Yup, more froggy research

I’m being a bit lazy; I could compile a lot of this information by reading through my 5 shelves worth of history books and noting down every earl and earldom mentioned along with the detail, but then I thought there might be something similar to what I want already in existence. If so it will save me maybe a week’s work. Some earldoms are frequently mentioned, while others barely get a word in edgeways for various reasons, so there’s plenty of room for me to get something wrong anyway.

Basically (ha!) I want a list of what earldoms there were in medieval and Saxon England, before 1400. I know this changed a great deal, so rough dates for when new earldoms were created and old ones retired/broken up would be useful.

I’d also love something which gives a reasonable idea of how much land each earldom covers. Well, it would have to be several somethings to keep up with the various changes. Just a rough idea will do; it doesn’t need to be massively detailed. While some are named simply (the earldom of Lincoln is around …. Lincoln!) others are not (Huntingdon, anyone? Never heard of the name outside of the earldom) Besides, even the simple ones are a bit deceptive anyway; they cover more than just the city they were named after. It’s annoying; I have very little idea of what kind of area even the earldoms I encounter frequently covered.

Really I’m surprised none of my books already have something like this. It’s a rather obvious thing to cover. Humph.

Thanks.

If someone has similar information for bishoprics in the same period I'd be interested in that too. I've spent hours compiling notes on that now, and it still feels distressingly incomplete, mostly because I've been pulling them off an ecclesiastical map of medieval England.