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Offa 14

Name

Summary

Offa 14 held a small manor in north-east Gloucestershire TRE that after the Conquest was merged with that of Leofwine to form an estate assessed at 3 hides and with a value of £6; both men had the power of alienation over their land.

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
Shire Gloucestershire	Phil. ref. 39,20	Vill Upper Slaughter	DB Spelling Offa	Holder 1066 Offa 'of Slaughter'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger de Lacy	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 1.50	1066 Value 3.00	1086 Value 3.00	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Offa 14’s manor was at Upper Slaughter, on a tributary stream between the rivers Windrush and Dickler in the Cotswolds in north-east Gloucestershire and near where Ryknild Street meets the Foss Way. By 1086 it had been merged with another manor, held TRE by Leofwine, to form a single estate held by Roger de Lacy (Roger 14) and his mother. This combined estate was then assessed at 3 hides and with a value of £6 in both 1086 and before. DB also notes that Offa and Leofwine ‘could go where they wished’, indicating that each had the power of alienation over his lands, and gives no hint that either was subject to a lord.

That the pre-Conquest situation may have been more complex than DB implies is suggested by the post-Conquest records of Evesham Abbey. In the survey known as Evesham N, datable to c.1097, is a claim that 5 hides at Parva Sloutra (Upper Slaughter) had been taken from the abbey by Bishop Odo of Bayeux (Odo 3) in the time of Abbot Walter (Walter 13) and were now in the hands of Hugh de Lacy, who succeeded to his brother Roger’s estates in 1096 (Moore 1982: EvN). Taken at face value, the claim implies that the 5 hides were taken from the abbey after Walter’s appointment in early 1077 or 1078 (Knowles et al. 2001: 47, 248) but before Odo’s arrest and imprisonment in late 1082 or early 1083. 

Elrington (1965: 134-42; citing Taylor 1917: 71-2) regarded the abbey’s claim as unfounded; and it certainly seems implausible as it stands and in the face of the DB evidence to the contrary. It is not mentioned in any other source and there is a sense that the abbey’s claim was timed to coincide with Hugh’s succession after his brother’s banishment, with Odo’s known rapacious tendencies providing a ready vehicle to explain the abbey’s putative loss. It is possible that the abbey had held or claimed an estate at Upper Slaughter at some point before the Conquest, but such a possibility cannot be sustained on the basis of the current evidence.

Offa 14’s manor was too small and too far removed from those held TRE by others of that name for any connection between them to be considered.

Bibliography

Elrington 1965: C. R. Elrington, ed., A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 6 (London, 1965)

Knowles et al. 2001: D. Knowles, C. N. L. Brook and V. C. M. London, eds., The Heads of Religious Houses. England and Wales. I: 940-1216, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, 2001)

Moore 1982: J. S. Moore, ed., Domesday Book 15: Gloucestershire (Chichester, 1982)

Taylor 1917: C. S. Taylor, ‘The Norman settlement of Gloucestershire’, Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 40 (1917)