Skalpi 2

Skalpi housecarl of Earl Harold, fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Skalpi
Skalpi 3

Summary

Skalpi 2 was a housecarl of Earl Harold who held two manors in south-east Suffolk and acquired a third from his lord perhaps as late as 1066, making a total of around 7 carucates and hides worth over £15. He retained his estates into William’s reign but was outlawed for reasons unknown and went to Évreux in Normandy, where he died before 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
Essex 30,16 Great Leighs Scalpinus Skalpi, housecarl of Earl Harold Harold, earl Geoffrey de Mandeville William fitzSaxwalo de Bouville 2.63 4.00 4.50 A Map
Essex 32,40 Ardleigh Scapius Skalpi, housecarl of Earl Harold - Robert Gernon William d'Aunay 0.75 2.00 0.25 A Map
Suffolk 36,1 Churchford Scapius Skalpi, housecarl of Earl Harold Harold, earl Robert Gernon William d'Aunay 1.00 3.00 2.00 A Map
Suffolk 36,16 Layham Scapius Skalpi, housecarl of Earl Harold - Robert Gernon William d'Aunay 0.17 0.15 0.15 A Map
Suffolk 36,2 Stutton Scalpius Skalpi, housecarl of Earl Harold Harold, earl Robert Gernon William d'Aunay 2.00 6.00 3.00 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
Suffolk 16,35 Burstall Scalpus Ælfgeat 'of Burstall' Skalpi Odo, bishop of Bayeux Roger Bigod 0.10 0.13 0.13 A Map
Suffolk 36,8 Woolverstone Scalpius Alfred 'of Woolverstone' Skalpi Robert Gernon - 0.67 0.80 0.50 A Map
Totals

Profile

The references to Skalpi in Suffolk and Essex can be confidently attributed to a single landowner on the basis of succession, proximity, and DB’s description of him in different entries as a housecarl and thegn of Earl Harold. The identification was first made long ago, connecting the thegn of Earl Harold recorded in Suffolk with Harold’s housecarl in Essex (Round 1903: 352).

Four of the five manors in question had passed by 1086 to Robert Gernon, an important if second-rank tenant-in-chief in Essex and adjoining counties, Skalpi being much his most important predecessor in Suffolk. All four places were evidently held from Robert in 1086 by the same subtenant, William d’Aunay, on the reasonable assumption that ‘William’ in Essex was the same as William de Alno in Suffolk. Gernon also acquired a small manor at Woolverstone which had been held TRE not by Skalpi but by his commended man Alfred. Gernon’s acquisition of Skalpi’s man’s land underlines the antecessorial character of his succession to Skalpi. Skalpi’s only other commended man was not dealt with in the same way: his land at Burstall was parcelled up with similar small properties in the vill and given instead to Odo of Bayeux (Suff. 16:18, 35).

One of Skalpi’s manors, Great Leighs in Essex, was held in 1086 by Geoffrey de Mandeville rather than Robert Gernon. DB’s lengthy account of its recent history was clearly intended to explain why: probably Gernon made claim to it at some point during the Domesday proceedings and testimony was obtained from the hundred jurors. DB begins by stating that Great Leighs had belonged to Esgar (Ansgarus), in context clearly a reference to Esgar the staller (Esgar 2), a prominent figure under Edward the Confessor whose lands across a large swathe of southern England had been given to Geoffrey de Mandeville. DB then explains that

Esgar gave this manor to Harold TRE; and Harold in turn gave it to a certain housecarl of his, Skalpi by name; and this Skalpi gave it to his wife in dower (in dote) in the sight of 2 men, viz. Roger the marshal and a certain Englishman; and the hundred testifies to this because they heard it formally acknowledged by Skalpi (quod audier’ recognoscere Scalpino); and after the king came into this land, he [Skalpi] held it himself until he went to the place where he died in Ebroica in outlawry (donec iuit ubi mortuus fuit in Ebroica in utlagaria).

The passage is full of interest, but not without its difficulties. The clearest fixed point is that Skalpi’s gift to his wife must have taken place after the Conquest, since one of the witnesses had the thoroughly Francophone name of Roger the marshal. Roger was in one sense a near neighbour of Skalpi at Great Leighs, holding land (though a mere 5 acres) in 1086 at Notley about 3 miles away, but his status as a (very minor) landowner was probably less important than his standing as part of the new military establishment of Essex immediately after the Conquest. As a marshal (presumably the king’s), he may well have been in charge of the horses in a garrison at Colchester even before the castle was begun there around the middle of the Conqueror’s reign (VCH Essex IX, 19–21, 241): the largest of his four small properties, ½ hide at Byrton, was only just outside the borough (Essex 62:1–4).

Whatever Roger the marshal’s connections, Skalpi’s gift to his wife must have been in the nature of a promise rather than an actual transfer, if dos indeed has its normal meaning of widow’s dower: Great Leighs was intended as her portion if she should be widowed in the future. Skalpi’s promise in the sight of Norman and English witnesses was evidently followed by confirmation in the hundred court of Chelmsford, which seems to be the meaning of the phrase that in 1086 the hundred testified that ‘they heard it formally acknowledged by Skalpi’. The phrase is difficult, not least because the verb audier’ must stand for audiuerunt (‘they heard’) or audiuerant (‘they had heard’) but has been abbreviated incorrectly. The crucial point is that Scalpino must be the ablative (‘by Skalpi’) rather than the dative (‘to Skalpi’). Previous attempts at a translation do not make sense, since they require Skalpi’s name to be in the genitive or accusative: ‘they heard Scalpin’s right acknowledged’ (VCH Essex, I, 507); ‘they heard [them] acknowledge Scalpi’ (Phill. Essex, entry 30:16); and ‘they heard [the right of] Skalpi recognised’ (Williams and Martin 2002: 1013).

The meaning of the next phrase, however, is plain: ‘after the king came into this land’ is a stock way in DB of referring to the advent of William I; plainly, Skalpi continued to hold the estate because his gift to his wife was actually only a promise for the future. But then there is another difficulty: what place is Ebroica, where Skalpi went as an outlaw and died? Round translated it for the VCH as Évreux in Normandy, despite being hampered by reading the name as ehroica, whether in the photozincographic facsimile (OS Facsimile: Essex) or the actual manuscript of LDB. Farley had in fact printed the name correctly in 1783, and it is clear enough in the modern Alecto facsimile.

Freeman had taken Ebroica to be York despite acknowledging that it ‘ought to mean Evreux’. Out of this he created a romantic anecdote: Skalpi as the loyal housecarl honouring the memory of his dead lord King Harold by abandoning his lands in Essex and joining the Danes after the invasion of Yorkshire in autumn 1069:

As in so many other cases, the Norman Survey preserves to us the name of a single man, who was doubtless only one man among many. A former Housecarl of King Harold, attached to him doubtless in the early days of his East-Anglian government, whose name in French ears sounded as Scalpin, left the lands in Essex which William had allowed him to keep and died at York as an outlaw.

Evreux would be a strange place of shelter for an English exile. . . . One can hardly doubt that Scalpin, or whatever his real name was, fought and died in this Yorkshire campaign. (Freeman: IV, 253 and note 4)

Both recent editions of DB follow Freeman in rejecting Évreux in favour of York, glossed in one case as ‘York(shire)’ (Phill. Essex, note 30,16; Williams and Martin 2002: 1013), and the story of Skalpi’s participation in the northern risings of 1069–70 has been restated as fact more than once (Williams 1980: 178; Williams 1995: 34). But it is all wishful thinking, for the sake of a colourful story and a precious link between an entry in DB and ‘historical’ events.

The place of Skalpi’s outlawry and death in fact has to be Évreux rather than York: both places occur repeatedly in DB with spellings that allow for no confusion between the two. The same LDB scribe who wrote this passage elsewhere gave York its phonetically correct Old English name Eurewic, pronounced /Everwick/ (Essex 6:15). In GDB the great northern capital was accorded its Latin name Eboracum (with variants like Eboracensis ciuitas) (Devon C:4; Notts.: B:20; Yorks. 22W:6; C:1; C:29; C:36; C:39; SN:Y1; Lincs. T:1), except in the Yorkshire Claims, where it was named in English as Euruic, again pronounced /Everwick/ (Yorks. CE:20; CW:35; see also PN Yorks. ER: 275–80). The scribe who wrote the Essex entries has been identified as having a typically Norman hand (Rumble 1987: 87; Gullick 1987: 109), but there can hardly have been an educated man in Normandy or England in 1086 who did not know the correct Latin and English names for the kingdom’s second archiepiscopal city. Évreux, too, the seat of a Norman bishop and a count, appears repeatedly in DB because Count William was only ever referred to as the count of Évreux: comes Ebroicensis or some abbreviation thereof (Hants S:3; Berks. Index List; B:5; 17; 17:1; Oxon. Index List; B:9; 7:51; 17; 17:1). Ebroicensis is the adjective formed from Ebroica.

Skalpi, then, was outlawed in William I’s reign for reasons unknown and at a date unknown, and died in Normandy at Évreux. Banishment to Normandy has a partial parallel in the fate of Earl Morcar (Morcar 3), who after the failure of the English rebellion of 1071 was held in custody throughout the rest of the Conqueror’s reign by Roger de Beaumont, almost certainly in Normandy rather than England (Baxter 2007: 280).

The dates of Esgar the staller’s gift of Great Leighs to Earl Harold, and Harold’s to Skalpi, remain to be discussed. Probably both took place while Harold was king. So late a transfer by Esgar would explain why it was his name that was recorded as the holder in DB and not Skalpi’s: Esgar was owner of Great Leighs all the time that Edward was king, literally TRE. This also explains why Great Leighs came lawfully in 1086 to Esgar’s successor Geoffrey de Mandeville, and not Skalpi’s successor Robert Gernon: Skalpi’s possession was nullified in Norman eyes not by his outlawry but by his having acquired the manor from the usurper Harold. The tenurial clock was turned back to the day King Edward was alive and dead.

