THE DOMESDAY SURVEY of London ' is entered in Domesday as giving Tooting to Westminster Abbey. The true form of the noble's name is given by Florence of Worcester, who tells us that ' ./Ethelnoth of Canterbury ' was one of the leading hostages whom William carried off with him to Normandy in io67. 1 The bishop of Bayeux secured his lands with those in Kent at least of another Kentish noble, ' Bricsi (or Brixi) cild ' ; but the latter's Surrey manor of Stoke was obtained by Richard of Tunbridge. But the one English landowner who appears as distinctively a Surrey man is one to whose pecular position Mr. Maiden has called attention, Oswold, brother apparently of Wulfwold abbot of Chertsey. His land at Worth in the forest to the south had passed away to Richard of Tunbridge, who allowed him, however, at Mitcham, to retain as an under-tenant the land he had held, before the Conquest, direct of the Crown ; while at Effingham he actually held of Richard a good estate which had belonged to a dispossessed Englishman. He also held of Chertsey Abbey another estate at Effingham, which, under Edward the Confessor, he had held in his own right. But it is as a thegn of king William that his position is most remarkable ; at the close of the Survey we find him holding, in that capacity, four estates, two of which he had similarly held direct of king Edward, while in one earl Harold was his lord. The fact that another Englishman, ' Seman,' had actually commended himself to Oswold ' since king William came into England ' is a proof of the favour he had found in the eyes of the Norman King. Huntsmen, as might be expected, were a class who contrived, in places, to keep their lands when other Englishmen lost them. Four huntsmen, under the Confessor, had held land in Surrey ; and, although two of them, ' Elmer ' and Coleman, were no longer holders of land in 1086, Wulfwine retained the small estate he had held under the Con- fessor, and Chetel the land at Littleton which had then been held by his father. With these retainers of the court, perhaps, we may class Theoderic the goldsmith, who held Kennington under William as he held it under the Confessor, and who, in the words of Professor Freeman, 'doubtless owed the favour of William to his skill in an art specially adapted to enhance the splendour of a king's court, an art for which both natives and sojourners in England were specially famous.' The remaining instances of English landowners are introduced to illustrate the scattered nature of their possessions. Osmund, who had held in Surrey Loseley and Worplesdon with Burgham, can be positively shown to be the same Osmund as he who had held in Hampshire Penton Mewsey and North Houghton, and in Wiltshire, as Osmund the thegn, Milston and Eaton Mewsey. 2 For not only had they all passed to earl Roger of Shrewsbury: they had all been also bestowed by him on a 1 ' nobilem satrapam Agelnothum Cantuariensem.' Ellis, unfortunately, followed Kelham, who relied on Hasted for identifying ' Alnod ' with Wulfnoth, a younger brother of Harold (Introduction to Domesday, II. ^).
- This is doubtless the reason why Loseley was found, some two centuries later, to be held of Richard
Seymour ' as of the manor of Eiton Meisey in Wilts ' (Esch. 45 Ed. III., n. 4) ; and it identifies positively the Domesday manor of ' Ettone (Wilts).' 283
