Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/312

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE tuent hides, for we never can rely on Domesday Book giving all the ' hundredal rubrics ' that it ought to give, and the Worcestershire hundreds were subjected to rearrangement before the day of maps had dawned. An intimate knowledge of the county might achieve the reconstruction of the old hundreds. But, as it is, we seem to see enough. We seem to see pretty plainly that Worcestershire has been divided into twelve districts known as hundreds each of which has contained lOO hides." * The History of the Worcestershire Hundreds is one of much obscurity ; ^ but when they emerge into the light of day in the 1 3th century, we find the Bishop's triple Hundred of Oswaldslaw still in exis- tence ; the 300 hides belonging to Westminster and Pershore represented by the Hundred of Pershore;* Evesham's Hundred of Fishborough con- verted into that of Blakenhurst ; and the four Domesday Hundreds of Came, Clent, Cresselau, and Esch amalgamated in that of Halfshire, while that of Dodintree retains its name. As there are sometimes found parishes of which the outlying portions are accounted for by their repre- senting the former possessions of some religious house, so was it even with some Hundreds. More than half of Worcestershire had, under the English kings, been divided into Hundreds consisting not of geographi- cal areas, but of the scattered possessions of certain religious houses. And, stranger still, these possessions were older not only, as we see, than the Hundreds, to which they thus gave shape, but even than the county, as it stands, itself. A glance at the Domesday map will show that its outlying portions consist mainly of lands bestowed upon the church of Worcester, and that parts of Gloucestershire or Warwickshire may find themselves in Worcestershire to-day as the direct consequence of some gift made to the monks of Worcester a thousand years ago. But even private lords could change, or procure the change, of the boundaries of a county. All Halesowen was in Worcestershire at the time of the Norman Conquest ; but the mighty earl of Shrewsbury, who secured its chief manor, succeeded in throwing his part of it into Shrop- shire, at a period subsequent to Domesday, and this has only been restored to Worcestershire in modern times. I cannot but suspect that Forthamp- ton, at the other end of the county, may have originally belonged to Worcestershire, by which it is almost surrounded, and have owed its inclusion in Gloucestershire to the fact of its forming part of the great Tewkesbury lordship of Brihtric the son of iElfgar. Domesday throws some light on a loss that was certainly suffered, for a long while, by the county. The story told by the monks of Worcester, to account for the sheriff of Staffordshire ' farming ' Tarde- bigg and Clent in Worcestershire with Swinford in Staffordshire, was that, according to St. Wulfstan's statement, a certain ' dean ' there, iEthelsige by name, prudent, wise, and enjoying high favour at court, bought these three vills from king iEthelred for 200 pounds of silver, Norman period, will be found in the opening fos. of Vesp. B. XXIV. ^ There is reason to believe that Pershore Abbey, long before that of Westminster Abbey was founded, had certain rights over this triple Hundred (see Domesday, fo. lyS''')- 238
 * Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 455.
 * A valuable list of them, giving the vills (with the number of hides in each) in the