that Ælfric Modercope may bow to the two abbots of Bury St. Edmunds and Ely.[1] In other cases the division of a family inheritance might lead to a partition of the profits derived from the homage, the commendatio, of free tenants.[2] The language of Domesday proves that such partitions were, in fact, made,[3] though it is difficult to find early documents which illustrate them. One of the earliest records in the register of St. Benet's shows the abbot, as lord, dividing an estate with the manredae of the tenants upon it between three claimants:
Hec est conuencio que facta est ab abbate Richero inter Edricum ⁊ sororem ⁊ nepotem Goduuini monachi de terra apud Felmingham que pertinet ad candelam . reddens per annum .xxv. solidos. Partita est tota terra illa cum manredis eiusdem terre in duo . et accepit Edricus unam partem unde dabit per annum .xii. solidos ⁊ vi. denarios ad hos terminos . ad festum sancte Marie candelarum .iiii. solidos ⁊ duos denarios . ad pentecosten .iiii. solidos ⁊ duos denarios . et ad natiuitatem sancte Marie . quatuor solidos ⁊ duos denarios . Soror quoque ⁊ nepos Godwini acceperunt alteram partem terre . unde totidem solidos ⁊ totidem denarios dabunt ad candelam ⁊ ad eosdem terminos. Si reddiderint ⁊ conuencionem seruauerint.ʼ scilicet Edricus ⁊ soror ⁊ nepos Godwini.ʼ in pace teneant. Quod si non fecerint . tollatur ab eis terra. Testimonio domini abbatis Richeri . ⁊ Godwini monachi . ⁊ Gilberti monachi . Hermanni dapiferi ⁊ fratris eius Walteri . Roberti balistarii ⁊ filii eius Odari etc. Hec conuencio facta est apud hundredum de Walsham.[4]
The personal character of the relationship between lord and man expressed in the ceremony of homage explains the general character of the invasiones recorded in the memorandum. The lands of the abbey had suffered encroachment, though not to any very serious extent. The heaviest losses which the abbey had sustained consisted in the withdrawal of the homages and services of its tenants. It does not seem to have been difficult to induce or compel a man to do homage to a new lord without his former lord's consent. It need not be assumed that this withdrawal was always in defiance of law and custom. There is little doubt that most of the men of whose loss the memorandum complains were personally free—sokemen or liberi homines rather than villeins. They or their ancestors may well have enjoyed the liberty of choosing a new lord at their own will.
- ↑ Thorpe, Diplomatarium, p. 416. It is, at the least, a remarkable coincidence that at Starston, Norfolk, in 1066, there was a free man common to the abbots of St. Edmunds and Ely (D. B. ii. 125 b; Vict. County Hist., Norfolk, i. 54).
- ↑ Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 74.
- ↑ As different men would pay different sums to their lord as an acknowledgement of his superiority, the common method of dividing the commendatio of a group of tenants between two persons must have been to divide the profits of each tenant's commendatio equally between them.
- ↑ MS. Cott. Galba, E. ii, fo. 54. The small estate which St. Benet possessed in Felmingham, worth twenty-one shillings in 1086, is described in D. B. ii. 219.
