Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/322

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE three Hundred-courts, and at the same time to form for them scattered and artificial Hundreds out of the 300 hides selected for the purpose from the monastery's lands. The whole then formed the privileged district of Oswaldslow. What the privileges were that the Bishop claimed within this district is not absolutely clear. It is certain, from Domesday, that the King's sheriff was excluded from exercising any jurisdiction within it, and that all the profits of the local courts and other royal rights in the district went to the Bishop. But much obscurity surrounds his rights with regard to the Danegeld within the district and to its quota of military service known before the Conquest as ' expeditio ' or ' fyrd.' As to the former, the Bishop, I hold, did not enjoy, like St. Petroc in the west, or St. Edmund in the east, the special privilege of retaining for himself the money paid as Danegeld,^ but was entitled to collect it through his own officers and to receive the penalties, if any, incurred by its non-payment. As to the duty of military service, the Bishop's Hun- dred of Oswaldslow was, similarly, not exempt from it ;^ but its quota was led by his own officers, instead of being under the sheriff, and any fines for neglect of the duty [fyrdwite) would be collected through his courts. Military service was due to the King not only by land but by sea; there was scipfyrd as well as landfyrd? This is a point of much im- portance in connection with the Hundred of Oswaldslow, for the dis- puted charter speaks of ' naumachix expeditionem, qus ex tota Anglia regi invenitur,' and constitutes the triple Hundred in order that the Bishop, with his monks, may have a separate ' naucupletionem quod Anglice " Scypfylled " vocatur,'* Recent research has favoured the view that there was some arrangement of Hundreds in threes with a liability on each group to provide a ship's crew.® And even the term ' Scip- socne,' which is applied, in the same charter, to Oswaldslow, is paralleled by the application of ' Sipe Socha ' to each of three Warwickshire Hun- dreds in 1 170.* But what is most noteworthy is that we have actual mention of ' Eadric who was, in the time of king Edward, steersman of the bishop's ship and leader of the bishop's force {exercitus) in the King's service,' as present at the great trial between the houses of Worcester composition of this Hundred receives some further illustration from a survey of the Evesham Abbey manors in Cott. MS. Vesp. B. XXIV. fos. 49^, 53. A marginal note describes as ' T.R.E.' the hidation which is there given, and which seems to be occasionally in excess of that recorded in Domesday. p. lOI. ^ Compare Hale's Registrum Beatte Marite JVigorniensts, p. xxxiii. ^ The duty of ' expeditio ' by sea is referred to, in Domesday, at Exeter, Malmesbury, Warwick, Leicester, Stamford, etc. ® Ibid. p. xxxiii. ; Stubbs' Const. Hist. (1874), I. 105-6 ; Earle, cited by Freeman in Norman Conquest (1870), I. 647 ; Vigfusson, citing Steenstrup in Eng. Hist. Review,!]!. 500 ; Canon Taylor in Domesday Studies (1888), pp. 75-6). 248
 * See, for this privilege, my paper in Domesday Studies, I. 126-8, and Feudal England,
 * Hale's Registrum, p. 23^.
 * Pipe Roll, 16 Henry II. pp. 90-91. Compare Stubbs as above, p. 106 note.