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Victoria County History of Kent Vol. 3  1932 - Introduction to the Kent Domesday Survey - Page 193

of which only two went to the same Norman. Alnod Cilt, a great personage,70 had nine Norman successors, including the Bishop of Bayeux, who held one manor in demesne. Leuin (comes) had eleven successors. Again the instances could be multiplied. The lands of the Godwin family, who might perhaps be considered subject to special disposition and therefore of less value for the argument, show also a good deal of scattering. It would seem difficult then to establish any correspondence in Kent between the groupings of lands of the Saxon and the Norman tenants. It is true, however, that Kent is not a very good county to use, either to contravene or to support Dr. Farrer’s contention, because so much of the county was in the hands of the church, and therefore little disturbed, and so much else possibly distributed by King William in accordance with some particular royal purpose.
   Another point of great interest in the study of the Saxon tenements is the contrast before the Conquest between the relatively small number of great manors assessed at considerable sums or with great ploughing capacity, and the multiplicity of very small tenements or of those of very moderate size. The great manors were held by great men. Earl Godwin held 50 sulungs at Hoo,. 40 sulungs at Folkestone; the archbishop 21 sulungs at Aldington. The lands of the church had evidently progressed far in the direction of manorialization in Saxon times, that is to say, the Saxon assessment usually indicates the presence of a fairly large Saxon estate. It is clear that the church had developed a system of exploitation round a domanial centre, a natural development in view of the great extents of territory granted to the church in the early charters. Lands granted to Odo bishop of Bayeux present, of course, a different problem. They were probably granted to him as Earl of Kent; certainly they were later sequestrated on this interpretation of his office, and although his name appears among the ecclesiastical rather than the lay tenants, his great fief cannot be regarded as strictly a church fief. As would be expected, the lands he held were derived from a multitude of Saxon tenants, most of whom are described as having held of King Edward, and were in the main, with some important exceptions, small tenements. The lands given, to Hugh de Montfort form a striking example of the forcible amalgamation under one lord of many small holdings. Another characteristic of the arrangements of Saxon times is the overwhelming proportion of small tenants who are said to have held their land of King Edward. In the tenements of Odo bishop of Bayeux, for example, there are nearly one hundred and fifty such cases. Outside church lands and the great estates of the Godwin family, and of some men who ‘went where they would with their land,’ much of Kent was in the hands of these comparatively small freeholders of King Edward.
   While the Domesday of Kent discloses, then, much that may be called manorial, and while the word manor frequently appears, yet there was in the county before the time of the Conquest a large number of small tenants of free status, whose holdings were assessed at very small amounts, with small ploughing capacity. It is probable that these small tenements were more frequent in the less settled parts of the county and on the outskirts of large manorialized groups. When occasionally, it is stated, that small tenements are held by two brothers for two manors, one wonders whether any of this
   70  See V.C.H. Surrey, i, 282.

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