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Leofrun 12

Name

Summary

Leofrun 12 held two estates in east Hertfordshire TRE assessed at 2¼ hides and with a value of about 63s; she was in the commendation of Archbishop Stigand (Stigand 1) with regard to one of her estates, which she held freehold, and held the other as a dependent tenant of Almær.

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 Hertfordshire	Phil. ref. 34,14	Vill Brickendon	DB Spelling Leueron	Holder 1066 Leofrun 'of Brickendon'	Lord 1066 Stigand, archbishop of Canterbury	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Geoffrey de Bec	1086 Subtenant Isembard 'of Brickendon'	Fiscal Value 1.25	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 0.50	Confidence C	Map
Shire Hertfordshire	Phil. ref. 36,8	Vill Libury	DB Spelling Leueron	Holder 1066 Leofrun 'of Brickendon'	Lord 1066 Almær of Bennington	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Peter de Valognes	1086 Subtenant 2 sokemen	Fiscal Value 1.00	1066 Value 1.14	1086 Value 0.57	Confidence C	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

The identification of Leofrun 12 is based mainly on the fact that her two estates were close together, of similar size and lay more than 110 miles away from any other estate held TRE by a woman called Leofrun.  These positive identification criteria outweigh the potentially negative ones that the name Leofrun was common and that Leofrun 12 was associated with two different lords.

She held a small estate at Brickendon, a vill focussed on a low hill between minor tributaries of the rivers Mimram and Lea and just to the west of Ermine Street in south-east Hertfordshire.  The main estate at Brickendon was in the hands of Waltham Abbey but Leofrun held the largest of three smaller estates in the vill.  DB states that Leofrun was the ‘man’ (Latin homo, which here includes the sense ‘woman’) of Archbishop Stigand but also notes that she could sell her land, which implies that she was not a dependent tenant and therefore was probably Stigand’s ‘man’ by commendation.

Leofrun was also recorded among the many landholders at Stuterehele, now Libury (Hertfordshire) and also on a slight upland overlooking a stream; it lies less than 10 miles to the north of Brickendon.  She held one of two estates there that were together valued at 40s TRE, with hers having an assessment of 1 hide and the other, held by Alwine TRE, assessed for 3 virgates; if divided proportionally, this would give Leofrun’s estate a value of nearly 23s.  There is no obvious reason to connect Leofrun and Alwine and the two estates seem to have been joined after the Conquest only because both TRE holders had been in the lordship of Almær of Bennington, whose lands had passed to Peter de Valognes (Peter 11) by 1086.  In this instance Leofrun held the land leasehold from Almær, with DB’s record that she ‘could not sell without his leave’ indicating that she was his dependent tenant.