Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/336

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE frequent mention, but they are normally entered in connection with the ploughs, at the head of the agricultural classes. At Pedmore the priest is even entered between the villeins and the bordars (fo. 177), while in another case (fo. 1771^) we read of '18 bordars and i priest with i plough.' At Broughton there are entered '5 villeins and 10 bordars and a church and a priest,' who have between them six ploughs (fo. ijjb), and at Halesowen the villeins, bordars, ' Radmans,' 'and a church with two priests' have between them 41 1 ploughs (fo. 176). It is clear, therefore, that in this county Domesday is only interested in the priests and churches as owners, with the agricultural classes, of the all-important plough-oxen. There is occasional entry, however, of tithes as bestowed on religious houses ; Westminster Abbey had received the tithes of the King's revenues at Droitwich (fo. ij^b), and William Fitz- Osbern had bestowed on his abbeys of Cormeilles and of Lyre those of his Worcestershire estates (fo. i8o<^).^ Of the lay holders of land in the shire earl Roger claims precedence, but his holding is chiefly of interest for his great manor of Halesowen being, in consequence of that tenure, transferred to his own county of Shropshire, only to be restored in modern times.^ His one other manor, Salwarpe, was secured by Urse as under-tenant, and in its woodland he made his park, which absorbed the church of Coventry's land there, of which also he was under-tenant. Next to earl Roger we must rank William Fitz Ansculf the lord of Dudley, Ralf de Tosni ('Todeni'), Osbern Fitz Richard of Richard's Castle, and the terrible Urse the sheriff. These four had considerable estates, but only the first and fourth need special notice here. For Ralf and Osbern were Herefordshire lords, the former holding Clifford Castle, while his chief seat appears to have been at Flamstead in Hertfordshire. William Fitz Ansculf, whose castle at Dudley and its ' castlery ' are mentioned, had succeeded his father Ansculf, who had been sheriff of Surrey, and, apparently, of Bucks, and who belonged to the great Picard house of the vidames of Picquigny. From Ansculf's brother Ghilo descended the baronial house of 'Pinkeney,' the head of whose barony was in Northamptonshire. William Fitz Ansculf appears in Domesday as a tenant-in-chief in eleven counties, in some of which, especially in Bucks, he held great estates. His Worcestershire lands were but a small portion of the fief of which Dudley was the head, and which was afterwards held, as the barony of Dudley, by the families of Paynel and of Someri. The dominant personality revealed to us, in Worcestershire, by Domesday is that of Urse the sheriff. In Mr. Freeman's vigorous words : The terrible sheriff. . . Urse of Abetot was only the chief of a whole band of Norman spoilers, who seem to have fallen with special eagerness on the lands of the Church in this particular shire. But the sheriff was the greatest and most daring offender of all. He built his castle in the very jaws of the monks of Worcester so that the foss of the fortress encroached on the monastic burying- ground.' 262
 * See p. 240 above. * See p. 238 above. ^ Norman Conquest (187 i), IV. 171.