DOMESDAY SURVEY Brampton, and Pilsley had remained stationary, while Holmesfield had actually fallen by half, so that the gain is entirely due to the extraordinary rise made by Elmton from 2 to 7, and by Stony Houghton from ioj. to 3. The estates of Geoffrey * Alselin,' scattered as they are all over England, afford an excellent instance of a Norman baron being placed in the exact position of one English predecessor. Geoffrey's predecessor in Derbyshire, as elsewhere, was a certain Tochi, the son of Outi, who must from the mere extent of his possessions have been a very important person in the days before the Conquest, although absolutely nothing is known of him apart from Domesday. A great landowner in the several counties of the northern Danelaw, he had a hall in Lincoln which, like his rural manors, passed to Geoffrey Alselin. In Derbyshire, Geoffrey became in this way possessed of Alvaston,Ednaston,Egginton and Ockbrook, and we are not surprised to read that he laid claim to Tochi's manor of Scropton which had been appropriated by Henry de Ferrers. Tochi had also been one of several people who had possessed a church in Derby itself, and here too he was succeeded by Geoffrey. Only two of Geoffrey's undertenants are recorded in Domesday one of whom, the ' Azelin ' who held at Etwall and Egginton, who has already been mentioned, granted half a carucate of land to Tutbury Priory ' with the consent of Geoffrey Alselin, his lord.' 1 Next to Geoffrey Alselin on the list of landowners comes Ralf fitz- Hubert, the lord of Crich, the description of whose estates fills more than a folio of the Survey. He had succeeded to the lands of two Englishmen who appear in Domesday as Levenot (Leofnoth) and Leuric (Leofric) and who had preceded him in Nottinghamshire as well as in Derbyshire. Some manors had been held by each of these men separately, others they appear to have held jointly, while one manor, that of Stony Middleton, is said to have been held by Levenot and his brother. This makes it very probable that the two men held parts of a divided inheritance, but we have no further clue to their identity. We may, however, note at this point that a considerable part of the property of ' Leuric and Levenot ' had belonged, some three quarters of a century earlier, to that great Mercian thegn Wulfric * Spot,' to whose * will ' we have several times had to refer. In this document 3 he bequeaths Whitwell, Clowne, Barlborough, Duckmanton, Mosbrough, Eckington, and Beighton, in this county to a certain Morcar, who may certainly be identified with the ' chief thegn of the seven boroughs,' who, with his brother Sigeferth, was murdered in ioi5. s What, if any, was the connexion which existed between this Morcar and the Leofnoth of our Survey must remain uncertain, but Domes- day shows us the latter in possession of all the above ' manors,' which 1 In Earl Robert's charter to Tutbury this land is said to be situated ' apud Herdewike.' As no such name occurs anywhere in the neighbourhood of Egginton we must see here a reference to one of those ' herdwicks ' which like berewicks were outlying appendages of some central manor. Another Derbyshire ' herdwick ' appears in the foundation charter of Bredon Priory at Hethcote, near Hartington. Dugdale, Man. vi. 97. 2 Kemble, Codex Diplomatlcus, 1280. 3 Angk-Sax. Chron. (Rolls Ser.) sub anno. i 305 39
