Chapter II: Preface: v (1)

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xiv

ESSAY I.

DOMESDAY BOOK.

Domesday Book and its satellites, 1. Domesday and legal history,
2. Domesday a geld book, 3. The danegeld, 3. The inquest and the geld
system, 5. Importance of the geld, 7. Unstable terminology of the
record, 8. The legal ideas of century xi. 9.

§ 1. _Plan of the Survey_, pp. 9-26.

The geographical basis, 9. The vill as the unit, 10. Modern and
ancient vills, 12. Omission of vills, 13. Fission of vills, 14. The
nucleated village and the vill of scattered steads, 15. Illustration
by maps, 16. Size of the vill, 17. Population of the vill, 19.
Contrasts between east and west, 20. Small vills, 20. Importance of
the east, 21. Manorial and non-manorial vills, 22. Distribution of
free men and serfs, 23. The classification of men, 23. The classes of
men and the geld system, 24. Our course, 25.

§ 2. _The Serfs_, pp. 26-36.

The _servus_ of Domesday, 26. Legal position of the serf, 27.
Degrees of serfdom, 27. Predial element in serfdom, 28. The serf and
criminal law, 29. Serf and villein, 30. The serf of the _Leges_, 30.
Return to the _servus_ of Domesday, 33. Disappearance of _servi_, 35.

§ 3. _The Villeins_, pp. 36-66.

The boors or coliberts, 36. The continental colibert, 37. The
English boor, 37. _Villani_, _bordarii_, _cotarii_, 38. The villein's
tenement, 40. Villeins and cottiers, 41. Freedom and unfreedom of the
_villani_, 41. Meaning of freedom, 42. The villein as free, 43. The
villein as unfree, 45. Anglo-Saxon free-holding, 46. Free-holding
and seignorial rights, 47. The scale of free-holding, 49. Free land
and immunity, 50. Unfreedom of the villein, 50. Right of recapture,
50. Rarity of flight, 51. The villein and seignorial justice, 52. The
villein and national justice, 52. The villein and his land, 53. The
villein's land and the geld, 54. The villein's services, 56. The
villein's rent, 57. The English for _villanus_, 58. Summary of the
villein's position, 60. Depression of the peasants, 61. The Normans
and the rustics, 61. Depression of the sokemen, 63. The peasants on
the royal demesne, 65.

§ 4. _The Sokemen_, pp. 66-79.

_Sochemanni_ and _liberi homines_, 66. Lord and man, 67. Bonds
between lord and man, 67. Commendation, 69. Commendation and
protection, 70. Commendation and warranty, 71. Commendation and
tenure, 71. The lord's interest in commendation, 72. The seignory
over the commended, 74. Commendation and service, 74. Land-loans and
services, 75. The man's _consuetudines_, 76. Nature of
_consuetudines_, 78. Justiciary _consuetudines_, 78.

§ 5. _Sake and Soke_, pp. 80-107.

Sake and soke, 80. Private jurisdiction in the _Leges_, 80. Soke
in the _Leges Henrici_, 81. Kinds of soke in the _Leges_, 82. The
Norman kings and private justice, 83. Sake and soke in Domesday, 84.
Meaning of _soke_, 84. Meaning of _sake_, 84. Soke as jurisdiction,
86. Seignorial justice before the Conquest, 87. Soke as a regality,
89. Soke over villeins, 90. Private soke and hundredal soke, 91.
Hundredal and manorial soke, 92. The seignorial court, 94. Soke and
the earl's third penny, 95. Soke and house-peace, 97. Soke over
houses, 99. Vendible soke, 100. Soke and mund, 100. Justice and
jurisdiction, 102. Soke and commendation, 103. Sokemen and 'free
men,' 104. Holdings of the sokemen, 106.

§ 6. _The Manor_, pp. 107-128.

What is a manor? 107. _Manerium_ a technical term, 107. Manor and
hall, 109. Difference between manor and hall, 110. Size of the
_maneria_, 110. A large manor, 111. Enormous manors--Leominster,
Berkeley, Tewkesbury, Taunton, 112. Large manors in the Midlands,
114. Townhouses and berewicks attached to manors, 114. Manor and
soke, 115. Minute manors in the west, 116. Minute manors in the east,
117. The manor as a peasant's holding, 118. Definition of a manor,
119. The manor and the geld, 120. Classification of men for the geld,
122. Proofs of connexion of the manor with the geld, 122. Land gelds
in a manor, 124. Geld and hall, 124. The lord and the man's taxes,
125. Distinction between villeins and sokemen, 125. The lord's
subsidiary liability, 126. Manors distributed to the Frenchmen, 127.
Summary, 128.

§ 7. _Manor and Vill_, pp. 129-150.

Manorial and non-manorial vills, 129. The vill of Orwell, 129. The
Wetherley hundred of Cambridgeshire, 131. The Wetherley sokemen, 134.
The sokemen and seignorial justice, 135. Changes in the Wetherley
hundred, 135. Manorialism in Cambridgeshire, 136. The sokemen and the
manors, 137. Hertfordshire sokemen, 138. The small _maneria_, 138.
The Danes and freedom, 139. The Danish counties, 139. The contrast
between villeins and sokemen, 140. Free villages, 141. Village
communities, 142. The villagers as co-owners, 142. The waste land of
the vill, 143. Co-ownership of mills and churches, 144. The system of
virgates in a free village, 144. The virgates and inheritance, 145.
The farm of the vill, 146. Round sums raised from the villages, 147.
The township and police law, 147. The free village and Norman
government, 149. Organization of the free village, 149.

§ 8. _The Feudal Superstructure_, pp. 150-172.

