Chapter XII: ARRINGTON. A vill of 4 hides (1)

1. Ælfric, a King's thegn 1 1 10}
A sokeman, man of Earl Waltheof 1 0 0}
A sokeman, man of the Abbot of Ely 1 0 0} 8 0
A sokeman, man of Robert Wimarc's son 20}
2. A man of Edith the Fair 2 0 4
--------- -----
4 0 0[562] 8 4

[The Wetherley sokemen.]

Now if by a 'manor' we mean what our historical economists usually mean when they use that term, we must protest that before the Norman Conquest there were very few manors in the Wetherley hundred. In no one case was the whole of a village coincident with a manor, with a lord's estate. The king had considerable manors in Comberton and Haslingfield. Sigar had a manor at Haslingfield; the church of Chatteris had a manor at Barrington besides some land at Shepreth; Wimpole was divided between Edith and Earl Gyrth; Harlton between Achil and Godman. But in Barton, Grantchester, Shepreth, Orwell, Wratworth, Whitwell and Arrington we see nothing manorial, unless we hold ourselves free to use that term of a little tenement which to all appearance might easily be cultivated by the labour of one household, at all events with occasional help supplied by a few cottagers. Indeed it is difficult to say what profit some of the great people whose names we have mentioned were deriving from those of their men who dwelt in the Wetherley hundred. We take the Mercian earl for example[563]. One of the sokemen of Grantchester, four of the sokemen of Barrington, one of the sokemen of Shepreth, one of the sokemen of Orwell, one of the sokemen of Wratworth, two of the sokemen of Whitwell were Ælfgar's men. That Ælfgar got a little money or a little provender out of them is probable, that they did some carrying service for him is possible and perhaps they aided him at harvest time on some manor of his in another part of the county; but that they were not the tillers of his land seems clear[564].

[The sokeman and seignorial justice.]

What is more, our analysis of this Wetherley hundred enables us to drive home the remark that very often a sokeman was not the sokeman of his lord or, in other words, that he was not under seignorial justice[565]. Ælfgar had ten sokemen scattered about in six villages. Did he hold a court for them? We think not. Did they go to the court of some distant manor? We think not. The court they attended was the Wetherley hundred-moot. One of the sokemen in Arrington was in a somewhat exceptional position--exceptional, that is, in this hundred. Not only was he the man of the Abbot of Ely, but his soke belonged to the Abbot; and if he sold his tenement, and this he could do without the Abbot's consent, the soke over his land would 'remain' to the Abbot[566]. He was not only his lord's man but his lord's justiciable and probably attended some court outside the hundred. But for the more part these men of Wetherley were not the justiciables of their lords. It was a very free hundred when the Normans came there: much too free for the nation's welfare we may think, for these sokemen could go with their land to what lord they pleased. Also be it noted in passing that the churches have little in Wetherley.

[Changes in the Wetherley hundred.]

In 1086 there had been a change. The sokemen had disappeared. The Norman lords had made demesne land where their English _antecessores_ possessed none. Count Roger had instituted a seignorial court at Orwell. He had borrowed three sokemen 'to hold his pleas' from Picot the sheriff and had refused to give them up again[567]. Apparently they had sunk to the level of _villani_. Two centuries afterwards we see the hundred of Wetherley once more. There is villeinage enough in it. The villein at Orwell, for example, holds only 10 acres but works for his lord on 152 days in the year, besides boon-days[568]. And yet we should go far astray if we imposed upon these Cambridgeshire villages that neat manorial system which we see at its neatest and strongest in the abbatial cartularies. The villages do not become manors. The manors are small. The manors are intermixed in the open fields. There are often freeholders in the village who are not the tenants of any lord who has a manor there. A villein will hold two tenements of two lords. The villein of one lord will be the freeholder of another. The 'manorial system' has been forced upon the villages, but it fits them badly[569].

[Manorialism in Cambridgeshire.]

In the thirteenth century the common field of a Cambridgeshire village was often a very maze of proprietary rights, and yet the village was an agrarian whole. Let us take, for example, Duxford as it stood in the reign of Edward I.[570] We see 39 villein tenements each of which has fourteen acres in the fields. These tenements are divided between five different manors. Four of our typical 'townsmen' hold of Henry de Lacy, who holds of Simon de Furneaux, who holds of the Count of Britanny, who holds of the king. Two hold of Ralph of Duxford, who holds of Basilia wife of Baldwyn of St George, who holds of William Mortimer, who holds of Simon de Furneaux, who holds of the Count of Britanny, who holds of the king. Eight hold of the Templars, who hold of Roger de Colville, who holds of the Earl of Albemarle, who holds of the king. Nine hold of William le Goyz, who holds of Henry of Boxworth, who holds of Richard de Freville, who holds of the king. Sixteen hold of John d'Abernon, who holds of the Earl Marshal, who holds of the king. Three of the greatest 'honours' in England are represented. Three monasteries and two parochial churches have strips in the fields. And yet there are normal tenements cut according to one pattern, tenements of fourteen acres the holders of which, though their other services may differ, pay for the more part an equal rent[571]. The village seems to say that it must be one, though the lords would make it many. And then we look back to the Confessor's day and we see that a good part of Duxford was held by sokemen[572].

[The sokemen and the manors.]

