John 37

John the Dane, fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

John
John 34
John 38

Summary

John the Dane (John 37) was the owner of almost 50 hides of land in seven manors scattered across Wessex. His centre of operations may have been Yatton in Somerset, and there is some evidence of a connection with Bishop Giso of Wells (1060–88) (who acquired Yatton after 1066), through John’s probable son Northmann (fl. 1065–72). On balance John was probably the same person as John the sheriff who had an interest in a small estate across the Wye from Hereford and was probably sheriff of Herefordshire.

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
Devon 17,22 North Bovey Johannes John the Dane - Judhael of Totnes Turgis 'of Bovey' 1.75 2.00 2.00 C Map
Devon 17,33 Thurlestone Johannes John the Dane - Judhael of Totnes - 1.75 4.00 3.00 C Map
Dorset 46,1 Milborne St Andrew Johannes John the Dane - Matthew de Mortagne - 5.00 5.00 5.00 A Map
Dorset 46,2 Owermoigne Johannes John the Dane - Matthew de Mortagne - 9.75 10.00 10.00 A Map
Gloucestershire 73,2 Shipton Moyne Johannes John the Dane - Matthew de Mortagne Rumbald 'of Shipton Moyne' 10.00 15.00 8.00 A Map
Somerset 44,1 Clevedon Johannes John the Dane - Matthew de Mortagne Ildebert 'of Milton Clevedon' 5.63 2.00 4.00 A Map
Somerset 6,14 Yatton - John the Dane - Giso, bishop of Wells Bentelin the archdeacon 1.00 1.00 1.00 A Map
Somerset 6,14 Yatton - John the Dane - Giso, bishop of Wells Fastrad 5.00 1.00 4.00 A Map
Somerset 6,14 Yatton - John the Dane - Giso, bishop of Wells Ildebert 'of Milton Clevedon' 3.00 3.00 5.00 A Map
Somerset 6,14 Yatton Johannes John the Dane - Giso, bishop of Wells - 10.00 6.00 6.00 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
Devon 17,33 Thurlestone Johannes 1 thegn John Judhael of Totnes 1 knight 0.25 0.25 0.50 C Map
Herefordshire 10,19 Bullinghope Johannes Alnoth 'of Bullinghope' John the sheriff Roger de Lacy - 2.00 2.50 2.50 E Map
Somerset 6,14 Yatton - Æthelrun 'of Yatton' John the Dane Giso, bishop of Wells Ildebert 'of Milton Clevedon' 1.00 1.00 0.00 A Map
Totals

Profile

John the Dane appears with his byname in GDB at Yatton and additionally in Exon (450) at Clevedon (both Som.). Yatton passed into church ownership by 1086, but Clevedon was handed to the same Norman successor as Milborne St Andrew, Owermoigne (both Dors.), and Shipton Moyne (Glos.), firmly linking to John the Dane all the estates associated with his forename in Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucestershire.

The two Devon manors listed under John’s name went instead to Iudichael of Totnes, but Iudichael’s fief in Devon had a geographical rather than an antecessorial basis, and Matthew de Mortagne was a small tenant-in-chief whose claims as John the Dane’s successor would hardly be thought to override the imperative behind the formation of Judichael’s fief. The extreme rarity of John’s name has to be the deciding factor here: one pre-Conquest landholder in Wessex called John is surprise enough; a second in Devon is not plausible.

John the sheriff is more of a puzzle. He is named only as the landlord of the Alnoth who had a third share of Bullinghope, immediately across the Wye from Hereford. If the sheriff was John the Dane, his geographical interests stretched still further. If he was different, we are faced again with two instances of the profoundly unEnglish name John (unEnglish at any rate among the laity). Given that John the sheriff appears in Herefordshire, however, he may have been a Frenchman, part of the group of pre-Conquest ‘Norman’ settlers in Herefordshire under Edward the Confessor. The name John was certainly used by laymen in Normandy (e.g. Bates 1998: p. 1093). A Norman origin remains an outside possibility, but the rarity of the name makes it marginally more likely that John the sheriff was John the Dane. The use of different bynames in different shires is not an obstacle to the identification.

Even without the lordship near Hereford, John’s was a scattered estate, stretching well over 120 miles from south Devon to the Cotswolds. His manors were all in Wessex, however, and the context for his arrival there is Danish rule between 1016 and 1042. John’s byname can be taken as indicating that he was Danish by birth or parentage. A career in Wessex from early in Cnut’s reign to the eve of the Conquest is not out of the question, but neither is it a requirement to explain the pattern of John’s estates: he could have arrived later, or have succeeded his father. He never figures as a charter witness.

John’s estates form three or four sub-groups which may have eased their management. Yatton and Clevedon adjoined one another on the Severn estuary near the alluvial marshes of the lower Kenn. Together they amounted to over 25 hides worth perhaps £18 in 1066 (the figures for Yatton are unsatisfactory, being what they were worth when the 1086 holders received them). Exon (but not GDB) shows that one of the 20 hides at Yatton was in the hands of a woman who can be presumed John’s tenant. Shipton Moyne, 35 miles away and perhaps to be reckoned part of the same sub-group, was 10 hides worth £15. The Dorset estates, Milborne on the rolling chalk uplands of mid Dorset and Owermoigne 10 miles away near the infertile heaths of south-east Dorset, amounted to 14¾ hides worth £15. The Devon manors were less valuable at £6 and much less heavily assessed (like the rest of Devon) at 3½ hides: North Bovey on the edge of Dartmoor, and Thurlestone 30 miles away, sequestered among the deep lanes of the fertile and mild South Hams. John’s property in these four shires comes to a little short of 50 hides worth £54, with his tenants at Thurlestone and Yatton having 1¼ hides between them. This was a substantial estate.

The rarity of John’s name is again a persuasive factor in thinking that he was the father of the man who witnessed a purchase of land in Somerset by Bishop Giso of Wells (Giso 1) in 1072 as Northmann son of John, who in turn has been identified with the Northmann (Northman 6) who witnessed Edward the Confessor’s confirmation charter of 1065 in favour of Giso (Keynes 1996: 247). This family link with the bishop might explain how John’s manor of Yatton found its way into Giso’s hands between 1066 and 1086. Its acquisition was not documented in Wells’s own quite copious archives for the period, though it has been pointed out that the main source for Giso’s activities, his so-called ‘autobiography’, is not a full and contemporary account of his deeds, but rather a mid twelfth-century text angled towards explaining matters that were important when it was drafted (Keynes 1996: 221–6, 254–68).

Northmann’s brief career as a charter witness in 1065 and 1072 might mean that his father was already dead by the former date. It should also be noted that Northmann himself appears as a landowner in Devon and elsewhere in Wessex in 1066; if this is the same Northmann, the family’s estates were considerably larger than John’s 50 hides or so.

John the Dane, antecessor of Matthew de Mortagne, has long been identified as a pre-Conquest landowner of substance (Williams 1968: 32; Williams 1989: 26). The list of his estates provided by Clarke (1994: 316), however, omits those in Devon, does not list his tenants’ holdings separately, and has three errors in the figures.

Bibliography


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

Clarke 1994: Peter A. Clarke, The English Nobility under Edward the Confessor (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994)

Keynes 1996: Simon Keynes, ‘Giso, bishop of Wells (1061–88)’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 19: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1996 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 203–71

Williams 1968: Ann Williams, ‘Introduction to the Dorset Domesday’, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Dorset, III, ed. R. B. Pugh (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1968), 1–60

Williams 1989: Ann Williams, ‘An introduction to the Gloucestershire Domesday’, The Gloucestershire Domesday, [ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine] (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1989), 1–39