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Seisyll 2

Name

Summary

Seisyll 2 held two Herefordshire estates with a combined assessment of 6 hides, one on the Welsh frontier, the other near Hereford. He may have been a Welsh ally of Earl Harold, given lands in Herefordshire during the resettlement after 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. 24,11	Vill Lyde	DB Spelling Saisi	Holder 1066 Seisyll 'of Staunton on Arrow'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Osbern fitzRichard	1086 Subtenant Roger de Lacy	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 1.25	1086 Value 1.50	Confidence C	Map
Shire Herefordshire	Phil. ref. 24,8	Vill Staunton on Arrow	DB Spelling Saissil	Holder 1066 Seisyll 'of Staunton on Arrow'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Osbern fitzRichard	1086 Subtenant Drew fitzPons	Fiscal Value 4.00	1066 Value 0.00	1086 Value 3.00	Confidence C	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Succession after the Conquest provides a reason for identifying the holders of Staunton on Arrow and one of the manors at Lyde as the same person, despite the different DB spellings of the personal name and ther 13 miles that separated them. Both manors passed after the Conquest to Osbern fitzRichard (Osbern 10), but whereas Staunton was in the midst of Osbern’s pre-Conquest frontier estate, Lyde was something of an outlier, the most southerly of his acquisitions after 1066. There is no reason for Osbern to have acquired Lyde unless it had belonged to the same man as Staunton.

Staunton is situated well up the Arrow valley west of Leominster, on the fringe of the upland zone probably much affected by the wars between the English and the Welsh king Gruffudd ap Llywelyn in the period 1055–63, but then reorganized (and resettled?) in the wake of Earl Harold’s victory over Gruffudd in 1062–3. Staunton was recorded as waste TRE but had a larger assessment and was potentially more valuable than Lyde, in the Lugg valley 3 miles north of Hereford. Other property at Lyde, an area of scattered farms and hamlets, was in the hands of the bishop of Hereford (Herefs. 2:44), the important Danish thegn Thorkil as a tenant of Earl Harold (Herefs. 10:25), and a smaller thegn, Burning 29 (Herefs. 10:26), who had seemingly been involved in Harold’s reorganization of the frontier.

A manor near Hereford and another on the resettled frontier, larger but temporarily disrupted, are perhaps what Earl Harold would give to a Welsh ally.