The higher ranks of men, 150. Dependent tenure, 151. _Feudum_,
152. _Alodium_, 153. Application of the formula of dependent tenure,
154. Military tenure, 156. The army and the land, 157. Feudalism and
army service, 158. Punishment for default of service, 159. The new
military service, 160. The thegns, 161. Nature of thegnship, 163. The
thegns of Domesday, 165. Greater and lesser thegns, 165. The great
lords, 166. The king as landlord, 166. The ancient demesne, 167. The
comital manors, 168. Private rights and governmental revenues, 168.
The English state, 170.

§ 9. _The Boroughs_, pp. 172-219.

Borough and village, 172. The borough in century xiii., 173. The
number of the boroughs, 173. The aid-paying boroughs of century xii,
174. List of aids, 175. The boroughs in Domesday, 176. The borough as
a county town, 178. The borough on no man's land, 178. Heterogeneous
tenures in the boroughs, 179. Burgages attached to rural manors, 180.
The burgess and the rural manor, 181. Tenure of the borough and
tenure of land within the borough, 181. The king and other landlords,
182.

The oldest burh, 183. The king's burh, 184. The special peace of
the burh, 184. The town and the burh, 185. The building of boroughs,
186. The shire and its borough, 186. Military geography, 187. _The
Burghal Hidage_, 187. The shire's wall-work, 188. Henry the Fowler and
the German burgs, 189. The shire thegns and their borough houses, 189.
The knights in the borough, 190. _Burh-bót_ and castle-guard, 191.

Borough and market, 192. Establishment of markets, 193. Moneyers in
the burh, 195. Burh and port, 195. Military and commercial elements in
the borough, 196. The borough and agriculture, 196. Burgesses as
cultivators, 197. Burgage tenure, 198. Eastern and western boroughs,
199. Common property of the burgesses, 200. The community as
landholders, 200. Rights of common, 202. Absence of communalism in the
borough, 202. The borough community and its lord, 203. The farm of the
borough, 204. The sheriff and the farm of the borough, 205. The
community and the geld, 206. Partition of taxes, 207. No corporation
farming the borough, 208. Borough and county organization, 209.
Government of the boroughs, 209. The borough court, 210. The law-men,
211. Definition of the borough, 212. Mediatized boroughs, 212.
Boroughs on the king's land and other boroughs, 215. Attributes of the
borough, 216. Classification of the boroughs, 217. National element in
the boroughs, 219.

ESSAY II.

ENGLAND BEFORE THE CONQUEST.

Object of this essay, 220. Fundamental controversies over
Anglo-Saxon history, 221. The Romanesque theory unacceptable, 222.
Feudalism as a normal stage, 223. Feudalism as progress and
retrogress, 224. Progress and retrogress in the history of legal
ideas, 224. The contact of barbarism and civilization, 225. Our
materials, 226.

§ 1. _Book-land and the Land-book_, pp. 226-244.

The lands of the churches, 226. How the churches acquired their
lands, 227. The earliest land-books, 229. Exotic character of the
book, 230. The book purports to convey ownership, 230. The book
conveys a superiority, 231. A modern analogy, 232. Conveyance of
superiorities in early times, 233. What had the king to give? 234.
The king's alienable rights, 234. Royal rights in land, 235. The
king's _feorm_, 236. Nature of the _feorm_, 237. Tribute and rent,
239. Mixture of ownership and superiority, 240. Growth of the
seignory, 241. Book-land and church-right, 242. Book-land and
testament, 243.

§ 2. _Book-land and Folk-land_, pp. 244-258.

What is folk-land? 244. Folk-land in the laws, 244. Folk-land in
the charters, 245. Land booked by the king to himself, 246. The
consent of the witan, 247. Consent and witness in the land-books,
247. Attestation of the earliest books, 248, Confirmation and
attestation, 250. Function of the witan, 251. The king and the
people's land, 252. King's land and crown land, 253. Fate of the
king's land on his death, 253. The new king and the old king's heir,
254. Immunity of the ancient demesne, 255. Rights of individuals in
national land, 255. The _alod_, 256. Book-land and privilege, 257.
Kinds of land and kinds of right, 257.

§ 3. _Sake and Soke_, pp. 258-292.

Importance of seignorial justice, 258. Theory of the modern origin
of seignorial justice, 258. Sake and soke in the Norman age, 259. The
Confessor's writs, 259. Cnut's writs, 260. Cnut's law, 261. The book
and the writ, 261. Diplomatics, 262. The Anglo-Saxon writ, 264. Sake
and soke appear when writs appear, 265. Traditional evidence of sake
and soke, 267. _Altitonantis_, 268. Criticism of the earlier books,
269. The clause of immunity, 270. Dissection of the words of
immunity, 272. The _trinoda necessitas_, 273. The _ángild_, 274. The
right to wites and the right to a court, 275. The Taunton book, 276.
The immunists and the wite, 277. Justice and jurisdiction, 277. The
Frankish immunity, 278. Seignorial and ecclesiastical jurisdiction,
279. Criminal justice of the church, 281. Antiquity of seignorial
courts, 282. Justice, vassalage and tenure, 283. The lord and the
accused vassal, 284. The state, the lord and the vassal, 285. The
_landríca_ as immunist, 286. The immunist's rights over free men,
288. Sub-delegation of justiciary rights, 289. Number of the
immunists, 289.

Note: The _Ángild_ Clause, 290.

§ 4. _Book-land and Loan-land_, pp. 293-318.

The book and the gift, 293. Book-land and service, 294. Military
service, 295. Escheat of book-land, 295. Alienation of book-land,
297. The heriot and the testament, 298. The gift and the loan, 299.
The _precarium_, 300. The English land-loan, 301. Loans of church
land to the great, 302. The consideration for the loan, 303. St.
Oswald's loans, 303. Oswald's letter to Edgar, 304. Feudalism in
Oswald's law, 307. Oswald's riding-men, 308. Heritable loans, 309.
Wardship and marriage, 310. Seignorial jurisdiction, 310. Oswald's
law and England at large, 311. Inferences from Oswald's loans, 312.
Economic position of Oswald's tenants, 312. Loan-land and book-land,
313. Book-land in the dooms, 314. Royal and other books, 315. The
gift and the loan, 317. Dependent tenure, 317.

