, Archbishop Wulfstan’s compilation on status, dating from the later years of Æthelred’s reign; one of the criteria needed for a ceorl to attain thegnhood was ‘a seat (steall) and special offi ce in the king’s hall’.77 Someone with a steall in the king’s hall might well be described as a staller; indeed Ralph the staller, who begins to attest in the 1050s, is described in a diploma of 1062 as regis aulicus, ‘man of the king’s hall’, a passable Latin rendering of ‘steallere’. His colleague, Esger the staller, appears in same diploma as regis procurator aule, ‘procurator of the king’s hall’, and another staller, Bondi, is called regis palatinus, ‘man of the royal palatium’.78 In the Vita Edwardi, the staller Robert fi tzWymarc is styled regis palatii stabilator, which can scarcely mean anything else but ‘staller of the royal palatium’.79

What specifi c meanings (if any) are implied by such titles is unclear. Both Ralph and Esger are described as royal stewards (dapiferi regis) in a spurious


diploma of 1060, and all four men, Ralph, Esger, Robert and Bondi, appear in a genuine diploma of 1065 as procuratores.80 In Domesday Book, Bondi, whose usual title is staller (or constabularius), is once called forestarius, which suggests that he had some offi ce connected with hunting, a pastime of which King Edward was particularly fond.81 Ælfstan steallere, who attended a royal witan soon after Christmas 1045, has been identifi ed with Ælfstan of Boscombe, to whom King Edward gave land at Sevington (Wilts.) in 1043.82 He may also be identical with Ælfstan wicgerefa, portreeve of Bedford, who attests a bequest of land in Bedfordshire between 1053 and 1066.83 If Ælfstan steallere and Ælfstan wicgerefaof Bedford are one and the same (and the name is a common one), then his posi-tion is analogous to that of Osgod clapa, a staller who also held offi ce in London. Ralph the staller’s attestations similarly invite comparison with the position of Tovi the Proud. Of the three vernacular agreements which he attested as staller, only one, Earl Leofric’s endowment of the minster at Stow (Lincs.), in the 1050s, concerned land in the region where Ralph himself held property; the other two are an agreement between the Old Minster, Winchester, and Wulfweard white (c.1053), and a Bath lease in favour of Archbishop Stigand (1061–65), suggesting that Ralph’s attendance on both occasions concerned ‘the king’s business’.84

Such evidence as there is implies that the duties of stallers were not fi xed but various, and were performed as and when the king had need of them. To fi nd the precursors of the eleventh-century stallers, we must look for men who performed a similar range of services. In Geþyncðu the holder of ‘a steall and special offi ce in the king’s hall’ also ‘rode in his household band (hired) on his radstefn’; a unique word, which probably refers to errands undertaken by a mounted messenger. The king’s ærendracan (‘messengers’) are mentioned from time to time, but the superior thegn of Archbishop Wulfstan’s tract seems rather more than a simple courier.85 More likely candidates are the men styled pedisequi (or variants thereof), who appear in the late tenth century.86 King Eadred made grants to three pedisequi; Wulfric pedisequus was given land at Warkton (Northants) in 946, Uhtred cild pedissequus received land at Chesterfi eld (Derbys.) in 955, and in the same year Wulfstan sequipedus was given land at Stapleford (Cambs.).87 A fourth pedisecus, Æthelsige, attested a diploma of Edgar, relating to land in Derbyshire, in 968.88 It is striking that all these diplomas concerning pedisequi relate to land in the east midlands, but the sample is too small for any conclusions to be drawn.

Larson thought that pedisecus was ‘simply a pedantic translation of thegn’, but the word itself (‘one who sits at the feet of ’) suggests a special closeness to the king, and the status of those who bear the title suggest a more specifi c meaning.89

In Edgar’s diploma, mentioned above, Æthelsige pedisecus is the fourth of ten laymen below the rank of ealdorman, and the three who precede him all attest as discifer (OE discðegn, seneschal), while the six who follow are merely ministri.Æthelsige himself is perhaps the man who attests a diploma of 963 as camerarius


(OE burðegn, chamberlain), and might be a brother of Ealdorman Æthelwine of East Anglia, though the name is common in the late tenth century.90 Wulfric pedisequus might be the Wulfric to whom Edgar gave land at Austrey (Warks.), and who was arguably a kinsman of the north Mercian magnate Wulfric Wulfrun’s son, but again, the name is common.91 We are on fi rmer ground with Uhtred cild,who can be identifi ed as a kinsman of the high-reeves of Bamburgh, to all intents and purposes the rulers of north-east England; in 956 and 958, Uhtred himself attests diplomas as dux (ealdorman), possibly of the Five Boroughs.92

The best-recorded of the tenth-century pedisequi is Wulfstan of Dalham, a benefactor of Ely Abbey who fi gures largely in the house’s records, the Liber Eliensis and its precursor, the Libellus Æthelwoldi episcopi.93 On his fi rst certain appearance, in the mid-950s, he is found in the service of King Eadred, but the bulk of his activities date from the reign of Edgar.94 The Libellus Æthelwoldidescribes him as being ‘in the king’s confi dence, a discreet man wise in counsel and strong in action’ (regi a secretis, vir prudens, consilio pollens opibusque potens), words which recall the praise of Tovi the Proud in the Waltham Chronicle: ‘he was closest to the king in his counsels and assisted the king in important matters of the realm’ (regi proximus in consiliis et praecipuis regni causis assistebat). The description of Wulfstan is confi rmed by his appearance, as Edgar’s representative, in support of Bishop Æthelwold’s expulsion of the secular clerks from the Old Minster, Winchester, in 964.95

Wulfstan’s connection with Ely went back before its re-foundation as a monas-tic community (coenobium), to the time when it was ‘a public minster’ (publicummonasterium) ‘lacking ceremonial and reverence’.96 Towards the end of Eadred’s reign, he was presiding over a court of two hundreds held at the minster’s north gate, when the widow Æscwynn of Stonea, supported by her kinsmen and friends (quamplures cognatis et vicinis suis), gave him land and a fi shery at Stonea.97

Wulfstan then gave Stonea to Ely, and was instrumental in persuading another local landholder, Ogga of Mildenhall, to transform his post obitum gift of a hide at Cambridge into an immediate donation to the same house. These transactions suggest that Wulfstan was not merely a benefactor of the minster but one of its patrons. Indeed, when in King Edgar’s reign two of his ‘great men’ (magnatibus regis), Thurstan the Dane and Bishop Sigedwoldus, asked the king to give them the minster of Ely, it was Wulfstan of Dalham who persuaded Edgar to refuse; Wulfstan is said to have related the minster’s history ‘both from the writings of Bede and from oral tradition’ (vel per Beda scripta vel per fama divulgata), which suggests he had received some education.98 The king subsequently gave the minster and its endowment to St Æthelwold, who in 970 transformed it into a Benedictine house.

Wulfstan’s relations with the minster at Horningsea (Cambs.) are rather less creditable, but illustrate the rewards available to royal offi cers prepared to bend the


rules or turn a blind eye in return for favours.99 Like Ely, Horningsea survived the Viking settlements as a community of secular clerks, under the priest (sacerdos)Cenwold (c.875–920) and his successor Herolf (c.920–65), a retainer (sequutus)of King Æthelstan.100 The minster was endowed by converted (but unnamed) Danes with fi ve hides of land at Horningsea and two hides at Eye. It suffered, however, from the tendency for minster land to be treated as the property not of the community as a whole but of the individual priests who served in it. Thus Wulfric the provost (prepositus), a kinsman of Cenwold, claimed two of the fi ve hides at Horningsea, and on his death (c.960) bequeathed them to his nephew Leofstan the priest.101 Soon afterwards Leofstan was accused of stealing a cloak from some Irish traders at Cambridge. The city elders (patrocimium civium)interceded on Leofstan’s behalf for his life and property, and he gave the land at Horningsea, with the cyrograph relating to it (probably a copy of Wulfric’s will), to Wulfstan of Dalham, presumably for help in escaping the charge of theft.

Leofstan was not the only priest of Horningsea to be involved in shady dealings. At about the same time as the incident with the Irish traders, a quantity of goods belonging to Thored Oslac’s son was stolen, including ‘a dagger ornamented with silver and gold and many garments made of precious fabrics’ (sicam unam optime insigitam auro et argento et indumenta pretiosarum vestium).102 Thored, apparently acting on a tip-off, arrived at Horningsea with the local ‘hundredmen, tithing-bailiffs and watchmen’ (centurionibus, triumviris ac preconibus), and made a forcible search of the locked chests belonging to Herolf. When the missing items were found inside, it turned out that the chests were in the custody of Herolf ’s kinsman and deputy, the priest Æthelstan, who was promptly arrested and hauled before Archbishop Oscytel of York (956–71).103 Herolf, however, collected the portable treasures of the church and went to Wulfstan, to whom he gave some of the treasure ‘so that he might have charge of his minster until the end of his life’ (ut monasterio suo diebus vite sue potiretur); the use of the possessive is worth noting. The rest of the treasure he gave to the archbishop to ensure that his kinsman Æthelstan would neither be executed, nor degraded from his priestly offi ce. In effect Herolf bribed both the secular and ecclesiastical offi cers to get Æthelstan off the capital charge of theft, and when Herolf died soon afterwards (c.965), Æthelstan succeeded him in offi ce.

Nor was this the end of the matter. After Herolf ’s death, Bishop Æthelwold bought the minster of Horningsea from King Edgar for 50 mancuses (£6 5s). Wulfstan of Dalham, presumably acting as the king’s representative, ordered a survey to be made of the land held by Æthelstan as priest of Horningsea, namely three hides of 240 acres (Wulfstan, it will be remembered, had already received two hides at Horningsea from the priest Leofstan). Æthelstan meanwhile was claiming that Eye, assessed at two hides, belonged to him and not to the minster. He was, however, under pressure from Bishop Æthelwold, who was demanding


the surrender of the church’s moveables used by Herolf to bribe Archbishop Oscytel and Wulfstan of Dalham. Æthelstan, seeing that he could not withstand the bishop on his own, went to Wulfstan, did homage to him, and offered to sell him the land at Eye for any price he chose, in return for help against the bishop.104 Thus Wulfstan obtained the land at Eye ‘through the lies of the priest and [the expenditure of] a small amount of money’ (per mendacia presbiteri et per aliquantulum pecunie), nor was Æthelwold able to recover the land while Wulfstan lived.105

It is probably Wulfstan of Dalham who, ‘exercising the office of reeve’, received land at Berlea when it was forfeited for theft, for a subsequent law-suit relating to the land was heard before a Cambridgeshire shire-court, attended by (among others) Wulfstan of Dalham’s widow Wulffl æd.106 This, coupled with his interventions in the Horningsea dispute, might suggest that he was a kind of proto-sheriff of Cambridge, but his activities were not confi ned to a single shire. In the late 960s or early 970s, he attended a witenagemot in Kent, which witnessed the bishop of Rochester’s purchase of land in Bromley and Fawkham.107 He was also one of only two named members of a court of three hundreds in Norfolk, which witnessed Bishop Æthelwold’s purchase of land at Kelling.108 Wulfstan might rather be compared to the ‘junior ealdorman’ (cyninges ealdormannes gingra), mentioned in a few ninth-century sources, who could preside over public assemblies.109 Such activities resemble those of the eleventh-century stallers in range and scope, though, living as he did in the reign of Edgar ‘the peacemaker’, Wulfstan was not required, like Esger contractus, to command troops in battle.

The full extent of Wulfstan’s lands cannot be assessed, but he seems to have matched the eleventh-century stallers in wealth. It can be assumed from his toponymic that he held land at Dalham (Suff.), which may have been his patrimony.110 Some of his property was inherited, for Ælfgar of Moulton left him estates at Brandon and Livermere (both Suff.).111 He also used – and abused – his offi cial position. He acquired land at Berlea legitimately, ‘while exercising the offi ce of reeve’, but Eye, given to him by the priest Æthelstan, and Horningsea, given by the priest Leofstan, were certainly in the nature of bribes, and this may have been the case with Stonea, given to him by the widow Æscwynn. Wulfstan was also given land by successive kings. It is pretty certain that he was the original recipient of 15 hides (cassati) at Stapleford (Cambs.), the gift of King Eadred, in 954–55.112 From King Edgar he received 12 hides at Northwold and Pulham (Norf.), forfeited by one Waldegist for theft, a grant made after the death in 966 of the king’s grandmother, Eadgifu, the previous holder.113 Wulfstan acquired other land by purchase, buying two hides at Swaffham (Cambs.) from one Wynsige.114 How he came by the Huntingdonshire estates of Wennington (6 hides) and Hemmingford (30 hides) is unknown.115 His widow Wulffl æd sold three hides at Woodbridge (Suff.) to Bishop Æthelwold, but whether this land


belonged to her or was acquired from her husband is unknown.116 Wulfstan was remembered at Bury as a benefactor who gave four hides at Palgrave (Suff.) to St Edmund.117 Leaving aside the unassessed land at Stonea which he donated to Ely, Wulfstan disposed of some 70 hides of land in four shires (Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk), which would have given him the status of a ‘leading man’ (procer) in the east midlands and East Anglia. The date of his death is nowhere recorded but it is clear that he predeceased King Edgar, who died in 975, possibly only by a year or two.118 It has been suggested that he was ‘paradigmatic of the kind of government which King Edgar was determined to maintain and which Edgar’s successors in the next decade may not have been in a position to uphold’.119 A hiatus in the immediate aftermath of Edgar’s death is more than likely, but, though the careers of other pedisequi cannot be recon-structed in detail, Æthelsige at least seems to have played a similar role when his royal master, Æthelred, assumed full control.120

Wulfstan was survived by his wife Wulffl æd, but there is no record of any children.121 His wider kin included Æthelstan chusin, to whom he gave land at Horningsea, which Æthelstan subsequently sold to Bishop Æthelwold.122

Æthelstan’s brother, Æthelweard of Sussex, was the father of Æthelwine, who held lands at Berlea and Swaffham which had been acquired by Wulfstan, and a second estate in Swaffham belonged to another of Wulfstan’s kinsmen, Æthelwold.123

The most interesting of Wulfstan’s kinsmen is Wihtgar, to whom he gave land at Brandon and Livermere.124 Wihtgar’s name is very rare, which raises the possibility that he was the father of Ælfric Wihtgar’s son, who attested a grant of Thurstan Lustwine’s son, an East Anglian magnate, in the early 1040s, especially since Ælfric’s son, also called Wihtgar, held land at Dalham on the eve of the Norman Conquest.125 Ælfric Wihtgar’s son founded a college of secular canons at Clare (Suff.), and was remembered at Bury as the as the donor of land at Long Melford in the same shire.126 His kinsman, Æthelwine the Black, was a benefactor of both Ramsey and St Albans, but his bequest to the former was contested by Ælfric, who bribed King Edward and Queen Edith to support his claim, so that the abbot had great diffi culty in securing even part of the property.127

Ælfric’s name is very common, and without his distinctive patronymic, he cannot be identifi ed with any certainty. Two thegns called Ælfric attest royal diplomas in 1044 and 1049, and one continues to attest until 1059; given that most of the datable references to Ælfric Wihtgar’s son come from the early 1040s, he might be the thegn whose attestations cease in 1049.128 Like Wulfstan of Dalham, Ælfric Wihtgar’s son was a royal servant, though in the following of the queen rather than the king, administering the soke of Thingoe (Suff.) for Queen Emma.129 The connection may have been Stigand, once King Cnut’s chaplain, and a close associate of the queen, for Ælfric Wihtgar’s son attests a grant of Stigand to Bury made before the latter’s promotion to the East Anglian


see in 1043.130 His kinswoman Leofgifu, who bequeathed land at Bramford (Suff.) to him, may also have been in Emma’s service.131 If Ælfric Wihtgar’s son was indeed a descendant of Wulfstan of Dalham’s kinsman Wihtgar, his service to Queen Emma suggests the existence of ‘ministerial’ families, whose members served successive kings, like Tovi the Proud, his grandson Esger and perhaps his son Æthelstan.132 Men of standing in the king’s service would of course expect to secure promotion for their relatives; Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire (d. 1016) procured the abbacy of Abingdon for his brother Edwin, and his son Ælfgar was a royal reeve, and perhaps sheriff of Berkshire.133 It was, however, necessary to sustain the connection with the king’s service; the descendants of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth of Essex can be traced down to the eve of the Norman Conquest, but, though still prosperous, they were by then only local thegns. Such local thegns, however, still had a crucial part to play in the political and social organization of the English kingdom.134


3

Friends and Neighbours: Local Communities

Wise men must hold meetings together … they always settle disputes and advise for peace.

MAXIMS I1

In the late 1040s Godric of Brabourne bought land at Offham (Kent) from his sister Eadgifu for a mark of gold (£6), £13 of silver and 63d ‘to complete the purchase’.2 The agreement, whereby Godric was to enjoy the land with full rights of disposition during his lifetime and freedom to bequeath it after his death, was concluded at Wye, ‘before the whole shire’ (ætforan ealra scyre), and witnessed by Archbishop Eadsige, Bishop Siward (Eadsige’s chorepiscopus), Godric the Dean and the community of Christchurch, Abbot Wulfric and the community of St Augustine’s, Æthelric bigga, Thorgar Ælfgar’s son, Eadric Ælfric’s son, Osweard of Harrietsham, Leofwine the priest, Godric portgerefa, Wulfsige the king’s reeve (þæs cynges gerefa), ‘and many a good man besides’ (and mænig god mann þarto).3

It was at such meetings that greater and lesser thegns came together, as the elders (duguð) and ‘better men’ (meliores) or ‘good men’ (god menn, boni homines) of their localities.4 Most of the surviving vernacular memoranda which record such business relate to Kent, and the attestations of identifi ably Kentish thegns are also found in royal diplomas concerning Kentish land and Kentish benefi ciaries (Tables 3.1–3.3).5 By combining this material with information from Domesday Book, the Kentish community between the late tenth century and the eve of the Conquest can be reconstructed, revealing the extent to which the thegns of Kent acted as a coherent group.

Most of the witnesses to the Offham purchase appear elsewhere. Leofwine the priest, who attests Kentish charters between 1020 and the mid-1040s, belonged to the community of St Mary’s, Dover, an ancient minster re-founded (possibly by Earl Godwine) in the early years of the eleventh century.6 In 1044 or 1045 (about the time of Godric’s purchase of Offham), he was involved in a lawsuit with St Augustine’s over the minster of St Mildryth, Thanet, which both sides claimed to have been given by Cnut. A settlement was brokered by Earl Godwine, whereby Leofwine abandoned his claim in return for a life-lease of two sulungs, one at Langdon and the other at Ileden.7 Leofwine’s title to the minster and its lands is unknown, but he may have been related to Leofrun, arguably its last abbess.

Table 3.1: The Kentish shire community, c.960–c.1000.

S 1215 (968) S 1276 (963– 75)

S 1511 (975–89)

S 877 (989–90) S 875 (990) S 1455 (990–1005)

S 878 (993) S 899 (1001)

Ælfheah Ælfheah Ordheah’s son

Æthelred (see Table 3.2)

Æthelric (see Tables 3.2, 3.3)

Brihtric Brihtric; Brihtric

Eadhelm Eadhelm

Ealdred Ealdred Ealdred Lyfi ng’s son

Godwine (see Table 3.2)

Leofric Leofric Leofric

Leofstan Leofstan

Leofwine; Leofwine

Leofwine

Lyfi ng Lyfi ng Ealdred’s father

S 1215 (968) S 1276 (963– 75)

S 1511 (975–89)

S 877 (989–90) S 875 (990) S 1455 (990–1005)

S 878 (993) S 899 (1001)

Sired Alfred’s son

Sired Sired Sired

Siward onCent

Siward Siward Siward

Wulfheah Wulfheah Ordheah’s son

Wulfsige; Wulfsige

Wulfsige Ælfsige’s son; Wulfsige the Black

Wulfstan of Saltwood; ‘the other’ Wulfstan (see Table 3.2)

Other attestations (single occurences)

Hlothwig portgerefa

Ælfgar of Meopham

Leofsunu Wulfgar

L…uma Wine priest

Wulfstan uccea

S 1456 (995–1005)

S 904 (1002) S 905 (1002) S 1220 (1013–1018)

S 950 (1018) S 985 (1017–1020)

S 1461 (1016–1022)

S 959 (1023) S 1465 (1032)

Ælfsige cild Ælfsige Ælfsige cild

Ælfwine

Æthelred portgerefa

Æthelred (portreeve)

Æthelric Æthelric Æthelric Æthelric prefectus;Æthelric

Æthelric Æthelric Æthelric bigga

Æthelwine scirman

Æthelwine scirgerefa

Brihtric Brihtric Brihtric Brihtric geounga

Eadmær of Burham

Eadmær

Eadwine Eadsige’s brother (see Table 3.3)

Table 3.2: The Kentish shire community, c.1000–1030.

S 1456 (995–1005)

S 904 (1002) S 905 (1002) S 1220 (1013–1018)

S 950 (1018) S 985 (1017–1020)

S 1461 (1016–1022)

S 959 (1023) S 1465 (1032)

Godwine Godwine Godwine; Godwine Eadgifu’s son

Godwine

Godwine Wulfheah’s son

Godwine Wulfheah’s son; Godwine Wulfstan’s son

Karl (see Table 3.2)

Leofric Ealdred’s son; Leofric scyresman

Leofric

Leofstan of Mersham

Leofstan

Leofsunu Leofsunu Eadgifu’s son

continued

S 1456 (995–1005)

S 904 (1002) S 905 (1002) S 1220 (1013–1018)

S 950 (1018) S 985 (1017–1020)

S 1461 (1016–1022)

S 959 (1023) S 1465 (1032)

Leofwine Ælfheah’s sonLeofwine of Ditton

Leofwine; Leofwine

Leofwine Leofwine se ræda

Leofwine se ræda;Leofwine Godwine’s son; Leofwine Wærhelm’s son

Leofwine priest of Dover (see Table 3.3)

Lyfi ng of Malling

Lyfi ng

Sired Sired Sired Sired Sired Sired ealda Sired

Siward Siward Siward

Wærhelm Wærhelm

S 1456 (995–1005)

S 904 (1002) S 905 (1002) S 1220 (1013–1018)

S 950 (1018) S 985 (1017–1020)

S 1461 (1016–1022)

S 959 (1023) S 1465 (1032)

Wulfstan of Saltwood; Wulfstan se iunga

Wulfstan; Wulfstan

Other attestations (single occurrences)

ÆlfhelmOrdhelm’s son

Ecgwine Ælfric Ælfgar Sired’s son

Ælfwine priest

Ælfnoth of Orpington

Cenwold rust

Eadwold priest

GodaWulfsige’s son

Eadred Ealhhelm’s son

Thored Thorkell’s nephew

Sidewine ofPaddlesworth

Frerth priest of Folkestone

Wulfsige priest of Dover

S 981 (‘1032’) S 1400 (1038–1050)

S 1044 (1042–1044)

S 1471 (c.1045)

S 1472 (1044–45)

S 1473 (1044–1048)

S 1502 (1048–1050)

S 1090 (1053–1061)

Ælfwine se reada

Ælfwine Ælfwine se reada

Æthelric bigga Æthelric bigga Æthelric Æthelric bigga Æthelric bigga Æthelric bigga

Æthelwine Ælfhelm’s son

Æthelwine Ælfhelm’s son

Azur Azur roda

Eadmær of Burham

Eadmær Eadmær of Burham

Eadric of Elham

Eadric Ælfric’s son

Eadwine Eadsige’s brother

Eadwine

Esbearn Esbearn

Godric of Brabourne

Godric Godric of Brabourne

Godric of Brabourne

Karl (see Table 3.2)

Table 3.3: The Kentish shire community, c.1030–60.

S 981 (‘1032’) S 1400 (1038–1050)

S 1044 (1042–1044)

S 1471 (c.1045)

S 1472 (1044–45)

S 1473 (1044–1048)

S 1502 (1048–1050)

S 1090 (1053–1061)

Leofwine priest of Dover

Leofwine Leofwine, priest

Leofwine, priest

Siward of Chilham

Siward

Thorgar Thorgar Ælfgar’s son

Other attestations (single occurrences)

Ælfweard se Kæntisca

Alfred Ælfric Godric portgerefa

Goldwine Alfred’s brother

Æthelred optimas

Osweard of Harrietsham

Wulfbald Wulfsige, king’s gerefa


The date of his death is unknown, but he was perhaps still holding one of the prebends of Dover on the eve of the Norman Conquest.8 His contemporary, Æthelric bigga, attests at least fi ve charters (including the Offham agreement) between 1016 and 1050, one of them also witnessed by his son Esbearn.9

Æthelric was a benefactor of St Augustine’s, to which he gave Bodsham Green and Wilderton, with the proviso that his men, Wade miles and Leofwine feirage,should dwell on the land as long as they lived.10 Christ Church, Canterbury also benefi tted from Æthelric’s generosity, receiving Little Chart outright, plus the reversion of Stowting and Milton, and a messuage in Canterbury which Æthelric had built.11 His death is commemorated in the Christ Church obituary lists on 1 July.12 The year is unknown, but he must have died before 1066, for it is his son Esbean bigga who appears in Domesday Book among the leading landowners in East Kent.13 He was one of three laymen with full rights over his own men in the city of Canterbury, where he had 11 messuages rendering 11s 22d.14 In the shire at large, he held 14 sulungs of land, while Garrington, assessed at half a sulung and 42 acres of land, was held of him by one Eadric.15 It is likely that Cudham, assessed at four sulungs, also belonged to Esbearn bigga, for although no TRE tenant is named, the entry immediately precedes that for Esbearn’s manor of Keston, and not only did both manors lie in Ruxley Hundred, Sutton Lathe, but they were also the only Kentish estates held in 1086 by Gilbert Maminot, bishop of Lisieux.16 Alfred bigga, who held land at Wickhambreux, was perhaps a member of the same family.17 On the supposition that Esbearn’s land came from his father, Æthelric bigga disposed of an estate assessed at a minimum of 24½ sulungs.18

To judge by the frequency of his attestations, Æthelric was one of the most prominent thegns of the shire. Godric of Brabourne, the purchaser of Offham, attests less frequently, but appears in two other Kentish charters of the 1040s.19

His name is relatively common, which makes him hard to distinguish from Godric the portreeve, who attests the Offham agreement, and Godric Karl’s son, who appears in Domesday Book.20 It is indeed only the Offham agreement that allows Godric of Brabourne to be identifi ed as the holder of Offham in Domesday Book, when it was assessed at one sulung.21 The manor lay in Larkfi eld Hundred, Aylesford Lathe, and was held in 1086 by Hugh de Port, which suggests that it was Godric of Brabourne who held Paddlesworth, assessed at half a sulung, which lay in the same hundred and lathe, and also passed to Hugh de Port.22

Hugh de Port also succeeded Godric, presumably Godric of Brabourne, at Ash, in Axton Hundred, Sutton Lathe; it was assessed at three sulungs.23 Brabourne itself, assessed at seven sulungs, passed to Hugh de Montfort, but its berewick at Aldglose, assessed at half a sulung, was held by Osbert of William de Thaon’s son; the only other manor in Kent held by William de Thaon’s son, at Little Delce, assessed at a sulung and a yoke, had previously belonged to Godric, presumably Godric of Brabourne.24 The Godric who held Horton, assessed at half a sulung,

F R I E N D S A N D N E I G H B O U R S : L O C A L C O M M U N I T I E S 49

which lay, like Aldglose, in Felborough hundred, Wye Lathe, may also be Godric of Brabourne, but this manor passed to Alvred maleclerc.25 In all, Godric of Brabourne may have held as much as 13 sulungs and three yokes of land.

The other witnesses to the Offham agreement are less easily identifi ed. Neither Godric the portreeve (presumably of Canterbury), nor the king’s gerefa Wulfsige, probably sheriff of Kent, appear elsewhere, at least not with those bynames. Thurgar Ælfgar’s son bears a name which is uncommon in southern England, and may be the Thurgar (no patronymic) who attested a grant of Archbishop Eadsige to St Augustine’s, at some time between 1038 and 1050.26 His father’s name, by contrast, is very common, but it is possible that he is Ælfgar Sired’s son, who attested a Kentish marriage agreement between 1016 and 1022; if so, then Thurgar may have been the grandson of Sired who attested a number of royal and private charters at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries (see below).27

The names of Eadric Ælfric’s son and his father are among those most frequently used in eleventh-century England, but at some time in the reign of Cnut, a thegn called Ælfric forfeited land at Newington, and though this is usually identifi ed as Newington (Oxon), a manor in Newington (Kent) was held on the eve of the Conquest by Eadric.28 The Kentish Newington lay in Bewsbury Hundred, Eastry Lathe, which might identify its holder with Eadric of Elham, whose manor at Temple Ewell lay in the same hundred and lathe.29 Eadric of Elham, who attested a Kentish charter between 1038 and 1053, held lands assessed at 15½ sulungs, on the eve of the Conquest.30

The fi nal lay witness to the Offham agreement, Osweard of Harrietsham, does not attest any other Kentish charters, but he was involved in the dispute between King Harold I and Christ Church, Canterbury, over the king’s seizure of Sandwich in the late 1030s.31 He seems to have acted as one of the church’s representatives, which suggests that he is the Osweard who held Crayford (Erhede), assessed at four sulungs, and a half a sulung in Sheppey of the archbishop.32 Though his name is comparatively rare, it is hard to disentangle his holdings from those of his namesake Osweard of Norton, sheriff of Kent.33

He presumably held Harrietsham itself, assessed at two sulungs. It lay in the same hundred as Allington (Eyethorne, Aylesford Lathe), which can be assigned to Osweard of Norton, but in 1086 Harrietsham was held not by Osweard of Norton’s usual successor, Hugh de Port, but by Hugh nephew of Herbert fi tzIvo.34

What other land Osweard of Harrietsham held is speculative, but his estate may have included Godstone (Surr.). Both Harrietsham and Godstone had belonged in the mid-tenth century to the Kentish magnate Brihtric, whose will, dating from between 975 and 989, bequeathed land at Harrietsham to his kinsmen Wulfheah and Ælfheah, Ordheah’s sons, while Godstone went to another kinsman, Wulfstan uccea.35 Like Harrietsham, Godstone was held on the eve of the Conquest by a man called Osweard, when it was assessed at 40 hides.36 It is presumably this


Osweard who held two other estates in Surrey, a hide at Tooting (of Chertsey Abbey), and eight hides at Addington.37 If the Osweard who held in Surrey is identical with Osweard of Harrietsham, his total estate consisted of 49 hides and 6½ sulungs, which would qualify him as a procer.

The parties and witnesses to the Offham lease provide a snapshot of the ‘good men’ of Kent in the 1040s, which can be supplemented from contemporary materials. Just as Æthelric bigga attested Godric of Brabourne’s purchase of Offham, so Godric of Brabourne attested Æthelric’s agreement with Archbishop Eadsige concerning Chart, concluded at about the same time.38 The other wit nesses to the Chart agreement, Ælfwine se reada, Azur roda, and Eadmær of Burham, may be among the ministri who witnessed a royal diploma of the early 1040s, Eadmær in twelfth place, Ælfwine in fi fteenth, and Azur in twentieth.39

Fourteenth among the ministri is Eadwine, perhaps Archbishop Eadsige’s brother, who attests a grant made by Eadsige to St Augustine’s which can be dated no more closely than 1038–1050, alongside Ælfwine se reada, Æthelric bigga and his son Esbearn, and Godric of Brabourne, as well as Eadric of Elham, Leofwine of Dover and Thorgar.40 Æthelric bigga and Eadwine Eadsige’s brother also attest a memorandum of Archbishop Eadsige in 1032, and a royal diploma of 1023 is attested by Ælfwine (?se reada), Æthelric (?bigga) and Eadmær (?of Burham).41

An earlier generation of Kentish thegns is revealed in a marriage agreement concluded at some time between 1016 and 1022, involving Godwine (the bride-groom) and Brihtric (the bride’s father). Both have common names, and neither can be securely identifi ed.42 Godwine was clearly a wealthy man, for he gave his intended a pound’s weight of gold ‘for her acceptance of his suit’, and ‘the land at Stræte with everything that belongs to it’, plus 150 acres at Burmarsh, 30 oxen, 20 cows, ten horses and ten slaves. Stræte cannot be identifi ed, but Burmarsh lies in Kent (in Lympne Lathe). The bride was fetched from Brightling, in east Sussex (Hastings Lathe); on the eve of the Conquest it was assessed at a single hide, and was held by two unnamed brothers.43 Its situation just across the shire border, and the fact that the agreement was made known to ‘every trustworthy (dohtig)man in Kent and Sussex, thegn or ceorl’, suggests that Brihtric and his daughter belonged to an east Sussex family.44 He might be the thegn who attests two royal diplomas in 1018 and 1023 respectively, but the name is very common.45

Whoever they were, Godwine and Brihtric were clearly men of substance, for their agreement was concluded before a witenagemot held at Kingston (Surr.), in the presence of King Cnut. The lay witnesses were Æthelwine the sheriff, Sired ealda, Godwine Wulfheah’s son, Ælfsige cild, Eadmær of Burham, Godwine Wulfstan’s son, and Karli the king’s cniht. Later, ‘when the maiden was brought from Brightling’, the eleven sureties (the bridegroom Godwine being the twelfth) were Ælfgar Sired’s son, Frerth priest of Folkestone, Leofwine and Wulfsige, priests of Dover, Eadred Ealhhelm’s son, Leofwine Wærhelm’s son,


Cenwold rust, Leofwine Godwine’s son of Horton, Leofwine se reada, Godwine Eadgifu’s son and his brother Leofsunu. Not all the sureties and witnesses can be identifi ed, and some, like Cenwold rust and Frerth priest of Folkestone, do not appear elsewhere. Others, however, provide links with both earlier and later generations. We have already met Leofwine of Dover, here making his fi rst identifi able appearance, and Eadmær of Burham; Ælfgar Sired’s son may be the father of Thorgar, who attested the Offham agreement in the 1040s, and Karli’s sons, Godric and Godwine, held land in Kent on the eve of the Conquest (see below). Of the remaining witnesses, Leofwine se reada does not appear after the early 1020s, but he might be the father of Ælfwine se reada, who attested Æthelric bigga’s grant of Chart in the 1040s (see above). About the time of the marriage agreement (c.1020), Leofwine se reada granted pasture at Southernden ‘to whomever acquires Boughton [Malherbe] after his death’, and on the eve of the Conquest, a sulung at Boughton, with pasture for 20 pigs, was held of Earl Godwine by Aluuinus, perhaps Ælfwine se reada.46 The byname suggests that he was a kinsman, perhaps a son of Leofwine se reada. Since Boughton was held in 1086 by Hugh nephew of Herbert fi tzIvo, it seems likely that Aluuinus is the man of the same name who held a sulung at Fairbourne and a yoke in Shelborough, both of which also passed to the same Hugh; in both cases, Aluuinus held of Earl Godwine.47 Broomfi eld, assessed at a sulung, was also held by Aluuinus of Earl Godwine, but this passed to Adelold after 1086.48 If all this land belonged to Ælfwine se reada, he held at least 3¼ sulungs of land; the fact that all of it was held of Earl Godwine suggests that he was a median thegn.49

Leofwine se reada had acquired Southernden from Godwine ‘at the price which Leofsunu had to pay him, namely £2, and 40d, and eight ambers of corn’. The meaning is not entirely clear, but perhaps Leofsunu had previously bought the land from Leofwine, and Leofwine was now buying it back, at the same price, from Godwine. If so, Godwine and Leofsunu might be the sons of Eadgifu who appear, with Leofwine se reada, among the guarantors of the marriage agree-ment.50 The fact that the brothers bore a metronymic rather than a patronymic is rare, but not unique; the founder of Burton Abbey, a great landholder in the north-west midlands, was known by his metronymic as Wulfric Wulfrun’s son.51

It will be remembered that Godric of Brabourne bought Offham from his sister Eadgifu; it is a common name, but if she was named after her grandmother, Godric of Brabourne might be the son of either Godwine Eadgifu’s son or his brother Leofsunu.

Of the other men who appear in the marriage agreement, Ælfsige cild and Siredealda also attest Leofwine se reada’s memorandum concerning Southernden, as does a man called Æthelric. All three names, with those of Brihtric and Godwine, appear towards the end of the witness-list of a royal diploma of 1018.52 The other witnesses include two men called Æthelric, one identifi ed as prefectus (reeve).


He is presumably the man addressed in two royal writs of 1035, since, although no byname is included in either, the text of one writ refers to the time ‘before Æthelric was reeve and after he was reeve up to the present day’.53 In an earlier writ, from between 1017 and 1020, Æthelric is addressed, with no byname, immediately after Æthelwine scirman; perhaps he had been a subordinate of Æthelwine’s, and succeeded him in the shrievalty.54

Ælfsige cild does not appear again, but Sired is a frequent witness to royal and private transactions around the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, often in company with his brother Siward. His family can be traced back to the late tenth century, and forward to the eve of the Conquest. He and Siward (who was probably the elder) appear for the fi rst time in 990, when Siward of Kent (on Cent)attended a witan at London, and Sired received land at Sibertswold from King Æthelred.55 Siward attests royal diplomas until 1005 and thereafter disappears.56

Sired, however, continues to attest both royal and private transactions until the early 1020s, and is probably the Sigered to whom King Æthelred gave lands at Hatfi eld and Horndon (Essex) in 1013.57 He might be identical with Earl Sired who attests diplomas of 1019 and 1023, and sold Godersham to Archbishop Æthelnoth at some in Cnut’s reign; if so, Sired ealda was ‘a prominent and senior fi gure in Kent who was sometimes accorded a status commensurate with his local distinction’.58 It has been argued already that he is the father of Ælfgar Sired’s son, and grandfather of Thorgar Ælfgar’s son, and either he or his brother Siward must have been the father of Siward of Chilham, who attests a grant of Cnut to Christ Church, Canterbury in 1032.59

Another link to the late tenth-century community is the father of Leofwine Wærhelm’s son, one of the guarantors of the marriage agreement between Godwine and Brihtric. Wærhelm’s name is very rare, with only three known occur-rences, all in Kentish contexts; he appears as Leofwine’s father in the transaction already mentioned, and attests a second (private) transaction of 995–1005 and a royal diploma of 1002.60 The last two documents invite comparison. The private transaction records the settlement of a long-standing dispute resolved at a moot held in Canterbury, before all the thegns of East and West Kent, in whose presence Leofwine Ælfheah’s son renounced all claim to the manor of Snodland in favour of Godwine, bishop of Rochester. The settlement was negotiated by Abbot Ælfhun (possibly the future bishop of London), Abbot Wulfric of St Augustine’s, Leofric the sheriff (sciresman), Siweard, Wulfstan of Saltwood and Ælfhelm Ordhelm’s son, and the lay witnesses included Leofric the sheriff, Lyfi ng of Malling, Siweard and his brother Sired, Leofstan of Mersham, Godwine Wulfheah’s son, Wulfstan of Saltwood, Wulfstan iunga, Leofwine of Ditton, Leofric Ealdred’s son, Goda Wulfsige’s son, Ælfhelm Ordhelm’s son, Sidewine of Paddlesworth, Wærhelm, Æthelred the portreeve and Guthwold.61 Nine of these names appear in the witness-list of King Æthelred’s diploma of 1002, granting land in Canterbury to


his fi delis Æthelred, the city’s portreeve: Leofwine (of Ditton), Lyfi ng (of Malling), Leofstan (of Mersham), Siward and Sired, two men called Wulfstan (presumably Wulfstan of Saltwood and Wulfstan iunga), Wærhelm and Guthwold, the last of whom bears another rare name which occurs only in the 1002 diploma and the Snodland memoranda.62

One of the members of the shire-court which resolved the Snodland case was Godwine Wulfheah’s son, a witness to the marriage agreement of 1016–1022.63

His father’s name is not rare, but he might be the thegn Wulfheah who attested a grant of King Edgar some time between 963 and 975. Since the grant is also attested by Ælfheah, this Wulfheah can be identifi ed as Wulfheah Ordheah’s son who, with his brother Ælfheah, was a kinsman of the rich Kentish magnate Brihtric; Ælfheah himself might be the father of Leofwine Ælfheah’s son, another of the Snodland witnesses.64 The benefi ciary of Edgar’s grant was one Leofric, a common name but one which reappears in a memorandum of 968, in company with three of the witnesses to Edgar’s grant, Eadhelm, Ealdred and Leofstan.65

Ealdred’s name is also not rare, but he might be the father of yet another member of the shire-court which heard the Snodland dispute, Leofric Ealdred’s son.66

Lyfi ng, another witness of the 968 memorandum, might in turn be the father of Ealdred Lyfi ng’s son, whose settlement of a dispute with Abbot Wulfric of St Augustine’s over land at Cliffe, some time between 990 and 1005, is attested by his father, in company with Siweard and his brother Sired, Wulfstan of Saltwood and ‘the other’ Wulfstan (presumably Wulfstan iunga).67 Either Wulfstan of Saltwood or Wulfstan iunga could be the father of Godwine Wulfstan’s son, one of the witnesses to the Kentish marriage agreement.

The successors of these Kentish thegns can still be traced on the eve of the Conquest. Among the ‘good men’ of Kent who appear in Domesday Book (Table 3.4), eight are recorded as having special privileges in the four lathes (Borough, Eastry, Lympne and Wye) which made up East Kent.68 These eight, namely Esbearn bigga, Godric of Brabourne, Azur, Godric Karl’s son, Sired of Chilham, Thorgils, Northmann and Æthelnoth cild, were entitled to take from their free tenants (allodiarii) the heriots which would normally have been rendered to the king, to whom they themselves were liable only for their own personal dues (forisfactura de capitibus). On the assumption that Azur is identical with Azur roda, the fi rst three appear among the witnesses to surviving charters relating to Kent.69 The others do not, but Godric Karl’s son, who held 1¾ sulings of land at West Wickham, Old Shelve and Pimps Court, and his brother, Godwine Karl’s son, with fi ve sulungs at Higham, are presumably the sons of Karli the king’s cniht,one of the sureties to the marriage agreement discussed above.70 Sired of Chilham held some 11 sulungs on the eve of the Conquest and was one of the privileged landowners with full rights over their property in Canterbury. Chilham itself, though assessed at only fi ve sulungs, was clearly a signifi cant holding, for it had


land for 20 ploughs, and included 13 messuages in Canterbury, a church, six and a half mills, and two fi sheries.71 He may have been related to his namesake Sired, canon of Dover, who held two prebends, one consisting of a sulung at Charlton to which was attached a minster (monasterium) in Dover, and the other a sulung at Farthinghoe.72 Sired of Chilham was probably the son of Siward of Chilham, a witness to a diploma of 1032.73 He is presumably the Siward who, with his wife Matilda, gave land at Mersham to Christ Church, Canterbury, confi rmed by a writ dated only 1053–1061, Siward minister, who attests a spurious diploma attrib-uted to 1044, and Siward princeps who attests the genuine foundation charter of Waltham Abbey in 1062.74 Siward of Chilham’s antecedents must include Sired se ealda and his brother Siward of Kent, who attest royal and private charters at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries (see above).

Of the others named in Domesday Book, Northmann, who held just over ten sulungs in Kent, is probably the man who held 12 hides at Camberwell (Surr.).75

His most valuable Kentish estate was Mereworth, in Aylesford Lathe (West Kent) and Brihtwold of Mereworth, who attended a Kentish shire-court in Archbishop Dunstan’s time (between 964 and 988), may have been one of his ancestors.76

By contrast, Æthelnoth cild was one of the richest landholders in England, with 216 hides spread over six shires. Outside Kent he was known as ‘the Kentishman’, and his estate included 21½ sulungs in Kent, as well as property in both Rochester and Canterbury. John of Worcester describes him as ‘governor (satrap) of Kent’,

Table 3.4: Kentish Magnates in 1066.

East Kent (GDB 1) West Kent (GDB 1v)

Godric of BrabourneGodric son of KarliÆthelnoth cild*Esbearn biggaSired of ChilhamThorgilsNorthmannAzur

Beorhtsige cild*Æthelwold of ElthamAskell of BeckenhamAzur of LessnessAlwine Horne*Wulfweard White*Ording of HortonLeofnoth of SuttonEdward of StoneEsbearn of Chelsfi eldWulfstan of WateringburyLeofric of WateringburyOsweard of NortonEdith of HæselholteÆthelred of Yalding

*Can be identifi ed as a landowner outside Kent.


and his alternative byname, Æthelnoth of Canterbury, suggests that he was the city’s portreeve.77 He had abstracted two prebends from the church of Dover, at Merclesham and Hawkhurst, with the aid of Earl Harold, and his connexion with the earl suggests that he is identical with Æthelnoth optimas, who attested the Confessor’s diploma in favour of Harold’s church at Waltham Abbey (Essex) in 1062.78 His name does not occur in any of the surviving private memoranda relating to Kent; since most relate to the 1040s and 1050s rather than the 1060s, he had perhaps come into his land only at the very end of King Edward’s reign. He may have been related to Ælfweard se Kæntisca, who attests a spurious memorandum of 1032, and possibly to Ælfsige cild, whose attestations belong to around 1020 (see above).79 The ancestors of Thorgils, who had 11½ sulungs in Kent, cannot be traced, but he is perhaps the Thorgils who held nine hides at Ashstead (Surrey) of Earl Harold, and a tenement at Chipstead (also Surrey) of Chertsey Abbey.80

The memoranda also give some idea of the matters dealt with at meetings of the shire-court. The men of East Kent and West Kent heard a plea involving Archbishop Dunstan at Erith, some time between 964 and 988. Another suit concerning the bishop of Rochester was heard at Canterbury, between 995 and 1005, presumably before the full shire-court, whereas an earlier dispute involving Rochester was heard by the leading men (duguð folces) of West Kent alone.81 As well as hearing and determining legal disputes, the shire-court played a vital role in recognizing transactions involving the transfer of land; as we have seen, Godric of Brabourne’s purchase of Offham from his sister Eadgifu was concluded ‘at Wye, before the whole shire’, and other such sales and agreements are attested by local landowners.82 Marriages among its members were also attested by the shire-court.83 But the shire was not a purely parochial community; it also dealt with matters concerned with royal government and administration. The laws of King Æthelstan were ratifi ed by a meeting of the Kentish shire attended by ‘the bishops and other wise men of Kent’ (episcoporum et aliorum sapientium de Kantia), and communicated to the king in a letter from ‘your bishops in Kent and all the thegns of Kent, nobles or commoners’ (episcopi tui de Kantia et omnes Cantescyrae thaini comites et villani).84

Contact between the Kentish thegns and the court of the itinerant king was maintained by their attendance at meetings of the royal witan, demonstrated by their attestations to royal diplomas. Where such diplomas involve land outside Kent (or non-Kentish benefi ciaries), the Kentish witnesses can be identifi ed only when their names are comparatively rare, but Siward of Kent and his brother Sired ealda are probably among the witnesses to diplomas relating to Devon, Oxfordshire, Staffordshire and Wiltshire, as well as Kent and Sussex.85 Karli, a surety for the marriage agreement of around 1020, is probably the thegn who attests diplomas of Cnut, Hardacnut and Edward between 1019 and 1044,


relating to land in Berkshire, Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, Warwickshire and Wiltshire, and for benefi ciaries including Abingdon Abbey, the bishop and monks of Winchester, Leofric the chaplain (future bishop of Exeter), and the thegns Aghmund, Urk and Thored.86 Another witness to the diploma for Thored is Esbearn, possibly Esbearn bigga, who also attests a diploma of 1043 granting land in Wiltshire to Ælfstan of Boscombe, and (as Esbearn princeps) the Waltham Abbey foundation charter of 1062.87 Cnut’s diploma for Urk is attested by Siward, presumably Siward of Chilham, whose attestation (as Siward princeps)is also found, beside that of Esbearn, on the foundation charter for Waltham Abbey.88 Names borne by other Kentish thegns occur in the witness-lists of diplo-mas between 1020 and 1065, but are too common for certain identifi cation.

Just as Kentish thegns visited the itinerant court, so the king was occasionally to be found in Kent. On the eve of the Conquest, Æthelnoth cild ‘and those like him’ (similius eius) were required to provide a royal bodyguard for six days at Canterbury or at Sandwich, for which the king provided food and drink.89 Sandwich in the eleventh century was the operational station for the English fl eet, deployed there when need arose from its home base in London. King Edward was at Sandwich with his fl eet in 1044, 1045 and 1049, and King Harold II drove his brother Tostig from Sandwich in 1066.90 Edward is not recorded as visiting Canterbury, though Cnut was there in 1023 for the translation of Bishop Ælfheah (St Alphege), but he was frequently to be found at London, which had enjoyed close links with north Kent from the eighth century, when Æthelbald of Mercia remitted toll on ships going to London from the churches of Thanet and Rochester.91 In the early Middle Ages, the route from London to north and east Kent was both shorter and safer than it is now, for Thanet was still an island; ships from London could use the Wantsum, and fi nd a safe anchorage off Sandwich.92 Royal contact with southern Kent may have been more indirect, for while the portreeves of Canterbury and Fordwich attest royal diplomas, those of Dover (apparently) do not, neither is the king’s presence noticed at Dover, though its burgesses were required to assist the king’s messengers (missatici regis) with transport.93

The link between the local community and the itinerant royal court was not merely a matter of individual contact but had an institutional basis. A Kentish lawsuit heard soon after 995 was begun on the orders of King Æthelred unræd,conveyed by the king’s writ and seal (gewrit and insegel), the fi rst recorded example of a suit opened in this way.94 Royal writs were addressed to the bishop and earl, the presiding offi cers of the shire-court, but increasingly throughout the eleventh century the sheriff, the king’s local representative, was also included.95

The earliest recorded English sheriff is Wulfsige the priest, who attended a Kentish shire-court at some time between 964 and 988.96 Subsequent sheriffs of Kent include Leofric, who was involved in the Snodland dispute between 995 and 1005, and Æthelwine, one of the witnesses to Godwine’s marriage agreement,


who is addressed as scirman in a writ of Cnut between 1017 and 1020.97 It has already been suggested that Æthelric prefectus may have been a subordinate of both Leofric and Æthelwine, before succeeding Æthelwine as sheriff some time during Cnut’s reign. Wulfsige the king’s gerefa, who attested the Offham purchase in the mid-1040s, was probably Æthelric’s successor as sheriff of Kent.98

Little can be discovered about any of these men, but rather more is known (thanks to Domesday Book) about Kent’s last Old English sheriff, Osweard of Norton. One of the functions of the sheriff was to administer the king’s estates within his shire, and Osweard was clearly in charge of the royal manors of Dartford and Milton Regis. At Dartford, he held the manorial dependency at Hawley, which was assessed at only half a sulung but was worth £15; since this tenement should have remained ‘in the king’s feorm’ (in firma regis) after Osweard lost the shrievalty (quando uicecomitatem amittebat), it was perhaps ‘vicecomital land’, attached to the offi ce of sheriff.99 In 1086 it was held by Hugh de Port, Osweard’s usual successor, who had also been sheriff of Kent before being replaced by Hamo dapifer.100 Osweard had leased other property belonging to Dartford, consisting of a meadow, an alder-grove (alnetum), a mill with 20 acres of land, and ‘enough meadow for ten acres of land’ (tantum prati quantum pertinet ad x acras terrae), to Ælfstan, (port)reeve of London, and had given a further six acres and a wood (silva) in pledge for 40s, the text does not specify to whom.101 At Milton Regis, Osweard held the manorial dependencies at Tunstall, Upchurch, Stuppington and Tonge (total assessment eight sulungs), for which he paid rent, and he had appropriated a further three sulungs and 1½ yokes of land from the king’s villani. Like Hawley, all this land was held in 1086 by Hugh de Port.102 As well as the royal lands which he held (either legally or illegally), Osweard held Norton, in Faversham Hundred, Wye Lathe, assessed at four sulungs, Hurst, in the same hundred and lathe, assessed at three yokes (three-quarters of a sulung), and Allington, in Eyethorne Hundred, Aylesford Lathe, assessed at three sulungs; all were held in 1086 by Hugh de Port.103 In all, Osweard of Norton held 163 sulungs, and he appears among those landholders with sake and soke in West Kent (the lathes of Sutton and Aylesford).104

Though some of the identifi cations proposed above are necessarily tentative, it seems permissible to conclude that the shire of Kent was dominated from the mid-tenth to the mid-eleventh centuries by the same group of interlinked Kentish families. Any fi rm conclusions on how typical Kent was are precluded by the lack of comparable source material elsewhere. The vast majority of extant charters relate to Wessex, south-west Mercia and Kent, but this might be a refl ection of production; the records from Ely Abbey describe in some detail the land market in the east midlands in the tenth century and the disputes to which it gave rise, but diplomas do not seem to have played a large part in the settlement of such quarrels (as they do in Kentish records), which suggests that


few existed for the region.105 It is nevertheless likely that, given more favourable rates of documentary survival, some (if not all) shires could have produced similar results to Kent. A memorandum from Hereford records a meeting of the Herefordshire shire-court at Aylton, some time in Cnut’s reign.106 Present were Æthelnoth, bishop of Hereford, Ranig, earl of the Magonsæte (Herefordshire and south Shropshire), Eadwine the ealdorman’s kinsman, Leofwine Wulfsige’s son, Thorkell hwita, Bryning the sheriff, Æthelgeard of Frome, Leofwine of Frome, Godric of Stoke, and ‘all the thegns of Herefordshire’; Tovi the Proud was also present ‘on the king’s business’.107 The memorandum recording the meeting relates to a dispute between Eadwine Enneawn’s son and his unnamed mother over land at Wellington and Cradley. Thorkell hwita, as the mother’s representative, under took to answer on her behalf, and three men were deputed to ride to her at Fawley and ask for instructions: they are named as Leofwine of Frome, Æthelsige þe reada, and Wynsige the seaman (scægðman). The lady, ‘strongly incensed against her son’, answered that she had no lands ‘which in any way belonged to him’, and summoning her kinswoman Leoffl æd, Thorkell hwita’s wife, made a verbal will granting to her ‘my land and my gold, my clothing and my raiment and all that I possess … and not a thing to my own son’. She then bade the three thegns to proclaim her will to the shire-court, and ask all the members to be witnesses to it. This they did, after which ‘Thorkell rode to St Æthelbert’s minster (Hereford Cathedral) and had it recorded in a gospel book’.

Some of the participants in this agreement were still in possession on the eve of the Conquest. Domesday Book reveals that Thorkell hwita held 45 hides in Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, including fi ve hides at Wellington, one of the estates disputed between Eadwine and his mother.108 Thorkell’s wife is probably the Leoffl æd who held nine hides which passed to Nigel the physician.109 A few years after the moot at Aylton, Thorkell was one of the witnesses to a transaction involving his brother-in-law, Leofwine, fi nalized before another shire-court in the presence of Bishop Æthelstan, Earl Swein [Godwineson], Thorkell hwita,Ulfcytel the sheriff, and the communities of St Æthelberht (the cathedral) and St Guthlac.110 Leofwine’s name is common, but he might be Leofwine Wulfsige’s son, whose name precedes that of Thorkell in the Aylton memorandum. Of the others who attended the Aylton meeting, Bryning sciregerefa was presumably sheriff of Herefordshire. Eadwine, a kinsman of ‘the ealdorman’, was a son of Leofwine, ealdorman of the Hwicce from 994 to about 1023, and brother to Earl Leofric of Mercia (c.1023–57).111 He attested two Worcester leases in 1017 and 1038, and a number of royal diplomas between 1013 and 1033, and was killed in 1039, at the battle of Rhyd-y-Groes, on the Wales/Shropshire border; this, and his appearance in the company of Ranig, earl of the Magonsæte, suggests that he may have been sheriff of Shropshire.112 Like Earl Ranig, Eadwine was remembered as a despoiler of the church of Worcester, from which he took Bickmarsh (Warks.)


and Wychbold (Worcs.).113 Eadwine had also appropriated lands at Tetshill, Hopton Wafers and Cleobury North (Salop), held in 1066 by Siward Æthelgar’s son, a grandson of Eadric streona, ealdorman of Mercia (1007–1017).114 In con-trast to Thorkell hwita and the ealdorman’s kinsman Eadwine, Godric of Stoke was a minor fi gure. By 1086, his manor at Stoke [Bliss] (Herefords.) had passed to Gruffydd, son of King Maredudd of Deheubarth (c.1063–1071); Gruffydd’s manors at Bunshill and Mansell Lacy had also belonged to Godric, giving him a total of six hides of land.115 Like Godric of Stoke’s manor, those of Æthelgeard of Frome and Leofwine of Frome presumably lay in Herefordshire, but there were several vills of this name in 1086, none of which contained holdings which can be associated with either Æthelgeard or Leofwine.116 Such a small sample cannot be pressed too far, but at least the social mix of the Herefordshire court, which included an earl’s kinsman, a local procer and several minor landholders, parallels the situation in Kent, as does the fact that Thorkell hwita attests the transaction involving his brother-in-law Leofwine, and (probably) vice versa.

Three leases from the St Albans archive reveal a similar community in south-east Mercia.117 In 1051–1052, the abbot of St Albans leased land at Great Tew (Oxon) to a woman named Tove and her son, before a shire-court held at Oxford, attended by Earl Leofric of Mercia, with his housecarls under their commander Vagn, Godwine the portreeve of Oxford (possibly the earl’s brother), Wulfwine the earl’s reeve, Burgred, Leofwine Osmund’s son and his brother Leofnoth, Azur Toti’s son and a group of thegns, fi ve of whom – Æthelric of Glympton, Brihtwine of Deddington, Æthelweard of Worton, Ælfwine of Ingham and Leofwine of Barton – can be identifi ed by their toponymic bynames as Oxfordshire land-holders.118 As in Kent, some of these men are found elsewhere. About ten years earlier, Burgred had attested a grant made by Æthelwine the Black, a kinsman of Ælfric Wihtgar’s son, of land in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire to St Albans. This agreement seems to have been concluded before a royal witan,for the witnesses include King Edward, his mother Emma and Earl Siward [of Northumbria], as well as the local earl, Thuri of the east midlands; also present were Ælfric Wihtgar’s son and three Buckinghamshire landholders, Thorgils, Leofwine, Æstan’s son, and Ælfwold, his brother.119 Burgred and his son Eadwine also attested an agreement whereby Oswulf and his wife Æthelgyth were received into confraternity with St Albans by Abbot Leofstan, for a payment of £1 and the reversion of Studham (Beds.). The abbot was to provide wood for the building of a church at Studham, and the transaction was fi nalized on the occasion of its dedication, before Bishop Wulfwig of Dorchester, Bondi the staller, Burgred and his son Eadwine, Godric the sheriff, Ælfstan wicgerefa (presumably of Bedford) and Leofwine of Caddington.120

The social mix shown in these witness-lists resembles that in Kent and Herefordshire. Burgred, the sons of Osmund, and Azur Toti’s son held extensive


estates both in south-east Mercia and beyond, whereas Oswulf, Leofwine of Caddington and Æthelwine the Black were local proceres.121 Oswulf of Studham appears in Domesday Book as Oswulf Frani’s son, with lands in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire amount-ing to 47¼ hides.122 Leofwine of Caddington’s estate, some of it inherited from his father Eadwine of Caddington, was assessed at 74¾ hides in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.123 The lands of Ælfric Wihtgar’s son’s kinsman, Æthelwine the Black, lay in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire; his bequest of four estates in Bedfordshire to Ramsey Abbey was disputed by Ælfric Wihtgar’s son as the next heir. His full estate cannot be calculated, but he might be the Alwin[us] who appears in Domesday Book as William Peverel’s predecessor in Bedfordshire, holding 18¼ hides.124 Beside these proceres were men of more modest wealth. Leofwine of Barton, one of the witnesses to the Great Tew lease, held 14 hides of land at Little Tew, Duns Tew and Dunthrop, as well as Westcote Barton, where an early church, now beneath the standing twelfth-century nave, may mark the site of his manor-house. Westcote Barton, like Great Tew, lay in Wootton Hundred, as did the vills from which Æthelric of Glympton, Brihtwine of Deddington, and Æthelweard of Worton took their bynames, while the land of Ælfwine of Ingham lay in Pyrton Hundred,125 Deddington, indeed, was by some distance the largest manor in Wootton Hundred, assessed at 36 hides, 11½ of which were in demesne ‘besides the inland’.126 Domesday Book records no pre-Conquest tenant but the entry is incomplete, ending with the unfi nished phrase ‘Five thegns …’; the scribe wrote a note in the margin (rq: require) to indicate that more information is needed, but none was forthcoming. Brihtwine is unlikely to have held the entire manor; he was probably one of the ‘fi ve thegns’, attending the shire-court in the retinue of his unnamed lord, as Ælfweard of Longdon attended the shire-court of Worcester in the company of his lord, Earl Odda, the holder of Longdon.127 Of the other witnesses, Thorgils, who attests Æthelwine the Black’s grant, is perhaps the Thorgils commended to Baldwin Herluin’s son, who held fi ve hides at Stowe (Bucks.), and a man commended to Leofwine Æstan’s son held half a hide at Woughton (Bucks.). Leofwine’s father Æstan may have been, like Brihtwine, a median thegn. Domesday Book records that his man Alwine held land at Little Brickhill (Bucks.) which was tributary to Æstan’s manor at Great Brickhill, assessed at nine hides, but the main entry for the latter makes Earl Tostig the pre-Conquest holder; perhaps Æstan was the earl’s retainer.128 It is clear that, as in Kent and west Mercia, the social mix of the east midlands included royal servants, proceres, minor local magnates and (possibly) retainers of the greater lords, all of whom met together to settle the affairs of their locality.

