Page:VCH Leicestershire 1.djvu/360

 A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE were held of him by undertenants are described under a separate heading on folio 237. 80a In all the lands comprised within the first division the count had been preceded by an Englishman called Saxi, who had also possessed Shawell and Bagworth, which are described in the second division. Aylestone, Hun- cote, and Market Bosworth were the most important manors on the fief, the first-named possessing dependencies which the count had sublet to two of his men, and in regard to one of which we meet with a formula of great rarity in Domesday Book. Certain land belonging to Aylestone was held of the count by one Turald, and we are told ' Turald holds the land of four villeins and has one plough-land in demesne and 5 sokemen with I villein and 2 bordars who have 2 ploughs.' The peculiarity of the case lies not only in the omission of any statement as to the assessment of the land, but in the description of its former owners as ' villani,' a term which can only have been used in a vague and untechnical sense in this instance. Following the fief of the count of Meulan comes an estate which is described as ' the land of Earl Aubrey.' This person has been proved to be Aubrey de Couci, who had been appointed earl of Northumbria upon the murder of Bishop Walcher in 1080, and after a short time, finding it impossible to govern his unruly province, had resigned his earldom and retired to his Norman lands, forfeiting his English possessions in consequence. His fief in Leicestershire is accordingly described as being ' in the king's hand,' but it is not merged in the general body of the king's lands, and by 1130 part at least of it had come into the possession of the earl of Leicester. As described in Domesday it represents an estate of Anglo-Saxon origin, for all Earl Aubrey's land is said to have been held formerly by a certain ' Harding and his men,' sl which last expression is interesting as a pre-Conquest example of dependent land-tenure. Of Anglo-Saxon origin also are the two small estates which follow in the survey, the lands respectively of the Countess Godeva (Godgifu) wife of Earl Leofric of Mercia, and her daughter-in-law Alveva (^Elfgifu) wife of Earl jElfgar. Both these ladies were dead some years before 1086, but their lands are duly kept apart in the survey, each under a separate rubrication. The elder countess had possessed a smaller estate in Norton near Twycross, Appleby on the Derbyshire border, 8 * and Bilstone ; the less famous Alveva had held five carucates in Aylestone and the large manor of Castle Donington. By far the greatest landowner in Leicestershire in 1086 was Hugh de Grentemaisnil, whose manors are accordingly indicated on our Domes- day map. A powerful baron in central Normandy, where his original seat of Grandmesnil, a corruption from Grentmesnil (Calvados), lay, he had been a trusted lieutenant of King William in the critical years be- tween 1066-9, when he had held the important government of Hamp- shire. 83 Somewhere about the latter date he seems to have fallen into disfavour with the king, and judging from the negative evidence of charters 11 Harding had also been Aubrey's predecessor in three Warwickshire manors. " An interesting reference to the countess's tenure of land in Appleby occurs in the Derbyshire section of Domesday. In the description of the Derbyshire portion of Appleby, 5 carucates of which belonged to Burton Abbey, we are told that ' Abbot Leofric gave I carucate of this land to the Countess Code, which the king has now.' ' Gode ' in this passage is merely a contracted form of Godgifu (Godeva), though elsewhere in Domes- day it may stand for the distinct name ' Gytha.' Ordericus Vitalis, Hut. Eccles. (Soc. de 1'Hist. de France) ii, 167. 290
 * " The survey of Leicestershire occupies the fifteen folios from 230 to 237.