§ 5. _The Growth of Seignorial Power_, pp. 318-340.

Subjection of free men, 318. The royal grantee and the land, 318.
Provender rents and the manorial economy, 319. The church and the
peasants, 320. Growth of the manorial system, 321. Church-scot and
tithes, 321. Jurisdictional rights of the lord, 322. The lord and the
man's taxes, 323. Depression of the free ceorl, 324. The slaves, 325.
Growth of manors from below, 325.

Theories which connect the manor with the Roman villa, 326. The
_Rectitudines_, 327. Discussion of the _Rectitudines_, 328. The
Tidenham case, 329. The Stoke case, 330. Inferences from these cases,
332. The _villa_ and the _vicus_, 333. Manors in the land-books, 334.
The _mansus_ and the _manens_, 335. The hide, 336. The strip-holding
and the villa, 337. The lord and the strips, 338. The ceorl and the
slave, 339. The condition of the Danelaw, 339.

§ 6. _The Village Community_, pp. 340-356.

Free villages, 340. Ownership by communities and ownership by
individuals, 341. Co-ownership and ownership by corporations, 341.
Ownership and governmental power, 342. Ownership and subordinate
governmental power, 343. Evolution of sovereignty and ownership, 343.
Communal ownership as a stage, 344. The theory of normal stages, 345.

Was land owned by village communities? 346. Meadows, pastures and
woods, 348. The bond between neighbours, 349. Feebleness of village
communalism, 349. Absence of organization, 350. The German village on
conquered soil, 351. Development of kingly power, 351. The free
village in England, 352. The village meeting, 353. What might have
become of the free village, 353. Mark communities, 354. Intercommoning
between vills, 355. Last words, 356.

ESSAY III.

THE HIDE.

What was the hide? 357. Importance of the question, 357. Hide and
manse in Bede, 358. Hide and manse in the land-books, 358. The large
hide and the manorial arrangement, 360. Our course, 361.

§ 1. _Measures and Fields_, pp. 362-399.

Permanence and change in agrarian history, 362. Rapidity of change
in old times, 363. Devastation of villages, 363. Village colonies,
365. Change of field systems, 365. Differences between different
shires, 366. New and old villages, 367.

History of land measures, 368. Growth of uniform measures, 369.
Superficial measure, 370. The ancient elements of land measure, 372.
The German acre, 373. English acres, 373. Small and large acres, 374.
Anglo-Saxon rods and acres, 375. Customary acres and forest acres,
376. The acre and the day's work, 377. The real acres in the fields,
379. The _culturae_ or shots, 379. Delimitation of shots, 380. Real
and ideal acres, 381. Irregular length of acres, 383. The _seliones_
or beds, 383. Acres divided lengthwise, 384. The virgate, 385. Yard
and yard-land, 385. The virgate a fraction of the hide, 385. The
yard-land in laws and charters, 386.

The hide as a measure, 387. The hide as a measure of arable, 388.
The hide of 120 acres, 389. Real and fiscal hides, 389. Causes of
divergence of fiscal from real hides, 390. Effects of the divergence,
392. Acreage of the hide in later days, 393. The carucate and bovate,
395. The ox-gang, 396. The fiscal carucate, 396. Acreage tilled by a
plough, 397. Walter of Henley's programme of ploughing, 398.

§ 2. _Domesday Statistics_, pp. 399-490.

_Statistical Tables_, 400-403.

Domesday's three statements, 399. Northern formulas, 404. Southern
formulas, 405. Kentish formulas, 406. Relation between the three
statements, 406. Introduction of statistics, 407. Explanation of
statistics, 407. Acreage, 407. Population, 408. Danegeld, 408. Hides,
carucates, sulungs, 408. Reduced hidage, 410. The teamlands, 410. The
teams, 411. The values, 411. The table of ratios, 411. Imperfection
of statistics, 412. Constancy of ratios, 413.

The team, 413. Variability of the _caruca_, 414. Constancy of the
_caruca_, 414. The villein's teams, 415. The villein's oxen, 416.
Light and heavy ploughs, 417. The team of Domesday and other
documents, 417.

The teamland, 418. Fractional parts of the teamland, 418. Land for
oxen and wood for swine, 419. The teamland no areal unit, 419. The
teamlands of Great and the teams of Little Domesday, 420. The
Leicestershire formulas, 420. Origin of the inquiry touching the
teamlands, 421. Modification of the inquiry, 423. The potential teams,
423. Normal relation between teams and teamlands, 424. The land of
deficient teams, 425. Actual and potential teamlands, 426. The land of
excessive teams, 427. Digression to East Anglia, 429. The teamland no
areal measure, 431. Eyton's theory, 431. Domesday's lineal measure,
432. Measured teamlands, 433.

Amount of arable in England, 435. Decrease of arable, 436. The food
problem, 436. What was the population? 436. What was the field-system?
437. What was the acre's yield? 437. Consumption of beer, 438. The
Englishman's diet, 440. Is the arable superabundant? 441. Amount of
pasturage, 441. Area of the villages, 443. Produce and value, 444.
Varying size of acres, 445. The teamland in Cambridgeshire, 445.