The most obvious difference between the societies of Mercia and that of Kent is that fewer members of the former can be identifi ed among the witnesses


to royal diplomas. Since the greater thegns of western Wessex are as, or more, prominent in the witness-lists of royal diplomas (especially King Edward’s) as those of Kent, it might be concluded that the thegns of Mercia were less closely associated with the royal court than those of ‘old Wessex’ south of the Thames.129

It must be remembered, however, that the available evidence is heavily biased towards southern and western England. Thegns from the east and north certainly attended meetings held in Wessex; in the late 990s a witenagemot held at Cookham (Berks.) included thegns ‘from far and wide, both West Saxons and Mercians, Danes and English’, among them Wulfric Wulfrun’s son, whose lands were concentrated in north-west England, and Fræna, whose known connections are with the north-east midlands.130 Most local thegns, however, seem to have attested diplomas relating to land and recipients in their own areas. It is also true that kings did not perambulate as regularly through the northern and eastern shires as they did within Wessex and south-west Mercia; King Æthelred’s visit to Shropshire in 1006 was suffi ciently rare to be noticed in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and was remembered as late as 1086, when Domesday Book records that three Shropshire manors had paid half a night’s feorm ‘in the time of King Æthelred, King Edward’s father’.131 As for what had been the Danish kingdom of York (what came to be known as the Danelaw), no vernacular memoranda survive to illustrate the membership or the business of the emerging shire-courts in the region, and what we know of its inhabitants suggests that they were more independent of royal control and more tenacious of their local customs than the thegns of Wessex and Mercia. The legislation of both Edgar and Æthelred allowed some leeway to their special circumstances, and the demand of the northerners in 1065 for confi rmation of ‘the law of King Cnut’ suggests that this leeway still operated on the eve of the Conquest.132 The independence of local communities increased the further away they were from the centre of royal authority. Yet all acknowledged one king, one currency and one law, and the extension of the shire and the sheriff to the territories of the former kingdom of York, which began in the reign of King Æthelred, must have drawn even the thegns of the north closer to the nexus of royal power. Only the regions beyond the Tees remained ‘debateable land’, under the effective control of their own rulers, the bishops of Durham and the earls of Bamburgh.


4

Lords and Men (1): Households and Warbands

I will be to my lord faithful and true … if he will keep me as I am willing to deserve.

SWERIAN1

Aristocratic society was bound together not only by neighbourhood, a concept still familiar today, but also by the more remote concept of lordship. Archbishop Wulfstan, in his tract on status, distinguished not only between aristocrat and commoner (eorlisc ge ceorlisc) but also between thegn and lord (þegen ge þeoden).2

Thegns and lords were intimately linked; to be a thegn was to be in the service of someone else, and to be a lord was to have thegns in one’s service.3 The greatest lord, after God, was the king, but anyone, however humble, who aspired to free, let alone noble, status must have had some kind of following. Various terms are used to describe the members of a lord’s household (hired), of which the com-monest are cniht (‘young man, retainer’), and, after the Danish conquest, huscarl(‘housecarl, man of the household’).4 Not all were directly maintained in their lords’ establishments; Cnut’s Secular Code distinguishes between household retainers (folgeres) and those who had lands of their own (heorðfæst).5 For many young men of good birth, however, the fi rst step in their careers was to obtain a place in the household of a lord. In the late 990s, for instance, the Hertfordshire landowner Æthelgifu requested her ‘royal lady’ (Queen Ælfthryth, the king’s mother) to fi nd a place for her young kinsman Leofwine in the household of the ætheling, almost certainly that of Æthelstan, eldest son of King Æthelred unræd.6

Non-royal households are diffi cult to see, largely because the king’s monopoly on the issue of charters means that pre-Conquest England can show none of the private instruments, attested by members of the donor’s household, which were produced by contemporaries on the continent. Non-royal transactions in England usually took the form of vernacular memoranda (OE geswutelunga,‘declarations’) recording agreements between individuals made in the sight of their neighbours, represented by the members of the shire-court, who witnessed the transactions.7 Some of the participants in such agreements might be accom-panied by their own followers, but these are visible only if they appear among the witnesses. Even if they do, they are often anonymous; at some time before 982, the companions (geferan) of Ealdorman Æthelmær of Hampshire attested


his purchase of an estate, but none are named. It is the more important retainers who attest by name; in 1051–1052, Earl Leofric of Mercia witnessed a lease of land in Oxfordshire accompanied by his housecarls under their commander Vagn, and his reeve (gerefa) Wulfwine.8 In the fi rst decade of the eleventh century, a lease in favour of the ætheling Edmund (the future King Edmund II Ironside) was attested by Leofwine his discþen (seneschal), his cnihtas Ælfgeat and Ælfweard, ‘and all the other members of his household’ (hiredmen).9 Relationships between the parties are rarely so explicit, but can sometimes be supplied by comparison with other evidence; in the 1050s, Ælfweard of Longdon, one of Earl Odda’s thegns, attested a Worcester memorandum along with his lord.10

Wills are a rather better source of information on households, since they often contain bequests to the testator’s followers, named or unnamed. Ælfwold, bishop of Crediton, left ‘to each man of his household his mount which he had lent him’ (ælcon hiredmen his onrid þe he alæned hæfde), and bequeathed a sum of £5 to all his hiredcnihton, ‘to divide each according to his degree’ (to gedale ælcon be þam þe his mæð wære).11 The bishop made further bequests of military equipment (horses, mail, helmet and tents) to named individuals, some of them his kinsmen, who may well have been members of his household, but of whom none bear any distinctive titles.12 His bedlinen, however, went, appropriately enough, to his unnamed chamberlains (burþenon), and his scribe (writere) Ælfgar received a pound of pennies. Ælffl æd offestre, to whom the bishop bequeathed fi ve mancuses of pennies, may have been in the employ of his sister Eadgifu, another benefi ciary of the will; the word offestre is of uncertain meaning, but implies some form of service.

The will of the ætheling Æthelstan, Edmund ætheling’s elder brother, who died in 1014, is particularly revealing.13 His benefi ciaries include his chaplain (mæssepreost) Ælfwine, his seneschal (discþen) Ælfmær, his retainers (cnihtas)Ælfmær and Æthelwine, and his sword-polisher (swurdhwita) Ælfnoth.14 There is also a bequest to his unnamed staghuntsman (heardeorhunta).15 Ælfmær discþen got eight hides of land at Catherington (Hants), plus a stallion, a shield and a sword, a bequest comparable to that of Sigeferth, one of the leading thegns of Northumbria.16 Ælfmær cniht also received eight hides of land, at Chalton (Hants), but this was a confi rmation of what he had already been granted; another cniht, Æthelwine, received ‘the sword which (the ætheling) has given to me’.17 Ælfnoth the sword-polisher received, appropriately enough, a sword, and the ætheling’s anonymous staghuntsman (heardeorhunta) an equally appropriate gift of ‘the stud which is on Coldridge’ (Wilts.).18 Most surprising is the ætheling’s bequest to his mæssepreost Ælfwine, who not only received an estate at Harleston (uniden tifi ed), but also a sword and ‘my horse with my harness’, a gift which recalls the strictures of the ætheling’s contemporary, Archbishop Wulfstan, on priests who bear arms.19 Bequests to ecclesiastics of what seem to be distinctly

L O R D S A N D M E N ( 1 ) : H O U S E H O L D S A N D WA R B A N D S 65

secular objects are, however, found even in the will of Bishop Ælfwold, who left a horse and a tent, as well as 20 mancuses of gold, to Ælfwold the monk (munuc), and a horse and 20 mancuses of gold to Brihtmær the priest (preost); by contrast his chaplain (mæssepreost) Edwin got fi ve mancuses of gold and the bishop’s cope, and another chaplain, Leofsige, was left ‘the man called Wunstan whom he had relinquished to him before’.20

The surviving comital wills (those made by ealdormen) are rather less informa tive about the testators’ followers. Like the bishop of Crediton, Ealdorman Æthelmær of Hampshire, who died in 982, left £5 to be divided between his hiredcnihtas, and his will also reveals that his ‘companions’ (geferan) attested his purchase of an unnamed estate bequeathed to the New Minster, Winchester, but none are mentioned by name.21 Ælffl æd, widow of the hero of Maldon, Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, left Lawling (Essex) to another Æthelmær (Ealdorman Æthelweard’s son), on condition that ‘during my life he shall be a true friend and advocate to me and to my men’, but makes neither general nor specifi c bequests to any of the latter.22 By contrast, Ælffl æd’s sister Æthelfl æd, widow of King Edmund I, left four hides at Hadham (Herts.) to her reeve (geræfa) Ecgwine, and equal shares (two hides each) of Donyland (Essex) to her cniht Brihtwold, her priests Ælfwold and Æthelmær, and her kinsman Ælfgeat; ten hides at Wickford (Essex) went to another kinsman, Sibriht.23 The bequests to Brihtwold and Sibriht are of particular interest, since the names reappear in the memorial poem on the battle of Maldon, where Æthelfl æd’s brother-in-law, Byrthnoth, was killed by a Viking host in 991; Brihtwold, described as an ‘old retainer’ (eald geneat), delivers the moving exhortation to the warriors for which the poem is famous, and Sibriht’s brother Æthelric appears as a ‘noble retainer’ (æþele gefera) of the ealdorman, killed with the rest of the hired after Byrhtnoth’s death.24 Other members of Byrthnoth’s household are named in the poem, notably Edward his chamberlain (burþen), who distinguished himself by killing one of the Vikings who had slain his lord’s sister’s son, Wulfmær.25 One retainer who (according to the poem) emphatically did not do his duty was Godric Odda’s son, who fl ed from the battle with his brothers, Godwig and Godwine. Godric indeed compounded his offence by stealing the mount belonging to his lord ‘who had often made him the gift of many a horse’; the sight of the ealdorman’s mount with its rich tack led many to believe that it was Byrhtnoth himself who was riding off, and thus ‘put many men to fl ight’.26 The emphasis on the horse’s tackle as a mark of status is worthy of notice, and suggests that bequests of such equip-ment were not simply practical. When Æthelstan ætheling left his mæssepreostÆlfwine not merely his own horse, but also its accompanying tack (gerædon), and the Hertfordshire lady Æthelgifu bequeathed her ‘saddle-gear’ to her kins-woman Leofrun, the recipients were acquiring articles which were both useful and valuable.27


The supply of comital wills dries up after the turn of the eleventh century. If the earls of Cnut and Edward the Confessor made written testaments, none have come down to us, but their place is fi lled, up to a point, by thegnly wills, most of them from the archive of Bury St Edmunds. A glimpse of the household of a wealthy eastern magnate is provided by the will of Thurstan Lustwine’s son (a great-grandson of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth), drawn up between 1043 and 1045, and disposing of lands in Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.28 Like the ætheling Æthelstan, Thurstan had a stud for his horses, in the wood of Ongar (Essex), where he also maintained a derhage, presumably an enclosure for the hunting of deer.29 Both stud and derhage were reserved when the wood of Ongar was bequeathed by Thurstan to his (unnamed) cnihtes, presumably the men of his household.30 Two cnihtas are specifi cally named, Viking, who received half a hide at Westley (Waterless) and a hide in the neighbouring vill at Dullingham (both Cambs), and Thurgot, who received half a hide at Ongar itself.31 The estate (lond) at Kedington (Suff.) was to be divided between Ælfwig the priest (?of Kedington) and Thurstan’s household chaplains (hirdprests), Thurstan and Ordheah. The appearance of household chaplains raises the question of whether lay lords made any provision for making and/or keeping written documents; the fact that some copies of vernacular memoranda went to the lay participants in the agreement suggests the latter, and the three lay seal-matrices extant from the late tenth and eleventh centuries the former.32

Thurstan’s establishment may be compared to that of his contemporary Leofgifu, kinswoman of Ælfric Wihtgar’s son, whose lands extended into Essex and Suffolk. Her will names no fewer than three stewards, two of whom seem already to have been holding land of her; at Belchamp (Essex) Godric stiward is to keep the land that he has, and Ælfwig stiward is to receive half a hide at Bentley (Essex) formerly held by Osmund, as well as what he already occupies (þat he on sit). The third stiward, Ælfnoth, gets ‘the land which was in Berric’s possession’ (þat lond þat Berric havede under hande).33 It might be thought that these men were reeves of the respective estates, rather than household offi cials, but two manorial reeves are specifi cally mentioned in the will: Godric, reeve (reve) of Waldingfi eld (Suff.), who receives ‘the thirty acres which I have let to him’ (þaþritti acre þe ic hym er to hande let), and Æthelmær, who receives ‘the estate at Stonham [Suff.] which I have let to him as reeveland’ (þat lond at Stonham þe ic hym er to hande let to refl ande). Leofgifu also remembers her household chaplain (hirdprest) Æthelric, and ‘Ælfric [and those of] my cnihts … who will serve me best’, to whom jointly she leaves an estate at Lawford (Essex). The will of another wealthy lady, the Hertfordshire landowner Æthelgifu, mentions her priest Boga and her huntsman (hunta) Wulfric, and leaves an unspecifi ed number of serfs to her hired, and clothing, again unspecifi ed, to her household women (hiredwifmen).34


Many household retainers, especially those of the greater lords, must them-selves have been of thegnly rank; indeed Geþyncðu gives added status to the thegn who ‘had a thegn who served him, possessing fi ve hides of land on which he discharged the king’s dues’.35 Like the household offi cers of the king, the seneschals, chamberlains and stewards of lesser lords were not servants but men of substance holding ‘honourable’ posts. Vagn, for instance, who attests a lease of 1051–1052 as the leader of Earl Leofric’s housecarls, held lands in Warwickshire and Staffordshire amounting to 54 hides of land.36 His chief manor at Wootton Wawen (‘Vagn’s Wootton’) was the site of a church which looks like an old minster, of which Vagn was probably the patron.37 The rarity of his name suggests that he is the same Vagn (Waga) who attests three charters of Ealdred, bishop of Worcester in the early 1050s, and he bears all the marks of an infl uential local magnate, whose landed endowment is that required for a procer.38

Men like Vagn formed the inner circle of the lord’s household, those closest to him in friendship, and probably highest in rank. The will of Bishop Ælfwold envisages the distribution of cash between his hiredcnihton ‘each according to his degree (mæð)’, and the bequests of Æthelstan ætheling hint at differences of status between the recipients; Ælfmær cniht, for instance, was to have the eight hides of land at Chalton (Hants), whereas Æthelwine cniht received only the sword which the ætheling had already given him (see above). King Alfred wrote of the various degrees among those to be found in the royal palace: ‘some men are in the chamber, some in the hall, some on the threshing-fl oor, some in prison’ (sume on bure, sume on healle, sume on odene, sume on carcere).39 The threshers presumably stand for all the manual labourers and servants, and the prisoners may be discounted in the present context, but the distinction between chamber (bur) and the hall (heall) is interesting.40 The bur was the private part of the lord’s house, occupied by his immediate family, and containing his valuables, while the hall was the public apartment.41 The men of the hall (aulici) were presumably the ordinary retainers, whereas the men of the bur were of higher status and privy to their lord’s counsel. This is obviously the case with men specifi cally described as burþegnas, but probably included other individuals; one of the benefactors of Ramsey Abbey in the late tenth century, Ælfgar of Burwell (Cambs.), a man of Æthelwine of East Anglia, is described as ‘of the ealdorman’s household and in his confi dence’ (aldermanni familiaris et a secretis).42 Such intimate associates are perhaps exemplifi ed by the fi gure of Offa in The Battle of Maldon. Though there is no explicit statement that he was one of Byrhtnoth’s hired (he is certainly accorded no specifi c offi ce), he nevertheless advises and warns the ealdorman in the council (gemot) held before the battle, rallies the troops after Byrhtnoth’s death, and, alone among the ealdorman’s companions, promises him that ‘either they should both ride safely home to the manor house or fall in the battle and perish of their wounds on the fi eld of slaughter’ (hi sceolden begen on burh ridan,


hal to hame, oððe on here crin[c]gan, on wælstowe wundum sweltan). It is of Offa that the poet remarks that ‘he lay like a thegn, at his lord’s side’.43

In contrast to such high-ranking retainers, some hiredmen were unfree. The will of Leofgifu, which concludes with the wish that ‘all my men shall be free, in the household (on hirde) and on the estate (on tun)’, presumably refers to rural serfs as much as household attendants, but the will of Æthelgifu, dating from the last decade of the tenth century, grants freedom to her goldsmith, Mann, along with his wife and his eldest and youngest sons, and his cnapa (‘knave’, ‘boy’), who was possibly his apprentice.44 It seems that Mann maintained his own little household within that of his lady, but none of its members was personally free. The connotations of freedom and unfreedom might be quite complex. Æthelgifu also freed the wife and children of her huntsman (hunta) Wulfric, with specifi c instructions that their daughter Ælfwaru should regularly chant psalms for her lady’s soul. The stipulation suggests both that Ælfwaru had been in Æthelgifu’s personal service and that she had received some education.45 Wulfric himself, moreover, seems to have been a free man, who received a yoke of oxen and two cows from the stock on Æthelgifu’s chief residence at Standon, and he and his now emanicipated wife also received two male slaves. Wulfric’s marriage to an unfree woman seems not to have disparaged his own status, though it did not alter hers.

Most retainers, like Wulfric, were probably free, though they need not have been thegns. The warband of Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, as described in The Battle of Maldon, included the ‘simple freeman’ (unnorne ceorl) Dunnere, and the geneatBrihtwold, both fi ghting alongside the aristocratic retainers, and if Brihtwold has been correctly identifi ed, he had been a cniht of Byrhtwold’s sister-in-law, Æthelfl æd.46 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle includes Æthelfrith the king’s geneatamong the casualties of battle in 896, and Domesday Book identifi es Eadric the deacon, a liber homo killed at Hastings, as the man of King Harold.47 The king’s own retinue might include non-noble free men as well as those of thegnly status; when he visited Canterbury or Sandwich, his bodyguard (custodia) was furnished by the most powerful thegns of Kent, whereas at Hereford it was the lesser burgesses ‘who did not hold whole messuages’ (non habentes integras masuras) who did ‘guard-duty at the hall’ (inewardos ad aulam).48 It is often hard to determine status. In the closing years of the tenth century, Brihtferth the huntsman (venator) held three hides of land at Loðeresleah (Middx); his tenement was clearly lænland, since he left it to seek another lord after the death of Wulfmær, who had held six hides in the same vill, but whether he was a free man or a thegn is unclear.49 Ælfhelm polga’s goldsmith Leofsige, to whom his lord granted a lease of half a hide at Potton (Beds.), was clearly free, and probably a thegn, since under Ælfhelm’s will he and his wife received estates at Littlebury (Essex) and Staughton (Hunts.) in return for a payment of 100 gold mancuses towards his lord’s heriot.50


Eorlisc or ceorlisc, the tie which bound men to their lords, was the act of commendation, in which the man formally submitted to his lord, kneeling before him, and swearing the oath of fi delity (holdað):

By the Lord before whom this relic (halidom) is holy, I will be faithful (hold) and true to [my lord], and love all that he loves, and shun all that he shuns, according to God’s law and secular custom; and never, willingly or intentionally, by word or by deed, do anything that is displeasing to him, on condition that he keep me as I shall deserve (swaic earnian wille), and fulfi ll what we agreed when I submitted (gebeah) to him and chose [to do] his will.51

The act of homage may be described in the Old English poem The Wanderer,where the eponymous exile imagines that he ‘embraces and kisses his lord (mondryhten)’, and ‘on his knee lays hand and head’, and the homilist Ælfric used the ceremony of commendation (mannrǽdenn) as a metaphor when describing how ‘a certain man sold himself to the devil (sum man deófl e mannrǽdene befæste)’.52 As one of basic ties of pre-Conquest society, commendation was legally enforce able; King Æthelstan required the families of lordless men ‘from whom no justice can be obtained’ to fi nd them lords ‘in public meeting’ (onfolcgemote); if they cannot or will not do, the man is to be considered an outlaw whom anyone may kill with impunity.53

Once a lord had been chosen (or imposed), the man could not go elsewhere, unless the lord himself gave him some cause.54 Betrayal of a lord (hlafordswice)was one of the unemendable (botleas) offences enumerated in Cnut’s Secular Code, which, like arson, theft and murder, could not be countered by the pay-ment of a fi ne.55 In such circumstances it may seem odd that it was possible to be commended to two lords at once. The East Anglian thegn Ælfric modercopecommended himself both to the abbot of Bury and to the abbot of Ely, and though the confi rmation of this arrangement by a royal writ might imply that it was unusual, the evidence of Little Domesday suggests that the practice was common; at Hemley (Suff.), for instance, a free man called Beorhtmær was commended half to his namesake, the thegn Beorhtmær, and half to the abbey of Ely.56 The exceptionally full description of pre-Conquest relationships in the accounts of Norfolk and still more of Suffolk reveals large numbers of ‘half-free men’, whose commendation was divided between two or more lords.57 Most shared commendations were half and half, but an unnamed man at Wyverstone (Suff.) ‘was commended to the predecessor of Robert Malet [Eadric of Laxfi eld] for one-sixth part, and Aki, predecessor of Robert Blund, had fi ve-sixths of his commendation’.58 How this had come about is unclear, and many mechanisms may have been at work, but some shared commendations were due to inher-itance: at Cookley (Suff.), Wulfsige and his two brothers had equal shares in the commendation of an anonymous free man. Nor was this an East Anglian


phenomenon; in the late tenth century, three brothers at Ardley (Oxon) could all be described as ‘lords’ of the hand-having thief, Leofric.59 Where minor free men are concerned, shared commendation might represent little more than a division of cash dues; apart from heriot, these are rarely recorded, but in Hertfordshire a sokeman at Hinxworth commended to King Edward paid a penny, while Ealdred’s man at Barkway paid a halfpenny a year.60

Like most early formulations of fi delity, the hold-oath is unspecifi c about the obligations of the parties.61 One suspects that the man’s promise to ‘love all that [his lord] loves and shun all that he shuns’ included turning up armed on occasions when the lord felt the need to appear mob-handed. Fighting in the lord’s warband was certainly part of the deal; the highest praise which the Maldon poet can bestow is ‘he lay like a thegn (ðegenlice) beside his lord’. Self-sacrifi ce, to the point of death if need be, was expected of retainers, and was sometimes forthcoming. The young Gospatric, miles et comes of Earl Tostig, ‘bore himself courageously in his service to his lord’ (in fi delitate domini sui); when Tostig’s party was attacked by bandits in the Roman Campagna, Gospatric claimed to be his lord ‘and signalled as best he could to the earl to ride away’.62 Only when ‘he thought the earl far enough away to be safe’ did he confess to his captors that ‘he was not the man they thought they had captured’. Gospatric got away with it; his captors were so impressed by his bravery that they let him go. The companions (geferan) of the ætheling Alfred were not so fortunate; when they and their lord fell into the hands of Earl Godwine, ‘some were sold for money, some were cruelly killed, some were put in fetters, some were blinded, some were mutilated, some were scalped’.63

Lord and men fought together in the larger forces raised by the king. Cnut’s Secular Code remits the heriot for the man ‘who falls before his lord on a cam-paign’ (on fyrdunge), and conversely ‘the man who in his cowardice deserts his lord or his comrades’ is to forfeit life and possessions, ‘and the lord is to succeed to the possessions and to the land (ðam æhton and to his lande) which he previously gave him’; if the offender had bookland (granted by a royal diploma or landboc), that was to revert to the king.64 Lordly warbands can sometimes be discerned within the levies who fought successive waves of Viking attackers in the reign of Æthelred unræd. According to the commemorative poem on the battle of Maldon in 991, Ealdorman Byrhtnoth was leading the levies of Essex (Eastseaxne ord), but most of those recorded as falling in the battle seem to have been members of his household. The English army which suffered an equally disastrous defeat in 1001 at the battle of Æthelingadene (Dean, Suss.) consisted of the levies of Hampshire, commanded by the king’s high-reeves, Æthelweard and Leofwine, but again, to judge from the casualty list in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a substantial part of the force consisted of household retainers of the bishop of Winchester; the dead included Wulfhere the bishop’s thegn, Godwine of Worthy (Hants), son of a


former bishop, Ælfsige (d. 958), and Leofwine of Whitchurch (Hants), a manor belonging to the episcopal church.65

The desperate years of King Æthelred’s reign saw the fall of many English lords and thegns in the unavailing struggle to stem the Danish tide. But even without invaders from abroad, life could be hazardous, especially for those accustomed to travel, whether for business or pleasure. Gospatric’s misfortunes befell him, as we have seen, in the course of a pilgrimage to Rome, and were occasioned by the banditry for which northern Italy was notorious, but there were thieves and robbers in England too; Gospatric’s cousin, Earl Osulf of Bamburgh, was killed in 1067 while ‘rushing headlong against the spear of a robber’.66 A century later, William of Malmesbury remarked that ‘the king himself, who in the south of England is content with an escort from his household, does not set forth without a great company of auxiliary troops whenever he is visiting northern parts’.67

The serious danger of highway robbery (forsteal) is shown by its appearance among the offences usually reserved for the king’s judgement.68 There were other perils. It was on a hunting-trip (according to John of Worcester) that Eadric streona had Ealdorman Ælfhelm of Northumbria assassinated, and another Northumbrian ealdorman, Ealdred, was murdered in similar circumstances by Karli Thorbrandson.69 Nor could a man feel entirely safe even at home, for one of the offences reserved for the king’s judgement was hamsocn, attack on a man in his own house.70 The penalty was forfeiture of the offender’s property, even death, if the offence was suffi ciently serious, but hamsocn was not rare.71 A clear case is recorded in 1002, when Ealdorman Leofsige of Essex slew the king’s high-reeve, Æfi c, ‘in his own house, without warning’.72 What lay behind Leofsige’s murderous assault is unknown, but disputes over property could easily escalate into violence; in the 990s, the widow of Wulfbald of Brabourne (Kent), an estate which had been the subject of a family wrangle, ‘went along with her son and slew Eadmær the king’s thegn, Wulfbald’s uncle’s son, and his fi fteen companions (geferan) on the estate (land) of Brabourne’.73 Even kings were not immune from physical violence; in 946 Edmund was stabbed to death at Pucklechurch, Gloucester, by a thief who had attacked his steward (dapifer).74

In such uncertain times, an effective bodyguard was an absolute necessity both at home and abroad; Wulfstan cantor, writing in the 990s, describes an ealdorman riding out ‘attended by a large mounted company’.75 Ealdorman Byrhtnoth is alleged to have refused the hospitality of the abbot of Ramsey because it was not extended to his commilitiones, saying that since he did not intend to fi ght without them he would not eat without them either, and Byrhtnoth’s contemporary Ælfhelm polga left half his stud at Troston to ‘my companions who ride with me’ (minan geferan healues þe me mid ridað).76 The Bayeux Tapestry shows us Harold, dux Anglorum, riding to Bosham with his milites, recalling the ideal picture of a nobleman in the Old English Maxims: ‘a nobleman (eorl) goes on the arched back


of a warhorse, a troop of horsemen (eored) must ride in a body’.77 Riding in their lord’s entourage was a duty required both from the thegnly members of his hired,and from the non-noble free men.78 The better-off hiredmenn probably owned their mounts, but others were horsed by their lords; Bishop Ælfwold left to each of his hiredmenn ‘the mount which I have lent him’, and Godric Odda’s son, the traitor of Maldon, had been given ‘many a horse’ by the lord he betrayed.79 The necessity to provide for a mounted escort perhaps explains the prominence of horses in some aristocratic wills. Wulfgeat of Donington (Shrops) not only left ten mares with their colts (x mæran mid x coltan) to the king as part of his heriot, but also bequeathed six more mares with their colts to Brun, ‘in gratitude’, and divided ‘the remaining horses’ (þa hors þa þe þær to hlafe) equally between his wife and daughter.80 Bishop Ælfwold of Crediton left to the ætheling (unnamed but almost certainly Æthelstan) ‘the wild horses on the land at Ashburton’ (þæra wildra worfa æt Æscburnan landa), and Æthelstan himself maintained a stud at Coldridge (Wilts.).81 Some of the mounts distributed in his will may have been bred there, but the two horses left to his father the king had themselves been gifts to the ætheling, from Thurbrand and Leofwine respectively.82 Presumably royal and aristocratic households included men specifi cally charged with the care of the lord’s stables; few are named, but the deaths of two cyninges horþegnas(marshals), Ecwulf and Wulfric, are recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.83

Wulfsige of Donington’s legatee Brun, who received some of his lord’s breeding-mares (see above), may been in charge of Wulfsige’s stud.

The lord’s hiredmenn did not act only as his bodyguard, they also carried his messages and ran his errands. Archbishop Wulfstan described how the lesser thegn, ‘who attended his lord in the king’s hall, and had thrice gone on his errand to the king’, could thereafter represent his lord in legal proceedings.84

In 896, Ecglaf, geneat of the Mercian thegn Æthelwold, rode the boundaries of a disputed estate at his lord’s command, as did the geferan (companions) of the Worcestershire thegn Wulfstan in the early eleventh century.85 When in the late tenth century, the pigs of Æthelwine, son of Ealdorman Æthelmær of Hampshire, were stolen by Æthelsige of Dumbleton (Glos.), Æthelwine’s men ‘rode thither and brought out the bacon from Æthelsige’s house’, and in the middle years of the eleventh century, Toki of Halton (Bucks.) sent his cnihtas Sexi and Leofwine on a more peaceful mission to re-negotiate the terms of his lease with Eadsige, archbishop of Canterbury.86 Such men were vital to the greater thegns, the proceres, whose estates might be widely scattered over one or more shires, ‘each at the end of a long muddy track’, and who therefore needed ‘men to ride to and fro’, conveying their orders and checking on their possessions.87 Their counter-parts in the king’s services were the ‘errand-bearers’ (ærendrecan) who appear from time to time, carrying royal orders and edicts, or collecting his dues.88 In 1041, two of King Harthacnut’s housecarles, Feader and Thurstan, were killed


in the course of duty, attempting to collect geld from the recalcitrant citizens of Worcester.89

In return for the services which they rendered to their lords, the hiredmennreceived his ‘protection’ (mund), recognized in the lord’s right to compensation (manbot) if one of his men should be killed.90 Such protection might involve patronage of an indeterminate nature, but tangible benefi ts included food and clothing, arms and armour, horses and, of course, land.91 The obvious way for the thriving ceorl of Geþyncðu to obtain the fi ve hides of land needed to become a thegn was to ‘earn’ it from a lord by faithful service; as Archbishop Wulfstan wrote elsewhere, a ceorl could become a thegn by an earl’s gift.92 Lords were also obliged to furnish legal security for the men of their households.93 The purpose was to secure justice if a man was involved in criminal activity, but lords might also support their men in legal actions (and vice versa). Powerful lords might indeed exercise undue infl uence, to the detriment of the judicial process. It was ‘by force and the power of himself and his lord’ (my italics) that Sigmund, a retainer (miles) of Earl Leofric, so burdened the Church of Worcester’s estate of Crowle (Worcs.) with claims and suits that the monks were forced to lease it to him.94 Legal codes not infrequently specify penalties for lords who support, or fail to punish wrongdoing among their men; King Æthelstan legislated against the lord who ‘refuses justice and upholds his guilty man’, and Æthelred laid down hefty fi nes for lords who advised their men to evade justice.95 Such edicts had only a limited effect. When, in Æthelred’s reign, a stolen bridle was found in the possession of a certain Leofric, his three lords, brothers sharing a dwelling at Ardley (Oxon), were involved in a full-scale brawl with the bridle’s owners. Two of the brothers were killed, but despite the fact that they perished fi ghting in support of a hand-having thief, the reeve of Oxford allowed them Christian burial, and when the local ealdorman protested, the king not only upheld the action of the reeve, but granted him the brothers’ forfeited estate at Ardley.96

Powerful lords who protected wrong-doers among their own men are not found only in pre-Conquest England, but their activities do provide an antidote to the king-centred perspective of most of the surviving evidence.

Among the intangible benefi ts of commending oneself to a more powerful lord was status. A man’s standing depended, in part at least, on that of his lord; as we have seen, a king’s thegn outranked a median thegn (commended to a lesser lord), even if their landed resources were broadly comparable.97 But land did play a part in the determination of status, and one of the rewards which a man hoped to gain by faithful service was a grant, ideally a permanent grant of land. This must be the subject of its own chapter.


5

Lords and Men (2): Land, Tenure and Service

Every man hopes, when he has built a dwelling-place on land loaned from his lord, that he may rest upon it for a time and hunt and hawk and fi sh

… until through his lord’s kindness he has earned bookland and perpetual possession.

KING ALFRED, Soliloquies1

At some time in the Confessor’s reign, a Suffolk free man called Brungar was found in possession of stolen horses. Little Domesday, the source of our information, reveals that he held a manor at Aveley, assessed at a single carucate, over which the abbot of Bury St Edmunds had sake and soke (soc et saca).2 The abbot duly came to the ensuing plea, held before the double hundred of Babergh, in which the manor lay. So did the royal staller Robert fi tzWymarc, to whom Brungar was commended. The outcome was apparently a compromise, for the participants departed ‘in a friendly fashion without any trial that the hundred saw’ (amicabiliter sine iuditio quod uidisset hundretum).

The roles of Robert fi tzWymarc and the abbot of Bury illustrate two of the three varieties of lordship identifi ed by F.W. Maitland: ‘we may distinguish three different bonds by which a man may be bound to a lord, a personal bond, a tenurial bond, a jurisdictional or justiciary bond’.3 It was the fi rst which bound Robert fi tzWymarc and Brungar. Robert was Brungar’s lord, but the relation-ship between them was (in Little Domesday’s phrase) ‘only commendation’ (commendatio tantum). Robert’s presence at the hundred court was presumably occasioned by the lord’s obligation to provide surety for his man (see previous chapter). Had there been a judgment against Brungar, however, Robert would have had no share in any judicial fi nes or forfeitures involved; that share belonged to the abbot of Bury, to whom sake and soke over Aveley belonged. The abbot’s rights, which were over the land, not over the man who held it, represent Maitland’s ‘jurisdictional or judiciary bond’.4

Neither commendation nor soke per se gave the lord title to his man’s land; Brungar, though only a minor free man, held the manor of Aveley with the soke (cum soca), in this context meaning with full rights of ownership.5 When, in the 950s, Æthelstan of Sunbury commended himself (gebeh under) Wulfgar of Northheallum, Wulfgar did not thereby gain possession of Sunbury.6 Only


if the man commended his land as well as himself did it pass into the lord’s ownership, as when, at about the same time, the Kentish thegn Ealdred Lyfi ng’s son commended himself with his land at Cliffe (gebeh … mid lande) to Abbot Wulfric of St Augustine’s. Even so, Ealdred continued to hold the estate at Cliffe, paying a pound annually, on the understanding that at his death it would pass into the abbey’s possession.7

Ealdred was in a similar position to the man ‘on land loaned (læne) from his lord’ envisaged in King Alfred’s words quoted at the head of this chapter, except, of course, that he had no hope of gaining ‘perpetual possession’ (æce yrfe); indeed the agreement was designed to ensure that the land would pass to his lord after his death, and was in effect a post obitum bequest. King Alfred was referring to a different situation, pointing up the distinction between lænland (‘loanland’), held from a lord for a fi xed term (albeit sometimes as long as three lifetimes), and bocland (‘bookland’), granted by a royal diploma (boc), in perpetuity, with full rights of disposition for the benefi ciary. An apparent exception is a charter in the name of Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians (d. 911), but he and his consort Æthelfl æd operated as virtual kings within their territory, though under the over-arching authority of Æthelfl æd’s brother Edward, king of the Anglo-Saxons.8

Unlike the royal diplomas which grant bookland, the charters which convey lænland are nearly all ecclesiastical.

Royal grants of lænland are uncommon, but one of the earliest grants of lænland occurs in a charter of King Offa of Mercia, which, though cast as a diploma, is in effect a three-life læn to the thegn Osberht, his wife, and ‘a son or daughter if one should be born to you’ (si contigerit ut vobis fi lius aut fi lia nati fuerunt).9 Kings also made læns from church land, usually with the consent (not always willing, one suspects) of the institution concerned. King Alfred, for example, granted land at Chelworth (Wilts.) for four lives to his thegn Dudi, with the consent of the community of Malmesbury and with reversion to that church.10 Such direct evidence of non-ecclesiastical grants of lænland isscarce, presumably because if the land concerned did not eventually come into ecclesiastical hands, the documentation was not preserved. It is only because Wouldham (Kent) eventually passed to Rochester Cathedral Priory that an almost textbook example of the transition from læn to ‘perpetual possession’ is preserved; a memorandum from the church’s archive reveals that Wouldham had been bought from King Edmund by the thegn Ælfstan, but only after he acquired a diploma from Edmund’s nephew and successor, Eadred, did he hold it ‘as a perpetual inheritance’ (on æce yrfe).11

Most references to royal lænland are made only in passing. In what is effectively a two-life læn, King Æthelwulf granted Stanton (Wilts.) to his thegn Cenweald and then to Cenweald’s son Cenfus ‘if he could serve and obey the king’.12 In the early tenth century, Denewulf, bishop of Winchester, leased

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Beddington (Surr.) to King Edward the Elder for his lifetime, ‘to use yourself or to let on lease (to lænnenæ) to whomsoever you please’.13 A possible reference to a single-life lease appears in the will of the bishop’s contemporary, Ealdorman Ælfred, who bequeathed three hides of bookland to his son with the request that the king would allow him the folcland as well.14 A later ealdorman, Æthelwold (fl . 940–46), having distributed his booklands, requested that his lænlands too might be disposed of in accordance with his wishes, and though it is not actually stated that the lænlands were held of the king, this is the implication; when the ætheling Æthelstan (d. 1014) made his will he asked the king’s leave to dispose of land at Morden (Cambs.) ‘which my father (King Æthelred) let to me’.15

References to grants of lænland by laymen are even rarer than royal læns.One possible lay læn is preserved in a vernacular memorandum entered in a tenth-century gospel book, recording Ælfhelm polga’s grant of half a hide in Potton (Beds.) to his goldsmith Leofsige. Though no term is specifi ed – indeed Leofsige was to ‘dispose of [the land] during his life and at his death as pleased him best’ – the small size of the tenement, coupled with the fact that Ælfhelm continued to hold the manor of Potton (he disposed of it in his will without reference to Leofsige’s holding) suggests that he retained overall control.16 It is likely that transactions between laymen, including lænland grants, were rarely written down. Godric of Brabourne’s purchase of land at Offham (Kent) from his sister was recorded in a vernacular chirograph, but when Wulfstan of Dalham bought two hides at Swaffham (Cambs.) from Wynsige, there seems to have been no written record; when Wynsige disputed the sale after Wulfstan’s death, he was refuted not by production of any written agreement but by oral testimony citing the eight hundreds of south Cambridgeshire which had witnessed the transac-tion.17 Whatever the reason, most references to lay læns occur in the context of other transactions. The same Rochester memorandum which records Ælfstan’s acquisition of Wouldham (Kent) also reveals that his son and heir Ælfheah leased the estate (and others) fi rst to his brother Ælfric, than to Ælfric’s son Eadric, and fi nally to Eadric’s widow, before he resumed possession (feng to his læne) and bequeathed the land to Rochester.18 Other references appear in wills; in 1002 the Mercian magnate Wulfric Wulfrun’s son left his cniht Wulfgar an estate at Balterley (Staffs), ‘just as his father acquired it for him’ (or, for himself), and some 40 years later Leofgifu bequeathed to her reeve Godric the land at Waldingfi eld (Suff.) which she had previously let to him.19

King Alfred spoke of the tenant of lænland who ‘earns’ (gearnige) bookland from his lord, and in the hold-oath formula, the man expresses his willingness to ‘earn’ (earnian) his lord’s support.20 Ealdorman Æthelred granted Stoke (Glos.) to Cynewulf Ceoluht’s son for three lives ‘because he has earned (gearnode) it from the lord of the Mercians through due humility’, and a tenement in Worcester, loaned for three lives by Archbishop Oswald to his cliens Ælfsige, is described in


an endorsement as earningcland.21 The verb [ge]earnian, when used in relation to land, ‘probably refers to sub-tenure, and means “to hold land under some-one else”, possibly only when services were rendered in return’.22 Such services could include cash, either as a lump sum or an annual render. Ealdorman Æthelred’s charter reveals the price of 60 mancuses (£7½) paid by Cynewulf for Stoke, and the Kentish thegn Ælfstan paid 120 mancuses (£15) for Wouldham.23 Bishop Denewulf of Winchester loaned land at Ebbesborne (Wilts.) to his kinsman Beornwulf for a yearly rent of 45s, annual contributions for the repair of his cathedral church and churchscot, and his charter contains a thought-provoking clause forbidding anyone to eject the recipient or his heirs by offering a higher rent, so long as the dues were properly rendered.24 A charter of King Edmund loaning to a king’s thegn land at Wootton (Som.) belonging to Glastonbury specifi es an annual food-rent (feorm) to be paid to the church.25 This may be a recognition of Glastonbury’s ownership rather than the normal lænland dues, but these could involve food-rents; the Kentish thegn Ælfheah took (or intended to take) food-rents from the land loaned to his brother’s family.26

Most of the surviving læns are made by ecclesiastical landholders, and while the conditions imposed may not have been identical with those due to royal and lay landlords, they give a general idea of the services rendered. Oswald, as bishop of Worcester, granted land at Cotheridge (Worcs.) to his thegn Ælfric for three lives, on the condition that he should set aside two acres to supply churchscot.27

Churchscot was a specifi cally ecclesiastical render, but another of Oswald’s loans, of land at Thorne to his thegn Æthelstan for three lives, requires the recipient not only to render churchscot but also to work ‘with all his might twice a year, once at haymaking and the other time at harvest’.28 A later tenant of Worcester, Wulfric, held land at Huddington ‘serving as a peasant (rusticus)’, but Alric at Wolverton owed ‘all the customs of the feorm except rustico opera’.29 Presumably the thegns did not have to work in person, merely to supply their own subordinates to provide the appropriate labour; when Bishop Denewulf leased 40 hides at Alresford (Hants) to the thegn Alfred one of the requirements was that ‘when the need arises’, Alfred’s men ‘shall be ready for harvesting and hunting’. The other obligations were £3 rent (gafol) annually at the autumn equinox and churchscot.30

The bulk of the surviving ecclesiastical loans come from the archives of Worcester Cathedral Priory, and are preserved in its two early cartularies, the Liber Wigornensis which dates from the early eleventh century, and the one compiled by the monk Hemming in its closing decade.31 Most of the lænsrecorded in the earlier cartulary were made by Oswald, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York (961–92), and Hemming’s cartulary incorporates a letter to King Edgar ascribed, probably correctly, to Oswald, which sets out the services due from tenants of lænland within the triple-hundred of Oswaldslow, the core of the episcopal estates:


They shall fulfi l the whole law of riding as riding men should (omnis equitandi lex ab eis impleatur que ad equites pertinet), they shall pay in full all those things which justly belong to the rights of the same church … which in English are called churchscot and tacc, that is swinesceade (payment for pasturing pigs), and the other dues of the church … In addition they shall hold themselves available to supply all the needs of the bishop, they shall lend horses, they shall ride themselves, and moreover be ready to build bridges and do all that is necessary in burning lime for the work of the church. They shall at their own will (ultronei) make deer-hedges for the bishop’s hunting, and they must send their own hunting-spears to the chase … Further, to meet the many other wants of the bishop, whether to fulfi l the service due to him or to the king, they shall always, with due humility, be subject to the authority and will of that commander (archiductor)who presides over the bishopric, on account of the benefi ce (benefi cium) which is leased (prestitum) to them.32

Similar services were required from non-noble free men. The tract on estate-customs known as Rectitudines Singularum Personarum, composed probably in the mid tenth century and revised in the early eleventh, lists the obligations of the geneat, a free but not thegnly tenant:

He shall pay rent (landgafol) and payment for pig-pasturage (gærsswin) yearly and ride and carry and lead loads (ridan and auerian and laðe lædan), work, and entertain his lord, reap and mow, cut the deer-hedge and maintain the stall (sæte), build and hedge the manor-house (burh), make new paths for the vill, pay church-scot and almsfee, and perform heafodwearð and horswearð and go on errands far and near as he is bidden.33

In the more or less contemporary survey of Tidenham (Glos.), the geneat ‘must labour either on the estate or off the estate, whichever he is bidden, and ride, and furnish carrying-service (auerian) and supply transport (lade lædan) and drive herds and do many other things’.34 The Tidenham survey divides the land of the manor into inland (exploited directly for the lord) and ‘rented land’ (gafolland), the latter presumably held by the geneatas, since King Edgar enjoined mercy on the thegn whose geneatman had withheld his rent (gafol), ‘unless he prove obstinate’.35

The surviving leases imply that most of the tenants of Oswaldslow were thegns.36 In Archbishop Oswald’s letter, however, they are described as equites,‘riding-men’, presumably translating OE radmen or radcnihtas; on the eve of the Conquest, Leofwine, the bishop’s radman, held two hides at Bredon’s Norton, a dependency of the manor of Bredon, in Oswaldslow Hundred.37 In Domesday Book, radmen and radcnihtas are recorded in considerable numbers in the west midlands, from Herefordshire to the land ‘between Ribble and Mersey’, which later became south Lancashire.38 These ‘riding-men’ seem to be non-thegnly free men (though Earl Odda’s retainers, Ælfweard and Merewine, appear both as radmen and as thegns), and in 1066 the tenants of Oswaldslow included four


liberi homines with ten hides at Bishampton, part of the manor of Fladbury, rendering sake and soke, churchscot, burial fees, military service by land and sea (expeditiones et navigia), and pleas to the hundred (of Oswaldslow).39 It is because similar services might be imposed on both thegnly and free tenants that the line between them is so diffi cult to draw. The services demanded were ‘honourable’, that is, ‘they bring the person who performs them into close proximity with his lord’, and such service raised the status of the performer in line with that of the lord to whom it was rendered.40

The obligation of ‘riding’ involved guarding the lord. In the original text of Rectitudines, the duty of heafodwearð (‘guarding the head/chief ’) is imposed on the geneat, and in the section on ‘thegn’s law’ added in the eleventh century, it is due from king’s thegns.41 In the Domesday descriptions of some eastern shires, ‘guard-duty’ (inward) is frequently specifi ed as one of the customs owed to the king, at Fulbourn (Cambs), for instance, 26 free men (liberi homines) with four hides owed annually ‘twelve horses and twelve (spells of) guard-duty if the king should come into the shire’ (xii equos et xii inguardos si rex in uicecomitatu ueniret).42 The geneat of Rectitudines was also liable to horswearð, but this may be linked with the obligation of the Tidenham geneat to ‘furnish carrying-service (auerian) and supply transport (lade lædan)’, in which case packhorses rather than riding horses might be involved; in the Domesday texts, inward is frequently associated with avera, ‘carrying service, cartage’. ‘Carrying-service’, however, seems to have been imposed only on free men, not thegns; unlike heafordwearð,horswearð does not form part of the thegn’s obligations in Rectitudines.43

Closely associated with the duty of escort was attendance in the hunting fi eld; when the bishop of Worcester rode to the hunt, the tenants of Oswaldslow ‘sent their own hunting-spears (uenabula) to the chase’, presumably with men to wield them.44 Like the duties of escort and cartage, hunting services originated in obligations once due to the king. At Shrewsbury, 12 of the ‘better burgesses’ (de melioribus civitatis) formed the king’s guard (vigilantes) when he visited the city, and if he went hunting, those who had horses formed an armed escort. The advisability of such an escort is underlined by John of Worcester’s account of the death of Ealdorman Ælfhelm in 1006, murdered while hunting by Godwine porthund, carnifex (butcher) of Shrewsbury.45 Another concomitant was to undertake the lord’s errands. Archbishop Oswald’s letter does not specifi cally include the bearing of messages (earendian) but this was probably implied in equitandi lex; in Geþyncðu the thegn ‘who attended his lord in the king’s hall and had thrice gone on his errand to the king’ could thereafter represent his lord in legal proceedings.46 Free men as well as thegns could bear messages; and the geneat of Rectitudines was obliged to ‘run errands … far and near’. Thegns, cnihtas, radmen, and geneatas might all act for their lords as the royal errand-bearers (ærendwracan) did for the king.47


The lord’s hired probably also furnished the offi cials who oversaw his manors and farms. Ministerial offi cials might hold parcels of thegnland in return for their services, while the key offi cers, the reeves who supervised the estates, could be given reeveland for their support.48 Most Domesday references to thegnland relate to ecclesiastical estates, like the four hides of land at Cerne Abbas (Dorset) held by Brihtwine, who could not withdraw from the church of Cerne, but there are some examples of thegnland on lay estates, like Hatton (Derbys.), where 6½ bovates of sokeland and 1½ bovates of thegnland belonged to the manor of Scropton, held by Toki Auti’s son.49 Whereas lænland tended to consist of whole tenements (like manorial berewicks), thegnlands and reevelands were typically smaller parcels of land, held on a more precarious tenure; the East Anglian thegn Ketel bequeathed to his reeve Mann a life interest in the land which he had previ-ously let to him.50 Ketel also left his man Ælfwold a life occupancy on ‘the land let for services’ (earnungland) at Harling (Essex), and his uncle Edwin bequeathed to Leofric ‘the three acres on which he dwells’ (þo þre acres þe he on sit); before the bequests, presumably, the benefi ciaries had occupied the tenements at their lord’s pleasure.51 Other precarious tenures occasionally come to light. In 1050, Æthelric bigga granted lands in Bodsham Green and Wilderton (Kent) to St Augustine’s, reserving life-tenancies for two of his men, Wada miles and Leofwine freirage,who dwelt (sedeat) at Bodsham and Wilderton respectively.52 A few years earlier, Thurstan Lustwine’s son bequeathed to Bury the estate at Harlow, reserving ‘the homestead (toft) which Ælfgar occupies (on sit) and the spur of land which belongs to it’; even more tellingly, he left to Thurgot miles half a hide at Ongar (Essex) ‘on which Æthelstan dwells’ (þe Ælstan on sit), effectively granting the man as well as the land. He also bequeathed Weston (Colville, Cambs.) to his wife Æthelgyth, except for the land held by Sæwine to earninge, which was to belong to the manorial church (into tunkirke).53 In such contexts earnungland and land held to earninge probably imply thegnland, like the ten hides of earningland held by the abbot’s men at Bury St Edmunds.54

The precarious nature of thegnland is demonstrated by the use of the verb sittan, ‘to dwell [on]’ (Latin: sedere, manere) denoting the actual occupiers of the land, as opposed to those who owned it, and/or received dues from it; the literal meaning of gebur, denoting a free but dependent peasant, is ‘one who dwells [in a vill]’ (Latin villanus), and at some time in the Confessor’s reign, Siffl æd of Marlingford left to her tenants (lansethlen) ‘their homesteads (tofts) as their own possession’ (to owen aihte).55 Not all occupiers of land were of low rank; the Salisbury Oath of 1086 was sworn by ‘all the landsittende men over all England, no matter whose man’s men they were’.56 The Kentish folios of Domesday Book reveal that, on the eve of the Conquest, Godric lived (mansit) on 20 acres in the manor of Solton, which he held as his alodium, that is, the 20 acres belonged to him, though he may have owed service to whomever the manor of Solton


belonged (not recorded in Domesday). In a comparable entry on the same folio, Altet lived (mansit) at Leveburga (unidentifi ed), holding two acres in alodium,of the king in 1066, and in 1086 of Ansfrid de Cormeilles, who in turn held of the bishop of Bayeux.57 Such men are the equivalents of those described in the northern and eastern shires as sokemen, who held their own land, but owed rents and services to a lord.58 In Kent, their holdings are sometimes called ‘free land’ (libera terra); a half-sulung of libera terra at Stokenbury paid geld along with the manor of East Peckham (also in Kent), and its holder, Eadric, paid rent (scot) to the manor’s lord, the community of Christ Church.59 Similar tenures elsewhere in southern England are said to have been held ‘freely’ (libere, in alodium), or ‘in parage’ (in paragio), a word which denotes shared family land. Though free in the sense that the holders could dispose of them as they wished (within the limits of custom), and could commend themselves to whichever lord they chose, the land was still bound to make its renders to a lord, sometimes distinguished as the landlord (landhlaford, landrica); the package of associated obligations is summed up in Domesday’s phrase as ‘sake and soke and customary dues’: sac et soca et consuetudines.60

The obligations laid on lænland and thegnland had originally been rendered to the king, but a royal grant of bookland, which freed the benefi ciary from all service except military obligations (bridge- and burh-building and service in the host) and the more serious judicial fi nes, effectively meant that the recipient could intercept for his own benefi t the formerly royal dues. The customary renders from sokeland must also have originated in a royal grant.61 In 959, King Edgar granted to the matrona Quen land at Howden and Old Drax (Yorks.), whose bounds include the dependencies (heorað, tributary lands) of Howden which owed sake and soke (mid sace and mid scone) to the chief manor (heafoddene).62

Not all such grants, however, were recorded in a diploma (landboc). The bishop of Worcester’s rights in Oswaldslow were most probably conferred by Edgar, but it seems that no diploma was issued; when, in the twelfth century, litigation arose between the bishop and his community over partition of the dues, the monks of Worcester had to resort to forging a diploma in Edgar’s name to prosecute their claims.63 It remains the case, however, that whether a charter was issued or not, such grants could only be made by the king.

Whatever their origins, the renders from sokeland covered the same range as those due from lænland and the other dependent tenures; money-rents, agricul-tural services, repair of the lord’s hall and mill, and the like.64 All such service was due to the central manor of the estate, the heafodbotl (Latin: caput manerii), the site of the lord’s manor house (burh), whose hall defi ned the identity of the estate; Thurstan Lustwine’s son had two manors at Shouldham (Norf.), respectively described as ‘the estate at the north hall’ and ‘the estate at the middle hall’.65

But whereas lænland, thegnland and land held by other precarious tenancies


belonged to the lord, sokeland remained the property of its holders, who could, in Domesday’s words, ‘give and sell’ the land without hindrance, provided the services were maintained. The structure of such estates appears most clearly in the northern and eastern shires.66 The king’s thegn ‘who has his soke’ appears in the heriot regulations in Cnut’s Secular Code and lists of those with ‘sake and soke’ are included in the Domesday folios for Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire with Derbyshire.67 One of those who held sake and soke in Nottinghamshire was Toki Auti’s son, holder of a large estate spread over the shires of Northampton, Leicester, Derby, York and Lincoln as well as Nottingham, most of which passed after 1066 to William Alselin.68 The account of William’s Nottinghamshire fi ef clearly describes the manorial centres once held by Toki, with their associated sokelands; to give a single example, Laxton, assessed at two carucates, had sokeland in nine other vills, three of them specifi cally said to be held by sokemen.69 Such examples could be multiplied ad nauseam, but manors of this kind are not confi ned to the regions once settled by Scandinavians; the Kentish folios of Domesday Book also contain a list of those who held sake and soke over their lands in West Kent.70 Even where the terminology differs, estates of the same nature can be identifi ed. The manor of Tewkesbury (Glos.), held by Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, is described in detail in Domesday Book.71 It was assessed at 95 hides, plus an unhidated ‘demesne’ (?inland), consisting of land for 12 ploughs at Tewkesbury itself; this was the centre of the estate (capital manerium) the site of the lord’s manor-house.72 Forty-fi ve hides were ‘in demesne’, spread through seven dependent vills, which elsewhere would have been called berewicks; some of this demesne was held by radmen. Twenty hides belonged to the minster at Stanway, described as ‘the church of Tewkesbury’, and a further 30 hides, which were not demesne, lay in the vills of Hanley, Forthampton, Shenington and Clifford Chambers; no tenants are named for the pre-Conquest period. These 50 hides (the 20 attached to the church and the four non-demesne tenements) ‘made the 95 hides which belonged to Tewkesbury quit and free from all geld and royal service’; the demesne hides were ‘exempt from all royal service and geld, except the of the lord to whom it belongs’, Brihtric Ælfgar’s son. In effect, Brihtric had sake and soke over the manor (soon to become the hundred) of Tewkesbury, and over its dependencies at Hanley, Forthampton, Shenington and Clifford Chambers, which in the eastern shires would probably have been described as sokeland.

No diploma exists for Brihtric’s manor of Tewkesbury, and perhaps none ever did; the manor seems to have originated in a re-distribution of family land orchestrated by his grandfather, Æthelweard mæw.73 Many lay estates, whether held by great earls or minor thegns, must have been not bookland but folkland, either inherited within families, or on loan from the king; much of the comital land held by the great earls of the Confessor’s day was probably held on such


a temporary basis.74 While bookland and lænland are both well documented, folkland, being intrinsically unlikely to be the subject of written agreements, has proved elusive.75 Aristocratic wills, which relate to the eastern shires as well as the south and west, are no help, since what they bequeathe is bookland; folkland by its nature passed according to custom. The bias in the sources towards bookland, whatever the cause, means that the proportion of the wealth of a given thegn which came from folkland as opposed to bookland is unknowable; it might, however, have constituted a large, perhaps the largest part of his holding.76

Even though it may not have played as great a part in the construction of thegnly wealth as is sometimes supposed, bookland remained a valuable asset, both because the recipient could dispose of it freely, and because it signalled his relationship with the king.77 King’s thegns are never explicitly defi ned as holders of bookland, but both were subject only to the king’s jurisdiction; none could have soke over a king’s thegn except the king himself, and the king had all fi nes incurred by holders of bookland.78 Land was what men expected to receive from their lords, and, to judge from King Alfred’s words cited above, what king’s thegns most wanted was bookland, confi rmed by a royal diploma. The heyday of such diplomas is (roughly speaking) the tenth century (c.930–c.1020). The reasons for this are still obscure, but may have to do with royal policy, at least in the West Saxon heartlands. The expanding kingdom needed offi cials and administrators to convey (if not enforce) the king’s commands, and such offi cials had to be rewarded. The word ‘thegn’ never lost its connotations of service, especially evident in the case of the modestly endowed thegns of the West Saxon heartlands, Berkshire, Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. Here king’s thegns (taini regis) are recorded in large numbers, most of them with small amounts of land, many still holding it in 1086. Modest though their holdings might be, they were king’s men, elevated by their service to their royal lord and the landed estates which this had brought them.79

6

Displaying Status (1): The Rich Man in his Burh

It came into his mind that he would command the construction of a huge mead-hall, a house greater than men on earth had ever heard of … Boldly

the hall reared its arched gables.

BEOWULF1

In 679, Æthelred, king of the Mercians, and Ecgfrith, king of the Northumbrians met in battle near the River Trent; Æthelred was victorious, and though Ecgfrith escaped, his brother, Æfwine, was among the slain.2 Bede, in his description of the aftermath, recounts the story of one of Ælfwine’s retainers, the thegn (miles) Imma, who was left for dead on the fi eld and recovered only to be taken captive by the followers of one of King Æthelred’s companions (comites). When asked to account for himself, Imma answered that he was a poor man, a peasant (rusticus), and had only been bringing supplies for the Northumbrian host; he was therefore not killed, but merely enslaved. Soon, however, ‘those who watched him closely realized by his appearance, his bearing and his speech (ex vultu et habitu et sermonibus eius) that he was not, as he had claimed of common stock (de paupere vulgo), but an aristocrat (de nobilibus)’.

The rest of Imma’s story – the forbearance of the comes in selling him to a Frisian trader rather than killing him, the raising of his ransom and his eventual return to his Northumbrian kin – is not germane to the present context. What is of interest is the assumption that a man of aristocratic birth could be distin-guished from a peasant by the way he looked, the way he spoke and the way he carried himself. Even more interesting is that the story makes no such distinction between Imma and the anonymous Mercian comes into whose hands he had fallen. Their circumstances were very different. Imma was a young man without land or resources of his own, lost outside his lord’s warband, while the comes had his own following, a house where Imma was held captive, and (by implication) land enough to support himself and his men, but both were aristocrats: nobiles.Imma’s story prompts comparison with the tale of Earl Tostig’s miles et comesGospatric, who, when his lord’s party was attacked during a pilgrimage to Rome, pretended to be the earl, so that his lord could save himself. Gospatric’s claim was believed ‘because of the luxury of his clothes and his physical appearance, which was indeed distinguished’(pro ornatum uestium et situ corporis ut erat


egregii).3 But there is a subtle difference between the stories; even in captivity and in disguise, it was plain to those with eyes to see that Imma was nobilis, whereas, though Gospatric was also ‘distinguished’, it was his rich clothing which made his claim credible.4

The establishment of different degrees of nobilitas was a long drawn-out pro-cess, not complete in England until the fourteenth century.5 A step along the way is the appearance in the years around the fi rst millennium of a ‘lesser nobility’, men whose wealth was modest but who commanded a thegn’s wergeld.6 A few such men are visible in the earlier sources; the reeve (praefectus) Hildmær and the gesith Hemma, both of whose wives were healed by St Cuthbert, each had a residence in which they dwelt with their families, but it is probably signifi cant that in neither case are the houses located in a specifi c place.7 It is only in the tenth century that such fi gures become common, and their holdings fi rmly delimited, as royal diplomas grant estates ‘assessed in smaller numbers of hides to lesser people’, whose detailed boundary clauses refl ect ‘a society of small proprietors, ready to quarrel over rights which earlier landlords had been content to leave vague’.8 The break-up of large estates into small, compact holdings was a European phenomenon, marking the switch from a tributary economy, in which food-renders were collected at a central place from scattered farmsteads, to a system of manorial exploitation, marked by communal agricultural produc-tion in nucleated villages. In Europe these developments were linked with the privatization of public authority in the hands of local magnates (the ‘feudal revolution’), but no political fragmentation occurred in England, where royal power remained intact.9

The distribution of written sources favours Wessex and south-west Mercia, but even outside this charmed circle the same processes were at work. In the north and east, where the king was rarely seen, and diplomas correspondingly few, large manors with dependencies in several vills were divided unit by unit, so that the new estates preserved the tenurial patterns of those out of which they were carved.10 There are suggestions of deliberate planning in southern England too; in places where enough diplomas survive for blocks of neighbouring estates to be investigated, their boundaries appear to have been drawn so as to give each new holding a share in local resources, such as water-meadows, arable land and hill-pasture.11 The underlying reasons for this phenomenon are still not clear, though the division of inheritance by heirs probably played a signifi cant role, but the picture revealed by Domesday Book is unequivocal; by 1066, it is the small landowners who are the more numerous, from Kent to Yorkshire and from East Anglia to the borders of Wales.12 Of the 4,000–5,000 individuals named as landholders on the eve of the Conquest, only about a hundred (including the great earls) held the 40 hides needed to qualify as proceres, and fewer still held lands across the whole kingdom; most landholders were local men.13 Manors still

D I S P L AY I N G S TAT U S ( 1 ) : T H E R I C H M A N I N H I S B U R H 87

varied greatly in size and structure, from Tewkesbury (Glos.), whose 95 hides were scattered all across Gloucestershire, to the 60 acres at Shotley (Suff.) which were held ‘as a manor’ (pro manerio) by Ceolwold, commended to Ælfric Wihtgar’s son.14 While it would not be correct to say that the greater men held the larger manors, the converse, that few lesser thegns and free men held large manors, seems to hold true. The manors of such lesser landholders also tend to be concentrated within a smaller geographical compass than those of the great lords.

