Page:VCH Buckinghamshire 1.djvu/282

Rh day Survey of Worcestershire His also was the church of Bucking- ham, which held a good estate there, and to which Gawcott also was appurtenant. On the Archbishop of Canterbury's manor of'Nedreham' Gilbert the priest is mentioned as holding the church and tithe with a large glebe assessed at 3 hides. A small glebe of half a virgate, lying in Hardmead, is mentioned as belonging to the church of St. Firmin of (North) Crawley.

Of institutional and legal antiquities a few illustrations may be noted. The distinct mention of castle guard in the case of Drayton Parslow, whence two knights, we read, were due towards the ward of Windsor, is probably unique in Domesday, though later evidence shows us the baronies of Picquigny (' Pinkeny ') and Windsor in this county charged with that service. The development of subinfeudation is seen at Crafton (in Wing) where Robert de Nouers held of the Bishop of Lisieux, who held of the Bishop of Bayeux. At Gayhurst he held of the former, who held sine medio of the Crown. The difficulties thus created receive curious illustration in the case of * Bricstoch,' where ' Turstin ' is entered as holding a hide under Walter Giffard. This Turstin proves to have been Turstin Fitz Rou, under whose fief the entry is repeated, the land being there said to be held by Rainald of Turstin, who holds it of the king ; but this latter entry is deleted. It enables us, however, to place side by side the versions in the two entries with this interesting result :

Here again we are reminded of that singular passion for variation which led the Domesday scribe to express by different formulas the text he had before him.

The same passion for variation is perhaps accountable for the fact that in some Buckinghamshire entries we have extremely full details of the previous holders of land, while in others a bald statement is deemed sufficient. That the Domesday scribe did occasionally omit such de- tails is shown by collating his text for Cambridgeshire with the full returns from the Hundreds, of which we possess transcripts. At times he preserved the gist of the details, while skilfully reducing their bulk ; but at others he simply ignored them. At Wratworth, for instance, he simply wrote : ' Hanc terram tenuerunt vi sochemanni et cui voluerunt terram suam vendere potuerunt ' (fo. I93b) ; and at Whitwell, in one case : ' Hanc terram iii sochemanni tenuerunt et cui voluerunt vendere potuerunt' (fo. I93b) ; while in another, after writing 'Hanc terram tenuerunt viii sochemanni,' he copied out in full the details concerning them (fo. 198). We are justified, I think, by this evidence, in holding that the strange variations presented in the Buckingham portion were