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Lodric 2

Name

Summary

Lodric 2 was a thegn with a single manor of 5 hides in central Herefordshire worth the surprisingly small sum of 15s.; he had been commended to the Mercian Earl Ælfgar (d. 1062 or 1063).

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 Herefordshire	Phil. ref. 10,58	Vill Yazor	DB Spelling Ludri	Holder 1066 Lodric 'of Yazor'	Lord 1066 Ælfgar, earl	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger de Lacy	1086 Subtenant Robert de Boscherville	Fiscal Value 5.00	1066 Value 0.75	1086 Value 3.00	Confidence D	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Yazor, in the hills on the north bank of the Wye 8 miles upstream from Hereford, belonged with full power of alienation to Lodric, a thegn of Earl Ælfgar. Ælfgar had been earl of Mercia until his death probably in 1062 or 1063 (Baxter 2007: 43–8), but Herefordshire had not been part of the Mercian earldom since the accession of Cnut in 1016, and the only land which any male descendant of Earl Leofric is known to have held in the shire was the large manor of Eardisland, some 8 miles north of Yazor; Eardisland belonged in 1066 to Earl Morcar but had presumably earlier been Ælfgar’s. Earl Ælfgar and his Welsh ally Gruffudd ap Llywelyn ravaged Herefordshire in 1055, burning the cathedral after advancing down the Wye valley from mid Wales, in what proved a successful attempt to restore Ælfgar to favour with King Edward.

Even with a sizeable estate of the Mercian earls only a few miles from Yazor, it is strange to find a local thegn commending himself to Earl Ælfgar when he was surrounded by the estates of Earl Harold and his men. For that reason it is conceivable that Lodric 2 was the same man as Lodric 3, who held an estate of about the same size as Yazor in south Warwickshire, a shire at the heart of the Mercian earldom. If Lodric’s status as the earl’s thegn meant that he spent much time in the earl’s company, then the very scattered location of his estates may not have been significant.

The value of Yazor TRE, at 15s., was unusually low for a manor of 5 hides.

Bibliography

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