Note 215 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES (continued 3)

Allusions to early enfeoffment are scattered through the cartae themselves. Henry fitz Gerold begins his return: 'Isti sunt milites Eudonis Dapiferi', and Eudo, we know, 'came in with the Conqueror'. We learn from another return (Lib. Rub., p. 397) that Henry I had given William de Albini, 'Pincerna, de feodo quod fuit Corbuchun xv. milites feffatos'. Now this refers to 'Robertus filius Corbution', a Domesday tenant in Norfolk. The Testa, again, comes to our help. Thus we learn from Domesday that Osbern the priest alias Osbern the sheriff (of Lincolnshire) was William de Perci's tenant at Wickenby, co. Lincoln, but the Testa entry (p. 338a) proves that William had enfeoffed him in that holding by the service of one knight.215 So too Count Alan (of Brittany) had enfeoffed his tenant Landri at Welton in the same county for the service of half a knight (Ibid., 338b), and we find his son, Alan fitz Landri, tenant there to Count Stephen, a generation later than Domesday, in the Lindsey Survey. The barony of Bywell in Northumberland, we read in the Testa (p. 392a), had been held by the service of five knights216 since the days of William Rufus, who had granted it on that tenure.217 After this we are not surprised to learn that the barony of Morpeth had been held 'from the Conquest' by the service of four knights, and that of Mitford as long by the service of five (Ibid., p. 392b), or that those of Calverdon, Morewic, and Diveleston had all been similarly held by military service 'from the Conquest'. In Herefordshire, again, John de Monmouth is returned as holding 'feoda xv. militum a conquestu Anglie'.218 So too Robert Foliot claims in his carta (1166) that his predecessors had been enfeoffed 'since the conquest of England';219 and William de Colecherche, that his little fief was 'de antiquo tenemento a Conquestu Angliae' (L.R., p. 400); Humphrey de Bohun enumerates the fees 'quibus avus suus feffatus fuit in primo feffamento quod in Anglia habuit' (Ibid., p. 242), and refers to his grandfather's subsequent enfeoffments in the days of William Rufus (p. 244), while Alexander de Alno similarly speaks of sub-infeudation 'tempore Willelmi Regis' (p. 230). To take one more instance from the cartae, an abbot sets forth his servicium due to Henry, 'sicuti debuit antiquitus regibus predecessoribus ejus' (p. 224). This brings us to the instructive case of Ramsey Abbey.