What we know about Sir Crosby

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We know that land records were made in early England for tax collections and land disputes. They were used to compile the Domesday Book.

Hopefully those documents that recorded the Crosby Transactions still exist, will be recognized, translated and presented to us declaring his full name and the transaction dates.

In the meantime . . .

"Reconstructive Genealogy" allows us to calculate and estimate the known unknowns between known facts.

We know the Normans took control of eastern England in the 800's.

The Crosby Family name came into being around 912 in Normandy France.

Crosby Village came into existence somewhere between 912 and 1000.

The nature and size of the land Sir Crosby controlled tells us a lot about him.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_manor

Lord Denning, in Corpus Christi College Oxford v Gloucestershire County Council [1983] QB 360, described the manor thus:

In medieval times the manor was the nucleus of English rural life. It was an administrative unit of an extensive area of land. The whole of it was owned originally by the lord of the manor. He lived in the big house called the manor house. Attached to it were many acres of grassland and woodlands called the park. These were the "demesne lands" which were for the personal use of the lord of the manor. Dotted all round were the enclosed homes and land occupied by the "tenants of the manor".

Tenancy
In England in the Middle Ages, land was held of the English monarch or ruler by a powerful local supporter, who gave protection in return. The people who had sworn homage to the lord were known as vassals. Vassals were nobles who served loyalty for the king, in return for being given the use of land. After the Norman conquest of England, however, all land in England was owned by the monarch who then granted the use of it by means of a transaction known as enfeoffment, to earls, barons, and others, in return for military service. The person who held feudal land directly from the king was known as a tenant-in-chief (see also Land tenure).

The Crosby Manor of 2 carucates of land (somewhere between 200 and 300 acres) and Soke with another 3 carucates and two mills - existed at the time of writing of the Domesday Book in 1086, but the lands were then controlled 2nd by the king, then 3rd by Ivo Talliboise.
There were no Crosbys in the county at that time. Where did they go?

BUT there were Crosbys with a new Manor 57 miles to the north northwest in North Riding Yorkshire!

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My interpretation of the data in a nutshell:

Sir Crosby sold or traded land in Normandy for land in Lincolnshire.
After getting the Lincolnshire farm up and running, he or his children traded the farm to the king for new land in Yorkshire.

From the above facts we can deduce that:

1. He must have arrived somewhere between 912 and 1000. Therefore -

2 He had to have been born somewhere around those dates, most likely circa 950.


Assuming 20 years between generations -

he was most likely generation 4 or 5, born between; 940 and 960.

3. He had to be a man of means and discernment. Most families of the time had 30 - 60 acres of ground to sustain their families.

The prime location and nature of his land is attested to by the fact that it is the first Manor mentioned by Smith in the introduction of his translation of the section of the Domesday Book pertaining to Lincolnshire.

Five carucates and two mills required a minimum of 10 oxen and 5 men to work them.

Add his Personal Steward, Bailiff (in charge of supervising the cultivation of the manor), Reeve (an overseer), Ditch Reeve (responsible for maintaining drainage ditches), bakers, butchers, blacksmiths, carpenters, millers, quarry men, stone masons; wives, children, and many others. The Manor and Soke required a village to function and survive!

In Doomsday inquisition, the arable land was measured by carucates, the common pasture by hides, and the meadow by acres. In some countries the word is still preserved a carve of land, and the imposition on land carrucagium et carcagium is called carvage.

A carucate of land = one hundred and twenty acres.

CARUCATA. A plough-land, or as much arable ground as in one year could be tilled with one plough: which in the reign of Rich. I. was computed at sixty acres, Mon. Ang. tom. ii. p. 107.
Yet another charter 9 Rich. I. allots one hundred acres to a carucate.
And Fleta, temp. Edw. l. says, if land lay in three common fields, then ninescore acres to a carucate, sixty for winter tillage, sixty for spring tillage, and sixty for fallows.
But if the land lay in two fields, then eightscore acres to a carucate; one half for tillage, and the other for fallow, lib. ii. cap. 72. §. 4.

The measure of a carucate was different, according to time and place. In 23 Ed. III. one carucate of land in Burcester contained one hundred and twelve acres; and two carucates in Middleton were three hundred acres, ii. 103.
Caruca was sometimes used for carucata; Robert de Ver confirmed to the monks of Thorney, Decimas de quinque carucis quas pater concessit in Islep Draitune et Edinton, i. iii.

A bovate [ boh-veyt ] noun
an old English unit of land area measurement equivalent to one-eighth of a carucate.

a hide: from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning "family", was, in the early medieval period, a land-holding that was considered sufficient to support a family. This was equivalent to 60 to 120 old acres (approximately 30 modern acres (120,000 m2)) depending on the quality of the land.

soke [ sohk ] noun Early English Law.
the privilege of holding court, usually connected with the feudal rights of lordship.
a district over which local jurisdiction was exercised.

sokeman [ sohk-muh n ] noun, plural soke·men.
a tenant holding land in socage.

socageor soc·cage [ sok-ij ] noun Medieval English Law.
a tenure of land held by the tenant in performance of specified services or by payment of rent, and not requiring military service.

The nature and size of the land Sir Crosby controlled.

There are 640 acres in a square mile.

The Old Crosby Road is a mile long, which helps us visualize the size of the lands he managed.



The area he located in shows the wisdom used in choosing a land site. The Manor and village on the high ground, the farm and pasture lands on the low ground. The mills must have been on the River Trent.

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POSTERITY

Populations grow fast in good times, slow in bad.

Looking at the chart below, by 1500 (500 years from 900 to the perpendicular line at 1400, up to where it is crossed by the green dotted lines, then left to the numbers), Sir Crosby Could have had as many as 56,500 descendants, or as few as 32.

Most likely there were well over a thousand. Of course only a few of the males would carry his surname.

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Norse

Both Middle English and Early Scots were strongly influenced by Norse – especially dialects from northern England, within the area of the Danelaw, and Lowland Scots, both of which contained many Old Norse loanwords. Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse.