On the other hand, the counties to the north-west of what I have termed the Midland group are assessed at a rate singularly low. Nottingham and Derby, with a joint area of 1,855 miles, contributed only £108 8s 6d, representing one-seventeenth;¹⁷⁴ while Staffordshire, with its 1,169 miles, is found paying £44 0s 11d, a rate scarcely more than one twenty-seventh. Passing to the opposite corner of the realm, we have Kent, always a wealthy county, assessed at the phenomenally low rate of about one-fifteenth (£105 2s 10d, as against 1,555 miles), rather less than half that of Essex to its north, and Sussex to its west.

It would seem impossible to resist the conclusion that in these widely differing rates we have traces of a polity as yet divided, of those independent kingdoms from which had been formed the realm. Kent, for instance, which had so steadily maintained, first, its independent existence, and then its local institutions, had succeeded in preserving an assessment that its neighbours had cause to envy. In the west, Cornwall similarly enjoyed a low, indeed a nominal assessment while that of Devon, though higher than this, was so significantly lower than those of Somerset and Dorset¹⁷⁵ as to remind us that here, in part at least, the 'Welsh' long held their own. If the incidence of geld were shown by shading a map of England, on the plan so successfully adopted in Mr Seebohm's great work, it would show that the heavily assessed counties were those which formed the nucleus of the old West-Saxon realm.¹⁷⁶ All round this nucleus the map would shade off sharply, another sudden change marking the Danish counties on the north, the Jutish kingdom on the east, and the British district in the south-west. It is, perhaps, worthy of remark that Shropshire was assessed twice as heavily as the adjoining county of Stafford, possibly because part of it was added, at a very early period, to the kingdom of the West Saxons. If Mr Eyton was right in his reckoning that Kesteven was assessed twice as heavily as Lindsey, and Lindsey, in turn, twice as heavily as Holland, it would illustrate the survival of local distinctions even within the compass of a modern county, as well as the 'shading off' tendency of which I have already spoken.

The point I have here endeavoured to bring out is that if the system of artificial assessment were of Roman or British origin, we should expect to find it fairly uniform over the whole country, whereas we find, on the contrary, the very widest discrepancies. It might be urged, perhaps, that these were due to the differing conditions of particular counties, to their more or less partial reclamation, for instance, of the date when they were assessed. But this would not account for the grouping I have traced, and would imply that each county ought to differ indefinitely. Nor would it explain the case of Kent, where a county that must have been foremost in early development and prosperity enjoyed a phenomenally low assessment.

Another objection that may be raised to my hypothesis is that the Hundred, as an area for police and rating, was a comparatively late institution, and that if the artificial system of assessment were as ancient as I suggest, it could not have operated, as we saw, in Cambridgeshire, it did operate, through the 'Hundred'. It is, however, admitted that the thing represented by the 'Hundred' was, whatever its original name, of immemorial antiquity, as the intermediate division between the Vill and the Shire or kingdom. Approaching the subject from the legal standpoint, Professor Maitland has pointed out that the Hundred having a proper court, which the Vill had not, was the older institution of the two, and has skilfully seized on the differentiation of villages originally possessing one name in common as a hint that some such subdivision may have been going on more widely than is known. It seems to me to be at least possible that the district originally representing a Hundred, and named, as we are learning, in most cases from the primitive meeting-place of its settlers, was reckoned as so many multiples of five or ten hides, and that this aggregate was subsequently distributed by its community among themselves.¹⁷⁷

If it be not presumption to touch on the controversies as to the Hundred,¹⁷⁸ I would suggest that while agreeing with Dr Stubbs, that the name of 'Hundred' may be traced to the ordinance of Edgar¹⁷⁹ —which did not, however, create the district itself—I cannot reconcile it with the view to which he leans in his Constitutional History, that 'under the name of geographical hundreds we have the variously sized pagi or districts in which the hundred warriors settled'; and that we should 'recognize in the name the vestige of the primitive settlement, and in the district itself an earlier or a later subdivision of the kingdom to which it belonged'.¹⁸⁰ For my part, I have never been able to understand the anxiety to identify the district known, in later days, as a 'Hundred' with an original hundred warriors, families, or hides. The significant remark on the 'centeni' by Tacitus, that 'quod primo numerus fuit, jam nomen et honor est', would surely lead us to expect that by the time of the migration the 'Hundred' had become, like the 'hide' of Domesday, a term even more at variance with fact. Indeed, in his masterly 'Introductory sketch', Dr Stubbs observed that the 'superior divisions' made by the 'new-comers' would 'have that indefiniteness which even in the days of Tacitus belonged to the Hundreds, the centeni of the Germans', and that their 'system' would be 'transported whole, at the point of development which it has reached at home'.¹⁸¹

The suggestion I have made as to the origin of the five-hide system is tentative only, and must remain so until we have at our disposal for the whole hidated region that complete and trustworthy analysis of assessment, on the need of which I again insist, at the risk of wearisome iteration.

