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² Sawyer, P., ‘Domesday Studies since 1886’ in, Domesday Book: a Reassessment (1985)Google Scholar, 1–4, amply demonstrates the great activity in the area of Domesday studies in the last century.

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¹² Coulton traced his own ultimate inspiration to Carlyle's remark that what people wanted from historians (but did not get) was answers to ‘…that great question: how men lived and had their being’, Coulton, G. G. ‘Some Problems in Medieval Historiography’, Proceedings of the British Academy, xviii (1932), 181Google Scholar, repeated in idem, Medieval Panorama (Cambridge, 1938), p. xiii.

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²⁶ Thomas, H. M., Vassals, Heiresses, Crusaders and Thugs: the Gentry of Angevin Yorkshire, 1154–1216 (Philadelphia, 1993), 19–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reviews the evidence for a break down in the honorial structure of the North East. For Leicester D., Crouch, The Beaumont Twins: the Roots and Branches of Power in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1986), 115–31Google Scholar; for Holderness, English, B., The Lords of Holderness, 1086–1260 (Oxford, 1979), 153–6Google Scholar; for Huntingdon Stringer, K. J., Earl David of Huntingdon: A Study in Anglo-Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1985), 127–32Google Scholar.

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³² Carpenter, C., ‘Gentry and Community in Medieval England’, Journal of British Studies, xxxiii (1994), 344–65Google Scholar, gives a forthright critique of recent late medieval county studies and finds the idea of county communities very woolly. Indeed she thinks that the whole idea of ‘community’ is misapplied by historians. Although I would agree that one should be cautious about the word, I use it here unashamedly, on the grounds that medieval people were fond of the word communitas, and clearly saw some point in using it. Woolliness and misapplication by modern historians does not invalidate a word with such a clear contemporary application, see further, Reynolds, S., Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 1984)Google Scholar.

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⁴⁵ De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, ed. David, C. W. (New York, 1936), 54–6Google Scholar, 100, refers to Norfolcenses et Sudfolcenses, Hamtunenses et Hastingenses. For the barones Eboracenses, see Torigny, Robert de, Chronica, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard, ed. Howlett, R. (4 vols, Rolls Series, 1886–1889) iv, 264Google Scholar. For the Bristoenses, see Gesta Stephani, ed. Potter, K. R. and Davis, R. H. C. (Oxford, 1976), 62–4Google Scholar, where the author (who had suffered from their attentions) subjects them to a vicious assassination of character. A writer from south-east Wales a century later had a similarly low opinion of the Bristollenses, Colker, M. L., ‘The “Margam Chronicle” in a Dublin Manuscript’, Haskins Society Journal, 4 (1992), 137Google Scholar.

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⁴⁸ Leges Henrici Primi, ed. Downer, L.J. (Oxford, 1972), c. 7.7–7aGoogle Scholar; an actual example of this of the time of Henry I has been pointed out to me by DrBrand, Paul, Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, ed. Leach, A. F. (Camden Society, new ser., xlviii, 1891), 196Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ For the comitatus of Glamorgan or Cardiff, see Glamorgan County History, iii, The Middle Ages, ed. Pugh, T. B. (Cardiff, 1971), 16Google Scholar. For Pembroke, we hear of its sheriff and hundred courts in the time of Henry I, see Haverfordwest Record Office, PEM 1; Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I, 136 and its comitatus in 1233, Royal and Other Letters Illustrative of the Reign of Henry III, ed. Shirley, W. W. (2 vols, Rolls Series, 1862–1866) i, 426Google Scholar. We find the sheriff of Trim making his tourn in mid-thirteenth century Meath, Calendar of the Gormanston Register, ed. Mills, J. and McEnery, M.J. (Dublin, 1916), 177Google Scholar, and there is evidence for a sheriff of Dublin in the 1190s and sheriffs in Waterford and Meath early in the next century, see Marin, F. X., ‘John, Lord of Ireland, 1185–1216’, in A New History of Ireland, ii, Medieval Ireland, ed. Cosgrove, A. (Oxford, 1981), 143–4Google Scholar, although the existence of vicecomites does not automatically mean that there were also comitatus.

