The present-day acreage of Wolverhampton parish is no less than 17,449; made up of 3,396 acres in Wolverhampton proper, 1,845 in Bilston, and 1,650 in Bentley, a total of 6,891 acres in Seisdon Hundred; thus leaving 10,608 acres to constitute Hilton (two manors, since united into one) Hatherton, Kinvaston, Featherstone, and Hocintune. The last-named was a manor which, at that time, probably lay between Hilton and Hatherton, within Wolverhampton; the name is obsolete.
These ten estates, comprising Wolverhampton, Willenhall (part of), Arley (part of), Bushbury (part of), Hilton (part of), Pelsall, Wednesfield, Cote (near Penn), Haswic (near Newcastle), and Hocintune (now obsolete), were in 1086 held by the Canons of Wolverhampton under Sampson, the highly favoured royal Chaplain, to whom the Conqueror had presented this fief. For the purposes of comparison it may be mentioned that there were then eighteen holdings in Staffordshire, occupying 567 hides, and valued at about £516. Sampson’s fief extended to 26½ hides of this, and was estimated as being worth £8 2s. a year.
This Sampson, who has been incorrectly styled the first Dean of Wolverhampton, was a Canon of Bayeux, and though a king’s chaplain, was not ordained a priest till nine years after the Conqueror’s death, when Rufus made him Bishop of Worcester. Bishop Sampson subsequently gave the Church of Wolverhampton to his Cathedral Monastery of Worcester. He also held the neighbouring estates at Bilbrook and Tettenhall as the superior of the priests of Tettenhall College.
Willenhall, in the great survey, is recorded to have contained, as previously stated, three hides belonging to the King, and two hides belonging to the church—a hide of land in Saxon measurement was a variable quantity from 200 to 600 acres, according to
the locality, but generally it was accounted so much as would serve to maintain a family—together with one acre of meadow, and a carucate (which was a measure of about 100 acres of “carved” land) employing three ploughs. The annual value of Willenhall is set down at 20s. The population consisted of eight families, or, as the return puts it, five bordars and three villeins.
A bordar, or boor, was a squatter living in a hut or cottage on the borders of a manor, having attached a little patch of land, the rent of which was paid to the lord of the manor in the shape of poultry, eggs, and small produce. A villein, or serf, was to all intents and purposes a slave, at the absolute disposal of the lord, except that he could not be detached from the soil on which he was born. While the bordar, or cottager, was resident in the manor more or less on sufferance, the villein was there of right, and was in that sense the superior of the bordar. The villein certainly might not go away from Willenhall, nor get married, nor buy and sell oxen, nor grind corn, without the express permission of the lord of the manor; yet he was not so badly off as all this would make it appear to our modern ideas. People seldom travelled in those days, money was little used, life was exceedingly primitive, and wants were very few and very simple.
Staffordshire at that time was in a chronic state of poverty, an insurrection in the county having been suppressed in 1069 with the Conqueror’s customary severity, thousands of the wretched hinds having been slaughtered, the county desolated and the Midlands depopulated.
Bilston was but a cluster of mud huts inhabited by swineherds; and it is probable Willenhall was a similar little centre of boor life in the next woodland clearing a little further along the purling brooklet, and near its junction with Beorgitha’s Stream, as the Tame was then called. The entire population of the county was purely agrarian, the villeins and boors altogether numbering about 2,800; or on an average of one labourer to each 167 acres of land registered in Domesday Book. The subsequent history of the two parts of Willenhall will have to be traced separately.
The two hides set down as ecclesiastical property have remained in the possession of the church throughout. Erdeswick, writing his history of this county in 1593, states that within the jurisdiction of the Dean and Chapter of Wolverhampton there were then “nine several leets, whereof eight belong to the church. The custos, lately called the Dean, is lord of the borough of Wolverhampton, Codsall, Hatherton, and Pelsall in com. Stafford; and of Lutley in com. Wigorn; hath all manner of privileges belonging to the View of Frankpledge (that is, the administration of criminal justice, &c.), to Felons’ goods, Deodands, Escheats, Marriage of Wards, and Clerks of the Weekly Markets, rated at £150 per annum, and in the total is valued worth £300 per annum.
“Each of the other portionaries (continues Erdeswick) have a several leet; whereof