Perhaps we shall be guilty of needless repetition; but what is written in Domesday Book about _maneria_ is admirably designed for the deception of modern readers whose heads are full of 'the manorial system.' Therefore let us look at two Hertfordshire villages. In one of them there is a _manerium_ which Ralph Basset holds of Robert of Ouilly[573]. It has been rated at 4, but is now rated at 2 hides. There is land for 4 teams. In demesne are 2 teams; and 3-1/2 _villani_ with 2 sokemen of 1 hide and 5 _bordarii_ have 2 teams. There are 1 cottager and 1 serf and a mill of 10 shillings and meadow for 3 teams. It is now worth £3; in King Edward's day it was worth £5. Now here, we say, is a pretty little manor of the common kind. Let us then explore its past history. 'Five sokemen held this manor.' Yes, we say, before the Conquest this manor was held in physically undivided shares by five lords. Their shares were small and they were humble people; but still they had a manor. But let us read further. 'Two of them were the men of Brihtric and held 1-1/2 hides; other two were the men of Osulf the son of Frane and held 1-1/2 hides; and the fifth was the man of Eadmer Atule and held a hide.' We will at once finish the story and see how Robert of Ouilly came by this manor. 'No one of these five sokemen belonged to his _antecessor_ Wigot; every one of them might sell his land. One of them bought (i.e. redeemed) his land for nine ounces of gold from King William, so the men of the hundred say, and afterwards turned for protection to Wigot.' So Robert's title to this manor is none of the best. But are we sure that before the Conquest there was anything that we should call a manor? These five sokemen who have unequal shares, who have three different lords, who hold in all but 4 team-lands, whose land is worth but £5, do not look like a set of coparceners to whom a 'manor' has descended. When Robert of Ouilly has got his manor there are upon it 2 sokemen, 3 villeins, 5 _bordarii_, a cottager and a serf. It was not a splendid manor for five lords.

[Hertfordshire sokemen.]

We turn over a few pages. Hardouin of Eschalers has a manor rated at 5-1/2 hides[574]. It contains land for 8 teams. In demesne are 2 hides less 20 acres, and 3 teams; 11 _villani_ with the priest and 5 _bordarii_ have 5 teams. There are 4 cottagers and 6 serfs. It is worth £9; in the Confessor's day it was worth £10. Who held this manor in the past? Nine sokemen held it. Rather a large party of joint lords, we say; but still, families will grow. Howbeit, we must finish the sentence:--'Of these, one, Sired by name, was the man of Earl Harold and held 1 hide and 3 virgates for a manor; another, Alfred, a man of Earl Ælfgar, held 1-1/2 hides for a manor; and the other seven were sokemen of King Edward and held 2 hides and 1 virgate and they supplied the sheriff with 9 pence a year or 2-1/4 _averae_ (carrying services).' No, we have not been reading of the joint holders of a 'manor'; we have been reading of peasant proprietors. Two of them were substantial folk; each of the two held a _manerium_ at which geld was paid; the other seven gelded at one of the king's _maneria_ under the view of his bailiffs. _Maneria_ there have been everywhere; but 'manors' we see in the making. Hardouin has made one under our eyes.

[The small _maneria_.]

We hear the objection that, be it never so humble, a manor is a manor. But is that truism quite true? If all that we want for the constitution of a manor is a proprietor of some land who has a right to exact from some other man, or two or three other men, the whole or some part of the labour that is necessary for the tillage of his soil, we may indeed see manors everywhere and at all times. Even if we introduce a more characteristically medieval element and demand that the tillers shall be neither menial servants nor labourers hired for money, but men who make their living by cultivating for their own behoof small plots which the proprietor allows them to occupy, still we shall have the utmost difficulty if we would go behind manorialism. But suppose for a moment that we have a village the land of which is being held by nine sokemen, each of whom has a hide or half-hide scattered about in the open fields, and each of whom controls the labour of a couple of serfs, shall we not be misleading the public and ourselves if we speak of nine manors or even of nine 'embryo manors'? At any rate it is clear enough that if these estates of the sokemen are 'embryo manors,' then these embryos were deposited in the common fields. In that case the common fields, the hides and yard-lands of the village are not the creatures of manorialism.

[The Danes and freedom.]

We have seen free villages; we have seen a free hundred. We might have found yet freer hundreds had we gone to Suffolk. We have chosen Cambridgeshire because Cambridgeshire can not be called a Danish county, except in a sense in which, notwithstanding the wasted condition of Yorkshire, about one half of the English nation lived in Danish counties. When men divide up England between the three laws, they place Cambridgeshire under the Danelaw; but to that law they subject about one half of the inhabitants of England. There may have been many men of Scandinavian race in Cambridgeshire; but we find hundreds not wapentakes, hides not carucates, while among the names of villages there are few indeed which betray a Scandinavian origin. The Wetherley hundred was not many miles away from the classic fields of Hitchin[575].

[The Danish counties.]

