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Æthelwulf 56

Name

Summary

Æthelwulf 56 held two manors less than 3 miles apart in the valley of the Bow brook between Worcester and Pershore in 1086.

Distribution map of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

List of property and lordships associated with this name in DB

Sub-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
Shire Worcestershire	Phil. ref. 2,4	Vill Lower Wolverton	DB Spelling Aiulfus	Holder 1066 Alric 'of Lower Wolverton'	Lord 1066 Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester	1086 Subtenant Roger de Lacy	Fiscal Value 2.00	1066 Value 2.50	1086 Value 2.00	Confidence A	Map
Shire Worcestershire	Phil. ref. 8,24	Vill Broughton Hackett	DB Spelling Aiulfus	Holder 1066 Beorhtmær 'of Hazdor'	Lord 1066 Edwin, abbot of Westminster	Tenant-in-Chief 1086 Gilbert Crispin, abbot of Westminster	1086 Subtenant Urse d'Abetot	Fiscal Value 3.00	1066 Value 2.00	1086 Value 1.50	Confidence A	Map
Totals								Fiscal Value	1066 Value	1086 Value

Profile

An Aiulfus was named as the holder in 1086 of two manors less than 3 miles apart in the valley of the Bow brook between Worcester and Pershore, holding Lower Wolverton from Roger de Lacy, who held from the church of Worcester, and Broughton Hackett from Urse the sheriff, who held from Westminster abbey’s great manor of Pershore. Their proximity can be taken as showing that the same man was involved at both places, and their distance of 20 miles from the much smaller holding on the king’s manor of Kidderminster at the north end of Worcestershire must surely mean that he was distinct from Æthelwulf 55.

The two manors did not descent together after 1086, even though Urse’s successors the Beauchamps were intermediate lords of both places, having displaced the Lacys at Lower Wolverton. Wolverton was occupied by a family which adopted Wolverton as a surname (often a sign of English ancestry), but before the middle of the twelfth century Broughton had passed into the hands of the Parler family, descendants of Robert Parler, one of Urse’s Norman tenants elsewhere in 1086 (VCH Worcs. III, 532–7; IV, 43–5). The early separation of the two manors makes it marginally more likely that their 1086 holder was an English Æthelwulf than a Norman Aiulf. In 1086 he had ploughteams at both of his manors (2 at Wolverton, 1½ at Broughton), two slaves at each, and a mill on the brook at Wolverton.

It is not known whether Æthelwulf 56 was related to the TRE holder of Wolverton, Æthelric 80, brother of Bishop Beorhtheah of Worcester (1033–8) (Beorhtheah 2), who had given him the manor; Æthelric was still in possession in 1066 when Earl William fitzOsbern stole the manor from the church (Hearne 1723: I, 266). It is worth noting that Æthelric and Æthelwulf shared the first element of their names.

Bibliography

Hearne 1723: Hemingi chartularium ecclesiæ Wigorniensis, ed. Thomas Hearne, 2 vols (Oxford, 1723)

VCH Worcs. III: The Victoria History of the Counties of England: The Victoria History of the County of Worcester, ed. J. W. Willis-Bund, H. Arthur Doubleday, and William Page, 4 vols and index (London, 1901–26)