This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online. It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover. Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you. Usage guidelines Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you: + Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes. + Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help. + Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it. + Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/ ( ■ '^ '• \ CA- ^ ®ome0^ag ^h^B VOLUME I. Volume II., which will be published as soon as possible, will contain the rest of the Papers read at the meetings, with a Bibliography of Domesday Book, Accounts of the MSS. and Printed Book exhibited at the Public Record Office and at the British Museum, and an Index to the whole work* The subscription price of the whole work is j£i. I ox. Volume I. is sold separately at iSs, ■7 C- 1086 A.D.— 1886 A.D. DOMESDAY STUDIES BEING THE PAPERS READ AT THE MEETINGS OF THE DOMESDAY COMMEMORATION 1886 WITH A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF DOMESDAY BOOK AND ACCOUNTS OF THE MSS AND PRINTED BOOKS EXHIBITED AT THE PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE AND AT THE BRITISH MUSEUM J. EDITED BY P. EDWARD DOVE or Lincoln's inn, baksistss-at-law HONOKASV SBCXSTAJtY OF TUX DOMBSDAY COMMEMORATION COMMXTTBB VOLUME I. LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. ^ AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST i6ti» STREET 1888 " ^ ' Ui '4 All rights rtstrvtd PKINTKO 8V trOTTISWOODE AND CO,, NEW-STSBBT SQUARB LOMOON • •••«•• •• ••• • • ••• • ! • DEDICATION TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN THIS BOOK WRITTEN IN COMMEMORATION OP ONE OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF ONE OF THE GREATEST STATESMEN THAT EVER RULED ENGLAND HER majesty's ILLUSTRIOUS ANCESTOR AND PREDECESSOR IS BY HER majesty's GRACIOUS PERMISSION RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED PREFACE By HYDE CLARKE, V.P.R.Hist.S. The occurrence of the Eight Hundredth Anniversary of the Completion of Domesday Survey of 1086 was the subject of discussion in the press, and it having been brought before the Council of the Royal Historical Society, it was considered desirable to take measures for its commemoration. In effecting this it was hoped that some benefit might accrue to the encours^ement of historical studies, without un- duly promoting popular manifestations. At the same time, if the national history is to become a vital subject with us, then it is necessary that those incidents which affect the population or localities should on suitable occasions receive notice. There can be no doubt that the announcement of the pro- posed celebration did in numerous cases recall attention to the nature of the Domesday record, and to its wide relation to so many thousands of townships and villages throughout the length and breadth of the land. This was one purpose of the Council, because the members considered the documents in question were of singular interest, constituting a most re- markable national monument, and relating to an epoch for the description of which the materials are in other respects scanty and obscure. Great as have been the labours on this epoch and its records, and particularly of late years under the leadership of viii PREFACE Professor Freeman, one chief result which has accrued from them is to show how much is still wanted, and more particu- larly the demand for individual and local co-operation, to accomplish the task of elucidation. In that survey we have before us a mass of details relating in many cases to institu- tions which have ceased to be operative among us, and from the proper explanation of which many historical facts have yet to be evolved. To stimulate such researches and exer- tions was the desire of the Council, and they believe they have been usefully employed in bringing forth the resources of the English school. From the very condition of our school of history, which is that of so many of our departments of learning, dependent on individual effort, exertion and co-operation, and to a very limited degree on the organised action of the Government and the community, we are subjected to comparisons which appear unfavourable with countries where there are great in- stitutions, an ficole des Chartes, numerous professorships, and large establishments paid from the public funds. The Domesday manifestation has shown that there is a con- siderable body of men among us giving their time and atten- tion to this branch of investigation, and these have been strengthened in the conviction that their fellow-countrymen appreciate their labour. With regard to the course of proceedings to be instituted, the Council wished to leave that in the hands of their fellow- workers. They invited the co-operation of all those interested, as well societies as individuals, in the formation of a con- ference. They esteemed it their duty to lay the matter among the first before Professor Freeman. Although the occupations of some persons prevented their active adhesion, the Council PREFACE ix received such encouragement as enabled them to persevere and apply for public support From the time of the constitution of the General Com- mittee the direction of all measures passed into their hands. Conscious that they disposed of small means and were en- gaged in an enterprise of doubtful issue, the Committee were desirous rather to restrict than to enlarge its bounds, and to court technical contributions rather than those belonging to the domains of general history. They were aware that their participation was only temporary, and that the great work, if they succeeded in awakening attention, must come after them in the future, and would not really be set aside by their limited action. The history of that great migration and intermixture of races, of which Domesday was one consequence, is not a labour to be achieved at once. Many attempts have been made to appreciate the changes which at first took place, and which are still in operation, but we are as yet too little familiar with the particulars of such ethnological events in various countries to arrive at determinate conclusions. The science of ethnology is still new and unsettled, and as its serious study expands so are multifarious conditions brought under notice, which still stimulate closer and more laborious examination of incidents here. The intermarriage of races is no longer accepted as implying a necessary perpetuation of their offspring, or the equal participation of these in the characteristics of the parent tribes. We are prepared for the disappearance or extinction of one element, while we know that the laws which govern the distribution of physical and mental characteristics are also obscure. It is indeed of deep interest to study the effect of the in- X PREFACE troduction in these islands of the Norman element, compli- cated by contact with various mixed populations. Discussions on these subjects during a limited session could, however, have led to no definite conclusions, while they might have wandered into vague speculations. Similar circumstances were held to discourage the invita- tion of papers on questions of genealogy, family or personal history. In the case of Domesday these topics are germane, and are necessarily suggested, because its particulars refer to the names of ancestors of those who have figured in our annals, as of those now living in such numbers among our existing population. The narrow course adopted by the Council was no protest against other branches of study, nor the expression of any undue preference. It was found that among the active co- operators there were many who had devoted themselves to the study of Domesday as a record, and to its elucidation. It was seen there were enough of these to supply the material for two volumes of essays, which it was hoped would form a contribution acceptable to the student and even to the public, taking its due place in the illustration of the subject to which it is devoted. Such was the design of these volumes, but it does not constitute the whole matter of the commemoration, and only expresses some portion of the co-operation which was elicited by the occasion. There was scarcely a local society in England, engaged in archaeological pursuits, which did not send delegates to the conference, and it is known that one result will be further effort in the illustration of the relation of the record in reference to the local and personal circum- stances of several counties. A disposition has even been PREFACE xi shown to make the portion of the record referring to a locality a school lesson, just as it is now proposed to make the local map a beginning for geographical teaching. A short general manual of history impresses itself but little on the minds of children. They may be more awakened by what they can understand, the events, and incidents, and battles in their neighbourhood, which are narrated in the larger chronicles, and which can be explained by competent illustration, by maps and by excursions. Interest was also manifested in the congress throughout the English-speaking people. The Historical Societies of the United States and Canada concurred in naming delegates, and their chief and competent representative was the Minister of the United States, the Hon. Edmund G. Phelps, who took an active part in the councils of the conference and in its pro- ceedings. A like concurrence was shown by the Historical Societies of Australia and the Colonies. The growing attention to our older history and genealogy observable among those of our people who are engaged in the establishment of new commonwealths throughout the world is one of the best guarantees for the vitality of the English school of students and for its effective development. Although the direct interest of our Scandinavian friends was limited, the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries adopted the measure of sending a delegate, whose presence was a welcome announcement of the participation of that eminent body. Reports of the proceedings also appeared in the Scandinavian journals. The regret felt at the inaction of the Norman Societies after their invitation would have been unalloyed, if it had not been for the co-operation of their most distinguished repre- xii PREFACE sentative, M. Leopold Delisle, of the Institute, Director- General o( the National Library in Paris. He, stimulated by the memory of his former labours on Domesday, did what he could to provide for the share of France. Aided by the Sociit^ pour THistoire de France, he contributed a paper on a new Norman charter to their proceedings, and gave it as a freewill offering on the part of France to us. He also sent copies of the paper for the service of his numerous colleagues on our com* mittee. M. Waddington, the Ambassador of France, was pleased to take an active part in promoting co-operation from that country. Encouragement was thus lai^ely given for proceeding with the undertaking, and in this course, through the intervention of their President, Lord Aberdare, the Committee received the support of the two great national establishments. The chiefs of the British Museum entered most cordially on the task, and provided fully for the public requirements. From their collections they brought forth every document which was illustrative, and the General Committee were able to obtain by the liberality of various authorities, and particularly of the Deans and Chapters, the production of local Domesday books and other records. This assemblage of ancient muni- ments was laid open for public inspection for many days, and was one of the events of the institution in that year. The officers of the institution, some of whom were members of the Committee, spared no pains in their arrangements, and on the day of opening caused an address to be read, and afforded copious information. The application of Lord Aberdare to Lord Esher, the Master of the Rolls, was received with cordiality and re- sponded to by the application of the resources of the Record PREFACE xiii Office, and by the zeal and energy of the Deputy Keeper and the officials. Thus a memorable spectacle was afforded, such as has seldom been equalled or surpassed, of bringing together in the Record Office and the British Museum the scattered contemporary archives of a far-distant age. Many were reminded that all history is not in the pages of books, nor are writers its only witnesses and exponents. The evi- dences of the past were brought before the eyes of our generation, and the Domesday volumes in their chest were produced by the successors of their original custodians. The Record Office is not designed for popular exhibitions, and its staff could on this occasion do less than they desired to meet the public wishes, but they made an effectual effort. One useful result was obtained, and that was to make more widely known than to the circle of specialists how the Record establishment had been administered under conditions far from favourable, and little savouring of liberality to it, and how by the care of those who have governed it in this country an institution has grown up honourable to the country, and able to be placed alongside those of continental nations. It is not easy as yet properly t6 estimate the co-operation of the Record Department, but it is to be hoped the hands of its officials will be strengthened in unobtrusive labours by the conviction that those labours are recognised in their value and their usefulness. In the Rolls House the meetings of the Committees were allowed to be held, with the presence of officers of the staff, and sometimes under the chairmanship of the Deputy Keeper. These meetings have helped to con- solidate the corps of Domesday workers, and it may be possible occasionally to resume the meetings of the con- ference so as to consult on operations in future years. xiv PREFACE Trivial as such opportunities for intercourse may some- times appear, yet they occasionally strengthen the convictions of thinking men, and g^ve activity to their resolutions. A proposition had previously been made by Mr. William de Gray Birch for a Domesday Society, and this has received more adherents. There was, however, one conviction which on such an occasion could not fail to come under active con- sideration, when directly suggested by the purpose of the gathering, and that is, the great want of a careful study of our legal muniments and their bearing on a subject hitherto obscure, the history of English law. When we consider that of the laws which govern the population of the globe the English system exercises so wide an influence as compared with the Chinese, the Roman, the Mussulman, or the Hindu, then the importance of its thorough study is seen. A grow- ing zeal on this head is now manifested at home and in the United States, and it appeared to our Honorary Secretary, Mr. P. Edward Dove, that the time had come for a further effort Supported by the approval of members of the con- ference, he has been enabled to carry his design to comple- tion. The Selden Society has been founded, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, with the concurrence of authority in England and in the United States, and is to be carried out as a common institution. The first volume of the Selden Society will shortly follow this now in our hands. A further effect of the influence of the commemoration is proposed by a society here for publishing the French chartu- laries, for naturally the history of the tenants in capite is largely to be found in the records of their native countries and of the monasteries they founded there. Thus what Dugdale has given us in his ' Monasticon ' may be duly supplemented. PREFACE XV . M. Delisle has also laid before the French Government a proposal for a Norman Commemoration, on the basis of ours, upon the other side of the channel. The papers which were prepared for the conference were, by the liberal co-operation of the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn, read in their hall. Although read at a time when so many were still absent from town, the papers were fully and ade- quately discussed, and the proceedings were recorded in the daily and other papers in a sufficient extent to bring their matter well before the public. The journals in most parts of this country and in many districts abroad also gave attention to the subject. Referring to the Commemoration in his last Annual Address, the President of the Society of Antiquaries said : * I must, however, now turn to the events of the past year in which this society has been principally interested. I may first mention the Domesday celebration, in the organisation of which we were represented by our Fellows, Mr. C. Trice Martin and Mr. Stuart Moore. The idea of such a celebration of the eight-hundredth anniversary of the completion of this unique Survey originated with the Royal Historical Society, and the success of the undertaking is in great part due to the energy and perseverance of its honorary secretary, Mr. P. E. Dove. That it was a success all who took part in the week's proceedings will readily acknowledge. The exhibition of original documents both at the Record Office and at the British Museum was bf the highest value and interest, and this society was able to contribute a not unimportant quota in the Winton Domesday and the Liber Niger of Peterborough, of which the Museum authorities kindly took the charge. The papers read on the occasion were numerous and valu- VOL. I. a xvi PREFACE able, and it is to be hoped that when they are published in a connected form they will add a further impetus to the detailed study of the Norman period which the Domesday celebration so well and happily inaugurated.* Thanks are due to many who have co-operated in the conduct of the Domesday conference. Indeed, the appeal made by the promoters of this undertaking has been in general most cordially received, and they believe that had they made a more extended appeal it would have met with as ready response. On one point alone have they not suc- ceeded as yet, which may be owing to the delay in the publication, and that is, in providing a sufficient number of subscribers for these volumes. They therefore strongly recommend this matter to the hearty consideration of those who read these volumes. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK. Bv Stuart Moore, F.S.A I ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY, AND ITS RE- LATION TO DOMESDAY BOOK. A Study in Comparative History. By Hyde Clarke, V.P.R.Hist.S 37 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS. By Canon Isaac Taylor, M.A., LL.D., Litt.D 47 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS. By Canon Isaac Taylor, M.A., LL.D., LittD 67 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY. By . J. Horace Round, M.A 77 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH. By Canon Isaac Taylor, M.A., LL.D., LittD 143 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND. By J. Horace Round, M.A. . . . , 18 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY, embracing the Divisions op the Libra or Pound of Silver and the Weights and Measures of un- coined Metal, Flour, Cloth, &c., as made by the Angli, Mercians, Danes, Normans, and Celts, and their Connec- tion with the true Understanding of the Words 'Hida,* 'Carucata,* 'Virgata,* 'Villanus,* 'Anglicus Numerus,* &c. By O. C. Pell, M.A. 227 On i^t ^iub^ of Someeba^ Q^ooS. By STUART MOORE, F.S.A., Barrister-at-Law. I COME before you oppressed with such a sense of my un- fitness to enter upon a dissertation of the Stiidy of Domesday that I feel I must crave your utmost indulgence to-night, and deprecate any severe criticism on this paper, for these reasons. It is now twenty-three years ago since I made any serious study of our great Record, and my researches in it since that time have been casual and accidental, directed only to particular objects which have come before me from time to time. A collec- tion of voluminous notes and extracts from the Book itself, and from some hundred or more Monastic Chartularies which I made when I was engaged in editing the Northamptonshire Domesday, were lent by me to the late Mr. Larking, and by him, alas, never returned, and I am thrown back upon imperfect recollection of past study for material for this paper. I had hoped to come here to-night to listen and to learn, and not to speak. I thought that my place would have been more worthily and more fittingly filled by my friend Mr. Elton, from whom we have all long expected a learned dissertation upon the important subject before us, but I was informed only a few days ago that Mr. Elton could not read any paper, and at the earnest entreaty of your most indefatigable Secretary, VOL. I. B 2 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK Mr. Dove, I have consented to do my best to take his place. I feel, however, that to attempt any really serious discussion of Domesday Book, I require better material than an imperfect recollection of past labours and the fragmentary observations of succeeding years. Time has not permitted me to suffi- ciently refresh my memory or to collect new materials and new observations, to enable me to deal with the subject before us in the way I had hoped would be done to-night. In approaching such a subject, one cannot be too conscious of the great labours of previous inquirers, and these are so im- perfectly known to me, and so imperfectly understood, that I may say with a recent poet, who speaking of the realm of song says : We are pent Who sing to-day by all the garnered wealth Of ages of past song. We have no more The world to choose from, who, where'er we turn, Tread in old thoughts and fair. When I review the vast array of works on Domesday, bear- ing the names of Ellis, Eyton, Baker, Larking, and other great scholars and labourers in this great field of research, I shrink from my present task and feel that I shall in almost every, if not every part of it, be telling a tale that is told. I have thought it best therefore, in this slight essay, not to attempt any exhaustive review of the material for national or social history which this great Record presents, but to give forth the impressions that I have received in studying Domes- day, and the conclusions that force themselves on my mind as to the motives 6f its conception, the method of its execution, the nature of the information it yields, and the means of inter- preting its obscurities, in such a way that they may possibly serve as some guide and assistance to those who are studying particular portions of the Record or particular subjects arising from its text. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 3 At the outset I find myself in accord with one whose minute study of the great Record and whose indefatigable labour and great attainments will be recognised by all here (I mean Mr. Eyton), on the first and most important question relating to the study of Domesday, viz. to use Mr. Eyton's own words : That it long since dawned upon my convictions that Domesday is its own best interpreter, and that those who would understand Domesday thoroughly must get their knowledge from Domesday itself. Lexicographers and glossarists only perplex and mislead the Domesday^ student The question for us here is not what a word or expression may sometimes have meant etymologically or in its various and successive uses, but what that word or expression did mean and must have meant in Domesday. It must be remembered that we have no official contempo- rary record whereby to illustrate the text of the great Survey (for the Exon Domesday and the * Inquisitiones Geldi ' I think should be read as parts of it), and until we get that long hoped for compilation of a Chartularium Anglo-Normannicum which I believe has been proposed, and it is hoped will one day be produced by the Rolls authorities, we are not likely to get any great help in this direction. I do not wish it to be supposed for a moment that researches among Monastic Chartularies and records of later date dp not materially assist us in under- standing the obscurities of the great Record, but the informa- tion which they give us with regard to measures of land and methods of cultivation &c. must be taken cum granosalis when we attempt to illustrate Domesday by the information which they present. These records are for the most part of very much later date, and we must not too hastily suppose that the information they give us, and the facts they set forth, and the deductions to be drawn from a collation of them, necessarily and accurately apply to the condition of the land and the state of its cultivation at the time of Domesday Book. 4 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK My researches amongst these later records lead me to the conclusion that from the thirteenth century downwards there was not any existing knowledge of what Domesday Book meant, and the few references to it which I have found seem to me to show that the writers of them knew the Book only as the great Survey, but were almost wholly ignorant of the meaning of its language. The very meaning of the name of it was lost in actual doubt. The interpretation of the name given by Rudbome, a writer of the fifteenth century, is that * it is called Domesday because like the great Day of Judgment it spares none.* ' The word is similarly explained by the author of the * Dialogus de Scaccario,* * who composed his work about the end of the reign of King Henry III. According to the com- piler of the Red Book of the Exchequer, who wrote in the twelfth century, it is called Domus Dei, or the Roll of Win- chester, and Stowe in his * Annals ' (p. 1 18) says of it : * The Book of Bermondsey saith that this Book was laid up in the King's Treasury (which was in the church of Winchester or Westminster, in a place called Domus Dei or God's House), and so the name of the Book therefore called " Domus Dei," and since shortly Domesday.' Archdeacon Hale's theory is that its name arose from the Law Day or Domesday at which the tenants and Hundred men presented their verdicts before the Royal Commissioners. Among Monastic Registers the more general title by which it is quoted is * Liber qui vocatur Domesdei ' ; and it is worthy of remark that wherever the monk transcribing the record has done so correctly and appears to have in any way studied his subject, he invariably writes Domesdei or Domesday, but when the scribe has been manifestly ignorant we generally find Domus Dei. It is almost certain that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries or even earlier the monastic scribes of the times with few exceptions knew little or nothing of the nature * j4nglia Saera, I 257. * Madox, Ifist, of Excheq, ii. 398. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 5 of the Record, as they seldom if ever transcribed it accurately ; in one instance the scribe has so grossly blundered as to introduce an interlinear word in the original into the middle of the line, utterly regardless of the sense.* The most intelligent ancient observation upon Domesday which I have found occurs in the Register of Waltham Abbey, * appended to a copy of a portion of the Record relating to the possessions of that Abbey, in which the writer says : Many advantages may arise from the possession of the copy, because it can be seen by it how the manors of this church were held before the Conquest and at the Conquest. It can also be seen how many hides there are in every manor, and if the king should wish to tallage his realm by hides, it can be seen by how many hides our manors are taxed, notwithstanding that by charter this church is free from the tallage of hidage. It can also be seen what estate the tenants of our manors have of right I do not say what state they have at present, because by the patience and negligence of lords or their bailiffs, by long continuation they have now a freer estate and may have other than they should have, to the disherison of the church and the peril of the souls of those who in such cases ought to have provided a quick remedy. It can also be seen, if any plea of malice long afore- thought should in times future be raised by anyone to take away (ffuod absit) the possessions of this church, what or what words being in the said books or rolls should be called to warranty, and likewise what advantage or gain may be brought to this church, and many other uses, although they are not here expressed, may arise from the possession of such copy ; and be it known that those things which are here noted from the Book of Domesday [* Librum del Domesday'] are written word for word with titles as is there written. And then the monk adds the following caution : Nor do I advise that these memoranda should be allowed to come into the hands of the unfaithful, lest perchance they might scheme something sinister to the prejudice of this church, whereby many inconveniences, costs, and trouble might arise. ' MS, LamdrnvfUy Brit. Mus. 415, f. 31. ' MS, CoUon, Tiberius, C, ix. f. 196^. 6 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK The extract which the monk gives is very correctly made, and shows that the scribe had studied his subject. In the reign of John, Domesday was known to the King s Court as the Rotulus Wintoniae.* In the reigns of Edward I. and Edward II. it is referred to by the Court of Queen's Bench as Domesdei and Domesday, but by the time of Edward III. it seems clear that the meaning at any rate of part of the great Record was not even understood by the Judges.* Kelham says, a question arising in 12 Edward III. whether the lands of Roger de Huntingfeld were holden of the king ut de corona or ut de Baronia vel Honore^ the Treasurer and Barons of the Exchequer were directed by the king's writ to search Domesday and other records, and to call to their assis- tance the Judges and others of the king's council, to make their return thereof. They accordingly return to the king in his Chancery a certificate by which they set forth several things which they found upon the search, and inter alia, verbatim, what they found relating thereto in Domesday, but as to the words contained in the said Book of Domesday they set forth that they are not able to make a declaration or interpretation of them unless just as the words sounded. We must not look therefore for any but the slightest aid from the records of later centuries to enable us to understand the difficulties presented by the text of the great Record. I am convinced that it is better understood now in this nine- teenth century than it has been since the end of the twelfth century. From the Book itself, and from the Exon Domesday and from the ' Inquisitiones Geldi,' we shall learn more than from any other source. The first and most important step towards the study of ' In the entry of Peter de Bras* land made after the completion of the Book, it is described as Liber de Wintonia, * Kelham, Domesday Book illustrated^ p. 245. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 7 Domesday will be, I think, the completion of the bibliography of Domesday, which I am rejoiced to find is contemplated by this Society. It will gather together and give as it were a catalogue raisonn^ of the work which has been hitherto done towards the understanding of the great Record, and I hope that it may be so compiled that it will not give merely a kind of bookseller's catalogue of the printed works, but will contain some review of the labours of the authors, showing what branches of study they have each taken up, with a criticism of the theories which they respectively advance. Such a work would be of the highest value to future inquirers and save many a student from much useless labour. Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information, and much that has been written on the subject savours more of a deduction from the result than of a know- ledge of the immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of St Mary's, Worcester,' of the appointment of the Commissioners by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also, the heading of the * Inquisitio Eliensis ' which purports to' give, and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of inquiry, which it sets forth as follows : I. What is the manor called ? II. Who held it in the time of King Edward } III. Who now holds it.^ IV. How many hides ? V. What teams are there in demesne ? VI. What teams of the men } VII. Whatvillans? VIII. What cottagers .? IX. What bondmen ? X. What freemen and what sokemen } ' MS, Cotton, Tiberius, A, xii. 8 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK XL What woods ? XII. What meadow ? XIII. What pastures ? XIV. What mills ? XV. What fisheries ? XVI. What is added or taken away ? XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now.? XVI 1 1, How much each freeman or sokeman had or has f All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is, I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry, and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns as we now have them. So far as I am aware, the only other contemporary record as to the nature of the inquiry is the passage in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in which the Chronicler states that : The king had very deep speech with his council about this land, how it was peopled, and by what men ; and then sent his men over all England into every shire, and caused to be ascertained how many hundred hides were in the shire and what land the king himself had and cattle within the land, and what yearly rent he ought to have out of each county. Also he caused to be written how much land his Archbishops had and his Bishops, his Abbots and his Earls, and that I may not relate prolixly, what or how much each man had who was a holder of land in England, whether of land or of cattle, and how much it was worth. So narrowly he caused it to be traced out that there was not one single hide or one yard [or, as Mr. Seebohm reads it, yardland or virgate of land], and even— it is shame to tell though it seemed to him no shame to do — not an ox nor a cow nor a swine was left that was not set down in his writ^ and all the writings were brought to him afterwards. Now these two statements differ considerably, and the growl of the unintelligent, unthrifty Saxon monk about the ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 9 enumeration of the cattle is scarcely borne out by the Survey itself. It IS true that in the fuller returns, as the Exon Domesday, and the Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex portion, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, are returned, but they are the cattle &c. which formed the stock of the demesne of the manor, and this stock was quite distinct from the stock belonging to the tenants. Now it must be remembered that at this period and through many later centuries, this stock went with the land^ and passed from bailiff to bailiff in succession, and was accounted for annually and enumerated on the back of every bailiff's account, and when in later times the demesnes of manors came to be leased, this stock was leased with the lands and the lessee had to makie it good at the end of his lease. This practice existed as late as the reign of Henry VIII. It will be seen therefore that the Commissioners who made the Survey could not possibly arrive at the value of the manor unless they took account of the stock on the demesnes. Accord- ingly* in the fuller returns of the Exon Domesday we find the stock so enumerated, but in the abbreviated record the stock no longer appears. There was no specific instruc- tion, as is insinuated by the Saxon chronicler, that the Com- missioners should make return of every man's pigs, but that inquiry became necessary as to the stock of the demesnes in order that the Commissioners should arrive at the value of the manor which he was bound to return. There was no inquiry as to stack belonging to the tenants^ and no unnecessary inquisition as to their possessions. This grumble of the Saxon monk, who like all his tribe keenly resisted all attempts to ascertain the wealth of the Church, must no longer be held up to the world as an instance of the rapacity and extor- tionate greed of the Conqueror. Thus all external evidence failing, we are driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion lo ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK that it was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly declining into a state of disorga- nisation and decay. The defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous remissions of its liability, and its possessions were constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment It had probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects. Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the difficulties before him and to count the resources of his kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken (as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was prepared to ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK ir Study the resources of his kingdom and consider the liability of his subjects from every possible point of view. He did not simply order a return of what his subjects then held in present value, without r^ard to whether the estates they held were of improving value or decaying value. He wished to ascer- tain in each case what was the old taxable assessment, and what was the annual value under that assessment. He wished to ascertain what was the annual value in each case when the grant was made, and what was the value at the time of the inquiry ; but having ascertained the modem value, or rather gross value, he did not seek to enforce a tax upon that assessment, which from adventitious circumstances might press unequally and unfairly upon some ; but he directed his Com- missioners to make a new assessment^ not upon the then total value, but upon the basis of a rateable value which was to be measured by what we may call the possibilities of each estate. He directed them to inquire and ascertain and estimate what extent of cultivable land existed in each estate. The method he employed to arrive at this assessment was to direct them to return for what number of teams there was arable land in each manor, ahd what number of such teams were in existence, whether in the hands of the lord or of his tenants. This assessment comprehended the pasture land necessary for the maintenance of the teams and the houses and homesteads of the tenants. From this return he could see what the land ought to produce and what it was at the time actually pro- ducing ; and further, be it observed that this assessment was not made arbitrarily by the Commissioners, but upon the evidence of the men of the Hundred and the men of the estate. A more perfect method of assessment, a more just and reasonable basis of taxation, can hardly be conceived when we recollect that the universal method of cultivation was cultivation on the system of the common field. The Conqueror seems to have considered that by basing his new 12 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK assessment upon the team he was taxing the producible value of each estate fairly and equally, for the team could cultivate a given number of acres varying in each locality according to the nature of the soil, and he who had the most teams and ' the land for them to cultivate, had the most revenue. By tax- ing the team he also taxed the pasture, exceptmowable pasture, and the waste land upon which such teams subsisted, and also the house of the tenant. In short he taxed on a fair basis the whole estate. Special items of profit, as mills, fisheries, woods, &c., were in some cases separately mentioned, but valued in the total valuation of the estate. In this system of valuation the Conqueror was creating no new or arbitrary basis of taxation ; he was only following out and correcting the Saxon system, and calling it by a new name. That basis of taxation which had been called the hide in Saxon times he terms the caruca or team. Under the Saxon system the Danegeld had been collected upon the hide. Now the hide of early Saxon times seems to have been an un- determined portion of land sufficient for the maintenance of a family, and Beda writes 'familia' where his Saxon inter preter writes * hydelandes.' Kemble suggests that its root is to be found in the root of * hygan,' * hyvt^xiy* familia. It kept a plough at work during the year and was sufficient for the support of one ' hywisc,' or household. Henry of Huntingdon defines the hide as land sufficient to work one plough in the year. Despite much that has been said to the contrary, I am convinced that the hide, as the word is used in Domes- day, cannot be treated as a definite areal measure of land. The variations of the extent of hides which we find in monastic surveys are remarkable, and we have no definition con- temporary with Domesday of what a hide then represented. The inquisitions taken on the lands of Ramsey Abbey in the fourteenth century specify with great exactness the number of hides in each manor and the number of the acres contained ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 13 in them, and the acreage varies from 80 to 252 acres. In the Abingdon Chronicle the quantity is estimated at 240 acres. In the first book of the * Liber Eliensis ' we have several notices of hides of 240 acres. In one instance in the Ramsey Chartulary there is mention of a hide containing 300 acres, and to show that the hide was well understood to be of variable extent, I will quote a passage from the Ramsey Chartulary which describes the manner of raising the relief of the free tenants of the Abbey, in which it is stated that an entire knight's fee is composed of certain hides, the hides of certain virgates, and the virgates of certain acres : to wit, that four hides make a knight's fee, four virgates make a hide, and acres make a virgate, ' videlicet aliquo loco plus aliquo loco minus.' It seems to be well understood that the hide or main- tenance of the household did not signify mere acreage of arable land, for belonging to it was necessarily pasture for the cattle which tilled it, but whatever may have been the Saxon hide as a measurable quantity of land, I think it is clear that the hide mentioned in Domesday is, like its equiva- lent the team, a term of assessment and not of measure ; it too was a basis of valuation, a designation of rateable value, and this is strongly confirmed by a comparison of the Ramsey Chartulary Survey with the entries in Domesday relating to the same lands. In Domesday the manor of Cranfield in Bedfordshire is rated for ten hides, and it is stated that there is land for twelve teams. It is further stated that there were, in demesne, two hides, and that the villans have ten teams, thus estimating that there were altogether twelve hides in- cluding the demesnes. In the Ramsey Survey it is stated that there are in Cranfield, actually, eleven hides, one virgate and a half and one third, or nearly twelve hides, besides the demesnes — but the demesne is reckoned €^ to the king for ten hides. Now it would seem that the Saxon estimate of ten U ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK hides was not a measure but a rough estimate of ten hides, where there was in fact a measurable quantity of eleven hides a virgate and a half and a third over and above the demesne, or altogether nearly fourteen hides including the demesnes. If the Domesday Commissioners had proceeded by measure they would have found the eleven hides one virgate and a half and a third, and not have returned ten hides as they did. These eleven hides and a half and a third make nearly twelve hides. Now the Domesday Commissioners' new assessment is that there is land for twelve teams^ and I think we must infer that both the assessment of the hides and the assess- ment of the teams are assessments of rateable value and not measurements, and indeed anyone who knows anything of the process of measuring land can hardly imagine the Domes- day Commissioner * dragging at each remove a lengthening chain.' Again, how is it possible to reconcile such an extract as the following with an idea of measurement ? ' It was assessed for four hides in King Edward's time, now for two. There is land for four teams.' * But the explanation of the difference comes in the same entry, for it is shown that the estate at the time of the Survey was worth 70J., whereas in King Edward's time it had been worth loor. ; hence the depreciation in value causes a new assessment at a lower rate. Again (i. in a)\ Earl Eustace holds Kreunge. It was assessed for 29 hides in King Edward's time, and now for five hides and one virgate. There is land for 20 teams. In demesne there are twelve hides. There are three teatns^ and there might be two more. The men have nine teams, and six more might be used. There is pasture for the cattle of the vill What can this language mean except assessment anciently by hides, and at the time of the Conquest by teams, and what can be fairer or more just than this mode of assessment } ' Domesday, i. 137. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 15 Innumerable instances may be given to show the inequality and unfairness of the ancient assessment by hides. Again, (L 30 by col. i), Queen Edith had held Esher and had been assessed for nine hides ; * nevertheless/ say the Domesday Com- missioners, ' there were then sixteen hides' They state that it does not give geld (as it was the king's), but they say ' there is land for fourteen teams.' This clearly again is assessment. The ancient sixteen hides were too small to fully occupy six- teen teams, so the new rate of assessment is set by the Com- missioners at fourteen teams. Throughout the Survey, wher- ever the land had been Saxon, and except in the counties of Derby, Nottingham, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire, we have the ancient assessment of the hide, but in the counties above mentioned the ancient assessment is all by carucates of land instead of hides, the new assessment being by teams. In an entry relating to Herefordshire it is stated that Turstin, son of Rolf, has between Usk and Wye seventeen teams (' carucas '). Of these there are in demesne four and a half, the others are the men's. * Of this land^ (dehac terrd)^ the record goes on, five carucates and a half are claimed by tlic king's reeves, saying that Turstin took them without a gift. The same Turstin has six carucates of land (' carucatas terrae ') beyond Usk, and there his men have four teams. Here we have the word * caruca * and ' carucata ' used alternatively to mean the same thing, but neither word used in Domesday can be strained to mean areal measure — it must mean assess- ment A careful perusal of the Domesday for Rutlandshire shows, I think conclusively, that the object of the Domesday Com- missioners in their inquiry was to estimate, but not to measure, the quantity of land which could be profitably ploughed in every manor. They state at the commencement that * there are in Alfnodeston Wapentake two hundreds, in each of which there are twelve carucates at geld * (that is, paying i6 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK geld), and that * in each of which hundreds twenty-four teams could be employed/ so that the Wapentake was only assessed at half its rateable value. In Martinslei Wapentake they state that * there are twelve carucates paying geld,' and that • there may be forty-eight teams employed,' showing that it was only assessed at one-fourth of its value. The Commis- sioners appear to have assessed the royal manors in Martinslei Wapentake at a very low rate, for as to Oakham they say that ' Queen Edith had four carucates oi land at geld, but that there is land for sixteen teantsl and they go on ^o say that ' the king has two teams, and the villans thirty-sevatl and that the king might employ four more. As to Hameldun they say that Queen Edith had four carucates of land at geld, and they estimate that there is land for sixteen teams, but they state that the king has five teams and the tenants forty. Redlington is assessed for sixteen teams, but the king has four and the tenants thirty. In the manor of a subtenant of Redlington they say that * in his land there might be employed eight teams (caruc(E\ and nevertheless there are ploughing there (ibi arant) sixteen teams {caruc<B), From these entries it is manifest that the Commissioners were estimating (not over fairly) and not measuring the land. Innumerable examples of this kind might be brought forward to show that areal measure was not contemplated by the Survey, but only assessment of taxable value. I do not wish for a moment to suggest that there was not an ascertainable quantity of land, varying in extent according to locality and soil, which was called a hide or a carucate, and could be measured, but what I do wish to impress strongly upon the student of Domesday is that the words hide and carucate and caruca as they are generally used in Domesday do not in that record mean any definition of actual measure- ment, but do mean a rateable assessment approximated to the actual measurement, but still assessed by the Commissioners ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK i; and men of the Hundred by estimation ^di statement of rate- able or taxable value approximately arrived at, taking all the considerations of the quality and condition of the land into account, and giving a fair valuation or rateable value to every estate in the kingdom. From the Ramsey Chartulary we learn that the number of hides accounted for to the king was not always identical with the actual number on the estate, and also that land might lie * extra hidam.' The learned editor of the Domesday of St. Paul's notices the variation in the number of rateable hides in the manors belonging to the Church between the time of the Survey and the year 1222, and remarks that these changes are interesting not only as indicating changes in the condition of the manors as respecting cultivation, but as implying a power on the part of the tenants in capite of procuring from the crown a relaxation of the burden of hidage. As with the hide so with the carucate. It was an utterly uncertain quantity. Wherever we find definitions of the extent of carucates we find that they vary almost as much as the extent of the hide, so that every computation of acreage which is attempted to be deduced from the entries in Domesday must be fallacious unless we have extrinsic evidence of what was the true extent and acreage of the carucate within the manor in question. Even then we shall only arrive at the acreage of arable, for the carucate or ploughland is described as so much arable as can be managed with one plough and the beasts belonging thereto in a year, having meadow, pasture, and houses for the householders and cattle belonging to it, and it is thus defined by Statute 7 William IIL cap. 29, and see Coke Litt. 86 b. Fleta, who wrote in the time of Edward I., states, if land lay in three common fields, then nine score acres to the carucate, sixty for winter tillage, sixty for spring tillage, and sixty for fallows ; but if land lay in two fields, then eight score VOL. I. C 1 8 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK acres to the carucate, one half for tillage and the other for fallow. Tliis general estimate is confirmed by a curious treatise on husbandry written in the fourteenth century by Sir Walter de Henley, knight, who endeavours to explain that by a little management the plough can be made to culti- vate twelve score acres yearly.* I have found about the time of Edward I. descriptions of carucates of 140 acres, 106 acres, 152 acres, and one of 50 acres, and in the Battle Abbey Chartulary we read that the Church of St. Mary of Mildehall has in demesne the land of one plough, to wit one hundred acres} It will be seen from these instances that, as in the case of the hide, no exact number of acres can be assigned to the carucate, and the fact is made more evident from an entry in the Chartulary of Ramsey Abbey of the fourteenth century, where the jurors on an inquisition say that there are in demesne two carucates, but they dotit know how much they contain. That the carucate of the thirteenth century consisted of both arable and pasture may be further shown by the register of Geronden Abbey, where a charter describes half a virgate of land, ' that is to say twenty-five acres in one field and as much in the other field, with five acres of meadow : and a virgate of land, that is to say ten acres and a half in one field and as many in the other field, with two and a fialf acres of meadows* • The variations of the virgate, which was the subdivision both of the hide and the carucate, are quite as remarkable. In the Ramsey Chartulary under Cranfeld the jurors say that ' they do not know how many acres make a viigate, because sometimes forty-eight acres make a virgate and sometimes fewer.* I have found descriptions of virgates varying from fifteen to seventy-two acres. The virgate is often described as containing both arable and meadow. Usually four virgates make up the hide, but I I MS. Addit, 6159, f. 221. ' MS, CotL Tiberius, B.v. f. 88. ■ MS, Lansdownif 415, £ 33. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 19 find several cases of hides containing five virgates, and one containing eight. I am sorry to be obliged to detain you with these dry de- tails, but I am obliged to do so in order to lay before you the view that I take of the study of Domesday. I am aware that others more capable than I have made far more extensive study of this question of measurement, and I shall listen with the utmost; deference to everything that may be said upon the subject. I have endeavoured to follow Mr. Eyton in his attempt to apply a system of areal measurement to the Domesday return for Dorsetshire, but I confess I am unable to do so, and it seems to me that the examples he cites to prove his theory tend rather to disprove it Time does not permit me to go more fully into this ques- tion of measurement or assessment, but what I wish to impress upon the future student of Domesday as the result of my re- searches is that the great Record must be regarded as a great Rate Book and not as a Survey of Extent If the Con- queror had desired to be informed of the acreage of his tenants' lands he would have directed his Commissioners to as- certain the acreage and boundaries of each estate and to set forth the perambulations in their return ; nor would this have been a remarkable proceeding, for we must recollect that the usual Saxon method of conveyance was to convey by charter with the boundaries of the land thereon endorsed. This method of conveyance survived into Norman times in many cases, and the Commissioners had before them the Hundred men and the men of the vill, who would readily have presented the boundaries and estimated the acreage ; but no such thing is done. The Conqueror simply inquires how many teams might be employed and how many there are. It is obvious therefore that at any rate his primary object was assessment of producible value. An assessment of area without taking into consideration the quality and nature of the land would 20 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK have been manifestly unfair, but the assessment of producible value was just to all, and conceived, as I have before said, in the highest spirit of equity. Moreover, it must be recollected that we have in Domesday no mention or return (or if any it is accidental) of the extent of waste land or of the extent of forest, and this fact I think strengthens the argument that no consideration of a return of areal measurement existed in the mind of the Conqueror when he instituted his inquiry. Of the general accuracy of the return of the assessments, so far as any collation of later records enables us to judge of them, there is very little doubt. All persons interested in pre- senting them accurately were present, and the return was in the most perfect degree a return to a public inquiry. Of the accuracy of the return of what I may call casual profits, as mills, fisheries, &c. there may be some doubt. If these casual profits were not at the time of the Survey let to tenants, I think that the Commissioners have frequently estimated their value in the gross value without specifying the items, and this particu- larly applies, I think, to inland fisheries, numerous instances occurring, particularly on the Thames, where several fisheries must have existed which are not specifically mentioned in the return. A remarkable instance came under my own observa- tion in the course of my professional work. On the river Taw there is a certain fishery which is fished by a fishing hatch at the mill situate between the manors of Monkton and Wear GifTard. In the entry relating to Wear Giflfard the Commis- sioners return half a fishery ('dimidia piscaria'), rendering 40^., but the return as to Monkton is silent as to the other half Now the records of the manor of Monkton show that this fishery has been fished in common by the lords of the two manors for many centuries, and the bailiffs' accounts show that it was the practice to divide the fish equally, even to the cutting in half of the odd fish Thi^, therefore, I take it, is a clear case of omis- ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 21 sion from the Record, not that it is accidental omission, but that the Commissioners valued the half fishery of Monkton in the total value of the manor, without specifying it, because it was then in hand and not producing rent In some cases the returns of casual profits are much fuller than others. For example, at Limpsfield in Surrey the Com- missioners return two stone quarries and three hawks' nests, clearly matters outside their instructions except in respect of the total value. Returns of beehives are frequent, and these kinds of items show principally in those counties of which we either have the original returns, or in which the returns have been less abbreviated, as Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Norfolk, Essex, Suffolk, Wilts, Somerset, Dorset, Devon, and Cam- bridge, than in the returns for the rest of the counties, as Northamptonshire, Warwickshire, and the northern counties, where the returns are very closely abbreviated ; and it would seem that the entry of these casual profits was only made by the Commissioners in assessing the total value, and not as any part of the inquiry required of them ; and it must not be argued because such casual profits are not mentioned in respect of any particular manor, that they did not necessarily exist because they are not mentioned (for we cannot suppose that there were no hawks' nests or stone quarries in England except at Limpsfield and some few other places in which they are noticed). This, I think, strengthens the argument that this great Record must not be treated nor studied as if it were an actual survey b}^ mensuration and particulars, but it must be looked upon as a valuation and rate book, and studied from that point of view. Of matters of special interest as illustrative of the social life and condition of the people, the careful student will find many interesting entries in Domesday. Time does not permit me to go into such an inquiry, nor have I made the necessary re- search, but I would notice that there is in vol. ii. p. 59, a 22 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK curious entry, showing that a man could endow his wife by a verbal declaration, probably joined with livery of seisin, in the presence of two witnesses, one a Norman and one an English- man ; and that the Hundred men bore witness to the Com- missioners that they had heard the husband acknowledge this. The practice of making feoffments of land quasi public is curiously illustrated by a record of the time of Henry III., in which the claim of the Abbot of St. Osith to land was defeated because the charter under which he claimed was made privately, and not read in the Hundred^ and the abbot could show no seisin. At p. 117 of vol. ii., we have an entry which shows that the town of Norwich rendered to the Saxon king 20/. yearly, and to the earl 10/., and also, it would appear, one bear and six bear-baiting dogs ('unum ursum et sex canes ad ursum '), which is, I think, the earliest notice of the ancient sport of bear-baiting. The Conqueror, however, does not appear to have encouraged the grosser sport, but he took instead 70/. ' ad pensum Regis,' and lOOs. in gift to the queen, and a gerfalcon, probably in lieu of the bear and bear dogs. These are instances by way of example. The careful student will find out others innumerable ; many of them, but by no means all, have been collected by Ellis in his ' Introduction.' A careful collation of the values of estates as they stood in the time of King Edward, with the value as assessed at the time of Domesday, would be highly interesting, and would, I think, show a very large increase of material pro- sperity during the Conqueror's reign. The entries relating to towns and cities deserve especial study. From them much valuable historical matter may be gleaned. With regard to the great portion of Domesday relating to the counties, I regard Domesday as an imperfectly worked gold mine. The quartz has been picked over in places by student after student, and many valuable nuggets they have found ; but to get at ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 23 the real value of a mine, the rock must be crushed out, and the text of Domesday, bulky though it is, must be thoroughly analysed and sorted by a process analogous to crushing and washing out — a process of careful tabulation, analysis, and collation. This, though a great labour, might yet be done, and I would suggest that it might be done as follows. Let the student make his translation of the text in the form of a return to a parliamentary commission, by way of tabular analysis in columns, which might be somewhat as follows : Manor and Hundred. Saxon tenant. Saxon assessment Saxon value. Land not assessed. Norman tenant. Norman assessment Teams in demesne. Teams of the men. Population T.R.E. Population T.R. Will. Stock of demesne. Wood. Several pasture. Special items: Mills, Fisheries, Churches, Sundries. Remarks and memoranda of the Commissioners. This might be done without any great violence to the text, at any rate of the first volume of Domesday. The tabulation would have to be altered slightly to suit the forms of the second volume. The result of such a process would be that what we might call the auriferous quartz would be tabu- lated and set forth in statistical columns in a readily available and workable form ; and in the last column of remarks and memoranda, which might be called 'the sorting pan/ we should find all the already-discovered nuggets, together with many others hitherto unnoticed, and a mass of golden in- formation, the careful collation of which would give a rich harvest c^ historical material. If such a work could be set going by this Society, with the aid of the many devoted students of the great Record 24 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK who are spread over the land, it would form j truly valuable monument of the anniversary we celebrate to-day. Of the practical uses of Domesday, outside its literary value, the principal appears to have been the determination of what was or was not land of ancient demesne, but before the Great Revolution which swept away feudal tenures, it was constantly referred to in the Courts for the determination of questions of tenure. Its uses survive to the present day, and it is frequently referred to in cases relating to manorial rights to show the legal existence of a manor anterior to the Statute of Quia Emptores. Also to show the relative positions of superior manors and sub-manors in questions respecting mining rights and rights of common over the wastes a few years ago. The decision in a great Lincolnshire mining case, involving mines to the value of many thousands per annum, was mainly rested on the evidence of Domesday. In cases relating to fisheries it is evidence of the highest value, and at the present moment I believe there is a question arising at Nottingham respecting the claim of the burgesses of that town to fish in the river, in which an entry at p. 280 may be of grave impor- tance, for Domesday states * that the burgesses used to fish in the water of Trent, and now they make complaint that they are prevented from so fishing/ There is a remarkable entry on the same page which tends to show that the conservancy of the Trent was entrusted at this early period to Nottingham^ and it is stated that if anyone hindered the passage of ships he was liable to be fined 8/. Many other examples might be given to show that the practical uses of this great Record are by no means exhausted after a lapse of 800 years. It has been generally supposed, and is distinctly stated by Blackstone, that the Conqueror imposed upon his subjects the yoke of military tenure, but there is a passage in Domes- day at p. 56 b, which seems clearly to show that in doing so he was not imposing a new yoke, but only systcmatising and ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 25 repilating anew an old burden. The passage, which is wholly expressed in the past tense, and refers to the time of King Edward, is as follows : When geld was given in the time of King Edward the hide throughout Barkshire gave ^\d, at Christmas and as much at Whit- suntide, If the king sent an army anywhere only one knight went for five hides, and for his food and payment 4;. were given him for every hide for two months, but this money was not sent to the king but given to the knights. If anyone summoned to an expedition did not go, all his land was forfeited to the king. If anyone having promised to send a substitute, and the substitute did not go, his lord was acquitted for 50J. The king's demesne thane or knight dying, left all his arms, and horse with a saddle and another without a saddle, to the king for a relief If he had any hounds or hawks they were to be presented to the king, that he might accept them if he would This surely is a brief statement of the main incidents of feudal service, and is a fragment of history which goes to show that the Conqueror was not imposing new burdens, but only systematising and rearranging the incidence of old ones. I feel sure that the more this great work is studied, the more will the spirit of equity, order, and justice in which it was conceived be recognised, and the memory of our great Conqueror be absolved from the untrue accusations of shame- less greed and rapacity which are cast upon him by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicler, who has been followed by historian after historian almost down to the present day, until this great organiser and founder of this kingdom has come to be looked upon as a ruthless and greedy tyrant, because by his great genius and love of order and law^ he in some cases reorganised, in others swept away, the degenerate and effete systems of his predecessors, and established in their place a solid and substantial form of government and economical legislation which has developed into the mighty empire over which her most gracious Majesty at present rules. That the accusations 26 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK of the Saxon chronicler are baseless and without foundation, we have, indeed, his own acknowledgment in the very same Chronicle, where speaking of the result of William's stem but righteous rule, he says : Among other things, the good order that William established is not to be forgotten. It was such that any man who was himself aught, might travel over the kingdom with a purse full of gold unmolested, and no man durst kill another, however great the injury that he might have received from him. And here I would refer the Domesday student to the valuable review of this period of our history which is contained in the preface to the second volume of my late master Sir Thomas DufTus Hardy's ' Materials for the History of Great Britain,' and will read from it his description of Domesday. He refers to the Anglo-Saxon hatred of the Survey, and says : The dislike of having their land, their crops, their stock, theur woods surveyed, of making accurate returns to a government inspector of field and fallow, of ploughs and teams, of pigs and sheep, is characteristic of a people who regard all official interference as preparatory to new exactions. But, however useful and even indispensable such knowledge may be for a just, wise, and philo- sophic system of public taxation, such prejudices are not confined to one era in our history. From the violence of those prejudices now, we may judge what their force must have been when every act of the new comer was regarded with suspicion ; and we may moreover judge of the astonishing advance which the Normans had made in all that belongs to the practice and theoiy of good government, when, in spite of such prejudices, they could conceive, carry out, and complete within a few years so wonderful a monument of economic science as Domesday. Domesday is a register of land, of its holders, its extent, its transfer, its resources, its produce, its deprived and present possessors ; the stock of the manors, the number of the tenants, cotters, slaves, and cattle employed upon them. It is at the same time a military register, showing the national capabilities of defence, the position of the defenders, and their relation to the crown ; a census of the population ; a survey of their means of subsistence, their employments,' their condition ; a ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 27 topographical and genealogical dictionary of all the great families in England ; and a faultless record of real property, its incidences and distribution. From its pages the Conqueror could discover at a glance the state of his revenues, the wealth, the consequence, the natural connection of every personage in his kingdom. As it was the first, so is it the greatest and most perfect experiment which has ever been made by our own or any other people in economic legisla- tion ; and history since then, notwithstanding all the appliances, improvements, sciences, and enlightenment of modem times, can point to no achievement like it. And now after the lapse of 800 years through which this great Record has served as a reference to settle disputed questions, growing through lapse of time less and less useful until its utility is all but exhausted, we are to-day face to face with a demand for a new Domesday, and this demand comes not from the ruling powers desiring to ascertain the resources of the kingdom, and settle on a just and equitable basis the taxation of the subject, but it comes prompted by wholly different motives from the people themselves. It is asked for not to determine the sovereign's rights against his subjects, but to determine their respective rights as between themselves. The question of land transfer and r^istration of title is one of the great questions of the day, and, as the Earl of Derby remarked some years ago, it is a question which involves the making of a new Domesday ; but this new Domesday will have to be a very different record from its predecessor — this Domesday will have to be in truth a Survey, and not a rating or assessment. To accomplish the r^istration and the simplification of the transfer of land now divided and split up throughout the kingdom into innumer- able holdings, subject to infinite conditions, liabilities, burdens, and rights, no form of description by writing will suffice. The new Domesday, if it be ever made, must be based on cadastral survey on elaborate and accurate plan, aided by registration of particulars explanatory of the plan. The main difficulty 28 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK of easy and cheap conveyance is the strict identification and description of the subject matter. Since the time of the ancient Domesday, when estates were almost entirely estates within a ring fence, the land has been divided and subdivided indefinitely, and now words and writing are inapt and impo- tent to accurately describe the inextricably interwoven parcels of land and property which form the estates of the present day. Survey, and survey only, and survey by cadastral measurement and plan, can and must be the only basis upon which such a Domesday Book as is now called for can be based. The labour and cost of such an undertaking is beyond all possibility of calculation, but it is called for and will doubtless ultimately be done. The compilation of the ancient Domes- day must have appeared at the time to have been a work of gigantic labour, but the genius of the Conqueror did not shrink from the task, and let us hope that now that we are celebrating the Sooth anniversary of his great work, we may be incidentally celebrating the inception of a larger and a greater work, the Domesday Survey of Queen Victoria, and that, when it shall be completed, the judgment of future ages upon it may be like that expressed by Sir Thomas Hardy upon the ancient Domesday : that it was ' the greatest and most perfect experiment which has ever been made by our own or any other people in economic legislation,' as we may well hope that with all the appliances, improvements, sciences, and enlightenment of modem times, it may and ought to be. ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 29 DISCUSSION. Mr. O. C. Pell said that he had the greatest diffidence in making any remarks on a paper read by so very competent an authority as Mr. Stuart Moore, and it was only because, during two years, he had been much engaged in this subject, and had prepared and read a paper (now to be found in the ' Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Communications,* vol. v. No. xxvii.) that he ventured to do so. He quite agreed with what Mr. Stuart Moore had said in regard to the equity of the Survey contained in Domesday, and he would shortly allude to a fact which confirmed it. He quite agreed, also, that it is impossible to say with truth that the words * carucatal * terra adcarucam^ or * hida ' (so far as the latter word may mean the land of one plough) point to one uniform measure of land ; but he said this for a reason not advanced by the reader of the paper. It must be borne in mind that the areal terra adcarucasoi Domesday in any one manor was the area of the land under the plough expressed in Domes- day Book by a statement of the number of terra ad carucam in such manor. Domesday not only gives the number of ploughs, but subdivides such statement into lord's ploughs and tenants' ploughs, such tenants' ploughs being very often an association of two or more virgates to work one plough. These virgates, when examined by later MSS., are found generally to be of three classes, one consisting of areas in decimal figures, another in areas of duodecimal figures, and another of sexdecimal figures, and the significance of this fact cannot be overestimated ; as he would shortly point out, they are either in acres of 8, 16 and their multiples, or in acres of 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, and 60 in number, or 12, 18, 24, 30 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 36, 48, and 72. The area covered even by these associated ploughs (weighted as they were known to have been by the work that they were bound by their servitia and consuetudines to do on their lord's demesne) must of necessity be less than the area covered by the lord's ploughs, thus assisted. The terra ad carucam of the whole manor (being the area covered by the lord's ploughs, thus assisted, plus the terra ad carucam covered by Ae tenants' ploughs) would therefore, as regards any one plough, be the mean of all the ploughs, demesne and servile. For instance, the lord of some manor might have an area in demesne of 960 acres covered by six ploughs, each taking 160 acres ; and the homines of the same manor might also have an area of 960 acres, covered by twelve associated ploughs (four viigatarii forming one plough), each plough taking 80 acres, the two sets covering together 1,920 acres (all in the^ open fields with roods and acres intermixed), being a mean of 120 acres to each plough, demesne and associated. The terra in such a manor is expressed in two ways in Domesday, i.e. either as terra ad carucam for 18 ploughs, or, if each virgate of the homines is treated with its two boves as a terroy then as terra for 54 ploughs ; and sometimes it is ex- pressed in both ways in the same manor. It is impossible, therefore, to say, from reading Domesday alone, what tlie area of the terra ad carucam of one plough in any one manor was, though they could, by ascertaining from later MSS. what the size of the virgate of that manor was, draw a pretty certain conclusion as to it by noticing the number of villani &c. as recorded in Domesday. But in regard to the uses of the words * hida,' * terra ad car.,' and ' carucata ' as units for taxational purposes, the case was very different Domesday was a rate book, and the unit of assessment must have been definite. That unit was the geldable, not the areal, 'hida' or 'carucata,' and the size and value of it cannot be ascertained from the 'valet,' or ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 31 *summa' of values, of the whole manor; because such 'summa' contains the values of the several appendicia be- longing to the manor, such as the rents and services, the mills and fisheries, and several other things, over and above the bare land actually taxed. But luckily it was possible to find many small plots of land, disentangled and unconnected with any of these appendicia, recorded in Domesday with their value annexed, being the value of such land per se. Two cases are sufficient for illustra- tion : one is the land of Hardwinus in Belesham (Domesday Book, f. 190 i), Cambridgeshire, where 80 acres are taxed at thirteen shillings and fourpence, and Harduic in Cambridge- shire (Domesday, f. 191 6), where ten acres are taxed at twelve- pence. It will be observed that at Harduic it is one and one-fifth of a penny per acre, at Balsham it is just twopence per acre, and that 10 anglico numero = 12. Taking one pound or liira of silver to represent the taxable unit (and speaking for himself alone he had no doubt that it did), it will at once be seen that, assuming this fact, it would take 120 acres to make the pound at two pence per acre, and 240 acres to make the pound at one penny per acre. But in a two-course manor (as in the beginning of things it probably would be) the fallow, or one -half of it, would be in each year uncropped, and if it was * wara ' (hence the word * ad warectum*) that is, * jacens in communi,' of or belonging (as to rights of common on it) to the whole body of tenants, then, only 120 acres would be taxed, but at the rate of two pence per acre, which equals one penny per acre on the two hundred and forty acres. Of this untaxed fallow Domesday Book takes no notice. The * hida ' or * carucata ' was therefore (when used to express the geldable unit) a librate, or one pound's worth of land — that is, 120 acres at twopence, where the sole right belonged to the owner, or, where the fallow was * wara ' and all had liberty to common on it when fallow, then 240 acres at one 32 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK penny per acre. There are repeated instances of this in old MSS. : for instance, in the Survey of Littleberi in Essex, in Add. MSS. No. 6165 of the British Museum. But of course the question arises, H6w does that tally with the case of Harduic and its taxation at one and one-fifth of a penny ? It arises in this way. A libra or pound of silver may be divided in two ways — either according to the divisions shown in Troy weight, or those shown in Apothecaries' weight He must now ask them to carry their minds back to the time when the Anglo-Saxon and other tribes arrived in England. They would find the arable land in open fields and in acre strips, so well described by Mr. F. Seebohm in his ' Village Community.' The Anglo-Saxons appear to have divided their libra like, and perhaps by adoption from, the Romans ; their scilling was of four peninga, and seventy-two went to their pound of silver ; consequently one and one-fifth peninga would equal one denarius of a people dividing the libra according to the division of Troy weight, when sixty shillings would go to the pound. That the original Anglo-Saxon shilling was four peninga appears from sec. v. of Ina's Laws (Thorpe, * Ancient Laws and Institutions,' vol. i. p. 140), where an ox's tail is valued at one scill of four peninga, and sec. xi. of the Con- queror's Laws (p. 472), where the English penny is stated to be fourpence. In the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum the Danish king it was necessary, for stating the amount of * weregilds,' that some form of account should be adopted that would fit in to the mode of accounting used by the different kingdoms, and a solidus of five denarii of twenty-four units was adopted. (See the treaty, Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 481-483, and more especially the heading * De eodem in Mercennorum laga,' p. 484, where 7,200 shillings make 120 pounds.) None the less the old shilling of account of four denarii of eighty units still remained and was referred to by the Conqueror, as ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 33 he said before. He must ask them therefore to keep in mind that the Anglo-Saxons divided their libra of silver like the Romans, and that the Danes and Normans divided it as the English do now. Moreover, the Angli had one method of count- ing (differing from others), by which 120 with them really meant 144 in numbers and 240 meant 288. In just the same way they would find that their libra of silver, i.e. 5,760 grains or units, divides up into 288 units of 20, that is into 72 shil- lings of fourpence of 20 units each. When the land was first occupied by the Angli, the Jutes, and others, the acre and good strips, existing as such long before their coming, would be distributed according to their respective ways of counting, coinciding as it did with their respective divisions of the libra. In some settlements the men would receive virgatesof 10, 20, or 30 acres, in others 12, 24, or 36 acres, and each answering to the respective divisions of the libra. The libra of silver would in this way be spread over 240 acres in the one class of settlement, and over 288 acres in the other. When, how- ever, the first Domesday was proceeded with, the difficulty of course arose, how the 240 acres answering to one pound of silver could be reconciled with 288 also answering to one pound of silver. The difficulty was apparently got over in a way most ad- vantageous to the Anglo-Saxon men (if their lords, Saxon or Norman, permitted them to keep it and did not grasp the benefit themselves). This was done by putting out of taxa- tion, ' extra hidam,' one-sixth of the Anglo-Saxon land ; thus of 12 acres two would go out, of 24 four, of 36 six, and so on, and out of 288, 48 acres. Thus it is that where the word hida is used as to the amount taxed * erga regem,' if it is dealing with Anglo-Saxon land, one-fifth more must be added on to ascertain the actual area. The case of Cranfield, alluded to by Mr. Stuart Moore, is a case in point ; the ' decem hidae erga regem ' means in effect 'decem librae/ or 1,200 acres VOL. I. D 34 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK of taxed land, but 1,440 acres (not 1,220) of land in area. To show that he did not speak without book as regards this, he would refer them to the Hundred Rolls of the year 1279, being a Domesday of Edward I.'s reign, or a return made for taxational purposes. At one place in vol. ii. the officers deal with Shelford Magna in Cambridgeshire, and set out for purposes of taxation, under the heading ' De Servis,' a list of tenants by name holding 1 5 acres each, and under the head- ing ' Aliis servis,' another list of men holding seven and a half acres each. In the Cottonian MS. Claudius, C, xi. they would find a survey of the same manor in the year 1277 (only two years earlier) where precisely the same people hold, the one class 18 and the other class 9 acres, thus showing that the area of taxed land was one-sixth less than the actual area : or, in other words, one-fifth must be added on to the taxed land in order to ascertain the real area. Moreover, in some cases the definite names of *sexacra' and 'sexlond' were given to this sixth ; thus in the Domesday of St. Paul's (Hale, p. 46), there will be found an entry showing that Ralf fil letlede held * I acram sexacram extra hidam,' and in the same page ' il sexacras extra hidam.' So also, at page 49, there is a list of persons who hold eight acres of ' sexacras,* and another in regard to * sexloiid.' Reverting back to Harduic, it will be at once seen that ten acres taxed at 12 denarii (each consisting of 20 units) really represents a taxation of one denarius (of Norman denarii of 24 units) per acre. The practice of counting by the long hundred, i.e. 120 for a hundred, still exists in the neighbourhood of Liibeck, and also in England ; and he would conclude by quoting a passage in Frank Buckland's Life (3rd edition, p. 309) : * The crab-fishers of Cromer have a peculiar arithmetic ; thus two crabs are counted as one. The two crabs being called a cast, six score crabs are called a hundred. At Cromer, therefore, a hundred crabs means 240.' But their forefathers were more advanced ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK 35 than that when they got from William the Conqueror for a hide of wara (equal to 288 acres) a taxation of only 120 acres. Sir J. B. Phear agreed with Mr. Stuart Moore in the view that the Domesday Book was not a survey of extent : that is, it did not profess to give the acreage of the manorial area, or any approximation thereto. In a sense it was a book of manorial assessment, and so far was (as Mr. Stuart Moore termed it), a sort of rate book : he did not, however, think with Mr. Stuart Moore that the primary object of its being compiled was that it should serve as a means of taxing in the modern sense of that word. No doubt the capacity and the liability of the manorial community to take its share of public burdens, among which, of course, was the payment of the Danegeld when levied, was apportioned or measured in terms of the hide, an ancient unit, which in name pointed to the house, homestead, or family, and in the concrete was the quantity of arable land actually tilled by the Anglo-Saxon eight-ox team, with its co-operative plough staff. And it seems manifest that under the earlier form of rural economy, the strength and substance of each village community bore an immediate relation to its ploughing power. But it was not for the purpose of rectifying the basis upon which the Danegeld or any similar tax should be levied that the Domesday Survey was undertaken. Its main object, as he apprehended it, was to provide the Barons of the Exchequer with an authoritative record by which their court should be guided in taking the half-yearly accounts of the sheriffs. At the time of the Conquest and before, the revenue of the crown was not the result of any regular system of taxation, as we understand it To use an old phrase, * the king lived of his own.* He had his manors like other lords, and the pro- duce or firms ' of these royal demesnes constituted the main 36 ON THE STUDY OF DOMESDAY BOOK portion of his revenue. He was also entitled even under the Saxon system to certain so to say feudal incidents, which were enlarged under the Norman rule in respect to all other manors besides his own. The sheriffs of counties were his officers for collecting the firms from the bailiffs of his manors, and all other royal dues, for which they accounted twice a year before the Barons of the Exchequer. The Domesday Book afforded a complete register of the manors existing at the time of its compilation, the holders of them, and all such facts in relation thereto as were needed to enable the Barons to check the sheriff's collections and audit his accounts. It was in essential character a series of short abstracts of the different manorial bailiffs' annual accounts, verified locally by the Domesday Commissioners. This explains the comparative shortness of the period of time within which the Commission performed its work, a period quite insufficient for an original land survej^ and measurement of extent even of the roughest kind. On t^ ^tttSie^ ^tttSeg of ^un^at^^ anb He A STUDY IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY. By HYDE CLARKE, V.P.R.Hist. S. In the discussions on the question whether the Domesday Survey was the issue of a system of registry of written records or of oral communications, I maintained that however minute the information appears to persons here,, it is within the bounds of that which is orally communicated and transmitted in many regions and many epochs of society. Indeed all the particulars in Domesday are such as would be known to a village head or chief in Turkey, or in any Asiatic country. He would likewise know what the particu- lars were at a former period, equivalent to T.R.E. These are the particulars which the head of a village has to keep in his mind for requisitions in foreign or civil war, taxations, and impositions. In some parts of Turkey the Mussulman village school- master, or hojahy may commit memoranda to writing, or the village scribe,, or mahto, in some parts of India, but many village heads of the subject races are ignorant of writing. Where records are kept is not in the villages, but in the superior division equal to the Hundred, Armin Vamb^ry^ in giving a review of the literature of i 38 ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY, Hungary for 1886,* enumerates one work relating to the ancient Turkish occupation of Hungary, which illustrates the system of written registration, and affords an example of records of the cadastre class. The work by Messrs. Velios and Kammerer is styled * Magyarorszdgi Torok Kinestdri Defterek,* which he trans- lates * Treasury Lists of the Turks in Hungary ; * more literally it would be * Registers of the Turks in Hungary.' Defter is indeed a register kept by a defterdar^ and in this instance refers to the defterdar who was the chief accountable officer in an administrative division under the Turkish empire. Professor Vamb^ry observes : ' These registers constitute a most remarkable monument of Turkish rule, showing as they do the painstaking administration of the Ottoman civil and military officers of that time. Not only every town and place of note, but every village has a special register, in which the name of every peasant, and the quality and quantity of his land, are accurately put down.' It will be seen that the form is that of Domesday. Pro- fessor Vamb^ry says the details are accurately put down. He means with precise figures, for the quantities are estimated and customary, the Turkish dunum, like the English hide &c., not being measured by survey. The particulars in Hungary would be furnished by the local heads to the authorities of the kaza or hundred, and the mukhtars or elders would be chiefly * Magyars,* giving un- written information recorded in Turkish in the defter. The book above mentioned may be recorded as an illus- tration of Domesday and the cadastre system. There are many features in Turkish rural districts which illustrate those of Domesday. Indeed it is in a country like Turkey that the history of various epochs may be seen in its real conditions. The village has its woods and common ' Athenaum^ January I, 1887, p. 21. AND ITS RELATION TO DOMESDAY BOOK 39 pastures with rights of pasturage analogous to Domesday. It may be that practices supposed to be peculiar in Asia may hereafter explain those at home. A fruit-bearing tree, as an olive, is a property separate from the field on which it grows, and its ownership will pass separately. In the woods the honey trees also are under conditions different from the other trees. Honey trees may belong to the village community, or a honey tree may have an individual owner. As a land com- missioner in Asia Minor, I was called upon to award com- pensation for such trees. A tree would be worth an acre of arable land, and might be worth more. In Asia for thou- sands of years, as in England for centuries, the wild honey serves as a resource for home food, and is a commodity for outside sale ; of importance before sugar was introduced, and still, in the shape of helwa^ as in the time of th#^ Greek settlers and conquerors in Asia, able to hold its own. There is a practice in Asia which is the same as that lately exercised in Spain with regard to the pasturage of the flocks of merino sheep, and which is likewise of remote antiquity and dependent for its origin on the relations between the nomad or pastoral tribes and the agricultural population. Over a great part of Asia the nomads are still to be found, and the Kurds and Turkomans may be seen on the shores of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean with herds of kine, sheep, goats, horses, and camels. When the crops are gathered in, the nomads claim to pasture, and to remove fences where existing and other impediments. Certain plots and gardens are, however, recognised as enclosed. It is this right of late pasturage called bozooky which has impeded the substitution of the late maturing American cotton for the short staple cotton, which matures earlier. The condition of common pasturage in Domesday may represent a survival of the general tradition as to pasturage throughout the ancient world. 40 ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY, Tillage in Asia, as in Southern Europe, depends on the possession of plough oxen, and the holdings correspond to the working of the ploughs, as in Domesday, and are limited. The division of the crop depends on the ownership of the oxen by the lessor or the tenant If the tenant finds the oxen, then he takes the larger share. In the division the seed, about one-fourth of the crop should first be set aside, but spmetimes the tithe is taken. The tithe, or Government tax or proportion, is always set aside .before division between the land-owner and tenant. These are the general principles, but in the application there is great diversity. Land of itself is of no more real value in Asiatic Turkey than it can have been at Domesday Survey, or than it is in a new colony. I have awarded as the value of land as good as any in the prairies from five shillings to twenty shillings per acre. In the purchase of a large estate the land would not be measured off, nor the outer bounds in woods and hilltops be defined. As has been cited during the conference with regard to the bounds of Sussex and Surrey, so in the East the bounds of properties or administrative divisions may meet in an undefined region. The quality of land, even if it be a deep black alluvial mould, forty or fifty feet deep, is little regarded. Common field or tarla has a nominal price, but arable land, if it has not gone back to tarla^ has its price. In the case of land which has been cleared for cotton at an expense of twenty pounds an acre or more, it has its value, equivalent to European rates, and so likewise have vineyards, fig and other orchards. Until the alteration made by the great Sultan Mahmood in our times, much of the land was held as a military fief or timar^ and the country was covered with a body of tenants in capite. The princely or baronial timariot, living in the castle which was the head of his barony, assigned portions to his AND ITS RELATION TO DOMESDAY BOOK 41 military and household retainers, and they again subinfeuded. Many of these were relatives of the tenant in capite^ and con- stituted a military class. The tillage was largely carried on by the descendants of the ancient cultivators. Thus the conditions of William the Norman's time have been seen by many Englishmen and others. Against these great barons the Sultans were in constant struggle, some- times in actual warfare ; sometimes only retaining their nomi- nal superiority by conceding the local functions of adminis- tration to the powerful rebel. What followed the suppression of the timariots, and what we have seen, is a picture of the decline of the Norman barons in England. Many of the timariots suffered under charges of treason ; others, having no longer the resources of war to maintain their expenditure became embarrassed, alienated their estates and succumbed to the usurers. The retainers remained on their small properties, and constitute a petty squirearchy of yeomen, holding inferior offices in local administration, and largely supplying the ranks of the sub- altern officers in the newly disciplined army. In the main, the greater barons in Asia and Europe have fallen, while the large body of the squirearchy fairly holds its ground. The tenant maintains his position by the very nature of it The Norman baron might displace the English thane, but he could not displace the English tenant. The cultivator is a cultivator. The Norman cultivator could not practically be displaced from Normandy. Normans and the Norman warrior did not want to cultivate in England. This is a chief and natural cause of the few Frenchmen enumerated in the Survey. The timariot was under the same conditions. His Mussulman retainer would live on the fief, and in peace would enjoy his horse and his greyhounds, but the native cultivated. 42 ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY, To cultivate a country there must be a cultivating class, adapted to the land, to the soil and the climate, and this population will hold its own. The usurer may remove the proprietor, though it does not always suit him to do this ; but unless there is a large population competing under land hunger, he cannot, except at his own loss, dispossess the cultivator. The tenant of Domesday was sheltered and protected by his personal value, and any surplus of population was drawn off to the cities or to war and adventure. The dwelling and the outhouses are of no independent value, as they are mere ease- ments necessary for the cultivator. No one will buy these over a tenant's head. So, too, a steady vitality, it will be found, was given to the subtenants of Domesday, and they survived to profit by better social conditions when those of the former epoch had passed away with the superiors of the epoch. Many of the observations here made apply to large portions of India, and of other parts of the world. Thus the study of Domesday has to be pursued as one of comparative history, obscure for the time in our understanding of the details, but cap?ible of explanation and illustration more from living institutions than from passages in books. Chance survivals in our country may afford us some materials of comment or rather of conjecture, but the wide field of the world must be surveyed for practical and working facts com- petent to afford fair comparisons. Pursuing the parallel between Domesday and Turkey, it will be seen that the owner or purchaser must himself, though legally free, be practically adscripius gkba. If not on the spot to receive his dues in kind, under the metayer system it goes hardly with him. Therefore he can only be an absentee by means of the ballivus. This is a person not to be implicitly depended upon. If possible he is one of the family. He lives on the land, of which he must have some know- ledge, and he takes care of the domain. One of the difficulties AND ITS RELATION TO DOMESDAY BOOK 43 in the way of a town-living usurer foreclosing is the want of a ballivus, wKo is not to be supplied from towns. In a country thinly peopled and with bad communications, com, the general crop, is not saleable except in times of dearth. In good times all are producers, and compete for the small supply of the towns. After Domesday the wealth of England must have been created and developed by its river and water communications, if not before, for the country was rich T.R.E. It must be observed that the tithe is a means of abstract- ing customers from the cultivator. In England the monas- teries were the chief receivers of tithe, and were therefore sellers. In Turkey the tithe is the land-tax belonging to the Grovemment The economical result is to narrow the market. Incidentally it may be observed with regard to Domesday . that the tithe was not appropriated generally to a parochial clergy, and information is wanted as to the distribution of churches and priests. Both might exist in a manor, but they had no necessary connection, and no necessary title to the tithes. The landowners claimed the disposal of the tithes for the ecclesiastical purposes to which they were applicable. In preference to devoting the tithes for parochial endowment they dedicated them to the endowment of new or the enrich- ment of old monasteries. The same practice had prevailed in Normandy before, and also concurrently. The lord gave the tithes to his priory, the subtenant gave small parcels of land, or other property (as the charters in the * Gallia Chris- tiana' &c. show). Thus it was that England became covered with the new priories, at small expense to the barons. The parochial clergy were subsequently endowed by the care of their chiefs, the bishops, and in concert with the abbots and priors. As on the dissolution of the monasteries their tithes were presented 44 ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY, to laymen, it must be the case that the tithes of many parishes have never been in the possession of the parochial clergy, as is generally assumed. The disposing power of the lord or baron was not termi- nated by the grant of the tithes to a monastery. This is shown in the instance of the Limesis. Ralph de Limesi, then residing in the south, founded the priory of Hertford, and endowed it Among the tithes afterwards assigned were the tithes and church of Maxstoke in Warwickshire.* On the ex- tinction of the male line, Clinton, the heir of the half barony, founded the priory of Maxstoke, to which he transferred these tithes. Under these circumstances it seems difficult to conceive that at Domesday the doctrine can have prevailed that the tithes were the freehold of the parson, or that he held any freehold. The relations with the Ulema or ecclesiastical body in Turkey, in some respects worked out as in England. What may be called the Church acted as a compact unit, endowed with civil privileges and spiritual powers. In a state of society where life and property were exposed to hazard, persons in Europe became tenants of the monasteries for their own lands. After the Conquest the monasteries appear to have retained many men as warriors for their own defence and the performance of military services. Thus the small squirearchy was subsidised. In Turkey, under uncertain political conditions, a very large part of the lands and houses has been made what is called vakuf, and assigned for various ecclesiastical services, sometimes by the founder of a mosque or other institution, and sometimes for simple protection of property. The tenant was reinstated in his land, paying a small chief rent, but on the failure of male heirs the land lapsed to the 'Church.' As vakuf property increased, so was there a disposable surplus. * See De Limesi in Dugdale, Baronagium, Warwickshire, MonasHe^n. AND ITS RELATION TO DOMESDAY BOOK 45 In the Middle Ages, too, further property was with accumu- lated surpluses purchased by monasteries ; so in the East new properties were purchased as vakuf. As at the dissolution of monasteries, so under Sultan Mahmood, a great extent of .-property was found to be in mortmain, and the Ottoman Government is now administer- ing this by commission, and providing for the enfranchise- ment of ecclesiastical tenures. As in England the tombs of the baron are found in his priory, so in Turkey are those of the Dere Bey (or valley- lord, as he is now called) around his mosque. In the economical conditions of such lands and popula- tions, the imposition of a Danegeld or money tax is particu- larly odious, and felt as a great oppression. It carries off every coin obtained in prosperous years, and puts the other valuables in the hands of the usurer. The general state is neces- sarily one of barter, and the use of coin is only exceptional. As money can be raised by the Government on such taxes in advance, the levy falls into the hands of the lenders and the farmers of their rights, who exercise all possible oppression. Legal rights of the population are thereby dis- regarded. As confirmed in Magna Charta, so elsewhere, the working bullocks are legally exempt from seizure, but even this primary condition of social existence is frustrated, and a population may be thrown into a condition of misery for years, and land may go out of cultivation, through the exac- tions of the hated publican or farmer of the taxes. The pub- lican and his servants in Judaea, in Norman England, or in Turkey belonged to the foreign and less esteemed races. A feature of the Domesday Survey also recognisable in some parts of Turkey is the praedial slave. He is there a negro. The village herdsman taking out the herds and flocks to the common pasture is an institution even of wider applica- tion than those hitherto referred to. 46 ON THE TURKISH SURVEY OF HUNGARY. Frankpledge takes its natural place, and a fine on the village community is the great resource for the stoppage of the robberies and misdeeds of outlaws harboured within its domain. A marked difference between Domesday England and modem Turkey is the number of the smiths in the former region and their absence in the latter. The wright, the maker of wooden ploughs, tools, and wagons, is common to both ; but long distances may be travelled in some parts of a country like Turkey without finding a smith. The shoeing- smith is provided with ready-made shoes and nails. In many parts of Turkey, and in Hungary at the time of the Survey quoted and now, the provision of iron is made by travelling iron- workers (usually gipsies). It has been supposed that Eng- land was dependent on the ironworks recorded in Domes- day, but it is possible that the supply of iron as of charcoal was not, as we suppose, dependent on fixed establishments. In India, Turkey, Hungary, the migratory ironworker makes his own small furnace two feet square, and smelts haematite and other suitable ores, producing an iron or mild steel at one process, wrought into shoes and nails, and sold about the country. ®ome0Mg ^utSiSafe. By Canon ISAAC TAYLOR, M.A., LL.D., Litt. D. Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and economical history of our country, a mine almost inex- haustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among national documents it is unique. There is nothing that approaches it in interest and value except the Landnimab6k, which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and apportioned among them. Such a document for England, de- scribing the way in which our forefathers divided the territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after their own names/ would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before the great battle which changed all the future history of England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of the land from Englishmen to Normans ; it shows how far the earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration of the classes of population — freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves — it indicates the nature 48 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS and extent of the earlier conquests. Thus we leam that in the West of England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts first subdued the British population was exterminated or driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude. The ethnological value of Domesday Book is therefore great All our present English counties are not included in the Survey. The omissions are significant Lancashire, of course, is not mentioned, since it was not till the Flantagenet period that three incoherent blocks of territory were made into a county as an appanage for a scion of the Royal House. Blackbumshire and Salfordshire, the r^ion between the Ribble and the Mersey, are surveyed as a part of the county of Chester, while Fumess and Amoundemess, the district between the Ribble and Morecambe Bay, belonged to the West Riding of Yorkshire. Nor is there any mention of Cumberland and Westmore- land. The southern portions of these counties were then included in Yorkshire, but the remainder, which belonged to the old kingdom of Strathclyde, still formed a fief of the Scottish king, and was only subdued by William Rufus, who transplanted to Carlisle many of the peasants who were dis- possessed by the formation of the New Forest The reasons for the omission of Durham and Northumberland are not so clear. The Palatinate of Durham was the border march of the Earl Bishop, and may have enjoyed fiscal immunities and exemptions, while Northumberland had probably been so harried by William and the Scots as to be almost depopu- lated. Rutland, that anomalous little shire, is partly described under Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire, and Wales was still unconquered. With these exceptions, the boundaries of the counties were pretty much as they are at the present day. Putting aside the more strictly historical interest of the DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 49 Domesday record, and the interesting facts which relate to the method by which it was compiled, its condition, and its preservation ; putting aside also the invaluable statistical in- formation which it contains, we may perhaps venture on less trodden ground, and note what may be called the Domesday Survivals which may be discovered at the present day. The Domesday Book everywhere implies, if it does not expressly record, social and economical conditions widely different from any that now prevail, but the transformation has been so gradual that in many counties innumerable survivals of those bygone conditions may be still detected. The Present is so intimately interwoven with the Past, that there are few country parishes in which the Domesday record fails to throw some flashes of light on the meaning of common matters of rural observation. The facts recorded with pen and ink on the venerable pages of the Domesday Book are, for the most part, still legible, scored deeply on the surface of the soil by the Domesday plough, and others survive in customary tenures, in the names of fields and farms, the forms and dimensions of inclosures, and the directions followed by hedges, roads, and rights of way. To understand such survivals we must first picture to our- selves the aspect of an ordinary country parish at the time of the Survey. England is now pre-eminently a land of small inclosures ; the numerous hedges, and the hedgerow timber, give it much of its rich beauty. At the time of the Conquest inclosures were few. Here and there were great forest tracts, thinly peopled and fed by swine. Elsewhere there were vast open treeless districts, resembling the great stretches of tilled land now existing in many parts of France and Germany, the dwellings not dotted about by the wayside, but collected in scattered hamlets, consisting of a few houses or cots, often not more than five or six. Close to the little hamlet would be VOL. L E so DOMESDAY SURVIVALS some few acres — a score or so — of inclosed meadow mowed for hay, but the rest would be open arable, protected only by temporary fences of dead thorns, while beyond the arable were great stretches of rough moorland pasture. In most of the larger hamlets stood the Lord's 'hall,' built of stone or timber, brick being almost unknown. Round the Hall clustered the houses of the tenants of the manor ; those of the villans or boors, who were small farmers holding their lands by fixed services, with mud walls, earthen floors, and thatched roofs, each standing in its ' toft,' with a little narrow acre strip of ' croft ' behind it, and the still ruder huts of the cottiers, and of the serfs who were sold with the land. The land, to a great extent, was held in common by the village community, and tilled by co-operative labour. The best land lay in great open arable fields, which were divided into narrow strips, usually acres and half-acres, each strip about a furlong in length, and a perch or two perches in breadth. These little strips were separated by turf balks, and the holding of each villan was as a rule either a bovate or a virgate, made up of a score or two of these strips scattered about the open arable fields, and usually amounting to from ten to thirty acres in all. He did not hold the same strips year by year, but every second or third year one division of the arable land was thrown into fallow, over which the cattle of the village had common rights of pasturage. Beyond the village and the arable fields were extensive wastes, rough pastures of coarse grass, overgrown with thin wood or brushwood, forming the summer pasturage of the sheep and cattle, upland pastures of wold or down for the sheep, and lowland pastures of undrained moors and carrs and ings for the cattle. One or two instances will show how vast were these common pastures, how widely separated were the hamlets, and how scanty was the popu- lation. The parish of Pickering now contains 32,700 acres, which DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 51 agrees roughly with the Domesday measurement of the manor. In the time of Edward the Confessor the inclosures were less than 400 acres, and about 7,000 acres were tilled in open fields, leaving some 25,000 acres as moorland pasture. At the time of the Domesday Survey about 1,200 acres were in tillage, and there were twenty villans, with six ploughs between them, the lord having one plough. The population of this vast tract, twenty miles by six, cannot have been much more than 100. It is now one of the most sparsely peopled parts of Yorkshire, yet the population is over 5,000. The parish of Holme-on-Spalding-Moor contains 11,514 acres. In the time of King Edward there were less than 1,500 acres under plough, leaving 10,000 acres in moor and carr. At the time of the Survey about 600 acres only were tilled, there were eight villans and twelve bordarii with three ploughs, and the lord had half a plough. The popula- tion was about 100, and there was a church and a priest. The present population is over 2,000. These are extreme instances, where the soil was poor, and the wastes unusually extensive. As an average case we may take Heslerton, with 7,1 20 acres, of which about half were tilled in the time of King Edward, and about a fourth at the time of the Survey. In the adjacent township of Knapton there are 2,889 acres. In King Edward's time twenty acres were inclosed, and 1,080 acres were tilled. In King William's time all was desolate : apparently there was not a single inhabitant. The arable was divided between the lord and the tenants of the Manor who held in villanage. The land was tilled by huge ploughs, normally drawn by eight oxen, yoked four abreast. When the soil was light the teams were somewhat smaller, con.sisting of as few as four oxen, yoked two and two. This was called a half plough. But where the land was heavy, as many as ten or even twelve oxen were yoked to each plough. A villan usually possessed one yoke of oxen, 52 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS each plough being drawn by the associated teams of four villans. Land was plentiful, and it was rather the possession of oxen for tillage, than of land itself, which constituted wealth. Hence we understand why the system of taxation recorded in Domesday is based on the number of ploughs rather than on the number of acres. We must dismiss the notion of the modem English system of letting farms at fixed annual rents. There were no farms or farmers in our sense of the word, a farmer being originally a tenant who was bound to supply /eorm — food and entertainment — to the lord when he visited the manor. The occupation of a messuage, which descended from father to son on the payment of a fine or heriot, carried with it a customary right to pasturage for a certain number of oxen, sheep, and swine, and to the produce of a certain number of 'acres' in the arable fields. Rents were paid mainly in kind and by services. Manors were granted by the King in fee to his tenants in capite, chiefly the greater bamso who rendered military service in return. These barons sublet their lands to their knights, who kept a portion in their own hands, in demesne, as it is called, and let out the rest to the villans, the men of the vill or township, in fee — that is, on certain fixed conditions of tenure, usually that the lord should have a defined share of the produce : so many chaldrons of oats, so much malt and meal, the milk of so many cows, so much honey, so many hens and eggs, and so much comage, a commutation for beeves and sheep ; but the rents were chiefly paid in services, the tenants had to work so many days a week, generally two or three, with their oxen and ploughs, in tilling the lord's land, ploughing, harrowing, reaping, mowing, or leading stores, without payment The villans could not be dispossessed so long as they rendered the customary dues, the rent could not be raised, their rights and obligations passed, when it changed hands, with the land, of which they were, in fact, joint owners with the lord. DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 53 As time went on these services were more and more com- muted into fixed money payments, but we still find survivals of these tenures, not only in copyholds, which mainly grew out of holdings in villanage, but in the existing tenures of the North of England, where, in addition to the money rent, the tenant is usually bound to furnish so many loads of straw, and so many days' service in carting for the landlord, with horses, wagons, and men. My own glebe, by immemorial usage, is let on these terms, the rent being paid partly in money, partly in kind, and partly in services. At the time of the Conquest the actual money rents, or scatpennies, as they were called, were usually either id. or 2d, an acre, or 4^. when no services were rendered. We gather from the Boldon Book of Durham and the Liber Niger of Peterborough that even the village artificers, such as the carpenter who made the woodwork of the ploughs and harrows, the smith who made and repaired the ironwork, the marshall who shod the horses, the lorimer who made the bits and stirrups, as well as the bailiff, the mason, the pounder, the shepherd, the neatherd, the hogwarden, and the beekeeper, were paid for the services they rendered to the lord or to the community, not in money, but by the produce of a certain number of strips of arable in the open fields, usually amount- ing to 8, 12, or 15 acres, which they held rent free, and which were tilled for them by the ploughs of the villans, in addition to which they often had a right to their thraves, a certain number of sheaves of corn from each plough. The villans had to grind their com at the lord's mill, and the miller had his multure ; he retained a certain proportion of the meal as his fee, and rendered a fixed payment in money or kind to the lord for the privilege. North country mills still grind on these terms : the miller keeps the bran, and makes no charge for grinding. When certain special services, called precations or boon services, were performed, as in hay time or harvest, the villans 54 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS were entitled to an allowance of food called a corrody. The corrody was no very luxurious repast, if we may judge from the modern etymological descendant of the word, the North- umbrian * crowdy,' which denotes a sort of stirabout, consisting of oatmeal over which boiling water has been poured. The priest was paid for his services, like the other village officials, by a share in the produce of the land. We may thus obtain some light on the disputed origin of tithes, and even of glebe. He had his thraves, consisting of every tenth sheaf, but in some instances it would seem that the produce of every tenth or twelfth acre (a tenth either by the small or large hundred) was allotted to him. Thus the laws of Ethelred and of Egbert ordain that every Christian man shall pay his tithe justly, ' as the plough traverses the tenth acre.* Appa- rently the whole arable field was tilled by the villans, and the produce of every tenth acre strip belonged to the priest Ultimately, when the land came to be held in severalty, in- stead of in community, these tenth strips became the parson's freehold, and he had to till them with his own oxen. There are several townships in the East Riding in which the ancient glebe can be actually shown to have consisted, not only of an exact tenth of the whole Domesday arable, but of every tenth strip in the open fields, appropriated as ordained in the laws of Ethelred, the Church taking the produce of every tenth acre as the plough traversed the land. The accompanying map of the township of Burton Agnes indicates that the old glebe consisted of eighteen strips in the three fields, say twelve in the two fields which were in tillage at the same time. According to Domesday Book there were twelve carucates of arable,^ and therefore the parson had one stripout of each carucate, his tenth acre as the plough traversed it, according to the laws of Ethelred. But the glebe strips are ' The glebe strips are interesting as fixing the size and position of some of the Domesday carucates. DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 55 Burton Agnes. 1809. 56 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS somewhat narrower than the others, because the others are eighths, each representing one oxgang, the work of one ox in the eight-ox plough, while the parson had not an eighth but a tenth in each ploughland. The actual measure of the arable is 999 ac. o r. 18 p., of which one-tenth would be 99 ac 3 r. 26 p., whereas the eighteen strips of glebe only amount to 98 ac. 2 r. 20 p., falling short of the theoretical tenth by i^^ acre. This is accounted for by encroachments which are visible on the map. Some of the parson's neigh- bours do not seem to have ploughed quite fairly, thus gra- dually shaving off a part of some of the parson's strips. The map of the adjacent township of Haisthorpe gives a similar result. In the three arable fields there seem to have been nine strips of glebe, and a bit over, averaging six strips in the two fields tilled in any one year. Domesday assigns six carucates to Haisthorpe. Thus, as in Burton Agnes, the parson had one strip out of each carucate, or one-tenth of the whole arable. In other parishes, where the numeration was by the great hundred of six score, the priest had one twelfth of the arable. At Foxholes he had half a carucate out of six, and at Kirby Underdale four oxgangs out of forty-eight The churches were few and far between. In the East Riding only forty-eight are mentioned in Domesday, and these were chiefly on the lands of spiritual lords, the Bishops and the great Monasteries. The way in which the ministrations of the Church were frequently supplied is shown by the names of several Hundreds and Wapentakes, such as Staincross (Stone cross), Ewcross (Yew cross), Buckrose (Beech cross), and Osgodcross, which were originally preaching crosses where the people came to- gether at the great Church festivals, afterwards becoming the trysting-places for assemblage in arms when invasion threat- ened, and moots for the hundred-courts of civil jurisdiction. DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 57 The social and economical conditions pictured in the foregoing pages have now completely passed away, but they have left behind not a few traces of their former existence — curious anomalies, manifest to all who have eyes to see them, which testify to the scheme of village life recorded, or tacitly assumed, in the Domesday Survey. I will take from my own neighbourhood, the East Riding of Yorkshire, a few examples of such survivals. Down almost to our own days a lai^e portion of the East Riding was uninclosed, presenting a living picture of its aspect at the time of the Norman Conquest. Only the tofts and crofts around the houses, and a few garths of meadow land were fenced, the wolds, the moors, and the arable, still lying uninclosed. The village had its 'outgang/ as it is still called, where the cattle of those who possessed rights of grazing were col- lected in the morning, ready to be driven out into the moor under charge of the neatherd. We have still, in my own parish of Settrington, the public cowherd who takes the villagers cows into the lanes, and who is paid rateably by the owners. The arable land was tilled in common, alternate strips being held by different owners, and separated only by turf balks. The position and extent of the open arable fields can frequently be determined by the old names which cling to them, East Field and West Field, High Field and Low Field, Far Field and Town End Field. These * Fields,' each containing several hundred acres, are normally either two or three in number. When there are two fields the Domesday entry usually indicates that the township was tilled on a two-year shift, but when there are three fields a three-year shift was adopted.* When we learn from Domes- day that there were two manors in a township, one cultivated * This is more fully discussed in the paper on *The Ploughland and the Plough.' 