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Title: Feudal England -- Historical Studies On The Eleventh And Twelfth Centuries
Author: J.H. Round
Release Date: October 25, 2013 [EBook #44021]
Language: English
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FEUDAL ENGLAND
HISTORICAL STUDIES ON THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES
BY
J. H. ROUND
FIRST PUBLISHED 1895
_Second impression 1909_
_Third impression 1909_
PREFACE
The present work is the outcome of a wish expressed to me from more
than one quarter that I would reprint in a collected form, for the
convenience of historical students, some more results of my researches
in the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But to these I
have added, especially on Domesday, so much which has not yet seen the
light, that the greater portion of the work is new, while the rest
has been in part re-written. The object I have set before myself
throughout is either to add to or correct our existing knowledge of
facts. And for this I have gone in the main to records, whether in
manuscript or in print. It is my hope that the papers in this volume
may further illustrate the value of such evidence as supplementing
and checking the chroniclers for what is still, in many respects, an
obscure period of our history.
As a foreign scholar has felicitously observed:
Je lis avec plaisir le chroniqueur qui nous raconte les
événements de son époque. Les détails anecdotiques, les traits
piquants dont son [oe]uvre est parsémée font mes délices. Mais
comment saurai-je s'il dit la vérité si les pages qu'il me
présente ne sont pas un roman de pure imagination? Dans les
chartes, au contraire, tout est authentique, certain, précis,
indubitable. Leur témoignage est contradictoirement établi,
sous le contrôle de la partie adverse, avec l'approbation et
la reconaissance de l'autorité souveraine, en présence d'une
imposante assemblée de notables qui apposent leur signature.
C'est la plus pure de toutes les sources où il soit possible
de puiser un renseignement historique.[1]
An instance in point will be found in the paper on 'Richard the
First's change of seal'.
A collective title for a series of studies covering the period
1050-1200, is not by any means easy to find. But dealing as they do so
largely with the origins of 'Feudal England', I have ventured to give
them this title, which may serve, I hope, to emphasize my point that
the feudal element introduced at the Conquest had a greater influence
on our national institutions than recent historians admit.[2] Even
Domesday Book has its place in the study of feudalism, rearranging, as
it does, the Hundred and the Vill under Fiefs and 'Manors'.
To those in search of new light on our early mediaeval history, I
commend the first portion of this work, as setting forth, for their
careful consideration, views as evolutionary on the Domesday hide and
the whole system of land assessment as on the actual introduction
of the feudal system into England. Although I have here brought into
conjunction my discovery that the assessment of knight-service was
based on a five-knights unit, irrespective of area or value, and my
theory that the original assessment of land was based on a five-hides
unit, not calculated on area or value, yet the two, one need hardly
add, are, of course, unconnected. The one was an Anglo-Saxon
system, and, as I maintain, of early date; the other was of Norman
introduction, and of independent origin. My theories were formed at
different times, as the result of wholly separate investigations. That
of the five-hides unit was arrived at several years ago, but was
kept back in the hope that I might light on some really satisfactory
explanation of the phenomena presented. The solution I now propound
can only be deemed tentative. I would hope, however, that the theories
I advance may stimulate others to approach the subject, and, above
all, that they may indicate to local students, in the future, the
lines on which they should work and the absolute need of their
assistance.
Perhaps the most important conclusion to which my researches point
is that Domesday reveals the existence of two separate systems in
England, co-extensive with two nationalities, the original _five
hides_ of the 'Anglo-Saxon' in the south, and the later _six
carucates_ of the 'Danish' invaders in the north.[3]
No one, I may add, is better qualified to carry further these
inquiries than Prof Maitland, whose brilliant pen has illumined for us
the origins of English law. Himself engaged on the study of Domesday,
he kindly offered to withhold his conclusions until my work should
have appeared.[4]
Among the fresh points here discussed in connection with Domesday Book
will be found the composition of the juries by whom the returns were
made, the origin and true character of the _Inquisitio Eliensis_, and
the marked difference of the two volumes compiled from the Domesday
returns.
Of the six early surveys dealt with in conjunction with Domesday, I
would call attention to that of Leicestershire as having, it would
seem, till now remained absolutely unknown. It has long been a wish of
mine to deal with these surveys,[5] not only as belonging to a period
for which we have no records, but also as illustrating Domesday Book.
In 'The Knights of Peterborough' will be found some facts relating
to Hereward 'the Wake', which seem to have eluded Mr Freeman's
investigations, and even those of Mr Tout.
In case it should suggest itself that these papers, and some in the
other portion of the work dwell at undue length on unimportant points,
I would observe that apart from the fact that even small points
acquire a relative importance from our scanty knowledge of the time,
there are cases in which their careful investigation may lead to
unforeseen results. At the last anniversary of the Royal Society, Lord
Kelvin quoted these words from his own presidential address in 1871:
Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific
imagination a less lofty and dignified work than looking for
something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of
science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement
and patient, long continued labour in the minute sifting of
numerical results.
The same principle applies to the study of institutional history.
Whether we are dealing with military service, with the land, with
finance, or with the king's court, 'the minute sifting' of facts and
figures is the only sure method by which we can extend knowledge.
To those who know how few are the original authorities for the period,
and how diligently these have been explored and their information
exhausted, the wonder will be not so much that there is little, as
that there was anything at all yet left to discover.
* * * * *
In a work dealing with the history of the eleventh and twelfth
centuries, a writer must inevitably find himself at times dealing with
the same subjects as the late Professor Freeman. Without in any way
disparaging the genius of that eminent man, one may deem it a duty to
correct the errors into which he fell, and conscientiously to combat,
as an obstinate and mischievous superstition, the conviction of his
pre-eminent accuracy and authority on matters of fact. It would be far
pleasanter to dwell only on his merits; but when one finds that,
in spite of the proofs I have been producing for years, Mr Herbert
Fisher, representing the Oxford school of history, can still declare
Mr Freeman to have reached 'the highest standard of scholarly
exactitude',[6] it is evident that the works of the Regius Professor
are still surrounded by a false glamour, and that one must further
expose his grave liability to error. I cannot suppose that any
competent scholar who may carefully peruse this work will in future
venture to deny that, in spite of his many and his splendid gifts, Mr
Freeman was as liable as any of us to error, or that however laudable
his intentions, he was capable of precisely the same inaccuracy and
occasionally of the same confusion as he denounced so bitterly in
others.
It is, indeed, my contention, as I have already explained,[7] that
to these denunciations of the errors of others is largely due the
conviction of Mr Freeman's supreme accuracy. The question raised may
seem to affect the whole method of history, for if, as has been said,
it is the argument of the scientific historian that we ought to prefer
accuracy of fact to charm of presentment and to literary style,
the proof that his method fails to save him from erring like any
'literary' historian strikes at the root of his whole contention.
Yet it is not the scientific method, but its prophet himself that was
at fault.
Although I am here only concerned with inaccuracy in matters of fact,
I would guard myself against the retort that, at least, Mr Freeman's
errors are of little consequence as compared with that obliquity of
vision which led Mr Froude, at all hazards, to vindicate Henry
the Eighth. Without insisting on an absolute parallel, I trace a
resemblance even here. Just as his bias against the Roman church led
Mr Froude to vindicate Henry in order to justify the breach with Rome,
so Mr Freeman's passion for democracy made him an advocate on
behalf of Harold, as 'one whose claim was not drawn only from the
winding-sheet of his fathers'. I have elsewhere maintained, as to
Harold's election 'by the free choice of a free people', that Mr
Freeman's undoubted perversion of the case at this 'the central point'
of his history, gravely impairs his narrative of the Conquest, because
its success, and even its undertaking, can actually be traced to that
election.[8] Unless we realize its disastrous effect on the situation
both at home and abroad, we cannot rightly understand the triumph of
the Duke's enterprise.
It had been my hope, in the present work, to have avoided acute
controversy, but the attitude adopted, unfortunately, by the late
Professor's champions has rendered that course impossible. One can
but rejoice that his accuracy should find strenuous defenders, as
it removes the reluctance one would otherwise feel in continuing to
criticize it now. A case is doubly proved when proved in the teeth of
opposition. But one expects that opposition to be fair, and the line
my opponents have taken throughout cannot, by any stretch of courtesy,
be so described. My difficulty, indeed, in dealing with their
arguments on the Battle of Hastings, is that they do not affect or
even touch my case. In spite of their persistent efforts to obscure a
plain issue, there is not, and there cannot be, any 'controversy' as
to Mr Freeman and the 'palisade'. For, while fully recognizing that
the _onus probandi_ lay on those who assert its existence, he failed,
on his own showing, to produce any proof of it whatever.[9] Mr Archer
has ended,[10] as he began,[11] by deliberately ignoring Mr Freeman's
words,[12] on which my case avowedly rests, and without suppressing
which he could not even enter the field. This, indeed, I have
explained so often, that I need not again have disposed of his
arguments had not Mr Gardiner, in the exercise of his editorial
discretion, allowed him to make certain statements,[13] and refused
me the right of exposing them. A typical example will be found on p.
273.[14]
It is not only demonstrable error that justifies critical treatment;
no less dangerous, if not more so, is that subtle commixture of
guess-work and fact, which leaves us in doubt as to what is proved and
what is merely hypothesis. In his lecture on 'The Nature of Historical
Evidence', the late Professor himself well brought out the point:
Many people seem to think that a position is proved if it
can not be disproved.... Very few see with Sir George
Lewis--though Sir George Lewis perhaps carried his own
doctrine a little too far--that in a great many cases we ought
to be satisfied with a negative result, that we must often put
up with knowing that a thing did not happen in a particular
way, or did not happen at all, without being furnished with
any counter-statement to put in the place of that which we
reject.[15]
The question is whether a statement can be proved, not whether it can
be disproved. Cases in point will be found on pp. 291, 298, 331-3.
It may, in view of certain comments, be desirable, perhaps, to
explain that the study on the origin of knight-service appeared in Mr
Freeman's lifetime,[16] and that my open criticism of his work began
so far back as 1882. It will be seen, therefore, that I challenged its
accuracy when he was himself able to reply.
To those who may hold that in these studies excessive attention is
bestowed on Anglo-Norman genealogy, I commend the words, not of a
genealogist, but of the historian Kemble:
It is indispensable to a clear view of the constitutional law
and governmental institutions of this country, that we should
not lose sight of the distribution of landed estates among
the great families, and that the rise and fall of these houses
should be carefully traced and steadily borne in mind....
Amidst all the tumult and confusions of civil and foreign
wars; throughout religious and political revolutions; from the
days of Arminius to those of Harald; from the days of Harald
to our own; the successions of the landowners and the
relations arising out of these successions, are the running
comment upon the events in our national history: they are at
once the causes and the criteria of facts, and upon them has
depended the development and settlement of principles, in laws
which still survive, in institutions which we cling to with
reverence, in feelings which make up the complex of our
national character.[17]
The paper on 'Walter Tirel and his wife' may serve to show that in
this department there is still needed much labour before we can hope
for a perfect record of the great houses of the Conquest.
* * * * *
I have to thank Mr Murray for his kind permission to make use of two
of the articles I have contributed to the _Quarterly Review_. Some
of the studies have previously appeared in the _English Historical
Review_, and these are now republished with Messrs Longmans' consent.
Lastly, I would take the opportunity afforded by this preface of
acknowledging the encouragement my researches have derived from the
approval not only of our supreme authority--I mean the Bishop of
Oxford--but also of that eminent scholar, Dr Liebermann, whose name
one is proud to associate with a work on mediaeval history.
J. H. ROUND
[_Note_: I have not thought it needful to include in the index names
of persons or places only introduced incidentally in illustration of
arguments. The prefix 'Fitz', as in _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, has been
retained as a useful convention, whatever the actual name may have
been.]
[Footnote 1: _Table chronologique des chartes et diplômes
imprimés concernant l'histoire de la Belgique._ Par Alphonse
Wauters, vol. i, p. xxxi.]
[Footnote 2: See pp. 198, 208, 404-5.]
[Footnote 3: See p. 430.]
[Footnote 4: Prof Maitland informs me that since the
appearance of his _Select Pleas in Manorial Courts_, he has
discovered the earlier occurrence of the word 'leet' (see p.
90).]
[Footnote 5: See _Domesday Studies_.]
[Footnote 6: _Fortnightly Review_, December 1894, pp. 804-5.]
[Footnote 7: _Quarterly Review_, July 1892.]
[Footnote 8: See _Quarterly Review_ as above. ]
[Footnote 9: See pp. 263-9.]
[Footnote 10: _English Historical Review_, July 1894.]
[Footnote 11: _Contemporary Review_, March 1893, pp. 335-55.]
[Footnote 12: _Norman Conquest_ (2nd Ed.), iii, 763-4.]
[Footnote 13: _English Historical Review_, as above.]
[Footnote 14: I have, therefore, been obliged to refer in some
detail to these statements, while for those I have already
disposed of I have given the references to the _Q.R._ and
_E.H.R._]
[Footnote 15: _Methods of Historical Study_, p. 141.]
[Footnote 16: _English Historical Review_, July 1891-January 1892.]
[Footnote 17: _The Names, Surnames, and Nicknames of the
Anglo-Saxons._ Read at Winchester, September 11, 1845.]
CONTENTS
FOREWORD _page_ 7
PREFACE 9
PART I. TERRITORIAL STUDIES
DOMESDAY BOOK 17
Nature of the _Inquisitio Com. Cant._, 19--Criticism
of the Domesday text, 26--'Soca' and 'Theinland', 35--The
Domesday 'caruca', 40--The Domesday hide, 41--The five-hide
unit, 47--The six-carucate unit, 66--The Leicestershire
'hida', 76--The Lancashire 'hida', 79--The Yorkshire unit,
79--General conclusions, 82--The East Anglian 'Leet',
88--The words _Solinum_ and _Solanda_, 91--The
'Firma unius noctis', 96--'Wara', 100--The Domesday
'juratores', 102--The _Inquisitio Eliensis_, 106--The
Ely Return, 114--First mention of Domesday Book, 120
THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GELD-ROLL 124
THE KNIGHTS OF PETERBOROUGH 131
THE WORCESTERSHIRE SURVEY (Hen. I) 140
THE LINDSEY SURVEY (1115-18) 149
THE LEICESTERSHIRE SURVEY (1124-29) 160
THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SURVEY (Hen. I-Hen. II) 175
THE INTRODUCTION OF KNIGHT SERVICE INTO
ENGLAND 182
The _cartae_ of 1166, 189--The 'servitium debitum',
197--Scutage, aid, and 'donum', 209--The total number of
knights due, 228--The normal knight's fee, 231--The early
evidence, 232--The Worcester Relief, 241
PART II. HISTORICAL STUDIES
NORMANS UNDER EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 247
MR FREEMAN AND THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS 258
The name of 'Senlac', 259--The palisade, 264--Mr Freeman's
authorities for it, 265--My argument against it, 269--The
shield-wall, 273--The disposition of the English, 277--The
Norman advance, 284--The fosse disaster, 288--The great
feigned flight, 292--The relief of Arques, 294--Summary,
297--Conclusion, 302
MASTER WACE 306
Wace's meaning, 306--Wace's authority, 309--Wace and his
sources, 313
NOTE ON THE PSEUDO-INGULF 321
REGENBALD, PRIEST AND CHANCELLOR 323
THE CONQUEROR AT EXETER 330
THE ALLEGED DESTRUCTION OF LEICESTER (1068) 347
ELY AND HER DESPOILERS (1072-75) 349
THE LORDS OF ARDRES 351
EARLY IRISH TRADE WITH CHESTER AND ROUEN 353
WALTER TIREL AND HIS WIFE 355
WALDRIC, WARRIOR AND CHANCELLOR 364
A CHARTER OF HENRY I (1123) 366
THE ORIGIN OF THE NEVILLES 370
THE ALLEGED INVASION OF ENGLAND IN 1147 373
THE ALLEGED DEBATE ON DANEGELD (1163) 377
A GLIMPSE OF THE YOUNG KING'S COURT (1170) 381
THE FIRST KNOWN FINE (1175) 385
THE MONTMORENCY IMPOSTURE 392
THE OXFORD DEBATE ON FOREIGN SERVICE (1197) 398
RICHARD THE FIRST'S CHANGE OF SEAL (1198) 406
COMMUNAL HOUSE DEMOLITION 416
THE CINQUE PORTS CHARTERS 424
ADDENDA 430
INDEX 434
PART I
TERRITORIAL STUDIES
DOMESDAY BOOK
The true key to the Domesday Survey, and to the system of land
assessment it records, is found in the _Inquisitio Comitatus
Cantabrigiensis_. Although the document so styled is one of cardinal
importance, it has, from accident, been known to few, and has
consequently never succeeded in obtaining the attention and scientific
treatment it deserved. The merit of its identification belongs to Mr
Philip Carteret Webb, who published in 1756 a paper originally read
before the Society of Antiquaries, entitled, _A Short Account of
Danegeld, with some further particulars relating to William the
Conqueror's Survey_. It is difficult to speak too highly of this
production, remembering the date at which it was composed. Many years
were yet to elapse before the printing of Domesday was even begun, and
historical evidences were largely inaccessible as compared with the
condition of things today. Yet the ability shown by Mr Webb in
this careful and conscientious piece of work is well seen in his
interesting discovery, which he announced in these words:
In searching for the _Liber Eliensis_, I have had the good
fortune to discover in the Cotton Library a MS. copy of the
Inquisition of the jury, containing their survey for most of
the hundreds in Cambridgeshire. This MS. is written on vellum
in double columns and on both sides of the page. It is bound
up with the _Liber Eliensis_, and begins at p. 76_a_ and ends
at p. 113. It is written in a very fair but ancient character,
not coeval with the Survey, but of about the time of Henry II.
It was given by Mr Arthur Agard to Sir Robert Cotton, and is
marked Tiberius A. VI 4. Your lordship and the Society will
be of opinion that this is a discovery of importance, and what
had escaped the observation of Sir H. Spelman, Mr Selden,
and other antiquarians. A part of this valuable morsel of
antiquity is already transcribed, and in a few weeks I hope to
be able to communicate the whole of it to the Society (p. 26).
Mr Webb's discovery was known to Kelham, and duly referred to by him
in his _Domesday Book Illustrated_ (1788). It was also known to
Sir Francis Palgrave, strong in his acquaintance with manuscript
authorities, who alluded (1832) to the fact that 'fragments of the
original inquisitions have been preserved',[1] and described the MS.
Tib. A. VI, of which 'the first portion consists of the _Inquisitio
Eliensis_, extending, as above mentioned, into five counties; it
is followed by the inedited _Inquisitio_', etc.[2] It is, however,
undoubtedly ignored in Ellis's _Introduction to Domesday Book_ (1833),
and 'even the indefatigable Sir Thomas Duffus Hardy', writes
Mr Birch,[3] 'has omitted all notice of this manuscript in his
_Descriptive Catalogue of Manuscripts relating to the History of Great
Britain and Ireland_, vol. ii. (1865)'. This, however, is not strictly
the case, for in his notice of the Domesday MSS. he observes in a
footnote:
The Cottonian MS. [Tib. A. VI] has also a second and unique
portion of this survey, which was not printed in the edition
published by the Record Commission in 1816. It commences 'in
Grantebriggesira, in Staplehouhund', and ends imperfectly 'et
vicecomiti regis v. auras'.
These words prove that Sir Thomas had inspected the MS., which duly
begins and ends with the words here given.
It is certain, however, that Mr Freeman, most ardent of Domesday
students, knew nothing of this precious evidence, and remained
therefore virtually unacquainted with the _modus operandi_ of the
Great Survey. The pages, we shall find, of the _Inquisitio_ afford
information that no one would have welcomed more eagerly than himself.
Perhaps, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr N. E. S. A. Hamilton,
when editing this document for the Royal Society of Literature (1876),
should have supposed that it had been overlooked till then, or that
he was 'the first to bring its importance to light' (p. vi). It
is, however, much to be regretted that Mr De Gray Birch should have
strenuously insisted that Webb (whose paper he actually names)
and Kelham 'appear to have been strangely ignorant of the true and
important nature of this manuscript',[4] and should have repeated this
assertion[5] after I had shown at the Domesday Commemoration (1886)
that the honour of the discovery really belonged to Mr P. C. Webb.
One may claim that Webb should have his due, while gladly expressing
gratitude to Mr Hamilton for his noble edition of the _Inquisitio_,
which has conferred on Domesday students an inestimable boon.[6]
The printing of the document in record type, the collation throughout
with Domesday Book, and the appending of the _Inquisitio Eliensis_,
edited from three different texts, represent an extraordinary amount
of minute and wearisome labour. The result is a volume as helpful as
it is indispensable to the scholar.
I propose in this paper to take up anew the subject, at the point
where Mr Hamilton has left it, to submit the text to scientific
criticism, to assign it its weight in the scale of authority, and to
explain its glossarial and its illustrative value for the construction
and the contents of Domesday Book.
I. NATURE OF THE 'INQ. COM. CANT.'
Exact definition is needful at the outset in dealing with this
document. The _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_, which is entered
on fos. 76-113 of Tib. A. VI, must be carefully distinguished from the
_Inquisitio Eliensis_ on fos. 38-68. Mr Hamilton doubted whether any
one before him 'had distinguished between' the two, but this, we have
seen, was a mistake. The distinction however is all-important, the two
documents differing altogether in character. One would not think it
necessary to distinguish them also from the so-called _Liber Eliensis_
(which is not a survey at all) had not Mr Eyton inadvertently
stated that our document has been printed under the title of _Liber
Eliensis_.[7]
The _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_ (hereafter styled 'the
I.C.C.') deals with the county of Cambridge alone, but, in that
county, with the lands of all holders. The _Inquisitio Eliensis_
(which I propose to style 'the I.E.') deals with several counties,
but, in these counties, with the lands of the abbey alone. The latter
was duly printed, with Domesday Book, by the Record Commission; the
former remained in manuscript till printed by Mr Hamilton.
Mr Hamilton describes his record at the outset as 'the Original Return
made by the _Juratores_ of the county of Cambridge in obedience to the
Conqueror's mandate, from which the Exchequer Domesday for that
county was afterwards compiled by the King's secretaries', and as 'the
original source from which the Exchequer Domesday for that county was
derived'. Mr Birch here again repeats the words, insisting 'that we
have in this very precious Cottonian MS. _the original source_ from
which the Exchequer Domesday of Cambridgeshire was compiled'.[8]
Such a description is most unfortunate being not only inaccurate but
misleading. All that we are entitled to predicate of the document
is that it is _apparently a copy_ of the original returns from which
Domesday Book was compiled. For 'the original source' of both we must
look to the now missing returns of the jurors, the primary authority
from which Domesday Book and the _Inquisitio Com. Cant._ are
independently derived. This distinction is all-important, reducing, as
it does, the _Inquisitio_ from the rank of an 'original' to that of
a secondary authority on the same level with Domesday Book.[9] Mr
Hamilton, like Mr Webb before him, assigned the handwriting of the
_Inquisitio_ to about the close of the twelfth century. The copy of
the returns which it contains, therefore, was made about a century
later than the returns themselves.
The problem then that we have to solve is this: 'Is the I.C.C.
an actual transcript of these original returns, and if so, is it
faithful?' I will not, like Mr Hamilton, assume an affirmative, but
will attempt an impartial inquiry.
The two paths which we must follow in turn to arrive at a just
conclusion are (1) the construction of the I.C.C., (2) collation with
the _Inq. Eliensis_. For I hope to show that the latter record must
have been derived from the same source as the _Inq. Com. Cant._
Following the first of these paths, we note at once that while
_Domesday Book_ arranges the Manors according to fiefs, the _Inq. Com.
Cant._, on the contrary, arranges them by hundreds and townships. Its
system is regular and simple. For every hundred it first enumerates
the principal jurors who made the return, and then gives the return
itself, arranged according to townships (_villæ_). These townships
are thus the units of which the Manors they contain are merely the
component fractions. This is precisely what we should expect to find
in the original returns, but it only creates a presumption; it does
not afford a proof. For instance, it might be reasonably urged that
these copies may have omitted certain items in the returns, just as
Domesday Book omitted others.
To reply to this objection, we must turn to the second path; that is
to say, we must collate the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ with the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ I shall prove below that the latter cannot have been taken from
the former, which only covers a portion of its field, and that, on the
other hand, the former cannot have been taken from the latter, because
the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ is accurate in places where the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ is in error. Consequently they must both have been derived
independently from some third document. This being so, if we should
find that their versions agree closely, we may fairly infer that
each is intended to be a faithful reproduction of the above 'third
document'. In other words, if neither version omits items which are
given in the other, we are entitled to assume that the copy is in each
case exhaustive, for two scribes working independently are not likely
to have systematically omitted the same items from the document before
them.
What then was the 'third document' from which they both copied?
Obviously it was either the original returns of the Domesday jurors,
or a copy (exhaustive or not) of these returns. Now we cannot suppose
that two scribes, working, as I have said, independently, would both
have worked, not from the original returns themselves, but from a
copy, and that the same copy of these returns--a copy, moreover, of
the existence of which we have no evidence whatever. Moreover, in this
hypothetical copy, there would, we may safely assert, have been
some clerical errors. These would have duly re-appeared in both the
_Inquisitiones_, and collation with Domesday Book would enable us to
detect them. Yet in no single instance, though each of them contains
errors, have I found a clerical error common to both. We are thus
driven to the conclusion that in both these _Inquisitiones_ we have
copies of the actual returns made by the Domesday jurors.
One of the postulates in the above argument is that the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ and the _Inq. Eliensis_ 'agree closely' in their versions. Here
is an instance in illustration:[10]
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
Meldeburna pro x. sol[idis] se Meldeburne pro x. hidis se
defendebat T.R.E. et modo pro defendebat in tempore R. ÆD. et
viii. Et de his x. hidis tenet modo pro viii. Et de his x.
predictus abbas ii. hidas et hun[dredis] tenet abbas de eli
I^{am.} virgam. v. carrucis est ii. hidas et i. v[irgam].
ibi terra. Una carruca et dimidia, v. carucis ibi est terra. I.
et una hida et una virga in caruca et dimidia, et i. hida
dominio, et dimidia carruca et dimidia, in dominio, et
potest fieri. iii. Carucæ dimidia caruca potest fieri.
villanis. vi. villani, ix. iii. carucæ hominibus. vi.
bordarii, iii. cotarii, villani, ix. bordarii, iii.
dimidium molendinum de iii. cotarii. Pratum v. carucis.
solidis, et viii. denariis. i. molendinum de ii. solidis
Pratum v. carrucis. Pastura ad et viii. denariis. Pastura ad
pecora villæ, ccc. oves iii. pecora villæ. oves ccc., iii^{es.}
minus, xxxiiii. porci. Inter minus, et xxxiiii. porci. Inter
totum valet c. sol., et quando totum valet v. lib. Quando
recepit totidem. T.R.E. vi. lib. recepit v. lib. T.R.E. vi.
Hæc terra jacet et jacuit in lib. Hæc terra jacet et jacuit
ecclesia sancte Ædel. de eli in in ecclesia sancte Ædel'
dominio. ely in dominio.
Et de his x. hidis tenet Wido de In eadem villa habet Guido de
Reb' curt de rege, &ca., &ca. Raimbecurt de rege, &ca., &ca.
These extracts are typical and instructive. They leave, in the first
place, no doubt upon the mind that both are versions of the same
original. This, which proves my postulate, will be shown below to
possess a further and important bearing. But while these versions
closely agree, we notice (1) independent blunders, (2) slight variants
in diction. As to blunders, we see that the I.C.C. has 'sol[idis]'
where the I.E. has the correct 'hidis', while, conversely, the I.E.
reads 'hun[dredis]' where the I.C.C. has, rightly, 'hidis'. Again the
I.C.C. allots to demesne an assessment of a hide and a virgate, but
I.E. a hide and a half (_i.e._ two virgates). Collation with Domesday
Book confirms the former version. Conversely, the I.C.C. assigns to
the mill the value of three shillings and eightpence, but the I.E. of
two shillings and eightpence. Collation with Domesday Book confirms
the latter. Turning now to the variants, we may express them more
clearly thus:
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
T.R.E. = in tempore R. ÆD.
predictus abbas = abbas de eli.
villanis = hominibus.
dimidium molendinum = i. molendinum.
c. sol. = v. lib.
totidem = v. lib.
de his x. hidis tenet = in eadem villa habet.
These prove that verbal accuracy was not aimed at by the transcribers.
The same freedom from its trammels is seen in the transposition of the
'mill' and 'meadow' passages, and, indeed, in the highly abbreviated
form of the I.E. entries (in which a single letter, mostly, does duty
for a word), which shows that the original version must have been
either extended in the I.C.C., or (more probably) abbreviated in the
I.E.
We are now in a position to advance to the criticism of the text of
the _Inq. Com. Cant._, and to inquire how far it can be trusted as a
reproduction of the original returns. In other words, are its contents
more or less trustworthy than those of Domesday Book?
It might, no doubt, be fairly presumed that a simple transcript of
the original returns was less likely to contain error than such
a compilation as Domesday Book, in which their contents were (1)
rearranged on a different system, (2) epitomized and partly omitted,
(3) altered in wording. Mr Hamilton, indeed, who was naturally
tempted to make the most of his MS., appears to have jumped at this
conclusion; for he speaks in his preface (p. xii) of its 'superior
exactness', and gives us no hint of omissions or of blunders. There
are, however, plenty of both, as will be seen from the lists below,
which do not profess to be exhaustive.
But we will first examine the instances adduced by Mr Hamilton. Out of
ten examples in proof of its value, five are cases in which 'the want
of precision in Domesday' leaves the identity of the tenant-in-chief
'undefined'. It is difficult to comment on these statements, because
in all five cases the name is as carefully recorded in Domesday as in
the I.C.C. Mr Hamilton's error can only, it will be found, have
arisen from comparing the I.C.C. not with Domesday Book, but with the
extracts therefrom printed in his work, which, being torn from their
place, do not, of course, contain the tenant's full name, which in
Domesday itself is given at the head of the list from which they
are taken. Moreover, as it happens, this test demonstrates not
the inferiority, but (in one instance at least) the superiority of
Domesday, the I.C.C. (fo. 97, col. 2) reading 'Hanc terram tenuit
comes alanus' [_sic_], where Domesday has (rightly) 'Hanc terram
tenuit Algar comes'. The former must have wrongly extended the
abbreviated original entry.[11]
Another of Mr Hamilton's examples is this:
'Hæc terra fuit et est de dominio æcclesiæ' (Domesday) is
abbreviated from a long account of the holdings of Harduuinus
de Scalariis and Turcus homo abbatis de Rameseio in the Cotton
MS.
But, on referring to the passage in question, we find that the
Domesday passage: 'Hæc terra fuit et est de dominio æcclesiæ' has
nothing to do with that 'long account', but corresponds to the simple
formula in the I.C.C., 'Hanc terram tenuerunt monache de cet'ero
T.R.E. et modo tenent'. The example which follows it is this:
At pp. 38, 39 we see a curious alteration in the value of
the land, which had risen from xv. lib. 'quando recepit' and
T.R.E. to xvii. lib. at the time the return was made, and
dropped again to xvi. lib. in the Domesday Survey.
This strange comment implies the supposition that the I.C.C. records
an earlier survey than Domesday Book, whereas, of course, they are
derived from the same returns, so that the discrepancy of xvi. and
xvii. is merely a clerical error. One more instance, the 'curious
reading' _Harlestone_ in the I.C.C., is shown below to be merely
an error in that MS. Such are eight of the examples adduced by
Mr Hamilton. The remaining two merely illustrate not the superior
accuracy, but the greater elaboration of the I.C.C. It has been
absolutely necessary to dispose of these examples, in order to show
that a critical estimate of the value of the I.C.C. has yet to be
made.
Taking the omissions in the MS. first, we find some really bad ones.
On fo. 79A (2), collation with Domesday gives this result:
_I.C.C._ (p. 12)[12] _D.B._ (I. 196A)
II. hidas et dimidiam et x. acras Tenuerunt ii. hidas et dimidiam
tenuerunt. [..................... et x. acras. Nec isti potuerunt
................................. recedere absque licentia
................................. abbatis. Et xix. sochemanni,
................................. homines regis E., tenuerunt
....]. Non potuerunt recedere ii. hidas. Non potuerunt
sine licentia. recedere absque licentia.
A similar 'run on' omission is found on fo. 109A (1):
_I.C.C._ (p. 79) _D.B._ (I. 200A, 193A)
Tenet Radulfus de bans de [Widone Tenet Radulfus de Widone iii^{ciam.}
de] rembercurt terciam partem partem i. virgatæ [Terra est i.
unius virge. I. bovi ibi est bovi], et ibi est bos. Valet et
terra, et est bos [.............. valuit ii. sol., et vendere potuit,
................................. et iiii^{tam.} partem unius Avere
................................. vicecomiti invenit.
.................................
................................. In Oreuuelle tenet eadem
................................. æcclesia iiii^{tam.} partem unius
.......................] Valet et virgatæ. Terra est dimidio bovi
valuit semper xii. den.[13] et valet xii. den.
Another instance of 'running on' occurs on fo. 105A (1), where 'xviii.
cotarii' (p. 67) is proved by Domesday to stand for 'xviii. [bordarii
x.] cotarii'. Again on fo. 79B (2) we have this:
_I.C.C._ (p. 14) _D.B._ (I. 195B 1)
Eadiua unam hidam habuit et Tenuit Eddeua i. hidam et i.
unam virgam [.................. virgatam et Wluui homo ejus
....] Socham huius habuit ædiua i. hidam et i. virgatam. Socam
T.R.E.[14] ejus habuit Eddeua.
So, too, on fo. 100B(1):
_I.C.C._ (p. 52) _D.B._ (I. 190A)
XI. carruce villanis xv. [villani, XV. villani et xv. bordarii
xv. bordarii, xi. servi. Unum mol' cum xi. carucis. Ibi xi. servi,
de xvi. denariis, et alii duo mol' et i. molinus de xvi. denariis
de xxxii. denariis. Pratum] xvi. et alii duo molini xxxii.
carrucis. denariis. Pratum xvi. carucis.
The importance of such an omission as this lies in the proof of
unintelligent clerkship and want of revision which so unmeaning an
entry as 'xv. xvi. carrucis' supplies.
Omissions of another character are not infrequent. On fo. 95B (1)
an entire holding of a virgate (held by a sokeman of Earl Alan) is
omitted (p. 34). Another sokeman of Earl Alan (p. 32) has his holding
(1/4 virgate) omitted on the same folio (95A, 1), so is an entire
holding of Hardwin's (p. 36) on fo. 96A (2). A demesne plough ('i.
caruca') of Hugh de Port (p. 8) is omitted (78A, 1), and so are the
ploughs ('et iiii. villanis') of Aubrey's villeins (p. 9) a few lines
lower down. On fo. 90A (1) the words 'ibi est terra' are wanting
(p. 15),[15] and so are 'non potuit' on fo. 100 (A) 1.[16] The word
'recedere' is left out on fo. 103B (2),[17] and 'soca' just before
(103 (B) 1).[18] 'Odo' is similarly wanting on fo. 90A (1).[19] The
note also on the Abbot of Ely's sokeman at Lollesworth (p. 95), is
wholly omitted (fo. 113, B, 2), though found both in Domesday Book and
in the _Inquisitio Eliensis_.[20]
Turning now to the clerical blunders, we find an abundant crop. We may
express them conveniently in tabular form:
Folio Page
76 (_a_) 2. 'Auenam lvii. nummos,' _for_ 'Aueram (ve)l viii.
denarios' (D.B.) 2
76 (_b_) 1. 'Hominis' _for_ 'ho(mo)' 3
77 (_a_) 2. 'In dominio et iii. villani', _for_ 'una caruca in
dominio et iii. villanis' 7
_Ibid._ 'Mille de anguillis dimidium de piscina', _for_
'i. millen' et dimidium anguill'' (D.B.) 7
78 (_b_) 2. 'iiii. in dominio carucæ et iiii. hidæ in dominio',
_for_ 'iiii. carucæ et iiii. hidæ in dominio' 11
79 (_a_) 1. 'cuius honor erat', _for_ 'cuius ho(mo) erat' 12
79 (_b_) 2. 'iiii. bobus', _for_ 'iiii. bord(arii)' 14
91 (_b_) 2. 'valent iii.', _for_ 'valent iii. den.' 21
92 (_b_) 2. 'xliii. car(ucis) ibi e(st) terra', _for_ 'xl.
acras terræ' 25
95 (_a_) 2. 'has v. h(idas) tenet', _for_ 'de his v. h(idis)
tenet' 33
95 (_b_) 1. 'et pro iiii. virgis', _for_ 'et pro iii. virgis' 34
95 (_b_) 2. 'unam virgam minus', _for_ 'dimi' virg' minus' (D.B.) 35
96 (_b_) 1. 'dimidiam virgam', _for_ 'i. virg'' (D.B.) 38
97 (_b_) 1. 'Clintona', _for_ 'Iclintona' 41
97 (_b_) 2. 'unam hidam', _for_ 'dimidiam hidam' (D.B.) 42
100 (_a_) 1. 'Terra est vi. carucis', _for_ 'Terra est v.
carucis'[21] 50
100 (_a_) 2. 'ii. h(idas) et dimidiam virgam', _for_ 'ii. hidas
et i. virgam et dimidiam'[22] (D.B.) 50
100 (_b_) 2. 'vii. sochemanni', _for_ 'iii. soch[emanni]'[23] 52
101 (_a_) 2. 'homities', _for_ 'homines' 54
101 (_b_) 2. 'tenet pic' vicecomes quendam ortum de rege ii. hide',
_for_ 'tenet pic' vicecomes de rege ii. hidas'[24] 55
102 (_a_) 1. 'ii. boves', _for_ 'ii. bord(arii)' 56
104 (_b_) 1. 'iiii. hidas et i. virgam', _for_ 'iii. hidas et
i. virgam' (D.B.) 65
105 (_b_) 2. _bis_ 'Rahamnes', _for_ 'Kahannes' 60
106 (_a_) 1. 'pro vi. hidis' (_bis_), _for_ 'pro vii. hidis' 70
109 (_b_) 2. 'Fulcuinus tenet de comite Alano iii. cottarios',
_for_ 'Fulcuinus tenet de comite Alano. iii.
cottarii' 82
110 (_a_) 1. 'ely tenuit ii. h(idas)', _for_ 'ely tenuit
i. h(idam)' (I.E.) 83
110 (_b_) 1. 'viiii. h(idis)', _for_ 'viii. h(idis)' 84
111 (_a_) 2. 'liii. carrucis est ibi terra', _for_ 'iiii. car' est
ibi terra' 87
Besides these, Ralf 'de bans' is often entered as Ralf 'de scannis'.
Again, we find such blunders as this:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
Hugo de portu tenet sneileuuelle. Ipse Hugo tenet _de feudo
Pro v. hidis se defendebat T.R.E. episcopi baiocensis_ snellewelle.
et modo facit _de feudo episcopi Pro v. hidis se defend[ebat]
baiocensis_ (p. 3). semper.
Tenuit Turbertus i. hidam sub Tenuit Turbern i. hidam de abbate.
abbate de eli. _Et in morte_ ita Non poterat separare ab æcclesia
quod non potuit dare neque extra firmam monachorum T.R.E.
separare ab ecclesia extra _nec in die mortis ejus_.
dominicam firmam monachorum
T.R.E. (p. 63).
Abuerunt de soca S. Ædel' ii. Habuerunt ii. hidas et dimidiam
hidas et dimidiam virgam _de ely_ vir[gatam] de soca S. Ædeldride
T.R.E. (p. 65). _de Ely_.
In all these three cases the italicized words are misplaced, and in
all three the explanation is the same, the scribe having first omitted
them, and then inserted them later out of place. Having now criticized
the text of the I.C.C., and shown that it presents no small traces of
unintelligent clerkship, if not of actual ignorance of the terms and
_formulæ_ of Domesday, I turn to the text of Domesday Book, to test it
by comparison with that of the I.C.C.
II. CRITICISM OF THE DOMESDAY TEXT
Among the omissions are, on i, 195 (_b_) 1, 'Item et reddebat viii.
den. vel aueram si rex in vicecomitatu venit' (p. 5). At Kirtling (p.
11), 'et v^{ta.} caruca potest fieri [in dominio]' is omitted (i. 202
_a_). So is (p. 25) a potential demesne plough of John fitz Waleran
(i. 201 _b_). The Countess Judith's sokemen at Carlton (pp. 20, 21)
have their values omitted[25] (i. 202, _a_, 2). 'Habuerunt dimidiam
hidam, et,' is omitted (p. 28) in the entry of two sokemen of Godwine
(201, _b_, 2). On i. 196 (_a_) 1, 'Terra est i. bovi' is wanting (p.
79). More important, however, are the omissions of whole entries.
These are by no means difficult to account for, the process of
extracting from the original returns, the various entries relating to
each particular fief being one which was almost certain to result in
such omissions.[26]
Moreover, two entries were occasionally thrown into one, a dangerous
plan for the clerks themselves, and one which may sometimes lead us
to think that an entry is omitted when it is duly to be found under
another head. Lastly, the compilers of Domesday Book had no such
invaluable check for their work as was afforded in the original by
entering first the assessment of the whole township, and then that of
each of its component Manors separately. But of this more below.[27]
The only wonder is that the omissions are, after all, so few. Perhaps
even of these some may be only apparent. Hardwin's half-hide
in _Burwell_ (p. 6) is wanting; so is Aubrey's half-virgate in
_Badburgham_, according to Mr Hamilton (p. 36), but the oversight is
his. A virgate held in Trumpington by a burgess of Cambridge (p.
51) would seem to be not forthcoming, but its position was somewhat
anomalous.[28] Guy de Rembercurt held a hide and a virgate in
_Haslingefield_ (p. 73), though we cannot find it in Domesday; and in
_Witewelle_ (Outwell) two hides which were held by Robert, a tenant of
Hardwin (p. 81), are similarly omitted, according to Mr Hamilton but
will be found under 'Wateuuelle' (198, _b_, 2).
There are cases in which the I.C.C. corrects D.B., cases in which D.B.
corrects the I.C.C., and cases in which the I.C.C. corrects itself.
There are also several cases of discrepancy between the two, in which
we cannot positively pronounce which, if either, is right. A singular
instance of both being wrong is found in the case of Soham. The
assessment of this township was actually eleven hides, its four
component holdings being severally assessed at nine and a half hides
less six acres, half a hide, one hide, and six acres. The I.C.C. at
first gives the total assessment as eleven hides and a half, while
D.B. erroneously assesses the first of the four holdings at six hides
and forty acres in one place, and nine hides and a half in the other,
both figures being wrong. A most remarkable case of yet another kind
is found in _Scelford_ (Shelford). Here the entry in I.C.C. agrees
exactly with the duplicate entries found in D.B. Yet they both make
nonsense.[29] But on turning to the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ we obtain
the correct version. As this is a very important and probably unique
instance, the entries are here given in parallel columns:
_Inq. Eliensis._ _Inq. Com. Cant._ _D.B._ i. 198 _D.B._ i. 198
(_a_) 2. (_a_) 2.
i. hidam et dim. Tenuerunt vii. Tenuerunt vii. Tenuerunt vii.
et vi. acras quas [_sic_] [_sic_] [_sic_]
tenuerunt vi. sochemanni sochemanni sochemanni
sochemanni de i. hidam et i. hidam et i. hidam et
socha abbatis dim. et vi. dim. et vi. dim. et vi.
ely, de quibus acras de soca acras de soca acras de soca
non potuerunt abbatis de ely. abbatis. Non[30] abbatis de ely.
dare nec Non potuerunt potuerunt Non potuerunt
recedere nisi recedere sed recedere cum recedere cum
iii^{cs.} virgas soca remanebat terra, sed soca terra, sed soca
absque ejus abbati. remanebat remanebat
licentia. æcclesia de ely. æcclesiæ Ely.
Et si alias
vendidissent
tres virgas,
predictus abbas
semper socham
habuit T.R.E.
Here the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ version shows us that the estate had
two divisions held by different tenures. Three virgates the sokemen
were not free to sell; the other three they might sell, but if they
did, 'predictus abbas semper socham habuit'.[31] The two divisions of
the estate are confused in the other versions. But all three of these
correspond so exactly that we are driven to assign the error to the
original returns themselves. In that case the compiler (or compilers)
of the I.E. will have corrected the original return from his own
knowledge of the facts, which knowledge, I shall show, he certainly
possessed.
This brings us to the _errors_ of Domesday. For comparison's sake, I
here tabulate them like those of the I.C.C.:
Folio Page
i. 189 (_b_) 2. 'mancipium', _for_ 'inuuardum' (I.C.C.) 4
i. 195 (_b_) 1. 'Terra est ii. carucis et ibi est', _for_
'Terra est i. carucæ et ibi est' 15
i. 199 (_b_) 1. 'xxx. acras', _for_ 'xx. acras' (I.C.C.) 15
i. 196 (_a_) 2. 'iiii. villani ... habent iii. carucas',
_for_ 'iiii. villani ... habent iiii. carucas' 21
i. 199 (_b_) 1. 'De hac terra tenet', _for_ 'adhuc in eadem
villa tenet' (?)[32] 29
i. 198 (_a_) 1. 'tenet Harduuinus i. virgatam' _for_ 'tenet
Hardeuuinus dim. virgatam' (I.C.C.) 38
i. 194 (_b_) 1. 'ii. hidas et i. virg. terræ', _for_ 'ii. hidas
et una virg. et dimidiam' (I.C.C.) 64
i. 199 (_b_) 2. 'xvi. sochemanni', _for_ 'xv sochemanni' 65
i. 198 (_b_) 1. 'tenet Durand ... i. hidam et i. virg.',
_for_ 'tenet Durand i. hidam et dim. virg.' 67
i. 200 (_a_) 1. 'In dominio ii. hidæ et dim', _for_ 'In
dominio ii. hidæ et dim. virg.'[33] 67
i. 200 (_b_) 2. 'tenet Radulf de Picot iii. virg.', _for_
'tenet Radulf de Picot i. virg.' 80
i. 196 (_b_) 2. 'tenet Robertus vii. hidas et ii. virg. et
dim.', _for_ 'tenet Robertus vii. hidas et
i. virg. et dim.' 74
i. 200 (_a_) 1. 'vii. homines Algari comitis', _for_ 'vi.
homines Algari comitis' 84
Comparing the omissions and errors, as a whole, in these two versions
of the original returns, it may be said that the comparison is in
favour of the Domesday Book text, although, from the process of its
compilation, it was far the most exposed to error. No one who has not
analysed and collated such texts for himself can realize the extreme
difficulty of avoiding occasional error. The abbreviations and the
_formulæ_ employed in these surveys are so many pitfalls for the
transcriber, and the use of Roman numerals is almost fatal to
accuracy. The insertion or omission of an 'x' or an 'i' was probably
the cause of half the errors of which the Domesday scribes were
guilty. Remembering that they had, in Mr Eyton's words,[34] to perform
'a task, not of mere manual labour and imitative accuracy, but a task
requiring intellect--intellect, clear, well-balanced, apprehensive,
comprehensive, and trained withal', we can really only wonder that
they performed it so well as they did.
Still, the fact remains that on a few pages of Domesday we have been
able to detect a considerable number of inaccuracies and omissions.
The sacrosanct status of the Great Survey is thus gravely modified.
I desire to lay stress on this fact, which is worthy of the labour it
has cost to establish. For two important conclusions follow. Firstly,
it is neither safe nor legitimate to make general inferences from a
single entry in Domesday. All conclusions as to the interpretation
of its _formulae_ should be based on _data_ sufficiently numerous to
exclude the influence of error. Secondly, if we find that a rule of
interpretation can be established in an overwhelming majority of the
cases examined, we are justified, conversely, in claiming that the
apparent exceptions may be due to errors in the text.
The first of these conclusions has a special bearing on the theories
propounded by Mr Pell with so much ingenuity and learning.[35] I have
shown, in an essay criticizing these theories,[36] that the case of
Clifton, to which Mr Pell attached so much importance,[37] is nothing,
in all probability, but one of Domesday's blunders, of which I gave,
in that essay, other instances. So, too, in the case of his own Manor
of Wilburton, Mr Pell accepted without question the reading '_six_
ploughlands', as representing the 'primary return',[38] although that
reading is only found in the most corrupt of the three versions of
the _Inquisitio Eliensis_, while the two better versions (B and C
texts) agree with Domesday Book, and with the abbreviated return at
the end of the A text itself (Tib. A. VI fo. 67, _b_, 1), in giving
the ploughlands as _seven_. Really it is nothing but waste of time to
argue from a reading which is only found in one out of five MSS., and
that one the most corrupt.
This brings me to the existence and the value of duplicate entries in
Domesday. Mr Hamilton describes as 'a curious reading' the words in
the I.C.C., 'sed soca remanebat _Harlestone_'. Now it so happens that
in this case we have five separate versions of the original entry: one
in the I.C.C., one in the I.E., and three in Domesday Book. Here they
are side by side:
_I.C.C._ _I.E._ _D.B._ _D.B._ _D.B._
(p. 46) (p. 106) (I. 200, (_ibid._, (I. 191,
_a_, 2) in margin) _a_, 2)
Et potuit Potuit Recedere Vendere Potuit
recedere recedere cum terra potuit, recedere sine
quo voluit cum terra sua sua potuit, sed soca licentia ejus,
sed soca absque ejus sed soca Abbati sed soca
remanebat licentia, remansit remansit. remansit
Harlestone. sed semper æcclesiæ. Abbati.
remansit
socha ejus
in ecclesia
sancte Ædel'
ut hund
testantur.
The value of such collation as this ought to be self-evident. It is
not only that we thus find four out of five MSS. to be against the
reading '_Harlestone_' (which, indeed, to any one familiar with the
survey is obviously a clerical error), but that here and elsewhere we
are thus afforded what might almost be termed a bilingual inscription.
We learn, for instance, that the Domesday scribe deemed it quite
immaterial whether he wrote 'recedere cum terra ejus', or 'vendere'
or 'recedere sine licentia'. Consequently, these phrases were all
identical in meaning.[39]
Considerable light is thrown by the I.C.C. on the origin of these
little known duplicate entries in Domesday. In every instance of
their occurrence within the limits of its province they are due to a
conflict of title recorded in the original return. They appear further
to be confined to the estates of two landowners, Picot, the sheriff,
and Hardwin d'Eschalers, the titles of both being frequently contested
by the injured Abbot of Ely. Why the third local offender, Guy de
Raimbercurt, does not similarly appear, it is difficult to say. He
was the smallest offender of the three, and Picot the worst; but it
is Hardwin's name which occurs most frequently in these duplicate
entries.[40] The principle which guided the Domesday scribes cannot be
certainly decided, for they duplicated entries in the original return
which (according to the I.C.C.) varied greatly in their statements of
tenure. Thus, to take the first three:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
fo. 79 (_b_) 1, 'Tenet Harduuinus {I. 190 (_b_) 2, 'Tenet Harduinus
descalariis'.[41] { _sub abbate_'.
{I. 199 (_a_) 2, 'Tenet Harduinus'.
fo. 90 (_b_) 2, 'Tenet Harduuinus {I. 190 (_b_) 1, 'Tenet Harduinus
_de abbate_'. { de Escalers _de abbate_'.
{I. 199 (_a_) 2, 'Tenet Harduinus'.
fo. 92 (_a_) 2, 'Tenet Harduuinus {I. 199 (_b_) 2, 'Tenet Harduinus
_de rege_'. { _de abbate_'.
{I. 199 (a) 2, 'Tenet Harduinus'.
Here, whether the original return states Hardwin to hold (1) of the
abbot, (2) of the king, or (3) of neither, the scribes, in each of the
three cases, enter the estates (_A_) under the Abbot's land, as held
of the Abbot, (_B_) under Hardwin's land, as held _in capite_. And
it is singular that in all these three cases the entry of the estate
under the Abbot's land is the fuller of the two.[42]
On the whole it would appear that the Domesday scribes did not
consistently carry out a system of duplicate entry, though, on the
other hand, these entries were by no means due to mere clerical
inadvertence, but were prompted by a doubt as to the title, which
led to the precaution of entering them under the names of both the
claimants.
But the chief point of interest in these same entries is that they
give us, when we add the versions of the I.C.C. and the I.E., four
parallel texts. At some of the results of their collation we will now
glance.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._ _D.B._ _D.B._
(fo. 92, (p. 107) (I. 190, (I. 199,
_b_, 2) _b_, 2) _a_, 2)
Hanc terram Hanc terram Hanc terram Hanc terram
tenuerunt iii. tenuerunt iii. tenuerunt iii. tenuerunt iii.
sochemanni sochemanni sochemanni sochemanni.
homines sub predicto homines _Vendere_
abbatis de ely. abbate ely. abbatis de ely. non potuerunt.
Non potuerunt Non potuerunt Non potuerunt
_recedere absque _vendere terram _dare nec
licentia ejus_. suam sine vendere absque
eius licentia_. ejus licentia
terram suam_.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._ _D.B._ _D.B._
(fo. 79, (p. 102) (I. 190, (I. 199,
_b_, 1) _b_, 2) _a_, 2)
iiii. sochemanni Hanc terram Hanc terram Hanc terram
tenuerunt hanc tenuerunt iiii. tenuerunt iiii. tenuerunt iiii.
terram T.R.E. Et sochemanni sochemanni, sochemanni
non potuerunt T.R.E. de nec potuerunt abbatis de ely.
_recedere sine abbate ely. _recedere sine Non potuerunt
licentia Non potuerunt licentia _vendere_.
abbatis de ely_. _recedere vel abbatis_.
vendere sine
licentia
abbatis ely_.
These extracts illustrate the use of the terms _dare, vendere,
recedere_, etc. They are supplemented by those given below:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._ _I.E._
(76, _a_, 1) (I. 196, _b_, 1)
Potuit dare sine Terram suam tamen
licentia domini sui dare et vendere
terram suam. potuit.
(76, _b_, 2) (I. 199, _a_, 2) (p. 101)
Absque eius licentia Sine ejus licentia Potuerunt dare vel
dare terram suam poterant recedere vendere terram suam.
potuerunt, sed socham et terram suam dare Saca remansit abbati.
eorum habuit vel vendere, sed
archiepiscopus. soca remansit
Archiepiscopo.
(76, _b_, 2) (I. 196, _b_, 1)
Potuit dare cui Potuit absque[43]
voluit. ejus licentia
recedere.
(77, _b_, 2) (I. 195, _b_, 1)
Potuerunt recedere Potuerunt recedere
cum terra ad quem sine licentia
dominum voluerunt. eorum.
(78, _a_, 1) (I. 190, _b_, 1)
Potuerunt recedere Dare et vendere
cum terra sua absque potuerunt.
licentia domini sui.
(90, _a_, 2) (I. 190, _b_, 2)\ (p. 102)
Non potuerunt Non potuerunt | Non potuerunt recedere
recedere sine recedere sine | vel vendere absque
licentia abbatis. ejus licentia. | eius licentia.
}
(I. 200, _a_, 2) |
Non potuerunt |
vendere sine |
ejus licentia. /
(105, _a_, 2) (I. 200, _a_, 1) (p. 109)
Potuerunt dare et Terras suas vendere Potuerunt dare vel
vendere sine soca. potuerunt. Soca de vendere cui voluerunt,
viii. sochemannis sed saca eorum remansit
remansit in abbatia eidem abbati.
de ely.
(113, _b_, 1) (201, _a_, 1) (p. 112)
Potuerunt recedere Terram suam vendere Potuerunt dare preter
sine soca. potuerunt. Soca licentiam abbatis
vero remansit et sine soca.
abbati.
No one can glance at these passages without perceiving that _dare_,
_vendere_, and _recedere_ are all interchangeably used, and that
even any two of them (whether they have the conjunction 'et' or the
disjunction 'vel' between them) are identical with any one. It would
be possible to collect almost any number of instances in point.
Further, the insertion or omission of the phrase 'sine' (or 'absque')
'ejus licentia' is immaterial, it being understood where not
expressed. So too with the words 'cui voluit'. In short, like the
translators to whom we owe the Authorized Version, the Domesday
scribes appear to have revelled in the use of synonym and
paraphrase.[44] Our own conceptions of the sacredness of a text and of
the need for verbal accuracy were evidently foreign to their minds.
Glancing for a moment at another county, we have in the Survey of
Leicestershire a remarkable instance of a whole fief being entered
twice over. It is that of Robert Hostiarius:
Robertus hostiarius tenet de Robertus filus W. hostiari,
rege ii. car. terræ in Howes. tenet de rege in Howes ii.
Terra est iii. carucis. In cari terræ. Ibi habet i. car.
dominio est i. caruca et iii. in dominio et iii. serv[os] et
servi, et viii. villani cum viii. villani cum i. bordario
i. bordario habent ii. car.... habentes ii. car....
Idem [Turstinus] tenet de R. Idem Turstinus tenet de Roberto
iiij. car. terræ in in Clachestone iiii. car. terræ
Clachestone. Terra est ii. et Tetbald[us] ii. car. terræ.
caruca. Has habent ibi iii. Ibi est in dominio i. caruca et
sochemanni cum ii. villanis iii. sochemanni et v. villani
et ii. bordariis. Ibi viii. et iiii. [_sic_] bordarii cum
acræ prati. Valuit et valet iii. carucis et i. servo. Ibi
x. solidos. xiii. acræ prati. Valuit et
valet totum xx. solidos. Has
Tetbald[us] tenet de Roberto terras tenuerunt T.R.E. Outi et
ii. car. terræ in Clachestone. Arnui cum saca et soca.
In dominio est i. caruca cum
i. servo et iii. villani cum
i. bordario habent i. car.
Ibi vi. acræ prati. Valuit et
valet x. solidos.
Here the last two entries (both relating to Claxton) have been boldly
thrown into one in the second version, which also (though omitting
the number of ploughlands) gives additional information in the name of
Robert's father, and in those of his predecessors T.R.E. This is thus
an excellent illustration of the liberty allowed themselves by the
compilers of Domesday.
An instance on a smaller scale is found in the Survey of
Cambridgeshire, where we read on opposite pages:
In Witelesfeld hund'. In Witelesf' h'd.
In histetone jacet Wara In histetune jac' Wara
de i. hida et dimidia de de hida et dimidia de
M. Cestreforde et est in Cestres' man. et est
Exsesse appreciata, hanc appreciata in Exexe.
terram tenuit Algarus Algar comes tenuit
comes (i. 189 _b_). (i. 190).
The second entry has been deleted as a duplicate, but it serves to
show us that the scribes, even when free from error, were no mere
copyists.[45]
III. 'SOCA' AND 'THEINLAND'
The extracts I have given above establish beyond a doubt the existence
among the 'sochemanni' of two kinds of tenure. We have (1) those who
were free to part with (_vendere_) and leave (_recedere_) their land,
(2) those who were not, i.e. who could not do so without the abbot's
licence. This distinction is reproduced in two terms which I will now
examine.
In the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ and the documents connected with it there
is much mention of the 'thegnlands' of the Abbey. These lands are
specially distinguished from 'sokeland' (_terra de soca_). Both,
of course, are distinct from the 'dominium'. Thus in one of the
Conqueror's writs we read:
Restituantur ecclesiæ terræ que in _dominio_ suo erant die
obitus Æduardi.... Qui autem tenent _theinlandes_ que procul
dubio debent teneri de ecclesia faciant concordiam cum abbate
quam meliorem poterint,... Hoc quoque de tenentibus _socam_
et _sacam_ fiat.[46]
Now this distinction between 'thegnland' and 'sokeland' will be found
to fit in exactly with the difference in tenure we have examined
above. Here is an instance from the 'breve abbatis' in the record of
Guy de Raimbercurt's aggressions:
In melreda ii. hidas et dim. virg.
In meldeburne ii. hidas et dim.[47] et dim. virg.
Hoc est iiii. hidas et iii. virg. Ex his sunt i. virg. et dim.
_thainlande_ et iiii. hidas et dim.[48] _de soca_.
On reference to the two Manors in question, there is, at first sight,
nothing in the I.C.C., the I.E., or Domesday to distinguish the
'thegnland' from the 'sokeland'. Of the first holding we read that it
had been held T.R.E. by 10 _sochemanni_ 'de soca S. Edelride'; of the
second, that it was held by 'viii. _sochemanni_ ... homines abbatis
de Ely'. But closer examination of the I.C.C. reveals, in the former
case, this distinction:
De his ii. hidis et dimidia virga tenuit i. istorum _unam
virgam et dimidiam_. Non potuit dare nec vendere absque
licentia abbatis. Sed alii novem potuerunt recedere et vendere
cui voluerunt.[49]
Here then we identify the virgate and a half of 'theinland'--though
held by a _sochemannus_--and this same distinction of tenure proves
to be the key throughout. Thus, for instance, in the same document
'Herchenger pistor' is recorded to have seized 'in Hardwic i. hidam
_thainlande_ et dim. hidam et vi. acras _de soca_' (p. 177). Reference
to the I.C.C., D.B., and the I.E. reveals that the former holding had
belonged to 'v. sochemanni homines abbatis de ely', and that 'isti
non potuerunt dare neque vendere alicui extra ecclesiam S. Edeldride
ely'.[50] But the latter holding had belonged to a _sochemannus_, of
whom it is said--'homo abbatis de ely fuit: potuit recedere, sed socam
ejus abbas habuit'.[51]
This enables us to understand the distinctions found in the summaries
appended to the Cambridgeshire portion of the I.E., and recorded in
the _Breve Abbatis_. Indeed they confirm the above distinction, for
the formula they apply to holders 'de soca abbatie ely' is: 'Illi qui
hanc terram tenuerunt de soca T.R.E. vendere potuerunt, sed saca et
soca et commendatio et servitium semper remanebat ecclesia de ely.'
These terms are valuable for their definition of rights. Over
the holder of land 'de soco' the lord had (1) 'saca et soca', (2)
'commendatio et (3) servitium'. If the land was thegnland then the
Abbot received 'omnem consuetudinem' as well.[52] We will first
deal with the latter class, those from whom the Abbot received
'consuetudo', and then those who held 'de soca'.
For contemporary (indeed, slightly earlier) evidence, we must turn
to the Ely _placitum_ of 1072-75.[53] The special value which this
_placitum_ possesses is found in its record of the services due from
_sochemanni_, and even from freemen. It thus helps to interpret the
bald figures of Domesday, to which it is actually anterior. The first
two instances it affords are these:
In breuessan tenet isdem W. terram Elfrici supradicte
consuetudinis. In brucge tenet ipse W. terram etfled ejusdem
modi.
The _consuetudo_ referred to was this:
Ita proprie sunt abbati ut quotienscunque preceperit
prepositus monasterii ire et omnem rei emendationem
persolvere. Et si quid de suo voluerint venundare, a preposito
prius licentiam debent accipere.
The corresponding entries in the I.E. run thus:
'In Brugge una libera femina commend' S. Ædel. de lxxx. ac.
pro manerio.
In Beuresham ten[uit] Ælfricus i. liber homo commed' S.
Ædel.[54] lx. acras pro manerio' (p. 165).
Thus we obtain direct evidence of the services due from commended
freemen owing 'consuetudines'. Turning now to those of _sochemanni_,
we have this important passage:
Willelmus de Warena tenet quadraginta quinque socamans in
predicta felteuuella qui quotiens abbas preceperit in anno
arabunt suam terram, colligent et purgabunt segetes,
adducent et mittent in horrea, portabunt victum monachorum ad
monasterium, et quotiens eorum equos voluerit, et ubicunque
sibi placuerit, totiens habebit, et ubicunque forsfecerint
abbas forsfacturam habebit, et de illis similiter qui in eorum
terram forsfecerint.
Item Willelmus de uuarenna tenet triginta tres socamans,
istius consuetudinis in Nortuuolda.
Item W. tenet quinque socamans istius modi in Muddaforda.
Supradictus Walterus et cum eo Durandus, homines hugonis de
monte forti, tenent xxvi. socamans supradicte consuetudinis in
Maraham.
Collating as before from the I.E. the relative entries, we find they
run thus:
Felteuuelle ... Huic manerio adjacebant T.R.E. xxxiiii.
homines cum omni consuetudine, et alii vii. erant liberi
homines,[55] qui poterant vendere terras, sed soca et
commendatio remansit S. Ædel. (p. 132).
In felteuuella tenet W. de uuarenna xli. sochemannos ... Super
hos omnes habebat S. Ædel. socam et commendationem et omnem
consuetudinem. Illorum vii. liberi erant cum terris suis, sed
soca et commendatio remanebat S. Ædel. (p. 139).
IIII. sochemanni adjacent [_sic_] huic manerio [felteuuella]
T.R.E. Et modo habet eos W. de Warenna (p. 138).
Nortuualde ... Huic manerio adjacebant T.R.E. xxx. sochemanni
cum omni consuetudine. Et alii iiii. liberi homines qui
poterant vendere terras, sed saca et commendatio remanebat S.
Ædel. (p. 132).
In Nortuualde S. Ædel. xxxiiii. sochem [annos] ... S.
Ædel. [habuit] socam et commendationem et omnem consuetudinem
de illis xxx. tantum; et iiii. erant liberi homines, socam et
sacam et commendationem [super hos] S. Ædel. habebat[56] (p.
139).
Mundeforde ... Huic manerio adjacebant T.R.E. septem
sochemanni cum omni consuetudine (p. 132).
In Mundeforde S. Ædel. vii. sochemannos cum omni consuetudine
(p. 139).
Huic manerio [Mareham] T.R.E. adjacebant viginti vii.
sochemanni cum omni consuetudine, sed postquam Rex W. advenit,
habuit eos hugo de Munfort preter unum (p. 130).
[Terre hugo de Munford.] In mareham xxvi. sochemanni
quos tenet [_sic_] S. Ædel. T.R.E.[57] ... hanc terram
receperunt[58] pro escangio, et mensurata est in brevi S.
Ædel. (p. 137).
Here then we identify these four cases: Feltwell, with its 41
_sochemanni_ (more accurately described as 34 s. and 7 _liberi
homines_) attached to one Manor and four to another--45 in all;
Northwold, with its 33 or 34;[59] Muddiford with 5 or 7;[60] and
Marham with its 26.
The three former Manors lay in the Hundred of Grimeshoe, the fourth
northwards, towards the Wash. Just to the south of the three Manors,
over the borders of Suffolk, lay Brandon, where Lisois de Moustiers
had usurped the rights of Ely over six _sochemanni_.
In Lakincgeheda et in Brandona vi. sochemanni S. Ædel. ita
quod non potuerunt vendere terras liberati liseie antecessori
eudo[nis] dapif[eri] ... Post eum tenuit eos eudo et tenet cum
saca et soca (p. 142).
The record of the _placitum_, drawn up during the tenure of Lisois,
shows us their limited services: 'Isti solummodo arabant et c'terent
[_sic_] messes ejusdem loci quotienscunque abbas præceperit.' The
difference between these services and the others we have seen recorded
is considerable.
Yet another group of sokemen on Suffolk Manors rendered these
services:
Ita proprie sunt abbati ut quotienscunque ipse præceperit
in anno arabunt suam terram, purgabunt et colligent segetes,
portabunt victum monachorum ad monasterium, equos eorum in
suis necessitatibus habebit [abbas], et ubicunque deliquerint
emendationem habebit semper et de omnibus illis qui in terris
eorum deliquerint.
This is practically the same definition as we had for the other group,
and suggests that it was of wide prevalence. A notable contrast is
afforded by the entry: 'In villa que vocatur Blot tenet ipse R. iiii.
homines qui tantum debent servire abbati cum propriis equis in omnibus
necessitatibus suis.'
We have now examined the _consuetudines_ due from those 'qui vendere
non potuerunt', and may turn to the rights exercised over the other
class. Excluding 'servitium' (which is usually omitted as subordinate
or comprised in the others), these are: (1) 'commendatio' (2) 'saca et
soca'. The distinction between the two meets us throughout the survey
of the eastern counties. A man might be 'commended' to one lord while
another held his _soca_. Thus we read of Eadwine, a 'man' of the Abbot
of Ely: 'Potuit dare absque eius licentia, sed socam comes Algarus
habuit.'[61] That is to say, he was 'commended to the Abbot of Ely',
but Earl Ælfgar had the right of 'sac and soc' over him.[62]
So too in the case of three 'liberi homines', commended to the Abbot
in Norfolk. He had no right over them, but such as commendation
conferred 'non habebat nisi commendationem', while their 'soca'
belonged to the King's Manor of Keninghall.[63] Conversely, the Abbot
of Ely had the 'soca' of a 'man' of Earl Waltheof,[64] and a 'man' of
John, Waleran's nephew.[65] 'Commendatio', of course, took precedence
as a right. Thus we read of the above three 'liberi homines'--'Hos
liberos homines tenet [tenuit] Ratfridus, postea W. de Scodies, et
abbas saisivit eos propter commendationem suam' (p. 133).
In the above extracts we saw 'liberi homines qui vendere poterant'
distinguished from 'Sochemanni', who could not sell. But we also saw
that the two classes were not always carefully distinguished. We find,
moreover, that the 'liberi homines' were themselves, sometimes, 'not
free to sell'. Thus 'tenuit anant unus liber homo sub S. Ædel. T.R.E.
pro manerio ii. carucatas terræ sed non potuit vendere' (p. 142). Some
light may be thrown on this by the case of the estate held by Godmund,
an abbot's brother:
Totam terram quam tenebat Gudmundus in dominio, id est
Nectuna, sic tenebat T.R.E. de S. Ædel. quod nullo modo
poterat vendere, nec dare; sed post mortem suam debebat
manerium redire in dominio ecclesiæ; quia tali pacto tenuit
Gudmundus de Abbate (p. 144).
With this we may compare these entries:
In Cloptuna ... Ædmundus commendatus S. Ædel. unam carucatam
... quam non potuit vendere nec dare (p. 150).
In Brandestuna Ædmundus presbyter terram quam accepit
cum femina sua dedit S. Ædel. concedente femina T.R.E. ea
conventione quod non posset eam dare nec vendere. Similiter de
Clopetona' (p. 152).
In these cases the holder had only a life interest. Exactly parallel
with the second is the case of 'Eadward', citizen of London, who gave
lands to St. Paul's, reserving a life interest for himself and his
wife--'et mortua illa Sanctus Paulus hereditare debuit'.[66]
The above commendation of Edmund the priest ought to be compared with
that of 'unus liber homo S. Ædel. commendatus _ita quod_ non poterat
vendere terram suam sine licentia abbatis', and of 'i. liber homo S.
Ædel. Commendatus _ita quod_ non poterat vendere terram suam extra
ecclesiam (sed sacam et socam habuit stigandus in hersham)'.[67] Thus
both those who were free to sell and those who were not, might belong
to the class of 'liberi homines'. The essential distinction was one,
not of status, but of tenure.
IV. THE DOMESDAY CARUCA
Yet more definite and striking, however, is the information on
the Domesday _caruca_ afforded by collating D.B. with the I.C.C. I
referred at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) to the problem raised by
the _caruca_,[68] and recorded my belief that in _Domesday_ the word
must always mean a plough team of _eight_ oxen. The eight oxen, as Mr
Seebohm has shown, are the key to the whole system of the carucate and
the bovate. In Domesday, as I argued, the _formula_ employed involves
of necessity the conclusion that the _caruca_ was a fixed quantity.
Such entries, moreover, as 'terra i. bovi', 'terra ad iii. boves',
etc., can only be explained on the hypothesis that the relation of
the _bos_ to the _caruca_ was constant. But as the question is one
of undoubted perplexity, and as some, like Mr Pell, have strenuously
denied that the number of oxen in the Domesday _caruca_ was fixed,[69]
the evidence given below is as welcome as it is conclusive:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
fo. 96 (_a_) 2: 'Dimidiæ caruce I. 202 (_a_) 2: 'Terra est.
est ibi terra.' iiii. bobus.'
fo. 103 (_a_) 2: 'iiii. bobus I. 190 (_a_) 1: 'Terra est
est terra ibi.' dimidiæ carucæ.'
fo. 103 (_b_) 2: 'Dimidiæ caruce I. 196 (_b_) 2: 'Terra est
est ibi [terra].' iiii. bobus.'
fo. 112 (_b_) 1: 'iiii. bobus I. 201 (_a_) 1: 'Terra est
est ibi terra.' dimidiæ caruce.'
fo. 112 (_b_) 2: 'iiii. bobus I. 202 (_b_) 1: 'Terra est
est ibi terra. iiii. bobus, et
Et ibi sunt. Pratum ibi sunt, et
dimidiae caruce.' pratum ipsis bobus.'
It is absolutely certain from these entries that the scribes must
have deemed it quite immaterial whether they wrote 'dimidia caruca'
or 'iiii. boves'; as immaterial as it would be to us whether we
wrote 'half a sovereign' or 'ten shillings'. It is, consequently, as
absolutely certain that the Domesday _caruca_ was composed of eight
oxen as that our own sovereign is composed of twenty shillings. And
from this conclusion there is no escape.[70]
Another point in connection with the _caruca_ on which the I.C.C.
gives us the light we need is this:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
fo. 102 (_a_) 2: 'ii. carrucis I. 200 (_b_) 1: 'Terra est iii.
ibi est terra. Non sunt carruce carucis. Sed non sunt ibi nisi
nisi sex boves.' boves.
Here the Domesday text is utterly misleading as it stands. But the
I.C.C., by supplying the omitted 'sex', gives us at once the right
sense.
V. THE DOMESDAY HIDE
Similar to its evidence on the Domesday 'plough' is that which the
I.C.C. affords as to the hide and virgate. In my criticism of Mr
Pell's learned paper, I strenuously opposed his view that the _hida_
of Domesday was composed of a variable number of virgates, and I
insisted on the fact that the Domesday 'virgate' was essentially
and always the _quarter_ of the geldable 'hide'.[71] The following
parallel passages will amply prove the fact:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
fo. 102 (_a_) 1: i. hidam et i. hidam et iii. virgatas terræ.--
dimidiam et unam virgam. i. 194 (_a_) 2.
fo. 102 (_a_) 1: dimidiam ii. virg' et dimidiam--i. 194
hidam et dimidiam virg'. (_a_) 2.
fo. 103 (_a_) 1: dimidiam ii.^{as} virg' et dimidiam--i. 198
hidam et dimidiam virg'. (_a_) 2.
fo. 103 (_b_) 1: i. hida et i. hida et ii. virg' et dimidiam--
dimidia et dimidia virg'. i. 190 (_a_) 2.
fo. 103 (_b_) 2: i. hida et i. hida et iii. virg'--i. 198
dimidia et i. virg'. (_b_) 1.
fo. 106 (_b_) 2: iiii. hidæ iv. hidæ et iii. virg'--i. 200
et dimidia et una virg'. (_b_) 1.
fo. 112 (_a_) 2: xi. hidæ i. x. hidæ et iii. virg--i. 192
virg' minus. (_b_) 1.
These are only some of the passages of _direct_ glossarial value.[72]
Indirectly, that is to say by analysis of the township assessments,
we obtain the same result throughout the survey _passim_.[73] Here,
again, we are able to assert that two virgates must have been to the
scribes as obviously equivalent to half a hide as ten shillings with
us are equivalent to half a sovereign. For here, again, the point is
that these scribes had no knowledge of the varying circumstances of
each locality. They had nothing to guide them but the return itself,
so that the rule, in Domesday, of 'four virgates to a hide' must have
been of universal application.
But not only were there thus, in Domesday, four virgates to a hide;
there were also in the Domesday virgate thirty Domesday acres. Mr
Eyton, though perhaps unrivalled in the study he has bestowed on the
subject, believed that there were only twelve such acres, of which,
therefore, forty-eight composed the Domesday hide.[74] It is, perhaps,
the most important information to be derived from the I.C.C. that _a
hundred and twenty_ Domesday acres composed the Domesday hide.[75]
We have the following direct statements:
_I.C.C._ _D.B._
fo. 105 (_b_) 2: 'una virg' i. 202 (_b_) 1: 'In dominio
et x. acre in dominio'. dimidia hida xx. acras minus.'
fo. iii. (_a_) 1: 'tenet i. 193 (_b_) 1: 'tenet comes
Rogerus comes xx. acras.' ii. partes unius virg'.'
If 20 acres were identical with two-thirds of a virgate, there must,
in a whole virgate, have been 30 acres; and if a virgate, _plus_ 10
acres, was equivalent to half a hide minus 20 acres, we have again
a virgate of thirty, and a hide of 120 acres. But the conclusion I
uphold will be found to rest on no isolated facts. It is based on
a careful analysis of the _Inquisitio_ throughout. Here are some
striking examples:
fo. 92 (_b_) 1. 'Belesham pro x. hidis se defendit.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Abbot of Ely 9 0 0
Hardwin 80
'Almar' 40
-- -- --
10 0 0
fo. 99 (_b_) 1: 'tenet hardeuuinus de scal' vi. hidas et i. virgam et
vii. acras de rege.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Ely Abbey 2-1/2 0 9 \
7 Sokemen 1-1/2 0 6 }
3 Sokemen 1/2 0 0 } T.R.E.
'Alsi' 1/2 0 0 }
2 Sokemen 1 7 }
5 Sokemen 3-1/2 0 /
----- ----- ----
6 1 7
fo. 79 (a) 2: 'Suafham pro x. hidis se defendit.'
_H._ _V._ _ A._
Hugh de Bolebec 7-1/2 0 10
Geoffrey 1 3 0
Aubrey de Ver 1/2 0 20
----- -- --
10 0 0
fo. 90 (_a_) 'choeie et stoua pro x. hidis se defenderunt.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Odo 1 0 0
Reginald 1/2 0 20[76]
Picot (1) 3 3 0
Picot (2) 4-1/2 0 10
----- -- -----
10 0 0
fo. 96 (_a_) 2: 'Pampeswrda pro v. hidis et xxii. acris se defendit.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Abbot of Ely 2 3-1/2 0
Two Knights 1 0 22
Ralf 'de scannis' 3 0
Hardwin 10
Picot 5
Hardwin 1/2[77] 0
A priest 1/2 0
----- ----- -----
5 0 22
fo. 107 (_a_) 2: 'Barentona pro x. hidis se defendit.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Robert Gernon 7 1-1/2[78] 0
Chatteris Abbey 2 0 0
Ralf 20
Walter fitz Aubrey 40
Picot 1/2 0
----- ----- ----
10 0 0
fo. 108 (_a_) 2: 'Oreuuella pro iiii. hidis se defendit.'
_H._ _V._ _A._
Earl Roger 1 1-1/3 0
Durand 3-1/3 0
'Sigar' 1-1/3 0
Picot 3-1/4 5
Walter fitz Aubrey 1 0
Robert 1 0
Ralf 'de bans' 1/3 0[79]
Chatteris Abbey 1/4 0[79]
--- ------ ---
4 0 0
This last example is, perhaps, the most remarkable of all, in the
accuracy with which the virgates and their fractions, by the help of
the five acres, combine to give us the required total.
But, it may be asked, how far does the _Inquisitio_, as a whole,
confirm this conclusion? In order to reply to this inquiry, I have
analysed every one of the Manors it contains. The result of that
analysis has been that of the ninety-four townships which the
fragment includes (not counting 'Matingeleia', of which the account is
imperfect) there are only fifteen cases in which my calculation does
not hold good, that is to say, in which the constituents as given
do not equal the total assessment when we add them up on the above
hypothesis of thirty acres to the virgate, and four virgates to the
hide. This number, however, would be considerably larger if we had to
work only from D.B., or only from the I.C.C. But as each of these, in
several cases, corrects the errors of the other, the total of apparent
exceptions is thus reduced. Hence I contend that if we could only
get a really perfect return, the remaining apparent exceptions would
largely disappear.
In some of these exceptions the discrepancy is trifling. Thus,
at Triplow, we have 2 acres in excess of the 8 hide assessment--a
discrepancy of 1/480. At 'Burch and Weslai' we have a deficit of 5
acres on 10 hides, that is 1/240. At 'Scelforda' the figures of
D.B. give us an excess of 7 acres on the 20 hide assessment, that is
7/2400. The I.C.C. figures make the excess to be 12 acres.
Another class of exceptions is accounted for by the tendency of both
texts, as we have seen, to enter a virgate too much or too little, and
to confuse virgates with their fractions. Thus at 'Litlingetona'
our figures give us a virgate in excess of the assessment, while at
'Bercheham'[80] and again at 'Witlesforde' we have a virgate short
of the amount. At 'Herlestona' we have, similarly, half a virgate too
much, and 'Kingestona' half a virgate (15 acres) too little. Lastly,
at 'Wicheham', the aggregate of the figures is a quarter of a virgate
short of the amount.
A third class of these exceptions is due to the frequent omission
in the I.C.C. of estates belonging to the king. Thus at Wilbraham it
records an assessment of 10 hides represented only by two estates of
four hides apiece. But on turning to Domesday (i. 189 _b_) we read:
'Wilborham dominica villa regis est. Ibi ii. hidæ.' The missing factor
is thus supplied, and the apparent discrepancy disposed of. So, too,
at 'Haslingefelda' (Haslingfield), where the I.C.C. accounts only for
twelve hides and three virgates out of an assessment of twenty hides.
Domesday here, again, supplies the missing factor in a royal Manor of
seven hides and a virgate. We thus obtain, instead of an exception, a
fresh illustration of our rule.
_Haslingfield_
_H._ _V._ _A._
Rex 7 1
Picot 4 3
Count Alan 1 1/2
The same 1/2
Geoffrey de Mandeville 5
Guy de Raimberccurt 1 1 3
Count Alan 12
---- ----- ----
20 0 0
Domesday omits altogether, so far as I can find, the holding of Guy,
an omission which would upset the whole calculation. But, in the
case of Isleham, the apparent exception is due to the I.C.C., not to
Domesday Book. Its assessment, in that document, is given as four
hides. But the aggregate of its Manors, as there recorded, gives us
an assessment of three hides _plus_ eighty acres. Here any one who was
rash enough to argue from a single instance (as Mr Eyton and Mr Pell
were too apt to do) might jump at the conclusion that the hide must
here have been of eighty acres. Yet Domesday enables us to collect
all the constituents of the 'Vill', among them the king's estate, here
again omitted. The real figures, therefore, were these:
_H._ _V._ _A._ _D.B._
The King 6 0 40 i. 189 _b._
Bishop of Rochester 1-1/2 0 20 i. 190 _b._
Hugh de Port 1-1/2 0 20 i. 199 _a._
Earl Alan 40 i. 195 _b._
----- --- ----
10 0 0
Isleham, then, was a normal ten-hide township, and confirms, instead
of rebutting, the rule that the geldable hide contained 120 acres.[81]
The remaining exceptions are 'Somm[er]tona' partly explained by the
omission of _terra Regis_, 'Bathburgeham' (Babraham) with 21 acres
short of an assessment of 7 hides, and Carlton, which fitly closes the
list of these exceptions. For here, on an assessment of 10 hides, we
have, according to the I.C.C., 27 acres short, but, according to D.B.,
53-1/2 (27 + 20 + 6-1/2). A demonstrable blunder in Domesday Book and a
discrepancy between it and the I.C.C. are responsible, together, for
the difference.[82] Thus we see how wide a margin should be allowed,
in these calculations, for textual error.
It is necessary to remember that there were three processes, in each
one of which error might arise:
I. In the actual survey and its returns, 'by reason of the
insignificance of some estates, or by reason of forgetfulness, or
inaccuracy, or confusion, or doubt on the part of local jurors and
witnesses, or of the clerks who indited their statements'.[83]
II. In the collection and transmission of the returns, by the loss of
a 'leaflet or rotulet of the commissioners' work'.[84]
III. In the transcription of the returns into D.B., or into the
I.C.C., _plus_, in the case of the former, the rearrangement and
abridgment of the materials.
We may now quit this part of our subject, claiming to have settled,
by the aid of the I.C.C., a problem which has puzzled generations of
antiquaries, namely: 'What was the Domesday hide?'[85] We have shown
that it denoted a measure of assessment composed of four (geld)
virgates or a hundred and twenty (geld) acres. What relation, if any,
it bore to _area_ and to _value_ is a question wholly distinct, on
which the next portion of this essay may throw quite a new light.
VI. THE FIVE-HIDE UNIT
It is one of the distinctive and valuable features of the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ that it gives us the total assessment for each Vill of which
it treats before recording the several Manors of which that Vill is
composed, the aggregate assessments of which Manors make up the total
assessment for the Vill. In this feature we have something which
Domesday does not contain, and which (independently of its checking
value),[86] gives us at once those Vill assessments which we could
only extract from the Domesday entries by great labour and with much
uncertainty. Let us see then if these Vill assessments lead us to any
new conclusions on the whole assessment system.
The first point that we notice is this. The _five-hide unit_ is
brought into startling prominence. No careful student, one would
suppose, of Domesday, can have failed to be struck by the singular
number of Manors in the hidated portion of the realm, which are
assessed in terms of the five-hide unit, that is to say, which are
entered as of five hides or some multiple of five hides. This is
specially the case with towns, and some years ago, in one of my
earliest essays, I called attention to the fact, and explained its
bearing in connection with the unit of military service.[87] Yet no
one, it would seem, has been struck by the fact, or has seen that
there must be some significance in this singular preponderance of
five-hide Manors. Now what the _Inquisitio_ here does for us is to
show us that this preponderance is infinitely greater than we should
gather from the pages of Domesday, and that when the scattered Manors
are pieced together in their Vills, the aggregate of their assessments
generally amounts either to five hides or to a multiple of the
five-hide unit. Thus the rural townships are brought into line with
towns, and we learn that in both the assessment was based on the
_five-hide unit_.
Let us now take a typical Hundred and test this theory in practice:
HUNDRED OF STAINES
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 11-17)
_Vill._ _Hides_ _Ploughlands_ _Valets_
(T.R.E.)
