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Ecclesiastical Wealth in England in 1086

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Andrew Ayton  and
Virginia Davis
Andrew Ayton
Affiliation:
The Domesday Project, University of Hull
Virginia Davis
Affiliation:
The Domesday Project, University of Hull
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Extract

England was a rich prize for William the Conqueror to have won at the battle of Hastings. His conquest was followed by a major redistribution of the wealth of his new kingdom. By the end of his reign, a tenurial revolution had swept through the lay landholding community, leaving only a handful of Anglo-Saxons as tenants-in-chief. The Church had undergone considerable changes of personnel; only one bishopric was still in English hands (Worcester), and of the greater Benedictine houses only Bath and Ramsey were still ruled by English abbots. Domesday Book, the great survey of England made in 1086, although difficult to interpret, provides much information to enable an examination of ecclesiastical wealth, its nature, and its distribution, in the late eleventh century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 24: The Church and Wealth , 1987 , pp. 47 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1987

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References

1 The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus, ed. W. T. Mellows (Oxford, 1949), pp. 84–5.

2 R. Fleming, ‘Monastic Lands and England’s Defence in the Viking Age’, EHR 100 (1985), pp. 249–50; a minimum figure for this loss is £1, 300 of ex-monastic land included among royal and comital holdings in 1066: ibid., p. 263.

3 DB ed. A. Farley and H. Ellis, 4 vols (London, 1783–1816) 2, fols 10a-b.

4 In contrast to Harold’s seizures in the south-west, his mother, the Countess Gytha, granted the important manor of Werrington to Tavistock Abbey soon after the Conquest, Finberg, H. P. R., Tavistock Abbey (Cambridge, 1951), pp. 6–7 Google Scholar. The career of Hugh FitzGrip, Sheriff of Dorset was a mixture of benefactions and despoliations, A. Williams, ‘Domesday Survey’, VCH Dorset, 3, pp. 6–7.

5 DB 2, fol. 103a.

6 DB 2, fol. 15a.

7 DB 1, fol. 58b.

8 This paper concentrates on the institutional landholders listed as tenants-in-chief in Domesday Book, that is, religious houses with land in England (including French houses) and English bishoprics. Individual priests and men described in Domesday as clerk or chaplain and the parish churches which appear irregularly throughout the text are excluded, as are the four continental Bishops of Bayeux, Coutances, Lisieux, and Evreux who held land in England as tenants-in-chief. They were essentially lay magnates, owing their lands more to their personal relationships with the Conqueror than to their ecclesiastical status. Since the Domesday Survey does not cover England north of the Tees, the important lands of the bishopric of Durham and other Church land in this area are also excluded.

9 W.J. Corbett in CMH 5, pp. 305–13; Knowles, MO, pp. 100–3, appendix 6.

10 Lennard, R., Rural England: 1086–1135 (Oxford, 1959), pp. 26, 105 Google Scholar.

11 DB 4, fol. 199 b 2.

12 Robinson, J. A., Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (Cambridge, 1911), p. 38 Google Scholar; Galbraith, V. H., ‘An Episcopal Land Grant of 1085’, EHR 44 (1929), pp. 353–72 Google Scholar; Lennard, Rural England, pp. 108–9.

13 Lennard, Rural England, pp. 106, 112.

14 Chew, H. M., The English Ecclesiastical Tenants-in-chief and Knight Service (Oxford, 1932), pp. 4–8 Google Scholar.

15 King, E., Peterborough Abbey, 1086–1310 (Cambridge, 1973), pp. 13–14 Google Scholar. Tavistock Abbey in Devon was also disproportionately burdened, owing fifteen knights, one more than the combined quota of five religious houses in neighbouring Dorset.

16 Lennard, Rural England, pp. 84–91.

17 Chew, English Ecclesiastical Tenants-in-chief, pp. 113–16, 119. There was a tendency, discernible at Canterbury and Abingdon, for example, to create more fees than were required to fulfil quotas.

18 For examples see King, Peterborough Abbey, pp. 16–18; Dyer, C., Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 36–7 Google Scholar; compare Boulay, F. R. H. Du, The Lordship of Canterbury (London, 1966), pp. 58–9 Google Scholar.

