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Page:VCH Rutland 1.djvu/194

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A HISTORY OF RUTLAND but also that the fact of her ownership would imply the payment into her treasury of a combined rent from the whole of this great estate. In 1086, indeed, the wapentakes of Alstoe and Martinsley seem only held apart from the adjacent shires and in connexion with each other by the payment of a ]oint ^rma to the crown and by the attribution of their geld to the sheriffdom of Nottingham : of a court common to the two wapentakes we read nothing, but we may feel certain that the administration of the district in matters both of iinance and jurisdiction would originally be placed in the hands of officers appointed by and responsible to the queen." It would be impossible in the present article to attempt to trace what may possibly have been the history of Rutland in still earlier times ; but such inferences as are to be drawn in connexion with this matter from the local geography of the Welland valley by no means conflict with the theory before us, which, at least, supplies a possible explanation of the anomalous position occupied by the district when it first appears in detail before us in the pages of the Great Survey.'" " In 1003 a French reeve of Queen Emma appears in command of Exeter. Angl.-Sax. Chron. jui anno. '^ The name ' Rutl.md ' may be compared with that of the adjoining wapentake of Framland, Leicester- shire (Dom. Bk. * Framland ' ), and with Aveland Wapentake, Lincolnshire. Possibly the original Rutland m,iy have been a wapentake of Northamptonshire, subsequently divided into the wapentakes of Alstoe and M.irtinsley, the bouniaries of the latter being designedly drawn so as to include the whole of the royal estate in this district. 136