Chapter IX: Preface: v (8)

[528] D. B. i. 35 b.

[529] Northumbrian Priests' Law, 58, 59, (Schmid, p. 369.)

[530] An Act of 1869 (32-3 Vic. c. 41) allowed the owners of certain
small houses to agree to pay the rates which under the
ordinary law would become due from the occupiers, and
authorized the vestries to allow such owners a commission of
25 per cent. See also the instructive recital in 59 Geo. III.
c. 12, sec. 19:--The small occupiers are evading the poors'
rate, and the owners exact higher rents than they would
otherwise get, on the ground that the occupiers can not be
effectually assessed.

[531] See above, p. 24.

[532] E.g. D. B. ii. 389 b, 'Clarum tenuit Aluricus pro manerio 24
car. terrae T. R. E. Tunc 40 villani.... Tunc 12 carucae in
dominio.... Tunc 36 carucae hominum.... Huic manerio semper
adiacent 5 sochemani cum omni consuetudine 1 car. terrae et
dim. Semper 1 caruca et dimidia.'

[533] E.g. D. B. ii. 339: 'In eadem villa 14 liberi homines
commendati, Godricus faber et Edricus et Ulnotus et Osulfus et
Uluricus et Stanmarus et Leuietus et Wihtricus et Blachemanus
et Mansuna et Leuinus et Ulmarus et Ulfah et alter Ulfah et
Leofstanus de 40 acris et habent 2 carucas et valent 10
solidos.'

[534] Above, p. 115.

[535] Rolls of the King's Court, Ric. I. (Pipe Roll. Soc.), p. xxiv.
But apparently there had been considerable rearrangements in
some of the counties.

[536] Hoveden, iv. 46. The important words are these: 'Statutum
etiam fuit quod quilibet baro cum vicecomite faceret
districtiones super homines suos; et si per defectum baronum
districtiones factae non fuissent, caperetur de dominico
baronum quod super homines suos restaret reddendum, et ipsi
barones ad homines suos inde caperent.' The baron's _homines_
we take to be freeholders; he would be absolutely liable for
the tax cast upon his villeinage. As to the tax of 1198 see
Eng. Hist. Rev. iii. 501, 701; iv. 105, 108.

[537] In Dial. de Scac. ii. 14, the author tells us that until
recently if a baron who owed money to the crown was insolvent,
the goods of his knights could be seized. The idea of
subsidiary liability is not too subtle for the time.

[538] Above, p. 108.

[539] D. B. ii. 9: 'set Comes Eustachius 1 ex illis [hidis] tenet
que non est de suis c. [100] mansionibus.'

[540] D. B. ii. 233 b.

[541] D. B. ii. 242 b.

[542] D. B. ii. 258.

[543] D. B. ii. 258.

[544] D. B. ii. 447.

[545] D. B. i. 45 b.

[546] Two objections to our theory may be met by a note. (1) Some
manors are free of geld, and therefore to make our definition
correct we ought to say that a manor is a tenement which
either pays its geld at a single place or which would do so
were it not freed from the tax by some special privilege. A
_manerium_ does not cease to be a _manerium_ by being freed
from geld. (2) In later days we may well find a manor holden
of another manor, so that a plot of land may be within two
manors. If this usage of the term can be traced back into
Domesday Book as a common phenomenon, then our doctrine is in
great jeopardy. But we have noticed no passage which clearly
and unambiguously says that a tract of land was _at one and
the same time_ both a _manerium_ and also a part of another
_manerium_. To this we must add that of the distribution of
_maneria_ T. R. E. we only obtain casual and very imperfect
tidings. If T. R. W. a free man has been 'added to' a
_manerium_, the commissioners have no deep interest in the
inquiry whether T. R. E. his tenement was itself an
independent _manerium_. A great simplification has been
effected and the number of _maneria_ has been largely reduced.

§ 7. _Manor and Vill._

[Manorial and non-manorial vills.]

