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Lodric 4

Name

Summary

Lodric 4 was a free man who held two estates close to the Thames in north Berkshire and south Oxfordshire, together assessed at 5½ hides and worth £4 10s.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Holder 1066

Shire	Phil. ref.	Vill	DB Spelling	Holder 1066	Lord 1066	Tenant-in-Chief 1086	1086 Subtenant	Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value	Conf.	Show on Map
Shire Berkshire	Phil. ref. 49,2	Vill Fulscot	DB Spelling Lodric	Holder 1066 Lodric 'of Fulscot'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger fitzSeffrid	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 3.00	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 4.00	Confidence C	Map
Shire Oxfordshire	Phil. ref. 51,1	Vill Bispesdone	DB Spelling Ledric	Holder 1066 Lodric 'of Fulscot'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Osbern Giffard	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 2.50	1066 Value 2.50	1086 Value 2.50	Confidence C	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Fulscot, a small vill in the rich lowlands at the foot of the Berkshire Downs, was held in 1066 by Lodric, ‘a certain free man’. Bispesdone in Oxfordshire, not previously identified, can be located with reasonable confidence in the Chilterns, the clinching factor being the matching hidation and resources of Bispesdone and Ipsden (Oxon. 58:2): each had 2½ hides, land for four ploughs, 7 acres of meadow, and woodland 1½ leagues by 1 league, and was worth 50s. in both 1066 and 1086. That locates Bispesdone in the immediate vicinity of Ipsden, only 7 or 8 miles from Fulscot. The name of its TRE holder was given in DB as Ledric, ostensibly a different name from Lodric at Fulscot, but it would be too much of a coincidence to have two men with unusual but strikingly similar names of Continental provenance who just happened to be such near neighbours. More probably they were the same man, holding two estates which provided balanced resources, one in the lowland arable zone of north Berkshire, the other in the Chilterns.

There is a remote possibility that the same Lodric held all four of the manors entered with that name in 1066. Lodric 2 was a thegn of Earl Ælfgar of Mercia, Lodric 3 owned land in one of the core shires of the Mercian earls, and Lodric 4’s Oxfordshire estate lay within 10 miles of Earl Ælfgar’s large Thames-side Chiltern manors of Marlow and Hambleden (Bucks. 52:1–2). The Continental name Lodric can hardly have been anything other than very unusual in late Anglo-Saxon England, and may have been unique.

In the end, however, the case against identifying all the Lodrics as one and the same person has to carry the day: the earls of Mercia had many estates scattered across central England (so the association with Lodric 3 in Warwickshire and Lodric 4 in the Chilterns may be only a coincidence), and large distances are involved: it is 60 miles from the Wye valley to south Warwickshire, and another 60 from Warwickshire to the Chilterns. Having said that, such distances may not be significant if we were dealing with a thegn who was essentially a household retainer of Earl Ælfgar rather than a landed proprietor. The four manors together were assessed at 14 hides and worth over £7 in 1066.