But in truth we must be careful how we use our Dane. Yorkshire was a Danish county in a sense in which Cambridgeshire was not Danish; it was a land of trithings and wapentakes, a land without hides, where many a village testified by its name to a Scandinavian settlement. And yet to all appearance it was in the Confessor's day a land where the manors stood thick[576]. Then we have that wonderful contrast between Yorkshire and Lincolnshire which Ellis summed up in these figures:--

Sochemanni Villani Bordarii
Lincolnshire 11,503 7,723 4,024
Yorkshire 447 5,079 1,819

Perhaps this contrast would have been less violent if Yorkshire had not been devastated: but violent it is and must be. It will provoke the remark that the 'faults' (if any faults there be) in a truly economic stratification of mankind are not likely to occur just at the boundaries of the shires, whereas so long as each county has a court from which there is no appeal to any central tribunal, we may expect to find that lines which have their origin in fiscal practice will be sharp lines and will coincide with the metes and bounds of jurisdictional districts.

[The contrast between villeins and sokemen.]

Nor should it escape remark that the names by which a grand distinction is expressed are in their origin very loose terms and etymologically ill-fitted to the purpose that they are serving. In English the _villanus_ is the _túnesman_ or, as we should say, the villager. And yet to all seeming the sokeman is essentially a villager. What is more the land where the sokemen and 'free men' lived was a land of true villages, of big villages, of limitless 'open fields,' whereas the hamleted west was servile. Then again _sokeman_ is a very odd term. If it signified that the man to whom it is applied was always the justiciable of the lord to whom he was commended, we could understand it. Even if this man were always the justiciable of a court that had passed into private hands, we could still understand it. But apparently there are plenty of sokemen whose soke 'is' or 'lies' in those hundred courts that have no lord but the king. The best guess that we can make as to the manner in which they have acquired their name is that in an age which is being persuaded that some 'service' must be done by every one who holds land, suit of court appears as the only service that is done by all these men. They may owe other services; but they all owe suit of court. If so we may see their legal successors in those freeholders of the twelfth century who are 'acquitting' their lords and their villages by doing suit at the national courts[577]. But when a new force comes into play (and the tribute to the pirate was a new and a powerful force) new lines of demarcation must be drawn, new classes of men must be formed and words will be borrowed for the purpose with little care for etymological niceties. One large and widely-spread class may find a name for itself in a district where the ordinary 'townsmen' or villagers are no longer treated as taxpayers responsible to the state, while some practice peculiar to a small part of the country may confer the name of 'sokemen' on those tillers of the soil who are rated to the geld. We are not arguing that this distinction, even when it first emerged, implied nothing that concerned the economic position of the villein and the sokeman. The most dependent peasants would naturally be the people who could not be directly charged with the geld, and the peasants who could not pay the geld would naturally become dependent on those who would pay it for them; still we are not entitled to assume that the fiscal scheme accurately mirrored the economic facts, or that the varying practice of different moots and different collectors may not have stamped as the villeins of one shire those who would have been the sokemen of another[578].

[Free villages.]

Be this as it may, any theory of English history must face the free, the lordless, village and must account for it as for one of the normal phenomena which existed in the year of grace 1066. How common it was we shall never know until the material contained in Domesday Book has been geographically rearranged by counties, hundreds and vills. But whether common or no, it was normal, just as normal as the village which was completely subject to seignorial power. We have before us villages which, taken as wholes, have no lords. What is more, it seems obvious enough that, unless there has been some great catastrophe in the past, some insurrection of the peasants or the like, the village of Orwell--and other villages might be named by the dozen--has never had a lord. Such lordships as exist in it are plainly not the relics of a dominion which has been split up among divers persons by the action of gifts and inheritances. The sokemen of Orwell have worshipped every rising sun. One has commended himself to the ill-fated Harold, another to the ill-fated Waltheof, a third has chosen the Mercian Ælfgar, a fourth has placed himself under the aspiring Archbishop; yet all are free to 'withdraw.' We have here a very free village indeed, for its members enjoy a freedom of which no freeholder of the thirteenth century would even dream, and in a certain sense we have here a free village community. How much communalism is there? Of this most difficult question only a few words will now be said, for our guesses about remote ages we will yet a while reserve.

[Village communities.]

In the first place, we can not doubt that the 'open field system' of agriculture prevails as well in the free villages as in those that are under the control of a lord. The sokeman's hide or virgate is no ring-fenced 'close' but is composed of many scattered strips. Again, we can hardly doubt that the practice of 'co-aration' prevailed. The sokeman had seldom beasts enough to make up a team. It is well known that the whole scheme of land-measurements which runs through Domesday Book is based upon the theory that land is ploughed by teams of eight oxen. It is perhaps possible that smaller teams were sometimes employed; but when we read that a certain man 'always ploughed with three oxen[579],' or 'used to plough with two oxen but now ploughs with half a team[580],' or 'used to plough with a team but now ploughs with two oxen[581],' we are reading, not of small teams, but of the number of oxen that the man in question contributed towards the team of eight that was made up by him and his neighbours. When of a piece of land in Bedfordshire it is said that 'one ox ploughs there,' this means that the land in question supplies but one ox in a team of eight[582]; and here and not in any monstrous birth do we find the explanation of 'terra est dimidio bovi et ibi est semibos[583]':--there is a sixteenth part of a teamland and its tenant along with some other man provides an ox. There may have been light ploughs as well as heavy ploughs, but the heavy plough must have been extremely common, since the term 'plough team' (_caruca_) seems invariably to mean a team of eight.

[The villagers as co-owners.]

