THE DOMESDAY SURVEY his brother ^Ifric, who had died there in 1053 and who was simi- larly buried at Pershore.^ Having now seen that earl Odda was estab- lished at Deerhurst as at Longdon, we may follow up the clue given by the Pershore annals, and ask whether we cannot connect him with the great transfer to Westminster of lands formerly held by Pershore. That ' most wicked earl, Delfer,' of whom, said the monks, he was the heir, was no other than JEKhere, ealdorman of Mercia {d. 983), who had led the anti-monastic reaction after the death of Eadgar (d. 975), and of whom the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that he 'com- manded the monasteries to be demolished, which king Eadgar had be- fore commanded the holy bishop ^thelwold to found,' ' and monks expelled and God's servants persecuted.' ^ If, as stated in the Pershore annals, it was he who despoiled the abbey of so large a portion of its lands, we understand how Longdon, which Eadgar had confirmed to the house, came to be found in the hands of his heir, earl Odda. It seems therefore to me possible that what really happened was that, on Odda's death (1056), king Edward seized all his lands, as he left no heir, and refused to recognise his undertaking to restore the Pershore manors.^ The king would thus be able to bestow them on his new foundation. Although Longdon is the only manor that Domesday names as having been Odda's, the great record was not concerned with a man who had died thirty years before it was compiled, and his estates were probably of wide extent. The above suggestion is but tentative, although it is quite in harmony with what we elsewhere read of the fate, especially in Worcestershire, of monastic lands. When they had been held for a time by laymen, the monks' claim had little weight ; possession then, as now, was ' nine points of the law.' Apart from his distinct connection with Pershore Abbey and its lands, earl Odda has a claim on the historian of Worcestershire if, as Mr. Freeman thought, he was the local earl in the last years of his life.* But the fact that he attested three charters of Ealdred bishop of Worcester seems to be insufficient ground for this belief, seeing that, in all three cases, earl Leofric attests before him. Odda obtained his earldom, which was that of the south-western counties, during the ascendancy of the Normanizing party in 105 1—2 ; a kinsman of the king he supported him warmly against earl Godwine and was chosen, with earl Ralf of Hereford, to command the king's fleet in 1052. Al- though sometimes styled ' Odo,' he was doubtless a native, as Mr. Freeman held,^ though I do not agree with that writer that he bore the
- Florence of Worcester, I. 211. ^ Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, II. 99.
' The Pershore annals state that he refrained from marriage in order that he might have no heir to claim them. He very possibly bargained that the lands should remain his for life.
- ' His connection with the Hwiccian land and its monasteries points to Worcestershire,
or possibly Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, as the district under his charge.' {Norman Conqueit [1870], II. 565-6.) * Ibid. pp. 564-5. 259
