A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE describes his tenure is noteworthy, for it supplies an early example of a technical distinction which later became of immense importance in English land-law. We are told that, ' Edith the queen held these lands. Now God- win has them of the king at farm. But Dishley he holds of the king in fee (in feudo) ,' and the record goes on to state that Godwin also holds 2J hides and 4 carucates in Shepshed of the king in fee. This case has been noted by Professor Maitland, 25 who remarks that ' as in general a farmer would have no heritable rights,' Godwin's occupancy of Thorpe Acre, Saddington, and Wad- borough would be terminable at the king's pleasure. The case of Shepshed is also noteworthy for another reason, for Odo of Bayeux in the time of his regency had ordered that the manor should pay 6 ' for the service,' that is, probably, the military service, ' of the Isle of Wight.' Why a manor on the edge of Charnwood Forest should be required to contribute towards the de- fence of the Isle of Wight may not be very apparent, but the fact illustrates the way in which Domesday often reveals the existence of an unlikely con- nexion, fiscal or otherwise, between widely separated parts of the kingdom. The small fief of the archbishop of York, on which the most important manors were in Langton and Lubenham, is chiefly remarkable for the ex- ceptional subinfeudation of the latter vill. Lubenham as a whole was held of the archbishop by a certain Walchelin, and under him by a tenant named Robert. But a nameless knight held 3 carucates in Lubenham of this latter Robert, so that the five villeins and one bordar who cultivated the soil on that portion of the vill had four lords in ascending sequence between them and the king. This fact would be in no way remarkable in the thirteenth century, but it is exceptional in Domesday for more than two lords to inter- vene between the king and the peasant. 26 It also may incidentally be noticed that the carucate which the archbishop held in Tilton was assigned to the ' alms ' of the collegiate church of Southwell in Nottinghamshire. From the lands of the archbishop of York the survey proceeds to deal with the fief of the bishop of Lincoln, within whose diocese Leicestershire lay. The bishop's estates fall into two divisions : the first, regarded as be- longing to the church of Lincoln rather than to the bishop, consisting of land in the borough of Leicester, and a manor of i 2 carucates in Knighton ; the second comprising a number of manors which before the Conquest had been held by almost as many separate Englishmen, 27 and therefore representing rather the personal estate of Remigius of Fecamp than the lands of the see of Lincoln. Whatever possession may have belonged to the see of Leicester in the old days of the Mercian kingdom had been swept away in the general ruin occasioned by the great Danish settlement, and these few personal grants to Bishop Remigius contrast strongly with the handsome endowment which he possessed, largely as a result of the Conqueror's favour, in Lincoln- shire itself. Peterborough Abbey possessed in Leicestershire the two manors of East Langton and Great Easton. The latter, with its appurtenances in Glaston (Rutland), Drayton, Priestgrave, and Bringhurst, had been given to the 14 Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 152. * Ibid. 170. 17 All the bishop of Lincoln's predecessors in Leicestershire appear to have been quite unimportant people with the exception of the Bardi who had possessed ' Haliach.' He had preceded the bishop in a number of Northamptonshire manors and had been a considerable landowner in Lincolnshire itself, where he had held the great estate of Sleaford. 288