Bottisham 10 20 £16 0 0
Swaffham (1) 10 16 11 10 0
Swaffham (2) 10 13-1/4 12 10 0
Wilbraham 10 17 20 0 0
Stow-cum-Quy 10 11 14 10 0
-- ------ ------------
50 77-1/4 £74 10 0
Here we have five Vills varying in area from eleven ploughlands to
twenty, and in value T.R.E., from £11 10s to £20, all assessed alike
at ten hides each. What is the meaning of it? Simply that ASSESSMENT
BORE NO RATIO TO AREA OR TO VALUE in a Vill, and still less in a
Manor.
Assessment was not objective, but subjective; it was not fixed
relatively to area or to value, but to the five-hide unit. The aim of
the assessors was clearly to arrange the assessment in sums of five
hides, ten hides, etc.
Take now the next Hundred in the _Inq. Com. Cant._:
HUNDRED OF RADFIELD
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 17-25)
_Hides_ _Ploughlands_ _Valets_
(T.R.E.)
Dullingham 10 16 £19 5 0
Stetchworth 10 13-1/4 12 15 0
Borough Green
and Westley 10 17 17 1 4
Carlton 10 19-1/2 18 10 0
Weston 10 19-1/4 13 15 0
Wratting 10 15-3/4 8 8 0
Balsham 10 20 12 13 4
-- ------- -------------
70 120-3/4 £102 7 8
Here again we have seven Vills varying in area from thirteen and a
quarter ploughlands to twenty, and in value from £8 8s to £19 5s, all
uniformly assessed at ten hides each. The thing speaks for itself. Had
the hidation in these two Hundreds been dependent on area or value,
the assessments would have varied infinitely. As it is, there is for
each Vill but one and the same assessment.
Note further that the I.C.C. enables us to localize holdings the
locality of which is unnamed in Domesday: also, that it shows us
how certain Vills were combined for the purpose of assessment. Thus
Borough Green and Westley are treated in Domesday as distinct, but
here we find that they were assessed together as a ten-hide block.
By this means we are enabled to see how the five-hide system could be
traced further still if we had in other districts the same means of
learning how two or three Vills were thus grouped together.
We may now take a step in advance, and pass to the Hundred of
Whittlesford.
HUNDRED OF WHITTLESFORD
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 38-43)
_Hides_ _Ploughlands_ _Valets_
(T.R.E.)
Whittlesford 12 } 20 11 } 20 £15 2 0 } £34 2 0
Sawston 8 } 9 } 19 0 0 }
Hinxton 20 16 20 10 0
Icklington 20 24-1/2 24 5 0
Duxford 20 20-1/4 27 5 0
-- ------ ---------
80 80-3/4 £106 2 0
Here we are left to discover for ourselves that Whittlesford and
Sawston were grouped together to form a twenty-hide block. And on
turning from the above figures to the map we find the discovery
verified, these two Vills jointly occupying the northern portion of
the hundred. Thus, this hundred, instead of being divided like its
two predecessors into ten-hide blocks, was assessed in four blocks of
twenty hides each, each of them representing one of those quarters so
dear to the Anglo-Saxon mind (_virgata_, etc.), and lying respectively
in the north, south, east and west of the district. Proceeding on the
lines of this discovery, we come to the Hundred of Wetherley, which
carries us a step further.
HUNDRED OF WETHERLEY
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 68-83)
_Hides_ _Ploughlands_
Comberton 6} 7 }
Barton 7} 20 12 } 32
Grantchester 7} 13 }
Haslingfield 20 22[88]
Harlton 5} 7 }
Barrington 10} 20 15-3/8 } 27-7/8
Shepreth 5} 5-1/2 }
Ordwell 4} 5-5/16}
Wratworth 4} 5-3/8 }
Whitwell 4} 20 5 } 29-3/16
Wimpole 4} 5 }
Arrington 4} 8-1/2 }
-- --------
80 111-1/16
It is important to observe that, though the grouping is my own, the
_order_ of the Vills is exactly that which is given in the _Inq. Com.
Cant._, and by that order the grouping is confirmed. Note also how,
without such grouping, we should have but a chaos of Vills, whereas,
by its aid, from this chaos is evolved perfect symmetry. Lastly,
glance at the four 'quarters' and see how variously they are
subdivided.
Advancing still on the same lines, we approach the very remarkable
case of the adjoining Hundred of Long Stow.
Now it is necessary to explain at the outset that, the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ being here imperfect, it only gives us the first two of the
above 'quarters', its evidence ending with Bourne. But, by good
fortune, it is possible to reconstruct from Domesday alone the
remaining half of the Hundred, and thus to obtain the most valuable
example of the system we are engaged in tracing that we have yet met
with. The grouping I have adopted is based on the figures, but in some
cases it is obvious from the map: Eltisley and Croxton, for instance,
which form a ten-hide block, occupy a projecting portion of the county
all to themselves, while Caxton adjoins them.
HUNDRED OF LONGSTOW
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 83-89)
_Hides_ _Ploughlands_
Eversden 8-1/3} 13-3/8 }
Kingston 8-1/3} 25 8-9/16 } 38-1/16
Toft and Hardwick 8-1/3} 16-1/8 }
Grandsen 5 } 25 9 }
Bourne 20 } [23 } 32-1/2
Gamlingay 20}
}
Hatley 4-1/4} 5} 25
[Unnamed] 3/4} }
Croxton 7 } }
Eltisley 3 } 10}
}
Caxton 10} 25
}
Caldecot 1-3/4} }
Long Stow 3-1/4} 5}
--------
100
Several points are here noticeable. Observe, in the first place, how
the twenty-five hide 'quarter' which heads the list is divided
into three _equal_ blocks of 8-1/3 hides each, just as we found in
Wetherley Hundred that one of the twenty-hide 'quarters' was divided
into five _equal_ blocks of four hides each. In these cases the same
principle of simple equal division was applied to the quarter hundred
as we saw applied to the whole hundred in the first two cases we
studied--the Hundreds of Staines and of Radfield. Notice next how
the two Vills of Toft and Hardwick, which are separately surveyed in
Domesday under their respective names, are found from the _Inq. Com.
Cant._ to have combined (under the name of 'Toft') in a block of
8-1/3 hides. Lastly, it should not be overlooked that the 3/4 hide not
localized in Domesday fits in exactly with Hatley to complete its five
hides.
The chase now becomes exciting: it can no longer be doubted that we
are well on the track of a vast system of artificial hidation, of
which the very existence has been hitherto unsuspected. Let us see
what further light can be thrown by research on its nature.
On looking back at the evidence I have collected, one is struck,
surely, by the thought that the system of assessment seems to work,
not as is supposed, _up from_, but _down to_ the Manor. Can it be
possible that what was really assessed was not the Manor, nor even the
Vill, but the Hundred as a whole? This view is so revolutionary, so
subversive of all that has ever been written on the subject, that it
cannot be answered off-hand. We will therefore begin by examining the
case of the Hundred of Erningford, which introduces us to a further
phenomenon, the _reduction_ of assessment.
HUNDRED OF ERNINGFORD
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 51-68)
_Hides_ _Ploughlands_
T.R.E. T.R.W.
Morden (1) 10 8 20
Tadlow 5 4 10-1/2
Morden (2) 5 4 10-3/4
Clopton 5 4 7
Hatley 5 4 7
Croydon 10 8 11-1/2
Wendy 5 4 6-3/4
Shingay 5 4 6
Litlington 5 4 11
Abington 5 4 3-3/4
Bassingburne 10 8 22
Whaddon 10 8 14-3/4
Meldreth 10 8 20-1/2
Melbourne 10 8 19-1/2
--- -- -------
100 80 171
Here we have, as in the last instance, a Hundred of exactly a hundred
hides (assessment). But we are confronted with a new problem, that of
reduction. Before we form any conclusions, it is important to explain
that this problem can only be studied by the aid of the _Inq. Com.
Cant._, for the evidence both of Domesday and of the _Inq. El._ is
distinctly misleading. Reduction of assessment is only recorded in
these two documents when the Manor is identical with the Vill. In
cases where the Vill contains two or more Manors, the Vill is not
entered as a whole, and consequently the reduction on the assessment
of that Vill as a whole is not entered at all.
After this explanation I pass to the case of the above Hundred, in
which the evidence on the reduction is fortunately perfect. The first
point to be noticed is that in four out of the five Hundreds that we
have as yet examined, there is not a single instance of reduction,
whereas here, on the contrary, the assessment is reduced in every Vill
throughout the Hundred. That is to say, the reduction is _conterminous
with the Hundred_. Cross its border into the Hundred of Wetherley,
or of Triplow, and in neither district will you find a trace of
reduction. Observe next that the reduction is _uniform_ throughout the
whole, being 20 per cent in every instance. Now what is the inevitable
conclusion from the _data_ thus afforded? Obviously that the reduction
was made on the assessment of the Hundred _as a whole_, and that this
reduction was distributed among its several Vills _pro rata_.[89]
Further research confirms the conclusion that these reductions were
systematically made on _Hundreds_, not on Vills. There is a well
defined belt, or rather crescent, of Hundreds, in all of which the
assessment is reduced. They follow one another on the map in this
order: Erningford, Long Stow, Papworth, North Stow, Staplehow, and
Cheveley. Within this crescent there lies a compact block of Hundreds,
in no one of which has a single assessment been reduced. They are
Triplow, Wetherley (? Cambridge[90]), Flendish, Staines, Radfield,
Chilford and Whittlesford. Beyond the crescent there lie 'the two
Hundreds of Ely', in which, so far as our evidence goes, there would
seem to have been similarly no reduction. As the two horns of the
crescent, so to speak, are the Hundreds of Erningford and Cheveley, we
will now glance at the latter, and compare the evidence of the two.
HUNDRED OF CHEVELEY
(_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 9-11)
_Hides_
T.R.E. T.R.W. _Ploughlands_
Silverley 6-1/2} 4} 8}
Ashley 3-1/2} 10 2} 6 4} 12
Saxon Street 5 3 7[93]
Ditton 5 3[92] (or 4) 10
Ditton 10 1 16
Kirtling 10 6 21
Cheveley 10[91]
--
50
As a preliminary point, attention may be called to the fact that
the grouping of Ashley and Silverley, although they are surveyed
separately in the _Inq. Com. Cant._, is justified by their forming,
as 'Ashley-cum-Silverley' a single parish. So too, Saxon Street may be
safely combined with Ditton, in which it is actually situate. We thus
have a Hundred of fifty hides divided into five blocks of ten hides
each, and thus presenting a precise parallel to the Hundred of
Staines, the first that we examined.
And now for the reductions. As the Vill of Cheveley, unluckily, is
nowhere surveyed as a whole, we have in its case no evidence. But of
the five remaining Vills above (counting Ashley-cum-Silverley as one),
four we see had had their assessments reduced on a _uniform_
scale, just as in the Hundred of Long Stow. Now this is a singular
circumstance, and it leads me to this conclusion. I believe that,
precisely as in the latter case, the assessment of the Hundred _as
a whole_ was reduced by twenty hides. This was equivalent to 40 per
cent, which was accordingly knocked off from the assessment of each
of its constituent Vills. One of the Dittons is clearly an exception,
having nine hides, not four, thus knocked off. I would suggest, as the
reason for this exception, that Ditton having now become a 'dominica
villa regis' (_Inq. Com. Cant._, p. 10), was specially favoured by
having a five-hide unit further knocked off its assessment, just as in
the case of Chippenham (_Ibid._, p. 2).[94]
It has been my object in the above argument to recall attention to the
corporate character, the _solidarité_ of the Hundred. This character,
of which the traces are preserved in its collective responsibility,
even now, for damages caused by riot, strongly favours the view which
I am here bringing forward, that it was the Hundred itself which was
assessed for geld, and which was held responsible for its payment.
Although this view is absolutely novel, and indeed destructive of the
accepted belief, it is in complete harmony with the general principle
enunciated by Dr Stubbs, and is a further proof of the confirmation
which his views often obtain from research and discovery. Treating of
'the Hundred as an area for rating', he writes thus:
There can be no doubt that the organization of the Hundred had
a fiscal importance, not merely as furnishing the profits of
fines and the produce of demesne or folkland, but as forming a
rateable division of the county.[95]
Now there are several circumstances which undoubtedly point to my
own conclusion. We know from the _Inq. Com. Cant._, that the Domesday
Commissioners held their inquiry in the Court of each Hundred, and had
for jurors the men of that Hundred. Now if the Hundred, as I suggest,
was assessed for geld as a whole, its representatives would be clearly
the parties most interested in seeing that each Vill or Manor was
debited with its correct share of the general liability. Again we
know from the _Inquisitio Geldi_ that the geld was collected and
paid through the machinery of the Hundred; and its collectors, in
Devonshire, are 'Hundremanni'. The Hundred, in fact, was the unit for
the purpose.[96] Further, we have testimony to the same effect in the
survey of East Anglia. But as that survey stands by itself, it must
have separate treatment.[97]
I need not further discuss the collective liability of the Hundred,
having already shown in my 'Danegeld' paper how many allusions to it
are to be found in Domesday in the case of urban 'Hundreds'.[98] It
is only necessary here to add, as a corollary of this conclusion, that
the assessment of a single Manor could not be reduced by the Crown
without the amount of that reduction falling upon the rest of
the Hundred. Either therefore, that amount must have been allowed
('computatum') to the local collector as were _terræ datæ_ to the
sheriff, or (which came to the same thing) the assessment on the
Hundred must have been reduced _pro tanto_.
I now proceed to apply my theory that the Hundreds themselves were
first assessed, and that such assessments were multiples of the
five-hide unit.
We are enabled from the _Inq. Com. Cant._, to determine the
assessments of eleven Hundreds.[99] Nine out of these eleven Hundreds
prove to have been assessed as follows:
_Hides_
Erningford 100
Long Stow 100
Triplow 90
Staplehow 90[100]
Whittlesford 80
Wetherley 80
Radfield 70
Cheveley 50
Staines 50
This list speaks for itself, but it may be as well to point out how
convenient for the Treasury was this system. At the normal Danegeld
rate of two shillings on the hide, an assessment of fifty hides would
represent £5, one hundred hides £10, and so on.
Can we discover in other counties traces of this same system? Let us
first take the adjacent county of Bedfordshire.
I am anxious to explain that for the means of utilizing the
Bedfordshire evidence I am entirely indebted to the _Digest of the
Domesday of Bedfordshire_ by the late Rev. William Airy (edited by his
son, the Rev. B. R. Airy[101]). It was, most happily, pointed out
to the author by the Rev. Joseph Hunter 'that what we want is not
translations but analyses of the surveys of the several counties' (p.
viii). To this most true remark we owe it that Mr Airy resolved to
give us a 'digest' instead of that usual 'extension and translation',
which is perfectly useless to the Domesday student. It is easy to
take from the record itself such an instance as these Beauchamp
Manors entered in succession (213): Willington 10 hides, Stotford 15;
'Houstone' 5, Hawnes 5, 'Salchou' 5, Aspley 10, Salford 5; but it is
only Mr Airy's work that enables us to reconstruct the townships, and
to show how fractions--apparently meaningless--fit in, exactly as in
Cambridgeshire, with one another. His work is all the more valuable
from the fact that he had no theory to prove, and did not even add
together the factors he had ascertained. His figures therefore are
absolutely free from the suspicion that always attaches to those
adduced to prove a case.
_Risely_ _Tempsford_ _Wymington_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _ V._ _H._ _V._
7 0 1 1-3/4 0 3
1 0 1 1 3 0
1/2 0 4 1 4 0
1/2 0 2 0 1/2 0
1 0 1 1/4 0 3
1 0
------------ ------------ ------------
10 0 10 0 10 0
_Cople_ _Eversholt_ _Clophill_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
4 0 2 0 5 0
5 3 7-1/2 0 4 0
0 1 1/2 0 1 0
------------ ------------ ------------
10 0 10 0 10 0
_Northill_ _Portsgrove_ _Chicksand_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
1-1/2 0 1 0 1/2 0
1-1/2 0 7-1/2 0 3-1/2 0
1/2 0 1 0 3 0
6-1/2 0 1/2 0 1 0
------------ ------------ ------------
10 0 10 0 10 0
_Eyeworth_ _Holwell_ _Odell_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _ V._
9 0 3-1/2 0 4-1/2 1/3
1 0 6-1/2 0 5 1-2/3
------------ ------------ ------------
10 0 10 0 10 0
_Pavenham_ _Houghton Conquest_ _Dean_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
2-1/2 0 5 0 4 0
5 0 1/2 0 2 1/2
2-1/2 0 4-1/2 0 2 7-1/4
0 1/2
------------- ------------- -------------
10 0 10 0 10 0-1/4
Of these fifteen ten-hide townships, the last is selected as an
instance of those slight discrepancies which creep in so easily and
which account for many apparent exceptions to the rule. Passing to
other multiples of the five-hide unit we have:
_Oakley_ _Thurleigh_ _Blunham_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
4 0 0 1 4 1
1 0 1/2 0 0 1
1/2 0 1/2 0
0 1 10 0
3 0
1/2 0
------------- ------------- -------------
5 0 5 0 15 0
_Marston_ _Roxton_ _Dunton_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
{ 2 (less 1/2 virg.) 1 1 { 8 1
10{ 8 (plus 1/2 virg.) 0 4 10{ 1 3
{ 1 1 1 { 5 0
{ 1/2 7-1/2 1 10{ 4-1/2 0
5{ 3 8 3 { 1/2 0
{ 1/2
------------- ------------- ---------------
15 0 20 0 20 0
I now give three illustrations of slight discrepancies:
_Streatley_ _Sutton_ _Eaton Socon_
_H._ _V._ _H._ _V._ _H._ _V._
1 0 { 0 3 20 0
4 1 { 1 0 6 3
4-1/3 0 5{ 1-1/2 0 0 1-1/2
0 2/3 { 1/2 0 0 1/2
0 2/3 { 0 3-1/2 9 1
{ 0 1-1/2 0 5-1/2
2 0 2 1/2
0 3 0 1
1/2 0
0 1-1/2
1 0
------------- ------------- -------------
9 3-2/3 9 0-1/2 40 1
In the first case there is a deficiency of 1/120, and in the second of
7/80, while in the third we find an excess of 1/160. No one can doubt
that these were really ten-hide, ten-hide, and forty-hide townships.
We have to allow, in the first place, for trivial slips, and in the
second for possible errors in the baffling work of identification
at the present day. One can hardly doubt that if a student with the
requisite local knowledge set himself to reconstruct, according
to Hundreds, the Bedfordshire Domesday, he would find, as in
Cambridgeshire, that even where a township was not assessed in terms
of the five-hide unit, it was combined in an adjacent one in such an
assessment.
We will now cross the border into Huntingdonshire, and enter the great
Hundred of Hurstingston. This, which may be described as a _double_
Hundred, was assessed, Domesday implies, at 200 hides. Quartering this
total, on the Cambridgeshire system, we obtain fifty hides, and this
quarter was the assessment allotted to the borough of Huntingdon.[102]
The total assessment of the Hundred was thus accounted for:
_Hides_
Huntingdon 50
St. Ives (Slepe) 20
Hartford 15
Spaldwick 15
Stukeley 10
Abbots Ripton 10
Upwood 10
Warboys 10
Calne 6 }
Bluntisham 6-1/2 } 20-1/2[103]
Somersham 8 }
Wistow[104] 9
Holywell 9
Houghton 7
Wyton 7
Broughton 4
Catworth 4[105]
--------
200-1/2
Passing on into Northamptonshire, we come to that most curious
document, which I shall discuss below (_see_ p. 124), and which was
printed by Ellis (_Introduction to Domesday_, i. 187 _et seq._).
Ellis, however, can scarcely have read his own document, for he
speaks of it as a list 'in which every Hundred is made to consist of
a _hundred hides_'.[106] This extraordinary assertion has completely
misled Dr Stubbs, who writes:
The document given by Ellis as showing that the Hundreds of
Northampton each contained a hundred hides seems to be a mere
attempt of an early scribe to force them into symmetry.[107]
It is greatly to be wished that some one with the requisite local
knowledge should take this list in hand and work out its details
thoroughly. In capable hands it should prove a record of the highest
interest. For the present I will only point out that its contents are
in complete harmony with the results that I obtained on the Hundred in
Cambridgeshire; for it gives us Hundreds assessed at 150 (four), 100
(nine), 90 (two), 80 (four), 60 (one), and 40 (one) hides, with a
small minority of odd numbers. This list throws further light on the
institution of the Hundred by its recognition of 'double' and 'half'
Hundreds. Note also in this connection the preference for 100-hide
and fifty-hide assessments, which here amount to thirteen out of the
twenty instances above, and in Cambridgeshire to four out of nine.
These signs of an endeavour to force such assessments into terms of a
fifty-hide unit will be dealt with below.[108]
In Hertfordshire, as indeed in other counties, there is great need for
that local research which alone can identify and group the Domesday
holdings. So far as single Vills are concerned, Bengeo affords a
good illustration of the way in which scattered fractions work out in
combination.
_H._ _V._
Count Alan 0 1
Hugh de Beauchamp 6 0
Geoffrey de Mandeville 3 1
{ 5 1
{ 6-1/2 0
Geoffrey de Bech { 1 1-1/2
{ 0 5-1/2
{ 0 3-1/2
Peter de Valognes 0 1/2
-----------------
25 0
If we now push on to Worcestershire, we find a striking case in
the Hundred (or rather the triple Hundred[109]) of Oswaldslow. Its
assessment was 300 hides;[110] and I am able to assert that of these
we can account for 299, and that it contained Manors of 50, 40, 35,
25 (two), and 15 hides.[111] We have also, in this county, the case of
the Hundred of Fishborough, made up to 100 hides, and remarkable for
including in this total the fifteen hides at which Worcester itself
was assessed. The special value of this and of the Huntingdon
instances lies in its placing the assessments of a borough on all
fours with the assessment of a rural Manor, as a mere factor in the
assessment of a rural Hundred. By thus combining town and country it
shows us that the assessments of both were part of the same general
system. This is a point of great importance.
This case of the Hundred of Fishborough is, however, peculiar. The
entry, which was prominently quoted by Ellis (who failed to see its
true significance), is this:
In Fisseberge hundred habet æcclesia de Euesham lxv. hidæ. Ex
his xii. hidæ sunt liberæ. In illo Hundredo jacent xx. hidæ de
dodentreu. et xv. hidæ de Wircecestre perficiunt hundred.[112]
Now this entry is purely incidental, and its real meaning is this.
In the true Hundred of Fishborough (adjoining Evesham on the east),
Evesham Abbey held sixty-five hides (assessed value), of which
twelve were exempted from payment of geld, a statement which can be
absolutely verified from the details given. To this aggregate was
added the fifteen hides of Worcester (though in another part of
the county), together with twenty hides of the distant _Hundred_ of
Doddentree. A total of 100 hides was that arrived at. Now the Hundred
of Doddentree had itself made up to about 120 hides,[113] by
the addition of eighteen hides, which belonged to Hertford as to
'firma'.[114] A reduction, therefore, of twenty hides suggests a
complicated process of levelling the local Hundreds, which may remind
us how large a margin must be allowed for these arrangements.
Before leaving Worcestershire, attention should be called to the great
Manor of Pershore, which Westminster Abbey held for 200 hides, and
to the 100 hides connected therewith under the heading 'Terra sanctæ
Mariæ de Persore'.
In Somerset we find some good instances, with the help of Mr Eyton's
analyses.
HUNDRED OF CREWKERNE
Merriott (5 + 7) 12}
Seaborough (1-1/2 + 1-1/2) 3} 15
Hinton St. George 13}
In Crewkerne 12} 25
--
40
HUNDRED OF WHITSTONE
East Pennard (19 + 1) 20
Baltonsborough 5
Doulting (14 + 3-1/4 + 2-3/4) 20
Batcombe (10-1/4 + 2 + 7-3/4) 20
Ditcheat (5 + 5-1/2 + 6-1/2 + 5-1/2 + 1 + 7) 30-1/2
Pilton (6-1/2 + 3 + 5 + 5 + 2) 21-1/2
Stoke St. Michael 3
----
120
There are also abundant cases of _Manors_ which work out similarly
such as Walton and its group (4-1/2 + 5 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 2-1/2 = 20),
Butleigh (7-1/2 + 8 + 2 + 1/2 + 2 = 20). Again, in the Hundred of
Frome we find eight Manors (Camerton, Englishcombe, Charterhouse
Hinton, Norton St Philip, Corston, Beckington, Cloford, and Laverton),
assessed at ten hides each, in addition to divided Manors, such as
Road (9 + 1), and Tiverton (7-1/2 + 2-1/2).[115]
We will now pass to Devon and examine the assessments of its Hundreds.
Of these thirty-one are entered in the _Inquisitio Geldi_. Now, as
four virgates went to the hide, such assessments as 25-3/4, 9-1/4
hides, show us that the simple doctrine of probability is in favour of
only one Hundred in every twenty proving to be assessed in multiples
of the five-hide unit. Yet we find that those so assessed form an
absolute majority of the whole. When classified, they run thus--50
(four), 40 (one), 30 (two), 25 (four), 20 (five): total, 16 Hundreds.
It will at once be observed that these assessments are, as nearly as
possible, on one half the scale of those we met with in Cambridgeshire
and Northamptonshire. But this must be taken in conjunction with the
fact that the Devon and Cornwall assessments are altogether peculiar.
'In Devon and Cornwall, where the scope of the gheld-hide was
enormous, it was necessary to introduce another quantity, intermediate
between the virgate and the acre. This was the Ferndel or Ferdingdel,
to wit, the fourth part of the next superior denomination, the fourth
part of the virgate.'[116] One might at first sight be tempted to
suggest that the hide was in these two counties a term of higher
denomination when we find Manor after Manor assessed at a fraction
of a hide, while in Cornwall the 'acra terræ' was clearly a peculiar
measure.[117] Yet in some Manors adjacent to Exeter or to the
neighbouring coast the assessment is much less abnormally low, though
even there moderate. There is much scope, here also, for intelligent
local research, although we may conclude, from the evidence of the
Pipe Rolls, that the hide represented the same unit here as elsewhere,
as it would seem did the Devonshire Hundred, in spite of its
singularly low average assessment. Indeed, it represented a larger,
not a smaller, area than usual. I shall deal with this phenomenon
below, and endeavour to explain its significance. For the present it
is only necessary to insist on the evidence that the Hundreds afford
of assessment on the five-hide system.
Indeed, though I definitely advance the suggestion that the assessment
was, in the first instance, laid upon the Hundred itself, and that
the subsequent assessment of its Vills and Manors was arrived at by
division and subdivision, the truth or falsehood of this theory in no
way affects the indisputable phenomenon of the five-hide unit. On the
prominence of that unit I take my stand as absolute proof that the
hide assessment was fixed _independently of area or value_, and that,
consequently, all the attempts that have been made by ingenious men
to discover and establish the relation which that assessment bore to
area, whether in Vill or Manor, have proved not only contradictory
among themselves, but, as was inevitable, vain.
The late Mr Eyton did much to destroy the old belief held by Kemble
and other well-known writers that the Domesday hide was an areal
measure and to substitute the sounder view that it was used as a
term of assessment, and Mr Chester Waters, in his _Survey of Lindsey_
(1883), claimed that the 'key to the puzzle' had been thus finally
discovered. Canon Taylor, on the other hand, at the Domesday
Commemoration (1886), claimed that if his own most ingenious theory
of the relation of the geld-carucate to area could be more generally
extended, 'many volumes of Domesday exposition, including, among
others, Mr Eyton's _Key to Domesday_, may be finally consigned _al
limbo dei bambini_'.[118] Mr Pell's theories--the inclusion of which
at enormous length in _Domesday Studies_[119] cannot be too deeply
regretted--require a passing notice. According to him, the Domesday
hide was virtually an areal term; but the interests of truth and of
historical research require, as to his confident calculations, very
plain speaking. Although I devoted to the investigation of Mr Pell's
theories a deplorable amount of time and labour,[120] I would rather
state the inevitable conclusion in the words of that sound scholar, Mr
W. H. Stevenson:
All the fanciful calculations that Mr Pell has based upon this
assumption, including his delicious 'Ready Reckoner', may be
safely left to slumber in oblivion by the Domesday student who
does not wish to waste his time.
The only abiding principle underlying Mr Pell's calculations
is that the figures in Domesday, or wherever found, have to
produce a certain total that Mr Pell has already fixed upon.
To do this, virgates may mean hides, carucates may mean
virgates, and, in short, anything may mean anything else.[121]
Although Mr Eyton also indulged in 'fanciful calculations', and
committed the fatal error of combining facts and fancies, he was at
least on the right track in discarding the notion that the Domesday
hide denoted a fixed area, and in treating it as a term of assessment.
At the same time, the acceptance of my theory that this assessment
was not determined by the real value of the Manor or Vill, but was
unconnected with it, would be, of course, destructive of all his
calculations.
The five-hide unit which lies at the root of my theory is found ever
to the front, turn where we will. In Oxon[122] we find entered in
succession the Bishop of Lincoln's Manors 90, 60, 40, 50, 50 hides,
while if we work through the southern extremity of the county (lying
south of Ewelme), following the bend of the Thames, we find the
assessments are as follows: Preston Crowmarsh, 5; Crowmarsh Gifford,
10; Newnham Murren, 10; Mongewell, 10; Ipsden, 5; North and South
Stoke, 20-1/4; Checkenden, 5; Goring, 20; Gethampton, 6-1/2;
Whitchurch, 10; Mapledurham, 10; Caversham, 20; Dunsden, 20; Bolney
(8) and Lashbrook (12) 20; Harpsden, 5; Rotherfield, 10; Badgemoor, 5;
Bix 5. So too on the western border we have in succession Churchill,
20; Kingham, 10; Foxcote (1) and Tilbury (14), 15; Lyneham, 10;
Fyfield, 5; Tainton, 10; Upton, 5; Burford (8) and Widford (2), 10;
Westwell, 5.[123]
Berkshire undoubtedly offers a fruitful sphere of study. On the one
hand, we have so large a proportion of Manors assessed at 5, 10, 15,
20 hides, and so forth as to strike the reader at once without special
research; on the other, we find these archaic assessments reduced
under the Conqueror in the most sweeping manner, and the old system
thus effaced. Fortunately for us in this case its existence is
recorded in the Domesday entries of the previous assessments. What is
here, as elsewhere, wanted is a thorough local analysis of the hidage,
Hundred by Hundred. For no county is such an analysis more urgently
needed.
In Bucks the Primate's three Manors are of 40, 5, 30 hides, while nine
Manors of Walter Giffard follow one another with these assessments:
20, 10, 10, 20, 3-1/2, 10, 5, 5, 10; and in Gloucestershire we are met
on every side by Manors of 5, 10, 15, 20 hides, and so on. In Surrey,
the Primate's six Manors are assessed at 30, 20, 80, 5, 20, 14 hides.
As a proof that this feature is in no way of my own creation, I will
take the Wiltshire Manors selected by Mr Pell for his tables. Seven
out of the eleven selected by him are five-hide assessments, being 5,
10, 20, 40, 20, 5, 10. The marvel is that any one can have failed to
observe the general occurrence of the fact.
In Middlesex the five-hide unit is peculiarly prominent. We have only
to glance at the pages of Domesday to be struck by such assessments
as Harrow (100 hides), Fulham (50 hides[124]), Isleworth (70 hides),
Harmondsworth (30 hides), while on folios 129B-130, we have seven
Manors in succession of which the assessments are 15, 35, 30, 30,
7-1/2, 15, 10, representing 3, 7, 6, 6, 1-1/2, 3, 2, multiples of the
five-hide unit. But, here again, conspicuous as is this unit even in
the case of Manors, its prevalence would be still more apparent, if
we could reconstruct the Vills. Thus, for instance, in the Hundred of
Spelthorne we find these assessments:
_Hides_ _Folio_
Staines 19 128
'In Speletorne Hundred' 1 128_b_
'Hatone' 1-1/2 129
Haneworde 5 129
'Leleham' 2 129
'Exeforde' 1 129
'Bedefunt' 2 129
Felteham 12 129
Stanwelle 15 130
'Bedefunde' 10 130
'West Bedefunde' 8 130
'Haitone' 1-5/6[125] 130
'Leleham' 8 130_b_
'In Hundredo de Spelethorne' 2/3[126] 130_b_
'Cerdentone' 5 130_b_
'Exeforde' is Ashford, which 'appears from a very early period till
after the dissolution of the monasteries to have been an appendage
of Stains'.[127] Thus we obtain an assessment of 20 hides for Staines
_cum_ Ashford. So too we have at once for Laleham an assessment of ten
hides, while that of East and West Bedfont was, we see, twenty hides.
The most striking case, however, is that of Hatton; for, if we add to
its two named Manors the nameless estates in the above list, the four
fit in like a puzzle, giving us an aggregate assessment of exactly
five hides.
The hundred, therefore, was assessed thus:
_Hides_
Stains with Ashford 20
Stanwell 15
West Bedfont 10
East Bedfont 10
Laleham 10
Feltham 12
Hanworth 5
Charlton 5
Hatton, etc. 5
Let us now connect the territorial with the institutional unit.
Dealing in my 'Danegeld' essay with the evident assessment of towns in
terms of the five-hide unit, I traced it to the fact that 'five hides
were the unit of assessment for the purpose of military service'.[128]
The evidence I have adduced in the present paper carries further
its significance; but we must not allow its financial to obscure its
military importance. I appealed, at that time, to the Exeter instance:
Quando expeditio ibat per terram aut per mare serviebat hæc
civitas quantum v. hidæ terræ;
and to the service of Malmesbury:
Quando rex ibat in expeditione vel terra vel mari habebat de
hoc burgo aut xx. solidos ad pascendos suos buzecarlos aut
unum hominem ducebat secum pro honore v. hidarum.[129]
Of course this brings us to the notoriously difficult question of the
thegn and his qualification. With this I am only concerned here so far
as it illustrates the prevalence of a five-hide unit. Mr Little, who
holds that Maurer, followed by Dr Stubbs, has gone too far, and that
'there is no proof of any general law or widely prevalent custom
which conferred on the owner of five hides pure and simple the title,
duties, and rights of a thegn',[130] sets forth his view thus:
What then is the meaning of the frequent recurrence in the
laws of possession of five hides of land as the distinctive
mark of a particular rank?
An explanation may be hazarded: at the end of the seventh
century it was the normal and traditional holding of a royal
_thegn_.... It is not too much to infer from the parallelism
of the two wergelds, that five hides formed also the regular
endowment of a Saxon king's thegn.[131]
Dr Stubbs' views will be found in his _Constitutional History_ (1874),
i. 155-6, 190-2, and those of Gneist in his _Constitutional History_
(1886), i. 13, 90, 94. The latter writer follows Schmidt rather than
Maurer, but sums up his position in the words: 'Since under Ælfred and
his successors every estate of five hides is reckoned in the militia
system as one heavy-armed man, the rank of a thane becomes the right
(as such) of a possessor of five hides.'
Lastly, it is an interesting and curious fact that we owe to the
five-hide unit such place-names as Fivehead, Somerset; Fifehead,
Dorset; Fifield, Oxon; Fifield and Fyfield, Wilts; Fyfield, Hants; and
Fyfield, Essex--all of them in Domesday 'Fifhide' or 'Fifehide'--as
well as Fyfield, Berks, which occurs in Domesday as 'Fivehide'.
Philologists will note the corruption and its bearing on the original
pronunciation.
To the probable antiquity and origin of the five-hide system I must
recur, after glancing at the evidence for the northern and eastern
districts of England.
VII. THE SIX-CARUCATE UNIT
The subject that I now approach is one of the highest interest. I
propose to adduce for my theory convincing corroborative evidence
by showing that the part which is played in the hidated district of
England by the five-hide unit is played in the Danish districts by a
unit of six carucates. In other words, where we look in the former
for 'v. hidæ', we must learn to look in the latter for 'vi. carucatæ
terræ'.
One must dissociate at the outset this six-carucate unit from the
'long hundred', or _Angelicus numerus_, with which Mr Pell confused
it. In Mr Stevenson's instructive article on 'The Long Hundred and
its use in England',[132] he has clearly explained that this reckoning
only applied to a whole hundred, which, if a 'long' hundred, was
really 120. Any lesser number was reckoned in our usual manner. This
is seen at once in the test passage at Lincoln (D.B., i. 336_a_),
where 1,150 houses are reckoned as 'novies centum et lxx.', because
'hic numerus Anglice computatur, id est centum pro cxx'.[133] The
persistence, in Lincolnshire, of the long hundred is well shown in
the _Inquisitiones post mortem_ on Robert de Ros, 1311, among those
printed by Mr Vincent.[134] We there read of 'c. acre terra arrabilis
per majorem centenam que valent per annum lx. s. prec' acre vj. den.',
at Wyville and Hungerton (on the border of Leicestershire); while at
Claxby and Normanby (in the north of the county) we have 'cc. acras
per minorem centenam et valent c. s. prec' acre vj. d.' Again, at
Gedney (in the south-east), we have 'cc. acre terre arrabilis per
majus centum et valent per annum xxiiij. li'. prec' acre ij. s. et
iiij^{xx.} acre prati et valet per annum viij. li., prec' acre ij. s.
Et cxiij. acre pasture per majus centum et valent per annum ix. li.
xix. s. vi. d. prec' acre xviij. d.' On the same property there were
due 'ccciiij^{xx.} opera autumpnalia cum falcis, et valent xxxvj. s.
viij. d., prec' operis j. den.', so that these also were reckoned by
the long hundred.
Mr Stevenson was not aware of this evidence, but admitted that as the
Domesday passage refers to 'such a Danish stronghold as Lincolnshire,
it is not free from the suspicion of Danish influence'. His own
evidence from a sixteenth-century rental[135] is subject to a similar
criticism. For the general use, therefore, of the 'long hundred' in
England he is compelled to rely on the _Dialogus de Scaccario_
and Howden's description of the new survey of 1198, the 'hide or
ploughland' being described in both cases as of a hundred acres, where
the 'hundred' must have meant 120. But I venture to think that the
use of this reckoning for the ploughland, or archaic 'hide', does not
establish its general employment. In Domesday, certainly, it is only
at Lincoln that we find it actually recognized, houses being reckoned
everywhere else on the usual system.
I think, therefore, that we fairly may hold the _Anglicus numerus_, or
long hundred, to have specially prevailed in the 'Danish' districts,
which were also assessed, we shall find, in sums of six and twelve.
But what was the boundary of this Danish district? It was not the
border between Mercia and Wessex, for Mercia was itself divided
between the 'six' and the 'five' systems.[136] Of the two adjacent
Mercian shires, for instance, of Leicester and Warwick (afterwards
united under one sheriff), we find the latter decimal and the former
duodecimal. The military service of Warwick and Leicester was arranged
on the same method, yet Leicester sent _twelve_ 'burgesses' to the
fyrd where Warwick sent _ten_. But, it may be urged, the two shires
were divided by the Watling Street, the boundary (under the peace of
Wedmore) of Danelaw. Was then the Danelaw the district within which
the systems prevailed? No, for the Danelaw, under this treaty,
included all Cambridgeshire and other hidated districts. The answer,
therefore, which I propound is this: The district in which men
measured by carucates, and counted by twelves and sixes, was not the
district which the Danes _conquered_, but the district which the Danes
_settled_, the district of 'the Five Boroughs'.
Dependent on these 'Five Boroughs' were the four shires of Leicester,
Derby, Nottingham, and Lincoln. For two of the Boroughs, Lincoln and
Stamford, both belonged to this last shire, which was, indeed, the
stronghold of the system.[137] Between Stamford and Cambridge we
have the same contrast as between Warwick and Leicester, for while
Cambridge was divided into _ten_ wards ('custodiæ'), Stamford was
divided into _six_. Lincolnshire, as I have said, was the stronghold
of the system, and it is in Lincoln itself that we find Domesday
alluding _eo nomine_ to the _Anglicus numerus_, the practice of
counting 120 as 100.
Now in the peculiar district of which I am treating there occurs an
important formula which covers Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire,
and Notts. Domesday has nothing like it for the other parts of
England. Here are the three passages in which we find it recorded:
LINCOLNSHIRE YORKSHIRE DERBY AND NOTTS
Pax manu regis vel Pax data manu regis In Snotingehamscyre
sigillo ejus data, vel sigillo ejus, et in Derbin scyre
si fuerit infracta, si fuerit infracta, pax regis manu vel
emendatur per regi solummodo sigillo data, si
xviii. hundrez. emendatur per xii. fuerit infracta,
Unumquidque hundret hundrez, unumquidque emendatur per xviii.
solvit viii. libras. hundret viii. libras. hundrez, unumquidque
Duodecim hundrez Pax a comite data et hundret viii. libras.
emendant regi et vi. infracta a quolibet Hujus emendationis
comiti.--i. 336_b._ ipsi comiti per vi. habet rex ii. partes,
hundrez emendatur, comes terciam. Id est
unumquidque viii. xii. hundred emendant
libras--i. 298_b._ regi et vi. comiti--i.
280_b._
For comparison with these three passages we may turn to the charter of
immunities confirmed to York Cathedral by Henry I, Stephen, and Henry
II. We there read:
Si quis enim quemlibet cujuscumque facinoris aut flagitii
reum et convictum infra atrium ecclesiæ caperet et retineret,
universali judicio vi. _hundreth_ emendabit; si vero infra
ecclesiam xii. _hundreth_ infra chorum xviii. ... _In
hundreth_ viii. _libræ continentur_.[138]
As there were _twelve_ carucates in the 'Hundred', so it paid _twelve_
marcs, which, if we can trust the above explanation, themselves came
to be termed a 'Hundred'. Moreover, the 'Hundreds' themselves were
grouped in multiples of _six_. So too the Yorkshire thegn who held
_six_ Manors or less paid three marcs to the sheriff; if he held more
than six, _twelve_ marcs to the king (_Domesday_, i. 289_b_).
It is a special feature of the 'Danish' district that each
territorial 'Hundred' contained twelve 'carucatæ terræ'. This point
is all-important. Just as a 'Hundred' to an Anglo-Saxon suggested one
hundred 'hides', so to the Danes of this district it suggested twelve
'carucates'. Nay, to the men of Lincolnshire there could be no more
question that twelve carucates made a 'Hundred' than there could be
now, among ourselves that twelve pence make a shilling. If we turn to
the Lindsey Survey,[139] a generation later than Domesday, we obtain
proof to that effect. We find that Survey, in three instances, adding
up all the estates of a tenant within a Wapentake, and giving us the
result in 'Hundreds' and 'carucates'. Here are the actual figures:
_Car._ _Bov._ _Car._ _Bov._ _Car._ _Bov._
2 4 12 0 12 0
2 0 10 0 11 4
2 4 10 6 3 0
11 0 8 0 1 0
5 0 6 0 2 0
11 0 1 4 3 0
8 6 0 4 3 4
1 0
0 6
2 0
1 6
-------- -------- ----------
H. 3 6 6[140] H. 4 0 6[141] H. 3 5 4[142]
Now we must observe that these 'Hundreds' are not _districts_ with 'a
local habitation and a name'; they are merely sums of twelve carucates
produced by compound addition. We further find, at the head of the
survey of each Wapentake, a note that it is reckoned to contain so
many 'Hundreds', with the explanation, in some instances that in each
'Hundred' were 'xii. carucatæ terræ'.[143] But even here the real unit
is shown to be 'six carucates', for several Wapentakes contain an odd
'half-hundred', while in that of Horncastle this is actually entered
as 'six carucates'.
