^ HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE Conquest, must on no account be confused, as it has been by Professor Maitland, with the liability of the Bishop, under the system introduced by the Normans, to provide 60 knights (or, as he maintained, 50) in respect of his entire fief extending over three counties.^ If he had to send 60 men — and this total is only a conjecture — to the King's fyrd before the Conquest, in respect of his Hundred of Oswaldslow, that total was wholly unconnected with the quota of knight-service due, after the Conquest, in respect of his entire fief.^ Dealing, however, with what he terms ' Feudalism in Oswaldslaw,' ^ Professor Maitland attaches very great importance to bishop Oswald's letter to king Edgar * recording the terms of his land loans, which ' is for our purposes the most important of all the documents that have come down to us from the age before the Conquest.' But if we cannot accept as genuine, in its present form, Edgar's charter constituting the Hundred of Oswaldslow, we must also, I think, view critically ' this unique docu- ment.' ° For its only existing version is at least later than the Conquest, and it seems to me to proceed clearly from the same mint as ' Altitonan- tis.' ^ The clause on which Professor Maitland would specially insist is the condition enforced on those to whom the lands were granted ' ut omnis equitandi lex ab eis impleatur qus ad equites pertinet.' They are, ' above all,' riding-men, and must fulfil ' the law of riding.' The im- portance of this, for the Domesday student, is that the Professor finds in ' Oswald's riding men ' the predecessors of ' the radchenistres and radmanni of Domesday Book, the rodknights of Bracton's text.' The class entered in Domesday under this mysterious name is almost wholly confined to the counties near the Welsh border from Gloucestershire on the south to the modern South Lancashire on the north, and is well represented in Worcestershire. The entry, perhaps, which most favours the view that riding was the essence of the service due from these tenants is that, under Bredons Norton, of Leofwine having held 2 hides, ' et inde radman episcopi fuit ' (fo. 173). But the actual charters of bishop Oswald granting lands for three lives make no mention of this service ; ^ and on Westminster Abbey's Deerhurst manor, just over the Gloucestershire border, we find several small estates, from half a hide to two hides, held ^ This is particularly well seen in the return, temp. John, of the 'Servicium debitum domino Regi de episcopatu Wigornie' {^esta de Nevill, pp. 41-2).
- See my paper on ' Military Ser'ice before the Conquest,' in English Historical Review
(1897), XII. 492-4. The point is of much institutional importance. 3 Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 303-313. The Professor seems to have based his argument on the belief that Oswald's letter applies only to his grants within Oswaldslow, but it covers his grants in other places, such as the Gloucestershire Compton, so that the terms of his grants must have been unconnected with his special position within Oswaldslow.
- Codex Diplomaticus, I. xxxv. ; VI. 124. Heming's Cartulary, I. 292-6.
- Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 312.
^ For instance, the ' Dunstanum archiepiscopum et venerandum Athelwoldum Wintonie episcopum et virum magnificum Brihtnothum comitem ' of Oswald's letter echoes the ' Dunstanum archiepiscopum et Athelwoldum Wintoniensem episcopum et virum magnificum Brightnodum comitem ' of Edgar's charter. It should further be observed that Oswald's grants range down, as the Professor observed, to 992. But Edgar died in 975. ' Heming's Cartulary, passim. 250