⁵⁰ The occasion is called une grand congregation … pur hautes busoynes, and the judicial function of that assembly leaves no doubt that it was a shire moot, Monasticon Anglicantan, ed. Caley, J. and others (7 vols in 8, 1817‐1830) vi, 345Google Scholar.

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⁵⁵ Carpenter, , ‘Gentry and Community’, 348–9Google Scholar, makes this point independently for the later middle ages, my contention is that it is just as true for the earlier period.

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⁵⁷ William of Luddington in Dorset, PRO JUST1/200, m. 2; Robert of Halford in Berkshire, PROJUST1/273, m. 14, JUST1/342, m. id; Henry de St Maur in Staffordshire, PRO JUST1/802, m. 16 (not to mention also in Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, PRO JUST1/616, m. 4, JUST1/343, m. 1).

⁵⁸ Pipe Roll of 31 Henry I, 34. See on this, Holt, J.C., ‘The Prehistory of Parliament’, in, The English Parliament in the Middle Ages, ed. Davies, R. G. and Denton, J. H. (Manchester, 1981), 24–6Google Scholar.

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⁶¹ For the original classic statement of this sort of political structure, K. B. McFarlane, ‘Bastard Feudalism’, reprinted in, England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. G. L. Harriss (1981), 23–44.

⁶² For the literature on this shift in perceptions see, Waugh, S. L., ‘From Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century England’, English Historical Review, ci (1986), 811–39Google Scholar; Bean, J. M. W., From Lord to Patron: Lordship in Late Medieval England (Manchester, 1989)Google Scholar; Crouch, D., William Marshal Court, Career and Chivalry in the Angevin Empire (1990), chapters 5–6;Google ScholarCrouch, D., Carpenter, D. A. and Coss, P. R. ‘Debate: Bastard Feudalism Revised’, Past and Present, no. 131 (1991), 165–203Google Scholar; Carpenter, D. A., ‘Simon de Montfort: the First Leader of a Political Movement in English History’, History, 76 (1991), 10–13Google Scholar; Crouch, D., ‘A Norman Conventio and Bonds of Lordship in the Middle Ages’, in, Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. Hudson, J. and Garnett, G. (Cambridge, 1994), 299–324Google Scholar.

⁶³ Llandaff Episcopal Acta, 1140–1287, ed. Crouch, D. (South Wales Record Society, 5, 1988)Google Scholar, no. 14, my translation.

⁶⁴ Crouch, D., ‘William, earl of Gloucester and the end of the Anarchy: new evidence relating to the honor of Eudo Dapifer’, English Historical Review, ciii (1988), 69–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁷³ A good example in Worcestershire is the family of le Seneschal of Evesham, which seems to have been more than a match for the abbey it once served in an hereditary stewardship, see Chronicon abbatiae de Evesham ad annum 1418, ed. Macray, W. Dunn (Rolls Series, 1863), 289–91Google Scholar; Monasticon Anglicanum, ii, 18–19; Cartulary of Evesham, Brit. Libr., ms Harley 3763, fos. 68r, 92r–v; PRO, E159/2, m. 14; JUST1/56, m. 32.

⁷⁴ Mortimer, , ‘Land and Service, 194–5Google Scholar.

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⁷⁷ The last Montfort known to have attested a Warwick act was Henry, who died c. 1199, and who attested acts of Waleran of Warwick, who had become earl in 1183.

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⁷⁹ For the Stafford and Mowbray fees, Red Book, i 268; Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. Greenway, D. E. (British Academy, 1972), 264Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ The Cantilupe connection derived from the wardship by William de Cantilupe of Thurstin (III) de Montfort early in John's reign, which led to a marriage with a Cantilupe daughter, Complete Peerage, vii, 123n. In 1236, Thurstin's son, Peter, called William de Cantilupe the younger, ‘his lord’, Calendar of the Patent Rolls, 1232–47, 140.

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