Here are the nineteen Wapentakes, with the number of Hundreds assigned
to each, and the number of 'carucatæ terræ' that such Hundreds would
imply:
West Trithing
_Wapentake_ _Hundreds_ _Car. terr._
Manley []-1/2
Aslacoe 7-1/2 90
Lawress 12 144
Corringham 5 60
Axholme 4 48
Well 7 84
North Trithing
Walshcroft 8 96
Haverstoe 7-1/2 90
Bradley 3-1/2[144] [and 3 bov.] 42-3/8
Ludborough 3 36
Yarborough 14 168
Bolingbroke 8 96
Gartree 6 72
South Trithing
Candleshoe 10 120
Calceworth 10 120
Wraghoe 9 108
Hill 6 72
Lothesk 10 120
Horncastle 6-1/2 78
All the above, it will be seen, are multiples of the six-carucate
unit. That the aggregate of recorded 'carucatæ terræ' appears to
differ, though slightly, from the totals here given only shows how
vain is the argument that, because the recorded aggregates of Hundreds
may often be uneven figures, there could therefore have been no
system at work such as I contend there was. Clerical error and special
alterations have both to be allowed for.
It has never, so far as I know, been pointed out that these Lindsey
Trithings were so arranged as to contain an approximately equal number
of 'Hundreds'. So far as it is possible now to reckon them, the South
Trithing contained 51-1/2, the North Trithing 51-1/2, and the West
Trithing 49-1/2. Fifty 'Hundreds' would represent 600 _carucatæ_; and
it is, to say the least, a singular coincidence that, in the archaic
territorial list that has hitherto baffled investigation, the North
Gyrwa, South Gyrwa, and Spalda are reckoned each at 600 hides.[145]
I shall now give some instances of Lindsey townships assessed on the
basis of the six-carucate unit:
_Car._ _Bov._
Willoughton 3 5-1/2
" 2 2-1/2
--------------
6 0
Faldingworth 2 4
" 1 0
" 2 4
-------------
6 0
Reepham 0 4
" 0 6
" 4 6
-------------
6 0
Thoresway 0 2
" 5 6
-------------
6 0
Benniworth 2 4
" 3 4
-------------
6 0
Thorganby 1 7
" 0 5
" 1 6
" 0 6
" 1 0
-------------
6 0
Beelsby 4 4
" 1 0
" 0 4
-------------
6 0
Riby 1 4
" 4 4
-------------
6 0
Rigsby 3 6
" 2 2
-------------
6 0
South Kelsey 4 4
Thornton le Moor 1 4
-------------
6 0
These instances will illustrate the value of the Lindsey Survey
in enabling us to group the fractional assessments which appear in
Domesday Book. Here are some other varieties:
_Car._ _Bov._
Dunholm 5 3
" 2 5
" 2 0
" 2 0
-------------
12 0
Glentham 3 0
" 0 10
Glentham and Caenby 7 6
-------------
12 0
Scotton 0 4
" 0 4
" 2 0
" 6 0
-------------
9 0
Irby-on-Humber 1 4
" 1 0
" 0 4
-------------
3 0
Somerby 2 4
" 0 6
-------------
3 0
Barrow-on-Humber 11 0
" 1 0
-------------
12 0
-------------
South Elkington 4 0
" 8 0
-------------
12 0
Winteringham 11 0
" 1 0
-------------
12 0
Nun Ormsby 2 2
" 4 4
" 2 2
-------------
9 0
Croxby 0 3
" 0 5
" 1 0
" 1 0
-------------
3 0
Worlaby 2 2
" 0 6
-------------
3 0
Lastly, to complete the parallel with the Leicestershire Hundreds
_infra_, we may take this case (_cf._ p. 65, note 122):
Claxby and Well 14
Claxby 10
--
24
Precisely the same system prevailed in Holland as in Lindsey, for
the 'Testa de Nevill' preserves for us the constituents of a Holland
Wapentake, that of 'Elhou':
Pinchbeck 12
Spalding 12
Weston 6
Moulton 6
Whaplode and Holbeach 18
Fleet 6
Gedney 8} 12
Lutton 4}
Sutton 9-3/4} 12
Tydd 2-1/4}
----
84
The Lindsey Survey would describe such a Wapentake as containing
'Seven Hundreds'.
Crossing the border from Lincolnshire into Rutland (_i.e._ the Rutland
of Domesday), we find the same system at work that meets us in the
Lindsey Survey. We read:
In Alfnodestou Wapent' sunt ii. Hundrez. In unoquoque [sunt]
xii. carucatæ ad geldum.... In Martinesleie Wap' est i.
hundret, in quo xii. carucatæ ad geldum.--_D.B._, i. 293_b._
On analysing the contents of these Wapentakes, we find this statement
fully borne out, the former containing twenty-four, and the latter
twelve, 'carucatæ terræ'. These are carefully contrasted throughout
with the 'terra carucæ' or areal measure.[146]
In Yorkshire, Notts and Derby, we have less direct evidence. Sawley,
in Derbyshire, has indeed been alleged to be entered in Domesday as
a Hundred of twelve carucates, but Domesday does not justify this
assertion being made.[147] I would rather trust to the notable
formula, which, as I explained at the outset, is common to these
counties for proof that they also were arranged in 'Hundreds' of
twelve carucates.
The prevalence, however, of assessment by sixes, threes, and twelves,
meets us on every side, as does, in hidated districts, the assessments
by fives and tens. At the outset, for instance, of the survey of
Yorkshire we have the district 'gelding' with the city assessed at
eighty-four (12×7) carucates (which would be described in Lincolnshire
as seven 'Hundreds'). We have two lists of the details, which are
given here.[148]
_Car. terræ_ _Car. terræ_
Archbishop 6 Archbishop 6
Osboldeuuic 6 Osboldeuuic 6
Stocthun 6 Stochetun 6
Sa'bura 3 Sa'bure 3
Heuuarde 6 Heuuorde 6
Ditto 3
Fuleford 10 Fuleforde 10
Round the City 3 Round the City 3
Cliftune 18 Cliftune 18
Roudclif 3 Roudeclif 3
Ouertun 5 Ouertune 5
Sceltun 9 Scheltune 9
Mortun 3 Mortune 3
Wichistun 1 Wichintun 3
---- ----
'84' '84'
These lists have a value independent of their illustration of the
arrangement in threes and sixes. They show how Domesday breaks down,
when it supplies a check upon its own evidence, by failing to make its
details agree with its total; and they further show by the discrepancy
between them how easily error may arise, and how rash it must be to
argue from a single case.[149]
Yorkshire presents other traces, in its Hundreds, of the same system.
Thus the townships in the Hundred of 'Toreshou' follow one another
in this order: 18, 18, 20, 6, 18, 8, 12, 12 (8+4), 6, 18, 8, 18, etc.
(_infra_, p. 80).
But my strong evidence is found in an invaluable survey of
Leicestershire, unknown till now to historians,[150] which does for
the carucated districts just what the _Inq. Com. Cant._ does for the
hidated ones. Here we find the townships grouped in small blocks
of from six to twenty-four 'carucatæ terræ', as a rule with almost
monotonous regularity. And these blocks are further combined in small
local Hundreds, of which the very existence is unknown to historians
and antiquaries,[151] and which are usually multiples, like the
Lincolnshire Wapentake, of the six-carucate unit.
It will be remembered that in the case of Cambridgeshire, I selected
for my first two examples a Hundred of 50 hides, composed of 5 Vills
assessed at 10 hides each, and a Hundred of 70 hides, composed of 7
Vills, assessed at 10 hides each. In Leicestershire, precisely in the
same manner, I shall begin with the simplest forms and select Hundreds
of 36 and 48 carucates, composed of Vills uniformly assessed at 12
carucates each.
HUNDRED OF SCALFORD
Scalford 12 (11-1/2 + 1/2)
Goadby 12 (6 + 6)
Knipton 12 (8-3/4 + 3-1/4)
----
36
HUNDRED OF KIBWORTH
Kibworth (Beauchamp) 12
Kibworth (Harcourt) 12
'Bocton' 12
Carlton 12 (10 + 1-1/4 + 3/4)
----
48
From these we may advance to other combinations:
HUNDRED OF HARBY
Harby and Plungar 18
Stathern 18
----
36
HUNDRED OF TONG
Tong 12
Kegworth 15} 18
Worthington 3}
'Dominicum' 12
----
42
HUNDRED OF LANGTON
Langton (1) } { 14-1/2 (11-1/4 + 3-1/4)
Thorp (Langton) } 24 { 3-3/4
Langton (2) } { 5-3/4
Tur Langton } { 12
Shangton } 24 { 12 (10 + 2)
----
48
With these types as clues we are in a position to assert that where
the total assessment of a Hundred varies but slightly from a multiple
of six, there must have been some slight error in one of the figures.
Thus Hundreds of 35-1/2, 34-13/16 carucates, etc., may be safely
assumed to have been Hundreds of 36 carucates; those of 41, 43-7/8,
etc., would be of 42 carucates; those of 48-7/8, 50, etc., would be
of 48 carucates. These slight discrepancies, precisely as in
Lincolnshire, are accounted for by Vills of 6 or 12 carucates, being
entered as of 5-7/8, 5-13/16, 6-3/4, or 11-7/8, 13, etc. Thus:
HUNDRED OF EASTWELL
_Vills_ _Carucates_
Eastwell 12 (2 + 6 + 4)
Eaton 12-1/4 (3-1/4 + 9/16 + 8-7/16)
Branston 12 (7-1/2 + 4-1/2)
-------
36-1/4
The most usual Leicestershire Hundreds are those of 36, 42, and 48
carucates, which, be it observed, would be described in the language
of the Lindsey Survey as 'Wapentakes' of 3, 3-1/2, and 4 'Hundreds'
respectively. The name may be different: the thing is the same.[152]
It will have been seen by this Survey that the 'Vills', single or
grouped, were assessed precisely as in Cambridgeshire, save that there
the assessment was reckoned in fives and tens, while here it was in
sixes and twelves.
VIII. THE LEICESTERSHIRE 'HIDA'
The case of Leicestershire introduces us to a very curious point.
Leicestershire is not one of those counties to which the singular
formula that I discussed above refers. This suggests that it was not
arranged in 'Hundreds' of twelve carucates. The above Survey confirms
this, for it shows us Hundreds resembling in character those found in
the hidated districts. But although the twelve-carucate unit of
the 'Hundred' is not found in Leicestershire, we do find in it a
group-unit, and that unit is the _hida_. Just as we have seen the
Hundred used in two wholly different senses, so also was the 'hida'.
The quite peculiar way in which 'hida' occurs in Leicestershire (which
was not a hidated but carucated district) completely baffled Mr Eyton,
and was misunderstood by Mr Pell.[153] Both writers failed to observe
not only that the use of 'hida' is here of a peculiar character, but
also that the normal 'hida' of Domesday (from which they could not
emancipate themselves) would be quite out of place in this carucated
district.
The first point to grasp is that this Leicestershire 'hida' was a term
which, locally I mean, explained itself. It is used at least a dozen
times in the Survey of Leicestershire without any mention of its
contents. Those contents must have been, therefore, familiar and
fixed. But what were those contents? Three incidental notices enable
us to determine them:
231 (_a_), 2: 'Ibi est i. hida et iiii^{ta.} pars i. hidæ. Ibi
sunt xxii. car' terræ et dimidia.'
236 (_a_), 1: 'II. partes unius hidæ, id est xii. car' terræ.'
237 (_a_), 2: 'II. partes unius hidæ, id est xii. car' terræ.'
Just as the 'Hundred' of Lincolnshire was a sum of twelve
carucates, so the 'Hide' of Leicestershire was a sum of _eighteen
carucates_.[154] Working in the light of this discovery (for as such
I claim it), we find that the other 'hides', thus interpreted, give
us an aggregate of 'carucates' obviously suitable to the recorded
ploughlands.[155] It may, however, be fairly asked why Domesday
should speak in one place of half a 'hide', and in another of nine
'carucates'; in one place of a hide and a third, and in another of
twenty-four carucates. The answer is that the singular love of variety
which distinguishes Domesday in Cambridgeshire (as we saw) is at
work here also. For instance, two equal estates are thus described:
'Willelmus iiii. car' terræ et dimidiam et iii. bovatas, et Rogerus
iiii. car' terræ et vii. bovatas' (fo. 234_a_). The same instinct
which led the scribe to enter these seven bovates as half a carucate
_plus_ three bovates, led him also to enter ten and a half carucates
as half a hide _plus_ a carucate and a half (fo. 237_a_).
But to the rule I have established there is a single exception. We
read of 'Medeltone' in this shire: 'Ibi sunt vii. hidæ et una carucata
terræ et una bovata. In unaquaque hida sunt xiiii. carucatæ terræ et
dimidia' (fo. 235_b_). The actual formula employed is unique for the
shire, and the figures are specially given as an exception. But, with
singular perversity, Domesday students have always been inclined to
pitch upon the exceptions as representing the rule, forgetting that
it was precisely in exceptional cases that figures had to be given. In
normal cases they would have been superfluous.
Several years have elapsed since I wrote the above explanation, but
I have decided to publish it exactly as it originally stood. In the
meanwhile, however, Mr Stevenson has dealt with the subject in
an article on 'The Hundreds of Domesday: the Hundred of Land'
(1890).[156] He has advanced the ingenious theory that the
Leicestershire 'hida' was only a clerical error for H[undred], and
that it was really that 'Hundred' of _twelve_ carucates which we
meet with in the Lindsey Survey. To prove this, he reads an entry on
236_a_, 1, as 'Ogerus Brito tenet in Cilebe de rege ii. partes unius
hidæ, id est xii. car[ucatæ] terræ', and claims that this gloss
defines the 'hida' as a 'hundred' of twelve carucates. I confess that
to me such a rendering is in the highest degree non-natural. If we
speak of 'two-thirds of a yard, that is twenty-four inches', we
should clearly imply that the yard itself was thirty-six inches, not
twenty-four. Similarly, I claim to render the 'gloss' as implying that
the 'hida' itself contained eighteen carucatæ, not twelve.[157] If
I am right, Mr Stevenson's suggestion that this 'hida' was really a
'Hundred' also falls to the ground.
After careful study of the Domesday Survey of Leicestershire,
I definitely hold that in that county 'carucata terræ' was the
geld-carucate and 'terra _x_ car[ucis]' the actual ploughlands.[158]
Now there are only three instances in which the Survey records the
assessment both in terms of the 'hida' and in 'carucatæ terræ', and in
all three the figures support my own theory. The Abbot of Coventry's
Burbage estate (231_a_, 2), where a 'hide' and a quarter equates
22-1/2 'carucatæ terræ', is a test-case, and Mr Stevenson there takes
refuge in a suggested 'beneficial hidation'. The exact formula, no
doubt, is peculiar, but reference to the text shows that 's[un]t' has
been interpolated between 'ibi' and 'xxii.' I suspect that the scribe
had written 'ibi' (from the force of habit) when he ought to have
written 'id est'.
I close this portion of my essay by applying my own theory to the case
of 'Erendesbi' (Arnesby). The relative entries are:
'Episcopus Constantiensis tenet in Erendesber iii^{as.}
car[ucatas] terræ et dim. et unam bovatam (231).'
'W[illelmus] Pevrel tenet dim. hidam et iii. bovatas terræ in
Erendesbi (235).'
Put into figures they work out:
_Car._ _Bov._
Bishop of Coutances 2-1/2 1
William Peverel 9 3
------------
12 0
So that Arnesby was a typical Vill assessed at twelve carucates.[159]
IX. THE LANCASHIRE 'HIDA'
There is one other case of a peculiar 'hide' in Domesday. This is that
which is found in the land 'between Ribble and Mersey', that district
of which the description offers so many peculiarities. We find it
divided into six hundreds, and of the 'hides' in the first, that of
(West) Derby, we read: 'In unaquaque hida sunt vi. carucatæ terræ' (i.
269_b_). Whether or not that explanation applies, as is believed, to
the whole district, we have here again a 'Danish' place-name brought
into direct relation with the six-carucate unit. On the opposite
bank of the Mersey lay the Wirral peninsula, in which this system of
assessment cannot be traced.
Mr Green alluded to the Danish 'byes' as found, by exception, 'about
Wirral in Cheshire',[160] and held that Norsemen from the Isle of Man
had founded 'the little group of northern villages which we find in
the Cheshire peninsula of the Wirral'.[161] I cannot find them myself.
In his 'Notes on the Domesday Survey, so far as it relates to the
Hundred of Wirral'[162] (1893), Mr Fergusson Irvine, in a paper
which shows, though somewhat discursive, how much can only be done
by intelligent local research, has collated all the Domesday entries.
'Raby' is the one place I can there find in the peninsula with the
'bye' termination; while out of fifty-one entries twenty refer to
places with the English termination 'tone', and the Anglo-Saxon
test-words 'ham' and 'ford' are found in four others. There were,
doubtless, Norse elements in the peninsula, but they were not strong
enough to change the place-names or divide the land on their own
system. In the same way, Chester had its 'lawmen', though it was not
one of the Five Boroughs, nor is what I have termed the Scandinavian
formula applied to Cheshire in Domesday. So, too, there were lawmen at
Cambridge, and their heriot included eight pounds,[163] which occur in
the above formula as the twelve marcs of the Danish 'Hundred'. Yet the
whole system of Cambridgeshire was non-Danish. It was only, in short,
where the northern invaders had settled down as a people that they
were strong enough to divide the land anew and organize the whole
assessment on their own system.
X. THE YORKSHIRE UNIT
We have seen that the unit of assessment for the carucated districts
of England was 'vi. carucatæ terræ', just as five hides was the
old unit in the south. We have also seen that the former reckoning
extended over those districts which the Danish immigrants had settled.
There remains the question whether the Danes had merely substituted
six for five in the pre-existing arrangement, or had made a wholly new
one for themselves based on actual area.
It is _primâ facie_ not probable that they can have adopted the latter
course, for the uniformity of their assessment proves its artificial
character. Yet, in his remarkable paper on 'The Ploughland and the
Plough',[164] Canon Taylor has arrived at the conclusion that:
The geldable carucate of Domesday does not signify what the
carucate usually signifies in other early documents. The
'carucata ad geldum' is not as commonly stated by Domesday
commentators, the quantity of land ploughed in each year by
one plough, but it is the quantity tilled in one year _in one
arable field_ by one plough.[165]
This 'novel and important proposition', as its author truly described
it, was probably the most notable contribution to our knowledge that
the Domesday Commemoration produced. The Canon's theory, which (so
far as his own East Riding is concerned) he certainly seems to have
established, is, at first sight, fatal to mine. But, on the other
hand, my own theory can be proved no less clearly for Leicestershire,
where the 'carucata terræ' and the ploughs are often connected in
about the same ratio as in Yorkshire.[166] This leads us to inquire
whether, even in the East Riding (where his theory works best), we may
not find traces of that assessment by the six-carucate unit which I
advocate myself. Such traces in Yorkshire we have already seen,[167]
but there is other and stronger evidence.
If we take the modern Wapentake of Dickering (the first on Canon
Taylor's list) and examine its three Domesday Hundreds of Turbar,
Hunton, and Burton, we obtain these results:[168]
TURBAR HUNDRED
Hundemanebi 24
Ricstorp, Mustone, Scloftone, and Neuton 18
Flotemanebi 6
Muston and Neuton 6
Fordun and Ledemare 6
Burton, Fulcheton, and Chelc 30
Chelc (2), Ergone, Bringeham, Estolf,
Fodstone, and Chemelinge 19
Nadfartone 23-3/4
Pochetorp 6
Helmeswelle and Gartune 44
HUNTON HUNDRED
Flaneburg and Siwardbi 24-1/2
Marton 9
Bredinton 18
Hilgertorp 6
Wivlestorp and Basingebi 12
Frestintorp 9 }
Eleburne 1/2 } 29-1/2
Eston 6 }
Bovintorp 14 }
Gerendele 12
Ricton, Benton and Spetton 24
Bocheton 12
Fleuston 14 }
Stactone 6 } 27
Foxhole 7 }
BURTON HUNDRED
Burton 12
Grenzmore (4+2) 6
Arpen (4+8) 12
Chillon (30+11+7) 48
Roreston (9+3) 12
Logetorp (1-1/2+5-1/2) 7 }
Thirnon 7 }
Ascheltorp (4+2) 6 } 36
Torp 3 }
Cherendebi 13 }
Caretorp (5+4+3) 12
Rodestain (8+8+8) 24
Twenc 17-1/4
Suauetorp 9
Fornetorp (4+14) 18
Butruid 12
Langetou (9+6) 15 }
Buitorp 5 }
Bruneton 3 } 42
Galmeton 8 }
Binneton 6 }
Widlaueston 5
The evidence of this last Hundred is so overwhelming that it cannot be
gainsaid.[169]
I claim, therefore, that my theory holds good even in Canon Taylor's
stronghold, but I do so without venturing to dispute the accuracy of
his own. How far they can be reconciled I leave to others to decide.
There are certain difficulties, however, which his brilliant
suggestion must raise. It is the essence of his theory that in a
two-field Manor the ploughland of 160 acres (half fallow) was
assessed at _one_ 'carucata terræ', while in the three-field Manor the
ploughland of 180 acres (a third fallow) was assessed at _two_. This
would be an obvious and gross injustice. Again, remembering that,
according to the Canon, the proportion of 'carucatæ' to ploughlands
should be either 2 to 1 or 1 to 1, what are we to make of such figures
as these, taken at a venture from a page of the Leicestershire Survey
(232_a_, 1):
_Carucatæ_ _Ploughlands_ _Carucata_ _Ploughlands_
1 2 12 8
1 1/2 11-1/8 7
2 1 9 4
5-5/8 4 7 6
2 1 6 5
2-5/8 4 2 4
1 1 10 7
6 4 9 6
8-7/8 6 5/8 1/2
1/2 1/2 6 4 (thrice)
28 22 4-7/8 3
It is certainly difficult to discover any regular or consistent
assessment in a system where the ploughland was represented by
anything from 1/2 _carucata_ to 2-1/4 _carucatæ_. There is, however,
in so many cases an approximation to an assessment of three _carucatæ_
for two ploughlands, that there seems to have been some underlying
idea, if we could only trace it out. But for this there is needed a
special investigation of all the carucated counties, a work of great
labour and requiring local co-operation. If we could have tables for
each county, arranged Hundred by Hundred and Vill by Vill, showing in
parallel columns the ploughland and the _carucatæ ad geldum_, we
could then, and only then, venture to speak positively. Till that
is accomplished we are not in a position to explain how a system
of assessment, based on actual area, could result in aggregate
assessments uniformly expressed in terms of the six-carucate unit.
XI. GENERAL CONCLUSIONS
In seeking a clue to the origin of that artificial assessment, of
which the traces, whether more or less apparent, linger on the pages
of Domesday, I propose to exclude the carucated district, because
we require, as I have said, more complete evidence as to the system
pursued within it, and because, being associated with the settlement
of the Danes it represents a later introduction, while the very name
'carucate', as I observed in _Domesday Studies_, has, unlike the
mysterious 'hide', an obvious connection with the ploughland.
Confining ourselves to the district assessed in terms of the 'hide',
we seek to learn the origin of the system by which, as I contend, it
was divided for the purpose of taxation into blocks, each of which was
expressed in terms of the five-hide unit.
Now if we follow the clue afforded by the Cambridgeshire evidence,
and hold that the assessment was originally laid not on the Manor,
nor even on the Vill, but on the Hundred as a whole,[170] it might
be suggested that the Hundred itself subdivided the amount among its
constituent elements. In practice, indeed, from the nature of the
case, this principle must have prevailed in every _town_ assessed at a
Hundred or Half-Hundred, for where an urban community was assessed
in 'hides' the burgesses must, as in later days, have settled among
themselves the proportion to be borne by individuals or individual
properties. If, then, they were able to do this, and if, as I hold,
town and country were assessed on the same principle, as part of the
same system, what was to prevent their neighbours, in the court of
the rural Hundred, similarly distributing among its constituents their
respective shares of the common burden?
We might even be tempted to go far further than this, and to carry
our discoveries to a logical conclusion. If, as is asserted, direct
taxation ('geld') began in England with the need for raising money to
buy off the Danes, let us ask ourselves how the Witan would proceed
when confronted with a demand, let us say, for £10,000. As there had
been hitherto, _ex hypothesi_, no direct taxation, there would be no
statistical information at their disposal, enabling them to raise by
a direct levy the sum required. Their only possible resource, we might
hold, would be to apportionate it in round sums among the contributory
shires. Proceeding on precisely the same lines, the county court,
in its turn, would distribute the _quota_ of the shire among its
constituent Hundreds, and the Hundred court would then assign to each
Vill its share. As the Vills were represented in the Hundred court,
and the Hundreds in the Shire court, the just apportionment of the
Shire's _quota_ would be thus practically secured. The arrangement
would, moreover, be as satisfactory to the Witan as it was fair to the
contributors _inter se_; for, by this gradation of responsibility, the
payment of the whole was absolutely secured. This explanation is very
tempting, and, indeed, such a system of apportioning liability is to
be traced from time immemorial in the Indian village community.[171]
Moreover, if the ratio of 'hides' to ploughlands were found to vary to
any marked extent, according to county, the hypothesis that the quota,
in the first instance, was laid upon each county would duly explain
the ratio assessment being higher or lower in one county than in
another.
But such an hypothesis would imply that this assessment dated only
from the days of Æthelred, or _circ._ 1000. Now the five-hide unit,
on the contrary, was undoubtedly an old institution. Church lordships,
the easiest to trace, appear to have retained their hidation unchanged
from early times, and the 'possessio decem familiarum' of Bede seems
to carry the decimal system back to very early days. Mr Seebohm,
indeed--though, like others, he had failed to discover the existence
of the five-hide system--saw in this 'possessio' of Bede a connecting
link with the Roman _decuria_, just as he saw in the Roman _jugatio_
the possible origin of English hidation. And we must, of course, trace
its artificial arrangement (1) either to the Romans, (2) or to the
Britons--assuming them to have had the same system as existed in Wales
for the food-rents, (3) or to the English invaders.
Arrested at this point by the difficulty of assigning to the system I
have described its real origin, I dropped these studies for some years
in the hope that there might come from some quarter fresh light upon
the problem. As I cannot, however, for lack of evidence, propound a
solution capable of proof, I will content myself with indicating the
line of research that offers, I venture to think, the most likelihood
of success.
The proportionate sums contributed by the several counties to the
Danegeld present a fruitful field of inquiry, but one, it would seem,
as yet unworked. Mr Eyton, it is true, observed that 'in Devon and
Cornwall the scope of the gheld-hide was enormous',[172] that is, in
other words, the assessment was strangely low, but it did not occur
to him to seek the cause of the phenomenon he observed. If, as was
the case, West Wales was assessed on quite a different scale to the
counties adjoining it on the east, it may suggest a conclusion no less
important than that, when the latter were originally assessed,
West Wales was not yet a portion of the English realm. But, before
concluding that the hide assessment is proved to be as ancient as
this, we must see whether it is possible to detect any principle at
work in the total assessments of the several counties, any relation
between their area and the sums they contributed to the geld as
entered in the Pipe Roll of 1130, our first evidence on the subject.
For such an enquiry it is especially needful to insist on breadth of
treatment. In the first place, the modern area of the counties may
vary more or less from the original extent;[173] in the second we
have no proof that the assessment had always been the same, though the
tendency in early days, no doubt, was to stereotype such figures. We
must not, therefore attempt close or detailed investigation but if,
on a review of the whole evidence, we detect certain broad features,
uneffaced by the hand of time, we may fairly claim that we have in
these the traces of a principle at work, the witness to a state of
things prevailing in the distant past.
On comparing the contributions to a 'geld' at two shillings on the
hide with the (modern) area of counties, we find that a rate of about
a pound for every seven square miles prevailed widely enough to be
almost described as normal.
The three eastern counties work out thus:
Square Miles (At 1/7) Actual Sum
£ £ s d
Norfolk 2,119 302-5/7 330 3 2
Suffolk 1,475 210-5/7 235 0 8
Essex 1,542 220-2/7 236 8 0
In all three cases the proportion to the square mile is between a
sixth and a seventh of a pound. In Cambridgeshire it is just under, in
Sussex, just over, a seventh:
Square Miles (At 1/7) Actual Sum
£ £ s d
Cambridgeshire 820 117-1/7 114 15 0
Sussex 1,458 208-2/7 209 18 6
Most remarkable, however, is this Midland group:
Square Miles (At 1/7) Actual Sum
£ £ s d
Leicestershire 700 100 100 0 0
Warwickshire 885 126-3/7 128 12 6
Worcestershire 738 105-3/7 101 5 7
Gloucestershire 1,224 174-6/7 179 11 8
Somerset 1,640 234-2/7 227 10 4
It is remarkable, not only for this agreement _inter se_, but also
for the sharp contrast it presents to the groups of counties, lying
respectively to the south-east and the north-west of it. The former
approximates a rate twice as high, namely, _two_-sevenths of a pound
to the square mile:
Square Miles (At 2/7) Actual Sum
£ £ s d
Buckinghamshire 745 212-3/7 204 14 7
Oxfordshire 756 216 239 9 3
Berkshire 722 206-2/7 200 1 3
Wiltshire 1,354 386-6/7 388 13 0
Taking this group as a whole, it paid £1,032 18s 1d, a curiously close
approximation to the £1,021-4/7 which my suggested rate of 2/7 would
give. Middlesex was so exceptional a county, that one hardly likes to
include it, but there also the rate was a little over two-sevenths.
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 Dorset[175] 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
Edgar[179]--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.
£ s d
{ Barrow 7
I.{ Flemington 6
{ Lackford 6
------
19 0 1 7
II. Risby 20 0 1 8
{ Saxham (_A_) 7
III.{ Saxham(_B_) 7
{ Westley 6-1/2
------
20-1/2 0 1 8-1/2
IV.{ Hengrave 10
{ Fornham 10
------
20 0 1 8
{ Ickworth 7-1/2
V.{ Chevington 6-1/2
{ Hargrave 7
------
21 0 1 9
{ Brockley 7
VI.{ Rede 7
{ Manston 6
------
20 0 1 8
VII. Whepstead 20 0 1 8
VIII.{ Hawstead 13-1/2
{ Newton 6-1/2
------
20 0 1 8
IX. Horningsheath 20 0 1 8
X., XI., XII. Sudbury 60 0 5 0
----------
£1 0 0-1/2
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. 119_b_).
'Hund[redum] et dim[idium] de Clakelosa de x. leitis' (ii.
212_b_).
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 1-1/2d on the pound (i.e. £1 0s 1-1/2d). I group the Vills
_tentatively_, thus:
_d_
I. Barton 27
II. {Fornham 6-1/2} 26-1/2
{Rougham 20 }
{Peckenham 13-1/2}
III. {Bradfield 5 } 26-1/2
{Fornham St Genevieve 8 }
IV. {Thurston 16 } 27
{Woolpit 11 }
V. {Rushbrook 7 } 27
{Ratlesden 20 }
{Hessett 18 }
VI. {Felsham 5 } 28
{Bradfield 5 }
{Gedding 5 }
VII. {Whelnetham 10 } 26
{Drinkston 11 }
{Ampton 7 }
VIII. {Tostock 10-1/2} 27-1/2
{Staningfield 10 }
IX. {Tinworth 14 } 26
{Livermere 12 }
--------
241-1/2 (£1 0s 1-1/2d)
The same unit of 27 (x9)--or, which comes to the same thing, 13-1/2
(x18)--was adopted in Risbridge Hundred. In this case no less than
five Manors are assessed at the same unit--13-1/2d. So, again, in the
Hundred of Blackbourn the units are 34-1/2d and 17-1/4d, 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 _sulland_[196] (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, 7-1/2
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_.
_Commutation_ £ s d
Somerton (with Borough of Langport) 79 10 7 }
Chedder (with borough of Axbridge) 21 0 2-1/2} 100 10 9-1/2
North Petherton 42 8 4 }
South Petherton 42 8 4 } 106 0 10
Curry Rivell 21 4 2 }
Williton }
Carhampton } 105 17 4-1/2
Cannington }
Frome 53 0 5 }
Bruton 53 0 5 } 106 0 10
Milborne Port (with Ilchester) 79 10 7
[Bedminster[203] 21 0 2-1/2]
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:
_Ploughlands_ _Valets_
Calne 29
Bedwin 79
Amesbury 40
Warminster 40
Chippenham 100 £110
'Theodulveshide' 40 £100
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 6-1/2d, when the sum named is
£105 17s 4-1/2d, 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:
'T.R.E. reddebat dimidiam 'Reddebat T.R.E. dimidiam
firmam noctis et quadrantem' noctis firmam et unum quadrantem'
(Domesday). (Eyton).
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:
_£_ _s_ _d_
Crewkerne 46 0 0 40
Congresbury 28 15 0 25
Old Cleeve 23 0 0 20
North Curry 23 0 0 20
Henstridge 23 0 0 20
Camel 23 0 0 20
Dulverton 11 10 0 10
Creech St Michael 9 4 0 8
Langford 4 12 0 4
Capton[205] 2 6 0 2
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'
The meaning of 'Wara' is made indisputable by the I.C.C. When land was
an appurtenance, _quoad_ ownership, of a Manor in one township, but
was assessed in another in which it actually lay, the land was said to
be in the former, but its 'wara' in the latter. As this 'wara' was an
integral part of the total assessment of the township, it had to
be recorded, under its township, in the I.C.C. Here are the three
examples in point:
[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 (61_b_): 'Hæc terra jacet et
appreciata est in Gratentun quod est in Oxenefordscire, et tamen dat
scotum in Berchesire'. Again (203_b_) 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. 61).
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'
I now approach the subject of 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:
Staplehow Staplehow Staplehow
Cheveley Cheveley Cheveley
Staines Staines Staines
Radfield Flammenditch Erningford
Flammenditch Childeford Triplow
Childerford Radfield Radfield
Whittlesford ([208]) Flammenditch
Triplow Triplow Whittlesford
Erningford Erningford Weatherley
Weatherley Weatherley Stow
Stow Stow Papworth
Papworth Papworth Northstow
Northstow Northstow Chesterton
Chesterton Ely
Ely
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:
[_Francigenæ_] [_Angli_]
Walterus Monachus Colsuenus
Hunfridus de anseuilla Ailmarus eius filius
Hugo petuuolt Turolfus
Ricardus de Morduna Alfuuinus odesune
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'
The record known by this name has long been familiar to Domesday
students, but no one, so far as I know, has ever approached the
questions: Why was it compiled? When was it compiled? From what
sources was it compiled? These three questions I shall now endeavour
to answer.
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.
A careful analysis of the three texts has satisfied me beyond question
that while C is the most accurate in detail, it is marred by a
peculiar tendency to omission on the part of its scribe. This, indeed,
is its distinctive feature. Now B cannot be derived from C, because
it supplies the latter's omissions. On the other hand, C cannot be
derived from B, because it corrects, throughout, B's inaccuracies.
Consequently they are independent. More difficult to determine is
the genesis of A, the worst of the three texts; but as it virtually
reproduces all the inaccuracies found in B (besides containing many
fresh ones), without correcting any, it can only be inferred that B
was its source. Thus we have on the one hand C, and, on the other B
(with its offspring A), derived independently from some common source.
And this conclusion agrees well with the fact that a long catalogue of
lands abstracted from the House of Ely is found in C, but not in A
or B,[218] and with the circumstance that the famous rubric ('Hic
subscribitur inquisitio'), which heads the inquisition in A and B, is
placed by C at the end of the lists of jurors.[219]
Starting from this conclusion, let us now proceed to ask, what was the
document from which B and C copied independently? Clearly, it was
not Domesday Book, for outside the eastern counties they record the
returns in full, like the _Inq. Com. Cant._ itself. Were they then
taken from the original returns, or at least from the copy of those
returns in the _Inq. Com. Cant._? This point can only be determined
by close analysis of the variants; if we find B and C containing
occasionally the same errors and peculiarities, although copied
independently, it follows that the document from which they both
copied must have contained those same errors and peculiarities. Let
us take the case of Papworth. The right reading, as given both in
Domesday and the _Inq. Com. Cant._, I have placed on the left, and the
wrong reading, in B and C, on the right:
[tenet abbas] ii. hidas et iii. [tenet abbas] ii. hidas et dim.
virgas et dim. [virgam]. virgam et[220] iii. virgas.
I. hida et i. virga et dimidia I. hida et dimidia virga et una
[virga] in dominio. virga[221] in dominio.
Here are some further illustrations of errors in the I.E.:
_D.B. and I.C.C._ _I.E._
VIII. hidas et dimidiam et VIII. hidis et dimidia et dimidia
dimidiam virgam.... In dominio virga ... iii. hidæ et dimidia
iii. hidæ et dimidia (p. 18). _et dimidia virga_ in dominio
(p. 104).
II. carruce in dominio. Et IIII^{or.} carruce ... in
tercia potest fieri (p. 21). dominio.
I. hida _et dimidia_ et xii. I. hida et xii. acræ in dominio
acræ in dominio (p. 87). (p. 110).
tenet Radulfus de Picot (p. 85). Rod[bertus] tenet de vicecomite
(p. 110).
Johannes filius _Waleranni_ Johannem filium
(p. 27). _Walteri_ (p. 103).
Again, the clause 'Tost[222] pro viii. hidis et xl. acris', which
ought to head the Hardwick entries, is wrongly appended in the I.E.
(p. 110) to a Kingston entry with which it had nothing to do. So too,
'hoc manerium pro x. hidis se defendit [_sic_] T.R.E. et modo pro
viii. hidis', which belongs to Whaddon, is erroneously thrown back by
the I.E. (p. 107), into Trumpington, a Manor in another Hundred. It
is singular also that all the MSS. of the I.E. read 'iii. cotarii' (p.
101), where D.B. and the I.C.C. have 'iii. bordarii' (p. 3), and 'x.
cotarii' (p. 101), where they have 'x. bordarii' (p. 6): conversely,
the former, in one place, read 'xv. bordarii' (p. 107), where the
latter have 'xv. cotarii' (p. 63).
In comparing the text of the I.E. with that of the I.C.C., we
shall find most striking and instructive variants in the lists of
_juratores_ for the several Hundreds. Take, for instance, the lists
for the Hundreds of Cheveley and Staines, which follow one another in
both MSS.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
CAUELEIE CAUELAI[223]
Ric[ardus] Ric[ardus] _prefectus huius
hundreti_.
Euerard[us] filius Brientii Æduuard[us] _homo Alb[er]ici de
uer_
Radulfus de hotot Radulfus de hotot
Will[elmu]s de mara Will[elmu]s de mara
Stanhardus de seuerlei Standard[224] de seuerlaio
Frauuin[us] de Curtelinga Frawinus[225] de quetelinge[226]
Carolus de cauelei _Brunesune_ Carlo de cauelaio[227]
Vlmar[us] homo Wigoni _et Wlmar' homo Wighen[228]
o[mne]s alii franci et
angli juraverunt_
The second name on these lists can be conclusively tested. For the
relative entry in the I.C.C. is 'Esselei tenet euerard[us][229] filius
brientii de Alberico'. This proves that the I.C.C. is right in reading
'Euerard[us]', while the I.E. is right in adding 'homo Alb[er]ici de
uer'.
These are the lists for Staines Hundred.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
STANE STANAS
Harold[us] Alerann[us]
Roger[us] Rogger[us] _homo Walt[er]i
giffardi_[230]
Aleranus _francigena_
Ric[ardus] fareman Ric[ardus] _p[ræ]fectus hui[us]
hundreti_ Farmannus
Huscarl de suafham[231] Huscarlo de suafham[231]
Leofuuin[us] _de bodischesham_ Leofuuin[us]
Harald _homo Hard[uuini] de
scalariis_
Alric[us] de Wilburgeham _et_ Aluric[us] de Wiburgeham _et
_omnes franci et angli_. alii omnes franci et angli
de hoc hundreto_.
In these two lists the points to strike us are that Harold is placed
first on one list and seventh on another; Aleran third on one list and
first on another; and 'Fareman' distinguished more clearly in the I.E.
than in the I.C.C. as a separate individual.
If we now collect from the other Hundreds some instances of
instructive variants, we shall obtain important evidence.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
Rob[ertus] de Fordham Rob[er]tus _angli[cus]_ de Fordham
Picotus vicecomes [Omitted][232]
Walterus Monac[us] Walt[erus][233]
Gerardus Lotaringus _de Girardus lotherensis _Herveus de
salsintona_ salsitona_
Pagan[us] homo hardeuuini Paganus _dapifer_ Hard'
Rad[ulfus] de _scannis_ Radulfus de _bans_[234]
Fulco _Waruhel_ Fulcheus _homo vicecomitis_
Rumold[us] _de cotis_ Rumold _homo comitis Eustachio_
Will[elmu]s Will[elmus] _homo picoti vice
comitis_
Wlwi _de doesse_ Wlwi de _etelaie_
Godlid de _stantona_ Godliue
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
FLAMENCDIC FLAMMINGEDICH
Robert[us] de Hintona Rodb[er]t[us] de Histona
Fulcard[us] _de Dittona_ Osmundus parvus
Osmund[us] parvulus Fulcold _homo abbatis de
Ely_
Baldeuuinus _cum barba_ Baldeuuinus _cocus_
Æduuin[us] presbyter Æduuinus presbyter
Ulfric[us] de teuersham Wlfuric de teuersham
Silac[us] _eiusdem villæ_ Syla
Godwun[us] _nabesone_ Goduuine _de fulburne_
It is impossible to examine the italicized variations in these
parallel texts without coming to the conclusion that they must have
been independently derived from some common original, an original
containing more detail than either of them. On the other hand, the
comparatively close agreement between the texts of the actual returns
in the I.C.C. and the I.E. leads one to infer that these were copied
with far more exactitude than the comparatively unimportant surnames
of the jurors. For us the value of these variations in the jurors'
lists lies in the evidence afforded to the origin of the existing MSS.
The object of this careful scrutiny has been to prove that as certain
errors and peculiarities are found in two independent MSS., they must
have existed in the original document from which both were copied,
and which was neither the I.C.C. transcripts nor the original Domesday
returns. What then was this document? It was, and can only have been,
the true _Inquisitio Eliensis_, the date and origin of which I
shall discuss below. Further, I should imagine this document to
have probably been a roll or rolls, which--on its contents being
subsequently transcribed into a book for convenience--was allowed,
precisely as happened to the Domesday rolls themselves, to disappear.
