[667] D. B. i. 91: ‘Hae terrae erant tainland in Glastingberie T. R. E. nec poterant ab aecclesia separari.’
[668] Hamilton, Inquisitio, pp. xviii. xix.
[669] D. B. i. 66 b: ‘De hac eadem terra 3 hidas vendiderat abbas cuidam taino T. R. E. ad aetatem trium hominum, et ipse abbas habebat inde servitium, et postea debet redire ad dominium.’ Ib. i. 83 b: ‘Ipsa femina tenet 2 hidas in Tatentone quae erant de dominio abbatiae de Cernel; T. R. E. duo teini tenebant prestito.’
[670] D. B. i. 64 b: ‘Herman et alii servientes Regis ... Odo et alii taini Regis ... Herueus et alii ministri Regis.’ Ib. 75: ‘Guddmund et alii taini ... Willelmus Belet et alii servientes Regis.’
[671] D. B. i. 56 b (Berkshire custom): ‘Tainus vel miles Regis dominicus moriens, pro relevamento dimittebat Regi omnia arma sua et equum unum cum sella, alium sine sella.’
[672] D. B. i. 83: ‘Bricsi tenuit miles Regis E.’ Such entries are rare. D. B. i. 66: ‘De eadem terra huius manerii ten[ent] duo Angli.... Unus ex eis est miles iussu Regis et nepos fuit Hermanni episcopi.’ Here the king compels an Englishman to become a miles. D. B. i. 180 b: ‘Quinque taini ... habebant sub se 4 milites.’ The warrior was not necessarily of thegnly rank.
[673] See the passages collected by Schmid, Gesetze, p. 667.
[674] In their treatment of the thegnship of the last days before the Conquest, Maurer lays stress upon the proprietary element, Schmid upon the hereditary. See Little, Gesiths and Thegns, E. H. R. iv. 723.
[675] Cnut, ii. 71.
[676] D. B. i. 280 b.
[677] Hamilton, Inquisitio, 121.
[678] Eyton, Somerset, i. 84.
[679] D. B. iv. 75: ‘Dominicatus Regis ad Regnum pertinens in Devenescira.’ Ib. 99: ‘Mansiones de Comitatu.’ Eyton, Somerset, i. 78.
[680] D. B. ii. 119: ‘Hoc manerium fuit de regno, sed Rex Edwardus dedit Radulfo Comiti.’ Ib. 144: ‘Suafham pertinuit ad regionem et Rex E. dedit R. Comiti.’ Ib. 281 b: ‘Terra Regis de Regione quam Rogerus Bigotus servat.’ Ib. 408 b: ‘Tornei manerium Regis de regione.’ Mr Round, Feudal England, p. 140, treats regio as a mere blunder; but it may well stand for kingship.
[681] D. B. i. 30 b: ‘Huius villae villani ab omni re vicecom[itis] sunt quieti.’
[682] D. B. iv. 99.
[683] Pseudoleges Canuti (= Liebermann’s Instituta Cnuti), 55 (Schmid, p. 430): ‘Comitis rectitudines secundum Anglos istae sunt communes cum rege: tertius denarius in villis ubi mercatum convenerit, et in castigatione latronum, et comitales villae, quae ad comitatum eius pertinent.’
[684] D. B. ii. 118 b: ‘Terre Regis in Tetford ... est una leugata terre in longa et dim. in lato de qua Rex habet duas partes: de his autem duabus partibus tercia pars in consulatu iacet.’ But this seems to mean that only this part of the land is in the county of Norfolk. Ibid. i. 246: in Stafford the king has twenty-two houses ‘de honore comitum.’
[685] D. B. i. 246.
[686] Ellis, Introduction. i. 313. When twenty years after Harold’s death a question about the title to land is at issue, there seems no reason why the jurors should tell lies about Harold.
[687] D. B. i. 154 b.
[688] D. B. i. 172.
[689] D. B. i. 238.
[690] D. B. i. 56 b: Berkshire custom, ‘Qui monitus ad stabilitionem venationis non ibat 50 sol. Regi emendabat.’ See also the Hereford custom, Ib. 179; also Rectitudines (Schmid, App. III.) c. 1.
[691] D. B. i. 69. But the meaning of reveland is obscure. The most important passages about it are in D. B. i. 57 b (Eseldeborne), 181 (Getune). D. B. i. 83: ‘Hanc tenet Aiulf de Rege quamdiu erit vicecomes.’
