DOMESDAY SURVEY queror retained in his own hands when he apportioned the county to his followers. At the time of the survey, however, he also held Rother- field, which had belonged to his unruly brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent. This estate had also belonged to Earl Godwin, and although only assessed at 3 hides was of considerable extent and included a park, in which some writers' have seen the explan- ation of the king's seizure of this one item of Odo's great fee, which was otherwise intact in 1086, though the prelate himself was in dis- grace. The economic importance of the smallness of the Conqueror's estate in Sussex lay in the resulting fact that Bosham was the only manor of ' ancient demesne,' and that consequently when the villeins of Brede, Steyning, Laughton, and other manors attempted, as they did occasionally during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, to claim the special privileges which attached to manors of ' ancient demesne,' their claims ' scrutato libro de Domesdei ' always failed. Next to the king came the ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief, beginning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, who held extensively in the county, his chief estate being the manor and hundred of South Mailing, which formed a broad strip of land reaching north-east from Lewes to the borders of Kent. It had been rated at 80 hides, but 5 hides had been annexed by the Count of Mortain — who had also taken away i| hides of the archbishop's manor of Wootton ; — it is said to have been leased to Godfrey^ at £()0, but as the value of the demesne thus leased was only ^jo and had been as low as £30 previously, it is not surprising that the lease had terminated. Wootton, Stanmer, Patching and Tarring formed links carrying the chain of Canterbury manors into west Sussex, where the archbishop held East Lavant, Tangmere and Pagham ; to the latter was appurtenant the church of All Saints in Chichester, ' which pays 64 pence,' either from tithes, church scot, etc., or more probably from rents from houses in the peculiar of the Pallant in Chichester. The Bishop of Chichester, who in or shortly after 1075 had trans- ferred his ' cathedra ' to that town from the village of Selsey, where it had first been established, held Selsey, Sidlesham, Wittering, Alding- bourne and Amberley in the west of the county, and Henfield, Preston and Bishopstone in Mid-Sussex, but had lost the two manors in Hastings rape which Alric his predecessor had held. Bexhill had been seized by the Count of Eu when he received the ' castelry ' of Hastings, but had been recovered by 11 66 when Bishop Hilary made the return of his knights.^ ' Haslesse ' in Ticehurst had also been lost, but as the Dean and Chapter held land in this parish in the thirteenth century it is possible that part at least of this estate was recovered. The only other loss recorded was four hides in Westbourne which Alric had held ' ad monasterium.' In view of the service of four knights by which the • E.g. Mr. Round in Suss. Arch. Coll. xli. 50. ' Possibly Godfrey de Pierpoint. 3 Red Bk. of the Exch. (Rolls Ser.), i. 200. Domesday records the hidation as 20 hides, but according to the 1 166 return the bishop only claimed (and recovered) ten hides. 373
