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Rh ceded Winemar at three places in Northamptonshire, is his predecessor in his one Buckinghamshire manor as ' Aldene the housecarl.' The other two housecarls mentioned are Golnil and Alii. We thus see that it is only the accident of a man being sometimes styled a housecarl in the Buckinghamshire portion of the Survey that enables us to distinguish him as such ; and we are consequently led to infer that there may have been other landowners who were, as a matter of fact, housecarls, although they are not so described. As there is nothing to distinguish these housecarls from the rest of the men so styled, a new light, perhaps, is thrown on the status of the whole body.

It is only from incidental notices that we can recover in Domes- day the names of sheriffs. That Ansculf de Picquigny, father of William the Domesday baron, had acted as sheriff of Bucks one such notice tells us ; but it is only conjecture, though highly probable, that Ralf Taillebois, who had filled the office in the adjoining counties of Herts and Beds, had occupied it also here. So far as the tenure of land is concerned, his widow Azelina held but one manor at the Survey ; if Ralf, therefore, was connected with the county, it was in an official capacity. Now of two holdings towards the end of the Survey half a hide which Leofwine had held and one hide which had been held by three men we read that they had been added to the king's manor of Wendover, to which they had not belonged before the Conquest ; and it is expressly stated of the first that this had been done by ' Ralf.' In Bedfordshire a whole string of entries charges Ralf Taillebois with pre- cisely similar action, and by comparing those in the two counties we can better understand its character. A sheriff who ' farmed ' the Crown manors could wrongfully in- crease his gains by two opposite devices ; he could either, as at Wend- over and in Bedfordshire, seize on small holdings and add them to the king's manors thus increasing their revenue without increasing his payment to the Crown for them," or he could filch portions of the Crown demesne for the benefit of himself or of his friends. This would seem to have been done in Buckinghamshire by Godric, an English