Ceolric 5

Ceolric ‘of Curry Mallet’ (Som.), fl. 1066x1086
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Ceolric
Ceolric 6

Summary

Ceolric 5 was a small thegn in west Somerset whose three manors of 7 hides were worth £7 10s. TRE. He survived the Conquest as a subtenant of both Muchelney abbey and the Englishman Hearding son of Alnoth, holding two manors of about 2 hides worth £1.

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
Somerset 21,2 Curry Mallet Celric Ceolric 'of Curry Mallet' - Roger de Courseulles - 3.50 4.00 5.00 B Map
Somerset 36,4 Syndercombe Cerric Ceolric 'of Curry Mallet' - Thurstan fitzRolf Hugh 'of Syndercombe' 1.00 1.00 1.00 A Map
Somerset 9,2 Chipstable Celric Ceolric 'of Curry Mallet' - unnamed abbot of Muchelney - 2.50 2.50 2.50 A Map
Totals

Subtenant in 1086

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
Somerset 47,4 Goose Bradon - Tovi the sheriff - Hearding son of Eadnoth Ceolric 'of Curry Mallet' 1.00 1.00 0.50 B Map
Somerset 9,6 Drayton Celric Beorhtwine 'of Chilthorne' Leofweard, abbot of Muchelney unnamed abbot of Muchelney Ceolric 'of Curry Mallet' 1.00 0.50 0.50 B Map
Totals

Profile

Ceolric is a rare enough name for the five occurrences in Somerset, all located within a stretch of 25 miles, to be confidently identified as one person. The fact that the three TRE manors concerned passed to different tenants-in-chief does not affect this judgement.

Ceolric’s largest manor, Curry Mallet on the low ridge south of the Levels of West Sedgemoor, went to the Somerset baron Roger de Courseulles, presumably because it was located in one of the two areas of the county which he dominated. Syndercombe, an upland manor on the southern slopes of the Brendons about 20 miles west of Curry, was not in an area where Roger received any estates and it went instead to Thurstan fitzRolf, an outlier of a fief which in Somerset was based on succession to Æthelweald the bald (Æthelweald 3). Ceolric’s third manor, Chipstable, was within 3 miles of Syndercombe and by 1086 was in the hands of Muchelney abbey, the monastery’s most distant manor in a rather small fief. Given that Ceolric was a tenant of Muchelney in 1086, it seems likely that he had given it to the abbey himself.

Ceolric’s tenancy from Muchelney in 1086 was on the abbey’s large manor of Drayton, which abutted the monastic site and was only 5 miles along the ridge from his pre-Conquest holding at Curry Mallet. At Drayton, he and Wulfweard shared 2 hides which had been held by lessees of the abbey in 1066. In 1086 Ceolric was also a tenant of the Englishman Hearding son of Eadnoth (Hearding 4) at Goose Bradon, 4 miles from Drayton. Ceolric had three of the four virgates of Bradon in demesne in 1086, farming the holding with one plough and a flock of 50 sheep. There was also demesne at Drayton, but it is not clear how much of it was Ceolric’s and how much Wulfweard’s.

Ceolric’s survival after the Conquest (albeit with a significantly smaller estate than in 1066 and none of his former possessions) was bound up with his dependence on other and greater English survivors, not only Hearding, but Muchelney abbey. The pre-Conquest abbot of Muchelney, Leofweard, may have survived in 1086, and the house still had an Englishman as its head in the 1110s (Heads: 57).

Bibliography


Heads: The Heads of Religious Houses: England and Wales, 940–1216, ed. David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooke, and Vera C. M. London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972)