THE DOMESDAY SURVEY hides of Pershore ; and lastly, the 65 hides, in Fishborough Hundred, of Evesham. This gives us a grand total of 759 hides as held by the Church out of the 1,200 hides at which the county was assessed. Taking first the possessions of ' St. Peter,' the patron saint of the Church of Worcester in Old English days, we find its whole fief in the shire (fos. 172(^-174) entered under the heading, 'the land of the Church of Worcester.' As this heading has given rise to some misunderstanding, it would seem desirable to explain that ' the Church ' means the Bishop and monks between them. In the adjoining county of Hereford we similarly find the heading, ' the land of the Church of Hereford ' (fo. 1 8 1/^), but the corresponding entry in the schedule of names (fo. 179) is ' the bishop of Hereford.' In this, as in many other matters, the practice of Domesday was not uniform. Sometimes it spoke of the fief as the Bishop's, and sometimes as that of his church ; in one case it would group together the manors of the Bishop and monks, and in another it would treat them as distinct, and survey them, accordingly, apart. In Worcestershire the peculiar privileges attached to the triple Hundred of Oswaldslow belonged to the Bishop, as its lord, alone ; but, in the words of archdeacon Hale, ' the beneficial occupation, if we might so speak, was shared between the Bishop and the monastery.' ^ The learned writer reckoned that, of its 300 hides, 82 were assigned to the monks, while the Bishop retained the rest.^ If the Domesday text be studied carefully, it will be found that, within Oswaldslow, the manors in the Bishop's hands come first as usual, and are followed by those held by the monks, beginning with Overbury. Outside the Hundred of Oswaldslow, Domesday does not enable us to distinguish the manors of the Bishop from those of the monks, except in one instance. The Henry I. Survey, however, does enable us to do this, and shows them holding in those manors an equal number of hides.' The great fief of the Church of Worcester, comprising, as we have seen, in hides, nearly a third of the county,* is headed by a formal record of the Bishop's special privileges in the triple Hundred of Oswaldslow (fo. ij2b), as deposed to (Domesday tells us) by the whole county (court).* Heming's Cartulary contains (pp. 287—8) a version of this return, with some slight variations, which is followed by a statement of the highest importance for students of the Domesday Survey. We are there told that the county (court) made this return on oath, exhorted
- Registrum Prioratus Beata Maria Wigorn'iensis (Camden Society), p. iv.
- ' Of the fifteen manors of which the Hundred consisted, eight were held by the Bishop
and seven by the Monks. The division, however, was not so equal as at first sight appears ; the eight Episcopal Manors contained . . . 225 hides; whereas the seven which were in the hands of the Monastery or church contained only seventy-five. . . . The Monastery also held of the Bishop as " De Victu Monachorum," parts of three Episcopal Manors, amounting to seven hides ' {Ibid.). ^ Feudal England, p. 174, and p. 326 below.
- The monks claimed other manors as having formerly belonged to it. See, for instance,
pp. 238-239 above. ' See translation of Domesday text below. 245