Then one notable case meets our eye in which the ownership of land, of arable land, seems to be attributed to a village community. In Goldington, a village in Bedfordshire, Walter now holds a hide; there is land for one team and meadow for half a team. 'The men of the vill held this land in common and could sell it[584].' Apparently the men of the vill were Ælfwin Sac a man of the Bishop of Lincoln who held half a team-land and 'could do what he liked with it,' nine sokemen who held three team-lands between them, three other sokemen who held three team-lands, and Ælfmær a man of Asgil who held three team-lands[585]. How it came about that these men, besides holding land in severalty, held a tract in common, we are left to guess. Nor can we say whether such a case was usual or unusual. Very often in Little Domesday we meet an entry which tells how _x_ free men held _y_ acres and had _z_ teams; for example, how 15 free men held 40 acres and had 2 teams[586]. In general we may well suppose that each of them held his strips in severalty, but we dare not say that such a phrase never points to co-ownership.

[The waste land of the vill.]

Then as to such part of the land as is not arable:--Even in the free village a few enclosed meadows will probably be found; but the pasture ground lies open for 'the cattle of the vill.' At the date of the survey, though several Norman lords have estates in one vill, the common formula used in connexion with each estate is, not 'there is pasture for the cattle of this manor, or of this land,' but 'there is pasture for the cattle of the vill.' Occasionally we read of 'common pasture' in a context which shows that the pasture is common not to several manorial lords but to the villeins of one lord[587]. In the hundred of Coleness in Suffolk there is a pasture which is common to all the men of the hundred[588]. But, as might be expected, we hear little of the mode in which pasture rights were allotted or regulated. Such rights were probably treated as appurtenances of the arable land:--'The canons of Waltham claim as much wood as belongs to one hide[589].' If the rights of user are known, no one cares about the bare ownership of pasture land or wood land:--it is all one whether we say that Earl Edwin is entitled to one third of a certain wood or to every third oak that grows therein[590].

[Co-ownership of mills.]

Sometimes the ownership of a mill is divided into so many shares that we are tempted to think that this mill has been erected at the cost of the vill. In Suffolk a free man holds a little _manerium_ which is composed of 24 acres of land, 1-1/2 acres of meadow and 'a fourth part of the mill in every third year[591]':--he takes his turn with his neighbours in the enjoyment of the revenue of the mill. We may even be led to suspect that the parish churches have sometimes been treated as belonging to the men of the vill who have subscribed to erect or to endow them. In Suffolk a twelfth part of a church belongs to a petty _manerium_ which contains 30 acres and is cultivated by two bordiers with a single team[592]. When a parish church gets its virgate by 'the charity of the neighbours[593],' when nine free men give it twenty acres for the good of their souls[594], we may see in this some trace of communal action.

[The system of virgates in a free village.]

Incidentally we may notice that the system of virgate holdings seems quite compatible with an absence of seignorial control. In the free village, for example in Orwell, we shall often find that one man has twice, thrice or four times as much as another man:--the same is the case in the manorialized villages of Middlesex, where a villein may have as much as a hide or as little as a half-virgate; but all the holdings will bear, at least in theory, some simple relation to each other. Thus in Orwell the virgates are divided into thirds and quarters, and in several instances a man has four thirds of a virgate. In Essex and East Anglia, though we may find many irregular and many very small holdings, tenements of 60, 45, 40, 30, 20, 15 acres are far commoner than they would be were it not that a unit of 120 acres will very easily break into such pieces. Domesday Book takes no notice of family law and its 'vendere potuit' merely excludes the interference of the lord and does not imply that a man is at liberty to disappoint his expectant heirs. Very possibly there has been among the small folk but little giving or selling of land.

[The virgates and inheritance.]

Nor is a law which gives the dead man's land to all his sons as co-heirs a sufficient force to destroy the system of hides and virgates when once it is established by some original allotment. In the higher ranks of society we see large groups of thegns holding land in common, holding as the Normans say 'in parage.' We can hardly doubt that they are co-heirs holding an inheritance that has not been physically partitioned[595]. Sometimes it is said of a single man that he holds in parage[596]. This gives us a valuable hint. Holding in parage implies that one of the 'pares,' one of the parceners,--as a general rule he would be the eldest of them--is answerable to king and lord for the services due from the land, while his fellows are bound only to him; they must help him to discharge duties for which he is primarily responsible[597]. This seems the import of such passages as the following--'Five thegns held two bovates; one of them was the _senior_ (the elder, and we may almost say the lord) of the others[598]'--'Eight thegns held this manor; one of them Alli, a man of King Edward, was the _senior_ of the others[599]'--'Godric and his brothers held three carucates; two of them served the third[600]'--'Chetel and Turver were brothers and after the death of their father they divided the land, but so that Chetel in doing the king's service should have help from Turver his brother[601]'--'Siwate, Alnod, Fenchel and Aschil divided the land of their father equally, and they held in such wise that if there were need for attendance in the king's host and Siwate could go, his brothers were to aid him [with money and provisions]; and on the next occasion another brother was to go and Siwate like the rest was to help him; and so on down the list; but Siwate was the king's man[602].' No doubt similar arrangements were made by co-heirs of lowlier station[603]. The integrity of the tenement is maintained though several men have an interest in it. In relation to the lord and the state one of them represents his fellows. When the shares become very small, some of the claimants might be bought out by the others[604].

[The farm.]

