others, as by their values under the Confessor receiving the same treat- ment, while those of the three estates annexed by the Conqueror are entered as ' renders.' In other words, although these lands had all alike been held by Harold, Risborough, Swanbourne, and Upton are recorded to have ' rendered' £10, £1 10s, and 1£5 respectively ; Wooburn and Ellesborough are entered as having been 'worth' £15 and £9 As Domesday uses the two words carefully and by way of distinction, one is tempted to suggest that the three manors differed in character from the two, the more so as there is reason to believe that in the adjoining county of Herts the lands entered as Harold's had really been Crown manors. It might, again, be suggested that the three had really been ' comital ' manors, held, that is, by Harold in his official capacity as the earl. Professor Maitland indeed has said that
one of the best marked features of Domesday Book, a feature displayed on page after page, 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 . . . The greater part of the land ascribed to Godwin, his widow and his sons, seems to consist of comttales villa.[1]
Mr. Freeman, however, considered that Buckinghamshire was
- probably ' within the earldom of Harold's brother, Leofwine, a belief
which he based largely on the number of Leofwine's ' men ' within it.[2]
So far as the lands they held are evidence, there is nothing to tell us which of the brothers had been earl in this county. Leofwine had held six estates as against Harold's five, but their annual value was about £13 less. Those of Tostig, the third brother, were only three in num- ber, but were worth rather more than those of Harold himself. It is worthy of notice that while the Bishop of Bayeux had obtained, as in Kent, Surrey, and Hertfordshire, the whole of Leofwine's land, save only Halton, this latter had gone to the Archbishop of Canterbury. For in the adjoining county of Middlesex Leofwine occurs as having held at Edward's death the vast manor of Harrow, which had similarly passed to Lanfranc in 1086, and had done so, clearly, because it formed part of the possessions of his see. From this we may conjecture that if Halton passed, unlike the rest of Leofwine's land, into the hands of Lanfranc, it was because the see of Canterbury had claims to its pos- session, and that this was also why Lanfranc obtained the important manor of ' Nedreham,' which had been held by Tostig. For Godwine and his sons are accused of being apt to encroach on the lands of the Church, and Tostig is charged in the English Chronicle with having ' robbed God.' Turning from the lands of the three brothers to their ' men ' within the county, we find that, as Mr. Freeman observed, Leof- wine had a good number ; but Harold had almost as many. On the whole, therefore, one cannot say that Domesday affords much evidence for the tenure of the earldom by Leofwine.
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