XII. THE EAST ANGLIAN 'LEET'

In Norfolk and Suffolk we find Domesday recording assessed values not, as everywhere else, at the outset of an entry, but at its close; not in terms of hides and carucates, but in terms of shillings and pence. Instead of saying that a Manor paid on so many 'hidæ' or 'carucatæ terræ', Domesday, in the case of these counties, normally employs the phrase: 'x denarii de gelto'. Its meaning is that to every pound paid by the Hundred as geld the Manor contributed x pence.¹⁸² Thus, in the case of a Hundred assessed at a hundred hides, the formula for a five-hide Manor would be here 'xii. denarii de gelto', instead of the usual 'defendit se pro v. hidis', or some such phrase as that. There is an exact parallel to this method of recording assessed values in the case of fractions of knights' fees where portions of land are entered as paying so much 'when the scutage is forty shillings', instead of being assessed in terms of the knight's fee.¹⁸³ This system would seem, however, to have been understood imperfectly if at all. I may, therefore, point out that its nature is clear from the case of the Suffolk Hundred of Thingoe.

The case of this Hundred is singularly instructive. We find its twenty 'Vills' grouped in blocks, precisely as in the Cambridgeshire Hundreds, and these blocks are all equal units of assessment, like the ten-hide groups of the hidated districts. But in this case we can go further still, for we are not dependent on Domesday alone. The portion of a special Survey executed about a century later (circ. 1185) for Abbot Sampson of St Edmund's, which relates to its Hundred, is fortunately preserved, and gives us the name of the twelve 'leets' into which this Hundred was divided.¹⁸⁴

Here are the divisions recorded in it, with the Domesday assessment (in pence) of each Vill placed against its name.

The two records—Domesday and the Inquest—thus confirm one another, and their concurrent testimony establishes the fact not only that the Suffolk Hundred was divided into blocks of equal assessment, but that these blocks were known by the name of 'leets'.

Now Professor Maitland, in his Dissertation on the 'History of the Word Leet',¹⁸⁵ pronounces this 'the earliest occurrence of the word' that he has seen. But I can carry it back to Domesday itself. Though not entered in the Index Rerum, we find it in such instances as these:

'H[undredum] de Grenehou de xiv. letis' (ii. 119b).

'Hund[redum] et dim[idium] de Clakelosa de x. leitis' (ii. 212b).

I think it probable that in these cases the entry happened to stand first on the original return for the Hundred, and so—as in the I.E., where it is derived from the original returns—the general heading crept in. Though Professor Maitland has to leave the origin of the word unexplained, it seems to me impossible to overlook the analogy between the Danish lægd, described by Dr Skeat as a division of the country (in Denmark) for military conscription,¹⁸⁶ and the East Anglian leet, a division of the country (as we have seen) for purposes of taxation.

Sudbury, it will be observed, was a quarter of the Hundred of Thingoe,¹⁸⁷ just as Huntingdon was a quarter of a Hundred,¹⁸⁸ and Wisbech a quarter of a Hundred.¹⁸⁹

Having thus obtained from the Hundred of Thingoe the clue to this peculiar system, we can advance to more difficult types. The Hundred of Thedwastre, for instance, was divided not into twelve blocks, each paying twenty pence in the pound, but into nine blocks, each paying twenty-seven. This assessment allowed a margin of 3d for every pound (i.e. £1 0s 3d); but in the case of Thedwastre the total excess was only 1½d on the pound (i.e. £1 0s 1½d). I group the Vills tentatively, thus:

The same unit of 27 (x9)—or, which comes to the same thing, 13½ (x18)—was adopted in Risbridge Hundred. In this case no less than five Manors are assessed at the same unit—13½d. So, again, in the Hundred of Blackbourn the units are 34½d and 17¼d, one Manor being assessed at the former, and five at the latter sum. Such is the key to the peculiar system of East Anglian assessment.

It is to be noted that 'twenty shillings'¹⁹⁰ represents ten hides at two shillings on the hide (the normal Danegeld rate), and thus suggests that in Norfolk, as in Cambridgeshire, the Hundreds were normally assessed in multiples of ten hides. The point, however, that I want to bring out is that the Hundred, not the Manor, nor even the Vill, is here treated as 'the fiscal unit for the collection of Danegeld'.¹⁹¹

XIII. THE WORDS 'SOLINUM' AND 'SOLANDA'¹⁹²

Several years ago I arrived at the conclusion that the identity of these two words was an unsupported conjecture. So long as it remained a conjecture only, its correction was not urgent; but since then, as is so often the case, the result of leaving it unassailed has been that arguments are based upon it. There appeared in the English Historical Review for July 1892 a paper by Mr Seebohm, in which that distinguished scholar took the identity for granted, as his no less distinguished opponent, Professor Vinogradoff, has done in his masterly work on Villainage in England.

I believe the alleged identity was first asserted by Archdeacon Hale, who wrote in his Domesday of St. Paul's (1858), p. xiv:

The word solanda, or, as it is written at p. 142, scolanda, is so evidently a Latinized form of the Anglo-Saxon sulung, or ploughland, and approaches so near to the Kentish solinus, that we need scarcely hesitate to consider them identical.

Let us start from the facts. In the Domesday of Kent we find the form solin, or its Latin equivalent solinum, used for the unit of assessment, like the hide and the carucate in other counties. In the Kent monastic surveys it is found as sullung or suolinga. But when we turn to the Domesday of St. Paul's, we find—first, that instead of being universal, as in Kent, it occurs only in three cases; secondly, that the form is solande, solanda, scholanda, scolanda, or even (we shall see) Scotlande; thirdly, that it is not employed as a unit of assessment at all.