The hides of Domesday, 446. Relation between hides and teamlands,
447. Unhidated estates, 448. Beneficial hidation, 448. Effect of
privilege, 449. Divergence of hide from teamland, 450. Partition of
the geld, 451. Distribution of hides among counties and hundreds, 451.
The hidage of Worcestershire, 451. _The County Hidage_, 455. Its date,
456. The Northamptonshire Geld Roll, 457. Credibility of _The County
Hidage_, 458. Reductions of hidage, 458. The county quotas, 459. The
hundred and the hundred hides, 459. Comparison of Domesday hidage with
Pipe Rolls, 460. Under-rated and over-rated counties, 461. Hidage and
value, 462. One pound, one hide, 465. Equivalence of pound and hide,
465. Cases of under-taxation, 466. Kent, 466. Devon and Cornwall, 467.
Cases of over-taxation, 468. Leicestershire, 468. Yorkshire, 469.
Equity and hidage, 470. Distribution of hides and of teamlands, 471.
Area and value as elements of geldability, 472. The equitable
teamland, 473. Artificial valets, 473. The new assessments of Henry
II., 473.

Acreage of the fiscal hide, 475. Equation between hide and acres,
475. The hide of 120 acres, 476. Evidence from Cambridgeshire, 476.
Evidence from the Isle of Ely, 476. Evidence from Middlesex, 477.
Meaning of the Middlesex entries, 478. Evidence in the Geld Inquests,
478. Result of the evidence, 480. Evidence from Essex, 480. Acreage of
the fiscal carucate, 483. Acreage of the fiscal sulung, 484. Kemble's
theory, 485. The ploughland and the plough, 486. The Yorkshire
carucates, 487. Relation between teamlands and fiscal carucates, 487.
The fiscal hide of 120 acres, 489. Antiquity of the large hide, 489.

§ 3. _Beyond Domesday_, pp, 490-520.

The hide beyond Domesday, 490. Arguments in favour of small hides,
490. Continuity of the hide in the land-books, 491. Examples from
charters of Chertsey, 492. Examples from charters of Malmesbury, 492.
Permanence of the hidation, 493. Gifts of villages, 494. Gifts of
manses in villages, 495. The largest gifts, 496. The Winchester
estate at Chilcombe, 496. The Winchester estates at Downton and
Taunton, 498. Kemble and the Taunton estate, 499. Difficulty of
identifying parcels, 500. The numerous hides in ancient documents,
501. _The Burghal Hidage_, 502. _The Tribal Hidage_, 506. Bede's
hidage, 508. Bede and the land-books, 509. Gradual reduction of
hidage, 510. Over-estimates of hidage, 510. Size of Bede's hide, 511.
Evidence from Iona, 512. Evidence from Selsey, 513. Conclusion in
favour of the large hide, 515. Continental analogies, 515. The German
_Hufe_, 515. The _Königshufe_, 516. The large hide on the continent,
517. The large hide not too large, 518. The large hide and the manor,
519. Last words, 520.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen und Ostgermanen, der
Kelten, Römer, Finnen und Slawen, von August Meitzen, Berlin, 1895.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.

B. = Birch, Cartularium Saxonicum, London, 1885-7-93.
D. B. = Domesday Book.
E. = Earle, Land Charters, Oxford, 1888.
E. H. R. = English Historical Review.
H. & S. = Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Ecclesiastical
Documents, vol. iii, Oxford, 1871.
K. = Kemble, Codex Diplomaticus Ævi Saxonici, London, 1839-48.
T. = Thorpe, Diplomatarium Anglicanum, London, 1865.

ADDENDUM.

p. 347, note 794. Instances of the periodic reallotment of the whole
land of a vill, exclusive of houses and crofts, seem to have been not
unknown in the north of England. Here the reallotment is found in
connexion with a husbandry which knows no permanent severance of the
arable from the grass-land, but from time to time ploughs up a tract
and after a while allows it to become grass-land once more. See F. W.
Dendy, The Ancient Farms of Northumberland, Archaeologia Aeliana, Vol.
xvi. I have to thank Mr Edward Bateson for a reference to this paper.

ESSAY I.

DOMESDAY BOOK.

[Domesday Book and its satellites.]

At midwinter in the year 1085 William the Conqueror wore his crown at Gloucester and there he had deep speech with his wise men. The outcome of that speech was the mission throughout all England of 'barons,' 'legates' or 'justices' charged with the duty of collecting from the verdicts of the shires, the hundreds and the vills a _descriptio_ of his new realm. The outcome of that mission was the _descriptio_ preserved for us in two manuscript volumes, which within a century after their making had already acquired the name of Domesday Book. The second of those volumes, sometimes known as Little Domesday, deals with but three counties, namely Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, while the first volume comprehends the rest of England. Along with these we must place certain other documents that are closely connected with the grand inquest. We have in the so-called Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiae, a copy, an imperfect copy, of the verdicts delivered by the Cambridgeshire jurors, and this, as we shall hereafter see, is a document of the highest value, even though in some details it is not always very trustworthy[2]. We have in the so-called Inquisitio Eliensis an account of the estates of the Abbey of Ely in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and other counties, an account which has as its ultimate source the verdicts of the juries and which contains some particulars which were omitted from Domesday Book[3]. We have in the so-called Exon Domesday an account of Cornwall and Devonshire and of certain lands in Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire; this also seems to have been constructed directly or indirectly out of the verdicts delivered in those counties, and it contains certain particulars about the amount of stock upon the various estates which are omitted from what, for distinction's sake, is sometimes called the Exchequer Domesday[4]. At the beginning of this Exon Domesday we have certain accounts relating to the payment of a great geld, seemingly the geld of six shillings on the hide that William levied in the winter of 1083-4, two years before the deep speech at Gloucester[5]. Lastly, in the Northamptonshire Geld Roll[6] we have some precious information about fiscal affairs as they stood some few years before the survey[7].

[Domesday and legal history.]