In perfect accordance with this view we find the whole contents of the
_Inquisitio_ arranged for a special purpose, and no mere transcript of
the Domesday returns. Thus, after abstracting all the entries relating
to the Cambridgeshire estates, and subjoining a list of houses held in
Cambridge itself, it proceeds to add up all the items independently,
and record their total values to the Abbey. This analysis is carried
out for several counties (pp. 121-4), and is, of course, peculiar
to the _Inquisitio_, although inserted between the abstracts of the
Domesday returns for Cambridgeshire and Herts. So too the breviate
or short abstract of the estates (pp. 168-173), which was part of the
original document--for it is found in all the derived MSS.--must have
been specially compiled for it, and so also was the _Nomina Villarum_
(pp. 174-83).
Another peculiarity of the _Inquisitio_ is the care with which it
records the names of sokemen on the Abbey estates when omitted in the
I.C.C. and D.B. This may lead us to ask whether its compilers supplied
these names from their personal knowledge. We might think not, for in
some cases they are recorded by the D.B. and the I.C.C., while in
one (p. 106) the I.E. actually omits the name, reading only 'quidam
sochemanus', where the other two documents (p. 46) supply his name
('Fridebertus'). From this we might infer that the names were probably
recorded in the original returns, but deemed of too slight importance
to be always copied by the transcriber. Yet the balance of evidence
leads me to believe that the I.E. did supply names from independent
knowledge. With the values, however, the case is clearer. The
I.E. contains special and exclusive information on the value of
socman-holdings, and must, I think, have derived it from some other
source than the original Domesday returns. Here are some instances in
point.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
III. sochemanni fuerunt ... In Erningetone fuit quidam
secundus homo abbatis de Ely sochemannus, _Ædwardus_, et
tenuit ii.[235] hidas ... habuit i. hidam. Homo abbatis
Potuerunt Eli fuit in obitu regis Ædwardi,
recedere (p. 83). sed terram suam vendere potuit;
sed soca semper S. Ædeldrede
remansit (p. 110).
X. sochemanni ... et i. istorum In Ouro fuit quidam sochemannus
homo abbatis de Ely fuit. _nomine Standardus_, qui dimidiam
Dimidiam hidam habuit. Non hidam habuit sub abbate ely. Non
potuit dare neque vendere, et potuit ire ab eo nec separare ab
ii. istorum, homines predicti ecclesia _et valet viginti
abbatis, iii. virgas habuerunt, solidos_. Et modo habet
vendere potuerunt; soca remansit Hardwinus. Et alii ii. sochemanni
abbati (p. 91). iii. virgatas habuerunt.
Potuerunt dare vel vendere sine
soca cui voluerunt et modo tenet
Hardwinus. _Et valet_ xv.
_solidos_ (p. 112).
Et x^{us} [sochemannus] homo Quidam sochemannus sub abbate
abbatis de ely fuit. i. hidam et eli i. hidam et dim. tenuit
dim. habuit. Et omnes isti T.R.E. potuit dare sine licentiam
recedere potuerunt; et vendere [_sic_] eius, sine socha. Et modo
terram suam cui voluerunt Picot vicecomes tenet eam sub
(p. 95). abbate ely. _Valet_ x. _sol_.
(p. 113).
This last passage, of itself, is full of instruction. Firstly,
the I.E. alone gives the value of the holding. Secondly, the I.E.
preserves the 'sine socha' which qualifies the holder's right. Now
D.B. gives the last clause as:
Hi omnes terras suas vendere potuerunt. Soca tantum hominis
abbatis de Ely remansit æcclesiæ.
This qualification corresponds with the 'sine socha' of the I.E., and
is, we should observe, wholly omitted in the I.C.C. Thirdly, the
three versions of the original return employ three different words
to express the same one--'recedere', 'vendere', 'dare'. Fourthly, the
superiority of the C text of the I.E. over B (which makes two blunders
in this passage) and of B over its offspring A (which adds a third) is
here well illustrated. Fifthly, the phrase 'Picot vicecomes tenet
eam sub abbate ely' differs notably from Domesday, which assigns the
estate to Picot unreservedly, and still more from the I.C.C. which
reads 'tenet Robertus de Picoto vicecomite in feudo regis'.
The next example is taken from the township immediately preceding.
_I.C.C._ _I.E._
V. istorum (sochemannorum) Fuerunt quinque sochemani
homines abbatis de Ely fuerunt. Et T.R.E. unus istorum _sugga
unus istorum i. virg. et dim. habuit. nomine_ habuit una virg. et
Non potuit recedere. Et alii iiii. dim. sub abbate ely.
habuerunt v. hidas et i. virg. Non potuit recedere.
Potuerunt recedere sine soca (p. 95). _Et valet_ x. _sol._
Et alii iiii^{or}
sochemani v. hidas
et i. virg. tenuerunt de
abbate eli. Potuerunt
dare preter licentiam
abbatis et sine socha et modo
tenet eam Picot vicecomes
de abbate ely _et valet_
iii. _lib._ (p. 112).
I have said that in all these cases it might perhaps be held that
the additional details found in the I.E. were not due to special
information possessed by its compilers, but were derived from the
original returns, though omitted by their other transcribers. It is
possible, however, to put the matter to the test. If, anticipating for
a moment, we find that we have, for the eastern counties, in Domesday
the actual materials from which the compilers of the I.E. worked, we
can assert that any additional details must have been supplied from
their own knowledge. An excellent instance in point is afforded by
Tuddenham, in Suffolk:
_D.B._ _I.E._
In Tudenham Geroldus i. lib' In Tudenham i. li. homo Ælfric'
hominem ... comend' Saxæ de commend' S. Ædel' xii. ac' et iii.
abbate T.R.E. xii. ac' pro man', b. et i. c. et iii. ac' prati et
iii. bord' Semp' i. car. ii. ac' val. viginti iii. s.
prati ... val. iii. sol.; et in
eadem ii. liberi homines comend' In eadem i. l. ho' hedric'[236]
i. sancte Æ. et alter comend' commend' S. Ædel' viii. ac' et val'
heroldi x. ac', et dim. car. et xx. den. Hoc tenet R. de Raimes
val. ii. sol. Hoc tenet Geroldus (p. 151).
de R. [de Raimes] (ii. 423_b_).
One knows not, truly, which blunder is the worst, that of the Domesday
scribe, who has converted a probable 'S. æ',[237] i.e. Ely Abbey, into
'Saxæ', or that of the compiler of the I.E., who, by interpolating the
word 'viginti', has converted three shillings into three-and-twenty.
But the point is that the latter could name the Abbot's sokeman
(nameless in Domesday) and could supply his acreage and the value of
his holding. The actual details seem to have been:
Acres Pence
Abbot's sokeman 8 20
Harold's sokeman 2 4
---------------
10 24
Domesday records the totals only.
Enough has now been said of the twelfth century transcripts in which
alone are preserved to us the contents of the _Inquisitio_. We have
seen that they point to the existence of some common original, which,
while closely parallel with Domesday, as a record of the Abbey's
possessions, contained certain special features and additional
information. Why, when, and from what sources that original was
compiled, I shall now endeavour to explain.
XVIII. THE ELY RETURN
The theory I propound for the origin of the so-called _Inquisitio
Eliensis_ is that it was the actual return ordered by that writ of the
Conqueror,[238] of which a copy is given in all three MSS. (A, B, C)
and which is printed in Mr Hamilton's book, on p. xxi (No. VIII).
I give the wording of the writ, followed by the heading to the
_Inquisitio_ with which it should be closely compared.
Willelmus Rex Anglorum Lanfranco archiepiscopo salutem....
Inquire per episcopum Constantiensem et per episcopum
Walchelinum et per ceteros qui terras sanctæ Ædeldrede
scribi et jurari fecerunt, quomodo jurate fuerunt et qui eas
juraverunt, et qui jurationem audierunt, et qui sunt terre,
et quante, et quot, et quomodo vocate [et] qui eas tenent. His
distincte notatis et scriptis fac ut cite inde rei veritatem
per tuum breve sciam. Et cum eo veniat legatus abbatis.
RETURN
Hic subscribitur inquisicio terrarum, quomodo barones regis
inquisierunt,[239] videlicet per sacramentum vicecomitis
scire et omnium baronum et eorum francigenarum, et tocius
centuriatus, presbiteri, prepositi, vi. villani [_sic_]
uniuscujusque ville; deinde quomodo vocatur mansio, quis
tenuit eam tempore R.E., quis modo tenet, quot hide, quot
carruce[240] in dominio, quot hominum, quot villani, quot
cotarii, quot servi, quot liberi homines, quot sochemanni,
quantum silve, quantum prati, quot[241] pascuorum, quot
molendina, quot piscine, quantum est additum vel ablatum,
quantum valebat totum simul,[242] et quantum modo, quantum
quisque liber homo vel sochemannus habuit vel habet. Hoc totum
tripliciter, scilicet tempore regis Æduardi, et quando Rex
Willelmus dedit et qualiter modo sit, et si potest plus haberi
quam habeatur.
Isti homines juraverunt, etc., etc.
Especially important is the fact that the return contains the jurors'
names, in accordance with the express injunction to that effect in the
Conqueror's writ.
Now if this theory meet with acceptance, and the writ be taken to
refer, as I suggest, to the Domesday Inquest itself, it follows that
the Bishop of Coutances and Bishop Walchelin were the heads of the
Domesday Commission for this district. This, of course, has been
hitherto unknown; but it adds to the presumption in favour of the
facts that Bishop Walchelin is not mentioned in any of the Ely writs
as taking part in the _placita_ concerning the Abbey's lands,
and that, therefore, the only Inquest in which he could have been
concerned was the Domesday Inquest itself. It should be added,
however, that these two Bishops may have been, respectively, the heads
of two distinct commissions for adjoining groups of counties.
The heading to the _Inquisitio Eliensis_ is so well known, and has
been so often quoted by historians, that it is a gain to fix its
_status_, the more so as it has been loosely described as the
'official' instructions for the Survey itself. We may also determine
the date of the writ as the very close of the Conqueror's reign. For
it must have been issued between William's departure from England,
_circ._ September 1086, and his death (September 1087).
And now, how was the return compiled? It deals, we find, with six
counties, arranged in this order: Cambridgeshire, Herts, Essex,
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Hunts. For _Cambridgeshire_ it copies, clearly,
from the original returns. For Herts it must have done so also,
because it gives full details, which are not found in Domesday Book.
This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that, for these two counties,
it gives the jurors' names (for the hundreds dealt with), which it
could only have obtained from those original returns. For _Essex_,
_Norfolk_, and _Suffolk_, on the contrary, it simply gives the same
version as the second volume of Domesday Book, and omits accordingly
the jurors' names. The case of the four Manors in _Hunts_ I leave in
doubt, because the version in the _Inquisitio_ (pp. 166-7) has more
details than that of Domesday, though the latter is here exceptionally
full, and because it places first the Manor which comes fourth in
Domesday (i. 204). The additional details (as to live-stock) are such
as we might expect to be derived from the additional returns; but the
names of the witnesses for the Hundred are not recorded, a fact to be
taken in conjunction with the belated entry of these Huntingdonshire
Manors not following, as they should, those in Cambridgeshire and
Herts.
In addition to the _Inquisitio_ itself, as printed by the Record
Commission, there is a record, or collection of records, which follows
it in all three MSS., and which is printed in Mr Hamilton's book (pp.
168-89). Although its character is not there described, it can be
determined. For in the _Inquisitio_ there are three references to
the 'breve abbatis de ely' (pp. 123-4), all three of which can be
identified in the above record (pp. 175-7). It is noteworthy that the
record in question is only complete in C, which confirms my view that
B and its offspring A were independent of C.
Though the word _Breve_ in Domesday Book normally means the king's
writ, there are passages which seem to have been overlooked, and in
which it bears another and very suggestive meaning. One of them is
found at the end of the Survey of Worcestershire and was foolishly
supposed by the compilers of the index volume (pp. 250, 315) to relate
to lands held by 'Eddeva' and entered immediately before it. The
passage is an independent note, running thus:
In ESCH Hund' jacent x. hidæ in Fecheham et iii. hidæ in
Holewei et scriptæ sunt in _brevi de Hereford_.
In DODINTRET Hund' jacent xiii. hidæ de Mertelai et v. hidæ de
Suchelei quæ hic placitant et geldant, et ad Hereford reddunt
firmam suam, et sunt scriptæ in _breve regis_ (i. 178).
All four places are found on fo. 180_b_, 'Feccheham' and 'Haloede'
[_sic_][243] together (under 'Naisse' Hundred[244]) as paying a
joint ferm--'Merlie' (Martley) under 'Dodintret' Hundred and Suchelie
(Suckley), now in Herefordshire, as 'in Wirecestrescire' (cf. i. 172).
It is clear then that Domesday here uses 'breve' of a return, not of
a writ, and I venture to think the word may refer to the abbreviated
entries made in Domesday Book itself as distinct from those _in
extenso_ found in the original returns.[245]
This usage is found in both volumes. We read of land at Marham,
Norfolk, held by Hugh de Montfort; 'est mensurata in brevi Sanctæ
Adeldret' (ii. 238), where the reference is to the 'Terra Sanctæ
Adeldredræ' (ii. 212), and of Hurstington Hundred, Hunts, 'Villani
et sochemanni geldant secundum hidas in brevi scriptas' (i. 203). The
reference, in both cases, is to the text itself.
The former of these two phrases is repeated in the _Inquisitio
Eliensis_,[246] a fact of some importance if, as I venture to think,
it is there meaningless. The point is worth labouring. We see that
the phrase cannot have occurred in the original returns, where all
the entries relating to Marham would have come together. But if it
was only applicable to Domesday Book itself--where the fiefs were
separated--then must the I.E. have copied from Domesday Book.
This, indeed, is the point to which I am working. For Essex, Norfolk,
and Suffolk, I believe, the compilers of the _Inquisitio_ (1086-7)
must have worked from the second volume of Domesday as we have it now.
We see it _firstly_, in the order of the counties; _secondly_, in the
absence of the jurors' names; _thirdly_, in the system of entering the
lands. With a fourth and minute test I have dealt just above.
But to make this clearer, we must briefly analyse the return. The
Cambridgeshire portion extends from p. 101 to p. 120. It extracts
from the original returns, Hundred by Hundred, all that relates to
the Abbey of Ely. Following this is a note of its possessions in
the Borough of Cambridge[247] (pp. 120-1), and then summaries of the
Abbey's estates, in _dominium_ and _thainland_ and _socha_, in all
six counties, and of the lands held by Picot the Sheriff, Hardwin
d'Eschalers and Guy de Raimbercurt, to which it laid claim as its own
(pp. 121-4). Then we resume with Hertfordshire, the extracts from
the original returns (pp. 124, 125). Both the Cambridgeshire and
Hertfordshire portions close with the words, 'De toto quod habemus',
etc., referring to the totals worked out by the Abbey from the entries
in the original returns.
With Essex, we enter at once on a different system. This portion,
which extends from p. 125 to p. 130 (line 8), is arranged not by
Hundreds but by fiefs. It first gives the lands actually held by the
Abbey (as coming first in Domesday), and then those of which laymen
were in possession. To the latter section are prefixed the words: 'Has
terras calumpniatur abbas de ely secundum breve regis'. From Essex we
pass to Norfolk, the entries for which, commencing on p. 130 with
the words 'In Teodforda', end on p. 141 at 'Rogerus filius Rainardi'.
These again are divided into two portions, namely, the lands credited
to the Abbey in Domesday (pp. 130-6), and those which it claimed but
which Domesday enters under other owners (pp. 137-41). Between the two
comes the total value of the former portion and a list of the Norfolk
churches held by the Abbey. Last of the Eastern counties is Suffolk,
which begins on p. 141 at 'In Tedeuuartstreu hund.', and ends on p.
166. This also is in two portions, but the order seems to be reversed,
the alleged aggressions on the Abbey's lands coming first and its
uncontested possessions last. The latter portion begins on p. 153,
where the B text inserts the word 'Sudfulc'.
The following parallel passages are of interest as showing how closely
the I.E. followed D.B. even when recording a judicial decision.
_D.B._ _I.E._
In dermodesduna tenuerunt xxv. In dermodesduna tenuerunt xxv.
liberi homines I car. terræ ex lib. homines I car. terre ex
quibus habuit sca. Al. commend. quibus habuit S. Ædel. sacam et
et socam T.R.E. Tunc vi. car. socam et commend. T.R.E. Tunc
modo ii., et iii. acre prati, vi. car. modo ii., et iii. acre
et val. xx. sol. prati, et val. xx.
Rogerus bigot[us] tenet de abbate, sol. R. bigot tenet de Abbate
quia abbas eam derationavit super quia Abbas eam dirationavit
eum coram episcopo de sancto super eum coram episcopo
Laudo, sed prius tamen tenebat de constantiensi. Sed prius
rege (ii. 383). tamen tenuit de rege (p. 157).
The one variation, the Bishop's style, has a curious parallel in
Domesday Book (i. 165), where under the rubric 'Terra Episcopi
Constantiensis' we read 'Episcopus de Sancto Laudo tenet', etc.
We may take it then that the compilers of the _Inquisitio Eliensis_
worked for Cambridge and Herts from the original returns, but, for
the eastern counties, from the second volume of Domesday. What are the
corollaries of this conclusion? They used, for some reason or other,
the second volume of Domesday, but not the first--if, indeed, it then
existed. Speaking for myself, I have always felt not a little uneasy
as to the accepted date for the completion of Domesday Book.[248] Mr
Eyton went so far as to write:
Imperial orders have gone forth that the coming Codex, the
Domesday that is to outlive centuries, is to be completed
before Easter (April 5th, in that year [1086]), when King
William himself expects to receive it in his Court and Palace
of Winchester (_Notes on Domesday_, 15).
And he explicitly stated that:
On any hypothesis as to the time taken by the different
processes which resulted in Domesday Book, the whole, that
is the survey, the transcription, and the codification, were
completed in less than eight months, and three of the eight
were winter months. No such miracle of clerkly and executive
capacity has been worked in England since.[249]
But was it worked then? All that the chronicle says of the King is
that the '_gewrita_ wæran gebroht to him', a phrase which does not
imply more than the original returns themselves.
Of course, the chief authority quoted is the colophon to the second
volume:
Anno millesimo octogesimo sexto ab incarnatione Domini
vicesimo vero regni Willelmi facta est ipsa descriptio non
solum per hos tres comitatus sed etiam per alios.
It seems to have been somewhat hastily concluded that because the
Survey ('Descriptio Angliæ') took place in 1086, Domesday Book (which
styles itself _Liber de Wintonia_), was completed in that year. The
phrase 'per hos tres comitatus' proves, surely, that 'descriptio'
refers to the Survey, not to the book.[250]
I have never seen any attempt at a real explanation of the great
difference both in scope and in excellence between the two volumes,
or indeed any reason given why the Eastern counties should have had
a volume to themselves. For a full appreciation of the contrast
presented by the two volumes, the originals ought to be examined. Such
differences as that the leaves of one are half as large again as those
of other, and that the former is drawn up in double, but the latter in
single column, dwarf the comparatively minor contrasts of material
and of handwriting. So, too, the fullness of the details in the second
volume may obscure the fact of its workmanship being greatly inferior
to that of the first. Of its blunders I need only give one startling
instance. The opening words of the Suffolk Survey, written in bold
lettering, are 'Terra Regis de Regione' (281_b_). I have no hesitation
in saying that the last words should be 'de _Regno_'. Indeed, the
second formula is found on 289_b_, as 'Terra Regis de Regno', while on
119_b_ under 'Terra Regis', we read 'hoc manerium fuit de regno'. So
also in the Exon Domesday 'Terra Regis' figures as 'Dominicatus regis
ad regnum pertinens'.[251] The muddled order of the tenants-in-chief
for Norfolk and for Suffolk--where laymen precede the church[252]--is
another proof of inferiority, but only minute investigation could show
the hurry or ignorance of the scribes.
Now, all this might, I think, be explained if we took the so-called
second volume to be really a first attempt at the codification of the
returns. Its unsatisfactory character must have demonstrated the need
for a better system, which, indeed, its unwieldy proportions must have
rendered imperative. So drastic and so successful, on this hypothesis,
was the reform, that while these three counties had needed a volume
of 450 folios, the rest of England that was surveyed--some thirty
counties--was compressed into a single volume of 382 folios, and on
a system which rendered consultation easier and more rapid. In every
respect the first volume is a wonderful improvement on the second, but
the authorities may have shrunk from ordering the latter to have been
compiled _de novo_, when the work, though unsatisfactory, had once
been done.
This, it must of course be remembered, is all hypothesis, a hypothesis
suggested by the facts. If it were proved that at the time when the
Ely return was made, the 'second' volume had been compiled, and the
'first' had not, I should have established my case. But it might be
urged that the 'first' volume did exist at the time, and that the
Ely scribes used the returns instead, because they contained fuller
information. To this I reply, so far as the details of the estates are
concerned, that neither the terms of the writ nor the heading of the
_Inquisitio_ involved the inclusion of such details as Domesday
Book omitted. If the scribes inserted them, it must have been merely
because they inserted everything they found in the records from which
they copied. It might still be urged that they went to the returns for
the names of the _juratores_; but why, if so, did they not do so for
the three eastern counties? It certainly seems to me to be the most
satisfactory explanation that the materials supplied for compiling
this return, as being the recognized official records, were the
so-called 'second' volume of Domesday, and (for the rest) the original
returns.
XIX. FIRST MENTION OF DOMESDAY BOOK
No one nowadays should require to be told that the pseudo-Ingulf's
dealings with Domesday are devoid of all authority. Some, however, may
still believe in the tale found in that 'Continuatio' of his chronicle
which is fathered on Peter of Blois. It is there that Ellis found
(putting Ingulf aside) the only case of an appeal to its witness
before the reign of John.[253]
With the 'Continuatio' I shall deal below,[254] but I would observe,
while on the subject, that the 'pseudo-Ingulf' (charters and all)
was, I believe, largely concocted by the help of hints gathered from
Domesday Book.
The absence of any authoritative mention, in its early days, of our
great record gives a special importance to an entry in the _Chronicle
of Abingdon_ (ii. 115-6), where we read that Abbot Faritius was
impleaded by certain men:
Sed is abbas in castello Wincestre coram episcopis
Rogero Saresberiensi, et Roberto Lincolniensi, et Ricardo
Londoniensi, et multis regis baronibus, ratiocinando ostendit
declamationem eorum injustam esse. Quare, justiciarorum regis
judicio obtinuit ut illud manerium, etc. ... sed quia rex tunc
in Normanniâ erat, regina, quæ tunc præsens erat, taliter hoc
sigillo suo confirmavit.
Then follows the Queen's writ, announcing the decision of the plea
held in the royal 'Curia', together with the names of the 'barons'
present. These names enable us to determine a certain limit for the
date of the plea. 'Thurstinus Capellamus', for instance, implies that
it was previous to his obtaining the See of York in 1114, while the
presence of Richard, Bishop of London, places it subsequent to July
26, 1108. It must, therefore, have been held during the King's absence
between July 1108 and the end of May 1109; or in his later absence
from August 1111 to the summer of 1113.
The action of the Queen in presiding over this _placitum_ illustrates
a recognized practice, of which we have an instance in Domesday
itself (i. 238_b_), where it is stated that Bishop Wulfstan,
'terram deplacitasse coram regina Mathilde in presentia iiii^{or.}
vicecomitatuum'. The Queen's description of the _Curia Regis_ as
'curia domini mei et mea' should be compared with the phrase employed
by the Queen of Henry II, who, similarly acting in her husband's
absence, speaks of the Great Justiciar as 'Justicia Regis et mea'.
But the essential portion of the passage before us is this:
Sciatis quod Faritius abbas de Abendona in curia domini mei et
mea, apud Wintoniam in thesauro ... _per Librum de Thesauro_,
diratiocinavit quod, etc.
The court was held 'in castello Wincestre', says the narrative, 'apud
Wintoniam in thesauro', says the record. Both are right, for the Royal
Treasury was in Winchester Castle.[255]
But what was the 'Liber de Thesauro'? I contend that it was Domesday
Book, and can have been nothing else. For, passing now to the
_Dialogus de Scaccario_ (_circa_ 1177), we there read in reply to an
inquiry as to the nature of Domesday Book (which 'in thesauro servatur
et inde non recedit'): '_liber ille_ de quo quæris sigilli regii comes
est individuus _in thesauro_' (I. XV.). The connection of the Book
with the Treasury is brought out strongly in the _Dialogus_, and leads
to the presumption, as Mr Hall perceived, that the Treasury being
originally at Winchester, the Book was there also--as indeed we see
it was under Henry I.[256] On the date of its removal to Westminster,
there has been much discussion between my friend Mr Hall and
myself.[257] Mr Hall relies mainly on the _Dialogus de Scaccario_, and
on the inferences he draws from it, for the early removal of Domesday
to Westminster, and the establishment there of the royal Treasury.
For myself, I claim for the Winchester Treasury greater importance
and continuity than he is willing to admit. The leading records, of
course, were stored there as well as treasure. We find William
Rufus speaking of 'meis brevibus ... qui sunt in thesauro mea
Wyntoniæ';[258] and we read that, on his father's death, 'pergens apud
Wincestre thesaurum patris sui ... divisit: erant autem in thesauro
illo lx. m[ille] libræ argenti excepto auro et gemmis et vasis et
palliis.'[259] Heming's Cartulary describes the Domesday returns
as stored 'in thesauro regali', and Henry of Huntingdon states that
'inter thesauros reposita usque hodie servantur'.[260] Now, as the
Treasury was in Winchester Castle at the time of the above suit, and
as it had been in 1100[261] and 1087, so it was still at the accession
of Stephen in 1135, and at the triumph of Matilda in 1141. This is
absolutely certain from the Chronicles, nor do they ever mention
any other Treasury. Moreover, the contents of this Treasury in
1135--'erant et vasa tam aurea quam argentea'--correspond with those
described by the _Dialogus_ forty years later: 'vasa diversi generis
aurea et argentea'. Lastly, there is a piece of evidence which has not
yet been adduced, namely, that in his _Expugnatio Hibernica_ (1188),
Giraldus, speaking of that ring and letters which John of Salisbury
declared had been brought by him from the Pope, and were 'still stored
in the Royal Treasury', writes of
Annulum aureum in investituræ signum ... qui statim simul cum
privilegio _in archivis Wintoniae_ repositus fuerat.
Giraldus certainly must have looked on the Royal Treasury at
Winchester as the only recognized repository for all such objects as
these.
Mr Hall, indeed, has gradually modified his original position
that 'Ingulphus saw the Domesday register, as it now exists, at
Westminster', and that it was sent there for good from Winchester
'early in the reign of Henry I',[262] but he still places the
establishment of 'the' Treasury at Westminster, in my opinion, too
early. It is the gradual decay of Winchester as the capital and seat
of administration that makes it difficult to say positively when or
how the national records, Domesday Books among them, were transferred
to Westminster. We have seen at least that, in its early days, the
'Liber de Wintonia', as it styles itself, had its home within the
walls of the Royal castle of Winchester; and I cannot but think,
now as at first, that it began by visiting Westminster for Exchequer
sessions only.[263]
In any case, we have seen its witness appealed to on a far earlier
occasion than had hitherto been known. In my paper on 'An Early
Reference to Domesday',[264] I quoted an even earlier mention of the
'Descriptio Angliæ', but here again the reference seems to make rather
to the Domesday Survey itself than to Domesday Book, the 'Liber de
Thesauro'.
As an appendix to this paper, I give the pedigree of the Domesday MSS.
according to the views I have expressed.[265]
Original Returns
________________________|_________________________
| | | |
Domesday Domesday 'Inquisitio 'Inquisitio[266]
Book, vol. II Book, vol. I Eliensis', Comitatus
| _quoad_ Camb. Cantabrigiensis'
| and Herts (Tib. A. VI.)
| |
| |
'Inquisitio ______|________
Eliensis', | |
_quoad_ Essex, C text B text
Norfolk, Suffolk |
______|______ A text
| | (printed by
C text B text Ellis)
|
A text
(printed by
Ellis)
[Footnote 1: _English Commonwealth_, II, ccccxliv.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 3: _Domesday Book_, p. 42.]
[Footnote 4: _Athenæum_, 1885, I, 472, 566-7; _Domesday Book_,
1887, p. 44.]
[Footnote 5: _Domesday Studies_ (1891), II, 488.]
[Footnote 6: _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis._ Cura N.
E. S. A. Hamilton, 1876.]
[Footnote 7: _Notes on Domesday_ (1877), reprinted 1880, p.
15.]
[Footnote 8: The italics are his own, _Domesday Book_, p. 42.
Cf. _Domesday Studies_, II, 486-7.]
[Footnote 9: It is not even _proved_ that the I.C.C. is copied
from the original returns themselves. There is the possibility
of a MS. between the two. See _Addenda_.]
[Footnote 10: These extracts are _extended_ and _punctuated_
to facilitate the comparison. Important extensions are placed
within square brackets.]
[Footnote 11: Curiously enough, the cases in which the I.C.C.
does really supplement the Domesday version, that is, in the
names of the holders T.R.E. and of the under-tenants T.R.W.,
were left unnoticed by Mr Hamilton.]
[Footnote 12: The references to pages are to those of Mr
Hamilton's edition. The portions within the square brackets
are the passages omitted.]
[Footnote 13: In this instance the omission is so gross that
it attracted Mr Hamilton's notice. He admits in a footnote
that his MS. 'confounds two separate entries'. It would,
however, be more correct to say that the MS. here omits a
portion of each. It is easy to see how the scribe erroneously
'ran on' from the first portion of one entry to the second
portion of another. This entry has a further value, for while
D.B. convicts the I.C.C. of omitting the words 'de Widone',
it is itself convicted, by collation, of omitting the entry,
'Terra est i. bovi'.]
[Footnote 14: The I.C.C. here wholly omits one of the three
holdings T.R.E. 'The three hides and a virgate', at which the
estate was assessed, were thus composed: (1) three virgates
held by Huscarl, (2) a hide and a virgate held by Eadgyth,
(3) a hide and a virgate held by Wulfwine, her man. It is this
last holding which is omitted. Note here that the Domesday
'hide' is composed as ever (_pace_ Mr Pell) of four virgates.]
[Footnote 15: 'i. caruce [ibi terra] et est caruca.']
[Footnote 16: 'Ita quod [non potuit] dare vel vendere' (p.
50).]
[Footnote 17: 'Potuerunt [recedere] qua parte voluerunt'--p.
62 (Mr Hamilton noticed this omission).]
[Footnote 18: 'Sed [soca] eius remansit ædiue' (p. 61).]
[Footnote 19: 'Tenet [Odo] de comite Alano' (p. 15).]
[Footnote 20: 'Soca tantum hominis abbatis de Ely remansit
æcclesiæ' (D.B.); 'sine socha' (I.E.).]
[Footnote 21: The latter is the reading of D.B., and is the
right one because confirmed by I.E.]
[Footnote 22: This, like the similar cases where D.B. is
given as the authority for the second reading, is proved
arithmetically (_vide infra_).]
[Footnote 23: The I.C.C. enumerates only _three_, which is the
number given in D.B.]
[Footnote 24: The words 'quendam ortum' had occurred just
before, and are here wrongly repeated.]
[Footnote 25: 'Inter totum valent et valuerunt xii. den.' This
was _exclusive_ of the value of the Manor, which by the way
the I.C.C. gives as sixteen pounds and D.B. at six pounds, one
of those cases of discrepancy which have to be left in doubt,
though D.B. is probably right.]
[Footnote 26: Mr Eyton, in his _Notes on Domesday_ (p. 16),
called attention to this. 'The result,' he wrote (of the
Lincolnshire Domesday), 'as to arrangement, is in certain
instances just what might have been expected from some haste
of process.... The hurried clerks were perpetually overlooking
entries which they ought to have seen.']
[Footnote 27: Mr Eyton (_ibid._, pp. 17, 18), while ignoring
this valuable and most important feature, notes the employment
of a similar device in Domesday Book itself in the case of
Yorkshire. 'Against such errors and redundancies a very simple
but effective precaution seems to have been adopted by some
clerk or clerks employed on the Yorkshire notes. Before
transcription was commenced an index was made of the loose
notes of that county. This index gave the contents of each
Wapentac or Liberty in abstract under the appropriate title;
then the measure in carucates and bovates of each item of
estate; and lastly (interlined) some hint or indication to
whose Honour or fief each item belonged. This most clerkly
device will have saved the subsequent transcribers much
trouble of roll-searching and a world of confusion in their
actual work.']
[Footnote 28: 'Warra jacet in trompintona, et terra in
grantebrigga.']
[Footnote 29: To say that the sokeman 'non potuerunt recedere
_sed_ soca remanebat abbati', is nonsense, because if they
were not able 'recedere', the question of 'soca' could not
arise. The formula 'sed soca', etc., is only used in cases
where there _was_ a right 'recedere'.]
[Footnote 30: In this case the 'n[on]' has been added by
interlineation.]
[Footnote 31: The meaning, I think, is clear, though badly
expressed, 'alias' being, seemingly, put for 'illas'.]
[Footnote 32: This error arose thus: The original return
(_see_ I.C.C.) ran: 'De his v. hidis' (i.e. in 'Campes') tenet
Normannus de Alberico dimidiam hidam.' The Domesday scribe
read this hurriedly as implying that Norman's half hide was
part of Aubrey's estate here (two and a half hides), whereas
it was reckoned and entered as a _separate_ estate.]
[Footnote 33: Proved by collation with I.C.C. and I.E., which
agree with each other.]
[Footnote 34: _Notes on Domesday_, p. 16.]
[Footnote 35: _Domesday Studies_, pp. 227-363, 561-619.]
[Footnote 36: 'Domesday Measures of Land' (_Archæological
Review_, September 1889; iv, 130).]
[Footnote 37: _Domesday Studies_, 188, 354.]
[Footnote 38: 'vi. carucis ibi est terra'. See _Addenda_.]
[Footnote 39: Compare the equivalent tenure recognized in
William of Poitier's charter to Bayonne: 'Le _voisin_ qui
voulait abandonner la cité sans esprit de retour avait le
droit de vendre librement tout ce qu'il possédait maisons,
prairies, vergers, moulins.']
[Footnote 40: We have three separate statements (of which more
anon) of the aggressions of these three men on the Abbey's
lands. Taking the one printed on pp. 175-7 of Mr Hamilton's
book, we find that of the twelve estates grasped by Hardwin,
all but one or two can be identified as the subject of
duplicate entries in Domesday. (A disputed hide and a half in
'Melrede', though not mentioned in this list, is also entered
in duplicate.) But neither of the estates seized by Guy de
Raimbercurt is so entered in Domesday. The first two of
those which Picot is accused of abstracting are entered in
duplicate, but not the following ones. There is one instance
of a duplicate entry of another character, relating to half a
virgate (D.B., i, 199, _b_, 2, gives it erroneously as half
a hide, but D.B., i, 190, _a_, 1, rightly as half a virgate),
which Picot, as sheriff had regained for the king against the
'invading' Aubrey.]
[Footnote 41: The I.E. adds 'sub abbate ely' in each case, but
is, from its nature, here open to suspicion.]
[Footnote 42: This is not always the case. At Whaddon, for
instance, the entry under Hardwin's land is the fuller. It is
noteworthy also that in this case the _later_ entry (i. 198,
_b_, 1) is referred to ('Hæc terra appreciata est cum terra
Hardwini') in the _earlier_ one (i. 191, _a_, 2).]
[Footnote 43: This same change of phrase is repeated four
times on two pages (pp. 4, 5).]
[Footnote 44: So, for instance:
'de appulatione navis' (I.C.C.) = 'de theloneo retis' (D.B.).
'ferarum siluaticarum' (I.C.C.) = 'bestiarum siluaticarum' (D.B.).
'silua ad sepes refici.' (I.C.C.) = 'nemus ad claud. sepes' (D.B.).]
[Footnote 45: Compare the I.C.C. version on p. 100, _infra._]
[Footnote 46: _Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. xviii, xix.]
[Footnote 47: 'Et dimidiam' [hidam] is omitted in B, and
(oddly enough) in Domesday itself.]
[Footnote 48: All three MSS. err here, as the reading should
clearly be 'dim. _virg._']
[Footnote 49: b. 65. This distinction between the one and the
nine, but not the size of the holding, is preserved in D.B.;
while the I.E., though preserving it, gives the numbers as two
and eight.]
[Footnote 50: This is the I.E. and D.B. version. For 'extra
ecclesiam', the I.C.C. substitutes 'sine ejus [abbatis]
licentia'.]
[Footnote 51: 'Soca _remansit abbati_' is the D.B. and I.E.
version. It should be noted that the I.E. and _Breve Abbatis_
give 'herchenger pistor' as the despoiler, while the I.C.C.
and D.B. record him only as a 'miles' of Picot the sheriff.
This is a case which certainly suggests special local
knowledge in the compiler of the former documents, who also
gives the sokeman's name--Siward.]
[Footnote 52: Thus 'In Branmmeswelle ... lxx. liberi homines
unde abbas habuit sacam et socam et commendatio _et omnes
consuetudines_ ... In eadem villa iiii. liberi homines[*] unde
abbas habuit sacam et socam et commendationem' (p. 161).]
[Footnote *: 'Commend' abbati' (D.B., ii 387 _b_).]
[Footnote 53: _Inq. Com. Cant._, 192-5. see paper on it,
_infra_.]
[Footnote 54: 'In soca et commendatione abbatis de eli'
(D.B., ii. 441).]
[Footnote 55: 'Soca et commendatione tantum' (D.B.).]
[Footnote 56: 'iiii. liberi homines soca et commendatione
tantum' (D.B.).]
[Footnote 57: 'T.R.E. ad socham' (D.B.).]
[Footnote 58: 'Recep'' (D.B., ii. 238).]
[Footnote 59: The _Breve Abbatis_ records 34.]
[Footnote 60: _Ibid._, 7.]
[Footnote 61: I.C.C., fo. 110 (_b_) 1. Cf. D.B., I. 199 (_a_)
2, and I.E., p. 110.]
[Footnote 62: 'Socam comes Algarus habuit' = 'soca remansit
comiti Algaro'. See, for instance, the similar case in which
a 'man' of Earl Waltheof 'terram suam dare vel vendere potuit,
sed abbas de Rameseia socam habuit' (I.C.C., fo. 122, _b_,
2), where D.B. has: 'dare potuit, sed soca remansit abbati de
Ramesy' (i. 202, _b_, 1).]
[Footnote 63: 'Et in eadem villa iii. liberi homines ...
de quibus abbas non habebat nisi commendationem: soca in
kanincghala regis.']
[Footnote 64: 'Hanc terram tenuit godmundus homo comitis
Waltevi; soca vero remansit abbati ely' (p. 115).]
[Footnote 65: 'Unum liberum hominem unde abbas habet sacam et
socam tantum' (p. 140).]
[Footnote 66: _Domesday Studies_, p. 556.]
[Footnote 67: _Inq. El._, pp. 140, 141.]
[Footnote 68: _Domesday Studies_, p. 209.]
[Footnote 69: _Domesday Studies_, p. 187.]
[Footnote 70: It is essential to bear in mind that the
Domesday scribes had nothing to guide them but the bare words
of the return, so that if they thus equated these expressions,
they can only have done so because the rule was of universal
application.]
[Footnote 71: _Archæological Review_, vol. i, p. 286.]
[Footnote 72: Compare also the Exon. Domesday, where
'Stoches', which is entered 'pro. ii. virgatis et dim.'
appears in D.B. as 'dim. hida et dim. virga'.]
[Footnote 73: See below, and _ante_, p. 17, note.]
[Footnote 74: _Key to Domesday_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 75: It is to this evidence that I made allusion
in _Domesday Studies_ (p. 225). Similar evidence as to the
Domesday carucate is found in the _Inq. El._ (Ed. Hamilton,
pp. 156, 178) where 'lx. acre' equate 'dim. c[arucata]'.]
[Footnote 76: D.B. erroneously reads 'xxx.' (30) by the
insertion of an 'x' too many. The I.C.C. correctly reads 'xx.'
(20), its accuracy here being proved by the above arithmetic.
Thus the I.C.C. corrects a reading which (1) would, but for
it, appear fatal to the belief that 30 acres = a virgate; (2)
would upset the above arithmetic. This ought to be clearly
grasped, because it well illustrates the element of clerical
error, and shows how apparent discrepancies in our rule may be
due to a faulty text alone.]
[Footnote 77: Here, as in the preceding instance, Domesday is
in error, reading 'one virgate' ('I virgata') where the I.C.C.
correctly gives us half a virgate ('dimidiam virgam'). The
remarks in the preceding note apply equally here.]
[Footnote 78: Here, again, Domesday is in error, reading _two_
and a half virgates, where the I.C.C. has _one_ and a half.]
[Footnote 79: These two entries are by a blunder in the
I.C.C. (see above, p. 23) erroneously rolled into one (of 1/3
virgate). In this case it is Domesday Book which corrects the
I.C.C, and preserves for us the right version.]
[Footnote 80: The I.C.C, which is very corrupt in its account
of this township, gives us a deficiency of 1 hide 0-1/2
virgates.]
[Footnote 81: The apparent exception was caused by the _Inq.
Com. Cant._ reading 'pro iiii. hidis', and omitting the words
'xl. acras minus', the true assessment of the Manor, when the
king's estate was excluded, being 'three hides _less forty
acres_'.]
[Footnote 82: The _blunder_ consists in treating 6-1/2 (geld)
acres as part of the Countess Judith's estate, whereas they
had been reckoned separately; the _discrepancy_ is due to D.B.
reading 'ii. acras', where the I.C.C. has 'xxii. acras'.]
[Footnote 83: Eyton's _Notes on Domesday_, p. 12.]
[Footnote 84: _Ibid._, p. 13.]
[Footnote 85: Dr Stubbs' remarks 'on the vexed question of
the extent of the hide' will be found in a note to his _Const.
Hist._, vol. i (1874), p. 74. Mr Eyton (_Key to Domesday_, p.
14) asserted that the _Domesday_ hide contained 48 geld-acres.
Prof Earle in his _Land Charters and Saxonic Documents_ (1888)
reviews the question of the hide, but leaves it undetermined
(pp. lii-liii, 457-461).]
[Footnote 86: See above, p. 27.]
[Footnote 87: _Antiquary_, June 1882, p. 242. See also
_Domesday Studies_, vol. i, p. 119.]
[Footnote 88: The I.C.C. _omits_ the king's Manor (7-1/4
hides, 8 ploughlands).]
[Footnote 89: I do not here discuss the cause of the
reduction. Indeed, this would be hard to discover; for the
original assessment was distinctly low, whether we compare it
with the aggregate of ploughlands or of valuation. It is true
that the total of _valets_ which had been £235 0s 4d T.R.E.,
and was £203 8s 4d at the time of the survey, had fallen so
low as £161 18s 4d, when the grantees received their lands,
but, even at the lowest figure, the assessment was still
moderate.]
[Footnote 90: 'Burgum de Grentebrige pro uno Hundredo se
defendebat.'--_D.B._, i. 189.]