The three places where the term occurs in the Domesday of St. Paul's are Drayton and Sutton in Middlesex, and Tillingham in Essex. Hale would seem to have arrived at no clear idea of what the word meant. At p. xiv he wrote that 'a solanda consisted of two hides, but probably in this case the hide was not of the ordinary dimension'. At p. lxxviii he inferred, from a reference to 'la Scoland' in a survey of Drayton, that '"ploughed land" would seem to be opposed to "Scoland"'. At p. cx he was led by the important passage—'De hydis hiis decem, due fuerunt in dominio, una in scolanda, et vii. assisæ'—to suggest that it 'appears to denote some difference in the tenure'. This last conjecture seems the most probable. If we take the case of Sutton and Chiswick, we read in the survey of 1222:

Juratores dicunt quod manerium istud defendit se versus regem pro tribus hidis preter solandam de Chesewich que per se habet duas hidas, et sunt geldabiles cum hidis de Sutton.

Hale (p. 119) believed that this Solande de Chesewich was no other than the Scotlande thesaurarii of 1181, namely the prebend of Chiswick. The above passage should further be compared with the survey of Caddington (1222):

Dicunt juratores quod manerium istud defendit se versus regem pro x. hidis ... preter duas prebendas quæ sunt in eadem parochia.

The formula is the same in both cases, and a solanda was clearly land held on some special terms, and was not a measure or unit of assessment at all. Indeed Hale himself admitted that it could not be identified with one or with two hides.

Fortunately I have discovered an occurrence of the word solanda which conclusively proves that it meant an estate, such as a prebend, and was not a unit of measurement. We have, in 1183, a 'grant by William de Belmes, canon of St. Paul's, to the chapter of that church, of the Church of St. Pancras, situate in his solanda near London' (i.e. his prebend of St. Pancras), etc.¹⁹³ This solves the mystery. The three solandæ at Tillingham were no other than the three prebends—Ealdland, Weldland, and Reculverland—which that parish actually contained.¹⁹⁴

Hale, however, misled Mr Seebohm, who in his great work on the English Village Community (p. 54), wrote of Tillingham:

There was further in this Manor a double hide, called a solanda, presumably of 240 acres. This double hide, called a solanda, is also mentioned in a Manor in Middlesex [Sutton], and in another in Surrey [Drayton]¹⁹⁵; and the term solanda is probably the same as the well-known 'Sollung' or 'solin' of Kent, meaning a 'ploughland'.

Proceeding further (p. 395), Mr Seebohm wrote:

Generally in Kent, and sometimes in Sussex, Berks and Essex, we found, in addition to, or instead of, the hide or carucate, or 'terra unius aratri', solins, sullungs, or swullungs, the land pertaining to a 'suhl', the Anglo-Saxon word for plough.

Unfortunately no reference is given for the cases of Sussex and Berks, and I know of none myself.

Turning now to the learned work of Professor Vinogradoff, we find him equally misled:

Of the sulung I have spoken already. It is a full ploughland, and 200 acres are commonly reckoned to belong to it. The name is sometimes found out of Kent, in Essex for instance. In Tillingham, a Manor of St. Paul's, of London, we come across six hides 'trium solandarum'. The most probable explanation seems to be that the hide or unit of assessment is contrasted with the solanda or sulland¹⁹⁶ (sulung), that is with the actual ploughland, and two hides are reckoned as a single solanda (p. 255).

Lastly, we come to Mr Seebohm's reply to Professor Vinogradoff (ante, pp. 444-465). Here the identity is again assumed:

Along with parts of Essex, the Kentish records differ in phraseology from those of the rest of England. Their sullungs of 240 acres occur also in the Manors of Essex belonging to St. Paul's, and the custom of gavelkind and succession of the youngest child mark it off as exceptional. Mr Vinogradoff ... shows that in the Kentish district, and in Essex, where the sullung or solanda takes the place of the hide, and where gavelkind prevailed, the unity of the hides and virgates was preserved only for the purposes of taxation and the services; whilst in reality the holdings clustered under the nominal unit were many and irregular.

I yield to no one in admiration for Mr Seebohm's work, but the question raised is so important that accuracy as to the fact is here essential. (1) Sullung is nowhere found in Essex, but only solanda; (2) Solanda does not occur 'in the Manors' referred to, but at Tillingham alone; (3) In Essex it nowhere 'takes the places of the hide', as it does in Kent; (4) The Essex instance adduced by Professor Vinogradoff is taken from a Manor where solanda does not occur.

Two issues—quite distinct—are involved. In the first place, Mr Seebohm contends that Professor Vinogradoff must not argue from 'the custom of Kent' to the rest of England, because (inter alia) Kent, unlike the rest of England, was divided into sulungs, which points to some difference in its organization.¹⁹⁷ This contention is sound, and is actually strengthened if we reject the identity of sulung and solanda. But, in the second place, he endeavours to explain away the Essex case of subdivision at Eadwulfsness, to which the Professor appeals, by connecting it with the Kentish system through the term solanda. This, as I have shown above, is based on a misreading of the evidence, and is contrary to the facts of the case.