Such small, compact holdings provided the economic base for the emergence of local, resident proprietors, ‘the middle ground between Dives and Lazarus’.15

Some social repercussions might be expected. The appearance of king’s thegns whose status depended on service rather than land or birth may have been re-sented by those magnates whose rank derived from inherited wealth and ancient (in some cases royal) lineage.16 Archbishop Wulfstan certainly had occasion to reprove great laymen who looked down on bishops and priests from more modest backgrounds, reminding them that God could make a shepherd-boy (David) into a king, and a fi sherman (Peter) into the greatest of bishops.17 The same attitudes perhaps applied to prospering free men as well; the insistence in Norðleoda lagu that a ceorlisc family must maintain the property qualifi cation (fi ve hides of land) for three generations for the offspring to be regarded as a thegn (gesiðboren) suggests a desire to close ranks against intruders.18 A similar stipula tion is found in Conrad II’s legislation for north Italian vavassors in 1037 but this concerns the ability of the vavassor’s grandson to render the correct heriot, thus entitling him to his benefi ce; this would not have suffi ced in England, where rank followed land, not military equipment.19 The crisis caused by the Danish incursions of King Æthelred’s day might have put ‘aristocratic’ weapons into the hands of those ordinary free men who followed their lords into battle, but ‘even if he prospers so that he possesses a helmet and a coat of mail and a gold-hilted sword, if he has not the land, he is a ceorl all the same’.20

By the middle of the tenth century, status was suffi ciently important to fi gure in royal legislation. In his fourth code, King Edgar commanded that the rights of the laity (woruldgerihta) be maintained ‘as they can be best devised’, adding that his thegns ‘are to have their rank (scipe) in my lifetime as they did in my father’s’.21 The matter became urgent during the Danish incursions in his son’s reign. The warfare of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries was not merely disruptive in itself; increasingly large and frequent tributes and taxes were raised, either to pay off successive waves of invaders or to defend the country against them, and both bore hard on even the richest landowners.22 At the end of the eleventh century, after the greater disaster of the Norman conquest, the monks of Worcester still remembered this ‘great tribulation of the fatherland’ (magna turbatio patriae), and the losses sustained by their church, for if the tribute on an estate was not paid on time, covetous men could hand over the outstanding


sum and claim the land for themselves.23 If a church as rich as Worcester could feel the breeze, lesser landholders must have been cut to the bone.

Nor was it only wars and taxes which they had to fear. Poor harvests and cattle-plague were endemic, so that only the worst outbreaks are recorded. The ‘great famine’ of 976 was attributed to God’s wrath at the disturbances which followed upon King Edgar’s death.24 Even this was surpassed by the famine of 1005, ‘such that no man remembered one so cruel’, which was so severe that the Danish host which had been ravaging southern England for the past two years took itself home, presumably because supplies had dried up.25 Other natural disasters took their toll: on Michaelmas Eve (28 September) in 1014, ‘the great tide of the sea fl ooded widely over this country, coming up higher than it had ever done before, and submerging many villages and a countless number of people’.26

Archbishop Wulfstan provides a characteristically forceful vignette of the social chaos in the closing years of Æthelred’s reign, in his Sermon of the Wolf(Sermo Lupi ad Anglos), preached in 1014:

Though any slave runs away from his master and, deserting Christianity, becomes a Viking, and after that it comes about that a confl ict takes place between thegn and slave, if the slave slays the thegn, no wergild is paid to any of his kindred; but if the thegn slays the slave whom he owned before, he shall pay the price of a thegn.

Not only could a slave usurp his master’s rank, but the thegn could be reduced to servitude: ‘often a slave binds very fast the thegn who previously was his master and makes him a slave through God’s anger’.27 It is against this background of the world turned upside down that the signifi cance of Wulfstan’s works on status becomes clear; setting out as they do the lawful methods of social climbing and the proper observance of rank and precedence, they are part of his programme for the re-establishment of order after the Danish wars.28

The best known of Wulfstan’s tracts on status is Geþyncðu, the ‘promotion law’, in which the criteria for a ceorl aspiring to thegnhood include not only the requisite fi ve hides of land, but also a residence suitable to his new rank, described as ‘a bellhus and a burhgeat’.29 Two centuries earlier, the thegn Wulfheard of Inkberrow was negotiating with another bishop of Worcester for a suitable estate (lond), where ‘he could live honourably (mid arum) and have his dwelling (wic) in the residence (burh) during his life’.30 No standing example survives of such a thegnly dwelling, nor for that matter of an ealdorman’s hall, or a king’s palace. William of Malmesbury unkindly remarked that the English ‘in small, mean houses … wasted their entire substance’, unlike the Normans and Frenchmen who ‘in proud, great buildings live a life of moderate expense’.31

This opprobrium might be directed against the materials of construction, for pre-Conquest secular buildings are almost invariably built in timber (the OE word ‘to build’ is [ge]timbran), whereas by William’s time stone was used in lay as


well as ecclesiastical architecture. This cannot, however, be the whole story. Asser claims that King Alfred built ‘halls and chambers’ of stone as well as wood, and even speaks of stone-built royal dwellings (villis regalibus lapideis) ‘moved from their old positions and splendidly reconstructed at more appropriate places’; no such buildings have been identifi ed archaeologically, though the pre-Conquest palatium at Winchester was perhaps stone-built.32 Conversely, timber continued to be used throughout the Norman and Angevin period; even castles were not necessarily constructed in stone, many being built wholly or predominantly in wood.33 Nor was the castle the only form of secular architecture, for the English tradition of the great hall, surrounded by its subsidiary buildings, persisted well into the later Middle Ages, and though their chamber-blocks might be constructed in stone, the halls were still built of wood.34

Like its post-Conquest successors, the Old English manor house or, to give it its native name, the burh, was not a unitary structure but a complex of separate buildings linked by walkways, the whole enclosed within a ditched boundary-hedge or fence. Such a complex is described in Gerefa (‘the Reeve’), a tract on the duties of an estate-manager, put together in the eleventh century:35

[The reeve] can always fi nd something to repair in the burh – he need never be idle when he is in it … [he can] put the hus in good order, set it to rights and make it clean, and fence drains, repair breaches in the dykes, make good the fences (hegan godian), root out weeds, make walkways between the houses, make tables and benches, provide horse-stallsand maintain the fl ooring.

Gerefa’s picture is confi rmed by excavation. At the opening of the eleventh century, a thegnly residence within the walls of Portchester (Hants) comprised an aisled hall, orientated north–south, measuring 7.9m in length and 4.9m in width, while south-east of the hall and at right-angles to it lay a second, larger building (possibly the chamber or bur), measuring 12.5 by 5.7m. Facing this second building was what has been interpreted as a storehouse, and a well had been dug in the courtyard formed by the three structures. Another possible storehouse lay to the north of the hall, and in the angle between hall and chamber was a masonry tower. No trace of a defensive circuit was found, perhaps because the standing walls of the Saxon shore fort, whose watergate was refurbished about the same time, rendered such protection unnecessary.36 The buildings have been interpreted as the residence of a thriving ceorl, perhaps one of the three free men (liberi homines) who shared fi ve hides there on the eve of the Conquest.37 Portchester itself, however, was a burh in the urban sense, attached to the royal manor of Wymering, and it seems just as likely that this high-status dwelling was home to a royal reeve.38 Similar dwellings have been excavated all over the country, notably at Goltho (Lincs.), Sulgrave and Raunds (Northants), and Faccombe Netherton (Hants).39 To these may be added Water End West,


near Great Barford (Beds.), where rescue excavation has revealed a Middle Saxon settlement site remodelled in the late Anglo-Saxon period to include ‘four substantial post-built structures’, the largest of which (19m by 7m) included a porch, was internally partitioned (perhaps to separate animal stalls from the living quarters), and may have been two-storied. The site’s layout and scale ‘imply the home of an affl uent sokeman or perhaps even a minor manorial lord’; four anonymous sokemen held tenements in Great Barford in 1066.40 Bishopstone (Suss.) has been included for purposes of comparison, though this seems to have been an ecclesiastical manor; by the eleventh century it was a substantial estate, assessed at 25 hides, belonging to the bishop of Selsey, but there is no record of how or when it came into episcopal hands.41 It was a high-status site, the main focus of whose occupation was the tenth and eleventh centuries.42 The excavated buildings perhaps represent successive phases of a manor-house used by the bishop or one of his reeves, and the same may be true of the dominicumaedifi cium (‘lordly building’) at Pytchley (Northants), which before the Conquest was assigned to the upkeep of the monks of Peterborough.43

The word burh, the common name for such dwellings, implies defences, and the buildings were usually fenced and ditched. In the Old English poem TheWife’s Lament, the forsaken heroine is driven from her home to seek refuge in an eorðscræf (a cave or barrow), where ‘the burhtunas are overgrown with briars, the dwelling (wic) is joyless’. The precise meaning of the word burhtun is debatable, but in this context the woman is clearly contrasting the tangled undergrowth around her hole in the ground with the well-kept hedges surrounding the house where she used to live.44 From the early eighth century, fi nes had been levied for burhbryce, breaking into a fortifi ed residence, scaled according to the owner’s rank, king, ealdorman or thegn; the offence is contrasted with edorbryce, breaking into the fenced dwelling of a ceorl.45 A notorious case of burhbryce occurred in 786, when the ætheling Cyneheard surprised and killed his kinsman, King Cynewulf, in the royal burh at Meretun (possibly Martin, Dorset).46

The defences of an English burh may seem vestigial in comparison with the more heavily fortifi ed castles of the high Middle Ages, but they were probably adequate for their own circumstances They were certainly more than mere boundary-markers; at Goltho (Lincs.), the early tenth-century buildings stood within a banked enclosure, surrounded by a ditch up to 7ft (2.1m) deep and 18ft (5.4m) wide.47 It was on such works that the thegn’s dependants were required to labour. At Tidenham (Glos.) each dependent tenant (gebur) had to ‘fence and dig (tyne and dicie) one pole of the burh-hedge’, while in Rectitudines it was the free tenants (geneatas) who were obliged ‘to build and fence the burh’ (bytlian and burh hegegian).48 Their labour was organized by the manorial reeve, who, as we have seen, had to ‘repair breaches in the dykes’ and ‘make good the hedges (hegan godian)’. The site at Goltho was rebuilt and re-organized in the eleventh


century, while at Faccombe Netherton (Hants), the defences may have been strengthened at a similar period, perhaps in response to the Danish incursions of King Æthelred’s day.49

It is the defensive aspect of the burh which is emphasized in Geþyncðu, which characterizes its essential components as a bellhus and a burhgeat. The burhgeatcan scarcely be anything but the entrance-gate in the defensive circuit. Since the burh was the administrative centre of its estate, at which services and dues were rendered, the burhgeat was a symbol of lordly power; the king’s peace was measured ‘from the burhgeat where he is dwelling, on its four sides’.50

Though no standing burhgeat can be certainly identifi ed in a pre-Conquest context, some may be illustrated in the contemporary Bayeux Tapestry, and the form continued into the mid-twelfth century.51 The essential element of the design seems to be the large openings in the upper fl oors, perhaps leading to now-vanished wooden galleries, which ‘can only have been for the display of people or relics’.52 It was from such galleries, perhaps, that lords greeted their dependants at important moments in the agricultural and ritual year, just as kings seem to have presented themselves to their people at coronations and crown-wearings.53 Of all the manorial buildings, the burhgeat is the one most likely to have been constructed (at least partially) in stone, though the most promising example, the west tower of St Michael at the Northgate in Oxford, appears in an urban, not a rural context. Its nature and function are not unam-biguous, but one interpretation is that it ‘was originally a pedestrian gate-tower into the city, a burhgeat or secular tower’.54 By 1086 it was associated with the collegiate community of St Michael, but it might once have belonged to ‘some kind of offi cial residence … perhaps even the town house of the earl of Mercia or his reeve’.55

At Portchester (Hants), the fl int and mortar foundations of a similar tower, approximately 4m by 5m, were added to the existing complex at the beginning of the eleventh century. The position of the tower at Portchester, and the lack of a defensive enclosure (for which see above) precludes its identifi cation as a burhgeat, but it might well be a bellhus, like the wooden belfry 140ft (42m) tall associated with Adam of Cockfi eld’s manor house at Bury St Edmunds, in the time of King Stephen.56 Like the tower at Portchester, the Bury belfry is found in a semi-urban context, but a similar structure has been excavated at the rural manor of Bishopstone (Suss.). It seems to have been timber-built, though all that is left today is a cellar 2.7m square, with settings for massive wooden posts (sub-sequently removed) at each corner, and as at Portchester, it was axially aligned on two ‘hall-type’ buildings.57 It is natural nowadays to associate a bellhus with the belfry where the church peal is hung, but the original meaning was a timber tower used in siege warfare; the fi rst element of bellhus derives from the same root (beorgan, ‘to protect’) as the word burh itself.58 Local and manorial churches


seem not to have been provided with towers until the later eleventh century, and the connection between bells and belfries may not yet have existed; William of Malmesbury described how Bishop Wulfstan had a housing for hanging bells constructed above the roof of a church, but added ‘what is the right name for such a structure I cannot at the moment recall’.59 At the very least, the bellhus of Geþyncðu might have had more than one purpose.60

Archbishop Wulfstan emphasized the defensive aspects of the burh, but there was already a literary convention of defi ning such residences in terms of their other major components, the hall (aula, h[e]alla) and chamber (camera, bur).61

Asser refers to the ‘halls and chambers’ (aulis et cambris) built by King Alfred, who himself describes the parts of a royal dwelling as chamber, hall, threshing-fl oor and prison (bur, healle, odene, carcenne).62 The hall was the ‘public’ part of the burh, which defi ned the identity of the attached estate.63 Thurstan Lustwine’s son’s two manors at Shouldham (Norf.) were known as ‘the estate at the north hall’ and ‘the estate at the middle hall’, and possession of a hall (or a share in one) signifi ed the right to the enjoyment of customary services.64 The lady Wulfwaru, who died in the reign of Æthelred unræd, left her estate at Butcombe (Som.) to her son Wulfmær and her daughter Ælfwaru, with the instruction that they were to have half each, but to share the heafodbotl ‘as evenly as they can’.65 How this share-out was effected is unknown; the siblings may have occupied a single hall, or perhaps had one apiece, like the two anonymous brothers at Shalford (Surr.), each of whom had his own house (domus), ‘but nevertheless dwelt within one court (curia)’.66 Since the hall was the centre to which manorial rents and services were rendered, the intention was that Wulfwau’s children were to have equal shares in the profi ts of the estate at Butcombe.

Such stratagems are a reminder that estate (land) and residence (burh)went hand-in-hand; the radknights dwelling on the manorial berewicks of Tewkesbury (Glos.), and the 16 appurtenant burgesses dwelling in Gloucester, rendered their services and paid their rent to the court (curia) of the head-manor (capite manerium) at Tewkesbury itself.67 In Yorkshire, Earl Waltheof had a hall at Hallam, to which 16 berewicks (dependent settlements) were attached, the whole amount ing to 29 hides of geldable land, while another fi ve carucates in Attercliffe and Sheffi eld ‘are said’ (dicitur) to have been inland of Hallam.68 Only in exceptional circumstances was a place without a hall categorized as a manor. The abbot of St Augustine’s had ‘a manor without a hall’ at Selling (Kent), which was clearly a substantial estate, since it was assessed at six sulungs; there was also a church, which would not have been present on a minor tenement. The explanation may lie in the fact that ‘there is nothing in demesne’; the estate seems to have been in the hands of the 30 villani who are the only recorded population, and the 1086 value (₤13 5s) may be the sum paid in lieu of the profi ts of the estate. With no demesne, and no renders except an annual farm, the abbot had


no need of a hall; but there may once have been a manorial complex at Selling, for its name derives from OE sele (‘hall’).69

It is the administrative aspect of the burh, its association with lordship and the exercise of power, which explains why so many post-Conquest manor-houses and castles were raised on the same sites as their pre-Conquest predecessors. Because of this ‘great rebuilding’ (which affected ecclesiastical as well as secular architecture), any manorial dwellings visible today exist only as robbed-out foundation-trenches and empty post-holes, which may give some idea of the fl oor area of such buildings, but little hint of their actual appearance. Some, however, were probably substantial, even impressive buildings. If the remains of two stone structures excavated at Holm Hill, Tewkesbury, are indeed what is left of the ‘great house’ (magnifi cum domum) of Waleran, earl of Gloucester, destroyed in 1140, then the post-holes underlying their foundations can only belong to the hall (aula) of Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, which was still standing at the time of the Domesday survey. The stone buildings were axially aligned, a characteristic of pre-Conquest planning, so the timber buildings had similar dimensions to their post-Conquest successors; their height is unknown, but the remains suggest ‘a major timber building … of imposing scale and constructed on the edge of a scarp to accentuate its height’.70 Looking north-east from the highest point of the scarp, which itself commanded the approach from the south, Brihtric’s hall must have dominated the town that was beginning to form around it, as Hrothgar’s Heorot dominated the sea-coast of the Scyldings.

The hall as a symbol of authority makes frequent appearances in literary contexts, where it signifi es light, order and peace, a bulwark against the dangerous dark. It was in the hall that authority was displayed, gifts were given and friends encountered; it was at a feast in Heorot that Beowulf received Hrothgar’s gifts as thanks (premature as it turned out) for ridding the hall of Grendel.71 In the OE poem The Wanderer, the hero, driven out by his lord’s death from the hall, recalls ‘gifts of treasure and former hall-retainers’, and how ‘his lordly patron was wont to entertain him at the feast’.72 One of the best-known images of the hall occurs in Bede’s account of the discussion in the Northumbrian witan on the adoption of Christianity, put into the mouth of one of King Edwin’s lay councillors:

This, King, is how the present life of man on earth appears to me, in comparison with that time which is unknown to us. You are sitting feasting with your ealdormen and thegns in winter-time; the fi re is burning on the hearth in the middle of the hall, while outside the wintry storms of rain and snow are raging; and a sparrow fl ies swiftly through the hall. It enters in by one door and quickly fl ies out through the other. For the few moments it is inside, the storm and wintry tempest cannot touch it, but after the briefest moment of calm, it fl its from your sight, out of the wintry storm and into it again.73


Bede locates the discussion at York, but the image of King Edwin’s royal villa of Yeavering inevitably comes to mind.74 Here the fi rst ‘great hall’, associated with Edwin’s predecessor, King Æthelfrith, measured 25m in length and 11m in width; some estimate of its height is provided by the ‘king’s cauldron’ discovered at Sutton Hoo, whose suspension-chains would have required a clearance of 4.2m above fl oor level.75 The fi rst hall at Cheddar (Somerset), perhaps a hunting-lodge, was 24m long, and slightly bow-sided, 5.5m wide at each end and just over 6m in the middle; it may have been two-storied. By the 950s Cheddar was a royal palace, which may account for the demolition of the long hall in the later tenth century, to be replaced by a chapel and a smaller hall, 17m long and just over 9m wide.76 Such royal buildings presumably served as models for aspiring aristo-crats; the tenth-century hall at Sulgrave (Northants) measured 16.7m by 5.5m and was divided into two more or less equal halves, with a smaller room to the west; this opened onto a cobbled porch and faced a second two-celled building measuring 7.6m by 5.2m, perhaps a kitchen.77 The overall dimensions of the area demarcated by the post-holes beneath the stone structures at Tewkesbury were 40m in length by 8–12m in width, but these probably represented more than one building, perhaps a hall and chamber; the fi rst stone structure which replaced them was an aisled hall 30.5m long and between 13.5–18.5m wide, with a service block at its west end.78

By contrast with the ‘public’ hall, the bur (chamber) constituted the private apartment of the lord and his family. In 786, when the ætheling Cyneheard attacked his kinsman Cynewulf, king of the West Saxons, in his burh at Mereton (?Martin, Dorset), the king was entertaining a lady-friend in the bur; though he bravely defended himself, his companion’s screams did not alert the king’s entou-rage in time to save him.79 Presumably they were sleeping (or drinking) in the hall, which (implicitly) lay at some distance from the bur. In Beowulf, Hrothgar’s thegns likewise normally slept in Heorot itself, until the nightly visits of Grendel drove them out to seek for ‘sleeping-quarters … among the outer-buildings’ (bed mid burum).80 In the archaeological record, however, hall and chamber are usually adjacent, either on the same axis, as seems to be the case at Tewkesbury, or at right angles to each other, as at Portchester. At Sulgrave the bur may be represented by the stone footings which have been interpreted as ‘a cross-wing set at right angles to the axis of the main hall’, and at Goltho, ‘the hall and bower were juxtaposed but not actually touching’.81 Whatever the arrangement, hall and chamber were separate buildings.

The bur or chamber was a place where the lord could entertain his intimate friends and discuss private matters. Asser relates a conversion with King Alfred, while ‘both of us were sitting in the royal chamber’ (ambo in regia cambra resideremus); they were reading together, so books were presumably available, and since Asser, at Alfred’s command, recorded the passage they were discussing


in a quire which he prepared on the spot, pen, ink and parchment seem also to have been to hand.82 Asser gives the impression of a calm place of study and meditation, but, like his modern successors, even the king could not expect to enjoy peace and quiet for long; it was as Alfred was washing his hands in the bur at Wardour that a deputation of thegns arrived, asking for his judgement.83 Solitude was not a pleasure readily available in the mediaeval period, and complete privacy was rare enough to be noticed. Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, according to his biographers, had ‘in every one of his manors (in singulis uillis suis) … a little room (edicula)’ into which he locked himself after mass, in order to pray and meditate. This ‘private room’ (priuata domus) was associated with the bur (camera) but the passage (claustrum) linking them was known only to the bishop and his most intimate servants.84 The suggestion is of an inner chamber, with a lockable (perhaps hidden) door, and the existence of such separate rooms is implied by the internal divisions found in excavated examples of halls and chambers.85

Even without unwelcome intrusions, the privacy of the bur was limited. It was the place where valuable items were stored, in the keeping of the burþegnas, whose activities are illustrated by an apocryphal tale of Edward the Confessor, retailed (by Ailred of Rievaulx) as an example of the king’s sanctity. Edward, resting on his couch but unable to sleep, observed a servant repeatedly stealing from his money-chest, which had been carelessly left unlocked by a clerk; being a saint, he let the matter pass twice, and on the third occasion merely warned the thief of the approach of Hugo the chamberlain.86 The association between bur andcash is also found at a lower social level towards the end of the eleventh century, when Tovi, a minor Devonshire landholder, paid toll on the sale of a serf ‘within his bur’ (innan bure), presumably because that was where he kept his money.87

The connection appears in literary sources too; one of the riddles in the Exeter Book concerns ‘a bright ship of the air’ (usually assumed to be the Moon), laden with plunder which it intends to store in a bur within its byrig.88

Some chamber-buildings may have been two-storied. In his version of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, King Alfred writes of an argument rising ‘as on a ladder … until it stands fi rmly in the upper chamber (solar) of the mind’.89

The image implies an upper room reached from the interior of the building, but in the Bayeux Tapestry Earl Harold and his companions are pictured feasting at Bosham in a room supported on a pillared arcade and approached by an outside staircase; this has been interpreted as a fi rst-fl oor hall, but it could equally well represent a bur with an undercroft for storage.90 The Bayeux Tapestry is, of course, a post-Conquest source, but the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle relates how, in 977, ‘all the chief councillors of the English people fell from an upper storey (upfl or) at Calne, except that Archbishop Dunstan alone remained standing upon a beam; and some were very severely injured there, and some did not survive it’. When describing the same incident, William of Malmesbury renders OE upfl or


as solarium, an upper chamber, either over one end of the hall, or raised over an undercroft in a separate chamber-block.91 In the case of Calne, the former seems more likely, though a bur seems less appropriate for a conference of the witan than the hall itself; the Chronicle might, however, be referring to a more intimate conclave, involving only the more important councillors. Whatever the circumstances, the incident adds weight to the instruction in Gerefa to ‘maintain the fl ooring’ (see above).

Other elements of the aristocratic burh are revealed both in written sources and the archaeological record. One version of Geþyncðu mentions a kitchen, as well as a belhus and a burhgeat; in timber dwellings, a separate kitchen made for greater safety, if colder food. One of the buildings at Sulgrave, near to the porch of the aisled hall, was interpreted as a kitchen, and similar structures have been identifi ed at Goltho and Faccombe Netherton.92 The kitchen appears to have been a symbol of status (see Chapter 8), but more mundane buildings must also have been associated with the lord’s house. Stabling for the horses of the owner and his guests was an obvious necessity, and provision of horse-stalls was among the duties of the good reeve. Another essential element of any dwelling was the privy; the hunting-lodge which the twelfth-century tenants of West Auckland (Co. Durham) had to build for their lord the bishop included a privatum.93 In the second phase of the royal vill at Cheddar (c.930–1000), the privy was conveniently positioned just outside the west door of the hall, though in the tenth-century phase at Portchester, it was on the other side of the courtyard, while at Facombe Netherton, the privy was associated with the chamber-block.94

The burh must also have included agricultural buildings proper to an estate centre. Gerefa warns the reeve that ‘should he be disdainful or negligent to undertake and attend to what appertains to cow-shed and threshing-fl oor it will soon be apparent in what appertains to them in the barn’, and mentions the need to provide cattle-byres and pigsties ‘before too severe a winter may come’.95 The threshing-fl oor, for which the reeve had to provide a stove for the oven and kiln needed to process the grain, also makes an appearance in King Alfred’s descrip-tion of the ideal royal estate (along with hall, chamber and prison).96 Gerefa also mentions the hen-house, which may be represented at Cheddar by the composite three-celled structure associated with the tenth-century residence, which bears a strong resemblance to the fowl-house illustrated in the ninth-century plan of St Gall (Switzerland).97 The lists of necessary equipment which the good reeve should supply suggest other areas: dairy, granary, buttery (for the production and storage of drink), spence or pantry (for the furnishing of the hall and table), brewhouse and bakehouse. In the later Middle Ages such activities would normally be conducted within separate buildings; the appendages of the hunting-lodge which the peasants of West Auckland (Co Durham) had to build for their bishop included a buttery (butillera) and a spence (dispensaria).98 The evidence


of Gerefa shows that such functional areas were already established in the pre-Conquest period, but how this related to the actual buildings is another matter; some functions might be incorporated into a single room in the ‘service-end’ of a larger hall. One problem is that ‘very few estate farmsteads have been excavated on a suffi cient scale to recover evidence for all the structures’; at Grove (Beds.), there were no fewer than three courts, in which the lord’s accommodation (hall and chambers) was separate from the food-processing area (brewhouse and kitchen), with yet another enclosure for the barns.99

Rural vills might be centres of non-agricultural production. Gerefa reveals that the reeve might have craftsmen under him, and although the only examples given are a miller, a shoe-maker and a lead-founder, one of its lists contains numerous items of metalwork, which might imply the services of a resident or itinerant smith; a cache of objects buried in the demolished tower at Bishopstone has been interpreted as the stock of some such person.100 One of the subsidiary buildings at Faccombe Netherton has been interpreted as a ‘metalworking shop’ for the production of, among other things, jewellery; built of timber and measuring some 21.5m by 7.5m, it contained three large hearths and four smaller ones, one associated with crucible fragments, and another with a crucible containing traces of gold, set on a bed of charcoal. Other hearths, large and small, were found outside the building, the latter associated with copper-alloy waste, while the smaller hearths were perhaps used to melt metal and the larger to make the moulds used for casting.101 Faccombe Netherton is one of the few sites which can be associated with a known person, in this case Wynfl æd, who received it as her morning-gift, and left it to her son.102 Perhaps, like the Hertfordshire landholder Æthelgifu, Wynfl æd maintained a goldsmith in her household, though the hearths might well have been used by an itinerant smith.103

Wynfl æd’s will is particularly interesting for the items of clothing it mentions and the exceptional detail in which they are described. It is likely that most of them were made under her supervision, for among the slaves bequeathed in her will are ‘a woman-weaver and a seamstress’.104 Textile production was par-ticularly associated with women in the early Middle Ages, and early continental law-codes occasionally mention the buildings in which they wove cloth.105 One of the subsidiary structures at Goltho has been interpreted as a weaving-shed (though not all are convinced of this) and loom-weights were among the fi nds at Bishopstone; Gerefa too contains a list of ‘textile implements’, not including loom-weights.106

The version of Geþyncðu which includes the kitchen among the burh’s build-ings also mentions a church. The same age which sees the proliferation of ‘thegnly’ estates also witnesses the building, in increasing numbers, of churches to serve them, many of them forerunners of parish churches.107 Relations between churches and their lay patrons had been close since the beginnings


of Christianity in England. The earliest churches were founded and endowed by kings, but by the beginning of the eighth century aristocratic participation in the process was suffi ciently widespread to alarm Bede, who feared that the laity might exercise undue infl uence over the communities they favoured, to the detriment of the religious life.108 Certainly the endowment of churches was never a matter of simple piety; lay patrons expected some return, both in the spiritual fi eld (the prayers of the community in life, and burial in the church precincts in death) and in the material world (a say in the appointment of the community’s head, and some continuing interest in its land and property). It is possible that even in the seventh century some thegns founded small churches to serve their own estates, but the communities most visible in the surviving sources are minsters (monasteria), substantial communities of monks or (especially in the early period) nuns accompanied by priests, all of whom observed some kind of communal rule.109 The great age of minster-culture lay in the eighth century, and by the middle of the ninth, a process of impoverishment and retrenchment had set in, hastened (though not caused) by the Viking invasions. From the late ninth century, minsters and their estates were falling into lay hands, and by 1086 most of them, apart from those re-founded as Benedictine monasteries in the tenth century, had become ‘adjuncts of secular territorial centres [with] modest enclaves of land embedded in much larger secular estates’.110

Among the predators on ailing minsters and their lands were the West Saxon kings. The royal residence of Cheddar seems to have been established within the precinct of a minster, whose community, still in existence in the early tenth century, was eventually swallowed up by the king’s palatium, and where the king led, his greater thegns were sure to follow.111 Deerhurst (Glos.) is the most obvious example of a minster occupied by a secular magnate, for the topography suggests that Odda built his manor house in the south-western half of the precinct originally occupied in its entirety by the church of St Mary.112 A similar arrangement may have existed at Godstone (Surr.). This was a functioning minster in the 980s, when the Kentish magnate Brihtric and his wife Ælfswith left it ten hides at Stratton, but the same testators also left the estate (land) at Godstone and ‘what belongs to it’ (innon þæt gecynde) to their kinsman, Wulfstan uccea. By 1066, Godstone was a purely secular estate in the hands of the Kentish thegn Osweard and the former minster seems to have dwindled into a parish church.113 The same seems to have happened to the early minster at Wootton (Warks.), for the fact that Earl Leofric’s housecarl Vagn gave his name (Wootton Wawen) to the vill suggests that it was the site of his chief residence.114 Not all such takeovers were hostile, and some laymen revived the minsters which came into their hands.115 New minsters and colleges were also founded; the surviv-ing charter for Wolverhampton is not genuine as it stands but the place-name (‘Wulfrun’s homestead’) is shows the essential truth of the story that it was


founded and endowed by the rich midlands’ landholder, Wulfrun of Tamworth, mother of both Wulfric Wulfrun’s son (himself the founder of Burton Abbey) and of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria.116

It took the resources of kings and magnates to endow and support minsters, but lesser thegns could at least provide themselves with small churches for the use of their families and dependants. By the reign of Edgar, so many of these ‘estate churches’ (tunkirkan) had been built that the king had to legislate on the subject. Edgar’s second code lays down the proper distribution of tithe between minsters and the local churches established within their territories; the minster was to receive the full tithe from both demesne (inland) and tenanted land (geneatlande), but a thegn who had built on his bookland a church with an attached graveyard could divert one-third of his demesne tithe to it; if the church had no graveyard, however, the full tithe went to the minster, and the thegn could pay what he chose to his priest out of the remaining nine parts.117 By the early eleventh century, a hierarchy of churches was beginning to emerge; Æthelred’s legislation on sanctuary, reiterated by Cnut, distinguished between head-minsters (cathedrals), ‘rather smaller minsters’ (presumably the surviving old minsters and mother-churches), ‘still smaller minsters’ which nevertheless had graveyards, and ‘fi eld-churches’ with no graveyard; the fi nal pair are presumably to be identifi ed with the bookland churches found in the legislation of Edgar.118

The earliest thegnly churches seem to have been humble buildings, probably constructed in wood rather than stone, small in size and consisting of a single cell with no separate chancel and no tower. From the mid-eleventh century, however, churches were built (and rebuilt) in stone and on a more elaborate scale, with larger naves, separate chancels, decorative sculpture, wall-paintings and (eventually) western towers.119 Unlike great magnates, who tended to intrude their manor-houses into the precincts of the minsters they appropriated, thegnly churches are usually sited adjacent to the thegn’s dwelling, rather than within the manorial enclosure itself. In the best-excavated example, at Raunds (Northants), the fi rst church was built outside the ditch which enclosed the early hall and subsidiary buildings, and when, in the early eleventh century, it acquired a graveyard, the original manorial precinct was abandoned for a larger hall to the north.120 The church of Sulgrave likewise stands east of the post-Conquest ringwork within which the pre-Conquest manorial buildings lay, but even though the present building is later, its west door is still on the axis of the tenth-century hall.121

Some documentation still survives to throw light on the relations between thegns and their churches. About 1060 Oswulf of Studham and his wife Æthelgyth gave their estate at Studham (Beds.) to the abbey of St Albans; the land had been inherited by Æthelgyth from her previous husband, and is likely to have been her morning-gift.122 The couple retained a life-interest in the estate,


and the landlord, Abbot Leofstan, was to provide them with ‘timber for a church and all the [other] buildings in that manor’ (tymber to anre cyrican and to eallum gebytlum on þam ilcan tune). Oswulf and his wife also paid a pound of silver, and received confraternity with St Albans. Nothing survives today of the church which they built, but the present topography of the village, with the moated site of the mediaeval manor house lying to the south-east of the standing church (once dedicated to St Alban), suggests that the original layout of church and burh was similar to that already observed at Raunds.123 Oswulf was a wealthy procer, whose estate on the eve of the Conquest amounted to some 47 hides of land spread over four shires; it is interesting that he still sought the aid of Abbot Leofstan not only for the patronage but also the construction of his church.124

Some ten years after the foundation of the church of Studham, Ælfsige of Faringdon built a church at Longney-on-Severn (Glos.), which was dedicated (eventually) by Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester (see below). Unlike Oswulf of Studham, Ælfsige of Faringdon was one of those who prospered after the Norman Conquest.125 Before 1066 his identifi able land, apart from Longney, assessed at fi ve hides, consisted of four hides attached to Faringdon and two hides attached to Littleworth (Berks.). Both the latter had belonged to Earl Harold, and the fact that Ælfsige continued to hold his tenements when they passed into the hands of King William suggests that he had been in the earl’s service, possibly as reeve.126

His toponymic byname implies that he was overseeing Faringdon for the king in 1086, and it was presumably his managerial skills which ensured his survival. By the time of the 1086 survey, he had added a further 15 hides, in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire, to the 11 which he had possessed before, while his son Alwig held a messuage in Wallingford, given him by King William, and a hide in Milton-under-Wychwood (Oxon), of Earl William’s fi ef.127 In addition to what he held in his own right, Ælfsige farmed the royal manors of Great Barrington (Glos.) and Langford and Shipton (Oxon), as well as Faringdon itself. The combination of land and offi ce made Ælfsige a wealthy man, and he was perhaps also responsible for the fi ne Anglo-Norman church at Langford, though the two Anglo-Saxon roods inserted into its walls may have been commissioned by an earlier holder.128 Ælfsige would not have been the only thegn to establish or patronize churches on more than one of his manors; his contemporary, Cypping, had no fewer than fi ve churches on his estates, including Headbourne Worthy (Hants), which has a pre-Conquest rood, and Stratfi eld Mortimer (Berks.), where the inscribed grave-slab of his son Æthelweard can still be seen.129

Since Longney lay in the diocese of Worcester, it was to another English sur-vivor, Bishop Wulfstan, that Ælfsige turned to have his church consecrated. The bishop, however, objected to the presence of a huge nut-tree which overshadowed the building and demanded its removal. Ælfsige, who was accustomed to sit in the tree’s shade on fi ne days, drinking and dicing with his friends, replied that he


would see the church unconsecrated before he would have the tree destroyed. It is always unwise to argue with potential saints; Wulfstan cursed the tree, which died.130 There are obvious hagiographical elements to this anecdote (Christ’s cursing of the barren fi g-tree, St Boniface’s destruction of Thor’s oak) but it has some aspects of interest. The tale assumes that Ælfsige’s residence lay close enough to the church for him to use its precinct, and perhaps the building itself, for recreation; Archbishop Wulfstan lupus had specifi cally forbidden the use of churches for secular purposes, which itself suggests this was not uncommon.131

As for the nut-tree (presumably a hazel), its site may be indicated today by a mound on the south side of the church, near the pond between the churchyard and Manor Farm to the south.132 As Richard Morris has observed, ‘trees loom large in natural religion’, and though the usual suspects are oaks, other trees, notably ashes, yews (especially in the vicinity of churches) and nut-bearing hazels are especially prominent in Welsh legend.133 Indeed it is possible that it was the presence of the tree that determined the position of Ælfsige’s house and church. An eleventh-century manorial complex at Ketton (Rutland) is associated with an early one-cell church and a large tree, both of the latter being the foci of groups of graves, and it is not clear which feature was the earliest; it may be that the tree, as a sacred site, was the primary factor.134 If Ælfsige’s nut-tree too had been a centre of local piety, his refusal to fell it is understandable; Colman, Bishop Wulfstan’s fi rst biographer, records Ælfsige’s great love for the tree, and his regret at its loss.135

Like Ælfsige, Ælfric parvus had prospered after the Conquest, and for the same reason; he was a king’s thegn, whose services were valuable to his new master. Ælfric’s name was one of the commonest in eleventh-century England, but he held about six hides of land in Hampshire and Wiltshire, in conjunction with his (unnamed) father and his uncle, Godric the priest (see Table 6.1).136 The exten sion of the forest affected his estates, but he held the manor of Milford of the king ‘in exchange for the forest’ (de excambio foresta).137 He also held 1½ hides attached to the royal manor of Martock (Som.), and had acquired several other parcels of land formerly held by other Englishmen, in one case by purchase. By 1086 he was enjoying a modest prosperity, but it is not Domesday Book but an entry in the cartulary of Christchurch Priory which records his construction of a church at Milford, probably in the 1090s.138 Since Milford lay within the parochiaof Christchurch, Ælfric approached the minster’s dean, Godric, who agreed ‘on condition that Christchurch should lose nothing of its old custom, namely tithes and churchscot’. Ælfric gave half a virgate to the minster, and delivered the key of Milford church to the dean, in the presence of Walkelin, bishop of Winchester, who presumably performed the consecration; he also agreed that only his slaves and cottars (servi et cotarii) should be buried there, on payment of 4d. as burial dues (sepultura). In return, Godric provided a priest, who was

Hundred/Shire Vill 1086 Assessment Fo. TRE

Redbridge (Hants.) In foresta Æ petit claims 1 virgate 50v Colibertus

[no name] Alric 2 virgates 50v father/uncle Godric

Boldre (Hants.) Brockenhurst Æ [parvus] 1 hide 51 Father/uncle in parage

Cildeest Æ parvus 5 hides 51v Brihtsige

Througham Æ parvus 1 hide, 2 virgates 51v Himself in parage

Througham Hugh de Port 1 hide 51 Wihtlac in parage

Rowditch (Hants.) Milford Æ de excambio foresta 1 hide 51v Sæwulf de rege E

Efford Æ parvus 2 virgates 51v Father in parage

Utefel Æ, bought TRW 1½ virgates 51v Lyfi ng and Ketel

[no name] Alweald from Ælfric 3 virgates 51v Himself

Oxlei with Wihtlac in parage 2 hides 51v Bolla

Edgegate (Hants.) [no name] Æ. medicus and Wihtlac 8 acres 51v No tenant named

Stanpit Hugh de Port 1 hide 46v Wihtlac (aula)

Stanpit Hugh de Port 2 hides 46v Godric presbyter

Isle of Wight Yarmouth with Wihtlac in parage 1 hide, 2½ virgates 54 Themselves

Yafford with Wihtlac in parage 2 virgates 54 4 alodiarii

Table 6.1: The lands of Ælfric parvus.

Hundred/Shire Vill 1086 Assessment Fo. TRE

Wiltshire Tilshead Æ parvus 2½ virgates 73v No tenant named

Hilmarton Æ parvus 1 hide 73v No tenant named

Tockenham Æ parvus 1 hide 73v No tenant named

[no name] Æ parvus 1 hide, 3 virgates 73v 2 thegns

Somerset Martock Æ parvus [Exon: of Hampshire]

1 hide, 2 virgates 87 Queen Edith


to be provided with food from Ælfric’s table while he was resident on the estate; the priest ‘should wait suitably for service on Ælfric as his superior (maiorem)’, and accompany him to the hundred court when required. Godric duly appointed Æthelwig, a member of the Christchurch community, as Milford’s priest, but it is not clear whether he was to live permanently at Milford, or merely to ride out on occasion to say mass. Whatever the case, it is striking that he was expected to behave as Ælfric’s subordinate, ‘waiting on him respectfully, eating at his table, and attending him to the hundred’.139

The relationship between Ælfric parvus and his priest Æthelwig irresistibly recalls the later rhyme: ‘God bless the squire and his relations, and keep us in our proper stations’; indeed it foreshadows the long-standing alliance between the parochial clergy and the local squirearchy, which emerged in the later Middle Ages to dominate the course of English local history well into the modern period. It was the centripetal pull of this dual authority which helped to form the ‘typical’ English village, with fi elds radiating out from a group of cottages clustered around church and manor house. Of course the process varied from place to place according to the character of the land and the use to which it was put; ‘village England’ is largely confi ned to the midlands while the regions to east and west preserve even today a landscape of scattered farms and hamlets. It remains the case that the process of manorialization, with its concomitant depression of the peasantry into serfdom, affected virtually the whole country to a greater or lesser degree. The manors of the smaller landholders tended to be clustered in particular localities; unlike earls and proceres, with far-fl ung estates, members of the lesser aristocracy did not perambulate their estates, drawing on food-rents as and when required, but concentrated on the economic exploitation of the manors on which they were more or less permanently resident. Labour service on the lord’s inland was not, of course, new, but as landlords maximized their resources, the pressure on their dependent tenants grew more intrusive; the slaves and cotarii of Ælfric parvus were not only buried around his new church, but probably also lived around his manor-house. The contrast between the nobiles and the pauperes, already evident in the time of Imma, became ever wider and more apparent. This, too, was one of the consequences of the ‘rise of the gentry’.

7

Displaying Status (2): The Trappings of Authority

Indeed as they looked at the clothes of the king and his courtiers, woven and encrusted with gold, they considered whatever they had seen before to

be of little worth.1

Gold befi ts a man’s sword.2

The anonymous poet of the battle of Maldon recounts how, as Ealdorman Byrhtnoth lay dying on the stricken fi eld, ‘an armed man approached the earl; he wanted to acquire that warrior’s arm-rings (beagas), the robe and gold bands (reaf and hringas), and the ornamented sword (gerenod swurd)’. The ealdorman drew his sword and struck out at his mail-coated attacker, but another lithesman cut at Byrhtnoth’s arm, disabling him so that ‘the golden-hilted sword fell to the ground’, and Byrhtnoth was killed, along with the two warriors beside him, Ælfnoth and Wulfmær se geonga Wulfstan’s son. Who got the arm-rings, robe and sword we are not told, but one of the ealdorman’s own followers, Godric Odda’s son, escaped by stealing his lord’s horse with its tack (gerædum), an act which the poet considered ‘highly improper’, since he was not of suffi cient rank to ride such an animal decked out in such a way.3 Weapons, arm-rings, clothing, equipment, mount, all set the ealdorman apart from his followers, and declared his status.

Let us begin with the last item of spoil which the Viking hoped to acquire, Byrhtnoth’s sword. One would expect an ealdorman to carry a high-quality weapon, but it was the decoration as well as the killing-power which the Viking coveted; Byrhtnoth’s sword was fealohilte, ‘golden-hilted’.4 Such swords were symbols of rank; King Alfred’s version of Boethius pictures the retinues of ‘over-proud kings’ as ‘a great company of thanes who are decked out with belts and golden-hilted swords’.5 Gold-hilted swords continued to symbolize rank; the twelfth-century chronicler John of Worcester describes Earl Godwine’s gift of a warship to King Harthacnut, each of whose 80 warriors had ‘a sword with gilded hilts [and] a Danish axe bound with gold and silver hanging from the left shoulder’.6 The same tradition appears among Scandinavian historians; Sven Aggeson asserted that ‘only those men who … adorned the force of warriors by shining resplendent with gilded axe-heads and sword-hilts’ could form the inner core of the royal bodyguard, and Snorri Sturlusson recorded that King Æthelstan


presented his foster-son, King Hakon of Norway, with a sword ‘of which the hilt and handle were gold’.7

Such swords were not just literary conceits; among the gifts sent to Rome by King Alfred’s father, King Æthelwulf, was ‘a sword bound with purest gold’ (spata cum auro purissimo ligata), and Alfred’s grandson King Eadred bequeathed two golden-hilted swords (gyldenhilta sweorda) to the place where he wished to be buried.8 Sword-hilts decorated with gold, often accompanied by cloisonné garnets, are well known from earlier periods, but they were becoming rare in the ninth century, when gold was replaced by silver as the preferred medium for embellishment.9 The Abingdon sword, which dates from Alfred’s time, has a hilt adorned with sheet-silver mounts inlaid with niello, though the decoration of the pommel is fragmentary, and a sheet-gold fragment, found with the sword but now missing, may once have been part of it.10 On another late ninth-century sword, found in the River Witham near Fiskerton (Lincs.), the pommel, the guard and the three decorated bands which originally secured the now-vanished grip, are ornamented with silver inlaid with niello.11 Gold-hilted swords are virtually unknown in the tenth and eleventh centuries, though a sword found at Dybäck (Scania) and dated to around 1000 has a hilt whose upper and lower guards (the pommel is missing) are of cast silver with gilt ornamentation, and a grip bound with gold wire, held by an oval ring of gold wires twisted together.12 If Byrhtnoth’s sword really was fealohilte, it is likely to have been an heirloom rather than a recently made weapon. In this context, the aspirant ceorl of Norðleoda laguwho might own a gold-hilted sword sounds like hyperbole, but a spear inlaid with gold (goldwrekan) formed part of the heriot of the minor East Anglian thegn Wulfsige, whose will dates from 1022–1034.13

Most of the swords recorded in Old English wills form part of the required heriot, but some specifi c bequests are recorded. In the late 830s, the Kentish thegn Abba left his sword to Freothemund, who was to pay him ‘4,000’ for it; if 4,000 thrymsas is intended this was a very valuable weapon, since 2,000 thrymsaswas the wergeld of a Kentish thegn.14 King Alfred left his son-in-law, Ealdorman Æthelred of Mercia, a sword worth 100 mancuses (3,000 pennies or 600 West Saxon shillings), which was the wergeld of a lesser West Saxon thegn in Alfred’s law code.15 Ealdorman Ælfgar of Essex, Byrhtnoth’s father-in-law, left to King Edgar a sword worth 120 mancuses of gold (720s), originally given to him by his other son-in-law, King Edmund; the accompanying belt was adorned with £4 worth of silver.16 The golden belt (gyldenan fetels) which the ætheling Æthelstan bequeathed to the New Minster may have been a sword-belt, since it accompanied a sword with a silver hilt.17 King Alfred is said to have given his young grandson Æthelstan ‘a belt set with gems and a Saxon sword with a gilded scabbard’, and a scabbard ‘decorated with gold’ (auro nimium decorata) was among the gifts given to Romsey Abbey as the burial fee of King Edgar’s infant

D I S P L AY I N G S TAT U S ( 2 ) : T H E T R A P P I N G S O F AU T H O R I T Y 107

son, Edmund (d. 971).18 It may have been the housing for the sword bequeathed to the ætheling by his godfather Ealdorman Ælfheah (d. 971); Ælfheah also left to the king (Edgar) a seax whose scabbard was decorated with 80 mancuses worth of gold (£10).19 Another seax worth the same amount formed part of the heriot of the Kentish couple, Brihtric and Ælfswith, who bequeathed a second seax, worth £3, to their kinsman Wulfstan uccea.20 The sica, ornamented with gold and silver, which the priests of Horningsea stole from Thored Oslac’s son, was presumably also a seax, a single-edged sword or knife; ‘not a very practical weapon, but one that was probably used in hunting and was therefore redolent of aristocratic practice’.21

The value of the sword was enhanced by the decoration of its sword-belt and scabbard. In King Alfred’s reign, the thegn Helmstan stole ‘Æthelhelm’s belt’, clearly a valuable object, since its theft provoked a series of legal wranglings which lasted into the 920s.22 Æthelric of Bocking’s heriot included his belt (fetele) as well his sword, as did those of Ealdorman Ælfgar and the Kentish couple Brihtric and Ælfswith.23 Sword-belts were made of leather, which means that none survive intact.24 They are represented archaeologically by their buckles, mounts and strap-ends; a strap-end and decorative plaque of gilt silver, both with ‘portions of a leather strap still attached’, were found at Winchester in close enough proximity to suggest that they were from the same belt.25 Scabbards too might be valuable enough to be itemized in their own right; the heriot of Æthelwold, who died after 987, included two scabbards as well as two swords, and a third scabbard, presumably accompanied by a sword, went to his son.26 Scabbards were usually made of wood, sometimes bound with leather or fabric, and lined with fl eece to protect the blade.27 As with the belt, the value lay in the decoration, the chape (which fi tted over the point), the mount around the mouth, and the studs which held the straps by which the scabbard was fastened to the belt.28 The mount from the mouth of the Dybäck sword’s scabbard is still attached to the lower guard, and is similarly ornamented in silver decorated with niello, with a row of beaded gold wires twisted together along its upper edge; this is probably the closest we can get to the gilded scabbards of the æthelings Edmund and Æthelstan.

Æthelstan ætheling (d. 1014) distributed a number of swords.29 To his father King Æthelred he bequeathed ‘the silver-hilted sword which belonged to Ulfcytel’, while his brother Edmund received not only ‘the sword which belonged to King Offa’, but also ‘the sword with the pitted hilt, and a brand’ (presumably a blade without a hilt), and his brother Eadwig got a silver-hilted sword; Æthelstan’s burial fee to the Old Minster, Winchester, included his own sword-belt and ‘the sword with the silver hilt which Wulfric made’.30 It is Offa’s sword which has excited most comment; clearly an heirloom, it has been linked with the Avar sword given to Offa by Charlemagne, but since Offa probably possessed a number of swords ‘there seems no way to determine this’.31 ‘Ulfcytel’s sword’,


given to the king, is also worthy of notice. The most famous Ulfcytel in the early eleventh century was the thegn to whom later Scandinavian tradition gave the byname snelling, ‘the Bold’, in memory of his gallant (if vain) defence of East Anglia against them. Ulfcytel outlived the ætheling – he fell at Assandun in 1016 – but both Æthelstan and his brother Edmund were associated with thegns of the north and east, and Ulfcytel may have exchanged gifts with the ætheling.32

Ulfcytel’s sword was ‘silver-hilted’ (seolferhilta), as was the sword bequeathed to Eadwig, which accords with the evidence from surviving weapons of the period; the cross-guard of a sword allegedly found in the Thames near the Temple has ‘patterns of interlace … picked out in copper alloy and the interior then fi lled in with silver alone or a mixture of copper alloy and silver’, while on the fi ve-lobed pommel ‘each lobe is separated from the next by plaited silver wire bounded on each side by a string of copper alloy decorations’.33 The ‘pitted hilt’ of the sword bequeathed to Edmund can likewise be paralleled in some Scandinavian examples; the pommel and guards of a sword now in the Oslo museum are plated with silver which has been pierced through with lines of holes, each surrounded by a circle, bored through to expose the iron beneath: ‘one of the most striking hilts to have survived’.34

It is noticeable that decorated hilts are mentioned only in connection with the swords granted to the ætheling’s father and brothers and the Old Minster. The swords bequeathed to his retainers are differentiated by their blades, suggesting that, though of high quality, they were less splendidly furnished than the weapons borne by the ætheling and his peers; hilts and blades were made by different craftsmen, and whereas the ætheling could afford to employ a professional gold-smith to embellish his equipment it is probable that few of his followers were able to emulate him.35 Æthelstan’s chaplain Ælfwine got ‘the inlaid sword (malswurd)which belonged to Withar’, his discþegn Ælfmær got ‘the notched (sceardan)sword’, Sigeferth got ‘a sword and a horse and my curved shield (bohscyldes)’, Eadric Wynfl æd’s son ‘the sword on which the hand is marked’, Æthelwine ‘the sword which he has [previously] given to me’; and Ælfnoth the sword-polisher ‘the notched [and] inlaid sword’ (þæs sceardan malswurdes). Since one meaning of OE mǽl (var. mál, mél) is ‘mark, sign’, a malswurd is usually interpreted as a sword with some form of inlaid ornament.36 The commonest ‘mark’ is the name of the blade’s maker, inlaid on the fuller; Ulfberht and Ingelri are the most famous, though Gicelin, Leutfrit and Niso also occur.37 Many of them have accompanied by characteristic patterns, including crosses incorporated into the names, and latterly by the Christian invocation in nomine domini. The letter-shapes were cut into the untempered blade with a chisel and fi lled with wire shaped to fi t, usually iron, though gold, silver and latten are also known; ‘the blade would then be raised to welding heat and the wire hammered into the chisel cuts’.38 It is possible that such incisions are implied by the word scearda, used of some blades in the


ætheling’s will. The literal meaning of sceard is ‘gashed, notched’, which would be appropriate for the sceardan malswurdan left to Ælfnoth the swurdhwita, since ‘he could render it serviceable again’.39 This consideration does not, however, apply to the sceardan sword bequeathed to the discþegn Ælfmaer, and scearda may imply some form of incised or engraved ornament; especially if malswurd has a more specifi c meaning, for the word mǽl can also mean ‘cross, crucifi x’, and a malswurdmight be ‘a sword on which a cross is marked’. Religious imagery on blades is not unusual; an example from the ætheling’s will is ‘the sword on which the hand is marked’, for this can only refer to a ‘hand of God’ motif, like the one inlaid in gold on an early eleventh-century blade found in Finland. Here the image is of an ‘open hand’, accompanied by two or three doves; on the other side of the blade is the outline of a bishop’s crozier.40 Another blade (unprovenanced) has a hand in the attitude of blessing, accompanied by two Greek crosses and an eight-petalled fl ower, with the outline of a church on the blade’s other side.41 The fi rst type, the ‘open hand’ is perhaps the likeliest design for the sword bequeathed by Æthelstan, since this motif is found on two issues of his father’s coinage.42

It is noticeable that the author of The Battle of Maldon rarely refers to English warriors wielding swords. As Byrhtnoth draws up his forces on the bank of the Blackwater, he instructs them how they should hold their shields and swords (line 15), and promises the Viking envoy an unwelcome heriot of ‘sharp ened [spear]-point and ancient sword’ (line 47); Edward se langa, the ealdorman’s burþegn, uses his sword to good effect, killing one of the slayers of Byrhtnoth’s nephew with a single blow (lines 117–19), and Offa urges the surviving warriors to stand fast as long as they can hold ‘the fi rm blade, the spear and the fi ne sword’ (lines 236–37). But most of the English warriors wield spears against the swords of their Viking opponents, and it is likely that, as in earlier times, ‘the ubiquitous spear and shield were the basic equipment of free men’.43 The Blickling Homilies, composed a little earlier than the Maldon poem, recount a vision of ‘two angels with shields and spears and with their equipment, just as if they meant to go to battle’.44 The sword in the tenth century seems still to be an aristocratic weapon, a sign of status; the obscure reference to Ecgfrith, a thegn of King Edgar, whose property was declared forfeit by the king and his witan ‘by the sword which hung on his hip when he was drowned’ may indicate that he was a king’s thegn.45

The Maldon poet gives the distinct impression that the English fyrd was inferior to its opponents in the matter of equipment. Mail-shirts appear only on the backs of Vikings; Byrhtnoth himself is not said to be wearing mail, nor indeed a helmet.46 It was perhaps the exigencies of the Danish wars which brought such equipment within the reach of the rank and fi le; the fi rst comital will to include helmet and mail is that of Ealdorman Æthelmær (977–82).47 To judge from the heriots specifi ed in other wills, a mid-tenth-century ealdorman had to provide four men, each equipped with a horse, sword, spear and shield;


by the 970s, this had been raised to six men (three men in the case of a king’s thegn) similarly equipped, but still neither helmet nor mail-shirt was required. In the later years of King Æthelred unræd, the heriots were radically changed. In 1008, a royal edict required the provision of a warship from every 300 hides, and a helmet and mail-coat from every eight hides, and the contemporaneous issue of coin (the ‘Helmet’) shows the king himself in arms, with a helmet instead of the usual crown.48 It was probably as part of the same programme of reform that the heriots were raised, so that by Cnut’s time an ealdorman was required to produce four fully equipped men, each furnished with a helmet and mail-shirt as well as a sword, a horse with his tack, a shield and a spear, plus four men lightly armed with shields and spears and four unsaddled horses, while the king’s thegn provided equipment for one fully armed man, with helmet and mail-shirt as well as sword, horse, spear and shield, plus one mounted man with sword, shield and spear, two men with shields and spears, and two unsaddled horses.49 It seems that the much-maligned Æthelred was ‘concerned to improve the quality of his army by seeing that his ealdormen and thegns had armed retinues of men with effective body-armour’.50

The wills of Archbishop Ælfric of Canterbury (1002–1005), Bishop Ælfwold of Crediton (1008–1012) and the ætheling Æthelstan (1014) show that at least some of the king’s men attempted to provide for such retinues. The archbishop left the king a warship with 60 helmets and 60 mail-shirts, presumably to equip its fi ghting contingent; Bishop Ælfwold, whose own heriot ‘corresponds almost exactly to that of a king’s thegn’, not only left a similar ship, but also distributed mail-shirts, weapons and horses among his retainers; and Æthelstan, as we have seen, bequeathed shields, swords and horses to his following, though the only mail-shirt mentioned went to his father the king.51 The effect of such lordly munifi cence may have been to make high-class weapons and armour available to a wider section of thegnly society; when the Northumbrian rebels seized Earl Tostig’s house in York in 1065, they carried off not merely his gold, silver and coined money (sceattas), but also ‘all his weapons’ (ealle his wæpna), which in the context clearly means weapons for distribution, not personal use.52 The need to increase the fi ghting strength of the English fyrd perhaps contributed to the demand for such items, just as the developing economy and the concentra-tion of landed wealth in the hands of smaller proprietors enabled more minor thegns and free men to afford them.53 The availability of what had once been prestige weapons seems to have increased as the eleventh century wore on; in the 1020s or 1030s, Wulfsige, a minor East Anglian thegn, left the king a heriot of two horses, a helmet, a sword and a mailshirt, as well as the gilded spear mentioned above.54