After what has now been said, it is needless to repeat that in Domesday Book the _manerium_ and the _villa_ are utterly different things[547]. In a given case the two may coincide, and throughout a great tract of England such cases were common and we may even say that they were normal. But in the east this was not so. We may easily find a village which taken as a whole has been utterly free from seignorial domination. Orwell in Cambridgeshire will be a good example[548].

[The vill of Orwell.]

In King Edward's day this vill of Orwell was rated at 4 hides: probably it was somewhat underrated for at the date of the survey it was deemed capable of finding land for nearly 6 teams. The following table will show who held the four hides before the Conquest:--

H. V. A.

Two sokemen, men of Edith the Fair 2/3
A sokeman, man of Abp Stigand 1-1/3
A sokeman, man of Robert Wimarc's son 1-1/3
A sokeman, man of the King 2/3
A sokeman, man of Earl Ælfgar 1-1/3
A sokeman, man of Earl Waltheof 3
A sokeman, man of the King 1/3
Sigar a man of Æsgar the Staller 1-1/3
Turbert a man of Edith the Fair 3-1/4 5
Achil a man of Earl Harold 1
A sokeman of the King 1
St. Mary of Chatteris 1/3
St. Mary of Chatteris 1/4
----------------
4 0 0[549]

It will be seen that eight of the most exalted persons in the land, the king, the archbishop, three earls, two royal marshals or stallers, and that mysterious lady known as Edith the Fair, to say nothing of the church of Chatteris, had a certain interest in this little Cambridgeshire village. But then how slight an interest it was! Every one of the tenants was free to 'withdraw himself,' 'to give or sell his land.' Now we can not say that all of them were peasants. Achil the man of Harold seems to have had other lands in the neighbouring villages of Harlton and Barrington[550]. It is probable that Turbert, Edith's man, had another virgate at Kingston[551]: he was one of the jurors of the hundred in which Orwell lay[552]. Sigar the man of Æsgar was another juror, and held land at Thriplow, Foxton, Haslingfield and Shepreth; he seems to have been his lord's steward[553]. But we may be fairly certain that the unnamed sokemen tilled their own soil, though perhaps they had help from a few cottagers. And they can not have been constantly employed in cultivating the demesne lands of their lords. They must go some distance to find any such demesne lands. The Wetherley hundred, in which Orwell lies, is full of the sokemen of these great folk: Waltheof, for example, has 3 men in Comberton, 4 in Barton, 3 in Grantchester, 1 in Wratworth: but he has no demesne land, and if he had it, he could not get it tilled by these scattered tenants. The Fair Edith has half a hide in Haslingfield and we are told that this belongs to the manor of Swavesey. Now at Swavesey Edith has a considerable manor[554], but it can not have got much in the way of labour out of a tenant who lived at Haslingfield, for the two villages are a long ten miles apart. As to the king's sokemen, their only recorded services are the _avera_ and the _inward_. The former seems to be a carrying service done at the sheriff's bidding and to be only exigible when the king comes into the shire, while _inward_ seems to be the duty of forming a body guard for the king while he is in the shire:--if in any year the king did not come, a small sum of money was taken instead[555].

[A Cambridgeshire hundred.]

Lest it should be thought that in picking out the village of Orwell we have studiously sought a rare case, we will here set out in a tabular form what we can learn of the state of the hundred in which Orwell lies. The Wetherley hundred contained twelve vills: it was a land of true villages which until very lately had wide open fields[556]. In the Confessor's day the lands in it were allotted thus:--

CAMBRIDGESHIRE. WETHERLEY HUNDRED[557].

I. COMBERTON. A vill of 6 hides.
H. V. A. C. B.
1. Seven sokemen of the King 1 1 0}
A sokeman, man of Earl Waltheof} 3 0} 4 0
A sokeman, man of Abp Stigand } }
2. A man of Earl Waltheof 1 15 1 0
3. A sokeman, man of the King 1 0}
A sokeman, man of Abp Stigand 1 15} 2 0
A sokeman, man of Earl Waltheof 1 15}
4. The King 2 2 0 5 0
--------- ------
5 3 15[558] 12 0