the suggestion may be hazarded that it may be possible ultimately to establish differences between the personal nomenclature of the several parts of the Danelaw which go back to the settlement of the ninth century itself.
Unlike Domesday, the present memorandum deals with individuals, not with classes of men. In two passages it speaks of sokemanni, but for the rest it tells nothing of the rank or status of the peasants to whom it refers. Nevertheless it provides valuable material for comparison with the terminology of Domesday. In particular, the word manreda, a Latin form of the Old English mannrœdenn, 'homage.', is interesting in this connexion. The word is used in the Old English Chronicle as late as the annal for 1137, but it does not seem to have been noticed in any private document written after the Norman Conquest.[1] The act of homage was the essential feature of the transaction by which a free man placed himself under the authority of a superior, and the present text suggests very strongly that mannrœdenn was the English word which the clerks who wrote the East Anglian Domesday represented by commendatio. The following writ issued by Earl Ralf of East Anglia shows that the word was current in that region before the date of Domesday:
Radulphus comes E. presbitero ⁊ omnibus baronibus de hundredo salutem. Sciatis me dedisse Grim capellano meo manredam Askitelis ⁊ quicquid tenet in Walsham cum sache ⁊ sokne ⁊ omni consuetudine ⁊ ingang ⁊ utgang ad opus ecclesie sancti Benedicti de Hulmo sicut egomet melius habui. Valete.[2]
This writ, which is probably translated from an Old English original, anticipates the numerous private charters which record the grant of a tenant's homage and land. The phrase 'manredam Askitelis et quicquid tenet' explains the more difficult 'tres manredas abstulit cum suis possessionibus' of the memorandum. The 'possessiones' are the tenements of the men whose homages were withdrawn from the abbey. It may also be noted that the phrase 'manredam Edwini cum familia sua', which occurs in the memorandum, anticipates the occasional twelfth-century charter formulas which convey to a third party 'homagium X cum sequela sua'.
In several passages the memorandum states that the abbey has lost half the manred of this or that individual. It is clear from the East Anglian Domesday that a man's commendation might be divided between two or more lords.[3] There has been preserved a copy of the writ by which the Confessor consents
