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Cuthwulf 15

Name

Summary

Cuthwulf 15 was a small thegnly landowner on the border of Gloucestershire and Somerset, with two manors of 2½ hides worth a little over £2.

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. 6,8	Vill Gaunts Earthcott	DB Spelling Cuulf	Holder 1066 Cuthwulf 'of Gaunts Earthcott'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances	1086 Subtenant Robert 'the man of Geoffrey, bishop of Coutances'	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence D	Map
Shire Somerset	Phil. ref. 45,7	Vill Tadwick	DB Spelling -	Holder 1066 Cuthwulf 'of Gaunts Earthcott'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 William Hose	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 0.50	1066 Value 0.18	1086 Value 0.54	Confidence D	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Gaunts Earthcott, in the Vale of Gloucester about 10 miles north of Bristol, was a small vill of 2 hides in the hands of Cuthwulf 15 TRE. Some 15 miles to the south-east at Tadwick, in a coomb among the scarplands north of Bath, the three thegns who held the manor TRE were named in Exon. as Sigeric, Cuthwulf, and Waldin, and were said to hold ‘jointly’ or ‘in common’ (pariter) (Exon. 464v.). They may not quite have had equal shares. Although DB gives the total hidage as 1½, Exon. gives Cuthwulf and Waldin ½ hide each but Sigeric only 1½ virgates, ½ virgate short of the DB total. Exon also says that the two bordars enumerated in 1086 had ½ virgate; and it may be that in abbreviating the entry from Exon. the scribe of GDB mistakenly added that ½ virgate to the total for the vill.

Of Cuthwulf’s co-holders at Tadwick, Sigeric does not occur as a landowner anywhere remotely near, and Waldin appears only here.

The grounds for identifying Cuthwulf of Tadwick with Cuthwulf of Gaunts Earthcott are the relative rarity of the name in 1066 and the proximity of the two estates, though a distance of 15 miles between holdings of this size (2 hides and ½ hide) is probably at the limit of what would have been manageable as a small thegnly estate.

The identity of the two would be strengthened if Cuthwulf appeared as William Hosed’s predecessor on other estates in the vicinity besides being one of his three predecessors at Tadwick. That possibility is left open by the fact that William Hosed had succeeded an unnamed thegn as a tenant of Bath abbey at Charlecombe, barely 2 miles down the combe from Tadwick (Som. 7:8). Charlecombe was a larger holding than either Tadwick or Gaunts Earthcott, 4 hides worth 50s. TRE. If the abbey’s unnamed tenant was indeed Cuthwulf, it would have been his core holding, and Gaunts Earthcott the outlier on the estate.