[Footnote 91: This figure is arrived at by adding to the 'hida
et dimidia et xx. acræ' of Domesday, and the _Inq. Com. Cant._
the 'viii. hidæ et xl. acræ', which the latter omits, but
which Domesday records. The sum is exactly ten hides.]
[Footnote 92: Domesday reads 'iii.', and _Inq. Com. Cant._
'iiii.']
[Footnote 93: I.C.C. reads 'x.']
[Footnote 94: 'Per concessionem ejusdem regis' (Domesday).
Compare also the five hides knocked off the assessment of
Alveston by Henry I, and another ten hides off that of Hampton
(_Domesday Studies_, pp. 99, 103).]
[Footnote 95: _Const. Hist._, i, 105.]
[Footnote 96: See below, p. 87.]
[Footnote 97: See also _Domesday Studies_, i, 117.]
[Footnote 98: _Domesday Studies_, i, 122-30.]
[Footnote 99: The fragments of the Hundred of Papworth and
North Stow, which it contains, are too small to enable us to
speak with certainty.]
[Footnote 100: Correcting the _Inq. Com. Cant._ by adding from
Domesday the royal Manors in Isleham and Fordham.]
[Footnote 101: Bedford, 1881.]
[Footnote 102: 'Huntedun Burg defendebat se ad geldum
regis pro quarta parte de Hyrstingestan hundred pro L.
hidis.'--_Domesday_, i, 203.]
[Footnote 103: Adjoining Manors held by the Abbot of Ely.]
[Footnote 104: I have not attempted to group these six Manors,
as we have not sufficient information to warrant it. They
would, however, form two groups of twenty hides each, or one
of twenty-five and another of fifteen.]
[Footnote 105: There are five entries relating to Catworth
(fos. 205_b_, 206, 206_b_, 217_b_), which, by the addition
of 11 hides (1 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 3 + 1), would bring up its
assessment to 15; but as they are all credited in Domesday to
other Hundreds, and as there are _two_ Catworths surveyed, I
have adhered to the above figure.]
[Footnote 106: _Introduction to Domesday_, i, 134. The italics
are his own.]
[Footnote 107: _Const. Hist._, i, 99.]
[Footnote 108: This point brings further into line the towns
and the rural Hundreds, through the 100-hide and the 50-hide
assessments of the former. (_See_ my 'Danegeld' Essay in
_Domesday Studies_.)]
[Footnote 109: Edgar spoke of it as three Hundreds.]
[Footnote 110: 'Unum hundret quod vocatur Oswaldeslaw in quo
jacent ccc. hidæ.'--_D.B._, i., 172_b._]
[Footnote 111: It also contained one 23-hide and two 24-hide
Manors, which were once perhaps, of 25 hides. The Church
of Worcester, also possessed, outside this Hundred, Manors
(_inter alia_) of 20, 15, 10, and 5 hides. (_See_ below, p.
143.)]
[Footnote 112: D.B., i. 175_b._]
[Footnote 113: I make the aggregate 118-1/2 hides.]
[Footnote 114: 'Quæ hic [Dodintret hundred] placitant et
geldant et ad Hereford reddunt firmam suam.' It would
have been said in Cambridgeshire that their 'wara' was in
Doddentree Hundred.]
[Footnote 115: Eyton's _Somerset Survey_, ii, 25.]
[Footnote 116: Eyton's _Dorset Domesday_, p. 14.]
[Footnote 117: I drew attention in the _Archæological Review_
(vol. 1) to a Cornish survey of 21 Ed. I. (_Testa de Nevill_,
p. 204), in which every Cornish acre contains a Cornish
carucate.]
[Footnote 118: _Domesday Studies_, p. 172.]
[Footnote 119: 'A New View of the Geldable Unit of Assessment
of Domesday.' _Ibid_., pp. 227-363, 561-619.]
[Footnote 120: _Archæological Review_, i, 285-95; iv, 130-40,
391.]
[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, iv, 325.]
[Footnote 122: A curious hint of the grouping of Vills is
afforded in Oxfordshire by Adderbury and Bloxham. Domesday
first gives us an assessment of 34-1/2 hides in the two, and
then 15-1/2 hides in Adderbury, making in all, for the two, 50
hides, the same as Banbury.]
[Footnote 123: This evidence is rendered available by the
useful _Notes on the Oxfordshire Domesday_, published by the
Clarendon Press in 1892.]
[Footnote 124: 40 + 5 + 5.]
[Footnote 125: 'Unam hidam et iii^{es.} virgatas et iii^{ciam.}
partem de i. virgata.']
[Footnote 126: 'Dimidiam hidam et iii^{ciam.} partem dimidiæ
hidæ.']
[Footnote 127: Lysons. So also Domesday: '_soco vero jacebat
in Stains_'.]
[Footnote 128: _Domesday Studies_, i. 120. See also _supra_,
p. 45, and the case of Northampton, _infra_.]
[Footnote 129: _Domesday_, i. 64_b._]
[Footnote 130: _English Historical Review_, 1889, iv. 729.]
[Footnote 131: _English Historical Review_, 1889, iv. 728-9.]
[Footnote 132: _Archæological Review_, iv. 313-27.]
[Footnote 133: Mr Stevenson, perhaps, is rather too severe
on Canon Taylor's 'Carucate' remarks in the _New English
Dictionary_. Strictly, no doubt, the Canon was mistaken, with
Mr Pell, in reckoning 120 as 144 'by the English number'; but
the evidence in his paper on 'the plough and the ploughland'
seems to establish a practice of counting by twelve instead of
ten.]
[Footnote 134: _Genealogist_, N.S., vi. 160-1.]
[Footnote 135: _Archæological Review_, iv. 322.]
[Footnote 136: On this point one may compare with profit
'the making of the Danelaw' (858-78), by the late Mr Green
(_Conquest of England_, pp. 114-29), who had devoted to this
subject much attention. He discusses the limits of Eastern
Mercia, the district of the Five Boroughs, in the light of
local nomenclature (_ibid._, pp. 121-2), and includes within
it, on this ground, Northamptonshire, while observing that the
country about Buckingham, which formed the southern border of
the 'Five Boroughs', has no 'byes'. My own evidence is wholly
distinct from that of local nomenclature, and defines more
sharply the district settled and reorganized by the Danes.
The hidation of Northamptonshire is peculiar, a unit of
four (reminding one of the Mercian shilling) coming into
prominence. Still, it was not carucated, but retained its
assessment in hides.]
[Footnote 137: Stamford is assigned to Lincolnshire by
Domesday, but is now in Rutland. The 'Rutland' of Domesday
(the northern portion of the county as at present constituted)
was included, we shall find, in the carucated district by
which it was surrounded on the north.]
[Footnote 138: Reg. Mag. Alb. at York, pars. ii. 1. Quoted
by Canon Raine, in his edition of John of Hexham (who applies
these _formulæ_ to Hexham itself), p. 61.]
[Footnote 139: _Vide infra_, p. 149, _et seq._]
[Footnote 140: 'Suma iii. hundr' et vi. car. et vi. bov.']
[Footnote 141: 'Suma iiii. hundr' et x. car.' (a wrong
total).]
[Footnote 142: 'Summa iii. hundr' et v. car. et iiii. bov.']
[Footnote 143: See also on these Hundreds Mr Stevenson's
remarks in _English Historical Review_, v. 96, which have
appeared since I made these researches.]
[Footnote 144: This appears to be a clerical error. The actual
figures represent 'Hundreds'.]
[Footnote 145: The Northern division by threes and sixes is
responsible, of course, for the six 'sheaddings' of the Isle
of Man. On their connection with the 'scypfylleth' of three
Hundreds see Vigfusson in _English Historical Review_, ii.
500.]
[Footnote 146: The aggregate of these _areal_ measures does
not bear out the statement of Domesday regarding them, the
former Wapentake containing eighty-four ploughlands, where
Domesday allows it only forty-eight.]
[Footnote 147: The entry is far more suggestive of the
'Hundreds' (_vide infra_) in Leicestershire, on the border of
which Sawley stood. This remark applies also to the entry (i.
291_b_) that Leake (Notts) 'jacet in Pluntree Hund'.]
[Footnote 148: See D.B., i. fos. 298, 298_b_, and fo. 379.]
[Footnote 149: As Mr Pell did in the case of Clifton.]
[Footnote 150: _Vide infra_, p. 160.]
[Footnote 151: 'There is no trace of any,' writes Canon Taylor
(_Domesday Studies_, i. 74).]
[Footnote 152: As with _maenols_ and _trevs_ in North and
South Wales.]
[Footnote 153: Mr Pell tried to explain it by assuming that
the Leicestershire _carucates_ were really small virgates of
the _hida_ in question!]
[Footnote 154: This at once shows the absurdity of taking
these eighteen carucates to be eighteen 'virgates' of a normal
hide, and of all the reasoning based thereupon.]
[Footnote 155: See more below on this point.]
[Footnote 156: _English Historical Review_, v. 95.]
[Footnote 157: Mr Stevenson, moreover, should surely,
to obtain the meaning he wants, have extended _car_ as
'car[ucatarum]'.]
[Footnote 158: I also hold the formula 'T.R.E. erant ibi _x_
car[ucæ]' to refer to ploughs, not ploughlands.]
[Footnote 159: Note that the assessment of 2-5/8 carucates
represented 2-1/2 ploughlands, and that of 9-3/8 carucates
only 7 ploughlands. No relation, therefore, can be traced
here.]
[Footnote 160: _Conquest of England_, p. 121 note.]
[Footnote 161: _Ibid._, p. 276.]
[Footnote 162: _Chester Archæological Journal_, vol. v.]
[Footnote 163: 'De harieta Lagemanorum habuit isdem picot
viii. lib,' etc. (i. 189).]
[Footnote 164: _Domesday Studies_, i. 143-86.]
[Footnote 165: _Ibid._, 157.]
[Footnote 166: According to Canon Taylor's ingenious theory,
the ratio should be 1 to 1 (for two-field Manors), or 2 to
1 for three-field Manors. But in Leicestershire there is a
remarkable prevalence of the 3 to 2 ratio, which his theory
can, at best, only explain as exceptional.]
[Footnote 167: _Supra_, p. 74.]
[Footnote 168: The figures are taken from the 'Index' to the
Hundreds at the close of the first volume of Domesday Book,
and the names are arranged in the same order as they are there
found.]
[Footnote 169: There is plenty of similar evidence elsewhere
in the shire. Thus we find the Craven Manors assessed at 6,
6, 6, 3, 3, 4, 6, 10, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 3, 3,
3 carucates. These assessments would give us
24 (6 + 6 + 6 + 3 + 3) + 24 (4 + 6 + 10 + 2 + 2) + 18
(3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3) + 11 (2 + 3 + 3 + 3).]
[Footnote 170: _Supra_, pp. 51, 62.]
[Footnote 171: Compare the 'Reparto de la contribucion',
found in the Spanish village communities, the members of which
apportioned the assessment among themselves.]
[Footnote 172: _Key to Domesday_: Dorset, p. 14.]
[Footnote 173: The anomalous position of Rutland also was, of
course, a disturbing element.]
[Footnote 174: This low assessment is equally obvious in that
of the several Manors.]
[Footnote 175: Probably 1/27, as against about 1/6 for
Somerset and Dorset jointly.]
[Footnote 176: See Mr Green's maps in his work, _The Making of
England_, and Mr Freeman's map of 'Britain in 597', in vol.
i. of his _Norman Conquest_. The figures for Hampshire,
unfortunately, are wanting in the roll of 1156, as in that of
1130.]
[Footnote 177: Even if such assessment were not required, at
first, for financial reasons, it might be necessary for such
obligations as eventually formed the 'trinoda necessitas'.]
[Footnote 178: See Stubbs, _Select Charters_, pp. 67-9, and
_Const. Hist._, i. 96-9.]
[Footnote 179: Select Charters, p. 67.]
[Footnote 180: Vol. i., pp. 98, 99. Cf. _Select Charters_, p.
67: 'It is sometimes stated that the Hundred is a primitive
subdivision consisting of a hundred hides of land, or
apportioned to a hundred families, the great objection
to which theory is the impossibility of reconciling the
historical Hundreds with any such computation.']
[Footnote 181: _Select Charters_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 182: Thus, the first entry for East Anglia (ii.
109_b_) has 'de xx. solidis reddit xvi. d. in gelto.']
[Footnote 183: Compare also the very curious system of
'purses' adopted by the Cinque Ports. The 'purse' was £4
7s, and to every 'purse' Sandwich, for instance, paid twenty
shillings, while, whenever it paid twenty such shillings, its
four 'members' were assessed to pay three and fourpence apiece
towards it.]
[Footnote 184: 'In hundredo de Tinghowe sunt xx. villæ ex
quibus constituuntur ix. lete, quas sic distinguimus.' Gage's
_Suffolk_, p. xii.]
[Footnote 185: _Select Pleas in Manorial Courts_ (Selden
Society), I., lxiii.--lxxvi.]
[Footnote 186: _Ibid._, p. lxxvi.]
[Footnote 187: 'De gelto v. sol'' (D.B., ii. 286_b_). Sudbury
was an outlying portion of the Hundred of Thingoe, in which
is situated Bury St Edmunds, of which we read (D.B., ii. 372):
'quando in hundredo solvitur ad geldum i. libra, tunc inde
exeunt lx. d. _ad victum monachorum_.' This substitution,
apparently, of Sudbury (as three leets) for Bury St
Edmunds (of which the monks received the geld) deserves
investigation.]
[Footnote 188: See p. 58.]
[Footnote 189: 'Wisbeche, quæ est quarta pars centuriatus
insulæ' (_Liber Eliensis_ p. 192).]
[Footnote 190: 'In Sparle et in Pagrave, xviii. d. quando
hundret scotabat xx. solidos et in Acra vi. d. et in pichensam
xii. d. quicunque ibi teneat' (ii. 119_b_). See also note
182.]
[Footnote 191: See _Domesday Studies_, p. 117.]
[Footnote 192: Reprinted from the _English Historical Review_,
October 1892.]
[Footnote 193: Ninth Report on Historical MSS., App. I, 38.]
[Footnote 194: _Domesday of St. Paul's_, p. iv.]
[Footnote 195: This is a slip. Drayton was in Middlesex, and
the words (which Mr Seebohm quotes) are 'cum _una_ hida de
solande'.]
[Footnote 196: I know of no authority for this form.]
[Footnote 197: The '_Lathes_' of Kent of course point in the
same direction.]
[Footnote 198: Professor Vinogradoff states, on the contrary,
that 'all are irregular in their formation'.]
[Footnote 199: _English Village Community_, pp. 54, 139, 396.]
[Footnote 200: The phrase 'quot hidæ _sint_ ibi' is of
importance because such _formulae_ as 'T.R.E. geldabat pro ii.
hidis, sed tamen _sunt_ ibi xii. hidæ', have sometimes been
understood to imply two geldable, but twelve arable hides,
whereas both figures refer to assessment only.]
[Footnote 201: _English Village Community_, 212 note.]
[Footnote 202: We might also compare the _droit de gîte_ on
the other side of the Channel.]
[Footnote 203: I am indebted for these identifications to Mr
Eyton's work.]
[Footnote 204: It is a further and fundamental error that
Mr Eyton speaks of the _firma unius noctis_ as 'borough
taxation', whereas it was essentially of the nature of rent,
not taxes.]
[Footnote 205: I am indebted for these identifications to Mr
Eyton's work.]
[Footnote 206: We should perhaps read this as explaining
the composition of the centuriatus, viz.: 'the priests, the
reeves, and six villeins from each Vill'.]
[Footnote 207: Of this conflict there is a good instance,
almost at the outset of the Cambridgeshire survey (p. 3):
'Hanc terram posuit Orgarus in vadimonio ... ut homines
Goisfridi dicunt. Sed homines de hundredo neque breve
aliquid neque legat' R.E. inde viderunt, neque testimonium
perhibent.']
[Footnote 208: Whittlesford omitted, because in this Hundred
no lands were held or claimed by the Abbey.]
[Footnote 209: Compare Wilkins, 125 (quoted by Palgrave,
_English Commonwealth_, i. 464) on English and 'Welsh' in
Devon: 'Disputes arising between the plaintiffs and defendants
of the two nations were to be decided by a court of twelve
"lawmen"--six English and six Welsh--the representatives of
the respective communities. And it may be observed that
the principle which suggested this dimidiated tribunal was
generally adopted in our border law.']
[Footnote 210: Wharton's _Anglia Sacra_, i. 339.]
[Footnote 211: Palgrave's _Commonwealth_, ii. 183.]
[Footnote 212: This seems of great importance as a very early
instance of the _quatuor villatæ_ system, on which see Gross's
'The Early History and Influence of the Office of Coroner'
(_Political Science Quarterly_, vol. vii, No. 4), where the
researches of Prof Maitland and others are summarized.]
[Footnote 213: Only four, however, of the fourteen actually
swore: 'reliquos vero decem quietavit Willelmus abbas, qui
parati erant jurare'.]
[Footnote 214: The number eight perhaps, is unusual for
the jury of a Hundred but we have an instance in 1222, of a
'jurata per octo legales cives Lincolniæ et præterea per octo
legales homines de visneto Lincolnie' (_Bracton's Note-book_,
ii. 121); and see Addenda.]
[Footnote 215: His surname is there omitted, but his identity
is proved by Humphrey 'de Anslevilla' occurring elsewhere as
an under-tenant of Eudo.]
[Footnote 216: So I conclude from his _Introduction to
Domesday_, i. 22, note 2.]
[Footnote 217: _Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_, pp. 97
_et seq._]
[Footnote 218: Ed. Hamilton, pp. 184-9.]
[Footnote 219: _Ibid._, pp. 97, 101.]
[Footnote 220: C omits 'et'.]
[Footnote 221: Here the scribe of C, puzzled by the
evident corruption of the text from which he copied, read
'inv[enit]'.]
[Footnote 222: 'Toft' (rightly) in C.]
[Footnote 223: Chauelæi, C.]
[Footnote 224: Stanhard[us], B, C.]
[Footnote 225: Frauuis, C.]
[Footnote 226: Chertelinge, C.]
[Footnote 227: Cheleia, C.]
[Footnote 228: Wigeni, C. This was 'Wigonus de mara' (I.C.C.)
or 'Wighen' (D.B.) Count Alan's under-tenant at Ditton.]
[Footnote 229: Eurard[us] in D.B.]
[Footnote 230: 'Juraverunt homines scilicet Alerann[us],
Rogger[us] homo Walteri Giffardi' omitted in C.]
[Footnote 231: A sokeman of the Abbot of Ely at Suafham.]
[Footnote 232: Staplehoe Hundred.]
[Footnote 233: This is a noticeable case because 'mo' has
been interlined in B text of I.E., and because this man can
be identified in I.C.C. and D.B. as an under-tenant in the
Hundred.]
[Footnote 234: The I.E. version ('bans') is the right one.]
[Footnote 235: Rectius 'I. hidam'.]
[Footnote 236: C text.]
[Footnote 237: Commend' 'S. ae.' is found on 386_b_, _ad
pedem_.]
[Footnote 238: From internal evidence I hold this writ to have
been sent from over sea. It cannot have been issued by William
Rufus, for the Bishop of Coutances rebelled against him in
1088, and William Rufus did not go abroad till later in his
reign.]
[Footnote 239: This is usually quoted 'inquirunt', which is
the wrong reading.]
[Footnote 240: The right reading.]
[Footnote 241: Quantum in C text.]
[Footnote 242: The text here seems to be corrupt, C reading
'tunc' for 'simul'. As the 'tunc' and 'modo' formula is
represented in the next clause, it seems more probable that
'simul' is the right reading, and refers to the totals entered
in the _Inquisitio_. In that case the words 'et quantum modo'
are an interpolation.]
[Footnote 243: Hallow near Worcester.]
[Footnote 244: Note, Ash--'Esch'--'Naisse'.]
[Footnote 245: Compare the heading of the 'breve abbatis':
'Hic imbreviatur quot carucas', etc., etc. The returns of the
Norman barons in 1172 were styled 'breves'.]
[Footnote 246: Ed. Hamilton, p. 137.]
[Footnote 247: This also seems to have been taken from the
detailed original returns.]
[Footnote 248: So far back as 1887 I raised this question,
writing: 'Indeed, heretical though the view may be, I see no
_proof_ whatever that Domesday Book was itself compiled in
1086' (_Antiquary_, xvi. 8).]
[Footnote 249: _Domesday Studies_, pp. 526, 626.]
[Footnote 250: The most erroneous date that has been suggested
for Domesday is the year 1080. Ellis wrote, referring to
Webb's 'short account', that 'the Red Book of the Exchequer
seems to have been erroneously quoted as fixing the time of
entrance upon it as 1080' (i. 3). Mr Ewald,[*] following in
his footsteps, has repeated his statement (under 'Domesday
Book'), in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_; and, lastly, Mr
de Gray Birch asserts on his authority that 'this valuable
manuscript' is not responsible for that date (_Domesday Book_,
p. 71). All these writers are mistaken. The _Diologus de
Scaccario_, indeed, does not mention a year, but Swereford's
famous Introduction, in the Red Book of the Exchequer, does
give us, by an astounding blunder, the fourteenth year of the
Conqueror (1079-80) as the date of Domesday (see below, p.
210).]
[Footnote *: Author of _Our Public Records_.]
[Footnote 251: I am not sure that even the 'pertin[ent] ad
rege[m]' of the 'first' volume (100_b_) is not a mistake for
'regnum'.]
[Footnote 252: On fo. 17 is a curious deleted list of church
fiefs in Essex, which has no business there.]
[Footnote 253: _Introduction to Domesday_, i. 354.]
[Footnote 254: _Vide infra_, p. 154.]
[Footnote 255: Henry, says Orderic, in 1100, 'concito cursu
ad _arcem Guentoniæ, ubi regalis thesaurus continebatur_,
festinavit'.]
[Footnote 256: This account of the Winchester placitum is
taken from my second article on 'The Custody of Domesday Book'
(_Antiquary_, xvi. 9-10).]
[Footnote 257: _Academy_, November 13, 1886; _Domesday
Studies_, p. 537 note; and Mr Hall's _Antiquities of the
Exchequer_, chap. i.]
[Footnote 258: _Mon. Ang._, iii. 86.]
[Footnote 259: _Hen. Hunt._, 211; Richard of Hexham says
of Henry I's charter of liberties that 'in ærari suo apud
Wintoniam [eam] conservari præcepit' (p. 142).]
[Footnote 260: _Domesday Studies_, 546-7.]
[Footnote 261: _Supra_, note 255.]
[Footnote 262: _Athenæum_, November 27, 1886.]
[Footnote 263: See also _Domesday Studies_, 547 note^{2}.]
[Footnote 264: _Domesday Studies_, 539 _et seq._]
[Footnote 265: It will be observed that I do not touch the
_Liber Exoniensis_.]
[Footnote 266: Possibly at second-hand, see p. 20 note
(Footnote 9, above), and Addenda.]
THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GELD-ROLL
This remarkable document was printed by Sir Henry Ellis (1833) in
his _General Introduction to Domesday_ (i. 184-7) from the fine
Peterborough Cartulary belonging to the Society of Antiquaries (MS.
60). I shall not, therefore, reprint it here, but will give the
opening entry as a specimen of its style:
This is unto Suttunes (Sutton) hundred, that is an hundred
hides. So it was in King Edward's day. And thereof is
'gewered' one and twenty hides and two-thirds of a hide, and
[there are] forty hides inland and ten hides [of] the King's
ferm land, and eight and twenty hides and the third of a hide
waste.
We have seen (_supra_, p. 59) that Ellis not only erred, but even led
Dr Stubbs into error, as to the character of the 'hundreds' enumerated
in this document. Except for that, I cannot find any real notice taken
of it, although it has been in print over sixty years. It appears to
be not even mentioned in Mr Stuart Moore's volume on _Northamptonshire
in Domesday_; and no one, it seems, has cared to inquire to what date
it belongs, or what it really is.[1]
Now, although written in old English, it is well subsequent to the
Conquest, for it mentions _inter alia_ 'Rodbertes wif heorles',
who, we shall find, was Maud, wife of the Count of Mortain. It also
mentions William and Richard Engaine, Northamptonshire tenants in
Domesday. On the other hand, it cannot be later than 1075, for it
speaks of lands held by 'the lady, the King's wife'; and this was
Edith, Edward's widow, whose Northamptonshire lands passed to King
William at her death in 1075. Of the very few names mentioned, one
may surprise and the other puzzle us. The former is that of 'the Scot
King', holding land even then in a shire where his successors were to
hold it so largely: the other is 'Osmund, the King's writer', in whom
one is grievously tempted to detect the future Chancellor, Saint and
Bishop. But, apart from his identity, his peculiar style, exactly
equating, as it does, the Latin 'clericus regis', emboldens me to make
the hazardous suggestion that we possibly have in this document an
English rendering of a Latin original, executed in the Peterborough
_scriptorium_.
For what was the purpose of the document? It may be pronounced without
hesitation to be no other than a geld-roll, recording, it would seem,
a levy of Danegeld hitherto unknown.[2] There are three features which
it has in common with the rolls of 1084: it is drawn up hundred by
hundred; it records the exemption of demesne; and it specifies those
lands that had failed to pay their quota.[3]
Its salient feature is one that, at first sight, might seem to impugn
its authenticity. This is the almost incredible amount of land lying
'waste'. If we confine our attention to the land liable to geld
represented by the first and fourth columns in my analysis below, we
see that by far the larger proportion of it is entered as 'waste':
yet this witness to a terrible devastation is the best proof of its
authenticity; for it sets before us the fruits of those ravages in the
autumn of 1065, which are thus described by Mr Freeman, paraphrasing
the English chronicle:
Morkere's Northern followers dealt with the country about
Northampton as if it had been the country of an enemy. They
slew men, burned corn and houses, carried off cattle, and
at last led captive several hundred prisoners, seemingly as
slaves. The blow was so severe that it was remembered even
when one would have thought that that and all other lesser
wrongs would have been forgotten in the general overthrow of
England. Northamptonshire and the shires near to it were for
many winters the worse.
Mr Freeman, had he read it, would have eagerly welcomed our record's
striking testimony to the truth of the Chronicle's words.
The devastation that our roll records had been well repaired at the
time of Domesday; but we obtain a glimpse of it in the Rockingham
entry: 'Wasta erat quando rex W. jussit ibi castellum fieri. Modo
valet xxvi. sol.' (i. 220).
But it is not only that the entries of 'waste' on our roll are thus
explained: they further prove it to be, as I have urged, a 'Danegeld'
roll. For, when we compare it with the Pipe-Roll of 2 Henry II (1156),
we find the latter similarly allowing for the non-receipt of geld from
land 'in waste'; and it is specially noteworthy that the portion thus
'waste' is in every case, as on our roll, entered after the others.
The fact that the geld was remitted on land that had been made 'waste'
is now established by collation of these two records.
Incidentally, it may be pointed out that as our document bears witness
to the devastation of Northamptonshire in 1065, so the first surviving
roll of Henry II illustrates the local range of devastation under
Stephen. In Kent, which had been throughout under the royal rule,
the waste was infinitesimal; in Yorkshire it was slight; but in
the Midlands, which had long been the battle-ground of rival feudal
magnates, it was so extensive that, as here in Northamptonshire after
the Conquest, there was more land exempted as 'waste' than there was
capable of paying.
Before leaving this subject I briefly compare the cases of
Northamptonshire and of East Sussex. In the former, we have seen, it
is only our document that preserves for us evidence of the ravages in
1065; Domesday does not record them, because they had then (1086)
been repaired. But in East Sussex, the entries are fuller; and as was
observed by Mr Hayley, an intelligent local antiquary:
It is the method of Domesday Book, after reciting the
particulars relating to each Manor, to set down the valuation
thereof, at three several periods, to wit, the time of King
Edward the Confessor, afterwards _when the new tenant entered
upon it_, and again at the time when the survey was made. Now
it is to be observed in perusing the account of the Rape of
Hastings in that book, that in several of the Manors therein
_at the second of these periods_, it is recorded of them that
they were waste, and from this circumstance it may upon good
ground be concluded what parts of that Rape were marched over
by, and suffered from the ravages of the two armies of the
Conqueror and King Harold; and indeed, the situations of those
Manors is such as evidently shows their _then_ devastated
state to be owing to that cause.[4]
Mr Freeman's treatment of this theory was highly characteristic. In
the Appendix he devoted to the subject[5] he first contemptuously
observed of the allusion to Harold's army:
This notion would hardly have needed any answer except from
the sort of sanction given to it by the two writers who quote
Mr Hayley. I do not believe that any army of any age ever
passed through a district without doing some damage, but to
suppose that Harold systematically harried his own kingdom
does seem to me the height of absurdity.
And he, further, indignantly denied that such a King as Harold was
'likely to mark his course by systematic harrying'. Now, Mr Hayley
had never charged him with 'systematic harrying'; he had merely traced
with much ingenuity, the approach of his army to Senlac by the damage,
Mr Freeman admits, its passage, when assembled, must have caused.
The fact is that Mr Hayley had, and Mr Freeman had not, read his
Domesday 'with common care'.[6] The latter started from the hasty
assertion that:
the lasting nature of the destruction wrought at this time is
shown by the large number of places round about Hastings which
_are returned in Domesday_ as 'waste'.
Hence he argued, Harold, even had he been 'Swegen himself'--
could not have done the sort of lasting damage which is
implied in the lands being returned as 'waste' _twenty years
after_. The ravaging must have been something thorough and
systematic, like the ravaging of Northumberland a few years
later.
The whole argument rests on a careless reading of Domesday. It was on
passages such as these that Mr Hayley had relied:
Totum manerium T.R.E. valebat xx. lib. Et _post vasta fuit_.
Modo xviii. lib. et x. sol.
Totum manerium T.R.E. valebat xiiii. lib. _Postea vastatum
fuit._ Modo xxii. lib.
Totum manerium T.R.E. valebat cxiiii. sol. Modo vii. lib.
_Vastatum fuit._[7]
Thus, so far from being returned in 1086 as 'waste', these Manors, we
see, had already recovered from their devastation at the Conquest, and
had even, in some cases, increased their value. And so Mr Freeman's
argument falls to the ground.
But as he was eager to vindicate Harold from a quite imaginary charge,
I will try to clear William from Mr Freeman's very real one. Having
wrongly concluded that the ravages were 'lasting', and must therefore
have been 'systematic', Mr Freeman wrote:
There can be little doubt but that William's ravages were
not only done systematically, but were done with a fixed and
politic purpose (p. 413) ... there can be little doubt that
they were systematic ravages done with the settled object of
bringing Harold to a battle (p. 741).
Possibly the writer had in his mind the harrying of the lands of the
Athenians, as described in the pages of Thucydides: but how can it
have been politic for William, not only to provoke Harold, but to
outrage the English people? It was Harold with whom his quarrel lay;
and as to those he hoped to make his future subjects, to ravage their
lands wilfully and wantonly was scarcely the way to commend himself
to their favour: it would rather impel them, in dread of his ways, to
resist his dominion to the death.
But if William's policy be matter of question, Domesday at least is
matter of fact; and Mr Freeman's followers cannot be surprised at the
opposition he provoked, when we find him thus ridiculing a student
for a charge he never made, and proved to have himself erred from his
careless reading of Domesday.
I now append an analysis of the roll, showing the proportion of land
'gewered',[8] of 'inland', of _terra regis_, of land which had not
paid (in square brackets), and of 'waste'. The totals in square
brackets are those given in the document; the others are those
actually accounted for.
Inland Terra Waste Total
Regis
Sutton 21-2/3 40 10 28-1/3 100 [100]
Warden 17-3/4 40 41-1/4 99 [100]
Cleyley 18 40 42 100 [100]
Gravesend 18-1/2 35 5 41-1/2 100 [100]
'Eadbolds Stow' 23-1/2 45 5 26-1/2 100 [100]
'Ailwardsley' 16-1/2 40 [6-1/2] 37 100 [100]
Foxley 16 30 21 33 100 [100]
Wyceste 19[9] 40 20 21 100 [100]
Huxlow 8 15 39 62 [62]
Willybrook 7 11 31 13 62 [62]
Upton Green 50 27 [3-1/2]29-1/2[10] 110 [109]
Neuesland [80-1/2][11] 59 [8] 12-1/2 [160]
Navisford 15 14 33 62 [62]
Polebrook 10 20 32 62 [62]
Newbottlegrove 44-7/8 72 33-1/8 150 [150]
Gilsborough 16 68 66 150 [150]
Spelho 20-1/2 [Borough 25] [16] 28-1/2 90 [90]
Wiceslea W. 10 40 30 80 [80]
Wiceslea E. 15 34 31 80 [80]
'Stotfald' 9-1/8 40 50-1/8 99-1/4 [100]
Stoke 18 [10] 12 [40]
Higham 49-1/2 44 56 149-1/2 [150]
'Malesley' 12 30 8 30 80 [80]
Corby 8-1/2 12-1/4 12-1/4 [?4] 10-3/4 47-3/4 [47]
Rothwell 10 20 7-1/2 [7-1/2] 45[12] [60]
'Andwertheshoe' [?26][13] 25 39 [90]
Ordlingbury 29-1/2 24-1/2 21 80 [80]
'Wimersley' 41 60 49 150 [150]
The persons mentioned as not having paid can in most cases be
identified. Thus 'Robert the Earl's wife' is one of those in Rothwell
Hundred, whose land was 'unwered'. This was clearly Maud, wife of
Count Robert of Mortain, who had been given lands by her father, Roger
of Montgomery, at Harrington in this Hundred. Domesday, it is true,
where it figures as 'Arintone', knows it only as 'Terra æcclesiæ de
Grestain' (222 _b_); but a charter of Richard I (_per Inspeximus_)
confirms to the Abbey 'ex dono Matildis Comitisse Moreton ... xxxii.
hidas terre quas dederat ei pater suus Rogerus de Montegomerico,
scilicet apud Haxintonam [_sic_] viii. hidas, etc.'[14] As the lands
had first been given to Roger, then by him to his daughter, and,
finally, by her to the Abbey, I cannot think our document earlier, at
any rate, than 1068. Edith, whose name proves it not to be later than
1075, is entered as 'the lady, the King's wife', holding eight hides
in Neuesland Hundred, and again as a holder in Rothwell Hundred, under
the name of 'the King's wife'. Both entries, doubtless, refer to her
wide-spreading Manor of 'Tingdene' (I. 222), parts of which lay in
both the above Hundreds. Of the other holders we may notice 'Urs' (?
Urse d'Abetot), and 'Witeget the priest'; but these are quite eclipsed
by Richard and William Engaine, of whom the former occurs twice and
the latter thrice on the roll. In Spelho Hundred 'Richard' seems to
be credited with ten hides at 'Habintune' on which 'nan peni' had been
paid. In Domesday his holding at Abintone is given as _four_ hides (i.
229). In the same Hundred, William's land at 'Multune' is in default.
Moulton is not entered under his fief in Domesday, but under that of
Robert de Buci we find a 'William' holding of him a hide and a virgate
and a half in Moulton. This was William Engaine, as was the 'William'
of our roll; and in the Hen. I-Hen. II survey,[15] we find land in
Moulton entered as of Engaine's fee. Still more interesting is it to
note that so late as 25 Ed. I. more than two centuries after Domesday,
John Engayne is found holding half a fee in Moulton of Ralf Basset,
and Basset of the King _in capite_. For, as our Leicestershire survey
shows,[16] the Domesday fief of Robert de Buci had passed to Basset,
of whose heir, therefore, Engayne held, as his ancestor had held of
Robert de Buci, in the days of William the Conqueror.
It is particularly instructive to follow out the Northamptonshire
fief of William Engaine. In Domesday (i. 229) he is entered only as
'Willelmus' holding 3-1/2 hides in Pytchley (_Piteslea_), and Laxton
(_Lastone_), worth at that time, £3 10s. 'Vitalis' Engaine was his
heir in 1130, for the Pipe-Roll of 31 Hen. I (p. 82) records
his discharge of a debt to the crown 'ut rehabeat terram suam de
Laxetona'. And this is confirmed by the survey of 1125 in the _Liber
Niger_ of Peterborough, where we read under 'Pihtesle' (p. 162): 'Et
Vitalis reddit iii. solidos pro i. virga', this being the 'i. virga'
assigned to him in the list of Peterborough knights (_ibid._, p. 169).
The 'Rotulus de Dominabus' (1185) shows us the 'Piteslea' estate in
the hands of Margaret Engaine, makes it worth £6, and mentions that
her heir was Richard Engaine (p. 14). The 'Testa de Nevill' (p. 37)
enters Richard 'de Angayne' as holding five carucates of land in
'Pettesle' and 'Laxeton' worth £6 a year. It tells us, further,
that he held them by serjeanty--'et est venator leporum, et facit
servitium'. From the nature of this return I assign it to the inquest
of 1198, in which case it is of some value, as identifying five
carucates under the new assessment with the 3-1/2 hides recorded in
Domesday.[17] Fulc de Lisures, on the other hand--the heir of the
Richard Engaine of Domesday--returned himself in 1166, as the King's
forester in fee and attending the King's person, with his horn hanging
from his neck.[18]
The association of Pytchley with hunting is carried back even further
still. For Richard and William Engaine had for their predecessor in
title, Ælfwine the huntsman ('venator'), who owned their lands when
King Edward sat upon the throne.
Among the lands deducted we observe in Spelho Hundred 'fif and xx.
hida byrigland'. This represents the assessment in hides of the
Borough of Northampton, and, so far as I know, is the only mention of
that assessment to be found. In my paper on 'Danegeld and the Finance
of Domesday', I pointed out that Bridport and Malmesbury were assessed
at five hides each, Dorchester, Wareham, and Hertford at ten hides,
Worcester at fifteen, Bath and Shaftesbury at twenty, etc.[19]
Northampton (we now see) was assessed in the same manner, and Chester
and Huntingdon at no less than fifty hides each. Thus they admirably
illustrate assessment in terms of the five-hide unit. We find this
primitive system obsolete in 1130, when a borough gave an 'auxilium'
where its county paid Danegeld. But our roll implies that, here at
least, it was already obsolete in the early days of the Conquest; for
the twenty-five hides of 'byrigland' are, for the payment of 'geld',
deducted from the Hundred.
From the date I have assigned to this document (_ante_-1075), it
may fairly claim to represent our earliest financial record. Its
illustrative value for Danegeld and the Hundred, and consequently for
Domesday Book, will be obvious to every student.
[Footnote 1: I have found, since this was written, that it was
printed by Mr T. O. Cockayne in his little-known _Shrine_ (pp.
205-8), and pronounced by him (in error) to be 'evidently' of
the date 1109-18.]
[Footnote 2: I opposed in 1886 (_Domesday Studies_, pp. 86,
87) the accepted view that no Danegeld was levied by the
Conqueror till the winter of 1083-4 and discussed (_ibid._,
88-92) the _Inquisitio Geldi_, which, as Mr Eyton showed (_Key
to Domesday_), belongs to that date. It has been persistently
confused with the Exon Domesday (being bound up with it), as
by Mr Jones, in his Wiltshire Domesday (pp. xxxvii., 153 _et
seq._), and Professor Freeman (_Quart. Review_, July 1892, p.
22).]
[Footnote 3: It was connected, I find, by Mr Cockayne with
military service, not with _Danegeld_.]
[Footnote 4: Quoted in Ellis's _Introduction to Domesday_, i.
315-6.]
[Footnote 5: _Norm. Conq._, iii, 741-2.]
[Footnote 6: The phrase employed by Mr Freeman in criticizing
Professor Pearson.]
[Footnote 7: See Ellis, _ut supra_.]
[Footnote 8: 'Wered', like 'Wara' (_supra_, p. 100), refers
to assessment and corresponds with the 'defendit se' phrase
in Domesday. It seems here to represent the land which had
actually paid.]
[Footnote 9: Wrongly given by Ellis and Cockayne as 'xviii'.]
[Footnote 10: Wrongly given by Ellis as 'viii. and xx'.]
[Footnote 11: The MS. reads, 'thus micel is gewered ... viiii.
and xx. hida and i. hida and viiii. and fifti hida inland'.
The text is clearly corrupt.]
[Footnote 12: There is no entry for 'waste' in this hundred,
so that possibly the words 'xv. hida westa' are omitted.]
[Footnote 13: There are clearly some words omitted here in
the Peterborough transcript. We must read: 'and thereof is
"gewered" [? 26 hide and] five and twenty hides inland'.]
[Footnote 14: _Monasticon_, vi. 1090.]
[Footnote 15: _Infra_, p. 175.]
[Footnote 16: _Infra_, p. 173.]
[Footnote 17: See my paper on 'The great carucage of 1198'
(_English Historical Review_, iii, 501 _et seq._).]
[Footnote 18: 'Et ego ipse custodio forestagium Regis de feodo
meo; et debeo ire cum corpore Regis in servitio suo paratus
equis et armis, cornu meo in collo meo pendente.'--_Lib.
Rub._, i, 333.]
[Footnote 19: _Domesday Studies_, pp. 117-9.]
THE KNIGHTS OF PETERBOROUGH
(_Temp._ HENRY I)
The interesting 'Descriptio militum de Abbatia de Burgo' is found in
the same MS. as the Northamptonshire Geld-roll.[1] It was printed
by Stapleton in the appendix to his _Chronicon Petroburgense_ (pp.
168-75),[2] but no attempt was made to date it. The name of Eudo
Dapifer proves that it cannot have been compiled later than 1120. On
the other hand, it cannot well be earlier than 1100, for some of the
Domesday tenants had been succeeded by their sons--Robert (?) Marmion,
for instance, by Roger, and Coleswegen by Picot--while the mention
of 'Gislebertus filius Ricardi', possibly the son of Richard of
'Wodeford' (i. 224_b_), points in the same direction. As the majority
of names, however, seem to be those of Domesday tenants, it is
probable that the list is not later than the Lindsey survey itself,
if, indeed, it is not earlier. The first entry it contains is a good
specimen of its value:
Asketillus de Sancto Medardo tenet de abbatia de Burch
in Hamtonascira x. hidas et iii. partes i. virgæ, et in
Lincolnescira iii. carrucatas et inde servit se vi. milite.
Et de feudo hujus militis dedit rex Willelmus senior Eudoni
Dapifero in Estona hidam et dimidiam et mandavit de Normannia
in Angliam Episcopo Constantiarum et R. de Oilli per breves
suos ut inde darent ei excambium ad valens in quocumque vellet
de iii. vicinis comitatibus; sed abbas noluit.
We duly find 'Anschitillus' in Domesday, holding 'Witheringham',
Northants and 'Osgodeby', Linc., of the Abbot (i. 221_b_, 345_b_). In
the same way we are enabled to identify the 'Rogerius Infans' of our
list with 'Rogerius' who held 'Pilchetone', according to Domesday (i.
