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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