Trial of Penenden Heath

The Trial of Penenden Heath occurred in the decade after Norman Conquest of England in 1066, probably in 1076, and involved a dispute between Odo Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother of William the Conqueror and Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury and others.

Odo de Bayeux was previously Earl of Kent and the primary landowner of the region subsequent to his half-brother William the Conqueror's invasion of England in 1066. In 1070, Archbishop Lanfranc succeeded to the see of Canterbury and requested an inquiry into the activities of Odo (and Lanfranc's predecessor, Stigand) who had allegedly defrauded the Church (and possibly the Crown) during his tenure as Earl of Kent. It has subsequently been argued that: "most of the lands had been lost not to Odo, but to Earl Godwine and his family during Edward's reign and perhaps even earlier..." and that "Odo had simply succeeded to these encroachments and the conflict between archbishop and earl was to a large extent a reprise of that between Robert of Jumièges and Godwine in 1051-2," the suggestion being that Lanfranc, despite being the Prior of a Norman monastery (and born in Pavia, Lombardy), was attempting to restore the pre-conquest landholdings for the Church of Canterbury.

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