DOMESDAY SURVEY Cormeilles, we know little about them. At Linton the gift included the priest's land ; "^ but in the other cases we only read of tithes. On the bishop's fief we have cases of substantial glebe ; at Little Hereford the priest had half a hide, at Bromyard the two priests had i hide, at Bosbury the priest had a hide, but at Cradley only a virgate and a half, and at Frome a virgate. His holding of 2J hides at Ledbury seems almost suspiciously large for glebe. On the fiefs in lay hands there is at Fownhope a clear instance of glebe, where half a hide is entered as belonging to the church itself.^'^ In Archenfield three priests held their churches of the king by the tenure of acting as his envoys into Wales and of singing two masses a week for his soul. The line dividing the village priest from the upper class of the peasantry was but slender ; it is common enough in Domesday to find him entered with the villeins. Of the village community the lay officers were the gerefa iprepositus) and the ' bydel ' {bedellus), but, with the exception of a solitary entry under Worcestershire, it would seem to be only under Herefordshire that we meet with them as such."* Something, therefore, should be said of the entries concerning them. Ellis reckoned that forty-four prepositt and twenty-one bedelli are mentioned in our county ; "° but I make this to be so great an over-estimate that we must deduct from the former at least thirteen and from the latter twelve."' Thus we have only nine bedelli in Hereford- shire itself after all, and seven of these were attached to the great manor of Leominster. So remarkable is the form of the entry in which they appear that Professor Maitland was tempted to see in the arrangement it suggests ' a Welsh basis.' "^ It would be rash, however, to accept this suggestion, and comparison with other manors makes it probable that the apparent symmetry is largely due to coincidence. On the only other two Herefordshire manors where a bedellus occurs there is no prepositus, and conversely the prepositus occurs with no bedellus. Of the omission of one and more often of both of these officers the probable explanation is that they were only entered where they held a share in the ploughing arrangements — the mainspring of the village organization. In one instance the prepositus villae is entered as holding the manorial mill (fol. 182). The point on which I would specially insist is that at Leominster as in Worcestershire the prepositus is invariably assigned precedence of the bedellus. That the former was the superior officer is the view rightly taken by Ellis, i« 1 Presbiterum cum sua terra.' '" ' ii prcsbyteri cum ecclesia habente dimidiam hidam terre.' "' The Worcestershire entry is under the crown manor of Bromsgrove, where we find the ' prepositus <t bedellus cum presbitero ' grouped among the peasants between the villeins and the bordars {Dom. Bk. i, 172); but under Herefordshire (180^) we have, on four Worcestershire manors, ' et prepositus et bedel' entered regularly after the peasantry. Under Surrey (3 lb) we have an incidental mention of half a hide held by three men ex officio as ' bedelli ' on the royal manor of Kingston, and under Bedfordshire and Cambridge v, e have king's bedelli holding in their personal capacity, with the heading on fol. 209, ' Prefecti et bedelli regis,' a pre- cedence which is preserved in the entries. '" Inirod. to Dom. ii, 452, 454. "' This is partly due to Ellis including the Worcestershire manors with their five prepositt and four bedelli, -and partly to his actually adding the eight of each class at Leominster T.R.E. to the seven who occupied their places T.R.W. 117 '"phei-e were 8 reeves and 16 beadles, and 8 radknights, and 238 villeins, 75 bordiers, and 82 male and female serfs. ... It is a most interesting manor, for we see strong traces of a neat symmetrical arrange- ment : — witness the 16 members, 8 reeves, 8 radknights, 16 beadles ; very probably it has a Welsh basis.' {Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 1 1 2). But the Professor's figures are not quite accurate ; the ' 16 ' beadles should be ' 8.' 287
