A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE hand, and was granted out again by him to his minister Richard Basset, a member of one of the families which Henry ' raised from the dust ' at the expense of the nobility of the Conquest. The completeness of the transfer is proved by a comparison of the Leicestershire Survey with the documents relating to the Basset foundation of Launde Priory, Leicestershire," and it will be worked out in its own place. The fief had been held before the Conquest by a number of small but independent people, all of whom had been able to * go (with their land) whither they wished,' with the exception of one Seric, who held three carucates in Ragdale, ' but could not depart with them.' The small estate of Roger de Busli in Leicestershire was merely a frag- ment of the great honour of Blyth, and the succeeding fief of Robert Dis- pensator calls for no special notice here. The land of Guy de Reinbudcurt is more interesting. Guy held in demesne a manor of eighteen carucates in Thrussington on the Wreak, and a number of lands in the extreme south of the county, at Starmore, Misterton, Husbands Bosworth, and Kilworth. The lands in Kilworth, Husbands Bosworth, and Starmore, had been held by a certain Leuric, the pre-Conquest owner of Stanford on Avon just across the Northamptonshire border, and are entered in Domesday as ' belonging ' to Stanford. None of them is described as containing any demesne, so that we have here a case in which an estate forming an economic whole is cut by a county boundary. Further, we are told that the land in Starmore and Misterton is held of Guy de Reinbudcurt by 'Abbot Benedict,' and that he had ' bought ' from Guy 2j carucates of land in Husbands Bosworth. Now the abbot in question is Benedict, the founder of the great religious house of Selby, Yorkshire, 45 and the hero of one of the most romantic of modern legends. On turning to the Selby records printed in Dugdale's Monasticon 48 we find a charter of Guy de Reinbudcurt himself, in which he states that, for the love of God and the soul of his lord King William, and for the remission of his sins and those of his wife, sons, and all his relatives, he has given his vill of Stanford with all its appurtenances, including, of course, the Leicester- shire lands which we are considering, to Abbot Benedict and the church of St. German of Selby. Were it not for the evidence of Domesday Book we should never suspect that this pious formula covered a commonplace money transaction between the parties concerned ; and the fact has a wider bearing in its suggestion that the definite statements of legal documents of the period require careful scrutiny before we can be sure that we are possessed of their real meaning. 47 The Leicestershire fief of William Peverel, like that of Roger de Busli, was merely an appendage of a larger estate elsewhere. It comprised part of the honour of Nottingham, one of the typical ' escheats ' mentioned in Magna Charta. Within twenty years of 1086 the Cluniac priory of Lenton (Nott- inghamshire) had been founded on the estate, and several of William's Domesday tenants can be identified as contributing to the foundation. This is not definitely the case with regard to Leicestershire, but the Pagen who held of William in Lubbesthorpe, and the Sasfrid who was tenant of Ashby Magna, may reasonably be identified with the men of the same name who 44 See Teud. Engl. 212-13, an ^ Mm. Angl. vi, 188. 44 See Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv, App. The Foundation Legend of Selby Abbey.' 46 Mm. iii, 499. Compare also V.C.H. Northanti, i, 287. 294