The heriots assume that the more heavily armed men would be mounted, while the requirement that half of the horses due should be saddled and half


unsaddled suggests the provision of remounts, or possibly baggage-animals; the lightly armed spearmen may have acted as grooms. The whole question of Old English ‘cavalry’, once a matter for bitter dispute, has largely been resolved; few if any now doubt that the English, like their Viking opponents, fought largely on foot, though horses were ridden to the point of battle and might be used in the pursuit.55 The Maldon poem opens with the dismounted warriors sending their horses to the rear, and the rout begins when the fl eeing English mount their horses (or someone else’s) and ride off, leaving the heroes to fall around their lord’s corpse. The fact that the animals were used for transport rather than as true war-horses does not necessarily mean that they were less valued in England – or for that matter Scandinavia – than in continental Europe.56 Both great lords and local proceres kept studs for horse-rearing. The ætheling Æthelstan bequeathed his stud at Colungahrycge (Wilts.) to his staghuntsman, and Thurstan Lustwine’s son excepted his stud at Ongar (Essex) from the gift of the wood there to his retainers (cnihtes).57 Another east-midlands magnate, Ælfhelm polga,divided his stud at Troston (Suff.) between his widow and ‘my companions who ride with me’ (minan geferan … þe me mid ridað).58 There seems to have been some concern to acquire quality mounts. The stallion (stedan) which Æthelstan ætheling left to his father is described as white, while Ælfmær discþen received a pied stallion (anes fagan stedan), and Bishop Ælfsige a black one; the colours suggest that the animals were arab stallions from Spain, or bred therefrom, but then (as later) horse-breeders could also draw upon the native stock.59 The West Saxon lady Wynfl æd bequeathed to Cynelufu ‘her share of the untamed horses (wildera horsa) which are with Eadmær’s’, while ‘Eadwold and his sister are to have her tame horses (taman hors) in common’, and the Mercian magnate Wulfric Wulfrun’s son bequeathed to his monastery at Burton (Staffs.) ‘a hundred wild horses and sixteen tame geldings’ (an hund wildra horsa and sextena tame hencgestas); presumably geldings were considered more suitable mounts than stallions for Benedictine monks.60 Bishop Ælfwold left the ætheling Æthelstan the wild horses (wildra worfa) at Ashburton (Devon), a vill on the southern edge of Dartmoor, still famed for its wild ponies.61

Good quality horses were valuable; in 852, a horse and 30s were included in the annual rent of a Worcestershire tenement, and 200 years later, Sigmund danusof Crowle rendered annually to the church of Worcester either ‘an acceptable amount of money’ or a horse (caballus).62 By contrast, the horse rendered as part of the price of one of Bishop Oswald’s leases is clearly a farm animal, since it is enumerated with the other stock.63 More ambiguous is the marriage-portion given by the Kentish thegn Godwine to his prospective bride, Brihtric’s daughter, which included 30 oxen, 20 cows, 20 horses and 20 slaves (ðeowmen).64 It might be assumed that these horses too were farm animals (though there are rather a lot of them), but in a contemporary betrothal, between the Worcestershire thegn


Wulfric and the sister of Archbishop Wulfstan, the husband’s gifts to his future wife included 30 men and 30 horses, and it is possible that in both cases the intention was to furnish a mounted retinue, suitable to the standing of a thegn’s bride.65

Well-bred horses were proverbial status-symbols. ‘A nobleman goes on the arched back of a warhorse’ (eorl sceal on eos boge), as the Maxims have it, and when Godric Odda’s son fl ed at Maldon on Byrhtnoth’s ‘splendid steed’ (wlancwicg), ‘too many men believed … that it was our lord’.66 It was not just the horse himself, but his trappings (gerædu), which made this credible; valuable horses, like valuable swords, were equipped appropriately, to indicate their riders’ rank.67

The ætheling Æthelstan’s bequest to his masspriest Ælfwine of ‘my horse with my trappings’ (mines horses mid minon gerædon) was a valuable gift. Saddles especially may have been of symbolic signifi cance, for one of Hrothgar’s gifts to Beowulf was his own saddle, his hildesetl, ‘battle-seat’.68 The Hertfordshire lady Æthelgifu left her ‘saddle-gear’ (sadulgearo) to her kinswoman Leofrun, while the East Anglian thegn Wulfsige left two horses ‘with the saddle-gear’ to his brother’s sons, along with a mail-shirt and a cloak (ii hors mid sadelgarun and i brinie and on hakele), and Ælfwaru, daughter of the east-midlands magnate Æthelstan Mannesunu, bequeathed ‘her own saddle with all the equestrian equipment’ (sellam suam cum omni equestri apparatu) to Ramsey Abbey.69 It must have been the decoration which made such items precious; Ælfric envisages angels riding on horses with ‘golden trappings’ (mid gyldenum gerædum), and in the late tenth century, a stolen bridle was of suffi cient value to provoke an armed confl ict in which two of the thief ’s lords were killed.70 But, like the sword-belts and scabbards of the riders, much of the horse’s tack – bridle, reins, saddle, girths – was made of perishable materials and does not survive, though the Coppergate site in York produced what is believed to be part of a wooden saddle-bow, decorated with geometric forms and interlace, and studded with silver rivets which once secured strips of horn.71 Most of what remains consists of decorative mounts and buckles; the best set of harness-mounts, in gilded bronze, was found at Velds, in Denmark, but is ‘either English work or made by a Scandinavian craftsman under English infl uence’.72 Stirrups and spurs survive rather better, but it is unlikely that the English used iron stirrups (as opposed to rope or leather slings) much before the eleventh century; they seem to have been introduced from Scandinavia, where they are found from the tenth century onwards, sometimes with matching spurs.73 A stirrup-iron found in the River Avon near Seagry (Wilts.) is inlaid with copper and brass wire, and may have been of English manufacture, though clearly infl uenced by Scandinavian decorative taste.74 One particularly English fashion seems to be the use of pendent ornaments suspended from the bridle which ‘have no obvious Scandinavian parallels’.75

The heriots of ealdormen and king’s thegns did not consist simply of military equipment; but included a monetary component, of 200 gold mancuses and


50 gold mancuses respectively. The mancus was equivalent to 30 silver pence. Whether it existed as a unit of currency is debatable, but two surviving eleventh-century gold coins whose weights correspond to three light silver pennies may be mancuses; ‘assuming a gold:silver ratio of 10:1, the nominal 30d is reached’.76

Ælfhelm polga’s will (from the 990s) specifi ed that the 100 gold mancuses required for his heriot were to be furnished by Leofsige, elsewhere recorded as his goldsmith, and thus someone who had access to coined money.77 But payments in bullion are also recorded; the goldsmiths Ælfric and Wulfwine gave Thorney Abbey ‘two ores in weighed gold’, used to decorate the cover of a gospel book, while Æthelstan ætheling bought two estates for 200 and 250 gold mancuses ‘by weight’ (be gewihte).78 A few Mercian land-grants of the eighth and ninth centuries record the use of valuable objects as counter-payments, measured in mancuses which presumably refl ect their weight.79 Some sums were rendered both in bullion and in coin; Ealdorman Æthelmær left the New Minster, Winchester, ‘a hundred mancuses of gold and ten pounds of pennies’.80 When the method of payment is not specifi ed, the possibility that it was made in coin (whether gold mancuses or silver pennies) cannot be entirely discounted, but eight out of the 26 wills which survive from between c.930 and c.1020 specify that the monetary component of the heriot is to be rendered in arm-rings (beagas). Ealdorman Ælfgar of Essex, Byrhtnoth’s father-in-law, left two beagas, of 50 gold mancuses each, to acquit his heriot, and his contemporary, Ealdorman Æthelwold of East Anglia, left four beagas, two of 120 mancuses and two of 80 mancuses.81

Some 20 years later, Ælfgifu, the divorced wife of King Eadwig, left two beagas of 120 mancuses each, and her contemporary Ealdorman Æthelmær of Hampshire, left four beagas of 300 mancuses; presumably two pairs, though of what weight is debatable.82 Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s widow included two beagas of £2, equivalent to 16 mancuses, in her heriot.83 Even if they were worth £2 each, this is very low; her sister Æthelfl æd of Damerham (another royal widow), left four beagas worth 200 mancuses to acquit her heriot.84 Finally, the Kentish thegn Brihtric included a beah of 80 gold mancuses in his heriot, and the West Saxon Æthelwold a beahof 30 mancuses.85 Pairs of rings appear only in the wills of ealdormen and royal or comital widows, whereas only single rings are men tioned in the two thegnly wills. Of course the monetary component of thegnly heriots was only a quarter of that expected from ealdormen, but a difference in status may also be implied, for in Scandinavian tradition, pairs of rings seem to be a mark of especial favour. The twelfth-century historian Saxo Grammaticus describes the ruse used by Viggi to acquire a second arm-ring from Rolf kraki:

Viggi, raising his ornamented right wrist. and twisting his left behind his back in affected embarassment, strutted along grotesquely and declared that one whom Fortune had long kept in penury was overjoyed with this tiny present. Asked why he behaved like that, he


replied that the hand which boasted no adornment, when it beheld the other, coloured with a shamefaced blush at its poverty. For the wit of his repartee he received another gift to complement the fi rst; Rolf made sure that the hidden hand was summoned into the open to follow the other’s example.86

Arm-rings mentioned outside the context of heriot include the beah of 60 gold mancuses bequeathed to Bath Abbey by Wulfwaru, and the beah made by Wulfric (no value is given) which the ætheling Æthelstan left to the Old Minster, Winchester.87 Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s widow bequeathed to Ely the pair (gemaca)of the beah given as the burial-fee of her husband, but the value is not stated. Ælfgifu, the divorced wife of King Eadwig, bequeathes a beah of 30 gold mancuses to Queen Ælfthryth, and a second beah of the same value to the queen’s son, presumably, since only one son is mentioned, the ætheling Edmund, who died, aged no more than fi ve, in 971.88 If the arm-rings bequeathed to the queen and her son were a pair, which seems likely, they may be identical with the ‘splendidly ornamented’ (mirifi ce decorata) pair which formed part of Edmund’s burial-fee when he was interred at Romsey.89 Finger-rings are never mentioned, though some wills record other items of jewellery. Byrhtnoth’s widow is said to have given Ely a gold torque (torquem auream), probably a neck-ring (sweorbeah), for the sweorbeah worth 40 gold mancuses bequeathed by Ælfswith to the church of Rochester is described in the Latin version of her and her husband’s will as torquem auream; Ælfswith and her husband Brihtric left a second sweorbeah of 80 gold mancuses to Christ Church, Canterbury, and Ælfgifu left a neck-ring (swyrbeag) worth 120 mancuses to Queen Ælfthryth.90 Wulfric Wulfrun’s son left his great-niece and god-daughter ‘the brooch (bule) which was belonged to her grandmother’(Wulfric’s sister Ælfthryth), presumably an heirloom.91 The ‘old wired fastener worth 6 mancuses’ (ealdan gewired preon is an vi mancussum)which Wynfl æd left to her granddaughter Eadgifu was probably another heir-loom, possibly decorated with gold fi ligree; she also bequeathed to her daughter Æthelfl æd ‘her engraved ring (beah) and her mentelpreon’, presumably the pin or brooch which fastened her cloak.92 Archbishop Ælfric left a ring (anne ring) as well as a pectoral cross (sweorrode) to his colleague Archbishop Wulfstan.93

There has been some discussion as to whether arm-rings were simply bullion, or whether they were actually worn. Ealdorman Byrhtnoth was presumably wearing his beagas at Maldon, since they were among the items which his would-be despoiler wanted to acquire, and King Edmund presented a pair of golden arm-rings (ii armillas aureas) to St Cuthbert, which, according to later tradition, he stripped from his own arms.94 On the other hand, Wynfl æd’s bequest of 16 mancuses of gold to her grandson Eadwold ‘to enlarge his beah’ has been taken to imply that the arm-ring was ‘not so much a work of art as a piece of bullion indicating a man’s worth and status, to be enlarged by fusing more gold to it, and


presumably to be reduced in times of adversity’.95 The context, however, shows that Eadwold was under-age, probably little more than a child, and the reason for the enlargement of his ring might simply be that by the time he reached maturity he would have grown out of it. Of course arm-rings could be altered or even melted down and remade, but this is also true of other types of fi ne metalwork. There seems to be no doubt that wealthy ladies sometimes secured their veils with golden headbands, which might, to judge from their representation in manuscript art, be of considerable elaboration.96 These objects, however, could be broken up if required; the Kentish couple Brihtric and Ælfswith divided a golden headband between the churches of Rochester and St Augustine’s, Canterbury, and Æthelgifu left to Witsige fi ve mancuses of gold to be cut from her headband.97 Wulfwaru, by contrast left her headband entire to her daughter Gode.98 Any valuable object might end up in the melting-pot if the need was pressing. The Worcester monk Hemming laments that on account of the ‘unsupportable demands of royal taxa-tion’ (regalium vectigalium importabilis exactio) in King Æthelred’s time, ‘almost all the treasures of the church were squandered; altar tables were stripped of their gold and silver decoration and books of their ornamental covers, chalices were broken up, crosses melted down’. Only after all these items had been sacrifi ced did the church resort to leasing and selling its land.99 If churches could sacrifi ce their plate, which was certainly prized for beauty as well as utility, then arm-rings might be used both for display and to spend when, as in the Maldon poem, Vikings demanded beagas as tribute.100

There is no indication in the written sources of what such beagas looked like, but in the Tiberius Psalter, which dates from the second half of the eleventh century, the Devil is shown tempting Christ with a collection of worldly treasures, including a pair of arm-rings constructed of twisted gold rods.101 Despite the fact that ‘rings of twisted gold’ (earm-beaga … searwum gesæled) formed part of the dragon’s treasure in Beowulf, these seem to be a fashion introduced (or at least popularized) by Scandinavian settlers.102 Gold and silver rings made by twisting one or more rods together ‘form a characteristic element in Viking-age hoards found in Scandinavia’ and are found, in hoards or as single-fi nds, in Scotland and Ireland.103 Pairs of gold arm-rings are not attested, unless the two lost ‘bracelets’ found at the Broch of Burgar (Orkney) in 1840 were a pair; in any case their precise form is unknown.104 Only four plaited gold arm-rings have so far been found in English contexts, at Wendover (Bucks.), Brightlingsea (Essex), Goodrington (Devon) and York.105 Plaited gold fi nger-rings are rather more numerous, but no gold neck-ring has come to light in England, though they are known from Scandinavia.106 The intrinsic value of such objects makes their survival precarious; their fate is ‘to be kept until their owners die … and end up eventually in a jeweller’s melting-pot’.107 Those which survive were presum-ably chance losses. The heaviest arm-ring, discovered at Wendover (Bucks.) in


1848, consists of ‘a wreath of four threads, composed of two rounded bands of considerable thickness, with two twisted wires, of much slighter dimensions, wound spirally between them’; its tapering ends are welded together ‘without any indication of a hook or fastening’.108 Its weight, of 2,208 grains, suggests it was equivalent to 40 gold mancuses; the Brightlingsea example, at 757 grains, could be equivalent to 15 mancuses.109 Both beautiful and practical, such arm-rings are best thought of as ‘a decorative form of portable wealth’.110

Post-Conquest writers regarded the wearing of gold arm-rings as characteristic of the pre-Conquest aristocracy. John of Worcester says that the 80 housecarls who formed the fi ghting-crew of the warship given to Harthacnut by Earl Godwine wore golden rings on each arm, worth 16 ores (two gold marks) apiece (duas in suis brachiis aureas armillas sedecim uncias pedentes), and William of Malmesbury, writing of the English aristocracy in general, claims that they were ‘laden with golden arm-rings’.111 The Bury Chronicle describes Osgod clapadressed in an ankle-length sheepskin cloak, with gold rings on both arms, and a gilded axe hanging from his shoulder ‘in the Danish fashion’.112 It might be that the Anglo-Norman historians were more concerned to present pre-Conquest tastes as barbaric and backward than to record genuine custom, and arm-rings appear to have been falling out of fashion well before the Norman Conquest. Of the 14 eleventh-century wills which survive, seven give details of the heriot rendered.113 Apart from the ‘gold-inlaid spear’ mentioned by Wulfsige no decorated weapons are included.114 The only monetary renders occur in the wills of of Bishop Ælfric of Elmham, Leofgifu, Ælfric modercope and Thurstan Lustwine’s son.115 Ælfric modercope’s heriot was acquitted by a gold mark (£6), equivalent to 48 mancuses, which his brother Godric was to pay. In the other three cases, the sum involved was two gold marks (£12 or 96 mancuses), which (perhaps not coincidentally) is the value of the arm-rings worn by the housecarls in John of Worcester’s descrip tion Earl Godwine’s warship.116 Bishop Ælfric does not say how his heriot is to be rendered; Leofgifu specifi es merely that it is to be paid by her heirs, while in Thurstan’s will it is to be raised by the sale of an estate, suggesting that it could have been paid in cash. No beagas appear in any eleventh-century will, nor, apart from ‘a little gold crucifi x’ and two ‘ornamented drinking-horns’ bequeathed by Wulfgyth and a ‘chalice and dish’ left by Bishop Ulf of London, are there any parallels to the other gold and silver objects bequeathed by earlier testators.117 The eleventh-century wills emphasize land and money, the latter expressed in marks of gold and pounds of silver. It seems that ‘a display of elaborate jewellery was no longer the means of expressing competition or showing personal prowess and the ability to dispense patronage’.118

There are dangers in drawing conclusions from the contrast between the later and earlier wills, since we are not comparing like with like. The will of the ætheling Æthelstan, who died in 1014, is the last in the series made by the high


aristocracy, while the eleventh-century wills are those of thegns, some of quite minor wealth. There is also a geographical change; most of the tenth-century testators came from Wessex or western Mercia, whereas their eleventh-century successors were overwhelmingly East Anglians, whose wills were preserved in the archives of Bury St Edmunds. Their picture of an aristocracy concerned with land and money rather than with personal adornment is, however, born out by the archaeological record, which suggests that the use of precious metals for personal jewellery declined throughout the eleventh century. It has been argued that the coinage reforms of about 975 caused a bullion shortage, as the royal moneyers cornered the market in silver, but, as the wills show, the thegns of King Edward’s day had ample access to coin and/or bullion.119 A more plausible explanation seems to be a change in fashion. The multi-coloured jewellery and gold fi ligree of the seventh and eighth centures had gone out of fashion by the end of the ninth, after which it seems that the taste for opulent metalwork was fading ever further into the past, at least as far as personal adornment was concerned.120

When William of Poitiers wanted to describe the luxury of English court culture, he concentrated not on gold and silver jewellery, but on spectacular clothing. At King William’s victory feast on Easter Sunday, 1067, the guests, who included the French king’s father-in-law, ‘looked at the clothes of the king and his courtiers, woven and encrusted with gold, [and] considered whatever they had seen before to be of little worth’.121 The robes presumably came from the collection amassed, according to the Vita Edwardi, by Queen Edith for her royal husband, for ‘whereas it had not been the custom for earlier English kings in bygone days to wear clothes of great splendour, apart from cloaks and robes adorned at the top with gold in the national style’, Edith dressed her husband ‘in raiments either embroidered by herself or of her choice’, in the ornamentation of which ‘no count was made of the cost of the precious stones, rare gems and shining pearls that were used’.122

In the same vein, William of Malmesbury describes how, on religious festivals, Edward appeared in ‘robes interwoven with gold (uestibus auro intextis), which the queen had worked for him at very great expense’.123 The Vita’s assertion that such attire was something new in Edward’s day may not be correct; King Alfred had already written of over-proud kings enthroned ‘on high seats … bright with many kinds of raiment’, and in the late tenth century the Blickling Homilist wrote reprovingly about the vanity of ‘garments interwoven with gold’ (mid golde gefagode).124 Fine clothes, however, unlike gold-hilted swords and polychrome jewellery, seem to have remained in fashion, nor were they confi ned to the English court; in 1074, King Malcolm of Scotland gave ‘skins covered with expensive cloth (pælle), and robes of martens skin and grey fur and ermine, and expensive cloaks (pællon)’ to his brother-in-law Edgar ætheling and his retinue, and when Earl Tostig’s party was attacked by Italian bandits, Gospatric’s pretence that he was the earl was believed ‘because of the luxury of his clothes’ (pro ornatu uestium),


which were ‘suited to his noble rank’ (ut eum pro nobilitate decebat).125 Indeed the economic developments of the tenth and eleventh centuries may have brought such attire within the reach of lesser thegns and prosperous burgesses as well as kings and great lords, as a combination of urban growth and the proliferation of small compact estates produced both a market for agricultural produce and the means of satisfying it.

In the eleventh century, aristocratic patrons lavished their wealth not only on themselves, but on the church, not just houses which they themselves founded but also the great abbeys.126 Godgifu, wife of Earl Leofric of Mercia, is said to have given ‘her whole store of gold and silver’ to provide appropriate treasures for Coventry Abbey, while Tovi the Proud’s wife, Gytha, had her jewellery melted down to adorn the Black Rood of Waltham.127 Gytha also provided the gold and silver plate required for Holy Cross, in which the Rood was housed, but it is signifi cant that she employed for the purpose the London goldsmith Theodoric, ‘the fi nest craftsman in the city in cast gold and silver-work’.128 Theodoric’s name suggests a continental origin, possibly the Rhineland, and William of Poitiers, noting that the English were ‘outstanding in craftsmanship of every kind’, added that, for this reason, German artifi cers, who were even more skilled, were accus-tomed to dwell amongst them.129 Whatever his origins, Theodoric was neither a household servant nor a travelling smith, but a rich London burgess, who worked not only for Gytha, but also for Edward the Confessor and William the Conqueror, both of whom rewarded him with lands; so that by 1086 he had built up a substantial estate in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Surrey.130 Gytha’s employent of such a fi gure shows that by the mid-eleventh century, urban expansion had created ‘an alternative system through which the aristocracy could acquire their needs’, vitiating the need to maintain specialist craftsmen in the household.131

Craftsmanship was also available in monasteries, whose members could barter with customers for payment; Wulfric, who made the silver-hilted sword, the gold belt and the arm-ring which the ætheling Æthelstan bequeathed to the Old Minster, Winchester, does not seem to have been a member of the ætheling’s household (he receives no bequest in the will), and is perhaps identical with Wulfric aurifex, a member of the Old Minster’s community commemorated in the Liber Vitae of the New Minster, whose name is entered immediately before that of Wulfstan cantor (fl . 970s–990s).132

During the tenth and eleventh centuries, aristocratic landowners, greater and lesser, began to exploit the possibilities of commerce; they sold their agricultural surpluses in the towns, and the cash which they thus acquired was spent on buy-ing from skilled artisans and professional merchants the luxury objects in gold and silver which had once been provided ‘in house’.133 The growing interdepend-ence between town and country is shown by the inclusion of urban property among the adjuncts of rural estates.134 By the mid-eleventh century, most of the


richer thegns, and many lesser men, had such urban tenements, which not only provided their landlords with rents and services, but also gave direct access to the urban markets, creating ‘a shared aesthetic, a common “consumer” culture’.135

The connection between rural landlords and the urban economy is especially important for the acquisition of the more expensive textiles. Wool and linen were readily available in England; indeed the country had already begun to export cloth, the commodity for which (along with wool) it was to become famous. Silk, however, had to be imported. In Ælfric’s Colloquy, the merchant’s wares include ‘expensive robes (pællas, purpuram) and silk (sidas, sericam), precious stones and gold, unusual clothing (reaf)’.136 There were two routes by which such items might enter England; one via western Europe from the workshops of Italy and Sicily, the other from Serkland (‘the Silk Country’) itself, the region of modern Syria and Iraq.137 This second route, pioneered by Scandinavians, ran via Constantinople, Kiev and Scandinavia itself, into the ports of York and Dublin. Silk items found at York itself attest to the importance of this trade, but silk is also found at London and Lincoln, and may have been traded even more widely; the cloaks (sagae) stolen at Cambridge by the priest Leofstan of Horningsea from ‘traders from Ireland’ (institores de Hybernie) were certainly valuable, and prob-ably silk or silk-lined.138 Various grades of silk textiles (OE godweb) are recorded, of which purpura was especially prized. The word, of course, gives rise to ‘purple’, but red, green, black and white varieties are also known, and a thick-textured, glossy material, like shot-silk taffeta, is probably intended.139 The most valuable and precious silk was available only from Constantinople, where its distribution was strictly regulated, and the very best pieces were doled out by Byzantine emperors to especially important and favoured recipients, who probably did not include the English rulers.140 Most of the top-grade silk which arrived in this country probably came not in merchants’ packs but as second-hand gifts from German emperors or popes; Conrad II’s gifts to Cnut in 1027 included ‘cloaks and very costly garments’ (pallis et vestibus valde pretiosis).141 The vicissitudes suffered by Earl Tostig’s party on their return from Rome were perhaps due to the fact that they were laden with similar papal largesse. It was rather unwise of the earl to fl aunt his good fortune in so notoriously unsafe an area; his elder brother, on a similar trip, ‘passed through all ambushes with watchful mockery’ (per medios insidiantes cautus derisor).142

Although entire silk garments are occasionally found, the expense involved probably meant that silk was most widely used for trimming clothes made from some other material. One of the vestments recovered from St Cuthbert’s tomb was apparently lined with fawn-coloured silk, and this may be the implication of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s account of King Malcolm’s gifts to Edgar; ‘skins covered with pælle’ suggests fur garments lined with silk.143 Much Byzantine silk, like that derived from the Caliphate, was not merely coloured, but fi gured, with animal


and fl oral motifs eventually derived from the classical world.144 Such fabrics, when cut up, could provide the trimmings seen in manuscript illuminations of the tenth and eleventh centuries, which show men wearing tunics and cloaks bordered on the hems, necks, and sleeves with what appear to be patterned and embroidered textiles.145 This ‘banded style’ was not only élite but international, appearing in German and north European illustrations.146 There are dangers in interpreting the iconographic formalities of mediaeval art as representations of contemporary reality, but such banded garments have been found in tenth- and eleventh-century Scandinavian graves, and though the English evidence is sparser, woven braids and gold embroidery have been found in graves at Winchester, and silk ribbons at York, London and Lincoln.147 The reaf and hringas, which Byrhtnoth’s would-be despoiler hoped to acquire from his corpse, may refer to such a garment. The usual meaning of reaf is ‘booty, spoil’, but it could also be used of clothing, as in the passage from Ælfric’s Colloquy cited above.148 Similarly hring can denote both ‘a ring’ and ‘something in the shape of a ring’, such as a band of embroidery. When combined with the tradition that Byrhtnoth’s gifts to Ely included ‘two borders of his cloak, woven with gold and gems’, the passage in the Maldon poem suggests that ‘Byrhtnoth as commander was wearing some valuable and distinctive garment’, possibly a cloak banded with silk textiles.149

It was not just silk which was used for decoration; the Vita Edwardi speaks of ‘cloaks and robes adorned at the top with gold in the national style’ (secundum morem gentis). Gold embroidery was not, of course, confi ned to England, but it was an art for which English women were especially famed; William of Poitiers records that ‘the women of the English people are very skilled in needlework and weaving gold thread (auri textura)’.150 Domesday Book records that a young woman (puella) called Ælfgyth was given half a hide from the royal manor of Brill (Bucks.) by Godric the sheriff, in return for teaching his daughter the art of gold embroidery (ut illa doceret fi liam eius aurifrisium operari).151 Similar skills enabled the widow Leofgyth to retain possession of her husband’s tenement at Knook (Wilts.) after the Norman Conquest, in return for the gold embroidery (aurifrisium) which she undertook for the king and queen.152 Like Theodoric the goldsmith, these women were probably commissioned to produce specifi c items, rather than being members of the household; a chasuble which Queen Matilda presented to Holy Trinity, Caen, had been made in Winchester by the wife of Ealdred, brother of Odo of Winchester, one of the richer English survivors in 1086.153

It is not to be supposed that English thegns habitually went about their daily affairs clad in silk or silk-trimmed clothes; such garments were presumably kept for special occasions, the great feasts of the church, or the sessions of the shire and hundred, and especially meetings of the witan and the royal court. On such high days and holidays, ‘the contrast between garments sewn from


exotic textiles and most people’s brown-, dun- or russet-coloured garb would have been profound’.154 Finds from urban sites suggest that during the eleventh century, elaborate dress, signalled by ‘silk garments, silk edging to wool or linen garments, and decoration with embroidery, especially gold’, was becoming available to the urban aristocracy of wealthy townsmen and merchants which overlapped with the rural landlords.155 A fashion particular to the royal court and the high aristocracy may have been the wearing of ankle-length robes, caught up with a sash at the waist, and accompanied by a long cloak fastened with a brooch at neck or shoulder; the style was ultimately derived from the imperial court at Constantinople, and the English (unlike the Franks and Germans) were late in adopting it, for the fi rst king to be depicted in such a gown is Edgar, but the portrait may be purely iconographical.156 The Old English-illuminated Hexateuch, which dates from the fi rst half of the eleventh century, displays Pharaoh and his court arrayed in long gowns while passing judgement on a thief, which might imply that the English king and his courtiers were accustomed to wear such robes on solemn occasions.157 In the Bayeux Tapestry, long gowns are likewise used to represent authority, royal, ducal or comital, and though it is not clear whether any of the portraits are intended to refl ect actual costumes, Orderic Vitalis condemned long robes and mantles as evidence of the effeminate taste of his contemporaries in the early twelfth century.158 If such robes were indeed worn, they were the prerogative of very high-ranking lords; the ultimate statement, perhaps, of power, wealth and authority.


8

Living like Lords: Aristocratic Pursuits

There was one thing in this world which gave him great pleasure, the running of swift hounds, whose baying round his forests he would

respond to with great delight, and the fl ying of those birds whose nature it is to prey upon their kindred. To these sports he would devote himself for

days on end.1

In the summer of 1065, Earl Harold ‘ordered some building to be done at Portskewet [Wales] … and there he got together many goods and thought of having King Edward there for hunting’. The earl’s plans came to nothing; Caradoc ap Gruffudd ap Rhydderch, king of Deheubarth, fell upon Portskewet, slaughtered Harold’s men, and carried off all the goods.2 It was in the company of Harold’s brother Tostig that Edward was hunting when the news came that on 3 October a group of Northumbrian magnates had descended on York, killed Tostig’s housecarls and seized his treasure.3 The Vita Edwardi records how, when he heard of the disaster, the king ‘moved from the forests, in which he was as usual staying for the sake of regular hunting, to Britford, a royal manor near the royal town of Wilton’.4

The ramifi cations of this crisis, which contributed directly to the overthrow of the Old English kingdom, are well known, and need not be pursued here. More signifi cant in the present context, apart from the fondness of King Edward for hunting, a taste shared by both the lay and the ecclesiastical aristocracy, is the location of his hunt.5 In 1086, there were two forests nearby, the foresta regis (royal forest) in north-west Hampshire, and William I’s nova foresta (the New Forest) in the south and east of the same shire.6 Mention of Britford, which lies south-east of Salisbury, suggests that it was in the foresta regis that the king was hunting, in the woodlands east of the River Avon, where both he and Earl Tostig held land.7 The demonstration that the Conqueror’s ‘New Forest’ was an exten-sion (albeit substantial) of a forest which had existed in King Edward’s day, and perhaps before, has re-focused attention on the fact that pre-Conquest as well as post-Conquest kings were touchy about their hunting-rights.8 When Cnut (following Æthelred) decreed that ‘every man is to be entitled to his hunting in wood and fi eld on his own land’, he added the rider that ‘everyone is to avoid trespassing on my own hunting, wherever I wish to have it preserved, on pain of


the full fi ne’.9 Forest law may be elusive before the twelfth century, but the concept of a royal ‘preserve’ raises the possibility that land ‘outside’ (foris) normal custom existed from at least the early eleventh century.

If the Old English kings were protective of their hunting rights, so also were their aristocratic subjects, who had been maintaining their own hunting-grounds from at least the eighth century. King Alfred wrote of the desire of every man to hunt and hawk over his land, and in 956 King Eadwig granted land to his fi delisHehelm ‘with everything which belongs to it, in meadows, woodlands, pastures, and hunting-grounds’ (cum omnibus ad se pertinentibus, pratis, silvis, pascuis, venationibus), and Bishop Oswald of Worcester made a similar grant to his brother Osulf in 969.10 The form which these hunting-grounds took is a matter of debate; in particular, the derhage recorded in the will of Thurstan Lustwine’s son, dated to the 1040s, raises the vexed question of the existence (or non-existence) of deer-parks in pre-Conquest England.11 Not long ago it could be taken for granted that deer-parks, like castles and rabbit-warrens, were imported into England in the wake of the Norman Conquest. It is true that enclosures (hagan) are not infrequently recorded in pre-Conquest sources, and reappear in Domesday in their latinized form, as haiae. The problem is that both OE haga and Latin haiahave a range of meanings; both can indicate linear features as well as enclosures, and even when used in the latter sense can denote standardized burgage plots in towns (messuages, mansurae), as well as rural hedges, enclosures around buildings (see below for such a haya at West Auckland, Co. Durham) and, most importantly in the present context, temporary barriers used for the capture of hunted animals, including deer.12 The method is described by the king’s hunts-man in Ælfric’s Colloquy: ‘I weave myself nets (max, retia) and set them in a suitable place, and urge on my dogs so that they chase the wild animals (wildeor)until they come into the nets (nettan, retia) unawares and are thus ensnared; and I kill them in the nets (on þam maxum, in retibus)’.13

Ælfric is describing the ‘bow and stall’ hunt, in which the animals are driven by beaters into nets to be killed by archers or spearmen, and, despite the fact that he uses words for nets (OE max, nettan, Latin retia) in this context and not haga or haiae, it has been assumed that the hagan of the charters and the haiaeof Domesday Book are temporary structures of this kind.14 The problem is exacerbated by the fact that OE deor means primarily ‘a wild animal’, and only secondarily a deer. Thus the derhage at Ongar, which was clearly not a temporary structure, has been interpreted as a stud for horses, despite the fact that the stud and the derhage are distinguished from each other in Thurstan’s will; both were retained when the wood was bequeathed to his retainers (cnihtas), whom Stenton interpreted as ‘a group of hunt servants settled by their lord’s park’.15 The hagabelonging to Leofnoth, whose ditch appears among the landmarks in a boundary clause of 1008, must also have been a permanent structure, or at least one intended

L I V I N G L I K E L O R D S : A R I S T O C R AT I C P U R S U I T S 125

to stand for some time.16 In fact Old English and Latin sources do distinguish on occasion between temporary structures, known as ‘stalls’ (OE sættan, Latin stabiliturae/stabilitiones) and used for trapping game, and more permanent haganand haiae. Both thegnly and non-thegnly tenants owed service at the derhaga, but it seems that only the latter were required to work on the temporary sættan. In Rectitudines, the geneat, the free tenant, must both ‘cut timber for the deer-hedge and maintain the stall’ (deorhege heawan and sæte healdan), while the ‘thegn’s law’ merely includes unspecifi ed service ‘at the deer-hedge at the king’s residence’ (deorhege to cyninges hame). The Latin translation of Rectitudines reads ‘deorhege cedere et stabilitatem observare’, and in both versions, the temporary stall (sæt,stabilitas) seems to be distinguished from the (?permanent) deer-hedge.17 A similar distinction is found in the Domesday account of Shrewsbury, where the sheriff was required to provide 36 men to make and/or man the stalls (ad stabilitionem), and another 36 men to serve for eight days at the park (parcus) at Marsley, while the ‘better men’ (meliores) merely provided 12 of their number in arms to form the king’s guard.18 When thegns are obliged to build or man stalls, the service seems to be exceptional. King Edward’s thegns on the royal manor of West Derby (‘between Ribble and Mersey’) had to build ‘the king’s houses (domos) and what belonged to them’, including fi sheries and woodland haias and stalls (stabilituras)‘as if they were villans (sicut villani)’; by contrast, the men of Leyland and Salford ‘owed no customary labour to the king’s hall, nor did they reap in August, but nevertheless (tantummodo) they built a (haia) in the woodland’.19 The thegnly tenants of the bishop of Worcester in Oswaldslow were required ‘to make hedges for the lord bishop’s hunting’ (uenationis sepem domini episcopi … ad edifi candum), but the service was only to be performed ‘voluntarily’ (ultronei).20

A recent re-evaluation of pre-Conquest deer-hedges has concluded that in Domesday Book ‘the terms parcus and haia appear to be used interchangeably for pre- and post-Conquest structures’, and that ‘at least some haiae were sur-rounded with banks and ditches’.21 There is a strong connection between such hagan/haiae and roe deer (capreolus capreolus, OE rahdeor). In Domesday Book, haiae ‘for the taking of roe deer’ (capreolis capiendis) are recorded at Corfton and Lingen (Salop), and there were two haiae for roe deer (ii haiae capreolorum) at Weaverham (Ches.); the last-named estate belonged before 1066 to Earl Edwin of Mercia.22 ‘Roe-hedges’ (rah hege) also occur in some boundary clauses of the tenth century.23 A ‘white haga’, recorded in the boundary clause of Hurstbourne Tarrant (Hants), is particularly interesting, for ‘white’ in such contexts usually refers to the use of stone or (in this case) white fl int, and implies a substantial structure.24 The vill of Hurstbourne neighbours upon that of Faccombe Netherton, one of the high-status lay sites which in the late Old English period display a high proportion of roe deer remains, suggesting the importance of hunting as an élite pursuit.25


Pre-Conquest hagan may be the precursors of post-Conquest parks, and may even in some cases (like Ongar) occupy the same space. This does not necessarily mean that they had the same cultural signifi cance. Late mediaeval deer parks are associated with fauna not found in pre-Conquest England, especially with fallow deer (dama dama), a species introduced (possibly from Sicily) in the twelfth century. Since fallow deer are both smaller and tamer than their native cousins, it has been argued that they were largely culled by the foresters and huntsmen who kept the preserves, or by aristocratic women armed with bows, whereas pre-Conquest hagan, which saw the pursuit of wild deer by men in a wooded landscape, were very different places.26 The distinction, however, may have taken some time to emerge, for most early hagan, whether pre- or post-Conquest, seem to have been very large areas, some of them later broken up into smaller parks.27

It is also possible that hagan were not completely enclosed, or at any rate that animals were allowed to enter and leave at leap-gates (hlyp geatas) like those recorded in some tenth-century charter-bounds.28 Extensive areas of this kind are not inconsistent with the control and hunting of roe deer, which, unlike their fallow cousins, react badly to being confi ned.

It was not only roe deer which were hunted within the hagan. In King Edward’s day three Englishmen holding at Kington (Worcs.) had a haia ‘where wild ani-mals were caught’ (in qua capiebant ferae), and Ælfric’s huntsman lists the beasts he pursues as ‘harts, boar, roebuck and does and sometimes hares’ (heortas and baras and rann and rægan and hwilum haran).29 Since roe deer are specifi cally mentioned, the heortas must be red deer (cervus elaphus, OE hea[h]deor), the only other species known in pre-Conquest England. When pressed for further details, the huntsman adds that on the previous day he had caught two stags (heortas) in nets.30 It has been assumed that this ‘bow and stable’ method was the usual form of the hunt in pre-Conquest England, as opposed to the chase par force, in which the quarry is pursued by mounted and dismounted men and dogs, until it turns at bay, to be killed by spear or sword.31 Yet when Ælfric’s huntsman is asked if he can hunt without nets, he replies that indeed he can, with the aid of fast dogs (swiftum hundum), the implication being that they will pursue the quarry. To keep up with such dogs (and their quarry) it would be useful, perhaps even necessary, to be mounted. Ælfric’s huntsman (who was in the king’s service) reveals that he occasionally received a horse from his royal lord, and one of the royal dues from the shire of Northampton was 20s for a huntsman’s horse.32 Descriptions of hunts before 1066 are rare, and usually not unambiguous, but it must have been in the course of a chase that King Edmund had a near-fatal accident, when the stag which he was pursuing plunged to its death in the Cheddar Gorge, followed by the king’s hounds, and Edmund narrowly escaped the same fate by pulling up his horse on the very brink of the precipice.33 His quarry is specifi cally described as a red deer (cervus),


just as the huntsman of the ætheling Æthelstan was one who hunted red deer (headeorhunta).34

The association between hunting and horses reappears in other contexts. Æthelstan ætheling’s staghuntsman (headeorhunta) received the stud at Coldridge (Wilts.) under his lord’s will, though Thurstan Lustwine’s son reserved his stud and derhaga when he granted the wood at Ongar (Essex) to his cnihtas.35 In the latter case the derhaga seems to refer to a structure in the woods, whereas at the royal manor of Shipton-under-Wychwood (Oxon), the woodland was ‘within the royal enclosure’ (in defensione regis).36 Woodland, hunting, stud and hagacan also be found together in the grant by Oswald, bishop of Worcester, of land in Grimley (Worcs.) to his brother Osulf; the vill’s resources included ‘woods for hunting’ (silva venantionibus), and the appended boundary clause mentions ‘the old royal haga’ adjacent to ‘the old stud-fold’.37 It seems that although the frequency and importance of the chase par force may have increased after the Norman Conquest, it is unlikely to have been a Norman innovation.38 As for King Edmund’s unfortunate dogs, they (and the ‘swift dogs’ of Ælfric’s Colloquy)were presumably staghounds (headerhundas), like those which the Hertfordshire landowner Æthelgifu and the Kentish thegn Brihtric included in their heriots.39

Such valuable creatures were probably farmed out among the lords’ tenants, as was still customary in some shires down to the last century; in Rectitudines ‘every two geburs have to maintain one staghound (headorhund)’, and the Confessor gave a hide at the royal manor of Hendred (Berks.) to the wife of Godric the sheriff ‘because she was rearing his dogs (canis suis).40

King Edmund’s near-fatal mishap is a reminder that hunting could be a dangerous business for the hunter as well the quarry. Edmund, though doubtless shaken up, came to no harm, but Richard, son of William I, was not so lucky; he was hunting in the New Forest, near Winchester, when while ‘galloping in pursuit of a wild beast (quandam feram)’, he was crushed between a hazel bough and the pommel of his horse. Though he survived, he was mortally wounded and died a few days later.41 Richard was presumably engaged in the chase, but his younger brother King William II was clearly participating in a bow and stable hunt when, in 1100, ‘he was with an arrow from one of his own men offshot’.42

Such fatalities were not always accidental.43 In John of Worcester’s account of the death of Ælfhelm, ealdorman of Northumbria, in 1006, the victim was invited to a feast at Shrewsbury by Eadric streona, who bribed one Godwine porthund, butcher (carnifex) of Shrewsbury, to lie in ambush in the woodland, and when, on the third or fourth day of the festivities, the ealdorman went out hunting, Godwine murdered him.44 A similar fate befell another Northumbrian ealdorman, Ealdred of Bamburgh, who was invited to the house of his one-time enemy, Karli Thorbrandson, and in the course of the festivities was killed in the wood of Riseholme, presumably (though the text is unspecifi c) in the course of


a hunt.45 John’s description of Godwine as a carnifex is of some interest, for a butcher would be a suitable person to take on a hunt, since he could deal with the carcases on the spot; in the twelfth century, the carnifi ces (‘butchers’) were among the offi cials of the king’s larder.46 It seems, however, that carnifi ces had a particularly close association with murder and other vengeful deeds; Thrond carnifex was one of those sent by King Harthacnut to dig up the body of his half-brother, King Harold I, and throw it into the Thames marshes.47

Accidents might occur in various ways (some not ‘accidental’), but the most dangerous quarry was not deer, whether red or roe, but wild boar. When the king’s huntsman in Ælfric’s Colloquy describes how he killed a boar, driven towards him by his dogs, by sticking it, the master remarks that he must be a very brave man, to which the hunter responds that ‘a huntsman mustn’t be afraid, because all sorts of wild animals (wildeor) dwell in the woods’.48 He does not specify with what weapon he killed the boar, but since he uses the verb ofstikian, ‘to stab’, he must have used a sword or (perhaps more probably) a spear; the thegnly ten ants of Worcester were obliged ‘to send their hunting spears (venabula) to the bishop’s chase’, presumably with men to wield them.49 It is the boar-hunt which is included in the pre-Conquest illustrated calendars as a symbol for October; in both cases, a man on foot, with a spear, follows a group of pigs into a wood, followed by a second man, also afoot and equipped with a spear, who is blowing a horn and leading dogs. The scene is usually described as ‘feeding hogs’, but the spears, dogs and horn suggest a more sinister explanation (from the pigs’ point of view).50

King Edmund was presumably residing at Cheddar when he had his narrow escape. The place is not described as a palatium before the mid-tenth century, and the earlier buildings, which may date back to the ninth century, have been inter-preted as a royal hunting-lodge, intruded into the precincts of an ancient minster church.51 King Edward in 1065 is described as ‘residing … in the forests’ before he removed to Britford (a silvestribus locis, ubi … morabatur), presumably in some temporary lodgement, like Earl Harold’s ill-fated construction at Portskewet. No contemporary description of the latter exists, but John of Worcester describes it as a ‘great building’ (magnum … edifi cium), where ‘large supplies of food and drink’ were made ready; all that can be said is that the work at Portskewet was tempting enough (and provocative enough) for Caradoc ap Gruffudd to launch an attack upon it.52 Some idea of its nature is suggested by the Boldon Book’s description of the lodges built in the late twelfth century by the villans of West Auckland for the ‘Great Chase’ of their lord, the bishop of Durham:53

They make the hall of the bishop in the forest sixty feet in length [18.3m] and in width within the posts sixteen feet [4.9m], with a buttery and a pantry (spence) and a chamber and a privy (cum butilleria et dispensaria et cameram et privatam). Moreover they make


a chapel (capellam) forty feet in length [12. 2m] and fi fteen feet in width [4.6m] … and they make their share of the enclosure (haya) around the lodges (logias).

Further details come from the account of Stanhope, whose villani constructed a kitchen, a larder and kennels for the dogs (coquinam et lardariam et canillum), provided hay to strew the fl oors of the hall, chapel and chamber, and transported supplies to the lodges from Wolsingham.54 These are twelfth-century buildings, but the dimensions of the hall at West Auckland are comparable to those of the fi rst hall at Cheddar (the suggested hunting-lodge), which was 24m long by 6m broad at its widest point (the bowed sides tapered to 5.5m at each end); four smaller buildings, of unknown use, were associated with it.55

Hunting-lodges are rarely mentioned in pre-Conquest sources and not easily identifi ed on the ground. Tovi the Proud’s hunting-lodge in the wood-land at Waltham (Essex), described as ‘a lowly hut … in a woodland region’ (pauperis turgurii … in loco silvestri), was probably intruded, like the earliest royal settlement at Cheddar, into the lands of a decaying minster; it may be the bow-sided building discovered to the north of the present church.56 The ‘guest-house’(xenodochium), which, according to the Ramsey Chronicle, was already on the isle when it was given to the new Benedictine community by Ealdorman Æthelwine in 969, may also have been a lodge used for the ealdorman’s hunting; for when he gave Upwood (Hunts.) to the same community, he retained his hall and court (aulam suam et curiam) because he was accustomed to hunt and hawk in the nearby woods and marshes.57 In the 970s, the abbey of Thorney loaned two fi sheries and ten acres of land in Whittlesey Mere (Hunts.) to the abbey of Peterborough, in return for pasturing 120 pigs and maintaining the houses, fences and ‘stalls’ (pro commutacione centum viginti porcorcum pascualium ac pro domorum, sepium, et stabulorum emendatione); if the stabuli refer to the haia used for hunting this domus too may have been primarily a hunting-lodge.58 At the time of the Domesday survey, the abbot of Peterborough still held the two fi sher-ies (along with a virgate of land, two fi shermen and a boat) in return for fi nding pasture for 120 pigs, or fattening 60 pigs with corn if this was not available, and providing materials for a house (domus) 60ft long (18m), and poles (uirgas) for the enclosure (curia) around the house; he also had to repair both domus and curia if they fell into disrepair.59 Though stabuli are not specifi cally mentioned, the similarity of these obligations to those laid on the bishop of Durham’s tenants of ‘Aucklandshire’ is striking.

Place-names may indicate other settlements particularly associated with hunting. Of particular interest are six names containing the element lutegar:Ludgershall (Bucks.), Ludgershall (Wilts.), Luggers Hall Farm in Owlpen (Glos.), Lurgarshall (Suss.), Lotegareshale (lost) in Arkesden (Essex) and Lutgaresberi(Som.). The fi rst element, lutegar (‘trapping-spear’), suggests ‘a trap which shot


itself off when an animal disturbed it’, while the element healh, which signifi es ‘corner of land, sheltered place’, probably refers to ‘a small natural valley’; all fi ve places whose names include this element are or were associated with such a feature, though the site of the Wiltshire Ludgershall has moved, and the village now stands on a fl at-topped hill adjacent to the later castle.60 Three of the six places are further associated with members of the royal kin and/or high-ranking local offi cials. Ludgershall (Bucks.) belonged to Queen Edith and was held of her by Eadgifu, wife of Wulfweard white, a member of her household and one of the leading thegns of King Edward’s day; two hides in the same vill belonged to Ælfric, one of the king’s chamberlains.61 Ludgershall (Wilts.), bequeathed by the ætheling Æthelstan to Godwine dreslan, lay on the borders of Coldridge, site of the stud which the ætheling left to his staghuntsman; it was later held by Edward of Salisbury, who became sheriff of Wiltshire after 1066.62 Lutgaresberi (Som.), where the Black Rood of Waltham was discovered, belonged to Tovi the Proud, one of King Cnut’s stallers.63 Neither Lurgarshall (Suss.), nor Luggers Hall Farm (Glos.) appear in Domesday Book, nor does the lost Lotegareshale (Essex). Though it is only in the case of the ætheling’s vill at Ludgershall (Wilts.) that an association with hunting can be demonstrated, it seems possible that at least some of the vills whose names contain the same element had a similar connection.

The other great aristocratic pastime, hawking, appears alongside hunting and fi shing in King Alfred’s list of the occupations which a man might expect to enjoy on his own land, while Mercian charters of the eighth and ninth centuries free estates from the obligation to feed the king’s hawks and falcons, as well as his horses and dogs.64 Alfred himself not only enjoyed ‘all manner of hunting (omnem venandi artem)’ but also personally instructed his ‘falconers, hawk-trainers and dog-keepers’ (falconarios et accipitrarios canicularios).65 In the late tenth century, the Kentish thegn Brihtric bequeathed to the king two hawks as well as all his staghounds (twegen hafocas and ealle his headorhundas), and his contemporary Ealdorman Æthelwine was accustomed to go hawking as well as hunting at his manor of Upwood (Hunts.).66 King Edward had a great love of birds of prey, as well as hunting dogs, and his ‘thegns and king’s household warriors’ in Berkshire were required to include their hawks (accipitres) as well as their dogs in their heriots, ‘if the king wished to have them’ (si vellet accipere).67

King Harold II also enjoyed hawking: the Bayeux Tapestry presents him on horseback, hawk on fi st, with his hunting dogs running before him, and he is also known to have possessed books on the art of hawking, used by Adelard of Bath for his own treatise on the subject in the early twelfth century.68 The earliest royal seal from Scandinavia, that of Cnut the Holy of Denmark (d. 1085), shows on its reverse the king on horseback, with a hawk on his wrist.69

Some early Mercian charters include areas for hawking (aucupationes) among the appurtenances of estates, alongside fi sheries (piscationes) and hunting-grounds


(venationes).70 The fact that these cease to be mentioned in tenth- and eleventh-century charters may be no more than a change in diplomatic practice, for, like parks and deer-hedges, hawks’ eyries are recorded as manorial appurtenances in Domesday Book, where they appear (albeit sporadically) from East Anglia to the borders of Wales and from Surrey to Cheshire. In most shires, eyries are associ-ated only with high-status sites; in Surrey, the single reference to ‘three nests of hawks in the woodland’(iii nidi accipitrum in silva) is found in the account of Earl Harold’s manor of Limpsfi eld, while in Buckinghamshire the only recorded eyries are Earl Leofwine’s at Chalfont St Peter and that of Tovi, King Edward’s thegn, at neighbouring Chalfont St Giles.71 It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that only the upper crust possessed eyries.72 The Shropshire folios record not only the eyrie at Little Wenlock belonging to St Milburh’s minster but also one at Rushbury, held by Alwine, perhaps a minor thegn, and another at Wem, divided in 1066 between four named holders, who seem to be members of a family of modest free men or thegns.73 The position is clearest in Cheshire, where most of the references to eyries occur; they are found in the possession of minor holders like Dunning, with seven hides of land, and locally important thegns like Dot, as well as King Edward, Earl Eadwine and his brother Earl Morcar.74

Renders of hawks are occasionally recorded; in Herefordshire the royal manor of Kingstone paid annually 50s in assayed coin and a hawk, while two Welshmen in Bach rendered two dogs and a hawk.75 These payments, however, are recorded only for 1086 and it is not clear if they had also been due before the Conquest; this was certainly not the case at Calverhall (Salop), worth only 18s in King Edward’s day but valued in 1086 at 20s and a hawk, or Hampton (Ches.), formerly worth 5s but valued in 1086 at 2s and a sparrowhawk (unumsprevarium).76 The reference to the sparrowhawk is unusual, for it is rare for the kind of bird to be specifi ed, though the renders from Kirkby Fleetham (Yorks.) in 1086 included a sor hawk, one which had not yet had its fi rst moult.77 The wildfowler (fugelere) of Ælfric’s Colloquy boasts of his ability to catch and tame hawks, but distinguishes only two, ‘the greater [and] the lesser’ (þone maran … þæne læssan). It is perhaps natural (especially since the larger bird appears to be the more desirable) to think of the female peregrine and her smaller mate, the tiercel, but this is not a very likely inference, since the fowler does not keep his birds over the summer (because of the cost of feeding them) but takes new ones each autumn.78 The diffi culty is compounded by the fact that, though both hawks (accipitres) and falcons (falcones) are mentioned in Latin texts, Old English used one word, hafoc, to signify both.79

Hawking, as opposed to falconry, seems to have been especially popular in England. The word ‘sparrowhawk’ is Old English, as is ‘goshawk’ (goshafoc), and the former even occurs as a personal name.80 Sparrowhawks and goshawks are true hawks (‘short-wings’) and both names continued in use after the


Conquest; indeed ‘sparrowhawk’ is the only ‘Germanic’ bird-name adopted into the vocabulary of French falconry.81 Conversely names for falcons (‘long wings’) are largely foreign imports; indeed the Old English word for a falcon is wealhhafoc, ‘foreign hawk’. In the didactic verses known as The Fortunes of Men,some details are given of the training of a wælisca, presumably a falcon of some kind, describing how jesses are attached to the bird, which is fed small morsels of food until it learns ‘to return to the young man’s hands’.82 Since the word wealhcan mean ‘Welsh’, some of these birds might have come from Wales; Waswic, one of the king’s reeves in Archenfi eld (the area of south Wales appended to Hereford in 1086), owed 28s ‘for hawks’.83 The best birds, however, were probably imported from abroad. In the eighth century, King Æthelberht II of Kent wrote to Archbishop Boniface in Saxony, requesting him to send two falcons (falcones)trained to take cranes (grues), because such hawks (accipitres) were not to be had in Kent.84 Boniface himself mentions elsewhere that he has supplied King Æthelbald of Mercia with a hawk and two falcons (accipitrum et duos falcones).85

At the end of the Old English period, the royal dues from the shire of Worcester included £10 for ‘a Norwegian hawk’ (accipiter norresc), which must have been a falcon, probably a peregrine.86 Identical sums for hawks were required from Wiltshire and from the shires of Oxford, Northampton, Leicester and Warwick, and though the types of hawk are unspecifi ed, they were clearly expensive birds, as opposed to those locally caught in English woodlands; Worcestershire’s ‘Norwegian hawk’ was probably not set free to fl y back to the greenwood at the end of season, but kept in a mews.87 Expensive birds might also be found in lay hands, for in the Surrey folios of Domesday Book, Osweald, brother of the abbot of Chertsey, owed a fi ne of two gold marks (£12) or two hawks.88 When the young warrior in The Battle of Maldon ‘let his beloved hawk fl y from his hand, away to the woods’, he was making a considerable sacrifi ce, as the poet makes clear: ‘the young man (cniht) was not about to weaken in the weapon-play’.89

The only prey specifi cally mentioned is crane (grus), and the bones of the common crane are ‘surprisingly ubiquitous’ on archaeological sites of all kinds, whereas heron and bittern ‘appear to be associated with high status estate centres’.90 In the two pre-Conquest illustrated calendars already mentioned, the scene for October shows a crane being stalked by two men, one mounted, and both carrying birds of prey; two other birds, either geese or ducks, appear in the same scene.91 The paired mounts on the Sutton Hoo purse lid show what appears to be a duck in the grip of a hawk, and although the motif is derived from late Roman models, duck bones occur frequently at all types of archaeological sites, as do those of geese, though not all are necessarily from wild birds.92 Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester (1062–95) was once so carried away by the smell of a goose which was being roasted for him that he decided to give up eating such delicacies rather than risk the sin of gluttony, but since domestic poultry was a


major part of the monastic diet, the source of temptation may not have been a wild goose.93 The medicinal texts mention pigeons, doves and ‘wild hens’, possibly partridges, and a wide variety of all these and other species are known from excavation, but whether they were caught by hawks rather than by one of the other methods used by Ælfric’s wildfowler (netting, snaring, trapping, liming, luring) is unknown.94

The meat derived from hunting and hawking was, of course, destined to be eaten, but it would be an error to see the hunt as primarily a means of providing nourishment. Indeed the feeding of hounds and hawks probably outweighed the food value of the prey which they caught, but this was not the point: the meat from the prey was ‘symbolic of the conspicuous consumption that would confi rm [the lord’s] power’.95 The literal meaning of the word ‘lord’ (hlaford, hlafweard)is ‘bread-keeper’, while his wife the lady (hlafdige) is the one who makes it, and the retainers are those who receive the food.96 It is important, however, to dis-tinguish between the regular provision of meals to a household and ceremonial feasting, which was intended to impress as much as to nourish. Old English usage distinguishes the ordinary meal (gereord) from the celebratory feast (swæsende,symbel), and the key element of the latter was not the consumption of food, but the drinking (gebeorscipe) which followed it.97 At the feast held to celebrate the foundation of Abingdon Abbey, King Eadred (the chief guest) ordered the provision of an abundant supply of mead, and even commanded the doors to be locked, so that none should refuse his royal generosity; as a result the northerners present (who were presumably Anglo-Danes from York) got spectacularly drunk, ‘as was their custom’.98 When, a few years earlier, the rich widow Æthelfl æd had entertained Eadred’s half-brother, King Æthelstan, at Glastonbury, her one fear had been that the drink might run out (it didn’t).99 Not everyone approved of such indulgence. Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester ‘would always dine publicly in hall with his knights’ (semper in regia considentibus militibus palam conuiuibatur), but although ‘the English custom was followed of drinking all hours after the meal’, the bishop himself, when it came to his turn, drank only sparingly and out of a very small cup.100

The feast was a symbol of good cheer and good fellowship, but things could turn nasty, especially after drink had been taken.101 It was not only that fi ghts might break out (though this presumably happened). A cautionary tale on the evils of drink, set in the time of Cnut, is recorded among a collection of stories in the Ramsey Liber Benefactorum, which may go back to the eleventh century. When the king was visiting eastern England, he put up at the royal vill of Nassington (Northants), but there was insuffi cient accommodation available for all of his travelling companions, so Æthelric, bishop of Dorchester, and four of the king’s scribes (consecretariis), were housed by an anonymous Dane, who, by marriage to an English widow, had acquired a manor at Elton (Hunts.). They


were entertained lavishly with food and drink (in cibis variis et potibus), and sat up drinking into the night, but in the cold light of morning, their host found that in his cups he had sold his estate to the bishop, who had taken advantage of the presence of the royal scribes to have the agreement set down in writing. Presumably Æthelric either had a better head for ale than his Danish host, or he was pursuing St Wulfstan’s policy, but out of greed rather than piety.102 Such tales of indulgence (and over-indulgence) must be understood in a context where famine was as common as feast, and the hall a haven of peace and plenty in a hard world; it was the joy (wynn) of the hall that the outcast lady of The Wife’s Lament remembered when she complained that her present dwelling was wynneleas.103

In contrast to the numerous anecdotes involving drink, food is rarely men-tioned. No cookery books exist before the later Middle Ages, and ‘Old English literature is simply not interested in eating’.104 The food-rents which are spo-radically recorded give some idea of what was available; the thegn Æthelweard, for instance, left the reversion of his estate at Ickham (Kent) to Christ Church, Canterbury, promising to pay yearly to the community at Michaelmas a day’s food-rent (feorm) of 40 sesters of ale, 60 loaves, a wether sheep, a fl itch of bacon, an ox’s haunch, two cheeses and four hens.105 Beans and peas were also eaten; the villani of Southease (Suss.) owed three packloads of peas to the their lord, the abbot of the New Minster, Winchester.106 These were probably dried peas, used to make pottage; one of the characters in the Colloquia Diffi ciliora of Ælfric’s pupil and namesake, Ælfric bata, calls for ‘pottage and tasty food’ (pulmentarium et grata fercula).107 Broth also seems to have been popular, for Ælfric’s cook boasts that ‘you can’t even have a good broth (fætt broþ) without my art’.108 The closest we have to an actual menu comes from a fragmentary will, apparently of the eleventh century, which leaves instructions for the deceased’s funeral feasts. Only the fi rst is specifi ed in detail: fi ve ores (80d) for malt and fuel, 42d for bread, 17d for a pig, two ores (32d) for a bullock (reþær), one ore (16d) for three buces (presumably roe deer, though OE bucca can mean ‘goat’), 8d for a cheese, 3d for fi sh, 4d for milk.109 Bread, cheese, fi sh and milk reappear in the mid-eleventh-century Indicia monasterialia, a description of the sign language used at Christ Church, Canterbury. This is a monastic text, so no signs for meat are included, though eggs, various vegetables and fruit are mentioned, but the Christ Church list presumably refl ects the day-to-day diet, whereas the Bury will concerns a special feast.110 Both the unknown testator and the monastic communities belonged to the aristocratic, or at least affl uent section of society, and the diet of the poor was presumably much more restricted.

