THE DOMESDAY SURVEY read of Abbot's Langley : ' of this manor Herbert son of Ivo took and occupied i hide between wood and plain {planum) in the time of the bishop of Bayeux' (fo. 135^). On a Bedfordshire manor the same phrase occurs in connection with a similar aggression : * William de Caron claims 60 acres between wood and plain . . . of which Ralf Taillebosc ' disseised his father' (fo. 210). In Worcestershire also we find this phrase, ' inter boscum et planum.' Domesday uses ' inter ' in the sense of ' reckoning together,' and the odd combination of the two words repre- sents, I think, the English formula ' by wode and by felde.' Herbert himself occurs in Bedfordshire, where he was the bishop of Bayeux's chief under-tenant. The subject of aggression leads me to speak of the losses suffered by religious houses through the Normans seizing lands forfeited by Englishmen who held them only as tenants of those houses with no power to alienate them. Of this we have examples at Watton. As observed above (p. 285), TElfwine Home had held there a 5~hide estate as ' a thegn of king Edward.' The other 5 hides at Watton were thus held before the Conquest H. Abbot of Westminster I /Elfric blac ' of ' the same abbot 2 JElfmxr, a man of the said jElfric o Godwine 'of Westminster Abbey i
- had no power to alienate (the land) from the abbey,' and
Godwine similarly ' had no power to sell ' it ; indeed after Godwine's death it ought to have reverted to the abbey. Nevertheless archbishop Lanfranc secured ./Elfric's share because ' for other lands,' as Domesday puts it, he was ' a man of archbishop Stigand, Lanfranc's predecessor ' ; and count Alan is found in possession of Godwine's share because God- wine's wife (or widow) was induced to commend herself to ' Eadgyth the Fair,' to whose lands, and to those of her ' men,' count Alan suc- ceeded (fos. 136^7). Further, under this last holding we read that ' after the coming of king William ' there had been filched from it 1 6 acres 'which Anschitil de Ros now (1086) holds under the archbishop.' The special value of this statement is that it enables us to identify the
- Anschitil ' who was the archbishop of Canterbury's tenant at Watton,
Datchworth and two other places as that Anschitil de Ros who held largely in Kent of the bishop of Bayeux, having followed him to England from what is now ' Rots,' between Bayeux and Caen. It is probable that, as we know from Domesday was the case in other counties, these lands of which the tenant had no power to alienate them from the church were held under a lease for lives. Thus at Gaddesden (fo. 139) a large manor was held of the abbot of St. Alban's by a tenant who ' had no power to alienate it from (mittere extra) the 1 See p. 284 above. 291
