HALTON IN THE ELEVENTH CENTURY ARNOLD H. J. BAINES

The eleventh-century sources for the history of Halton are examined to show how Christ Church, , eventually secured possession. The use of declarations in gospel books as documents of title is briefly reviewed.

Halton, a:t Healtune in the Old English and is still in the library of Lambeth Palace. sources,' Haltone in Domesday Book,2 is the The text is as follows: village in the corner or recess; h(e)alh glosses angulus 3 and healhiht is angulosus. 4 It was a + Her swuteliad on disse Cristes bee 5-hide unit, with 21Jz hides in demesne, in the JEpelnodes arce-b forword & Tokiges embep north-east corner of the great estate of land ret Healtune. t> wres p- Tokig com to Wendover, from which it appears at some time Hrisbeorgan to dam arce5 syppan Aedelflred to have been separated. It was a manor of his wif fordfaren wres. & cydde him Christ Church, the cathedral monastery of Wulfnodes cwyde p he 1> land becweden Canterbury, in reversion from an uncertain hrefde into Xps cyrcean refter his drege & his date before the , in posses• wifes. & bred pone arce5 1Jhe 1Jland habban sion from soon after the Conquest until the moste his dreg. & refter his drege p hit lage Dissolution. King Henry VIII granted it to the into Xps cy rcean mid eallum pingum p he newly formed Chapter of Canterbury in 1541,5 preron getilian mihte unbesacen. & cwred p but in 1545 he compelled the Dean and he wolde pam 5 pances kepan & his mannum. Chapter to exchange Halton for other lands so & se arce"b him pres tidude. & srede-p-he riht that he could sell the manor to Henry Brad• wid hine gedon hrefdephe sylf him for dam shawe of Wendover,6 then solicitor-·generai,7 cwyde secgean wolde. pehhehit rerful georne since when it has been in lay hands. wiste. & dises wres to gewitnysse JEpelstan ret Bleddehlrewe. & Leofwine his sunu. & The suggestion that Halton was given to Leofric ret Eaningadene. & feala odra godra Canterbury in the tenth century at the same cnihta. peh we hi ealle ne nemnon. & call time as Monks RisboroughH seems to be un• oa::s arcebiscopes hired. ge gehadude ge supported. So is the belief that 'Queen Edith Jrewede. or Edeva', presumably Eadgifu, widow of King Edward the Elder, gave it to Christ Church in This memorandum was transcribed by the 959. 9 In that year King Edward restored to her eighteenth-century Welsh antiquary Lewis the estates that King Edwy had seized, and she Morris and was printed from his transcript 13 by gave some of these to Canterbury, 10 but Halton Kemble 14 and Thorpe. 15 Dr Robertson's text16 is nol mentioned among them. Indeed there is was collated with the originaL The following a record dated to 1020-38 11 which does not translation is offered: - support either of these traditions or con• jectures. It takes the form of a declaration + Here is declared in this Christ's book entered in the Gospels of MacDurnan, 12 a MS the agreement of Archbishop JEthelnoth and which had belonged to Maelbright MacDur• Toki about the land at Halton. This was that nan, of Armagh and Raphoe (d. 927); it Toki came to (Monks) Risborough to the was given by King Athelstan to Christ Church, Archbishop after JEthelflred his wife was 64 dead , and told him of Wulfnoth's testament, loca lity, or perhaps a group coming together that he had bequeathed that land to Christ for their common economic advantage . Church after his and his wife's lives, and he * Ean 'a lamb' is not on record in Old Eng• (Told) asked the Archbishop that he might lish, but is suffici ently evidenced by derivatives have the land for his life, and after his life and as a place-name clement. One would lik e it should come to Christ Church uncontested, eaningas to mean 'people who rear lambs ' in with everything that he could produce the Chiltern valley concerned, but there is no thereon; and he said that he would be grateful known parallel , and in our present state of to the (arch)bishop and his men (the knowledge -ingas will hardly bear this sense. community at Christ Church), and the One suspects that -ingas names could be Archbishop granted him this, and said that formed from appellatives, not necessarily to• he had acted rightly towards him in pographical, but there is no independent evi• mentioning the testament himself, though he dence of this. (JEthelnoth) was already fully aware of it. And the witnesses of this were JEthelstan of Archbishop JEthelnoth died in 1038 and was Blecllow and Leofwine his son and Leofric succeeded by E adsige, a monk who had been of Eaningadene and many other good cnihtas, Cnut's priest. 1x Toki asked the new although we do not name them all , and all Archbishop to confirm his life tenancy of Hal• the Archbishop's household, both clerics and ton, and a further agreement to this effect was laymen. entered on the preceding page of the same gospel book. 19 The text is as follows: The natural interpretation of Wulfnoth's will is that he had left Halton to Canterbury subject + arcetcyp on pisse Cristes bcc-p• to the life interests of Toki, probably his son• Tokig sende to me to Hrisbeorgan his twegen in-law , and JEthelflred, Toki's wife. If so, Toki cnihtas odor hatte Sexa odor Leofwine. & was not asking for a concession, but simply bred me p pa forword moston standan pe requesting recognition of his continuing life !Ethelnoa arce"b & he geworht hrefdon ymbc tenure. JEthelnoth accepted this as a matter of p land ret Healtune-p he his bruce his daeg. courtesy, and said that he did not need to be & code a:fter his drege into Xps cyricean & informed of the terms of the will. It was of course ic him a res tidude on manegra godra manna in the interests of the Archbishop and the gewitnysse & ealles mines hircdes ge community to have this recognition that Toki gehadudra ge lrewcdra. claimed no more than a life interest, and that on his death Canterbury would take the estate Transcription211 and publication21 arc as for with everything in it. the previous declaration, and the translation is as follows: At this period the cnihtas who acted as witnesses would be senior servants or respon• + Archbishop Eadsige states in this sible agents. 17 The term cnihL has succes• Christ's book that "Toki sent to me at sively denoted boy, youth, attendant, retainer, (Monks) Risborough his two cnihtas, one warrior and knight. Toki, whose name is Norse called Sexa, the other Leofwine, and asked though his wife was E nglish, may have had me that the agreement should stand which stewards at Bledlow and Eaningadene, an Archbishop JEthelnoth and he had made unknown valley of the Eaningas. Tn compound about the land at Halton, that he should enjoy place-names -inga- is th e genitive p lu ra l of it for his life, and after his life it should come -inRaS, denoting a group or association of to Christ Church, and I granted him this with people. In Lh settlement period the associa• the witness of many good men, and of all ti on would be personal. the dependents or fol • my household , both clerics and laymen". lowers of an individual leader; in the late Old E ngli sh period the association is more likely to On this occasion Toki did not come to Monks be geographical, the inhabitants of a particular Risboroueh 111 person; perhaps he was