[692] D. B. i. 100.
[693] D. B. i. 86, 86 b, 92, 97; so in Devonshire, 117 b: ‘Hoc manerium debet per consuetudinem in Tavetone manerium Regis aut 1 bovem aut 30 denarios.’
[694] D. B. i. 38 b.
[695] D. B. i. 101: ‘Ipsi manerio pertinet tercius denarius de hundredis Nortmoltone et Badentone et Brantone et tercium animal pasturae morarum.’
[696] Above, p. 155.
[697] Chron. ann. 1085.
[698] A sketch of the principal argument of this section was published in Eng. Hist. Rev., xi. 13, as a review of Keutgen’s Untersuchungen über den Ursprung der deutschen Stadtverfassung. The origin of the French and German towns has become the theme of a large and very interesting literature. A good introduction to this will be found in an article by M. Pirenne, L’origine des constitutions urbaines, Revue historique, liii. 52, lvii. 293, and an article by Mr Ashley, Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. x. July, 1896. The continuous survival of Roman municipal institutions even in Gaul seems to be denied by almost all modern students.
[699] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 625.
[700] Stubbs, Const. Hist. iii. 448.
[701] We must exclude cases in which the king takes an aid from his whole demesne, e.g. for his daughter’s marriage, for in such a case many royal manors which have no right to be called boroughs must make a gift.
[702] Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347, has excellent remarks on this point.
[703] Nearly.
[704] This may come only from the Staffordshire part of Tamworth.
[705] Chichester pays in later years; but very little.
[706] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. p. 139.
[707] Was the blank space in D. B. i. 246 left for the borough of Tamworth? This borough is incidentally mentioned in D. B. i. 238, 246, 246 b.
[708] But the account of the two sister boroughs here falls between the accounts of the two sister counties.
[709] D. B. i. 337. It is even called a suburbium of Lincoln, though it lies full 10 miles from the city.
[710] The one glimpse that I have had of the manuscript suggested to me (1) that the accounts of some of the boroughs were postscripts, and (2) that space was left for accounts of London and Winchester. The anatomy of the book deserves examination by an expert.
[711] D. B. i. 154.
[712] D. B. i. 56.
[713] D. B. i. 58.
[714] D. B. i. 238.
[715] D. B. i. 143.
[716] Ellis, Introduction, ii. 446; Winchcombe Land-boc, ed. Royce, p. xiv; Stevenson, Rental of Gloucester, p. ix.
[717] D. B. i. 128, 128 b; and above, p. 111.
[718] K. 855 (iv. 211).
[719] Stow, Survey, ed. Strype, Bk. iii. p. 121.
[720] D. B. i. 135 b.
[721] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 636.
[722] Rot. Hund. ii. 361.
[723] D. B. i. 189.
[724] Rental of Gloucester, ed. W. H. Stevenson: Gloucester, 1890, p. x.
[725] There are many examples in Kemble’s Codex.
[726] Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. p. 41: ‘Vicecomes reddit compotum de £80 de auxilio civitatis.... Et in perdonis.... Comiti de Mellent 25 sol.... Comiti de Lerecestria 35 sol.... Comiti de Warenna 16 sol.... Comiti Gloecestriae 116 sol. et 8 den.’ See also the Liber Wintoniae, D. B. iv. 531 ff.
[727] In the A.-S. land-books the word civitas is commonly applied to Worcester, Winchester, Canterbury, and other such places, which are both bishops’ sees and the head places of large districts. But (K. v. p. 180) Gloucester is a civitas, and for some time after the Conquest it is rather the county town than the cathedral town that bears this title. Did any one ever speak of Selsey or Sherborne as a civitas? In 803 (K. v. p. 65) the bishops of Canterbury, Lichfield, Leicester, Sidnacester, Worcester, Winchester, Dunwich, London and Rochester style themselves bishops of civitates, while those of Hereford, Sherborne, Elmham and Selsey do not use this word. But an inference from this would be rash.
