Wynric 4

Wynric tenant of Abingdon abbey, fl. 1086
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Wynric
Wynric 3

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

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Subtenant in 1086

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 7,34 Chilton Wenricus Blæcmann the priest Harold, earl Reynold, abbot of Abingdon Wynric 5.00 0.00 0.00 A Map
Oxfordshire 9,3 Sandford Wenricus Blæcmann the priest Ordric, abbot of Abingdon Reynold, abbot of Abingdon Wynric 10.00 8.00 3.00 A Map
Oxfordshire 9,5 Sandford Wenricus Ordric, abbot of Abingdon - Reynold, abbot of Abingdon Wynric 4.00 2.00 2.00 A Map
Totals

Profile

A man whom DB calls Wenricus held three manors as a subtenant of Abingdon abbey in 1086: two separate holdings of 10 hides and 4 hides at Sandford on Thames, 4 miles up the river from the monastery towards Oxford, and 5 hides at Chilton, 8 miles in the other direction on the Berkshire Downs. This formed a substantial holding, by hidage the second largest of any of the abbey’s enfeoffed knights in 1086. It was undervalued in relation to its assessment (even allowing for the absence of a valuation for Chilton), but that may mean that Wenricus held at a favourable rent. The estate looks short on resources and population for its size and assessment: there was land for 19 ploughs but only 10½ at work in 1086, 3½ in demesne and 7 held by the peasants, who numbered 13 villans and 21 bordars; there were only modest amounts of woodland and meadow but quite a valuable fishery.

Wenricus ought to represent the OE name Wynric, and is here taken as doing so, but there have been doubts whether it really does.

First, Abingdon’s own History seems to assign Wynric’s manors to the name Henry, in the outline list of its manors and tenants in 1086 called ‘an abbreviation of hides and a description’ (abreuiatio hidarum et descriptio) said to have been drawn from ‘the other [or ‘another’] book of the king’s treasury’ (in alio libro thesauri regis) of the time of William I.

The list follows the wording of Domesday Book very closely as far as names and assessments go, dropping all details of population, resources, and values, but appending hundred names (absent from DB) to the Oxfordshire manors. It was not merely a mechanical copy from DB or some other now long-lost treasury abbreviation of DB. One point at which it differs from DB is the tenant’s name at the manors under discussion here. At Chilton, the list has Henricus in place of DB’s Wenricus; at the first entry for Sandford it has Henri in place of DB’s Wenricus; and the second entry for Sandford is omitted altogether, probably by mistake rather than design (Hudson 2002–7: II, 383–4, 385).

It is difficult to make sense of the substitution of Henricus and Henri for Wenricus. In GDB the initial W of the first Wenricus is not remotely like a capital H and cannot have been misread as one. The next DB entry, however, does start with an H and the scribe’s eye may have slipped down to that line and back again. The same cannot be true of the capital W of Wenricus in the entry for Sandford. Probably the name was deliberately changed in both places, but why? It is hard to believe that the scribe of the Abingdon list, writing in the 1160s, knew the tenant’s name better than DB did. More likely he was completely baffled by the outlandish name Wenricus, concluded that DB had made a mistake, and substituted the familiar name Henricus.

The second doubt that Wenricus stood for Wynric originates with Sir Frank Stenton, who thought that the DB tenant was identical with the Gueres de Palances who appears as a knight of Abingdon holding fees at Sandford, Chilton, and elsewhere in the so-called list of knights of Abbot Adelelm (abbot 1071–83) (Hist. Abingdon, II, 322–3). Others have followed suit (Stenton 1939: 381; VCH Oxon. V, 269; Keats-Rohan 1999: 462). The idea is clearly misconceived, not least because it is impossible to see how the French names Gueres or Guerri could ever have been represented by the spelling Wenricus. Moreover it is now clearer than it was in Stenton’s time that the list of knights does not date from Abbot Adelelm’s time but is rather a composite of different dates stretching well into the later twelfth century (Hudson 1996, 193–4; Hist. Abingdon, II, pp. xxv–xxvi). Gueres de Palances’s 4 knights’ fees were located not only at Sandford and Chilton, but also at Leverton, Denton, Wheatley, Bayworth, and Sunningwell, places which were either in other hands in 1086, or not yet separate holdings (Hist. Abingdon, II, 322 note 1). Gueres must date from some period after 1086: he was emphatically not the Wenricus who held Sandford and Chilton.

Bibliography


Hudson 2002–7: Historia Ecclesie Abbendonensis: The History of the Church of Abingdon, ed. and trans. John Hudson, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002–7)

Hudson 1997: John Hudson, ‘The abbey of Abingdon, its Chronicle and the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XIX: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1996 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 181–202

Keats-Rohan 1999: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, I: Domesday Book (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999)

Stenton 1939: F. M. Stenton, ‘Domesday Survey: Introduction’, in The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Oxford, I, ed. L. F. Salzman (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1939), 373–95

VCH Oxon. V: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Oxford, V, ed. Mary D. Lobel (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1957)