Top of page Name Summary Distribution Map Property List Profile Bibliography Bottom of page

Gerald 4

Name

Summary

Gerald 4 was a dependant tenant on a Hampshire manor of the Old Minster, Winchester, TRE and so was under the lordship of Stigand 1 as bishop of Winchester; no separate TRE hidage or value is given for Gerald’s land in DB, but it was assessed as 2 ploughlands in 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
Shire Hampshire	Phil. ref. 3,1	Vill Chilcomb	DB Spelling Giraudus	Holder 1066 Gerald 'of Chilcomb'	Lord 1066 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Walkelin, bishop of Winchester	1086 Subtenant unnamed monks of Old Minster, Winchester, in 1086	Fiscal Value 0.00	1066 Value 2.16	1086 Value 4.80	Confidence C	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Gerald 4’s land lay within the great manor of Chilcomb in Hampshire, a possession of the monks of the Old Minster, Winchester, that included much of the land around the city (Munby 1982: Ch3 Notes) and was under the lordship of Stigand 1 in his role as bishop of Winchester.  Gerald is named among several people who held land within Chilcomb TRE and who ‘could not withdraw with their land to another lord’, indicating that they were dependent tenants.  It is possible that Gerald was a religious associated with the Old Minster who held his land as a prebend.

DB does not give a hidage or value for Gerald’s land, noting simply that his successor held ‘land for 2 ploughs’ that had been Gerald’s TRE; but if the total value of the manor is divided in proportion to the ploughlands within it then Gerald’s land would have been valued at about £2 3s 2½d.

Lewis (1995: 141) regarded Gerald 4 and Gerald 5 as different people and was probably correct to do so.  Nevertheless, although their TRE lands were about 35 miles apart that of Gerald 5 was large enough for this distance not to be an insurmountable obstacle to identification; and, given the extreme rarity of the name Gerald in pre-Conquest England it remains conceivable that they were the same person.

Bibliography

Lewis 1995: C. P. Lewis, ‘The French in England before the Norman Conquest’, Anglo-Norman Studies 17 (1995), pp. 123-44, at p. 141.

Munby 1982: Domesday Book 4: Hampshire, ed. J. Munby (Chichester, 1982)