DOMESDAY SURVEY the district, with their appendant lands, should have been intercepted from the abbey. A Lotharingian clerk, by name Albert, who seems to have enjoyed the king's personal favour,'^ appears in Domesday as in possession of the churches of Oakham and Hambleton, with the church of St. Peter of Stamford, which was dependent on the latter, his estate here being valued at the substantial sum of ^lo. However, the claims of Westminster had not been forgotten, for in 1268 Westminster possessed the advowson of Oakham, Hambleton, and Ridlington, and received dues from seven other villages in the neighbourhood."^ The transfer of these rights to Westminster is attested by three documents printed in the Monasticon^* of which the first grants to the abbey the churches of Uppingham, Wardley, and Belton ; the second, in more general terms, conveys the churches of Rutland with the lands pertaining 'as Albert of Lorraine held them ' of the king,' while in the third Hugh de Port is directed to seise St. Peter of Westminster of the tithe of Rutland. As Albert of Lorraine held the churches of Oakham and Hambleton in 1086, the second document must belong to the reign of William Rufus ; and it is distinctly probable that the first charter, granting Uppingham, Wardley, and Belton, was intended to transfer to the abbey the three churches which Domesday assigns to the manor of Ridlington, of which Albert, so far as wc know, never had possession, and which therefore would not be covered by the terms of the second grant mentioned above. If this were so we must conclude that these three vills were included among the seven unspecified berewicks of the manor of Ridlington. It is also noteworthy that after the names of the three Martinsley manors the word
- Cherchesoch ' is added in Domesday. It is not easy to determine the sense
in which the term ' church soke(land) ' could be applied to these lands; but we may suspect that its appearance was not unconnected with the West- minster claim ; the abbey may possibly have been reconciled to the postponement of its possession by a grant of dues to be paid by the estate. Such dues would undoubtedly be regarded as a form of soke in 1086, but we have no evidence on the point, and it must be left open. Of the pre-Conquest holders of land in Rutland there is little to be said. Nearly half the modern county had been possessed by Queen Edith, for in addition to her Martinsley estate her manors of Ketton and Barrowden extended over a wide area immediately to the north of the Welland. Even at the present day the village of Edith Weston preserves in its name a faint memory of the queen's ownership. Second to her in extent of territory came the ill-fated Earl Waltheof, to whom belonged Ryhall, Belmesthorpe, Overton, Stretton, Whissendine, and Exton, and whose lands, augmented by subsequent grants, were held by his widow, the Countess Judith, in 1086. The south of the modern county certainly, the north very possibly, formed part of Waltheof s earldom of Northampton. Earl Morcar of Northumbria had held the single manor of Great Casterton, and the house of Godwine is represented by King Harold, whose land in Ashwell had been conferred by the Conqueror upon Earl Hugh of Chester. The two manors of Greetham and Cottesmore, which King William retained in his own hand, had formerly belonged to a certain ' Goda,' a name which unfortunately tells " On Albert, see Round, Commune of Land. 36-37. " Pope Nich. Tax. (Rec. Com.), 66. " Dugdale, op. cit. i, 301, 302.