[728] An interesting example is this. In 779 Offa conveys to a thegn land at Sulmonnesburg. The boundaries mentioned in the charter are those of the present parish of Bourton-on-the-Water. ‘Sulmonnesburg ... is the ancient camp close to Bourton which gave its name to the Domesday Hundred of Salmanesberie, and at a gap in the rampart of which a Court Leet was held till recently.’ See C. S. Taylor, Pre-Domesday Hide of Gloucestershire, Trans. Bristol and Gloucestershire Archæol. Soc. vol. xviii. pt. 2. As regards the names of hills and of villages named from hills there may occasionally be some difficulty in marking off those which go back to beorh (berry, berrow, barrow) from those which go back to burh (burgh, borough, bury). Mr Stevenson tells me that in the West of England the termination -borough sometimes represents -beorh.
[729] Alfred, 40; Ine, 45.
[730] Aethelr. IV. 4. The Quadripartitus is our only authority for these Instituta; but Dr Liebermann (Quadrip. p. 138) holds that the translator had in front of him a document written before the Conquest. Schmid would read borh-bryce; see p. 541; but this emendation seems needless. Has not the sum been Normanized? The king’s burh-bryce used to be 120 (i.e. in English ‘a hundred’) shillings, and a hundred Norman shillings make £5. So according to the Berkshire custom (D. B. i. 56 b) he who by night breaks a civitas pays 100 shillings to the king and not (it is noted) to the sheriff.
[731] D. B. i. 2: ‘Concordatum est de rectis callibus quae habent per civitatem introitum et exitum, quicunque in illis forisfecerit, regi emendabit.’ See the important document contained in a St Augustin’s Cartulary and printed in Larking, Domesday of Kent, Appendix, 35: ‘Et omnes vie civitatis que habent duas portas, hoc est introitum et exitum, ille sunt de consuetudine Regis.’
[732] Schmid, App. XII; Leg. Henr. c. 16.
[733] Fleta, p. 66; see also 13 Ric. II. stat. 1. cap. 3.
[734] Edmund, II. 2.
[735] See also Schmid, App. IV. (Be griðe and be munde), § 15: ‘If any man fights or steals in the king’s burh or the neighbourhood (the ‘verge’), he forfeits his life, if the king will not concede that he be redeemed by a wergild.’
[736] Æthelstan, II. 20.
[737] K. 1334 (vi. p. 195): a contract made at Exeter before Earl Godwin and all the shire.
[738] Edgar, III. 5; Cnut, II. 18.
[739] Mention is made of the walls of Rochester and Canterbury in various charters from the middle of cent. viii onwards: K. vol. i. pp. 138, 183, 274; vol. ii. pp. 1, 26, 36, 57, 86; vol. v. p. 68.
[740] Green, Conquest of England, 189–207.
[741] For instance, K. iii. pp. 5, 50.
[742] K. 1154 (v. 302): ‘adiacent etiam agri quamplurimi circa castellum quod Welingaford vocitatur.’—K. 152 (i. 183): ‘castelli quod nominatur Hrofescester.’—K. 276 (ii. 57): ‘castelli Hrobi.’
[743] A beautiful example is given by Staffordshire and Warwickshire. Each has its borough in its centre, while Tamworth on the border is partly in the one shire, partly in the other. See Pipe Roll, 31 Hen. I. 75, 76, 107, 108. As to these Mercian shires, see Stubbs, Const. Hist., i. 123; Green, Conquest of England, 237: ‘Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire are other instances of purely military creation, districts assigned to the fortresses which Eadward raised at these points.’
[744] See our index under Burghal Hidage. Mr W. H. Stevenson’s valuable aid in the identification of these burgs is gratefully acknowledged.
[745] D. B. i. 154.
[746] D. B. i. 262 b.
[747] It will be understood that we are not contending for an exact correspondence between civil and military geography. Oxford and Wallingford are border towns. Berkshire men help to maintain Oxford, and Oxfordshire men help to maintain Wallingford.
[748] Widukind, I. 35. For comments see Waitz, Heinrich V. 95; Richter, Annalen, iii. 8; Giesebrecht, Kaiserzeit (ed. 5), i. 222, 811; Keutgen, Ursprung der deutschen Stadtverfassung, p. 44. Giesebrecht holds that Edward’s measures may well have been Henry’s model.
[749] A.-S. Chron. ann. 894.
[750] A charter of 899 (K. v. p. 141) professes to tell how King Alfred, Abp Plegmund and Æthelred ealdorman of the Mercians held a moot ‘de instauratione urbis Londoniae.’ One result of this moot was that two plots of land inside the walls, with hythes outside the walls, were given by the king, the one to the church of Canterbury, the other to the church of Worcester. How will the instauratio of London be secured by such grants?