Let us then look more closely at the Essex instance of subdivision. It is taken from one Manor alone, the great 'soke' of Eadwulfsness, in the north-east corner of the county. This 'soke' comprised the townships of Thorpe 'le soken', Kirby 'le soken', and Walton 'le soken' (better known as Walton-on-the-Naze). Such names proclaim the Danish origin of the community, and it is noteworthy that the 'hidarii', on whom the argument turns, are found only at Thorpe and Kirby, the very two townships which bear Danish names. This circumstance points to quite another track. That the system in this little corner of Essex was wholly peculiar had been pointed out by Hale, and it might perhaps have originated in the superimposition of hides on a previous system, instead of in the breaking up of the hide and virgate system. But this is only a conjecture. The two facts on which I would lay stress are that at Thorpe, according to Hale, 'the holders of the nine hides (in 1279) possessed also among them seventy-two messuages', which, by its proportion of eight to the hide, favours Mr Seebohm's views; and that the holdings of the 'hidarii' were rigidly formed on the decimal system (such as 60, 30, 15, 7½ acres, or 40, 20, 10, 5 acres),¹⁹⁸ unlike the holdings of an odd number of acres on the Kentish Manors of St. Augustine's. The reason for the Essex system was clearly the necessity of keeping the holdings in a fixed relation to the hide, that their proportion of the hide's service might be easily determined. These two points have, perhaps, I think, been overlooked by both of the eminent scholars in their controversy.

Before leaving the subject of the sulung, one should mention perhaps that it was divided (as Mr Seebohm has explained) into four quarters known as juga, just as the hide was divided into four virgates. Mr Seebohm bases this statement on Anglo-Saxon evidence,¹⁹⁹ but it is abundantly confirmed by Domesday, where we read of Eastwell (in Kent): 'pro uno solin se defendit. Tria juga sunt infra divisionem Hugonis, et quartum jugum est extra' (i. 13). So far all is clear; but Professor Vinogradoff, on the contrary, asserts that 'the yokes (juga) of Battle Abbey (in Kent) are not virgates, but carucates, full ploughlands' (p. 225). This assertion is based on a very natural misapprehension. In the Battle Manor of Wye (Kent) we find that the jugum itself was divided into four quarters, called 'virgates' which were each, consequently, the sixteenth, not, as in the hidated district, the fourth of a ploughland. Professor Vinogradoff, naturally assuming that the 'virgate' meant the same here as elsewhere, inferred that four 'virgates' (that is, a jugum) must constitute a full ploughland. But this change of denotation goes further still. The Battle Cartulary records yet another 'virgate', namely, the fourth (not of a ploughland, but) of an acre! This led me, on its publication, to wonder whether we have here the clue to the origin of the somewhat mysterious term 'virgate'. Starting from the acre, we should have in the virgata (rood) its quarter, with a name derived from the virga (rod) which formed its base in mensuration. The sense of 'quarter' once established, it might be transferred to the quarter of a jugum, or the quarter of a hide. This is a suggestion which, of course, I advance with all diffidence, but which would solve an otherwise insoluble problem. The relation of the bovate to the carucate, and of the jugum to the sulung, are both so obviously based upon the unit of the plough-team that they raise no difficulty. But the term 'virgate' does not, like them, speak for itself. If we might take it to denote merely a 'quarter' of the hide, it would become a term of relation only, leaving the 'hide' as the original unit. Should this suggestion meet with acceptance, it might obviously lead to rather important results.

Mr Elton, in his well-known Tenures of Kent, attaches considerable importance to a list, 'De Suylingis Comitatus Kanciæ et qui eas tenent', in the Cottonian MS., Claud. C. IV, which he placed little subsequent to Domesday. Having transcribed it for collation with the Survey, I came to the conclusion that it was not sufficiently trustworthy for publication, for the names, in my opinion, involve some anachronism. The feature of the list is that it shows us as tenants-in-chief, the leading tenants of Bishop Odo; and the change of most interest to genealogists is the succession of Patrick 'de Caurcio' to the holding of Ernulf de Hesdin.

XIV. THE 'FIRMA UNIUS NOCTIS'

The curious and evidently archaic institution of the firma unius noctis was clearly connected with the problem of hidation. In Somerset the formula for a Manor contributing to this firma was:

Nunquam geldavit nec scitur quot hidæ sint ibi (i. 85).

In Dorset it ran:

Nescitur quot hidæ sint ibi quia non geldabat T.R.E. (i. 75).

In Wiltshire we read:

Nunquam geldavit nec hidata fuit, or nunquam geldavit: ideo nescitur quot hidæ sint ibi.²⁰⁰

In all these entries the 'hide' is recognized as merely a measure of assessment quite independent of area.

Hampshire affords us, in a group of Manors, a peculiarly good instance in point. Of Basingstoke, Kingsclere, and 'Esseborne', we read:

Rex tenet in dominio Basingestoches. Regale manerium fuit semper. Numquam geldum dedit, nec hida ibi distributa fuit....

Clere tenet rex in dominio. De firma Regis Edwardi fuit, et pertinet ad firmam diei de Basingestoches. Numerum hidarum nescierunt....

Esseborne tenet rex in dominio. De firma Regis Edwardi fuit. Numerum hidarum non habent....

Hæc tria maneria, Basingestoches, Clere, Esseborne, reddunt firmam unius diei (39).

Other Manors are found about the county displaying the same peculiarity.

Ipse rex tenet Bertune. De firmâ Regis E. fuit, et dimidiam diem firmæ reddidit in omnibus rebus.... Nunquam in hid(is) numeratum fuit.... Numerum hidarum non dixerunt.

Ipse rex tenet Edlinges in dominio. Hoc manerium reddidit dimidiam diem firmæ tempore Regis E. Numerum hidarum nesciunt (38).

Manors, such as Andover, not hidated, clearly belonged to the same system, though neither their value nor their render is given.

Thus, then, within the limits of Wessex, in the four adjacent counties of Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire, and Hants, we find surviving, at the time of the Conquest, an archaic but uniform system of provision for the needs of the Crown by the assignment of certain estates or groups of estates, the render of which was expressed in terms of the 'firma noctis' or 'firma diei', and which, unlike the country around them, had never been assessed in 'hides'.

Mr Seebohm hints slightly at this firma system,²⁰¹ but only speaks of it as existing in Dorset. Nor does he allude to the significant fact of such Manors having never been hidated. It would lead us far afield to speculate on the origin of this system, or to trace its possible connection with the Welsh gwestva.²⁰² Nor can we here concern ourselves with the few scattered traces of it that we meet with elsewhere in Domesday. Its existence in four adjacent counties, with non-hidation as a common feature, is the point I wish to emphasize.

The system of grouping townships in the west for the payment of a food-rent (firma unius noctis) was exactly parallel to the grouping in the east for the payment, not of rent but of 'geld'. We can best trace this parallel in Somerset, because the firma unius noctis of the days before the Conquest had been there commuted for a money payment at the time of Domesday. Turning to the Cambridgeshire hundred of Long Stow, we find one of its 'blocks' (of twenty-five hides) divided into three equal parts, while another is divided into three parts, of which one is half the size of the two others. And so in Somerset we have Frome and Bedminster combined in one group for the payment of this firma, and the two Perrotts similarly combined with Curry. Frome and Bedminster are each assigned the same payment, but in the other group the contribution of one is half that of the two others.

Here are the Somerset groups of demesne, each charged with the render of a firma unius noctis.

Of these two last, Milborne Port is entered as having paid three-quarters of a firma noctis under the Confessor, while Bedminster—though in the midst of this group of firma Manors—is alone in having no render T.R.E. assigned to it. One is tempted to look on the two as originally combined in one firma (like Somerton and Chedder), save that the whole width of the county divides them, while in the other cases the constituents are grouped geographically.

The Wiltshire Manors, each of which rendered a firma unius noctis, were:

From the figures given for Somerset and Wilts, it may fairly be concluded that, in this district, the value of the 'firma' was about £105. In Somerset, however, there was clearly a special sum, £106 0s 10d, on which calculations were based.

An examination of Mr Eyton's statements on the firma unius noctis in Somerset and Dorset would prove a peculiarly conclusive test of his whole system.

In the case of Somerset one need not dwell on his giving its amount for the Williton group as £105 16s 6½d, when the sum named is £105 17s 4½d, although absolute accuracy is, in these matters, essential. We will pass at once to the bottom of the page (ii. 2), and collate his rendering of Domesday with the original:

Domesday gives the payment (in a characteristic phrase), as three-quarters [a half and a quarter] of a firma noctis. Mr Eyton first interpolates a 'unum', and then overlooks the 'quadrantem', with the result that he represents the due T.R.E. as a firma dimidiæ noctis (i. 77). So far, this is only a matter of error per se. But Domesday records the commutation of the due T.R.W. at £79 10s 7d. This proves to be three-quarters of the commutation, in two other cases, for a whole firma noctis (£106 0s 10d). Mr Eyton, however, imagining the due to have been only half a firma set himself to account for its commutation at so high a figure (i. 77-8). This he found no difficulty in doing. He explained that 'this was not a mere commutation', but 'was doubtless a change which took into consideration the extra means and enhanced value of Meleborne'.

The probability is, then, that what we have called the enhanced ferm, was enhanced by something less than the gross profits we have instanced; that is, that a part of those profits, say the Burgage rents, or some of them, had contributed to the dimidia firma noctis before the commutation.

All these ready assumptions, we must remember, are introduced to account for a discrepancy which does not exist.

Great masses of Mr Eyton's work consist of similar guesses and assumptions. Now, if these were kept scrupulously apart from the facts, they would not much matter; but they are so inextricably confused with the real facts of Domesday that, virtually, one can never be sure if one is dealing with facts or fancies.