But, to return to the village, we must once more notice that the Canons of St Paul's have let their manor of Willesden to the villeins[605]. This leads us to speculate as to the incidence and collection of those great provender rents of which we read when royal manors are described. In King Edward's day a royal manor is often charged with the whole or some aliquot share of a 'one night's farm,' that is one day's victual for the king's household. Definite amounts of bread, cheese, malt, meat, beer, honey, wool have to be supplied; thus, for example, Cheltenham must furnish three thousand loaves for the king's dogs and King's Barton must do the like[606]. Then too Edward the sheriff receives as the profits of the shrievalty of Wiltshire, 130 pigs, 32 bacons, certain quantities of wheat, malt, oats, and honey, 400 chicken, 1600 eggs, 100 cheeses, 100 lambs, 52 fleeces[607]. Between the king and the men of the manor, no doubt there stands a farmer, either the sheriff or some other person, who is bound to supply the due quantity of provender; but to say that this is so does not solve the problem that is before us. We have still to ask how this due quantity is obtained from the men of the village. It is a quantity which can be expressed by round figures; it is 3000 dog-cakes, or the like. We do not arrive at these pretty results by adding up the rents due from individuals. Again, just in the counties which are the homes of freedom we hear much of sums of money that are paid to a lord by way of free will offering[608]. In Norfolk and Suffolk the villagers will give a yearly _gersuma_, in Lincoln they will pay a yearly _tailla_, and this will be a neat round sum; very often it is 20 shillings, or 40 or 10.

[Round sums raised from the villages.]

In this particular we seem to see an increase of something that may be called communalism, as we go backwards. Of course in the cartularies of a later age we may discover round sums of money which, under the names of 'tallage' or 'aid' are imposed upon the vill as a whole; but in general we may accept the rule that tributes to be paid by the vill as a whole, in money or in kind, are not of recent origin. They are more prominent in the oldest than in other documents. As examples, we may notice the 'cornage' of the Boldon Book--one vill renders 20 shillings, another 30 shillings for cornage[609]; also the contributions of sheep, poultry, bread and cloth which the vills of Peterborough Abbey bring to the monks on the festival of their patron saint--one vill supplying ten rams and twenty ells of cloth, another four rams, five ells of cloth, ten chicken and three hundred loaves[610]. But then we have to notice that a village which has to pay a provender rent or even a _tailla_ or _gersuma_ is not altogether a free village. Its communal action is called out by seignorial pressure.

[The township and police law.]

And as we go backwards the township seems to lose such definiteness as is given to it by the police law of the thirteenth century[611]. This was to be expected, for such law implies a powerful, centralized state, which sends its justices round the country to amerce the townships and compel these local communities to do their duties. Once and once only does the township appear in the Anglo-Saxon dooms. This is in a law of Edgar. If a man who is on a journey buys cattle, then on his return home he must turn them onto the common pasture, 'with the witness of the township.' If he fails to do so, then after five nights the townsmen are to give information to the elder of the hundred, and in that case they and their cattle-herd will be free of blame, and the man who brought the cattle into the town will forfeit them, half to the lord and half to the hundred. If, on the other hand, the townsmen fail in the duty of giving information, their herd will pay for it with his skin[612]. The township has very little organization of which the state can make use. It does not seem even to have an 'elder' or head-man, and, from the threat of a flogging, we may gather that its common herdsman will be a slave. Purchases of cattle can not be made 'with the witness of the township'; the purchaser ought to seek out two or three of those twelve standing witnesses who are appointed for every hundred[613]. So again, in the twelfth century we see the finder of a stray beast bringing it into the vill; he conducts it to the church-door and tells his story to the priest, the reeve and as many of the best men of the vill as can be got together. Then the reeve sends to the four neighbouring vills, calls in from each the priest, the reeve and three or four men and recounts the tale in their presence. Then on the following day he goes to the head-man of the hundred and puts the whole matter before him and delivers up the beast to him, unless indeed the place where it was found straying was within the domain of some lord who had sake and soke[614]. Here again, the organization of the township appears to be of a most rudimentary kind. It has no court, unless its lord has sake and soke; it has no power to detain an estray for safe custody. In this very simple case it requires the help of other vills and must transmit the cause to the hundred court. And so again, though there may be some reason for thinking that at one time the murder fine--the fine payable if the slayer of a foreigner was not arrested--was primarily exigible from the vill in which the corpse was found, the hundred being but subsidiarily liable, still this rule seems to have been soon abandoned and the burden of the fine, a fine far too heavy for a single vill, was cast upon the hundred[615]. For all this, however, the law knew and made use of the township. The Domesday commissioners required the testimony of the priest, the reeve and six _villani_ of every vill. So soon as the law about suit to the hundred court becomes at all plain, the suit is due rather from vills than from men, and the burden is discharged by the lord of the vill or his steward, or, if neither of them can attend, then by the priest, the reeve and four of the vill's best men[616].

[The free village and Norman government.]

How could these requirements be met by a vill which had no lord? It would be a fair remark that the existence of such vills is not contemplated by the Norman rulers. The men who will represent the vill before the Domesday commissioners will in their eyes be _villani_. This assumption is becoming true enough. We have seen Orwell full of sokemen; in 1086 there is never a sokeman in it; there is no one in it who is above the rank of a villein. Count Roger and Walter Giffard, Count Alan and Geoffrey de Mandeville can make such arrangements about the suit of Orwell, the reeveship of Orwell, as they think fit. Everywhere the Frenchmen are consolidating their manors, creating demesne land where their English _antecessores_ had none, devising scientific frontiers, doing what in them lies to make every vill a manor. Thus is evolved that state of things which comes before us in the thirteenth century. The work of the foreigners was done so completely that we can see but very little of the institutions that they swept away.