58 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS on a two-year and the other on a three-year shift, we may expect to find traces of five arable fields. Rowlston in Holdemess is a good example of a two- field manor, and the present acreage, compared with the Domesday Survey, shows that upwards of 300 acres have been lost, the sea having encroached more than half a mile during the last 800 years. Burton Agnes, of which a map taken from a survey made in 1809 has already been given for another purpose, shows a not unfrequent arrangement of a three-field manor. We see the messuages of the villans and cottiers, each standing in its toft, with a narrow acre or half-acre croft behind it South of the main road was the moor, formerly open pasture for the cattle of the Community, but long since apportioned in ' deals ' or shares among the holders of oxgangs in the arable fields,^ one oxgate of moor, the pasture for an ox, going with each oxgang of arable, which represented the labour of the ox. North of the road is the ' terra ' or common arable, divided into three fields, East Field, Middle Field, ahd West Field, which were tilled in rotation, one field being ploughed in winter, another in Lent, while the third was left in fallow. The strips of tillage are divided by turf balks. They do not, as in many parishes, consist of acre strips, but are half oxgangs of about 7^ acres, two strips, one in each of the two fields tilled in any one year, constituting an oxgang. Some of the strips have been con- solidated, probably by exchange. The glebe strips are dis- tinguished by cross-hatching, and the oxgangs over which there was right of dower are stippled. The Hall of the Lord stands where it stood before the Conquest, but he seems to have in- closed his demesne land out of the common fields, whose ancient limits, however, are indicated by surviving rights of way. » In some parishes the pasture 'deals* were annually redistributed by lot. Each had a distinctive mark cut in the turf. After harvest corresponding marks were made on apples which were thrown into a tub of water. Each farmer dived for one, thus determining his deal of pasture for the succeeding year. DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 59 The map represents Burton Agnes as it was before the inclosure, which took place about thirty years ago. There are many townships which lay in open fields within the memory of persons now alive. The last of them, Tottemhoe near Dunstable, is being inclosed this year. The death-blow to the system of open arable fields was given by the introduction of turnips, which made fallows needless, and introduced a more varied and profitable course of tillage. The consolidation of the scattered strips was mostly effected by the Inclosure Acts passed in the reign of George III. under the pressure of the high prices due to the great war. Hence, in the East Riding, the inclosures in the great majority of cases have been too recent to have effiaced the names of the ancient open fields, which remain in the everyday parlance of the villagers to designate large tracts of country. A portion of my own parish, containing about 1,000 acres, still goes by the name of West Field, though it is now divided into four farms, and contains scores of inclosures which might be called ' fields ' in the modern acceptation of the word. Even where the land has long been inclosed and divided into separate holdings it is instructive to ride across the country, and observe how indelibly impressed on the soil by the ancient plough are the marks of those very divisions of the land which are recorded in the Domesday Survey. Fre- quently the exact boundaries of the Domesday carucates and bovates can be traced. The ancient arable, consisting as a rule of the best land, because land was plentiful, has com- monly gone back to valuable pasture, inferior soils, which were formerly unreclaimed, being now taken into tillage. Hence, the land still lies visibly in ' run-rig,' the great rigs, lands, or selions, usually a furlong in length, and either a perch or two perches in breadth, remaining as they were left by the Domesday co-operative ploughs, often higher by two feet or more in the ridge than in the furrow, while here and there, at 6o DOMESDAY SURVIVALS regular intervals, may be discerned the traces of the flat un- ploughed balks, two furrows broad, left in turf, to separate and give access to the strips held by the several tenants of the manor. Even when the old arable still remains in tillage it is not impossible, as harvest time approaches, to detect by the varying colours of the ripening com the lines of the selions of the Domesday plough, now levelled by cross ploughing, but still traceable owing to the fact of the com growing more luxuriantly, and ripening more slowly in the deeper and richer soil which has filled the depressions between the ancient selions. Here we can behold the visible concrete acres and roods, and measure the actual furlongs, not, as in the tables of our arithmetic books, abstract quantities of so many square yards or so many linear feet, but strips of land of definite shape as well as of definite size. The shots or furlongs are forty perches or one- eighth of a mile in length — a furrow-long, as the name implies — and the acres are of the same length, and four perches broad, the shape and the extent of each acre being determined, not arbitrarily, but by natural conditions — the precise length by the length of the longest furrow that could be conve- niently ploughed before the oxen had to stop and rest, the longest furrow possible, because the turning of the plough constituted the severest part of the ploughman's labour, while the breadth of the acre depended on the number of furrows which formed the daily task of the villan and his oxen. Thus the acre represents one day's ploughing under the most convenient conditions as to size and shape, for which reason its length is ten times its breadth. And, as we gaze on these actual acres, roods, and furlongs, we notice that they are seldom straight, such as are delved by the modem two-horse plough, but, as is shown by the hedges which scrupulously follow the lines of the turf balks which separated the oxgangs of different owners, they lie in great DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 6i sweeping curves, shaped usually like a reversed capital J or capital S, the long narrow fields of the present farms thus perpetuating the graceful curves of the acres— curves which can only be due to the twist of the great eight-ox plough as the leading oxen were pulled round, in preparation for the turn, as they approached the end of the furlong, by the villan at the near side of the leading ox. I have examined thou- sands of these S-shaped rigs, and I find that they invariably swerve towards the left or near side, which seems to be ex- plained by the fact that the driver, who walked backwards, would most conveniently have directed the oxen by pulling them round by their head-gear with his right hand instead of with his left Thus the acre strips, which were originally straight, were bent round in the course of centuries of contin- uous ploughing, the curvature being increased every year by an inch or two of further deviation, till at length the extremities of the furlong became shifted several feet from their original position. This is curiously shown at Rowlston, where the rigs originally terminated at a small watercourse. A road ran paral- lel to this beck at a distance of a few feet The ends of the rigs could not be ploughed, and hence kept their original positions. At the time of the inclosure it was found that the owner of each rig possessed a few square yards of ground between the road and the beck, not opposite to the end of his rig, but four yards to the right of it, these little patches fixing the original position of the acres. In other townships, rigs which must have originally been continuous, belonged to different shots or furlongs, and have become discontinuous, the ends of the acres swerving to the right on one side of the headland, and to the left on the other, as shown in the figure on p. 55, the acres thus gradually receding from each other in the course . of years of continuous ploughing. When the land is nearly level the rigs are S-shaped, with a curve at each end, but when the land is on a slope the rigs 62 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS are often J-shaped, with the curve at the bottom of the hill. If the hill was steep the plough went horizontally round it, forming those curious terraces on the hillsides which are called linces or reeans. These are very conspicuous when the land has gone back to grass, but when it has remained in tillage the modem cross ploughing has so nearly effaced them that they can only be seen in a favourable light, when the sun is low, and casts them into partial shadow. These terraces were formed, as Mr. Seebohm has shown, by the sod being turned downwards, the plough returning idle. The formation of the linces, the curvature of the acres, and the height attained by the rigs and headlands, impress the mind most forcibly with the great antiquity of the run- rig. Much of the land in run-rig went back to pasture at a remote date, either in Tudor times, when wool was found more profitable than com, or at the time of the Black Death, when many parishes were almost depopulated. The remote- ness of the date is shown by the alterations in the beds of streams. In my own parish a beck must have changed its course and cut through the rigs at a time when it flowed at a height of four feet above its present level. It has cut off the headlands from the rigs to which they belong, and since no new headlands have been formed, the stream must have changed its course at a time after the land had gone out of tillage. By noting the existence or absence of rigs and linces, it is easy to determine the limits of the ancient tillage. This is also indicated by the curvature of the hedges, which constantly follow the divisions of the oxgangs, mostly running along the balks which separated the ploughed strips of different owners. This is only the case with old closes ; in recent inclosures the hedges are straight, cutting across the curved rigs at various angles. In my own parish I can distinguish with certainty by the straightness or curvature of the hedges the fields DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 63 which were inclosed before or after our Local Inclosure Act, which was passed in 1797. The direction of the country lanes is commonly deter- mined by the position and extent of the Domesday tillage. They usually follow the lines of the balks and headlands which separated and gave access to the furlongs or shots in the open arable fields, while the highways frequently skirt the division between the moorland and the ancient arable. Hence the roads meander hither and thither, taking curious rectan- gular turns as if round the squares of a chessboard, their directions being survivals of the boundaries of the several cultures in the open fields. That this is the true explanation of these twists is shown by the fact that the direction of the run-rig on one side of the lane is often at right angles to the direction on the other. There are also queer rights of way, leading no-whither, and now scarcely used except for exercising horses. Their origin is indicated by the fact that they commonly run at right angles to the rigs along mounds of turf, consider- ably higher than the adjacent land, proving that these rights of way are survivals of the headlands which, before the land was inclosed, served to give access to the intermixed strips of arable in the open fields. Very striking are these conspicuous headlands, long irregular mounds, where the great plough, with its team of eight oxen, rested and turned — the mysterious mounds, two or even three feet in height, being the accumulations formed duting successive ages by the scrapings from the coulter of the plough at the spots where the oxen were accustomed to rest and pant after having traced a furlong in the acre which constituted the day's toil, the Journey^ as in some counties it is still called in Norman-French — a phrase which corresponds to the Morgen, or morning's work, which is the name given to the acre by the German peasant. Thus we see how the features of the Domesday agriculture 64 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS have been impressed upon the soil by the Domesday plough. We can still see and count the individual acres, and can detect the boundaries of the primitive oxgangs, while the strips of glebe, one in each carucate, show the acreage, and in some cases the actual position of the carucates recorded by the Domesday Commissioners.' If we ascend a hill, the Domesday map of the country lies spread before the eye. The curved hedges show the divisions of the oxgangs tilled by the villans ; here was the Domesday pratum, there was the pastura \ this was the Infield, yonder was the Outfield ; we look down upon the village, and see the Mill, and the Hall, and the Church, and the messuages of the villans, each with a long narrow two-acre strip of croft behind it, and the cots of the bordarii with their acre or half- acre tofts, the buildings retaining the same sites, and the crofls preserving the same boundaries as they had 800 years ago —a truly marvellous illustration of the immobile conser- vatism of English village life. On my own glebe I have garths and closes representing the very oxgangs which before the Conquest must have been held by my predecessors. The rigs are about two rods broad, and a furlong in length, being thus half-acres. A neighbouring Rector retains as his glebe the half-carucate of four oxgangs with which his church was originally endowed, and he also holds the four oxgates of pasture which maintained the four oxen who tilled his four oxgangs in the common arable fields. He also possesses an acre allotted to him in lieu of the right of tethering two horses on the balks and * marstalls ' of the common field, one horse, as an Elizabethan document recites, to each two oxgangs. In the next parish the inclosure took place by mutual consent of the freeholders and copyholders * In Burton Agnes the carucates average 60 acres in each field, which con- forms to the theoretical size of the carucate, as stated by Fleta, who wrote in the reign of Edward I. DOMESDAY SURVIVALS 65 more than three hundred years ago, and the names of the com- mon fields, East Field, Middle Field, and West Field, preserved in ancient documents, are now forgotten, but a right of way called the East Balk still remains. It is the East balk of the West Field, a long ridge of turf representing the headlands dividing the West Field from the Middle Field, as is shown by the fact that the rigs on one side run north and south, and on the other side east and west In my own parish there are several field names of historic interest. A paddock called Mill Garth preserves the memory of one of the two Domesday Mills, and a garden which goes by the name of the Chapel Garth shows the site of a pre- Reformation Chapelry. A meadow which bears the name of Kirk Hill marks the position of the church mentioned in Domesday, and though this church was pulled down more than seven centuries ago, the name still holds in its tei\acious grasp the memory of the ancient sit?. The cruciform trench which marks the position of the nave and transepts shows it was only a tiny edifice, though amply sufficient for the needs of the lord, the two millers, the nine sokemen, the twelve villans, and the nine cottiers, whom it served. Another field, called Gallows Hill, formerly a part of the open wold, marks the conspicuous spot, visible to all the country round, where malefactors met their doom, and I still pay year by year the sum of 5^". 8d, to the legal represen- tatives of the Provost of St. John of Beverley for his services in correcting the villans of my parish. Close to Kirk Hill, where stood the Domesday church, is a farmhouse called Belmanoir, which marks the spot where the Norman lord had his Hall, removed, not long after the Conquest, together with the church, to a more sheltered site. In this hall the grand- sons of Thorbrand v/ere slain in 1073 as they sat feasting, by order of Earl Waltheof, in satisfaction of an ancient blood feud. Belmanoir Farm is part of a tract of several hundred VOL. I. F 66 DOMESDAY SURVIVALS acres, now divided into numerous inclosures, which goes by the name of the ' Hall Field/ It represents the demesne land of the lord, tilled by his four ploughs and the oxen of his villans. It may be noted that one mill belonged to the lord, and the other collectively to the sokemen, who were thus free from paying multure to the lord. The township consisted of two Domesday manors, Buck- ton and Settrington. The name of the first is only preserved by a meadow called Buckton Holms, near the site of the old church and hall. Before the Conquest, both manors were held by Thorbrand, a man of Scandinavian race, as his name, 'the sword of Thor,' plainly indicates. When Domesday was compiled his twelve broad manors had passed to another full-blooded Northman, Berengar de Todeni (Thosney on the Seine), a descendant of Rolf Gangr, and nephew of Ralph de Todeni, the hereditary standard-bearer of Normandy, who re- fused to bear the consecrated standard at Senlac, pleading that on that bloody day there were more doughty deeds for him to do. Berengar's lands afterwards passed away to a younger branch of the Bigods, Earls of Norfolk, whose descen- dant, five centuries later, a zealot for the faith of his forefathers, planned the Pilgrimage of Grace, and perished on the scaffold. I have tried to draw a picture of old English life, more especially with reference to the Domesday Survivals, in a single Yorkshire parish and its neighbourhood. I hope I may induce others to attempt the same task for their own parishes. The work of tracing out the details of the Domesday record on the spot, and of noting the. survivals of the ancient agri- cultural communities, will be found to add a world of interest to every country walk, while independent investigations by persons possessed of local knowledge can hardly fail to throw fresh light on a book which forms one of our most precious national possessions, a unique treasure, the like of which no other land can boast By Canon ISAAC TAYLOR, M.A., LL.a, Litt. D. It is frequently asserted or assumed that the Wapentake was merely the Hundred under a Danish name. Thus Sir Henry Ellis ^ asserts that ' the Wapentake is synonymous with the Hundred ' ; Professor Skeat' says it was 'a subdivision of a shire in the Danish parts of England, answering to the Hun- dred in other parts/ and even so cautious a writer as Bishop Stubbs * states that * the Wapentake in all respects of adminis- tration answers directly to the Hundred.' These assertions are supported by a statement in the Laws of Edward the Confessor, ' quod Angli vocant Hundredum supradicti comi- tatus [i.e. York, Lincoln, Notts, Leicester, and part of North- ants] vocant Wapentachium.' It is true that some of the Danish shires are now divided into Wapentakes and not into Hundreds, and it is also true that in some counties the divisions which are called Wapen- takes in Domesday now bear the name of Hundreds, but the equivalence of the Hundred and the Wapentake has, I think, been taken for granted without due examination of the evidence which Domesday supplies. It seems to be assumed that the difference is mainly a ' Ellis, Introduction to Domesday ^ p. Ivii. ' Skeat, EtymoL Diet, s. ▼. Wapentake. ' Stubbs, Constitutional History^ vol. i. p. 99. F2 68 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS difTerence of name, and that after the Danish Conquest the Danish appellation was simply substituted for the other in the Danish shires. I believe, however, that I shall be able to prove that there was a fundamental difference between the Hundred and the Wapentake, that they co-existed for a time, that they denoted areas of different extent, and probably served distinct constitutional purposes. When the Domesday Survey was taken the change from Hundreds to Wapentakes had been already effected over a great part of the Danish area. In the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire the Domesday Wapentakes and the modem Wapentakes practically coincide, and there is no mention of Hundreds. The East Riding is now divided into Wapen- takes, whereas in Domesday the earlier division into Hun- dreds, which has now wholly faded out of memory, is retained, and there is no hint of the present division into Wapentakes. At the time of the next record, which is Kirby's Inquest, taken two hundred years later, in the 13th Edward I. (1284- 1285), the Domesday Hundreds of the East Riding have disappeared, and we find the modem division into Wapentakes has been effected. Thus in two of the Yorkshire Ridings we find only Wapentakes in Domesday ; the transformation is already complete. In the third Riding we find only Hundreds ; the transformation has not yet commenced. In the other Danish shires, Nottingham, Derby, Rutland, and Lincoln, Domesday records the existence both of Hundreds and of Wapentakes, and we are able to detect the transformation in various stages of progress, more or less advanced. In Nottinghamshire, Domesday Book mentions three H undreds and eight Wapentakes. Though these Wapentakes are now usually called Hundreds they are really Wapentakes : there has only been a change of name. In Derbyshire, the divisions called Wapentakes in Domes- WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS 69 day are now, as m Notts, called Hundreds, but in one case the old name of Wapentake is still retained. It may also be noted that the Hundred of Salle is mentioned in Domesday as a subdivision of the Wapentake (now called the Hundred) of Morlestone. In Rutland, in like manner, Domesday mentions Hundreds as subdivisions of Wapentakes, and in Lincoln we find men- tion not only of Wapentakes, which seem to agree with the modem Wapentakes of that county, but also of numerous Hundreds which appear to be divisions smaller than, and subordinate to, the Wapentakes. In the other counties, such as Bucks, the name Wapentake is not found, but the modern Hundreds differ in number and extent from the Domesday Hundreds, and seem to agree in everything but in name with the Wapentakes of the purely Danish counties. Thus there was a reorganisation of many of the counties, the new administrative units receiving a Danish name in the Danish districts and retaining the old name elsewhere. It may be admitted that in modem times Hundreds and Wapentakes have been confused, and that the name Hundred has been applied to Wapentakes ; but I do not find any evi- dence that a Hundred was ever called a Wapentake, still less that the words were synonyms as Sir H. Ellis asserts, or that they were names given by different races to identical terri- torial divisions. On the other hand, I believe it can be shown that they differed in extent, and probably also in their origin and their use. The historical significance of the Hundred has been much disputed. It has been held to denote the district originally settled by a hundred warriors, or the district which afterwards fumished a hundred warriors to the fyrth, or that it contained a hundred hides, or that it was occupied by a hundred free families. But we must not assume that the Hundred in 70 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS Kent was the same thing as the Hundred in Cornwall, or that the earlier and later Hundreds were identical divisions. There is reason to believe that the invading host was organised in companies of a hundred warriors, and that the chief divided the conquered lands according to the organisa- tion of the host, each division receiving a definite share of the conquered territory. The size of the Hundred would thus depend on the numbers of the host, and the extent of land available for division. We may thus account for the minuteness of the Hundreds in those districts where the English first established a footing on our shores, and their vast size in the regions which were overrun at a later stage of the Conquest. The primitive Hundred would thus be the territory shared among the survivors of the company of a hundred invaders, and this division would be normally occu- pied by a hundred free families, each holding a hide, and collectively furnishing a hundred warriors for defence, and a hundred judges for the p^us. But the division would be rough rather than exact, even at first, and with the growth of population would soon become merely an historical sur- vival, as was plainly the case in Thanet. The origin of the Wapentake is manifestly much later, and not lost, like that of the Hundred, in the dim mists of history. It is known only in the Danish shires of England, and the name comes undoubtedly from a Scandinavian source. The old Norse vdpna is the genitive plural of vdpn^ a ' weapon,' and taka means to ' grasp,' and also to ' touch.' Hence the Norse vdpnatak means probably the * touching of weapons.' We may compare it with the 'clash of arms ' to which Tacitus refers in the 'Germania' when he tells us that in the assemblies of the Teutonic warriors, in order to signify assent to any proposal, the armed warriors struck their spears together — frameas concutiunt The practice is more fully explained in the Laws of Edward the Confessor, whence we learn that WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS 71 when a new chief of the Wapentake was appointed, the other chiefs met him at the usual place of assembly — doubtless at the Thing — ^when he dismounted from his horse and held his spear erect, while the other chiefs touched his spear with theirs, in token of fealty. It would thus appear that the Hundred was the old mili- tary and judicial organisation of the Saxon and Anglian settlers, while the Wapentake was a new, and, at first, con- current federation introduced by the Scandinavian conquerors. It seems probable that in the Danish shires the Hundred- men, who had the right to attend the Hundred Moot, had sunk into the position of villans, while their lords assembled at the Thing held in every Wapentake. The Hundred Moots may have continued to meet for civil purposes, though they were superseded for purposes of military defence by the Wapentakes. Thus the Hundreds became subordinate to the Wapentakes, which gradually replaced them for all purposes. We have seen that in Derbyshire, Rutland, and Lincoln, Hundreds are mentioned in Domesday as subordinate divi- sions of Wapentakes. The Domesday returns for these counties do not, however, enable us to ascertain with any precision the relation of the Hundreds to the Wapentakes. But the way in which the Domesday of the East Riding of Yorkshire is indexed affords a means of determining the precise nature of this relation. In the Yorkshire Domesday, as in other counties, the returns are given under the several tenants in capitiy but at the end of the return the results are recapitulated under the Wapentakes in the North and West Ridings, and in the East Riding under the Hundreds. This index enables us to ascertain the precise extent of each of these Hundreds, so as to make it possible to construct an exact map of the East Riding as it was at the time of the Survey. By inserting on such a map of the Domesday Hundreds the boundaries of the Wapentakes, given in Kirby's Inquest, as 72 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS they existed in the reign of Edward I., we arrive at a very curious result The rule seems to have been that three of the old Hundreds were combined to constitute a Wapentake. The North-Eastem half of the Riding contained nine Hundreds, which were re-arranged into three Wapentakes. The three Domesday Hundreds of Turbar, Huntou, and Burton, are practically identical with the later Wapentake of Dickering. The three Domesday Hundreds of Toreshou, Scard, and Hacle, form the Wapentake of Buckrose, while the Wapentake of Holderness is made up of the three Hundreds of North, South, and Middle Holderness. The South- Western half of the Riding also comprised nine Domesday Hundreds, but the symmetry of the new division into Wapentakes is complicated by the fact that about a third of the townships were comprised in the great ecclesias- tical Liberties of St. Peter of York, St John of Beverley, and Howdenshire, the fee of St Cuthbert of Durham. The Wapentake of Ouse and Derwent was constituted out of those townships of four of the old Hundreds which were cut off from the rest by the Lower Derwent, and the Wapentake of Harthill included the remaining townships which were not in the great ecclesiastical Liberties. There was a good deal of cross-division, but, roughly speaking, we may say that the nine Southern Hundreds were re-organised, like the nine Northern Hundreds, into three divisions : the Wapentake of Ouse and Derwent, the Wapentake of Harthill, and the Liberties. The re-arrangement of the eighteen Domesday Hundreds into the six Edwardian Wapentakes and Liberties, may be tabulated as follows : New Wa^penukes Hundreds I. Turbar I. Dickering . , , 2. Huntou 3. Burton WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS 73 New Wapentakes riuncureds I. Toreshou II. Buckrose . 3. Scard 3- Hacle I. North Hundred III. Holderness . 2. Middle Hundred 3- South Hundred /I. Hessle IV. HarthiU . 3. Welton 3- DriiSeld 4. Howden V. The Liberties , ,i 5. Weighton 6. Warter 7. Cave VI. Ouse and Derwent 8. Sneculfcros ^9- Pocklington The important point is that the re-arrangement was by threes. Three Hundreds were combined to constitute a Wapentake. So far as the Domesday Record makes it possible to form an opinion, the division into Wapentakes was effected, in other counties, by the same rule of three, three Hundreds being combined to form a Wapentake, as in the East Riding of York. Other counties are not indexed in the same way as York, and hence it is difficult to ascertain so precisely the corre- spondence of the areds, and the results are therefore less definite. In the Lincoln Domesday, Hundreds and Wapentakes are only mentioned incidentally, and not systematically. In the whole county twenty-eight Wapentakes are named, and there- fore, if the East Riding rule held good, we should expect to find eighty-four Hundreds, which is precisely the number of those that are named. In the case of four of the Lincoln Wapentakes, moreover, it is possible to discover from Domes- 74 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS day the names of the three Hundreds of which they were severally composed. Leicester was one of the Danish shires, and in Domesday it is divided into Wapentakes, no mention being made of Hundreds. These Domesday Wapentakes are now called Hundreds, but the six modem Hundreds are practically identical with the six Domesday Wapentakes. There is no trace of any older Hundreds by the union of which the Domesday Wapentakes were constituted, but the extent of the modern Hundreds plainly indicates that each of them consisted of three primitive Hundreds. The average number of square miles in each of the six modem Hundreds is 136, whereas in other counties the average number of square miles in each Hundred is as follows. Square miles Sussex 23 Kent 24 Dorset 26 Lincoln 31 Northampton -34 But if each of the six Domesday Wapentakes or of the six modem Hundreds in Leicestershire was made up of three older Hundreds, the area of each would be only forty-five square miles instead of 136. Manifestly, though no Leicester Hundreds are named in Domesday, they must at one time have existed, and must have been at least three times as numerous as the Wapentakes. The same reasoning applies to Nottingham, also a Danish shire. In Domesday the Hundreds had not disappeared so completely as in Leicester- shire, since eight Wapentakes and three Hundreds are men- tioned. The average area of each Wapentake would be ninety- three square miles ; but on the supposition that each Wapen- take represented three older Hundreds the average area of these Hundreds would be thirty-one square miles, precisely the WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS 75 same as the average area of the Hundreds in the adjoining county of Lincoln. Both in Notts and Leicester the Domesday Wapentakes now bear the name of Hundreds, probably from assimilation to the names of the subdivisions of neighbouring shires. The same seems to have taken place in Bucks, in which county there has been a combination by threes, three of the old Hundreds constituting one modem Hundred. The eighteen Domesday Hundreds are now combined into six modern divisions, four of which, each containing three old Hundreds, are now simply called Hundreds, while in the other two there is a survival of the original arrangement — ^three of the old Hundreds being called collectively the Chiltem Hundreds, and three others are called collectively the Aylesbury Hundreds. The way in which the eighteen Domesday Hundreds were combined in threes is shown in the following table. Domesday Hundreds Rouelai Stodfald . Lamua Bonestou . Sigelai Moleslou . Elesberie . Stanes Riseberge . Coteslau . Mureslai . Erlai. Essedene . Votesdone Tichessele . Dustenburgh Stoches Bumham . Modern Hundreds Buckingham Hundred Newport Hundred The three Hundreds of Ayles- bury ICottesloe Hundred Ashendon Hundred The Chiltem Hundreds i8 76 WAPENTAKES AND HUNDREDS It is perhaps not altogether impossible to suggest an explanation of this combination of three of the primitive Hundreds into the new divisions which in all the Danish shires were originally called Wapentakes, and which in York and Lincoln still retain that appellation, though elsewhere the name of Hundreds has been resumed. The Wapentake seems to have been the unit on which the navipUHo or shipmoney was levied. We learn from the Saxon Chronicle that in 1008 Ethelred ordered that a ship should be furnished by every three hundred hides, and Edgar's charter to the Bishop of Worcester directed that every three Hundreds should furnish one scypfylled or navipletio, from which Bishop Stubbs infers * that every three Hundreds were liable to be called on to furnish one ship/' Hence the Wapentake, containing three old Hundreds, each of a hundred hideSy was the unit of assessment for the naval defence, just as the old Hundreds had been the units for the military defence of the kingdom. Thus, instead of the Wapentakes of the Danish shires * answering,' as has been affirmed, to the Hundreds of the Saxon counties, it would appear that they were districts of three times the extent, probably constituted for a different constitutional purpose, and for a time co-existent with the associated Hundreds of which they were composed. Bishop Stubbs ' also affirms of the Wapentake that * no attempt can be made to account for its origin on the principle of sym- metrical division.' If, however, the foregoing argument is correct, we may conclude that it was a thoroughly symmetrical division, consisting of three older Hundreds, and in all pro- bability containing three hundred primitive hides. > Stubbs, Const, Hist. vol. i. p. 105. « Ibid, p. 99. ©amjeC^ anb (^ Jtnance of ®ome0ba^« By J. HORACE ROUND, M.A, ' The inseparable connection there is between the Domesday Survey and Danegeld will induce your lordship and this learned body to excuse the trouble I give you of this second paper.' With these words Mr. Carteret Webb, a hundred and thirty years ago, prefaced the paper he read before the Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, entitled ' A short Ac- count of Danegeld, with some further Particulars relating to William the Conqueror's Survey.' It is difficult to speak too highly of this production, considering the date at which it was composed. Many years were yet to elapse before the print- ing of Domesday was even begun. Chronicles were mostly in MS., and historical evidences largely inaccessible as com- pared with the condition of things to-day. Yet, allowing for the fact that the criticism of authorities was a study as yet in its infancy, Mr. Webb's essay is a marvellous piece of careful and conscientious work. For my part, I gladly acknow- ledge how useful I have found it for my purpose. As an instance of Mr. Webb's ability and acumen, you will allow me, I hope, to call attention to the case of the now famous transcript of the Cambridgeshire Inquisitions. Our learned coadjutor, Mr. de Gray Birch, who has done so much to 78 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY encourage the study of MS. authorities, has informed us that the credit of discovering the transcript {tentp. Henry II.) of the origfinal Domesday returns for Cambridgeshire • is due to Mr. Hamilton of the British Museum, by whom they were given to the world in 1876. Now on turning to Mr. Webb's Danegeld essay, we learn that they were duly discovered by him a hundred and twenty ^ears before the above date. By him the discovery was thus announced : In searching for the Liber Eiiensis I have had the good fortune to discover jn the Cotton library a MS. copy of the inquisition of the jury, containing their survey for most of the hundreds in Cambridge- shire. This MS. is written on vellum in double columns and on both sides of the page. It is bound up with the Liber Eiiensis^ and begins at p. 76 a and ends at p. 113. It is written in a very fair but ancient character, not coeval with the Survey, but of about the time of Henry II. It was given by Mr. Arthur Agard to Sir Robert Cotton, and is marked Tiberius A. VI. 4. Your lordship and the Society will be of opinion that this is a discovery of importance, and what had escaped the observation of Sir H. Spelman, Mr. Selden, and our other antiquarians. A part of this valuable morsel of antiquity is already transcribed, and in a few weeks I hope to be able to com- municate the whole of it to the Society (p. 26). All honour, then, to Mr Webb for his discovery. Palmam qui meruit ferat ! You will agree with me that it is much to be regretted that Mr. Freeman, in his remarks on Danegeld, should have in- accurately assigned this essay to Pegge, and so have deprived Mr. Webb of the credit due to him for his labours, besides making it difficult, of course, for his readers to identify the essay he is referring to. Here I may note that Mr. Freeman bears witness no less emphatically than Mr. Webb to ' the in- separable connection ' between the Danegeld and the Survey. • The payment and non-payment of the geld,' he writes, ' is a matter which appears on every page of the Survey ; and it is perhaps not too much to say that the formal immediate DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 79 cause of making the Survey was to secure its full and fair as- sessment' * And here I may perhaps be allowed to express a feeling which I think will be shared by all present — namely, that of unfeigned regret that one who has done so much to call attention to the importance of the Domesday Survey, who has described it as ' one of the main sources ' of his work on the Norman Conquest, and who declares that for him ' the Survey has a fascination which cannot be put into words,' should not have honoured us with his presence on this historic occasion, when we are striving to gratify his ardent wish for more light on the Great Record, and so enable him to improve and perfect the monumental work of his life. Mr. Webb commences his valuable essay by drawing a distinction between what he terms tributary and stipendiary Danegeld. The distinction is, I think, a useful one. By tributary Danegeld he means that tribute by which the Danes were bought off, the payment of which was a practice that had begun on a more or less local scale long before the year 991, to which is assigned its first adoption by the king and the nation as a whole. It should be carefully noticed that no allusion is made to these tributary pa3nnents in the references to Dan^eld in the Leges Edwardi^ the Leges Henrici^ and the Dialogus. The ' stipendiary ' Danegeld, as Mr. Webb terms it, had its origin in 1012, when the Danes having for the last time been bought off by a sum of money, Thurkill, with five- and-forty ships, entered the English service, and was taken into English pay. That pay, the * stipendiary ' Danegeld, is the first payment recognised as Danegeld by the Leges Edwardi, the Leges Henrici^ and the Dialogus, I need not trouble you with the passages, as they are all quoted by Mr. Freeman.* The successive references to this 'geld ' in the. Chronicles are carefully worked out by Mr. Webb, and also given by • Norm, Conq, v. 4. • Ibid. vol. ii. (Appendix). 8o DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY Mr. Freeman. I need not therefore repeat them. But I would call your attention to the remarkable documents bear- ing upon this subject which are contained in Heming's Cartulary. In another paper ' I have called attention to Mr. Freeman's treatment of these invaluable records. Mr. Webb, who not in this alone appears to distinct advantage, was fully alive to their value. Take for instance the reign of Cnut and the allusion to his geld ('vectigal importabile ') in 1018, or to the earlier exactions of Sw^en (1013) 'cum maximum et fere importabile tributum tota Anglia reddere cogeretur. Ob hujus itaque tam gravis tributi exactionem, omnia fere or- namenta hujus ecclesie distracta sunt, tabule altaris, argento et auro parate, spoliate sunt, textus exomati, calices con- fracti, cruces conflate, ad ultimum etiam terre et villule pecu- niis ' distracte sunt * (1. 268). Compare this pass^e with the admission in Domesday that Norwich ' partim [vastata erat] propter geltum regis,' and see how strangely the earlier com- plaint is echoed in this grim entry. But we must now hurry on towards the Survey. It is the general belief that Edward the Confessor abolished the im- position of Danegeld in 1052, and that it was reimposed by William the Conqueror in 1083-4. On this point our supreme authority, Dr. Stubbs, tells us that Danegeld — ^'originally levied as tribute to the Danes, though it had been continued long after the occasion for it had ceased — had been abolished by Edward the Confessor. The Conqueror . . . imposed the Danegeld anew. In A.D. 1084 he demanded a sum of six shil- lings from every hide of land, three times the old rate.' As against this view we have the statement of the Dialogus^ here clearly of an ex parte character, that the Danegeld, down to the Conquest, remained an annual tax, but that the admirable go- vernment of the Conqueror after a time enabled him to make it * * An early Reference to Domesday,' which will appear in Vol. II.— Ed. ^ /./. their live stock. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 8i an occasional one. The subject is at first sight an obscure one, and Dr. Gneist, holding that Mn Freeman and Dr. Stubbs, while admitting the difficulty, have failed to solve it,> propounds a view which, so far as I can see, makes the question more obscure than ever. Keeping, however, to contemporary au- thorities, and to the plain facts of the case, I think we may be able to see our way without any great effort It is admitted on all hands that Edward the Confessor, about the year 105 1 (it is as well, where possible, before the Conquest, not to in- sist too closely on exact dates) abolished a tax which we are fortunately informed was the tax which his father had first imposed some eight-and-thirty years before. The tax abo- lished was clearly therefore what Mr. Webb, as I have said, de- scribed as the stipendiary Danegeld, and that which was alone referred to as Danegeld by the writers of the next century. Moreover, the cause of the abolition is not far to seek. The government had paid off, shortly before, the last of the Danish ships retained in English pay. And the Danegeld being ' ex- traordinary revenue ' (to quote the expression of Dr. Stubbs), originally raised to meet an emergency and subsequently continued to provide for a special military expedient, had no longer a raison diire. The government would of course be loth to part with it, but the feelings of the taxpayer are well ex- pressed later on by Henry of Huntingdon, whose attitude is curiously suggestive of that of payers of income-tax in our own day when they complain that what was meant for an emeigency-tax has become a normal source of revenue. Hoc autem malum usque in hodiemum diem duravit, et diu, nisi Dei pietas subvenit, durabit. Regibus namque nostris modo per- solvitur ex consuetudine^ quod Danis persolvebatur ex inefifabili terrore. I think that insufficient attention has been paid to the con- » Const Hist, i. 213. * This expression < ex consuetudine * should be noted. VOL. I. G 82 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY temporary statements of Henry of Huntingdon with reference to payment of Danegeld, and I propose therefore to notice them again. The cause then, I say, is not far to seek, which led to the abolition of the impost, and the curious legend that the pious king abolished it in consequence of seeing the devil leaping for joy on the gathered treasure, does but witness to the pecu- liar horror with which the Danegeld was regarded. Dr. Stubbs suggests that the unpopularity of the tax was due to its being that ' on which the sheriffs made their greatest profit' * I cannot here agree with him. I attribute it on the one hand to the odious and humiliating associations of the impost and of its origin, and, on the other, to that sturdy instinctive aversion to direct taxation which seems to have been a feature in the national character, which is by no means yet extinct among us, and which led under the later Plantagenets to the great constitutional cry, that the king should live * de suo * — of his own. Now there are three questions which arise as to the Dane- geld, all of them connected with the Domesday Survey. First, at what rate was it levied? Second, how often was it exacted ? Third, by what machinery was it raised ? As to the first of these we have, happily, evidence which, although limited in scope, is thoroughly direct and clear. Mr. Eyton writes: — 'The only instance we have met with of any gheld-rate of King Edward was at jd, a hide.* * When he thus wrote, he was, obviously, alluding to the passage in Domesday on the customs of Berkshire, of which more anon. I doubt if it is wise to draw conclusions, as both here and else- where Mr. Eyton has done, from a single and most probably an exceptional case. It will be safer to say that our direct evidence as to the rate of levy is as follows. In the winter of 1083-4 a Danegeld was levied at the ' Cmst, Hist. i. 381. * Key to Domesday ^ p. 70. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 83 rate of six shillings on the hide. From this date till the end of Henry the First's reign we have no direct record evidence ; but we have a statement in the so-called * Laws of Edward the Confessor' (section * De Danegeldo * ) that the Church enjoyed a special exemption. Usque ad tempora Willielmi regis junioris qui de baronibus totius Anglie auxilium petiit ad Normanniam retinendam de fratre suo, Roberto Normannorum comite, Jerusalem proficiscente. Concessum est ei, non lege statutum neque firmatum, sed habuit necessitatis causa ex unaquague hida quatuor solidos^ ecclesia non excepta, quorum dum fieret coUectio proclamabat sancta ecclesia libertatem suam reposcens, sed nihil profecit. If this statement stood by itself, its ex parte character, its description of this Danegeld as an ' auxilium,' and its occur- rence in a document of uncertain authority, needing external confirmation, would render it of small value, but I have found another and independent allusion to this same Danegeld, the more important because incidental. In the Cartulary of Abingdon (ii. 38), at the foot of a complaint ' de Raimbaldo milite,' we read : Praeterea et sequente anno vecHgcU quatuor soiidorum de hida^ patriotis cunctis nimium ferre ponderosum, in augmentum mali per Angliam illatum, quod de primo restabat forte consumendum miserianim incendio, id in subsequente penitus exhausit. Quare infra monasterii limina vasorum altaris diversorum argenteorum pro his plurima elata atque confracta ; forinsecus vero pecora abducta prae oculis abbatis et monachorum ministrorum vi regalium, et ab eis ad libitum cuncta distracta sunt. This description should be compared with that of Swegen's Danegeld (1013) by the monks of Worcester,' for the resem- blance is so curiously close that the later is almost a repetition of the very words of the earlier complaint. The point, how- ever, to observe is this. Here we have a levy of four shillings on * Supra^ p. 8a G a 84 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY the hide, spoken of in both the * Laws ' and the Cartulary as an exceptional and grievous exaction, and attributed in the former to the exceptional necessity of providing the 10,000 marks required for the loan to Robert (1096).* We cannot doubt that we have here to do with one and the same levy, and a comparison with the passage in Florence of Worcester describing how that sum was raised absolutely confirms this view: Indixit [rex] majoribus Angliae ut quisque illorum pro posse sibi pecuniam festinanter accommodaret Idcirco episcopi, abbates, abba- tissae, aurea et argentea ecclesiae ornamenta fregerunt, comites, barones, vicecomites, suos milites et villanos spoliavenint, et regi non modicam summam auri et argenti detulerunt (ii. 40). Lastly we have the witness of William of Malmesbury, who thus alludes to the raising of the tax, which necessitated the same sacrifices at Malmesbury as at Abingdon : ' Cum Willielraus Rex junior importabile tributum indixisset Angliae quo Normanniama fratre Roberto intendebat emere, Godefri- dus [Abbas], ut suam partem ex facili componeret, thesauros Ecclesias quos antiquonim cura coacervarat, foede distraxit, pessimorum usus consilio, quos nominare possem, si peccantium societas crimen alleviare posset magistri etc etc Thus, on the one hand, we may safely believe that a levy of four shillings on the hide actually took place in 1096 (that is, some twelve or thirteen years after the great levy of six shillings on the hide), and on the other, we obtain incidental confirmation of the authority, here at least, of the ' Laws of Edward the Confessor/ • ■ Compare the exceptional measures lesorted to for raising the sum required for the ransom of Richard I. (ii93)* * D$ PotUificibus^ lib. v. * This levy of four shillings on the hide would appear to have remained un- noticed. It was clearly unknown to Mr. Freeman, who dwells fully on the episode ( William Rufus, i. 556-7), but does not quote among the authorities the three passages I have here given from the Cartulary of Abingdon, the Gesta Pontificum and the * Laws of Edward the Confessor.* DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 85 The Danegeld next meets us in the Pipe Roll of 11 30, as levied at two shillings on the hide, and moreover as levied regu- larly as an annual tax. This is of special importance as confirm- ing the precise description of Henry of Huntingdon (relative to Stephen's accession) : ' Danegeldum, id est duos solidos ad hidam, quos antecessores sui accipere solebant singulis annis.' Thence we pass to the earliest Pipe Rolls of Henry H., in which it again figures as an annual levy of two shillings on the hide. Lastly we have the Dialogus de Scaccario (c. 1 177) in which it is described to have been originally levied at two shillings on the hide, to have been paid annually at the same rate down to the Norman Conquest, to have been at first paid similarly under the Conqueror, but, owing to the peace he secured for the land, to have been eventually changed by him into an occasional tax, and to have so continued since. All these statements in the Dialogus on the early history of the impost must, definite though they are, be looked upon with the gravest suspicion. In the first place, the writer, as Mr. Freeman observes, * forgot the remission of the Danegeld or Heregeld by Edward in 1040 \sic\ ' ^ — as a matter of fact Edward did not remit it till ten years later. Then he also forgot the great levy of six shillings on the hide, and he, further, asserted that the levy was but occasional under the Conqueror's successors, whereas, as soon as it meets us, it is, beyond dispute, as an established annual tax. I do not say that the mis-statements are wilful, but they are not contemporary evidence, and are demonstrably unworthy of credit. Glancing at the Leges Edwardi and the Leges Hettrici Primiy we find the Dan^eld described as a levy of a shilling on each hide. Dr. Gneist evidently, but somewhat strangely I think, relies upon this authority when he tells us that under the Anglo-Saxons ' the tax became finally fixed as Danegeld at twelve-pence for each hide.' ^ * Norm. Conq, vol. v. 883. « ConU, Hist, i. 35. 86 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY I hope to show you later on how it may be possible to account for the origin of this statement in an error.* As to the rate at which Danegeld was levied, and indeed as to the subject in general, Mr. Freeman's statements are so wildly contradictory ' that I shall here refrain from discussing them, and shall turn to my second point — namely, how often was this tax exacted f On this point I find I have the misfortune to differ, not only from Mr. Freeman, which may not be surprising, but also from a far more eminent authority : I mean Dr. Stubbs himself. That great historian adopts, as we have seen, the generally received view that Danegeld was never once levied between the remission of the tax by Edward, about the year 105 1, and its reimposition by the Conqueror in the winter of 1083-4. To Mr. Freeman this view presents difficulties, for it would be strange, he urges, ' if no taxes at all for the support of war- like forces . . . were levied between 1051 and 1083. . . . Are we,* he proceeds, * to infer that the Housecarls were henceforth maintained out of the ordinary royal revenues, or, what seems more likely, that the tax now remitted related wholly to the fleet ? * These words occur in an Appendix on the subject of Here- geld and Danegeld, which I have read through honestly many times in the hope of discovering its drift, Mr. Freeman's hypothesis appears to be that the earlier or tributary Danegeld was alone entitled to that name, and that the stipendiary Dane- geld ought properly to be described as Her^eld. As a matter of fact, the accepted term for this impost was * geld ' (or, in Latin geldum regis — ^answering to our expression king's taxes), and it is an admitted fact that in the whole of Domesday the form Danegeld only once occurs. But, as Mr. Freeman observes, * Namely the payment of the two shilling tax in two half yearly instalments of one shilling each. * See my paper in the Antiquary for December 1886. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 87 probably with justice, * there can be little doubt that the words which occur so often, geldum, geldare and the like, refer to it' To this I may add that the form * Danegeld ' comes strangely into use in the next century under Henry I. I do not know whether it has ever been suggested that this may have been due to the imposition, under him, of other gelds. But what I want to point out is that I do not think there is anything at all in this distinction between Heregeld and Danegeld. Here- geld occurs, I believe, only twice in the English Chronicle, once when the tax was remitted, and once under Harthacnut, on which occasion it figures in two of the four chronicles, not as Heregeld but merely as geld. Besides, the Danish Here, as as it is regularly termed in the chronicles, was essentially an amphibious force, so that there is nothing in the term Heregeld specially denotative of ships. My main contention, however, is this. While rejecting Mr. Freeman's eventual conviction that the *scot' which was levied subsequently to Domesday was in any sense a Danegeld at all, I hold, in opposition both to himself and to Dr. Stubbs, that true Danegelds were levied by the Conqueror more than once previous to the great levy of the winter of 1083-4. I base this conclusion both on the evidence of the chroniclers, and on that of Domesday itself and its fellows. Let us take the chroniclers first Turning to the winter of 1066-7, we learn from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that the Conqueror, immediately after his coronation, ' laid on men a geld exceeding stiff.' Again, turning to the next winter, the close of 1067, we read that William ' sette micel gyld * on the poor people. Mr. Freeman has quoted both these passages without perceiving what they meant. Yet compare them with the 'mycel gyld' of 1083-4 (similarly, I want you to note, raised at midwinter), or again, with the * full geld ' of Cnut, or the 'strong gyld' of Harthacnut, and no doubt will, I think, be left on your minds, when you carefully collate 88 DAMEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY the passages, that both the gelds here mentioned were Dane- gelds beyond a question. But happily Domesday itself bears witness that the geld of 1083-4 was by no means the first of the reign. Take for instance the Herefordshire entry of the manors which Earl William (i.e. Fitz Osbem) had granted to ' King Mariadoc/ and which had passed to his son ' Grifin.' Here we read : ' Rex W. condonavit geldum r^ Mariadoc et postea filio ejus.' (King William remitted the geld to Mariadoc, and after him to his son Grifin.) How could he have remitted the geld, if no geld was levied (for, observe, this expression is quite different to the grant of perpetual exemp- tion — ' dedit quietas a geldo * &c.) ? Mr. Freeman, I may add, has quoted this passage, but without perceiving its bearing on the geld, nor do I agree with him in his identification of Grifin.' But now turn to the Inquisitio Geldi of 1083-4, and what are we to say of sudi entries as these } * Hie est inventa I faida que non reddidit geldum postquam W. rex habuit regnum' (this is at Warminster in Wilts); or again, *De dimidia hida non habuit rex gildum hoc anno* (this is in Dorset) ; or again, ' Pro dimidia hida . . . non habuit Rex hoc anno gildum suum ; ' or again, ' De his [viii] hidis non habet rex gildum suum de hoc anno! How can we reconcile such passages as these with the theory that this was the first year in which geld had been levied since the Conquest or, * Mr. Freeman's comment on the passage is thb : — ' I conceive that this is Meredydd the son of Bleddyn, who is mentioned in the Brut y Tyvrysogino, iioo, and his son Gruffyd in 1 1 13, p. 140. But if so, Meredydd was not dead at the time of the Survey. He must therefore have given some offence and lost his lands, though they were kept by his son * (iv. 679). That is to say, this identification presents chronological difficulties. But further, there is nothing to connect Earl William ( 1067- 107 1) with Meredydd ap Bleddyn. And thirdly,the form * Maria- doc * for Meredydd would seem to throw some suspicion on the accuracy of the Domesday text. If we could only suppose that this curious form is really a mistake for Caradoc (the son of Grufiyd), that name b that of the Welsh prince who leagued himself with Earl William in 1070 ; and that he should be granted lands by the Earl as a reward, should be favoured by the Conqueror, and should have a son named after his grandfather, would be all most natural circumstances. DANEGELD and the finance of DOMESDAY 89 indeed, since the year 1051? Here then, surely, we have an important correction of the received view upon this subject. I now come to my third point ; by what machinery was the geld raised ? I shall here introduce you to an inquiry on a subject which I believe to be virgin soil. How and when was the Danegeld actually received by the collectors ? Let us begin by glancing at the passage in Domesday relating to the customs of Berkshire. Its first entry is this : Quando geldum dabatur tempore regis Edwardi communiter per totam Bercheschiram dabat hida in denarios et obolum ante NataU Domini et tantundem ad Pentecosten, Observe here (i) that the geld was paid in two instalments, (2) that these instalments were equal, (3) that they were paid at Christmas and^ Whitsuntide. Now let us turn to another record, the Leges Henrid Primi, There we read, in the section on Danegeld, <si ad terminos non reddatur, wita cmendatur.' Observe the term 'wita.' This 'wita,' or fine for non- payment of geld when it was due, had a special name. It was known as 'gyldwite' and so figures in the famous Oswaldslawe charter of Edgar, in connection with ' Oferhymes * as one of the pleas of the crown there made over to the Bishopric. Of course, I introduce this as an illustration only, irrespective of the genuineness of the charter. It will be found that this 'gyldwite' as a plea of the crown will throw light on an obscure passage in the Survey (i. 30) relat- ing to some houses in Guildford, with which the Leges Henrici ought to be compared, and that it also explains the great, and otherwise inexplicable, care with which every case of remissness in the payment of geld is entered. in the Inquisitio Geldi. There is a curious statement in Heming's Cartulary (i. 278) that, under Cnut, an order was made that anyone 90 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY four days in arrear with his payment of taxes forfeited ipso facto his land, which then passed to the first person who came forward and paid the tax. It is possible that the later fine or ' wita ' may represent a commutation for the forfeiture, in the same way that; as I have pointed out, the fine still inflicted for refusal of municipal of&ce was originally a com- mutation for that forfeiture of the freedom which was in early times the penalty for the offence. But I would call your attention to the word 'terminos/ employed in the Leges Henrici, specially to its plural form. What were these 'termini*? To answer this we must have recourse to the Inquisitio Geldi. We there find such passages as these : — * De prescripto hundreto habuit rex LXIIII solidos intra II termi" nos* (p. 20); 'nil denarios retinuerunt illi qui coUegerunt geldum in constitutis terminis' (p. 5). Thus, as in the original Berkshire instance, there were, we learn, two 'termini' at which the geld was due, and those ' termini ' were fixed ('con- stituti'). But we further learn, as in the Berkshire entiy, that a fixed proportion of the sum was due at each * terminus.' This we prove by such passages as that on the first page (repeated in duplicate on pp. 6, 13), that los. of the amount due * in primo termino * had been kept back ' usque ad extremum terminum ; ' or this : — * Sed de his denariis retinue- runt illi qui collegerunt geldum XV solidos et duo denarios usque ad is turn terminum ' (p. 5) ; or this : — ' XXXVI solidos et I denarium quos Rex debuisset habere in primo termino non habuit usque ad extremum terminum' (p. 11). You will find two similar complaints on p. 18, and another on p. 19. Now the point to observe here is the bearing of this arrangement on the system of the later Exchequer. The Danegeld, you see, like a modem farm rent, was paid in two fixed, and, we may say with virtual certainty, in two equal instalments. In the Exchequer system the Sheriff's ^rwa was similarly paid in two instalments, each of which was expected to represent a DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 91 half of the total* In one matter there is essential harmony. One of the passages I have quoted above proves that the collectors of the geld were bound to pay over the first instal- ment to the Treasury on receiving it, but the geld account was not made out till the time of the second termimis. So with the Exchequer, the money was received partly at Easter, partly at Michaelmas, but there was only one annual account, that of Michaelmas.' But, whereas the • termini ' under the Confessor were, as we saw in Berkshire, Christmas and Whitsuntide, the Ex- chequer sessions were Easter and Michaelmas.' The Inquisitio Geldi introduces us to Easter, but only as the second (' ulti- mus ') term, and of a Michaelmas ' term ' there is no trace. It may be significant that the three * termini ' thus mentioned in connection with the geld are precisely those at wjiich were held the three great annual courts, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. I am tempted to believe that these geld rolls in the form in which we now have them were compiled at Winchester after the close of Easter 1084, by the body which was the germ of the future Exchequer. I would further sug- gest that the second ' terminus ' at which the geld was due to the collectors was * ante Pascha ' (compare the ' ante Natale * of the Berkshire entry). I infer this from the fact that one holder (Robert of Oilly) promised, it would seem, in two cases, that his quota should be forthcoming after Easter. In one case (p. 20) he paid up ; but the account had meanwhile been balanced, and his payment had to be specially entered (* Exceptis v hidis de quibus habuit [Rex] xxx solidos post > ' Quilibet enim vicecomes medietatem finnse illios quae de suo comitatn per annam exsargit in termino illo [i.e. Paschae] soluturus est.' — Dialogus^ ii. 2. * ' In termino Paschae a vicecomitibus non compoti sed quidam visus compo- tonim fiunt ; unde pene nihil eorum quae illic tunc geruntur scripturae com- mendatur ; sed totum reservatur alii termino.' — Ibid, ' ' Bis in anno scaccarium convocetur, hoc est in termino Paschae et in termino Sancti Michaelis.* — Ihid, ii. I. 1 92 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY pascha.)' In another (p. 21), he failed ('rotbertus de oilleio retinuit XV solidos usque post pascha/ to which is added by- interlineation ' quos nondum habuit Rex '). It was at Easter, you will remember, that the Winchester Court was held. Lastly, I would ask whether the payment of the geld in these two half-yearly instalments of a shilling on the hide each may not have been the origin of the statement in the Leges Henrici Primi that geld was annually levied at the rate of a shilling on the hide. I now come to the question of exemption. On this Ellis writes : The demesne lands of churchmen and religious houses were uniformly excused. The demesne lands of the great lords, and barons, and others who held by military service, were likewise exempted : and partial exemptions were made in favour of the Barons of the Exchequer, the sheriffs of counties, and the assessors and collectors of the tax : a few exemptions also were claimed under especial grants from the king ; by means of all which, it will be readily believed, the produce of the tax had been much diminished.