Skule 2

Skule son of Leofweald, fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Skule
Skule 10

Summary

Skule 2 was a relatively minor king’s thegn in Norfolk, also commended to Harold, who had seven manors scattered across the shire, with a total assessment of around 14 carucates worth a little less than £14.

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
Norfolk 19,1 Islington Scula Skule son of Leofweald - William d'Écouis - 2.00 2.00 3.00 C Map
Norfolk 21,21 Pensthorpe Sclula Skule son of Leofweald - Reynold fitzIvo Ranulph 'the man of Reynold fitzIvo' 2.00 2.00 2.00 C Map
Norfolk 24,5 Tunstall Escule Skule son of Leofweald Harold, earl Eudo the steward - 1.00 2.00 3.00 C Map
Norfolk 24,6 Postwick Escule Skule son of Leofweald - Eudo the steward - 2.00 2.00 4.00 C Map
Norfolk 24,6 Catton - Skule son of Leofweald - Eudo the steward - 0.25 0.00 0.00 C Map
Norfolk 29,2 Massingham Scula Skule son of Leofweald - Eudo fitzSpirewic Berold 'of Massingham' 3.00 1.00 1.00 C Map
Norfolk 29,3 Babingley Scula Skule son of Leofweald - Eudo fitzSpirewic Geoffrey 'the man of Eudo fitzSpirewic' 2.00 3.00 3.00 C Map
Suffolk 4,10 Barnham Scula Skule son of Leofweald Edward, king Hugh, earl - 2.00 1.50 1.50 C Map
Totals

Lord 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
Norfolk 66,100 Postwick Escula 2 free men Skule Eudo the steward - 0.50 0.25 0.10 C Map
Totals

Profile

Skule son of Leofweald appears early in the reign of Edward the Confessor as one of nine laymen witnessing an agreement made in 1043 or 1044 between Æthelmær, brother of Bishop Stigand of Elmham (Æthelmær 35), afterwards bishop of East Anglia 1047–70, and Ufi, abbot of Bury St Edmunds (Ufi 4). The agreement concerned land at Swanton Novers and Hindolveston in the heathy uplands of north Norfolk (S 1468; cf. Norf. 10:9, 15). Some of the other witnesses can be located with precision. Vlf æt Welle (Ulf 26) probably took his byname from Wells next the Sea, some 10 miles north of the two places covered by the agreement. Godwine at Cringelforð (Godwine 63) was certainly named from Cringleford, nearly 20 miles away near Norwich. The bearer of the rare name Fredegist (Frithegist 6) was probably the same Fredregis who still in 1066 held land at Scarning about 10 miles from Swanton and Hindolveston (Norf. 8:67). Those circumstances make it likely that Skule son of Leofweald was the Skule who appears in DB as a landowner in the vicinity of Swanton and Hindolveston and elsewhere in Norfolk.

Six manors in Norfolk and one just over the border in Suffolk are involved. In 1086 they were divided among five different tenants-in-chief, a disposition which at first sight argues against their having belonged to the same Skule. William d’Écouis held Islington; Reynold fitzIvo Pensthorpe; Eudo the steward Tunstall and Postwick with its berewick at Catton; Eudo fitzSpirewic Massingham and Babingley; and Earl Hugh Barnham in Suffolk. However, the tenurial history of East Anglia under William I was such that there are not always clear lines of antecessorial succession from the English holders of 1066 to the Normans of 1086. That was because of the rebellion and dispossession of the Anglo-Breton magnate Earl Ralph (Ralph 3) in 1075, which also brought down the Breton and other tenants to whom he had given lands. Any pre-Conquest estates which had passed intact to Earl Ralph had already been rearranged through subinfeudation before 1075, and in DB it was explicitly Ralph’s dispossessed tenants who were regarded as antecessors of the men in possession in 1086. This process certainly affected three of the Normans who ended up with manors assigned to Skule TRE: Reynold fitzIvo’s antecessor was Wihenoc, Eudo the steward (Eudo 2)’s was Lisois de Moutiers, and Eudo fitzSpirewic (Eudo 1)’s was Hemfrey. As a consequence, succession to Skule’s manors cannot be used to help decide whether we are dealing with one or more landowners of that name.

