Toli 12

Toli, ‘of Billingborough’ (Lincs.), fl. 1066
Male
CPL
4 of 5

Name

Toli
Toli 11
Toli 13

Summary

Toli 12 was a small landowner in south Lincolnshire with holdings assessed at a little over 2½ carucates worth £1 10s. He survived the Conquest as the subtenant of two different manors, of 2 carucates worth £1 16s., holding them from Count Alan, who was the lord of one of the two Bretons who had acquired his TRE property.

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
Lincolnshire 27,58 Billingborough Toli Toli 12, ‘of Billingborough’ - Alfred of Lincoln Jocelin fitzLambert 1.00 0.50 0.50 - Map
Lincolnshire 42,10 Aslackby - Toli 12, ‘of Billingborough’ - Oger the Breton - 0.38 0.00 0.00 - Map
Lincolnshire 42,11 Rippingale - Toli 12, ‘of Billingborough’ - Oger the Breton - 0.50 0.00 0.00 - Map
Lincolnshire 42,12 Ringstone - Toli 12, ‘of Billingborough’ - Oger the Breton - 0.50 0.00 0.00 - Map
Lincolnshire 42,9 Laughton Toli Toli 12, ‘of Billingborough’ - Oger the Breton - 0.25 1.00 1.00 - 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
Lincolnshire 12,58 Drayton Toli Greifi 'of Horbling hundred' - Alan, count Toli 0.75 0.80 0.80 - Map
Lincolnshire 12,88 Kirton Toli Eadric 'of Kirton' - Alan, count Toli 1.25 2.00 1.00 - Map
Totals

Profile

Toli 12’s pre-Conquest holdings can be identified by their close proximity on the ground. A small part of Laughton, assessed at only 4 bovates and with land for ½ plough, was held as two manors by Toli and Hereweard . The latter has been plausibly identified as the Hereward whose rebellion against the Normans was written up in the early twelfth-century Gesta Herewardi, with a great deal of highly unlikely circumstantial detail. Hereward is said to have returned to England from foreign exile after 1066 to find his father Leofric of Bourne dead, his unnamed brother murdered, and his ancestral manor of Bourne in Norman hands. As has been remarked elsewhere, the eye of faith might identify Toli as Hereward’s murdered brother (Williams 1995: 50), but—if the brother existed at all—a more likely candidate is surely the holder of Bourne in 1066, Leofwine , not least because his name has the same first element as their supposed father Leofric.

The next DB entry after Laughton is for its berewick of 6 bovates at Aslackby and Avethorpe. Next are 1 carucate at Ringstone and Rippingale, followed by 1 carucate at Ringstone alone, which have no indication of status or owner but can be presumed also to have been attached to Laughton. Avethorpe and Ringstone are both ‘lost’ villages, but their approximate sites are known (Foster 1924: pp. xlviii, lxiii). The five places in question are clustered on the western side of the Roman canal called Car Dyke, where the land starts to rise out of the peat fens, with territories which stretched eastwards into the marshes. All five places were much divided in 1066. Toli and Hereweard’s holdings here passed to Oger the Breton.

Another carucate at Billingborough, another much divided vill 3 miles further north along the fen edge, was also held by Toli but passed instead to Alfred of Lincoln. The close proximity suggests that it was the same Toli.

Ten miles to the east across the fens, in 1086 Toli was subtenant of Count Alan at Drayton and Kirton, places standing on a tongue of dry land between the peat fens to the west and the silt fens fronting the Wash to the east.

Were all three Tolis the same person? The link is through the three Breton lords who were tenants-in-chief of the manors in question in 1086. Toli of Laughton’s successor Oger the Breton witnessed a charter of Toli of Drayton’s 1086 lord Count Alan (Keats-Rohan 1999: 311) and was presumably his man. Count Alan probably acquired property in Lincolnshire only after the Anglo-Breton Earl Ralph went into exile in 1075 (Keats-Rohan 1999: 127–8). Toli of Billingborough’s successor Alfred of Lincoln had held his land in the time of Earl Ralph and was probably the earl’s tenant. These observations provide a context for the division of Toli 12’s estates between Alfred of Lincoln and Oger the Breton, and for his survival as a subtenant of Oger’s lord Count Alan. Overall, Toli held more or less the same by assessment and value in 1086 as he had before the Conquest.

Bibliography


Foster 1924: C. W. Foster, ‘Extinct villages and other forgotten places’, in The Lincolnshire Domesday and the Lindsey Survey, trans. and ed. C. W. Foster and Thomas Longley, Lincoln Record Society 19 (1924), pp. lxvii–lxxii

Keats-Rohan 1999: K. S. B. Keats-Rohan, Domesday People: A Prosopography of Persons Occurring in English Documents 1066–1166, I: Domesday Book (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999)

Williams 1995: Ann Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995)