^ Mr. Pearson, who devotes much attention to Domesday, holds that : The demesne lands of the Church, and, later at least, of sheriffs, exchequer-officers, and of all military tenants, were exempt, or only taxed under very heavy pressure. Dr. Stubbs briefly observes, that ' all persons employed in the king's service were excepted from the impost.' Mr. Eyton, whose views on this subject are, of course, of the highest importance, confidently asserts that : It was a principle of the gheld-laws, if not from their earliest date, yet as they stood in the Confessor's time, that not only the ancient crown demesnes wer6 to be absolutely ingeldable, but that the bona-fide demesnes of the thanes or other tenants in capite should be exempted from any current gheld levy. Such an exemption, perpetuated by the Normans, was nothing more nor less ' Introduction^ L 351*. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 93 than a quid pro quo for the military and other services to which these tenants in capite were personally liable.' And in another place he similarly alludes to ' the statutory- exemption of all Baronial demesnes.' ^ Now it is obvious that, if this were the case, all calculations as to Dan^eld would be most seriously affected. It is a point, therefore, which it is essential to decide. Now the solitary proof advanced by Mr. Eyton, as * most relevant ' to his assertions on the question is that of the peculiar, and, as he terms it, ' colossal manor of Tewkesbury.* • But what are we told of that manor ? That it was assessed T.R.E. at 95 hides, and that, of these, 45 hides was the assessment on its dominium^hyxt that the 50 remaining hides ' faciebant quietas ' the whole 95 ' ab omni geldo et servitio regali.' * In other words, the special exemption of the dominium of this manor from paying the hidage at which it was assessed, is carefully recorded, as an exception, in the Survey, but is taken by Mr. Eyton as an example of the universal rule, whereas it is essentially, on the contrary, the exception, as is shown by the very fact of its being so recorded ; thus, so far from proving, it really disproves the rule. Mr. Eyton's authority, however, must carry such great weight, especially on so important a point as this, that further inquiry may be demanded. For my own part, I must say that I cannot understand how anyone can fail, in studying the Survey, to see that the whole scheme of the Danegeld contemplated the taxing of the hides in demesne just as much as the hides in villenage, as the normal condition * Key to Donusday^ p. 5. « Ibid, p. 62. * Ibid, p. 5. (Domesday, i. 163). « ' In Teodechesberie fuenint T.R.E. quater xx et xv hidae. Ex his sunt in do. minio XLV et erant quiete ab omni servitio regali et geldo preter servitium ipsius domini cujus erat Maneriam. . . . Quater xx et XV hidas quae pertin[uenint] ad Tedecbesberie quinquaginta hidae supra memoratse faciebant quietas et liberas ab omni geldo et regali servitio ' (fo. 163). 94 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY of things. For if, as Mr. Eyton rightly holds, the assessment of the whole manor was based on its real value, and if, as was the case, part of that assessment (and that part often the bulk) was laid on the dominium^ the exemption of the said dominium would be fatal to the whole system. But if definite evidence be asked for against the alleged exemption, I may point to the Dialogus de Scaccario^ of which the autliority must be supreme on the question, and in which we read in the chapter on Danegeld (i. 1 1 ) : Ab ipso liberi sunt qui assident ad^scaccarium, sicut dictum est Vice-comites quoque, licet inter barones scaccarii non computantur, ab hoc quieti sunt de dominiis suis, propter laboriosam ejusdem census coUectam. That is to say that, even so late as this, the only persons who could claim exemption were the Barons of the Exchequer by right, and the sheriffs by favour. You may remember that one of the chief concessions in the Coronation charter of Henry I, was the exemption from geld granted to the de- mesnes of all tenants by knight service : Militibus qui per loricas terras suas defendunt, terras domini- carum carrucarum suarum quietas ab omnibus gildis, et omni opere, proprio dono meo concedo. It would seem from the Dialogus that this important con- cession must, as in other cases, have been subsequently cancelled by the crown. The Exon Domesday well illus- trates what I have described as the bearing of the whole evidence of the Survey. I select it because of its ex- plicit phrase, ' reddidit gildum.' Thus, on p. 262, Count Eustace is entered as holding Lochestone, which in the time of Edward the Confessor paid geld (' reddidit gildum ') on five hides. ' Inde habet Comes IIII hidas ... in dominie, et villani I hidam.' That is, the demesne was responsible for four-fifths, and the villenagium for one-fifth of the geld assessed on the manor, which geld was paid in full. So too. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 95 on the next page, we read of ' Comes Hugo ' that he held a manor which ' reddidit gildum pro dimidiS. hidd/ and that a quarter of this geld was paid by the demesne and three- quarters by the villenage. Again, on p. 265, we see Baldwin the sheriff holding a manor which 'reddidit geldum pro I viigata,' of which one-third was assessed on the demesne, and two-thirds on the villenage. This may be compared with such entries in the Liier Niger of Peterborough {circ. 1125) as ' In Castre IIII hidae et dimidia in dominio sed villani [eas] adquietant,' and (in another manor) si hides of which * dominus adquietat dimidiam et villani dimidiam' (p. 161). Indeed in the special cases where the demesne was exempted, we find the fact particularly mentioned. Thus in Gloucestershire (Exchequer Domesday) : ' Ibi x hidae geldantes preter domi- nium quod non geldat* (l i6y b [2]). On the next page (168 ^j [i]), ' Ibi V hidae,' over which we have the interlineation * geldantes preter dominium ; ' and further on we similarly read : — * Ibi x hidae geldantes preter dominium ' (L 169 6 [i]). It was precisely, I take it, because their demesnes were liable to geld, that we find, as I shall show, the followers of the Conqueror greedily striving for a reduction of the assessment on the manors they held in dominio. As to the exemption of ecclesiastical demesnes, this view would seem to be based on the nth caput of the so-called Laws of Edward the Confessor.* That such demesnes were ' ' De hoc quoque Danegeldo libera et qnieta erat omnis ecclesia et etiam omnis tern quae in proprio dominio ecclesiae erat, ubicunque jacebat, nihil prorsus in tali redditione persolvens, quia magis in ecclesise confidebant orationibus quam in armorum defensionibus.* Obviously this ecclesiastical explanation throws some doubt on the entire statement, nor is that doubt lessened when we find that this law of Edward the Confessor proceeds to refer to its own abrogation in the days of William Rnfus. ' Et hanc libertatem tenuit Anglorum ecclesia usque ad tem- pora Willielmi regis junioris, qui de baronibus totius Anglie auxilium petit . . . Concessum est ei, non lege statutum neque firmatum, sed habmt necessitatis cansa ex nnaqoaque hidalin solidos, ecclesia non excepta . . . proclamabatsancta ecclesia libertatem suam reposcens, sed nihil profecit.' With this remarkable passage I have dealt above (p. 83). 96 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY distinctly geldable, and did actually pay geld, is clear from such passages as these, which are taken from the Inquest on the manors of St Paul's in 1 1 8 1 . Out of ten hides in one manor, half a hide ' est in dominio geldabilis ' (p. 141). In another of two hides and three-quarters, we read of its demesne : ' De hoc dominio una virgata et IX acre geldant cum villata ' (p. 142). Of another, that, of its seven hides and a half, four were in demesne, but that these four * quiete sunt preter quam de hydagio et denegeld' (id,) And of a fourth that, of its twenty hides, five were in dominio^ which five, though free from the atsxilium vicomitis, * cum aliis sunt geldabiles in omni hydagio ' (p. 143). ^ Compare with this the entry in the early Burton Survey relating to the abbatial manor of Winshill : De altera terra gildabili sunt etiam in dominio v bovatas. . . . Terra hominum se defendit pro 11 camicatis cum v bovatis pre- dictis dominicis} That is to say that, of the whole hidage assessed on the manor, five parts were paid by the demesne and eleven parts by the terra hominum. Nothing can be more explicit. Lastly, turn- ing to Domesday itself, we have the very remarkable entry at the end of the Survey of Huntingdon : In Herstingest Hundret sunt dominicae car[ucatae] quietae de geldo regis. Villani et sochemanni geldant secundum hidas in brevi scriptas. Excepta Broctone ubi geldat abbas cum aliis pro una hida (i. 203 [2]). That is to say that, by a special exemption, the demesnes were, in this hundred, free from paying geld, except in one manor, where their normal liability to geld held good. The result can be traced throughout the Survey of the county, in the entries relating to this hundred, of which the bulk be- longed to the abbeys of Ely and of Croyland. By a special formula in the case of the manors they affected, we are first > Barton Cartulary y fo. la. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 97 told the number of the hida ad geldum, then that of the plough- teams in villenage, and then the phrase * exceptis his hidis/ or * extra predictas hidas/ introduces the specially exempt de- mesne. You will see at once that this special arrangement must have been essentially an exceptional state of things. So much for the exemption of ecclesiastical demesnes. But now let me add at once that the levy-rolls of the Danegeld of 1084 distinctly show that, on that occasion, the hides ' in dominio ' were exempted from the tax. If, then, you admit that I have proved my point — namely, that hides in demesne were not normally exempt — what follows ? Surely that we have here the coincidence of two abnormal phenomena, an abnormal geld-rate of dr. on the hide, coinciding with an abnormal exemption from geld accorded to the baronial hides in demesne. May not these two phenomena be connected } That is the question I have now to ask you. I cannot find that anyone has attempted to explain the (to me) puzzling question why the Danegeld which is not found on any other occasion exceeding the rate of two shil- lings (save, probably, in the exceptional levy of 1096 *) was raised, in this year, at the rate of six. Dr. Stubbs merely observes that the Conqueror ' demanded a sum of six shillings from every hide of land, three times the old rate,' ' and in another place that the tax 'had been trebled: six shillings were exacted from each hide of land instead of two, the usual sum raised under the Anglo-Saxon kings.' ' Dr. Gneist speaks of it as ' a war-tax of an amount till then unheard of, being seventy-two pence for every hide.' * Now, remembering that the villeins were themselves responsible for the amount due from the hides in villenage, have we not here traces of a compromise — we might almost say a conspiracy — between the Conqueror and his * barons ' hitherto unsuspected by his- torians ? Was he not allowed by them on this occasion to » Supra, p. 84. « Const, Hist. i. 279. ■ Ibid, i. 381. « Ibid, i. 215. VOL. I. H K/ 98 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY fix the rate at this abnormal sum on condition of their own demesnes being wholly exempted from the levy ? The result would be that they would themselves escape their detested liability at the cost of those beneath them, and that the Con- queror would derive from the tax a larger aggregate return, though (owing to these exemptions) by no means thrice, nor even twice, the normal total. This can, of course, be only a suggestion, but I claim that it would fairly explain the pheno- mena, and that, if it be correct, it is of some novelty and interest I now pass to special exemptions, cases in which some portion of land was made geld-free by a special act of the crown. Let us take the two Gloucestershire manors belonging to the Abbey of Bath. Each of them was assessed at five hides ; thus in each case we read of these hides that ' tres geldant * and that * duo non geldant ' (or * sunt a geldo quietae ') ' concessu E. et W. regum ' (1. 165 [2]). That is, that Edward had exempted two hides in each manor from liability to geld, and that William had confirmed the exemption. So too with a lay holding. Thus, of an estate in the forest of Dean, we read, ' has terras concessit rex E. quietas a geldo pro foresta custodienda ' (i. 167 b, 2). And of Henry de Ferrers' estate at Lechlade we are told, * Ibi XV hidae T.R.E. geldantes. Sed ipse rex concessit VI hidas quietas a geldo. Hoc testatur omnis comitatus et ipse qui sigillum regis detulit* (i. 169 [i]). In another case the remission, on the contrary, seems not to have been proved to the complete satisfaction of the legati. We read of Hampton : — * Ibi X hidae. Eldred archiepiscopus tenuit. Rex Edwardus dedit ei II hidas quietas ex his X, ut dicunt ' (168). Again, of two manors in the fief of Sigar de Cioches, we read : — * Ibi x hidae. Wills, rex concessit III hidas ex his quietas a geldo,' and ' Ibi v hidae, ex his III sunt quietae a geldo per W. regem ut dicit homo Sigardi ' (i. 170 [2]). All the above instances are taken from the same county, possibly because this formula is only or chiefly used there. The thing DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 99 itself must have occurred elsewhere. In the adjacent county of Worcestershire we have a very curious case. Ipsa aecclesia [de Evesham] tenet Ambreslege. Hsec anti- quitus pro iii hidis fiiit libera sicut dicunt cartas de ascclesia, sed T.R.E. fuit numerata pro xv hidis inter silvam et planum et iii hidae ex his sunt liberae (175 b^ 2). Here the Abbey must have produced its title-deeds before the legati. The figures, however, would seem to suggest that while the exemption was only intended to free three hides out of the fifteen from geld, the Abbey must have endeavoured to represent it wrongfully as enacting that only three of the fifteen hides should be liable to the payment of geld.' But the word to notice here is * numerata.' Its use explains the Domesday formula that there were so many hides * numero ' in some given manor. Such an expression clearly means that such was the assessed number on the rolls, which rolls, we must always remember, afforded the crown its indispensable check on the assertions and pretensions of its subject. The very next manor on this page of Domesday provides us with a remarkable and suggestive case, though of quite a different kind. Ipsa aecclesia tenet Hantone. Ibi v hidae fuerunt T.R.E. {ibid). Now throughout the litigation under the Conqueror on this manor between the churches of Worcester and of Evesham, we find it entered not as of five, but as of fifteen hides.* Fortunately, there exists a special survey of the fief of the Church of Worcester, under Henry I. (though it would seem to be little, if at all, known). In it we read of this manor : Ex his habet Abbas de Eovesham v hidas apud Hamtun geldantes et x sunt quiete a geldo per breve Regis. ... He omnes sunt geldantes et preter has x sunt quiete apud Hamtun a geldo per breve regis ut supra diximus.' » Heming's Cartulary, ' Ibid, p. 315. H 2 loo DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY Here the discrepancy is precisely accounted for. It is strange, however, that this * breve regis ' should have been issued so long before, for even T.R.E., as we have seen, the assessment was only five hides. Of course we are led by such a case to inquire whether, in other cases also, the assessment recorded in the Great Survey may not have been reduced from the original figure, though the fact of such reduction is not alluded to in the record ? A case of reduction may be added from Herefordshire : — * Ibi [Cuure] XV hidae geldantes, sed rex W. condonavit vi hidas quietas a geldo' (i. i86). In Berkshire we have this curious entry relating to one of the manors belonging to Abingdon Abbey: — 'Tunc se de- fendebat pro X hidis, modo pro VIII. Tamen fuit pro XV hidis, sed rex E. condonavit pro XI hidis ut dicunt ' (58 ^, 2). The figures here seem difficult, if not impossible, to understand. In the same county we have some other remarkable passives. For instance, of a manor of Westminster Abbey (' Peliforde *) which Harold had held T.R.E., we read: — 'Antequam Heraldus habuisset, defendebat sepro xxvii hidis. Postquam habuit, pro XVI hidis ad libitum heraldi. Homines de hundret nunquam audierunt nee viderunt breve ex parte regis qui ad tantum posuisset ' (32). Moreover, against this entry we find a marginal note: — *Modo geldat pro viii hidis.' This is a striking passage. Again, of one of the manors of Battle Abbey we read : — ' Heraldus comes tenuit. Tunc [se defendebat] pro X hidis. Quidam tainus qui ante eum tenuit geldabat pro XV hidis. Modo (geldat) pro nichilo ' (59 b, 2). That is to say, it had been first held by a thegn who paid geld on fifteen hides, then by Earl Harold, in favour of whom the assessment was reduced to ten hides, and lastly by Battle Abbey, in favour of which it was freed from any assessment whatever. Such an entry is most instructive as illustrating the gradual diminution of the revenue by this practice of special exemption. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY loi It would seem probable that the ' tamen ' above may prove the clue to the fonnula which otcxirs throughout the Survey of Cornwall This Cornwall phenomenon, which is very remark- able, has hardly obtained the attention it deserves. We have a typical instance in the entry : ' Ipse Comes tenet Liscarret. Merlesuain tenebat T.R.E. et geldabat pro li hidis. Ibi tamen sunt sunt Xii hidae. Terra est LX carrucis' (121 ^, i). The great peculiarity of these entries is that so far from being the exception, they are the rule throughout the county. On this point reference should be made to Mr. Eyton's * Dorset Domesday.' ' He rightly points out that, even without this exemption (if such it was), the hidation was exceptionally favourable ; but I think he hardly brings out as clearly as could be wished, that, in these cases, the larger number of hides represented an actual original assessment for the purpose of taxation. In Hampshire we are told of the manor of Clere, belonging to the New Minster, * T.R.E. se defendebat pro llli hidis et una virgata, modo pro nichilo. Revocant regem pro geldo ' (i. 43 [2]). That is to say, the Abbey appealed to a grant of the king exempting them. It so happens that we have, in this case, an early if not contemporary transcript of the charter granting the manor. I at length succeeded in seeing this, which has probably been seen by very few, and found that by it the king granted the manor geld-free. Here, then, we have a case in point This, however, is the nearest approach that I can find in this reign to a charter granting exemption, and it is not quite what we want We have a somewhat different case in the charter printed by Madox, which grants to the Abbey of Westminster * vill hidas de manerio Piriford quae in Dominio meo sunt infra Forestam de Windlesores quietas amodo semper et liberas a geldo a scoto et ab omni consuetudine et censu pecuniae quae £;eld vocatur Anglic^. Testibus etc. Post ' P. 5t 9* See also his Stajfordihire Survey. I02 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY descriptionem totius Angliae ' (p. 238).' This I take to be a writ exempting the estate in question from that liability to ' geld ' which would otherwise fall upon it, on being severed from Windsor (* Ancient Demesne '). But this charter, if genuine, is in many ways worthy of attention. • Piriford ' is obviously the present Pyrford (far as that village is now from the forest), and must also represent the * Peliforde * of Domes- day of which we read : — ' De hac terra habet rex ill hidas in foresta sua ' (32). But the points for our purpose to be specially noted are the remarkable description * censu pecuniae <\\x^geld vocatur Anglic6,' which seems very distinctly to imply that there was only one kind of ' geld ' then recognised, and the mention of ' scot ' and ' geld ' as two separate and distinct impositions in a way which, if the text is all right, somewhat complicates the meaning. By far the most valuable definition I have met with — that is, if we can trust it— is in a grant of liberties by Henry I. to Ramsey Abbey : Et omnia sua sint libera ab omni regia consuetudine et ab omni colkcHone census qua geld vel scot vel Denegeld Anglich nominatur,^ But it sounds ' too good to be true.* There is further the striking expression 'Post descrip- tionem Angliae,' on which I have commented in another paper. The exemption of what may be termed the home estate of St. Paul's is deserving of notice because it rests on successive charters of the Conqueror, of William Rufus, and of Henry I. The charter of William Rufus runs : Precipio quod secclesia Sancti Pauli et canonici ejusdem aecclesiae teneant libere et solute et quiete xxiiii hidas quas habent juxta civitatem Londonie de denegeldis et omnibus aliis geldis et omnibus operibus et expeditionibus sicut pater meus precepit per cartam suam.' * No. cccxcvi : < Ex autographo.' * Ramsey Cartulary^ i. 242-3. * Hist, MSS, Commission^ App. I. 60 b. The Conqueror's charter here con- DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 103 Henry I. thus confirms it : Precipio vobis ut dimittatis totam tenram canoniconim Sancti Pauli Londonie, videlicet xxiiii hidas. . . . ita omnino esse quietam de hoc geldo et omnibus aliis geldis sicut melius fuit tempore patris et fratris mei« et de omnibus aliis consuetudinibus et operibus, sicuti brevia patris et fratris mei precipiunt^ In this latter charter the phrase 'de hoc geldo' ought to be carefully noted, as it may prove of considerable importance. If, as it would seem, it means ' from this levy of the geld,* * then the words ' de omnibus aliis geldis ' might mean ' from all other levies of the same,' but the point cannot be regarded as wholly free from doubt. To complete the chain of evidence by continuing the sequence of reigns, we will next take the grant of Bromham by William Rufus to Battle Abbey. Here the case is some- what different, Bromham not having been ancient demesne of the crown. The clause of exemption runs thus : — ' Volo ergo et firmiter precipio ut sic libere et quiete et in pace eam Monachi teneant ab omnibus Consuetudinibus, Geldis et Scotis^ et Hidagiis et Danegeldis .... sicut Pater meus liberius et quietius tenuif Here the mention by name of, it would seem, four separate impositions, is important to notice, though, of course, in both the above charters, their evidence is subject, as always, to their authenticity. Passing to the reign of Henry I., we have in the Roister of the Church of Worcester,* a charter of Heniy I. freeing five of the fifteen hides of Alveston from geld — that is to say, reducing the assessment from fifteen to ten hides. This case finned is found in Cartu Antiqua, CC. 16. He grants ' xxiiii hidas quas Rex iEdel- bert dedit . '. . juxta Civitatem Lundonie . . . liberas esse et quietas de Dane- geldo et omnibus aliis geldis/ etc. I Hist, MSS. Commission^ p. 45 a. ' This is certainly the case in another and similar writ of Henry I. to the Sheriff of Oxfordshire {Abingdon Cartulary^ ii. 69-70). ■ Madox's Formularium, p. 176. « Rtgistor of St, Marysy Worcester (cd. Hale). 104 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY should be compared with that of Hampton above. We have also a good example of the formulae used for the purpose in his charter of confirmation to Hurley Priory. The clause runs : Praeterea volo et firmiter precipio, quod dimittatis esse in pace imperpetuum vi Hidas Ecclesise ejusdem de Dominio Prions et Monachonim de omnibus Geldis et Danegeidis et teloneo per Angliam.' Lastly, we have an important cliarter of Stephen freeing six and a half hides of the manor of Westminster (belonging to the Abbey) from liability to Danegeld &c. Here is the relevant portion : Sciatis me imperpetuum claroasse quietas Deo &c vi Hidas et dimidiam Hidam in eodem Manerio Westmonasterii. . . . de omnibus Geldis et Danegeidis et Murdris &c. &c. . . . Quare volo et firmiter precipio quod Ecclesia predicta Sancti Petri et Monachi quietantiam VI Hidarum et dimidiae Hidse finabiliter possideant in perpetuam elemosinam.' The above charter may serve to illustrate the caution that should be employed in using the terms * geld ' and * Danegeld.' It seems virtually clear that under the Conqueror there was but one kind of ' geld/ and though these charters may raise a doubt as to the succeeding reigns, the evidence of the Pipe Rolls would seem to point to there having been only, in practice, one exaction of the kind. On the whole, the ques- tion can scarcely be regarded as being yet definitely settled. In any case the practice and system of exemption has now been traced down from the days of Edward the Con- fessor, the later examples being intended to throw light on the probable character of those which we find recorded in Domesday.* * Madox*s Fcrmularium, p. 38. * /Hd. p. 293. ' Although somewhat later in date, reference may be made to an important writ of Henry II. to the Barons of the Exchequer, early in his reign, notifying that he had exempted thirty-eight hides belonging tg St. John's Abbey, Colchester, rom liability to geld {Carta Antigua^ v. 36. Printed in Old Monasticon, il 893). DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 105 Entirely distinct from these special exemptions was the case of that land which had never paid geld (* quae nunquam geldavit'). The two expressions that Domesday employs for such land are ' inland ' and * carucate ' (in a special sense). Let us first take the * carucate.' The occasional occurrence of the * carucate ' in the hidated districts is, as Mr. Eyton observes, * one of the curiosities in Domesday.* Both in his • Dorset * and in his * Staffordshire * monographs he devotes special attention to the subject, and examines with great care the passages in which the use occurs. His remarks will be found in the former of these works on pp. 16-22, and in the latter on pp. 18, 24-5, &c. In Dorset he fairly makes good his point that the ' carucate ' is the term employed for the measurement of ' ungeldable ' land, land ' quae nunquam geldavit.' But he further held that the term carucata was introduced by the Normans, and that they intended thereby an estate which, in point of value and capacity, was closely analogous to the Saxon hide (* Dorset Domesday,* p. 17). . . . tantamount to the privileged and ingeldable hide ; to the hide not as yet distorted from its more ancient form by considerations of relative value (/<J. p. 18). Now this point is really one of very great importance. Much depends on it I cannot admit that Mr. Eyton puts it as clearly as could be wished. The question really is this. Was the 'carucate,' in terms of which the Domesday Commis- sioners described lands which had never been hidated (' quae nunquam divisae sunt per hidas *), and had never paid geld, a carucate 'ad arandum* or a carucate 'ad geldum.' If, as Mr. Eyton appears to hold, the ' carucate * in this special use corresponded in character with the 'hide' (of Domesday), then (as the Domesday hide was a ' hida ad geldum ') these 'carucates ' must have been 'carucatae ad geldum.' But as it was, by his admission, their essence that they were not geld measures at all, it follows that they must have been carucates io6 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY * ad arandum ' — that is to say, units of measurement, not units of geld assessment But we must not overlook the Staffordshire examples. Of ' the waste vills ' in that county, In three cases the Commissioners reported a carucatagCy which seems to have been in Staffordshire a figure for unverified hidage. In the other fourteen cases they reported only the arable element of each estate, and about this they were not sure. . . . They estimated the area of three estates in terms of canjcatage — that is, I suppose, of presumptive hidage. They measured the other two in terms of carucage which implied only the extent of the arable portion (* Staffordshire Domesday,' pp. i8, 19). Treating further of these 'carucates,' of which he tells us there were in Staffordshire thirty-seven and a half, Mr. Eyton observes that There is no invariable connection between the ' carucata terrae » and the ' terra ad unam carucam.' I should here state, or repeat, what I consider to have been the meaning of the term * carucata terrse ' in the Staffordshire Survey. I think it was a conceptional hide. The Norman surveyors used it for land which had never been hidated, or whose hidation they could not fix or discover. So they used it as an alternative for the Saxon hide ; not as having any other than an etymological association with the terra ad unam carucam or ploughland, from which they always distinguished it {Und. pp. 24, 5). It is with great reluctance that I have eventually arrived at the conclusion that Mr. Eyton was mistaken, and that, at any rate in the cases he was here discussing, the carucata was virtually, it would appear, the equivalent of the terra ad unam carucam. No one, I think, can go through the instances he gives in Dorset (pp. 16-22) without being driven to this con- clusion- And it is specially noteworthy that whereas the *hida' is systematically opposed to the 'terra ad unam carucam,' as measures calculated on different systems, the ' carucata * is, it would seem, never. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 107 The important inference from all this is that when the term * carucate ' occurs in hidated districts, it represents the name given by the Normans to a ploughland which was free from liability to geld. Had it been liable, it would then have been described in terms of the Anglo-Saxon * hide/ the unit of geld-assessment. As it was not so liable, they were free to describe it by the name in use for a ploughland among them- selves. Let us now pass to the 'inland,* the other term, as I contend, by which Domesday describes land not liable to geld. In order to establish my case on this point, I here append typical entries, (i) from the Survey of Somerset, (2) from the Survey of Dorset, (3) from the Survey of Oxford- shire, (4) from the peculiar Hundred of ' Herstingest,' in the Huntingdonshire Survey, in which the hides in demesne were specially exempted from geld. Somerset. (I. 90.) Ipsa aecclesia tenet Piltone. T.R.E. geldabat pro xx hidis. Terra est xxx camicis. Prefer hanc ^ kabet abbas ibi terram xx carrucis qua nunquam geldavit. In dominio sunt x camicae et XV send et xxi villani et xlii bordarii super terram non geld- antem.' hidis et una virgata terrae. Terra est xx carrucis. Prefer hanc terram habet in doininio 1 1 carrucaias term qua nunquam geldaverunt et ibi habet 1 1 carru- cas. Idem episcopus tenet Altone. T.R.E. geldabat pro vi hidis. Terra est vi carrucis. Prefer hanc habet terram 11 carru- carum in dominio qua nunquam geldavit Ibi habet 1 1 carrucas. Dorset. (I. 77, 75 b.) Episcopus idem tenet Beim- instre. T.R.E. geldabat pro xvi Oxfordshire. 0. 158, iSS ^^, 156 b.) Idem Robertus tenet Etone. Ibi sunt V hidse. Prefer has * < Exceptis his hidis/ in Exon Domesday. ' ' Quae nunquam reddidit gildum * {ib, ). io8 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY hidas habet de inland in hidas Hunts. tt dimidiam qua nunquam /]. 204.) Tu- 1 u-j ^ J- J- In Sumersham habet abbas de Ibi sunt XV hidaeet dimidia. „, ... j ,, ^ rrs ^ • . Ely VIII hidas ad geldum. Terra . . . Terra est xviii camicis et "^ .J? . » . * *-j ^ • r* 1 r V • • X" camicis. Et exceptts hts totidem invenrtaej. In domtnto ,.-..,.. '••'..,, /(/tfwmdommio terra II camicis. «/ /(?mi 1 1 carructs inland. » t^ . , , -, . ^ , . , T^ - . In Riptune habet abbas de Ibi sunt L hidae. De his „ *^, . , , , , rw. , . ^ • J . . Ramesy X hidas ad geldum. Terra habet episcopus m dominio ' . ...... . . , , . , XVI camicis et tn domtnto terra terrain x camicis et iii hidas , . j.^ ,.» ^ ^ . , , II carrtuis extra predtdas hidas. preter inland, Tu- L'j J ' 1 J In Upehude habet abbas de Ibi I htda de inland que „ i_.j j ,j , . .^ ' Ramesy x hidas ad geldum. nunquam geldavit «, . ^, . ^ ** Terra xvi carrucis. Et in dominio terra in carrucis preter predictas hidas. The term 'inland' is deserving of more careful study than it has obtained. Excluding the cases of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, in which counties it occurs in several places, and it would seem, in a special sense, it is but rarely employed in Domesday. It occurs in Kent, Northamptonshire, and Shropshire, but only once or twice, I think, in each of these three counties. The only other county, I believe, in which it is found (it is difficult on such a point to speak with certainty) is Oxfordshire. Mr. Seebohm, indeed, asserts that *the lord's demesne land was called in the Exon Domesday for Cornwall the "thane's inland,*"* but though I have gone specially through the whole record in the hope of verifying this statement, I cannot find a single instance. The ' demesne ' is entered as dominium with seemingly unvarying regularity. ' Inland ' it may be as well to observe, must not be confused with * Tain- land,' which is a term often applied in Domesday to land which had, under King Edward, belonged to a private holder (tainus\ but which, at the time of the Survey, had become annexed to ' Terra Regis.' * English Village Community ^ p. 134. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 109 Though the examples of ' inland ' which occur in Oxford- shire include lands measured by the hide, and therefore, presumably, once geldable, yet it is quite clear that there, at least, * inland ' meant land not subject to geld at the time when it was so described. ' Inland * occurs very prominently in the extremely curious Anglo-Saxon Record printed by Ellis in his • Introduction' (i. 184-7). But the point I want to bring out is, that ' inland ' may have been, before the Conquest, the term representing * demesne ' (Stubbs's ' Select Charters/ pp. 70, 523), but I deny that such was its meaning in Domesday, or in later records. Here is a striking instance in point, from the great Survey itself. ' De hac terra habent Rex et comes VIII carucatas in dominio. . . . Prater has VIII carucatas habent Rex et comes CC et XXXI acras terrae arabilis inland * (i. 336). Here the 'dominium,* it will be seen, is sharply distinguished from the ' inland.' Its meaning can perhaps be best studied in the early abbatial surveys contained in the Burton Cartulary. Its learned editor (General Wrottesley) writes thus on * Inland : ' The Inlands were the lands held in demesne ; the name still exists in many places ; they were, I believe, not liable to taxation, hke the land in hands of tenants. See under Appleby (p. 18 note). But the very instance here appealed to, that of Appleby, is the key to the meaning of the term : In Appdby nichil Inlandas est, id est qua sit sine geldo Regis. Terra in dominio est xxxiiii virgata. . . . Terra hominum se defendit pro XXIII virgatis (p. 30). Nothing could be more conclusive. In the first place, we are told that there was, at Appleby, no ' inland,* and yet that there were lands * held in demesne/ which proves that the two were not identical. In the second, we are given, in so many words, the true meaning of ' inland ' : it is land free front HaHlity to geld (' quae est sine geldo regis '). The way in which no DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY the holder realised this privilege was that he made the tenant pay geld to himself. So at Stratton : ' Rowen filius Leverici [tenet] il bovatas de Inlanda pro III solidis et debet geldare Abbati ' (p. 19). But besides this essential characteristic of ' inland/ there was the further one that it normally formed part, although a separate and distinct part, of the demesne. The Oxfordshire entries in Domesday illustrate this point. The Burton Cartulary does so also, as in the case of Winshill, where the demesne comprised five bovates of ' terra gildabilis * and two ploughlands of ' inland ' (p. 29). This explains the meaning of the expression • Terras de dominico, quas vocant Inlandes,' ' namely, that portion of the demesne which they call ' Inlands.' It further explains the instructive charter of Henry I. aptly quoted by Ellis (* Introduction,' i. 230) : • Si vicecomites Berkesire et prepositi de Chels. dederunt ali- quid et posuerunt extra dominium de inlanda de Chels. facite totam illam inlandam redire in dominium Abbatis.' Here the * inlanda ' and the * dominium,' it will be seen, are used as distinct terms. We will now glance at a Domesday phenomenon which, so far as I know, has escaped notice, but which may be des- tined to prove of singular interest and importance. This is the reduction of the ' geld ' assessment throughout four southern counties. When I mention that these four counties are Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, and Berks, it will be seen that they not only cover between them a compact block of country, but that they comprise that district which was probably the first to fall beneath the real sway of the Conqueror, and which was traversed by him in the course of that somewhat mysterious period which intervened between his great victory and his formal acceptance as king. 1 Occurring, in 1240, at Beauchamp St. PauPs, Essex (Hale, Domesday of St. PauVs, pp. 118.121). DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY in It is this peculiar geographical position which invests the phenomenon we are about to approach with distinct historical importance. Let us take, from each county in turn, typical instances in point. We will begin with Surrey, where the reduction ap- pears to have been most sweeping. Here the assessment of Croydon and Mortlake, which the Primate held ' in dominio,' was reduced from 160 hides to 41^ hides. That of four manors which he held 'de victu et vestitu monachorum,' from 59 hides to is|. That of the two manors held by Earl Eustace was reduced from 60 hides to 1 1 (though they con- tained SO ploughlands), while the two held by the Count of Mortain, which had been assessed T.R.E. at 1 3f hides, were now exempted altogether. Richard Fitz Gilbert held two manors, of which the assessment had been reduced from 30 hides to 9 ; Geoffrey de Mandeville three manors in which the reduction was no less than from 44 to 9. And these are but specimen instances. In Sussex, the assessment of the four manors held 'in dominio' by Earl Roger was reduced from 193^ hides to loi, that of the four similarly held by William of Warenne from 224 hides to 142, and of the four of William de Braose from 32 hides to I2f. As in Sussex the reduction was less sweeping than in Surrey, so in Hampshire it seems to have had less effect than in Sussex. Still on four of the episcopal manors the assess- ment seems to have been reduced from 10 1 hides to 76, and on the four dominical manors of Hugh de Port, from 29 hides to 18. And on two manors of Earl Alan we find an assess- ment of 12 hides reduced to 3|. In Berks the reduction seems chiefly to be found on ecclesiastical estates. On two manors of the Bishop of Salisbury there is a reduction from 62^ hides to 24, and on three of the Bishop of Winchester's, from 55 to 30. After 112 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY working through the extensive property of Abingdon Abbey, I make the reduction of assessment on its manors to be nearly 200 hides — namely, from 464^ to 267 J, but such calculations are always liable to a certain amount of error. Here is the very work for local research to undertake. Complete tables should be drawn out for each of these (bur counties, showing the character and comparative extent of the reduction, in each, of assessed value. The figures I have given sufficiently prove the need of such an inquiry and the prospect of obtaining valuable results when the necessary data are to hand. Meanwhile it may be mentioned that a cursory examina- tion of the assessment in the adjoining counties reveals no such process at work. In Kent there are some faint traces, but they are rather the exceptions that prove the rule. Indeed, it seems throughout the country to have been the systematic practice of the Conqueror to maintain the assessment at the same figure as it had been under the Confessor, and to grant neither reduction nor remission in consideration of deprecia- tion of value consequent on the incidents of the Conquest. Hence the complaints of the urban populations which meet us in the great Survey. Unfair and illusory as was in practice this stereotyped assessment for the ' geld,' it would seem to have been jealously maintained thoughout the Norman period, though the terrible devastation in the wars of the Anarchy compelled Henry the Second, as is proved by the evidence of the Pipe Rolls, to abandon this harsh principle and make large concessions for ' waste.' Such being the system, it is the more significant to find these striking reductions of assessment in a particular part of the country. Tempted by the geographical position of that district to connect this reduction with the historical events im- mediately succeeding the Conqueror's victory, one might suggest that as it was William's steadfast resolve to exercise to DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 113 the full, as king of the English, the rights which belonged to the English crown, while it was equally the aim and object of his followers to resist that claim so far as it operated to their disadvantage, they might in the early days of the Conquest have extorted from him a remission of the obligations to which their grants were liable, a remission which he would cease to grant when he had actually secured the crown. This, however, would not explain the reduction of assess- ment on ecclesiastical estates, unless we assume that this was done to curry favour with the Church and allure the nation while the issue was still doubtful. But I fear that this explan- ation is not satisfactory in practice, and that we have a further difficulty in the noteworthy circumstance that the reduction applied to the manors * in demesne ' ; therefore it would seem that we must assign it to a date subsequent to the process of subinfeudation on the fiefs to which it applied. It should be mentioned that there is another inference to be drawn from this circumstance: namely, that, as the reduction applied spe- cially to the manors held * in demesne ' (see, for proof of this, the Sussex fiefs that I quoted), a reduction on the assessment of such manors would benefit the tenant-in-chief, while a reduction on that of the manors held of him by under-tenants would not Here, then, we have further light thrown on the respective liabilities of the tenant-in-chief and the under- tenant, and the way in which the burden of the impost fell.* The importance of grasping the real character of the re- duction here discussed is made manifest by the singfular con- clusions to which Mr. Loftie has been led by a misapprehension on this point Writing on the reduction of the assessment at Kennington from five hides to one and three quarters, and at Lambeth from ten to two and a half, he observes : ■ The Dan^eld was clearly a tax paid by the under-tenant. They paid it whether they ^et^firmarii (see Domesday of St, PauTs) or knights (see a curious instance in point, for the latter, in Abingdon Cartulary^ ii. 136). VOL. I. I 114 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY Even if we did not know of the probability of a great irruption of \ the river to cause this discrepancy, a flood of some kind would be one of the most obvious explanations. If we suppose therefore that, after long occupation and cultiva- tion, .... the land had gradually been won for the king ; that great embankments had been made and annual labour bestowed to keep them in repair ; but that, under the oppression of the Normans, the land was allowed again to fall a prey to the restless tide, we may, it is more than probable, have found a good working theory for the early history of the southern suburbs.^ We could not desire a better instance of the unfortunate results of copying from Domesday without an understanding of its language. In one exceptional case among these reductions we find Domesday quoting no less than four assessments. This is that of Beedon, Berks (see also p. lOo) : Tunc se defendebat pro x hidis, modo pro viii hidis. Tamenfuit pro XV hidis, sed Rex E. condonavit pro xi hidis ut dicunt (L 58 b). It is curious to find, in an assessment list of about the end of the twelfth century, the assessment here assigned to the Confessor (eleven hides) accepted.* It is important to add that these strange reductions became under Henry I. a matter of practical importance. For instance, in Berkshire, we read thus in the Pipe Roll of 1 1 30 : Robertus Greuesac. . . . debet lii marcas argenti et dimidiam ut Manerium de Burwardescote geldet amodo pro vi hidis. . . . VVillelraus girbertus debet xlvii marcas argenti et dimidiam ut M anerium de Burwardescota geldet amodo pro vi hidis.' On turning to Domesday we there read of the manor of * Boroardescote * : * History of London t ii. 267-8. • Abingdon Cartulary, ii. 312. • Hot. Pip, 31 Hen. I. Both men were to pay in instalments and to find sureties for doing so. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 115 Ipse Comes tenet Boroardescote et Robertus de eo. Heraldus comes tenuit Tunc se defendebat pro xl hidis, modo pro vi hidis (i. 60). We learn, in the first place, from these entries that financial extortion was at work, and that it had taken the form of the crown repudiating the Domesday assessment of six hides. By the Domesday assessment I mean, of course, the strangely lowered assessment which I have just discussed above. That the under-tenants (who were the parties affected) had clearly been paying on this lowered assessment is proved, I take it, by their anxiety to have that assessment confirmed. It strengthens the impression that in these reductions we have a local and abnormal phenomenon when we find the crown, as here, refusing to recognise their validity. I gather that the agents of the crown, eager by hook or by crook to satisfy the king's greed, pitched upon such cases as these, and, proceeding by a kind of * quo warranto,* demanded the production of the Royal writ reducing the assessment of the manor.* In default of this they would claim payment on the pre-Conquestual as- sessment, here forty hides. The tenants, in their anxiety to retain the existing low assessment, would offer to commute the difference, while the crown, ever eager for prompt returns, would encourage them so to do by offering favourable terms. This would at once explain the payments recorded in the Pipe Roll.' Now to commute by a payment of a hundred marks (66/. 1 3 J. 4//.) an assessment of 34 hides (the extreme increase which the crown could demand) would imply twenty years* purchase, if we reckon the tax at two shillings annually on the hide, the rate at which it was certainly levied at the period of this Pipe Roll. But twenty years' purchase was an impossible rate in those troubled times, and still more so in a case ' Such a writ as the Survey, we have seen, refers to in the Gloucestershire cases • Compare the case of Etone {^oL Pip, 31 Hen. I. p. 125). I 2 ii6 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY where the terms must have been favourable to the tenant in order to induce him to commute. What is the inference ? Surely, that at least at this period, the * hide ' must have been liable to some further payment than two. shillings a year. Whether this further payment was of the nature of a local levy, and if so, what, I will not presume to say. One would gladly learn if this action of the crown extended to other parts. It is just what one might have expected in the previous reign from Flambard. The mysterious story of his revised edition of the original Domesday Survey has never been really .explained.* Dr. Stubbs has cut the Gordian knot by suggesting it as * probable that the whole story is a misap- prehension, and is to be referred to the Domesday Survey.' • I am quite unable to concur in this solution of the problem. Not only is the story told of William Rufus and his minister, not of the Conqueror and of his, but the precise words which Ordericus employs ('incitans ut totius Angliae reviseret de- scriptionem ') prove that he was writing of a revision of Domes- day, for ' totius Angliae descriptio ' was the term specially ap- plied to the Great Survey of the Conqueror. Though I cannot myself solve the riddle, I think that by ' mensuris quas libe- rales Angli jussu Edwardi regis largiter distribuerant,' Orderi- cus must be referring to what Mr. Eyton has described as the 'beneficial hidation of Anglo-Saxon times.' This obsolete assessment was, indeed, from the first, a stumbling-block to the Norman administration, and it is clear that one of the main objects of the Domesday Survey itself was to obtain a register of real, as distinct from assessed, value. This view is confirmed and illustrated by the great Carucage Survey of 1 198. Before leaving this point, it may be observed that the dis- trict affected by. the reduction may have been lai^ely devas- tated at the time of the original invasion, but how far, if at ' Ordericus Vi talis, viii. 8. ' ConsL Hist i. 303. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 117 all, this may be held to account for the reduction in question, I do not profess to explain. It is difficult to overrate the importance of the Danegeld in its bearing on the study of Domesday. For the present, however, I have only space to allude to a single point, the light which it throws upon the hundred. Just as the Domes- day Survey itself was based upon inquests in the hundred courts of the land, so the hundred was the fiscal unit for the collection of Danegeld, as is proved by the Inquisitio Geldi^ and so when that geld was unpaid or in arrear, it was in the hundred court that the king's fine {gyldwiti) was imposed on the offending individual. But in a still more special and direct sense does Danegeld, in connection with the Domesday, throw light on the institution of the hundred. What are we to say to such an expression as that Bedford was assessed at ' half a hundred ' ; ' Cambridge at * a hundred ' ; ' or Stamford at 'twelve hundreds and a half? With the latter case I have dealt in my paper on * Measures of Land/ and have shown that these hundreds being the small Danish ones of Lincolnshire, such an assessment would only represent a hundred and a half in the hidated districts. But just as the small Danish hundred is known to have contained 12 caru- cates, so I contend the English hundred must have been here reckoned for purposes of assessment as containing 100 hides. For obviously- assessment could not possibly be expressed in terms of the hundred unless that hundred represented some definite number of hides. I contend that by the hundred, in * *T.R.E. pro dimidio hundret se defendebat et modo facit in expeditione et in navibos ' (L 209). Dr. Stubbs erroneously states that * The town of Bedford paid towards ships as much as a third [jiV] of a hundred. Domesday i. 209 ' ( Const, Hist, L 105). Besides, there is nothing here about paying towards ships. The assessment merely determines the contingent of men (i.e. ten) due from the town in landfyrd and scypfyrd. « 'Pro uno hundret se defendebat T.R.E.' (i. 189). ii8 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY this sense, was meant a hundred hides. Do not suppose that I am here discussing that ancient problem the origin of the hundred. I merely contend that at this period it was, if you will, the legal fiction that a hundred contained a hundred hides. I have recently noted in the Survey a curious passage in point. We read of the Worcestershire hundred of Fish- borough that Evesham Abbey has there 65 hides, of which twelve are free (i.e. from geld), that there are also there 20 hides of Dodentree, and that the fifteen hides of Worcester make up the hundred.* The document with which this pas- sage should be compared is the very curious Anglo Saxon record belonging to this period, and printed by Ellis as illus- trative of the hundred, and giving a long list of hundreds, each of them divided into 100 hides.* So, too, the episcopal Liberty of Oswaldslaw, to which I have alluded more than once, comprised originally three hundreds, and is entered in Domesday as containing 300 hides. I hold that my theory is confirmed by such cases as Shrewsbury, which in Domes- day is assessed for geld at 100 hides, or Chester, which is similarly assessed at 50. See how this bears on the whole question of burghal development under the English system. The Anglo-Saxon system having originally only two adminis- trative units, the hundred and township, or pagus and vicus ; when that feature, new to Anglo-Saxon life, the borough, gradually arose, it received not a new organisation but the old organisation of the hundred, adapted as closely as pos- sible. When the borough was too small to be treated as a hun- dred, it was awkwardly treated as a A^x^-hundred. In my own district we learn from DomeSday that Colchester was then a hundred of itself, but Ipswich and Maldon A/i(/"-hundreds. When these boroughs had to be assessed for the quota due • • In Fisseberge Hundret habet secclesia de Evesham LXV hidas. Ex his XII hidae sunt liberae. In illo Hundredo jacent XX hidae de Dodentreio, et xv hidae de Wircestre perficiunt hundret' (i. 176 b), ^ Introduction to Donusday^ i. 184. DANEGELDAND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 119 from them for Danegeld, the ' hundred ' boroughs, I hold, were assessed as at Shrewsbury at 100 hides, and the half-hundreds at 50, as at Chester. But this would be only where no special composition had been purchased or wrung from a weak and often needy government It is this practice of special arrange- ment which gives such complexity, and indeed obscurity, to Danegeld and Domesday finance in general so far as the boroughs are concerned. Exeter for instance, to take a striking case, had procured for itself the almost nominal assessment of five hides, and had further obtained the special privilege that it should only be called upon to pay when London, Winchester, and York paid. This is one of the most curious and tantalising glimpses that we are given in the whole of Domesday of the financial system of the period. It illustrates on the one hand, the vicious system in which liberty was represented by privilege and exemption— privilege and exemption at the cost of others ; and again it raises the striking question : Had London, Win- chester, and York the power of granting a Danegeld, or at their pleasure withholding it, when it was paid by the rest of England. Then further we have the mysterious commutation of Danegeld for a special contribution towards the payment of the king's housecarls, the prototypes, as you know, of our household troops. This practice, which brings the Danegeld itself into a still more direct connection with that famous Danish body-guard, deserves more attention than it has yet received. But I must pass on now for want of time. Keeping to the assessment of towns in Domesday, we find Bridport and Malmesbury assessed at 5 hides each, Dor- chester, Wareham, and Hertford at 10 hides, Worcester at 15 (they were counted, as we have seen, in Fishborough hundred), Bath and Shaftesbury at 20, &c. Now what I want you to notice here is this. Like the hundred and the half-hundred, all these assessments, you see, are multiples of five hides. Why I20 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY was this ? It was because, just as in later days, our towns and counties had their special assessments for the quotas due from them to the land-tax and to the militia, so these Anglo- Saxon towns had to be assessed not only for the Danegeld but also for the territorial military service. Now five hides was the unit of assessment for the purpose of military service. Thus Domesday tells us of Exeter, that ' Quando expeditio ibat per terram aut per mare serviebat haec civitas quantum V hidae terrae.' That is to say that when the fyrd was raised, whether landfyrd or scypfyrd as the English would have put it, Exeter had to send the quota due from every five hides. Thus this military quota is proved to be a fixed quantity, and that fixed quantity was one man. We see this in the Berk- shire entry: 'Quando rex mittebat exercitum, de quinque hidis tantum unus miles ibat.' * When the king [i.e. King Edward] sent forth his host to war, one warrior was due from every five hides/ We see it again in the case of Malmes- bury : Quando rex ibat in expeditione vel terra vel mari habebat de hoc burgo aut xx solidos ad pascendos suos buzecarlos aut unum hominem ducebat secum pro honore v hidanim * (L 64 b). It was clearly of this borough, I may add, that Mr. Eyton was thinking when he wrote that In one case, as we remember it, a geldability of five hides was commuted for the service of providing an attendant on the king in any expedition he might make by sea or land. Such attendants were like our modern marines, and were usually called Bus-karles or Buthsecarles (Key to Domesday ^ p. 71). But this entry describes a commutation, not of the town's liability to * geld ' but of the town's liability to ' fyrd ' {expe- ditio) or military service. It ought to be compared with the entry at Lewes, where * si rex ad mare custodiendum sine se ' Dr. Stubbs wrongly assigns this to Wilton. He writes : — ' Wilton [sent] one man for five hides' {ConsL HisL i. 117). DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 121 suos mittere voluisset,' the burgesses raised 20 shillings, * et hos [xx solidos] habebant qui in navibus arma custodiebant ' (i. 26). And this unit of five hides takes us back, of course, to the five-hide qualification of the English thegn. I would even throw out the suggestion that, by a converse application of this principle, just as it was possible to ascertain from the number of hides at which a town was assessed, the quota of military service for which it was liable, so it might be possible from its military service to infer its assessed hidage. Thus the contingent of twenty men due to the fyrd from Oxford would represent an assessment of one hundred hides, while that of ten men from Warwick would represent an assessment of fifty, that is the half-hundred. But remember that this military service had its financial aspect as well, for by a special composition it could be com- muted, either for some service in kind, as in the case of Leicester sending four pack-horses instead of a contingent of sailors for the fleet, or for a definite sum of money, that sum, as we have seen, being twenty shillings as a substitute for each man. Then again, if the soldier was actually sent, the locality which sent him had to pay him a certain sum in advance. This, I would suggest, curiously anticipates the * coat and conduct * money of later times. In the Berkshire entry it is given as four shillings a man, which, it is specially added, is to be kept by him and not given up to the king. But you are doubtless aware how, a few years later, the notorious Flambard unscrupulously availed himself of this very practice as a means of financial extortion by summoning the host to meet at Hastings, and then making them hand over the sums thus provided (at that time ten shillings), when the cunning official disbanded them at once, to make their way home as best they could The subject of Domesday finance and assessment is, in- 122 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY deed, notwithstanding its great obscurity, of intense and in- exhaustible interest, not only for itself, but also for the extra- ordinary amount of light it casts indirectly upon other matters, and indeed on the whole condition of the country. I have, however, only time to-day to give you one or two instances. Let us first look at this remarkable entry, tlie most in- structive of its kind in the whole Survey, appended like a * rider ' to the Domesday Commissioners* report of their inquest at Shrewsbury. Dicunt angligense burgenses de Sciropesberie multum grave sibi esse quod ipsi reddunt totum gelduni sicuti reddebatur T.R.E. quamvis castellum comitis occupaverit li masuras, at alise l masurae sint vastae, et xliii francigenae burgenses teneant masuras geldantes T.R.E. et abbatise quam facit ibi comes dederit ipse xxxix burgenses olim similiter cum aliis geldantes. Inter totum sunt cc masurse vii minus quae non geldant (i. 252). I say that this is the most instructive entry of its kind in the whole Survey, because it sets fully and clearly before us a grievance of the native urban populations, consequent on the events of the Conquest, of which, throughout Domesday, we catch occasional glimpses, and which it is absolutely necessary to grasp. This was the exaction of the full amount of the ' geld * assessed upon the town, although the burgesses from whom it had to be raised had greatly diminished in number. The causes, in the case of Shrewsbury, assigned for this diminution are : (i) Burgages of which the Earl's castle now occupied the site . . . . . . . -51 (2) Burgages lying * waste ' 50 (3) Burgages held by * Frenchmen ' . . . -43 (4) Burgages made over to the Abbey ... 39 183" Accordingly, say the ' English bom ' burgesses, there are 193 bui^ages (masura) less contributing towards the *geld' DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 123 now (1086) than there were T.R.E. It will be noticed that there is here a discrepancy of ten, beyond the possibility of dispute. This is the more suspicious when we find, as we do, a similar case at Malmesbury : In burgo Malmesberie habet rex xxvi masuras hospitatas et xxv masuras in quibus etc. . . . Unaquseque hamm masurarum reddit x denarios de gablo, hoc est simul xliii [sic] solidos et vi denarios (i. 64 ^). For 51 burgages at 10^. each would represent a total, not of 43X. 6rf., but of 42s. 6d, Here, then, also, the Domesday scribe must have made a careless slip, on the showing of his own figfures. Probably he wrote (if the error was clerical) * XLIII ' for • XLII.' So, at Shrewsbury, the error may be either arithmetical or clerical. If the latter, it would be accounted for by the insertion or omission of an * X.' Taking now seriatim the causes assigned for the diminu- tion, we have first the construction of the castle. This is a cause which, as Domesday shows us, operated in almost every important town.^ But I would take this occasion of pointing out that it may have continued in operation even after Domesday. Thus we read in the Great Survey that, at Gloucester, * sedecim domus erant ubi sedet Castellum ' (i. 162) ; but in the fragment of the Evesham Abbey Survey (1097-- I loi) we read, of the three hundred houses which (T.R.E.) had stood on the King's demesne in Gloucester, ' infra castellum manserunt de hiis CCC XXIV.' That is to say, the si^iteen houses which had been removed for the castle had now in- creased to twenty-four.* The second cause assigned by the burgesses was that ' See also Mr. Freeman's note on < Castles and Destruction in Towns * {Norm* Conq. vol. v). ' There would seem to have been also a great increase in the number of < wasted' houses, proving that this process was by no means limited to the period imme- diately succeeding the Conquest. 