19 Finberg, Tavistock Abbey, p. 15.

20 Several of the greatest lay magnates, including Roger of Montgomery and the Count of Mortain, subinfeudated 50 per cent or more of their property, though perhaps 30–40 per cent was nearer the norm.

21 M. K. Lawson, ‘The Collection of Danegeld and Heregeld in the Reigns of Aethelred 11 and Cnut’, EHR 99 (1984), pp. 721–38.

22 Galbraith, V. H., The Making of Domesday Book (Oxford, 1961), pp. 97–8 Google Scholar.

23 For example, Chilcomb in Hants, DB 1, fol. 41a; Round, J. H., ‘Danegeld and the Finance of Domesday’, in Dove, P. E., ed., Domesday Studies, 2 vols (London, 1888) 1, pp. 98–104 Google Scholar.

24 DB 1, fol. 121b.

25 Most notably in a group of counties, Gloucestershire, Oxford, Somerset, and Wiltshire; all had more than £500 of Church land held in chief.

26 J. D. Hamshere, ‘A Computer-assisted Study of Domesday Worcestershire’, in T. R. Slater and P. J. Jarvis, eds, Field and Forest. An Historical Geography of Warwickshire and Worcestershire (Norwich, 1982), p. 115.

27 Hoyt, R. S., The Royal Demesne in English Constitutional History (Ithica, New York, 1950)Google Scholar, cap. 2; app. A; A. Williams, ed., ‘Dorset Geld Rolls’, VCH Dorset, 3, p. 116; Finn, R. Welldon, Domesday Studies. The Liber Exoniensis (London, 1964), p. 105 Google Scholar points out that ‘Mesne tenants regularly appear as not having gelded’, but they seem to be treated as exceptions in the geld accounts.

28 Finn, Liber Exoniensis, p. 110; Williams, ‘Dorset Geld Rolls’, pp. 124–49.

29 French houses, however, are regularly found as tenants of lay landholders; for details see Beauroy, J., ‘La conquête cléricale de l’Angleterre’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 27 (1984), pp. 35–48 Google Scholar.

30 Round, ‘Danegeld’, pp. 97–9.

31 Hoyt, The Royal Demesne, p. 57.

32 Eyton, R. W., A Key to Domesday (London and Dorchester, 1878), p. 5, n. 1 Google Scholar.

33 Round, ‘Danegeld’, pp. 83–4; J. Green, The Last Century of Dangeld’, EHR 96 (1981), pp. 245–6.

34 Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Devonshire, Nottinghamshire, Rudand, Yorkshire.

35 Kent, Hunringdonshire, Middlesex, Worcestershire.

36 DB 1, fol. 75d bis. The average manor of an ecclesiastical landlord was larger than its lay counterpart. This was particularly so in a block of counties—Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire.

37 Darby, H. C., Domesday England (Cambridge, 1977), pp. 9, 10 Google Scholar.

38 Hamshere, ‘Domesday Worcestershire’, p. 108: ‘Hides appear significantly correlated with both population and ploughteams’.

39 Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond (Fontana edition, London, 1960), p. 540 Google Scholar.

40 MacDonald, J. and Snooks, G. D., ‘Were the Tax Assessments of Domesday England artificial? The Case of Essex’, EcHR, ser. 2, 38 (1985), pp. 352–72 Google Scholar. MacDonald, J. and Snooks, G. D., ‘Statistical Analysis of Domesday Book (1086)’, The Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, ser. A, 148 (1985), pp. 151–4 (Wiltshire)Google Scholar.

41 Darby, Domesday England, pp. 116–20; Harvey, S.P.J., ‘Taxation and the Ploughland in Domesday Book’, in Domesday Book: a Reassessment, ed. Sawyer, P. (London, 1985), pp. 86–103 Google Scholar; Green, The Last Century of Danegeld’, p. 243.

42 About 20 per cent of places in circuit 1 counties are without ploughland figures and 3 counties of circuit V almost wholly lack such information, Darby, Domesday England, pp. 96, 101.

