Wulfwynn 11

Wulfwynn of Creslow, fl. 1066
Female
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Wulfwynn
Wulfwynn 12

Summary

Wulfwynn of Creslow was one of the richest women in England in 1066, holding ten manors scattered between the Dorset coast, the Chilterns, and the outskirts of London. In all they were assessed at 108 hides and valued at £147. She had close connections with the king, leased a manor from the abbot of St Albans, and may well have had connections with the king’s thegn and treasurer, Oda of Winchester. She was dead by 1086 and most of her manors passed intact to the English sheriff of Wiltshire, Edward of Salisbury.

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
Berkshire 65,1 Hinton Waldrist Vluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Oda of Winchester - 10.00 11.00 9.00 B Map
Buckinghamshire 24,1 Aston Clinton Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow Edward, king Edward of Salisbury - 20.00 20.00 18.00 A Map
Buckinghamshire 24,3 Creslow Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury Ranulph 'the man of Edward of Salisbury' 5.00 6.00 5.00 A Map
Dorset 31,1 Canford Magna Vluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury - 25.00 32.89 46.05 A Map
Dorset 31,2 Kinson Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury - 13.00 17.11 23.95 A Map
Hertfordshire 32,1 Great Gaddesden Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow Ecgfrith, abbot of St Albans Edward of Salisbury - 6.00 25.00 22.00 A Map
Middlesex 20,1 Chelsea Wluuene Wulfwynn of Creslow Edward, king Edward of Salisbury - 2.00 9.00 9.00 A Map
Somerset 40,1 Hinton Charterhouse Vluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury - 10.00 10.00 12.00 A Map
Wiltshire 24,24 Chitterne Vluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury Robert 'the man of Edward of Salisbury' 5.00 3.00 5.00 A Map
Wiltshire 24,27 Poole Keynes Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury Azelin 'of Poole Keynes' 5.00 5.00 6.00 A Map
Wiltshire 24,41 Winterbourne Earls Wluuen Wulfwynn of Creslow - Edward of Salisbury - 7.00 8.00 12.00 A Map
Totals

Lord 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
Buckinghamshire 24,2 Hoggeston Wluuene Almær the man of Wulfwynn of Creslow Wulfwynn of Creslow Edward of Salisbury Ranulph 'the man of Edward of Salisbury' 1.38 1.00 0.50 A Map
Buckinghamshire 43,4 Helsthorpe Wluuen 1 thegn, man of Wulfwynn Wulfwynn of Creslow Mainou the Breton Helgot 1.06 1.00 0.50 - Map
Totals

Profile

The estates which passed to Edward of Salisbury, sheriff of Wiltshire, clearly belonged to the same Wulfwynn, as it would be too much of a coincidence for Edward to have been given the estates of more than one woman of that name. They were scattered across six shires from the Chilterns to Poole Harbour and from east Somerset to the Thames just above London. Only one of those manors was assessed at less than 5 hides, and the exception, Chelsea (Mdx.), was beneficially rated in proportion to its value and resources.

Wulfwynn was called Wulfwynn of Creslow in connection with her lordship over the holder of a small estate in the same Buckinghamshire hundred as her own manor of Creslow. That was clearly how she was known in Buckinghamshire, and it is convenient to call her that, but Creslow was not one of her largest manors and it is unlikely that it provided her only or even her most commonly used name.

Wulfwynn was commended to King Edward, being called ‘man (homo) of King Edward’ at Chelsea and Aston Clinton. She had power of alienation over most of her estates, but in 1066 she leasing Great Gaddesden (Herts.) from the abbot of St Albans for a life term. Gaddesden stood only a few miles from her group of estates in Buckinghamshire. It ought to have returned to the abbey when Wulfwynn died (clearly at some unknown date between 1066 and 1086) but was instead retained by Edward of Salisbury, an appropriation which underlines the fact that he regarded Wulfwynn as his regular antecessor.