65 2 too old or infirm. Of the two cnihtas who Cathedral. H represented him, Leofwine was presumably the son of !Ethelstan of Bledlow. Declarations (swutelunga) were less formal Eadsige was incapacitated by illness from than solemn charters and less authoritative 1044 to 1048 , and died in 1050. If EkwalF2 was than royal writs , but they would last as long as right in dating this declaration to c. 1050, Toki the holy books themselves, and could be would have been seeking reassurance before further hallowed by the declarant's placing his hand on the book and placing the book on the the Archbishop died , but he seems more likely 29 to have made this approach in or soon after altar. Inventories of church property and trea• 1038. sures were sometimes recorded in this way; surviving examples include the York Gospels in the Dean and Chapter's Library at York, with a When Toki died, Christ Church should have 30 taken peaceable possession of Halton with its list of church goods at Sherburn in Elmet, and crops and stock, but this did not happen. It the record of Bishop Leofric's gifts to Exeter in 1069-72,31 entered in a gospel book 32 and appears from Domesday Book that in 33 Archbishop 's time Halton was in the in the Exeter Book itself, that invaluable possession of Earl Leofwine, probably anthology of Old English poetry. wrongfully. 23 After the Conquest King William Until 's time the interests of the restored it gratuitously to Archbishop Archbishop and his monastic community had Lanfranc,24 and did not transfer it with hardly been distimmished. but now the Leofwine's other estates to the Bishop of advo~son of Halton ~was as~igned to the for• Bayeux. 25 If Wulfnoth and/or Toki were Earl mer, the manor to the latter, the holding Leofwine's men, and if Leofwine's earldom the lordship. 34 With Monks Risborough, included Buckinghamshire,26 Leofwine may Halton formed a separate deanery in the ex• have felt able to deny the validity of the empt jurisdiction of the Archbishop until that testament, especially if it had not been reported was abolished in 1841 ,35 but the advowson of to the shiremote. In a well-reported case in Halton was surrendered by Archbishop Herefordshire,27 during Cnut's reign, an oral Cranmer to King Henry VIII/0 who granted it will was declared before witnesses and in 1545 to Sir Edward and Alice NorthY King authenticated by the shire meeting, which then Edward VI compensated the Archbishop for 3 had it noted in a gospel book (let settan in ane the loss of the patronage, H which later de• Cristes boc) which survives at Hereford scended with the manor.

