Burgnoth 7

Burgnoth ‘of Ernulfitone’ (Kent), fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Burgnoth

Summary

Burgnoth 7 held a single manor of 1 sulung worth £4 in east Kent. The manor included property in Canterbury and its suburbs, and it is unclear whether Burgnoth was primarily a Canterbury man or a thegnly rural landowner.

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
Kent 5,147 Ernulfitone Burnod Burgnoth 'of Ernulfitone' Edward, king Odo, bishop of Bayeux Ansfrid Masculus 0.92 3.83 4.83 A Map
Kent 5,147 Ernulfitone Burnod Burgnoth 'of Ernulfitone' Edward, king Odo, bishop of Bayeux Ansfrid Masculus 0.08 0.18 0.18 A Map
Totals

Profile

The name Burgnoth occurs only once in DB, as holder of a vill named as Ernoltun in the main entry and Ernulfitone elsewhere (Kent D:18). The place in question, in Faversham hundred, has long been identified as Arnolton in the parish of Eastling, high on the dip-slope of the North Downs at grid reference TQ 9755 (VCH Kent, III, 235; Darby and Versey 1975: Map 27; Phill. Kent). But there is no such place as Arnolton, whether in Eastling or elsewhere in Kent. The place so mapped is actually Arnold’s Oak Farm, a manorial site evidently named from Arnold de Bononia, father of the John fitzArnold who held the manor in the 1240s (Hasted 1797–1801: VI, 434; PN Kent: 285). The name Ernoltun or Ernulfitone, by contrast, is from the OE personal name Earnwulf + tūn (the same personal name appears spelled Arnul and Ernulf in DB: von Feilitzen 1937: 244).

Ernulfitone is much more likely to have lain in the coastal belt near Faversham, and had probably come into existence as a separate entity when the king’s Faversham estate was broken up in earlier centuries. The intricate nineteenth-century parish boundaries around Faversham (Kain and Oliver 2001: nos. 19/108–12, 152–7) are likely to reflect a process of subdivision designed to give new owners access to some of the resources of the wider territory of Faversham in the Thames-side marshes and the woodlands of the Downs. Another indication of such subdivision is the existence in this area of place-names in an OE personal name with tūn. Besides Ernulfitone, they are Goodnestone (Godwine), Brimstone (a lost place in Ospringe: Brun), and Elverton (in Stone: Æthelwaru or Ægelwaru) (PN Kent: 286, 290, 297–8). The personal names involved point to a relatively late date in the Anglo-Saxon period for the naming of new ‘manorial’ estates carved out of Faversham.

Hasted (1797–1801: VI, 393) confidently identified Ernulfitone as one of them, Elverton, but the two place-names are certainly based on different personal names. Ernulfitone has been mapped provisionally in the marshes north of Faversham.

Burgnoth’s manor included land for three ploughs, two salt-works, a house in Canterbury, and 10 acres near Canterbury. The salt-works are themselves good reason for not locating Ernulfitone 6 miles inland on the Downs. The only other manors in Faversham hundred with salt-works in 1086 were Faversham itself with two (Kent 1:4) and Oare and Ospringe with one each (Kent 5:141, 145).

The other appearance of Ernulfitone in DB is among a list of lands where the king took the fines for housebreaking (handsoca), breach of the peace (gribrige), and highway robbery (foristel) (Kent D:18). This looks like a privilege for the places concerned, since the king would normally have been entitled to a longer list of fines. All the places listed except the last seem to be in Faversham hundred, and the privilege was presumably connected with the break-up of the Faversham estate.

Burgnoth’s interests at Canterbury, held as part of Ernulfitone, comprised a house (masura) in the city, worth 21d. (above average for the houses recorded as attached to outlying manors), and 10 acres near the city which paid 42d. TRE but had since been taken from the manor by Ranulph de Colombières. In 1086 Ranulph had another 45 suburban houses and 118 acres, all acquired with questionably legality and including the property of the burgesses’ gild and of a church (Kent C:3). The location of his (and thus Burgnoth’s) extra-mural holdings cannot be determined in the present state of research: they will have lain in either the northern suburb (Northgate) or the southern (Wincheap), since the western suburb belonged to the archbishop and development on the east was constrained by the precinct of St Augustine’s abbey (Urry 1967: 186–9 and maps).

The close link of Ernulfitone with the city of Canterbury makes it uncertain whether we should see Burgnoth as a minor rural thegn with urban interests or as a Canterbury man who had acquired a single estate in the countryside.

Bibliography


Darby and Versey 1975: H. C. Darby and G. R. Versey, Domesday Gazetteer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975)

Hasted 1797–1801: Edward Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of Kent, 2nd edn, 12 vols (1797–1801)

Kain and Oliver 2001: Roger J. P. Kain and Richard R. Oliver, Historic Parishes of England & Wales: An Electronic Map of Boundaries before 1850 with a Gazetteer and Metadata (Colchester: History Data Service, 2001)

Phill. Kent: Domesday Book, ed. John Morris, 11: Kent, ed. Philip Morgan (Chichester: Phillimore, 1983)

PN Kent: J. K. Wallenberg, The Place-Names of Kent (Uppsala: Appelbergs Boktryckeriaktiebolag, 1934)

Urry 1967: William Urry, Canterbury under the Angevin Kings, 1 vol. and map folder (London: Athlone Press, 1967)

VCH Kent III: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Kent, ed. William Page, III (London: The St. Catherine Press, 1932)

von Feilitzen 1937: Olof von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Nomina Germanica 3 (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells, 1937)