A manor at Helsthorpe was divided TRE among four unnamed thegns, only one of whom was commended to Wulfwynn; it lay near her other Buckinghamshire estates. The entire manor went to Mainou the Breton after the Conquest rather than to Edward of Salisbury, but the Wulfwynn in question was clearly Wulfwynn of Creslow.

The Thames-side manor of Hinton Waldrist passed after 1066 to the important king’s thegn Oda of Winchester rather than Edward of Salisbury. Oda also acquired the smaller property of two unnamed thegns in the same vill (Berks. 65:2). Hinton stood between the two major groupings of Wulfwynn of Creslow’s estates, the Chilterns–Chelsea group and the West Country group. It is very unlikely to have belonged to a different Wulfwynn, but in the present state of research no reason can be suggested why it passed to Oda rather than Edward.

Wulfwynn has been identified as a woman of importance by earlier commentators: ‘a great lady who held in five different shires’ (Abels 1991: 21); ‘a figure of some mysterious consequence’ (Pinder 1991: 20); and ‘a wealthy woman’ (Hooper 1988: 21). An estate assessed at 108 hides and worth £147 was large by any standards but those of the earls: Wulfwynn was probably the richest woman in England in 1066 apart from Queen Eadgyth.

There may be clues about her identity, or at least her connections, in the Domesday material. Her manor of Kinson (Dors.) included a house (domus) and three bordars at Wimborne Minster (Dors.). Wimborne was a major royal estate TRE, one of the ancient possessions of the kings of Wessex which was assessed as paying the ‘farm of one night’ rather than by hides (Dors. 1:3). But other landowners had a stake in Wimborne too: the small abbey of Horton, refounded c. 1050, had a chapel and land for two houses (Dors. 14:1); eleven houses belonged to a wealthy priest (Dors. 1:31); and ½ hide distinct from the royal manor belonged to an Oda (Dors. 1:21) who may well be identical with Oda the treasurer, alias Oda of Winchester , the same Oda who survived the Conquest in royal service and succeeded to Wulfwynn of Creslow’s Berkshire manor of Hinton Waldrist.

Wimborne was the site of an early double monastery of monks and nuns under the rule of an abbess. According to the sixteenth-century antiquary John Leland it was refounded for a dean and secular canons by King Edward, not specifying whether he meant Edward the Elder (899–924) or Edward the Confessor (1042–66) (Knowles and Hadcock 1971: 443; Foot 2000: 6). It is just about conceivable that some vestige of the ancient nunnery survived into the eleventh century, though recent opinion on its survival even into the early tenth century has been divided (Yorke 1996: 208 ; Foot 2000: II, 233–7). . At any rate there was an important minster church at Wimborne in 1066, and if there was still a residual element of the ancient nunnery (as there was, for example, at Leominster, Herefs., under the control of Queen Eadgyth: Foot 2000: II, 103–7), perhaps Wulfwynn of Creslow had some part in its supervision.

It is possible that Wulfwynn was connected to Oda the treasurer of Winchester: his wife even? If so, she held land independently of him (cf. Leofflæd, wife of Thorkell the White (Leofflæd 4) in Herefordshire) and at her death most of her estates were directed away from him.





It is surely significant that the bulk of Wulfwynn’s estates passed to an Englishman. It has been suggested before that Edward of Salisbury was her son.

Bibliography


Abels 1991:  R. P. Abels, ‘An introduction to the Hertfordshire Domesday’, in The Hertfordshire Domesday: Introduction and Translation [ed. Ann Williams and G. H. Martin] (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1991), pp. 1–36

Foot 2000: Sarah Foot, Veiled Women, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000)

Hooper 1989: N. A. Hooper, ‘An introduction to the Wiltshire Domesday’, in The Wiltshire Domesday: Introduction and Translation [ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine] (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1989), pp. 1–30

Knowles and Hadcock 1971: D. Knowles and R. N. Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales, 2nd edn (London, 1971)

Pinder 1991: T. G. Pinder, ‘An introduction to the Middlesex Domesday’, in The Middlesex and London Domesday: Introduction and Translation [ed. Ann Williams and G. H. Martin] (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1991), pp. 1–21