124 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY fifty burgages (of those which had formerly contributed) were now (1086) lying waste (* vastae *). This term ' waste ' is one of the pitfalls of the Survey, though not so much so as * con- suetudo * which appears to cover (in addition to customary rights and laws) every form of service and money-payment that was due by fixed custom. To learn how many causes, in towns alone, could be implied by the term ' waste,' we must turn to such entries as these at Lincoln and Norwich. Lincoln. Norwich. Sunt modo Waste cc [man- Isti [burgenses] fugientes et siones] anglico numero [L e.] alii remanentes omnino sunt ccxL . . . De predictis Wastis Vastati, partim propter foris- mansionibus, propter castellum fecturas Rogerii comitis, partim destructae sunt clxvl Reliquae propter arsuram, partim propter Lxxiiii Wastatae sunt, extra geltum regis, partim propter metam castelli, non propter Walerannum (ii. 117 3). oppressionem vicomitum et ministrorum, sed propter infortu- niam et paupertatem et ignium exustionem (i. 336). Poverty and fire are not among the causes specially mentioned at Shrewsbury, but the above entries will show that they may be included beneath the term 'waste.' Of poverty there is a good instance at Bridport, where * XX domus sunt ita desti- tutae quod qui in eis manent geldum solvere non valent/ * We must also remember that the term ' waste ' does not neces- sarily imply destruction (which is occasionally specified by name), but merely a desolate or uninhabited condition. The third cause assigned by the burgesses is that forty-three •Frenchmen* {FrancigeruE) now (1086) held burgages, which T.R.E. had contributed their share towards the geld. That is to say that these said burgages had ceased to contribute their share since they had passed into the hands of the > See for Mr. Freeman's singular misrepresentation of this case, ih^ Antiquary for December 1886. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 125 foreigners. Now I deem this statement to be of great im- portance as bearing on one of the so-called Laws of William the Conqueror. By this law, all those * Francigenae ' who had taken up their residence in England before the Conquest were ordered to pay * lot and scot ' with their fellow-burgesses, as they had presumably done in the days of King Edward.* I infer from this that those * Francigenae ' who had settled here after the Conquest could claim exemption from such * lot and scot,' and that those who had settled here under the Confessor were attempting without right to claim it for themselves also, against which attempt this law was directed. The right to this exemption would exactly explain the precise state- ment of the Shrewsbury burgesses, by whom, apparently, its existence is not disputed, though they complain of its indirect effect upon themselves. We find it in operation again at York, where, among the burgages that ceased to contribute, we read * CXLV mansiones tenent Francigenae * (i. 298).* And at Hereford we find a careful distinction between the native and the immigrant burgesses : ' anglici burgenses ibi manentes habent suas priores consuetudines, Francigenae vero burgenses habent per XII denarios omnes forisfacturas suas,' etc. (i. 179)' Sometimes the immigrants settled in a separate quarter by themselves. Thus, under the heading *Franci de Norwic' (ii. 1 18), we learn that in the new quarter (' in novo burgo *) there were forty-one * burgenses franci ' resident at the time of the Survey. At Nottingham there was a similar ' novus burgus ' (i. 280). And in this fact recorded in Domesday we have, I ' 54. ^De jure Normannorum qui ante adventum Guilielmi cives fuerant AnglicanL Et omnis Francigena qui tempore Edwardi propinqui nostri fuit in Anglia particeps consuetudinum Anglorum, quod ipsi dicunt an hlote et an scote, persolvat secundum legem Anglonim.* ' At Wallingford the description is transferred from the dwellings to their in- habitants: — 'sunt XXII masune francigenae* (i. 56). ■ At Southampton (i. 52), as at Pevensey, the Conquest had led to an influx of population. But here, too, the distinction is maintained :—*Postquam rex W. venit in Angliam sunt hospitati in Hantone LXV francigenae et xxxi angligense. 126 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY may observe, the explanation of the existence of 'the two boroughs ' which meet us, later in the Nottingham Records, the * French ' and the * English.* * At Shrewsbury also, from which we set out, we find two communities, each with their own customs, down to recent times. Here, then, we have a fresh illustration of the marvellous instructiveness of Domes- day. The fourth cause brought forward by the bui^esses is the grant of 39 burgesses by the Earl to his Abbey,' they having for- merly paid their share towards the geld (* olim similiter cum aliis geldantes '). This entry is of value as illustrating a grievance, a subject of contention between ecclesiastics and burgesses, of which there are in Domesday not a few traces, and which — as, for instance, at Leicester and Exeter— proved for long after- wards a fruitful source of strife. This was the diversion of ' the king's geld' into the pockets of ecclesiastical persons, who con- tinued to levy the impost on their tenants^ but pleaded their ex- emption from liability to geld in justification of their retaining the money for themselves instead of handing it over. The ideal at which the Church aimed is well set forth by such a passage as this : ' Hujus Sancti terrae nunquam reddiderunt geldum nisi ipsi aecclesiae ' (i. 121). When the king's geld was thus di- verted, it was said to go into ' the abbot's pouch ' — * in mar- supium Abbatis ' is the actual term employed in the Burton Cartulary — and the fact that it was then withdrawn from the total proceeds of what we might term the rate raised by the burgesses, obviously increased the burden of the remain- ing portion of the community. Hence such a provision as that in the charter of Henry H., early in his reign, to Not- tingham : * Et quicunque in burgo manserit, cujuscunque ' Each of them electing one of the bailiffs, because their customs were different (* pro diversitate consuetudinum in eisdem burgis habitarum '). ^ He had paid over twelve pounds' worth (it would have been described later on as 12 Mibrates') of burgesses and mills :— * Tantum de suis burgensibus et mo- linis quod xil libras rcddit monachis ' (i. 252 b). DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 127 feodi sit, reddere debet simul cum burgensibus taillagia et defectus burgi adimplere.' Hence, too, such struggles as that at Leicester, where it was not till 128 1 that the burgesses gained their point, that the Abbot's tenants should *scot' with them,' or at Exeter, where the Bishop and the Mayor were still wrangling in the fifteenth century over the episcopal fee of St Stephen's, SydwelL* Hence also the jealous care with which the fact was entered in Domesday when the tenants of the Church fee ' scotted ' with the citizens, and did not pay their ' geld ' to their ecclesiastical lord. Thus at Chester, out of fifty hides at which the city is assessed, the Bishop's fee was liable for two and a half hides — that is, one-twentieth of the whole amount — and, it is carefully added in in Domesday, *hae [hidae] geldabant cum civitate' (i. 263). So also, at Shrewsbury itself, we read : Episcopus de Cestre habuit in Sciropesberie xvi masuras, et totidem burgenses geldant cum aliis burgensibus, Modo sunt wastas ex eis X masurae (i. 252). It is most interesting to find from the description of the city, that this estate of the Bishop was assessed at one hide out of the hundred hides at which the whole city was assessed. Five other ecclesiastical and one lay fee, were also responsible for 8f hides between them.' We have probably another case in point, in the Bishop's fee at Colchester, of which the constituent parts are described as * non reddentes consuetudinem /r^/^r j^^/«i« nisi episcopo' (ii. 11), where (assuming that in this district ' scotum ' was occasionally used for * geld,') * it was, we see, specially reserved that the Bishop's * Thompson's Municipal Antiquities^ p. 68. * ShillingforeTs Letters. Camden Society. * St. Alcmund's fee contained 21 burgesses. It was assessed at * 11 hidas de c hidis quae computantur in geldo civitatis ' (i. 253). * So, at Ipswich there were * waste ' houses, * quae T. R. E. scottahant ad geltum regis.' Heie we have another instance of the perplexing variety in Domesday phraseology. 128 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY tenants should * scot * with the burgesses. Perhaps the most striking instance is to be found at Lincoln, where the Bishop's fee (' maneriolum/) comprised, inter alia, three ' mansiones,' on one of which he could retain the 'geld,' while the other two had to pay over theirs to the common fund of the citizens, and two churches with 78 ' mansiones ' all of which had similarly to pay their ' geld ' not to him but to the citizens.' * I have been thus particular in dealing with this entry be- cause the point is one which has been little, if at all, noticed. It has now been shown how this grievance arose in the number of geld-paying burgesses diminishing in the troubles of the Conquest while the quota of Danegeld exacted remained the same in each case. Thus the impost in many cases fell with crushing weight, especially where, as at Chester, the assess- ment was abnormally high. Thus it was, also, that, as we learn from Domesday, the English burgesses anxiously pro- tested against any reduction of their rateable area. At Colchester, for instance : i Burgenses calumpniantur v hidas de Lexsendena ad consuetu- dinem et scotum civitatis (ii. 104). That is to say, they claimed that this land ought to contribute towards their quota on its assessment of five hides, or, in other words, that its holders should * scot and lot ' with them. It is strange to see how completely Mr. Freeman has mis- understood this instructive entry, which he imagined to imply a claim to * common lands.* * We seem to have a similar case at Chester, where the Survey records the verdict of the shire- moot that certain land * semper fuit in consuetudine regis et comitis sicut [terra] aliorum burgensium' (i. 262 b). At * ' Remigius episcopus habet I maneriolum ... in civitate Lincoliae cum saca et soca et cum Thol et Theim super ill mansiones similiter et super 11 aecclesias et super Lxxviii mansiones ^imWiiei prater geldum regis quod dani cum burgensihus . . . De tribus superioribus mansionibos I quieta ab omnibus rebus [est], due vero sunt in geldo cum burgensibus * (i. 336). » Arch. Joum, xxxiv. 68. I DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 129 Malmesbury we find them placing it on record that the abbot's nine tenants * foris burgum .... geldant cum burgensibus * (i. 64 i.) At York, they record of the surrounding lands, that • in geldo civitatis sunt quater xx et nn carucatae terrae, et unaquaeque geldabat quantum una domus civitatis ' (i. 298), and at Lincoln, that Torksey and Hardwick were between them responsible for one-fifth of the *geld' at which the city was assessed. Moreover, special complaint is made of several landowners by name, including an earl, a countess, a bishop, and an abbot, who have not contributed towards the ' geld,' as it was their duty to da* Here again we have the new-comers, especially the more potent among them, en- deavouring to evade their distasteful liabilities. The grievance which I have thus lengthily discussed illustrates the persistence in this matter of finance of the great Anglo-Saxon principle of collective liability? For we must carefully distinguish between these payments for which the community was responsible as a whole, and those for which each individual was responsible for himself, and for himself alone. In the matter of the * geld,' the liability was necessarily collective because the assessment was upon the borough as a whole, not on individual burgesses. In this 'collective liability' to the treasury we have the explanation of the remarkable passage in the ' Historia Fundationis * of St. John's, Colchester, relating to the reign of William Rufus, that : Terras damnatorum. . . . dum nemo coleret, exigebantur tamen pUnaliter fiscalia, et hac de causa populus valde gravabatur. Has ergo terras Eudo sibi vindicavit, ut pro his fisco satisfaceret et populum eatenus alleviaret. (Monasticon,) ■ ' Hi sabscripti non dederunt geldum regis sicut debuissent * (i. 336). ' It is just possible that in this same principle we may have the clue to the power of enforcing tenants to keep up their houses, and prevent their becoming ruinous, of which power we have distinct evidence in much later times (cf. Anti- quary, xii. 201, 278). The original ground of intervention would be the increased liability of the other residents if such houses became ruinous (*vastae'). This suggestion has I believe never been made. VOL. I. K I30 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY Here we have the fiscal result of land falling out of cultivation or, as Domesday would express it, becoming ' waste,' nor could anything better illustrate the grievance of the Shrews- bury burgesses. But so hopelessly has Mr. Freeman mis- understood this passage,' that in order to explain his own ex- planation, he has unluckily attempted to rationalise the story, and, in so doing, has plunged into deeper trouble than before, making in all, as I have elsewhere shown, some half a dozen separate mistakes.* It may perhaps assist towards a clearer comprehension of this really important subject if we take an instance from our own days. This very year there has been a hot agitation in the city parish of St. Botolph Without on the subject of the tithe-rate raised to provide the fixed sum annually due to the tithe-owner. The complaint of the parishioners as reported in the daily papers of the date ' curiously resembles that of the English burgesses of Shrewsbury just eight centuries before. Ratepayers complain very strongly that . . . owing to depression of trade many houses are vacant, and others have been cleared away for railway extension, with the result that the residents who remain find the demands made upon them to make Mr. — 's 6,500/. grow heavier and heavier. And as the men of Shrewsbury looked to the Conqueror for special intervention in their case, so did these parishioners ask for it in theirs, by special petition to the Prime Minister. The railway station here plays the same part as the Earl's castle in the days of the Conqueror, in involving the clearing away of the houses. Some houses are empty ; of others the inhabitants are poor. In short, as Domesday would put it the district is largely ' vastata.' In another case, as I remember it, a complaint was made, not long ago, that a number of ' William Rufm^ pp. 464>5. ' Antiquary^ vi. 98-9. " 5 November 1886. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 131 small houses were burnt down or damaged in a destructive fire. The inhabitants, thus * vastati/ pleaded for a remission of the poor-rate, but it was found, I believe, impossible to make any remission. The ' struggle ' to pay, in these cases, and the complaints of ruinous exaction enables us more clearly to understand such expressions as that some of the Norwich burgesses were 'vastati . . . propter geltum regis,* or the earlier moan of the Church of Worcester against that * maximum et fere importabile tributum ' * exacted by Swegen, when they had to sell almost all that they had to meet the demands of the tax-collectors. Indeed, our thoughts are carried further back still, back to that 'tributum' of the Roman Empire, which, lying on its subject populations with a crushing and a grinding weight, reduced them to slavery or maddened them to revolt. But to return to the ' geld.' After all, there is something fearfully eloquent in these entries of * waste,* of devastation, these entries in which the great and terrible Survey bears witness to the doings of its own maker. I am not speaking now of the ravages of war, or of the infinitely worse ravages of cold-blooded and merciless vengeance. I am thinking of such glimpses of devastation under a rule of law and order as we obtain from such typical entries as these: — 'waste,* on account of the king's castle ; * waste,' on account of the king's forest ; ' waste,' on account of the king's taxes. Far be it from me to malign the memory of one of the great rulers of men ; but the Conqueror was, in very truth, a man of blood and iron. And I think that in the lurid light which these entries cast on his career, we should be able to make some just allowance for the feelings of our English forefathers when • Compare Morant*5 description (1748) of the * very great distress' in a poor parish where the poor rate had become * extremely, nay almost intolerably, charge- able/ so much so that in 1694 the landowners were paying in rates * the full value of their rents,' K 2 132 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY they saw in this dreaded saviour of society as it were a second Attila sent in vengeance for their sins. There is yet one point to be dealt with before we can leave the subject of this paper. We have discussed the gdd of Domesday ; we have yet to discuss its gafoL Now there is one point of such vital importance, that until we have once firmly grasped it, it is useless to approach Domesday finance. I refer to the fundamental and cardinal distinction between the services and payments due to the lord, and the services or payments due to the king — the seigneurial dues and the crown dues. A moment's thought will show you that this distinction is self-evident Yet our greatest authorities have been led astray by the neglect of this simple point. No one, for instance, can read Mr* Eyton's ' Key to Domesday ' without perceiving that in the case of Dorset he persistently and invariably confuses throughout the tax paid to the king qua king, and the rent paid to the king qua lord. It is specially in the towns that this point is of . importance. Broadly speaking, the state of things which meets us in the Survey is this. The king has rights and claims, as king, over the entire town. But, in addition to this, he has rights and claims over a special portion, generally by far the larger portion, of the town, as lord. That special portion is styled his * dominium.' Thus, at Wareham, out of 285 houses T.R.E., the Survey describes 143 as *in dominio regis,' while 62 were in the fee of the Abbot of Fontanell (' Sanctus Wandregisilus *), and 80 in those of other holders (' alii barones '). And at Shaftesbury, out of its 257 houses T.R.E., 104 were ' in dominio regis,' while in that of the Abbess of Shaftesbury were 153. Within this 'dominium' the holders of burgages, sometimes styled the king's bur- gesses, would pay their burgage-rents to him as lord, just as the holders of burgages outside that ' dominium ' would pay their DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 133 burgage-rents to their own respective lords. You will see then, that to treat these burgage-rents, as Mr. Eyton does, as a ' tax,' is to miss the whole point of borough finance in Domesday. Mr. Eyton, in his introductory essay, makes another singu- lar error. * The individual burgess,' he writes, ' when holding immediately, was responsible to the sheriff or other fiscal officer for his quota of rent, or taxes, or local burdens. But in other cases, where the tenure of burgages was not immediate, the party responsible to the baron would be that earl, or bishop, or abbot, or baron, whose tenants the burgesses happened to be, and who received the respective burgage-rents* (p. 51). That is to say these holders had to pay over to the crown the burgage-rents which they received from their tenants, instead of keeping them for themselves. How erroneous is that view is shown by Mr. Ey ton's own words on p. 72, where he admits the ' burgage-rents ' received by the Abbess of Shaftesbury formed a main factor of the value of her Shaftesbury estate. Now the term for rents so paid, whether to a private lord, or to the king himself as lord, was gablutn or landgablum. Thus our greatest authority of all — I mean, of course, Dr. Stubbs — is clearly in error, when he assigns to gablutn, in the glossary to his * Select Charters,' the meaning, ' a tax.' Gablum, the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon gafol, plays an important part in Mr. Seebohm's learned theories. He traces it from its origin in the German gaben (* to give ') through its sense of ' tribute,' to that of * payments in money or kind, or work rendered by way of rent* (p. 78). He shows that as early as the seventh century it is to be found in the ' Laws of Ine,' as designating ' the customary tribute ' due from the tenant to the lord (pp. 142-3), and that in the Recti- tudiftes of the tenth (?) century its meaning is most clearly defined (pp. 132, 140). Its development I conceive to have been as follows. From being a general term, denoting tribute or rent, in money, kind, or labour, it acquired by composition 134 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY a more exact denotation. Thus we learn from the Rectitu- dines that the * gebur * paid his gafol (or gablum) (i) in money. This was known as * g^SoX-pence ' (or pennies). (2) In kind ; as honey-gdSoX, mea^-gdiM, o/e-gSiM, and gBfol-iarley, to which we may add from the Survey itself (i. 27, 28) gafol-Jiw«/, the ' porci de gablo ' of Sussex, being the annual ' tribute * of swine paid by the swineherd to his lord. (3) In labour, as gafol- ^r/A (ploughing), g^tol-wood (chopping), gafol-mowing, gafol- fencing^ and gavel-r^, which last term I have noted in the Register (still in MS.) of St. John's Abbey, Colchester. In the ordinary course of social development there was a ten- dency, even from early times, to commute these two latter kinds oi gafol {ox money payments. Hence the term gablum (or landgablunt) became practically equivalent to a quitrent paid in money alone. Thus in Domesday we read of the king's manor of Cheddar, after the usual description of the ploughlands, * VII gablatores reddunt XVII solidos * (i. 87) : that is to say that there were seven tenants who held their lands by payment of money-rent {gablum) amounting to seventeen shillings.* Again, passing from Somerset to Kent, we find the 'gablum rusticorum' mentioned (i. 12 b) among the sources of revenue in a manor belonging to St. Peter's of Ghent. These expressions should be compared with tlie entry in the Liber Niger of Peterborough {circ. 1125) that, at Col- lingham, 20 villeins * reddunt de gabulo^er annum IIII libras.' Let us now turn to another record, the Kentish Domesday of the Church of Canterbury. I would observe in doing so that it is most desirable that the date of this as well as of the other earliest Surveys should be ascertained as exactly as possible. In this case it is stated by the learned author of the Report on the Chapter Records (8th Report Hist. MSS. i. 315 b), that this Survey was ' compiled, apparently, immedi- • See also my notes in the Historical Review on Mr. VinogradafTs distinction between * gafol ' and * mol.' DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 135 ately zSt&cMic Domesday Domini Regis I and again that * internal evidence indicates that the compilation was made near the be- ginning of the twelfth century.' It will be seen that there is, perhaps, if I may venture to say so, a slight discrepancy be- tween these two statements. Now the valuable feature of this Survey, though it is not mentioned in the Report, appears to me to be this. In the case of Edesham, which is given as a specimen, the Exchequer Domesday merely states that the manor renders (' reddit *) 46/. \6s, 4^! (for the 26s. 4^. of the Report is an error), whereas the Kentish Domesday gives us the two constituents of this total, stating that it is worth (' valet *) 30/. ' de firma,' and * de gablo reddit * 16/. 16^. 4^. I need scarcely point out how important a bearing this passage has on the vexed question of what are known as Domesday * values.* To understand it aright we must bear in mind that it was the favourite practice of monastic bodies to let out their manors ' ad firmam ' to a * firmarius,' who paid them a fixed annual sum. But we further learn from the Burton Cartulary, which I select on account of its early date, that it was not unusual to except certain sources of profit from the firma, and to receive their income separately. Thus Eadric held Bran- stone * ad firmam ' from the Abbot of Burton at 5/. a year, ' preter lucum et haias et preter terram quae fuit Ormi et preter terram quae fuit Tracemusche, quae omnia retinuit Abbas in manu sua ' (p. 19). So too Godric and Wulfric held Leigh ' ad firmam ' at 5/. a year, but * praeter haec, extra firmam eorum ' was a tenant who paid his rent separately. This may serve to illustrate a point insufficiently, if at all, understood — namely, that the firma need by no means, in towns, have always in- cluded every source of revenue. For instance, at Colchester we are told of one payment * hoc totum jacet ad firmam regis,' of a second * hoc pertinent {sic\ ad firmam regis,* but of a third *hoc non est ad firmam ' (ii. 107). That is to say, as I understand, that the first two were, but the third was not, 136 DANECELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY among those sources of revenue which were compounded for in the firma. It may perhaps be mentioned, while on the subject, that the firma of Colchester included the profits arising from the monetarii and from the King's Wood. When there ceased to be monetarii and when the king took his wood into his own hands, ^^ firma was reduced pro rata for each. Thus the firma burgi may be looked on as, to some extent, the aggregate of several yfrw^. But now let us approach the towns in Domesday in the light of these conclusions, bearing in mind my explanation of gablum as the rent arising from the tenants of burgages within the king's dominium. In Southampton we have a good case in point : In Burgo de Hantune habet rex in dominio quater xx homines iiii minus qui reddunt vii libras de gablo terre et totidem reddi- derunt T.R.E. Horum xxvii reddunt quisque viii denarios. Duo vero XII denarios, et alii l numero reddunt quisque vi denarios (L 52). That is to say : In the borough of Southampton the king has in his dominium 76 men who pay him seven pounds in landgable, and paid the same amount T.R.E. 27 of these pay 8^. each, two pay 12^., and fifty others 6^. each. How Domesday works out its sum I will not attempt to say. I am only here concerned with its language. Again, take Pevensey as a typical case : — In Burgo Pevenesel T.R.E. fuerunt xxiiii burgenses in dominio regis et reddebant de gablo xiiii solidos et vi denarios. De theloneo xx solidos. De portu xxxv solidos. De pastura vii solidos et 111 denarios (i. 20 b). Here we have a passage of singular clearness. At Pevensey the Confessor had in his dominium 24 burgesses paying him I4f. 6d, a year in gafol, that is in burgage rents (being an average of T\d. apiece), 20s. for market dues, 35^. for harbour DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 137 dues, and 7s. $d. for their use of the so-called common pasture, for which, as at Oxford, we must not forget, they had to pay their lord: The other payments were, I take it, evidently of the nature, severally, oi firmly as the port dues and market dues must have varied from year to year. Notice that besides these 24 burgesses in dotninio, there were 28 others belonging to four other lords. Now the special interest of this case is that the Conqueror had transferred to his half-brother, the Count of Mortaine, all the rights which he held, as lord, in Pevensey, that is, the dominium with its appendages. Thus, the lord of that Oominium was now a subject But the pro- fits of that dominium having been received by the Confessor, not as king but as lord, the same seigneurial dues would now be received by his successor. Accordingly we find the Count in receipt of the gablum (or bui^age-rent) in that dominium. And so rapidly had Pevensey increased, in consequence, I presume, of the increased traffic with Normandy consequent on the Conquest, and of the Count's residence at the castle, that the 25 burgesses in the dominium of the Confessor (27 when it was granted to the Count) were now represented by 60, paying not I4f. 6rf., but 39J. ' de gablo.* Notice that this represents an average burgage rent of y\d. as against 7\d. under the Confessor, a curiously close approximation, as it also is to the amount at Southampton. The Tkeloneum^ or market dues, had increased in proportion — namely, from 35^. to 4/., the amount in each case representing, I take it, a com- position. Nor was this all, for the holders of burgages outside the dominium had increased from 28 to 51, the list being headed by the eight burgages which paid their rents (averaging ^\d, each) to the monks of Mortaine. Perhaps the most in- structive passage on this subject in Domesday is that which describes the ' gablum * of the various estates in Wallingford (i. 56-7). On King Edward's ' dominium * there stood 276 •hagae reddentes XI libras de geldo,' an average of ()\d. 138 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY The Bishop held twenty-seven, paying him twenty-five shillings, an average of i id. In this case all the rents are recorded with exceptional care, some of the houses being described as ' hags ' and some as ' masurs/ I have been thus particular in dealing with these two cases, because they enable us to understand the language in which Domesday refers to other towns, of which the account is not so full. Thus when we read that T.R.E. Lewes ' reddebat Vi libras et nil solidos et HI obolos de gablo et de theloneo ' (i. 26), or that T.R.E. * reddebat Oxeneford pro theloneo et gablo et aliis omnibus consuetudinibus per annum,* etc. etc. (1. 154), we recognise the * theloneum ' and the * gablum * of Pevensey, and know that the latter was the amount of the burgage rents from the dominium. Again, turn to Huntingdon (i. 203). * De toto hoc burgo exibat T.R.E. de landgablo X librae.* This, as in the other cases, refers exclusively to the burgage-rents. Accordingly we read *De hoc censu remanet nunc super XX mansiones ubi castrum est XVI solidi et Vlii denarii.* Referring to the preceding column, we find the same fact alluded to— namely, that these 20 houses had stood on the ground now occupied by the castle, and had paid annually i6j. 8^/. ' ad firmam regis * : that is, you will perceive, an average rent of lorf. each. But the special importance of the Survey of Huntingdon, as bearing upon borough finance in Domesday, is this : on the one hand, here alone in the Survey, we meet with the expression y?rw^a burgi ; on the other, we can, fortu- nately, in the case of the borough, speak with absolute certainty not only of the amount of its total payments, but also of each constituent factor. These factors were as follows : Landgable . Firma Burgi Borough Mill 3 Monetarii Total . £10 30 3 2 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 139 Now the earl received one third of each of these four sources of profit. Thus he took 15/., leading the king 30/. But the point that I want you to observe is that the so-called firtna burgi is not, as we have always been taught to believe, a composition for the total profits of the town, but only in this case, for some di the profits. I have already drawn at- tention, you may remember, to this important distinction, and I would remind you of that passage in the Kentish Domes- day in which we found the gablum entered as a payment outside, and independent of, ^^firma^ just as we do here at Huntingdon. The account of Leigh, in the Burton Cartulary, with Its * preter hec, extra firmam ' should also be compared with this of Huntingdon. The exception of the gablum from theyfr;«tf burgi is the more remarkable, because that firma has been looked upon as essentially a composition for the gablum. Thus Dr. Stubbs describes the firma burgi as * a rent paid to the crown from the borough,* and proceeds to speak of * the burgage tenants, from whose burgages the rent was originally due, and from which it must, if raised legally, be paid.' * Without taking you through every mention oi gablum in the Domesday towns, I would point out that at Cambridge, as at Huntingdon, the profit arising from the landgavel is esti- mated separately : * De consuetudinibus hujus villae vil librae per annum et de landgable Vil librae et II orae et duo denarii.' Here the 7/. for the consuetudines would doubtless represent ^ firma. Chester, too, I must ask you to glance at. Here we read, among its customs, * Qui ad terminum quod debebat gablum non reddebat X solidis emendabat.' This by-law, as we might term it, imposing a fine of lar. on him who failed to pay up his gafol at the appointed time, should be compared * Though ^^ firma burgi thus at Huntingdon specially excludes that source of revenue from which Dr. Stubbs {ut supra) presumes it to have been essentially raised, it seems to be implied by Domesday that the 10/. for landgable represented a separate composition {firma) for the rents. I40 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY with these doggrel lines, preserved in the ' Diary of Abraham de la Pryme/ as recited by the crier at Scarborough, in a formal Corporation procession : Whay 1 Whay 1 Whay ! » Pay your gavelage, ha ! Between this and Michaelmas-day, Or youll be fined, I say ! This it will be seen exactly reproduces the principle of the Domesday by-law. The form * gavelage ' appears to represent a Latin form, gablagium. We find it again in the same county, under the barbarous corruption 'gasfleage,' in the customs of New alton, printed among the miscellaneous pieces in Hearne's Liber Niger : It is used and granted that every burgess shall give to the lord one tyme in the year a fee-£urm rent for his tenement, the which is called the gasfleage? Returning to Chester, we may notice the fact that from its Domesday gablutn were duly derived the later forms, * the gabell rent,' ' the gabul rentes,' and even, by the combination of this pleonasm with a corruption, * the long-gable rent ' — that is, the landgafol? It may be known to some of you that under the title 'The true Story of the Leicester Inquests,'* I have published a paper on some curious inquests held at Leicester in the thirty-seventh of Henry III., the object of one of which was to determine the origin of the payment to the lord of ' gavel pennies.' So strangely had that origin been al- ready forgotten, that the jurors gravely returned the payment as having originated a century and a half before in a payment from every house of which the gable (gabbis) faced the High » Perhaps, originally, • Oyez, Oyer, Oyez.' * Hearne's Liber Niger ^ p. 803. » Eighth Report Hist, AfSS. App. I. pp. 340, 358 b, 362 b, * Antiquary^ vol. xi. DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY 141 Street ! Though everyone seems to have been imposed upon by this return (which affords an instance of Folk-Etymology as obvious as it is interesting) they have all, you must kindly allow me to add, been fairly outstripped by Mr. Cordy Jeaffreson, who in his glowing Report to the Royal Com- mission, describes this record as revealing to our gaze a glimpse of 'the eleventh century ' in 'a striking picture of the old borough town, with its one main street bordered hy gabled houses ' I But, keeping to the Survey, observe that at Canterbury the king had possessed, T.R.E., 51 burgesses 'reddentes gablum,' whereas, in 1086, he had only 19 'gablum reddentes.* This, though in such striking contrast to the state of things at Pevensey, was clearly the usual experience. As evidence of this the Gloucestershire fragment, attributed to the close of the eleventh century, will be found of special valtfe. In the time of King Edward, we there read, there were at Gloucester 300 * bui^enses in dominio reddentes XVlii libras et X solidos de gablo per annum.' But when this particular Survey was made the 300 gafol'^^y\x\g burgesses had dwindled to 97. We are prepared, it may be added, for this by the Great Survey itself, which also speaks, at Gloucester, of the * dominica terra regis ' and of the * dominium regis in civitate.* At Winchcombe, which is included in the same Survey, the sixty ga/o/'pdiying burgesses in dominio were only reduced to fifty-two. But here, as at Gloucester, it would seem, as we might expect, to have been precisely the most valuable houses on which the crown had lost its gablum. While on the subject, I would observe that this Survey gives us an indica- tion of the relative importance of these two towns, the burgage- rents at Winchcombe averaging i\d., while those at Gloucester the capital of the West, averaged no less than i^. 2\d, Lastly, if we turn to tiie Winton Domesday, another of these early Surveys, we find it describing itself as due to the 142 DANEGELD AND THE FINANCE OF DOMESDAY determination of Henry the First 'scire quid rex Edwardus habuit omnibus modis Wintonie in sua dominio^ and as being * Liber de terris regis reddentibus landgahlum^ etc. etc. Thus here, as at Gloucester and Winchcombe, the gablum (or burgage-rent — ^we might almost term it ground-rent), arising from the houses on the King's dominium, is the special subject of inquiry, and here as there, we find that its payment had been widely neglected. I hope I have now made good my point — namely, that gablum was not a tax, but was a payment of the nature of rent, which, in towns, was received by the king as lord from the burgages within his dominium. It is a rash thing to differ from Dr. Stubbs, even in the smallest detail, but here, at least, I think we stand on sure ground. Gneist, I may add, is at one with me on the point, for he distinctly terms it an error to describe the king's gafol as a tax, although it has been so regarded, he observes, by Kemble and others. Postscript. — Since the above was in type, Mr. W. H. Stevenson has written : *■ Mr. Round is too hasty in charging Kemble and Dr. Stubbs with being in error in speaking of gafol as a tax * {^Historical Review , ii. 336). A perusal of my case will show, I hope, that his criticism is without warrant. By Canon ISAAC TAYLOR, M.A., LL.D., Litt. D. General speculations as to the interpretation of the Domes- day record require to be tested over limited areas by those who possess personal knowledge of the localities. For several reasons the East Riding of Yorkshire is a district which offers special advantages for such an inquiry. The Domesday record is presented in a very simple form. At the time of the Survey, a great part of the district lay waste, depopulated by the terrible devastation of the North. The Danish conquest had previously swept away the ancient system of hide geldation. The hide, that fertile source of ambiguity, having disappeared, the record is confined, for the most part, to the number of ploughlands, of possible and actual ploughs, and the extent of meadow and of pasture. Owing to the geological structure of the district, the ancient areas of arable, of hill pasture, and of marshland are clearly marked and easily recognisable. Moreover, there were no extensive woodlands, whose clearance has elsewhere greatly altered the agricultural conditions and the external aspect of the country. In few districts have the primitive features of the country been so little disturbed by the hand of man. The land has not been defaced by mining or manufacturing industries ; with the exception of one seaport, there are no great modern 144 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH towns, with encroaching suburbs to transform and disfigure the neighbouring villages. The population is sparse and stationary, the houses are not, as in some counties, dotted here and there over the land in clearings from the forest, but, as in the champaign districts of France and Germany, the dwellings — both cottages and farmhouses — are collected in villages and hamlets, on the same spots where available springs of water caused them to be originally fixed. The general inclosure of the county has only been effected in comparatively recent times, so that within the memory of persons now living, it was possible to cross the Riding on horseback from west to east over the open ground. In many instances the uninclosed arable fields remained, in the reign of George III., as they were in the reign of William the Bastard, and thus in numerous townships it is possible to recover the boundaries and extent of the arable, the pratum, and the outlying common pastures, as described by the Domesday Commissioners. The survival of these archaic features greatly facilitates the solution of certain Domesday problems. In the East Riding the task of investigating the significance of the Domesday Survey is thus presented under the simplest conditions, free from complications arising either from the character of the record, from geographical difficulties, or from modern transformations of the features of the country. We have, in the East Riding, a repetition, on a large scale, of those favourable conditions which, in the neighbourhood of Hitchin, enabled Mr. Seebohm to throw such a brilliant light on the early village communities of England, but with the important difference that we are dealing with communities, not of Saxons, but of Danes and Angles. A fundamental fact which has to be borne in mind is the former existence of two different systems of agriculture. The simpler of the two, and doubtless the most ancient, was the two-field system, in which the whole arable of the township THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 145 lay in two fields or shifts, one field being fallowed every year and fed over by the cattle of the community, while the other field was in tillage, half of it being ploughed in winter, and the other half in Lent. The other system was the three-field shift, in which the arable lay in three nearly equal fields, one for fallow, one for winter tillage, and the third for spring tillage. Each tenant of the manor had corresponding strips in all three fields. Thus in two-field manors half of the arable was con- stantly in tillage, while in three field manors two-thirds was always tilled. In the south of England, to which Mr. Seebohm's investi- gations were confined, the three-field shift seems to have been nearly universal, and he has consequently overlooked the im- portant differences arising from the two systems of agriculture. In Derbyshire the two-field system prevailed, while in the East Riding of Yorkshire we find both systems were practised, one in Holdemess and the other on the Wolds, and we have therefore a unique opportunity of discovering how they were noted in the Domesday record. The chief object of the present paper is to discover how the t^vo-field and three-field manors may be recognised in the Domesday entries, and to show how the distinction affects the interpretation of the Domesday land measures. All over the East Riding the six-inch Ordnance Map still testifies to the former existence and extent of these open arable fields.' Their names are found upon the map, and in numerous instances they enable us to determine whether the township was cultivated on the two-field or the three-field shift * At the end of the last century half or more than half of Huntingdonshire, Berkshire, and Wilts were in open fields, as were 50,000 acres in Warwickshire, 100 parishes in Oxfordshire, and 89 in Northamptonshire (Nasse, Agricultural Communitus of the Middle Agts^ p. 6). In 1 557 Tusser describes Essex and Suffolk as almost wholly inclosed, while the common-field system, usually in a three- field shift, and exceptionally in a two-field shift, prevailed in Leicestershire, Nor- folk, and Cambridgeshire. lb, p. 84. VOL. L L 146 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH These ' fields * usually take their name from some local peculiarity — from the nature of the soil, as Clay Field, Sand Field, or Gravel Field ; from some building, as Mill Field or Church Field ; from distance, as Far Field, Near Field, or Out Field ; or more commonly from their position in relation to the village, as East Field, North Field, or Town End Field. In eighteen of the two-field townships, Lisset, Beeford, Ulrome, Dringhoe, Lund, Aldbrough, East Newton, Preston, Coniston, Danthorpe, Elstemwick, Burton Pidsea, Laxton, Oin'thome, Hollym, Holmpton, Patrington, and Kilnsea, the two fields are called North Field and South Field. In six- teen townships, Foston, Riston, Sigglesthome, Everthorpc, Heslerton, Easington, SkeflRing, Out Newton Weeton, Wel- wick, Ryhill, Roos, Tunstall, Sproatley, South Coates, and Arnold, they are called East Field and West Field. We find High Field and Low Field at Bessingby and Scaggle- thorpe ; and Gravel Field and Clay Field at Catwick. Among the three-field townships we have the names East Field, West Field, and North Field at Fridaythorpe, Button- Cranswick, Riccall, and Hotham ; we have East Field, West Field, and South Field at Wawne ; we have North Field, South Field, and West Field at Bishop Wilton, Garton-on-the- Wolds, Skidby, and Swanland ; we have East Field, West Field, and Middle Field at Elmswell, Driflield, and Burton Agnes ; North Field, South Field, and Middle Field at Mappleton, and Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. At Wharram-le- Street we find North Field, South Fields and Town End Field ; we have West Field, North Field, and Low Field at Willerby and Hessle. At Millington the names are In Field, Near Out Field, and Far Out Field ; at Tibthorpe, In Field, High Field, and Low Field ; at Kirkbum, In Field, Out Field, and High Field ; at Wilberfoss, Mill Field, Town End Field, and Far Field ; at Shipton, Clay Field, Sand Field, and South Field ; at Brandsburton, Sand Field, West Field, and East THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 147 Field ; and at Hemingbrough, Mill Field, Chapel Field, and North Field. These names (and scores of others could be adduced) prove that the ancient common-field system, either in the two-field or the three-field shift, survived in the East Riding down to com- paratively recent times. In Burton Agnes, Haisthorpe, and Rowlston it was in force only forty years ago. At Tottemhoe near Dunstable it existed last year, being put an end to by the owner of the soil mainly on account of the disputes to which it gave rise among the tenants. The existence of the common- field system of agriculture is recorded in the Preambles to many of the Inclosure Acts passed during the reign of George III. At Brandsburton the agreement between the landowners, made in 1632, recites that in the common arable fields of Brands- burton ' every man's land lay intermixed in several places and quantitys together,' and that ' one of the said fields used to be sowed one year, and the other field another year.' * In 1766, at Elstemwick, the oxgangs contained 12 acres in each arable field, and 4 acres of meadow ground in the Ings. At Keyingham each oxgang consisted of 10 acres in each arable field, 4 acres in the Ings, 4 acres in each Carr, and 3 roods being balks and marstalls in the fields. At Etton an ancient document recites that ' each oxgang contains 12 acres always upon plough. The whole oxgang lies in three different fields, one of which is always fallowed, the others always in crop.' Mr. Seebohm has shown that the open arable field system has come down to us from the remotest times of English settlement. It must therefore have existed at the time of the Domesday Survey, and it would be strange if we could find no traces of it in that record. I shall now endeavour to show that the open arable field system of tillage is the master key for the interpretation of Domesday, that Domesday assumes its existence throughout, ' Poulson's Holdemess^ vol. i. p. 270. L 2 148 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH and that some of the chief difficulties that have beset Domes- day commentators have arisen from ignorance of this funda- mental fact of ancient land tenure, and of the course of agri- culture which resulted from it. When this is once recognised, as it has been by Mr. Seebohm and Mr. Pell, some of the greatest obscurities of the Domesday record disappear as if by magic. Domesday does not expressly refer to the open field system. If it were universal, or nearly so, it would naturally be tacitly assumed in the record. We ought to be able to detect it, and to distinguish, by some simple test, between two-field and three-field manors, as the number of fields formed an obvious distinction. Now the Ordnance Map, as we have seen, shows that, with certain exceptions hereafter to be explained, a large number of the East Riding townships, before the Inclosure Acts, lay in open arable fields, either two or three in number. The same arrangement of the arable must have existed at the time of the Norman Conquest Hence the first question to be solved is this : does the East Riding Domesday present any corresponding indications as to whether in these townships the land lay in a two-field or a three-field shift ? In the Yorkshire Domesday the carucate or ploughland takes the place of the hide of the Southern counties. The entries in an overwhelming number of cases follow one almost invariable type. We are told that in such a place * there are so many ploughlands to be taxed,' and ' there is land to so many ploughs ' ; or, • there may be so many ploughs.* For instance : In Brunebi adgeldum quatuor carucatcB. Terra ad quatuor carucas. In Lont ad geldum duodecint carucatce, et sex carttca possunt esse. Our first business is to determine the significance of such THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 149 entries. Sir Henry Ellis is plainly wrong in his interpretation. He says (' General Introduction to Domesday/ p. xlix) : * we have frequent intimations that the land could maintain more ploughs — ^that is, was capable of improvement* In Yorkshire, he continues, 'entries of this description are extremely numerous.' These entries, he adds, ' are perhaps to be ascribed to the slow recovery of Yorkshire from devastation.' The statement that in a certain manor, Lund for instance, ' there are twelve ploughlands to be taxed,' and ' there may be six ploughs,' or that ' there is land to six ploughs,' does not mean, as Sir H. Ellis supposes, that there were twelve plough- lands under plough, and that six more might be brought into cultivation, but it means that six ploughs were sufficient to till the twelve ploughlands. This is proved by the occasional alternative use of other phrases. For instance : Sex carucatcBy quas possunt arare tres caruca. Inter omnes suntadgeldum Ix carucatce in quibus possunt esse XXXV carucce. Inter omnes xiiii carucatce^ et viii carucce possunt arare. Sunt V carucattE terra ad geldum^ et totident ad arandum. These equivalent expressions prove that the number of carucaUe is the fiscal area, while the number oi carucce %\y^^ the tillage area. If any further disproof of Sir H. Ellis's theorj' be required, it is found in the significant fact that in a large number of cases the number of geldable carucates bears A FIXED PRO- PORTION to the number of ploughs. In Holdemess, as a rule, the number of ploughs is equal to the number of carucates, while on the Wolds, as a rule, the number of ploughs is half the number of carucates. I will first take a few instances of manors in which the number of carucates is equal to the number of ploughs. They are not picked cases, but follow one another consecutively on ISO THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH p. liiL of the Facsimile of the Yorkshire Domesday. They are all manors which were held by Drogo, in Holdemess. Number of NnmlMr of Carucates Ploughs Keyingham 8 8 Ottringham 4 4 Newiomc s^ 5 Rimswell 5^ S Waxham 2 2 Roammere i| l4 Holmpton 8 8 Newton 5 6 Rise 2> 2 Thorpe 3 3 LiMett 3 3 Beeford 12 12 Soke of Beeford 12^ 12^ Frodin^^uun la 12 Barmston 8 8 Totals gii 9if I will next take, from p. vii., some consecutive entries relating to the Wolds. Here the number of carucates is double the number of ploughs. Number of Number of Camcetes Ploughs Rilltngton a i Mennythorpe 2 i Eddlethorpe 4 2 Burythorpe 2 I Kirby Underdale 4^ 2 Uncleby 2 i . Painsthorpe 4 2 North Grimston 4 2 Wharram Percy 8 4 Fridaythorpe i | Totals 33J 16} Thus the number of carucates is either equal to the number of ploughs, or else double. In the East Riding, in manors where the number of ploughs and carucates is stated, there are eighty-one cases, chiefly in Holdemess, where the number of ploughs is exactly equal to the number of carucates, and there are 128 cases, THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 151 chiefly in the Wolds, where the number of carucates is exactly double the number of ploughs. In addition to these 209 manors in which the rule is exactly observed, there are also 145 townships in which, as in several of the foregoing cases, the difference is so trifling that the rule practically holds good. These are mostly where several berewicks are lumped together ; so that we are unable to ascertain the exact proportion of ploughlands to ploughs in each. I will first give some instances where the carucates are nearly equal in number to the ploughs, and then some where they are nearly double. Cases of Approximate Equality, Number of Carucates Number of Ploughs Diveivence from the rule In the Soke of Mappleton, 1 1 berewicks . „ Aldbrough, 14 berewicks . „ Burstwick, 8 berewicks . ,, Patrington, 4 berewicks . Totals 4lf 41 20 3Sl 43 40 12 20 35 +* -I iSoi 149 -li Cases where they are nearly double. Number of Carucates Number of Ploughs Divergence In the Soke of Bridlington, 14 berewicks . „ Langton and 5 berewicks . „ Welton and 4 berewicks . „ Wartcr and 3 berewicks . „ Driffield and 4 berewicks . », Kelk and 2 berewicks Totals 58* 39 39 29 23 13 30 20 20 15 12 7 + ; + • + + • + ■ + 201* 104 + 3t In these lists, which are by no means exhaustive, but might easily be enlarged, there are eighty townships in which the want of exact conformity to the rule is so small as to be almost inappreciable, and even this trifling irregularity would probably in most cases disappear if the number of ploughs 152 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH and ploughlands were given separately, instead of collectively. Altogether, there are upwards of 350 manors and sokes in the Kast Riding in which the number of canicates is either equal or very nearly equal, to the number of ploughs, or else double or vtxy nearly double. The inquiry might be extended to Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, and the other Ridings of Yorkshire, with results nearly as striking. It is quite incredible that these fixed proportions of ploughs to carucates can be accidental. There must be a cause to explain the result. Mr. Eyton's theory that some persons had their lands favourably carucated— that is, that they were taxed upon a number of carucates less than those actually in cultivation — affords no sufficient explanation. As far as the East Riding goes, the number of geldable carucates, when it is not equal to the number of ploughs, is not less than the number of ploughs, as the theory would require, but double or nearly double. Nor will the theory hold that the geldable carucates referred to the possible arable, and the ploughs to the arable actually under cultivation; or the converse theory of Sir H. Ellis, that the number of carucates refers to the number under plough, while the number of ploughs represents the land that might be brought into cultivation. That in 150 manors in the East Riding precisely two-thirds of the possible arable was tilled, and precisely one-third had gone out of cultivation owing to William's devastation of the North, is quite incredible. Did William order every third plough to be destroyed, and every third villan to be slain ? Even this extravagant supposition is excluded by the fact that these returns as to the relative numbers of ploughs and carucates usually refer to the state pf things in the time of King Edward, and not at the time of the Survey. Moreover, the number of ploughs actually on the land is frequently stated, and usually differs very materially from the number THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 153 of possible ploughs. For instance at Ferriby we learn that * there were ten carucates ctd geldum^ and land to five ploughs. There are now three ploughs.' Besides, over extensive areas, the proportions are curiously uniform. On the Wolds, in a large number of cases, the number of carucates is double, or nearly double, the number of ploughs, while in Holderness, with a few exceptions, the rule of equality prevails. Plainly, we must seek for an explanation of an entirely different nature, we must try and discover some general law which will apply universally. Is it difference of soil ? It is true that Holderness is a level plain overspread with glacial drift, the subsoil being heavy clay, while the Wolds are rolling hills of chalk, with a thin covering of light soil. But we can hardly assume that the clay of Holderness was exactly twice as difficult to till as the chalk of the Wolds. Even if this were the case there are curious exceptions which dispose of this hypothesis. There are Wold manors where the Holderness rule prevails, and Holderness manors where the Wold rule prevails. For an example we may take the manors belonging to Odo Ar- balistarius, which are given on p. Ixiv. of the Facsimile, None of them are in Holderness, and they are mostly on the Wolds, and yet the number of carucates is exactly equal to the number of ploughs, as in Holderness. We have Number of Namber of Carncates Ploughs ^ugthorpe 4 4 Bttiythorpe 2 2 Youlthorpe 4 4 Fridaythorpe 18 18 Raisthorpe 2 2 Swaylhorpe 9 9 Skirpenbeck 5) 5J Grimston 4| 4| Kilham 7 7 Totals . 56! 56^ 154 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH Now in some of these townships (viz. Fridaythorpe, North Grimston, and Burythorpe) I have already cited manors which belonged, not to Odo Arbalistarius, but to the king, in which the other rule prevails, the number of carucates being double the number of ploughs. Vice versa^ we may take manors of the Archbishop situate in Holdemess, and we find that they conform, not to the local rule of the equality of ploughs and carucates, which prevails in Drc^o's manors, but the rule which prevails in the manors of the Archbishop situate elsewhere. Thus, in Eske, a Holdemess manor of the Archbishop, there were two carucates, and land to one plough ; in Tickton, twelve oxgangs, and land to six oxen ; and in Wawne 2^ carucates, and land to one plough. It is evident that the ratio depends, not on local situation, or on the nature of the soil, but on some rule or custom of the manor, or on the method of tillage. The true explanation cannot fail to suggest itself when once the problem is thus stated. We have already seen, from an examination of the Ordnance Map, that the townships of the East Riding may be divided into two classes — those in which the arable lay in two fields, and those in which it lay in three. With the aid of Domesday we may also divide the East Riding manors into two classes — those in which the number of carucates equals the number of ploughs, and those in which it is double. The only question which remains to be answered is this : Do these two classifications agree or do they not ? If they agree the mathematical chances are overwhelming that we have found the explanation we are seeking — that we have, in fact, discovered a test by which the two-field manors in Domesday can be distinguished from the three-field manors. I have gone through the six-inch Ordnance Map of the East Riding, and made complete lists of those townships in THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 155 which the names of the open arable fields are preserved so perfectly as to show which of them were divided into two fields, and which into three fields. I have also gone through the Domesday returns, making a list of those townships in which the number of carucates was equal to the number of ploughs, and another of those in which the carucates are double the ploughs. The lists themselves are too long for insertion, but the summary of the results of the inquiiy seems to me to be conclusive. There are 50 townships as to which the map shows plainly that the land lay in two fields, and in 44 of these we find from Domesday that the number of carucates was equal to the number of ploughs. In the remainder the record is defective, usually owing to the number of ploughs not being stated. Again, there are 52 townships in which the map shows three fields, and in 48 of these we learn from Domesday that the number of carucates was approximately double the number of ploughs. Thus there are 102 townships in which the Ordnance Map enables us to discover the number of the ancient common fields, and in 92 of these the correspondence holds good ; and I have been able to add a few more from older maps and surveys. For instance, at Langton, a survey which must be earlier than 16 1 7 shows that there were then three fields. East Field, Middle Field and West Field, the names of which have now been for- gotten. As far as the evidence is in existence it may be af- firmed that there are at least 100 townships in the East Riding in which the rule prevails. Briefly to sum up the argument of the preceding pages, the map determines, in about one hundred townships, the former existence of the two-field or the three-field culture ; Domesday frequently states that the number of ploughlands was either equal to the number of ploughs or else double. These two classifications of East Riding townships practically 156 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH agree. - Where there are two fields the number of Domesday ploughlands is equal to the number of ploughs ; where there are three, the ploughlands are double the ploughs. The agreement cannot be accidental The inference is irresistible, the one fact must be the explanation of the other. Exceptio probat regulam. There is a remarkable case where the rule apparently fails.* On p. iv. of the Facsimile we read that in the manor of Burton Agnes, sunt ad geldum xxv carucatce terra^ quas possunt arare xv cartica. The proportion of ploughlands to ploughs is neither equal nor double, but as 5 to 3. This is anomalous. The rule fails. But, when we examine more narrowly, the rule is curiously confirmed. The Domes- day manor consisted of Burton, with its three berewicks of Grensmore, Harpham, and Boythorpe. The text does not allot the number of carucates to each township, but if we turn to p. Ixxxvii, we find, in the index to the East Riding Domes- day, that the 25 carucates were apportioned thus : Burton, 12 ; Grensmore, 4 ; Harpham, 4 ; Boythorpe, 5. Number of Fields Number of Carucates Number of Ploughs Burton Grensmore . Harpham . Boythorpe . Totals 3 3 3 3 12 4 4 5 6 2 2 5 — 25 15 The map shows that Burton, Grensmore, and Harpham which are contiguous townships, had, each of them, three fields, whereas at Boythorpe, which lies detached in another hundred, among two-field manors, there were only two fields, now called Boythorpe Field North side and Boythorpe Field * Some other exceptions which I have discovered seem also to confirm the rule. In some townships there were two manors, one worked on a two-field, and the other on a three-field shift. Occasionally the map shows one large field, and two small ones which seem to have been worked together as a single field. Some cases in which the rule fails are discussed further on. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 157 South side. If, as in the foregoing table, we apportion the ploughs to the carucates according to the rule, we get a result which agrees with the Domesday statement.