221_b_), of the Abbot, 'Ascelinus de Waltervilla' with the 'Azelinus'
of Domesday (_ibid._), 'Gosfridus nepos Abbatis', with 'Goisfridus'
who held in 'Sudtorp' (_ibid._), and 'Rogerius Malfed' with that
'Rogerius' who held of the Abbot at Woodford (i. 222). 'Rogerus', on
the other hand, who held in Domesday two hides at Milton, Northants
(i. 221_b_), and seven bovates at Cleatham, Linc. (i. 346), is
represented in our list by the entry:
Turoldus de Meletona ii. hidas in Hamtonascira, et in
Lindeseia vi. bovatas, et inde servit se altero milite (p.
171).
The chief lesson taught us here is the rashness of assuming the
identity of tenants happening to bear the same name. For even among
the few who are named as holding of the Abbot of Peterborough, we have
found three Rogers quite distinct from one another.
The entries which follow are of value as absolute proofs of
succession:
DOMESDAY DESCRIPTIO MILITUM
In Dailintone tenet Ricardus de Rodbertus filius Ricardi iiii.
abbate iiii^{or.} hidas (i. 222). hidas in Hamtonascira, et inde
servit se altero milite (p. 175).
In Risun habuit Elnod iiii. Picotus filius Colsuaini habet
bovatas terre ad geldum ... Nunc dimidiam carrucatam in Rison,
habet Colsuan de abbate Turoldo quam abbas dedit patri suo tali
(i. 345_b_). servicio quod esset ad placita
abbatis et manuteneret res suas
et homines suos in scira et in
aliis locis (p. 175).
This second entry not only records a peculiarly interesting
enfeoffment, but identifies 'Colsuan', the Abbot's under-tenant
at Riseholme, with no less a person than the conqueror's 'English
favourite Coleswegen, ... an Englishman who, by whatever means,
contrived to hold up his head among the conquerors of England'.[3]
As sons, in such cases as these, have succeeded their fathers, it need
not surprise us that our list comprises some names that are found in
the _Liber Niger_ survey of 1125.[4] Vivian, whom, it tells us, Abbot
Turold had enfeoffed at Oundle (p. 175) occurs there in that survey
(p. 158), as does Robert d'Oilli at Cottingham (pp. 159-73).[5]
Vitalis ('Viel') Engaine had succeeded William (Engaine) at Pytchley
both in our list and in the survey of 1125 (cf. _ante_, p. 129).
One of the most interesting and important points in this list of
knights is the gleam of new light it throws on Hereward 'the Wake'. In
it we read:
Hugo de Euremou iii. hidas in dominio et vii. bovatas in
Lincolneshira, et servit pro ii. militibus.
Ansford iii. carucatas et servit pro dimidia hida [_sic_].
Now Hugh de Euremou is the name of the man who, according to the
pseudo-Ingulf, married Hereward's daughter. Here we have proof of his
real existence, and are enabled moreover to detect him, I claim,
in that Hugh who, as a 'miles' of the Abbot, held three hides at
'Edintone' [Etton, Northants] in Domesday (i. 222). Mr Freeman
speaking of the vacancy at Bayeux in 1908, wrote:
William at once bestowed the staff on Turold, the brother of
Hugh of Evermont [_sic_], seemingly the same Hugh who figures
in the legend of Hereward as his son-in-law and successor.[6]
But the French editors of Ordericus, in a note to the passage from
which this statement was taken (iv. 18), speak of our man as 'Hugue
d'Envermeu, donateur du prieuré de St. Laurent d'Envermeu à l'Abbaye
de Bec'.[7]
Turning for a moment from Hugh to Ansford, we read in the Lincolnshire
'Clamores':
Terram Asford in Bercham hund' dicit Wapentac non habuisse
Herewardum die quo aufugiit (D.B., i. 376_b_).
About this entry, as Mr Freeman observed, 'there can be no doubt'.
But as the result of his careful inquiry,[8] he limited 'our positive
knowledge', from Domesday, to this entry and to two in the text of the
Lincolnshire survey (364_b_-377). It is strange that he did not follow
up the clue the 'Clamores' gave him. The relevant entry in the text of
the Survey is duly found under the Peterborough fief:
In Witham et Mannetorp et Toftlund habuit _Hereward_ xii.
bovatas terræ ad geldum.... Ibi Asuert [_sic_] homo abbatis
Turoldi habet, etc....
Berew[ita] hujus M. in Bercaham et Estou i. carucata terræ ad
geldum. ... Ibi Asford habet, etc....
In Estov Soca in Witham iiii. bovatæ terræ et dimidia ad
geldum.... Ibi Asfort de abbate habet, etc.... (i. 346).
This is the 'terra Asford' referred to in the 'Clamores', and, as
amounting to 3-1/16 carucates, it is clearly the 'iii. carucatas'
assigned in our list to 'Ansford'. Thus, through his successor
Ansford, we have at last run down our man; Hereward was, exactly as is
stated by Hugh 'Candidus', a 'man' of the Abbot of Peterborough;
and his holding was situated at Witham on the Hill,[9] not far from
Bourne, and, at Barholme-with-Stow a few miles off, all in the extreme
south-west of the county. This is the fact for which Mr Freeman sought
in vain, and which has eluded Professor Tout, in his careful life of
the outlaw for the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
We are now in a position to examine the gloss of Hugh 'Candidus',
showing how 'Baldwin Wake' possessed the holdings both of Hugh and of
Ansford:[10]
Primus Hugo de Euremu. Baldwinus Wake tenet in Depinge,
Plumtre, et Stove feoda duorum militum.... Et præterea dictus
Baldewinus tenet feodum unius militis in Wytham et Bergham
de terra Affordi. Et prædictus Baldewinus de predictis feodis
abbati de Burgo debet plenarie respondere de omni forensi
[servitio].
Here we see how the legendary name and legendary position of Hereward
were evolved. The Wakes, Lords of Bourne, held among their lands some,
not far from Bourne, which had once been held by Hereward. Thus arose
the story that Hereward had been Lord of Bourne; and it was but a
step further to connect him directly with the Wakes, by giving him
a daughter and heir married to Hugh de Evermou, whose lands had
similarly passed to the Lords of Bourne. The pedigree-maker's crowning
stroke was to make Hereward himself a Wake,[11] just as Baldwin fitz
Gilbert (de Clare) is in one place transformed into a Wake.[12] The
climax was reached when the modern Wakes revived the name of Hereward,
just as 'Sir Brian Newcome of Newcome' set the seal to his family
legend by giving his children 'names out of the Saxon calendar'.
Returning to Hereward himself, we find Mr Freeman writing (of the
spring of 1070):
At this moment we hear for the first time of one whose
mythical fame outshines all the names of his generation, and
of whom the few historical notices make us wish that details
could be filled in from some other source than legend.... Both
the voice of legend and the witness of the great Survey agree
in connecting Hereward with Lincolnshire, but they differ
as to the particular spot in the shire in which he is to be
quartered. Legend also has forgotten a fact which the document
has preserved, namely, that the hero of the fenland did
not belong wholly to Lincolnshire, but that he was also a
landholder in the distant shire of Warwick. But the Survey has
preserved another fact with which the legendary versions of
his life have been specially busy. Hereward, at some time it
would seem, before the period of his exploits, had fled from
his country.[13]
Let us first dismiss from our minds the alleged fact as to
Warwickshire. There is absolutely nothing to connect the Count of
Meulan's tenant there with the Lincolnshire hero; indeed Mr Freeman
admits in his appendix 'that the Hereward of these entries may be some
other person' (p. 805). Legend had an excellent reason for ignoring
this alleged 'fact' as had 'romances' for having 'perversely
forgotten' to mention the deeds or the fate of William Malet in the
Isle (_ibid._, p. 473). We must also dismiss the 'fact'--'undoubted
history' though it be (_ibid._, p. 805)--of Hereward's 'banishment'
at some time between 1062 and 1070. For the Survey gives no date; it
merely speaks of 'die quâ aufugiit' (i. 376_b_), which phrase, in the
absence of evidence to the contrary, must be referred to his escape
from the 'Isle',[14] when (1071) in the words of Florence, 'cum paucis
evasit'. This at once explains the Domesday entry (_ante_, p. 160),
for he would, of course, have forfeited his holding before that date.
'But leaving fables and guesses aside,' in Mr Freeman's words, 'we
know enough of Hereward to make us earnestly long to know more' (p.
456). My proof that the English hero was a 'man' of the Abbot of
Peterborough explains why 'Hereward and his gang', as they are termed
in the Peterborough Chronicle, 'seem', Mr Freeman is forced to admit,
'to be specially the rebellious tenants of the Abbey', as distinct
from the Danes and the outlaws (p. 459). And the vindication, on this
point, of Hugh Candidus' accuracy makes one regret that Mr Freeman,
though eager for information as to Hereward, ignored so completely
that writer's narrative. It is in absolute agreement with the
Peterborough Chronicle, Mr Freeman's own authority, but records
some interesting details which the Chronicle omits.[15] These place
Hereward's conduct in a somewhat different light, and suggest that he
may really have been loyal to the Abbey whose 'man' he was. His plea
for bringing the Danes to Peterborough was that he honestly believed
that they would overthrow the Normans, and that the treasures of the
church would, therefore, be safer in their hands. He may perfectly
well have been hostile to the Normans, and yet faithful to the Abbey
so long as Brand held it; but the news that Turold and his knights
were coming to make the Abbey a centre of Norman rule against him[16]
would drive him to extreme courses. Professor Tout has made some use
of Hugh, but says, strangely, that 'the stern rule of the new Abbot
Turold drove into revolt the tenants', when his rule had not yet
begun.
Again, there is now no doubt where Hereward ought 'to be quartered'.
Two other places with which the Domesday survey connects him are
Rippingale and, possibly, Laughton to the north of Bourne. Living thus
on the edge of the fenland, he may well have been a leader among
'that English folk of the fenlands' who rose, says the Peterborough
Chronicle, in the spring of 1070, to join the Danish fleet and
throw off the Norman yoke. And the prospect of being ousted from his
Peterborough lands by a follower of the new French abbot would have
added a personal zest to his patriotic zeal.
Mr Freeman, followed by Professor Tout,[17] holds that the story in
the false Ingulf is not to be wholly cast aside, as it may contain
some genuine Crowland tradition;[18] but he has not accurately given
that story. It might hastily be gathered, as it was by him, that it
was Hereward's mother-in-law who 'very considerately takes the veil
at the hands of Abbot Ulfcytel', whereas it was, according to the
_Gesta_, his wife who did this. The _Gesta_ version, he writes, 'of
Turfrida going into a monastery to make way for Ælfthryth is plainly
another form of the story in Ingulf, which makes not herself but her
mother do so'. But if the _Historia Ingulphi_ (pp. 67-8) be read with
care, it will be seen that 'mater Turfrid_æ_' should clearly be 'mater
Turfrid_a_', the reading that the sense requires. So there is here no
opposition, and Ingulf merely follows the _Gesta_ version.
As for the honour of Bourne, it can be shown from the _carta_ of Hugh
Wac in 1166, from our list of knights, and from the Pipe-Roll of 1130,
to have been formed from separate holdings and to have descended as
follows:
------------------------------
| |
William Richard
de Rullos, de Rullos
Lord of Bourne (see p. 161)
_temp._ Hen. I. |
Baldwin fitz Gilbert, = Adelina
Lord of Bourne, |
_jure uxoris_, |
Founder of |
Bourne Priory, |
1138[19] (see p. 359) |
---------------------------------
| |
Roger Emma = Hugh Wac,
| Lord of
------- Bourne,
| _jure uxoris_
Baldwin in 1166
Wac,
Lord of Bourne
The Psuedo-Ingulf's version runs:
Leofric, = Edith
Lord of Bourne, |
1062 |
-------------
|
Hereward, = Turfrida
Lord of Bourne |
---------------
|
a daughter, = Hugh de Evermou
heiress of Bourne | Lord of Depyng (p. 67)
----------
|
a daughter, = Richard de Rullos.
heiress of living _temp._ Will. I.
Bourne and (pp. 77-8;
Depyng pp. 95, 99, 118)
It will be seen how skilfully the author of this famous forgery brings
in the names of real people while confusing their connection and their
dates. Richard de Rullos, for instance, was living shortly before
1130, yet is here described as living under the Conqueror, though
represented as marrying the great granddaughter of a man who was
himself in the prime of life in 1062. The whole account of him as an
ardent agriculturist, devoted to the improvement of live-stock and the
reclamation of waste, is quaintly anachronistic; but the fact of his
being a friend and benefactor to Crowland is one for which the writer
had probably some ground. For my part, I attach most importance to
his incidental statement that the daring deeds of Hereward the outlaw,
'adhuc in triviis canuntur', an allusion, perhaps unnoticed, to a
ballad history surviving, it may be, so late as the days when the
forgery was compiled.
But, leaving Hereward, no entries in this list are more deserving of
notice than those which bring before us the famous name of Nevile:
Gislebertus de Nevila [tenet] ii. carrucatas in Lincolnescira,
et servit Abbatiæ pro ii. hidis et inde inventi i. militem (p.
171).
Radulfus de Nevila [tenet] x. carrucatas in Lincolnescira
et i. hidam et dimidiam in Hamtonascira et servit se tercio
milite (p. 175).
Hugh Candidus wrote of the former:
Heres Galfridi de Nevile tenet in Lincolnescire, scilicet in
Waletone [_sic_] justa Folkingham, et Yoltorpe duas carrucatas
terra et inde facit plenum servitium unius militis (p. 59).
With this clue we are enabled to detect Gilbert de Nevile in that
'Gislebertus homo Abbatis', who held of the Abbot (D.B., i. 345_b_) at
'Walecote' (Walcot near Folkingham). So also Hugh 'Candidus' writes of
the other Nevile fee:
Heres Radulfi de Nevile tenet decem carrucatas terræ
in Lincolnshire, scilicet in Scottone Malmetone; et in
Norhamtonscire unam hidam et dimidiam, scilicet in Holme,
Rayniltorp, et inde facit plenum servitium trium militum (p.
55).
It is, then, Ralf de Nevile that we have in that 'Radulfus homo
Abbatis', who held of him at 'Mameltune', and 'Rageneltorp' with
'Holm' in Domesday (i. 345_b_, 346)--Manton, with Raventhorpe and
Holme (near Bottesford, co. Linc.)--for Hugh, of course, has blundered
in placing the two latter places in Northamptonshire.[20] The _Testa_,
more exact, enables us to add Ashby to Holme and Raventhorpe as part
of one estate, held as a single knight's fee. Scotton, in the same
neighbourhood, was held by 'Ricardus' in Domesday, but, in the hands
of Nevile's heirs, represented a fee and a third.
Between Ralf and Gilbert de Nevile on fo. 346 we find 'Gislebertus
homo Abbatis' holding ten bovates at Hibaldstow. This was the
'Gislebertus Falvel' of our return, not Gilbert de Nevile.
The last Domesday name I shall identify is that of the Abbot's
under-tenant 'Eustacius', who held of him at Polebrook, Clapton
(Northants), and Catworth (Hunts). He was, I believe, the same as that
Eustace who held land, as a tenant-in-chief, at Polebrook, Northants,
and with that Eustace the sheriff ('Vice-comes') who held (at
Catworth, Hunts) also _in capite_. Indeed the abbot's tenant
is identified with the latter in the story of the foundation of
Huntingdon Priory (_Mon. Ang._, vi. 78), where, as in our list, we
find that his two knights' fees soon passed to Lovetot.[21]
We may learn from this identification that two different
tenants-in-chief and at least one under-tenant may prove to be all one
man, just as, on the other hand, we found three distinct Rogers among
the Domesday under-tenants of the Abbot. An additional conclusion
is suggested by the name 'Eustachius de Huntendune', given to this
sheriff in the _Inquisitio Eliensis_.[22] For we find Picot, the
Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, similarly styled in Domesday (i. 200),
'Picot de Grentebrige'. 'Ilbert de Hertford', I think, was the Sheriff
of Hertfordshire,[23] and Hamo, a contemporary sheriff of Kent,
attests a charter as 'Hamo de Cantuaria'. Turold, sheriff of
Lincolnshire, is found as Turold 'of Lincoln' (see p. 255), and Hugh,
sheriff of Dorset, as Hugh of 'Wareham', while Walter and Miles 'of
Gloucester', Edward and Walter 'of Salisbury', are also cases in
point. Hugh 'of Leicester' was sheriff of Leicestershire _temp._ Henry
I, while Turchil 'de Warwic' (D.B., i. 240_b_) may possibly have owed
that appellation to the fact that his father Ælfwine was sheriff of
Warwickshire. Enough, in any case, has been said to show that it was
a regular practice for sheriffs to derive, as often did earls, their
styles from the capital town of their shire.
[Footnote 1: Society of Antiquaries' MS. 60.]
[Footnote 2: Ed. Camden Society.]
[Footnote 3: _Norman Conquest_, iv. 219. We know _aliunde_
that 'Picot filius Colsuani' was the son of Colswegen of
Lincoln. It would seem to be of this estate that we read in
the 'Clamores': 'Abbas de Burg clamat iiii. bov. terræ in
Risun terra Colsuani, et Wap' testatur quod T.R.E. jacuerunt
in æcclesia Omnium Sanctorum in Lincolia.']
[Footnote 4: Society of Antiquaries' MS. 60. Printed by
Stapleton _ut supra_.]
[Footnote 5: But possibly the Robert d'Oilli of our list may
be the _first_ Robert (who, as 'Robertus' in Domesday, held
Cranford of the Abbot), while the tenant of that name in 1125
may be the _second_ Robert, entered in the Pipe-Roll of 1130,
and living _temp._ Stephen.]
[Footnote 6: _William Rufus_, i. 571. He makes it 'Evermouth'
in the _Norman Conquest_.]
[Footnote 7: Envermeu lay on the coast some 19 miles to the
east of Dieppe.]
[Footnote 8: 'The legend of Hereward' (_Norman Conquest_, iv.
[1st Ed.], 805).]
[Footnote 9: With its hamlet of Manthorpe and Toft with
Lound.]
[Footnote 10: Ed. Sparke _Historiæ Anglicanæ Scriptores_
[1723].]
[Footnote 11: Professor Tout throws out the unlucky
suggestion: 'the _Wake_, i.e. apparently the watchful one'.]
[Footnote 12: See the new _Monasticon_ on Deeping Priory, and
the rubric to Baldwin's charter. The true parentage of Baldwin
fitz Gilbert will be shown _infra_ in the paper on 'Walter
Tirel and his wife'.]
[Footnote 13: _Norman Conquest_ (1st Ed.), iv. 455-6.]
[Footnote 14: _Norman Conquest_ (1st Ed.), iv. 484. Professor
Tout, however, follows Mr Freeman, and accepts an earlier
'flight from England' as a fact. One must therefore insist
that 'the whole story has no historical basis'.]
[Footnote 15: I am tempted, indeed, to suggest that Hugh may
have had before him that lost local 'account of Hereward's
doings', which was inserted (but, according to my own view, in
an abbreviated form) into the earlier chronicle, according
to Professor Earle (see _Norm. Conq._, iv. 461, note 3). This
solution would explain everything, and would, if accepted,
greatly increase the importance of Hugh's chronicle.]
[Footnote 16: Cf. William of Malmesbury _in loco_.]
[Footnote 17: _Dictionary of National Biography_.]
[Footnote 18: Appendix on 'the Legend of Hereward', _ut
supra_.]
[Footnote 19: The names of the churches he bestowed on the
Priory illustrate the constituents of the Honour of Bourne.]
[Footnote 20: The name of Ralf de Nevilla occurs in full in
the Lincolnshire 'Clamores' (i. 376_b_), annihilating the
old assertion that this famous surname is nowhere found in
Domesday. (See my letter in _Academy_, xxxvii. 373.)]
[Footnote 21: It is specially interesting to trace his holding
at Winwick, Hunts, which then lay partly in Northants. As
'Eustachius' he held _in capite_ at 'Winewincle' (i. 228),
as 'Eustachius Vicecomes' at 'Winewiche' (i. 206), and as
'Eustacius', a tenant of the Abbot, at 'Winewiche' (i.
221). In the first two cases his under-tenants are given as
'Widelard[us]' and 'Oilard[us]', doubtless the same man. For
'Winewincle' we should probably read 'Winewicke'. See also p.
222, _infra_.]
[Footnote 22: _Inq. Com. Cant._, Ed. Hamilton, p. 111.]
[Footnote 23: _Ibid._, 56, 192.]
THE WORCESTERSHIRE SURVEY
(_Temp._ HENRY I)
We have, in the case of the see of Worcester, the means of testing
some of the changes which took place among its tenants within a
generation of Domesday. This is a survey of that portion of its lands
which lay within the county of Worcester. Although printed by Hearne
in his edition of Heming's Cartulary (fos. 141, 141_d_), it escaped
notice, I believe, till I identified it myself in _Domesday Studies_
(p. 546). As it follows immediately on the transcript of the Domesday
Survey of the fief, the fact that it represents a later and distinct
record might, at first sight, be overlooked.
In spite of the importance of Heming's Cartulary in its bearing on the
Domesday Survey, the documents of which it contains the transcripts
have been hopelessly confused and misunderstood. Professor Freeman,
dealing with them, came to utter grief,[1] and as for Mr De Gray
Birch, he not only took this Survey _temp._ Henry I to be a portion
of Domesday itself, which 'should be collated with the original MS. at
the Record Office',[2] but even repeated Ellis's blunder,[3] that the
names in a document _temp._ Bishop John [1151-7][4] represent 'the
list of jurors for the Hundred of Oswaldeslaw' at the Domesday
Survey.[5]
From a writ entered on fo. 136 we may infer that there had been some
dispute between the Sheriff and the Church of Worcester as to the
number of hides in the county for which the latter should be rated.[6]
This Inquest or Survey was the consequence of that dispute, and
resulted in the issue of the writ. Its date is roughly determined
by the facts that Urse d'Abetot was dead when it was made, while the
Count of Meulan is entered as a tenant, so that we may probably date
it as later (at the earliest) than 1108, and previous to the death of
the Count of Meulan in July 1118.[7]
Let us now compare, Manor by Manor, the earlier with the later Survey:
DOMESDAY SURVEY _temp._ HENRY I
_Chemesege_ _Kemesige_
Bishop [13] Bishop 13
Urso 7 Walter de Beauchamp 9
Roger de Laci 2
Walter Ponther 2 Hugh Puiher 2
---- ----
24 24
_Wiche_ _Wike_
Bishop 3-3/4 Bishop 3
Urso 9-3/4 Walter de Beauchamp 10-1/2
Robert Despenser 1/2 Nicholas (de Beauchamp?) 1/2
Osbern fitz Richard 1 Hugh fitz Osbern 1
------ ------
15 15
_Fledebirie_ _Fledebyri_
Bishop 7 Bishop 3
Bishop of Hereford 5 Bishop of Hereford 5
Urso 12
Robert Despenser 5 Walter de Beauchamp 22
Alricus archid[iaconus] 1
Roger de Laci 10 Hugh de Laci 10
---- ----
40 40
_Breodun_ _Bredune_
Bishop 10 Bishop 13
Monks 4 Monks 4
Ælricus Archd. 2
Urso 16 Walter de Beauchamp 16
Durand 2 Gile (? bertus) 1
Brictric fil' Algar King 1
(in king's hands) 1
---- ----
35 35
_Rippel et Uptun_ _Rippel et Uptun_
Bishop 13 Bishop 14
Ordric 1
Siward 5
Roger de Laci 3 Hugh de Laci 3
Urso 1
Ralph de Bernai
(in king's hands) 1 Walter de Beauchamp 6
Brictric fil' Algar
(in king's hands) 1 King 2
---- ----
25 25
_Blochelei_ _Bloccelea_
Bishop 25-1/2 Bishop 22
Richard 2 Bishop 2
Ansgot 1-1/2 Walter de Beauchamp 5
Stephen fil' Fulcred 3 'Dæilesford' 3
Hereward 5 'Eunilade' 5
Monks 1 Monks 1
------ ----
38 38
_Tredingtun_ _Tredintun_
[Bishop 17] Bishop 17
Monks 2 Monks 2
Gilbert fil' Thorold 4 'Langedun' 4
--- ---
23 23
_Norwiche_ _Northewike_
Bishop 3-1/2 Bishop 6-1/2
Urso 7-3/4 Walter de Beauchamp 10
Ordric 4-1/4
Alric Arch' 1
Walter Ponther 7-1/2 Hugh Puiher 7-1/2
Herlebaldus 1 King 1
--- ---
25 25
_Ovreberie cum Penedoc_ _Werebyri et Penedoc_
The Church of Worcester 6 6
_Seggesbarne_ _Segesberewe_
The Church of Worcester 3 3
_Scepwestun_ _Scepwestune_
The Church of Worcester 2 2
_Herferthun cum Wiburgestoke_ _Herfortune cum Wiburga Stoke_
The Church of Worcester 3 3
_Grimanleh_ _Grimeleage_
The Church of Worcester 2 2
Robert Despencer 1 Walter de Beauchamp 1
--- ---
3 3
_Halhegan cum Bradewesham_ _Hallhagan cum Bradewasse_
The Church of Worcester 1 [The Church of Worcester 1]
Duo Radmanni 2 Walter de Beauchamp 1-1/2
Roger de Laci 3-1/2 Roger de Laci 3-1/2
Walter de Burh 1/2 Count of Meulan 1
Hugh de Grentmesnil 1/2
------- -------
7-1/2 7
_Cropetorn cum Neothetune_ _Croppethorne_
Church of Worcester 14 Monks 15
Robert Despencer 11 Walter de Beauchamp 9
Urso 6 Robert Marmion 7
Abbot of Evesham 9 Abbot of Evesham 9
[_Ibid._ 10] _Ibid._ 'quiete a geldo' 10
--- ---
50 50
_Total for Oswaldslaw Hundred_
HIDES TENANTS HEMING'S TOTAL
(_ut supra_) (_ut supra_) 'He sunt ccc. hide ad
24 Bishop 93-1/2 Osuualdes lauues hundret.'
15
40 Monks 39
35 Walter de Beauchamp 90 'Episcopus habet in
25 King 4 dominio' xciiii.
38 Hugh Puher 9-1/2 'Monachi' xl.
23 Hugh de Laci 13 } 'Walterus de Bealcamp' xx.[8]
25 Roger de Laci 3-1/2 }
24 Robert Marmion 7 } 'Alii barones' lxiii.
50 Bishop of Hereford 5 } 'Rex' iii.
-- Abbot of Evesham 19 }
299 Hugh fitz Osbern 1 } 72-1/2
Count of Meulan 1 }
Gile (?bertus) 1 }
Alii 12 }
Nicholas (? de } 'Quiete apud Hamtun
Beauchamp) 1/2 a geldo' x.
------- ----
299 230
_Huerteberie_ _Heortlabyri_
Church of Worcester 20 Bishop 15
Walter de Beauchamp 5
---
20
_Vlwardelei_ _Wlfwardile_
Church of Worcester 5 Monks 5
_Stoche_ _Stoka_
Church of Worcester 10 Monks 10
_Alvievecherche_ _Ælfithe cyrce_
Church of Worcester 13 Bishop 13
_Clive cum Lenc_ _Clive cum Leng_
Church of Worcester 10-1/2 Monks 10
_Fepsetenatun_ _Fepsintune_
Church of Worcester 5 Monks 1
Walter Ponther 1[9] Hugh Puiher 1[9]
Roger de Laci 5 Hugh de Laci 5
--- ---
11 7
_Hambyrie_ _Heanbyri_
Church of Worcester 14 Bishop 13-1/2
Walter de Beauchamp 1/2
------
14
_Ardolvestone et Cnistetone_ _Eardulfestun et Cnihtetun_
Church of Worcester ('de Monks 15
victu monachorum') 15
_Total_ _'Summa in Kinefolka'_
Bishop 41-1/2 'Episcopus in dominio xli.'
Monks 41 'Monachi xli.'
Walter de Beauchamp 5-1/2 'Walterus de Bealcamp vi.'
Hugh de Laci 5 'Hugo de Laci v.'
Hugh Puiher 1 'Hugo Puiher i.'
------- -----
94 94
In Oswaldeslaw 299
Outside ditto 94
---
393
Summa hidarum, quas episcopus habet in toto vicecomitatu est
ccc. et quater xx. et xvii. cum his quas Abbas de Evesham
tenet de OSWALDES LAUUE.[10]
It will be seen that of these 397 hides only 393 are accounted for
above. The explanation is this. Of the five hides held in 'Fepsintune'
by the Church of Worcester in Domesday, only one is entered in the
above list, the other four being wholly omitted, both in the list
itself and in the total. These four omitted hides bring up the 393 to
397, the exact sum that we have to account for.
If the Manors in the above Survey are examined with care _seriatim_,
it will be found that they bear manifest witness to the aggressions of
Urse d'Abetot, who, we may gather from this Cartulary, was the _bête
noire_ of the Church of Worcester. The various extensions of his
Domesday holdings, as at 'Fledebyrie', where twelve hides had been
increased to twenty-two, were partly due to the accession of the lands
he inherited from his brother, but partly also to his absorption of
the lands of other tenants and of portions of the episcopal demesne.
All the benefit of these accessions passed to his son-in-law and
successor, Walter de Beauchamp.
But perhaps the most important information that this Survey gives
us is to be found in the light it throws on the succession to Robert
'Dispensator'. That he was brother to Urse d'Abetot is, of course,
generally known. His relationship to the Marmions is the _crux_.
I deal with it under the Lindsey Survey,[11] which shows us his
Lincolnshire fief in the hands of Roger Marmion. In the present
Survey we find that of the seventeen hides and a half which Robert
Dispensator had held, at the time of Domesday, from the Bishop, only
seven were held by Robert (not Roger) Marmion when this document was
compiled, the rest being held by Walter de Beauchamp. We thus learn
that here, as in Leicestershire, the fief had been divided between the
two.[12]
But this Survey further tells us--if we may trust the text--that, in
this succession, Roger Marmion had been preceded by Robert. One may
throw it out as a possible suggestion that, in addition to the wife of
Walter de Beauchamp, Urse d'Abetot may have had a daughter who
married Robert Marmion.[13] On the forfeiture of his son Roger, such a
daughter would have pressed her claim, and, though the inheritance of
Urse himself may, by special favour, have been regranted to Walter,
she may have obtained a share of the fief of her uncle, Robert
'Dispensator'. But this can only be conjecture.
Of the other points of family history on which this Survey throws
light, one may mention that Hugh 'Puher' had succeeded Walter
'Ponther', that Osbern fitz Richard (of Richard's Castle) had been
succeeded by his son, Hugh fitz Osbern; and that though, as in
1095,[14] the name of Hugh de Laci supplants that of his brother
Roger, yet that, if we can trust the text, Roger had in one Manor been
allowed to retain his holding, in accordance with a policy which
is believed to have been practised, namely, that of keeping a hold,
however small, on the forfeited. The name of the Count of Meulan
also, the supplanter of Grentmesnil, will be noticed, and that of
a 'Nicholas', whom, as the successor in a small holding of Robert
Despencer, one might perhaps be tempted to identify with the
mysterious Sheriff of Staffordshire, Nicolas de Beauchamp.
There are fragments of two other early surveys relating to
Worcestershire, which, as they contain the names of Walter and of
William de Beauchamp respectively, may be roughly assigned to the
reigns of Henry I and of Stephen. The first, which is found in an
Evesham Cartulary,[15] is mainly an abstract of Domesday, but
contains a later and valuable analysis of Droitwich, with an important
reference to the Exchequer. The other[16] begins in the middle of a
survey of what seems to be the Church of Worcester's fief, records the
lands held, as under-tenant, by William de Beauchamp, and shows us the
Domesday fief of Ralf de 'Todeni' in the hands of his heir, Roger de
'Toeni'.
DROITWICH
Hee sunt x. hidæ in Wich'. De Witton' petri corbezun ii.
hidas. De feodo sancti Dionysii Ricardus corvus et Willelmus
filius Oueclini tenent i. hidam. De sancto Guthlaco Willelmus
filius Ricardi tenet i. hidam. De Johanne de Suthlega
Ricardus filius Roberti tenet i. hidam. De Pagano filio
Johannis Godwi tenet dimidiam hidam. De Waltero de bello campo
Theobaldus et petrus tenent dimidiam hidam. De la Berton' de
Gloucestra [see Glouc. Cartu.] Randulf filius Ringulfi tenet
dimidiam hidam. De monachis Gloucestrie Baldwinus et Lithulfus
dimidiam hidam. De Comite Warewice Randulfus et Essulf filii
Ringulf tenent iii. virgatas. De Waltero del Burc Randulf
et Essulf dimidiam hidam. De Westmonasterio Theobaldus et
Walterus fil' Thorald i. hidam. De Almega fil' Aiulfi et mater
ejus i. hidam. De Battona Aiulfus presbyter i. virgatam. De
Wichebold Rogerus de Bolles i. virgatam. De monachis fil' Grim
tenet i. virgatam. De Kinefare et Douerdale i. virgatam. Alewi
caure et socii ejus dimidiam virgatam.[15]
H[oc] debet computari ad Scacarium Regis vicecomiti
Wirecestrie. Habes x. hidas ad Danegeld et Wasto forestæ ii.
hidas.
Et in Ederesfeld vi hid[æ]. Et in happeworda i. hid[a]. Et in
Biselega i. hid[a]. Et in Burlega i. hyda.
FRAGMENT OF A SURVEY SUBSEQUENT TO 1130 AND PERHAPS
_circa_ 1150
(_Cott. MS. Vesp._, B. xxiv. fo. 8.)
... manerio de hambyry. Estona Ric' dimidiam hidam. In hundredo de
Camele. In Waresleia v. hidæ de manerio de hertlebery. Summa
quater xx. et xiii. hidæ.
In hundredo de persora habet ecclesia de Westmustier has
terras quas tenet Willelmus de bello campo. Hekintona iii.
hidæ et iii. virgatæ. Chaddesleia ii. hidæ. Langeduna Osmundi
i. hida et dimidia. Colleduma iii. hidæ et iii. virgatæ.
Graftona Ebrandi i. hida et iii. virgatæ. Flavel et pidelet
v. hidæ. Newentona x. hidæ. Broctona Inardi iii. hidæ. Pidelet
radulfi iii. hidæ. Berford v. hidæ. Branefford i. hida.
Wicha Inardi iii. hidæ. Burlingeham ii. hidæ et i. virgata.
Cumbrintona ii. hidæ. Poiwica Willelmi de bello campo i. hida.
Newebolt i. hida. Medeleffeld i. hida de poiwica. Ad bergam i.
hida. Olendene i. hida. Arleia i. virgata. Poiwica Inardi i.
hida. Summa lx. hidæ et dimidia.
In predicto hundredo de persora feudum Abbatis persore. Belega
xxi. hidæ. Branefford i. hida. Wadberga iii. hidæ et dimidia.
Cumbrintona i. hida et dimidia. Lega Ricardi dimidia hida.
Walecote et torendune i. hida et dimidia.
In hundredo de Leisse tenet idem Willelmus Chirchlench iiii.
hidas de abbatia de Evesham. Croulega v. hidas de feudo
Osberti filii hugonis.
In hundredo de Clent. Belua viii. hidæ de feudo folwi
paganelli. Salawarpa v. hidæ de feudo Rogeri Comitis. Item
Salawarpa i. hida de feudo episcopi Cestrie. Chaluestona i.
hida de feudo Roberti filii Archembaldi. Apud Wich dimidiam
hidam Gunfrei. Item apud Wich i. hidam de terra Sancti
Guthlaci quam Rodbertus filius Willelmi tenet. Item ibidem
dimidiam hidam de Cormell' quam Gilebertus tenet. Cokehulla
ii. hidæ et dimidiam de feudo regis. Hactona iii. hidæ de
feudo episcopi baiocensis. Escreueleia i. hida. Summa tocius
cclxiiii. hidæ et dimidia et dimidia virgata.
Terra rogeri de toeney. Esla iii. hidæ. Bertona iii. hidæ et
iii. virgatæ. Alcrintona ii. hidæ. Linda ii. hidæ et ad halac
i. hida. Mora hugonis i. hida et dimidia. Werueslega ii. hidæ
et dimidia. Alboldeslega ii. hidæ et dimidia. Rudmerlega i.
hida et dimidia. Estlega i. hida Geldans et una hida quieta.
Sceldeslega i. hida. Almelega Ricardi de portes xi. hidæ.
In the former of these two fragments we recognize in John of Sudeley
the younger son of Harold, son of Earl Ralf. It would be of interest
if we might identify his tenant, Richard fitz Robert, with the younger
son of his brother, Robert. The succession in the tenancy of the
Crowland hide (St Guthlac's) needs explanation. In Domesday (176)
Urse held Dunclent of Nigel the physician, who held both here and
at Droitwich under Crowland Abbey. It must have been through him at
Droitwich also that William fitz Richard became tenant, for Robert
fitz William (who was clearly the latter's son) held here of Walter de
Beauchamp in the second fragment.
It is in tracing William de Beauchamp's succession, as under-tenant
to his grandfather Urse, that we find the chief interest of the second
fragment. He has succeeded him, for instance, as tenant to the Abbeys
of Westminster, Pershore, and Coventry (the fief of the last having
now become that of 'the Bishop of Chester'). At Wadborough, however,
it was Robert 'Dispensator' whom he had succeeded as tenant of
Pershore. In one case we find him holding of Robert fitz Erchembald,
whose Domesday predecessor we thus learn was William Goizenboded
(177_b_). We may also note his tenure of Madresfield (now Lord
Beauchamp's seat)--the earliest mention, I think, of the place--as a
limb of Powick. Fulk Paynell, of whom William held at Beoley, had now
succeeded to the Domesday fief of William fitz Ansculf, whose tenant
'Robert' may have been Robert 'Dispensator'. Osbern fitz Hugh had
similarly succeeded to the Richard's Castle fief held, in Domesday, by
his grandfather.
I append a partial comparison of Domesday with the Henry I survey so
far as concerns Droitwich, where property, owing to its value, was
divided among many owners.
DROITWICH
DOMESDAY _Temp._ Henry I
H. H.
Willelmus filius Corbucion Petrus Corbezun (de Witton) 2
(Witone) 2
Church of St Denis 1 'De feodo sancti Dionysii
Ricardus corvus et
Willelmus filius Oueclini' 1
De Sancto Guthlaco Nigellus De Sancto Guthlaco Willelmus
Medicus 1 filius Ricardi 1
Heraldus filius Radulfi De Johanne de Suthlega
Comitis 1 Ricardus filius Roberti 1
De Pagano filio Johannis
Godwi 1/2
Urso tenet Witune in Wich et } De Waltero de Bello Campo
Gunfrid de eo 1/2} Theobaldus et Petrus 1/2
Æcclesia sancti Petri de } De la Berton de Gloucestra
Glou. 1/2} Randulf filius Ringulfi 1/2
In Wich est dimidia hida De monachis Gloucestrie
quæ pertinet ad aulam de Baldwinus et Lithulfus 1/2
Glou. 1/2
De Comite Warewice
Randulfus et Essulfus
filii Ringulf 3/4
De Waltero del Burc
Randulf et Essulf 1/2
Ibi duo presbyteri [de De Westmonasterio
Westmonasterio] tenet i. Theobaldus et Walterus
hidam que nunquam geldavit 1 fil' Thorald 1
Isdem [Radulfus] tenent in De Almelega fil' Aiulfi
Wich i. hidam de x. hidis et mater ejus 1
[geldantibus] 1
[Footnote 1: See my paper 'An early reference to Domesday'
(_Domesday Studies_, pp. 542-4).]
[Footnote 2: _Domesday Studies_, p. 513; _Domesday Book_
(S.P.C.K.), p. 305.]
[Footnote 3: _Introduction to Domesday_, i. 19.]
[Footnote 4: _Domesday Studies_, p. 547.]
[Footnote 5: _Domesday Book_ (S.P.C.K.), pp. 78, 305.]
[Footnote 6: There was a similar dispute about the same time
in the case of Abingdon Abbey and its possessions in Berkshire
(_Abingdon Cart._, ii. 1600).]
[Footnote 7: This, however, as I have elsewhere shown must
remain a presumption, as it is possible that, owing to the
youth of his heir, he may have been entered as nominal tenant
for some time after his death (see p. 155).]
[Footnote 8: MS. now destroyed here.]
[Footnote 9: 'Non geldat.']
[Footnote 10: p. 116.]
[Footnote 11: _Infra_, pp. 149 _et seq._]
[Footnote 12: We are enabled by this Survey, and by the
division it records, to carry up the history of Elmley, the
original seat of the Beauchamps, to Domesday itself. The great
Manor of Cropthorne, by Evesham, was held by the Church of
Worcester. In Bengeworth, one of its 'members', Urse d'Abetot,
had seized an estate of five hides (_Heming's Cartulary_ fo.
125_b_). His brother, Robert Despencer, had seized two other
'members', Charlton ('Ceorlatuna') and Elmley (_ibid._). In
Domesday we are merely told that Robert held eleven hides in
Cropthorne. But the present Survey fortunately mentions that
the portion which fell to Marmion's share was seven hides in
'Charlton'. This leaves four hides for Elmley, which, added to
the five hides of Urse d'Abetot in Bengeworth, makes exactly
the nine hides here entered to Walter de Beauchamp. We thus
learn how the Beauchamps became possessed of Elmley. And this
calculation is confirmed by the entry in the _Testa_ (p. 41):
'Willelmus de Bello Campo ... in Elmeleg in dominico iiij.
hidas.']
[Footnote 13: It is worth noting that we find, in Domesday,
both a Robert and a Walter holding of Urse in Worcestershire.]
[Footnote 14: See p. 244 _infra_.]
[Footnote 15: _Harl. MS._, 3,763, fo. 80.]
[Footnote 16: _Cott. MS. Vesp._, B. xxiv. fo. 8.]
THE LINDSEY SURVEY
(1115-18)
This 'invaluable Survey', as Mr Stevenson has termed it,[1] might be
described as a miniature Domesday for each of the Wapentakes in the
three trithings into which Lindsey was divided. For although drawn up,
Wapentake by Wapentake, as is the Leicestershire Survey, Hundred by
Hundred, the lands within each Wapentake described are grouped under
the names of the holders of fiefs, instead of being entered Vill by
Vill. It was doubtless compiled, like other surveys, in connection
with the assessment of the 'geld'.[2]
Remarkable from a palaeographic standpoint, as well as from the nature
of its contents, the record, which is found in a Cottonian MS.
(Claud. C. 5), has been singularly unfortunate in its editors. As Mr
Greenstreet truly observed:
The indefatigable Hearne, seeing that the manuscript related
to a very ancient period of our history, and recognizing its
great importance, printed it in the Appendix to his 'Liber
Niger', but he does not appear to have properly examined
either the question of the date of the writing, or the
internal evidence.... As a natural consequence of his
superficial examination, he associates it wrongly with the
reign of Henry II.
