Cuthwulf 14

Cuthwulf ‘of Rollestone’ (Wilts.), fl. 1066x1086
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Cuthwulf
Cuthwulf 15

Summary

Cuthwulf 14 was a thegnly landowner with over 15 hides worth about £15, partly on the fringes of Salisbury Plain, straddling the shire boundary between Wiltshire and Hampshire, and partly on the more northerly downs near Wansdyke. He held his main estate from Earl Harold but survived the Conquest as a king’s thegn, reduced to a single manor of 6 hides worth £3.

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
Hampshire 28,6 South Tidworth Codolf Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' Harold, earl Robert fitzGerald Hugh 'the man of Robert fitzGerald' 7.00 10.00 10.00 A Map
Wiltshire 42,4 Biddesden Coolle Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - Robert fitzGerald Robert 'the man of Robert fitzGerald' 0.25 1.50 1.50 A Map
Wiltshire 42,9 Shaw Cudulf Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - Robert fitzGerald Hugh 'the man of Robert fitzGerald' 2.38 1.00 2.00 A Map
Wiltshire 67,39 Rollestone Cudulfus Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - 6.00 3.00 3.00 B Map
Totals

Tenant-in-Chief 1086 demesne estates (no subtenants)

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
Wiltshire 67,39 Rollestone Cudulfus Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - Cuthwulf 'of Rollestone' - 6.00 3.00 3.00 - Map
Totals

Profile

Three estates in east-central Wiltshire passed from Cuthwulf to the same Norman, Robert fitzGerald. South Tidsworth and Biddesden are not more than 4 miles apart. Shaw is now identified with the place of that name about 15 miles to the north, on the downs near Wansdyke, rather than the Shaw near Biddesden (VCH Wilts. XI, 190–1; VCH Wilts. XVI, 114). The proximity and common succession of the three are enough to establish the identity of Cuthwulf 14. In GDB his name is spelled in three different ways, including one form, Coolle, which on its own would be barely recognizable as representing the same name, even if the final –le represents a misreading of –f. 

Some 12 miles west of South Tidworth, a manor in the valley of the river Till was also held TRE by Cuthwulf, who in this case survived in 1086 as a king’s thegn. His name is spelled Cudulfus in GDB and Codulfus, Covlfus, and Codolf in the three variants of the corresponding Exon. entry, confirming that spellings without the medial –d– could stand for the same name

That manor was Wintreburne, one of several of the same name all called after the river on which they stood, which was literally a ‘winterbourne’, a river which flowed only in winter and dried up in summer. The present river-name Till is not recorded until modern times (Ekwall 1928: 407, 464). The holding has been identified as Rollestone through a process of elimination, Rollestone being the only place on the Winterbourne alias Till not accounted for in other DB entries (PN Wilts.: 235; Darlington 1955: 179; VCH Wilts. XI, 208; Phill. Wilts. place-name note for Winterbourne).

Identification of Cuthwulf 14 as the holder of Rollestone requires him to have retained it as a king’s thegn while losing most of his lands after the Conquest to Robert fitzGerald. Given that he had been associated with Earl Harold TRE, holding his largest manor from him, Cuthwulf did well to survive at all.

Cuthwulf 14’s largest and most valuable manor, South Tidworth, was central to his estate; in 1066 he held it from Earl Harold as an alod. It was the largest of four pre-Conquest holdings in the vill and in 1086 included the church. The other pre-Conquest holdings there were held of the king rather than Harold (Hants 28:3; 60:1). South Tidworth was a classic manor of the chalk downland valleys of Hampshire and Wiltshire, centred in a narrow fertile valley and reaching up on to the chalk downs on either side. Cuthwulf’s estates at Shaw and Biddesden were both in wooded areas, providing an additional resource.

Cuthwulf’s pre-Conquest holding of over 15½ hides worth £15 10s. made him a landowner of some significance locally. In 1086 he was reduced to 6 hides worth only £3 but even so was among the larger English survivors in Wiltshire. At Rollestone in 1086 he had a home farm with two ploughs at work and five slaves, as well as a handful of dependent peasants.

A remote possibility is that Cuthwulf 14 was the same person as Cuthwulf 16. Cuthwulf 14 held an alod from Earl Harold in Hampshire; Cuthwulf 16 was presumably the earl’s tenant in Sussex, having certainly once been his father Earl Godwine’s. But the estates in question are over 50 miles apart, a distance too great (given the size of the manors) for the identity of their holders to be at all likely. 

Bibliography


Darlington 1955: R. R. Darlington, ‘Wiltshire Geld Rolls’, in The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Wiltshire, II, ed. R. B. Pugh and Elizabeth Crittall (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1955), 169–221

Ekwall 1928: Eilert Ekwall, English River-Names (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928)

Phill. Wilts.: Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 6: Wiltshire, ed. Caroline and Frank Thorn (Chichester: Phillimore, 1979)

PN Wilts.: J. E. B. Gover, Allen Mawer, and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Wiltshire, English Place-Name Society 16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939)

VCH Wilts. XI: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Wiltshire, XI, ed. D. A. Crowley (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1980)

VCH Wilts. XVI: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of Wiltshire, XVI: Kinwardstone Hundred, ed. D. A. Crowley (London: Oxford University Press for the Institute of Historical Research, 1999)