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Beorhtræd 13

Name

Summary

Beorhtræd 13 was a thegn of Earl Edwin of Mercia who held one of the berewicks of the earl’s great manor of Bromsgrove, assessed at 2¾ hides and 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
Shire Worcestershire	Phil. ref. 1,1c	Vill Willingwick	DB Spelling Brictredus	Holder 1066 Beorhtræd 'of Willingwick'	Lord 1066 Edwin, earl	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 William, king	1086 Subtenant Urse d'Abetot	Fiscal Value 2.75	1066 Value 1.44	1086 Value 1.05	Confidence A	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

Beorhtræd was one of five thegns of Earl Edwin who held four named berewicks of the earl’s manor of Bromsgrove without power of alienation; the berewicks passed after the Conquest to four knights who held as tenants of the royal manor under Urse the sheriff. DB makes it clear that in 1086 each knight had one of the berewicks, but does not say which thegn had held what TRE and does not give individual values.

Those details are supplied by the late twelfth-century text called Evesham A, an abstract of Domesday information about holdings, hidages, and holders for most of Worcestershire; it derives from a ‘satellite’ of DB dating from 1086. Evesham A was of course subject to copying error and should not be trusted over GDB itself where the details disagree.

The DB entry corresponds to Evesham A 166, which names the thegn Brichthveit as holding Willingwick TRE. Brichthveit is unsatisfactory as a personal name, seeming to mistake the second syllable as the Scandinavian place-name element thveit. It can, however, be reconstructed as a misreading of Brictret, with two perfectly normal twelfth-century spelling substitutions (ch for c, and th for t), r misread as v, and –et rendered as –eit (the last as in the name of another of the Bromsgrove thegns, DB’s Erniet (Earngeat) becoming Evesham A’s Ernheit). Willingwick has disappeared but its location about 3 miles north of Bromsgrove is known (PN Worcs. 345).

Since Beorhtræd did not have power of alienation of his only manor, he was presumably a retained based in Earl Edwin’s household.

Bibliography

PN Worcs: