Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/342

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE at ' Laure ' (Lawern) and in other lands which I suspect to have been at Elmley (fo. 174). But in another quarter we find him, as ' Kynewardus de Lauro,' witnessing the charter granted, in 1072, by Robert de Stafford to Evesham.' If, as there is no reason to doubt, Kineward held Laugherne till his death, it is obvious that the story told by the monks throws back the great plea between Worcester and Evesham to a date several years earlier than that of the Domesday Survey. If Worcestershire is remarkable in Domesday for the amount of its church land, it has also a peculiar and dominant feature in Droitwich and its salt industry. It is not too much to say that Droitwich pervades the survey of the shire. The actual ownership of the place was divided in a quite peculiar manner between about a dozen tenants-in-chief, who had, each of them, fractional holdings. But, in addition to this, the tenants of many scattered manors possessed there ' burgesses,' saltpans, or rights to a supply of salt. The clue to the Domesday assessment of Droitwich is found in an entry at the foot of fo. 176, that Ralf de Todeni 'holds in (Droit) wich i hide, out of 10 hides that pay geld.'" A special survey of Droitwich, which was found and printed by me,^ and which seems to belong to the latter part of Henry I.'s reign, is headed ' Hee sunt x bids in Wich.' We have then to recover from Domesday the constituents of 10 hides. They seem to have been as follows : Westminster Abbey St. Denis' Abbey . Coventry Abbey St. Guthlac of Hereford . St. Peter of Gloucester, King's Hall at Gloucester Ralf de ' Todeni ' . Harold, son of earl Ralf . Roger de Laci William, son of Corbucion (in Witton) Urse d'Abetot (in Witton) ides Burgesses I I ?8 I 4 I 9 i I 2

I

I 20 i 1 1 2

i 7 10 100 This would give us exactly 10 hides for Droitwich, a quarter of which (2I) would be in Witton.* from an Elizabethan translation) his name is followed by that of ' Harlebaldus,' a leading result under-tenant of Urse. The sheriff Urse also is himself a witness. ' This is the entry that Professor Maitland misunderstood (see p. 241 above), with the that he assigned 15^ hides to (Droit)wich and 2| to Witton. ^ Feudal England, pp. 177, 1 80. See also p. 330 below. that it had never paid geld, and that the later survey, though headed (as above) ' these are the 10 hides,' accounts for iif hides. 268
 * Salt (StafiFordshire) Arch. Coll., II. 178. In this charter (which is known to us only
 * It is right, however, to observe that Domesday states of Westminster Abbey's hide