[751] K. 1144 (v. 280). Other cases: K. 663 (Chichester), 673 (Winchester), 705 (Warwick), 724 (Warwick), 746 (Oxford), 1235 (Winchester).
[752] K. 765–6, 805.
[753] Schmid, App. V. This might mean a seat (of justice) in the gate of his own burh. But this document will hardly be older than, if so old as, cent. x., by which time we should suppose that burh more often pointed to a borough than to a strong house. We may guess that in the latter sense it was supplanted by the hall of which we read a great deal in Domesday. See above, p. 109. However, it does not seem certain that O. E. geat can mean street.
[754] A.-S. Chron. ann. 994.
[755] Thorpe, Diplomatarium, 610. When the Confessor sends a writ to London he addresses it to the bishop, portreeve and burh-thegns. See K. iv. pp. 856, 857, 861, 872.
[756] Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 183, 189.
[757] Gross, op. cit. ii. 37.
[758] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 257.
[759] A.-S. Chron. ann. 1097: ‘Eac manege sciran þe mid weorce to Lundenne belumpon ...’ Thorpe thought good to substitute scipan for sciran.
[760] D. B. i. 298. Outside York were some lands which gelded with the city; ‘et in tribus operibus Regis cum civibus erant.’ This refers to the trinoda necessitas.
[761] Sohm, Die Entstehung des deutschen Städtewesens: Leipzig, 1890.
[762] Ellis, Introduction, i. 248–253.
[763] D. B. i. 56 b.
[764] D. B. i. 1. Black Book of the Admiralty, ii. 158: ‘the herring season, that is from St. Michael’s Day to St. Clement’s (Nov. 23).’ St. Andrew’s Day is Dec. 1.
[765] Edward, I. 1; Æthelstan, II. 12, 13; IV. 2; VI. 10; Edmund, III. 5; Edgar, IV. 7–11; Leg. Will. I. 45; Leg. Will. III. 10. See Schmid, Glossar. s.v. Marktrecht.
[766] Edgar, IV. 3–6. We should expect rather 36 than 33, and xxxvi might easily become xxxiii.
[767] K. 280 (ii. 63), 316 (ii. 118).
[768] Kemble, Cod. Dip. 1075 (v. 142); Kemble, Saxons, ii. 328; Thorpe, 136: ‘ge landfeoh, ge fihtwite, ge stale, ge wohceapung, ge burhwealles sceatinge.’ In D. B. i. 173 it is said that the Bishop of Worcester had received the third penny of the borough. Apparently in the Confessor’s day he received £6, the third of a sum of £18. As to the early history of markets, see the paper contributed by Mr C. I. Elton to the Report of the Royal Commission on Market Rights, 1889.
[769] Æthelstan, II. 14.
[770] The general equivalence of port and burh we may perhaps infer from Æthelstan, II. 14: No one is to coin money outside a port, and there is to be a moneyer in every burh.
[771] Stockport, Langport, Amport, Newport-Pagnell, Milborne Port, Littleport are instances. But a very small river might be sufficient to make a place a haven.
[772] Seemingly if this O.-E. port is not Lat. portus, it is Lat. porta, and there is some fascination about the suggestion that the burh-geat, or in modern German the Burg-gasse, in which the market is held, was described in Latin as porta burgi. In A.D. 762 (K. i. p. 133) we have a house ‘quae iam ad Quenegatum urbis Dorouernis in foro posita est.’ In A.D. 845 (K. ii. p. 26) we find a ‘publica strata’ in Canterbury ‘ubi appellatur Weoweraget,’ that is, the gate of the men of Wye. But what we have to account for is the adoption of port as an English word, and if our ancestors might have used geat, they need not have borrowed. In A.D. 857 (K. ii. p. 63) the king bestows on the church of Worcester certain liberties at a spot in the town of London, ‘hoc est, quod habeat intus liberaliter modium et pondera et mensura sicut in porto mos est ad fruendum.’ To have public weights and measures is characteristic of a portus (= haven). The word may have spread outwards from London. Dr Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 439) gives a weighty vote for porta; but the continental usage deserves attention. Pirenne, Revue historique, lvii. 75: ‘Toutes les villes anciennes [en Flandre] s’y forment au bord des eaux et portent le nom caractéristique de portus, c’est-à-dire de débarcadères. C’est de ce mot portus que vient le mot flamand poorter, qui désigne le bourgeois.’ See D. B. i. 181 b: ‘in Hereford Port.’