For rich and poor alike, the fact of living in an agricultural community meant that daily fare must have been dictated primarily by the seasons; modern gardeners are still familiar with the ‘hungry gap’ in late spring and early sum-mer, when the autumn store of fruit and vegetables has been used up and the


new produce is not yet ready to harvest.111 To this basic limitation was added the ecclesiastical progression of fast and feast, which might be accentuated in particularly dire circumstances; the advent of Thorkell the Tall’s immense raiding army in 1009 was countered by a three-day general fast, in which every adult Christian was commanded to eat only bread, water and raw vegetables.112 The edict is a reminder that in the Middle Ages the distinction was preserved between bread as the primary staple on the one hand, and the accompaniments added to it as relish (sufol) on the other; the tenth-century regulations of the London ‘peace-guild’ record that on the death of a guild-brother, each of his fellows was to contribute a loaf and its relish (gesufel) as alms for his soul, and the food-rent from Newton (Suff.) in the time of Abbot Leofstan (1044–65), included relish (syfl incge) for 300 loaves’.113 What the ‘relish’ entailed varied according to the season, as well as the wealth of the provider. Then as now, butter was a common accompaniment to bread, but OE smeoru could include lard, fresh cheese and dripping (the latter still a valued addition to bread within living memory). More exotic relishes included black cumin, ‘the southern wort that is good to eat on bread’.114 ‘Southern’ here indicates an import, available only to the well-off; the goods offered by the merchant in Ælfric’s Colloquy include ‘spices, wine and oil’ (wyrtgemangc, win and ele).115

It seems likely that the difference between an ordinary meal in a lord’s house, as opposed to that of a peasant, lay not merely in the quantity and variety of the food on offer, but also on the presentation. In Ælfric’s Colloquy, both the cook and the baker are presented as specialist craftsmen. When the company assert that they can do their own boiling and roasting, the cook responds that without his art they will not only have raw vegetables and uncooked meat, but ‘you’ll all be serv-ants and none of you lords’; the implication is that men of status do not do their own cooking. The baker, by contrast, is not contradicted when he claims to be ‘the mainstay of men’ (since ‘without bread all food would become loathsome’) which suggests that his trade was rather less easily duplicated.116 Indeed, given the labour involved in producing fl our (especially on a hand-quern) good bread may have been ‘a prestigious food’, readily available only in the richer households with access not only to a mill but also to a kitchen.117 While unleavened bread can be cooked on an open fi re using a bakestone, yeasted bread requires an oven, not something which would be found in a peasant’s cottage. Throughout the late mediaeval and even well into modern times most villages of any size had a communal bakehouse, though none are attested for the pre-Conquest period.118

Before 1066, ovens were associated with aristocratic households, and were usually sited in a separate kitchen to minimize the dangers of fi re.119 Possession of a kitchen was itself a mark of status: one version of Geþyncðu includes a kitchen among the elements required for a ceorl to thrive to thegnhood.120 By the eleventh century both ecclesiastical and lay lords would have had both cooks


and bakers in their service; both are recorded among the monastic servants of Bury St Edmunds in 1086.121 A professional cook with access to a well-provided kitchen and oven could provide more elaborate (though not necessarily more nourishing) meals than a peasant woman cooking over an open fi re. The kitchen utensils listed in Gerefa include not only cauldrons, pots, pans and ladles but also an iron grill or trivet (brandiren), which was probably not available to a poor household.122

Another way of asserting status was the consumption of rare foodstuffs, or those which were not commonly available; it is noticeable that on élite sites the proportion of animal remains from game as opposed to domestic animals increases in the late Old English period.123 The same trend is seen in the con-sumption of fi sh. Fishing as a sport is not found until the later Middle Ages, but fi sh itself had a role to play in the expression of status The obligations of fasting meant that fi sh formed an important part of the mediaeval diet for laymen, as for ecclesiastics, and the archaeological record reveals a wide variety of species, both marine and freshwater. On the eastern sites (Durham, York, Lincoln, Great Yarmouth and Ipswich), cod, haddock and herring predominate among the former, and eel among the latter, though oddly enough none were found at Flaxengate (Lincs.).124 This tallies with the documentary evidence; Domesday Book reveals that eels in their thousands were rendered from mills and weirs the length and breadth of England. Other species are less frequently mentioned. Porpoises (mereswin, ‘sea-pigs’) were particularly valued; the villani of Southease (Suss.), belonging to the New Minster, owed £4 a year for porpoises.125 Whale-meat too was a luxury item; Ælfric’s fi sherman, who seems to have operated mainly in inland waters, was too timid to attempt such a dangerous animal, though he agreed that those who dared to do so stood to make a good profi t.126

Whales did (and do) beach on English shores, but most whale-meat was probably imported. At London in King Æthelred’s reign, the men of Rouen paid 6s for any ship carrying craspisce (‘blubber-meat’) and a twentieth part of the cargo itself, whereas for ordinary fi sh the toll was a halfpenny for a small ship (bata) and 1d for a larger one (navis).127 At Tidenham (Glos.) ‘every rare fi sh which is of value, sturgeon and porpoise, herring or sea-fi sh (styria and mereswyn, healic oð sæfi sc)’ belonged to the lord of manor.128

In Domesday Book references to herring are concentrated in East Anglia (especially Suffolk), the London region and Kent. The archaeology of Ipswich suggests an increase in the quantity of herring between the late ninth and the late eleventh centuries, which is not seen in other sea-fi sh, and which may have to do with developments in fi shing techniques; the introduction of the drift-net, for instance.129 The centres of herring fi shing seem to be the coastal settlements of Kent, which operated a fi shing fl eet to take the catch between Michaelmas (29 September) and St Andrew’s Day (30 November) every year; since the same


term was observed at Yarmouth, which was emerging as a fi shing port at the same time, the taking of herring seems to have been a cooperative effort all along the east coast.130 Much of the catch must have been sold, to feed the growing urban populations of the region, hence the appearance of herring-bones in the archaeological record (see above). Renders of herring to manorial lords appear ‘only in association with the most powerful men and institutions of the realm’, suggesting that ‘salt and dried herring … must have been special food, served at genteel tables’.131

Matters may, however, have been rather more complicated than this. Herring do not appear in Domesday Book’s account of western England, where their place is taken by salmon.132 Though classifi ed as a sea-fi sh in Ælfric’s Colloquy, salmon was probably caught, then as now, in tidal rivers. Earl Edwin’s fi shery at Eaton (Ches.), just south of Chester itself, rendered no fewer than 1,000 salmon, and was staffed by six fi shermen; a second fi shery, with two fi shermen, was attached to his manor of Farndon. Both manors lay in Broxton Hundred, and the fi sheries concerned must have been on the Chester Dee.133 Of the other Domesday refer-ences to salmon, the 16 rendered to Malmesbury Abbey from the burgesses of Gloucester, and the six which went to Earl Harold from Turlestane, a member of his manor of Much Marcle (Herefords.), presumably came from the Severn, and the 30 salmon received by Heca from Loddiswell (Devon) from the River Avon.134

A century earlier, Archbishop Ealdwulf of York (and bishop of Worcester) leased land at Hunesham to his miles Leofnoth, for three lives, the rent to include 15 good salmon annually on the fi rst day of Lent to the brethren of Worcester, from the appurtenant fi shery; Hunesham is unidentifi ed, but the fi shery presumably lay on the Severn.135 Heca is otherwise unknown but the status of the four others in receipt of salmon renders (Earls Edwin and Harold, the church of Worcester and Malmesbury Abbey) suggest that salmon played the same role in western England as herring did in the east; it was presumably salmon which were taken in the fi sh-weirs described in the Tidenham survey, belonging to Bath Abbey. But when Abbot Ælfwig leased the manor to Archbishop Stigand in the early 1060s, the rent did not include salmon; instead the abbot required six porpoises and 30,000 herrings. It seems that in the west, herring were the ‘rare fi sh’ which were particularly prized, as salmon presumably were in the east.136 It was their novelty and scarcity value that rendered particular foods valuable to the greater lords, and enabled them to display power and status. As with weapons, armour, clothes, furnishings and the decorative arts, so it was with food: conspicuous consumption was ever uppermost in the minds of the Old English lords (and ladies). What’s the point of being rich if no-one notices?


Appendix 1: The Assessment of Land and Wealth

Estimates of wealth are hampered by uncertainty as to what constituted riches in the early mediaeval period. Land was certainly an important factor, but cash, treasure and bullion must also have played a part. It is unfortunate that only landed wealth leaves enough trace to be assessed, and even here there are ambi-guities. Domesday Book gives monetary values for most of the parcels of land which it lists, usually both for the present (valet, ‘it is worth’) and the past (valuit,‘it was worth’); the ‘past’ value is sometimes (but not always) said to have been that in King Edward’s time. Whatever the ‘value’ might be (and there is still considerable debate on this topic), it is clearly not the market value of the estate concerned; in the few cases where both the Domesday value and the market value is known, the latter is by far the greater.1 Nor do the Domesday values represent what might accrue if the tenement were leased for money, for where actual rents are recorded (reddet/reddebat and similar terms being used) they are always greater than the values. In fact what the values seem to represent is the income in cash due to the lord of the estate from those of his tenants who owed money rents. Thus neither the value nor the rent includes all the resources, in labour and in kind, produced by the estate. Adding up the Domesday values may be useful for comparative purposes, but gives little idea of the actual resources of any individual.

Sources from the late Old English period rarely make estimates of value. Some-times the price paid for a particular estate is included in the charter describing the transaction, but there is insuffi cient evidence to assess the cash value of any lord’s total holding. For this reason, I have not attempted to use the cash values of Domesday Book in assessing the size of individual holdings, preferring to use the fi gures for hidage.2 This is still an unsatisfactory assessment of ‘wealth’, for what hidage represents is the taxable capacity of a given estate, the amount for which it answered to the king’s geld and other royal services. It does, however, provide some comparison between Domesday Book and the pre-Conquest sources, since, with some exceptions (notably ancient royal man ors), Domesday regularly records the geld assessment for each holding, while bookland is invariably hidated, the hidage being recorded in the relevant diploma (boc). It is clear, however, that Domesday Book’s record of land which was not assessed to geld is at best sporadic, so much so that it is impossible to determine the

A P P E N D I X 1 : T H E A S S E S S M E N T O F L A N D A N D W E A LT H140

extent of such unhidated land.3 Conversely, bookland (the best recorded of the Old English tenures), which was always hidated, need not have constituted the whole or even the greater part of an individual’s total estate; some (perhaps most) may have been unhidated folkland (inherited family land).4 Imperfect as it is, however, hidage provides the only assessment consistently available for purposes of comparison.

Appendix 2: Count Eustace’s Divorce, 1049

In 1049 Count Eustace of Boulogne was excommunicated for marrying within the prohibited degrees, and it is usually assumed that the offence concerned his second wife, Ida of Lorraine, for both were descended from Louis the Stammerer.1 If this is the case, then his fi rst wife Gode (Godgifu, King Edward’s sister) must have died before 1049. Eustace and Gode, however, were also within the prohibited degrees, for both were descended from Alfred the Great, Eustace in the seventh generation and Gode in the fi fth. If it was their union which provoked papal condemnation in 1049, it may simply have been dissolved, allowing Eustace to remarry and Gode to return to England. In 1051, the Anglo-Saxon Chroniclenotes merely that Eustace ‘had married King Edward’s sister’, and he and his brother-in-law were clearly on good terms.2 Eustace’s family has been discussed by Professor Tanner, who constructed his genealogy, but does not mention his descent from King Alfred.3


Appendix 3: The Earldom of Hereford

It is often asserted that Ralph received the earldom of Herefordshire in 1051 (or even earlier), but it is improbable that he held it until after the death of Swein Godwineson on 29 September 1052. Herefordshire was in Swein’s control in 1051, but he was dispossessed of his lands and honours in the same year, along with the rest of his kin.1 It seems to have been not Ralph but Osbern Pentecost who took over the Herefordshire portion of his earldom; Domesday Book reveals that the earl’s share of the renders of two Herefordshire hundreds, attached to the manor of Burghill, were paid to Osbern Pentecost during the period of Earl Godwine’s (and therefore Earl Swein’s) exile.2 Swein did not participate in his father’s triumphant return in 1052, for he had undertaken the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and died on the return journey, being buried at Constantinople.3 John of Worcester even claims that Swein was excluded from the general reinstatement of Earl Godwine and his children in 1052, but all versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle include all Godwine’s children in the reconciliation.4

It is probably signifi cant that Osbern Pentecost was one of the Normans exiled on Godwine’s return in 1052. On the eve of the Norman Conquest, Burghill and its revenues (along with Brinsop, also once in the possession of Osbern Pentecost) belonged to Earl Harold Godwineson, who succeeded Ralph as earl of Hereford, perhaps on Ralph’s death 1057, but more probably after the disastrous Welsh expedition of 1055.5 In 1086, however, Burghill and Brinsop were held by Alvred of Marlborough, Osbern’s nephew, who also held Much Cowarne, another comital manor formerly in Earl Harold’s possession, to which the earl’s share of the revenues of three hundreds had been attached before the Conquest.6 Taken together, this evidence suggests that it was Osbern Pentecost, not Earl Ralph, who administered Swein Godwineson’s earldom in 1051–52. If indeed ‘Pentecost’s Castle’, recorded in the ‘E’ recension of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, is not, as was once believed, the castle of Ewias Harold, then Osbern was the fi rst architect of the castle at Hereford, whose construction ‘in Earl Swein’s district (folgoð)’ was one of the major irritants which provoked the initial confrontation between Earl Godwine and the king.7


Appendix 4: The Antecedents of Wihtgar

The name Wihtgar is not a common one, so that Wihtgar I, who witnessed diplomas of Wihtred of Kent (S18, 29) in 696–99, may have been an ancestor of Wihtgar II, who attested diplomas of Æthelwulf and Æthelberht of Wessex between 844 and 862 (S 294, 315, 316, 331), all but one of which (S 294) relate to land in Kent; it must be Wihtgar II whose name which appears on the spurious S 294b (previously listed as S 322), since the diploma’s witness-list is based on that of S 294. No connection can be established between Wihtgar II and Wihtgar III, who attests S 276, a pretended diploma of King Ecgberht dated 826, whose witness-list is largely copied from S 446, dated 939. Wihtgar III is probably one of the two ministri called Wihtgar, who attest diplomas of Æthelstan and Edmund between 928 and 946; both attest a diploma of Æthelstan in 938 (S 441).1 One of them must be Wihtgar IV, who received a four-life læn of seven hides at Havant (IOW) in 935 (S 837), and attested a bequest of land at North Stonham (Hants) in the 930s (S 1509), and he in turn might be a descendant of the Kentish thegns Wihtgar I and Wihtgar II, for Kent, the Isle of Wight (once ruled by the legendary Jutish prince Wihtgar) and south Hampshire were all ‘Jutish’ provinces.2 It has been suggested that Wihtgar IV was identical with Wihtgar V, Wulfstan of Dalham’s kinsman, but this hypothesis depends on the identifi cation of Wulfstan with the Kentish reeve of the same name who appears in S 1457, which is perhaps unlikely, and Havant, the only estate associated with the Wihtgar IV, does not appear in the hands of Wulfstan’s kinsman, Wihtgar V; King Æthelred unræd gave it to the Old Minster, Winchester, in 980 (S 837).


Notes

Notes to Preface

1 Angela Care Evans, The Sutton Hoo Ship Burial (London: The British Museum, 1986),

p. 9.

2 ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and (increasingly) ‘Saxon’ are used, especially by archaeologists, to signify the

post-Roman, pre-Norman era of English history; so that, for instance, we read of ‘Saxons’

in Kent (whose population was considered, from Bede’s time, to be Jutish in origin) and in

Northumbria (similarly considered as Angles). Useful though the terms are for academic

purposes, they add to the misconception that the pre-Conquest population of England

was somehow not English. For this reason I have preferred in what follows to use the term

‘Old English’ rather than ‘Anglo-Saxon/Saxon’ for the pre-Conquest period.

3 Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (eds), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969).

4 HE iv§26; Colgrave and Mynors, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, p. 227 and n. 4.

5 Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995).

6 Donald Scragg (ed.), The Battle of Maldon (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1981); Alexander Bell (ed.), L’Estoire des Engleis, by Geoffroy Gaimar (Anglo-Norman Text

Society, 14–16; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1960).

7 OV ii, pp. 258–59.

8 The survey on whose records Domesday Book is based was undertaken in the Conqueror’s

reign, in 1086; when the book was produced is another matter, for which see David Roffe,

Domesday: the Inquest and the Book (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

9 R.H.C. Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’, in C. Harper-Bill, C.J. Holdsworth and J.L. Nelson (eds),

Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989),

pp. 103–16.

10 R.A.B. Mynors, R.W. Thomson and M. Winterbottom, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum

Anglorum, The History of the English Kings (2 vols; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

11 A. Campbell (ed.), The Chronicle of Æthelweard (London: Nelson, 1962); A Campbell (ed.),

Encomium Emmae Reginae (Camden Classic Reprints; Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1998); F. Barlow (ed.), The Life of King Edward who Lies at Westminster (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 1992). 12 Not all surviving copies of pre-Conquest documents are extant in their original form,

but some later copies may be faithful to their originals, and even those which have been

tampered with (or even forged) can still be of interest.

N O T E S T O PA G E S x i – 2

13 See Timothy Reuter, ‘The medieval nobility in twentieth-century historiography’ in

M. Bentley (ed.), Companion to Historiography (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 178–80.

14 The title ‘earl’ replaced ‘ealdorman’ in Cnut’s reign (1016–35), having previously been

used for leading men in Scandinavian-settled areas, or of Scandinavian background (see

Introduction, below).

15 The most recent study of Earl Godwine and his family is that of Emma Mason, The House

of Godwine: The History of a Dynasty (London: Hambledon and London, 2004). Earl

Leofric and his kin are treated by Stephen Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power

in Later Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); see also Stephen

Baxter, ‘The Leofwinesons: power, property and patronage in the early English Kingdom’

(Oxford University: D. Phil. thesis, 2002).

16 Ann Williams, Land, Power and Politics: The Family, Estates and Patronage of Odda of

Deerhurst (Deerhurst Lecture 1996; Deerhurst: Friends of Deerhurst Church, 1997);

Ann Williams, ‘The king’s nephew: The family and career of Ralph, Earl of Hereford’, in

C. Harper-Bill, C. Holdsworth and J.L. Nelson (eds), Studies in Medieval History, pp. 327–44.

Notes to Introduction: Definitions

1 IV Eg 2a.

2 The classic account is in Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined (trans

A. Goldhammer; Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1980); for the English evidence,

see T.E. Powell, ‘The “Three Orders” of society in Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE 23 (1994):

103–32; MEL, pp. 457–63.

3 W.J. Sedgefield (ed.), King Alfred’s Version of the Consolations of Boethius (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1900), ch. 17, pp. 41–42.

4 F. Liebermann (ed.), Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (3 vols; Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1905–13);

F.L. Attenborough (ed.), The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1922; repr. New York: Russell and Russell, 1963); A.J. Robertson (ed.), The

Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1925; repr. New York: AMS Press, 1974). The codes are cited according to the

convention established in MEL. 5 See the example of Wulfric hunta and his wife, who appear as benefi ciaries under the will of

the Hertfordshire lady Æthelgifu (Æthelgifu, pp. 8–9, 12–13, 34; and Chapter 4 below).

6 Af 9. To avoid tedious circumlocutions, the word ‘man’ will hereafter be used in its sense

of ‘human being’, unless the sex of the being is relevant.

7 In the earliest West Saxon code, that of King Ine (c.695), the 600s wergeld was that of a

British, as opposed to West Saxon, aristocrat, but by Alfred’s time the British element was

no longer a separate group within Wessex.

8 The institution of slavery in England has been exhaustively studied by David A.E. Pelteret,

Slavery in Early Mediaeval England from the Reign of Alfred until the Twelfth Century

(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995).

9 Mircna laga, translated in EHD i, no. 52C. Alfred’s legislation applied to both Wessex and

‘English’ Mercia, which is to say that part of Mercia not overrun by the Danes.

N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 – 4

10 Norðleoda lagu 9–12, translated in EHD i, no. 52E, and see MEL, pp. 391–94. The lands

beyond the Tyne comprised both the land of the Haliwerfolc (‘people of the Holy

Man’, i.e. St Cuthbert of Durham), and the territory of the ealdormen (formerly high-

reeves) of Bamburgh; roughly speaking, the modern shires of County Durham and

Northumberland.

11 The West Saxon shilling contained 5d; the Mercian shilling, however, contained only 4d,

so that 266 thrymsas equates to 199s 6d in Mercian reckoning. See H. Munro Chadwick,

Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905; repr.

New York: Russell and Russell, 1963), pp. 12–23.

12 Laws, pp. 140–41; Cnut’s Second Letter, preserved only in a Latin translation, is directed

to toti gentis Anglorum tam nobilis quam plebeiis (Laws, pp. 146–47). In the tenth century,

King Edmund had likewise commanded all men both twelfhindi and twihindi to unite in

seizing thieves (III Em 2), and the Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte, which dates from the

time of Edmund’s elder brother Æthelstan (924–39), divided those for whom wergeld must

be paid into ceorlboren and þegnboren: see Margaret Gelling (ed.), Offa’s Dyke Reviewed

by Frank Noble (BAR, British series, 114; Oxford: BAR, 1983), pp. 106–7. For what it is

worth, similar expressions are found in the post-Conquest Carmen de Hastingi Proelio (ed.

Catherine Morton and Hope Munz; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), verse 203.

13 The economic pressures of increasing manorialization have been examined by David A.E.

Pelteret, ‘Two Old English lists of serfs’, Medieval Studies 48 (1986): 470–513. Other factors

in downward social mobility included the Viking raiders, who expected to collect slaves

among other booty, and penal servitude, which was used as a legal sanction.

14 Liebermann, i, pp. 456–58; EHD i, no. 52(A), p. 432. The remaining clauses deal with the

status of merchants and scholars, and the king’s duties towards ecclesiastics.

15 Wulfstan uses the expression ge eorlisc ge ceorlisc, where eorl has its archaic sense of

‘aristocrat’, rather then the contemporary sense of ‘earl’.

16 The phrase denotes a defensible manor-house; see Chapter 6 below. One version of the

text includes ‘church and kitchen’ among the required elements.

17 II Cn 7l, translated in EHD i, no. 50, p.429. The rationale of heriot was that the dying

retainer returned the arms and war-gear with which his lord had once formerly invested

him.

18 See note 20.

19 The title ‘earl’ (ON jarl) replaced ‘ealdorman’ in the time of Cnut.

20 The healsfang was the sum paid to the closest kin (children, brothers and father) of

a slain man, after peace had been made between them and the kin of the killer, and

reckoned at 120s for a 1,200s wergeld (II Em 7§3; MEL, pp. 374–78); since the West Saxon

shilling contained 5d, 120s equates to 600d, which itself equates to £2½, at 240d pence

to the pound. The only recorded payment made by a median thegn in East Anglia, Ketel,

Archbishop Stigand’s man, was rendered in war-gear, not money, and consisted of a helmet,

a mail-coat, a horse with its tack, a sword and a spear (S 1519).

21 GDB fos 280v, 298v.

22 For sake and soke, which covered rights to various dues and renders, including judicial fi nes,

see David Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 151–62.

23 For the signifi cance of the gold-hilted sword, see Chapter 7 below.

150 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 – 6

24 Norðleoda lagu 9–12. Gesið is the term used in early law-codes for aristocrats, replaced in

the tenth century by þegn.

25 Landed wealth can only be assessed in terms of hidage (the assessment to service and tax);

Domesday Book gives monetary values for estates, but these are not easy to interpret; see

Appendix 1 below.

26 LE ii§97. On Wulfric’s death, Guthmund negotiated an extension of the agreement with

his successor Thurstan, but after 1066 all the land, along with Guthmund’s own estates,

passed to Hugh de Montfort (GDB fos 404v–410v).

27 Peter A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1994), p. 34, n. 4.

28 This is the sense of eorl in the earliest Kentish law-codes (Abt, 13–14, 75; Hl, 1) and in the

phrase ge eorlisc ge ceorlisc employed by Archbishop Wulfstan (see note 15 above).

29 EGu, 12; for the date and authorship, see MEL, pp. 389–91; D.G. Scragg (ed.), The Battle

of Maldon AD 991 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 26–27.

30 Vagn attests a charter of 1051–52 (S 1425) at the head of the earl’s houscarls.

31 Cynewig held estates at Ashton (Wilts.), Æsce (unidentifi ed, Oxon.), and Saintbury (Glos.),

and was reeve of the royal manor of Arlington (Glos.); see GDB fos 69v, 70v, 157v, 164,

169.

32 S 1519, LDB fos 8, 75v, 223, 243v, 254, 254v, 416v–417, 421. Ketel must also be the

anonymous thegn who held three carucates at (Ashwell) Thorpe of Archbishop Stigand

(LDB fos 151v–152), since land in this vill was left to Ketel by his maternal uncle Eadwine

(S 1516); his connection with Stigand probably also identifi es him as the holder of

57 acres at Billockby, eight acres at Thurton and 30 acres at Stoke Cross (all Norf.) (LDB

fos 264v–265, 266). His landed wealth amounts to 21 carucates, 145 geld acres and

2½ hides of land. In the entry for Onehouse (Suff.), he is called tegnus regis Edwardi (LDB

fo. 416v), but his will and other Domesday notices (LDB fos 243, 254) show that he was

Stigand’s man.

33 For Eadwine’s land, see S 1516; LDB fos 151v–152, 202, 203, 204–204v, 210v, 355v; he gave

two carucates at Thorpe Abbots to Bury St Edmunds, and three carucates at (Ashwell)

Thorpe to his nephew Ketel. For the family, see Ann Williams, ‘Property, marriage and

status in eleventh-century East Anglia: The family and connections of Eadwine, teinus

dominicus regis Edwardi’ (forthcoming).

34 GDB fo. 56v. The Hertfordshire lady Æthelgifu included her deerhounds in the heriot

which she paid to her lord the king (S 1497).

35 James Campbell, ‘Some agents and agencies of the late Anglo-Saxon state’, in J.C. Holt (ed.),

Domesday Studies (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 201–18 (216–17).

36 S 1462 (see Chapter 3 below); James Campbell, ‘The sale of land and the economics of

power in early England: Problems and possibilities’, Haskins Society J. 1 (1989): 23–37; C.R.

Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New Perspective (Manchester: Manchester University Press,

1982), pp. 24–43. For the monetary values of land, see Appendix 1 below.

37 Malcolm Godden, ‘Money, power and morality in late Anglo-Saxon England’, ASE

19 (1990): 41–66 (54).

38 Robin Fleming, ‘The new wealth, the new rich and the new political style in late Anglo-

Saxon England’, ANS 23 (2001): 1–22.

151N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 – 8

39 See Chapter 6 below.

40 Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995),

pp. 109–17.

41 Campbell, ‘Some agents and agencies’, pp. 210–12.

42 For Forne (GDB fo. 330v), see Ann Williams, ‘Henry I and the English’, in Donald

F. Fleming and Janet M. Pope, Henry I and the Anglo-Norman World (Haskins Journal 17;

Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006), pp. 27–38 (33–35). For Earnwine, see GDB fos 210, 211,

286v, 290, 292v, 293, 336, 336v, 337v, 342, 347, 371.

43 David Roffe, ‘Domesday Book and northern society: A reassessment’, EHR 105 (1990):

310–36 (329–31).

44 GDB fo. 269v.

45 G.W.S. Barrow, ‘Pre-feudal Scotland: Shires and thegns’, in G.W.S. Barrow, The Kingdom

of the Scots (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), pp. 7–68.


47 Richard Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation in Anglo-Saxon England (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), p. 268, n. 76.

48 GDB fo. 30v. Kingston’s status as a royal manor may have some bearing on that of its

inhabitants; King Æthelstan’s grant of land to Milton Abbey (Dorset) included ‘three

thegns in Sussex’, though the diploma is not authentic in its present form (S 391; Anglo-

Saxon Charters, no. 23).

49 GDB fo. 336v.

50 GDB fo. 181 (Archenfi eld), 269v (‘Between Ribble and Mersey’). Mersey means ‘boundary

river’ in Old English, and the region ‘Between Ribble and Mersey’, now southern Lancashire,

had been appended to Cheshire since the early tenth century; see David Griffi ths, ‘The

north-west frontier’, in N.J. Higham and D.H. Hill, Edward the Elder, 899–924 (London

and New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 167–87 (esp. p. 181).

51 Norðleoda lagu 9.

52 LDB fo. 204v.

53 GDB fos 174v, 175v, 184v, 186v; see Chapter 1 below.

54 III At, Preface; S 985; Writs, pp. 181–82.

55 S 1215; a private agreement concerning swine-pasture at Heronden attested by King

Edgar and Archbishop Dunstan, the unidentifi ed Abbot Siferth, two reeves (prepositi),

the portreeve (presumably of Canterbury), and seven thegns (ministri), as well as the

named rustici, the communities (unnamed) of Christ Church and St Augustine’s, the

three Canterbury gilds (geferscipas), Ælfsige burðen (chamberlain), the community of

Appledore, and fi ve named individuals without any description. See also the marriage

agreement of 1016–20 (S 1461; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 77), concluded in the witness of

‘every trustworthy man in Kent and Sussex, thegn or ceorl’ (ælc dohtig man on Kænt and

on Sudsexan on þegenan and on ceorlan).

56 S 855 (dated 984) re-grants the land to one of King Æthelred’s thegns. Stenton observed

that ‘it is only in Kent that the word thegn is used before the [Norman] Conquest to

cover men whose life was valued at a ceorl’s wergeld’ (F.M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England

[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3rd edn, 1971], p. 488), but the appearance of a Berkshire

rusticus with eight hides suggests that the practice may have been more widespread.

152 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 – 1 0

57 Christine Senecal, ‘Keeping up with the Godwinesons: In pursuit of aristocratic status in

late Anglo-Saxon England’, ANS 23 (2001): 250–66 (250).

58 For the itineraries of the English kings, which can only be partially reconstructed, see David

Hill, Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 85–91, 94–95.

59 WmM, GP, iii §9, trans in WmM, p. 138.

60 S 922, Charters of Burton, no. 32, issued after the death of Abbot Ælfweard of Glastonbury

on 19 December (S. Keynes, The Diplomas of King Æthelred ‘The Unreadey’, 978–1016

[Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980], pp. 263–64), and preserved in the archive

of Burton Abbey, one of the few Benedictine houses in the region.

61 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’ 1009.

62 Two men called Fredgist and one called Thurferth attest S 782 (dated 971), concerning

land at Barrow-on-Humber, granted to Peterborough Abbey. A Fredgist was one of those

accused of starting the fl ights of the men of Lindsey in 903 (AS Chronicle, ‘DE’ 993). Swafi ’s

name is rare and he might be the father of Swein Swafi ’s son, one of the leading men of

Nottingham and Lincoln in 1066 (GDB fos 280v, 285, 336, 337, 348v, 352v).

63 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1015. This is the only reference to the Seven Boroughs; the seventh

might be Torksey rather than Durham, but the reference is to the earldom of Northumbria,

which included the far north-east as well as the former kingdom of Danish York.

64 S 877, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 63. He also attests S 906 (dated 1004), another diploma

from the Burton archive.

65 Symeon, Opera Omnia i, pp. 215–20, translated and discussed in Christopher J. Morris,

Marriage and Murder in Eleventh-century Northumbria: A Study of ‘De Obsessione Dunelmi’

(Borthwick Paper, 82; York: Borthwick Institute of Historical Research, 1992).

66 Ted Johnson South (ed.), Historia de Sancto Cuthberto (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2002), pp. 66–7, 111–12. The transaction is undated, but the king was in the north

in 1014, having driven King Cnut’s army from Lindsey after the death of Swein Forkbeard

(AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1014). The other possible date is 1000, when Æthelred was campaigning

in the north-west.

67 For the family, see Williams, The English, pp. 30–31.

68 The murders of Uhtred and Thurbrand were the opening rounds in a series of killings

which ended only when Earl Waltheof, Earl Ealdred’s grandson, killed two of the grandsons

of Thurbrand hold at Settrington in 1074.

69 There is as yet no study of the high-reeves of Bamburgh, but for a general account of the

background, see William E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North (London: Croom

Helm, 1979), pp. 3–26.

70 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’ 1015. The lady did not remain in prison (at Marlborough) for long;

the king’s heir, Edmund Ironside released her, married her, succeeded to the property and

patronage of her husband and brother, and received the allegiance of the northern thegns,

actions which set him at odds with his father in the crucial years of the Danish conquest.

By her second husband, Sigeferth’s widow, named Ealdgyth in John of Worcester’s account,

became the mother of Edward ætheling, grandmother of St Margaret of Scotland, and great-

grandmother of Matilda II, queen of Henry I, and herself grandmother of King Henry II.

71 The pitfalls and problems of Domesday Book have now been exposed and clarifi ed by

Roffe, Decoding Domesday.

153N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 – 1 3

72 C.P. Lewis, ‘Joining the dots: A methodology for identifying the English in Domesday

Book, in K.S.B. Keats-Rohan (ed.), Family-Trees and the Roots of Politics (Woodbridge:

Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 69–87. For the general picture, see Clarke, English Nobility; Donald

Henson, The English Elite in 1066: Gone but not Forgotten (Hockwold-cum-Wilton: Anglo-

Saxon Books, 2001).

Notes to Chapter 1: The Upper Crust: Ealdormen and Earls

1 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1016; John of Worcester (JnW ii, pp. 492–93) adds that the kings were

conveyed to the island in fi shing-boats. There is a second Alney Island near Gloucester.

2 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1016. Edmund is said to have retained the regnum, presumably meaning

that he had overall authority, at least in name (JnW ii, pp. 492–93). There was perhaps

an understanding that whoever survived longest should take the whole kingdom; Cnut

succeeded when Edmund died on 30 November 1016.

3 James D. Harris, ‘The site of Alney, ad 1016’, Glevensis: Gloucester and District Archaeological

Society Research Group Review 26 (1992): 11–12.

4 The estate included the modern parishes of Corse, Hasfi eld and Tirley, all west of the Severn,

and Deerhurst, Elmstone Hardwicke, Leigh and Uckington on the east (S 1551). For the

minster, see S 1187 (dated 804); Patrick Wormald, How do we know so much about Anglo-

Saxon Deerhurst? (Deerhurst Lecture 1991; Deerhurst: Friends of Deerhurst Church, 1993);

Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, St Mary’s Church, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire: Fieldwork,

Excavation and Structural Analysis, 1971–1984 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997).

5 C.S. Taylor, ‘Deerhurst, Pershore and Westminster’, Transactions of the Bristol and

Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 25 (1902): 230–50. Odda’s church, dedicated to the

Holy Trinity, was subsequently incorporated into the late medieval manor-house; see

H.M. Taylor and Joan Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture (Cambridge: CUP, 1965), vol. 1,

pp. 209–11. For this and other lay intrusions on minster property, see John Blair, The

Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: OUP, 2005), pp. 323–29.

6 WmM, GR i, pp. 360–61. For Odda’s career, see Ann Williams, Land, Power and Politics: The

Family, Estates and Patronage of Odda of Deerhurst (Deerhurst Lecture 1996; Deerhurst:

Friends of Deerhurst Church, 1997); Timothy Bolton, Conquest and Controversy: The Early

Career of Odda of Deerhurst (Deerhurst Lecture 2006; Deerhurst; Friends of Deerhurst

Church, 2007).

7 Chron. Æthelweard, p. 39; Ann Williams, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King

(London: Hambledon and London, 2003), pp. 29–32.

8 WmM, GP, p. 298; S 832 (dated 977).

9 AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1051.

10 Monasticon ii, p. 59. Æthelweard appears as Haylwardus, and his unfamiliar byname mæw

(‘seagull’) becomes snew (‘snow’). For the family, see Ann Williams, ‘A west-country

magnate of the eleventh century: The estates of Beorhtric son of Ælfgar’, in K.S.B. Keats-

Rohan (ed.), Family-Trees and the Roots of Politics, pp. 41–68 (41–43).

11 ECEE, p. 253. King Æthelred’s diploma implies that Æthelweard mæw was dead by 1000,

whereas the Tewkesbury Chronicle says he was killed at the battle of Assandun (1016),

154 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 – 1 6

perhaps confusing him with Æthelweard son of Ealdorman Æthelwine of East Anglia

(AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1016).

12 ECEE, p. 254.

13 Keynes, Diplomas, p. 209 and table 8; GDB fos 75v, 163–163v.

14 Tewkesbury probably fell into the category of a medemra mynster, a ‘middle-ranking

church’ (VIII Atr 5§1, Robertson, Laws, pp. 118–19). In 1102 the monks of Cranborne

removed to Tewkesbury, of which Cranborne became a dependent cell.

15 AS Chronicle ‘A’ 962. Ælfgar was buried at Wilton, a house closely connected with the West

Saxon kings.

16 S 877, dated 993 for 996; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 63, pp. 130–31. The London meeting

must have taken place in 989–90 (Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 372). In the list of those

attending, Ælfgar se Hunitunisca is immediately preceded by Æthelstan þes greta (‘the

Fat’), perhaps the man who, with his son Æthelmær þæs greata, attests elsewhere in

association with Ælfgar mæw (Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 209–10, 227–28; Anglo-Saxon

Charters, pp. 372–73, 387). For the Devon lands of Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, see Williams,

‘West-country magnate’, pp. 48–50. Another possible member of the family is Brihthelm,

bishop of Winchester (959–63), a kinsman of Kings Eadwig and Edgar (S 615, 683, 695,

911).

17 GDB fos 163–163v (Tewkesbury), 166 (Deerhurst).

18 Steven Bassett, The Origins of the Parishes of the Deerhurst Area (Deerhurst Lecture 1997;

Deerhurst: Friends of Deerhurst Church, 1998), pp. 10–18.

19 Odda’s fi rst attestations are to S 931b, 933–34 (1013, 1014 and 1015); in the fi rst two his

name immediately follows that of Ælfgar mæw, a signifi cant association given that kinsmen

tend to attest in groups (Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 209, 227, n. 265).

20 S 911; Keynes, Diplomas, p. 309; AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1013. Only in 1013 did Æthelmær

receive his father’s ealdordom in the western shires (Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 197 and n. 163,

209–10 and n. 203).

21 JnW ii, pp. 486–87.

22 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1016.

23 AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1051; no earl had been appointed to the western shires since the outlawry

of Æthelweard, Ealdorman Æthelmær’s son-in-law, in 1020 (AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1020).

24 AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1052.

25 Elisabeth Okasha, A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Non-Runic Inscriptions (Cambridge: CUP,

1971), no. 28, pp. 63–64; AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1056.

26 S 1407 and see Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 457; Harold was earl of East Anglia from 1045–51

and again from 1052–53. The diploma is also attested by Odda’s brother Ælfric, who died

on 22 December 1053 (AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1053; JnW ii, pp. 574–75).

27 It has been suggested that he became earl of Worcestershire, on the strength of his

attestations to three Worcester leases as dux; two, however, date from 1051–52, the period

of Godwine’s exile (S 1408–1409), when Odda was earl of the western shires; only S 1407

dates from after Godwine’s return.

28 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1053, 1056.

29 Royal grants of land were made before the witenagemot, whose members were formal

witnesses to the act of gift. The scribe who wrote the ensuing diploma would include only

155N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 6 – 1 7

a selection of the names of those present, probably refl ecting those most closely connected

with the benefi ciary, or with the region where the land granted lay. Inclusion of local

witnesses is particularly likely in the case of diplomas written by scribes associated with

the benefi ciaries, rather than the king’s writing-offi ce.

30 S 951, 953 (both 1018), S 954 (1019), S 963 (1031), S 969, 971 (both 1033), S 975 (1035).

The fi rst three are not authentic, though their witness-lists may come from genuine texts.

S 963 and 971 may have been written by a Crediton scribe, while S 969 and 975 were

perhaps written at Sherborne (Dorset).

31 S 998, 1005, both in favour of the Devonshire magnate Ordgar; S 1019, relating to land

in Cornwall; and S 1003, 1021, both of which come from the Exeter scriptorium, S 1021

being the record of the amalgamation of the bishoprics of Devon and Cornwall and the

transference of the see to Exeter.

32 S 931b, apparently drawn up by Bishop Ælfhun of London. For Sigered or Sired of Kent,

see Chapter 3 below.

33 S 1044 (1042–1043), S 1017 (1048).

34 S 933 (1014), S 934 (1015), S 962 (1026), S 994 (a diploma of Harthacnut, dated 1042),

S 999 (1043), S 1001 (1044) and S 1007, 1009–1010 and 1012 (all 1045). He also attests

S 1011, a Westminster forgery by Osbert de Clare, and S 1049, a late forgery from Crowland.

35 S 1391, Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 98, pp. 184–87, 433–35.

36 S 1058; Sir Ivor Atkins, ‘The church of Worcester from the eighth to the twelfth centuries:

Part II’, Antiq.J. 20 (1940): 1–38 (22); Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 457. The lease, granting land

at Lench (Worcs.) to the thegn Osferth, now exists only as an appendix to S 1058, a spurious

diploma granting the same land to the same recipient, which itself may be a summary

of a lost lease of Bishop Lyfi ng concerning land at Lench (S 1856). S 1058’s witness-list,

presumably derived from the original lease, must be dated 1044–45, for it includes both

Mannig abbas, who became abbot of Evesham in 1044 (AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1044), and Thuri

dux, earl of the ‘middle peoples’ (the east midlands), whose earldom was given to Beorn

Estrithson, Earl Godwine’s nephew, in 1045.

37 S 1392, Atkins, ‘Church of Worcester’, p. 18.

38 S 1396; Atkins, ‘Church of Worcester’, p. 20. S 1394 (1042) is also attested by King

Harthacnut; in S 1395, however, the king’s permission is noted, but he does not attest

(Atkins, ‘Church of Worcester’, pp. 19–20). For Earl Harald, son of the great Viking warrior

Thorkell the Tall, see Chapter 2 below.

39 S 1398 (dated 1038) is attested by Ælfweard, bishop of London, but he had been abbot of

Evesham, and was thus a local man; S 1397 (1045) is attested by Wulfwig, abbot of Chertsey

(David Knowles, C.N.L. Brooke and Vera C.M. London, The Heads of Religious Houses:

England and Wales, I. 940–1066 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd edn, 2001),

p. 28), but all the other witnesses seem to be local men (Atkins, ‘Church of Worcester’,

pp. 18, 21).

40 S. 1406; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 112, pp. 208–11.

41 Æthelric’s half-brother Brihtheah was bishop of Worcester from 1033–38, having

previously been Abbot of Pershore. Ælfric of Comberton may have belonged to the same

family, for land at Comberton, belonging to Pershore Abbey, was later held of the church

by Azur, another of Bishop Brihtheah’s kinsman; GDB fo. 175 and see Ann Williams, ‘The

156 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 7 – 1 8

spoliation of Worcester’, ANS 19 (1997): 383–408 (394–95). Ceolmær has a very rare name,

which allows him to be identifi ed with the witness of two other Worcester leases (S 1409

and S 1405), and the pre-Conquest holder of land at Doddenham (GDB fo. 176v).

42 S 1474; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 105, pp. 200–3.

43 AS Chronicle ‘C’, 1052: ‘all the men of Kent and all the butsecarles (seamen) of Hastings and

from the region round about there by the sea-coast, and all the east province and Sussex

and Surrey and much else beside’ came over to Earl Godwine. The family’s ancestral land

lay in Sussex: see Ann Williams, ‘Land and power in the eleventh century: The estates of

Harold Godwineson’, ANS 3 (1981): 171–87, 230–34.

44 GDB fos 86v, 87, 87v, 88, 88v, 92, 97 (Som.); 100v–101 (Devon); 120–120v, 121v, 122, 123,

123v (Cornwall); Godwine also had a residence in Exeter (Williams, English, p. 20, n. 92).

Much of this was perhaps not available to them in 1052.

45 AS Chronicle ‘C’, 1052; ‘E’ adds that the Isle of Wight and Portland (Dorset) were ravaged

by Godwine’s fl eet. Only when they made rendezvous off the Isle of Wight and moved

eastward did Harold and his father cease to harry the coasts.

46 S. Keynes, An Atlas of Attestations of Anglo-Saxon Charters, c. 670–1066 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1998), table LXXV (1).

47 Ordgar, his brother Ælfgar, and his son Ordwulf were, like Odda and his brother Ælfric,

related to King Edward, for they were descended from the tenth-century ealdorman, Ordgar,

whose daughter Ælfthryth married King Edgar, and became King Edward’s grandmother;

see H.P.R. Finberg, ‘The house of Ordgar and the foundation of Tavistock Abbey’, EHR

53 (1943): 190–201; H.P.R. Finberg, ‘Childe’s Tomb’, in H.P.R. Finberg, Lucerna: Studies of

Some Problems in the Early History of England (London: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 186–203.

Ælfstan of Boscombe held some 237 hides of land, scattered over eight shires, making

him the fi fth richest of the recorded pre-Conquest thegns below the rank of earl (Clarke,

English Nobility, pp. 229–31); he had received at least one manor, Sevington (Wilts.) from

King Edward (S999), and may be identical with Ælfstan wicgerefa of Bedford (S 1235), and

Ælfstan the staller (S 1471). For Dodda, see Williams, Land, Power and Politics, p. 14.


49 Simon Keynes, ‘The control of Kent in the ninth century’, Early Medieval Europe 2 (1993):

111–31. The foundation and patronage of royal monasteries in the new territories

– St Albans, Bury St Edmunds, Ely, Ramsey, Crowland and Thorney – was another useful

expedient in extending the kings’ authority.

50 OV iv, pp. 76–77. Since the couple had two sons by 1030, their marriage probably took place

before Robert’s ducal accession (1027), perhaps in 1024, when Drogo is known to have

been in Normandy. See David Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors: The family of the counts

of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin in France and England during the eleventh century’, in

Robert Smith (ed.), The Sudeleys: Lords of Toddington (London: The Manorial Society,

1987), pp. 34–48 (36). Godgifu took a continental name (Etia or Emma) on her marriage,

but is ‘Gode’ in English sources.

51 Chron. Ramsey, p. 171; S 1022; Keynes, Atlas, table LXXIV.

52 It included Beds., Bucks., Cambs., Herts., Hunts., Middx and Northants. The succession of

its earls is diffi cult to determine (see Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’, pp. 338–40), but Thuri

commanded the ‘middle peoples’ in 1042 (JnW ii, pp. 532–33, where he is unaccountably

157N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 8 – 1 9

called ‘Thored’ in the translation), and is addressed as earl in a writ of the 1040s relating

to land in Huntingdonshire (S 1106); his fi rst attestation as dux is to S 1392 (dated 1038),

and he also attests S 1058 (1044–1045). Beorn attests as dux in S 1008 (dated 1045), and

is addressed as earl in two doubtful writs relating to Hertfordshire (S 1122–23; Writs,

pp. 73–78, 557). Ralph held the south-east midlands in 1051, though Cambridgeshire

and Huntingdonshire were then part of Earl Harold’s earldom of East Anglia (JnW ii,

pp. 558–9).


54 Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’, pp. 331–32.

55 See Appendix 2 below.

56 Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’, pp. 331–33, 336–37; Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 225–26.

57 Their estates are enumerated in Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’, pp. 336–38, but some

others may be added to the total. First, the tenure by Edwin Burgred’s son of two manors

(at Shelsfi eld and Hayford) which, though entered in the Northamptonshire folios, are

geographically within Oxfordshire, suggests that he is the Edwin who held North Stoke

(Oxon), assessed at ten hides, to which was attached a house in Wallingford (GDB fos

159–159v, 56v). Second, Clarke (English Nobility, pp. 268–71) credits Edwin Burgred’s

son with Exton (Devon), assessed at three hides, and Kensington (Middx), assessed at

12 hides, both held in 1086 by Burgred’s usual successor, Geoffrey de Mowbray, bishop

of Coutances (GDB fos 87v, 130v). The Edwin who held Kensington is described as King

Edward’s thegn, and was presumably identical with Edwin, King Edward’s man, who held

the manor of Tollington (Middx), assessed at two hides (GDB fo. 130v); both manors lay

in Ossulstone Hundred, and Edwin’s name, though not rare, is not particularly common.

Clarke does not, however, assign Tollington to Edwin Burgred’s son.

58 GDB fos 210, 212v, 220v, 224, 225v.

59 Glenn Foard, ‘The documentary evidence’, in Andy Boddington et al., ‘Raunds: An

interim report on excavations, 1977–80’, Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History

2 (1981): 103–22 (117–18); Brian Dix, ‘The Raunds area project: second interim report’,

Northamptonshire Archaeology 21 (1986–87): 3–29 (18–19).

60 W.T. Mellows (ed.), The Chronicle of Hugh Candidus (Peterborough: Oxford University

Press, 1949), p. 69; ECEE, p. 247. In 1086 it belonged to Burgred’s ususal successor, Geoffrey

de Mowbray, bishop of Coutances (GDB fo. 220v) but Hugh Candidus regarded his tenure

as illegal: ‘Geoffrey, bishop of St Lô (Coutances), the king’s justiciar, took it unjustly, to the

damnation of his soul’.

61 Simon Keynes, ‘A lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, ASE 22 (1993): 253–79 (266–68).

62 S 1425; Stephen Baxter, ‘The earls of Mercia and their commended men in the mid eleventh

century’, ANS 23 (2001): 23–46 (36).

63 S 1235.

64 S 1228.

65 Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 38, 266–67 (Bondi), 229–31 (Ælfstan of Boscombe).

66 Clarke lists the lands of Leofnoth Osmund’s son but not those of his brother Leofric

(English Nobility, pp. 319–20); for the holdings of both, see GDB fos 146v, 151v, 158, 159v,

160, 212v, 214v, 215v, 226v. Their appearance as attestors of the Great Tew lease suggests

that Leofnoth also held 8¼ hides at Henton (Oxon), and Leofric a house in Oxford and

158 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 9 – 2 1

ten hides at Wiggington (GDB fos 154, 159v, 160). They may be identical with the brothers

Leofric and Leofnoth whose lands lay in Staffs., Derbys., and Notts., many of them formerly

bequeathed by Wulfric Wulfrun’s son to Burton Abbey (Baxter, ‘The earls of Mercia’,

p. 26, n. 12) see S 1536; Charters of Burton, pp. xxvi–xxvii, xliii; Clarke, English Nobility,

pp. 321–22. For Azur Toti’s son, see GDB fos 143, 149v, 151v, 152–152v, 152v, 159v, 225, 244;

Clarke (English Nobility, pp. 253–54) identifi es him with Azur, King Edward’s housecarl,

who held Stanwell (Middx), with dependencies in East and West Bedfont and Hatton (GDB

fo. 130), but the name is common.


68 See Appendix 3 below.

69 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1055; JnW ii, pp. 576–9.

70 Another of King Edward’s Norman followers, Robert fi tzWymarc, called his son Swein,

another not very common name, and borne by Godwine’s eldest son. It may be signifi cant

that neither Robert fi tzWymarc nor Earl Ralph were among the foreigners expelled after

Earl Godwine’s return in 1052.

71 Geþyncðu 5 (see chapter heading).

72 The earl’s heriot entailed, apart from the 200 gold mancuses, equipment for four fully

armed and mounted men, four lightly armed men, and four remounts; king’s thegns

in Wessex owed 50 gold mancuses, one fully armed and mounted man, another with

sword, spear and shield (both with remounts) and two spear-carriers with shields (see

Introduction, above).

73 GDB fos 129v, 177, 238, 244.

74 Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’, pp. 331–33. Clarke, who uses the monetary values of

Domesday Book, not the hidage, assesses the estate at £170 5s (English Nobility, pp. 224–26);

for the pitfalls of this approach, see Appendix 1 below.

75 After 1066, Pull Court, a dependency of Longdon, ‘Earl Odda’s manor’, was removed from

Longdon and attached to Bushley, held TRE by Odda’s kinsman, Brihtric Ælfgar’s son

(GDB fo. 180v); for Poltimore, see GDB fo. 107v. Another 3¼ hides in Poltimore were held

by Brihtric, perhaps Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, and Scireweald, whose name is so rare that he

must be the Scireweald who held half a hide at Hillersden which passed to Odo fi tzGamelin,

who held some of the Devon lands of Brihtric Ælfgar’s son (GDB fos 116v, 117v).

76 Ælfweard is not an uncommon name, but the teinus who held half a hide at Mathon is

probably the Eluar[d] who held a tenement at Longdon, for Ælfweard of Longdon attests

a Worcestershire lease of 1051–1052 in company with Earl Odda (S 1408; Anglo-Saxon

Charters, no. 111, pp. 208–9, 459).

77 GDB fo. 186.

78 GDB fo. 166. For the division of Deerhurst between Odda and St Mary’s, and the equation

of Odda’s share with that later held by Westminster, see Taylor, ‘Deerhurst, Pershore and

Westminster’, pp. 230–50.

79 GDB fos 174–175; for Pershore’s former ownership, see S 786; GDB fo. 175v.

80 For Brihtric’s lands, see Williams, ‘West-country magnate’, pp. 46–50, 63–68. No pre-

Conquest values are given for many of Brihtric’s larger manors, but the total for those

which are provided is £358 10s. Clarke’s fi gure of £560 (English Nobility, pp. 32, 260–62)

includes the 1086 values for all those manors for which no pre-Conquest fi gure is provided,

159N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 1 – 2 3

but in the case of Clovelly, the only Devon manor with values both TRE and in 1086,

the fi gure has doubled by the latter date, from £6 to £12; if this has happened elsewhere,

Clarke’s total may be an overestimate.

81 Williams, ‘Land and power in the eleventh century’, pp. 171–75. The total does not include

the night’s farm manors (see p. 23 below), which were not assessed in hides.

82 F.W. Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge: CUP, 1897; repr., 1987), p. 168.

83 Exon fos 83, 93; DB iv, pp. 75, 84. The terra regis in 1086 also included lands once held

by Earl Godwine and his kin, but these are merely ‘the king’s demesne in Devonshire’

(dominicatus regis in Devene sira).

84 LDB fos 289v (Suff.), 119v (Sporle). In both passages, and that in Exon (see previous note)

regnum might mean ‘kingdom’, rather than ‘kingship’, but the result is the same. See also

LDB fo. 281v for the more ambiguous terra regis de regione (?recte ‘de regno’).

85 S 937, probably to be dated 999.

86 Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 21–23.

87 One example is Hawley (Kent), see GDB fos 2v, 6 and Chapter 3 below. Notices of reeveland,

both from Domesday Book and from late Old English wills and diplomas, are collected

and discussed by Sir Paul Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1908; repr., 1968), pp. 372–73; see GDB fos 57v, 69, 83, 181, 208; S 1521

(dated 1035–1044), S 1519 (1052–1066), S 1403 (1047–52). For the possibility that lands

may have been attached to the offi ce of staller, see Chapter 2 below.

88 Stephen Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 13.

89 GDB fos 246, 249v. Other property in Stafford seems to belong to the earldom: 22 messuages

de honore comitum, held by the king; fi ve messuages de comitatu attached to Worfi eld, a

manor held (like Penn) by Earl Ælfgar TRE (GDB fo. 248v); 13 messuages de honore

comitum attached to Bradley (GDB fo. 248v), held by Earl Edwin TRE. The phrases de

honore comitum, de comitatu might simply mean ‘[lands] held by the earl[s]’, but in view

of the entry for the appurtenances of Penn, ‘earldom’ is an equally likely translation.

90 Exon, fo. 106v, DB iv, pp. 99–100. Since the manors to which the heading refers to were in

the king’s hands in 1086, it must relate to pre-Conquest arrangements.

91 In Domesday Book itself, the material on the third penny has been detached from the rest

of the section (which has also lost both its heading and its sub-heading) and attached to

the account of Bath, held by Queen Edith TRE (GDB fo. 87v; Exon 114; DB iv, p. 106).

92 Liebermann i, pp. 614–15; ‘the punishment of thieves’ refers to judicial fi nes. For the nature

and date of the Instituta Cnuti, see MEL, pp. 404–5; Bruce O’Brien, ‘The Instituta Cnuti

and the translation of King Edward’s Law’, ANS 25 (2003): 177–97.

93 GDB fos 75, 238.

94 GDB fo. 86v; Exon 103, 103v; GDB iv, pp. 94–95, 95–96. Milverton (which had a market)

had been held by Queen Edith TRE (GDB fo. 87v), but was clearly a royal manor, since

the queen’s lands in Somerset are entered in a separate section, apart from the rest of her

family. Williton, Cannington and Carhampton had together rendered the ancient due of

a night’s farm; North Petherton was part of another group of manors rendering a night’s

farm (GDB fos 86, 86v). All were held by King Edward.

95 GDB fos 186, 283v; see also Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 18–19.

160 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 3 – 2 5

96 GDB fo. 101; the hundreds attached to Molland are those of North Molton, Bampton and

Braunton. The third penny is mentioned because it has not been paid since the Conquest;

Earl Harold had also held the hundredal manors of Shebbear and Torrington, and his

mother Gytha the hundredal manors of Chillington, Hartland, Tawton, Tiverton and

Witheridge.

97 Much of the holding of the pre-Conquest kings, especially in Wessex, consisted of such

manors, groups of estates which rendered a night’s farm, or some sub-division of it; already

by 1066, the original payments in kind were being commuted for cash.

98 GDB fo. 186; JnW ii, pp. 572–73. For Osbern’s tenure of the earldom of Hereford in

1051–1052, see Appendix 3 below.

99 GDB fo. 208; for Earl Harold’s authority in Hunts. in 1051, see JnW ii, pp. 558–59. Siward

is addressed as earl in S 1107 (Writs, no. 59, pp. 258, 472), whose outside dates are those

of Ulf, bishop of London from 1050–1052, who is also addressed.

100 King Edgar commanded that ‘one coinage shall be current throughout all the king’s realm,

and no-one shall refuse it’ (III Eg 8), and the ability of his successors to control minting

demonstrates the effi ciency of at least one aspect of their administration; see D.M. Metcalf,

‘Continuity and change in English monetary history, c.973–1086’, BNJ 50 (1980): 20–49;

BNJ 51 (1981), pp. 52–90. Baronial coinages appear for the fi rst time under King Stephen;

see James Campbell, The Anglo-Saxon State (London: Hambledon and London, 2000),

p. 187 and note.

101 S.1036, the authenticity of which has been defended by Simon Keynes, ‘Regenbald the

Chancellor (sic)’, ANS 10 (1988): 185–222 (200–202).

102 Battle of Maldon, lines 217–19 (Ælfwine’s father was Ealdorman Ælfric of Mercia but he had

been outlawed, which is presumably why Ælfwine confi nes his bragging to remoter kin);

Anglo-Saxon Charters, nos 39–40, pp. 74–75, 78–79; Chron. Ramsey, p. 75 (the ealdorman

in question is Æthelwine, ealdorman of East Anglia).

103 Margaret A.L. Lockerbie-Cameron, ‘Byrhtnoth and his family’, in D.G. Scragg (ed.), Battle

of Maldon 991 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), pp. 253–62 (255–57); Richard Mortimer,

‘The Baynards of Baynards Castle’, in Harper-Bill, Holdsworth and Nelson (eds), Studies

in Medieval History, pp. 241–53 (248–50).

104 Keynes, Atlas, tables LXXIV, LXXV.

105 S 1478.

Notes to Chapter 2: The Service of the King: Stallers and Thegns

1 S 926 (1012).

2 Keynes, Diplomas, p. 192, n. 141; Sir Frank Stenton, The Latin Charters of the Anglo-Saxon

Period (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), p. 79, n. 2.

3 Ealdorman Leofsige attests S 881 (994), and might be Leofsige minister who appears as a

witness to S 840 (982), 864 (987) and S 887 (988–990). The name, however, is common;

S 881 is also witnessd by Leofsige minister, possibly the same who attests S 931 (1013).

4 The best account of the royal household is L.M. Larson, The King’s Household in England

before the Norman Conquest (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin, 1904); see also

161N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 5 – 2 6

Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 158–62, 182–85; Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’; Ann

Williams, Kingship and Government in Pre-Conquest England, c.500–1066 (London:

Macmillan, 1999), pp. 75–76, 91–92, 126–30.

5 S 1515. King Alfred bequeathed £200 to ‘the men who serve me, to whom I have now given

money at Eastertide, to each as much as will fall to him in the manner in which I have just

now made my distribution’ (S 1507), but no details are given.

6 S 597. For Ælfheah, who also attests S 1292 (956–57) as cyninges discðegn, and his brother

Ælfwine, see Ann Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis: The family and career of Ælfhere,

ealdorman of Mercia, 956–83’, ASE 10 (1982): 143–72 (147–55). Two disciferi, Oddo and

Helwine, attest a spurious diploma of Æthelstan (S 450), and a genuine diploma of the

same king is attested by Wulfhelm discifer (S 396); the witness-list of S 397, probably issued

on the same occasion, has been truncated, but originally included a single discifer.

7 S 651.

8 S 768; Charters of Burton, no. 23; S 782. In the version of S 782 printed by Birch (BCS 1270),

the abbreviations after the names of Æthelweard, Eanulf, Ælfsige and Ælfweard have been

wrongly extended as discipulus instead of discifer (Charters of Burton, p. 39). Eanulf ’s name

is not common; he may be the thegn to whom Edgar gave 14 hides at Ducklington (Oxon)

in 958 (S 678).

9 S 853.

10 S 851. Wulfgar is addressed as minister, and only when the estate was re-granted to

Abingdon Abbey in 1000 (S 897) does it emerge that he was the king’s pincerna.

11 S 914 (dated 1006, recte 1001); Keynes, Diplomas, p. 161. In the Latin version, Æthelmær

and Leofric appear simply as ministri.

12 S 706.

13 S 713, 719, 789; in the last, Wynstan is styled cubicularius. For Æthelsige, who may also

have been a pedisequus, see p. 32 below.

14 Ealdorman Ælfric of Hampshire may also have served in the king’s household (see n. 26

below).

15 Ælfheah and his brother Ælfhere, ealdorman of Mercia, were addressed as kinsmen by

successive kings (Williams, ‘Princeps Merciorum gentis’, p. 145 and n. 4); for Æthelweard

and Æthelmær, see Chron. of Æthelweard, pp. xiii–xvi.