Postscript

An entry in a fragmentary gospel book which fessor granting Chartham to Christ Church, in belonged to Christ Church, Canterbury 39 is ihe order to ensure that all the estates listed were source of the description "Risborough by Chil• protected by St Edward's anathema as guar• tern eaves" (lnnan Buccingaham scire, be dian and upholder 42 of the monastery. This Cilternes efese, 411 Hrysebyrgan). This occurs in anathema appears ancient; it occurs again in a a list which was appended after the Conquest 41 writ43 attributed, perhaps rightly, to the to a genuine declaration by Edward the Con- Confessor.

REFERENCES

1. P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters (R. ed. P. Genser (Heidelberg, 1909) 163, and the Hist. Soc., 1968), nos. 1464, 1466 (cited as S1464, Vision of Leofric Earl of Mercia, ed. A . S. S1466). Napier (Philological Soc. Trans., 1908) 37. 2. Domesday Book i, fo. 143b; Victoria County 4. Anecdota Oxoniensa: 0. E. Glosses, ed. A. Hist. , Bucks (1905) i, 233b. S.Napier, 121. 3. Citations induJe the prose Life of St Guth/ac, 5. Pat. R. 33 Hen. Vlll, pt. 9, m.20.

66 6. Pat. R. 37 l-Ien. VIII, pt. (i, m. 41; Pat. R. 36 2.5 . VCH Bucks. i, 210. Hen. VIII, pt.9, m. 63. 26. /\s argued by Freeman , Normrtn Conquest 7. Pat. R. 32 He n. Vlll, pt. 5, m. 55; appointed ( Jg7o) ii, s6o, 567. attorney-ge ne ral, Pat. R. 37 Hen. VITI, pt. 13, 27. SJ 462. 111. 2. 1; died 1553. 28. H ereford Cathedral , MS Pl.2. fo. 134. B. VCH Bucks(1908)ii, 339. 2Y. Sl047. 9. G. Lipscomb, Hist. Bucks (1847) ii, 219. 30. W. de G. Birch, Ca rtulariwn Saxonicum , no. 10. Sl2J 1 (probably original); S l2 12, with confir• 1324; Robertson , App. TI . no. 2 , p. 249. matio n by King Ethelred. 3 1.. Kemble, no .940; Robertson , App. I, no. l, pp. 11. Sl4M; E. Ekwall, The Oxford Dictionary of 226-230. English Place-names (4th cdn., 1960) 213, dates 32. Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D.2. 16, fo.l. this c. 1033. 33. The Exeter Book Facsimile, ed. M . Forster 12. London, Lambeth Palace 1370, fo. 115. (11)33) 18 -30. 13. British Library, Add. MS 14907 fos. 1Hv-19. 34. Testa de Nevill (Rcc. Comm.) 245b. 14. J. M. Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus A: vi 35. VCH Bucks i. 344-5. Saxonici (1 839- 48) no. 1321. 36. Pat. R. 37 Hen. VIII, pt. 14. 15. B. Thorpe, Diplomatarium Angficum lEvi 37. VCH Bucks ii, 341 (1565- 6 is a misprint for Saxonici ( 1865) 331. 1545- 6). 1(i. A. J. Robertson, A nglo-Saxon Charters (2nd 38. Pat. R. 1 Edw. VI, pt. 2, m. 26. edn. , 1956) no. lxxx , p. 154. 39. BL, Cotton Claudius Aiii , fo. 5b((iv): S 1047 . 17. F. M . Ste nto n,The First Century of English 40. The word is singular, but the plural fo rm Feudalism (Oxford, 1932) l32 ff. ; D. eovesen occurs in Layamon. Wycliffe uses evese Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills (Cambridge, for the brow of a hill. The lonely sparrow on the 1930) 235 s. v. cnihl. housetop in Psalm 102.7 (101 .8 in the Vulgate) 18, S981 (untrustworthy Ill its present form, but passer solitarius in tecto, is "sparwe anhoga good evidence on this point). S 1642 makes oaac anwuniendc on efese oaae on pecene" Eadsige a bishop by 1035. (dwelling alone, either on the caves or on the 19. S1466; Lambeth Palace 1370, fo. 114. roof). 20. BL, Add. MS 14907, fos. 21v - 22. 41. Robcrtson,op. cit., 429; F. E. Hanner, Anglo• 21. Kemble, no. l336; Robertson, no. xc, p.174. Saxon Writs (2nd edn., 1981)) 175 n.5. 22. Ekwall, op. cit, 213. 42. "pll!s mynstres mund & upheald"; cf. Danish 23. D. B. i, fo. 143b. uphold (support). 24. Dugdale , Monast. Anglic. i,97. 43. Sl089; H armer, op. cit., no 34.

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