This third penny "redditus burgi" is in Domesday absolutely erratic. In the Wiltshire and Somersetshire towns, it seems to have been held by the king himself, though at Cricklade both he and Westminster Abbey are credited with it (64 _b_, 67). At Leicester it was held by Hugh de Grantmesnil, but we are not told by what right (i. 230). At Stafford it had been held by the English earl, and had fallen with his estates to the Crown. The Conqueror kept it, but, halving his own two-thirds share, made a fresh "third," which he granted to Robert de Stafford.[856] At Ipswich it had, with the "tertius denarius [_i.e._ placitorum] de duobus hundret," been annexed to an estate held by the local earl. The whole of this was granted by the Conqueror to his follower, Earl Alan.[857] At Worcester, by a curious arrangement, the total render had been divided, in unequal portions, between the king and the earl, while a third of the whole was received by the bishop. At Fordwich "the third penny" fell to Bishop Odo, and was bestowed by him, with the king's consent, on St. Augustine's, Canterbury, to which the other two-thirds had been given already by the Confessor. The case of Bristol has led Mr. Freeman into a characteristic error. We read in Domesday:— "Burgenses dicunt quod episcopus G. habet xxxiii marcas argenti et unam marcam auri p[re]ter firmam regis" (i. 163). Mr. Freeman, who is never weary of insisting on the value of Domesday, is clearly not so familiar as one could wish with its normal contractions, for he renders the closing words "p_rop_ter firmam regis." On this he observes: "This looks like the earl's third penny; but Geoffrey certainly had no formal earldom in Gloucestershire."[858] When we substitute for the meaningless "propter" the right reading "preter" ("in addition to"), we see at once that the figures given no longer suggest a "third penny."