16 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 2, p. 4; Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser’s

Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983),

pp. 68, 229. He may be the Oslac who attests S 328 (dated 858). Eatta, dux et regis discifer,

attests a diploma of Offa (S 124), dated 785 but forged in the twelfth century.

17 Sancti Dunstani Vita auctore B, in Mem. St Dunstan, pp. 17–18. See also the byrele (butler)

who bears drink to the drunkard in The Fortunes of Men, in Poems of Wisdom and Learning,

pp. 60–61.

18 Eight men called stallers are recorded in contemporary eleventh-century texts: Osgod clapa

(AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1045); Ælfstan (S 1471); Esger (S 1110, 1119–20, 1391, 1426, 1467, 1476,

1478); Lyfi ng (S 1476, 1478); Ralph (S 1426, 1476, 1478); Robert fi tzWymarc (S 1120, 1128,

1137; Vita Edwardi, p. 70); Eadnoth (S 1129; AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1067); Bondi (S 1235, 1426).

Only Lyfi ng cannot be identifi ed elsewhere. For their lands, see Clarke, English Nobility,

pp. 32–33.

162 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 6 – 2 7

19 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1042; JnW ii, pp. 532–35. Harthacnut clearly suffered a stroke, dying a

few days later, on 8 June.

20 S 1526, 1074; LDB fo. 361v; Williams, ‘The king’s nephew’ pp. 333–35. The Scandinavian

name Asgautr was anglicized as Osgod/t by the tenth century. For his attestations, see

Keynes, Atlas, tables LXX, LXXV.

21 Simon Keynes (ed.), The Liber Vitae of New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester

(Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1995), fo. 28v, p. 97; S 1391. In return for land at

Adderbury, Osgod gave the bishop his manor of Wroxhall (IOW). By 1066 Adderbury,

assessed at 14½ hides, had reverted to the bishop, while Wroxhall, assessed at fi ve hides

(but with a value of £27), was held by Earl Godwine’s wife, Gytha (GDB fos 39v, 155). A

virgate at Scaldeforde, in the vicinity of Wroxhall, had been held of Winchester by Osgod

but this is unlikely to have been Osgod clapa (Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 433).

22 S 1531; Dorothy Whitelock, ‘Scandinavian personal names in the Liber Vitae of Thorney

Abbey’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society 12(2) (1937–38): 127–53 (135).

23 Mem. St Edmund’s Abbey, vol. 1, pp. 54–56, 135–36, 364. 24 S 992, 1121.

25 Pamela Nightingale, ‘The origin of the court of Husting and Danish infl uence on London’s

development into a capital city’, EHR 102 (1987): 559–78 (565–66). In 1066 the vill of

Lambeth was divided between two manors, of which the one held of Earl Harold by the

canons of Waltham Holy Cross is presumably Osgod’s estate (GDB fo. 34v). The other

was probably royal in origin, being held in 1066 by St Mary’s, Lambeth, founded by King

Edward’s sister, Countess Gode, who also endowed St Mary’s with land in Gloucestershire,

at Aston-sub-Edge (GDB fo. 66); see John Blair, Early Medieval Surrey: Landholding, Church

and Settlement before 1300 (Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1991), p. 102.

26 The title of mayor is not used in surviving pre-Conquest sources, but later writers

occasionally applied it to men they considered important; John of Worcester included

Harthacnut’s maior domus Styr among those sent to dig up the body of King Harold I

Harefoot, and Abingdon tradition remembered Abbot Eadwine’s brother, Ealdorman

Ælfric of Hampshire, as maior domus regie, though confusing him with his namesake Ælfric

cild, ealdorman of Mercia (JnW ii, pp. 530–31, 613; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, p. 23);

see also Larson, King’s Household, pp. 118–19. The name Styr is not common in England

and Harthacnut’s maior Styr might be Harold I’s rædesmann (counsellor) Steorra, though

if so he had transferred his service to his old master’s rival pretty smartly (Robertson,

Charters, pp. 174–75, 423).

27 S 1029, 1036.

28 Esger is addressed in S 1119, with the burgesses of London, but this writ must belong to the

years 1042–1044; and, if genuine, his connection with London would pre-date the disgrace

of Osgod clapa in 1046. According to the post-Conquest (but arguably early) Carmen, he

‘commanded all the chief men of the city’; see Morton and Munz (eds), Carmen de Hastingi

Proelio, pp. 44–45.



31 AS Chronicle ‘C’, 1043. Cnut had given him charge of the memorial church at Assandun

(Essex), consecrated in 1020 (AS Chronicle, ‘F’, 1020).

163N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 7 – 2 8

32 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1044; JnW ii, pp. 510–11, 540–41. Gunnhild, a daughter of Cnut’s sister

and the Wendish king Wyrtgeorn, married Hakon (d. 1030), son of Eirik of Lade, earl

of Northumbria, but Thorkell and Hemming were probably the children of her second

husband, Earl Harald, earl in Worcestershire (see Chapter 1 above). Harald, son of Thorkell

the Tall, was murdered in 1042 at the instigation of King Magnus of Norway, an ally of the

Confessor; see Ann Williams, ‘ “Cockles amongst the wheat”: Danes and English in the West

Midlands in the fi rst half of the eleventh century’, Midland History 11 (1986): 1–22 (9–10).

His wife may have commissioned the Gunnhild Crucifi x, which is of English workmanship,

though usually attributed to the patronage of Gunnhild, Swein Estrithson’s daughter: see

John Beckman, Ivory Carvings in Early Medieval England, 700–1200 (London: Victoria and

Albert Museum, 1974), no. 74, pp. 44–47.

33 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1047, ‘CDE’ 1048. The raiders of 1048 sold their loot in Flanders, and it

may have been this, as well as the presence of English exiles in Bruges, which persuaded

Edward to blockade Flanders by sea in 1049, at the behest of the Emperor Henry III

(AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1049).

34 The Chronicle does not give her name, but she might be the Æthelswyth commemorated

at the New Minster, Winchester.

35 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1049 (4 ships); JnW ii, pp. 550–51 (2 ships). The Naze was then known

as Eadulfesness, ‘the promontory of Eadulf ’, the name born by the father of Osgod clapa’s

putative kinsman, Osgod Eadulf ’s son.

36 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1054.

37 S 1074; GDB fo. 155.

38 Leslie Watkiss and Marjorie Chibnall (eds), The Waltham Chronicle (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1994), pp. 1–19.

39 Watkiss and Chibnall (eds), Waltham Chronicle, pp. 18–19.

40 P.J. Huggins and K.N. Bascombe, ‘Excavations at Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1985–1991: Three

pre-Conquest churches and Norman evidence’, Arch.J. 149 (1992): 282–343; P.J. Huggins,

‘First steps towards the Minster Parish of London’, London Archaeologist 6(11) (1991):

292–300.

41 AS Chronicle ‘A’, 895; Jeremy Haslam, ‘Parishes, churches, wards and gates in eastern

London’, in John Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches: The Local Church in Transition

950–1200 (Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1988), pp. 35–43

(38).

42 In 1005, Abbot Leofric restored Eadulfi ncton (Edmonton with part of Enfi eld) to King

Æthelred, who had leased it to Ælfric, archbishop of Canterbury (S 912, 1488); see Pamela

Taylor, ‘Boundaries and margins: Barnet, Finchley and Totteridge’, in M.J. Franklin and C.

Harper Bill (eds), Medieval Ecclesiastical Studies in Honour of D M Owen (Woodbridge:

Boydell Press, 1995), pp. 259–79 (265). Both manors were held by Tovi’s grandson Esger

in 1066 (GDB fo. 129v).

43 P.J. Huggins, ‘The excavation of an eleventh-century Viking hall and fourteenth-century

rooms at Waltham Abbey, Essex, 1969–71’, Medieval Archaeology 20 (1976): 75–133. For

Odda’s manor house at Deerhurst, see Chapter 1 above, and for the intrusion of the royal

palace of Cheddar (Som.), also once a hunting-lodge, into the territory of an old minster,

see Chapter 8 below.

164 N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 8 – 2 9

44 Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 62–63.


46 S 1462; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 78, pp. 152–53. Bondi the staller likewise attended a

shire-court in Beds in the 1050s or 1060s, presumably as the king’s representative (S 1235).

47 Keynes, Atlas, tables LXX, LXXV. Tovi the White and Tovi the Red attest S 961 (1024);

neither can be identifi ed with Tovi the Proud. One or more men called Tovi attest S 993,

998–99, 1003, dated between 1042 and 1044.

48 S 1490, 1017; Charters of Burton, no. 38, pp. 73–75.

49 Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 24–25. Æthelstan cannot be a child of Gytha,

for his own son, Esger, attests as early as 1044, so Tovi was married at least twice.

50 Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. xvii–xviii. He has been identifi ed with

Ælfstan the staller who attests S 1471 (1045–46), but this is probably Ælfstan of Boscombe

(see p. 32 below).

51 Clarke places him second only to Brihtric Ælfgar’s son, but the latter’s wealth may have

been overestimated (see Chapter 1).

52 S 1029, 1030, 1036; see Keynes, ‘Regenbald the Chancellor (sic)’, fi g. 3, p. 206. Esger, whose

name is also rendered Asgar, Ansgar[d] and Esgar, begins to attest royal diplomas in 1044

(Keynes, Atlas, table LXXV), and is addressed in S 1119, 1120, 1391 and 1467; he also attests

the spurious S 1110.

53 LDB fo. 59.

54 Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 14–15, 24–25.

55 David Bates (ed.), Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087)

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), no. 180, p. 593. It has been suggested that Esger

had also been portreeve of London, but it is unlikely that either he or Osgod clapa fi lled this

offi ce. No sequence of London portreeves can be reconstructed, but Ulf scirgerefa, whose

name follows that of Osgod clapa in a writ of 1044–1046 (S 1121) is probably Ulf portgerefa,

a benefactor, with his wife Cynegyth, of Westminster Abbey in the early 1040s (S 1119).

Two portreeves apparently held offi ce jointly in King Edward’s later years; Leofstan and

Ælfsige porterefen are addressed in S 1149 (1051–1060) and S 1150 (1065–1066), and

Leofstan portireve attests a grant of land in London which seems to have taken effect in

1054 (S 1234; Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 468–69).

56 GDB fo. 129v; LDB fo. 58; Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 18–19, where

Tovi’s lands are listed as Enfi eld, Edmonton, Cheshunt, Mimms ‘and the barony (baroniam)

which Earl William de Mandeville now has’.


58 GDB fos 58, 60.

59 GDB fos 87, 88v, 91v, 94v, 98v. Since much of Tovi the sheriff ’s land passed to Harding, son

of Eadnoth the staller, he might have been their kinsman, rather than Tovi the Proud’s.

60 Munz and Morton, Carmen de Hastingi Proelio, pp. 44–45, where Esger is represented as

literally crippled, though he still managed to direct the city’s defence. He was not the only

staller to act as a military commander; in 1067, Eadnoth the staller was killed while leading

the western levies against the sons of Harold Godwineson (AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1067).

61 Esger contractus held land at Worle (Som.), and at Ermington, Blacawton, Sutreworde,

Goodrington, Stoke Fleming and Tunstall (all Devon); he also had ten houses in Exeter

165N O T E S T O PA G E S 2 9 – 3 0

(GDB fos 94v, 110v, 111v, 112). His byname appears only in the entries for Ermington and

Blackawton, and then only in the Exon text (GDB fo. 110v; Exon fo. 85; DB iv, p 87), but

these manors were exchanged by Walter (also known as Walschin) de Douai for the royal

manor of Bampton. Since two of Walter’s manors, at Coleridge and Woodcombe (Devon)

‘were added to Esger’s fi ef which Walter now holds’ (addita est honori Ansgari quem

W. tenet), Esger was probably one of Walter’s antecessores, from whom he derived title (Exon

fo. 504; DB iv, p. 467; see also GDB fo. 112, where the estates were ‘added to Esger’s lands’).

62 GDB fo. 129v; LDB fo. 58. The manor at Waltham held by Earl Harold, assessed at 40 hides

from which the earl had received (habebat) £36, is presumably the portion of Waltham lost

by Æthelstan and bestowed by the king on Earl Harold (Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham

Chronicle, pp. 24–27; LDB fo. 15v).

63 LDB fo. 16.

64 GDB fo. 34.

65 GDB fo. 93. The Glastonbury archive preserved various charters claiming land (1½ hides)

at Lodegaresbeorgu/Logderesdone/Logworesbeorh/Lodgaresburgh (sometimes equated with

Montacute), whose authenticity is diffi cult to gauge; see Lesley Abrams, Anglo-Saxon

Glastonbury: Church and Endowment (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996), pp. 160–62.

66 GDB fo. 137.

67 GDB fos 132v–133. For the diffi culties with monetary values, see Appendix 1 below.

68 The land of the Hicca was assessed at 300 hides in the Tribal Hidage and by 1066 the

manor of Hitchin was the caput of Hitchin half-Hundred: see David Dumville, ‘The

Tribal Hidage: An introduction to its texts and their history’, in Steven Basset (ed.), The

Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1989), pp. 225–30,

286–87 (227); Frank Thorn, ‘Hundreds and wapentakes’, in Ann Williams and G.H. Martin

(eds), The Hertfordshire Domesday (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1991), pp. 37–46

(38–40).

69 S 1497.

70 GDB fo. 100v; Exon fo. 85v; DB iv, p. 78. Aleriga/Ermington is not the only Devon Hundred

to have two names, one topographical (Aleriga’s second element is OE hrycg, ‘ridge’) and

one habitative: see Frank Thorn, ‘Hundreds and wapentakes’, in R.W.H. Erskine and Ann

Williams (ed.), The Devonshire Domesday (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1991),

pp. 26–42 (38–39).

71 Renders based on a unit of 30d (2s 6d) were paid to the royal manor of Axminster, held

by King Edward TRE (GDB fo. 100); South Tawton, a hundredal manor held TRE by Earl

Godwine’s widow Gytha (GDB fos 116v, 117, 117v); and Lifton, a hundredal manor held

TRE by Queen Edith (Exon fo. 496v; DB iv, p. 458).

72 GDB fo. 100v; Exon fo. 85v; DB iv, p. 78. The individual holdings reappear in the count

of Mortain’s fi ef (GDB fo. 105v), where the entry for Fardel states that de hoc manerio xxx

denarii per consuetudinem in Ermentone manerium regis et consuetundinem placitorum

ut dicunt prespositi et homines regis, representing Exon’s more specifi c statement that de

hac mansione calumpniatur hundremanni et prepositus regis xxx denarios et consuetudines

placitorum ad opus fi rme Ermentone mansione regis (Exon fo. 218; DB iv, p. 198). No such

statements are recorded in Domesday Book for the other dependencies, but their dues

are listed in the equivalent Exon entries (Exon fos 85v, 218; DB iv, pp. 78; 218), and in the

166 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 0 – 3 2

section on disputed land (Terre Occupatae) it is stated that these dues had been withheld

since King William arrived in England (Exon fos 504–504v; DB iv, pp. 467–68).

73 R.H.C. Davis, ‘Did the Anglo-Saxons have war-horses?’, in Sonia Chadwick Hawkes (ed.),

Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Committee

for Archaeology, 1989), pp. 141–44. See also Katharin Mack, ‘The stallers: administrative

innovation in the reign of Edward the Confessor’, J. Med. Hist. 12 (1986): 123–34. Wulfric

cyninges horsðegn, whose death is recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (‘A’, 897) may have

been the equivalent of the continental marshal.

74 Ralph’s father was Breton, but he himself was born in Norfolk (AS Chronicle, 1075), and

had a brother with the insular name of Godwine (LDB fos 119v, 144), which suggests

an English mother. Ralph’s earliest attestation is no later than 1034, which puts his birth

around 1010; his Breton father perhaps came to England with Emma of Normandy in 1002.

Both Ralph the staller and his son, Ralph Guader or de Gael, are called anglicus in Breton

ducal charters: see Helen Cam, ‘The English lands of the abbey of Saint-Riquier’, EHR 31

(1916): 443–47; K.S.B. Keats-Rohan, ‘The Bretons and the Norman Conquest’, in K.S.B.

Keats-Rohan, Domesday People (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), pp. 44–58 (44–46).

75 Larson, King’s Household, pp. 146–47.

76 See Eric Christiansen, The Norsemen in the Viking Age (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 145.

77 Geþyncðu, 3; EHD i, no. 52(A), p. 432 and n. 5.

78 S 1036, Edward’s diploma for Waltham Abbey, the authenticity of which has been defended

by Keynes, ‘Regenbald the chancellor (sic)’, pp. 212–13, 205–206 and fi g. 3.

79 Vita Edwardi, p. 76.

80 S 1029, 1042. In two diplomas of 1061, all four are simply ministri (S 1033–1034).

81 GDB fo. 154v (the Oxfordshire folios).

82 S 1471, 999; Sevington was held by Ælfstan of Boscombe on the eve of the Conquest (GDB

fo. 71). He is probably the thegn who attests the Waltham diploma (S 1036) as princeps.

83 S 1235; Keynes, ‘Lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, p. 266. In the Latin abbreviation of this

vernacular memorandum, he appears as vicecomes, which has led to the suggestion that

he was sheriff of Bedfordshire; that position, however, was held by Godric, who attests the

same memorandum immediately before Ælfstan, being described in the vernacular text

as scirgereua and in the Latin abstract as tribunus; he is also named in Domesday Book as

sheriff (GDB fo. 215).

84 S 1426, 1476, 1478. Ralph’s lands, apart from a single estate in Cornwall, lay in Lincolnshire

and East Anglia.

85 AS Chronicle ‘A’, 905, ‘CDE’ 1014. Ælfheah stybb and Brihtnoth Odda’s son attended a

meeting at Thunderfi eld on King Æthelstan’s orders (VI Ath 10) and Leofstan Ælfwold’s

son and Æthelnoth Wigstan’s son were sent by King Æthelred to negotiate with Duke

Richard II of Normandy (Mem. St Dunstan, pp. 397–98). None are more than names, but

some ærendracan were of high status, like Archbishop Ealdred of York (AS Chronicle ‘D’,

1054).

86 Similar titles are found in the early ninth century, usually in Mercian contexts, and in texts

relating to Kent. Æthelheah pedessessor attests a diploma of King Coenwulf of Mercia in 811

(S 168) and, as ped[es]secu[us], a second diploma of the same king in 812 (S 169). Another

of Coenwulf ’s diplomas, also of 812 (S 170), is attested by Cuthred pessessor, who appears as

167N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 2 – 3 3

pedesecus in an incomplete text (S 1861), undated but also issued by Coenwulf. Bola, who

attests agreements made at the councils of Clofesho in 824 and c.827 as pedissecus/pedisecus

(S 1434, 1436), must have been in the service of Beornwulf of Mercia, and Ælfred pedissecus

attests a diploma of King Wiglaf of Mercia in 831 (S 188). The sole West Saxon pedesecus

is Eastmund, who attests a diploma of Æthelberht in 858 (S 328).

87 S 520, 569, 572; the text of S 572 is corrupt, but the original recipient was probably Wulfstan

of Dalham (see n. 94 below).

88 S 768; Charters of Burton, no. 23. Larson (King’s Household, p. 124, n. 89) saw only the

cartulary copy of this diploma, printed by Birch (BCS no. 1211), which omitted the names

of the lay witnesses, lumping them together as ceteri duces disciferi pedissequi et ministri

quindecim.

89 Larson, King’s Household, pp. 124–25. The fotsetla, whom a thegn might take to the feasts of

the Cambridge Thegn’s Guild, on payment of a sester of honey, was presumably a personal

attendant (EHD i, no.136, p. 558).

90 S 713; Keynes, Diplomas, p. 159, n. 24; ECNENM, p. 291. The ninth-century pedisequi also

seem to be more than ordinary thegns; in Coenwulf ’s diplomas of 811 and 812 (S 168–69),

Æthelheah is the only lay witness apart from the ealdormen, and Cuthred’s attestation

(S 170) is actually included among those of the duces; in King Æthelberht’s diploma

(S 328), Eastmund attests immediately after Ealdorman Æthelmod [of Kent], at the head

of the remaining laymen.

91 Charters of Burton, pp. xli, 29–30.

92 Charters of Burton, pp. xli, 7, 21–22; S 659, 674, 677, 679. Uhtred was probably a grandson

of Eadulf, high reeve of Bamburgh (C.R. Hart, ‘The ealdordom of Essex’, in C.R. Hart, The

Danelaw [London: Hambledon Press, 1992], pp. 115–40 [123]), and a kinsman of Osulf,

high-reeve of Bamburgh and ealdorman of Northumbria (954–63). For the formation of

the Five Boroughs, see David Roffe, ‘The origins of Derbyshire’, Derbyshire Archaeological

Journal 106 (1986): 102–22 (esp. 110–11).

93 E.O. Blake (ed.), Liber Eliensis (Camden Society, 3rd ser., 92; London: Royal Historical

Society, 1962); trans. in Janet Fairweather, Liber Eliensis: A History of the Isle of Ely

(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005); Alan Kennedy, ‘Law and litigation in the Libellus

Æthelwoldi episcopi’, ASE 24 (1995): 131–83. The Liber Æthelwoldi underlies the opening

chapters (1–49) of Book ii of the Liber Eliensis; it has not been separately published in

a modern edition (though one is in hand, by Alan Kennedy and Simon Keynes). What

underlies the Libellus Æthelwoldi itself is uncertain; it is clearly based on an Old English

source (or sources), perhaps ‘an originally vernacular work of c. 990, by a member of

the Ely community’ (Wormald, English Law, p. 154; see also LE, pp. ix–xviii, xxxiv) or

perhaps ‘a register of discrete memoranda in Old English’ (Kennedy, ‘Law and litigation’,

pp. 132–33).

94 S 572. The diploma was reworked at Ely in order to make the abbey the benefi ciary but

Wulfstan was probably the original recipient (LE pp. xii, 416; Dorothy Whitelock, review of

Hart, ECEE, EHR 84 [1969]: 112–13). The passage relating to Wulfstan – ‘thereby Wulfstan,

a sequipedus of the aforesaid king, has full power to speak publicly, with promptitude and

plain utterance’ (hoc praevalet alacriter Wulfstanus praefati regis sequipedus patulo ore

propalare) – makes little sense as it stands, but may be compared with S 520, in favour of

168 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 3 – 3 5

Wulfric pedisequus – hoc potest pro certo Wulfric pedisequus alacriter conlaudere – and S 569,

in favour of Uhtred cild pedissequus – hoc dumtaxat pedissequs Uhtred Child alacriter …

collaudet.

95 LE p. 396; Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 12–13; AS Chronicle ‘A’, 964.

96 LE ii§1.

97 LE ii§18. The gift may have been to assist the ratifi cation of her dead husband’s will; in

the 990s, the widow of Æthelric of Bocking gave her deceased husband’s land to Christ

Church, Canterbury, so that his will might stand (S 939; EHD i, no. 121, pp. 535–36). The

clerks of Ely leased the estate back to Æscwynn’s kinsmen, who held it for 15 years before

the re-foundation of 970, which dates the court hearing to 954–55 (LE ii§24).

98 LE ii§2. Thurstan danus may have been related to Archbishop Oda, himself half-Danish

by birth, who had been granted 40 hides at Ely by Eadwig in 957 (S 646); see J. Robinson,

The Times of Saint Dunstan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923; repr., 1969), pp. 118–19.

Bishop Sigedwoldus is said to have been natione Grecus but nothing more is known

of him.

99 For complaints about the corruption rife among royal offi cers in the tenth and eleventh

centuries, see Campbell, ‘Some agents and agencies’, pp. 201–18.

100 LE ii§32–33, 49. For the dates, see Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 294, 319

and n. 156.

101 LE ii§32. The history of the dispute is complicated by the author’s confusion of the two

hides at Horningsea abstracted by Wulfric with two hides at Eye seized by Æthelstan the

priest (LE pp. 420–21), for which see n. 104 below.

102 LE ii§32. Thored’s father Oslac was promoted to the ealdordom of Northumbria at some

date between 963 and 966 (Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 24–25).

103 Oscytel had been bishop of Dorchester-on-Thames, in whose diocese Horningsea lay, and

continued to hold the see after his election as archbishop of York.

104 Æthelstan’s ploy was not new; in Edward the Elder’s reign, the accused thief Helmstan

surrendered his land to Ealdorman Ordulf to avoid conviction (Select EHD, pp. 30–32,

60–63). Æthelstan may have continued to hold Eye as Wulfstan’s tenant, for he was

compelled to surrender it to Æthelwold after Wulfstan’s death; in return the bishop

dropped his demand for the church treasure abstracted on Æthelstan’s behalf by Herolf

(LE ii§34).

105 LE ii§32.

106 LE ii§34. Berlea is unidentifi ed, but is probably not Barley in Hertfordshire.

107 S 1457; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 59, pp. 122–25, 366–67; Charters of Rochester, no. 36,

pp. xxiv, 53–54. Wulfstan of Dalham has been identifi ed with Wulfstan the reeve (gerefa),

who took the disputed lands into the king’s hand, but the name is too common to assume

identity, and the context suggests that Wulfstan se gerefa was a local Kentish offi cial

(Dorothy Whitelock, ‘Introduction’, in LE p. xiv, n. 2).

108 LE ii§48, dating from after the refoundation of Ely in 970. The other man named was

Ringulf, who also attested Bishop Æthelwold’s purchase of land at Granteden (Cambs. or

Hunts.), between 963 and 975 (LE ii§46); he may have been commended to Ealdorman

Æthelwine, who gave him land at Horningsea once held by Wulfstan of Dalham and his

kinsman Æthelstan chusin (LE ii§49).

169N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 5 – 3 6

109 Af 38§2; S 198. For another possible precursor, see the apparitor Badanoth Beotting,

perhaps the deputy of Ealdorman Ealhhere of Kent: see Ann Williams, Kingship and

Government, p. 56.

110 LDB fos 390–390v, 391. Wulfstan’s toponymic is recorded in LE ii§7; see also ECEE,

pp. 26–27.

111 LE ii§35; Moulton also lay in Suffolk (ECEE, p. 227). Ælfgar had bought the land, eight

acres in Brandon and three hides at Livermere from Jarl Scule, for two horses, two dorsals

of ‘purple’ (see below, Chapter 8) and 50 mancuses (pro duobus dextrariis et duobus dorsalis

de pallio et l aureis).

112 S 572 (see n. 94 above).

113 LE ii§42, 43; both Eadgifu and Wulfstan are said to have acquired ‘many other lands

and good’ (pluras terras et plura bona) once held by Waldegist, but none are specifi ed. It

has been asserted that Wulfstan and Eadgifu held jointly, and even that Wulfstan was in

Eadgifu’s service (ECEE, pp. 40–41), but the clear implication is that he only received the

land after her death.

114 LE ii§34. Wynsige’s heirs subsequently claimed that he had not received the full purchase-

price, but the suit was unsuccessful.

115 LE ii§7.

116 LE ii§38.

117 The Bury archive preserved his alleged charter (S 1213),a Latin text modelled on a royal

diploma; see ECEE, no. 75; ECNENM, p. 385. St Edmund’s held four carucates at Palgrave

both before the Conquest and in 1086 (LDB fo. 361).

118 LE ii§34, 43; Kennedy (‘Law and litigation’, p. 146) suggests 973 or 974. Wulfstan’s

attestation appears in S 1457, the Rochester memorandum concerning Bromley and

Fawkham (Kent), but though the story is brought down to 987, the appended witness-list

relates to a meeting at Gadshill (Kent) in Edgar’s reign and therefore before 975 (Charters

of Rochester, pp. xxiv–xxv).

119 Kennedy, ‘Law and litigation’, p. 146.

120 See Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 26–28. 121 It has been suggested that Wulfstan of Dalham and his wife Wulffl æd were the parents

of Wulffl æd, wife of Sigeferth of Downham, who gave to Ely land at Stretham (Cambs.)

inherited from her father Wulfstan; he himself had received it from King Æthelstan

(LE ii§10, 11). It is not impossible that Wulfstan of Dalham was of age in Æthelstan’s reign,

but his fl oreat is the 960s and 970s, rather than the 930s, and, given that his name is very

common, it seems chronologically unlikely that he was identical with Wulffl æd’s father.

122 LE ii§32, 45.

123 LE ii§34; Chron. Ramsey, pp. 78–79. The land at Swaffham disposed of by Æthelwold,

Wulfstan of Dalham’s kinsman, was subsequently claimed by Ælfnoth Goding’s son,

which raises the possibility that Wulfstan was also related to Goding of Girton, Cambs,

who became a monk at Ely (LE ii§26; Chron. Ramsey, pp. 65–66; for the identifi cation of

Girton, see ECEE, p. 46).

124 LE ii§35.

125 S 1530 (1042–1043); LDB fos 390–390v. Clarke’s valuation makes Wihtgar the 13th of the

90 richest non-comital landowners (English Nobility, pp. 32, 357–63). His antecedents

170 N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 6 – 3 9

are discussed by Andrew Wareham, Lords and Communities in Medieval East Anglia

(Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 33–35; see also Appendix 4 below.

126 LDB fo. 389v; Lord Francis Hervey, The Pinchbeck Register (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1925), vol. 2, p. 290; ECEE, p. 71.

127 Chron. Ramsey, pp. 169–70; S 1228. Æthelwine’s bequest to Ramsey was made before 1049,

for Abbot Ælfwine recovered the disputed estates (at Clapham, Kempstone, Cardington

and Cranfi eld, all in Beds.) after his return from the Council of Rheims held in that year.

S 1030, a spurious confi rmation of the Confessor, lists Kempstone and Clapham as given

by Æthelwine the Black (Ailwine suerte).

128 S 1049, 1019; Keynes, Atlas, table LXXV (1).

129 S 1078, 1087. He is probably the Ælfric addressed in the writ transferring Thingoe to Bury

St Edmunds, directed to Bishop Grimcytel, who held the East Anglian see in 1043–1044

when the queen and her supporter Bishop Stigand were in disgrace (S 1059; AS Chronicle

‘CDE’, 1043).

130 S 1224; he may be the Ælfric (no patronymic) who attested another Bury grant by Stigand’s

brother Æthelmær (S 1468). In 1086, land attached to St Peter’s Ipswich, formerly held by

Wihtgar Ælfric’s son, was claimed as part of the manor of Bramford, though the jurors

of Ipswich half-Hundred disagreed (LDB fo. 393). There were two manors in Bramford

TRE, one royal and one held by Archbishop Stigand (LDB fos 261v, 289–289v); in view of

the connection between Stigand and Ælfric, Wihtgar’s land, pace Pauline Stafford (Queen

Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England

[Oxford: Blackwell, 1997], pp. 321–22) was probably attached to the latter.

131 S 1521 (dated 1035–1044); Stigand, perhaps Ælfric’s patron (see previous note) was another

of Leofgifu’s benefi ciaries. For her association with Emma, see Stafford, Emma and Edith,

pp. 321–22.

132 Another ‘ministerial’ family is that of Eadnoth the staller, whose son Harding is later found

in the service of the Norman kings (Williams, The English, pp. 119–22).

133 Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 23, 26 and notes.

134 See Chapter 1 above.

Notes to Chapter 3: Friends and Neighbours: Local Communities

1 Poems of Wisdom and Learning, pp. 64–65.

2 S 1473 (dated 1044–48); Robertson, Charters, no. 103. For another such staggered payment,

see LE ii§25, and for the difference between this ‘market price’ and the ‘value’ as recorded

in Domesday Book (£2), see Appendix 1 below.

3 Kent and the south-east were part of the earldom of Wessex, so the absence of Earl

Godwine’s attestation is of interest. Later Canterbury tradition alleged that Archbishop

Æthelnoth (1020–1038) had received the third penny (the earl’s share) of the shire of Kent,

which passed to Earl Godwine (1018–1053) only in the time of Archbishop Eadsige, who

died in 1050; see Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester:

Leicester University Press, 1984), p. 301. Perhaps Eadsige was still acting as earl in the late

1040s.

171N O T E S T O PA G E S 3 9 – 4 0

4 For ‘good men’ see (for example), S 1454, 1473; for duguð, S 1449, 1456; ‘eldest’ (ieldran),

S 1409, 1422; ‘worthy men’ (dohtig), S 1461.

5 Many of the witnesses to royal diplomas have very common names; the Kentish names can

only be identifi ed when they occur en bloc, usually towards the ends of the lists of ministri.

See further Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 132–34.

6 Leofwine attests S 1461 (1016–1022), with another Dover priest, Wulfsige, and S 1400

(1038–1050). The minster, which incorporated the ancient pharos, still stands, though

much altered internally. It was built in the fi rst quarter of the eleventh century, see Tim

Tatton-Brown, ‘The churches of Canterbury diocese in the eleventh century’, in Blair (ed.),

Minsters and Parish Churches, pp. 105–18.

7 S 1472 (1044–1045). Neither Langdon nor Ileden appear in Domesday Book.

8 GDB fo. 1v (assessed at one sulung). Abbess Leofrun of St Mildred’s was one of the

ecclesiastics captured in Canterbury by Thorkell the Tall (AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1011;

JnW ii, pp. 468–69, Brooks, Early History of the Church of Canterbury, pp. 201, 204), and

those opposed to the translation of St Mildryth’s relics from Thanet to St Augustine’s

in 1035 were led by one Leofstan, possibly another kinsman of the former abbess: see

D.W. Rollason, ‘Goscelin of Canterbury’s account of the Translation and Miracles of

St Mildrith (BHL 5961/4): An edition with notes’, Mediaeval Studies 48 (1985): 139–210

(164–67; chs 6–7). Leofgifu of Dover, soror benefactrix of Christ Church, Canterbury (for

whom see Robin Fleming, ‘Christchurch’s sisters and brothers: An edition and discussion

of Canterbury obituary lists’, in Marc Anthony Meyer (ed.), The Culture of Christendom:

Essays in Medieval History in Commemoration of Denis L.T. Bethel (London: Hambledon

Press, 1993), pp. 115–53 (136)), may have belonged to the same family.

9 S 981, 1465, 1473, 1400 (also attested by Esbearn). An Æthelric attests S 899 (1001), S 904

(1002), S 905 (1002), S 1220 (1013–1019) and S 959 (1023), but without the distinctive

byname he cannot be positively identifi ed.

10 S 1502. Miles is probably used in the sense cniht, ‘retainer’, see Abels, Lordship and Military

Obligation, pp. 150–51.

11 S 1471; Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 188–89. The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church,

Canterbury, makes a certain Ælfhere the tenant of Stowting, but records Æthelric bigga

as the holder of half a sulung at Westgate (Domesday Monachorum, pp. 81–83); no

comparable tenement can be identifi ed in Domesday Book.

12 The text names Esbearn bigga, but he is separately commemorated on 24 November,

and his father must be intended. Æthelric’s gifts to the church are enumerated as

72 messuages in Canterbury, two chasubles, three cloaks studded with silver and jewels,

two gospel books with gold and silver, a large censer and a large silk dorsal, and the estates

at Newintonn and Southchurch (Essex), elsewhere credited to Leofstan. The death of his

daughter, Æthelthryth soror fi lii Æsbearn Bigga, is recorded on 25 February (Fleming,

‘Christchurch’s sisters and brothers’, pp. 12–23, 125, 128 and n. 93, 129 and n. 108, 134

and n. 132).

13 It was rare for sons to inherit their fathers’ bynames but there are other examples: in

Kent, Leofwine and Ælfwine se reada and Siward and Sired of Chilham (see pp. 51, 54),

outside Kent, Æthelwold se greta and his son Æthelmær (Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 387,

436), Æthelweard mæw (seagull) and his son Ælfgar (Chapter 1 above), Ælfred larwe

172 N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 0 – 4 9

(schoolmaster) and his son Eilaf (Williams, ‘West-country magnate’, pp. 45–46) and

Eadwine of Caddington and his son Leofwine of Caddington (see p. 60).

14 GDB fos 1, 2.

15 GDB fos 7, 7v, 8, 10v, 12, 13; Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 242–43 (where Esbearn appears

under the Scandinavian form of his name, Asbiorn).

16 GDB fo. 7.

17 GDB fos 9–9v. Wickhambreux was assessed at 4 sulungs, and included 3 messuages

in Canterbury rendering 6s 8d; it lay in Downhamford Hundred, Wye Lathe, as did

Farrington, held of Esbearn (no byname) by Eadric.

18 The total includes Esbearn’s own land (18 sulungs), plus a sulung at Bodsham and another

at Wilderton, both held by St Augustine’s (GDB fos 12, 12v), and Stowting, assessed at

1½ sulungs, held by the archbishop (GDB fo. 4). The monks of Canterbury held two

manors at Chart, both assessed at 3 sulungs, (GDB fo. 5), and it is not clear which one was

held by Æthelric and Esbearn.

19 S 1400 (1038–50), S 1471 (c.1045). His father was perhaps Godwine Eadgifu’s son, or his

brother Leofsunu (see p. 51).

20 For Godric Karl’s son and his brother Godwine, see p. 53; Godric portreeve attests S 1473.

Kent can also show Godric the deacon, who held Berwick of the archbishop (GDB fo.

4v; Domesday Monachorum, p. 92), and Godric wisce (‘marsh’), who held Badlesmere of

St Augustine’s (GDB fos 10v, 12v; Excerpta, pp. 4–5). Still holding in 1086 were Godric at

Sotton (GDB fo. 11) and Godric latimer (latinarius, interpreter), Canon of St Martin’s,

Dover, in 1086 (GDB fos 1v, 2; Excerpta, p. 30).

21 Godric has been called Godric of Bishopsbourne, but there is no evidence for his tenure of

any part of this manor (GDB fo. 3v), and the Domesday Monachorum clearly distinguishes

Bishopsbourne from Brabourne, calling the latter Godricesburne (Domesday Monachorum,

p. 80 and n. 3).

22 GDB fo. 7.

23 GDB fo. 6; there were dependent holdings at Idleigh and Soninges.

24 GDB fos 8v, 10v, 13v.

25 GDB fo. 10v.

26 S 1400; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 108.

27 S 1461.

28 S 1229 (Anglo-Saxon Charters, no 96), a vernacular declaration in the name of ‘Ælfgifu

the king’s mother’ (i.e. Emma), stating that she received Newington from Cnut after the

forfeiture of the thegn Ælfric, and that the king then granted it to Christ Church; it exists

as a contemporaneous insertion into BL Arundel MS 155, a psalter from Christ Church

(Brooks, Early History of the Church of Canterbury, n. 14, p. 380), and was presumably

used to fabricate S 1638, a post-Conquest charter in Emma’s name conveying Newington

and Britwell Prior (Oxon) to Christ Church. The same two estates are included in the

post-Conquest additions to S 1044, a diploma of Edward the Confessor in favour of Christ

Church, to whom Newington (Oxon) belonged in 1066 (GDB fo. 155). It seems likely that

the context of Emma’s original statement was a dispute over Newington (?Kent) early in

King Edward’s time (compare S 1242, a statement of Queen Ælfthryth concerning land at

Ruishton, seized from the Old Minster, Winchester); if so, Eadric’s tenure in 1066 (GDB

173N O T E S T O PA G E S 4 9 – 4 9

fo. 13v) suggests that the church was unsuccessful in maintaining possession. Eadric’s

father might be the Ælfric who attested S 950 (1018), a diploma of Cnut granting land

near Ticehurst (Surr.), some of whose witnesses seem to be Kentish thegns.

29 GDB fo. 13v. Another manor at Temple Ewell was held in 1086 by Hugh de Montfort, the

Domesday tenant of Newington (GDB fo. 11).

30 S 1400; GDB fos 9v, 11, 11v; Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 304–305. Elham itself, assessed at

six sulungs, lay in Loningborough Hundred, Lympne Lathe, and Eadric of Elham also held

Tickenhurst (Summerdene Hundred, Eastry Lathe), assessed at 12 sulungs, and Temple

Ewell (Bewsborough Hundred, Eastry Lathe), assessed at three sulungs. He is probably the

Eadric who held two sulungs at West Cliffe, and perhaps a sulung at Solton; he is given no

byname in the West Cliffe entry, and no TRE tenant is named for Solton, but the entries

for both immediately follow on that for Temple Ewell, and not only did both lie in the

same hundred and lathe, but all three were held in 1086 of the bishop of Bayeux by Hugh

nephew of Herbert fi tzIvo. The holding at West Cliffe might indeed be the two sulungs

given by the Confessor to Æthelred optimas (possibly a kinsman of Ælfric and Eadric) in

the early 1040s (S 1044; the assessment in the Latin text is two cassati, rendered as two

sulungs in the vernacular boundary clause).

31 S 1467 (1038–1039), Robertson, Charters, no 91.

32 Domesday Monachorum, pp. 85, 86. Osweard’s tenure of Crayford is not noticed in

Domesday Book (GDB fos 3, 4), and his half-sulung at Sheppey was attached to the

archiepiscopal manor of Teynham (not entered in Domesday Book).

33 All the land entered under Osweard’s name, in Essex, Surrey and Sussex as well as in Kent,

is assigned to one individual by Clarke (English Nobility, pp. 329–30). It is not impossible

that Osweard of Harrietsham and Osweard of Norton were identical, since thegns could

be known by more than one byname, but I have treated them as different persons. For

Osweard of Norton, see p. 57.

34 GDB fos 7v–8.

35 S 1511; Charters of Rochester, no. 35.

36 GDB fo. 34 (Wachelestede, ‘Walkhampstead’, an earlier name for Godstone).

37 GDB fos 33, 36v. One does not wish to pile hypothesis upon hypothesis, but it may be

signifi cant that in 1086 Tooting was held by Hamo, sheriff of Kent, who also held land

at Titsey (Surr.) bequeathed by Brihtric to Wulfstan uccea’s brother Wulfsige (S 1511;

Charters of Rochester, no. 35; GDB fo. 36v); the pre-Conquest holder of the estate, assessed

at 20 hides, was Godtovi, whose name does not occur elsewhere (K.S.B Keats-Rohan

and David Thornton (eds), Domesday Names: An Index of Personal and Place Names in

Domesday Book (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), p. 95). It is possible that Godtovi had

held Titsey of or under Osweard; not all such relationships are explicit in Domesday Book.

38 S 1471 (dated c.1045).

39 S 1044 (dated 1042–1044), from the archive of Christ Church, Canterbury. Of the

21 ministri, the last ten seem to be Kentish thegns; Æthelric (who attests in 13th place)

is perhaps Æthelric bigga and Godric (21st place) Godric of Brabourne. The bynames of

Ælfwine and Azur both mean ‘red’, but se reada is Old English, whereas roda represents

ON raudr. On the eve of the Conquest, Burham, assessed at six sulungs, was held by Earl

Leofwine, Earl Godwine’s son (GDB fo. 7v).

174 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 0 – 5 2

40 S 1400.

41 S 1465, S 959.

42 S 1461; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 41. There is no reason to identify the bridegroom with

Earl Godwine, whose only recorded wife is Gytha, King Cnut’s sister-in-law.

43 GDB fo. 18v. Burmarsh (Kent) assessed at 2¾ sulungs, plus a dependency of four sulungs

at Kennington, belonged to St Augustine’s (GDB fo. 12v).

44 The boundary between Kent and Sussex was still fl uid in the tenth and eleventh centuries;

a decision of a Kentish shire-court held between 964 and 988 was made known ‘in Sussex

and Wessex and Middlesex and Kent’ (S 1458), and the Hastings region, in which Brightling

lay, was distinct from Sussex (and Kent) in 1011 (AS Chronicle, ‘CDE’). Further north, the

Croydon region of Surrey may still have been reckoned as part of Kent in the late tenth

century (Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, p. 17).

45 S 950, 959 (both also attested by Godwine, perhaps Brihtric’s son-in-law). Brihtric might be

a descendant of the tenth-century testator of the same name, who disposed of lands both

in west Kent and in Sussex (S 1511), but in view of his status as a father he is unlikely to

be Brihtric geounga who attests a memorandum of Archbishop Eadsige in 1032 (S 1465),

since the appellation ‘youth’ is usually applied to unmarried men.

46 GDB fo. 8. As well as the Chart agreement (S 1471, dated c.1045) Ælfwine se reada also

attests S 1400 (1038–1059).

47 GDB fo. 7v.

48 GDB fo. 8.

49 If Leofwine se reada is Leofwine R who attests a diploma of 993 (S 878; Keynes, Diplomas,

pp. 133–34) the family may go back to the tenth century, but the name is common; another

thegn called Leofwine also attests S 878, and two thegns called Leofwine attest S 904

(1002). The Snodland dispute of the 990s (S 1456) is attested by Leofwine Ælfheah’s son

and Leofwine of Ditton; a single Leofwine attests S 899 (1001) and S 905 (also 902).

50 It has been suggested that the seller of Southernden was Earl Godwine, of whom Alwinus

held Boughton in 1066 (see above), but the only evidence is the coincidence of a common

name.

51 S 1536.

52 S 950.

53 S 987–88; Writs, nos 29, 30.

54 S 985; Writs, no. 26. Æthelwine scirman is presumably the scirgerefa who attested S 1461

(the marriage agreement).

55 S 875, 877; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 63. In 944, land at Sibertswold was granted by King

Edmund to Sigeric (S 501), who possibly a member of the same kindred; if he is the Sigeric

who attested a Canterbury lease in 905 (S 1288; Charters of St Augustine’s, pp. 103–107),

then the family had been prominent in Kent since the days of King Edward the Elder. The

canons of St Martin’s, Dover, held three prebends at Sibertswold in 1086, but none can be

associated with Sired’s family.

56 S 885, 878, 893, 899, 914, 904–905, 907, 910–11; Keynes, Diplomas, table 8.

57 S 931a, 931b. Sired Alfred’s son was one of the kinsmen and benefi ciaries of Brihtric

(S 1511, dated 975–89), but the absence of Siward from the will suggests that this was a

different man.

175N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 2 – 5 3

58 S 954, 960, 1389; Simon Keynes, ‘Cnut’s earls’, in Alexander Rumble (ed.), The Reign of

Cnut (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1994), pp. 43–88 (76), and see the title princeps

applied to Sired’s younger kinsman Siward of Chilham (S1036). For another ‘local’ title,

see the case of Æthelmær son of Ealdorman Æthelweard the chronicler (Williams, Æthelred

the Unready, pp. 114, 124; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 209–10).

59 S 981 (see also S 1643). The memorandum is a later concoction, but a genuine witness-list

may have been used, for it includes Æthelric bigga, Eadmær of Burham and Æthelwine

Ælfhelm’s son, all of whom attest genuine transactions relating to Kent; Æthelwine

Ælfhelm’s son attests S 1400 (1038–1050). Ælfweard se Kæntisca, the remaining witness,

does not appear elsewhere, but might be a kinsman of Æthelnoth cild, also known as ‘the

Kentishman’.

60 S 1456, 905.

61 S 1456, Robertson, Charters, no. 69. Wulfstan of Dalham and ‘the other’ Wulfstan

(presumably Wulfstan iunga) also attest S 1455.

62 S 905; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 132–33. For the identifi cation of Æthelred portreeve, see

Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 63–64. Æthelric, who attests in sixth place, may be

Æthelric the reeve, attending his superior, the sheriff Leofric, as he attends the succeeding

sheriff Æthelwine in S 985 (see n. 54 above).

63 S 1456, 1461.

64 S 1276; Edgar’s grant, conveying land at Haddun (Haven Street in Frindsbury) to Leofric, is

endorsed (in English) on an earlier grant of the same land by Swithulf, bishop of Rochester,

in 889. Brihtric’s will (S 1511, Campbell, Charters of Rochester, no. 35) dates from 975–989.

Wulfheah and Ælfheah were left land at Harrietsham (see p. 49 above), Wulfheah receiving

the inland and Ælfheah the utland. The testator might be the Brihtric who attests S 1276,

but the name is common; Brihtric’s own will mentions a second Brihtric, connected with

his kinswoman Brihtwaru.

65 S 1215, whereby Æthelfl æd disposed of land in Heronden.

66 S 1456.

67 S 1455; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 62. Ealdred Lyfing’s son commended himself to

St Augustine’s with the land, probably Cliffe at Hoo, in Shamwell Hundred, Aylesford Lathe

(Anglo-Saxon Charters, p. 372), though St Augustine’s did not have land there in 1066;

3½ sulungs belonged to Christ Church, Canterbury, and half a sulung to two brothers

called Ælfric and Ordric (GDB fos 4v, 9).

68 GDB fo. 1; Christ Church, Canterbury, St Augustine’s and St Martin’s of Dover, had similar

privileges. Table 3.4 includes the list of those with sake and soke in Sutton and Aylesford

Lathes (i.e., West Kent), some of whom are substantial landholders, but none appear

among the witnesses to Kentish and royal memoranda in the preceding period (unless

Osweard of Norton is identical with Osweard of Harrietsham). The reason may be that

much of the surviving material comes from the archives of Christ Church, Canterbury,

and St Augustine’s, whereas that of Rochester (which might be expected to refl ect ‘West

Kent’) dries up after the beginning of the eleventh century.

69 Azur rot held a sulung of land in Newchurch Hundred, in Lympne Lathe, East Kent

(GDB fo. 13).

70 GDB fos 5v, 8, 8v, 9, all held in 1086 by Adam fi tzHubert; S 1461. Since Karli’s name is

176 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 3 – 5 5

uncommon, he can probably be identifi ed as Karli minister who attests two royal diplomas,

S 1044 and the spurious S 1002.

71 GDB fos 1, 2, 10, 10v. Apart from Chilham, Sired held Eastling, assessed at fi ve sulungs,

and Luddenham, assessed at one sulung. Clarke (English Nobility, pp. 337–38) adds half

a sulung of free land (libera terra) at Wickhambreux, held by Sired of Alfred bigga, two

sulungs in Pising and Pineham shared between Leofstan, Leofwine, Alfred, Sired and two

others unnamed, all of whom ‘could go where they would with the land’ (i.e. they retained

their lands even if they gave their allegiance to another lord), and 15 acres in Elmton, held

by Sired (GDB fos 9v, 10v, 11v). Sired’s name is not common (Keats-Rohan, Domesday

Names, p. 193), and the association with Alfred, a fairly rare name in the eleventh century,

at both Wickhambreux and Pising is worthy of note, but there was at least one other Sired

in Kent, unless Sired of Chilham was identical with Sired, canon of Dover.

72 GDB fo. 1v; both were in other hands in 1086, but Sired continued to hold a prebend

at St Margaret’s previously held by his unnamed father, and a sulung and 16 acres

(whereabouts unspecifi ed) in conjunction with two other canons, Godric and Sæwine.

Sired’s son Dering held a prebend at Deal (2½ yokes). The name Dering is rare (the other

Domesday references are in Lincolnshire and Suffolk), so he may be the pre-Conquest

holder of three yokes at Farningham in Kent and two hides at Chaldon, Surrey (GDB fos

6, 31v; Keats-Rohan, Domesday Names, p. 53).

73 S 981.

74 S 1090, S 1002 (forged by Osbert de Clare in the twelfth century, but possibly based

on genuine materials), S 1036. Mersham, assessed at six sulungs, later belonged to the

archbishopric (GDB fos 3v–4). In the obituary lists of Christ Church, the donation is

ascribed to Matilda alone, which suggests that her husband predeceased her (Fleming,

‘Christchurch’s sisters and brothers’, p. 129; Writs, p. 181). Leofwine of Mersham attended

a Kentish shire-court at the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries, with Siward the elder

and his brother Sired (S 1456).

75 GDB fos 8v, 13v 14, 36v. Camberwell was held in 1086 by Hamo, sheriff of Kent, who had

received most of Northmann’s Kentish lands, and the totals assume that Northmann had

also held Hamo’s manor in Wye Lathe (probably at Trimworth), part of which belonged

to Hugh de Montfort, the other successor to Northmann’s lands. It is less certain that he

was the Northmann with land in Sussex (see Clark, English Nobility, p. 325).


77 Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 32, 237–38; Ann Williams, ‘Lost worlds: Kentish society in

the eleventh century’, Medieval Prosopography 20 (1999): 51–74 (58–59). Brunmann the

reeve, who was a toll-collector in Canterbury on the eve of the Conquest (GDB fo. 2), may

have been Æthelnoth’s deputy, or perhaps, like London and Exeter, Canterbury had two

portreeves (see Chapter 2 above).

78 GDB fo. 2; S 1036; he is probably the Æthelnoth attests S 1041 (1065), and the spurious

S 1037a, whose ostensible date is 1064; Keynes, Atlas, table LXXV(1). Æthelnoth’s tenure

of the Dover prebends is presented as illegal, but Harold, like his father Godwine, may

have been the minster’s lay protector, and his transference of some of its land to one of his

adherents perhaps represents the fi ne line between patronage and exploitation.

79 S 981.

177N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 5 – 5 7

80 GDB fos 7, 8, 10, 13, 31v, 33. Most of the Kentish land passed to Adam fi tzHubert.

81 S 1456–58; Anglo-Saxon Charters, pp. 84–87, 122–25, 140–43.

82 S 1455 (989–1005), S 1220 (1013–1018), S 1463 (1032), S 1471 (c.1043), S 1400 (1038

x 1040).

83 S 1461 (dated 1016–1020).

84 III Athelstan; see Simon Keynes, ‘Royal government and the written word in late Anglo-

Saxon England’, in Rosamund McKitterick (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in the Early Middle

Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 226–57 (238–39, 241); MEL,

pp. 295–97.

85 S 878, 899, 910–11; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 132–33.

86 S 955, 961, 964, 967, 993–94, 1001, 1003, 1006–1008, 1010, 1012; Keynes, Atlas, tables

LXX(ii), LXXV(i). Karl minister also attests S 1002, the diploma of Edward for St Peter’s,

Ghent, forged by Osbert de Clare in the twelfth century.

87 S 1010, 999, 1036.

88 S 961, 1036. Siward minister also attests three spurious texts (S 1000, dated 1043; S 1041–42,

dated 1065 and 1066 respectively).

89 GDB fo. 1.

90 AS Chronicle ‘CE’, 1044, ‘CD’ 1045, ‘CDE’, 1049.

91 AS Chronicle, 1023; S 86, 88, the latter confi rmed in 845 by King Berhtwulf. For the

itineraries of Cnut and Edward, see Hill, Atlas, p. 94.

92 John Pullen-Appleby, English Sea-Power, c. 871 to 1100 (Hockwold-cum-Wilton: Anglo-

Saxon Books, 2005), pp. 115–17.

93 GDB fo. 1. For ‘horse transport’ (pro caballo tranducendo), they paid 2d in summer and 3d

in winter; they also provided a steersman and an assistant, presumably ferrying messengers

to the continent. Hlothwig portgerefa of Canterbury attested S 1215 (968) and Brunmann

portreve gave land in Fordwich to St Augustine’s in 991 (S 1654).

94 S 1458.

95 Richard Sharpe, ‘The use of writs in the eleventh century’, ASE 32 (2003): 247–92 (252).

96 S 1456. Archbishop Wulfstan lupus forbade priests to act as reeves: see Canons of Edgar,

p. 25.

97 S 1456, 985, 1461.

98 S 1473.

99 GDB fos 2v, 9v; the text implies that Osweard ceased to be sheriff before King Edward’s

death. In 1086, Osbearn’s successor, Hamo dapifer, was entitled to income from some

royal estates, £5 from Dartford, administered by a French reeve (praepositus francigena),

£3 from Aylesford, and £12 from Milton Regis, paid by its unnamed reeve (GDB fo.

2v). No payment is recorded from Faversham, and the royal manor of Wye was held in

1086 by Battle Abbey (GDB fo. 11v). For such ‘administrative’ land, see also Chapter 1

above.

100 For the succession of Kentish sheriffs, see Judith A. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 (London:

HMSO, 1990), p. 50.

101 Several portreeves of London are recorded: in the 1040s: Ulf, who was also sheriff of

Middlesex (S 1119, 1121; Writs, nos 75, 77), and Wulfgar (S 1103; Writs, no. 51), who may

have held concurrently; Swetman, recorded in the closing years of Edward’s reign, between

178 N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 7 – 5 9

1058 and 1066 (S 1096; Writs, no. 43); and Leofstan and Ælfsige, who held concurrently, on

the eve of the Conquest (S 1149–50; Writs, nos 105–106). Ælfstan, not recorded elsewhere,

may have been a colleague of Swetman. Two portreeves held concurrently at Exeter (Earle,

Handbook, p. 256).

102 GDB fos 2v, 9. The land is entered twice, once among the Terra Regis, where it is assessed

at 8¼ sulungs, and again in the name of the bishop of Bayeux, of whom Hugh de Port

held in 1086. In the Domesday extracts made for St Augustine’s (Excerpta, p.3), Osweard

is called ‘Edward’.

103 GDB fos 7v–8, 10. It is possible that Norton and Hurst had once belonged to the royal

manor of Faversham, the head manor of the hundred in which they lay (GDB fo. 2v).

104 GDB fo. 1v.

105 Susan Reynolds, ‘Bookland, folkland and fi efs’ ANS 14 (1991): 211–27 (220), and see the

example of Wulfstan of Dalham, in Chapter 2 above. For the use of documentation in legal

cases, see Patrick Wormald, ‘Charters, law and the settlement of disputes in Anglo-Saxon

England’, in Wendy Davies and Paul Fouracre (ed.), The Settlement of Disputes in Early

Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 149–68.

106 S 1462; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 78; Aylton (Ægelnoðesstane) is either Aylton near

Ledbury, or Aylestone Hill near Hereford; see H.P.R. Finberg, The Early Charters of the

West Midlands (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1961), p. 146.

107 Ranig (aka Hrani) was made earl of the Magonsæte by Cnut, probably in 1016, and his last

appearance is in 1041 (Keynes, ‘Cnut’s earls’, pp. 60–61). Since Thorkell hwita and Godric

of Stoke were holding land on the eve of the Conquest, the moot probably took place in

the 1030s rather than the 1020s.

108 GDB fos 169, 187, all held in 1086 by Hugh l’Asne. Cradley was held by the canons of

Hereford (GDB fo. 182).

109 GDB fo. 183; some of this land was held of St Guthlac’s, Hereford..

110 S 1469; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 99; Leofwine was buying half a hide at Mansell from his

kinsman Eadric Ufi c’s son, for half a mark of gold (£3), £1 of silver and two ores (32d).

The outside dates are 1043, when Swein became earl, and his second exile in 1051; a date

before his fi rst exile in 1046 is perhaps likely.

111 There is a word missing after þæs ealdormannes, either sunu if Ealdorman Leofwine is

intended or broðor if Earl Leofric is meant; see Baxter, Earls of Mercia, pp. 31–32; Keynes,

‘Cnut’s earls’, pp. 74–75, 24–25.

112 S 931, 935, 954, 965, 971, 1384, 1392–3; AS Chronicle ‘C’, 1039, ‘D’, 1052.

113 Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 274, 278; Williams, ‘The spoliation of Worcester’’, pp. 385–86.

According to Domesday Book, Wychbold, assessed at 11 hides, had belonged to Earl

Godwine, but this may be an error for Earl Edwin, great-nephew of the alleged spoliator,

in which case it was perhaps a comital manor, attached to the offi ce of earl (GDB fo. 176v;

see Chapter 1 above). Bickmarsh (assessed at six hides) had belonged to Eadgyth (Eddiet,

Eddid), perhaps a kinswoman of the Mercian earls (GDB fos 170v, 244).

114 GDB fo. 260; Williams, ‘The spoliation of Worcester’, pp. 390–91.

115 GDB fo. 187v.

116 GDB fos 181v, 182v, 184 (bis), 184v, 185 (bis), 187.

117 S 1228, 1235, 1425; Keynes, ‘Lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, pp. 253–79.

179N O T E S T O PA G E S 5 9 – 6 3

118 S 1425; Baxter, ‘The earls of Mercia and their commended men’, pp. 25–29; John Blair,

Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire (Stroud: Allan Sutton Publishing, 1994), pp. 138–40.

119 S 1228. The agreement must pre-date Emma’s disgrace in 1043 (AS Chronicle ‘CDE’). For

Ælfric Wihtgar’s son see Chapter 2 above

120 S 1425. The outside dates are 1053–1066. No earl attests, which suggests a date after the

death of Earl Ralph (1057) and before the appointment of his eventual successor, Leofwine

Godwineson; presumably Bondi the staller took the earl’s position as representative of the

king.

121 For Burgred, Azur, and the sons of Osmund, see Chapter 1 above.

122 GDB fos 138, 149, 215, 225; Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 331–32. His land passed to Robert

de Tosny.

123 GDB fos 136, 138, 139, 139v, 141, 142, 142v, 211, 214v, 215, 215v, 216v. Leofwine, variously

described in Domesday Book as King Edward’s thegn, King Edward’s man, and Leofwine

cild, also shared a manor at Streatley (Beds.), assessed at four hides, with three other thegns

(GDB fo. 214v). The value of his estate was in excess of £47, but he does not appear in

Clarke’s lists of thegns with land worth £40 and over (English Nobility, pp. 38–39). Eadwine

of Caddington’s will (S 1517) is edited, translated and discussed by Keynes, ‘Lost cartulary

of St Alban’s abbey’, pp. 276–79.

124 Chron. Ramsey, p. 169; GDB fo. 148. Three of Alwin’s estates, at Middle and East Claydon

and at Hogshaw, lay in Waddesdon Hundred, as did Grandborough, the manor given to

St Albans by Æthelwine the Black. Alwin in Domesday Book can stand for both Ælfwine

and Æthelwine.

125 GDB fo. 156v; Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, pp. 138–40.

126 Inland was unhidated (and therefore untaxed) land reserved for the lord’s use.

127 GDB fo. 155v; for Ælfweard of Longdon, see Chapter 1 above.

128 GDB fos 144v, 145, 146v, 147.

129 For the attestations of the western thegns, see Chapter 1 above.

130 S 939; for Fræna, whose lands lay in Northants and Leics, see ECNENM, p. 335.

131 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1006; GDB fo. 253v.

