Stengrim 2

Stengrim ‘of Willingham’ (Lincs.), fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Stengrim

Summary

Stengrim 2 was a small landowner who had 2¼ carucates worth around £2 5s. in two places in north Lincolnshire, land which he evidently forfeited for reasons unknown at some time either before 1066 or within a very few years afterwards.

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
Lincolnshire 12,3 Willingham Staigrim Stengrim 'of Willingham' - Alan, count - 1.50 1.29 0.64 A Map
Lincolnshire 28,14 Waddingham Stangrim Stengrim 'of Willingham' - Jocelin fitzLambert - 0.38 1.00 1.00 A Map
Lincolnshire CW10 Willingham Stangrim Stengrim 'of Willingham' - - - 2.25 0.00 0.00 A Map
Totals

Profile

The rare name Stengrim appears only three times in DB, in circumstances which make it clear that we are concerned with only one person. The larger of the two holdings in question was a manor of 12 bovates at Willingham, in the Trent basin 12 miles north-west of Lincoln, recorded in 1086 on the fief of Count Alan. The smaller holding was some 12 miles from Willingham at Waddingham and Stainton, a double vill (15 miles north of Lincoln along Ermine Street) which stretched eastwards from the limestone Edge down into the Ancholme wetlands. At Waddingham and Stainton, unusually, a single manor of 6 bovates was recorded as held by two men TRE, Stengrim and Agemund (Agemund 7), and belonged in 1086 to Agemund’s Norman successor Jocelin fitzLambert. Normally in Lincolnshire, a holding with two TRE holders was flagged by the scribe of GDB as comprising two manors, so here we should be alert for unusual circumstances.

A third reference to Stengrim comes in the list of Claims in the West Riding of Lindsey for which jurors made sworn statements in 1086, though there is no mention of any underlying dispute (Lincs. CW:10). What the jurors said about Stengrim can only be understood by reading it with the entry immediately before. Each begins with DB’s paragraphos sign (here represented by a pilcrow, ¶), showing that they were distinct items.

¶ Scira testatur quod terra Gonneuuate .i. M[anerium] .i. carucata in dominio . fuit forisfacta ii. partes Sanctæ Mariæ . 7 tercia pars ad opus comitis . similiter de omni soca quæ pertinet ab [presumably for ad] borotona uel broctone [last two words interlined over borotona].

¶ Similiter 7 de terra Stangrim .xviii. bouatæ terræ.

¶ The shire testifies that the land of Gunnwate, 1 manor, 1 carucate in demesne, was forfeit, 2 parts to St Mary & the third part to the earl’s use; the same for all the soke which belongs to Gate Burton or Broughton.

¶ And the same for Stengrim’s land, 18 bovates of land.

The division of forfeitures two thirds to St Mary and one third to the earl was a local custom dating from before the Conquest, as apparent from the next entry, which says explicitly that if the thegns of Well wapentake forfeited their land (si terram suam forisfecissent) it was divided in the same way, but ‘Now the king has it’ (Nunc habet rex). The scribe used the pluperfect subjunctive for the conditional clause because the hypothetical forfeiture he had in mind was in the past: the jurors must have sworn to the effect that ‘This is what used to happen, but now the forfeitures go to the king’.

The past in question was either pre-Conquest or the short, genuinely Anglo-Norman period immediately after 1066, evident from the fact that neither recipient of forfeitures survived beyond 1071. St Mary was ‘St Mary of Lincoln’, the minster church ‘where the bishopric is now’, as DB itself says in another context (Lincs. C:17): references to it as St Mary are to the period before Bishop Remigius removed himself from Dorchester to Lincoln in 1072. An earl in receipt of a third of forfeitures was certainly the pre-Conquest earl with authority over Lincolnshire, and the earldom of Lincolnshire in that sense did not survive the fall of Edwin and Morcar after the English rebellion of 1071.

Since we are told explicitly in the perfect tense that Gunnwate and Stengrim’s land was forfeited (fuit forisfacta) and that it was divided between St Mary and the earl, the dispossession of both men can be pushed back before 1071 and perhaps before 1066.

Stengrim’s 18 bovates remain to be located. The general statement about forfeiture customs applied to Well wapentake, and the particular land at issue, Gunnwate’s and Stengrim’s, was at least partly also in Well: Gunnwate’s manor at Gate Burton with sokeland at Marton (Lincs. 12:1–2), and Stengrim’s 12 bovates at Willingham; they are consecutive entries in DB. That leaves the other 6 bovates of Stengrim’s forfeited land still to be found. His only other holding was the 6 bovates at Waddingham and Stainton which he and Agemund held as a single manor. The assessments correspond, though they were not in Well wapentake.

In addition there is a difficulty over ownership: if Stengrim had the whole 6 bovates of Waddingham and Stainton, what did Agemund have? One possibility is that he was Stengrim’s successor after the latter’s forfeiture, but that can probably be dismissed because Agemund’s name does not also appear in connection with Stengrim at Willingham. The other possibility is that Agemund was Stengrim’s lord. Either circumstance would explain why there was only one manor, not two, at Waddingham and Stainton, and why it passed to Agemund’s successor Jocelin fitzLambert.

Stengrim, then, owned two quite small manors in the countryside north of Lincoln, forfeiting them for reasons which are completely unknown. Forfeiture took place either quite soon before the Conquest (not in time for his name to be removed from the geld lists), or within the short period afterwards while the minster church of St Mary and the Anglo-Saxon earl were still in enjoyment of their customary rights in Lincolnshire.