[773] D. B. i. 143.
[774] D. B. i. 230.
[775] Cutts, Colchester, 65; Round in The Antiquary, vol. vi. (1882) p. 5.
[776] D. B. ii. 106–7. See Round, op. cit., p. 252.
[777] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 629.
[778] D. B. i. 252.
[779] D. B. i. 179. So at Chester (i. 262 b) it is considered possible that the heir will not be able to pay the relief of ten shillings and will forfeit the tenement.
[780] D. B. i. 336.
[781] D. B. ii. 116. See also the case of Thetford (D. B. ii. 119), where there had been numerous burgesses who could choose their lords.
[782] D. B. i. 280.
[783] D. B. i. 336 b.
[784] D. B. ii. 117.
[785] D. B. i. 2. In 923 (K. v. p. 186) we hear of land outside Canterbury called Burhuuare bocaceras, apparently acres booked to [certain] burgesses.
[786] D. B. i. 100.
[787] D. B. ii. 107: ‘In commune burgensum iiii. xx. acrae terrae; et circa murum viii. percae; de quo toto per annum habent burgenses lx. sol. ad servicium regis si opus fuerit, sin autem, in commune dividunt.’ As to this most difficult passage, see Round, Antiquary, vol. vi. (1882) p. 97. Perhaps the most natural interpretation of it is that the community or commune of the burgesses holds this land and receives by way of rent from tenants, to whom it is let, the sum of 60 shillings a year, which, if this be necessary, goes to make up what the borough has to pay to the king, or otherwise is divisible among the burgesses. But, as Mr Round rightly remarks, 60 shillings for this land would be a large rent.
[788] D. B. i. 2: ‘Ipsi quoque burgenses habebant de rege 33 acras terrae in gildam suam.’ Another version says, ‘33 agros terre quos burgenses semper habuerunt in gilda eorum de donis omnium regum.’ The document here cited is preserved in a cartulary of St Augustin, and is printed in Larking, Domesday of Kent, App. 35. It is closely connected with the Domesday Survey and is of the highest interest.
[789] Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 37.
[790] We do not even know for certain that when our record says that the burgesses and the clerks held land ‘in gildam suam,’ more was meant than that the land was part of their geldable property. See Gross, Gild Merchant, i. 189. In the Exon Domesday the geld is gildum.
[791] D. B. i. 154.
[793] In modern York the freemen inhabiting the different wards had rights of pasture varying from ward to ward: Appendix to Report of Municipal Corporations’ Commissioners, 1835, p. 1745. York is one of the towns in which we may perhaps suppose that there has been a gradual union of several communities which were at one time agrarianly distinct. See D. B. i. 298. Dr Stubbs seems to regard this as a common case and speaks of ‘the townships which made up the burh’ (Const. Hist. i. 101). We can not think that the evidence usually points in this direction, and have grave doubts as to the existence within the walls of various communities that were called townships. Within borough walls we must not leap from parish to township.
[794] D. B. i. 203. As to the whole of this matter see Mr Round’s paper on Domesday Finance in Domesday Studies, vol. i.
[795] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 635.
[796] D. B. i. 219.
[797] The case of London is anomalous; but not so anomalous as it is often supposed to be. On this point see Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, 347 ff. On the Pipe Roll of 2 Hen. II. (pp. 24, 28) the citizens of Lincoln are accounting for a farm of £180, while the sheriff in consequence of this arrangement is credited with £140 (blanch) when he accounts for the farm of the shire. This is as yet a rare phenomenon.
[798] As to the round sums cast on the boroughs, see Round in Domesday Studies, i. 117 ff.; also Round, Feudal England, 156.
[799] This may not have been the case in East Anglia.
[800] D. B. i. 252.
[801] D. B. i. 298. Of York we read: ‘In the geld of the city are 84 carucates of land, each of which gelds as much as one house in the city.’ This seems to point to an automatic adjustment. To find out how much geld any house pays, divide the total sum that is thrown upon York by the number of houses + 84.