^ We now see the reason of the prevailing ratios of carucates to ploughs. It depended on the system of tills^e. When the land lay in two fields — that is, when half the land was always in fallow — the number of ploughs was normally equal to the number of carucates. When the land lay in three fields, that is, when only one-third was always in fallow, the number of ploughs was normally one^half the number of carucates. But this result is exactly the opposite of what we should expect If two-thirds of the whole arable was annually tilled, it would surely require a larger proportionate number of ploughs than if only one-half were annually tilled, whereas we find the number is much smaller, only one-half as many ploughs being required. The explanation of this seeming anomaly lies in an im- portant and novel proposition, which I hope to establish. The proposition is this : The geldable carucate of Domesday does not signify what the carucate usually signifies in other early documents. The carucata ad geldum is not, as commonly stated by Domesday commentators, the quantity of land ploughed in each year by one plough, but it is the quantity tilled in one year IN ONE ARABLE FIELD by one plough. With a two-field shift, since only one field was in tillage in any one year, the land tilled in the year by one plough would > We may thus explain a not unfrequent anomaly, where the ratio of carucates and ploughs is as 3 to 2. Two carucates in three fields would require one plough, and one carucate in two fields would also require one plough, giving a total of three carucates and two ploughs. In such cases there may originally have heen two manors in the same township, or the land may have been of unequal quality, the heavy land being worked on a two-field shift and the light land on a three- field shift. Other exceptional cases may be due to a change from a two-field to a three-field shift in post- Domesday times. There are three or four cases in the East Riding where the number of ploughs exceeds the number of carucates. This is more common in other counties, and in some instances, as will presently be shown, arose from the adoption of a system of tillage unsuited to the soil. 158 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH be the same as the quantity tilled by one plough in one field. Here the arable carucate and the geldable carucate are the same. Hence in two-field manors the number of ploughs is equal to the number of geldable carucates* But with a three- field shift, the autumn tillage in one field and the Lent tillage in another by the same plough would each count as a geldable carucate, and hence the number of carucates ad geldum would be double the number of carucates ad arandum — that is, it would be double the number of ploughs. We have now arrived at a theoretical solution of the great- est difficulty which has perplexed Domesday commentators ; but as yet we have obtained only ratios. It still remains to be seen whether any trustworthy results as to the absolute acreage of the carucata ad geldum^ and of the terra ad unam carucam are attainable. It is, however, plain that the area of the carucate would differ in three-field and in two-field manors : in one case it was half, and in the other the whole of the tillage of the plough. I will first examine some of the documentary evidence as to the size of the carucate, and then proceed to adduce actual measures in East Riding townships. The earliest, and also the most definite authority, in fact the only evidence of supreme importance, is the statement in an anonymous work which goes by the name of Fleta, written in the reign of Edward L, about two hundred years after Domesday was compiled. Fleta tells us that if the land lay in three common fields, the carucate contained i8o acres, sixty for winter tillage, sixty for Lent tillage, and sixty for fallow ; but if it lay in two fields, then the carucate contained i6o acres, eighty for fallow, and eighty for winter and Lent tillage.* * It may be as well to quote the exact words : —' Item certificetur in primo ad- ventu suo de custagiis carucarum in quocunque manerio quae sciri poterunt per hanc rationem, ut terrse sint tripartita, tunc nonies xx acrae faciunt canicatam, eo quod \ THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 159 By means of this authoritative statement it becomes pos- sible to reconcile a great number of incidental notices as to the area of the carucate, and its eighth part, the bovate, notices which have seemed to be so hopelessly at variance, that com- mentators, in despair, have come to the conclusion that the chief Domesday land measures denoted no fixed areas, but varied in different places.' Taking Fleta's account as our guide, we now see that, in a three-field manor, the Domesday carucata ad geldutn should be sixty acres; the arable or tillage carucate, the terra ad unam carucam^ 120 acres ; and the whole carucate, including the idle shift, €ui warectandum, 180 acres. By the Anglicus nutnems, or great hundred of six score, these figures would be respec- tively 72, 144, and 216 acres. In a two-field manor, both the geldable and the arable carucate should be eighty acres, and the whole carucate, including the idle shift, 160 acres ; figures which by the great hundred would be 96 and 192 acres. Since eight Domesday bovates make one carucate,* we should also expect to meet with bovates of one-eighth of these areas, viz. of 7^, 15, 22^, 9, 18, 27, 10, 20, 12, and 24 acres, according as they were reckoned in one or more fields, in two-field or three-field manors, and by the Norman or the English score.' There are numerous incidental notices of the areas of Iz in hyeme, Ix in quadragesima, et Ix in arstate pro warecto debent exarari. De tenis vero bipartitis, debent ad carucani octies xx acrae computari, ut medietas pro warecto habeatur, et medietas alia in hyeme et quadragesima seminetur.* Fleta, lib. 2. cap. 72, De Officio communis Senescalli, §§ 4 and 5. ' Sec Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, pp. xlvii., xlviii. Sir H. Ellis comes to the conclusion that * the truth seems to be ' that the Domesday land measures 'contained no certain number of acres, but varied according to different places.* Mr. Eyton's carucates vary from 244 to i,cxx> acres. Mr. Kemble argues that the hide was not more than 40 acres. Canon Greenwell thinks the land measures * varied with the nature of the soil,' and Canon Raine considers they were * some- what uncertain.' » See Appendix, Note A. ' I have discussed the size of the Bovate in an article in Notes and Queries^ 7th Series, vol. ii. p. 481. x6o THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH carucates and bovates which do actually conform to these figures, which are those we should theoretically expect These notices go back to a period 260 years before Domesday was compiled, and come down to comparatively recent times. In an Anglo-Saxon charter' belonging to about 958 A.D., iElfgdr bequeaths a hide of 120 acres. This would be the tilled area of a hide of i8c acres in a three-field manor. In another and earlier charter,* we have in the year 825 a donation to St Guthlac of manerium meum de Boston, cum quatuor carucatis terra arabilis^ continentes in longitudine octo quarmtmas, et octo quarentenas in latitud^ne. This would give 64 square quarentenes, which, at ten acres each, would amount to 640 acres, or 160 acres for each carucatc; This would be the whole arable in both fields of a two-field manor. The length and breadth would of course include the fallow as well as the tilled field.' The importance of this evidence is obvious. It proves that the normal size of the carucate in two-field and three- field manors, a century or two before the Conquest, was the same as it was in Fleta's time, two hundred years after Domes- day was compiled. It is remarkable that there is only one direct statement in Domesday Book itself, from which the area of the carucate can be inferred. This passage, which has been repeatedly quoted, occurs on the second folio of the Kent Domesday. In communi terra Sti. Martini sunt CCCC^ acrce et dimid. qfue fiunt II solinos et dimid. The Kentish ploughland or ' sulung ' > Codex Diplomaticus, No. 1222 (vol. vi. p. 11). » Cod, DipL Nos. 221, 233, vol. i. pp. 286, 306. Kemble marks these charters as doubtful, but this does not affect their value for our purpose. ■ The charters, Nos. 213, 233, also mention a plot of ground at Langtoft 15 quarentenes long, and 9 broad, containing 6 carucates. This would give 22 1 square quarentenes, i,e. 225 acres, to the carucate, whereas the carucate of 180 acres by the great hundred would amount only to 216 acres. If the land was irregular in shape, and the greatest length and breadth were taken, as is usually the case in Domesday, the difference would be explained, or possibly roadways may be included. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH i6i is the English equivalent of the carucata of the Danish shires.^ Its area was the same, for if 2\ sulungs contain 450 acres, one sulung would contain 180 acres ; or a carucate reckoned in all three fields of a three-field manor. The post Domesday evidence which bears most nearly on the Yorkshire Domesday is the Boldon Book of Durham, which contains a survey, made in 1183, of the manors belong- ing to the See of Durham. It is therefore later by less than a century than Domesday Book, and unlike the other early surveys, the Liber Niger of Peterborough, and the Domesday of St Paul, it deals with northern lands where the carucate takes the place of the southern hide. In the Boldon Book, the size of a carucate is only once expressly stated, but the size of others can be inferred from the number of scatpennies paid, while in numerous instances the acreage of bovates is stated or implied, and since eight bovates normally constituted a carucate, the acreage of the corresponding carucates can be readily computed. In the Boldon Book, the acreage of 1,659 holdings is g^iven directly or indirectly, and all of them, without exception, accord with Fleta's statement as to the area of the carucate. The three- field shift seems to have generally prevailed, as there are 1,238 holdings in which it is implied, 1,222 by the small hundred, giving carucates of 60 acres, and 16 by the great hundred, giving carucates of 72 acres. When the land lay in the more primitive two-field shift, the older numeration was usually adopted, as there are only 23 holdings implying caru- cates of 80 acres, and 230 implying carucates of 96 acres, or 80 by the great hundred. There are 168 holdings where the * Solini velsolina suntet carrucaia, Ducange, s. v. ScHnum, We read also in the Register of Battle Abbey, of sepiem swuHngarum^ id est hidarum, and in a Canterbury Charter Terra irium arairarum guam CanHamdieunt three SwolHnjpu, £llis, Introduction^ p. xlix. VOL. I. M i62 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH land seems to have been converted from a two-field to a three- field shift» The Liber Niger of Hexham, though dating only from 1479, affords valuable information to the same effect. The greater portion of the lands of this monastery lay in North- umberland, where, at the time of the survey, the division into carucates and oxgangs had fallen into disuse ; but it possessed five Yorkshire manors, in which the old land division still prevailed. The Liber Niger records the acreage of 216 Yorkshire holdings, of which 191 imply carucates of 60 acres, 170 being by the large hundred and 21 by the small ; there are 24 holdings which imply carucates of 64 acres, which resulted from a two-field manor by the large hundred being converted into a three-field shift,* while there is one case which implies a holding in a two-field manor by the large hundred. I have collected a considerable number of incidental state- ments as to the area of the carucate and bovate from York- shire monastic charters and deeds, dating from the Conquest to the Reformation, which confirm Fleta's statement as to the size of the carucate in two-field and three-field manors. The evidence is given in the Appendix,* and it may here suffice merely to state the results. According to Fleta, the carucate in one field of a three-field manor was 60 acres, which would be 72 by the great hundred, while in a two-field manor it was 80 acres, or 96 by the great hundred. The actual acreages are as follows : — ( I. ) Carucates in thru-field manors by the small hundred^ncrmaUy 60 acres. A. R. p. Rokeby 63 o 8 Salton (demesne) 60 o o > A summary of the evidence for this account of the acreage of the Durham hold- ing9 is given in the Appendix, Note B. ' A two-field carucate by the great hundred would contain 192 acres, which if repartitioned into three fields would give 64 acres in each field, with bovates of 8 acres. In some districts this converted carucate of 64 acres is the most usual. * See Appendix, Note C. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 163 A. K. P. Flaxton 60 o o Little Baragh 64 o o Winksley 64 o o Nonnanby 60 o o Stainburn 64 o o Ingelby (Gisburn) 62 o o Ingelby (Hexham) 60 o o (2. ) Carucaies in three-field fnancrs by the great hundred —normal^ 72 acres. A. R. p. Scorton 72 o o Dishforth 71 2 o Winksley 70 o o North Cowton 71 I 13 Great Banigh 72 o o Edston 72 o o Brawby 72 o o Salton (villans) 72 o o Stainton-le-Street 72 o o (3. ) Canuates in twofield manors by the small hundred —normally 80 acres, A. s. p. Baldersby 80 o o Eliewick 80 o 26 Aberdeen 80 o o Herfortun 80 o o (4.) Carucaies in two field manors by the great hundred — normally 96 acres, A. K. p. Kirkby 96 o o Chesterhope 96 o o Sethon 96 o o Gisebum 96 o o Rainton . 96 o o To this evidence it may be objected that the round numbers indicate that the areas were not accurately measured, but only roughly computed, and also we cannot in every case be certain that the acres mentioned in the documents were really statute acres, as there seems to be reason for supposing that in certain localities the acres were either larger or smaller than the normal acre J It will therefore be satisfactory if, instead of relying ex- clusively on ancient documentary evidence, we can discover ' See Appendix^ Note D. M 2 i64 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH townships in which the area of the Domesday arable continued under plough till recent times, so as to test the Domesday land measures by the measurements of modem surveyors, who, beyond doubt, measured by statute acres. We may thus satisfy ourselves, not only of the correctness of Fleta's account of the acreage of the carucate, but may also ascertain whether the geldable carucate of Domesday in a three-field manor was 60 or 120 acres — ^that is, whether it was reckoned in one field only or in both of the two tilled fields, a matter as to which we derive no information from Fleta's statement, and which has hitherto escaped discussion. From modem surveys and estate maps compared with the statements in Domesday Book, I have obtained the following results for the area of the carucata adgeldum and of the terra ad unam carucam in three-field townships. Barton Agnes . Haisthorpe Thornholm Liangton . Kirby Underdale Wold Newton . Geldable Land to one Canicate Plough A. R. p. A. R. p. 60 a 121 60 3 6 121 2 13 63 2 34 127 I 28 63 2 17 127 034 64 128 67 I 18 117 2 27 I desire to draw particular attention to these cases, of which the details are given in the Appendix,^ as the know- ledge of the area of the arable in each of the three fields makes it possible to establish as a matter of fact the theorem at which we have only arrived by a process of inference, that in three-field manors the Domesday geldable carucates were double the number of ploughs, its carucata ad geldum being reckoned only in one field, while the terra ad unam carucam was reckoned in two fields ; and further we arrive at the more exact conclusion that the former was normally 60 acres, and the latter 120 acres. > See Appendix, Note £. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 165 We have» in next place, to investigate the area of the carucate in two-fidd townships. Here the problem is more simple, and the available evidence more abundant. According to Fleta's account the carucate in a two-field manor was 160 acres, of which 80 acres were in tillage and 80 in fallow. The Domesday geldable carucate would be the same as the arable carucate, 80 acres, or 96 by the great hundred. From maps and surveys of two-field townships I have obtained the results given in the Appendix,^ which may be tabulated as follows : — Ajika of thb Domesday Gbldablb Carucatb in Two-fibld Manors. (i.) By tk$ small hundnd^-normally 80 cures, A. R. p. Catiba (map of 1730) 80 i 13 Rowton (map of 1740) 81 3 2a Bewholme (Inclosure Act) . . . • 79 o 7 Rowlston (Tithe Map) 1858 . . . • 79 3 24 Rise (map of 1702) Z'^^** • ' • ^4 2 24 I- ' I land to one plough . 79 i 18 Keyingham (Franchise Fee) . . . . 80 o o •• Welwick (1705) 80 o o Patrington (1665) 80 o o (2. ) Bythi great hundred— normally 96 atres, A. a. p. Withemwick (Inclosure, reputed acreage) • 93 3 o Elstemwick (1766) ' on average ' . . . 96 o o Brandsburton (1632) 95 3 ^ The foregoing instances may perhaps suffice to prove that, at all events in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Fleta's state- ment as to the normal size of the carucate in two-field and three-field manors is substantially correct It is most improb- able that so early and well-informed a writer should have been wholly at sea as to a matter of which he must have had personal cognisance, and the disregard of his evidence by modem writers must be explained by the fact of their having * See Appendix, Note F. i66 THE PLOUGHLAnD AND THE PLOUGH failed to grasp the significance of the common-field system of agriculture, which is the key to any true understanding of the Domesday record.' We may take it then as established, that in Yorkshire the geldable carucate of Domesday was normally 80 acres with a two-field shift, and 60 with a three-field shift, either by the small or the great hundred. I have discovered some exceptional cases, but I think they can be explained without any very great difficulty. They class themselves in two divisions : 1. Where there has been a change from a two-field to a three-field shifl. 2. Where the customary course of husbandry was unsuited to the nature of the soil, and was modified accordingly ; for instance, where we have a two-field township on light soil, or a three-field township on heavy soil. As instances of the first anomaly I will take Sutton and Stainton ; as instances of the second, Leven and Burstwick. Sutton in Holdemess is one of the two or three exceptions to the rule already laid down, that where the modem map shows three arable fields the number of Domesday carucates is double the number of ploughs. Sutton was inclosed in 1764 by Act of Parliament. There were then about 780 acres of arable in three common fields. This corresponds to the 3i carucates held by Drogo. The number of ploughs is not expressly stated, but we may safely assume that, as in the rest of Drogo's manors, the number of ploughs was equal to the number of geldable carucates. There should, therefore, according to our theory, have been only two arable fields, in- stead of the three which we find in 1764. Now 780 acres in three fields gives an average of 260 acres in any one field, and ' Thus the Athenaum^ in its account of the Domesday Commemoration, com- plains that a certain paper * was tinged too deeply with the common-field theoiy. It would be as reasonable to complain that a paper on the motions of the moon * was tinged too deeply with the theory of gravitation.* THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 167 5 20 in any two. If we treat it as a three-field manor, we obtain 160 acres (520-7-3^=160) for the geldable carucate, instead of 60 acres as it ought to be, while if we treat it as a two-field manor, the geldable carucate is 120 acres (390-t-3j = i20), instead of 80, and the arable carucate comes out either as 160 or 80 acres. An inspection of the map explains these anomalies. There seem to have been two original fields, East Field and West Field, to which the Domesday statement refers, while at some subsequent time a third field, of equal extent, was taken out of the North Carr. This is indicated by its name. North Carr Field. Assuming that the carucates retained the customary acreage of the two-field carucate, 80 acres in each field, instead of being reduced to 60 acres as in original three-field townships, ever3rthing becomes clear. Excluding the North Carr Field, the Domesday carucates are found lo be of the normal size, while if we include it the abnormal size of the carucates in a three-field shift is accounted for at once. I have discovered another instance in which the same thing seems to have been done in the same way, though the evidence as to the fact is of an entirely different nature. In the Cartulary of the Priory of Finchale there is only one mention of the acreage of a bovate or carucate. In 1284, Ranald de Wynterse gave to the Priory two bovates of arable, containing 60 acres, at Little Stainton in the parish of Bishopton, county Durham.* A bovate of 30 acres implies a carucate of 240 acres, which would arise from a third field being added in a normal two-field manor. The original carucate would contain 160 acres in two fields, which would become 240 acres by the inclosure from tiiepastura of a third field of the same size as the other two. In some cases a two-field shift seems to have been con- verted into the more profitable three-field shift by taking in a • Charters of the Priory of FinchaU^ p. 59. i68 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH third field out of the pastura^ and retaining the customary size of the oxgangs (either lo or 12 acres), but reckoning 12 oxgangs to the carucate. This seems to have been the case at Etton.^ Or a two-field carucate of 192 acres by the great hundred, if redivided into three fields, would give 64 acres to the carucate in each field, which is not at all uncom- mon. Or if a three-field township lapsed into a two-field shift, the carucate would be 108 acres, and the bovates 13^ acres, as at Warden. The rule that the number of geldable carucates is either equal to the number of ploughs or else double is not universal even in the East Riding, and in other districts the exceptions are more numerous. Probably no single explanation will suffice ; in some cases the anomaly may have arisen from the exceptional value of the land, in others from recent extension of cultiv^ion, or from geldation by some older assessment, or from favourable geldation, as was probably the case with cer- tain monastic lands. Such explanations must be matters of conjecture, but there is another theory — differences in the nature .of the soil, which would afifect the possibilities ot tillage — the validity of which can actually be tested. I will take two typical cases : — Leven, where there were 6 geldable carucates and land to 4 ploughs ; and the converse case of Burstwick, where there were 4 geldable carucates, and land to 6 ploughs. Leven was a two-field township, with 6 carucates, and land to 4 ploughs. From the Inclosure Act it appears that there were two nearly equal fields. North Field and South Field, containing between them 962 ac. i r. 35 p., or an average of 481 ac. 37 p. in each field. Dividing this ■ At Etton in the last century there were three fields, and the oxgangs con- tained only 6 acres. Etton was in the fee of Maaley, in which 12 oxgangs seem to have gone to the carucate ; at least this was the case at LAytham and Good- manham in the same fee. With 12 oxgangs to the carucate, the carucate would contain 72 acres in each field, ut, 60 by the great hundred. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 169 by 6, we get 80 ac. 33 p., which is the normal geldable carucate in a two-field manor. But dividing by 4, the number of ploughs, we get 120 ac. i r. 9 p. to each plough, which is the normal arable carucate in ^ three-field manor, instead of the arable carucate of 80 acres usual in a two-field manor. Mr. Bethell, the owner of Leven, informs me that the soil in Leven is much lighter and easier to plough than in the neighbouring parishes ; there is very little of the stiff blue clay, while a great deal of land is peaty, and some is g^velly and sandy. Here then we have a two-field township in which the size of the carucate was the same as other adjacent two- field manors, but the land to each plough was 120 acres, as in normal three-field manors. Owing to the lightness of the soil the work could be done by two-thirds of the usual number of ploughs. Burstwick is an exceptional case of an opposite kind. Leven, with 6 carucates and 4 ploughs, is a two-field town- ship on light land ; Burstwick with 4 carucates and 6 ploughs seems to be a three-field township on stiff soil On the heavy Holdemess clay we have seen that a plough could till only 80 acres in the year, 40 in winter and 40 in Lent But the geldable carucate in a three-field manor was 60 acres, which, if clay land, would require i^ plough to till. Hence the four Domesday carucates at Burstwick would require 6 ploughs to till them, as Domesday records. In Nottinghamshire, where there is some very heavy land, the number of ploughs is occasionally double the number of carucates. If the oxen could plough only 30 acres in winter and 30 in spring, the normal three-field carucate of 180 acres would require two ploughs, and the number of ploughs would be double the number of carucates instead of half.^ ' In some counties where the carucates or hides instead of being double the ploughs are only one-half or in some smaller ratio, I suspect that it is simply a I70 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH In the East Riding, as we have seen, Fleta's account of the normal size of the canicate in two-field and three-field manors holds good when brought to the test of experience. But whether it holds good in other districts is a question to be investigated by persons possessing local knowledge.* It may be that in some southern counties, where three-field husbandry was practised on clay soils, the hide or canicate contained 120 acres, forty in each field, instead of sixty. There would be a reason for this, as there is a reason for the size of the canicate in the East Riding. There, as we have seen, the two-field shift with its tillage carucate of 80 acres prevailed over the Holdemess clay, while the three-field shift, with its tillage carucate of 120 acres, prevailed over the chalk hills of the Wolds with their thin light soil. The reason is not far to seek. Mr. Robert Wyse, of Malton, who has an extensive business as a land agent in the East Riding, informs me that the draught cattle required to work a farm in Holdemess, and a farm on the Wolds, bear the same proportion to each other that they did at the time of the Domesday Survey. He says that in stocking a farm he reckons that a team which could cultivate sixty acres on a Wold farm could only till forty acres on a Holdemess farm. The cause of the difference is not merely the greater tenacity of the soil, but chiefly the amount of moisture which it retains. On the Wolds, with a chalk subsoil, the land is dry enough for ploughing soon after question of nomenclature, the plough being regarded as the unit of geldation and the carucate or hide as the unit of aration, and not the other way, as in the York- shire Domesday. * I would especially direct the attention of local inquirers to Derbjrshire, where, if we may judge from Domesday, the two-field shift was more commoa than in any other county, and to the Lindsey and Kesteven Ridings of Lincolnshire, where, to judge from some old estate maps to which I have had access, the con- ditions are as favourable for such an inquiry as in the East Riding. The counties of Huntingdon, Berks, Wilts, North Hants, Warwick, and Oxford, w^here indo sures have been comparatively recent, might also repay investigation. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 171 rain, and horses can work all the year through on nearly every day except when it is actually raining, whereas in Holdemess, as soon as rain falls, ploughing has to cease till the land dries. A team of two horses can manage about an acre a day, but in Holdemess there are barely forty days in autumn and forty in spring during which the horses can get on to the land, whereas on the Wolds they can work nearly every day, except when there is frost Hence we see why the Domesday arable carucate in the two-field Holdemess township was eighty acres, or eighty days' work, half, as Fleta says, for winter ploughing, and half for Lent ploughing, while in the three-field Wold townships the arable carucate was 120 acres, 60 acres in one field for winter ploughing, and 60 in another for Lent ploughing. But in the South of England, where the three-field shift seems to have been usual on all soils, it would be more convenient on clay land for the caru- cate to consist of 120 acres, 40 in each of the three fields. I have confined myself in this paper to the area of the carucate, leaving the more difficult question of the area of the hide to other inquirers. The hide in Bede seems to denote the holding of one household, and may probably be equivalent to the Virgate or Husbandland of later times. But the Domesday Hide of the southern counties must generally correspond, as the unit of assessment, to the carucate of the North. Mr. Pell * has cited several cases in point. Thus at Oakington, in Cambridgeshire, the hide in the Placita (18 Edw. L) is said to contain 120 acres, and at Shepreth the Hundred Rolls mention a hide of 120 acres. At Rattendon, in E^ex, according to a MS. of 1277, the parson holds half a hide, which contains sixty acres. It may be a question whether these measurements refer to the whole hide, or only to the part tilled in any one year — that is, whether the whole * Pell, On the Domesday Geldable Hide^ in Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Communications, vol. vi. p. 70. 172 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH hide, including the fallow, was i8o acres or 120. Some light is thrown on this question by an entry in the Domesday of St. Paul's^ which tells us that at Runwell hida continet sexcies viginti acraSy -ul antiqua inquisitio dicit quod nan consuevit continere nisi quatuar viginti. I take this significant statement to mean that a two-field manor had been converted into a three-field manor. At the time of the antiqua inquisitio the hide contained 80 acres always under plough in a two-year shift, or 160 in all, including the idle shift In 1222, when the new Inquisition was made, the hide contained 120 acres. If the hide of 80 acres excluded the idle shift, so, we must hold, did the hide of 120 acres, Apparently twenty acres had been taken in from the pastura^ and added to the whole hide of 160 acres, making 180 acres in all, and this was then redivided into three fields, giving 60 acres in each field, or 120 acres in the two tilled fields. If this explanation be correct, it tends to show that Fleta's statement as to the size of the carucate, which it has been the object of this paper to establish and explain, holds good in the South of England as well as in the North. But on this point I do not offer any positive opinion, as I do not possess the local knowledge on which alone trustworthy conclusions can be based. But, so far as the East Riding of Yorkshire goes, Fleta's statement appears to me to have stood satisfac- torily every test that could be applied to it. If it can be extended, by other investigators, to the rest of England, many volumes of Domesday exposition, including among others Mr. Eyton's 'Key to. Domesday,' may be finally consigned al limbo dei bambini. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 173 APPENDIX. NOTE A (p. 159). Thb Number of Bovates in a Carucatb. The carucate being the quantity of land tilled by one plough, and the nonnal plough being drawn by eight oxen, a bovate, which was originally the share of the tilled land appropriated to the owner of each of the associated oxen contributed to the co-operative plough, was normally one-eighth of a carucate. A demonstration that eight* bovates went to one carucate is obtainable from the Yorkshire Domesday, in which county the holdings are first enumerated under the names of the tenants in capite^ and are then summarised in a sort of index under the Hundreds. The following incidental statements show that eight bovates were assumed to make one caru- cate. 1. Drogo's land at Preston is entered in the text as 11 bovates, and in the index as i carucate and 3 bovates. 2. The King's land at Belby is given in the text as 4 bovates, and in the index as half a carucate. 3. The Archbishop's land at Tickton is given in the text as 12 bovates, and in the index as a carucate and a half. 4. The land belonging to St John of Beverley at Routh is given in the text as 15 bovates, and in the index as one carucate and 7 bovates. 5. At Leavening the king holds two parcels of land, one of 10 bovates, and the other of i carucate and 6 bovates. In the index it is entered as 3 carucates in all. 6. At Sutton, in Scard Hundred, the king holds two parcels, one containing half a carucate, and the other 2 carucates and 2 bovates, which are added up in the index as 2 carucates 6 bovates. 7. At Sutton in Holderness the Archbishop holds 9 bovates, which is entered in the index as i carucate and i bovate. 8. At Kirby Underdale the king holds three parcels containing 174 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH respectively 6 bovates, 4 carucates and 2 bovates, and i canicate, which are added up in the index as 6 canipates. 9. At Anlaby the king holds two parcels, one of 9 bovates and the other of 2 carucates, which are added up as 3 carucates i bovate. 10. At Belby, the Bishop of Durham held half a canicate, which is entered in the Clamores as 4 bovates ; and also one canicate and 6 bovates, entered in the Clamores as 14 bovates. 11. In the soke of Howden the Bishop of Durham held half a canicate, and also 3 carucates 2 bovates, which are added up as 3 carucates 6 bovates. In these cases it is assumed that 8 bovates made i canicate. There is much post- Domesday evidence to the same effect For instance Esk is returned in Domesday as containing 2 carucates, which is given as 16 bovates in a Survey of 6 Edw. I. At Elstemwick 4 Domesday carucates reappear in 1766 as 32 oxgangs. In 1228 Ralph of Skirlington gives 14 bovates at Atwick, which are described as consisting of a certain canicate, and 6 specified bovates, 2 in one place, 2 in another, and 2 in a third.* Among the aids for knighting the Black Prince, we find in the fee of Roos, 20^. as the aid for 2 carucates, 5^. for half a canicate, j^d. for 6 bovates, 2^d, for 2 bovates, and 1^, for one bovate.' We now come to deal with certain exceptions. In the reign of Edward I. and afterwards, we occasionally find that 12 bovates went to the canicate. Thus at Laytham, in 1255, Peter de Mauley confirmed to the canons of Ellerton 6 bovates, being half a cani- cate.' But two centuries earlier, in this very manor, the canicate must have consisted not of i^ bovates but of 8 ; since in Domes- day, Gislebert Tison holds 11 bovates in Laytham, which are entered in the index as i canicate and 3 bovates ; while these 11 bovates together with 7 bovates in Willitoft and 2 carucates in Gribthorpe, are added together as 4 carucates and 2 bovates ; show- ing by a double proof, that in 1086, 8 bovates made a canicate in Laytham, and not 12, as was the case in 1255. How can this change be accounted for? A canicate of 12 bovates might arise from the conversion of a two-field manor into a three-field manor. With a two-field shift the arable canicate of 80 acres would contain » Poulson's Holdemess^ vol. L p. 179. ■ Ih. p. 6a « Burton, MonastUon Eboratensty p. 261. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 175 8 bovates of 10 acres each, but on conversion into a three-field shift, a normal arable carucate would contain 120 acres, and the bovates by custom would still be reckoned as 10 acres each, but there would be 12 of them, instead of 8. Or possibly the statement in the MonasHcon may be explained in a still simpler way. In a normal three-field manor, the carucate of 120 tilled acres would contain 8 bovates of 15 acres each in the two tilled fields. But if Peter de Mauley gave half of the whole carucate of 180 acres in severalty to the canons of EUerton his gift would consist of 90 acres, which might be reclconed as 6 bovates of 15 acres each, being half a carucate. There are, however, some other cases in which it is stated that 12 bovates made a carucate. Thus at Swine, in 1325, we are told that 12 bovates made one carucate,' and at East Halsh^^ni^^ the fee of Bautry, the carucate contained 12 oxgangs.' Also sct^^ood- manham 12 bovates made a carucate, since Adam de Linton (i3t1i century), confirmed 6 oxgangs, being half a carucate, to the canons of EUerton.' Here, possibly, there may be an exception to the Domesday rule, that 8 bovates made a carucate. In Domesday the King holds one carucate and a half at Goodmanham, land which is entered in the index as i carucate and 5 bovates. If this be not a clerical error,^ it would seem that here 10 bovates made a carucate in 1086. At Goodmanham the hills are very steep, and possibly 10 oxen were required to draw the plough instead of 8 as usual, a number afterwards increased to 1 2. NOTE B (p. 162). The Evidence of the Boldon Book. The Boldon Book, which has been published by the Surtees Society, is a Survey of the manors belonging to the See of Durham, compiled in 11 83 by order of Bishop Pudsey. A comparison with Bishop Hatfield's Survey of the same manors, taken nearly two ' Kirby's Inquest, pp. 440, 442. * Poulson's Holdemess, vol. i. p. 62. ' Burton, Afon. Ebor, p. 260. * There are some undoubted clerical errors in Domesday. Thus the Bishop of Durham holds at Belby 3 carucates and 2 bovates, and also half a carucate, which are added up as 4 carucates and 6 bovates. Plainly the figures in. and nil. have been confiised. At Towthorpe, in like manner, ii. and ni. have been apparently confused. 176 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH centuries later, affords curious information as to the gradual dis- int^;ration of the old holdings and the changes in the tenures. The only direct statement as to the area of the carucate contained in the Boldon Book will be found at p. 34, where we read, Eudo de Lucels tenet in Famacres 1. carucatam de cxx, acris. This shows that in 1 183, less than a century after Domesday, the arable carucate on the borders o£»Yorkshire, near Sunderland, was 120 acres, equivalent, with the idle shift, to 180 acres. Carucates of the same area are indicated by the scatpennies paid, which were usually 2d. an acre J Thus we have one carucate held at 20;. and four cases of half caru- cates held at 10s. which imply 120 acres of tillage, or x8o acres to the whole carucate. The holdings of the villans are usually 2 bovates, and the acreage of these bovates mostly supposes carucates of the same dimensions as above. No less than 12 16 bovates of 15 acres are enumerated. They are either expressly said to be of that size, or are shown to be so by the scatpennies of 2s, 6d. per bovate.' These bovates of 15 acres imply three-field carucates of 60 acres in each field. A carucate of 160 acres in a two-field manor would be 192 acres by the great hundred, or 96 acres in each field, and the bovate would be 12 acres. The Boldon Book enumerates 196 bovates of 12 acres, and 34 half-bovates of 6 acres, held usually by cotmen, which imply carucates of 96 tilled acres. That the cotmen held by the AngUcus numerus^ and by a two-field shift, while the villans held by the Norman number, and in a three-field shift, may indicate that the cotmen belonged to an older stratum of population than the villans. We have also in the Boldon Book indications of the conversion of two-field manors into the more profitable three-field shift, in which only one third instead of one-half of the land lay in faUow. This could be done in several ways. A two-field carucate of 192 acres (160 by the great hundred) if redivided into three fields would give carucates of 64 acres in each field, and corresponding bovates of 8 and 16 acres. Or the change might be effected by * Thus 15 acres pay 2s, dd,^ and 12 acres pay 2J. The scatpennies are occa- sionally more or less, according to the nature of the services rendered, but are almost always so many pence per acre. > That the acreage of the bovates in the Boldon Book may be safely inferred from the scatpennies is shown by a reference to Bishop Hatfield's Survey, in which the acreage of the bovates is often stated in townships where only the scatpennies are given in the Boldon Book. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 177 taking in a third field from the pastura. Thus we should get bovates of 10 and 20 acres, or of 12 and 24 acres by the great hundred The Boldon Book enumerates 80 bovates of 16 acres and 70 of 8 acres, all in the same neighbourhood, while there are 22 bovates of 20 acres and 213 bovates of 12 acres, which, however, may be original two-field bovates. At Warden there were 18 bovates of \'^\ acres. These may be bovates in a three-field manor by the great hundred which had lapsed into a two-field shift, giving caru- cates of 108 acres in each field, or bovates of 13^ acres. Or they may be explained as carucates of 192 acres, with 12 bovates to the carucate. There are also 14 bovates of 9 acres and 2 of 18 acres, which are bovates in a three-field manor by the great hundred. Of the 1,659 holdings whose area is given directly or indirectly in the Boldon Book there is only one which conflicts with Fleta*s statement as to the size of the carucate. This is a holding of 37 acres, which, however, is shown by the scatpennies to have been reckoned as a holding of 40 acres, or 2 bovates of 20 acres each. NOTE C (p. 162). Areas of Carucates deduced from Monastic Charters. (i.) Carucates of 60 acres. At Rokeby, in the Wapentake of Gilling East, William de Gilling confirmed to Fountains Abbey one oxgang containing 6 J acres at 20 feet to the perch. This would be 7 ac. 3 r. 2 1 p. by. the standard perch, and the carucate would be 63 ac. or. 8 p.' At Salton, near Helmsley, in the North Riding, the bovates in the demesne were 7^ acres, giving a carucate of 60 acres.* The same was the case at Flaxton near Mai ton.' At Little Barugh, in Kirby Misperton parish, there were bovates of 8 acres, giving carucates of 64 acres.^ At Winksley, in Claro Wapentake, Nicholas de Bellon gave to Fountains Abbey one oxgang containing 12 acres at 22 feet to the perch.^ This would be 16 statute acres, giving a carucate of 64 acres in one field. At Normanby, in the North Riding, Richard Loftus gave to ' Burton, Monasticon Eboracense^ p. 191. * Liher Niger of Hexham^ p 73. • lb. p. 80. * lb, p. 66. * Burton, Mon. p. 208. VOL. I. N 178 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH Rievaulx Abbey one oxgang of 15 acres at 20 perches to the acre, which would be 7 J standard acres at 40 perches to the acre. The carucate was therefore a carucate of 60 acres in one field of a normal three-field manor.^ At Stainbum, in Claro Wapentake, Helias de Staynbum gave one oxgang, containing 8 acres, to Fountains Abbey. The carucate would therefore be 64 acres.* At Ingelby, Robert son of Ralph quitclaimed to the Priory of Gisbum half a carucate, in which are 62 acres in tofts, and 5 acres of meadow. This would be a carucate of 124 acres in two fields of a three-field manor, or 62 acres in each field.' But at Ingelby the Priory of Hexham held a bovate of 15 acres, implying a carucate of 60 acres only. (2.) CarucaUs of 12 acres^ or 60 by the great hundred. At Greenberry Grange, in the township of Scorton and the Wapentake of Gilling East, the oxgang contained 18 acres. Hence the carucate would be 144 acres, or 72 in each field.^ At Dishforth, in 1286, Radulph de Disceford gave 143 acres to Fountains Abbey, with as much pasture as belongs to one carucate.^ At Winksley, in Claro Wapentake, William de Carleton quit- claimed to Fountains Abbey a carucate of 140 acres (ie. 70 acres in each field) together with 20 acres of meadow and 20 acres of wood- land« At North Cowton, near Richmond, Rainer de Couton confirmed to Fountains Abbey the fourth part of half a carucate, containing 26 ac. 3 r. which his father had given. The carucate would be 214 acres in three fields, 71 ac i r. 13 p. in one, or 142 ac 2 r. 26 p in two.^ At Great Barugh,® near Malton, and at Stainton-le-Street' in Durham, there were bovates of 18 acres, implying carucates of 144 acres in two fields, or 72 acres in one At Little Barugh,*<^ at Edston," and at Brawby, all near Malton, the bovates were of 9 acres, and the same was the case with the bovates in villanage at Salton.^* ' Burton, Monasticon Eboracensiy p. 362. • Ih. p. 202. • ^. p. 347. « lb, p. 167. » lb, p. 162. Cf. Kirbjr's Inquest^ p. 183. • Burton, Mm, p. 208. » lb. p. 159. • Liber Niger of Hexham, p. 68. • lb, p. 6a »• lb, p. 66. " /*. pp. 77, 78. »* lb. p. 73. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 179 (3.) Carucates o/So acres. At Birkhou, in the township of Baldersby, Cecilia de Stuteville gave one carucate of land, in which are 80 acres, to Fountains Abbey." AtEUerwick, in 121 2, the demesne lands of the Priory of Gisbum were settled to be 481 acres, which seems to be 3 carucates of 160 ac. ir. 13 p. '^ Skene quotes a case from the north of Scotland in which half a carucate contained 80 ac.* In the South of England there are traces of two-field manors, as in the case of Herfortun where the carucate was 160 acres,^ though the three-field system seems to have been more general than in the more backward counties of the North. (4.) Carucates of ^6 acres. At Kirkby in Cleveland,* and at Chesterhope in Redesdale,® the bovates were 1 2 acres, implying carucates of 96 acres. Walter Carrou gave to Gisburn Priory 2^ oxgangs in Sethon, containing 60 acres. Hence the oxgang would contain 192 acres, or 96 in each field.^ William de Brettevilla gave to the same Priory one oxgang of 12 acres in the fields of Gisbum.® At Rainton, in the North Riding, the oxgang contained 12 acres. ^ NOTE D (p. 163). The Length of the Perch, and the Area of the Acre. We occasionally meet with records of acres which are said to be measured by the perch of 10, 16, 19, 20, 22, and 25 feet, instead of 16^ feet, as in the standard acre, and also of acres at 18, 20, and 22 perches to the acre instead of 40. See the cases quoted from Dugdale's Monasticon by Ducange, s,v, Fertica, Carrucata, and Quarentena, Other instances will be found in Burton's Monasticon, pp. 170, 178, 181, 190, 191, 208. The carucates containing these abnormal acres, if reduced to standard acres, will, however, be found to conform to Fleta's rule. » Burton, Man, p. 152. * lb, p. 343. • Skene, Celtic Scotland, vol. iii. p. 225. * Nasse, Agricultural Communities^ p. 57. » Liber Niger 0/ Hexham, p. 70. • lb, cf. pp. 31 and III. ' Burton, Man, p. 352. • lb. p. 344- * ^b. p. 195. N 2 i8o THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH It may be noted that a carucate of 80 acres by the perch of 20 feet, would be nearly equal to a carucate of 96 acres by the standard perch ; and a carucate of 120 acres by the perch of 10 feet to a carucate of 80 acres by the standard perch ; and 80 acres by the perch ef 25 feet to 120 acres by the standard perch. Hence bovates and carucates by the great hundred of six score, if measured by the great perch of 20 feet, would be equivalent to bovates and carucates by the small hundred of five score measured by the small perch of 16J feet By varying the length of the perch it would also be possible to reduce to a common standard the bovates in two-field and three- field manors. The normal two-field bovate of 10 acres measured by a zo foot perch would be counted as 15 acres, and vice versd^ the normal three-field bovate of 15 acres measured by a 25 foot perch would be counted as 10 acres. We may thus possibly find a reason for the exceptional employment of these local perches. The perch, or virga^ was itself doubdess merely the oxgoad, which, laid upon the ground at the headland, would conveniendy measure the breadth of the rig or sellion to be ploughed. NOTE E (p. 164). Areas of Domesday Geldable Carucates, in Threb-field Townships, tested by Modern Surveys. It is easy to ascertain the size of the carucata ad geldum and of the terra ad unam carucam in the township of Burton Agnes, of which there is an excellent Estate Map, made in 1809.' Till 1856 Burton Agnes remained in three open fields, divided into oxgangs and half-oxgangs by turf balks. We can therefore compare the modem measurement of the arable with the Domesday record. In 1809 there were 999 ac. or. 18 p. in the three fields. East Field, Middle Field, and West Field. At some early time the lord seems to have inclosed between 80 and 90 acres, probably his demesne land, out of the common arable fields, as is indicated by the fact that the land lies in runrig. We thus obtain between 1,080 and 1,090 acres for the whole Domesday arable, which makes it possible to apply a definite test as to how the geldable carucate was estimated, whether in one field or in two. The arable averaged a little more than 360 acres in any one field, 720 acres in two, or 1,080 in all three. ' See p. 55, supray where the map b reproduced, THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH i8i At the time of the Domesday Survey there were 12 geldable carucates and land to 6 ploughs. According to Fleta the carucate would be 60, 120, or 180 acres according to whether it was reckoned in one, two, or three fields. Knowing the size of the fields at Burton Agnes, we can ascertain by a positive test which of these areas was the geldable carucate of Domesday. By a simple division we ought to get the 12 Domesday carucates as a quotient by dividing the number of arable acres by the number of acres in the carucate. We will first try whether the geldable carucate was 180 acres. We have io8o-m8o«6 720-m8o«3 360 -M 80 B 2. In no case do we get the required quotient, which is 12. We next try 120 acres for the geldable carucate. 1080 -M 20^9 720 -M 20-6 36o-rI20=3. We then try 60 acres, and obtain 1080 -h 60= 18 720-h60Bl2 360+ 60s 6. In one way only, by dividing 720 acres, the whole of the land tilled in any one year, by 60 can we obtain the required quotient ot 12 which is the number of geldable carucates given in Domesday. There was land to six ploughs, and we see from the foregoing calculations that we get 6 as a quotient in three ways, showing that 6 ploughs would suffice to till the land, whether we reckon the carucate at 180 acres in all three fields, or at 120 acres in the two tilled fields, or at 60 acres in any one field. Therefore we are led to the conclusion that in a three-field manor the geldable carucate of Domesday was 60 acres — that is, it was the quantity tilled in one arable field in one year by one plough, whereas the whole quantity tilled in one year by one plough was' 120 acres, or 60 acres in each of the fields tilled in any one year. Thus, and thus only, as it seems to me, can we explain why in three-field manors the number of geldable carucates is usually double the i82 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH number of caruca. The cartuata ad geldum is 60 acres, while the terra ad unam carucam is 1 20 acres. Hence we obtain the rule for finding the area of a Domesday carucate in a three-field manor. Divide two-thirds of the whole arable by the number of geldable carucates, and we get the area of one geldable carucate. Divide it by the number of ploughs, and we get the area tilled annually by each plough, />. the terra ad unam carucam. Thus at Burton Agnes 720-+- 12 = 60 acres for the geldable carucate, and 720 h- 6 = 120 acres, for the arable carucate. Again, to find the acres of arable in a three-field manor, add one-half to the number of Domesday carucates, and multiply by 60 ; or, which comes to the same thing, multiply the number of Domesday geldable carucates by 90, and we get the acres of arable in all three fields. We may now proceed to test these results in other townships. The parish of Burton Agnes comprises not only the township of Burton, but the townships of Haisthorpe and Thomholm. Of these also I have surveys taken prior to the inclosures, and they give similar results. In the three fields of Haisthorpe there were 547 ac or. 20 p., giving an average of 182 ac. 1 r. 20 p. in each field, or 364 ac. 3 r. op. in any two fields. According to Domesday there were six geldable carucates, and land to three ploughs. Hence we obtain 364 ac. 3 r. o p. -1- 6 ^ 60 ac. 3 r. 6 p. as the size of each geld- able carucate, while 364 ac. 3 r. 6 p. -^ 3 = 1 2 1 ac. 2 r. 1 3 p. is the land to one plough, or, as we may call it for convenience, the area of the arable carucate. At Thornholm there were about 670 acres in the three fields, or 446 on an average in any two. From Domesday we learn that in Thirnon there were 7 geldable carucates, which gives as before 63 ac. 2r. 34 p. for the geldable carucate and 127 ac. i r. 28 p. for the arable carucate. At Langton there were, according to Domesday, 18 geldable carucates, while from a survey which must be earlier than 161 7 we learn that there were 1,717 ac i r. 27 p. in three fields, East Field, Middle Field, and West Field, or an average of 1,144 ac 3r. 32 p. in any two fields, which gives, as before, 63 ac 2r. 17 p. for each geldable carucate. Wold Newton is a township of which I have no ancient maps, but from the Ordnance Survey it appears that there were about 1,060 acres in the three fields, East Field, West Field, and Top Field, THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 183 giving 706 acres on an average in any two fields. According to Domesday there were 1 1 carucates and land to 6 ploughs. This gives 67 aa I r. 18 p. to the geldable carucate, and 1 17 ac 2 r. 27 p. as the land to one plough. At Kirby Underdale, Domesday gives 6 carucates, which would be 48 oxgangs. By a survey taken in 1590 there were then 48 ox- gangs, containing 590 acres, which would ^give 65 ac 2r. 20 p. per carucate, or more probably 64 acres, as there is reason to suppose that 14 acres had been added to the arable from thepasfura. NOTE F (p. 165). Areas of Domesday Geldable Carucates in two-field Townships, tested by Modern Surveys. (i.) By the small hundred^ normally 80 acres, Catfoss in Holdemess was a two-field manor. We learn from Domesday that there were 6 carucates, and land to 6 ploughs. The two fields are called East Field and West Field. From a survey made in 1730, it appears that there were 936 ac. 2 r. 13 p. of arable in the two fields, or an average of 481 ac 3 r. 38 p. in each, which gives 80 ac i r. 13 p. for the carucate measured in one field, and 160 ac 2 r. 26 p. in both. In Rowton, by a survey of 1740, there were 327 ac. 2 r. 11 p. of arable, or 163 ac 3 r. 5 p. in each field Domesday gives in Rughe- ton 2 carucates, and land to 2 ploughs, and in 1269 Matthew de Rowton held 2 carucates, namely the whole fee of Rowton. Hence the Domesday carucate was 81 ac 3 r. 22 p. in one field, and 163 ac 3 r. 5 p. in both. Bewholme was at the time of the Inclosure ' in two fields, East Field containing 435 ac 2 r. 2 p., and West Field containing 417 ac. 2r. op. There seem to have been ancient appropriations of 31 acres out of the East Field, and of 25 out of the West Field. Hence the Domesday arable may be reckoned at 909 ac or. 2 p., or an average of 454 ac 2 r. 20 p. in each field According to Domesday, there were 5 carucates and 6 bovates ad geldum. Dividing by 5I we get 79 ac or. 7 p. as the area of the Domesday carucate. Rowlston lay in acre and half-acre strips till about 40 years ago, * Poulson's Holdemess, vol. i. p. 389, i84 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH when it was inclosed. There were two common fields, Middle Field, and Sea Field of which a part has now been washed away by the sea. The total acreage according to the Inclosure Map was 767 ac i r. 5 p. Deducting 347 ac. 3 r. 7 p. for the remains of the Sea Field, ^oi the tofts and crofls, and the outlying land called Rowlston Seats, whose name shows it was the summer pasturage for the cattle, we obtain 4i9ac. ir. 38 p. as the area of the Middle Field. According to Domesday, there were in Roolfestone 5 carucates and 2 bovates. Dividing the present area of the Middle Field by 5^ we obtain 79 ac 3 r. 24 p. for the Domesday carucate. In Rise there were, according to Domesday, two manors, one with 2 carucates and land to 2 ploughs, the other with 5^ carucates and land to 6 ploughs, or together 7^ carucates and 8 ploughs. From surveys made in 1702 and 17 16 it appears that there were then 1269 ac. 3r. 19 p. in two fields, North Field and Mill Field, or an average of 634 ac. 3 r. 29 p. in each. This gives 79 ac. i r. 18 p. as the land to each plough, and 84 ac 2 r. 24 p. for the carucate.^ At Keyingham, according to Domesday, there were 8 carucates and land to 8 ploughs. According to the MS. of the Franchise Fee there were only 41 oxgangs, or 5^ carucates. This is explained by a charter which shows that in the reign of Henry I., Saltagh, a member and parcel of Keyingham, containing about 800 acres, was detached and given to the Abbey of Meaux. According to the Franchise Fee, each oxgang consisted of 10 acres in each arable field with Kimcroft, 4 roods in the Saltmarsh, 4 acres in the Ings, 4 acres in each Carr, and 3 roods in the common ground, being balks and marstalls in the fields.' This is instructive, as showing how the bovates were made up of the original bovates of arable, with doles of pasture attaching to each. Each of the 41 oxgangs contained 33 ac. 3 r. op., or 1383 ac. 3 r. in all. Hence Saltagh is plainly excluded, as the Domesday manor measured 2 leugas in length by i in breadth, which would give 2880 acres. The 41 oxgangs, each containing 20 acres of arable, would amount to 820 acres, which agrees with the present amount, the two fields, East Field and West Field, containing ' By an Inquisiiio post mortem taken in 33 Edw. L, it appears that Walter de Fauconberg held in Rise certain bovates each of 7 acres. If in Rise, as in the adjoining parishes of Swine, Coniston, and Halsham 12 bovates then went to the carucate, there would be 84 acres in each carucate, which agrees with the preceding calculation. ' Poulson's Holdernessy vol. ii. p. 415. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 185 about 650 acres between them, while there are about 170 acres in Kirncroft Hence the whole carucate in the two fields with Kirncroft was 160 acres, or 80 acres in each field. At Welwick the carucate was also 80 acres, as from the Notitia Parochialis we learn that in 1705 an oxgang contained 10 acres. ^ At Patrington in 1665 the fines for every oxgang were 20^., and for every acre arable, u. Hence the oxgangs, as at Keyingham, contained 20 acres in the two fields, North Field and South Field, or ten acres in each, and the carucate was 80 acres in one field and 160 in both. (2.) Areas of two-field carucates by the great hundred^ normally 96 acres. In Withernwick there are two well-marked fields, North End Field and South End Field. I have not been able to obtain access to the Inciosure Map, which is in private custody, but it appears from the Inclosure Act, passed 42 George III., that the open field contained about 1,500 acres in two fields. According to Domesday there were 8 carucates. At 192 acres to the carucate, this would give 1,536 acres, sufficiently near to the rough estimate of 'about * 1,500 acres, and some small crofts may have been inclosed between 1086 and 1802. If 1,500 acres, evidently a round number, were the exact acreage of the open fields, the carucate would contain 93 ac. 3 r. o p. At Elstemwick, called Astenewic in Domesday, there were 4 caru- cates. In 1766 these 4 carucates are represented by 32 oxgangs, each containing about 28 acres on an average, viz. 12 acres in each arable field, and 4 acres of meadow ground in the Ings. Hence each Domesday carucate contained 192 acres, or 96 in each field. In 8 Henry IV., R. Todesham held 25 bovates, which, in the reign of Elizabeth, are described as 300 acres of arable, which gives 12 acres to the bovate, proving that the bovates were then reckoned only in the tilled field, whereas in 1766 they are reckoned in both fields. It would appear that in the i6th century a man's 'terra' consisted only of that portion of the common field which he had a right to till in any one year, whereas in the i8th the ownership in severalty in the fallowed field was recognised. Brandsburton was inclosed in 1667. The decree for the inclo- sure throws considerable light on the system of open field tillage. ' Lawton's ColUctions^ p. 421. i86 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH It is dated i8 Charles II., and sets forth a survey and agreement made in 1632, and recites that 'every man's land lay intermixed in several places and by several quantities together,' and that • in the common arable field of Brandsburton ' there were in the East Field 1,174 acres, and in the West Field 1,321 acres, or 2,495 ^icr^s alto- gether, and that the custom was for < one of the said fields to be sowed one year, and the other field another year.* * According to Domesday,* Drogo had 12^ carucates, which would give 95 ac 3 r. 8 p. to the carucate, or 191 ac. 2 r. 16 p. in both fields. DISCUSSION. Mr. O. C. Pell said that they were all much obliged to Canon Taylor for the admirable papers that he had read to them. In regard to the relative positions of the Hundred and Wa- pentake, he thought he had shown fair ground to suppose that his views were correct, and he- was very glad to find that Canon Taylor agreed with his views (contained in his Cam- bridge paper that he sent to him) in regard to the practical effect that the method of counting used by the Anglo-Saxons would have in calculating areas. He wished he could entirely concur in his views in regard to the carucata. Unless he had misunderstood Canon Taylor (and it was very possible he had) he seemed to him to mis- apprehend the meaning of Fleta. Fleta spoke of the ploughs in the lord's demesne, aided as they were by the supplementary ploughs of the homines. In Fleta's directions he instructs the ofKcers concerned to arrange so that each demesne plough, aided as it would be by the tenant's ploughs, should in a * Poulson's Holdemess, vol. i. p. 270. ' A carucate belonging to St. John of Beverley, and not included in Drogo's manor, seems to have been previously inclosed in severalty, and is therefore not included in the common field inclosed in 1667. THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH 187 two-course manor take 160 acres a year and in a three-course 180 acres ; but it was impossible that Fleta should mean, or that the word ' carucata ' could mean, in any county, when used in regard to a tenant's plough, that a plough of two or four oxen could till an area of that size. In fact, in no county in Domesday could such a meaning be given to the word ' carucata ' used as an areal measure therein. The word 'carucata' doubtless meant the land of one plough, but ploughs were not all of the same strength. There would be the smallest plough or carucata of all, consisting of one ox, as at Trewallen in Cornwall (Domesday, folio 123a) which is shown in the Exon Domesday, folio 214, to have joined with another ox in working one caruca^ consisting as appears by the Exon Domesday of the two oxen. Again, there would be the plough of one virgate, consisting of two oxen, which is repeatedly alluded to in Domesday as a carucata^ for instance at Derbei (Domesday Book, Tom. I. folio 269) in unaquaque hida sunt VI caruc. terrce^ meaning that in each hide of 120 acres there were six virgates of 20 acres ; so also (in Domesday Book, Tom. I. folio 235b) they could read that in Medeltone in Leicestershire, * Ibi sunt VII hidcB et una carucata terrce et una bovata. In unaquaque hida sunt XII I I carucatce et dimidiuml the explanation being that the hides were in areas juxta estimationem Anglorum^ i.e. by the greater hundred, viz. 144 acres, giving virgates of about ten acres ; there would be the associated ploughs or carucce of the Ae?WMf^J (containing i, 2, 3, 4, or more virgates) making up terrce of 60, 72, 80, 90, 96, 108, etc, which very often were meant when the word carucata was used in regard to the terrce of the homines. There would be the libera carucata^ or the terra free from services on the lord's land. There would be the supposed carucata of the whole manor of 120 acres, which common standard Domesday Book calls a hida^ terra ad carucam^ or carucata ad geldum, and uses as the unit of assess- i88 THE PLOUGHLAND AND THE PLOUGH ment. There would be the lord's carucatay often double the size of the terra of the homines^ but varying according to the amount of help received from the caructe adjutrices of the homimSy and depending, amongst other things, on the extent, if any, to which such services had been commuted for money payments. Lastly, there would be the pattern plough of the demesne, indicated by Fleta, consisting of i6o or 1 80 acres. All these remarks apply to every county in England, including Yorkshire, and if Canon Taylor would take the trouble to work out the details of some manors in Yorkshire where bovates are mentioned, and where he could thus find out how many boves went to a plough (at Clifton, for instance, folio 313a, Domes- day Book) he would see that a 'car' in many instances implied the work of four bovesy and they could not possibly cultivate 160 acres in a year when they performed extra services on the lord's land. The fact that the words (x) car possunt ere in Yorkshire indicate the uniform taxable area of 120 acres, which might or might not have a further area of fallow of 60 in a three-course or 120 in a two-course manor attached to it, which would or would not be taxed according as it lay or did not lie in communi when it was unsown, and which if taxed would go to make up (as far as it could go) a second area of taxed land of 120 acres in extent. Some months back he had sent to Canon Taylor the paper which he had read at Cambridge two years ago, in which all this was explained. He could not exactly make out whether this was what Canon Taylor meant If it was, of course they both agreed. OJioitB on ®ome0bag (HtltamuB of £anb« By J. HORACE ROUND, M.A. Before commencing my notes on this thorny and notoriously most difficult subject, I cannot but quote the words of one of the editors of the Rolls Series, who, in his preface to the Gloucester Cartulary, writes of the attempt to define these measures of land : ' Such a proceeding is both rash and un- justifiable, and it is a rock upon which some of the commen- tators on Domesday have hopelessly wrecked their little bark ' (III. cix). In one sense such a verdict is justified. The con- fidence, we might even say the rashness, with which this subject has been approached, has been the cause of much unprofitable work, and of a more serious consequence, namely the spread of error. ' The dispersion of error,' Mr. Eyton observes, * is the first step in the discovery of truth.