43 Ibid., pp. 121–35.

44 Darby, H. C. and Maxwell, I. S., The Domesday Geography of Northern England (Cambridge, 1962)Google Scholar; this phrase is used on pp. 47–8, 129, 203, 256.

45 Sawyer, P. H. review in EcHR, ser. 2, 16 (1963-4), pp. 155–7 Google Scholar; Sawyer, P. H., ‘The Wealth of England in the Eleventh Century’, TRHS, ser. 5, 15 (1965), pp. 146–7, 162–3 Google Scholar.

46 Hoskins, W. G., ‘Sheep-Farming in Saxon and Medieval England’, in Provincial England (London, 1963), pp. 1–14 Google Scholar.

47 DB 4, 36 a 1.

48 This estimate is in Hoskins, ‘Sheep-farming’, pp. 5–6 and is based upon 300, 000 documented demesne sheep from 8 counties. By comparison, Domesday records over 81, 000 ploughteams.

49 Darby, Domesday England, fig. 51, p. 151. The argument that the ‘importance of animal husbandry is reflected in the shares of non-arable land as well as in die numbers of livestock’ is thus untenable for many Domesday counties, and the general applicability of the method used on the Essex data called into doubt. J. MacDonald and G. D. Snooks, The Determinants of Manorial Income in Domesday England: Evidence from Essex’, Journal of Economic History, 45 (1985), p. 555.

50 Sawyer review in EcHR, pp. 156–7; Darby, Domesday England, fig. 74, p. 227.

51 Hamshere, ‘Domesday Worcestershire’, p. 116.

52 Ibid., passim; MacDonald and Snooks, The Determinants of Manorial Income’, passim.

53 20 per cent: this is inevitably only an approximate figure because many partially subinfeudated manors are recorded without separate valuations for the tenants’ portions. In two-thirds of Domesday counties the Church had subinfeudated less than 20 per cent of its property; in 8 less than 10 per cent was held by tenants, in 7 more than 30 per cent. If the 5 counties with over -£1, 000 of land held in chief are considered the range is much narrower, from 15 per cent (Kent) to 28 per cent (Somerset).

54 Darby, Domesday England, cap. 7, ‘Annual values’.

55 Corbett, CMH, p. 507.

56 Darby, Domesday England, figs 75–7, pp. 228–30.

57 DB 1, fols 3a-5d, 11d-12d.

58 DB 1, fols 247c, 247d.

59 Tutbury Priory was founded by Henry of Ferrers, VCH Stafford, 3, p.331; Blyth Priory by Roger of Bully, VCH Nottinghamshire, 3, p. 83; Lenton Abbey by William Peverel, ibid., p. 91.

60 D.M.Owen, Church and Society in Medieval Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1971), pp. 47–8.

61 DB 1, fols 172c-4b; Dyer, Lords and Peasants, cap. 2, pp. 39–50 discusses feudalism and the bishopric of Worcester.

62 In total 3 86 lay tenants-in-chief are listed in Domesday Book. This excludes those recorded in collective fees as Serjeants and thanes who number more than a further 500. Including the 4 continental bishops, there are in all 123 ecclesiastical tenants-in-chief.

63 Puriton manor in Somerset, DB 1, fol. 91b.

64 Knowles, MO, pp. 702–3.

65 Sixty of the ecclesiastical landholders held in only a single county.

66 Bates, D., Normandy before 1066 (London, 1982), p. 274 Google Scholar; Knowles, MO, p. 701.

67 On the holdings of continental churches and bishops in England in 1086 see Beauroy, ‘La conquête cléricale de l’Angleterre’.

68 Knowles, MO, pp. 702–3.

69 B. Golding, ‘The Corning of the Cluniacs’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1980, p. 71.

70 A number of the religious houses founded between 1066 and 1086 do not appear in Domesday Book; the bulk did not hold any land in chief, even the larger houses such as William of Warenne’s Cluniac foundation at Lewes. They were essentially honorial foundations.

71 The abbeys of Fecamp, St Remy of Rheims, St Denis, Paris, and St Peter’s, Ghent.

72 These figures are based on the foundation dates given in MRHEW.

73 EHD, 2, p. 316.