132 MEL, pp. 317–20, 328–30; AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1065.

Notes to Chapter 4: Lords and Men (1): Households and Warbands

1 William Stubbs, Select Charters and Other Illustrations of English Constitutional History

(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 9th edn, 1913), pp. 73–74.

2 Geþyncðu, 1.

3 VII Atr (AS) 5 distinguishes between hiredmen (household retainers) and heafodmen (chief

men, lords).

4 For the various connotations of cniht, see Pelteret, Slavery, pp. 266–67. The original sense

was probably ‘child, youth’. It is, of course, the Middle and Modern English word ‘knight’,

having been adopted after the Norman Conquest to describe the household retainers of

the continental incomers.

5 II Cn 20.

180 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 3 – 6 4

6 S 1497. In his own will, the ætheling Æthelstan speaks of ‘Ælfthryth my grandmother, who

brought me up’ (S 1503; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, p. 28).

7 See also Chapter 3 above. Such memoranda are commonly in the form of chirographs,

‘multiple writings’, in which two or more copies of the text are written on the same piece

of parchment, separated by the word chirograph in capitals; the parchment was then cut

through the word, and the separate portions given to the interested parties, the idea being

that the pieces could be matched up if there should be any subsequent dispute. It is rare

for more than one copy to survive, but the text usually says how many copies have been

made, and who is to have them.

8 S 1498, 1425. In the second document, the huscarlas of the OE text become barones in the

Latin abbreviation (Keynes, ‘Lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, pp. 266–67).

9 S 1422, O’Donovan, Charters of Sherborne, no. 14, translated in Anglo-Saxon Charters, no.

74.

10 For Ælfweard, see Chapter 1 above. Some of the Scandinavian names entered in the

Thorney Liber Vitae may represent the followers of one or more of the earls whose names

appear at the head of the list: see Whitelock, ‘Scandinavian personal names’, pp. 135–37.

11 S 1482, dated 1008–1012; translated in EHD i, no. 122. Whether some distinction is implied

between hiredmen and hiredcnihtas is unclear.

12 Eadwold, Æthelnoth, and Grimcytel, described as the bishop’s ‘three kinsmen’ (thrim

magon), each received 20 mancuses of gold and a horse; his kinsman Wulfgar received

three byrnies as well as two tapestries and two seat-coverings; his brother-in-law, Godric of

Crediton, received two byrnies. Cenwold received a helmet and a byrnie; Boia a horse; and

Leofwine polga, Mælpatrik, and Brihtsige got a horse each. Leofwine polga and Mælpatrik

also received fi ve mancuses of gold apiece.

13 S 1503, translated in EHD i, no. 130. It seems that before reaching adulthood, the æthelings

(Æthelstan, Edmund, and their younger brothers) had a joint establishment; Æfi c, who

attests the settlement of a Berkshire lawsuit in the early 990s, is described as þare æþelinga

discten, ‘seneschal of the æthelings (plural)’ (S 1454). As with the royal household, service

to the æthelings might lead to other things; Æfi c discten might be the high-reeve murdered

in 1002 (AS Chronicle, 1002; S 926).

14 The swurdhwita was a specialist craftsman; Alfred’s Code refers to the sweordhwita who

‘receives another man’s weapon to refurbish it’ (oðres monnes wæpn to formunge onfo),

and who must return it ‘in as good a condition as that in which it has been received’

(Af 19§3).

15 The hea[h]deor in question were probably red deer, since there is a specifi c word, rahdeor

(Lat. capreolus) for their smaller cousins, the roe deer (see Chapter 8 below).

16 Sigeferth received an unspecifi ed amount of land, with a horse, a shield and a sword. He

and his brother Morcar were murdered at the king’s command in 1015 (AS Chronicle ‘CDE’,

1015).

17 Chalton may have been lænland, transformed into a permanent possession; this seems to

have been the case with Hambleton, since the ætheling begs his father the king to allow

the grant, and Morden (Cambs.), bequeathed to the Old Minster, Winchester, was the

ætheling’s own lænland, ‘which my father let to me’ (me to let). Ælfmær cniht is presumably

a different person from Ælfmær discþen, but since the name is very common, it is uncertain

181N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 4 – 6 6

whether or not either was identical with the Ælfmær who was to receive the land at

Hambleton (Hants) ‘which he had before’. Any (or none) of them might be the Ælfmær

Ælfric’s son, who attests the will.

18 Coldridge neighbours upon Ludgershall, whose name is associated with hunting and

trapping game (see Chapter 8 below).

19 Fowler, Canons of Edgar, pp. 10–11, 36. In all the ætheling made bequests of eleven swords

and a ‘blade’ (branda), two shields and a coat of mail.

20 S 1492. Munuc might be a byname, rather than a description, so Ælfwold could have been

a layman; both he and Brihtmær the priest also attest the bishop’s will, in company with

Wulfgar Ælfgar’s son, Godric of Crediton, and Edwin mæssepreost.

21 S 1498. His death and burial are recorded in AS Chronicle ‘C’, 982.

22 S 1482. Æthelmær, who gave Lawling to Eynsham Abbey in 1005 (S 911), is described

in Ælffl æd’s will as ‘ealdorman’, but the title has probably been added by the copyist,

for it is unlikely that he became ealdorman of the Western Shires before 1013 (Keynes,

Diplomas, p. 210, n. 203). The will of Ælffl æd is usually dated 1000–1002, but her bequest

to Ælfþræðe minæs hlafordæs medder (Queen Ælfthryth) means that it cannot be later than

17 November 1001, and may be as early as 999 (Keynes, Diplomas, p. 210).

23 S 1494, dated 962–991.

24 Battle of Maldon, lines 280–82, 309–319; see Margaret A.L. Locherbie-Cameron, ‘The men

named in the poem’, in Scragg (ed.), Battle of Maldon AD 991, pp. 238–49 (242–43, 246–48).

Geneat and gefera both mean ‘companion’, but the geneat was a free man, not a thegn.

25 Battle of Maldon, lines 116–21. Locherbie-Cameron (‘The men named in the poem’, p. 245)

disagrees with Scragg’s identifi cation of Edward burþen with Edward ‘the Tall’ (se langa),

who helped to rally the troops and was killed after the ealdorman’s fall (lines 273–79). It

is not unusual, however, for individuals to be distinguished by more than one byname,

and Edward is not a particularly common name at the end of the tenth century. Whether

or not Edward burþen was identical with Edward se langa, the latter may have been a

descendant of Eadric longus, who died some time before 975, leaving his land at Hasten

(Essex) to King Edgar; a few years later, Eadric’s brother Ælfwold, who held land at Newton

attached to Hasten, was involved in a transaction with Ealdorman Byrhtnoth, involving the

transference of Hasten and Newton to Ely in return for land at Sproughton (LE ii§27).

26 Battle of Maldon, lines 187–97, 237–43.

27 S 1503, 1497, and see Chapter 7 below.

28 S 1531.


30 Stenton interpreted these cnihtas as ‘a group of hunt servants quartered by their master’s

park’, observing that ‘similar groups of cnihtas probably lie behind the numerous place

names which contain an Old English cnihta tun’ (Knighton): F.M. Stenton, The First

Century of English Feudalism, 1066–1166 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), p. 135.

31 The tenements at Westley and Dullingham seem to have been dependencies of the estate

(land) at Borough Green (Cambs.), since they are specifi cally excepted from the agreement

concerning Borough Green between Thurstan and his felaga Ulfketel. Thurgot’s tenement

was occupied by Æthelstan (Ælstan on sit at Aungre), so that he received the man, as well

as the land. Thurgot himself might be the unnamed free man who in 1066 held half a hide

182 N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 6 – 6 8

attached to the manor of Chipping Ongar (Essex), held by Thurstan’s widow, Æthelgyth

(LDB fos 30v, 31; Wills, p. 197).

32 Patrick Wormald, ‘Charters, law and the settlement of disputes’, in Wendy Davies and

Paul Fouracre (eds), The Settlement of Disputes in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 113–36; reprinted in Patrick Wormald, Legal

Culture in the Medieval West (London: Hambledon Press, 1999), pp. 313–32; and see Katie

Lowe, ‘Lay literacy in Anglo-Saxon England and the development of the chirograph’, in

P. Pulsiano and E.M. Treharne (eds), Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts and their Heritage

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 161–204. For examples of memoranda held by lay

participants, see S 939, 1425; for lay seal-matrices, see Janet Backhouse, D.H. Turner

and Leslie Webster (eds), The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, 966–1066 (London: British

Museum, 1984), pp. 112–14; Keynes, Diplomas, pp. 139–40.

33 S 1521. The syntax implies that Berric’s land was also at Bentley (Essex).

34 S 1497 (990–1001). Wulfric’s quarry, like that of the ætheling’s hearderhunta, were probably

red deer, for Æthelgifu left her headerhundas (staghounds) to the king, in addition to her

heriot of 30 gold mancuses and two stallions (stedan). Compare the heriot of the Berkshire

tainus vel miles regis dominicus (GDB fo. 56v, and see Introduction above).

35 Geþyncðu, 2 (fi ve hides was the minimum amount of land required by a ceorl who aspired

to thegnhood).

36 GDB fos 242v, 250, and see Stephen Baxter, ‘The affinity of the earls of Mercia in

eleventh-century England’ (Oxford University: Master of Studies in Historical Research

thesis, 1998), pp. 11–14. I am indebted to Dr Baxter for a copy of this unpublished

dissertation.

37 GDB fo. 242v; Ann Williams, ‘Thegnly piety and ecclesiastical patronage in the eleventh

century’, ANS 24 (2001): 1–24 (9–10). Vagn (Wagene) of Wootton also attests Earl Leofric’s

spurious charter of 1043 for Coventry Abbey (S 1226), whose witness-list may be based

on genuine materials.

38 S.1406, 1408–1409.

39 T.A. Carnicelli (ed.), King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1969), p. 77.

40 The ‘prisoners’ might include hostages, who are traditionally found fi ghting in the

warbands of those in charge of them; the Northumbrian hostage Æscferð Ecglaf ’s son fell

in Byrhtnoth’s warband at Maldon (Battle of Maldon, lines 266–72).


42 Chron. Ramsey, p. 51.

43 Battle of Maldon, lines 198–202, 239–43, 288–94. Offa’s name is not common in the tenth

century, and he may be the nephew of Bishop Theodred of London (d. 951–53), who

bequeathed him land in Suffolk (S 1526; Lockerbie-Cameron, ‘The men named in the

poem’, p. 246).

44 S 1521 and see Pelteret, Slavery, p. 124 and n. 82; S 1497; and see Æthelgifu, pp. 12–13 and

n. 16. The primary meaning of cnapa was ‘a male child younger than a cniht’ (Pelteret,

Slavery, pp. 112–19).

45 S 1497; Æthelgifu, pp. 8–9, 12–13, 34.

46 Battle of Maldon, pp. 65, 67, 108.

183N O T E S T O PA G E S 6 8 – 7 0

47 AS Chronicle, 896; LDB fo. 449; in the Domesday texts liber homo can denote a thegn, as

well as a free man. For similar post-Conquest ambiguities surrounding the word miles, see

Abels, Lordship and Military Obligation, pp. 134–35.

48 GDB fos 1, 179.

49 S 1450; for lænland, see Chapter 5 below. Wulfmær’s land was given by King Edgar to

Westminster, while that of Brihtferth was subsequently purchased for the same house by

Archbishop Dunstan.

50 S 1218a; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 7; S 1487. The seventh-century code of King Ine of

Wessex envisaged that an aristocratic household would include a smith (Ine, 63), but

apart from Mann and Leofsige, known goldsmiths are in the king’s service, like Ælfsige the

goldsmith, to whom King Eadred gave land in Wessex and the Isle of Wight (S 543, dated

949). Traces of gold were found in a crucible at Faccombe Netherton (Wilts.), a manor

once held by Wynfl æd, whose will dates from around the same time as that of Ælfhelm, but

this might have used by a travelling smith, rather than one attached to the lord’s household

(see Chapter 6 below). The goldsmiths Ælfric and Wulfwine, who gave two ores of weighed

gold (£1½) to Thorney Abbey to adorn a gospel book, were probably the men of Queen

Eadgifu, widow of Edward the Elder (BL Additional Ms. 40,000, fo. 4v; and Chapter 7

below).

51 Swerian, 1, cited in Stubbs (ed.), Select Charters, pp. 73–74; the formula probably dates

from the early tenth century (MEL, pp. 383–84). The verb gebeah (infi nitive bugan), ‘to

bow, bend, turn, submit’ is rendered in Domesday Book as [se] vertere, ‘to turn [oneself],

submit’.

52 Richard Hamer (ed.), A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse (London: Faber & Faber, 1970),

pp. 176–77; B. Thorpe (ed.), The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church: The First Part.

containing the … Homilies of Ælfric (2 vols; London: Early English Text Society, 1844–46),

vol. 1, p. 448.

53 II Ath 2; translated in EHD i, no. 35.

54 Lords were forbidden to receive men subject to another without the previous lord’s

permission (II Ath 22, III Ath 4, IV Ath 4–5). By the tenth century, a lord’s outlawry

seems to have dissolved the bond, for when Eadric of Laxfi eld returned from exile in King

Edward’s reign, it took a royal writ to restore his men to him (LDB fos 310v–311). See also

AS Chronicle ‘DE’, 1051, for the surrender of the thegns of the exiled earls Godwine and

Harold to the king.

55 II Cn 64.

56 S 1081; LDB fo. 424.

57 Ann Williams, ‘Little Domesday and the English: The hundred of Colneis, Suffolk’,

in Elizabeth Hallam and David Bates (eds), Domesday Book (Stroud: Tempus, 2001),

pp. 103–120.

58 LDB fo. 309: de sexta parte sui fuit commendatus antecessori malet et Achius antecessor

Roberti blundi habuit quinque partes commendationis de illo.

59 LDB fo. 333: Wlsinus antecessor Rogeri bigot terciam partem commendationis habeui et ii

fratres Wlsini ii partes commendationis. For the thief Leofric and his lords, see p. 73.

60 GDB fo. 41v; Roffe, Domesday, pp. 28–30. In Thetford (Norf.), all but 36 of the burgesses

could chose a lord, who was then entitled to their heriots (LDB fo. 119).

184 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 0 – 7 0

61 The lack of precision is not a purely English phenomenon; see David Bates, Normandy

before 1066 (London: Longman, 1982), pp. 122–24, and Frederick Behrends (ed.), The

Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), no. 51,

pp. 90–93.

62 Vita Edwardi, pp. 54–57. Gospatric was de eiusdem regis Ædwardi genere (he was a grandson

of the Confessor’s half-sister Ælfgifu, third wife of Earl Uhtred of Northumbria) and the

doublet miles et comes might refer to aristocratic (þegnlic) status, as well as his position as

a retainer (cniht).

63 AS Chronicle ‘C’, 1066; Encomium, pp. 42–45.

64 II Cnut, 77–78. The distinction is between lænland (‘loanland’), granted by a lord for a

limited period, and land granted by the king in perpetuity with full rights of alienation

(see Chapter 5 below)

65 Battle of Maldon, line 69; Locherbie-Cameron, ‘The men named in the poem’, pp. 238–49;

AS Chronicle ‘A’, 1001. Whitchurch and its dependencies belonged to the bishopric in 1066

(GDB fo. 41), and had allegedly been donated by Edward the Elder (S 378), while Godwine’s

land, bequeathed to him by his father (S 1491), was probably Martyr Worthy; see Charters

of New Minster, no. 18, pp. 81–84. The dead of Æthelingadene were commemorated

in a Winchester calendar under 23 May, and also included the brothers Wulfnoth and

Æthelwine, as yet unidentifi ed; see Bruce Dickins, ‘The date of the battle of Aethelingadena

(ASC 1001 A)’, Leeds Studies in English 6 (1937): 215–17.

66 Symeon, Opera Omnia, ii, pp. 198–99, 383–84. Gospatric succeeded Osulf as earl, but was

himself expelled in 1072. He went to Scotland, where King Malcolm III Canmore gave him

what was later known as the earldom of Dunbar.

67 WmM, GP iii§99; trans in WmM, p. 139.

68 II Cn 12.

69 JnW ii, pp. 456–57; Morris, Marriage and Murder, p. 3 (see Chapter 8 below).

70 Rebecca V. Colman, ‘Domestic peace and public order in Anglo-Saxon England’, in

J. Douglas Woods and David A.E. Pelteret, The Anglo-Saxons: Synthesis and Achievement

(Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1985), pp. 49–61.

71 II Em 6 decrees that ‘it shall be for the king to decide whether his [the offender’s] life shall

be preserved’, and the customs of Oxford recorded in Domesday Book specify that if any

member of the victim’s household is killed, the offender’s ‘body and all his substance shall

be in the king’s power, except his wife’s dower’ (GDB fo. 154v). IV Atr (the ‘Institutes of

London’), 4, 4§1 laid down a penalty of £5 for breach of the king’s peace and commanded

that anyone killed in the commission of hamsocn should be denied Christian burial (iaceat

in ungildan ækere); Cnut confi rmed the fi ne of £5, but only denied the payment of wergeld

for the slain offender (II Cn 62, 62§1).

72 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1002. Leofsige was exiled for this crime and his property forfeited, and

when his sister Æthelfl æd attempted to assist him, committing the crime of harbouring

fugitives (fl ymenafyrmð), her lands too were seized; (Stenton, Latin Charters, pp. 76–80;

Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 63–64).


74 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 946; JnW ii, pp. 398–9.

75 A. Campbell (ed.), Frithegodi Monachi Breviloqium Vitae Beati Wilfridi et Wulfstani

185N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 1 – 7 3

Cantoris Narratio Metrica de Sanco Swithino (Zurich: in Aedibus Thesauri Mundi, 1950),

p. 165.

76 LE, p. 135; S 1487.

77 D.M. Wilson (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985), plate 12;

Maxims I, in Poems of Wisdom and Learning, pp. 66–67.

78 The obligation of inward (guard duty) is recorded in Domesday Book as one of the customs

due to the king; as in pre-Conquest sources, it is often combined with carrying-service

(avera) but the latter seems to have been required only from non-noble free men (Faith,

English Peasantry, pp. 107–10, and Chapter 5 below).

79 Battle of Maldon, line 188.

80 S 1534. This is the only occasion when mares are incorporated in heriot-payments;

elsewhere, when the sex is specifi ed, stallions (stedas) are mentioned (S 1483, 1497).

Brihtric and Ælfswith left a stallion (steda) to the queen, for her support in validating their

will (S 1511).

81 In 1066, Ashburton (Devon) belonged to the bishop of Exeter, whither the see had been

moved (GDB fo. 102), but no wild horses are mentioned.

82 Thurbrand might be Thurbrand hold, a northern magnate (see Introduction above), but

the name is not uncommon; Leofwine’s name is too common for identifi cation.

83 AS Chronicle ‘A’, 896.

84 Geþyncðu 3.

85 S 1441; Select EHD, no. 14; S 1460; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 83.

86 S 886; EHD i, no. 119; S 1466; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 90.

87 Campbell, ‘Some agents and agencies’, pp. 213–14.

88 Some ninth-century diplomas (S 821–22, 841) free the lands they grant from the obligation

to feed and support the king’s fæstingmen, a word which might suggest members of the

garrison of a fortifi cation or ‘fastness’ (OE fæstenn, fæstness), used, like eleventh-century

housecarls, as royal agents: see Paul Brand, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England

(Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), p 26, n. 83.

89 JnW ii, pp. 532–33.

90 The manbot was paid after the healsfang, which went to the nearest kin, and before the fi rst

installment of the wergeld proper (III Em 7§3).

91 Some gifts were in a sense revocable, since at death, the man returned to his lord the heriot,

representing the military equipment which he had formerly received; see Nicholas Brooks,

‘Arms, status and warfare in the reign of Æthelred the Unready’, in David Hill (ed.), Ethelred

the Unready: Papers from the Millenary Conference (BAR, British series, 59; Oxford: BAR,

1978), pp. 81–103.

92 F.M. Stenton, ‘The thriving of the Anglo-Saxon ceorl’, in O.M. Stenton (ed.), Preparatory

to Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), pp. 383–93.

93 II Cn 31; I Atr 1§10; III Em 7.

94 Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 264–65.

95 II Ath 3; I At 1,2.

96 S 883; the third brother, along with Leofric, sought sanctuary in St Helen’s church, Oxford,

and their eventual fate is not recorded.

97 See Introduction above.

186 N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 5 – 7 7

Notes to Chapter 5: Lords and Men (2): Land, Tenure and Service

1 Carnicelli (ed.), King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, p. 48; translated in

Stenton, Latin Charters, p. 62 (ac ælcne man lyst, siððan he ænig cotlyf on his hlafordes læne

myd his fultume getimbred hæfð, þæt he hine mote hwilum þar-on gerestan, and huntigan,

and fuglian, and fi scian, and his on gehwilce wisan to þere lænan tilian, ægþer ge on se ge on

lande).

2 LDB fos 401v–402. Brungar’s name is uncommon, but there seems no reason to identify

the holder of Aveley with the man (or men) who held at three other places in Suffolk, and

in Colchester (LDB fos 322, 337v, 377, 401v. The name is also found in the west country

(GDB fos 79v, 88v, 103v, 107v, 111)

3 Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 67; see also Stephen Baxter, ‘The Leofwinesons:

property, power and patronage in the early English kingdom’ (Oxford University: DPhil

thesis, 2002), pp. 224–35.

4 The abbot’s rights did not extend to holding his own court; the case came before the court

of Baburgh Hundred.

5 Roffe, Domesday, pp. 30–31. At Feltwell (Norf.), the abbot of Ely had 34 sokemen with ‘all

customary dues’ (cum omni consuetudinibus) and 6 free men ‘in soke and commendation

only’ (soca et commendatione tantundem); see LDB fos 213–213v.


7 S 1455; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 62. The agreement may represent the settlement of a

dispute over Cliffe between St Augustine’s and Ealdred.

8 S 218. For Edward’s title, see Simon Keynes, ‘Edward, king of the Anglo-Saxons’, in Higham

and Hill (ed.), Edward the Elder, pp. 40–66.

9 S 128 (dated 788). It is not specifi cally stated that the land is to revert to the king at the

end of the term, but this is the natural assumption.

10 S 356; the diploma may have been rewritten at Malmesbury.

11 S 1458; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no 41; the original purchase price was 120 mancuses of gold

(£15). Rochester claimed prior ownership of the estate, but since the charter cited no longer

exists (if it ever did), this is impossible to check. For Wouldham’s later history, see p. 77.

12 S 368; this information appears in a diploma of Æthelwulf ’s grandson, Edward, dated

903.

13 S 1444 (dated 900–908), translated in EHD i, no. 101.

14 S 1508; Select EHD, no. 10. Ælfred was probably ealdorman in Surrey.

15 S 1504 (dated 946–47); Select EHD, no. 20; S 1503. Æthelwold’s jurisdiction lay in the

south-east; see C.R. Hart, ‘Athelstan “Half-king” and his family’, ASE 2 (1973): 115–44

(118–19).

16 S 1218a; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 71; S 1487.

17 S 1473; LE ii§34.

18 S 1458.

19 S 1536, 1521 (see also Chapter 4 above). Some of the references in Domesday Book to

restrictions on the alienation of land (non potuit uendere and similar formulae) perhaps

represent lænland tenures.

20 For the hold-oath, see Chapter 4 above.

187N O T E S T O PA G E S 7 8 – 8 0

21 S 218; S 1367. The term earningland could encompass tenures other than lænland (see

p. 81).

22 Wills, p. 178.

23 S 218, 1458.

24 S 1285. Such sharp practice was later regarded as typical of William the Conqueror’s

tyrannical greed (AS Chronicle, 1087).

25 S 509; and see Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury, pp. 181–82.

26 S 1458.

27 S 1303; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 35. Oswald became bishop of Worcester in 961, and

held the archbishopric of York in plurality from 971 until his death in 992; presumably

this grant was made before 971.

28 S 1305; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 36 (for the date, see previous note).

29 GDB fos 172v, 173v.


31 Both are printed in Hemingi Chartularium; see Neil Ker, ‘Hemming’s Cartulary:

A description of the two Worcester cartularies in Cotton Tiberius A. XIII’, in R.W. Hunt,

W.A. Pantin and R.W. Southern (eds), Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick

Maurice Powicke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1948), pp. 49–75. For the Liber

Wigornensis, see Stephen Baxter, ‘Archbishop Wulfstan and the administration of God’s

property’, in Matthew Townend (ed.), Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the

Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers NV, 2004), pp. 161–205.

32 S 1368; Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 293–96. For Oswaldslow, see Patrick Wormald,

‘Lordship and justice in the early English kingdom: Oswaldslow revisited’, in Wendy

Davies and Paul Fouracre (eds), Property and Power in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1995). The translation is based on that of R. Allen Brown,

The Origins of English Feudalism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973), pp. 133–34.

33 Liebermann i, pp. 444–53; translated in EHD ii, no. 172; printed, translated and discussed

in Frederic Seebohm, The English Village Community (London: Longmans Green, 2nd

edn, 1883), pp. 129–33. Rectitudines was probably composed in the mid-tenth century, and

revised early in the eleventh, see P.D.A. Harvey, ‘Rectitudines Singularum Personarum and

Gerefa’, EHR 108 (1993): 1–22; MEL, pp. 232–33, 387–89. I am very grateful to Professor

Harvey for sending me a copy of his paper. For the deorhege and the sæete, see Chapter 8

below.

34 S 1555; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 109; Seebohm, The English Village Community,

pp. 150–55. The survey must date from between 956, when the estate was granted to Bath

Abbey, and 1061–65, when the church leased it to Archbishop Stigand.

35 IV Eg, 1§1; for the distinction between inland and neatland, see II Eg 1§1.

36 Vanessa J. King, ‘St Oswald’s tenants’, in Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt (eds),

St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Infl uence (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1996),

pp. 100–116.

37 GDB fo. 173.

38 GDB fos 269v–270; Inter Ripam et Mersam was appended to Cheshire from the early tenth

century.

39 GDB fo. 173. For Earl Odda’s men, see Chapter 1 above.

188 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 0 – 8 2

40 John Gillingham, ‘Thegns and knights in eleventh-century England: Who was then the

gentleman?’, TRHS 6th ser. 5 (1995): 129–53 (140).

41 Harvey, ‘Rectitudines’, p. 13. In the ‘thegn’s law’ section, heafordwearð is coupled with

sæwearð and fyrdwearð, and in EHD ii, no. 172, the passage is translated as ‘guarding the

lord’, ‘guarding the coast’ and ‘military watch’, but the package may be more closely inter-

related; ‘guarding the lord on military expeditions by land and sea’, perhaps?

42 GDB fo. 190. The tenants of Oswaldslow had to ‘lend horses and ride themselves’.

43 EHD ii, no. 172. For carrying-services, see further Rosamond Faith, The English Peasantry

and the Growth of Lordship (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1999), pp. 107–10.

44 See also Bishop Denewulf ’s lease to the thegn Alfred, whose men were ‘to be ready for

harvesting and hunting’ (S 1287 and see Chapter 8 below).

45 GDB fo. 252; JnW ii, pp. 458–59. See further Chapter 8 below.

46 Geþyncðu 3.


48 For grants to reeves, see Chapter 4 above.

49 GDB fos 77v, 274v. It is Exon Domesday which reveals that Brihtwine’s tenement

was thegnland, for which he paid a render of 30s as well as service: Exon fo. 36; and

see Caroline Thorn and Frank Thorn (eds), Domesday Book: Dorset (Chichester:

Phillimore, 1983), no. 11.1 and notes. This and and similar references are discussed in

Ann Williams, ‘Introduction to the Dorset Domesday’, in R.B. Pugh (ed.), The Victoria

History of the County of Dorset (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), vol. 3, pp. 1–60

(39–40).

50 S 1519 ‘he shall freely occupy for life the free land which I have leased to him’ (þat he sitte

on þe fre lond þat ic him to honde habbe leten, his time euer fre). On Mann’s death, the land

was to go to Christ Church, Canterbury.

51 S 1516, 1519.

52 S 1502, Kelly, Charters of St Augustine’s, no. 38; the Latin text is probably a translation from

an OE memorandum.

53 S. 1531; Sæwine’s land was to pass to Ely after his death (presumably with the tunkirk).

54 S 1519; Anglo-Saxon Charters no. 104, pp. 194–95.

55 S 1525a.

56 AS Chronicle, 1086. The previous entry describes the great survey of 1085, which

enumerated the lands of the king’s archbishops and bishops and earls and ‘what and how

much each man had who was occupying land (þe landsittende wæs) in England’.

57 GDB fo. 11. The use of manere (‘to live at, dwell in’) recalls the rendering in Latin charters

of OE hid (hide) as mansa/mansio, ‘dwelling’, or as cassatus, ‘a house-dweller’. For fi scal

purposes, the hide (the notional amount of land which would support one household)

was a unit of assessment to tax, but to the landholder it represented his rights to the men

‘dwelling’ on the land.

58 An English memorandum of Archbishop Anselm’s time (1092–1109) lists by name the

men who dwelt (sittað) on the properties in Canterbury over which Christ Church had

sake and soke; see William Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings (London: Athlone

Press, 1967), p. 385.

59 GDB fo. 4v; Domesday Monachorum, p. 94. The Domesday Monachorum adds that Eadric

189N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 2 – 8 3

‘paid rent to Peckham of his own free will (spontanee) and not because it belonged to Holy

Trinity or the monks’.

60 For the identity of ‘sake and soke’ and ‘customary dues’, compare GDB, fo. 2: per totam

civitatem cantuariae habet rex sacam et socam excepta terra aeclesiae Sancti Trinitatis et

Sancti Augustini et Eddeuae reginae et Alnod cild et Esber biga et Siret de Cilleham, with the

equivalent entry in the Excerpta of St Augustine’s, p. 9: Regina E et Alnoth cild et Osbernn

bigga et Sired de Chileham isti habuerunt in ciuitate consuetudines suas de suis hominibus.

Writs granting sake and soke (over all their lands, not just those in Canterbury) exist for

the archbishop and the abbot, but if any were issued for the queen and the three laymen,

none have survived (S 986, 1088–89, 1091).

61 It has been argued that the rights associated with sake and soke were synonymous with

those attached to bookland, and that such tenure was characteristic of a king’s thegn (Roffe,

Domesday, pp. 28–46); see the contrary arguments of Stephen Baxter, ‘The Leofwinesons’,

pp. 266–71; Stephen Baxter, Reviews in History, at <www.history.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/paper/

baxterStephen.html> (accessed 1 March 2008).

62 S 681; soke over three of the specifi ed places (Eastrington, Belby and Knedlington) still

belonged to Howden in 1066, when it was held by the bishop of Durham, who also held

it in 1086 (GDB fo. 304v). See also S 659 (dated 956), translated in EHD i, no. 108, for a

grant of Eadwig to Archbishop Oscytel of Southwell (Notts.) and the vills belonging to it

mid sacce and mid sacne (recte socne).

63 S 731 (Altitonantis), see Julia Barrow, ‘How the twelfth-century monks of Worcester

perceived their past’, in Paul Magdalino (ed.), The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century

Europe (London and Rio Grande: Hambledon Press, 1992), pp. 53–74 (esp. 69–71).

64 Roffe, Domesday, pp. 31–32.

65 S 1531; for the manorial burh see Ann Williams, ‘A bell-house and a burh-geat: Lordly

residences in England before the Norman Conquest’, Medieval Knighthood 4 (1992):

221–40.

66 The regional variations within Domesday Book are infl uenced by procedural variations

among the different groups of circuit commissioners, and by the changing decisions of

the scribe who compiled the Book over what should and should not be included; for the

effects on Domesday’s presentation of manors, see Roffe, Domesday, pp. 211–20; Roffe,

Decoding Domesday, pp. 154–45. I am very grateful to Dr Roffe for allowing me to read

the draft text of the latter before publication.

67 GDB fos 280v, 298v, 337; see also Introduction, above.

68 Clarke, English Nobility, pp. 347–48.

69 GDB fo. 98v.

70 GDB fo. 1v.

71 GDB fos 163–163v; after 1066 Tewkesbury had passed through the hands of Earl William

fi tzOsbern and Queen Matilda to become part of the Terra Regis. There was also a

subordinate manor at Oxenton, assessed at fi ve hides ‘belonging to Tewkesbury’.

72 For the distinction between demesne (the ‘home farm’), and inland, which might be

tenanted, see Faith, English Peasantry, pp. 49–50. Inland did not pay geld, which was due

only from the warland (OE waru, ‘obligation’), occupied by tenants of various kinds.


www.history.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/paper/baxterStephen.html

www.history.ac.uk/ihr/reviews/paper/baxterStephen.html

190 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 4 – 8 6

74 Reynolds, ‘Bookland, folkland and fi efs’, esp. pp. 219–20. For comital lands, see Chapter 1

above.

75 For folkland, which effectively was any land which had not been ‘booked’ by a royal

diploma, see Stephen Baxter and John Blair, ‘Land tenure and royal patronage in the early

English kingdom: A model and a case study’, ANS 28 (2006): 19–46 (21–23). Even the

interpretation of the word folcland has been contentious. The current defi nition is ‘land

subject to common custom (folcriht)’; it is clear that folkland still owed to the king the

obligations from which bookland had been exempted.

76 See Faith, English Peasantry, p. 161: ‘Hereditable land which was not booked is ipso facto

almost invisible in the written records, but … could in fact have been most land’ (italics in

original).

77 Reynolds has suggested (‘Bookland, folkland and fi efs’, p. 219) that by the late tenth

century bookland perhaps ‘indicated the status of the landowner rather than any specifi c

grant of privilege’. It would perhaps be preferable to see bookland as a particular kind

of heritable property; see Patrick Wormald, ‘On þa wæpnedhealfe: Kingship and royal

property from Æthelwulf to Edward the Elder’, in Higham and Hill (eds), Edward the Elder,

pp. 264–79.

78 III Atr 11 (the fact that the code concerned, issued at Wantage, relates to the Danelaw is of

particular interest); I Atr 1§14. Forfeited bookland passed to the king, not the lord of the

transgressor (II Cn 13§1, 77§1).

79 See Introduction above.

Notes to Chapter 6: Displaying Status (1): The Rich Man in his Burh

1 Michael Alexander, Beowulf (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), p. 58.

2 HE iv§21, 22.

3 Vita Edwardi, pp. 54–57 (see also Chapter 4 above).

4 Gospatric was a kinsman of Edward the Confessor (his mother Ealdgyth was the daughter

of Edward’s half-sister Ælfgifu and Earl Uhtred of Northumbria), so he and Tostig were

socially of equal standing.

5 Peter Coss, ‘Knights, esquires and the origins of social gradation in England’, TRHS 6th

ser. 5 (1995): 155–78. For similar developments on the continent, see David Crouch,

The Image of Aristocracy in Britain, 1000–1300 (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 1–38,

120–53.

6 Peter Coss, The Origins of the English Gentry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

2003), pp. 24–43.

7 B. Colgrave (ed.), Two Lives of Saint Cuthbert (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1940), pp. 92, 115, 206, 252. Hildmær’s dwelling is not located at all, and only in the

earlier, anonymous life of Cuthbert is Hemma’s residence said to lie in regione … Kintis

(unidentifi ed). In the earlier life, both dwellings are described as villae, in Bede’s later Prose

Life, Hildmær’s dwelling becomes a domus, and that of Hemma a uillula (see further Blair,

Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 252–53).

8 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, p. 132.

191N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 6 – 8 8

9 Timothy Reuter, Chris Wickham and T.N. Bisson, ‘Debate: the “Feudal Revolution” ’, P&P

155 (1997): 177–225; David Bates, ‘England and the “Feudal Revolution” ’, Settimane di

Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo 47 (2000): 613–46.

10 David Roffe, ‘An introduction to the Lincolnshire Domesday’, in Ann Williams and

G.H. Martin (eds), The Lincolnshire Domesday (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1992),

pp. 1–31 (11–12); see also David Roffe, ‘Nottinghamshire and the North: A Domesday

Study’ (Nottingham University: PhD thesis, 1987); available online at <www.roffe.

co.uk/phdframe/htm> (accessed 1 March 2008).

11 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, pp. 124–25; Barbara Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages

(Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1995), pp. 264–76. See further Della Hooke, ‘Regional

variation in southern and central England in the Anglo-Saxon period’, in Della Hooke

(ed.), Anglo-Saxon Settlements (Oxford: Basil Blackwood, 1988), pp. 123–51.

12 For division between heirs, see Ann Williams, ‘A vice-comital family in pre-Conquest

Warwickshire’, ANS 11 (1989): 279–95.

13 The well-known problems of identifi cation mean that these are only approximate fi gures,

but the general trend is probably accurate.

14 GDB fo. 163; LDB fo. 394v. The consistency in meaning of the term manerium across the

Domesday folios is of course another matter; but both Brihtric Ælfgar’s son and Ceolwold

had effective control of their lands, and both would (probably) be counted as thegns.

Though it is, strictly speaking, a post-Conquest introduction, I have used the word ‘manor’,

as a matter of convenience, to translate OE land, an estate held by and exploited for a

lord.

15 Crouch, Image of Aristocracy, p. 24: ‘between the agricultural poor and the glittering great

was a fragmented group so worthy of a category that historians have invented several terms

to describe it’.

16 At least some of the tenth-century ealdormen were ‘cousins’ of the West Saxon kings (see

Chapter 1 above), and if Ealdorman Æthelweard is typical, given to insisting on their

rank.

17 Grið 21–23§1; Karl Jost, Die ‘Institutes of Polity, Civil and Ecclesiastical’ (Berne: Franke

Verlag, 1959), pp. 256–57; Benjamin Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes of England

(London: Record Commission, 1840), pp. 141–44 (‘VII Atr’). See also Wormald, MEL,

pp. 394–95.

18 Norðleoda lagu, 11: ‘if his son and his son’s son prosper so that they have as much land (5

hides), then the offspring is of gesith-born class, at 2,000 thrymsas’; if not ‘one is to pay at

a ceorl’s rate’.

19 Brooks, ‘Arms, status and warfare’, pp. 81–82; L. Wieland (ed.), Monumenta Germanica

Historica: Constitutiones (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 1893), vol. 1, pp. 90–91.

20 Norðleoda lagu, 10 (see also Chapter 7, n. 14, below).

21 IV Eg 2a, 2a§1.

22 For the tribute (gafol), misleadingly called ‘Danegeld’ by modern commentators, and

the heregeld (‘army-tax’), levied from 1012 to pay for the hire of ships to defend against

invaders, see Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 151–53. 23 Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 277–78.

24 AS Chronicle ‘AE’, 975, ‘C’, 976. The lament for Edgar’s death in the oldest version (‘A’)

www.roffe.co.uk/phdframe/htm


192 N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 8 – 8 9

records that ‘the vengeance of the Lord was widely evident when hunger reigned’, and as-

sociates the famine with the appearance of a comet. The Peterborough version (‘E’) couples

‘the great famine (mycel hungor)’ with ‘very many disturbances throughout England’.

25 Their departure for Denmark may not have achieved much, for the famine was felt on the

continent as well: see Karl Leyser, ‘The tenth-century condition’, in Karl Leyser, Medieval

Germany and its Neighbours (London: Hambledon and London, 1982), pp. 1–10 (1–3).

26 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1014. The location of the fl ooding is not specifi ed but the author of

the text underlying this section of the Chronicle was an easterner, perhaps a Londoner; see

Simon Keynes, ‘The declining reputation of Æthelred the unready’, in Hill (ed.), Ethelred

the Unready, p, 232.

27 EHD i, no. 240.

28 ‘The very number of eleventh-century tracts on status might be thought to indicate a new

level of concern with social mobility’ (Gillingham, ‘Thegns and knights in eleventh-century

England’, p. 137). See further MEL, pp. 391–94, 457–62.

29 EHD i, no 52A; the Textus Roffensis version adds ‘church and kitchen’.


31 WmM, GR i pp. 458–59.

32 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 91; Martin Biddle (ed.), Winchester in the Early Middle Ages

(Winchester Studies, 1; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 292–300. There were stone as

well as timber structures at Old Windsor (Berks.): see D. Wilson and J. Hurst, ‘Medieval

Britain in 1957’, Medieval Archaeology 2 (1953): 183–85.

33 Robert Higham, ‘Timber castles: A reassessment’, in Liddiard (ed.), Anglo-Norman Castles,

pp. 105–118.

34 Some two-storied stone buildings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries have been

interpreted as fi rst-fl oor halls, but they are more likely to be chamber-blocks whose timber

halls have vanished; John Blair, ‘Hall and chamber: English domestic planning, 1000–1250’,

in Liddiard (ed.), Anglo-Norman Castles, pp. 307–28.

35 Liebermann, i, pp. 454–55, translated in Michael Swanton (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Prose

(London: Dent, 1975), pp. 25–27; partial translation in Andrew Reynolds, Later Anglo-

Saxon England: Life and Landscape (Stroud: Tempus, 1999), p. 155. For the purpose

and dating of the tract, which as it stands is a composite text, see Harvey, ‘Rectitudines

Singularum Personarum and Gerefa’, pp. 1–22; Mark Gardiner, ‘Implements and utensils in

Gerefa and the organization of seigneurial farmsteads in the high Middle Ages’, Medieval

Archaeology 50 (2006): 260–67; John Hines, ‘Gerefa §§ 15 and 17: A grammatical analysis

of the lists of nouns’, Medieval Archaeology 50 (2006): 268–70. Dr Harvey kindly gave me

a copy of his article, and I owe the last two references to Dr Gardiner.

36 Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 14–18; Barry Cunliffe, Excavations at Portchester

Castle volume II: Saxon (Society of Antiquaries of London Research Committee Report,

33; London: Society of Antiquaries of London, 1976). 37 GDB fo. 47v; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 251: ‘From Portchester (Hants) we

may have an example of a the residence of a ceorl with aspirations’.

38 GDB fo. 38.

39 Guy Beresford, Goltho: The Development of an Early Medieval Manor c.850–1150 (London:

English Heritage, 1987); Brian Davison, ‘Excavations at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire,

193N O T E S T O PA G E S 8 9 – 9 1

1960–76: an interim report’, Arch.J. 134 (1977), pp. 105–14; G.E. Cadman, ‘Raunds

1977–1983: An excavation summary’, Medieval Archaeology 27 (1983): 107–22;

G. Cadman and G. Foard, ‘Raunds: manorial and village origins’, in M.L. Faull (ed.), Studies

in Late Anglo-Saxon Settlement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 81–100;

J. Fairbrother, Faccombe Netherton: Excavations of a Saxon and Medieval Manorial Complex

(2 vols; British Museum Occasional Paper, 74; London: The British Museum, 1990). A list

of excavated sites whose occupation began before 1066 can be found in Mark Gardiner,

‘The origin and persistence of manor houses in England’, in M.F. Gardiner and S. Rippon

(eds), Medieval Landscapes (Landscape History after Hoskins, 2; forthcoming.); I am very

grateful to Dr Gardiner for allowing me to see this paper in advance of publication. See also

P.V. Addyman, ‘The Anglo-Saxon house: A new review’, ASE 1 (1972): 273–307.

40 GDB fo. 213v; Mike Dawson, ‘A slice of clayland’, Current Archaeology 210 (vol. 17, no. 6)

(July/August 2007), pp. 41–42.

41 GDB fo. 16v. The bishopric of Sussex is particularly ill-documented: see S.E. Kelly (ed.),

Charters of Selsey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

42 Gabor Thomas, Excavations at Bishopstone, 2004, Third Interim Report (2005), pp. 6–9;

available at <www.sussexpast.co.uk/research> (accessed 1 March 2008). The animal bones

found on the site reveal the expensive diet, and hence the high status, of the occupants (see

Chapter 8 below).

43 GDB fo. 222.

44 Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, A Guide to Old English (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1964), pp. 248–51, where burgtun is glossed ‘protecting hedge’ (p. 294).

45 Ine, 45; Af 40.


47 Guy Beresford, ‘Goltho manor, Lincolnshire: The buildings and their surroundings’, ANS

4 (1982): 13–36. The dating of the successive stages of building at Goltho has been revised

by Paul Everson, ‘What’s in a name? Goltho, “Goltho” and Bullington’, Lincolnshire History

and Archaeology 23 (1988): 93–99.

48 S 1555; Anglo-Saxon Charters, no. 109; Liebermann, i, pp. 445–46.

49 The tenth-century buildings were enclosed in the eleventh century within a substantial

bank and ditch (Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 252–54). Similar works

are found at Sulgrave (Northants), see Davison, ‘Excavations at Sulgrave, 1960–1976’,

p. 111.

50 Grið, printed in Liebermann, i, p. 390, and see L. Downer (ed.), Leges Henrici Primi (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 120–21, where burhgeat is translated as porta. II Em lays

down the penalties for attacking anyone who has sought refuge in a church or the king’s

burh, which in the context must mean a royal manor-house.

51 Possible pre-Conquest examples include Warblington (Surr.), now incorporated into the

Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, and Wickham (Berks.), also incorporated into a later

church; see E.A. Fisher, The Greater Anglo-Saxon Churches: An Architectural-Historical

Study (London: Faber & Faber, 1962), pp. 385–86, 394–95, plates 220, 227–29, Derek

Renn, ‘Burhgeat and Gonfanon: Two sidelights on the Bayeux Tapestry’, in Liddiard (ed.),

Anglo-Norman Castles, pp. 69–90 (71, 74).

52 Renn, ‘Burhgeat and Gonfanon’, pp. 70–78, quotation on p. 75.

www.sussexpast.co.uk/research

194 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 1 – 9 3

53 Martin Biddle, ‘Seasonal festivals and residence: Winchester, Westminster and Gloucester

in the tenth and eleventh centuries’, ANS 8 (1986): 51–72 (62–63). The custom continues

today, with the appearance of the royal family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace on

important occasions.

54 Renn, ‘Burh-geat and gonfanon’, p. 72; David Parsons, ‘Appendix I. The west tower of

St Michael at the Northgate, Oxford’, in Liddiard (ed.), Anglo-Norman Castles, pp. 85–89.

55 Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, pp. 163–67, quotation on p. 167. Eadric streona, ealdorman

of Mercia from 1007–1017, had a house at Oxford (AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1015).

56 Cunliffe, Excavations at Portchester, p. 303; Diana Greenaway and Jane Sayers (eds), Jocelin

of Brakelond, Chronicle of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1989), p. 123. Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 251–52, compares the

Portchester structure with the prominent church-towers of Barton-on-Humber (Lincs.)

and Earl’s Barton (Northants), both of which may have been associated with thegnly

dwellings.

57 Thomas, Excavations at Bishopstone, pp. 6–9.

58 Higham, ‘Timber castles’, p. 112; Richard Morris, Churches in the Landscape (London: Dent,

1989), pp. 251–55.

59 R.R. Darlington (ed.), The Vita Wulfstani of William of Malmesbury (London: Royal

Historical Society, 1928), book 1§7. For the addition of towers to churches, see Paul Everson

and David Stocker, ‘The common steeple? Church, liturgy, and settlement in early medieval

Lincolnshire’, ANS 28 (2006): 103–23.

60 Sometimes the functions of tower and nave were combined, as at the minster of Barton-on

Humber (Lincs.), possibly the inspiration for later thegnly tower–nave churches, like Earls

Barton (Northants); see Michael Auduoy, Brian Dix and David Parsons, ‘The tower of All

Saints Church, Earls Barton, Northamptonshire: Its construction and context’, Arch.J. 152

(1995): 73–94.

61 John Blair, ‘Hall and chamber’, p. 309.

62 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch 91; Carnicelli (ed.), King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies,

p. 77.

63 Post-Conquest manorial courts were called ‘hall-moots’ (halimotes).

64 S 1531. In Little Domesday, ‘Shouldham’ and ‘the other Shouldham’ lay in Shouldham

St Margarets, while the implied ‘estate at the south hall’ was probably Shouldham All

Saints; both Shouldham St Margarets and Shouldham All Saints had appurtenances

in Shouldham Thorpe, and must once have formed a single holding (LDB fos 231v,

250v–251, 274).

65 S 1538.

66 GDB fo. 35v.

67 GDB fo. 163.

68 GDB fo. 320. For inland, see Chapter 5 above.

69 GDB fo. 12; Eilert Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1960), pp. 409, 411.

70 Alan Hannan, ‘Tewkesbury and the earls of Gloucester: Excavations at Holm Hill, 1974–5’,

Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 115 (1997), pp. 79–231

(114). I am very grateful to Celia Bennetts for providing me with a copy of this article.

195N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 3 – 9 6

71 Kathryn Hume, ‘The concept of the hall in Old English poetry’, ASE 3 (1974): 63–74;

Alban Gautier, Le Festin dans L’Angleterre anglo-saxonne (Rennes: Presses Universitaires

de Rennes, 2006), p. 121.

72 The Wanderer, lines 34–36, translated in Hamer (ed.), A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse,

pp. 176–77.

73 HE ii§13; the image is realized at <www.pastperfect.info/sites/yeavering/images/sparrowclip.

html> (accessed 1 March 2008).

74 Brian Hope-Taylor, Yeavering: An Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria (London:

HMSO, 1977); see also Martin Welch, Anglo-Saxon England (London: English Heritage,

1992), pp. 43–45; colour plate 1.

75 Addyman, ‘The Anglo-Saxon house’: p. 286: ‘it implies that the East Anglian king sat in

halls as lofty and fi ne as did his contemporary at Yeavering; as fi ne as Hrothgar’s Heorot’.

76 S 611 (29 November 956) was issued in palatio regis in Ceodre. See John Blair, ‘Palaces or

Minsters? Northampton and Cheddar reconsidered’, ASE 25 (1996): 97–121 (108–21);

Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 115–18; S 611.

77 Davison, ‘Excavations at Sulgrave, 1960–76’, p. 109.

78 Hannan, ‘Tewkesbury and the earls of Gloucester’, pp. 114–18.


80 Beowulf, line 140, translated in Alexander, Beowulf, p. 55.

81 Davison, ‘Excavations at Sulgrave, 1960–76’, p. 111; Beresford, ‘Goltho: the development’,

pp. 52–54.

82 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 88.

83 S 1445.

84 Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, book iii§8.

85 Addyman, ‘The Anglo-Saxon house’, p. 304; Cunliffe, Excavations at Portchester, pp. 36,

58–59; Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, p. 125.

86 Frank Barlow, The English Church, 1000–1066 (London: Longman, 1963), p. 123.

87 David A.E. Pelteret, Catalogue of English Post-Conquest Vernacular Documents (Woodbridge:

Boydell Press, 1990), no. 106, p. 105.

88 Kevin Crossley Holland, The Exeter Book Riddles (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979),

p. 50.

89 H. Sweet (ed.), King Alfred’s West Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, (2 vols; London:

Early English Text Society, 1871–72), vol. 1, p. 77. See p. 94 above for the possibility of an

upper fl oor in one of the Cheddar halls.

90 Wilson (ed.), The Bayeux Tapestry, plates 3–4.

91 AS Chronicle ‘DE’, 977; WmM, GR i, pp. 132–33. The word upfl or is also used for the

gallery in the church at Glastonbury from which Abbot Turstin’s men-at-arms shot at the

recalcitrant monks as they huddled around the altar (AS Chronicle ‘E’ 1083).

92 Pauline Stafford, The East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester: Leicester University

Press, 1985), pp. 165–66; Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 252–53.

93 David Austin (ed.), Domesday Book, Supplementary Volume: Boldon Book (Northumberland

and Durham) (Chichester: Phillimore, 1932), pp. 36–37.

94 Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 115–16, 125–28.; Yorke, Wessex in the Early

Middle Ages, pp. 252–53.

www.pastperfect.info/sites/yeavering/images/sparrowclip.html

www.pastperfect.info/sites/yeavering/images/sparrowclip.html

196 N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 6 – 9 9

95 See also Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, p. 155.

96 Carnicelli, King Alfred’s Version of Saint Augustine’s Soliloquies, p. 77 (see Chapter 4

above).

97 Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 117–18.

98 Austin, Boldon Book, pp. 36–37.

99 Gardiner, ‘Implements and utensils in Gerefa’, pp. 267.

100 The fi nds at Bishopstone (Gabor, ‘Excavations at Bishopstone’, p. 7) included a horseshoe,

a harness buckle, a sickle and a wool-comb, as well as the metal lock and fi ttings from a

wooden chest; a wool-comb also appears in one of Gerefa’s lists.

101 Kevin Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Crafts (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), pp. 135–36; Fairbrother,

Faccombe Netherton, pp. 403–35, 512–15. Similar indications were found at Cheddar,

(Philip Rahtz, The Saxon and Medieval Palaces at Cheddar (BAR, British series, 65: Oxford:

BAR, 1979), pp. 263–87, 381–82) suggesting ‘small-scale metal-casting and melting

in gold and silver … as well as heavier goods’ (Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England,

p. 118).

102 S 1539;Yorke, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages, p. 283.

103 For goldsmiths as members of aristocratic (and royal) households see Chapter 4 above.

104 Gale-Owen-Crocker, ‘Wynfl æd’s wardrobe’, ASE 8 (1979): 195–222.

105 Helen Hamerow, Early Medieval Settlements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002),

pp. 45–46.

106 Gardiner, ‘Implements and utensils in Gerefa’, p. 267; Thomas, ‘Excavations at Bishopstone’,

p. 5; Gale Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2nd

edn, 2004), p. 280; R.G. Poole, ‘The textile inventory in the Old English Gerefa’, Review of

English Studies 40 (1989): 469–78.

107 Morris, Churches in the Landscape, pp. 227–74.

108 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 101–8.

109 Bede (HE v§4–5) records two churches founded by the Northumbrian comites Puch and

Addi, which may have been private ‘estate’ churches (Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon

Society, pp. 119–20).

110 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 291–324, quotation on p. 323.

111 See n. 76 above.

112 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, fi g. 33, pp. 286, 328. For Odda’s relations with

Deerhurst and the division of the church’s assets, see Chapter 1 above.

113 S 1511; GDB fo. 34; Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, p. 103; VCH Surrey 4, pp. 288–90. In

Domesday Book Godstone appears under its earlier name of Wachelstede/Wolcnessstede

(Walkingstead/Walkhampstead).

114 GDB fo. 242v.

115 Williams, ‘Thegnly piety’.

116 S 1380, c.990; Charters of Burton, pp. xl–xli.

117 II Eg 1§1–3§1 (959–72); MEL, pp. 313–17.

118 VIII Atr 5§1; I Cn 3§2.

119 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 407–17. It is especially diffi cult to date

churches from this period, since many contain both ‘Saxon’ and ‘Norman’ elements and

techniques; the term ‘Saxo-Norman’ overlap is sometimes used to describe them.

197N O T E S T O PA G E S 9 9 – 1 0 1

120 A. Boddington, Raunds Furnells: The Anglo-Saxon Church and Graveyard (London: English

Heritage, 1996). The same arrangement is found at Trowbridge (Wilts.), Goltho (Lincs.),

Sulgrave (Northants) and Faccombe Netherton (Hants); see Blair, The Church in Anglo-

Saxon Society, pp. 388–89 and fi g. 45.

121 Morris, Churches in the Landscape, pp. 259–61 and fi g. 74. The door itself may have been

re-used from an earlier, possibly pre-Conquest, church.

122 S 1235; Keynes, ‘A lost cartulary of St Albans Abbey’, p. 266.

123 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 388, 396 and fi g. 47.


125 Williams, The English, pp. 118–19.

126 GDB fos 57v, 58, 170v; it is not specifi cally stated that Ælfsige held his land at Faringdon

before 1066. Blair does not accept the identifi cation of Ælfsige of Faringdon with Ælfsige

of Longney (The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 175) but Ælfsige of Faringdon was still

holding land, including Longney, in Gloucestershire in 1086 (GDB fos 164, 165v, 170v).

127 GDB fos 56, 63v, 160v, 161, 170v.

128 GDB fos 154v, 164. For Langford church, see Blair, Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire, pp. 135–36,

178–80. Blair suggests that Earl Leofric of Mercia might have commissioned the roods,

though Earl Harold, the pre-Conquest holder (GDB fo. 154v), is surely a possibility.

129 GDB fos 46v, 47, 62; Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 470–71. The other

churches were at Otterbourne, Shirley, Botley and Baddesley (Hants). The bulk of

Cypping’s land went to Ralph de Mortimer, but Cypping, whose name is uncommon, was

still in possession of Hazelbury (Wilts.) in 1086, and his son Alwine held two hides at Bray

(Berks.), which had belonged to Tovi TRE (GDB fos 63v, 73v).

130 Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, book ii§17, pp. 40–41.

131 Canons of Edgar, pp. li, 6–9.

132 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 382.

133 Morris, Churches in the Landscape, pp. 76–81.

134 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 381–82 and fi g. 44. As Blair observes

(pp. 374–83), earlier ‘sacred sites’, whether trees, wells or springs, may all have infl uenced

the location of churches.

135 Ælfsige himself is said to have narrated the story to Bishop Wulfstan’s biographer Colman,

saying that ‘nothing was sweeter than Wulfstan’s blessing, nor more bitter than his curse’

(Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, p. 41).

136 GDB fos 50v, 51v, 73v, 87; he may have been related to Wihtlac, who held several parcels

of land in Hampshire both before and after 1066, four in conjunction with Ælfric (GDB

fos 46, 51, 51v, 54, and see table 6.1). A thegn called Ælfric parvus appears in Bedfordshire

and Hertfordshire, but he seems to have held no land in 1086, and was probably a

different person. My reconstruction of Ælfric’s lands differs from that of P.H. Hase, ‘The

mother-churches of Hampshire’, in Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches, p. 54 and

n. 57, p. 65.

137 The creation of the Nova Foresta in south-east Hampshire did not necessarily entail the

eviction of tenants and the destruction of their communities; by placing them ‘outside’

(foris) the customary law, the king effectively created a royal monopoly of what had once

been the customary rights of the inhabitant. See Karin Mew, ‘The dynamics of lordship

198 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 1 – 1 0 6

and landscape as revealed in a Domesday study of the Nova Foresta’, ANS 23 (2000):

155–66.

138 Text and translation in Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, p. 518; see also Hase, ‘The

mother-churches of Hampshire’, p. 60.

139 Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 384, 493.

Notes to Chapter 7: Displaying Status (2): The Trappings of Authority

1 R.H.C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (ed.), The Gesta Guillielmi of William of Poitiers

(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 180–81.

2 Maxims 1(B), in Poems of Wisdom and Learning, pp. 70–71.

3 Scragg (ed.), Battle of Maldon, ad 991, pp. 24–27.

4 This is a unique compound, in which fealo ‘literally describes the gold with which

Byrhtnoth’s sword is decorated, but … has overtones of decay and misery’; see Battle

of Maldon, line 166 note. Presumably there is a reminiscence of fealuwian, ‘to wither’,

and the fallow (fealwe) fi eld which bears no crops (‘the sere and yellow leaf ’ springs to

mind).

5 W.J. Sedgefi eld, King Alfred’s Version of the Consolations of Boethius Done into Modern

English (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), ch. 37, pp. 128–29.

6 JnW ii, pp. 530–31. Earl Godwine is said to have presented a ship to King Edward, but its

complement of 1,200 warriors is mentioned only in passing (Vita Edwardi, pp. 20–21).

7 Eric Christiansen (trans.), The Works of Sven Aggesen, Twelfth-Century Danish Historian

(Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series 9; London: University College, 1992),

pp. 32–33; Samuel Lang (trans.), Snorri Sturlusson, Heimskringla: Sagas of the Norse Kings

(London: Penguin Books, 1961), p. 81.

8 Hilda Ellis Davidson, The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,

1994), p. 110; S 1515.

9 Davidson, Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 68–70; Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Crafts, p. 154.

Sword-hilts are made up of a pommel, an upper guard, secured to the pommel by rivets, a

grip, and a lower guard, which protected the user’s hand; there is a very clear explanatory

diagram in Ian Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002),

p. ii.

10 Backhouse et al., Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, no. 14, p. 34. It dates either from the late

ninth or the early tenth century, see David A. Hinton, ‘Two late Saxon swords’. Oxoniensia

35 (1971 for 1970): 1–4. A late eighth-century pommel found at Windsor has a panel

of gold interlace on one side: for this, and a similar pommel found in the Thames near

Chiswick Eyot, see Leslie Webster and Janet Backhouse (eds), The Making of England:

Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture ad 600–900 (London: The British Museum, 1991), nos 180,

181, pp. 225–26.

11 Webster and Backhouse, Making of England, no. 250, p. 276; see also no. 251, p. 277, for a

similar sword from Gilling Beck (Yorks.), which has fi ve such bands.

12 For the Dybäck sword, see James Graham-Campbell, Viking Artefacts: A Select Catalogue

(London: The British Museum, 1980), no. 250, pp. 70–71; the nearest parallel is a sword

199N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 6 – 1 0 8

found at Vrångebäck (also Scania). Though probably manufactured in Denmark, the

motifs of birds and quadrupeds ‘fi nd close parallels in English metalwork in the Winchester

style’. See also Backhouse et al., Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, no. 96, pp. 103–4.

13 Norðleoda lagu, 10; Stafford, East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages, p. 156; S 1537.

14 S.1482; Select EHD, p. 78. A thrymsa was equal to 3d (see Introduction above).

15 S 1507; Af 10. The West Saxon shilling was worth 5d (see Introduction above).

16 S 1483.

17 S 1503.

18 WmM GR i, pp. 210–11; ii, p. 119; S 812.

19 S 1485.

20 S 1511.

21 David Hinton, Gold and Gilt, Pots and Pins (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), p.75. For

the theft of Thored’s sica, see LE ii§33 and Chapter 2 above.

22 S 1445; Alfred P. Smyth, King Alfred the Great (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995),

pp. 397–98.

23 S 1483, 1501, 1511.

24 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 251–52; Davidson, Anglo-Saxon Sword,

pp. 93–96.