* ' I would ask you always to bear in mind this admirable maxim, especially when I find it necessary to disprove the assertions or the inferences of previous writers, which unless formally disproved, would rightly be deemed of validity as possessing the sanction of their authority. Indeed, it is one of our chief difficulties in dealing with the Domesday Survey, that so much has to be done in the way of clearing the ground before ' Staffordshire Survey^ p. 177. 190 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND we can begin to lay the foundations of that stable structure which modern scholarship is destined, we hope, to raise. Broadly speaking, Domesday commentators have hitherto been too ambitious. They would not begin at the beginning and work slowly upwards. They seemed to imagine, so to I speak, that it was all plain sailing. Unfortunately, one might j almost be led to say that the more we learn of Domesday the I less we find we know. We have still to study the grammar of our subject For my part, I would welcome the real ascer- tainment of any point, however small, bearing on the great I Record more cordially than a theory, however sweeping, how- I ever wide in its embrace, which did not rest on a secure foun- i dation, which could not be demonstrated and proved. j But now let me add that the problems of Domesday, though hard, are not insoluble, and that, thanks to the labours of modem students, we are really advancing. We do really know more than those who preceded us ; and specially, as we shall see, is this the case in the matter of measures of land. The stumbling-block over which so many have fallen in their researches on this question has been the use of the Glossary. On this Mr. Eyton has well observed, in the preface to his * Key to Domesday ' (p. i), that * Domesday is its own best interpreter, and that those who would understand Domesday thoroughly must get their knowledge from Domesday itself ; lexicographers and glossarists only perplex and mislead the Domesday student. The question for us here is, not what a word or expression may sometimes have meant etymologically, or in its various and successive uses, but what that word or expression did mean and must have meant ' in Domesday. I look upon this principle as of the utmost value and importance. Its earlier recognition would certainly have prevented incal- culable wandering from the right path. At the same time, by the side of this principle we should place that which was so well expressed in the preface of Sir Henry Ellis : — 'A patient NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 191 comparison of Domesday Book with the registers of our earliest Abbeys is the surest way to accomplish its thorough illustration: and this is to be effected not merely by the examination of charters and partial surveys, but by the scattered details of an historical kind with which many of them abound' (pp. xv-xvii). To this I need only add that one of the most useful tasks that we could accomplish would be to compile an annotated list of all the other Surveys of the Norman period, and, if possible, even to publish a collection of all those not included in the Supplement to Domesday Book. The two principles described above are, as it happens, respectively exemplified in the labours and writings of two scholars to whose works I would now invite your attention. I mean Mr. Eyton and Mr. Seebohm. Mr. Eyton may, perhaps, fairly be described as the greatest of our Domesday scholars. He may be said to have saturated himself with the Record, and to have been virtually the only student who has really grappled with the Survey and explored its inmost recesses. Of Mr. Seebohm, as a living student, it is more difficult to speak freely. I cannot, however, refrain from describing his 'Village Community in England' as a truly epoch-marking work, or from recording my belief that it has made the definition of Domesday measures of land for the first time possible. * Mr. E)^on*s labours were of so specialist a character, and his disposition so retiring, that his Domesday studies are barely known outside the circle of real students. The great characteristic of his work was his marvellous and untiring industry. Of this his note-books, now the property of the nation, are the still eloquent witnesses. Whether his judgment or his critical acumen were equal to his devouring industry, I must be permitted humbly to doubt. Of this, however, you will later on have opportunities of judging. Of Mr. Seebohm's work the distinctive note is its thoroughness and its scientific method. From such study as I have made 192 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND of these questions, I must confess that his work gives us a confidence which is not even inspired by that of our leading historians, who have not, as he has done, devoted themselves specially to this particular line of research. But the peculiar value as to Domesday land measures of the writings of these two eminent students, Mr. Eyton and Mr. Seebohm, is this. They have approached the same subject from different points of view. Domesday was the starting- point of Mr. Eyton ; it was the terminus ad quern of Mr. Seebohm. Mr. Eyton viewed it from above, from the stand- point of the crown and of its officers ; Mr. Seebohm ap- proached it from below, from the standpoint of the holders of land. Except in their virtual and independent agreement that the ploughland, the essential unit, was 120 acres, their conclu- sions have, at first sight, little in common. Yet it will, I hope, be possible to show that they are really in perfect harmony. Mr. Eyton's contribution to the study of the subject is thus described by his follower Mr. Waters, who, as some of you are doubtless aware, has trod closely in his footsteps : What number of acres was contained in the Domesday hide or carucate has been for generations a standing subject of controversy ' amongst antiquarians, and had come to be regarded as an insoluble problem until the key was discovered by the late Mr. Eyton, the historian of Shropshire. He has proved to demonstration that the difficulty has arisen from the false assumption that the hide or carucate indicated a constant area, whereas they were in fact terms denoting fiscal value rather than areal quantity, so that the enormous variation of acreage in different hides is accounted for by the difference of their contributions to the Exchequer. The fact that the little manor of Hammoon in Dorset, which contained 877 acres, was rated at five hides, while the great manor of Puddletown, extending over 4,126 acres, was assessed at half a hide, can only be explained by the theory that the hide or carucate was a measure of assessment, and not of acreage, and that it denoted a territorial holding of uncertain area, bearing a fixed and uncertain weight of taxation. > * Preface to Survey of Lindsey^ p. 5. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 193 What Mr. Waters can have meant by a fixed and un- certain weight, I cannot profess to explain ; but the whole passage well describes the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Eyton. Mr. Seebohm, on the contrary, contends that the hide was an areal measure, and estimates what he terms ' the normal hide ' at ' 120 acres ' ; that is to say, in other words, he identifies the hide with the ploughland, which ploughland, Mr. Eyton admits, was 120 acres. It will now be my endeavour to harmonise these apparently conflicting views. The explanation of their seeming contra- diction is as follows. The three terms employed by Domesday for what was substantially the same thing, namely the unit of assessment, were the hide, the carucate, and the solin, this last; as you know, being peculiar to Kent. Now, admitting, as most probably will, after examining the array of evidence produced by Mr. Seebohm for his conclusions, that he has proved the existence of a real hide, composed of four real virgates, each of which normally contained some thirty acres of arable land, we cannot deny that the real hide was in fact the equivalent of the ploughland. Independent testimony to this, indeed, is borne by Henry of Huntingdon, when he writes thus plainly: ' Hida autem Anglic^ vocatur terra unius aratri cultura sufficiens per annum.' Now this is precisely what Mr. Eyton denies. His anxiety to establish his main point — in which, remember, he was perfectly right — namely, that the hide of Domesday (that is, the hida ad geldum) was not a measure of area, but a unit of geld assessment — led him to reject the conception of the hide as being ever a definite areal measure. 'To say, or to suppose,' he observes at the out- set, * that in the days of Ethelred, or at the date of Domesday, or at any other period, the word '* hide " indicated a constant area of 240 acres, or of any specific number of measured acres, would be most erroneous.' * ' Key to Domesday y p. 3. VOL. I. O 194 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND Mr. Seebohm, on the contrary, while insisting that the hide ' was a real areal measure/ is careful to add that the term hide was used in the Survey exclusively as the ancient unit of assessment' This much, surely, at any rate is clear : the hide as a unit of assessment — that is, the hida adgeldum — was divided, as the Inquisitio Geldi proves beyond a shadow of doubt, into four virgates. Assuming as I do that the hida adgeldum was and must have been strictly parallel to the hide as a measure of area, it follows that the latter also must at this time have been divided into four virgates. That is to say, the assessment of a manor was expressed in terms of the hide, which hide, as Mr. Seebohm has shown, was in truth the ploughland, or terra ad unam carucam. In normal cases the manor was assessed at as many hides as it contained ploughlands, and indeed Mr. Eyton himself ad- mitted that ' the individual hide of most manors appears in conjunction with a single plough gang or, as the Dorset Domesday expresses it, with a terra ad unam carucam.* ' But whereas, as he has further well shown, manors bearing the same amount of ploughland varied in value from other con- siderations, and whereas royal favour often intervened to lighten their normal liability, we find some assessed at more and some at less than the number of hides which they really contained. For, you must remember, the hide (or its equiva- lent) being the sole unit of assessment, the amount added to or deducted from the normal assessment could only be expressed in terms of the hide. Here, I think, Mr. Eyton's method is, in one sense, distinctly misleading. His plan of dividing the total area of a county by the number of its hides and then treating the quota as the normal iirea represented by the hide in that county, has a real value, as in the case of Lincolnshire, in that it affords a rough estimate of the relative prosperity and wealth of different counties and districts. But it has the * Village Community in England, p. 34. ' Key to Domesday ^ p. 13. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 195 disadvantage of setting before us a false conception of the hide. Thus, for instance, in his * Antiquities of Shropshire * {xiu 83) he contends that the Domesday hide of Shropshire probably equalled something more than 240 statute acres. So also in his 'Staffordshire Survey' (p. 21) he asserts that * the average Staffordshire hide covered as much as 955 acres of such land as the Domesday Commissioners thought worthy of subsequent measurement and registration.' Lastly, in his 'Key to Domesday' (p. 13) we find him stating of Dorset that * the average of the whole county gives between 230 and 240 acres as the correlatives of the said hide,* and, further (p. 15), that the 'acra ad gheldum taken on the county average of about 240 acres per hide, represented the forty-eighth part of such average — that is, it represented about five modern acres.' Here I say that these expressions give us a false conception of the hide, because I do not believe that when the men of the time thought of the hide as an areal quantity they would think of it as anything but the normal area which the real hide represented. So, to take a modem illustration, if a house worth 400/. a year were valued for assessment at 300/., this would not imply that anyone could thiilk of these 300/. as representing 300 sums of 320 pence each, or indeed as representing anything else than pounds of 240 pence. You will now be prepared for the following theory. I hold that we have in the Domesday Survey three equivalent units of assessment — the Aide, the carmate, and the solin \ and that these three geld measures were parallel to the corre- sponding areal measures, namely to the real hide, and to the real carucate, and solin. And now let us see how these measures were divided. I look on this point as of some importance, because we find even the leading authorities speaking of the bovate as the eighth of a hide, or of the virgate as the fourth of a carucate. This produces confusion between two distinct systems. On the one hand, you see, we 196 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND have the hide divided into four virgates; on the other, its equivalent, the carucate, divided into eight bovates. I want you specially to notice that the divisions were not the same in number. Thus, to express the eighth of a hide, it was necessary to speak of it as half a virgate. Conversely, to express the quarter of a carucate it was necessary to describe it as two bovates. We can study in the Peterborough Liber Niger the two systems side by side. Six manors are there assessed in terms of the hide and virgate, and three in terms of the carucate and bovate, none in terms of the hide and bovate, none in terms of the carucate and virgate. The two systems were radically distinct What should be the inference from this distinction ? It suggests, I think, two problems. First, why do we find, not one, but two distinct measures ? Secondly, what was respec- tively the origin of the two systems ? First, then, why do we find England, always excluding Kent, partly measured in Domesday by hides, and partly by carucates ? On this point Mr. Eyton writes as follows : There is a doubt whether the 'carucate' was ever used In terms as of a land-measure by the Pre-conquestual Saxons. Our own impression is that the term 'carucate' was introduced by the Normans, and that they intended thereby an estate which in point of value and capacity was closely analogous to the Saxon hide.^ The passage which Mr. Eyton quotes in support of this conclusion is that which Ellis similarly adduced, namely the entry in the fief of Striguil : — ^ In eodem feudo dedit Willelmus Comes Radulfo de Limesi 4 carucatas terre, sicut fit in Normannia ' (i. 162). I do not say that their inference was wrong, but I do think that Mr. Eyton's rendering (* according to that estimate of the carucate which obtains in Normandy' ) is a straining of the phrase ' sicut fit in Normannia.' I would * Key to Domesday ^ p. 17. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 197 rather rely for the fact of the introduction of the carucate on the phrase of Ordericus, 'carrucatas quas Angli hidas vocant ' (viii 8) ; on the subsequent spread of the carucate at the expense of the hide system ; on the circumstance (which is not mentioned by Mr. Eyton, though, it strikes me, of great importance) that in Ireland the 'carucate' is the measure of land that we find in the charters of the Norman settlers ; and lastly that the carucate is found by a special usage, of which I shall say more anon, in the midst of otherwise hidated counties. But now arises this question. Why should the Normans introduce the 'carucate* as a substitution for the hide over a certain portion of England and not over the rest ? Further, as is brought out very forcibly in the subsequent Survey of Lindsey, the division of a county into carucates instead of hides was associated with its division into wapen- takes instead of hundreds, and with the subdivision of those wapentakes into miniature hundreds, each containing the fixed number of twelve carucates. Here we have an elabo- rate system, which we are actually, it would seem, asked to believe was not only introduced de novo by the Normans, but was even introduced as the result of caprice on the part of certain of the Domesday Commissioners ! Such, at least, is the contention of Mr. Waters, who follows, as I have said, in Mr. Eyton's footsteps, and who writes, in his preface to the * Survey of Lindsey ' : The procedure of the different sets of Commissioners was by no means uniform, and the variation in their method of working will usually enable us to determine from internal evidence what counties were comprised in the same circuit (p. 5). And he proceeds to explain that certain counties were pre- sumably included in the same circuit, 'as these counties were all surveyed on the same system,' namely that of the wapentake and carucate. It would really seem that Mr. Eyton himself may have similarly confused cause and effect. T58 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF'UVND and have seen in the division into wapentakes and carucates the independent action of the Commissioners themselves, rather than the recc^ition of an existing system. But the subject of the Commissioners and their respective circuits was one which possessed a fascination for Mr. Eyton, and to which, he himself tells us, he devoted * much study.' He found it, however, almost impossible to add much definite information to that which we already possessed, and in his * Staffordshire Survey * (p. 5 noU)^ he frankly confesses that in his ' Notes on Domesday ' he had committed to print some too hasty conclusions on the subject. * It is little better than a guess,' he writes, ' that Wulstan, Bishop of Worcester, presided over the committee which visited Shropshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire. It is still more of a guess that Osmund, Bishop of Sanim, previously Chancellor of England, presided over the committee which visited Lincolnshire and its as- sociated counties.' ' As usual Mr. Eyton here abstains from giving the ground for his ' guess * ; * I can, however, supply it Mr. E3^on had clearly noted an allusion contained in Heming's Cartulary. The passage runs 'domino Wlstano episcopo existente in legatione regis apud Ceastram.' From the fact that the Domesday Commissioners were termed 'legati regis,' Mr. Eyton (for we can trace the working of his mind) must have inferred that this passage alludes to the presence of Wulfstan at Chester as a Domesday Commissioner for the district. But the context points to an earlier date, and, as it happens, we can fix that date with precision. For on referring to the * Vita Wlstani ' (256) we read : * In eodem concilio apud Pedridan habito episcopatus ei Cestrensis a Lanfranco Archi- episcopo visitatio commissa est.' Thus Wulfstan did actually visit ' Shropshire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire ' (to quote Mr. ' Domesday Notes ^ p. 1 1. ' In the case of Osmund, it may have been suggested by a misapprehension of a passage in the Clamores of Lincolnshire (i. 377 b). NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 199 Eyton's words), not, however, as he inferred, in the guise of a Domesday Commissioner, but on an episcopal visitation, some ten years before. Note, by the way, how the ' Vita Wlstani ' and the passage in Heming's Cartularj'' here confirm one another. The real solution is, of course, to be found, not in the caprice of any Domesday Commissioners, but in the fact that, full two centuries before the date of Domesday, the districts which in the Survey are measured by carucates had been settled by the Danish invaders and apportioned out anew among themselves. In few things is the record of Domesday more valuable than in its authentic witness to that great event which had happened so long before, and in the boun- daries it gives us for the district in which the Danes intro- duced their new system. A map of the carucated district in the Survey would be of great illustrative value, and would show us how closely that district coincided with Danish Northumbria and Danish Mercia.^ We may note that Dr. Stubbs, while ' admitting that the wapentake is found only in the Anglian districts,' and that it * may be a relic of Danish occupation,' ' ignores, it would seem, the evidence of the carucate, and of the hundreds intermediate between it and the wapentake. The existence of these peculiar Danish hundreds explains what would otherwise be a mystery of the Survey — namely, why Stamford in Lincolnshire, one of the Danish ' Five Boroughs,' should have been assessed at \2\ hundreds (* dedit geldum T.R.E. pro XII hundredis et dimidio '), an assessment at first sight incomprehensible. As each of these Danish hundreds contained but twelve carucates, the total assessment was only equivalent to 1 50 carucates — that is, to a hundred and a half in the hidated portion of England. Such ' The same map ought to show the extent ot the < wapentake ' and of the *trithing' system. » Const, Hist, \, 96. 20O NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND an assessment would be normal enough when compared with that of similar boroughs, and thus the mystery vanishes. I am not aware that this interesting point has ever been noted before. It may serve to illustrate the diversity of Domesday, and the varying denotation of its formal phraseology, when we find its 'hundred' meaning in one place more than eight times as much as it does in another. The same illustration is afforded by that special use of the carucate which has been ably discussed by Mr. Eyton in his study on the Dorset Domesday, and which he also dis- cusses in Staffordshire and Somerset. 'The introduction of the carucate,' he writes, 'into the Survey of a county normally divided into hides is one of the curiosities of Domes- day.' ^ He describes it as a conceptional and ii^eldable hide. It is the carucate, in this special use, which I have already described as very probably introduced by the Normans at the Conquest My own contribution on this point would be that the ' inland' of Oxfordshire will be found to correspond with the * carucates ' of Dorset* If this conclusion is correct, and I feel pretty confident on the subject, it should confirm the views expressed by Mr. Eyton both of the essentially ingeldable character of the 'carucate' in hidated counties, and also its introduction in that capacity by the Normans. We have, then, arrived at this conclusion : that the carucate system had been introduced into England by the Norsemen from the east in the ninth century, and that it was again intro- duced in the eleventh by the Normans, from the south. In each instance it had to contend with the established system of the hide and virgate, and, this being so, we are led to ask whence the latter venerable system can itself have been originally derived. We thus pass to the second problem, namely the origin of the respective systems. All that I would here insist upon is this : the carucata and the bovata (like the solin and the ' Staffordshire Survey^ p« 24. * Sec my paper on * Danegeld.* NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 201 jtigum) are both of them terms obviously derived from the team of oxen for the plough. And this ox team, you know, might be described as the basis of Mr. Seebohm's theory. But the hide and the virgate are, on the contrary, etymo- logically unconnected with plough or team. I merely state and insist upon the fact. I leav^ it to others to draw con- clusions.' We are now in a position to move forward. In the three Domesday measures of land, the hide, the carucate, and the solin, with their divisions, the virgate, the bovate, and the jugum, we recognise three names for the same unit of assess- ment, each of them parallel with real areal measures possess- ing the same names, which measures again all represent the same areal unit, viz. the ploughland. Let us now pass from these to the terra unius caruca or terra ad unam carucam. The circumstance to which we owe that Domesday phrase is this. The Normans found on coming here, as we have seen, three distinct names for the same measure of land ; they further found that each name possessed, two distinct meanings, according as it was used as an areal measure or as a unit for assessment For a national Survey these complications involved obvious confusion. It was, of course, possible to distinguish the hide and carucate when used as units of assessment, as the ' hida ad geldum ' or the ' carucata ad geldum^ and this, indeed, was occasionally done. But the necessary juxtaposition of the areal measures with the geld units would still have led to much confusion if they appeared under the same name. It was therefore determined to enter the ploughlands — that is, the real areal hides, carucates, and solins — ^under the uniform formula, * terra unius carucae ' or * terra ad unam cafucam.' Thus the probable confusion * See my paper on the * Virgata ' in the English Historical Review (vol. ii.). setting forth a novel explanation of the term, and proving that the hide is the original unit, of which the virgate is only the subdivision (being essentially its quarter). 202 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND « between what may be termed the objective and subjective sense of these three measures would be entirely avoided.* Observe here that this formula of mensuration was parallel to, and formed upon, one of the three existing systems — ^that, namely, of the carucate and bovate, which, as I have said, there is reason to believe, was the system favoured by the Normans. Thus, the terra ad unam carucam was divided into eight portions, each of them a terra ad unum bovem, just as the carucata, in both its senses, was divided into eight bovaUe. Thus, as the terra ad unam carucam was, in fact, but another name for the real areal carucata (that is, the 'carucata ad arandum'), it is not wonderful that it should have been generally confused with the carucata in its sense a unit of assessment (that is, the ' carucata ad geldum ' ). Thus, even Mr. Eyton, who has devoted so much study to the point, and has insisted on the essential importance of the distinction between the carucata terrce and the terra ad unam carucam^ himself failed, as is shown by a passage in his 'Key to Domesday ' (p. 24), to perceive that the relation of the bovata terra to the terra ad unum bovem was precisely that of the carucata terra to the terra ad unam carucam. Indeed, the entry he there discusses bears definite evidence to the fact So also one of the few slips in Mr. Seebohm's great work is his assertion that ' the hidew^s used in the Survey exclusively as the ancient unit of assessment, while the actual extent of the manor was described in carucates ' (p. 84).^ This is an actual and a serious error, for the carucate, like the hide, was, in the Survey, as we have seen, employed normally as a unit of > It must however be noted that, in the case of the carucata two other formulae are also found. The three may be thus algebraically expressed : — (i) < Ibi X carucatae. Terra^ caruds.* (2) < Ibi X carucatae quas^ ' (or ' et y ') carucae possunt arare.* (3) ' Ibi X carucatae et ' (or * in quibus ') ^y carucae possunt esse.* In all three of these formulae < carucatae ' and < carucatae terrae * are used indifferently. » Cf. p. 293. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 203 assessment, while the 'actual extent' was described in terms of the terra ad unam carucam. But there are few more difficult problems in Domesday than the exact meaning of the term * carucata ' and its rela- tion to the normal ploughland. As with other terms employed in Domesday, there is the perplexing fact that 'carucata* may mean one thing in one place and one in another. It is quite certain that Domesday recognises the distinction be- tween the two senses in which ' carucata ' is employed, since •carucata terrae ad geldum regis' and 'carucata terrae ad arandum ' occur in the record in close conjunction (i. 280 [i]). It may further be asserted that the latter term equates the ' terra uni carucae.' For instead of the usual formula ' terra totidem carucis,' we get on folio 276 the entry 'Henricus nunc [habet] liii car[ucatas] ad geldum et totidem car[ucatas] ad arandum.' Moreover, on collating the Inquisitio Eliensis (p. 528) with the Exchequer Domesday (i. 204), we get these important parallel expressions in the case of the Abbey's Huntingdonshire manors : Domesday. Inq. Eliensis. In Colne habet Abbas de Ely vi In Colne vi h[id3e] ad gel- hidas ad geldum. Terra vi carucis. . dum et vi i\arucat£e\ ad arandum. In Bluntesham . . . . vi hidas Bluntesham .... unum et dimidiam ad geldum. Terra manerium de vi hidis et dimidia VIII carucis .... In dominio ad geldum. Ad arandum viii terra 11 carucis, Ibi nunc in ^rtuat<z\ , . . Ipse habet li dominio 11 carucae. c[arucatas] exceptis predictis hidis. . . . Nunc ipse it carucas. In Sumersham .... viii hidas Sumersham .... viii hidis ad ad geldum. Terra xii carucis. geldum. Ad arandum xii {[aru- Et, exceptis his hidis, in domi- cata], . . . Ipse abbas 11 {[aru- nio terra 11 carucis. Ibi nunc catas] exceptis predictis hidis. in dominio 11 carucae. Symon abbas invenit 11 c[arucas]. Spalduuic. . . . Manerium de In Spaldvice . . . . xv hidas ad xv hidis ad geldum .... et xv geldum. Terra x\ carucis. caruccBpossuntarareittxzmistzm. 204 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND The comparison of these formulae is, I consider, most in- structive. We have here the ' terra uni carucae/ equating the ' carucata ad arandum/ and even the ' carucata ' unqualified. The difficulty, then, is reduced to this. The ' carucata ad geldum ' and ' carucata ad arandum ' speak clearly for them- selves, but the unqualified 'carucata' (or 'carucata terrae') may mean the ploughland in one place, and the unit of assessment in another. In such entries, for instance, as ' XXV carucatae quas possunt arare XIIII carucae ' (i. 299 b, 30s b\ the ' carucata ' is certainly a geld measure, but in Leicestershire it seems, on the contrary, to be used (though not invariably) to denote the ploughland. But then, Utit formula in that county appear to be very peculiar. We even find a few (a very few) instances of such singular farmuke as these : ' Ibi est i hida et 1 1 1 1 ta pars I hidae. Ibi sunt xxil carucatae terrae' (i. 231). * Ibi est I hida et Vita pars i hidae. Ibi fuerunt xxill car[ucae ? ] T.R.E.' (i. 231 b). ' Ibi sunt lie partes unius hidae ; terra est VI carucis' {lb,) 'Ogerus Brito tenet de rege 11 partes unius hidae idest XII carucatas terrae ' (i. 236). These four, it will be seen, are all slightly different. But there can be no question that the ' carucata terrae * here represents the ' terra uni carucae,* the ploughland. To Mr. E)rton, who strenuously insisted on the essential distinction between the ' carucata ' and the 'terra uni carucae,' such a passage, for instance, as the fourth of these, proved — as he confessed in his ' Staffordshire Survey' — a stumbling-block. But this was because he did not allow for the two distinct meanings which 'carucata' could bear in the Survey. It is probable, I think, that the ' carucata terrae,' which occasionally occurs in hidated districts, was, contrary to his opinion, the ' carucata ad arandum,' not the ' carucata ad geldum.' A theory of great interest, and probably of entire novelty, is advanced by Canon Isaac Taylor with much ingenuity and erudition. He contends that the distinction between two- NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 205 field and three-field manors is the key to the whole system. His theory is thus summed up : In the Domesday Survey of the northern shires two phrases occur in the account of ahnost every manor ; these are the carucata ad gtldum^ the ' geldable carucate,' which was the fiscal unit for pur- poses of taxation ; and the terra ad unam canuam^ the ' arable carucate,' which was the unit for agricultural purposes. ... In three-field* manors the 'DoxaesAzj carucata ad geldum yfdis normally sixty acres, the land tilled in one field in one year by one plough, while terra ad unam carucam was 120 acres, the land tilled in both fields in one year by one plough, and the whole carucate including fidlow was 180 acres. In two-field manors, both the carucata ad geldum and the terra ad unam carucam were 80 acres, and the whole carucate, including fallow, 160 acres, by the reckoning locally used, either the Norman hundred of five score, or the English hundred of six score.' This theory is no doubt right — as far as it goes. It ex- plains beautifully a relation between the geldable carucate and the ploughland which is so frequent in Yorkshire as to be, perhaps, the rule. It will be observed, however, that such a theory virtually converts the unit of assessment into an area! measure, and implies that the relation between the ' carucata ad geldum ' and the ploughland was constant This is, at first sight, contrary to the view on which I have insisted throughout — namely, that the unit of assessment must on no account be confused with the areal measure. Yet the two views are quite consistent Just as, according to Canon Taylor, a two-field manor ought to be assessed at as many carucata cut geldum as it contained terra ad unam carucam^ so we find, in the south of England, plenty of manors assessed > The Standard^ Noyember I, 1886. This may perhaps be a fitting place for calling attention to the grant by the Count of Meulan {Rot, Seace, Norm. I. dv. ) to the Abbey of Jumiiges, in 1 183, of *a carucate of land, viz. sixty acres of arable land, with the wood upon it, measured with a perch of 25 feet ' \i,e, the forest perch]. Recent research is said to show that the ploughlands introduced by the Crusaders into Palestine were of eighty acres. These two measurements would point respectively to the three-field and two-field system. 2o6 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND at as many hicUe \adgelduni\ as they contained terra ad unatn carucant. But in the south the number of such manors was being continually diminished by the working of the assess- ment system, till the great majority were assessed at a number of hides which bore no relation to the number of their plough- lands, being sometime^ much above and sometimes much below it Now it must be seen that Canon Taylor's theory simply Ignores the operation of such a process ; it is not concerned with it; it only deals with the state of things before that process has come into play. Of course, as soon as it came into play, it would make havoc of any fixed rela- tion between the carucata ad geldum and the terra ad unafn carucam. If at the time when the Survey was taken that fixed relation between the ploughland and the united geld assess- ment was as much the rule in the north as it was the excep- tion in the south, we are led surely to a conclusion of histori- cal and political importance, viz. that the principle of assess- ment which had been acted on from the first in the south, had never, or hardly ever, come into operation in the north, where the assessment was almost solely regulated by the number of ploughlands, independent of all considerations of value or of favour. But if in Yorkshire, in the East Riding of which Canon Taylor's observations were made, we may accept this to have been the case, we cannot admit it as applicable to all ' the northern shires,' or, to speak more accurately, the carucated district. In Nottinghamshire, for instance, the relation of the carucata ad geldum to the terra uni carucce is quite diflTerent and would seem rather to resemble that of the hide to the ploughland. Here, then, the southern principle of assessment must already have come into operation. Canon Taylor's theory requires that the carucata ad geldum should stand to the terra ad unam carucam in the proportion of i to i or 2 to i, or some- NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 207 thing between the two, where the systems are mixed. But in Nottinghamshire we find the proportion to be ' the other way up.' The former stands to the latter in the proportion of 2 to 3, I to 2, 3 to 8, I to 3, I to 4, 1 to 5, and even i to 8.* In Derby- shire also, though less marked, we find cases of 2 to 3, i to 2, &c. In that portion of Rutland which was surveyed with Nottinghamshire we obtain figures which, on more than one ground, are of singular interest and completeness. We learn that this district was divided into two wapentakes, and that each wapentake contained 48 ploughlands. (' Terra uni carucae,' or [' in qua] una caruca esse potest.*) But as one of these wapentakes comprised two hundreds, and the other only one, and as each of these hundreds, according to the rule {vide supra) contained 12 'carucatae ad geldum,' it followed that these twelve geld-carucates represented 24 ploughlands in one wapentake and 48 in the other, thus respectively standing in the proportion of i to 2 and i to 4. All this is but further proof of the urgent need for local research. When the whole carucated district has been care- fully covered by such research, we may obtain results of great interest, and find it possible to trace with exactitude the principle of assessment adopted in the various and (I think we may find) widely differing sub-districts. As to confusion between the ' caruca ' and ' carucata,' it is true that, as Mr. Seebohm complains, ' unfortunately the same contracted form serves in the Survey for both carucata and caruca^ Yet there should, to the modem student, be little danger of confusion ; sometimes, of course, there may be a real doubt, but such cases are comparatively rare. As a rule there can be no question as to which term is meant. Thus, for instance, we can say positively that in his rendering of the famous passage heading the Inquisitio Eliensis^ Dr. Stubbs (doubtless following Ellis) is in error both in his ' Select * See, for instance, i. 281 h 282 b^ &c. 2o8 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND Charters ' and in his ' Constitutional History/ when he extends ' quot car?, in dominio ' as ' quot camicatae/ So too, to take a different instance, Mr. Hunt, in his excellent little ' Norman Britain,' gives us caruca as the equivalent, not of the plough, but of the ' ploughland ' (p. 96). Another pitfall for the. older commentators was the con- fusion between the oxgang and the ploughgang (^.^. between the bovate and the carucate). Thus Ellis wrote that ' the Bavata, or oxgang, was originally as much as an ox-team could plough in a year ' (i. 156). I need hardly say that Mr. Seebohm's researches have made such an error impossible for the future.* Let us now look at the real ploughland, the terra ad unam carucam of Domesday. Mr. Eyton rightly observes that ' this, if not quite a definite expression, is intended in Domesday to denote an area of arable land nearly, if not always, con- stant' ' He proceeds to discuss what that area was, and arriving at the conclusion that ' the ordinary measure of the ploughgang was 120 acres,* adds: 'We cannot find a single instance subversive of such a doctrine, while, if we adopt any hypothesis differing by ten acres in either direction, a similar examination of instances will soon convince us that our basis is unsound.' * Now compare this with Mr. Seebohm's conclu- sion, arrived at so carefully and independently, that the area of the normal 'hide' (used as an areal measure) was 120 acres, and with the leaning of the majority of commentators, especially old Agard himself, to that same figure, and I think you will admit that we have a strong presumption in favour of the correctness of this conclusion. But as a preliminary step, it is necessary to insist on a > So at least I thought when the above was written. Yet this error has been since solemnly brought forward by the Athenaum as a fact fatal to the views held by Canon Taylor, whom this illustration of the persistence of error must have amused no less than surprised. * Key to Domesday^ p. 23. " Ibid, p. 24. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 209 postulate which would seem to be imperfectly grasped. This is the principle of the assessment ' norm/ There has been, and is, much difference of opinion on the subject of the Domesday plough-team (caruca) ; but whether in practice the number of oxen in that team differed or not, it is absolutely certain, in my opinion, that the ' caruca * 0/ Domesday stands for a team of eight oxen, and that the terra ad unam carucam was the ploughland for such team of eight oxen. For it is beyond dispute that such terra is invariably composed, in Domesday, of eight parts, each of them a terra ad unum bovem. Now for purposes of uniformity of Survey, in Domes- day, it was essential that the term * caruca * should have the same denotation throughout, and that denotation would obviously be based on the normal plough-team of the time, such normal plough-team, as Mr. Seebohm holds, being that team of eight oxen on which his theory is essentially based. The only point on which, here, I differ from Mr. Seebohm is on his belief that the 'caruca* in Domesday was applied indifferently to *the typical manorial plough-team of eight oxen 'and to 'the plough- team of the villeins,* which latter, he holds, can hardly have been composed of * more than four oxen.' * I, on the contrary, cannot admit that the * caruca * of Domesday can ever have varied. Surely this is conclusively proved by the monotonously regular Domesday formula : 'Terra x carucis. Ibi ;r— a carucae. Et adhuc a possunt esse.' It will be seen that such a formula could only apply to the 'caruca' as a fixed quantity ; and that, moreover, it involves the axiom of * one plough-team to every ploughland.' * In the same way, where land-measures are concerned, we must remember that, however they may have varied in prac- tice, it must have been necessary, for purposes of assessment, ' Village Community in England^ pp. 85, 86. . ' At the same time, though this is indisputable, the point is one of some difficulty. VOL. I. P 210 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND to assume some uniform scale, and in this way, it may be added, the assessment system would lead to a greater uni- formity in practice. Thus, taking the unit of assessment, whether the hide, the carucate, or the solin, it is obvious that its divisions, if recognised as geld-measures, must invariably have borne a fixed proportion to that unit With the hide, for instance, its subdivisions, the geld-virgate and the geld- acre, must have been fixed fractions of the hide, or their assessment would have been impossible. That is to say, the geld-hide must have contained a fixed number of geld-virgates and geld-acres. But, here again, that number would be determined by the normal number in the areal hide. Hence the importance of investigating the former as an authoritative clue to the latter. This doctrine that the hide (or carucate or solin) must have always contained, as a geld-measure, the same number of acres, is necessarily opposed to Canon Taylor's theory that the geldable carucate contained either 60 or 80 acres, accord- ing as the manor assessed was cultivated on the two-field or three-field system. Unfortunately, the question is further complicated by variations in the length of the rod or perch, and consequently in the size of the acre. Thus we have carii- cates of 60 acres which are specially mentioned to have been measured by the rod of 24 or 25 feet (described as 'our* royal rod by Richard I. and Henry III.) ; * so that these 60 custo- mary acres might amount to some 120 acres measured by the short rod. All which shows us how cautious we should be in laying down for universal application any hard and fast rule. Of all the various views that have been held on this subject, I need only allude to those of Kemble, because his great eminence as an authority on the Anglo-Saxon state renders it impossible to ignore them. * The value of a hide,' he wrote * Hale's Register of Worcester Priory , p. xlv; Ellis's Introduction ^ i. 151 ; Ninth Report Hist, MSS, App. I. p. 30, See also supra^ p. 205, note. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 211 * is 40 Norman acres.' He further held that it was equal to 30 Saxon acres, or rather to 30 of their * large acres/ each of which he divided into four quarentcfia or small acres, thus assigning 120 of these small or quarter acres to the hide. Further, he held that * as the Anglo-Saxon half-score was equivalent to the Norman dozen, 40 Norman acres would represent 33^ English acres,' which does not, he argues rather weakly, * differ very widely from the calculation given above ' (i.e. 30 acres).* This curious view, which he elaborated at length, was ably criticised by Mr. Pearson in an Appendix to his * England in the Middle Ages.' Mr. Freeman appears with much judgment to have refrained from discussing this knotty point, but our greatest authority of all — I mean of course Dr. Stubbs — has devoted a footnote to what, with justice, he describes as this * vexed question,' and in it, with great caution, discusses Kemble's view, urging that * although his argument obviates many difficulties, it opens the way for many more.' He further suggests as * possible that some of the inconsistencies in the use of these words may arise from their being used to express the whole share of one man in all the fields of his village. Thirty hides in a system of common cultivation would represent such an allotment in each of the cultivated areas.' * I have pointed out to Dr. Stubbs, that, when he thus wrote, what he meant to say was thirty acres, not thirty hides. But, in any case, this suggestion will not apply to Kemble, for he explained that in his reckoning of 30 acres he allowed 10 to each course. His error is, I think, rather to be traced to the fact that the hiwisce, or family holding, from which the word * hide * is said to be derived, was sometimes, it would seem, applied to the yardland of 30 acres, and sometimes to the full ploughland composed of four such yardlands.^ • S^axons in England (ed. Birch), i. lOi. * Const. Hist. i. 74, fwte. ■ Compare Secbohm's Village Community ^ pp. 162, 395. 212 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND I should mention, perhaps, that although in strictness the areal hide represented a ploughland, yet that ploughland connoted the enjoyment of certain appendicia — meadow, pasture, wood, and so forth — which might sometimes, I pre- sume, be associated with the ploughland under the name 'hide/ Now, as to the number of acres contained in the areal hide, if we could prove that the subjective hide, the hide as a unit of geld assessment, contained 120 acres, we should obviously have the strongest presumption that the corre- sponding areal hide contained the same number. I have worked through the Inquisitio Geldi with this special object, but found to my disappointment that the odd acres which paid geld on that occasion did not pay at a uniform rate, some paying twice as much as others. This test, therefore, fails us, and all that we can say is that for the purpose of collecting the geld, the acre, if a geldable quantity, as it was, must have borne a fixed proportion to the unit of assessment with the hide ; and if that proportion was, as I think, one to a hundred and twenty, then at the normal geld-rate of two shillings on the hide, the holder of the virgate would have paid sixpence, and of the half-virgate threepence, while the typical cottier's holding of five acres would have paid one penny. I must explain, however, that we are only justified as yet in treating the geld as assessed on geld-hides and geld-virgates, not on the corresponding areal measure, for this involves a wide question on which I have made elaborate calculations, but on which I do not feel justified at present in speaking with the confidence I could wish. In any case you will see that the geld and the hide have a certain numerical relation, and I am, I must confess, a little surprised that Mr. Seebohm should connect the acreage of the hide with the comparatively late scutage, urging that ' in choosing the acreage of the standard hide and virgate, a number of \ NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 213 acres was probably assumed corresponding with the monetary system, so that the number of pence in the scutum should correspond with the number of acres assessed to its payment ' (P- 39)' Surely this is a strange inversion of the chronological sequence of events. But I now come to a theory of Mr. Eyton's which, I con- fess, greatly puzzles me. If what I have termed the objective hide (and what he terms the ploughland) was reckoned, for purposes of calculation, at 1 20 acres, that is four virgates of 30 acres each, then the subjective (or geld) hide would natu- rally be similarly reckoned as containing four virgates, or 120 acres. That it did contain four virgates is happily quite certain. Mr. Eyton, however, asserts that it contained, not 120, but 48 acres. The presumption is obviously so strong against so improbable a supposition, that it would need the clearest evidence to establish its correctness. To revert to an illustration I have already employed, it is like assuming that because the assessed value of a house differs from its real value, therefore every pound of the assessed value, though duly containing 20 shillings, would only contain in all 96 pence. But Mr. Eyton had, unluckily, a provoking habit of occasionally omitting his evidence, and thus rendering it impossible to judge of the correctness of his induction. So here, he merely writes : ' In Dorset the gheld-hide was sub- divided into four virgates, and each virgate into 12 acres.'* All we can do, then, is carefully to examine the instance quoted by himself in illustration of his own contention. This is the manor of Mappowder, in Dorset, of which Domesday says that T.RE. 'geldabat pro m virgatis et dimidia et VII acris terre.' 'Here,' says Mr. E}^on, 'the gheld quantities are clumsily but intelligibly expressed. The geldability of the estate was that of one gheld-hide and one gheld-acre, or more concisely still, that of 49 gheld-acres.* * But if so, why does » Key U Domesday^ p. 14. ' ^^*<'- P- *6. 214 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND not Domesday say so ? Wliy does it not say, after its wont, that the assessment is that of i hide and i acre ? Mr, Eyton gets over this difficulty by charging the Survey with clumsi- ness. Now it would be most unjust to that scholarly writer to quote, in his case, the old adage that ' bad workmen quarrel with their tools ' ; but, for my part, I confess I do not believe in finding fault with your record when you can't make it square with your theories. Let me give you an instance in point. We read, in Domes- day, of the borough of Stafford : Tempore regis R reddebat burgum de Stadford de omnibus consuetudinibus ix libras denariorum. Duae partes erant regis, tercia comitis. Modo habet rex W. de redditibus burgi vii libras inter suam partem et comitis. Medietatem partis proprise regis habet Robertus dono regis ut dicit (i. 246). On this Mr. Eyton thus comments in his work on the Staffordshire Domesday : Other evidence of the recent disorganisation of Staffordshire consists in what Domesday says about the county town and castle of Stafford In King Edward's time the burgage rents and customs had amounted to 9/. per annum, whereof 6/. went to the king, 3/. to the Earl (of Mercia). At the date of Domesday the gross income was 7/. instead of 9/. The whole went to the king, who was both king and earl. The half of his share as king, which half I take to have been 2/. 6s. Sd., was now receivable by Robert (de Stafford) who alleged a crown grant thereof. The reason of this fall in the annual revenue of the burgh of Stafford evidently was, that out of 179 burgage-houses which com- posed the town, 51 lay waste (vasta) (p. 19 ; cf. p. 51). The interest of this conclusion, if correct, lies in the reduc- tion it implies in the firma due from Stafford. Ellis must have arrived at the same conclusion, for he tells us that * the rents from the customary payments of the town had dimi- nished/ * But if so, this was a remarkable exception, for, * Introduction^ ii. 487. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 215 impoverished or not, all other boroughs had to pay more than, or at least as much as, they had paid under the Con- fessor. I contend, however, that it was not so. Later on in his work Mr. Eyton admits that as an item in Robert de Stafford's fief Domesday inserts the follow- ing : * In Burgo de Stafford habet Robertas lxx solidos de medietate partis Regis.' This I conclude to have been an erroneous statement ; at all events it is opposed to the statement above extracted from the Survey of the burgh of Stafford. It gives to Robert de Stafford half of the king's whole receipts, whether as king or earl, which whole receipts were 7/. — ^that is, it gives the Baron 3/. 105. per annum. But it is clear from the previous statement that he was only entitled to 2/. 6s. Sd, (P- 95)- But I deny that the great Survey here is either erroneous or contradictory. Its meaning is that the render of Stafford had been raised from 9/. to 10/. icxr., that of this the king's two-thirds was 7/. and the earl's third 3/. lar., and that the king having granted to Robert de Stafford half of his own share, namely of the 7/. (that is, 3/. lOJ., precisely as Domes- day states), there remained to the king ' inter suam partem et comitis [partem] ' just 7/., which is the sum given in the Survey. There is, therefore, no discrepancy whatever ; only a misunderstanding on Mr. Eyton's part. And this was due to the peculiarity of the case in the king giving Robert, not the earl's third, but (which came to the same thing) a half of his own two-thirds. His doing so is ingeniously, and no doubt rightly, thus explained by Mr. Eyton : In an arithmetical point of view it was immaterial whether the king made over half his own share of this revenue, or the whole of the earl's share : but William, I opine, was careful to give to Robert de Stafford nothing that savoured of earldom (p. 19, note). But to return : I object, as I have said, to theories being defended by charging the Survey with clumsiness or error 2i6 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND where its evidence is against them. In the passage quoted from the Dorset Domesday, the Survey is only clumsy if Mr. Eyton's theory is right If, on the contrary, as I am in- clined to hold, the geld virgate was of thirty acres, then three virgates and a half plus seven acres would be the natural way of expressing a hundred and twelve acres. So with Essex. There we have such a case as this. Alresford was held ' pro II hidis et pro L acris terre* On my hypothesis this means for two hides and fifty acres, that is for two hides and five-tenths. But on Mr. Eyton's, it would be a 'clumsy' expression for three hides and two acres. Again, on the fief of Randulf Peverel, we find manors occurring which *defend- unt se ' for 9 hides + 82 acres, for two hides and a half + 30 acres (ii. 72 a), for half a hide and 30 acres, for half a hide and 24 acres (ii. 75 a) — which last, according to Mr. Eyton, would - mean exactly one hide. All these appear to me to be entirely at variance with his theory. I had hoped, as I said, that the geld-rolls of 1084 might decide the point conclu- sively one way or the other, but a laborious search has com- pelled me to believe that the odd acres contributed at so uncertain a rate as to leave their relation to the virgate and the hide in as much uncertainty as ever. I must not leave this point without alluding to the peculiar use, in Cornwall, of the acre as a unit of geld- measurement. Mr. Eyton appeals to this usage when enun- ciating the view discussed above ; * but when we find a manor, as in these cases, assessed in terms of the acre, nay when we find manors assessed not merely at one acre, but actually at half an acre, you will, I think, agree with me that there must be something peculiar in these 'acres.' For even on Mr. Eyton's own hypothesis, an assessed value of half an acre would not represent more than a ninety-sixth of a hide, which, at the normal geld-rate of 2j., would involve the * Key to Donusday^ p. 16. NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 217 liability of this manor to a total payment for a year's geld of exactly one farthing. Surely we have here a reductio ad absurdum. It should, perhaps, be added that in these cases we have * ager ' occasionally instead of * acre.' If I am right in rejecting this hypothesis on the geld- acre, it follows that Mr. Eyton's assumption that in Lincoln- shire it equalled five statute acres, involved three errors. First, like his similar statement in Dorset, it rests on his fatal system of average, which is absolutely misleading for indi- vidual cases. Secondly, it does not, for Lincolnshire even, rest on an average, for in two of the three divisions of the county the averages were widely different from this. Thirdly, it is based on the erroneous estimate of twelve acres to the geld-virgate. Let us now take a test case and see how the estimate of 1 20 acres for the ploughland (or * terra ad unam carucam ') works out in practice. I select the now familiar name of Kensington, because that manor happens to afford a pecu- liarly clear and simple case. The Domesday entry is as follows : Albericus de uer tenet de episcopo Constantiensi Chenesit[am]. Pro X hidis se defendit. Terra est x carucis. Ibi in dominio sunt iiii carucae et villani habent v carucas et vi potest fieri.* In totis valentiis valet x libras. . . . T.R.E. x libras (i. 130 b^ 2). Here, as Mr. Eyton would say, everything is normal. Assessment, ten hides ; extent, ten ploughlands ; value, ten pounds. Four ploughlands are in demesne, six in villen- age. Now reckoning the ploughland at 120 acres, this would give us, for the Domesday manor, 1,200 acres of arable, of which 480 in demesne and 720 in villenage. Passing from 1086 to 1264, we find that, in the latter year, on the death of < It is clear from an examination of the manors on this page that the above 'VI' ought to be * VI ta'\i.e. sexta) *a sixth.' (Compare Inquisitio Etiensis^ p. 507 [I J.) 2i8 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND Hugh de Ver (Earl of Oxford) to whom the manor had descended from Aubrey de Ver, an Inq, p,m, was taken, and the extent of the manor ascertained to be (i) In demesne, 570 acres of arable of 4//. an acre ; (2) In villenage, 21 virgates, at the rent of 59/. 4^^. Now 2 1 virgates of 30 acres of arable each (on the hypothesis of 120 to the ploughland) would amount to 630 acres, which with the above 570 acres in demesne, would give us exactly the 1,200 acres of arable that we deduced from the Domesday entry. The only change that will have taken place in those 178 years is the taking of three virgates (90 acres) out of villenage into demesne. It is, of course, always dangerous to argue from a single case, but the above figures are certainly remarkable. They do not, however, affect or exclude the hypothesis that the sixty acres of fallow (under the three-field system) were never reckoned in the * ploughland.' Turning now to a different subject, I am particularly anxious to call your attention to the question of the acre as applied to meadow-land. When stud)ang the Domesday Survey of Colchester, I noted in the ' Antiquary ' that there was one point which I was utterly unable to explain. It was this. At Colchester, as in most similar localities, we find a King's Meadow, so-called, observe, not because the king owned it, but because he possessed in it a large proportion of the * doles.' The name remained, but its meaning was for- gotten. Now in this meadow were ten 'acres,' so-called, which I had identified with the ten acres of meadow entered as the king's in Domesday, which were always attached to the king's castle, and which have passed with that castle to my family. I found them described in our deeds as ' the ten acres in King's Meadow,' but on examining them I found that as a matter of fact they lay in three strips, the six-acre, the three- acre, and the acre, the whole only amounting to 7a. 2r. 36p., and the average for the acre in each strip varying from 75 to NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 219 •80, that is from 3 to 3^ roods. I could get no further light on this, till on reading Mr. Palmer's admirable treatise on 'Ancient Tenures of Land in the Marches of North Wales/ I found that his researches led him to the conclusion that ' the normal doles of the old common meadows ' in his district are represented by an area of * a little over three statute roods.' The resemblance was curiously complete. Mr. Palmer pro- ceeds to note that in common parlance a meadow is still spoken of both there and in Cheshire as containing so many * days' math,' and inclines to the conclusion that these normal doles were really * days* maths ' (a statement for which there is record evidence), and represented each the amount that a man could mow in a day. Now let us turn from Mr. Palmer to Palgrave. That writer tells us of East Friesland, that * the district known by the name of the Theel-land, contains about 2,000 day-maths, a measure which was anciently known in this country, being still retained in the County Palatine of Chester.' » We may fairly, then, assume that these Domesday acres in the King's Mead at Colchester were not really acres at all but days' maths, and if so there, elsewhere also, as for instance at Canterbury, where the eight Domesday acres of meadow are said, I believe, by Larking to have been situate in the King's Mead. This would at once explain the passage in the Battle Abbey Register, 'triginta acras prati ad men- suram Normanniae dimensas,' implying that the English meadow acre represented a different acre, in fact the * day's math.' Further, Mr. Palmer has well explained that seeming doles of a statute acre were the result of a process by which all the meadow was in some cases thrown together and doled out afresh on the real acre system. We have traces, I think, of some such process in a record of about the beginning of the thirteenth century, contained in Madox's * Formularium ' * English Commonwealth ^ i. 77. 