And far more startling than the case of Somerset is that of Dorset, the 'Key to Domesday'. Mr Eyton here held that Dorchester, Bridport, and Wareham paid a full firma unius noctis each, the total amount being reckoned by him at the astounding figure of £312 (p. 70)! Exeter, which affords a good comparison, paid only £18 (as render), though the king had 285 houses there: the three Dorset towns in which, says Mr Eyton, the Crown had 323 houses, paid in all, according to him, £312. The mere comparison of these figures is sufficient. But further, Mr Eyton observes (p. 93), that in 1156 'Fordington, Dorchester, and Bridport' were granted by Henry II to his uncle, 'as representing Royal Demesne to the annual value of £60'. This is an instructive commentary on his view that Dorchester and Bridport alone rendered £208 per annum. Our doubts being thus aroused, we turn to Domesday and find that it does not speak of any of these towns as paying that preposterous firma. The right formula for that would be 'reddit firmam unius noctis' (p. 84). Instead of that, we only have 'exceptis consuetudinibus quæ pertinent ad firmam unius noctis' (p. 70). The explanation is quite simple. Just as in Somerset, Mr Eyton admits, Langport and Ilchester, although boroughs, were 'interned' in groups of Royal demesne, paying the firma unius noctis, so in Dorset the boroughs were 'interned' in groups of Royal demesne. Indeed one of these groups was headed by Dorchester, and is styled by Mr Eyton the 'Dorchester group'. But he boldly assumed that 'Dorchester' must have two different meanings:

[A] We assume about 100 acres to have belonged to the Domesday Burgh, and perhaps 882 acres to represent land, subinfeuded at Domesday, and annexed to Dorchester Hundred. [B] It follows that we assume about 429 acres, [to be that] ... which here figures [fo. 75] under the name Dorchester.

It is not too much to say that any one, who refers to pp. 70-3, 78-101 of the Key to Domesday, will find that the singular misconception as to the Dorset Boroughs makes havoc of the whole calculation. But here again the point to be insisted on is not the mere mistake per se, but the elaborate assumptions based upon it and permeating the whole work.²⁰⁴

Apart from the Manors grouped for a firma unius noctis, if we take the comital Manors (mansiones de comitatu) of Somerset, which were in the King's hands in 1086, we find their rentals given on quite a different principle to those of the Manors in private hands.

(1) They are entered as renders ('reddit'), not as values ('valet').

(2) The sums rendered are 'de albo argento'.

(3) In at least ten out of the fifteen cases, they are multiples of the strange unit £1 3s.

As this fact seems to have escaped Mr Eyton's notice, I append a list of these Manors, showing the multiples of this unit that their renders represent:

Whatever this strange unit represented, it formed the basis in these Manors of a reckoning wholly independent of the 'hides' or ploughlands of the Manor, and as clearly artificial as the system of hidation I have made it my business to explain.

XV. 'WARA'

[Histon.] De his xx. hidis jacet Warra de una hida et dimidia in hestitone de manerio cestreford. Hanc terram tenuit comes alanus [sic] et est appretiata in essexia (p. 40).

[Shelford.] De his xx. hidis tenet petrus valonensis iii. hidas de firma regis in neueport.... Hæc terra est berewica in neueport, sed Wara jacet in grantebrigge syra (p. 49).

[Trumpington.] De his vii. hidis [tenet] unus burgensis de grenteburga i. virgam. Et Warra jacet in trompintona, et terra in grantebrigga (p. 51).

To these I may add a fourth instance, although in this case the name wara does not occur:

[Bathburgam.] De his vii. hidis tenet Picotus in manu regis dimidiam hidam et dimidiam virgam. Hæc terra jacet in cestreforda et ibi est appretiata xxx. sol. in essexia (p. 36).

The lands at Histon and 'Bathburgam' were mere outlying portions of the royal Manor of Chesterford in Essex, and those at Shelford were a 'berewick' of the royal Manor of Newport, also in Essex. But they were all assessed in Cambridgeshire, where they actually lay.

So also we read under Berkshire (61b): 'Hæc terra jacet et appreciata est in Gratentun quod est in Oxenefordscire, et tamen dat scotum in Berchesire'. Again (203b) we read under Pertenhall: 'Hec terra sita est in Bedefordsire, set geldum et servitium reddit in Hontedunscyre'. A good instance of the same arrangement in another part of England is found in those Worcestershire Manors which were annexed as estates to Hereford, but which were assessed in those Worcestershire Hundreds where they actually lay (see p. 60).

A similar expression is applied to the possession of 'soca'. Thus under Shelford we read:

De hac terra adhuc tenuerunt iii. sochemanni dimidiam hidam sub gurdo comite. Non potuerunt recedere sine licentia comitis gurdi. Et soca jacebat in Witlesforda (p. 48).

Here the land was in Shelford, but the jurisdiction (soca) was attached to Earl Gyrth's Manor of Whittlesford.

Prof Vinogradoff has dealt with 'the word wara' in his Villainage in England (i. 241-4), and asserts that the 'origin and use of the term is of considerable importance'. But he does not allude to the above evidence, and I cannot follow him in his argument. While rightly disregarding Mr Pell's fanciful derivation from 'warectum', he asserts that:

We often find the expression 'ad inwaram' in Domesday, and it corresponds to the plain 'ad gildam [sic] regis'. If a Manor is said to contain seven hides ad inwaram, it is meant that it pays to the king for seven hides.... The Burton cartulary, the earliest survey after Domesday, employed the word 'wara' in the same sense.

