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Wulfræd 50

Name

Summary

Wulfræd 50 had a small estate in west Buckinghamshire TRE assessed at 1½ hides and with a value of 20s, and which he held with power of alienation.

Profile

Wulfræd 50’s estate was at Horsenden, at the mouth of a gap in the scarp slope of the Chilterns in west Buckinghamshire. DB has five entries for estates there totalling slightly more than 9 hides, although there is no suggestion that Wulfræd was connected with the other TRE holders. As with those other holders at Horsenden, however, DB records that Wulfræd could sell his land, indicating that he held it freehold rather than in dependent tenure. 

This estate lay only 15 miles from the nearest of those held by Wulfræd 49 in Oxfordshire, which is probably close enough for the holders to have been the same man. However, the difference in post-Conquest successors is particularly telling in this instance (see discussion under Wulfræd 49), while as Freeman (1985: 210-12) notes the presence of another contemporary with the same common name acting as a moneyer at Aylesbury, just 7 miles to the north of Horsenden. It is therefore more likely than not that Wulfræd 50 held just this estate at Horsenden TRE and had no connection to anyone else with the same name.

Bibliography

Freeman 1985: A. Freeman, The Moneyer and the Mint in the Reign of Edward the Confessor, B.A.R. British series 145 (1985)