[802] Mr Round (Domesday Studies, i. 129) who has done more than anyone else for the elucidation of the finance of Domesday, has spoken of ‘the great Anglo-Saxon principle of collective liability.’ This may be a useful term, provided that we distinguish (a) liability of a corporation for the whole tax whenever it is levied; (b) joint and several liability of all the burgesses for the whole tax whenever it is levied; (c) liability of each burgess for a share of the whole tax, the amount that he must pay in any year being affected by an increase or decrease in the number of contributories.
[803] See the entry touching Colchester, above, p. 201, note 787.
[804] D. B. i. 1.
[805] D. B. i. 238. The custom of Warwick was that when the king made an expedition by land ten burgesses of Warwick should go for all the rest. He who did not go when summoned [summoned by whom?
paid 100 shillings to the king; [so his offence was against the king not against the town.] And if the king went against his enemies by sea, they sent him four boat-swains or four pounds in money.][806] D. B. i. 56 b.
[807] D. B. i. 179.
[808] At Chester (D. B. i. 262 b) the twelve civic iudices paid a fine if they were absent without excuse from the ‘hundret.’ This seems to mean that their court was called a hundred moot. It is very possible that, at least in the earliest time, the moot that was held in the borough had jurisdiction over a territory considerably larger than the walled space, and in this case the urban would hardly differ from the rural hundred. A somewhat new kind of ‘hundred’ might be formed without the introduction of any new idea.
[809] D. B. i. 336.
[810] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 631.
[811] Green, Town Life, vol. i. ch. xi.
[812] D. B. i. 189.
[813] D. B. i. 336 b.
[814] D. B. i. 336 b.
[815] D. B. i. 298.
[816] D. B. i. 262 b.
[817] R. H. i. 354–6.
[818] Besides the well known English books, see a paper by Konrad Maurer, Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu München, Philosoph.-philolog. Classe, 1887, vol. ii. p. 363. In the Leges Edw. Conf. 38 § 2, the ‘lagemanni et meliores homines de burgo’ seem to serve as inquest men, rather than doomsmen; while the lahmen of the document concerning the Dunsetan (Schmid, App. I.) seem to be doomsmen.
[819] Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 114 ff.; Hist. Eng. Law, i. 642.
[820] D. B. ii. 290, Ipswich: ‘Modo vero sunt 110 burgenses qui consuetudinem reddunt et 100 pauperes burgenses qui non possunt reddere ad geltum Regis nisi unum denarium de suis capitibus.’ D. B. ii. 116, Norwich: ‘Modo sunt in burgo 665 burgenses anglici et consuetudines reddunt, et 480 bordarii qui propter pauperiem nullam reddunt consuetudinem.’
[821] D. B. i. 108 b.
[822] Whether the novum burgum mentioned in D. B. i. 17 is Winchelsea or Rye or a new town at Hastings seems to be disputable. See Round, Feudal England, 568.
[823] D. B. i. 26 b, 27.
[824] D. B. i. 4 b.
[825] D. B. i. 4 b. See also, 10 b.
[826] D. B. i. 12.
[827] D. B. i. 345, 283 b. It has been said that Leofric gave Newark to the see.
[828] Dodsworth’s Yorkshire Notes, ed. R. Holmes (reprinted from Yorkshire Archaeological Journal), p. 126.
[829] D. B. i. 316 b. The estate is ingeldable and therefore looks like an ancient possession of the king.
[830] D. B. 337 b: ‘Toftes sochemanorum teignorum.’ Some commentators have seen here ‘sokemen thegns’; but the other interpretation seems far more probable.
[831] Had these towns been described in Great Domesday, they would probably have been definitely placed outside the Terra Regis.
[832] D. B. ii. 311, 312, 385.
[833] D. B. ii. 319 b.
[834] D. B. ii. 389 b: ‘semper unum mercatum modo 43 burgenses.’ For Sudbury, see D. B. ii. 286 b; for Beccles, 369 b.
[835] D. B. i. 136 b: ‘In burbio huius villae 52 burgenses.’ The word burbium looks as if some one had argued that as suburbium means an annex to a town, therefore burbium must mean a town. But the influence of burh, burg, bourg may be suspected. A few pages back (132) the burgum of Hertford seems to be spoken of as ‘hoc suburbium.’ It is of course to be remembered that burgus or burgum was a word with which the Normans were familiar: it was becoming the French bourg. It is difficult to unravel any distinctively French thread in the institutional history of our boroughs during the Norman age; but the little knot of traders clustered outside a lord’s castle at Clare or Berkhampstead, at Tutbury, Wigmore or Rhuddlan may have for its type rather a French bourg than an English burh. Indeed at Rhuddlan (i. 269) the burgesses have received the law of Breteuil.