Skalpi’s manors were divided between a cluster in south-east Suffolk and Great Leighs 30 miles away in the Ter valley in central Essex, the latter, as suggested above, probably acquired during 1066. The Suffolk property comprised two manors: Stutton on the north bank of the Stour estuary, and Churchford 5 miles to the west near the Roman road from Colchester to Norwich. A detached portion of the Churchford demesne was located 3½ miles away at Layham, and probably Churchford was the unnamed manor in Suffolk to which Ardleigh, 6 miles away in Essex, also belonged. Apart from Great Leighs, all of Skalpi’s property clustered around the edges of Earl Harold’s great manor of East Bergholt (Suff. 1:100, 103–105).

Skalpi farmed his land intensively in 1066, and it was all highly valued in relation to its assessment: over £15 for less than 7 hides and carucates. He had home farms with two ploughteams at each of Churchford, Ardleigh, Stutton, and Great Leighs, and there were large flocks of sheep at Churchford and Stutton (140 and 190 strong), besides dairy herds at both places and pigs at Stutton (no livestock figures are given for Great Leighs, missing perhaps because ownership of the estate had changed so recently). Other resources included two salt-works in the coastal marshes of Stutton and a watermill and a share of the church in the same vill. Involvement in farming makes a telling point about the lifestyle of an earl’s housecarl in the 1060s.

At both Churchford and Stutton Skalpi ‘had the soke under Harold’. In 1066 soke jurisdiction over most of the smaller freeholders of Samford hundred was retained by Earl Harold as lord of East Bergholt, the chief place of Samford; other great lords with estates in the hundred (Archbishop Stigand (Stigand 1), Ramsey abbey, Eadgifu the fair, Robert fitzWimarc (Robert 14), and Esgar the staller (Esgar 2) had soke over their own estates, as did a handful of thegns (Fridebern, Thori, Godwine son of Alsige, and Auti, the last only over his own demesne, not his villans’ lands). Two other lords besides Skalpi were described as having soke ‘under’ one of the great lords: Ælfric of Wenhou (Ælfric ) under Harold, and Alwine under Stigand. This looks like some kind of devolved jurisdiction, perhaps granted on certain conditions, rather than an absolute and permanent right.

Skalpi, the man of Earl Harold, was himself the commended lord of two lesser men with holdings in the neighbourhood: Alfred, who had 80 acres which formed the smaller part of the small vill of Woolverstone, located 3 miles across the Shotley peninsula from Stutton; and Ælfgeat, one of thirteen small free men at Burstall 4 miles north of Churchford, in his case with a third share in 37 acres. Both men had chosen Skalpi as their lord over other more obviously eligible candidates. Ælfgeat’s soke lord was Earl Harold, and other free men in his vill were commended to King Edward, Archbishop Stigand, and Earls Ælfgar (Ælfgar 46) and Gyrth (Gyrth 1) (Suff. 16:18, 35; 25:71, 77; 34:7). Alfred’s neighbour at Woolverstone, Thorsten 34, had Harold’s first wife Eadgifu the fair for his lord (Suff. 3:74).

There is nothing to connect the housecarl Skalpi with the two small manors in eastern Norfolk entered in DB with the same name (Skalpi 3), contrary to the assertion that they belonged to him too (Williams 1995: 34).

Bibliography


Baxter 2007: Stephen Baxter, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)

Freeman: Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols, revised edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1875–9 [I and II in 3rd edn, 1877; III and IV in 2nd edn, 1875–6; V and VI, 1876–9]

Gullick 1987: Michael Gullick, ‘The Great and Little Domesday manuscripts’, Domesday Book: Studies, [ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine] (London: Alecto Historical Editions, 1987), 93–112

OS Facsimile: Essex: Domesday Book, or The Great Survey of England of William the Conqueror, A.D. MLXXXVI: Facsimile of the Part relating to Essex (Southampton: Ordnance Survey Office, 1862)

Phill. Essex: Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 32: Essex, ed. Alexander Rumble (Chichester: Phillimore, 1983)

PN Yorks.: ER = A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the East Riding of Yorkshire and York, English Place-Name Society 14 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1937)

Round 1903: J. Horace Round, ‘Introduction to the Essex Domesday’, The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Essex, I, ed. William Page (Westminster: Archibald Constable, 1903), 333–425

Rumble 1987: Alexander R. Rumble, ‘The Domesday manuscripts: scribes and scriptoria’, Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), 79–99

VCH Essex I: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Essex, I, [ed. H. A. Doubleday and William Page] (London: Archibald Constable, 1903)

VCH Essex IX: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Essex, IX, ed. Janet Cooper (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1994)

Williams 1980: Ann Williams, ‘Land and power in the eleventh-century: the estates of Harold Godwineson’, Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, 3: 1980, ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1981), 171–87 and 230–4

Williams 1995: Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995)

Williams and Martin 2002: Domesday Book: A Complete Translation, ed. Ann Williams and G. H. Martin (London: Penguin, 2002)