Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/424

 A HISTORY OF ESSEX extreme subdivision, the geld ' hides ' and ' acres ' are a most misleading guide. The valuable manor of Gestingthorpe, for instance (p. 564 below), in which Otto the goldsmith had succeeded Earl ./Elfgar, was assessed at only half a hide. 1 The recorded values afford a surer guide to follow. Speaking guardedly and very generally, we form the impression from the Essex survey that the larger holders were steadily acquiring, even before the Conquest, rights over the smaller ones, even if ' only such as com- mendation gave.' In the tumult and confusion of the Conquest period some of the smaller holders, we find, suffered downright aggression at the hands of their own countrymen ; but it was naturally by the new- comers that their lands were chiefly absorbed. This absorption was effected partly by actual grant from the Crown, a grant which had to be completed by formal livery of seisin. There are several allusions in the Essex survey to the absence of such livery in the case of contested titles. The other way in which it was effected was simple lawless encroach- ment, the usual form of such encroachment being the extension of a Norman's lordship at the cost of an English free man whose lands adjoined it. It is very difficult to estimate the extent of such encroachment in the county, because the invasio or occupatlo is sometimes recorded under a fief and is sometimes found among the long list of invasiones super regem at the close of the county survey. This lawless aggression was at times the subject of complaint from one Norman against another, at times effected at the cost of Englishmen, and often at that of the king. His own manors, with which the Survey opens, teem with notices of such encroachment ; but it must be remembered that the seizure, without authority from him, of the land of a ' free man ' would be treated as a wrong done to himself, insomuch as it diminished the total spoils available for distribution. We are apt to forget that twenty years had elapsed between the date of William's victory and that of the great Survey. The disputes as to title recorded in Domesday Book must have been greatly increased by this lapse of time ; for, besides the ' aggressions ' of English prede- cessors, there were those also of aliens who had gained and lost their lands between the two dates. The lands of Count Eustace had been swollen by the acts of his predecessor Ingelric, 8 and the fief of ' Eudo dapifer' by those of Lisois de Moustiers; 8 Walter the deacon had succeeded to the lands of his brother Thierri, and John the son of Waleram to those of his father ; and at Wormingford and Stanway Roger of Poitou had benefited by the aggressions of a predecessor with the strange Provenal name of Reimund Girald. 4 It has always appeared to me that Mr. Freeman, in avowed re- action from Thierry, was disposed to underestimate the wholesale 1 There were, at Gestingthorpe, two manors, each apparently of six ploughlands and each assessed at half a hide (fos. 39, 98). The parish now contains 2,700 acres, and the assessment of the whole at one hide is worth noting for its lowness. It is evidently not accounted for by Earl ^Elfgar's tenure of one of the two manors. The low assessments of High Easter, of Tiltey, and of Stambourne and Toppesfield may be compared. 8 See pp. 463-8 below. 8 Compare Inj. Com. Cant. pp. 1923. * See my notes on him in The Ancestor, i. 122. 354