[836] For Taunton, see D. B. i. 87 b: ‘Istae consuetudines pertinent ad Tantone: burgeristh, latrones, pacis infractio, hainfare, denarii de hundred, denarii S. Petri, ciricieti.’ Compare the document which stands as K. 897 (iv. 233): ‘Ðæt is ærest ... seo men redden into Tantune cirhsceattas and burhgerihtu.’ See also K. 1084 (v. 157): ‘ut episcopi homines [apud Tantun] tam nobiles quam ignobiles ... hoc idem ius in omni haberent dignitate quo regis homines perfruuntur, regalibus fiscis commorantes.’
[837] D. B. ii. 5 b.
[838] D. B. ii. 104.
[839] D. B. i. 163.
[840] D. B. i. 75.
[841] D. B. i. 100, 108 b.
[842] D. B. i. 86 b.
[843] D. B. i. 87.
[845] D. B. 38 b, 44.
[846] D. B. 64 b.
[847] D. B. 66.
[848] The burgesses belonging to Ramsbury are really at Cricklade: D. B. i. 66.
[849] It seems very possible that already before the Conquest some boroughs had fallen out of the list. In cent. x. we read, for example, of a burh at Towcester and of a burh at Witham in Essex. We must not indeed contend that a shire-supported town with tenurial heterogeneity came into existence wherever Edward the Elder or the Lady of the Mercians ‘wrought a burh.’ But still during a time of peace the walls of a petty burh would be neglected, and, if the great majority of the inhabitants were the king’s tenants, there would be little to distinguish this place from a royal village of the common kind. See for Towcester, D. B. i. 219 b; for Witham, D. B. ii. 1 b. In later days we may see an old borough, such as Buckingham, falling very low and sending no burgesses to parliament. It will be understood that we have not pledged ourselves to any list of the places that were boroughs in 1066. There are difficult cases such as that of St Albans; see above, p. 181. But, we are persuaded that few places were deemed burgi, except the shire towns.
[850] A last relic of the old borough peace may be found in Britton’s definition of burglary (i. 42): ‘Burglars are those who feloniously in time of peace break churches, or the houses of others, or the walls or gates of our cities or boroughs (de nos citez ou de nos burgs).’
[851] By a charter of enfranchisement a lord might introduce burgage tenure and abolish ‘servile customs’; but it must be, to say the least, doubtful whether he could, without the king’s licence, confer upon a village the public status of a borough and e.g. authorize it to behave like a hundred before the justices in eyre. This is one of the reasons why sheriffs can draw the line where they please, and why some towns which have been enfranchised never obtain a secure place in the list of parliamentary boroughs.
[852] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 630. When it is being said that if land in the borough escheats, it always escheats to the king, the mesne tenures are already being forgotten within the borough, just as in modern times we have forgotten them in the open country. The burgher’s power of devising his land made escheat a rare event, and so destroyed the evidence of mesne tenure.
[853] See above, p. 212. Also the king might give away an undivided share of the borough. Apparently the church of Worcester had received the third penny of the city ever since the day when the burh was wrought by the ealdorman and lady of the Mercians. See above, p. 194.
[854] Ashley, Introduction to Fustel de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Land, p. vii.
[855] The gradual disappearance in recent times of the Irish language is no parallel case, for this is a triumph of the printing press. Mr Stevenson tells me that the number of unquestioned cases of a word borrowed from Celtic in very ancient times is now reduced to less than ten.
[856] Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Germanen, especially ii. 120 ff.
[857] We shall use, and cite by the letter K., Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici. We shall refer by the letters H. & S. to the third volume of the Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents edited by Haddan and Stubbs, by the letter T. to Thorpe’s Diplomatarium, by the letter B. to Birch’s Cartularium, by the letter E. to Earle’s Land Charters. Reference will also be made to the two collections of facsimiles, namely, the four volumes which come from the British Museum and the two which come from the Ordnance Survey. We are yet a long way off a satisfactory edition of the land-books. A model has been lately set by Prof. Napier and Mr Stevenson in their edition of the Crawford Collection of Early Charters, Oxford, 1895.