The comparative rarity of the name Skule, and the existence of a Skule in the mid 1040s prominent enough to witness an agreement between the diocesan bishop’s brother and the abbot of the richest East Anglian monastery, are in themselves persuasive factors in identifying a single, relatively wealthy Skule rather than a multiplicity of lesser namesakes. The size of the manors in question also matters. Only Tunstall (at 1 carucate) was not assessed at between 2 and 3 carucates, and all seven were worth between £1 and £3. The dispersal of the manors across the length and breadth of Norfolk—given that they were in East Anglian terms relatively large and valuable—does not count against their having been in one man’s hands in 1066. Furthermore, they were all among the largest holdings in their vills, and several were the dominant holding locally. Thus among the smaller vills where he had property, Skule had all of Pensthorpe (2 car.), two thirds of Babingley (3 car.), half of Postwick (4 car.) and a quarter of its berewick of Catton (1 car.), and the largest holdings in Tunstall (2⅔ car.) and Barnham (5 car.). His holdings were less dominant but among the largest in the bigger but much subdivided vills of Islington (one of eight manors of 1–2 car. in a vill of 12¾ car.) and Massingham (one of three manors of 3–4 car. in a vill of over 15 car.). There is one further link between the places where Skule owned land, namely that Rathi and Skalpi appear as landowners at both Postwick and Tunstall.

The seven manors which can be assigned to Skule son of Leofweald fell into three geographical groups, and on those grounds it is conceivable (though on balance unlikely) that they had three different owners in 1066. A group in north-west Norfolk comprised Islington in the Marshland fringing the southern shore of the Wash, Babingley 10 miles north-east which included marshes on the eastern shore of the Wash as well as higher wooded land behind, Massingham on the heaths another 10 miles further east, and Pensthorpe another 12 miles eastwards in the upper Wensum valley. The last was the nearest of Skule’s estates to the properties for which he had stood witness twenty years earlier. The second group was on the other side of the county, between 25 and 50 miles from the first group, and comprised Postwick and Catton on the river Yare 5 miles downstream from Norwich, and Tunstall, 10 miles to the east, perched above the vast expanses of marshland behind Great Yarmouth. The third group was formed by the solitary manor of Barnham, just a mile or two into Suffolk on the road leading south from Thetford across the heaths. Barnham was about 30 miles from the first group and 30–40 from the second.

The holder of Tunstall in Norfolk was described in DB a man of Earl Harold, whereas the holder of Barnham in Suffolk was called a thegn of King Edward. In fact there was no bar to being commended to two lords, as other East Anglian examples show (e.g. Leodmann 2 and Stanheard to King Edward and Queen Eadgyth; Haghni to King Edward and Archbishop Stigand).

On balance, then, all seven of these East Anglian manors probably belonged to the same man, Skule son of Leofweald. As already evident, his estate was dispersed across Norfolk, with no identifiable centre. It included property in different landscape regions: the lush salt-water flooded pastures of Marshland and Yarmouth, well wooded countryside north-east of Bishop’s Lynn, the nearly treeless heaths of north Norfolk and Thetford, and valley land near Norwich. It may be significant that there were manors close to each of the two main towns in the region, Norwich and Thetford. In 1066 Skule had demesne ploughs on every one of his manors: twelve teams in all, twice as many as were employed by his dependent peasants. There was meadow on nearly every manor, woodland on three of them, and mills at Pensthorpe on the Wensum and Barnham on the Little Ouse. Skule reared sheep on a large scale, especially on his marshland manors. He kept pigs nearly everywhere and cattle at three places. Among his peasants there were more than three times as many bordars as villans, with an especially large number of bordars (twenty-five) at Babingley. Skule also owned the parish churches at Postwick and Tunstall.

One East Anglian holding held by a Skule in 1066 can be excluded from the manors assigned to Leofweald’s son (see Skule 13).

Bibliography


S: P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography, Royal Historical Society Guides and Handbooks 8 (London, 1968), revised by S. Kelly, R. Rushforth et al., The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters, published online through Kemble: The Anglo-Saxon Charters Website, currently at http://www.esawyer.org.uk/about/index.html