of the memorandum. It is an important social fact that St. Benet could still claim the homage of twenty-two tenants in the two villages of Somerton and Winterton. In this corner of Norfolk, at any rate, manorial discipline had not yet superseded the ancient bond of homage, with all that it implied of the tenants' original independence.
It is clear from the memorandum itself that the encroachments which it records were not entirely the work of Roger Bigod and his Norman followers. They had begun before Roger can have entered into full possession of his Norfolk fee. Alwi of Thetford, the Egelwy of the memorandum and one of the wealthiest antecessores of Roger Bigod in Norfolk, had undoubtedly filled some official position in that county in the years immediately after the Conquest. The Norfolk Domesday contains several passages which suggest that he may once have been sheriff, though he is never addressed in that capacity in any writ of William I. It was obviously in process of law that he seized the land of the fugitive Ringolf of Oby, and some of the other encroachments which are ascribed to him may be explained in the same way. In the confusion which followed the Conquest the distinction between the land of Alwi's inheritance and the land which he seized to the king's use might easily be blurred.
In a different connexion, the memorandum supplies a fragment of new evidence relating to the time which immediately followed the Conquest. The Abbot Alfwold of the memorandum was ruling at St. Benet's already in 1066. He is the Abbot Alwold to whom King Harold entrusted the defence of the coast in that year.[1] John of Oxnead, the thirteenth-century monk of St. Benet's, who records this fact, goes on to relate that the abbot suffered tribulations from the Conqueror, but returned to his abbey, and died on 14 November 1089. William of Worcester, writing in the fifteenth century, states that the abbot received the custody of Norfolk from Harold, fled into Denmark, and never returned to England.[2] On the question of the abbot's return the evidence of John of Oxnead is to be preferred. The precision of his chronology makes it certain that Ælfwold was still abbot of St. Benet's at the accession of William II. He was present at the great inquest of 2 April 1080 concerning the liberties of the church of Ely.[3] It follows that he is the abbot, unnamed in the memorandum, with whom Ringolf of Oby fled into Denmark, and Ælfwold of St. Benet's may be added to the list of Englishmen who after the Conquest sought for a time the court of Swein Estrithson.