25 Backhouse et al, Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, nos 100–101, p. 106, where both objects

are dated to the late tenth century; Hinton, however, dates them to the eleventh century

and speculates that they ‘could have belonged to one of King Cnut’s followers’ (Gold and

Gilt, fi g. 4,11, pp. 134–35, and see pp. 166–67).

26 S 1505.

27 Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Crafts, p. 88. Leather scabbards survive better than wooden ones, but

most of those which exist were made for knives rather than swords (Hinton, Gold and Gilt,

p. 162).

28 Davidson, Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 88–103.

29 S 1503.

30 Wulfric himself receives no bequest, and does not seem to have been a member of the

ætheling’s household; he may have been a monk of the Old Minster, Winchester (see

n. 132 below).

31 Davidson, Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 109.

32 Æthelstan’s bequests to his father include ‘the coat of mail which Morcar has’ and he was

given a horse by Thorbrand, another northern magnate (see Introduction, above).

33 Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age, pp. 104–5. The grip is wound with silver wire but this may

not be the original covering, and the condition of the blade suggests a grave-fi nd rather

than a river deposit. See also Hinton, Gold and Gilt, p. 148 and n. 46.

34 Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age, p. 108 and plate VIII (colour illustration). In another

Norwegian example, ‘all lateral faces of the pommel and cross-guard [are] covered with

lines of tiny drilled holes’, though there is no trace of silver plating (Peirce, Swords of the

Viking Age, pp. 116–17).

35 For the ætheling’s goldsmith Wulfric, see n. 132 below.

36 In compounds, OE mæl might also refer to pattern-welded blades, see Davidson, Sword in

Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 120, 121–29.

200 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 0 8 – 1 1 1

37 The names are not necessarily those of individual smiths (though some may be). The

datable contexts in which Ulfberht blades have been found range from the tenth to the

twelfth centuries, and even though the later fi nds may have been made much earlier than

their time of deposition, it is clear that ‘Ulfberht’ operated for at least a couple of centuries.

The ‘original’ Ulfberht seems to have been not only a weapon-smith but also ‘the founder

and President of Ulfberht, Ltd., which as a company long outlasted him’ (Peirce, Swords

of the Viking Age, pp. 7–10, 24, 124–25, 132–33; quotation on p. 8). The possibility of

counterfeiting should also be considered: see Michael R. Gorman, ‘ULFBERHT: innovation

and imitation in early medieval swords’, Park Lane Arms Fair Catalogue 16 (1999): 7–12.

38 Ian Peirce, ‘Arms, armour and warfare in the eleventh century’, ANS 10 (1988): 237–57

(250).

39 Davidson, Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 121 and see pp. 122–29.

40 There are at least four similar blades in existence; see Peirce, Swords of the Viking Age,

pp. 138–39.

41 Peirce, ‘Arms, armour and warfare in the eleventh century’, pp. 251–57.

42 The ‘First Hand’ type, struck between c.979–85, and the ‘Second Hand’, c.985–91, but see

also the ‘Benediction Hand’ struck in 991 as a special issue (Backhouse et al., Golden Age

of Anglo-Saxon Art, nos 196–99, pp. 175, 177).

43 Brooks, ‘Arms, status and warfare in the late-Saxon England’, in Hill (ed.), Ethelred the

Unready, p. 83.

44 Richard J. Kelly, The Blickling Homilies: Edition and Translation (London and New York:

Continuum, 2003), p. 152.


46 Nicholas Brooks, ‘Weapons and armour’, in Scragg (ed.), Battle of Maldon, ad 991,

pp. 208–19.

47 S 1498.

48 AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1008. It is the specifi cation of the equipment that is signifi cant,

regardless of whether or not the kingdom really was divided into 300-hide units (Williams,

Æthelred the Unready, pp. 80–83). For the ‘Helmet’ issue, see Backhouse et al., Golden Age

of Anglo-Saxon Art, nos 203–205, pp. 178–79, 181.

49 II Cn 71.

50 Brooks, ‘Arms, status and warfare’, p. 90; Williams, Æthelred the Unready, p. 83.

51 S 1488, 1492, 1503; Brooks, ‘Arms, status and warfare’, p. 89. The distinction between the

‘round shield’ bequeathed by the ætheling to his discþen Ælfmaer and the ‘bowed shield’

given to Sigeferth recalls to mind the mostly kite-shaped but occasionally round shields

depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry.

52 AS Chronicle ‘DE’, 1065.

53 Gillingham, ‘Thegns and knights in eleventh-century England’, p. 136.

54 S 1537. The only estate named in the will is the unidentifi ed Wiken, divided between Bury

St Edmunds, Bishop Ælfric [of Elmham], and the testator’s widow (for life).

55 When in 1016 ‘the Danish army fl ed … with their horses into Sheppey’, King Edmund II

Ironside ‘killed as many of them as he could overtake’; presumably the English were also

horsed, otherwise the Danes would have escaped unharmed. See also R.H.C. Davis, The

Medieval Warhorse (London: Thames and Hudson, 1989), pp. 70–78.

201N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 1 – 1 1 3

56 James Graham-Campbell, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian equestrian equipment’, ANS 14 (1992):

77–90 (esp. 80).

57 S 1503, 1531; in both cases there is an association with hunting (see Chapter 8 below).

58 S 1487.

59 Robert Jones, personal communication.

60 S 1539, 1536.

61 S 1492; w[e]orfa means literally ‘cattle’.

62 S 1440; Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 264–65. In early mediaeval usage, caballus signifi ed a

warhorse (Davis, Medieval Warhorse, p. 135).

63 S 1362, dated 990.

64 S 1461.

65 S 1459.

66 Maxims IA, in Poems of Wisdom, pp. 66–67; Battle of Maldon, lines 239–40.

67 Graham-Campbell, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian equestrian equipment’; Gale Owen-Crocker,

‘Hawks and horse-trappings: the insignia of rank’, in Scragg (ed.), Battle of Maldon,

AD 991, pp. 220–37.

68 Owen-Crocker, ‘Hawks and horse-trappings’, p. 232.

69 S 1497, 1537; Chron. Ramsey, p. 85. The Latin abstract of Ælfwaru’s will preserved at

Ramsey is incomplete, for it omits her gifts to Ely (LE ii§61), but it clearly derives from an

Old English original.

70 W.W. Skeat, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (Oxford: Oxford University Press, repr., 1966), p. 98;

S 883.

71 Webster and Backhouse, Making of England, no. 253, pp. 278–79; Graham-Campbell,

‘Anglo-Scandinavian equestrian equipment’, p. 80. Reins and tack (bridelþwancgas and

geræda) were produced by the shoemaker in Ælfric’s Colloquy, along with spur-straps and

halters (Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 35).

72 Owen-Crocker, ‘Hawks and horse-trappings’, p. 233.

73 W.A. Seaby and P. Woodfi eld, ‘Viking stirrups from England and their background’,

Medieval Archaeology 24 (1980): 87–122 (esp. 87–89).

74 Backhouse et al., Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, no. 99, pp. 105–6; Graham-Campbell,

‘Anglo-Scandinavian equestrian equipment’, pp. 87–88.

75 Graham-Campbell, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian equestrian equipment’, p. 87. The remote

ancestors of horse-brasses, perhaps?

76 D.A. Hinton, ‘Late Saxon treasure and bullion’, in Hill, Ethelred the Unready, pp. 135–58

(140). The weight of the silver penny diminished progressively as the next re-coinage

approached. One of the possible mancuses (BM Coins and Medals 1883-5-16-1) was

minted at Lewes from the dies of Æthelred’s ‘Helmet’ issue (c.1003–1009).

77 S 1487, 1218a. Leofsige was to receive in recompense the estate at Great Slaughter (Hunts.).

Compare the will of Thurstan Lustwine’s son (S 1531), in which the 2 gold marks required

for his heriot were to be raised by the sale of an estate.

78 BL Additional Ms. 40,000, fo. 4v; S 1503. Ælfric and Wulfwine are described as ‘Eadgifu’s

goldsmiths’, and since the gospel book in question, in which the Thorney Liber Vitae was

subsequently entered, was in England by the mid-tenth century, Eadgifu is probably the

third wife and widow of Edward the Elder, who died in the reign of her grandson Edgar

202 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 3 – 1 1 4

(959–75). See Cecily Clark, ‘BL Addiitional Ms. 40,000, ff 1v–12r’, ANS 7 (1985): 50–68

(50–51, 53, 55).

79 In 840 (S 192), Bishop Heahberht of Worcester recovered some of his church’s estates

from King Berhtwulf in return for ‘four very choice horses, and a ring of thirty mancuses,

and a skilfully-wrought dish of three pounds, and two silver horns of four pounds’; he

also gave Queen Sæthryth ‘two good horses, two goblets of two pounds and one gilded

cup of two pounds’ (iiii caballos bene electos et unum anulum in xxx mancusis et discum

fabrefactum in tribus pundis et duas albas cornas in iii libris et ille regina dedit duos equos

bonos et duas steapas in twæm pundum et unam cuppam deauratam in duobus pundis). See

also S 124 (785), S 178 (815) and S 186 (822). S 118, an ostensible diploma of Offa, dated

780, granting land to Worcester in return for ‘a fi ne bible with two armlets adorned with

most pure gold’ (bibliothecam optimam cum duabus armillis ex auro purissimo fabricatis),

is an eleventh-century forgery, and the two bradiolas in S 206, a diploma of King Burgred,

dated 855, may have been ingots rather than rings (Hinton, Gold and Gilt, note 56, p. 294).

In the 950s, King Edgar gave an estate of fi ve hides to Westminster in return for ‘120

shillings (solidi) of gold in an arm-ring (armilla)’, but the diploma (S 670) is not above

suspicion.

80 S 1498 (dated 971–83).

81 S 1483 (946–51), 1504 (946–47). It is not clear whether Æthelwold left two beagas worth

120 mancuses each and two more worth 80 mancuses each, or whether two pairs, one of

60 mancuses each and one of 40 mancuses each, are intended; the latter interpretation, giving

a total of 200 mancuses, is perhaps the more likely, but arm-rings weighing 120 mancuses

each appear in the will of Ælfgifu (see next note). Hinton suggested (‘Late Saxon treasure

and bullion’, pp. 140–41) that arm-rings were produced to a weight-scale based on

120 mancuses (‘a sign of Scandinavian reckoning?’), divided either by a factor of three or a

factor of four; but the beagas in Ælfgar’s will, of 50 mancuses apiece, do not conform to this.

82 S 1484 (966–69, see next note), 1498 (971–83). If one pair of Æthelmær’s armlets

weighed 120 mancuses each, as did those of Ælfgifu, then the remaining pair would be of

30 mancuses each.

83 S 1486 (1000–1002). Wynfl æd, whose will (S 1539) probably dates from the same period

as Ælffl æd’s, left a cup adorned with 16 mancuses of gold to her grandson Eadwold, ‘in

order that he may enlarge his beah with the gold’.

84 S 1494 (c.975–91); Æthelfl æd was the second wife of King Edmund I. As with Ealdorman

Æthelmær, it is not clear how the 200 mancuses of Æthelfl æd’s heriot were disposed; four

beagas of 50 mancuses each, or two pairs worth respectively 120 and 80 mancuses are both

possible.

85 S 1511 (973–87), 1505 (after 987).

86 Hilda Ellis Davidson and Peter Fisher (trans.), Saxo Grammaticus, The History of the Danes

(Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1979), vol. 1, p. 55; Saxo tells an identical story about King Gøtrik

and his retainer Ref (vol. 1, p. 271). I owe these references to Val Fallan.

87 S 1538 (984–1016), 1503 (1014).

88 S 1484.

89 S 812. For the gifts to Romsey, which included a golden crucifi x and the gilded scabbard

discussed above, see Ann Williams, ‘The speaking cross, the persecuted princess and the

203N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 4 – 1 1 5

murdered earl: some notes on the early history of Romsey Abbey’, Anglo-Saxon 1 (2007):

221–38 (221–26).

90 LE ii§63; S 1511, 1484. In the Latin version of S 1511, Ælfswith alone is responsible for the

bequest to Rochester.

91 S 1516 (1002–1004). The bule, normally translated as ‘brooch’, might be an amulet or

pendant: see Elizabeth Coatesworth and Michael Pinder, The Art of the Anglo-Saxon

Goldsmith (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2002), p. 211.

92 S 1539 (probably to be dated to the 990s); Hinton, Gold and Gilt, p. 147. For the ‘engraved

ring’, see n. 103 below.

93 S 1488 (dated 1003/1004).

94 Edmund’s gift is recorded in the mid-eleventh-century tract, the Historia de Sancto

Cuthberto, but only in the Cronica (composed between 1072 and 1083) is the king said to

have been wearing the arm-rings (Johnson-South, Historia Sancto Cuthberto, pp. 8, 66–67,

110). Edmund was in the north in 944–45 (AS Chronicle).

95 D.A. Hinton, ‘Late Anglo-Saxon metalwork: an assessment’, ASE 4 (1975): 171–80 (177).

96 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 225; OE band/bænd is used to gloss Latin

diadema/nimbus.

97 S 1511, 1497.

98 S 1538.

99 Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 248–49: omnia fere ornamenta huius ecclesie distracta sunt, tabule

altaris, argento et auro parate, spoliate sunt, textus exornati, calices confracti, cruces confl ate.

100 Battle of Maldon, line 31.

101 BL Cotton Tiberius C vi, fol 10v, illustrated in Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, plate 5; the

treasures include a fi nger-ring, a sheathed sword with a decorated hilt and belt, a shield-

boss, a drinking-horn and a cup. The Tiberius Psalter, though English in style, may

date from just after the Norman Conquest, see T.A. Heslop, ‘A dated “late Anglo-Saxon”

illuminated psalter’, Antiq.J. 72 (1994 for 1992): 171–73.

102 Beowulf, lines 2763–64 (Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 189). Comparison is hampered by

the fact that few arm-rings, either intact or broken up for use as bullion, survive from

eighth- and ninth-century England (Hinton, Gold and Gilt, p. 87), and of course Beowulf

as it stands is a tenth-century text.

103 James Graham-Campbell, ‘A Viking-age gold arm-ring from the Sound of Jura’, Proc. Soc.

Antiq. Scotland 113 (1983): 64–42 (641). Though most arm-rings were made up of twisted

rods, this was not the only form; plain bands with stamped or moulded decoration are

also found (Graham-Campbell, Viking Artefacts, pp. 30, 60–66, nos 215–43). The ‘engraved

arm-ring’ (agrafena beah) bequeathed by Wynfl æd to her daughter Æthelfl æd (S 1539) may

have belonged to this type of ring, perhaps resembling the woman’s bracelet from Gotland

in Sweden now in the British Museum (registration number 1921.11-1,303).

104 James Graham-Campbell, ‘A lost Pictish treasure (and two Viking-age gold arm-rings)

from the Broch of Burgar, Orkney’, Proc. Soc. Antiq. Scotland 115 (1985): 241–61 243–44.

Two gold arm-rings discovered together in Dublin are made of twisted wires, but they are

not a pair (Graham-Campbell, Viking Artefacts, no. 220).

105 The gold arm-ring recently found near Harrogate is of a different type, a plain band

knotted together at the back; see The Times (Friday 20 July 2007), p. 25. I am very grateful

204 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 5 – 1 1 7

to Barry Ager of the British Museum for his help with this fi nd. For the Goodrington ring,

now in the British Museum (registration number 1979.10-4.1), see Graham-Campbell,

Viking Artefacts, no. 222, Graham-Campbell, ‘Viking-Age gold ring from the Sound of Jura’,

p. 641 (I owe these references to Daniel Pett, of the British Musuem). For the Brightlingsea

ring, now in the Ashmolean Museum (accession number 1927.6639), see VCH Essex,

vol. 1, p. 327. The damaged York ring (treasure reference number 2004T203) is now in the

Yorkshire Museum.

106 Hinton, ‘Late Saxon treasure’, pp. 146–47; Leslie Webster, ‘Gold ring from Dane John’,

Archaeologia Cantiana 92 (1976): 233–34; James Graham-Campbell, ‘The gold fi nger-ring

from a burial in St Aldate’s Street, Oxford’, Oxoniensia 53 (1988): 263–66; Hinton, Gold

and Gilt, p.147 and n. 56, fi g. 5.3. A silver neck-ring was found in a hoard at Halton Moor

(Lancs.), dated to c.1027 (BM M&ME AF.541). Neck-rings of gold and silver are illustrated

in Graham-Campbell, Viking Artefacts, nos 215–18; most have hooked fastenings,

suggesting that they were intended to be worn.

107 David A. Hinton, ‘The medieval gold, silver and copper-alloy objects from Winchester’,

in M. Biddle (ed.), Object and Economy in Medieval Winchester (Winchester Studies 7ii;

Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 646–52 (30).

108 A. Way, ‘Ancient armillae of gold recently found in Buckinghamshire and in North Britain’,

Archaeological Journal 6 (1849): 46–58 (48–49). The Wendover ring is now in the British

Museum (registration number 1849.02-10.1).

109 Hinton, Gold and Gilt, p. 147.

110 Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 189.

111 JnW ii, pp. 530–31; WmM, GR i, pp, 458–59. John also gives each of his warriors a coat of

‘triple mail’ (lorica trilicis), a gilded helmet, a shield with gilded boss and studs, and a spear

(ætgar).

112 Mem. St Edmunds i, p. 54: pedetenus decoratus mastrugam decore, armillis quoque bajulans

in brachiis ambobus superbe, Danico more deaurata securi in humero dependent.

113 S 1489, 1490, 1517, 1519, 1521, 1531, 1537. S 1528 and 1535 mention the ‘due heriot’ but

do not specify what this entailed

114 S 1537 (1022–1043).

115 S 1489 (1022–1038), 1521 (1035–1044), 1490 (1042/3) and 1531(1043–1044). Only in

Thurstan’s will (S1531) is war-gear as well as cash mentioned.

116 16 ores of gold, at eight ores to the mark. The mark is previously used only in the will of

Bishop Theodred of London (S 1526, dated 942–51), who owed a heriot of 200 marks of

‘red gold’, four of his best horses, two swords, four shields and four spears. Like most of

the eleventh-century wills, that of Bishop Theodred comes from the Bury archive.

117 S 1535 (Wulfgyth, dated to 1046), 1532 (Bishop Ulf, dated to 1050). In both cases the

recipients were ecclesiastical.


119 Michael Dolley, ‘The nummular brooch from Sulgrave’, in Peter Clemoes and Kathleen

Hughes (eds), England before the Conquest: Studies Presented to Dorothy Whitelock

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 333–50 (333–43); but see the counter-

arguments of Hinton, ‘Late Saxon treasure and bullion’, pp. 141–43.

120 Leahy, Anglo-Saxon Crafts, p. 154; Davidson, Sword in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 70–71.

205N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 1 7 – 1 2 0

121 Davis and Chibnall, Gesta Guillielmi, pp. 180–81.

122 Vita Edwardi, pp. 24–25. The text is incomplete, and this passage is supplied from the later

compilation by Richard of Cirencester (see Vita Edwardi, pp. xxxvii, xxxix–xli). Some

doubts have been expressed about its accuracy (Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon

England, p. 233 and n. 2), but the same tradition is preserved by William of Malmesbury

(see next note).

123 WmM, GR i, pp. 404–405 (220.1).

124 Sedgefi eld, King Alfred’s Version of the Consolations of Boethius, p. 128; Kelly, Blickling

Homilies, pp. 80–81.

125 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1074; Vita Edward, p. 54–57. Pæll probably denotes silk.

126 Williams, ‘Thegnly piety and ecclesiastical patronage’, esp. pp. 5–7; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon

Art, pp. 195–215.

127 OV ii, pp. 216–17; Watkiss and Chibnall, The Waltham Chronicle, pp. 22–23.

128 Watkiss and Chibnall, The Waltham Chronicle, pp. 62–63.


130 GDB fos 36v, 63, 160v.


132 Scott Gwara (ed.), Anglo-Saxon Conversations: The Colloquies of Ælfric Bata (Woodbridge:

Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 134–37 and n. 147. For Wulfric, see Simon Keynes (ed.), The

Liber Vitae of the New Minster and Hyde Abbey, Winchester (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and

Bagger, 1996), p. 88 and fo. 18v; his fellow-monks Brihthelm aurifex and Byrnelm aurifex

are commemorated in the same text.

133 Excavations have revealed fewer craft activities at eleventh-century rural sites than had

formerly been the case, yet ‘these sites are littered with English manufactured goods’, which

must have been ‘purchased from itinerant traders or urban merchants’; see Fleming, ‘The

new wealth, the new rich and the new political style in late Anglo-Saxon England’, p. 12.

134 See, for instance, S 693 (961), EHD i, no.110.

135 Robin Fleming, ‘Rural elites and urban communities in late Saxon England’, P&P 141

(1993), p. 21.

136 Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 33.

137 Robin Fleming, ‘Acquiring, fl aunting and destroying silk in late Anglo-Saxon England’,

Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007): 127–58 (130–31).

138 LE ii§32 (see also Chapter 2 above). ‘Traders from Ireland’ are likely to have been Hiberno-

Norse from Dublin.

139 Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 145–49.

140 Fleming, ‘Acquiring … silk’, pp. 129–30.

141 JnW ii, pp. 514–15.

142 Vita Edwardi, pp. 52–53.

143 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 237, 299; AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1074. OE pæll,

whose primary meaning is ‘a cloak or covering’, is sometimes used to gloss purpura, ‘silk’.

144 See, for instance, the silks deposited at various times in the tomb of St Cuthbert, which

included both Byzantine and Islamic examples: see Hero Granger-Taylor, ‘The weft-

patterned silks and their braid: The remains of an Anglo-Saxon dalmatic of c. 800?’ in

Gerald Bonner, David Rollason and Clare Stancliffe (eds), St Cuthbert, his Cult and his

206 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 0 – 1 2 1

Community to ad 1200 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 303–27; and Clare Higgins,

‘Some new thoughts on the nature goddess silk’, in Bonner, Rollason and Stancliffe (eds),

St Cuthbert, his Cult and his Community, pp. 329–37. Designs based on Islamic models

were being copied in pre-Conquest England from the ninth century onwards (Fleming,

‘Acquiring … silk’, p. 132).

145 Decorated wrist-bands were known in England from the sixth century and the tomb of

St Cuthbert contains a dalmatic embroidered at the neck with tablet-woven braid (Owen-

Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 247, 249).

146 Fleming, ‘Acquiring … silk’, p. 134.

147 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 246–49, 237; Fleming, ‘Acquiring … silk’,

pp. 135–37; Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, pp. 170–71.

148 In the 1981 edition of the poem, reaf is glossed ‘armour’ (The Battle of Maldon, p. 161), but

none of the English warriors in the poem, up to and including the ealdorman, are said to

be wearing mail; see Brooks ‘Weapons and armour’, pp. 215–17.

149 LE ii §62 (duabus laciniis palii sui, pretiose opere auri et gemmarum contextis); Brooks,

‘Weapons and armour’, n. 22, p. 218.


151 GDB fo. 149. Ælfgyth’s half-hide de dominica fi rma regis was attached to the 2 hides which

she held at Oakley, in Ixhill Hundred, and the only royal manor in Ixhill Hundred was Brill

(fo. 143v). All her land passed to Robert d’Oilly after 1066, which suggests that she was

the mother of Godwine Ælfgyth’s son, a commended man of Robert’s chief predecessor,

Wigod of Wallingford, who held land at Dawley (Middx); see GDB fo. 129.

152 GDB fo. 74. Leofgyth is called Leviet in Domesday Book and appears as ‘Leofgeat’ in

Caroline Thorn and Frank Thorn (eds), Domesday Book: Wiltshire (Chichester: Phillimore,

979), nos 67, 86, but Leofgeat is a man’s name.

153 Dodwell, Anglo-Saxon Art, p. 227 and n. 100, p. 327. Matilda also gave a ‘vestment’ which

was being made in England but the maker is not named. For the family of Ealdred and

Odo, see Williams, The English, p. 116; their land included a messuage on the High Street,

Winchester.

154 Fleming, ‘Acquiring … silk’, p. 157.

155 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, p. 320. The use of silver-gilt, as opposed to

gold thread, attested in the eleventh century, may have made such clothing cheaper and

available to a wider market (Fleming, ‘The new wealth’, p. 10).

156 Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 240–41, 319; the portrait is in the earliest

manuscript of the Regularis Concordia (BL Ms Cotton Tiberius A iii), a text replete with

imperial imagery.

157 BL Ms Cotton Claudius Biv, fo 59, for which see Owen-Crocker, Dress in Anglo-Saxon

England, p. 241 and fi g. 194, p. 235.

158 OV iv, pp. 188–9; Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Dress and authority in the Bayeux Tapestry’, in

Brenda Bolton and Christine Meek (eds), Power and Authority (Turnhout, Belgium:

Brepols Publishers NV, forthcoming); I am very grateful to Dr Owen-Crocker for allowing

me to see this paper ahead of publication.

207N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 3 – 1 2 4

Notes to Chapter 8: Living like Lords: Aristocratic Pursuits

1 WmM, GR i, pp. 404–5 (220.1–3).

2 AS Chronicle ‘CD’, 1065; the building began ‘before Lammas’ (1 August), and the

destruction of the lodge took place on St Bartholomew’s day (24 August).

3 The day (3 October) is given by John of Worcester (JnW ii, pp. 596–9); the Chronicle

(AS Chronicle ‘CDE’, 1065) merely places the attack ‘after Michaelmas’ (29 September).

4 Vita Edwardi, pp. 78–79.

5 Eadmer (Mem. St Dunstan, pp. 237–38) alleged that before Lanfranc’s reforms the monks

of Christ Church had been accustomed to keep horses, hounds and hawks, complaining,

revealingly, that they ‘lived like earls rather than monks’ (more comitum potius quam

monachorum vitam agebant). For the hunting of the bishop of Worcester, and the ‘Great

Hunts’ of the bishop of Durham, see pp. 128–9 below.

6 Mew, ‘The dynamics of lordship and landscape’. It may be signifi cant that Britford is close

to the post-Conquest palace and hunting-lodge of Clarendon: see Tom Beaumont James

and Christopher Gerrard, Clarendon: Landscape of Kings (Bollington: Windgather, 2007),

pp. 42–44 (I owe this reference to Rob Liddiard).

7 The rough extent of the foresta regis can be gauged from the Domesday record of

forestation in the hundreds of ‘Edgegate’, Ringwood and Fordingbridge. Earl Tostig held

the manors of Holdenhurst (‘Edgegate’ Hundred) and Ringwood (Ringwood Hundred),

while Eyeworth and three other unidentifi ed parcels of land in Fordingbridge Hundred

belonged to the king, as did the manors of Breamore, Rockbourne and Burgate, of whose

dues £3 10s lay in foresta (GDB fo. 39). None of this land appears in the Nova Foresta section

of the Hampshire folios.

8 Judith Green, The Government of England under Henry I (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1986), pp. 124–25 and n. 37. Mercian charters of the eighth and ninth

centuries free estates from the duty of provisioning those who bear hawks and falcons, and

lead dogs and horses (S 134, 183, 186, 197–98, 207, 1271). S 207, in the name of Ecgbert

of Wessex, is spurious as it stands.

9 II Cn 80, 80§1, repeating legislation probably promulgated in 1014; see Pauline Stafford,

‘The laws of Cnut and the history of Anglo-Saxon royal promises’, ASE 10 (1982):

173–90.

10 Carnicelli, King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, p. 48; S 627; S 1370. For earlier

charters conveying similar appurtenances, see S 31, 177, 186, 188, 293, 316, 332, 352. S 787

(for Peterborough Abbey), dated 972, is a post-Conquest forgery.

11 S 1531, dated 1043–1045.

12 The same range of meanings appears in northern Francia in the eleventh century: Alban

Gautier, ‘Game parks in Sussex and the Godwinesons’, ANS 29 (2007): 51–64 (57–58).


14 John Cummins, The Hound and the Hawk: The Art of Medieval Hunting (London:

Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1988), pp. 47–67; Naomi Sykes, The Norman Conquest:

A Zooarchaeological Approach (BAR, International Series, 1656; Oxford: Archaeopress,

2007), pp. 70–71, 79. Dr Sykes kindly allowed me to read extracts from her book before

publication.

208 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 4 – 1 2 6

15 S 1531; Stenton, First Century, p. 135.

16 S 920; Charters of Burton, no. 31: ðone dic hæge leofnaðes. Leofnoth cannot be further

identifi ed. See also the ‘white haga’ at Faccombe Netherton (Hants).

17 Libermann, i, pp. 444–53; Seebohm, English Village Community, p. 130.

18 GDB fo. 252. At Hereford, one man from each house went ad stabilitonem in silva (GDB

fo. 179).

19 GDB fos 269v, 270.

20 Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 293–96. The word venabulum (see p. 128 below) can mean a

stall for taking buck, but ‘spear’ seems more appropriate in the context.

21 Robert Liddiard, ‘The deer parks of Domesday Book’, Landscapes 4.1 (Spring 2003): 4–23.

I am very grateful to Dr Liddiard for a copy of this important paper, and for much help in

discussion of the problem.

22 GDB fos 256v, 260, 263v; see Liddiard, ‘Deer parks’, pp. 12–13.

23 S 590, 614 (both dated 956), which refer to the same feature, on the boundaries of the

Berkshire vills of Kennington and Sunningwell (Kelly, Charters of Abingdon, p. 241); S 1297,

a lease of Bishop Oswald of land at Oddingley (Worcs.) to his thegn Cynethegn. In S 786,

the problematic foundation charter of Pershore Abbey; a rah-hege appears in the section

relating to Libbery in Grafton Flyford (Worcs.). See further Della Hooke, The Anglo-Saxon

Landscape: The Kingdom of the Hwicce (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985),

pp. 163, 240; Della Hooke, Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon Charter Bounds (Woodbridge:

Boydell Press, 1990), pp. 186–87, 253.

24 S 689 (961), a grant of Edgar to Abingdon Abbey; ‘perhaps more likely than not to be

genuine’; see S.E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of Abingdon Abbey (2 vols; Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001), vol. 2, no. 89, pp. 364–69, quotation on p. 366. See Della Hooke, ‘Pre-Conquest

woodland: Its distribution and usage’, Agricultural History Review 37 (1989): 113–29

(127–28); Della Hooke, ‘Medieval forests and parks in southern and central England’, in

C. Watkins (ed.), European Woods and Forests: Studies in Cultural History (Wallingford:

Cab International, 1998), pp. 19–32. I owe the last reference to Rob Liddiard.

25 Sykes, Norman Conquest, p. 68.

26 Naomi Sykes, ‘Zooarchaeology of the Norman Conquest’, ANS 27 (2004): 105–97 (184–97).

27 Rob Liddiard, personal communication.

28 S 1342, for Waresley (Worcs.), dated 980; S 786 for Pershore (dated 972; see Hooke,

Worcestershire Charter Boundaries, p. 185); S 414, for Cold Ashton (Glos.), dated 931; S 553,

for Pucklechurch (Glos.), dated 950; S 661, for Weston (Som.), dated 961 for ?956. See also

Hooke, Anglo-Saxon Landscape, p. 183.

29 GDB fo. 176v; Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 24. Stags, hinds, roe deer and hares (ceruos uel ceruas nec

capreolos nec lepores) are also listed in the Confessor’s writ (of dubious authenticity) on

animals not to be pursued in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s woods without his express

leave (S 1087).

30 Ælfric’s Colloquy, pp. 23–25.

31 Cummins, Hound and Hawk, pp. 51, 57–58.

32 GDB fo. 219, de equo uenatoris xx solidi. The animal was clearly intended for riding, since

the shire-dues also included 20s for a baggage-horse (de summario), as well as £42 in

assayed coin for dogs (ad canes) and £10 for a hawk.

209N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 6 – 1 2 8

33 Vita Sancti Dunstani Auctore B in Mem. St Dunstan, pp. 23–24. This is the earliest life

of Dunstan, composed around 1000, by a clerk who had been in Dunstan’s service; see

Michael Lapidge, ‘B. and the Vita S. Dunstani’, in Nigel Ramsay, Margaret Sparks and Tim

Tatton-Brown (eds), St Dunstan, His Life, Times and Cult (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,

1992), pp. 247–59.

34 S 1503.

35 S 1503, 1531. For other huntsmen in the service of lay lords, see Chapter 4 above.

36 GDB fo. 154v; it rendered 10s in King Edward’s day but no sum is given for 1086.

37 S 1370 (dated 961–72); for the boundary and its solution, see Hooke, Worcestershire Charter

Bounds, pp. 115–18, 286–87. The stud was the next landmark after the haga; andlang þæs

aldan cyninges hagan norðweard to ðam aldan stod falde: ‘along the king’s old enclosure

northwards to the old stud-fold’.

38 After 1066 the remains of red deer begin to dominate at élite sites, while those of roe deer

decline (Sykes, ‘Zooarchaeology of the Norman Conquest’, p. 190). It was the red deer

(headeor) whom William I ‘loved … as if he had been their father’ (AS Chronicle, 1086).

39 S 1497, dated 990–1001; S 1511, dated 973–87. The remains of what are probably hunting-

dogs have been found in a number of excavations; see Ann Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food

and Drink: Production, Processing, Distribution, Consumption (Hockwold-cum-Wilton:

Anglo-Saxon Books, 2006), p. 135.

40 Liebermann, i, p. 447; EHD ii, no. 172, p. 814; GDB fo. 57v. The author’s mother could

remember how, before the First World War, she and her sisters used to exercise the Pytchley

fox-hounds which were billeted upon her family (and other households) in Creaton

(Northants).

41 OV iii, pp. 114–15. His epitaph, composed by Prior Godfrey of Winchester, places the date

of his death on 13 September, without specifying the year, but between 1069 and 1074 is

the likeliest estimate; see Frank Barlow, William Rufus (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 13,

n. 37. William of Malmesbury says that Richard was hunting deer, but transfers the details

of his accident to that of his nephew and namesake, Richard son of Robert Curthose, also

killed in the New Forest (WmM, GR, i, pp. 305–306; ii, p. 253).

42 AS Chronicle, 1100: fram his anan men mid anre fl a ofsceoten. The earliest (contemporary)

account of William II’s death is that of Eadmer, who says that he was hunting in a wood:

see further Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 420–46.

43 Murder in the course of hunting was something of a literary topos, possibly because of

‘the frequency of its occurrence in daily life’; see C.E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in

Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1939), p. 143.

44 JnW, ii, pp. 458–59. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (sub anno 1006) says merely that the

ealdorman was killed.

45 De Obsessione Dunelmensis, in Symeon, Opera Omnia, i, p. 219; translated in Morris,

Marriage and Murder, p. 3. This was a particularly despicable crime, since the two had

formally made up their differences (Ealdred had killed Karli’s father, who in turn had killed

the father of Ealdred) and become sworn brothers.

46 In the Constitutio Domus Regis, printed and translated by Stephen Church in Emilie Amt

and Stephen Church (eds), Dialogus de Scaccario: The Dialogue of the Exchequer, Constitutio

Domus Regis: Disposition of the King’s Household (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007),

210 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 2 8 – 1 3 0

pp. 202–3. I owe this reference to Dr Church (see also next note), who was also kind enough

to give me a copy of the book.

47 JnW ii, pp. 530–31, where carnifex is translated ‘executioner’, though in Godwine porthund’s

case it is rendered ‘butcher’. Thrond was clearly a member of the king’s household, since the

others dispatched on this grisly mission were Styr maior domus and Eadric dispensator. For

later murders and mutilations carried out by carnifi ces, see W. Stubbs (ed.), The Chronicle of

the Reigns of Henry II and Richard, 1169–1192 (Rolls Series; London: HMSO, 1867), pp. 100,

315. I owe this reference and much helpful advice on the question of carnifi ces to Dr Church.

48 Garmonsway, Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 25.

49 Hearne, Hemingi Chartularium, pp. 292–96. One of the duties which Bishop Denewulf

required from his tenant at Alresford (Hants) was that at need his men should ‘be ready

for harvesting and hunting’ (S 1287; Robertson, Charters, no. 15).

50 The calendars are found in the early eleventh-century BL Cotton Julius A vi and the

mid-eleventh century BL Cotton Tiberius B v (see Backhouse, Turner and Webster (eds),

Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art, nos 60, 164). For the images, see <www.trin.cam.ac.uk/

sdk13/ASCalendar/ASCalendar.html> (accessed 1 March 2008); the scene from the Julius

MS is also illustrated in Christina Lee, Feasting the Dead: Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon

Burial Rituals (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), plate 2.

51 Blair, Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, pp. 326–27; Blair, ‘Palaces or Minsters?’, pp. 108–21.

The original royal centre may have lain at Wedmore (‘hunting-moor’), which by 1066 was

an outlier (membrum) of Cheddar. S 611 (dated 956) was issued ‘in the royal palace’ (in

palatio regis) of Cheddar; S 511 (dated 960 for ?941) was allegedly issued at Cheddar but

is a later concoction, forged after the 950s.

52 JnW ii, pp. 596–97.

53 Austin, Boldon Book, pp. 36–37; for the choice of butilleria over the variant reading

bucheria, ‘butchery’, see Gardiner, ‘Implements and utensils in Gerefa’, p. 267 and n. 74.

54 Austin, Boldon Book, pp. 40–41.

55 Reynolds, Later Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 113–16 (see Chapter 6 above).

56 Watkiss and Chibnall, Waltham Chronicle, pp. 16–17; Huggins, ‘Excavations at Waltham

Abbey, 1985–1991’, pp. 282–83 and see Chapter 2 above.

57 Chron. Ramsey p. 52.

58 S 792 (dated 973), printed and discussed in ECEE, pp. 171, 183.

59 GDB fo. 205. The agreement is said to have been made in the time of King Edward.

60 Margaret Gelling, Signposts to the Past (Chichester: Phillimore, 3rd edn, 1997), p. 171;

Margaret Gelling, Place Names in the Landscape (London: J.M. Dent, 1984), p. 109. Since

the name Lutegaresberi (and variants thereof) is preserved only in late and clearly corrupt

forms, the second element is diffi cult to identify, but beorg, ‘hill, mound’, is likely.

61 GDB fos 145, 151. For Wulfweard, see the NDNB.

62 S 1503; EHD i, p. 550, n. 6;GDB fo. 69v. The earlier form of the name was Lurgershall.


64 Carnicelli, King Alfred’s Version of St Augustine’s Soliloquies, p. 48 (huntigan, and fuglian,

and fi scian); S 134 (792), S 183 (821), S 186, translated in EHD i, no. 83 (822); S 197 (844

for 848); S 198 (845 for 844); S 267, translated in EHD i, no. 87; S 1271 (844 for 843). S 278,

an alleged diploma of Ecgbert of Wessex dated 835, is a later forgery.

www.trin.cam.ac.uk/sdk13/ASCalendar/ASCalendar.html


211N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 0 – 1 3 2

65 Asser, Life of Alfred, ch. 76. Alfred may have possessed or composed a book on hawks; one

of the items in a library catalogue of 1315 from Christ Church, Canterbury, is Liber Aluredi

regis de custodiendis accipitribus (Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, p. 144).

66 S 1511; Chron. Ramsey p. 52. Fishing is not mentioned in the account of Æthelwine’s grant,

but ‘fi sh-weirs’ (gurgitum piscariis) were among the appurtenances of Upwood.

67 Vita Edward, pp. 62–63 and see n. 1 above; GDB fo. 56v.

68 Wilson (ed.), Bayeux Tapestry, no. 2; C. Homer Haskins, ‘King Harold’s Books’, EHR 37

(1922): 398–400.

69 Florence E. Harmer, ‘The English contribution to the epistolary usages of the early

Scandinavian kings’, Saga Book of the Viking Society 13 (1950): 115–55 (128–29).

70 S 37, 178, 186, 188. S 914 (1006 for 1002) is a forgery, but of the eleventh century.

71 GDB fos 34, 144, 152. Chalfont St Giles was assessed at four hides and three virgates; Tovi,

King Edward’s thegn, also held two hides in Ibstone (GDB fo. 147v); he is probably identical

with Tovi King Edward’s housecarl, who held three hides and 1¾ virgates in Bedfordshire

(GDB fos 216v, 217v). Although his total recorded holding amounts only to just over

nine hides, his status would have been raised by his position as a member of the king’s

following.

72 In Gloucestershire, eyries are recorded only on estates connected with Brihtric Ælfgar’s son,

at Avening, Hanbury Castle and Forthampton (GDB fos 163v, 180v), and in Worcestershire,

Earl Eadwine had four eyries at Bromsgrove (GDB fo. 172). The only recorded eyrie in

Herefordshire was attached to Queen Edith’s manor of Leominster (GDB fo. 180).

73 GDB fos 256v, 257. Alwine liber homo probably held land at Patton and Stacton as well as

Rushbury, and perhaps at Tugford (GDB fo. 254), but all together this would give him no

more that 12½ hides; his name, however, is common. The names of the holders of Wem,

Wicga, Leofwine and two women called Ælfgifu, reappear in the neighbouring entries in

conjunction and with other names, linkages which suggest a single kindred, but none of

the holdings are of any size.

74 For Dunning, see GDB fos 266v, 267v; he still held Kingsley, where there were four roe

deer haiae as well as a hawk’s eyrie, of Earl Roger in 1086. For Dot, who held at Wilkesley

and Wincham, to both of which eyries were attached (GDB fos 265v, 267), see Lewis,

‘Joining the dots’, p. 86. King Edward’s eyries (number unspecifi ed) at Penwortham are

specifi cally said to have been there before 1066 (GDB fo. 270). Earl Eadwine had four eyries

at Adlington and Earl Morcar had one at Acton (GDB fos 264, 265v).

75 GDB fos 179v, 187.

76 GDB fos 259, 264.

77 GDB fo. 310v.


79 See S 198, 207, 1271, which mention keepers of both falcones and accipitres.

80 Spearhafoc, monk of Bury, was appointed abbot of Peterborough in 1048 (AS Chronicle ‘E’)

and bishop of London in 1050 (AS Chronicle, ‘CD’), but was expelled from the latter offi ce

in 1051. The byname puttoc (‘kite’) is also found; Ælfric puttoc (d. 1051) was archbishop

of York.

81 Dafydd Evans, ‘The nobility of knight and falcon’, Medieval Knighthood 3 (1990): 79–100

(85, 89–90).

212 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 2 – 1 3 4

82 Poems of Wisdom and Learning, pp. 60–63. The hawk’s trainer is called a hagosteald,

meaning ‘one living in the lord’s house, not having his own household, an unmarried

person, a young person, young warrior’.

83 GDB fo. 162. The words wealh and wælisca signifi ed both ‘foreigner’ in general and

‘Welshman’ in particular; the intruding Normans who built their castles in Earl Swein

Godwineson’s earldom are described as þa welisce menn (AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1051).

84 E. Dümmler (ed.), SS Bonifatii et Lulli epistolae (Monumenta Germanica Historica

Epistolae, 3; Berlin: Weidmannos, 1892), no. 105, p. 392. In the later Middle Ages, the most

prestigious bird of prey was the gruarius, ‘crane-falcon’ (Evans, ‘The nobility of knight and

falcon’, pp. 89–90).

85 Dümmler, SS Bonifatii et Lulli epistolae, no. 69, p. 337.

86 Dafydd Edwards, personal communication.

87 GDB fos 64v, 154v, 172 (Worcester), 219, 230, 238. In all cases, the sum was to be rendered

at the rate of 20d to the ore, a characteristic of royal dues.

88 GDB fo. 36v.

89 Scragg (ed.), Battle of Maldon, lines 5–10, p. 52.

90 Keith Dobney and Deborah Jacques, ‘Avian signatures for identity and status in Anglo-

Saxon England’, Acta Zoologica Cracoviensia (special issue) 45 (2002): 7–21.

91 BL Ms Cotton Julius A vi, Tiberius B v. For the images, see <www.trin.cam.ac.uk/sdk13/

ASCalendar/ASCalendar.html> (accessed 1 March 2008); the Julius image is also illustrated

in Owen-Crocker, ‘Hawks and horse-trappings’, p. 221, plate 13.2.

92 Carola Hicks, ‘The birds on the Sutton Hoo purse’, ASE 15 (1986): 153–65. Dobney and

Jacques, ‘Avian signatures’, passim.

93 Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, book ii§2.

94 Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 31; Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 140–46.

95 Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, p. 456.

96 The reciprocity is indicated in the earliest code (that of Æthelbert of Kent) by the fact that

a ceorl’s dependant is called a hlafeata: ‘loaf-eater’ (Abt 25).

97 Gautier, Le Festin dans l’Angleterre anglo-saxonne, pp. 49–52.

98 EHD i, no. 235 (p. 834 and n. 2).

99 Sancti Dunstani Vita auctore B, in Mem. St Dunstan, pp. 17–18.

100 Darlington, Vita Wulfstani, book iii§3; WmM, GP, ch. 139.

101 Hume, ‘The concept of the hall’, p. 66.

102 Chron. Ramsey, pp. 135–40. Æthelric subsequently gave the estate to Ramsey Abbey.

The tale is one of a number which have Danish incomers as their butt, and may refl ect

contemporary attitudes to such foreign interlopers in the east midlands.

103 Chapter 6 above. In The Wanderer (line 36) the exiled retainer makes a similar complaint

that ‘all joy is gone’ (wyn eal gedreas).

104 Debbie Banham, Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud: Tempus, 2004), p. 8.

Drink rather than food was still the focus of post-Conquest festal descriptions; see, for

instance, Wace’s description of Arthur’s coronation feast, in Judith Weiss (ed. and trans.),

Wace, Roman de Brut: A History of the British (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999),

pp. 263–65 (I owe this reference to Val Fallon).

105 S 1506 (dated 958); Robertson, Charters, no. 32.



213N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 4 – 1 3 6

106 GDB fo. 17v.

107 Gwara, Anglo-Saxon Conversations, pp. 178–79; Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 46–48,

294–95.


109 Anglo-Saxon Charters, Appendix II, no. 8, pp. 252–53, 501–502. The fragment comes from

Bury St Edmunds, and the Scandinavian loan-words suggest that it relates to the eastern

counties. The date is incalculable, but it is attested by Wægen, a rare name otherwise

recorded only as that of Earl Leofric’s housecarl (see Chapter 4 above). For the second feast

(on the anniversary of the death) the only provision is 11½ ores (184d), rather less than

the combined total (202d) to be expended on the fi rst. In this calculation I have assumed

a rate of 16d to the ore; 20d to the ore was normally used only for royal dues. The testator

also left money for ale, bread, a fl itch of bacon and a bucc to ‘the priests and deacons and

clerics’, presumably those who were to conduct his funeral.

110 David Sherlock, ‘Anglo-Saxon monastic sign language at Christ Church, Canterbury’,

Archaeologia Cantiana 107 (1989): 1–27 (9–10). The novice in Ælfric’s Colloquy lists much

the same items, vegetables, eggs, fi sh, cheese, butter and beans, but he was still allowed to

eat meat (Ælfric’s Colloquy, p. 46).

111 For the kinds of foodstuffs available at different times of the year, see Hagen, Anglo-Saxon

Food, p. 458.

112 VII Atr 2 (Latin); see also VII Atr 2 (Anglo-Saxon). The common fasts and feasts to be

observed are stipulated in V Atr 12§3–20.

113 VI As (‘Ordinance of the bishops and reeves of London’) 8§6; Anglo-Saxon Charters,

no. 104, pp. 192–93. In the twelfth century, peasants who undertook compulsory

ploughing-services were entitled to bread and companagium, ‘something to go with

bread’: see, for example, N.E. Stacy (ed.), Charters and Custumals of Shaftesbury Abbey,

1089–1216 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 97. For the classical period, see

James Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens

(London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 21–22.

114 Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 389–90.



117 Banham, Food and Drink in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 17–18.

118 There was a communal bakehouse in Creaton (Northants) as late as the eve of the

Second World War, to which pies, stews and roasts were sent, as well as bread, from the

surrounding households; the author can just remember as a child accompanying her

maternal grandmother to the bakehouse with the family’s bread and rolls.

119 What appears to be a portable oven or stove, set over a fi re, appears in one of the scenes in

the Bayeux Tapestry (Wilson, Bayeux Tapestry, plate. 47, p. 187).


121 Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 288–90; LDB fo. 372.

122 Liebermann, i, p. 455; Gardiner, ‘Implements and utensils in Gerefa’, pp. 263–4. The list

of equipment includes small cauldron, leaden vessel, large cauldron (‘kettle’), ladle, pans,

earthenware pots, the grid iron, dishes and a scoop.

123 Sykes, Norman Conquest, pp. 89–90.

214 N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 3 6 – 1 4 1

124 Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 167–69.

125 GDB fo. 17v. By 1086, a porpoise had been added to the annual renders of Stone (Kent), a

manor of the bishop of Rochester (GDB fo. 5v).

126 Ælfric’s Colloquy, pp. 29–30. Ælfric was Abbot of Eynsham (Oxon), and his description

of the fi sherman’s catch and techniques might relate to practices on the upper Thames:

see Hirokazu Tsurushima, ‘The eleventh century in England through fi sh-eyes: salmon,

herring, oysters, and 1066’, ANS 29 (2007): 193–223 (195).

127 IV Atr 2§4,5. See Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, pp. 165–66.


129 Hagen, Anglo-Saxon Food, p. 168.

130 Tsurushima, ‘The eleventh century through fi sh-eyes’, pp. 200–6.

131 Fleming, ‘The new wealth’, pp. 5–6.

132 For the herring/salmon dichotomy, see Tsurushima, ‘The eleventh century through

fi sh-eyes’, pp. 196–99; Tsurushima points out a similar cultural divide in Japan, where at

the New Year celebrations salmon is eaten in the east, and yellowtail in the west. The only

reference to salmon-fi shing in eastern England which I have managed to fi nd is in the will

of the Yorkshire couple Ærnketel and Wulfrun (978–1016), which includes a render of

eight salmon during Lent to the brethren of Ramsey from the manor of Hicking; Dr Hart

suggests that the fi sh concerned came from the River Smite, which formed the border of

Hickling and Kinoulton, which also belonged to the couple (Chron. Ramsey, pp. 66–67;

ECNENM, pp. 112–13, and n. 2).

133 GDB fos 263v, 266v.

134 GDB fos 165v, 179v, 109.

135 S 1381.

136 S 1426.

Notes to Appendix 1: The Assessment of Land and Wealth

1 See the case of Offham (Chapter 3 above), bought for a mark of gold (£6), £13 of silver

and 63d (5s 3d), but ‘worth’ £2 in Domesday Book (GDB fo. 7).

2 The hide was notionally the amount of land which would support a free man’s family for

a year. In some areas, notably the north and east, the unit of assessment was the carucate,

while in Kent the sulung was used; both terms are connected with the word ‘plough’

(OE sulh, Latin caruca), but the same concept seems to underlie both, and for the purposes

of calculation, I have regarded the hide, the carucate and the sulung as equivalents.

3 Roffe, Decoding Domesday, pp. 240–50, 313–16.


Notes to Appendix 2: Count Eustace’s Divorce, 1049

1 Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s ancestors’, p. 38.

2 AS Chronicle ‘D’, 1051.

215N O T E S T O PA G E S 1 4 1 – 1 4 5

3 Heather Tanner, ‘The expansion of the power and infl uence of the counts of Boulogne

under Eustace II’, ANS 14 (1991): 251–86 (256–57, 263–64) and Genealogy IV.

Notes to Appendix 3: The Earldom of Hereford

1 AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1051; JnW ii, pp. 55–56.

2 GDB fo. 186.

3 AS Chronicle ‘C’ 1052; JnW ii, pp. 570–73.

4 JnW ii, pp. 570–71; AS Chronicle, ‘CDE’, 1052.

5 AS Chronicle 1055, 1057; JnW ii, pp. 576–79, 582–83.

6 GDB fo. 186.

7 AS Chronicle ‘E’, 1051, 1052. The castle and castelry of Ewias Harold was held in 1086 by

Osbern’s nephew Alvred of Marlborough, to whom it had been given by Earl William

fi tzOsbern, but no pre-Conquest holder of the associated land is named, nor is it assessed

in hides, and it may not have been in English hands before 1066; see C.P. Lewis, ‘An

introduction to the Herefordshire Domesday’, in Ann Williams and R.W.H. Erskine (eds),

The Herefordshire Domesday (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1988), pp. 1–22 (11).

Notes to Appendix 4: The Antecedents of Wihtgar

1 Keynes, Atlas, tables XXXIX(2), XLIII (1), XLIII(2), XLIV(1); S 379, 400, 403, 411–13,

416–18, 422–23, 425, 427, 430, 438, 440, 442–43, 448–49.

2 Barbara Yorke, ‘The Jutes of Hampshire and Wight and the origins of Wessex’, in Steven

Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (Leicester: Leicester University Press,

1989), pp. 84–96; Keynes and Lapidge, Alfred the Great, p. 68.


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Index

Abba 106

abbeys 118

Abingdon sword 106

Adelard of Bath 130

Ælfgar mæw 13−14

Ælfgifu 13

Ælfheah 26

Ælfric, Archbishop 110

Ælfric, brother of Odda 11, 16

Ælfric, Colloquy of 124, 127−8, 135, 137

Ælfric, son of Wihtgar 36−7

Ælfric of Hampshire 37

Ælfric parvus 101−4

Ælfsige of Faringdon 100−1

Ælfstan of Boscombe 19, 32

Ælfstan steallere 32

Ælfweard of Longdon 7

Ælfwine, Bishop 16

Ælfwold, Bishop 64, 67, 82

Æthelberht II, King of Kent 132

Æthelfrith, King 94

Æthelingadene, Battle of 70

Æthelmær 14, 26

Æthelnoth cild 54−5

Æthelred, ealdorman of Mercia 106

Æthelred, King of Mercia 85

Æthelred unræd, King 9−10, 13−16, 21, 56,

61, 71, 99, 110

Æthelric bigga 40, 50

Æthelstan, King 8, 105−6

Æthelstan the ætheling 64−7, 77, 106−7,

110−12, 116−17

Æthelweard the chronicler 11, 13

Æthelweard mæw 13−14

Æthelwine the Black 36

Æthelwulf, King 76, 106

Ailred of Rievaulx 95

Aldhun, Bishop of Durham 9

Alfred, King 1, 67, 75−7, 84, 89, 92−6, 105−6,

117, 124, 130

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 16, 27, 61, 68, 70, 72,

95−6, 119, 141, 143

arm-rings 114−16

Assandun, Battle of 11

Asser 89, 92−5

assessment of land and wealth 139−40

Baxter, Stephen 22

Bayeux Tapestry 71, 91, 95, 121, 130

Bede 33, 85, 93−4, 98

belfries 91−2

Beorn Estrithson 18

Beowulf 93−4, 115

bequests 64−6

Blickling Homilies 109

Boethius 105

Boldon Book 128−9

Bondi the staller 19, 31−2

Boniface, Archbishop of Saxony 132

bookland 76−7, 82−4, 139−40

Brihtferth 13

Brihtric 13, 17−18, 21

Brungar 75

Burgred 19

burhs 89−96

Byrhtnoth 5

Caradoc ap Gruffud 128

cavalry 111

ceorls 2−4, 69

Charlemagne 107

church-building 97−9

I N D E X238

churchscot 78

Clarke, Peter A. 4

clothing 117−21

Cnut, King 2, 8−9, 11, 14, 16, 99, 119, 123

law code of 4−5, 61, 63, 69−70, 83

Colman, Rebecca V. 101

comital manors 22−3

comital wills 65−6, 109

commendation to a lord 69−70, 73, 75−6

Conrad II, Emperor 87, 119

conspicuous consumption 137

Cynewig chelle 5

Danelaw 61

Deerhurst 11−16, 21, 98

Denewulf, Bishop 77

Domesday Book 4−10, 13, 18−24, 29−32,

39−40, 53, 57, 60−1, 79−83, 86, 120,

124−5, 131−2, 136−7, 139, 143

Dunstan, Archbishop 95

Eadred, King 25, 106, 133

Eadric streona 9, 14

Eadsige, Archbishop 50

Eadui basan 8

Eadwig, King 124

Eadwine 5, 58−9

ealdormen 5, 25

Ealdred, Earl 9

Ealdwulf, Bishop and Archbishop 137

earldoms 24

Earnwine 6

Ecgfrida 9

Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria 85

Edgar, King 26, 82, 87, 99, 121

Edmund I, King 71, 76, 126−8

Edmund II Ironside, King 11, 14, 64

Edward the Confessor 6, 11, 14−20, 27, 95,

123, 128, 130

Edward the Elder 76−7

Edward the Martyr 11

Ely Abbey 57−8

Emma, Queen 27

eorls 4−5, 69

‘errand-bearers’ 72−3, 80−1

Esbean bigga 40

Esger contractus 30−1, 35

Esger the staller 29−32

estates, break-up of 86

Eustace, Count of Boulogne 141

Exeter Book 95

falconry 131−2

famine 88

fi sh, eating of 136−7

fl ooding 88

folkland 84

foodstuffs 134−7

The Fortunes of Men (poem) 132

Geoffrey de Mandeville 29

Gepyncđu (tract) 88, 91, 96−7, 135

Gerefa (tract) 89, 96−7, 136

Godgifu 18, 118

Godric of Brabourne 39−40, 49−51, 55, 77, 112

Godwine, Earl 14−17, 20−3, 39, 51, 70, 105,

116, 143

Goltho 90−1, 94, 97

Gospatric 70−1, 85−6, 117−18

Gunnhild 27

Guthmund 4−6

Gytha 18−20, 118

Hakon, King of Norway 105−6

halls as symbols of authority 92−4

hamsocn 71

Harold fi tzRalph 20

Harold Godwinson 16−17, 20, 28−9, 55, 71,

123, 130−1, 143

Harold Harefoot 128

Harthacnut, King 26, 105, 128

hawking 130−3

Hemming 78, 115

Hereford, Earldom of 143

heriots 3−7, 20, 109−13

Hexateuch 121

hidage values 139−40

hiredmenn 68, 72−3, 81

I N D E X 239

Hitchin 30

Horningsea 33−5

horses, use of 111, 127

hunting 123−33

Ida of Lorraine 141

Imma 85−6

John of Worcester 14, 27, 71, 105, 116, 127−8,

143

Ketel 5

Keynes, S. 18

Königsnehe 1, 8

lænland 76−84

Larson, L.M. 31−2

Leofric, Earl 64, 98

Leofsige 25

Leofwine of Caddington 19

Leofwine the priest 39−40

Leofwine se reada 51

Liber Benefactorum 133

Liber Wigornensis 78

Little Domesday 21, 69, 75

lordship, concept and varieties of 63, 75

Lyfi ng, Bishop 16−17

Maitland, F.W. 21−2, 75

Malcolm, King of Scotland 117, 119

Maldon, Battle of 5, 68, 70, 105, 111

manorialization 104

Merewine 7

minsters 98−9

mobility, social 2

Morcar 9

Morris, Richard 101

New Forest 123

noble status 86

De Obsessione Dunelmi 9

Odda, Earl 11−17, 20−3

Offa, King of Mercia 76, 107

optimates 18

Orderic Vitalis 121

Osbern Pentecost 23, 143

Osgod clapa 26−8, 31−2

Oslac 26

Oswald, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop

of York 78−80, 124, 127

Osweard of Harrietsham 49−50

Osweard of Norton 57

Oswulf of Studham 99−100

peasantry 2

pedisequi 32−3

Portchester 89, 91, 94, 96

privacy 95

Promotion Law 2−3

Ralph, Earl of Hereford 14, 19−20, 143

Ralph the staller 31−2

Ramsey Abbey 60

Ramsey Chronicle 129

Richard, son of William I 127

‘riding-men’ 79−80

Robert fi tzWymarc 75

Robert of Normandy 18

rustici 8

Salisbury Oath (1086) 81

salmon fi sheries 137

satraps 25

Saxo Grammaticus 113−14

Sermon of the Wolf 88

Sherston, Battle of 14

shire-courts 55−6

Sigeferth 9

Sired of Chilham 53−4

Siward of Chilham 56

Snorri Sturlusson 105−6

sokemen and sokeland 82−3

stallers 26−32

Stenton, F.M. 124

stone buildings 88−94, 99

Styr, son of Ulf 9

Sven Aggeson 105

I N D E X240

Swein Estrithson 27

Swein Forkbeard, King 14

Swein Godwineson 18, 20, 143

swords 105−9

taini regis status 6

Tanner, Heather 141

Tewkesbury and the Tewkesbury Chronicle

13−14, 83, 86−7, 92−4

textiles 119−20

thegnland 81−3

thegnly churches 99

thegns 2−10, 17−18, 61, 66−7, 73, 87−8

thegn’s law 80

third-penny manors 22−3

Thorkell the Tall 9, 135

Thurbrand hold 2, 9

tithes 99

Tostig, Earl 119, 123

Tovi the Proud 27−31, 118, 129−30

trade 119

Uhtred, Earl 9

Ulfcytel 107−8

Vagn 5

Vita Edwardi 120, 123

Waltham Abbey 56

Waltham Chronicle 28−31

The Wanderer (poem) 69, 93

wealth, valuation of 139−40

wergeld 1−2

The Wife’s Lament (poem) 90, 133

Wihtgar 36, 145

William I, King 6

William II, King 127

William of Malmesbury 8, 71, 88, 92, 95−6, 117

William of Poitiers 117−20

wills 65−6, 109, 116−17

Winchester 6

Worcester Cathedral Priory 78

Wulfric, abbot of Ely 4−5

Wulfsige the priest 56

Wulfstan lupus, bishop of Worcester

(1002−16), archbishop of York (1002−23)

2−5, 11, 25, 31, 63, 72−3,

Wulfstan, St, bishop of Worcester (1062−95),

132–3, 134

Wulfstan cantor 71

Wulfstan of Dalham 33−6

Wulfstan of Durham 77

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