Osgeard 2

Osgeard ‘of Darenth’ (Kent)
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Osgeard

Summary

Osgeard 2 was a minor Kentish thegn with three scattered manors of 2 sulungs worth £8.

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 5,17 Darenth Osiert Osgeard 'of Darenth' Edward, king Odo, bishop of Bayeux Ansketil de Rots 1.00 3.00 3.50 C Map
Kent 5,180 Benenden Osier Osgeard 'of Darenth' Edward, king Odo, bishop of Bayeux Robert of Romney 1.00 2.00 2.50 C Map
Kent 9,45 Siborne Osiar Osgeard 'of Darenth' Edward, king Hugh de Montfort - 2.00 3.00 4.00 C Map
Totals

Profile

The name Osgeard occurs only three times in DB, all in Kent but scattered enough to raise the question whether they all referred to the same person or not. The two closest manors were 18 miles apart, and it was 33 and 45 miles respectively from Benenden and Siborne to Darenth. Those distances are not in themselves fatal to the idea that there was only one Osgeard. Succession after the Conquest is no help with identification, since as usual in Kent, the manors passed into the geographically based fiefs of Bishop Odo and Hugh de Montfort. On balance, the extreme rarity of the personal name argues for only a single pre-Conquest landowner.

The three manors concerned were of roughly the same size and value. At all three, Osgeard was said to hold ‘from King Edward’ (de rege. E.), the standard phrase in Kent for tenure with full power of alienation.

Osgeard’s ½-sulung manor entered under the name of Darenth was probably located at St Margarets, south of the large archiepiscopal manor of Darenth in the foothills of the North Downs above the Darent valley. Until the tenth century the ancient river-estate centred on Darenth and Dartford remained intact in royal hands; Osgeard’s ½ sulung was a fragment broken off some time later (Hasted 1797–1801: II, 367–83; Everitt 1986: 77–8). It included a mill on the Darent, worth 20s. in 1086. Osgeard’s holding had its pair in a manor held by Ælfric, probably also at St Margarets: each of them was assessed at ½ sulung and included land for 1½ ploughs and 3 acres of meadow, though their other resources did not match, including the number and value of the mills.

Benenden lay deep in the Weald. Osgeard’s ½ sulung was the only independent manor in a large vill divided into several ‘boroughs’ (tithings), each of which was in a different hundred (Hasted 1797–1801: VII, 173–83). It can be located at Benenden itself because in 1086 it included the church and was in Rolvenden hundred.

The third of Osgeard’s manors was the unidentified Siborne in Street hundred, at the eastern corner of the Weald. The place-name includes the element burne (‘stream’) and it presumably stood on one of the head-streams of the East Stour. Siborne was unique among the manors in Street hundred in having neither meadow nor woodland.

If there was indeed only one Osgeard, it may be significant that his scattered manors included the complementary resources of the downland foothills and the Weald.

Bibliography


Everitt 1986: Alan Everitt, Continuity and Colonization: The Evolution of Kentish Settlement (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1986)

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