[858] Heming’s Cartulary was published by Hearne. It has been said that some of the documents in this collection which Kemble accepted as genuine commit the fault of supposing that the old episcopal minster was dedicated to St. Mary, whereas it was dedicated to St. Peter. See Robertson, Historical Essays, 195. However, where Heming’s work can be tested it generally gains credit.
[859] D. B. i. 173 b; K. 131 (i. 158); B. i. 311.
[860] D. B. i. 127; K. 230 (i. 297); B. i. 558.
[861] Hist. Eccl. iv. 13 (ed. Plummer, i. 232).
[862] See the spurious charter of Cædwalla, K. 992 (v. 32) which purports to show where the 87 manses lay. According to it, the gift comprised some places which lay well outside the promontory of Selsey. But more of this hereafter.
[863] Napier and Stevenson, Crawford Charters, p. 43. Some of the best work that has been done towards connecting Domesday Book with the A.-S. land-books will be found in a paper on the Pre-Domesday Hide of Gloucestershire: Transactions of Bristol and Gloucestershire Arch. Soc. vol. xviii., by Mr C. S. Taylor.
[864] K. 12 (i. 16); B. i. 69; H. & S. 129; Plummer, Bede, ii. 247. The charter itself is open to grave suspicion.
[865] C. S. Taylor, The Pre-Domesday Hide of Gloucestershire.
[866] E. p. 4; B. M. Facsim. iv. 1.
[867] K. 83 (i. 100): ‘in possessionem aecclesiasticae rationis et regulae ... in ius monasticae rationis.’ K. 90 (i. 108): ‘in possessionem iuris ecclesiastici.’ K. 101 (i. 122): ‘ut sit aecclesiastici iuris potestate subdita in perpetuum.’
[868] K. 54 (i. 60) is a gift to an abbess, for compare K. 36 (i. 41). We here leave out of account the early lease for lives granted by Bp. Wilfrid, K. 91 (i. 109), an important document, but one which must be mentioned in another context.
[869] An accusative absolute.
[870] Eadric’s deed is K. 27 (i. 30). See also Hlothar’s charter K. 16 (i. 20) and Snaebraed’s, K. 52 (i. 59); B.M. Facs. i. plates 1, 3. With these should be compared the forms in Rozière, Formules, i. 208–255. On pp. 235, 253 will be found instances, one from the very ancient Angevin collection, another from Marculf, in which the breaker of the charter is threatened, not only with a money penalty, but also with excommunication and damnation.
[871] K. Nos. 12, 16, 32, 36, 48, 52, 56, 67, etc.
[872] K. 131 (i. 158).
[873] K. 1.
[874] K. Nos. 27, 35, 77, 79, 999, 1006, 1007.
[875] K. 35 (i. 39); E. 13; B. M. Facs. i. 2.
[876] K. 52 (i. 59); E. 16; B. M. Facs. i. 3.
[877] E. 4; B. M. Facs. iv. 1.
[878] Davidson, Precedents in Conveyancing, i. 88 (ed. 1874): ‘In conveying estates, it is not usual to refer to the leases affecting the same, unless the leases are for a long term, of years, or beneficial, or otherwise not of the ordinary type.’
[879] Hist. Eccl. iv. c. 13 (ed. Plummer, i. 230). In the O. E. version the words are: ‘Ond se cyning ... him to godsuna onfeng and to tacne ðære sibbe him twa mægþe forgeaf, ðæt is Wiht ealond and Meanwara mægþe on West Seaxna ðeode.’
[880] Hist. Eccl. iv. c. 13 (ed. Plummer, i. 232).
[881] K. 114 (i. 139); E. 49: ‘et cum omni tributo quod regibus inde dabatur.’ So by a deed of A.D. 762, K. 109 (i. 133), B. i. 272, a thegn states that king Æthelbert gave him a villa ‘cum tributo illius possidendam’ and then proceeds to give this villa to a church ‘cum tributo illius.’
[882] E. 4; B. M. Facs. iv. 1: ‘et semper liber permaneat omnibus habentibus ab omnibus duris secularibus, notis et ignotis, praeter arcem et pontem ac vulgare militiam.’
[883] K. 77 (i. 92); E. 24; B. M. Facs. i. 6: ‘Et ius regium in ea deinceps nullum repperiatur omnino, excepto dumtaxat tale quale generale est in universis ecclesiasticis terris quae in hac Cantia esse noscuntur.’