[Organization of the free village.]

On the whole, however, we shall do well not to endow the free township of the Confessor's day with much organization. We may be certain that, at least as a general rule, it had no court; we may doubt very gravely whether it always had any elder, head-man, or reeve. Often it was a small and yet a heterogeneous, and a politically distracted body. Some of its members might be attached to the house of Godwin, some had sworn to live and die for the house of Leofric. Just because it is free it has few, if any, communal payments to make. Only if it comes under a single lord will it have to render a provender rent, a _tailla_ or _gersuma_. As a sphere for communal action there remains only the regulation of the arable lands, the woods and waste. We can not say for certain that these give scope for much regulation. The arable strips are held in severalty; if by chance some of them are held in common, this in all probability is a case rather of co-ownership than of communal ownership. The pasture rights may well be regarded as appurtenances of the arable strips. The practice of 'co-aration' need not be enforced by law; the man who will not help his neighbours must be content to see his own land unploughed. The course of agriculture is fixed and will not be often or easily altered. The 'realism' which roots every right and duty in a definite patch of soil, the rapid conversion of new arrangements into immemorial customs, the practice of taking turn and turn about, the practice of casting lots, these will do much towards settling questions such as our modern imaginations would solve by means of a village council. No doubt, from time to time a new departure is made; new land is reclaimed from the waste, perhaps the pasture rights are stinted or redistributed, a mill is built or a church is endowed;--but all this requires no periodic assemblies, no organization that we dare call either permanent or legal. Once in five years or so there may be something to be done, and done it will be by a resolution of the villagers which is or calls itself an unanimous resolution. If the Cambridgeshire townships had been landowning corporations, each of them would have passed as a single unit into the hands of some Norman baron. But this did not happen. On the contrary, the Norman barons had to content themselves with intermixed strips; the strips of Ælfgar's men went to Count Roger, the strips of Edith's men went to Count Alan. We are far from denying the existence of a communal sentiment, of a notion that somehow or another the men of the vill taken as a whole owned the lands of the vill, but this sentiment, this notion, if strong was vague. There were no institutions in which it could realize itself, there was no form of speech or thought in which it could find an apt expression. It evaded the grasp of law. At the touch of jurisprudence the township became a mere group of individuals, each with his separate rights[617].

FOOTNOTES:

[547] D. B. ii. 174: 'Hec villa fuit in duobus maneriis T. R. E.'
Ibid. i. 164: 'De his 2 villis fecit Comes W. unum manerium.'

[548] Inquisitio, 77-9.

[549] This result comes out correctly if 1H=4V=120A. For the state
of this vill T. R. W. see Round, Feudal England, 40.

[550] His plot at Orwell is said to belong to Harlton. Then at
Harlton we find an Achil with sokemen under him, and though in
D. B. he is described as a king's thegn, this is not
incompatible with his being the man of Harold for some of his
lands. At Barrington Achillus Danaus homo Haroldi has a
holding of 40 acres.

[551] Inquisitio, 86.

[552] Ibid. 68.

[553] Ibid. 43, 44, 45, 73, 76.

[554] D. B. i. 195.

[555] D. B. i. 139: 'De consuetudine 1 averam inveniebat cum Rex in
scyra veniebat, si non 5 den. reddebat.' D. B. i. 190,
'[Sochemanni in Fuleberne] reddunt per annum 8 libras arsas et
pensatas et unoquoque anno 12 equos et 12 inguardos si Rex in
vicecomitatu veniret, si non veniret 12 sol. et 8 den.; T. R.
E. non reddebant vicecomiti nisi averas et inguardos vel 12
sol. et 8 den. et superplus invasit Picot [vicecomes] super
Regem.'

[556] Wratworth has completely disappeared from the modern map; its
territory seems to be included in that of the present Orwell.
See Rot. Hund. ii. 559 and Lysons, Magna Britannia, ii. 243. A
small hamlet called Malton seems to represent it. Whitwell
also is no longer the name of a village, while the modern
Coton is not mentioned in D. B. There is now a Whitwell Farm
near the village of Coton, but in the parish of Barton. The
modern Coton does not seem to be the ancient Whitwell, for on
Subsidy Rolls we may find Whitwell annexed to Barton and Coton
to Grantchester.

[557] The figures in our first column represent the division of the
vill among the Norman lords. H. V. A. stand for Hides,
Virgates, Acres. By C. and B. we signify the Carucae and Boves
for which 'there was land.'

[558] There is some small error in this case.

[559] A small conjectural emendation.

[560] The Inq. Com. Cant. says 6 hides.

[561] An error of one hide in the particulars. The two records do
not fully agree.

[562] A small emendation justified by Inq. Eliensis (Hamilton, p.
110).

[563] Ælfgar died before King Edward; Freeman, Norman Conquest, ed.
3, iii. 469, places his death in or about 1062.

