A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE the Evesham fief, in fact, they assign him no rights at all (fo. 175^), and under his own fief they vouch the county's statement for the fact that Evesham paid the Bishop T.R.E,, in respect of Hampton, nothing but the geld due in his Hundred (fo. 174^). The entry of the manors tvi^ice over shows us how difficult the question was ; and the Domesday com- missioners had, in fact, to arrange a compromise with the Bishop, by which he consented, at their request, to abandon his claim to hold these manors in demesne on the Abbot publicly admitting them to belong to his Hundred of Oswaldslow, and to be liable to geld, suit, znAfyrd there accordingly.* It is an interesting feature of this agreement that among its witnesses are at least two of the dispossessed English tenants of the bishop of Worcester, Edric ' de Hindelep ' and Godric ' de Piria.'* It was explained above that the knight-service due from the bishop of Worcester under the Norman system has to be carefully distinguished from the old English system of liability to fyrd.^ Domesday itself is almost silent on this knight's service, though one knight of the Bishop is referred to incidentally under Crombe.* The men {homines) also who appear in Domesday as tenants on his great Gloucestershire manor of Westbury (on Trym) are styled knights {milites) in a (probably) earlier survey.* Again, the return of knights' fees made by the bishop of Worcester in 1 166 shows us 37I fees carved out of the episcopal estates ' antiquitus' ;* and the context shows that this was done in the lifetime of bishop Wulfstan. In short, here as elsewhere,' it is clear that knights had been enfeoffed before Domesday, and that the silence of that record is no proof to the contrary. The valuable return of the Bishop's fees temp. John* shows us where the fees were situate, and its collation with the Domesday Survey and the return of 11 66 would throw a great deal of light on the topography and genealogy of the county at that early period. Here it is only possible to touch upon two points. In 1166 we find William de Beauchamp holding 1 5 knights' fees, created ' anti- quitus,' of the Bishop ; ® and under John we find a later William de Beauchamp holding these same fees, and are told where they were, the
- Heming's Cartulary, I. 75, 296. The purport of the ' conventio ' is suggestive of the
'fines' of later days. I * See, for them, Domesday, fo. 173^. ^ The well-known story of William Rufiis calling out t& fyrd in 1094 as a means of financial extortion (Florence of Worcester, II. 35) proves that the old native host was retained concurrently with the Norman knights (Stubbs' Const. Hist., I. 301).
- Similarly incidental mention of enfeoffed knights will be found on fos. 176-176^,
where Ralf 'miles' holds of Ralf ' de Todeni,' one of Ralf de Mortimer's knights is found holding of him, and ' two knights ' hold a manor of Roger de Laci. So too, on fo. 172, ' four knights ' hold land of Urse.
- See Feudal England, p. 294, and Heming's Cartulary, p. 84.
® Red Book of the Exchequer, p. 300. ' See my Feudal England for the full argument. ' Testa de Nevill, pp. 41-2 (see p. 236 above).
- j^i5 had heen remitted to him, in respect of these fees, in 1 156 (Rot. Pip. 2 Hen.
II.). 256
