THE DOMESDAY SURVEY Pierre-sur-Dive, Gilbert of Ghent had similarly bestowed a small estate at Easton ; but this also was entered under his own fief. In the absence of other foreign monasteries, we may note the appear- ance of a foreign monk, Benedict, formerly of Auxerre, who, as abbot of the newly-founded Benedictine abbey of Selby, is entered in Domes- day as holding two houses in Northampton and land at Stanford. Stanford (on Avon) supplies an example of a lordship formed before the Conquest passing down for centuries. Leofric had ' held freely,' in the days of Edward the Confessor, not only Stanford in Northamp- tonshire (fo. 226b), but two manors in Leicestershire, which 'belonged to Stanford ' (fo. 235). From Guy de Renbudcurt, his Norman successor, Benedict abbot of Selby acquired all three ; and with Selby Abbey these manors remained till the Dissolution, after which they were held, still together, by the family of Cave. It is particularly interesting to note that Benedict, according to Domesday, ' bought ' Stanford of Guy, though the charters represent Guy as ' giving ' the manor to the abbey.' There is reason to believe that there were other cases of the same kind. None of the bishops mentioned in Northamptonshire was holding land derived from his predecessors, a fact which emphasises the small proportion of the land in this county that was held by churchmen before the Conquest. Of these prelates, who were all Normans, the bishop of the diocese, Remi of Lincoln, had been given the lands of a Lincoln- shire thegn, Bardi, whose chief holding was at Sleaford (fo. 344*^), but who also held a manor in Leicestershire (fo. 231) and land in North- amptonshire and Rutland (fo. 221). Hollowell, which the bishop of Lincoln thus obtained in our county, passed to his successors in the see. Intermediate between the church lands and those of the lay tenants in chief are the fiefs held in their personal capacity by Odo, bishop of Bayeux, and Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances. The great fief of the latter prelate, a trusted officer of the king, enables us to catch glimpses of an English landowner and his son. A namesake of the last king of Mercia, he appears in Domesday as Borgeret, Borgret, Borred, Borret, Burgret, Burred, or Burret, holding lands not only in Northamptonshire, but in Bedfordshire and Bucks as well. In one place (fo. 210) he is styled ' a thegn of King Edward,' but he himself is entered, in Bucks, as having ' thegns ' under him. Eadwine, his son, who also (fo. 145) is styled ' a thegn of King Edward,' had held some Oxfordshire manors, which are entered under Northamptonshire (fo. 221), and is also doubtless the ' Edwinus ' who had held Harrowden Magna in the latter county (fo. 220b). All the lands of the father and the son had passed to the bishop of Coutances, who accordingly claimed, as Burred's successor, the ' homage ' of William Peverel's sochmen at Rushden, Irchester, and Raunds (fo. 225^^), together with some land at Piddington which had been held by * two "men" of Burred' (fo. 229). As the bishop had
- See Monasticon, III. 499, and the royal charters of confirmation in Coucher Book of Selby
Abbev, vol. I. 287