[564] The history of the earldoms during Edward's reign is
exceedingly obscure. See Freeman's elaborate note: Ibid., 555.
In particular Cambridgeshire seems to have lain now in one and
now in another earldom. Thus it comes about that
Cambridgeshire sokemen are commended some to Ælfgar, some to
Waltheof, some to Harold, some to Gyrth. Ælfgar, for example,
had at one time been earl in East Anglia. Men who had
commended themselves to an earl would, unless they 'withdrew
themselves,' still be his men though he had ceased to be earl
of their county.

[565] See above, p. 105. Observe how frequently our record speaks of
'sochemanni _homines_ Algari' and the like. These sokemen are
Ælfgar's men; but are not properly his sokemen.

[566] Inq. Com. Cant. 110. This is from the Inquisitio Eliensis.
Compare p. 83.

[567] Inq. Com. Cant. 77-8.

[568] Rot. Hund. ii. 558.

[569] One instance may suffice. In Sawston (Rot. Hund. ii. 575-80)
are three manors, _A_, _B_, _C_; _A_ has a sub-manor. One
Thomas Dovenel holds in villeinage of the lord of _A_; in
villeinage of the lord of _B_; in freehold of the lord of _B_;
in freehold of a tenant of the lord of _B_; in freehold of a
tenant of a tenant of the lord of _B_.

[570] Rot. Hund. ii. 580.

[571] On four out of the five manors the rent is 2_s._ 3_d._; on the
fifth 3_s._ 0_d._

[572] Inq. Com. Cant. 41.

[573] D. B. i. 137 b.

[574] D. B. i. 141 b.

[575] Inq. Com. Cant., pp. 108-110. As names of the Abbot of Ely's
sokemen in Meldreth and neighbouring villages we have Grimmus,
Alsi Cild, Wenesi, Alsi, Leofwinus, Ædricus, Godwinus,
Almarus, Aluricus frater Goduuini, Ædriz, Alsi Berd, Alricus
Godingessune, Wenestan, Alwin Blondus, Alfuuinus, Aluredus,
Alricus Brunesune, Alware, Hunuð, Hunwinus, Brizstanus. This
does not point to a preponderance of Norse or Danish blood.

[576] Owing to the wasted condition of Yorkshire, the information
that we obtain of the T. R. E. is meagre and perfunctory. But
what seems characteristic of this county is a holding of two
or three ploughlands which we might fairly call an embryo
manor.

[577] See the early extents in Cart. Rams. iii. Thus (242) at
Hemingford: 'R. V. tenet tres virgatas et dimidiam et sequitur
hundredum et comitatum.... R. H. tenet duas virgatas et
sequitur hundredum et comitatum.' Elsworth (249): 'R. filius
T. duas virgatas. Pro altera sequitur comitatum et hundredum;
pro altera solvit quinque solidos.' Brancaster (261): 'Cnutus
avus Petri tenebat terram suam libere in tempore Regis Henrici
et sequebatur comitatum et hundredum, et fuit quietus ab omni
servitio.' See also Vinogradoff, Villainage, 411 ff.

[578] Some thirty years ago the whole political world of England was
agitated by controversy about 'the compound householder.' Was
he to have a vote? The historian of the nineteenth century
will not treat the compound householders as forming one
homogeneous class of men whose general status could be marked
off from that of other classes. Nor, it is to be hoped, will
etymological guesses lead him to believe that the compound
householder held a compound house. He will say that a landlord
'compounded for' the rates of the aforesaid householder.
_Mutatis mutandis_ may not the villein have been the compound
householder of the eleventh century?

[579] D. B. ii. 204: '3 liberi homines ... semper arant cum 3
bobus.'

[580] D. B. ii. 184 b.

[581] D. B. ii. 192 b.

[582] D. B. i. 211.

[583] D. B. i. 218 b. Compare the 'dimidius porcus' of ii. 287.

[584] D. B. i. 213 b: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt homines villae
communiter et vendere potuerunt.'

[585] D. B. i. 210, 212 b, 213 b.

[586] D. B. i. 214: 'In Meldone Johannes de Roches occupavit iniuste
25 acras super homines qui villam tenent.' This is a vague
phrase.

[587] e.g. D. B. i. 112 b: 'Colsuen homo Episcopi Constantiensis
aufert ab hoc manerio communem pasturam quae ibi adiacebat T.
R. E. et etiam T. R. W. quinque annis.'

[588] D. B. ii. 339 b.

[589] D. B. i. 140 b.

[590] D. B. i. 75: 'tercia vero pars vel tercia quercus erat Comitis
Eduini.'

[591] D. B. ii. 404 b: 'et in tercio anno quarta pars mol[endini].'

[592] D. B. ii. 291 b.

[593] D. B. ii. 24 b.

[594] D. B. ii. 438.

[595] D. B. i. 83: 'sex taini in paragio,' 'quatuor taini in
paragio.' Ibid. 83 b: 'novem taini in paragio.' Ibid. 168 b:
'quinque fratres tenuerunt pro 5 maneriis et poterant ire quo
volebant et pares erant.'

[596] D. B. i. 96 b: 'dim. hida quam tenebat T. R. E. unus tainus in
paragio.' Ibid. 40: 'Brictric tenuit de episcopo in paragio.'

[597] But it was possible for several men to be holding in parage
and yet for each of them to have a separate _manerium_. This
seems to imply that their holdings were physically separate
and that each holding was separately liable for geld, though
as regards other matters, e.g. military service, the division
was ignored.