220 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND (p. 250), which is valuable for its evidence on the village community, and which speaks of * octo perticatas prati . . . quamlibet percatam de sedecim pedibus/ The special men- tion of the length of the perch would seem to point to a fresh division on a new system of measurement. The survival of so archaic a measurement as the * day- math ' at the date of the Domesday Survey will not seem strange when we learn that in Essex (at Runwell) we find at least ar. late as the middle of the thirteenth century mention of * daywcrkes * of land, that I have myself examined original charters relating to manors in the same county, and dealing with ' opera diurna vocata daywerkes,* and that in Warwick- shire, startling though the fact may seem, we actually find mention of * acres or dayes workes of arrable lande * as late as the reign of Charles II. This may lead us to glance for a moment at the witness of Domesday to * the open field.* The first point to which I would call attention is the occasional use in the Survey of the * acre ' not as an areal, but as a lineal measure. Students of our early land system will, of course, understand at once that such a usage is the direct consequence of the typical * acre-strip ' that characterised tlie open field Just as the base of the areal * rood * was the lineal * rood ' or ' rod,' so the base of the areal acre (composed of four such rood-strips lying side by side) was the lineal acre, i.e, four rods. But the measure which we find in Domesday in conjunction with the lineal acre is the ' quarentena.' Now the quarentena is the * furlong,' that is, the side of the areal acre, just as the lineal ' acre ' is its base. Thus the use of these two measures brings before us with vivid force the sight of those acre-strips which must have met on every side the eyes of the Domesday Commissioners. As Mr. Eyton observes in his Dorset Domesday (pp. 25-28), these two measures were used for estimating woodland and pasture. But it may be pointed NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 221 out that such phrases as ' Silva una quarentina et VIII acrae lata' (79 b^ i) cannot be taken as of rigid precision, although Mr. Eyton does so. For it is obvious that the woodland was not distributed over the country in a series of rectangular blocks. My own impression is that the legati used the divi- sions of the open field as a kind of rough-and-ready reckoner with which to estimate by eye the dimensions of the adjacent woodland. It is, indeed, said that the Domesday Survey nowhere alludes to the open field ; yet from behind the veil of the great Record there peep, irrepressible, ever and anon the familiar features of the village community. We have clear glimpses, under their actual names, of its three essential land divisions — the campi, or great open fields,* the citltura or shots, into which those fields were subdivided,* and even the acre- strips themselves, the acre-stups which had to be ploughed and the acre-strips which had to be sown.' It might even be urged, though I do not wish to press the point unduly, that the phrase, * Ibi i hida . . . jacet inter terram regis particit- latim ' (i. 1 56 b) points, if * particulatim * should be rendered 'piecemeal,* to the scattering of this * hide * over the open fields. * * In campis Lincoliae extra civitatem * (i. 336). Compare the * campi ' (or open fields) of Nottingham mentioned throughout the Records of the Borough of Nottingham, also the * Boroughfields ' at Colchester &c. &c. * • Una cultura terrae * (i 34, 375 b\ On this term, see a remarkable early charter (1 150-1159)1 in the Burton Cartulary (p. 37), where we find this expression : 'II culturas terne una de vi Uutdis et aliam de vii.' I note this as a most interesting case of the early occurrence of our term ' lands ' (in a Latinised form), of which term Mr. Atkinson (in his * Notes on Common Field Names ') writes ; *■ the universal term for the divisions of the field created by regular ploughing is lands'* {Antiquary^ xiv. 117). The same writer speaks of ^cultura or culture'' being a name of continual occurrence in old deeds of a group of such acres {Ibid. p. 74). I merely quote these passages as confirming my statements. • 'XLI acras de aratnra* (ii. 2 ^) ; • vii acras seminatas* (i. 267 b) ; * unam acram seminatam ' (ii. 7S b); * villani arant et seminant de proprio semine quater XX acras frumenti et totidem ad avenas preter ix acras . . . villani arabant cxi. acras terrae domini et seminabant de proprio semine frumenti * (i. 179 b). See also for villein services :—* Hi Radchenistri arabant et hcriciabant ad curiam domini ' (i. 163). 222 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND Lastly, we have the three typical services of the com- munity which dwelt within this shell (to adapt Mr. Seebohm's simile), the opus or week-work,^ the precaria or bene-work,* and the gablum or gafol,' all of them distinctly entered. We are reminded also that even dwellers in towns were connected with the open-field system, its dues and its villein services. At Nottingham the burgesses had paid for their land partly in gafol and partly in labour ; * at Hereford the owner of every burgage had yearly to reap the king's crops and make the king's hay ; * at Steyning he had to perform all the villein services;® and at Colchester almost every burgess held a strip, large or small, in the fields that lay about the walls. In dealing with the evidence of Domesday on the village community in England, Mr. Seebohm commits himself to one statement from which I must reluctantly differ. Urging that it is * clear ' from the witness of Domesday * that at the date of the Survey the holdings of the villein were generally hides, half-hides, virgates, and half-virgates,' and that the virgate or yard-land was the normal holding (p. 94), he writes, of * the Fen country ' — the holdings in this district seem to have been peculiar. Instead of being each of a virgate, or each of a half- virgate, they are each of so many acres, as was found to be the case in some districts of Cambridgeshire in the Hundred Rolls. The Fen district seems to have had its own local peculiarities, both in the nth and in the ' * XII bordarii operantes una die ebdomade ' (i. i86). * 'Excepto rustico opere sicut deprecari poterat a preposito' (i. 172 ^). ' Homines operantur opera regis quae prepositus jusserit ' (i. 219). ■ * Cum gablo rusticorum ' (i. 12 b), * * Hec terra . . . de censu terre et operibus burgensium reddit LXXV solidos et VII denarios ' (i. 280}. * * Unaquaeque Integra masura . . . tribus diebus in Augusto secabat ad Maur- dine et una die ad fenum congregandum erat ubi vicecomes volebat * (i. 179). ' *In burgo fuerunt cxviii masurse . . Ad curiam operabantur sicul villani T.R.E.'(i. 17). NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND 223 14th centuries, just as Kent also had. But here was no exception to the rule that the villani were classed in grades, each grade with equal holdings (Id.). I contend that, on the contrary, we have here to do with a very remarkable exception to that * rule * which Mr. Seebohm has so ably set forth. I have gone carefully through the manors in question, as surveyed in the Inquisitio Eliensi^, and I think the following results will be found tolerably accurate : 40 villeins, holding 5 acres. I »> II 6 „ 17 » 7 .. 32 »i 7i » 32 >i 8 „ 13 >9 9 .. 61 »» 10 „ II 9> " ,, 37 9f " » 12 II 15 .. It will be seen how startling is the difference between such a system as this and Mr. Seebohm*s four 'grades' of villeins, holding respectively 15, 30, 60, and 120 acres (taking his estimate of the hide and virgate). But as the hide and virgate are found in these manors as measures, though not as holdings, the extremely interesting question is raised, as it seems to me, whether this system of ' small holdings ' may not have been superimposed on the older ' virgate ' system. And this further suggests the question whether, if the 'virgate' under the normal system was the typical villein holding, the three other grades of holding represent a later development of the system by the division or aggregation of the original virgates ? Before finally taking leave of the subject of 'measures of land in Domesday,' it should be noted that on the title-page of his ' Key to Domesday ' Mr. Eyton places prominently 224 NOTES ON DOMESDAY MEASURES OF LAND * its exactitude of mensuration/ It might almost be described as having been a passion with him to account for every acre in each county on which he wrote. At first sight, no doubt, his results are wonderful. Every item is exactly accounted for. Yet, alas ! this perfect system will not bear the strain of test. When Mr. Eyton was sure of the total for which he had to account, he was generally able to account for it. But sometimes the total turned out to be wrong after he had accounted for it quite satisfactorily under the impression that it was right. And this, I fear, is fatal. Take for in- stance the case of Drayton in his analysis of the Staffordshire Survey. Mr. Eyton considered that the area for which he had here to account was 3,315 acres. He reckoned up its two constituent manors, the king's and Thurstan's, which con- tained between them 9 ploughlands — that is according to what he terms his * oft-repeated theory,' 1,080 acres -f* 20 acres of meadow, and (as I,' he adds, * compute the measure- ments) 1,440 acres of wood ' (p. 63). You can make nothing of this but 2,540 acres. Yet Mr. Eyton must have reckoned it, by an error of over 1,100 acres, at 3,653 acres, for he tells us that * the Domesday measures ' of these two manors * imply 338 acres more' than the 3,315 that he had to account for. This supposed excess he at once disposes of by informing us that 'these 338 acres were in Cantwell' (p. 64). But, alas! in his errata he frankly confesses that the existence of two manors at Drayton was on his part * a delusion,' as one of the two had been included in error, and that his calculations in Drayton were consequently * mostly inept ! ' Again, to take another instance, it has been ably suggested by General Wrottesly (introduction to the 'Burton Chartulary,' p. 3), that the supposed suppression of Burton Abbey's estate in Burton itself was due to an error in the compilation of Domesday, the words 'in ipsa villa' introducing the said estate being represented in the Survey as referring to Stafford. NOTES ON DOMESDAY^ MEASURES OF LAND 225 This ingenious hypothesis appears to carry conviction with it. Thus the estate in Stafford assigned by Domesday to the Abbey would simply represent the Burton estate, supposed by Mr. Eyton to have been suppressed. When, therefore, he estimated the alleged estate in Stafford at 240+ 16 -+-360, i.e. 5i6 acres (p. 93), he was in reality, though he knew it not, estimating the supposedly suppressed estate, which estate he had separately estimated at 6,580 acres ' (or, contradictorily, in another place, at * some 5,370 ').* That is to say, the area of one and the same estate was unconsciously proved by him in one place to be ten times as much as he proved it in the other. After such striking examples as these of the way in which, if not the greatest, at least the most ardent of Domes- day scholars ' hopelessly wrecked his little bark ' (to quote from the opening page of this paper) on 'the rock' of measures of land, it should be hardly necessary to warn the student that undue precipitancy or rash confidence will in- evitably lead him to the same fate. Postscript. — Since the above paper was in type I have found evidence proving that the Domesday hide (i.e. the unit of assessment) contained 120 acres as contended by me in the text. » P. 10. « P. 14. VOL. I, Errata et Addenda, Page 377, No. 70, instead of Roman Stadion read Stadion of 720 Roman feet square, and add The eighteenth part of this Stadion is the Roman jugerum, and the amount of the Sussex short acre of 100 statute poles. Page 383, Russia, itutead of 5 Roman Stadia read 5 Stadia of 720 Roman feet. ® QteS (pieSS of i^t (BefbaBf^ (^tdi of Oiaeeeamenf of ©omeebag^ EMBRACING THE DIVISIONS OF THE LIBRA OR POUND OF SILVER AND THE WEIGHTS AND MEASURES OF UN- COINED METAL, FLOUR, CLOTH, &c., AS MADE BY THE ANGLI, MERCIANS, DANES, NORMANS, AND CELTS, AND THEIR CONNECTION WITH THE TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORDS «HIDA,' 'CARUCATA,' «VIRGATA,* *VIL- LANUS,' 'ANGLICUS NUMERUS,' &c. By O. C. pell, M,A., Barrister-at-Law. It has been necessary in writing this paper to refer to certain MSS. ; these MSS. are cited by me under letters which are placed against the description of such MSS. as follows : — D. Bk. Domesday Booky &c., as printed by authority of Parliament, in four vols. E. L. h Liber Eliensis of the year 1221, being Tiberius B. il in the Cottonian MSS. L.E. Another Liber Eliensis of the year 1277, being Claudius C. xi. in the Cottonian MSS., of which another copy is in Caius College Library, though mutilated in some places. H. R. The Hundred Rolls. Printed in two vols. D. P. The Domesday of St. Paul, edited by the late Archdeacon Hale for the Camden Society. y 2 228 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF R.C. The Cartulary of Ramsey Abbey ^ at the Record Office, now in course of publication in the Rolls series, but of which only the first two volumes are as yet printed. Exon. D. The Exon Domesday ^ printed in 1 8x6 by order of Parliament, and containing the original returns of the Domesday Commissioners, from which portions of Domesday Book itself for the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Wiltshire were compiled. E. M. A MS. (in the possession of the Dean and Chapter of Ely) of the reign of Ed. II. called Extenta Manerii, but relating to seven Manors only. P. G. The Chariulary of St. Peter' Sy Gloucester ^ in the Rolls Series. B. B. Boldon Book. W. P. Registrum Prioratus Beatce Marice Wigornensis (Camden Society's Publication). Some of these MSS. give the size of the virgate of the manor, in those manors to which they relate, and some of them give in addition the area of the lord's demesne farm in each manor, and the number of ploughs at work on such demesne. It is obvious, therefore, that these MSS., written as they are ' on the same lines ' as D. Bk. (but going minutely into detail), give the clue to solve many doubtful points as to the meaning of such words as hida^ carucata^ terra ad carucam^ and virgata, and they are somewhat of a key to the survey of 1086. For the sake of easy reference I have arranged the contents of this paper under the following heads : — I. The Libra or pound of silver; divisions of in account into shillings and pence, &c. II. The divisions of the land. Poles or virgae, acrae, bovatae, and virgatae, &c. ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 229 III. The Areal *Hida,' 'Terra ad carucam' or 'carucata* of the lords and their men. IV. The Unit of Assessment V. The Geldable * Hida' or * Carucata.' VI. The Anglicus Numerus, &c. VII. • Villanus/ * Servus.' I. THE LIBRA OR POUND OF SILVER. Division of in account into Shillings and Pence, It has sometimes been said, and at first sight it would ap- pear to have been said with truth, that discussions as to the meaning of the words ' hida/ ' terra ad carucam/ ' carucatae/ and such like found in Domesday are vain and useless, in that they deal with matters of dry detail, and lead to no end worthy of the labour bestowed upon them. I think otherwise, and venture to say that these very particulars (when it is perceived what they really imply) are some of the most interesting to be found in the Great Survey, and contain matter of the most importance to the historian dealing with Anglo-Saxon times, for in them is wrapped up the key to much that has hitherto been only matter of specu- lation, and also to the knowledge of the race and the numbers, actual condition, and monetary position of the people in- habiting these islands in those times. In order to support the statement thus made by me, I must first of all consider the divisions of the libra or pound weight of silver and gold in ancient times. The libra (not the Tower or moneyers' pound) was then divided (in matters of account) in different ways. Among the Romans, in matters of account, it was divided into 72 shillings nominally, each of 96 grains, such grains or units being about one-sixth less than our Troy grains. This division for purposes of accounts, notwithstanding the depreciation of the actual coins 230 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELD ABLE UNIT OF themselves, appears to have been in practice at the time of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes; for instance, *Si quis solidos appendere voluit auri cocti, VI solidos quatemorum scriptulorum nostris vultibus figuratos appendat pro singulis unciis,' Cod. Theod. liber xii. tit 7, p. 563 ; and again, ' Quotiescunque certa solidorum summa pro tituli quantitate debetur et auri massa transmittitur in LXXII solidos libra feratur,' Cod. Justin, ix. tit. 7, p. 5. The Anglo-Saxons also in matters of account, before the advent of the Danes and the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum (referred to below), appear to have divided their pound into scillings of 4 peninga, ^dich penig being 20 grains Troy, or 26f wheat grains, 32 of which equalled 24 grains Troy. The actual existence of this wheat grain is most mate- rial as bearing on the land measures, the subject of this inquiry, and for the understanding of certain portions of Domesday Book. That the Anglo-Saxons had a shilling of 4^/. appears from a passage in Ina's laws, to be found at p. 140, vol. i. of Thorpe's ' Ancient Laws and Institutes of England,* where an ox's tail is put at i scilling, which in another version of the same date and of the same law is said to be 4 peninga. So, too, in the laws of the Conqueror, sec- tion I, xi. page 472 of the same volume of Thorpe, *De membrorum mutilacione.' ' Del dei apres le poucer XV sol de sol Engleis que est apele quaer denier.' But though the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons appear to have divided the libra in the way that I have mentioned, yet at the very time that it was so divided there was another division of the libra in practice in Europe, and perhaps in England, which was afterwards used by the Normans and Danes, which existed on the continent long before their advent in these islands, and which coincides with our division of the pound and with Troy weight, being the division which gives 20 solidi to the libra, 12 pence of 24 grains Troy (or ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 231 32 wheat grains) to the soUdus, and, therefore, 240 pence to the j>ound. This system was that of Charlemagne, and the proportions were those of the lira of Italy, the libra of Spain, and the livre of France. This division of the pound is to be found at a very early time in the beginning of the seventh century, and possibly considerably before that time. At any rate, it is mentioned in the * Leges Alamannicae,' cap. vi. § 3 : — ' Saiga autem est quarta pars tremissis — hoc est denarius unus : duo saiga duo denarii dicuntur. Tremissis est tertia pars solidi et sunt denarii quatuor.' See also 'Leges Ripuarix,' c. xix. § i. But further, there is distinct evidence that this division was in force in the middle of the eighth century in England. It ap- pears in the ' Historia Eliensis ' (Gale's ' Scriptores,' xv. p. 472) that Britnoth purchased at that time certain land at Cypcn- ham, in Cambridgeshire, and agreed 'quod Abbas pro singulis hidis C solidos daret.' When the payment was to be made, the MS. goes on to say, ' venit uxor Alfuodi xv libras acceptura, et abbati ill integras hydas traditura.' This would make the solidus one of 12 pence. Moreover, a century earlier, in the treaty of peace between Alfred and Guthnim (Thorpe's 'Ancient Laws and Institutes,' vol. ii. p. 481), we find this entry : — ' Twi hindi hominis wera est twa- hund, scilicet ducenti sol. ex V scl. denariis, qui faciunt nil lib. et XL d.,' thus disclosing a shilling of five pence and pointing to the conclusion that a division of the libra into 240 denarii, as well as into one of 288 pence, had at the time, and perhaps for the purposes of that treaty, been adopted by the Wessex king ; the mere statement of the number of denarii in a scilling implying the co-existence of solidi of a different denomination. To carry on this portion of the inquiry one step further in anticipation of what will be more fully shown, it has to be mentioned that expressions such as 'uncia agri,' 'solidata 232 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF terrae/ and ' Hbrata terrae ' are often to be met with in old MSS. Thus, in vol. ii. of 'H. R./ page 725, under the heading * De eis qui debent ere Milites/ we read : ' Dicunt juratores quod Robertus filius Nigelli habet terram suam valoris XX libr. argenti et amplius * (meaning the fee simple value) ; and, in the next entry, ' Dicunt et jurant quod Johannis filius Rogeri Gernon habet XX libras terrae et non est miles/ Now, supposing that if at any time in England land had to be distributed or redistributed and taxed by librae argenti and acres measured by poles or vii^ae corre- sponding to the measures of money or money's worth re- served on such distribution — i,e. by the pence contained in a pound of silver or by the measures of food or cloth, &c., for which such pence were the equivalent; and supposing, further, that once there were in England different modes of division of the libra at the same time — as there certainly were at the time of Edgar, and very likely at a much earlier time — then it is plain that id. per acre of acres in a two-course shift would give 288 acres to the pound, and 2d, per acre would give 144 acres to the pound with those who divided the libra into 288 pence, whilst id. per acre would give 240 acres in the one case, and 2d. per acre would give 120 acres in the other case, to the pound with those who divided the libra into 240 pence. Now, the Normans used this Frank division of the pound which gives 240 pence to the libra, and on examination I think it is pretty fairly sure that this last-mentioned area of 120 acres (taxed at 2d. per acre, being the sown portion of a plot of 240 acres in a two-course shift) was the Norman unit of assessment all over England, and is recorded under some one or other of the expressions * hida,* * carucata,' ' terra est car/ and ' car. possunt ere,' as shown further on. It is necessary to say here also in anticipation that it is more than likely that D. Bk. directly mentions the geldable land ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 233 only, and that linked to it may be fallow land lying <in cominuni ' untaxed and unnoticed (as will also appear further on), so that the 120 acres might represent 240 acres in a two- course shift, and 180 in a three-course. Continuing on with the divisions of the pound : it appears that there was another division of a weight or mark of gold, which I have ventured to call pre-Anglo-Saxon, and British (because used by that people), but which I shall allude to in this paper as Mercian, as for a long period it was the basis of the moneys of account of the Kingdom of Mercia and lingered on till after the time of D. Bk. in regard to customary payments ; this weight or mark (not to be confounded with the old libra mercatoria of 1 5 ounces of 7,680 Troy grains) was perhaps Gothic or Scandinavian, but was certainly founded on a wheat grain, 32 of which equalled 24 Troy grains, being as eight to six, or three-fourths the weight of the Troy grain. Of the existence of this grain we are made aware by referring to Thos. Rudborn in ' Hist Maj. Winton. Anglia Sacra,' vol. i. p. 257, who says it was declared by W. Conq. (1083) that a penny sterling was to weigh 32 wheat grains, and also to the declaratory statute 3 Ed. 51, which enacts * that an English penny called a Sterling round and without dipping shall weigh thirty-two wheat-ears from the midst of the ear,* and declares that * twenty pence shall make one ounce, and twelve ounces one pound/ It will appear, therefore, that therewere 7,680 of these wheat grains (= 5,760 Troy grains) in the Norman and Edward's pound. If we divide the 7,680 grains by 30, we have a pound containing 256 pence instead of the 240 of the Norman or 288 of the Saxon pound ; but all three pounds, if of the same weight, containing in actual weight 7,680 wheat grains. The men of Berkholt (Suffolk), in the Placita coram Rege 37 Henr. III. Rot. 4, plead 2^ prescriptive right to pay to the Lord of the Manor the customary fee of two ounces, or 'oras,' of the value of 32 pence (each of 30 234 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF grains). So also in Camden's 'Britan. in Belgis,' p. 186, citing an authority from the register of Burton Abbey, this ora of 16 pence is disclosed, each penny being 30 wheat grains = 22J Troy grains. Wherever a payment is recorded as having to be made in * 2 Orae denariorum/ it is invariably stated as to be made *ex veteri consuetudine/ and, as in D. Bk. it is so recorded (as we shall see), it is plain how very old, even at that day, such a money must have been, and that it must have existed long before the advent of the Danes. There is to be noticed this analogy between the Anglo- Saxon and Mercian mark, viz. that the number of grains in the Anglo-Saxon penny and Mercian penny is in deci- mals, and the Norman penny in duodecimals ; but, on the other hand, this is compensated in the former by a division into shillings of duodecimal or sexdecimal figures. This old (and possibly British) weight of 7,680 grains, divided into 256 pence, was further divided into 16 orae of 16 penny-weights. And in this case the ounce, or ora, would equal that referred to in the * Laws of King Ethelred ' (IV. De Institutis Lundoniae, sec. ix.), Thorpe, vol. i. p. 303, thus : 'Omne pondus sit marcatum ad pondus quo pecunia mea recipitur, et eorum singulum signetur ita quod XV ore libram faciant,' 15 ounces thus equalling 16 ounces of Ethelred, the latter containing 480 Mercian wheat grains in the ounce instead of 512 : the necessity for thus marking the pound would not have arisen (it is evident) if the Mercian mark had been originally 1 5 ounces. As Ethelred calls this weight a * libra,' I shall refer to it indifferently either as a pound or a mark. Before I proceed to examine more in detail the component parts of these moneys of account, to which as yet I have only generally alluded, it is perhaps necessary to say that in very early times, no doubt, the render that was owing from a man was not reserved in actual coined money ; it might have been, ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 235 and no doubt was, reserved in food, measures of flour, cloth, cattle, uncoined metal, or even, perhaps, slaves ; but these had recognised equivalents in money. Thus the old laws of the Saxons on the Continent give the equivalents of what was originally reserved in cattle, grain, or honey, stating the number or amount of each that was supposed to equal a solidus. In very old times an ox was treated as a nomisma ; so too in Norway the render being reserved in ells of cloth, the equivalent of six of such ells was reckoned as an ore of * wadmal,' and the ell subsequently coined as a penny. So, too (in the Venedotian Code, Book ii. c. xxvi.), if the render of a free maenol (occupied by several homesteads or tyddens) consisting of a horse-load of flour, the carcase of a cow, a vat of mead, seven thraves of oats, a three-year-old swine, a salted flitch, and a vessel of butter, could not be obtained, it was commuted thus, ' 6 score pence for bread, 3 score for liquor, and 3 score for enllyn' (i.e. what was eaten with bread). There is every reason to suppose that this right of commu- tation had existed for some time, each score of pence repre- senting in weight one ounce in a pound of 12 ounces to the pound of silver, being the pound of pence in use at the time when the copy of the Code that I am quoting from was made. Proceeding now to a detailed account of these pounds, I will, beginning with the grain, go on to the denarius, the ounce or ore, and finally the pound itself. The Grain. It will be gathered from what has gone before that there were two kinds of grains in use as measures of weight in England. First, the Troy grain, 5,400 of which went to the Old Tower or moneyers' pound, which appears to have been the Saxon pound of coined money as distinguished from the money of account Secondly, the wheat grain, 4 of which equalled 3 grains Troy ; 32 therefore counterbalanced the 24 236 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF Troy grains in a Norman pennyweight, and 640 equalled the 480 Troy in an ounce ; 7,680 wheat grains in a Mercian mark or pound of 16 orae or solidi of 16 pennyweights, therefore answer to 5,760 Troy of a pound of 12 ounces of 20 penny- weights to the pound, and 9,600 to 7,200 Troy of a pound of 15 ounces of 20 pennyweights; the 9,600 wheat grains being the contents of a pound of 1 5 ounces of 20 pennyweights of 32 wheat grains, or of a pound of 16 ounces of 20 penny- weights of 30 wheat grains each. It is worth mentioning that according to Kelly (* Cambist,' p. 379), the Barbary pound of 16 ounces of 160 carobs weighs exactly 7,680 Troy grains, being equal to the pound of 16 ounces of 20 pennyweights of 32 wheat grains. This makes an ounce of 480 Troy grains, or 640 wheat grains, to equal in weight an ounce of 160 carobs, i carob equalling 3 Troy grains or 4 wheat grains. Twelve ounces of this pound, therefore, is identical with the English Troy pound, and this identity clearly connects our Troy grains and weights with those used in Eastern countries. ' Denarius ' and ' nummus.' If an examination be made of the statements given by different authorities of ancient coins of the same denomina- tion still existing, it will be found that hardly any are described as being of exactly the same weight Of course a good deal of this variation in weight may be accounted for by the wear due to the lapse of time, &c. ; but as long as payments were principally made by weight and not by tale, it is possible that the actual amount of metal put into the denarius was from time to time purposely varied : such a practice (as pay- ments were oftener made by weight than by number) might be convenient for that arrangement. That this was so seems to follow from the purposely and oft-repeated statement in D. Bk. of payments to be made * in denariis qui sunt xxf* in ora * ; moreover, if an examination be ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 237 made of Ruding's book on coins, it will be seen that up to the time of Guthrum the Dane's treaty with Alfred (alluded to post) there can be found no penny or denarius approaching the weight of 24 Troy grains ; 18 grains nearly represents the average weight, and 288 pence of r8f Troy grains would exactly make the 5,400 Troy grains of the Tower pound supposed to be Anglo-Saxon. At the time of Guthrum's treaty an actual penny containing 24 grains of metal appears for the first time in the list of Anglo-Saxon coins, and the reason why the actual denarius was so increased in weight appears to have arisen from the necessity of a coin in unison with the requirements of that treaty made with a king and people who used a pound of account supposed to contain 12 orae, 'denariorum qui sunt XX** in ora,' and giving a total of 240 pence in weight instead of 288 in weight in the pound. There was another denarius or *nummus' of 30 wheat grains, 16 ounces of which, with 16 to the ounce, made the Mercian mark already alluded to, and (as will be hereafter seen) in use in this country long before the advent of the Danes at a very early time, and which probably existed in England and in Scandinavia before the arrival of the Saxons also. This word ' nummus ' was a general term used in refer- ence to denarii and ounces of denarii. Thus in D. Bk. Tom. i. fol. 164, 'Modo reddit XL lib. alborum nummorum de XX in ora ;' and 'Cui committunt solidos ' (i.e. marks of gold) ' triginta millia per singulos constanti numero sexdecem nummis ' (* Scriptores post Bedam,' p. 837), i.e. orae (each of 16 denarii, as mentioned at Pampesford in Cambridgeshire, and referred to immediately below on this page, where 4 orae = 64 pence : as 7,680 wheat grains = i libra, this would give 30 wheat grains to the penny, and 480 to the ounce, and 256 pence to the pound). Moreover (though it has been stated by Ellis, and has been constantly repeated after him, that the only ounce and the only denarius in D. Bk. is the ounce of 12 to 238 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF the pound and the penny of 20 to the ounce), yet this is not so, as the penny of 16 to the ounce alluded to above, and fully proved post^ still lingered on as a customary payment and is to be found in D. Bk. itself. The * Inquisitio Comi- tatus Cantabrigiensis * (being the origincd return from which D. Bk. for the county of Cambridge was made up) still exists in the Cott MS. Tib. A. vi ; it has been published by Mr. Hamilton, London, 1876, and in parallel columns with the corresponding entries in D. Bk. At page 38 of Mr. Hamilton's book and in f. 96 b, col. 2 of the MS. will be found the following, in regard to Pampes- uuorde in Cambridgeshire. ' Et in eadem villa tenet quidam presbyter dimidiam virgam de Judeta Comitessa; duobus bobus est terra. Haec terra valet et valuit iiii haras! This in the same page of Mr. Hamilton's book, and in Domesday, vol. L p. 202 a, col. 2, is put thus : ' In Pampesuuorde tenet unus presbyter de comitessa dimidiam virgam. Valet et valuit Ixiiii dmar! From this single entry, and from the entry in Hundred Rolls, 2 vol. p. 414, col. 2, where this hold- ing is called 32 acres (of ' wara,' see/^^/), we can gather that the area of a virgate at Pampesford with the fallow was 64 acres, which at a penny an acre would give 256 pence to the pound, and 256 acres to the hide, 16 pennies to the ounce, and 16 ounces to the pound, coinciding in every respect with the entries in regard to the land Inter Ripam (set out post) in the time of Edward the Confessor. Solidiis, Scilling. The solidus, or scilling, as used in ancient and pre-Domes- day matters of account, did not necessarily mean any one particular and existing coin, but implied either a piece or quantity of uncoined silver or gold of a certain weight, or some number of smaller, and perhaps actually existing, coins grouped tc^ether into one item of account and called a ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 239 soHdus or shilling. These solidi or shillings were called aurei or ai^entei, according to whether they related to gold or silver. Thus, as will be seen later on, there was in England the Mercian mark of gold, or solidus of 16 solidi of 16 * nummi ' or pence, as also there was on the Continent the shilling of weighed gold, alluded to in the note to page 16 of voL i. of Thorpe's 'Ancient Laws and Institutions.' The original shilling of account of the Anglo-Saxons would appear to be, as has been stated, a solidus supposed to equal 4 denarii of 20 grains Troy, and this would agree as a matter of account with the i8f grains in the actual penny of the Tower pound. The shilling of account of the Danes and Normans was i2d, of 24 grains Troy each, and this agrees with the then new solidus of 5 denarii of Alfred's treaty, containing 24 grains each, 48 of the latter equalling 20 of the former. The Mercian solidus or ora of i6d. of 30 wheat grains, or 22^ gjrains Troy, would thus equal 15 denarii of 24 grains of the Norman and Danish pound. There was thus at the time of D. Bk. the solidus of 5 denarii of 24 grains Troy, the Mercian solidus or ora of 16 denarii of 30 wheat grains, the Norman and Danish solidus of 12 denarii of 24 grains Troy, and the old Anglo-Saxon soHdus of 4 denarii, and all moneys of account. Ounce, Ora. The ounce of course was originally the twelfth part of a pound, but the Scandinavian word ora had a more extended meaning : it was applied to signify a larger number of ounces in the pound; thus, as we shall see, a pound of 12 orae of 2od. of the Danes and Normans was equalled by 16 solidi or orae of i6(i. each of the Mercians. The Libra and Mercian Mark. A libra was, as is well known, divided uncially by the Romans into 12 unciae of 24 scrupula of 24 lentes, and such 240 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF was the division of the uncia, or uinge, among the Celts in Ireland, who had, like the Anglo-Saxons, their long hundred, and used the duodecimal system in their measurements of land. In the Brehon Laws, vol. iii. p. io6, it appears that with the Irish Celts a screpall equalled 3 pinguins, and that a pinguin weighed 8 grains of wheat : taking 4 wheat grains to equal 3 grains Troy, a screpall would therefore equal 18 grains Troy. From vol. ii. p. 134, the following table can be made out: — I screpall. 4 B colpatch heifer i. 16 » 4 saxn haisc heifer i. 24 = 6 « ij = cow I uinge or ounce. 72>ai8B3§B 3-« Cumhall (female slave) I, vol. iil p. 98. 288 «» 72 « 18 » 12 » 4 B I (libra?). There would thus be 6,912 wheat grains, or 5,184 Troy grains, in 12 uinges, though the Celts in Ireland do not seem to have known the libra proper. Considering that in matters of account the items of account must in some measure con- form to actually existing coins or weights of uncoined metal, that the average weight of known Anglo-Saxon coins (struck before the Danish treaty of Guthrum) is under 20 grains Troy ; that the Anglo-Saxons, like the Irish Celts, used the long hundred in their calculations, and that by their system of measurement the decempedal rod was divided into duo- decimal divisions, it seems to be most probable that they too, in matters of account, divided their pound and ouncbs in the like way — that is, duodecimally. This supposition is sup- ported by the fact that there are entries in D. Bk. where ten acres are taxed at 12 deijarii, five acres at 6 denarii, and so on. If the Saxon penny contained 20 grains, and the Norman penny 24 grains, as I suggest, then it is clear that 10 Norman pennies would give one penny an acre, and would equal the 12 denarii supposed to be Saxon (Harduic, D. Bk., vol. i. p. 191b). ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 241 In Jeakes' weights and measures, in his * Arithmetic Sur- veyed and Reviewed' (London, 1596), it appears from the * Pathway to Knowledge ' quoted therein, * that the avoirdupois pound was parted in 16 ounces, every ounce into 8 drachms, and every drachm into 3 scruples, and every scruple into 20 grains ; 12 ounces of this pound would thus be the Troy pound, divided according to the supposed Anglo-Saxon division in account, and would be in reality the old standard. This would show the origin of Apothecaries' weight. Medicines were dispensed by this old subdivision of the pound, and continued to be so after the pound of Elizabeth had sup- planted the old one. It was then natural that the ounce, drachm, and scruple — which were no aliquot parts of the new pound avoirdupois, but which were aliquot parts of the pound Troy — should be referred to the latter.' The Danish and Norman divisions of the pound were those disclosed by D. Bk., and now existing in the pound Troy, viz. 12 ounces to the pound and 20 pennyweights to the ounce. In a treaty between peoples who divided their money of account in different ways, it would be only reasonable that one should be adopted by which the clauses of the treaty would be regulated. Such seems to have been the course pursued by the treaty between Alfred and Guthrum cited below, where it is expressly stated that the scilling of account was to be S denarii. See also the 3rd of the Ecclesiastical Laws of Canute, and the comments thereon in the ' Chronicon Pretio- sum,' p. 29. This, of course, would give 48 scillings of 5 denarii to the pound, and would fit in with the 12 orae of 20 denarii to the ora of the Danes and Normans, and to the 16 orae of 16 denarii of 30 wheat grains of the Mercian libra or mark ; more especially since in regard to the latter the Mercian King Ethelred (as appears by the quotation from his laws referred to above) ordered his pound of 16 orae to be marked 15, which it in fact equalled in weight when 32 wheat grains, VOL. U R 242 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF or 24 Troy, were reckoned to the denarius instead of 30 wheat grains. This Mercian mark was not the mark of six ounces of gold of later times, which equalled six pounds of silver (Madox, Exch. p. 189), but was in computation an ounce or solidus of gold, and equalled, as we have seen, 1 5 solidi or ounces (Madox, p. 189, note 6), or a libra of 16 ounces of 16 denarii of 30 wheat grains, was perhaps, as already hinted, of Scandinavian origin, but was undoubtedly intro- duced into this country at a very early time, seemingly at or before the Anglo-Saxon settlements. The first recorded mention of this mark (that I can find) appears in connection with Ina's raid into Kent, shortly after the commencement of the eighth century (long before the advent of the Danes into this country), and the ransom taken by him in consequence of its success. We have four separate descriptions of this ransom — first, that of Malmesbury ' De Gest. Reg.' p. 14, ' Nundinantur pacem xxx millibus auri marcis ' ; secondly, of the Saxon Chronicle (Ingram, p. 58), where it is called thirty thousand librae ; and, thirdly, that of (the earliest of the writers) Ethelwerd (not a Danish writer), in Gale's *Scriptores post Bedam,' p. 837, *Cui committunt solidos triginta millia per singulos canstanti numero sexdecim nummisl — i.e. 16 orae (of 16*?). The fourth description is that of Florence of Worcester, who states it at 3,750 librae : now 30,000 mand of eight to the pound do make 3,750 pounds. But Ethelwerd, the earliest writer, distinctly says, ' constanti numero sexdecim nummts! We have, therefore, i libra (whether we take 3,750 librae or whether we take 30,000 librae), equalling i solidus of 16 nummi. Now, the libra of Florence and that of Malmesbury was 240 pence, or 7,680 wheat grains; the 'nummus' alluded to was therefore 480 wheat grains — that is, 16 denarii of 30 grains, which equal 15 denarii of 32 wheat grains. Moreover, taking 8 manci to ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 243 a pound, the mancus would be 30 (2 x 15) pence of 32 wheat grains, which equal 32 pence (2 x 16) of 30 wheat grains — that is, 256 pence of 30 grains. This mark of 256 nummi or pence to a pound of 16 ounces still continued as the money of account among the Mercians at the time of the treaty between Guthrum, the Danish king, and Alfred — a treaty intended to embrace the whole of England, and to place the 'were' for blood- shedding on an equal footing for Saxon, Mercian, and Dane, and, as all these are stated in It to be equally * dear,' we may therefore take the price of the several weres to be reckoned in equivalent weights or sums of money, though stated in different ways in the dif- ferent clauses of the treaty. This treaty is to be found in Thorpe's • Ancient Laws arid Institutes of England,' printed by command, &c., vol. i. p. 153, in the section headed 'The Laws of King Alfred.' Amongst other clauses we first find the following: — * This the peace that King jtElfredy and King Guthrum, and the '* Witan " of all the English nation, and all the people that are in East Anglia ordained, and have sworn to, as well for themselves as for their offspring, • \st. Concerning their land, boundaries, &c. *2nd. And they ordained : if a man should be slain, we estimate dear, English and Danish at viii half marks of pure gold; besides the *^ ceorV who resides in ^^ gafol landl^ and their "liesings " .• they also are equally dear either at cc shillings' We also find at vol. ii. p. 473, a Latin version of the same clause as follows : — * De precio occisi Dad vel Angli, II, Hoc est autem primum : si quis occidatur omnes reputamus eque caroSf Daaim et Anglum, ad viii dimidias mar cos cocti auri, preter ceorlum, i,e, rusticum, qui in Gaffuland, Le, in terra censaria, manet, et eorum redemptiones sunt eque care, cc soU From this it is very clear that the ' mark of gold ' could not be the mancus of 30 pence. Moreover, in the • Leges Hen. I. * Ixx. 89, the 8 half-marks of pure gold are put as four librae, 244 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF clearly showing that the mark of gold was equivalent to a libra. So also, in Ducange {voc. Marca et Libra), ' Marca et libra in Anglia unum et idem interdum sonant Charta ann. 1296, apud eundem Rymer, tom. 2, page 732 : " Cum nos conces- serimus dilecto clerico nostro Gilberto . . . quandam ecclesiam viginti marcarum vel librarum valorem annuum attingentem^' Florence of Worcester, who died 434 years after Ina's raid, evidently confused the mancus of 30 pence with the mark of gold which equalled a pound. The money payments for the Dane and Englishman were therefore to be equivalent in whatever money they might be stated in. In vol. li. p. 481, we have the more detailed account of the money value of these * equally dear ' weregilds as follows : — 'De Weregildis. * Twi hindi hominis wera est twa-hundy scilicet ducenti sol. ex V scL denariisy quifaciunt iiii lib. et xl d. ' Twelf hindi hominis weregildum est twelf-hund scillinga i.e. duodecies c sol. qui faciunt libras xxv* (this is six times the former amount). Page 484, vol. li. ' De eisdem in Mercennorum laga ' : * Ceorles Weregildum est in Mercetmorum laga cc sol. Tayni Weregildum est sexies tantum^ i.e. duodecies c sol. Regis simpbim weregildum est sex taynorum weregildum^ in Mercennorum laga hoc est XXX * (Anglico numero 36,000) * millia sceattce^ id est tota- liter cxx libre* — i.e. in weight, not in tale. In other versions * sceattx ' do not appear, but * thrimsae ' take their place. Pence probably were meant, as 36,000 sceatts could not possibly equal 150 pounds of Alfred's money. (As to the value of the sceatta, see Thorpe's Glossary, at the end of the second volume, where he makes 30 sceats to equal i^ scillinga.) Multiplying the Anglo-Saxon twelf-hund *were' by six (as in the Mercian laga) for the king's ' were,' we have 1 50 librae, equalling in weight 120 Mercian librae. One- hundred and twenty of Ethelred's new pound (afterwards adopted by ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 245 Canute) oi fifteen ounces of twenty pennyweights do equal one hundred and fifty pounds of twelve ounces of twenty pennyweights. Stating the Mercian 'were/ however, in its own money^ we have 150 librae of 16 ounces of 16 Mercian pence, equalling in weight 150 librae of 12 ounces of 20 pence. Thus, as 36,000 treaty pence equal 38,400 Mercian pence, the treaty pennies must therefore weigh -jV niore than the Mercian penny ; in other words, the one penny would be 32 wheat grains and the other 30. The twi-hund man and the Mercian ceorl's 'were ' is said to be 200 scillinga of 5 denarii each: this stated in Troy grains is 24,000 grains, which equal 32,000 wheat grains, 32 wheat grains equalling 24 grains Troy. On the same page (484) there is another clause (vi.) which says, * Ceorles WeregUdum est cclxvi thrimsce — ije, cc sol, secundum lagam Mercennorum! The tremissis, or thrimsa, is the third part (as its name implies) of a shilling of 12 denarii, i.e. 4^. (see the quotation from the ' Leges Alamannicae,' anti). Putting 30 wheat grains to the Mercian penny, as stated above, we have 120 wheat grains in the tremissis or thrymsa, and dividing 32,000 wheat grains by 120 we find that the Ccdculation is correct, and that there are 266| thrimsae of 4^. in the 32,000 grains (wheat), each thrymsa equalling 4 Mercian pennies of 30 wheat grains. It will be seen that 266| is the exact calculation ; in another account the number of thrimsae is put at 267. The following table shows the calculation at a glance : — The Ceoii. lysing and twihinds were Tayns were (6 times) Kings were (6 times) 90O x,aoo 7,aoo x6o x6o x6o 1 39,000 X93,00O X, 153,000 do a 4» as ISO 0*0 « 2 d*S % 2 4l as ISO •66(1) x,6oo 9,600 9,600 thrimsas s 36,000 Alfred's pence. 246 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF This thus explains the law of King Ethelred the Mercian (afterwards adopted in the laws of King Canute) in regard to the moneyers, in the clause headed *De monetariis et ubi erunt/ Thorpe (vol. i. p. 303) in which Ethelred directs that there shall be three moneyers in each high port (sumtno portu) and in every other port one moneyer, * Ut omnepondus sit marcatum ad pondus quo pecunia mea recipitUTy et eomnt singulum signetur ita quod 15 ore librant faciant* A pound of 16 orae of Mercian pennyweights of 30 wheat grains being equal to a pound of 15 orae of pennyweights of 32 wheat grains, or 24 Troy, The same thing in effect was done by the declaratory statute of Ed. I., already quoted, by which 32 wheat grains are ordered to go to the penny sterling. According to the above calculation, the following table repre- sents the equivalent number of pence and solidi in the pound and mark, and grains of the same. ^1 obb 2 'o 1 •->. t .5 .S t t S i^ *3| a ^ Norman and Daziish 1 . pound . 7,680 940 3a xa ao 384 10 so zao 60 30 1 Mercian mark . 7.680 956 30 16 x6 480 8 40 za8 64 32 I have been thus particular in explanation of this Mercian mark of 16 solidi of 16 pence (or 256 in all) because we have in D. Bk. itself, relating to the Survey of that part of Mercia lying between the Ribble and the Mersey (the land of the Cheshire acre of 10,240 square yards founded on the pole of sixteen feet), a recital showing the number of carucae that there went to a hide and their * valets * at the time of Edward the Confessor. These ' valets * are there sometimes stated in Danish or Norman currency, of 12 ounces or orae of denarii to the pound, and in others in the Mercian currency tallying exactly with the foregoing tables, i.e. that which gives 16 orse or solidi ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 247 of 16 pence to the pound or mark; but there is a general statement applyuig to all these carucae and the thains who owned them to be found at the head of the second column of fol. 269 b, D. Bk. running thus : * Omnes isti taint habu- erunt consuetudinem reddere it oras denariorutn de unaquaqtie caruca^ The length of time necessary to support a aistont would carry back the existence of this Mercian money to a time long antecedent to that of the Danish irruptions. I have extracted from D. Bk. and placed in the next table below the manors to which the recital refers, their carucse and their valets as stated in D. Bk., placing in adjoining columns such valets in Norman and Mercian currency, the figures in brackets being mine. As the valet for one car is stated to be 32 denarii or 2 ores, it follows that each Mercian ora or solidus contained 16 denarii, as at Pampes- uuorde in Cambridgeshire, ante. We learn also from the valets of Latune and Hirleton, where half a hide is put at 10 sol. and 8 denarii (128 pence), that there must have been four car in half a hide (4x32) or eight in a whole one ; the valet, therefore, for a whole hide was 256 Mercian pence or one mark, equalling, as shown in the subjoined table in other entries, one Norman pound of 240 pence. This recital of D. Bk. refers to manors, lands, and carucae as they were in the time of Eldward the Confessor when held by Roger Picta- vensis : the statement of the same lands and the re-arranged carucae working thereon when held by the grantees of Roger at the time of D. Bk. is placed later on in the same folio, and shows different carucae and uniform valets in Norman money. It has been seen that by the valets one hide by custom would pay 256 pence (8 x 32). Supposing, then, that 32 Mercian pence represented the payment for a virgate (and we know that it did from the entry in regard to Stochestede where a virgate and a half is valued at 4 sol, i.e. 3 Mercian solidi of 16 pence each, pr 4 solidi of 12, i.e. in all 48 pence), it follows that 248 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF there were 8 virgates in a hide each valued at 32 Mercian pence per virgate ; this at one penny per acre would give 16 acres to the bovate, 32 to the virgate, and 256 to the hide or pound- paying unit The significance of this will appear further on. I hide B 256 acres, ue, 8 riiigfttes of 32 acres « 16 borates of 16 acres. Sioglecar. - 3a „ i „ * Double car. a 64 „ 2 „ See below, Hitune, Erengermeles, Melioge and HeleshaU. Norman, 240 den. to pound, 20 sol. to pound, I2i£ to soL, 32 grains to den. Mercian, 256 ,, 16 „ i6d. 30 „ Norman Mercian • Valet • Value in Value in No. of No. of T. R. E. as Denarii Denarii No of The 'Valet* Name of Manor Hides 'Car/ stated in D. Bk. (39 wheat grains to den.) (30 wheat srains to •den.) Grains stated in Hitune . I 4* 2OSOL 240 256 7.680 Nonnan money Stochestcde . (A)iivirg. di) 4 » 45 48 1.440 Mercian „ Sextone . I (8) 16 „ 240 256 7,680 ,, ., Chirchedele . ' (4) 10 ,» 120 128 3.840 Nonnan „ Liderlant ■ . (4) 8 M 120 128 3.840 Mercian „ Hinne • (4) 8 ., 120 128 3.840 ,, „ Torentun • ■ (4) 8 ., 120 128 3,J*40 ,, ,. Mele . (4) 8 .. 120 128 3.840 ,. *. Uluentune (■ I 2 64 den. 60 64 1,920 t. ,. Esmedune ( ) I 32 „ 30 32 960 ft >. Alretune (4) 8soL 120 128 3.840 t» *. Spec . . ( ) 2 64 den. 60 64 1,920 3.840 ,t •* Cildcninelle . (4) 8 sol. 120 128 *, t. Wilbaldeslei . ( ) 2 64 den. 60 64 1,920 *. », Vuetone. ( ) I 30 „ 30 32 960 Norman „ Wauretreu ( ) 2 64 M 60 64 1,920 Mercian „ Boltclai • ( ) 2 64 M 60 64 1,920 ft „ Achetun. (i ) I 32 >. 30 32 960 „ .. Fomebd ( ) 4 10 sol. 120 128 3.840 Norman „ Emuluesldel . (; ) 2 64 den. 60 64 1,920 Mercian „ Holland. ( ) 2 64 .. 60 64 1.920 t. 1, 1 Daltone . (1 ) I 32 M 30 32 960 ft ,. Schelmeresdcle (i ) I 32 „ 30 32 960 ft «. ( r) U)2* SsoL 120 128 3.840 f, ft Otegrimele . r (4) 10 ., 120 128 3.840 Norman „ Latune . ■ (4) 10 sol. 8^. 120 128 3.840 Herletune ■ (4) 10 sol &/. 120 128 3,840 t. .. Melinge. ( ) (4) 2* 10 sol. 120 128 3.840 Nonnan „ \ Bartune . <l r) I 32 den. 30 32 960 Mercian „ HeleshaU . ( ) (4)2^ 8 sol. 120 128 3.840 fi tf / 2,992 ac - 93i car. of Total "H 93i pence . 2,80s 2,992 — 32 acres to car. s I »» • — — grains 89,760 89,760 89.760 virg. f liU hides of 1 256 to hide ! ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 249 This system of dividing units of weights and measures into divisions of 8 and 16 (which I call in this paper the sex- decimal system) I have traced back as to money (already shown) to the time of Ina in the Jutish or Gothic kingdom of Kent, and as to measures of land {post) to the time of Dynval in his kingdom, whether confined to Wales or (as is much more probable) extended to a large portion of British England. But the system is one of very ancient times, and appears to be referred to by Lappenberg in his * History of England' under the Anglo-Saxon kings (Translation by Thorpe, vol. i. p. 74 et seg.), ' The events in the Saga of the CEscings or founders of the kingdom of Kent take place in an eight times repeated cycle of eight years. Whether the number eight was merely the division given by the probably historic numbers of forty and sixty-four, or whether it had an astronomic allusion, or was founded on some myth, we are unable to discover. We find the number 8 in the division of the 24 hours from one morning to another usual among the Anglo-Saxons and Icelanders. A similar division exists in the eight watches among mariners. As at Rome the period of eight days was superseded only by the Jewish Christian week of seven days, so both German and Scandi- navian colloquial terms point to a similar division of time in the heathen world.' But though this inquiry is based on the divisions of the pound of silver and the land in connection with it as divided into corresponding divisions, I will not here consider further the relative weights of different pounds of silver any more than I shall after having once for all shown the relative differ- ence in the size of acres and the cause of such difference further consider such difference, but shall show how the grouping of acres, virgates, and bovates corresponded with these three divisions of the pound of silver. We have, then, evidence of there having been in these islands three dis- tinct divisions of a pound of silver: one showing a divi- 250 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF sion into 240 pence, another into 256 pence, and another into 288 pence. The pound I call Mercian corresponds in its divisions with the ancient weight of France, called the Poids de Marc, which was the same for precious metals, and the customary apothecaries' weight — viz. 16 oz., 32 duelles, 128 sciliques, 256 drachms. According to Rhys the Britons came from Gaul, driving out the Goidels. The divisions are the same as of the Colc^ne Marc, which was declared the standard weight for the precious metals throughout Germany by an edict of Charles V. in IS24, All these divisions, it will be observed, are in the sexdecimal system. 11. DIVISIONS OF THE LAND. Poles or Virgcs^ Acra^ BovcUa^ and VirgaUt, Measurements of tracts of land were made in ancient as well as in modem times, by poles (perticae, quani, acenae, virgae, &c.) and by chains or ropes (forrachs, rapae, socaria, &c.) being presumably multiples of the poles. It may be a question, how- ever, whether the larger unit (such as a square leuca or league, as at Battle Abbey, in Sussex, or the five squares of 10 trevs each contained in the Welsh Cymwd of 12,800 erws (of 1,440 square statute yards each) equalling 3,200 Cornish acres, was not first roped off and then subdivided by the pole into smaller units such as the hides or carucates, trevs and maenols, &c., and the still smaller units of roods or erws and acres. It is more reasonable to suppose that a people (occupying a land for the first time, either by conquest or other- wise) should plot out portions of the land into large units, and then subdivide them into smaller units, than that they should begin with the smallest unit and add unit to unit up to a cer- tain point of squareness, and then stop. The varying features of the land would not permit of such an arrangement But as in the America of to-day, so in the Yorkshire of old, it seems to me, the land in the first instance was blocked out ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 251 into rectangular figures, and then subdivided by dividing the same into inferior divisions by the numbers 8, 10, or 12, and these again into further subdivisions till the smallest unit of all was reached. By using the same pole as the bigger unit was measured by, all the land within it that was suitable for arable purposes might be divided into perches, roods, and acres, which would all bear the same relative pro- portions to themselves and to the bigger unit as was orginally contemplated when the big block containing pastures and wood, as well as land suitable for arable purposes, was first set out (see 'Ordinance of Measures,' detailing the length and breadth of an acre — fost). In some old maps of manors that I have had access to I can trace the ancient rectangular figures as clearly as possible, though I can well imagine that in the majority of modern maps the open fields of old would no more show any sign of the * squareness ' of the big block than the manors or villae in Yorkshire do at the present day after the absorption by assartation or otherwise of unallotted land intervening between the several blocks. If we could only group together the several fractions as they now exist, I have little doubt that they would be found to compose the bigger blocks that I have referred to. If reference is made to a map of Ireland, which sometimes shows the town-lands or old ballybetaghs ('food -paying units' of 4 quarters), it is plain that many of these town-lands are of the shape or form of 4 seisrichs or plough-lands, though not of mathematical straightness, and if three of them are placed side by side a rough square, as shown in diagram, post^ would be produced. Though to King Alfred has been given the credit of grouping the country into tithings and hundreds, yet perhaps after all he only made use of a previously existing distribution of the land which had been before his time roped out on some definite principle into the larger units. The several manors in Domesday Book are arranged according to the names of the tenants in capite^ &c., in the several 252 A NEW VIEW OF THE GELDABLE UNIT OF counties. We therefore do not get therein the number of hides and carucates in any one particular villa or place grouped together so as to enable us to say how many of the smaller units (hides and carucates, &c.) they respectively held, and it would require a great deal of local knowledge and labour to group them together now ; but there happens still to be in existence a MS., Cott. Tiberius A. vL, viz. the 'Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis ' (published by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London, 1876), being the Inquisition of the Jury, containing their survey for most of the hundreds in the county of Cambridge, arranged in villas, and not in tenancies in capite^ from which it is possible, in regard to that county, to get to some extent the ancient grouping of Alfred, or the original distribution of the land before his time : some few pages are missing from the MS., but their contents I have supplied from Domesday, and the result is as follows : — Out of 1 12 villas or parishes there are 4 of thirty hides, 2 of twenty-five, 7 of twenty, ii^ of fifteen, 4 of twelve, 32 of ten, 2 of eight, S of seven, 28 of five, 6 of four, i of three, 2 of three and a half. It will be observed that more than half contain ten and five hides, and that there is no unit of six hides. In some cases, by putting adjoining villae together it would be possible still further to increase the number of fives, tens, fifteens, or twenties, and thus reduce fractions. I have ventured to do so in only one case, being a very prominent instance. One of the villse of 25 hides I have made up out of the three adjoining villae of Euresdone (Hamilton, 83) 8 hides -h 40 acres, Chingeston (Hamilton, 85) 8 + 40, and Tosth (Hamilton, 87)8 + 40, the original unit being evidently one compact whole of 25, or 2 units often and i of 5. It is to be noticed that 3 x 40 acres would make up 12 quarantenes, or I strip of 120 acres. Now a square leuga is an imaginary block of land of four sides, each a mile and a half long ; that is, 120 chains, or 7,920 stat. feet of 305 millimetres to the foot. ASSESSMENT OF DOMESDAY 253 The contents of such a block, therefore, contains 1440 statute acres. Ten units of 120 acres, ' Anglico numero' {see post), are 1440 acres : so it is more than probable that in very many cases where a villa 'defends itself* for ten hides or carucates it contains 1,200 taxable acres + 240 'extra hidam ' (see post, Anglicus numerus), and perhaps a further quantity if the land is 'wara,* i.e. the fallow untaxed, the sum total making up some multiple of 120. Moreover, in