ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY THE ecclesiastical history of Rutland does not present any features of special interest ; it is indeed merely a collection of statistics, and has no completeness or individuality. This will not however cause any surprise to the student who bears in mind that we are here dealing with what was until quite recently only a single deanery in the arch- deaconry of Northampton. It is not within the scope of this paper to discuss in what sense Rutland was a county at all before the Conquest ; it will be enough to say that the two wapentakes of Alfnodestou and Martinslei, which at the time of the Domesday Survey were united under the name of Rutland, had formed in earlier days a part of the kingdom of Mercia. Whether at the division of the great central diocese they passed under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Leicester or of Lindsey it is not easy to decide.^ At any rate they shared the fortunes of the other midland counties at the time of the Danish invasion ; and such churches or monasteries as were built before that period no doubt perished in the general ruin. They had their share also in the restoration which followed. The Domesday Survey mentions the existence of a church and priest both at Oakham and at Whitwell ; in the group of hamlets of which Hambleton was the centre there were three priests and three churches ; in the Ridlington district two priests and three churches. In the Wiceslai Hundred, not yet separated from Northamptonshire, there was a priest resident at Ketton, at Horn, at Great and Little Casterton, and at one at least of the Luffenhams. We may gather from these notices, on the usually received theory, that the parochial system was fairly well established in Rut- land before the Conquest. Only a few gifts of land had as yet been granted to cathedrals and monasteries outside the county. The Bishop of Durham had a manor in Horn worth ^4. The Abbot of Peterborough had a manor at Tinwell worth ^Ty in all ; no allusion is made in the Survey to the rights which Earls Siward and Waltheof were said to have given his predecessors in Ryhall and Belmesthorpe.^ All these Church lands, it may be noted, were in the county of Northampton, and not in either of the two wapentakes which then went ' The connexion in later times between this district and Northamptonshire makes it probable that it had formerly Iain within the territory of the Middle Angles, in which Oundle and Peterborough were situated. If this were the case the whole of the modern Rutland will have formed part of the Leicester diocese. " Kemble, Cod. Dip!, iv, 265. This charter of Waltheof implies that the abbot had never really enjoyed the manors ; the earl and his father before him had held the lands for life, only promising that they should finally revert to Peterborough. At the time of the Survey they were held by Waltheof's widow the Countess Judith, who seems to have had no idea of carrying out her husband's intentions. The charter of Wulfhere (ibid. V, 2), which would make the two manors part of the original endowment of the abbey, has very little historical value.