[598] D. B. i. 291.

[599] D. B. i. 145 b.

[600] D. B. i. 341.

[601] D. B. i. 354.

[602] D. B. i. 375 b: 'Siuuate et Alnod et Fenchel et Aschil
equaliter et pariliter diviserunt inter se terram patris sui
T. R. E. et ita tenuerunt ut si opus fuit expeditione Regis et
Siuuate potuit ire, alii fratres iuverunt eum. Post istum,
ivit alter et Siuuate cum reliquis iuvit eum; et sic de
omnibus. Siuuate tamen fuit homo Regis.'

[603] D. B. i. 206: 'sex sochemanni id est Aluuoldus et 5 fratres
eius habuerunt 4 hid. et dim. ad geldum.'

[604] D. B. i. 233: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt 2 fratres pro 2 maneriis,
et postea emit alter ab altero partem suam et fecit unum
manerium de duobus T. R. E.'

[605] D. B. i. 127 b: 'Hoc manerium tenent villani ad firmam
canonicorum.'

[606] D. B. i. 162 b.

[607] D. B. i. 69.

[608] D. B. ii. 118 b Yarmouth: 'De gersuma has 4 libras dant
burgenses gratis et amicitia.'

[609] Thus D. B. iv. 568: 'Due ville reddunt 30 sol. de cornagio.'
Ib. 570: 'Queryngdonshire reddit 76 sol. de cornagio.'

[610] Black Book of Peterborough, _passim_.

[611] Hist. Engl. Law, i. 550.

[612] Edgar IV. 8. 9.

[613] Ibid. 6.

[614] Leg. Edw. Conf. 24.

[615] Leg. Edw. Conf. 15. Compare Leg. Henr. 91; Leg. Will. Conq. I.
22; Leg. Will. Conq. III.. 3.

[616] Leg. Henr. 7 § 7.

[617] It is possible that the entry (i. 204) which tells how the
sokemen of Broughton enjoyed the smaller _wites_ points to a
free village court; but we have put another interpretation
upon this; see above, p. 99.

§ 8. _The Feudal Superstructure._

[The higher ranks of men.]

It remains that we should speak very briefly of the higher ranks of men and the tenure by which they held their land. Little accurate information can be extorted from our record. The upper storeys of the old English edifice have been demolished and a new superstructure has been reared in their stead. It is not the office of Domesday Book to tell us much even of the new nobility, of the services which the counts and barons are to render to the king in return for their handsome endowments:--as to the old nobility, that has perished. Still there are some questions that we ought to ask.

[Dependent tenure.]

The general theory that all land tenure, except indeed the tenure by which the king holds land in demesne, is dependent tenure, seems to be implied, not only by many particular entries, but also by the whole scheme of the book. Every holder of land, except the king, holds it of (_de_) some lord, and therefore every acre of land that is not royal demesne can be arranged under the name of some tenant in chief. Even a church will hold its land, if not of the king, then of some other lord[618]. The terms of the tenure are but very rarely described, for Domesday Book is no feodary. Just now and again a tenure _in elemosina_ is noticed and in some of these cases this term seems already to bear the technical sense that it will have in later days; the tenant owes a spiritual, but no secular service[619]. A few instances of what later lawyers would call a 'tenure by divine service,' as distinct from a tenure in frank-almoin, may be found[620]. A few words here and there betray the existence of tenure by knight's service and of castle guard[621]. In the _servientes Regis_ who have been enfeoffed in divers counties we may see the predecessors of the tenants by serjeanty[622]. We shall remark, however, the absence of those abstract terms which are to become the names of the various tenures. We read of _servientes_, _sochemanni_, _villani_, _burgenses_, but not of _seriantia_[623], _socagium_, _villenagium_, _burgagium_. As we pursue our retrogressive course through the middle ages, we do not find that the law of personal condition becomes more and more distinct from the law of land tenure; on the contrary, the two become less and less separable.

[_Feudum._]

It has sometimes been said that a feudal tenure was the only kind of land tenure that the Norman conquerors could conceive. In a certain sense this may be true, but we should have preferred to say that probably they could not easily conceive a kind of tenure that was not dependent:--every one who holds land (except he be the king) holds it of someone else. The adjective 'feudal' was not in their vocabulary, and their use of the word _feudum_--occasionally we meet the older _feum_[624]--is exceedingly obscure. Very rarely does it denote a tenure or a mass of rights; usually, though it may connote rights of a certain order, it denotes a stretch of land; thus we may read of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux, thereby being meant the territory which the bishop holds. Occasionally, however, we hear of a man holding land _in feudo_. One instance may be enough to show that such a phrase did not imply military tenure:--'William the Chamberlain held this manor _in feudo_ of the Queen [Matilda] at a rent of £3 a year and after her death he held it in the same fashion of the king[625].' All sense of militariness, and all sense of precariousness, that the word has ever had in its continental history, seems to be disappearing. Already the process has begun which will make it applicable to every person who has heritable rights in land. William the Chamberlain is, we take it, already a fee farmer, that is, a rent-paying tenant with heritable rights[626]. As to the word _beneficium_, which _feum_ or _feudum_ has been supplanting, we shall hardly find it with its old meaning. It seems to be holding its own only within the sphere of ecclesiastical rights, where the 'benefice' will survive until our own day[627].

[_Alodium._]