Such in brief are the documents out of which, with some small help from the Anglo-Saxon dooms and land-books, from the charters of Norman kings and from the so-called Leges of the Conqueror, the Confessor and Henry I., some future historian may be able to reconstruct the land-law which obtained in the conquered England of 1086, and (for our records frequently speak of the _tempus Regis Edwardi_) the unconquered England of 1065. The reflection that but for the deep speech at Gloucester, but for the lucky survival of two or three manuscripts, he would have known next to nothing of that law, will make him modest and cautious. At the present moment, though much has been done towards forcing Domesday Book to yield its meaning, some of the legal problems that are raised by it, especially those which concern the time of King Edward, have hardly been stated, much less solved. It is with some hope of stating, with little hope of solving them that we begin this essay. If only we can ask the right questions we shall have done something for a good end. If English history is to be understood, the law of Domesday Book must be mastered. We have here an absolutely unique account of feudalism in two different stages of its growth, the more trustworthy, though the more puzzling, because it gives us particulars and not generalities.

Puzzling enough it certainly is, and this for many reasons. Our task may be the easier if we state some of those reasons at the outset.

[Domesday a geld book.]

To say that Domesday Book is no collection of laws or treatise on law would be needless. Very seldom does it state any rule in general terms, and when it does so we shall usually find cause for believing that this rule is itself an exception, a local custom, a provincial privilege. Thus, if we are to come by general rules, we must obtain them inductively by a comparison of many thousand particular instances. But further, Domesday Book is no register of title, no register of all those rights and facts which constitute the system of land-holdership. One great purpose seems to mould both its form and its substance; it is a geld-book.

[Danegeld.]

When Duke William became king of the English, he found (so he might well think) among the most valuable of his newly acquired regalia, a right to levy a land-tax under the name of geld or danegeld. A detailed history of that tax cannot be written. It is under the year 991 that our English chronicle first mentions a tribute paid to the Danes[8]; £10,000 was then paid to them. In 994 the yet larger sum of £16,000[9] was levied. In 1002 the tribute had risen to £24,000[10], in 1007 to £30,000[11], in 1009 East Kent paid £3,000[12]; £21,000 was raised in 1014[13]; in 1018 Cnut when newly crowned took £72,000 besides £11,000 paid by the Londoners[14]; in 1040 Harthacnut took £21,099 besides a sum of £11,048 that was paid for thirty-two ships[15]. With a Dane upon the throne, this tribute seems to have become an occasional war-tax. How often it was levied we cannot tell; but that it was levied more than once by the Confessor is not doubtful[16]. We are told that he abolished it in or about the year 1051, some eight or nine years after his accession, some fifteen before his death. No sooner was William crowned than 'he laid on men a geld exceeding stiff.' In the next year 'he set a mickle geld' on the people. In the winter of 1083-4 he raised a geld of 72 pence (6 Norman shillings) upon the hide. That this tax was enormously heavy is plain. Taking one case with another, it would seem that the hide was frequently supposed to be worth about £1 a year and there were many hides in England that were worth far less. But grievous as was the tax which immediately preceded the making of the survey, we are not entitled to infer that it was of unprecedented severity. It brought William but £415 or thereabouts from Dorset and £510 or thereabouts from Somerset[17]. Worcestershire was deemed to contain about 1200 hides and therefore, even if none of its hides had been exempted, it would have contributed but £360. If the huge sums mentioned by the chronicler had really been exacted, and that too within the memory of men who were yet living, William might well regard the right to levy a geld as the most precious jewel in his English crown. To secure a due and punctual payment of it was worth a gigantic effort, a survey such as had never been made and a record such as had never been penned since the grandest days of the old Roman Empire. But further, the assessment of the geld sadly needed reform. Owing to one cause and another, owing to privileges and immunities that had been capriciously granted, owing also, so we think, to a radically vicious method of computing the geldable areas of counties and hundreds, the old assessment was full of anomalies and iniquities. Some estates were over-rated, others were scandalously under-rated. That William intended to correct the old assessment, or rather to sweep it away and put a new assessment in its stead, seems highly probable, though it has not been proved that either he or his sons accomplished this feat[18]. For this purpose, however, materials were to be collected which would enable the royal officers to decide what changes were necessary in order that all England might be taxed in accordance with a just and uniform plan. Concerning each estate they were to know the number of geldable units ('hides' or 'carucates') for which it had answered in King Edward's day, they were to know the number of plough oxen that there were upon it, they were to know its true annual value, they were to know whether that value had been rising or falling during the past twenty years. Domesday Book has well been called a rate book, and the task of spelling out a land law from the particulars that it states is not unlike the task that would lie before any one who endeavoured to construct our modern law of real property out of rate books, income tax returns and similar materials. All the lands, all the land-holders of England may be brought before us, but we are told only of such facts, such rights, such legal relationships as bear on the actual or potential payment of geld. True, that some minor purposes may be achieved by the king's commissioners, though the quest for geld is their one main object. About the rents and renders due from his own demesne manors the king may thus obtain some valuable information. Also he may learn, as it were by the way, whether any of his barons or other men have presumed to occupy, to 'invade,' lands which he has reserved for himself. Again, if several persons are in dispute about a tract of ground, the contest may be appeased by the testimony of shire and hundred, or may be reserved for the king's audience; at any rate the existence of an outstanding claim may be recorded by the royal commissioners. Here and there the peculiar customs of a shire or a borough will be stated, and incidentally the services that certain tenants owe to their lords may be noticed. But all this is done sporadically and unsystematically. Our record is no register of title, it is no feodary, it is no custumal, it is no rent roll; it is a tax book, a geld book.

[The survey and the geld system.]