One cannot disprove the first proposition without reading through all Domesday for this purpose. I can only say that I do not remember ever meeting in Domesday Book with such an expression. The solitary instance of its use known to me is in the Liber Niger of Peterborough (p. 159), where we read: 'in Estona sunt iii. hidæ ad in Waram'; and there the relevant entry in Domesday has no such expression. Of the statement as to the Burton cartulary, one can positively say it is an error. Its 'waræ' have quite another meaning and are spoken of as virgates would elsewhere be.

Collation with what I have termed the Northamptonshire geld-roll renders it clear that 'wara', in Domesday, represents the old English word for 'defence', in the sense of assessment, the 'defendit se' formula of the great Survey leading even to the phrase of 'Defensio x. acrarum', for assessment to Danegeld, which is found in the first volume of Fines published by the Pipe-Roll Society.

XVI. THE DOMESDAY 'JURATORES'

The lists of these in the I.E. and in the I.C.C. afford priceless information. The latter gives us the names for all but three of the Cambridgeshire Hundreds, the former for all Cambridgeshire (one Hundred excepted) and for three Hertfordshire Hundreds as well. The opening paragraph of the I.E. tells us 'quomodo barones regis inquisierunt, videlicet per sacramentum vicecomitis scire et omnium baronum et eorum francigenarum et tocius centuriatus presbyteri prepositi vi. villani [sic] uniuscuiusque ville'.²⁰⁶ Careful reading of this phrase will show that the 'barones regis' must have been the Domesday Commissioners. The difficulty is caused by the statement as to the oaths of the sheriff, the tenants-in-chief (barones), and their foreign (? military) under-tenants (francigenæ). The lists of juratores contain the names of many francigenæ in their respective hundreds, but, so far as I can find, of no tenants-in-chief. The sheriff, of course, stands apart. His name indeed in the I.C.C. is appended to the list of jurors for the first Hundred on the list, but is not found in the I.E. Moreover, it should be noted that the above formula speaks of all the tenants-in-chief, but only of a single Hundred court. Two hypotheses suggest themselves. The one, that the sheriff and barones of the county made a circuit of the Hundreds, and then handed in, on their oaths, to the commissioners a return for the whole county; the other, that the circuit was made by the commissioners themselves, attended by the sheriff and barones. In the former case it is obvious that the commissioners would fail to obtain at first hand that direct local information which it was their object to elicit: and further, when we find the sheriff and barones charged with wrongdoing in these very returns, it is, to say the least, improbable that they were their own accusers, especially in the case of such a sheriff as Picot, at once dreaded and unscrupulous.

It seems, therefore, the best conclusion that the Domesday commissioners themselves attended every Hundred court, and heard the evidence, sometimes conflicting, of 'French' and 'English'.²⁰⁷

The order in which the Hundreds occur must not be passed over, because their sequence distinctly suggests a regular circuit of the country. Here is the sequence given in our three authorities: the I.C.C., the I.E., and the list of jurors prefixed to the latter:

On comparing the first two of these lists it will be found that (except in the case of three contiguous Hundreds, which does not affect the argument) the Hundreds are taken in a certain sequence, which is seen, on reference to the valuable map prefixed to Mr Hamilton's book, to represent a circuit of the southern portion of the county from north-east to north-west, followed by an inquest on the district to its north, the 'two Hundreds' of Ely.

The third list, on the other hand, misplaces the Hundreds of Triplow and Erningford altogether, and wholly omits that of Childeford. The transposition and omission are both notable evidence that the B and C texts, as I shall urge, were derived from some common original which contained these defects.

The essential point, however, is that a circuit was made of the county whether merely by the sheriff, or, as seems most probable, by the Domesday Commissioners themselves—the 'barones regis' of the record—who must have attended the several Hundred-courts in succession.

But when we speak of the Hundred-court it is necessary to explain at once that the body which gave evidence for the Domesday Inquest was of a special and most interesting character. It combined the old centuriatus—deputations of the priest, reeve, and six villeins from each township (villa)—with the new settlers in the Hundred, the francigenæ. A careful investigation of the lists will prove that half the juratores were selected from the former and half from the latter. This fact, which would seem to have been hitherto overlooked, throws a flood of light on the compilation of the Survey, and admirably illustrates the King's policy of combining the old with the new, and fusing his subjects, their rights and institutions, into one harmonious whole. Conquerors and conquered were alike bound by their common sworn verdicts.²⁰⁹

We have the lists, in all, for eighteen Hundreds, fifteen in Cambridgeshire and three in Herts, of which two were 'double'. There were, practically, for each Hundred exactly eight juratores, half of them 'French' and half 'English'. But the two 'double' Hundreds had sixteen each, half of them 'French' and half 'English'. Although it is recorded that 'alii omnes franci et angli de hoc hundredo juraverunt', it is obvious that the eight men always specially mentioned were, in a special degree, responsible for the verdict. Their position is illustrated, I think, by the record of a Cambridgeshire placitum found in the Rochester chronicles. This is the famous suit of Bishop Gundulf against Picot the sheriff in the County Court of Cambridgeshire,²¹⁰ which affords a valuable instance of a jury being elected to confirm by their oaths the (unsworn) verdict of the whole court:

Cum illis (i.e. omnes illius comitatus homines) Baiocensis episcopus, qui placito præerat, non bene crederet; præcepit ut, si verum esse quod dicebant scirent, ex seipsis duodecim eligerent, qui quod omnes dixerant jure jurando confirmarent.

