DOMESDAY SURVEY brooke — by his benefactions to his Norman foundations at Cormeilles and La Vieille Lyre, benefactions which included also, on the mainland, charges on the revenues of Southampton. And this evidence is supplemented by inci- dental allusions to the former extent of his possessions.** Now^ when we turn to Herefordshire, it is precisely similar evidence that enables us to prove our point, for although Domesday shows us the manors of ancient demesne which King Edward had held in the hands of King William, it also records the gift of their churches and tithes to the earl's abbey of Cormeilles. Marden and the manor which follows it are, indeed, exceptions,*' but in both cases Domesday shows us that the earl had dealt with these manors. Again, among Roger de Laci's lands we find two of King Edward's manors ; but we are expressly told that Earl Wilham had given them to Ewan the Breton, and on one of them the abbey of Cormeilles had received the usual gift of the tithe and a virgate of land. The Pipe Rolls of the reign of Henry H show that these gifts were deemed valid,'" for they enter the earl's two abbeys as receiving ^12 a year ea.ch de c/ecimh constitutis irom. the revenues of the county. Again, it is clear that at Hereford Earl William was holding the same position as Earl Roger at Shrewsbury, the revenues of which town, Domesday tells us, were paid to the earl (not to the king). For, in the first place William Fitz Osbern took upon himself to grant to the French burgesses of Hereford ' the laws and customs of Breteuil,' " his Norman lordship ; and in the next, he boldly transferred, for financial purposes, to Herefordshire several Worcestershire and Gloucestershire manors, which are accordingly surveyed, as a separate group, under this county. What he actually seems to have done is to have made these nine manors, which he held in his private capacity, pay their rents ad Hereford, as part of the revenues he drew from his possession of that city."^ The strange thing is that this personal arrange- ment should have survived the downfall of his son and thrown the survey of these counties into such confusion. The evidence on these outlying manors strengthens the theory above set forth, for of three of them it is expressly recorded that the earl himself had bestowed their tithes on his Norman foundations.'^ These manors enable us also to see how his great possessions were built up apart from his holding of royal demesne, and prove that, as in Herefordshire itself, he had obtained some of Queen Edith's lands, a fact which, as Professor Tait observes of his dealing with Cleobury (Mortimer) in Shropshire, proves that the queen cannot, as Mr. Freeman imagined, have retained all her possessions till her death." «» F.C.H. Hants, i, 408-10.
- ° So also is Monmouth [then in the county], but I have argued that the confirmation of revenue there
to the abbey of Cormeilles proves that William Fitz Osbern had held it {Studies in Peerage and Family History,i8^). '° It is very noteworthy that his local legislation also remained valid in at least two matters, viz., the special pecuniary privileges that he granted (l) to his French burgesses at Hereford, (2) to his knights in the county. William of Malmesbury writes, of the latter : — 'Manet ad hanc diem in comitatu ejus apud Herefordam legum quas statuit inconcussa firmitas ut nullus miles pro qualicumque commisso plus septem solidos solvat,' &c. In other counties they would have been fined much more. " See below. "' See below. " ' Hujus manerii aecclesiam cum terra ibi pertinente et cum sua decima dedit comes W. S. Maria: de Cormeliis, etc. . . . Hujus manerii decimam et ascclesiam cum presbitero, etc. . . . dedit comes W. aecclesiae S. Mariae. . . . Willelmus comes dedit decimam hujus Manerii S. Mariae de Lire,' etc. (fol. i8o3). " y.C.H. Shrofs. i, 289, n. 45. Injustice, however, to Mr. Eyton, it should be observed that he laid stress on this Cleobury evidence as proof that Edith must have been deprived of part, at least, of her estates before 1 07 1 {Hist. ofShnps. iv, 194). But the evidence for Edith's identity is very slight. In Herefordshire iilone, and only on one manor there, is Ralf 's predecessor styled ' regina.' 271