We say this, not by way of vain complaint against its meagreness, but because in our belief a care for geld and for all that concerns the assessment and payment of geld colours far more deeply than commentators have usually supposed the information that is given to us about other matters. We should not be surprised if definitions and distinctions which at first sight have little enough to do with fiscal arrangements, for example the definition of a manor and the distinction between a villein and a 'free man,' involved references to the apportionment and the levy of the land-tax. Often enough it happens that legal ideas of a very general kind are defined by fiscal rules; for example, our modern English idea of 'occupation' has become so much part and parcel of a system of assessment that lawyers are always ready to argue that a certain man must be an 'occupier' because such men as he are rated to the relief of the poor. It seems then a fair supposition that any line that Domesday Book draws systematically and sharply, whether it be between various classes of men or between various classes of tenements, is somehow or another connected with the main theme of that book--geldability, actual or potential.

[Weight of the danegeld.]

Since we have mentioned the stories told by the chronicler about the tribute paid to the Danes, we may make a comment upon them which will become of importance hereafter. Those stories look true, and they seem to be accepted by modern historians. Had we been told just once that some large number of pounds, for example £60,000, was levied, or had the same round sum been repeated in year after year, we might well have said that such figures deserved no attention, and that by £60,000 our annalist merely meant a big sum of money. But, as will have been seen, he varies his figures from year to year and is not always content with a round number; he speaks of £21,099 and of £11,048[19]. We can hardly therefore treat his statements as mere loose talk and are reluctantly driven to suppose that they are true or near the truth. If this be so, then, unless some discovery has yet to be made in the history of money, no word but 'appalling' will adequately describe the taxation of which he speaks. We know pretty accurately the amount of money that became due when Henry I. or Henry II. imposed a danegeld of two shillings on the hide. The following table constructed from the pipe rolls will show the sum charged against each county. We arrange the shires in the order of their indebtedness, for a few of the many caprices of the allotment will thus be visible, and our table may be of use to us in other contexts[20].

APPROXIMATE CHARGE OF A DANEGELD OF TWO SHILLINGS ON THE HIDE IN THE
MIDDLE OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

£ £
Wiltshire 389 | Cambridge 114
Norfolk 330 | Derby and Nottingham 110
Somerset 278 | Hertford 110
Lincoln 266 | Bedford 110
Dorset 248 | Kent 105
Oxford 242 | Devon 104
Essex 236 | Worcester 101
Suffolk 235 | Leicester 100
Sussex 210 | Hereford 94
Bucks 205 | Middlesex 85
Berks 202 | Huntingdon 71
Gloucester 190 | Stafford 44
S. Hants 180 | Cornwall 23
Surrey 177 | Rutland 12
York 160 | Northumberland 100
Warwick 129 | Cheshire[21] 0
N. Hants 120 | ----
Salop 118 | Total 5198

[The geld of old times.]

Now be it understood that these figures do not show the amount of money that Henry I. and Henry II. could obtain by a danegeld. They had to take much less. When it was last levied, the tax was not bringing in £3500, so many were the churches and great folk who had obtained temporary or permanent exemptions from it. We will cite Leicestershire for example. The total of the geld charged upon it was almost exactly or quite exactly £100. On the second roll of Henry II.'s reign we find that £25. 7_s._ 6_d._ have been paid into the treasury, that £22. 8_s._ 3_d._ have been 'pardoned' to magnates and templars, that £51. 8_s._ 2_d._ are written off in respect of waste, and that 16_s._ 0_d._ are still due. On the eighth roll the account shows that £62. 12_s._ 7_d._ have been paid and that £37. 6_s._ 9_d._ have been 'pardoned.' No, what our table displays is the amount that would be raised if all exemptions were disregarded and no penny forborne. And now let us turn back to the chronicle and (not to take an extreme example) read of £30,000 being raised. Unless we are prepared to bring against the fathers of English history a charge of repeated, wanton and circumstantial lying, we shall think of the danegeld of Æthelred's reign and of Cnut's as of an impost so heavy that it was fully capable of transmuting a whole nation. Therefore the lines that are drawn by the incidence of this tribute will be deep and permanent; but still we must remember that primarily they will be fiscal lines.

[Unstable terminology of the survey.]

Then again, we ought not to look to Domesday Book for a settled and stable scheme of technical terms. Such a scheme could not be established in a brief twenty years. About one half of the technical terms that meet us, about one half of the terms which, as we think, ought to be precisely defined, are, we may say, English terms. They are ancient English words, or they are words brought hither by the Danes, or they are Latin words which have long been in use in England and have acquired special meanings in relation to English affairs. On the other hand, about half the technical terms are French. Some of them are old Latin words which have acquired special meanings in France, some are Romance words newly coined in France, some are Teutonic words which tell of the Frankish conquest of Gaul. In the one great class we place _scira_, _hundredum_, _wapentac_, _hida_, _berewica_, _inland_, _haga_, _soka_, _saka_, _geldum_, _gablum_, _scotum_, _heregeat_, _gersuma_, _thegnus_, _sochemannus_, _burus_, _coscet_; in the other _comitatus_, _carucata_, _virgata_, _bovata_, _arpentum_, _manerium_, _feudum_, _alodium_, _homagium_, _relevium_, _baro_, _vicecomes_, _vavassor_, _villanus_, _bordarius_, _colibertus_, _hospes_. It is not in twenty years that a settled and stable scheme can be formed out of such elements as these. And often enough it is very difficult for us to give just the right meaning to some simple Latin word. If we translate _miles_ by _soldier_ or _warrior_, this may be too indefinite; if we translate it by _knight_, this may be too definite, and yet leave open the question whether we are comparing the _miles_ of 1086 with the _cniht_ of unconquered England or with the knight of the thirteenth century. If we render _vicecomes_ by _sheriff_ we are making our sheriff too little of a _vicomte_. When _comes_ is before us we have to choose between giving Britanny an _earl_, giving Chester a _count_, or offending some of our _comites_ by invidious distinctions. Time will show what these words shall mean. Some will perish in the struggle for existence; others have long and adventurous careers before them. At present two sets of terms are rudely intermixed; the time when they will grow into an organic whole is but beginning.

[Legal ideas of cent. xi.]