Now we read of this jury:

Hi autem fuerunt Edwardus de Cipenham, Heruldus et Leofwine saca de Exninge, Eadric de Giselham, Wlfwine de Landwade, Ordmer de Berlincham, et alii sex de melioribus comitatus.

Investigation shows that the names mentioned are local. The land in dispute was a holding in Isleham in the Hundred of Staplehoe. One juror, Eadric, came from Isleham itself, two from Exning, one from Chippenham, one from Landwade, while the sixth, Ordmer, was an under-tenant of Count Alan, in the Manor from which he took his name (Badlingham), and was a Domesday juror for the Hundred. These six, then, were clearly natives chosen for their local knowledge. The other six, chosen 'de melioribus comitatus', were probably, as at the Domesday inquest, Normans (Franci). Thus the double character of the jury would be here too preserved, and the principle of testimony from personal knowledge upheld.

So again in the Dorset suit of St. Stephen's, Caen (1122),²¹¹ the men of seven Hundreds are convened, but the suit is to be decided 'in affirmatione virorum de quatuor partibus vicinitatis illius villæ'.²¹² Accordingly, 'sexdecim homines, tres videlicet de Brideport, et tres de Bridetona, et decem de vicinis, juraverunt se veram affirmationem facturos de inquisitione terræ illius'. The names of the jurors are carefully given: 'Nomina vero illorum qui juraverunt, hæc sunt'. Again in the same Abbey's suit for lands in London, 'per commune consilium de Hustingo, secundum præceptum regis, elegerunt quatuordecim viros de civibus civitatis Londoniæ qui juraverunt'. And in this case also we read: 'Hæc sunt nomina illorum qui juraverunt.... Et hæc sunt nomina eorum in quorum præsentia juraverunt.'²¹³

This corresponds, it will be seen, exactly with the writ to which the Inquisitio Eliensis was, I hold, the return: 'Inquire ... qui eas (terras) juraverunt et qui jurationem audierunt' (infra, p. 114).

Enough has now been said to show that the names of the Domesday jurors recorded for each Hundred represent a jury of eight, elected to swear on behalf of the whole Hundred, and composed of four foreigners and four Englishmen, in accordance with the principle that the conflicting interests ought to be equally represented.²¹⁴

We may take, as a typical set of juratores, those for the Hundred of Erningford, the survey of which, in Mr Hamilton's book, occupies pp. 51-68. I give them in their order:

All four francigenæ can be identified in the Hundred. Walter held a hide and a quarter in 'Hatelai' from the wife of Ralf Tailbois; Humfrey, a hide and a quarter in 'Hatelai', from Eudo dapifer;²¹⁵ Hugh, a hide and a half in 'Melrede', from Hardwin de Scalers; and Richard, three virgates in 'Mordune', from Geoffrey de Mandeville. Of the Angli, Colsuenus was clearly Count Alan's under-tenant at three townships within the Hundred, holding in all two hides; 'Ailmarus', his son, was, just possibly, the 'Almarus de Bronna', who was a tenant of Count Alan in two adjacent townships, holding two hides and three-eighths; 'Turolfus' and 'Alfuuinus' cannot be identified, and were probably lower in the social scale.

It will be observed that Colsweyn belongs to a special class, the English under-tenants. He is thus distinct at once from the Francigenæ, and from the villeins of the township. He and his peers, however, are classed with the latter as jurors, because they are both of English nationality. In the great majority of cases the English juratores cannot be identified as under-tenants, and may therefore be presumed to have belonged to the township deputations.

XVII. THE 'INQUISITIO ELIENSIS'

First printed by the Record Commission in their 'Additamenta' volume of Domesday (1816), its editor, Sir Henry Ellis, selected for his text the most familiar, but, as I shall show, the worst of its three transcripts (Cott. MS., Tib. A. VI), though he knew of what I believe to be the best, the Trin. Coll. MS., O. 2, 1, which seems to be the one styled by him 68 B 2.²¹⁶ In his introduction he thus described it:

The Inquisitio Eliensis is a document of the same kind with the Exeter Domesday; relating to the property of the Monastery of Ely recorded afterwards in the two volumes of the Domesday Survey (p. xiv).

From this it would seem that Ellis believed the Inquisitio, at any rate, to be previous to Domesday Book, but he practically left its origin altogether in doubt.

Sixty years later (1876) the Inquisitio was published anew, but without any further solution of the points in question being offered.²¹⁷ For this edition three MSS. were collated, with praiseworthy and infinite pains, by Mr N. E. S. A. Hamilton. Taking for his text, like Ellis, the Cottonian MS. Tib. A. VI, which he distinguished as A, he gave in footnotes the variants found in the MSS. at Trinity College, Cambridge, viz.: O. 2, 41 (which he termed B), and O. 2, 1 (which he distinguished as C). In Mr Hamilton's opinion (p. xiv) the 'C' text 'appears to have been derived from the "B" MS. rather than the Cottonian' ('A'). From this opinion, it will be seen, I differ wholly.