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into the eleventh century. It is noticeable that this is what Round did. 207 When we
look back to Domesday Book, we find nothing of all this.
There is a wider question of continuity concerning the Norman Conquest.
This is the question of the continuity of tenurial structures. I have already mentioned
something of Sawyer’s views, arguing for a great degree of continuity, in connection
with the subject of soc. Sawyer suggests that there was a double continuity: first, the
1086 tenancies-in-chief reflected the former holdings of the highest levels of Anglo-
Saxon aristocracy, and secondly that subtenancies broadly of the 1086 type were
common before the Conquest. 208 Robin Fleming, however, thinks that, although
there are some examples of continuity of tenancies-in-chief from before the
Conquest, these are atypical. On the subject of the place of subtenancies as part of
continuing tenancies-in-chief, Fleming argues that the fact that Anglo-Saxons could
have more than one lord, though perhaps in different respects, worked against
continuity. 209 In addition to this, although there are some examples in Domesday
Book of 1066 landholders ‘holding of’ other landholders, and although Sawyer is
undoubtedly right that more such cases went unrecorded, that is no reason to see
them everywhere. 210
In order to examine all these questions, it will be useful to look at a particular
1086 tenant-in-chief and a particular 1086 subtenant in eastern Suffolk. For this
purpose, I have chosen Ralph Baynard and Walter de Caen for reasons that will
become clear in the next chapter.
207
Even worse, he sometimes reads backwards from the early thirteenth century: Round, Feudal
England, pp, 232-3.
208
Sawyer, “1066-1086: A Tenurial Revolution?”, pp. 73-8.
209
Fleming, “Domesday Book”, pp. 88-9, 93.
210
Sawyer, “1066-1086: A Tenurial Revolution?”, pp. 76-8.
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