To this we must add that, unless we have mistaken the general drift of legal history, the law implied in Domesday Book ought to be for us very difficult law, far more difficult than the law of the thirteenth century, for the thirteenth century is nearer to us than is the eleventh. The grown man will find it easier to think the thoughts of the school-boy than to think the thoughts of the baby. And yet the doctrine that our remote forefathers being simple folk had simple law dies hard. Too often we allow ourselves to suppose that, could we but get back to the beginning, we should find that all was intelligible and should then be able to watch the process whereby simple ideas were smothered under subtleties and technicalities. But it is not so. Simplicity is the outcome of technical subtlety; it is the goal not the starting point. As we go backwards the familiar outlines become blurred; the ideas become fluid, and instead of the simple we find the indefinite. But difficult though our task may be, we must turn to it.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiae, ed. N. E. Hamilton. When, as
sometimes happens, the figures in this record differ from those
given in Domesday Book, the latter seem to be in general the
more correct, for the arithmetic is better. Also it seems plain
that the compilers of Domesday had, even for districts
comprised in the Inquisitio, other materials besides those that
the Inquisitio contains. For example, that document says
nothing of some of the royal manors. [Since this note was
written, Mr Round, Feudal England, pp. 10 ff. has published the
same result after an elaborate investigation.]

[3] This is printed in D. B. vol. iv. and given by Hamilton at the
end of his Inq. Com. Cantab. As to the manner in which it was
compiled see Round, Feudal England, 133 ff.

[4] The Exon Domesday is printed in D. B. vol. iv.

[5] Round, Domesday Studies, i. 91: '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.'

[6] Printed by Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, i. 184.

[7] Round, Feudal England, 147.

[8] Earle, Two Chronicles, 130-1.

[9] Ibid. 132-3.

[10] Ibid. 137.

[11] Ibid. 141.

[12] Ibid. 142.

[13] Ibid. 151.

[14] Ibid. 160-1.

[15] Ibid. 167.

[16] There is a valuable paper on this subject, A Short Account of
Danegeld [by P. C. Webb] published in 1756.

[17] D. B. iv. 26, 489.

[18] In 1194 the tax for Richard's ransom seems, at least in
Wiltshire, to have been distributed in the main according to
the assessment that prevailed in 1084; Rolls of the King's
Court (Pipe Roll Soc.) i. Introduction, p. xxiv.

[19] The statement in Æthelred, II. 7 (Schmid, p. 209) as to a
payment of £22,000 is in a general way corroborative of the
chronicler's large figures.

[20] The figures will be given more accurately on a later page.

[21] Cheshire pays no geld to the king. This loss is compensated by
a sum which is sometimes exacted from Northumberland.

§ 1. _Plan of the Survey._

[The geographical basis.]

England was already mapped out into counties, hundreds or wapentakes and vills. Trithings or ridings appear in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, lathes in Kent, rapes in Sussex, while leets appear, at least sporadically, in Norfolk[22]. These provincial peculiarities we must pass by, nor will we pause to comment at any length on the changes in the boundaries of counties and of hundreds that have taken place since the date of the survey. Though these changes have been many and some few of them have been large[23], we may still say that as a general rule the political geography of England was already stereotyped. And we see that already there are many curious anomalies, 'detached portions' of counties, discrete hundreds, places that are extra-hundredal[24], places that for one purpose are in one county and for another purpose in another county[25]. We see also that proprietary rights have already been making sport of arrangements which in our eyes should be fixed by public law. Earls, sheriffs and others have enjoyed a marvellous power of taking a tract of land out of one district and placing it, or 'making it lie' in another district[26]. Land is constantly spoken of as though it were the most portable of things; it can easily be taken from one vill or hundred and be added to or placed in or caused to lie in another vill or hundred. This 'notional movability' of land, if we may use such a term, will become of importance to us when we are studying the formation of manors.

[The vill as the geographical unit.]

For the present, however, we are concerned with the general truth that England is divided into counties, hundreds or wapentakes and vills. This is the geographical basis of the survey. That basis, however, is hidden from us by the form of our record. The plan adopted by those who fashioned Domesday Book out of the returns provided for them by the king's commissioners is a curious, compromising plan. We may say that in part it is geographical, while in part it is feudal or proprietary. It takes each county separately and thus far it is geographical; but within the boundaries of each county it arranges the lands under the names of the tenants in chief who hold them. Thus all the lands in Cambridgeshire of which Count Alan is tenant in chief are brought together, no matter that they lie scattered about in various hundreds. Therefore it is necessary for us to understand that the original returns reported by the surveyors did not reach the royal treasury in this form. At least as regards the county of Cambridge, we can be certain of this. The hundreds were taken one by one; they were taken in a geographical order, and not until the justices had learned all that was to be known of Staplehow hundred did they call upon the jurors of Cheveley hundred for their verdict. That such was their procedure we might have guessed even had we not been fortunate enough to have a copy of the Cambridgeshire verdicts; for, though the commissioners seem to have held but one moot for each shire, still it is plain that each hundred was represented by a separate set of jurors[27]. But from these Cambridgeshire verdicts we learn what otherwise we could hardly have known. Within each hundred the survey was made by vills[28]. If we suppose the commissioners charging the jurors we must represent them as saying, not 'Tell us what tenants in chief have lands in your hundred and how much each of them holds,' but 'Tell us about each vill in your hundred, who holds land in it.' Thus, for example, the men of the Armingford hundred are called up. They make a separate report about each vill in it. They begin by stating that the vill is rated at a certain number of hides and then they proceed to distribute those hides among the tenants in chief. Thus, for example, they say that Abington was rated at 5 hides, and that those 5 hides are distributed thus[29]:

hides virgates
Hugh Pincerna holds of the bishop of Winchester 2-1/2 1/2
The king 1/2
Ralph and Robert hold of Hardouin de Eschalers 1 1-1/2
Earl Roger 1
Picot the sheriff 1/2
Alwin Hamelecoc the bedel holds of the king 1/2
_____ _____
5 0

Now in Domesday Book we must look to several different pages to get this information about the vill of Abington,--to one page for Earl Roger's land, to another page for Picot's land, and we may easily miss the important fact that this vill of Abington has been rated as a whole at the neat, round figure of 5 hides. And then we see that the whole hundred of Armingford has been rated at the neat, round figure of 100 hides, and has consisted of six vills rated at 10 hides apiece and eight vills rated at 5 hides apiece[30]. Thus we are brought to look upon the vill as a unit in a system of assessment. All this is concealed from us by the form of Domesday Book.

