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Erlebald 2

Name

Summary

Erlebald 2 was a thegn who held two estates in south Wiltshire and east Somerset TRE assessed at 8 hides and with a value of £11; the smaller of these estates he held as a dependent tenant of Robert fitzWimarc (Robert 14).  Erlebald 2 may also be the same person as Ernebald 2 and so have held a third estate in the same area assessed at 2 hides and with a value of £2.

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
Shire Somerset	Phil. ref. 21,90	Vill Witham Friary	DB Spelling Erlebaldus	Holder 1066 Erlebald 'of Codford'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger de Courseulles	1086 Subtenant William 'the man of Roger de Courseulles'	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 1.00	1086 Value 1.50	Confidence C	Map
Shire Somerset	Phil. ref. 25,55	Vill Brewham	DB Spelling Erleboldus	Holder 1066 Erlebald 'of Codford'	Lord 1066 Robert fitzWimarc	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Roger de Courseulles	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 1.00	1086 Value 1.50	Confidence C	Map
Shire Wiltshire	Phil. ref. 37,1	Vill Codford	DB Spelling Erlebald	Holder 1066 Erlebald 'of Codford'	Lord 1066 -	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Waleran the huntsman	1086 Subtenant -	Fiscal Value 6.00	1066 Value 10.00	1086 Value 12.00	Confidence B	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Erlebald 2’s largest estate was of six hides at Codford, in the Vale of Wylye on the edge of Salisbury Plain in south Wiltshire.  He also held an estate at Witham Friary, on what was then the edge of Selwood in east Somerset and about 14 miles to the west of Codford; the Exon entry (434b1) for this estate describes Erlebald as a thegn.  DB notes that this latter estate lay in Brewham TRE, and the corresponding entry for Brewham makes it clear that Erlebald had held Witham under Robert fitzWimarc (Robert 14) and ‘could not be separated’ from Brewham manor, which indicates that he held his estate as one of Robert’s dependent tenants.

It is possible that Erlebald 2 was the same person as Ernebald 2, the spelling Erneboldus for the latter name in DB and Exon (447a4) perhaps representing a misspelling of Erlebald’s name through the Anglo-Norman tendency to interchange or assimilate /l/ and /n/ (Dodgson 1987: 125-6).  This is significant because Ernebald 2’s solitary estate at Yarnfield lay just 2¾ and 11½ miles respectively from Witham and Codford, and to have two pre-Conquest landholders with very similar continental names and with estates so close to each other suggests a connection between them.  Nevertheless, these estates passed to different successors after the Conquest and this perhaps outweighs the hypothesis of a misspelled name in both DB and Exon, and for that reason Erlebald 2 and Ernebald 2 are treated here as different people.

Bibliography

Dodgson 1987: J. McN. Dodgson, ‘Domesday Book: place-names and personal names’, in Domesday Studies, J. C. Holt (Woodbridge, 1987)