Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [245]
But not at present. The following day Nicholas the stoneworker was to take the glass out of the upper windows and reduce them to narrow slits, like those below: the manor was being fortified.
“Just as a precaution,” he sighed.
A few minutes later when his wife, a pleasant, quiet woman, daughter of a Breton knight, came to him with their three children, he gave them their instructions.
“John of Shockley will take you to London tomorrow. I am sending money with you – half of all I have. His kinsman is a burgess who will find lodgings for you and see that you are safe.”
It was a wise move. For centuries, even since the time of Alfred, London had been a world apart. It was the greatest port in the kingdom; its walls were formidable. And despite the great tower that the Conqueror had built beside it to overawe its citizens, the independent burgesses of the city would make their own terms with any king who tried to seize the crown. Not only would his wife be safe there, but if by chance he finished on the losing side in the conflict, she would be in a position in the independent city and with ample funds, to plead his case and arrange whatever financial settlement might be needed to win him back to favour. Though quiet, she was a capable woman, and he knew he could trust her.
“What do you think will happen?” she asked.
“I think the rebels will hold the west. This area will then be a battle ground. We must expect the worst.”
Left alone once more, Godefroi returned to his work.
On the table lay two books and an abacus, a recent importation from the Mediterranean that Godefroi had been quick to master. Since dawn that day he had been reckoning up his accounts.
The account of the manor of Avonsford in William the Conqueror’s great Domesday survey of England had been brief and simple.
Richard de Godefroi holds Avonsford from Edward of Sarisberie. In the reign of King Edward it paid geld for 6 hides. There is land for thirty ploughs. In demesne are 10 ploughs and 20 slaves; 30 villeins and 15 bordars have 20 ploughs. There is a meadow for 4 ploughs and pasture for the beasts of the village. There is a church.
It was a typical feudal manor, consisting of the lord’s own land, his demesne, farmed separately, and the common land he shared with the villagers. The estate was profitable and yielded him over twenty pounds a year. The estate in Normandy, which he seldom visited but which one of his wife’s family kept an eye on, yielded him another ten pounds.
In addition to this, he had some years previously bought a wardship in Devon. This was the practice by which an overlord could grant the estate of one of his tenants, which was in the hands of a widow or a minor, as payment to another landowner, who would then manage the estate and take most of its profits until the widow remarried or the minor came of age. Originally designed to protect the estates of those who were unable to manage them, the system in practice often led to terrible abuse, with the assets being systematically sold off by profiteers who finally returned only the shell of the estate to the rightful inheritors. Godefroi was a conscientious manager, but the Devon estate still brought him a useful twenty pounds a year.
Now he was considering the assets of his own estate. That spring he had decided to turn everything he could into ready cash, and midsummer was a crucial period. He had ordered the reeve to select a larger