Colswein 9

Colswein ‘of Melbourn’ (Cambs.), fl. 1066x1086
Male
DWP
4 of 5

Name

Colswein
Colswein 8
Colswein 10

Summary

Colswein 9 held three estates in south-west Cambridgeshire TRE assessed at 1½ hides and with a value of £6; his lord was Eadgifu the fair (Eadgifu 24), but he retained power of alienation over his lands and he himself was lord of a sokeman holding ½ virgate worth 3s.  Colswein survived the Conquest, retained his estates as a subtenant of Count Alan (Alan 1) and was one of the jurors (along with his son, Æthelmær) for his hundred in 1086.

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
Cambridgeshire 14,28 Whaddon Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.50 2.00 1.00 A Map
Cambridgeshire 14,32 Meldreth Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.25 2.00 1.50 A Map
Cambridgeshire 14,33 Melbourn Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.75 2.00 1.00 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
Cambridgeshire 14,30 Whaddon Colsuan 1 sokeman, man of Colswein Colswein Alan, count 1 man 0.13 0.15 0.10 B Map
Totals

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
Cambridgeshire 14,28 Whaddon Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.50 2.00 1.00 B Map
Cambridgeshire 14,32 Meldreth Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.25 2.00 1.50 B Map
Cambridgeshire 14,33 Melbourn Colsuan Colswein 'of Melbourn' Eadgifu the fair Alan, count Colswein 'of Melbourn' 0.75 2.00 1.00 B Map
Totals

Profile

Colswein 9 held three estates in close proximity to each other in south-west Cambridgeshire, in an area sloping and draining north into the River Cam and partly defined by major Roman roads (the Icknield Way and Ermine Street) running to the south and west.  All three were held by Colswein under the lordship of Eadgifu the fair (Eadgifu 24) but with power of alienation TRE and he survived the Conquest to hold them as the subtenant of Count Alan (Alan 1) in 1086.  Given these factors and the fact that the name Colswein was relatively rare there can be no doubt that all three estates were held by the same person, Colswein 9.

The largest of Colswein’s estates (relatively speaking) was that of ¾ hide at Melbourn, named from a minor tributary of the Cam, where he had 1½ plough-teams, a little meadow for the oxen and an estate population of three bordars and their households and a slave in 1086.  Like all of Colswein’s estates Melbourn had a value of 40s TRE but a lower valuation in 1086, in this instance 20s.

The second of Colswein’s estates was at Whaddon, where he had one plough on his demesne in 1086 and the workforce for the estate, comprising one villan and his household, had half a plough-team for their land.  In another part of Whaddon Colswein also had a man in his lordship, a sokeman who according to ICC(64) held ½ virgate worth 2s 6d although DB put that TRE value as 3s.  It is not clear if this sokeman had been in Colswein’s commendation or a dependent tenant.

The smallest of Colswein’s estates was in 1086 also the most valuable at 30s and was at Meldreth, lying between the other two.  The main reason for this was the presence of two mills on the stream running through Meldreth from Melbourn to the River Cam, although here too Colswein had one plough and the peasant population of two cottars had a plough for their land as well.

It is also highly probable that Colswein 9 is the same as the man of that name recorded in IE (98) as one of the English jurors for Armingford Hundred in 1086, where he occurs alongside his son, Æthelmær (Lewis 1993: 42; Williams 1995: 88-9; Keats-Rohan 1999: 175; Baxter 2008: 41).  All of Colswein 9’s estates in 1086 lay in this hundred.

Salzman (1938: 355) suggested that Colswein 9 was the same man as Colswein 12, a major tenant-in-chief in Lincolnshire in 1086, presumably because they were Englishmen with the same uncommon name who held lands in the same general region after the Conquest, and perhaps also because Colswein 12 was associated with Count Alan in a claim regarding an estate in north Lincolnshire.  This identification is improbable, however, because the two men were at completely different levels of landholding and the later manorial descents of their lands appear to be unconnected, although it is just conceivable that the claim regarding the north Lincolnshire estate in fact involved Colswein 9 rather than Colswein 12.

It is possible that Colswein 9 was the same as Colswein 2, witness to enquiries into the liberties of Ely Abbey made in c.1080 (Bates 1998: 418-20 no.118), even though Colswein 9’s estates lay in Cambridgeshire whereas Colswein 2 was listed with ‘proven French and English milites from ... Essex, Hertford, Huntingdon and Bedford’.  If so, then it is also possible that Colswein 9 was the same man as the Colswein whose grandson Ralph son of Richard was recorded in King Stephen’s reign as holding from Ely Abbey at Soham Mere, 22 miles from Whaddon (Cronne and Davis 1968: no. 268).  These possibilities aside, however, there is no reason to consider Colswein 9 in connection with any other TRE or TRW person of that name.

Bibliography


Bates 1998: Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)

Baxter 2008: S. Baxter, ‘Domesday Bourn’, in D. Baxter, Medieval Bourn: A Cambridgeshire Village in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 35-45

Cronne and Davis 1968: Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum III, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis (Oxford, 1968)

Keats-Rohan 1999: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prospography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066-1166: I: Domesday Book (Woodbridge, 1999), p. 175.

Lewis 1993: C. P. Lewis, ‘The Domesday jurors’, Haskins Society Journal: Studies in Medieval History 5 (1993), 17-44

Salzman 1938: L. F. Salzman, ed., A History of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely: Volume I (London, 1938)

Williams 1995: A. Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge, 1995)