 Urse , along with his contemporaries , benefited from the increasing power wielded by the sheriffs . Although royal officials , including the sheriffs , had been appropriating ecclesiastical lands since the late 10th century , in the immediate years after the Norman Conquest churchmen complained about the increased amount of land seized by the sheriffs . Urse received his share of complaints , but he was part of a wider trend during the early years of William I 's reign . The appropriation of land led to an increase in the recording of rights and possessions not only by clergy but also by laymen , culminating in the recording of all possessions and the rights held by the king over them in the Domesday Survey of 1086 . This behaviour was not limited to the sheriffs , as other nobles were also accused in contemporary chronicles of appropriating land from churches and from native Englishmen . 