[Stability of the vill.]

When that book mentions the name of a place, when it says that Roger holds Sutton or that Ralph holds three hides in Norton, we regard that name as the name of a vill; it may or may not be also the name of a manor. Speaking very generally we may say that the place so named will in after times be known as a vill and in our own day will be a civil parish. No doubt in some parts of the country new vills have been created since the Conqueror's time. Some names that occur in our record fail to obtain a permanent place on the roll of English vills, become the names of hamlets or disappear altogether; on the other hand, new names come to the front. Of course we dare not say dogmatically that all the names mentioned in Domesday Book were the names of vills; very possibly (if this distinction was already known) some of them were the names of hamlets; nor, again, do we imply that the _villa_ of 1086 had much organization; but a place that is mentioned in Domesday Book will probably be recognized as a vill in the thirteenth, a civil parish in the nineteenth century. Let us take Cambridgeshire by way of example. Excluding the Isle of Ely, we find that the political geography of the Conqueror's reign has endured until our own time. The boundaries of the hundreds lie almost where they lay, the number of vills has hardly been increased or diminished. The chief changes amount to this:--A small tract on the east side of the county containing Exning and Bellingham has been made over to Suffolk; four other names contained in Domesday no longer stand for parishes, while the names of five of our modern parishes--one of them is the significant name of Newton--are not found there[31]. But about a hundred and ten vills that were vills in 1086 are vills or civil parishes at the present day, and in all probability they then had approximately the same boundaries that they have now.

[Omission of vills.]

This may be a somewhat too favourable example of permanence and continuity. Of all counties Cambridgeshire is the one whose ancient geography can be the most easily examined; but wherever we have looked we have come to the conclusion that the distribution of England into vills is in the main as old as the Norman conquest[32]. Two causes of difficulty may be noticed, for they are of some interest. Owing to what we have called the 'notional movability' of land, we never can be quite sure that when certain hides or acres are said to be in or lie in a certain place they are really and physically in that place. They are really in one village, but they are spoken of as belonging to another village, because their occupants pay their geld or do their services in the latter. Manorial and fiscal geography interferes with physical and villar geography. We have lately seen how land rated at five hides was comprised, as a matter of fact, in the vill of Abington; but of those five hides, one virgate 'lay in' Shingay, a half-hide 'lay in' Litlington while a half-virgate 'lay and had always lain' in Morden[33]. This, if we mistake not, leads in some cases to an omission of the names of small vills. A great lord has a compact estate, perhaps the whole of one of the small southern hundreds. He treats it as a whole, and all the land that he has there will be ascribed to some considerable village in which he has his hall. We should be rash in supposing that there were no other villages on this land. For example, in Surrey there is now-a-days a hundred called Farnham which comprises the parish of Farnham, the parish of Frensham and some other villages. If we mistake not, all that Domesday Book has to say of the whole of this territory is that the Bishop of Winchester holds Farnham, that it has been rated at 60 hides, that it has been worth the large sum of £65 a year and that there are so many tenants upon it[34]. We certainly must not draw the inference that there was but one vill in this tract. If the bishop is tenant in chief of the whole hundred and has become responsible for all the geld that is levied therefrom, there is no great reason why the surveyors should trouble themselves about the vills. Thus the simple _Episcopus tenet Ferneham_ may dispose of some 25,000 acres of land. So the same bishop has an estate at Chilcombe in Hampshire; but clearly the name _Ciltecumbe_ covers a wide territory for there are no less than nine churches upon it[35]. We never can be very certain about the boundaries of these large and compact estates.

[Fission of vills.]

A second cause of difficulty lies in the fact that in comparatively modern times, from the twelfth century onwards, two or three contiguous villages will often bear the same name and be distinguished only by what we may call their surnames--thus Guilden Morden and Steeple Morden, Stratfield Saye, Stratfield Turgis, Stratfield Mortimer, Tolleshunt Knights, Tolleshunt Major, Tolleshunt Darcy. Such cases are common; in some districts they are hardly exceptional. Doubtless they point to a time when a single village by some process of colonization or subdivision become two villages. Now Domesday Book seldom enables us to say for certain whether the change has already taken place. In a few instances it marks off the little village from the great village of the same name[36]. In some other instances it will speak, for example, of _Mordune_ and _Mordune Alia_, of _Emingeforde_ and _Emingeforde Alia_, or the like, thus showing both that the change has taken place, and also that it is so recent that it is recognized only by very clumsy terms. In Cambridgeshire, since we have the original verdicts, we can see that the two Mordens are already distinct; the one is rated at ten hides, the other at five[37]. On the other hand, we can see that our Great and Little Shelford are rated as one vill of twenty hides[38], our Castle Camps and Shudy Camps as one vill of five hides[39]. Elsewhere we are left to guess whether the fission is complete, and the surnames that many of our vills ultimately acquire, the names of families which rose to greatness in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, will often suggest that the surveyors saw but one vill where we see two[40]. However, the broad truth stands out that England was divided into vills and that in general the vill of Domesday Book is still a vill in after days[41].

[The nucleated village and the vill of scattered steads.]