Stapleton, of course, knew better than this, and assigned the
survey at one time to _circ._ 1108,[3] but in his _Rotuli Scaccarii
Normanniæ_[4] to 1106-20. It was subsequently investigated and
analysed with great care by Mr Eyton, whose note-books, now in the
British Museum, show that he adopted the sound method of comparing it
in detail with Domesday Book. After his death Mr Chester Waters issued
(1883) an annotated translation of the text, with an introduction,
analysis, etc., in which the place-names were carefully identified,
and the same system of comparison with Domesday adopted.[5]
It is, unfortunately, necessary to explain that Mr Waters in the
table of contents described his translation as 'from the Cotton MS.,
Claudius C. 5', and wrote on the opposite page:
This MS. engaged the attention of Thomas Hearne, the
antiquary, who has printed it amongst the additaments to his
edition of the _Liber Niger Scaccarii_; but Hearne was one
of those industrious but uncritical antiquaries who had no
conception of the duties of an editor of the importance of
accuracy.
Knowing the high opinion entertained of Mr Waters' works,[6] I
accepted his translation in all good faith as 'from the Cotton
MS.' and was, I confess, not a little startled to discover from Mr
Greenstreet's facsimiles that it was made not from the Cotton MS., but
from that inaccurate edition by Hearne, which Mr Waters had mentioned
only to denounce. On fo. 4_b_ a whole line, containing three entries,
was accidentally omitted by Hearne, and is, consequently, absent also
from Mr Waters' version. On collating the two, however, I found, to
my great surprise, that matters were even worse than this, and
that Hearne's text was far less inaccurate than Mr Waters' own, the
erroneous figures found in the latter being almost always correctly
given by the 'uncritical' Hearne. As for the version given by Mr
Waters, even in the very first Wapentake, there are three serious
errors, five carucates being given as three, nine as seven, and
eleven as two! And for Bradley Wapentake (p. 27), his figures are so
erroneous that, according to him, 'Radulf Meschin alone had 42 cars.
6 bovs. in this Wapentake', though his real holding was only fifteen
cars. three bovs. With another class of resultant errors I shall have
to deal below.
To the enterprise of Mr Greenstreet scholars were indebted for
an _édition de luxe_ of the record in facsimile, which made its
appearance shortly after the treatise of Mr Waters. Unfortunately, no
attempt was made in the appended literal translation to identify the
names of places or persons, while such a word as '[ap]pendiciis',
which occasionally appears in the survey, is mistaken for a place-name
'Pendicus'. The book enjoys, however, the great advantage of an index.
The identification of places and of persons in Mr Waters' treatise
shows extraordinary knowledge; but both Mr Eyton and Mr Waters had the
provoking habit of making important assertions without giving their
authority. I expressed a wish in the _Academy_, at the time, that Mr
Waters would give us some clue as to his sources of information, but
as he did not think fit to do so, we have to test his statements as
best we can for ourselves. Now we learn from him on p. 36 that 'Walter
fitz William', a tenant at South Willingham, was 'brother of Simon
mentioned above', namely of 'Simon fitz William (ancestor to the Lords
Kyme)'. This is impressive until we discover that the actual words
in the survey (as indeed in Hearne's text) are 'Walt[erius] fil[ius]
Walt[eri]i' (fo. 11 _b_).[7] To an expert such a test as this will
prove significant enough. But to turn from an actual misreading of the
text to cases in which are incorporated interlineations, not part of
the original text, but written in later times, we find Mr Waters--like
other antiquaries who had followed Hearne's text--stating that 'Ranulf
[Meschin] is twice styled in the Roll Earl of Lincoln, but there is no
record of his creation, and no other authority for possession of the
earldom' (p. 8). The difficulty vanishes when we discover that this
supposed style was a mere interlineation made by a much later hand.[8]
So again we read on p. 30:
Richard, Earl [of Chester], has 6 cars. in Barnetby-le-Wold,
where [William], the constable of Chester, is his tenant [as
his father was Earl Hugh's in Domesday].
But on turning to Mr Greenstreet's facsimiles, we find that the survey
had nothing about 'the constable of Chester', the words 'constabularia
[_sic_] Cestrie' being only a faint interlineation by a later hand.
And even where a reference to the true text does not at once dispose
of the matter, these statements of Mr Waters are, on other grounds,
open at times to question. He assumes, for instance, that Hugh fitz
Ranulf, who occurs as a landowner in the survey, was a younger son of
Ranulf Meschin, afterwards Earl of Chester (p. 12). No such son would
seem to be known; and this assumption, moreover, does violence to
chronology. For the pedigree it involves is this:
Roger (1) Lucy (2) Ranulf
fitzGerold = = Meschin
| |-------.....
| | .
William Ranulf, Hugh
de Roumare, Earl of fitz Ranulf
Earl of Lincoln Chester
Now William de Roumare was not old enough to claim his inheritance
from the King till 1122, and his half-brother, Ranulf, was some
years younger than he was, as the words of Orderic imply in 1140.
Consequently Hugh, the youngest brother, can have been only a boy in
1122. How then could he, as Mr Waters alleges, have held a fief in
right of his wife so early as 1115 or thereabouts?
In this assumption, however, he only follows Stapleton, to whom
he here refers, and who relied on an abstract in the cartulary of
Spalding (fol. 416 _a_, _b_). This abstract which cannot, from its
form, preserve the wording of the original charter, runs:
Sciant tam presentes quam futuri quod Hugo frater Rannulfi
comitis Cestrie et Matild' uxor ejus, fil' filia [_sic_]
Lucie comitisse concesserunt, etc., etc.
Stapleton boldly rendered the obviously corrupt words as 'son and
daughter-in-law of the countess Lucia',[9] and hence pronounced this
Hugh to be 'a married brother of the whole blood' to the _second_
Randulf, Earl of Chester.[10] As he only knew their gift to Spalding
to be 'prior to 1141', no chronological difficulty was caused by this
view; but the occurrence of Hugh's name in the Lindsey Survey, as
already in possession of his small fief, at once raises the difficulty
I have explained. The solution that occurs to me is that the Hugh fitz
Ranulf of our survey, and the 'Hugo frater Ranulfi Comitis Cestrie'
of the Spalding charter, was a brother, not of the second but of the
_first_ Earl Ranulf, and that the words 'fil' filia Comitisse Lucie'
were introduced in error by the compiler, whose head was full of the
Countess Lucy, and who had here confused the two Earls Randulf.
Stapleton, Mr Waters has justly observed, was '_facile princeps_ of
Anglo-Norman genealogists'.[11] Yet I venture to think that, as he
here mistook a brother of the first Earl Ranulf for a son, so he
confused William Meschin, another and better known brother, with
William de Roumare, the Earl's stepson, afterwards Earl of Lincoln.
William Meschin was not merely a considerable landowner in Lindsey,
but had also estates in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, as our
survey of those counties show.[12] Stephen, according to Stapleton,
created him Earl of Cambridge.
Remembering the _dictum_ of Dr Stubbs that 'Stephen's earldoms are
a matter of great constitutional importance', it is worth while to
examine this earldom of Cambridge.
In one of Stapleton's greatest essays, that on Holy Trinity Priory,
York,[13] he writes of this William Meschin, that
By King Stephen he was made Earl of Cambridge, as we learn
from the following extract from a charter of Alexander, Bishop
of Lincoln, in 1139, founding the nunnery of Haverholm, in
the parish of Ruskington, of the order of St. Gilbert of
Sempringham. 'But this donation ... we have confirmed ... by
the testimony of Rannulph, Earl of Chester, and of William,
Earl of Cambridge, his brother' (p. 34).
The words in the original are:
Testimonio Rannulfi comitis Cestriæ et Willelmi comitis
Cantebrigiæ fratris ejus (_Mon. Ang._, v. 949).
Now, though Stapleton is positive on the point, speaking again of
'William Meschin, Earl of Cambridge' (p. 35), and though this learned
paper well sustains his reputation, yet he has here beyond question
gone astray. Earl Randulf, first of his name, appears as deceased
in the Pipe Roll of 1130. He could not therefore have been the Earl
Randulf of 1139, who was his son and namesake. Therefore the latter's
'brother', the Earl of Cambridge, could not have been William Meschin,
who was his father's brother.[14] A short chart pedigree will make the
matter clear:
Randulf,
_Vicomte_ of the Bessin
____________|______________
| |
Roger (1) Lucy (2) Randulf William
fitzGerold = = Earl of Chester, Meschin
| dead 1130
| |
William Randulf
de Roumare, 'de Gernon',
Earl of Lincoln Earl of Chester
('Earl of Cambridge') living 1139
The pedigree shows my solution of the mystery. The two brother-earls
of 1139 are those who are found so constantly together, and who were
jointly concerned, next year, in the surprise of Lincoln, but who
were really only _half_-brothers, though they spoke of one another as
'frater'.
The identity of the 'Earl of Cambridge' is thus clearly established;
but there of course remains the question why he is not here styled
'Earl of Lincoln'. Every mention of him as Earl of Lincoln is later,
if this charter be rightly dated, so that he may possibly have changed
his style. It is really strange that precisely as William, Earl of
Lincoln, is here once styled Earl of Cambridge, so William, Earl
of Arundel, is twice styled Earl of Lincoln, as I have shown in my
_Geoffrey de Mandeville_ (p. 324), though in that case also the fact
had never been suspected. It is most tempting, if rash, to suggest
that the reason why the Earl of Lincoln was at first Earl of Cambridge
is that the Earl of Arundel (Sussex) was at first Earl of Lincoln, and
thus kept him out of that title.
In any case an error has now been corrected, and one of Stephen's
alleged earls disposed of.
The question of the date of this interesting survey is no less
puzzling than important. Mr Greenstreet held that 'there is hardly any
room for doubting' that it was previous to 1109. This conclusion
was based on a misapprehension, and Mr Waters claimed to have
'established' the date as 'between March 1114 and April 1116' (pp.
2-4). In this conclusion he would seem to have been anticipated by
Mr Eyton, as is shown by that writer's note-books,[15] but I cannot
accept the identical and somewhat far-fetched argument on which they
relied. They obtained their limit on the one hand from a passage in
'Peter of Blois', and on the other from the fact that Robert, the
King's son, is entered in the roll as 'filius Regis', and 'was
therefore not yet Earl of Gloucester', whereas he was certainly Earl,
they say, 'before Easter, 1116', when he witnessed as Earl, a charter
they both assign to that date.
Of the latter date I disposed in my paper 'The Creation of the Earldom
of Gloucester',[16] in which I showed that Robert did not become
Earl till several years later. The other evidence, if it cannot be
disproved, cannot at least, be relied on. For, without asserting that
the chronicle assigned to 'Peter of Blois' is so daring a forgery as
the 'Historia Ingulphi', of which it is a 'continuatio', it must be
plainly described as absolutely untrustworthy. Apart from the passage
on Cambridge University,[17] we have a description 'Inclyti Comitis
Leycestriæ Roberti tunc validissimi adolescentis, burgensiumque suæ
dictæ civitatis' in 1113, and of his presence, with his knights,
at the laying of the Abbey foundation stones next year.[18] Now the
future Earl of Leicester was some nine years old at the time, and his
father, the Count of Meulan, lived till 1118. So also, about the year
1114 we meet with 'Milonis Comitis Herfordensis', who did not become
Earl of Hereford till 1141, and whose father, Walter of Gloucester,
was living long after 1114; while on the next page we find the
notoriously false Countess Lucy legend, with the additional blunder
of converting her son, the Earl of Lincoln, into her husband's
brother![19] It is in the midst of all this that we have the vital
passage on which Mr Waters relies:
We know from the _Continuator_ [_sic_] _of Peter of Blois_
(p. 121) that Stephen and his elder brother Theobald were on a
visit to Henry I, at Oxford, at some period between March 7th
and August 1st, 1114, when Theobald is described as Count of
Blois, and Stephen as 'pulcherrimus adolescens dominus postea
rex Anglorum'. It is manifest that at this date Stephen was
not yet Count of Moreton, so the Roll must be later than March
7th, 1114 (p. 3).
The fact that this alleged visit is connected by 'Peter' with
intervention in favour of the Abbot of Crowland, will not lessen the
suspicion under which the evidence must lie. Crowland was guilty of
'hiring', Dr Stubbs has severely observed, 'Peter of Blois, or some
pretended Peter who borrows an illustrious name, to fabricate for her
an apocryphal chronicle'.[20]
The actual proof of the survey's date is minute, no doubt, but
conclusive. In the Lindsey Survey, 'the sons of Ragemer' (himself the
Domesday under-tenant) are found holding of Walter de Gant; therefore
their father, at the time of the survey, had been succeeded by them in
this holding. But, as 'Rachmar, son of Gilbert', he is found attesting
a charter of Maud, Walter de Gant's wife, to Bridlington Priory, which
is addressed to Thurstan, Archbishop of York, and which therefore
must be later at the very least than his election, August 15, 1114.
Therefore Ragemer was alive after that date, and the survey, at the
time of which he was dead, can consequently scarcely be earlier than
1115. On the other hand, we can scarcely place it later than the death
of the great Count of Meulan in the summer of 1118,[21] though, as I
have urged in the _Genealogist_, the lands he had held might still be
assigned to 'the Count of Meulan', till his fiefs were divided among
his sons, who were boys at the time of his death. On the whole we
may safely assign the survey to 1115-1118, and in any case it cannot
possibly be later than the close of 1120.
As, according to Stapleton, the best authority, it is in this survey
that the name of Marmion first appears in England, it may not be
inopportune to examine here the accepted pedigree of that house. In
the Roger Marmion of our survey we have its undoubted ancestor, but of
Robert Marmion, who appears on its opening folio as a tenant of Walter
de Gant at Winteringham, one cannot speak so positively. In Domesday
Winteringham, as 12 carucates, was held of Gilbert de Gant by
'Robertus homo Gilberti' (354_b_): in our Survey eleven[22] of these
carucates were held of Gilbert's son Walter by Robert Marmion, and the
twelfth _in capite_ by Roger Marmion. Mr Waters (p. 17) identifies the
former with the Domesday under-tenant, which is a tempting solution,
were not the Domesday Robert also under-tenant at Risby (which was
held in our survey not by Marmion, but by Walter de St Paul). It seems
to me more probable that Robert, the under-tenant in our survey, was,
as Mr Waters, contradicting himself, elsewhere observes (p. 14), the
son and heir of Roger. Yet of Roger Marmion's estate at Fulstow, Mr
Waters writes (p. 27): 'Roger's father, Robert Marmion, was tenant
there in Domesday of Robert Dispenser.' This would give us an
interesting clue. But on turning to Domesday (363_b_), we find that it
is only one more mistake of Mr Waters, its 'Robertus' being no other
than Robert Dispenser himself.[23]
Stapleton, who worked out the descent, held that Roger's son Robert,
who had succeeded by 1130, and who was slain in 1143, was father of
the Robert who died in 1218. I would rather interpolate another Robert
between the two:
Roger
Marmion,
of the Lindsey Survey
|
|
Robert = Millicent
Marmion, |
in possession 1130, |
slain 1143 |
|____________________________|
|
[Robert
Marmion],
living 1155
|
|
Maud = Robert = Philippa
de Beauchamp, | Marmion |
living 1181 | d. 1218 |
(Stapleton) | |
| |
___________| |________________
| | |
Robert Robert William
Marmion, Marmion, Marmion,
'senior,' junior clerk
d. _circ._ 1242
|________________
|
Philip
Marmion,
died _circ._ 1292,
last of his line
The pedigree really turns on the charter of Henry III in 1249, to
Philip Marmion, confirming the royal charters to his ancestor. Mr
Stapleton declares that Henry inspected and confirmed
The charter which King Henry, his great-great-grandfather, had
made to Robert Marmyon, great-grandfather of Philip Marmyon,
of having warren in all his land in the county of Warwick, and
especially at Tamworth; and likewise of the charter of
King Henry, his uncle ['Avunculus noster' is the reading
transcribed on the rolls, obviously in error of 'atavus
noster'], which he had made to the said Robert of having
warren in all his land of Lindesay (_Rot. Scacc. Norm._, II.
cvi.).
This abstract is strangely inaccurate, considering that Stapleton had,
clearly, examined the Inspeximus[24] for himself. Henry VI inspected
and confirmed:
(1) The charter of Henry I, granting Robert Marmion freewarren
in Warwickshire (specially at Tamworth) as his father had.
(2) The charter of Henry II (confirming the above charter),
'T. Tom. Canc. apud Brugiam', and therefore granted in 1155.
(3) The charter of Henry III, who had inspected--
(_a_) 'Cartam quam Henr' rex avus [_sic_] noster [_i.e._ Henry II]
fecit Roberto Marmyon proavo Philippi Marmyun';
(_b_) 'Cartam Henrici regis avunculi nostri quam fecit Roberto';
and confirmed them as the charters, 'H. Regis avi nostri et H. regis
avunculi nostri', to Philip Marmion.
It is clear then that Henry III inspected the charter of his
grandfather ('avus') Henry II (not, as Mr Stapleton wrote, his
great-great-grandfather'), in 1155, to Robert Marmion, '_proavus_' of
Philip. This, it will be seen, could only be the Robert whom I have
inserted in the pedigree. Nor can Mr Stapleton's 'atavus' assumption
be accepted in view of the facts. The 'avunculus' and namesake of
Henry III would duly have been the 'young king' Henry (crowned 1170).
If 'avunculus' is a clerical error, the word to substitute is 'avus';
but the careful way in which the charter distinguishes the King's two
predecessors is quite opposed to the idea that they were in both cases
his grandfather.
As against the evidence afforded us by the charter of Henry III,
we have the statements and documents relating to Barbery Abbey, a
daughter of Savigny. It is alleged that the house was first founded in
1140[25] by that Robert Marmion who was slain at Coventry in 1143.[26]
Stapleton accepted this without question. Yet, so far as documents are
concerned, we have only the charter of Robert Marmion (1181), in which
he speaks of his father Robert as beginning the foundation.[27] If
that father were indeed the Robert who was slain in 1143, Stapleton's
pedigree is duly proved as against that which I derive from Henry the
Third's charter. But for this identification we have only, it would
seem, the _obiter dictum_ of the 'Gallia Christiana' editors, while
the fact that the first Abbot was appointed about 1177,[28] combined
with the fact that Robert Marmion, in 1181, was avowedly completing
that foundation which his father's death had arrested, certainly seems
to point to his father's benefaction being then recent, and little
previous to the said appointment of the first Abbot. In that case his
father would be not the Robert who died in 1143, but a Robert who, as
I suggest, came between the two.[29]
Leaving now this question of pedigree, there is a theory as to the
name of Marmion which one cannot pass over in silence, because it has
received the sanction even of Stapleton. Writing on the date of the
Lindsey Survey, that eminent authority observes:
Robert Le Despenser [_Dispensator_] was brother of Urso de
Abbetot, whose other surname, Marmion, is equivalent in Norman
French to the Latin word Dispensator; and as Robert Marmion
died in 1107, it was probably in the following year that this
catalogue was written.[30]
His meaning, though clumsily expressed, as was sometimes the case,
is that the Latin 'Dispensator' represented the name 'Marmion'.
This theory would seem to be derived from the word 'Marmiton' (not
'Marmion') which means not a 'Dispensator', but a scullion, the most
despised of the menials employed in the kitchen. There was indeed in
old French a rare word 'Marmion', but according to Godefroy, it
was equivalent to 'Marmot', the name of the Marmoset. In any case,
therefore, this illustrious surname, immortalized by Scott
They hailed him Lord of Fontenaye,
Of Lutterworth and Scrivelbaye,
Of Tamworth tower and town
had nothing to do with 'Dispensator', but meant either a scullion or
a monkey, and was one of those nicknames that the Normans loved to
inexorably bestow on one another.
What was the actual relation of the Marmions to Robert 'Dispensator'
is a problem as yet unsolved. Mr Waters wrote:
It is generally believed that Scrivelsby and the rest of the
Honour of Dispenser came to the Marmions through the marriage
of Roger Marmion's grandson,[31] Robert Marmion, who was the
husband of Matilda de Beauchamp, the grand-daughter of Urso
de Abitot, and grand-niece of Robert Dispenser. But the Roll
proves that Roger Marmion was the immediate heir of Robert
Dispenser (p. 14).
I know of no such general belief. Stapleton, to whom one would
naturally turn, had pointed out long before, in his 'Rolls of the
Norman Exchequer', that this survey proves Roger Marmion to have held
the Lincolnshire fief of Robert 'Dispensator',[32] while those who
have identified the latter magnate with Robert 'Marmion' have traced
the descent of Scrivelsby in the Marmions even from the Conquest.[33]
In any case, as I wrote in my _Ancient Charters_ (1888) of a document
there published:
The succession of Urse [de Abetot] to this [Lincolnshire] fief
is a genealogical discovery which throws a wholly new light
on the very difficult problem of the relation of Marmion to
Despenser, and is fatal to the assertion of Mr Chester
Waters that 'Roger Marmion was the immediate heir of Robert
Dispenser'.
Moreover, in the Leicestershire Survey,[34] and still more in that
of Worcestershire,[35] we have evidence that Robert's inheritance
was shared between Beauchamp and Marmion which points there also to
descent through Urse de Abetot. In my _Geoffrey de Mandeville_ (pp.
313-5) I have suggested that in their rivalry for Tamworth,[36] the
Marmions embraced the cause of Stephen, and the Beauchamps that of
Maud, their variance being terminated under Henry II by a matrimonial
alliance. Such a compromise was common enough. It was agreed on in the
case of Grantmesnil; it was carried out at this very period in that of
Fitzharding and Berkeley; it was again resorted to at a later stage in
the history of the house of Berkeley; it was arranged in the case
of Hastings; and it was repeated in that of Boleyn, where the Butler
inheritance was at stake.[37]
[Footnote 1: _English Historical Review_, v. 96.]
[Footnote 2: I have discussed above (pp. 69-72) the bearing
of its evidence on the problem of Domesday assessment, so need
not recur to the subject here.]
[Footnote 3: See note 31 below.]
[Footnote 4: Vol. II. p. xcvi.]
[Footnote 5: _A Roll of the Owners of Land in the parts
of Lindsey_ ('Reprinted from the Associated Architectural
Societies Reports and Papers').]
[Footnote 6: In consideration of which he received a pension
on the Civil List.]
[Footnote 7: There is a similar error on fo. 13, where the
'William fitz Aubrey' of Mr Waters proves to be 'filius
_Albrede_' (not _Alberici_).]
[Footnote 8: Hearne duly prints it as an interlineation.]
[Footnote 9: _Rolls of the Norman Exchequer_, II. clvi.]
[Footnote 10: He further hazarded the erroneous conjecture
that Roheis, Countess of Lincoln, was his daughter.]
[Footnote 11: _Gundrada de Warrenne_, p. 9.]
[Footnote 12: See pp. 171, 179, _infra_.]
[Footnote 13: pp. 1-237. Bound up in the York volume of the
Royal Archæological Institute.]
[Footnote 14: Stapleton indeed exposed himself unconsciously
by stating on the very same page that William Meschin's lands
had passed to his heirs 'prior to 1138', so that he could not
be the Earl of 1139.]
[Footnote 15: See on this point the important letters of Mr
Greenstreet and Mr J. A. C. Vincent to the _Athenæum_, May 9
and June 27, 1885.]
[Footnote 16: _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 420 _et seq._]
[Footnote 17: Ed. Gale, pp. 114, 115.]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, pp. 118, 119.]
[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, pp. 124, 125.]
[Footnote 20: _Lectures on Mediæval and Modern History_, p.
148.]
[Footnote 21: _Survey of Lindsey_, p. 2.]
[Footnote 22: Mr Waters, in error, states _two_.]
[Footnote 23: It is an illustration of the ignorance prevalent
on early genealogy that even Mr Freeman could write of
'Mr Chester Waters, than whom no man better deserves to be
listened to on any point of genealogy, especially of the
Norman genealogy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries'
(_English Historical Review_, iii. 690).]
[Footnote 24: Rot. Pat. 27 Hen. VI, part I, _m_ 30.]
[Footnote 25: _Neustria Pia_, 683.]
[Footnote 26: _Gallia Christiana_ (1874), xi. 452.]
[Footnote 27: _Neustria Pia_, 881; _Gall. Christ._, xi.,
Instr. 86.]
[Footnote 28: _Gall. Christ._, xi. 452.]
[Footnote 29: Since this was written I have found that Mr C.
F. R. Palmer, in his admirable little treatise on the Marmion
family (1875), duly inserts this intermediate Robert. Mr
Palmer has shown himself by far the best authority on the
subject, and has printed a valuable charter of Stephen to
Robert Marmion.]
[Footnote 30: Paper on 'Holy Trinity Priory, York', p. 208
note. This identification is accepted by no less an authority
than Mr A. S. Ellis (_Domesday Tenants of Gloucestershire_, p.
69).]
[Footnote 31: i.e. according to Stapleton's pedigree.]
[Footnote 32; And Mr Palmer independently had done the same in
his _History of the Marmions_ (1865).]
[Footnote 33: Lodge's _Scrivelsby: the Home of the
Champions_.]
[Footnote 34: See p. 174.]
[Footnote 35: See p. 174.]
[Footnote 36: It is certain that Tamworth originally belonged
to Robert 'Dispensator', and equally certain that it was held
successively by Roger and Robert Marmion under Henry I.]
[Footnote 37: See my _Early Life of Anne Boleyn_, pp. 25-7.]
THE LEICESTERSHIRE SURVEY
(1124-29).
Asserting the importance of the Lindsey Survey, Mr Chester Waters
observed that 'this is the sole record of its kind which deals with
the interval between the completion of Domesday in 1086, and the
compilation of the Pipe-Roll of 1129-30, and that no similar return
of the landowners of any other county is known to exist' (p. 2). And,
indeed, it would seem that the survey to which I now address myself
has hitherto remained unknown. It is found in the form of a late
transcript on an unidentified roll in the Public Record Office.[1]
Comprising the whole of Gosecote Wapentake, and in part those of
Framland and Gartree, it retains for these divisions the Domesday name
of Wapentake--they are now 'Hundreds'--while subdividing them into
small 'Hundreds', of which the existence seems to have been hitherto
unsuspected. Proceeding, like the I.C.C., 'Hundred' by 'Hundred', and
Vill by Vill, it enables us, like that document, to reconstitute the
aggregate assessments, and thus affords priceless evidence on 'the
six-carucate unit'.[2] But apart from this, it is invested with no
small importance from that 'great want of documentary evidence' for
the reign of Henry I which Mr Hunter rightly lamented in his elaborate
introduction to the first great roll of the Pipe (p. ii). It affords
us new and trustworthy evidence on the many vicissitudes of the great
fiefs, and enables us, while tracing the fortunes of their owners,
to see how the first Henry provided for his _novi homines_, showering
escheats and royal demesne on the trusty officials he had raised
'from the dust', as well as on his favourite nephew, Stephen, Count of
Mortain.
The date of this survey is thus determined. The frequent mention of
'Rex D[avid]' places it subsequent to his accession to the throne in
April 1124. On the other hand, the name of Ralf Basset (the justiciar)
shows it to be anterior to his death; and he was dead before Mich.,
1130 (_Rot. Pip._, 31 Hen. I). Moreover, it speaks more than once of
Hugh de Leicester as 'Vicecomes', and Hugh's shrievalty seems from the
Pipe-Roll to have terminated at Mich., 1129. We may therefore place
this survey between the spring of 1124 and the autumn of 1129, with a
likelihood of its having been compiled nearer the latter date.
TEXT OF THE SURVEY
... 'Comes Lerc[estri]æ vj. car.
_H[undredum] de[3] Langeton'_.--In eadem villa Comes
Lerc[estriæ] xj. car. et j. virg. Ibidem Ric[ardus] Basset
iii. car. et. j. virg. In thorp Eustaci[us] iij. car. et.
iij. virg. In alia Langeton' Abbas de Burg' iiij. car. et iii.
virg. Ibidem Henricus de pport j. car. In thurlington idem
Henricus xij. car. In sscanketon' Comes Lerc[estriæ] x. car.
Ansch' ij. car.[4]
_H[undredum] de Chiburd'_.--In eadem villa xii. car. de feodo
Ansch'. In alia chiburd' Walt[erus] de Bell' campo xj. car.,
Ricardus Basset j. car. In bocton Comes Leicestriæ xij. car.
In carleton' idem Comes x. car. Et Monachi Sancti Arnulphi v.
virg. Et de ssoch' Regis iij. virg.[5]
_H[undredum] de Knossinton_.--In eadem villa ij. car. de
Honore de Blida. Et Henricus de ferr' iij. car. et. iij.
virg. In Osolinstona Rex D[avid] vij. car. In Picwell et in
Lucerthorp de feudo Rogeri de Moubray xv. car. In Neubotel
Robertus de ferr' j. car. et dim. In Burg' Marm' iij. car.
In Balbegrave vj. car. iij. bov. minus de Soch[a] Regis. In
Mardefeud iij. car. de eadem Soch[a]. In alia Mardefeud iij.
car.[6]
GOSECOTE WAP'
_H[undredum] de Lodinton[e]_, in Sceftinton[e] Norm[annus] de
Verdun viij. car. et dim. Ricardus Bass[et] iij. car. et dim.
In Gokebia Normannus de Verdun vj. car. In Adelacston[e] v.
car. et j. virg. de feodo Regis David. Et de Soch[a] Regis
iij. virg. In Ludinton[e] Ricardus Basset xii. car. In Thorp
et in Twyford Ricardus de Roll[os] ix. car. j. bov. minus.
Ibidem Henricus de ferr[ariis] ix. car. j. bov. minus. Et de
Soch[a] Regis v. car. Ex hiis Grimbaldus tenet dim. car. et
Rex D[avid] j. car. In Norton[e] x. bov. Walter de Bello campo
vj. car. Et Roger de Moubray iiij. car. et iij. virg.[7]
_H[undredum] de[8] Tilton_.--In eadem villa ij. car. j. bov.
minus de Soch[a] Regis. Ibidem Walt[erus] de Bello campo iij.
car. Archiepiscopus[9] j. car. In Neuton[e] Walter de Bello
campo iiij. car. Roger de Moubray viii. car. In Lousebia Rex
David xij. car. In Watebergia Dominicum Regis iiij. car. In
Hallested Normannus de Verdun iij. car. j. virg. minus.[10]
_H[undredum] de bebia_.--In eadem villa Abbas de Croyland xij.
car. In Cahiham iiij. car. de Soch[a] Regis. Comes Lercestrie
ij. car. In Hung'ton ix. car. In Siglebia ix. car. et. vj.
bov. et dim. de[11] Comite Lercestriæ. Ibidem Comes Cestrie
iij. car. Ibidem Ricardus Basset ij. car. Robertus de
ferrer[iis] v. bov.[12]
_H[undredum] de Barkbia_.--In eadem villa v. car. de feodo de
Belvar[o]. In Hamelton' et in thorp vi. car. de eodem feudo,
et de feodo Comitis Lercestriæ j. car. et dim. In Thormedeston
Canonici iij. car. In Crocheston[e] ij. car. et j. bov. et
dim. de Soch[a] Regis. In Neubold[e] Robertus de ferer[iis]
j. car. et dim. In Barnesby Rex iij. car. et dim. bov. Ibidem
Comes Lercestriæ xiij. bov. In Gadesby [t]erra[13] Reg[is]
viij. car. et dim. et dim. et dim. [_sic_] bov. Ibidem
Episcopus Lincolniensis viij. bov. Comes Lercestriæ j. car. et
dim. bov. Ricardus Basset dim. car. Rex D[avid] ij. car.[14]
_H[undredum] de Essebia_.--In eadem villa Rex David v. car.
Ibidem Hugo de Lerc[estria] j. car. In Humberstay Roger de
Ram[is] viij. car. Ibidem Walter de Mustere j. car. Rad[ulfus]
de Martinwast iij. car. In Mardegrave Comes Lercestriæ xij.
car. In thurmedeston idem Comes car. [_sic._] Idem in Burstall
ix. car. Idem in Anlepia vij. car. Idem in Anesting[e] vj.
car.[15]
_H[undredum] de Resebia_.--In eadem villa Ricardus Basset v.
car. Ibidem Comes Cestrie ij. car. et dim. Rex David iiij car.
et dim. In Quenburg[o] xij. car. de feodo de Belvar[o]. In
Siefton[e] Comes Lercestriæ xij. car. In Brokesbya Comes
[_sic_] Cestrie v. car. Rex David j. car. quam Pip[er]d
tenet. In Quenebia vj. car. de feodo de Belvar[o]. In
thurketleston[e] de feodo Comitis viij. car. In Cropeston[e]
iiij. car. In Rodeleia terra Regis v. car.[16]
_H[undredum] de Magna Dalbia_.--In eadem villa Episcopus
Lincolniensis ix. car. et dim. Radulfus Basset j. car. et iij.
bov. Ibidem Wil[elmus] Gam[erarius] j. car. In frisebia Comes
Cestrie iij. car., et de Soch[a] Regis viij. car. In Rederbia
Comes cestrie vi. car. In Asfordebia Comes Lercestriæ xiij.
car. In Wartnadeby de Soch[a] Regis vi. car.[17]
_Hundredum de Dalbia super Wald'_.--In eadem villa ix. car. de
feodo Edwardi de sar[esbiria], Comes Lercestrie iij. car. In
Grimestona de Soch[a] Regis iij. car. j. bov. et dim. minus.
Ricardus Basset iij. car. In Saxebia Comes Lercestrie v. car.
et de Soch[a] Regis j. car. In Siwaldebia Comes Lercestrie
vj. car. In Cosinton[e] Comes Cestrie vj. car. In Horton[e]
Robertus de Jor' ij. car.[18]
_H[undredum] de Turstanestona_.--In eadem villa Thomas x. car.
et iij. virg. Ibidem Roger de Moubray xiiij. bov. In Wileges
ij. car. de eodem feudo. In Rachedal[e] vj. car. de eodem
feudo. In Houbia vij. car. et j. virg. de feodo Thome. Ibidem
de feodo Albemarl' iiij. car. et iij. virg.[19]
_H[undredum] de tunga_.--In eadem villa cum appendiciis xij.
car. de feodo Roberti de ferr[ariis]. In Caggworth Comes
Cestrie xv. car. In Wrdintona iij. car. secundum cartam Regis
et s[uper] dictum[20] hominum hundredi xij. car.[21]
_H[undredum] de[22] Luaeb'_.--In eadem villa j. H[ida] et
xiij. car. cum appendiciis. In cherlega vj. car. et dim. In
Dixeleia et in Geroldon et in Thorp ix. car. In Hantirna est
dim. H[ida].[23]
_H[undredum] de Beltona_.--In eadem villa Normannus de
Verdon vj. car. In Overton[e] Ricardus Basset iiij. car. In
Wrdinton[e] j. car. In alia Overton[e] Robertus de ferr[ariis]
ij. car., ibidem Comes Cestrie j. car. In Stanton Robertus de
ferr[ariis] ij. car. Ibidem Normannus de Verdon iij. car. In
Dailescroft Philippus de Bello Campo Maresc[allus] j. car. In
Doninton Comes Cestrie cum appendiciis xxij. car. et dim. In
Witewic Comes Lercestrie j. car. et dim. Ibidem Robertus de
ferr[ariis] j. car. et dim.[24]
_H[undredum] de Dichesword_.--In eadem villa Robertus de
ferr[ariis] vj. car. et j. virg. Comes cestrie vj. car. Ibidem
Comes iij. car. et dim. Normannus de Verdon j. car. et ij.
bov. In Hanthirn[e] ix. car. In Widesers iij. car. Willelmi
de Gresel[e]. Idem in Lintona j. car. In blakefordeb[ia] Comes
Lercestriæ iij. car. In Culverteb[ia] ij. car. et Robertus de
ferr[ariis] j. car. In Wodete Robertus de ferr[ariis] j. car.
et dim. In Alton[e] Comes Lercestriæ j. car. et dim. Idem in
Raveneston[e] j. virg. et dim. Ibidem Comes Cestrie iij. virg.
et dim. Et Comes War' ij. car. In Suipestona Hugo vic[ecomes]
ij. car.[25]
_H[undredum] de Seyla_.--In eadem villa Robertus de
ferr[ariis] vij. car. In alia Seyla idem vj. car. Idem in
Bocthorp j. car. Idem in appelbia j. car. et j. bov. Idem in
Strecton j. car. et dim. Idem in Durantestorp ij. car. quas
Walkelinus tenet. Idem in Swepeston[e] vj. car. In Neuton ij.
car. In Actorp dim. car. In Chilteston Comes cestrie j. car.
Idem in Alpelbia dim. car. In Assebia Comes Lercestriæ iij.
car. In Pakinton Hugo Vicecomes v. car. Idem in Osgodesthorp
dim. car. In scegla Henricus de Alben[eio] ij. car. que
pertinent ad defencionem de Swepeston[e].[26]
_H[undredum] de Shepesheved_.--In eadem villa Comes [ ][27]
et in wacthon[e] et in Lokinton et in Aminton ij. h[idas] et
dim. et iiij. car. In Wacton[e] Normannus de Verdon ij. car. et
ij. bov.[28]
FRAMELAUND WAP'
_H[undredum] de caleverton[e]_.--In eadem villa xij. car.
de feodo Willelmi de Alben[eio]. In Someredebia Robertus de
ferr[ariis] v. car. Ibidem Roger de Moubray vj. car. Ibidem
Robertus Marm[ion] iij. car. et in Burg[o] iij. car. In Dalbia
Robertus de ferr[ariis] v. car. et j. bov. de feodo tessun.
Ibidem Roger de Moubray xv. bov. In Wittok Walt[erus] de bello
campo j. car. et dim. In Gillethorp Roger de Moubray iij. car.
Idem in Burg[o] j. car. In Neubold Robertus de ferr[ariis] j.
car. et dim.[29]
_H[undredum] de Estwell_.--In eadem villa Robertus de
ferr[ariis] ij. car. Ibidem Roger de Moubray vj. car. Robertus
de insula iiij. car. In aitona idem Robertus iij. car. et ij.
bov. Et de Belvero dim. car. et dim. bov. Ibidem Robertus
de insula viij. car. et iij. bov. et dim. In Branteston[e]
Episcopus Lincolniensis vij. car. et dim. Robertus de Insula
iiij. car. et dim.[30]
_H[undredum] de Melton[e]_.--In eadem villa Roger de Moubray
xv. car. Idem in Burton[e] xj. car. et vij. bov. Et de Honore
blide iij. car. Robertus de ferr[ariis] ix. bov. In Fredebia
ix. car. et ij. bov. et dim.[31]
_H[undredum] de Chirchebia_.--In eadem villa Roger de Moubray
xxiiij. car. Idem in chetlebia viiij. car. In Sixtenebia iiij.
car. et dim. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Rex D[avid] iiij. car. et
dim. In alebia ix. car. de feudo Rogeri. Ibidem Rex David iij.
car.[32]
_H[undredum] de Droctona_.--In eadem villa Comes de Moretonio
xij. car. In thorp Comes Lercestriæ xij. car. In brantingbia
vj. car. de eodem feodo. In Ringolfestorp ij. car. et ij. bov.
de eodem feodo. Robertus de ferrer[iis] j. car. et vj. bov.
In Wyfordebia iiij. car. et dim. de blide. Roger de Moubray
j. car. et dim. In chetelby et Holewell[e] ix. car. de feodo
Basset. Episcopus Lincolniensis j. car.[33]
_H[undredum] de Scaldeford_.--In eadem villa Rex David xj.
car. et dim. Ricardus Basset dim. car. In Goutebia Roger de
Moubray vj. car. In Knipton Comes de Moriton[io] viij. car. et
vi. bov., et Willelmus de Alben[eio] iij. car. et ij. bov.[34]
_H[undredum] de[35] Waltham_.--In eadem villa Comes Lercestriæ
xvj. car. et dim. Alanus de creon ij. car. et dim. In
Stonesbia idem Alanus viij. car. In Caston Robertus de
ferr[ariis] ix. car.[36]
_H[undredum] de Barcheston_.--In eadem villa Willelmus de
Alben[eio] xxiij. car. G. Camerarius j. car. In Saltebia
et berthaldebia xx. car. de feodo Peuerelli. In Garthorp
Willelmus Mesch[in] vij. car.[37]
_H[undredum] de Sproxcheston[e]_.--In eadem villa Rex David
viij. car. Alanus de Creon ij. car. Ibidem filius Gilberti ij.
car. In Bucheminest[re] et in Seustern[e] ix. car. et dim. de
feodo Episcopi Lincolniensis. Ibidem Robertus de ferer[iis]
dim. car. Willelmus Mesch[in] v. car. In Sessebia Rex David
iij. car. Robertus de ferrer[iis] iij. car.[38]
_H[undredum] de Claxton[e]_.--In eadem villa xvi. car. et dim.
et dim. bov. Ibidem Henricus Tuchet xj. car. j. bov. minus. In
Houwes de feodo de Beluer vij. car. et dim.[39]
_H[undredum] de Stapelford_.--In eadem villa x. car. de feodo
Roberti de ferrer[iis]. In Wymundeham et in thorp xxvij. car.
et dim. de eodem feodo. Ricardus Basset iij. car. et dim.[40]
_H[undredum] de Herdebia_.--In eadem villa et in plungar xvij.
car. de feodo Willelmi de Alben[eio]. Ibidem Ricardus Basset
j. car. In Stacthirn Willelmus de Alben[eio] viij. car. et
dim. Ibidem Roger de Moubray viij. car. Robertus de Insula j.
car. et dim.[41]
_H[undredum] de Botlesford_.--In eadem villa et Moston et
Normanton[e] Willelmus de Alben[eio] xxxij. car. Ibidem Agnes
de Gaunt ij. car. In Moston[e] Robertus de Insula j. car. et
dim.[42]
_[H]undredum de crocstona_.--In eadem villa Comes Maur[itonii]
xxiiij. car. In Harestan idem Comes xij. car.'[43] ...
[FINIS.]
The work of identifying the places named in this survey is difficult,
not only from the corruption of the text, but also from the fact
that many of them are only obscure names, needing, for their perfect
ascertainment, local knowledge. A careful study of the map will show
that these Leicestershire 'Hundreds', unlike those to which we are
accustomed in the hidated districts, were strangely intermingled among
themselves. Another of their peculiarities is that just as we find
the reconquered 'shires' named each after its capital town, so these
'Hundreds' were each named after one of their Vills instead of after
some natural object--probably the meeting-place of the primitive
moot[44]--as so often in the south of England.
It is important to observe that, except for this survey, we should
not even have known of the existence of these 'Hundreds' in
Leicestershire. And when we compare the entry on our roll--'Framelaund
Wap'. Hundredum de Calevertone. In eadem villa xii. car.'--with that
in the Derbyshire Domesday: 'Morelestan Wepentac. Salle Hundred. In
Salle et Draicot et Opewelle ... xii. car.' (i. 273), it is scarcely
possible to resist the conclusion that, in this passage relating to
Sawley, divided only by a river from Leicestershire, we have a glimpse
of the same system existing in Derbyshire also. That is to say,
that Sawley was not a 'Hundred' of twelve carucates,[45] as has been
suggested,[46] but was the _caput_ of a 'Hundred' similar to those
of Leicestershire. I believe, indeed, that in our survey we see the
system on which these counties were surveyed in 1086. The original
returns will have been drawn up Wapentake by Wapentake, and 'Hundred'
by 'Hundred'. But when transcribed into Domesday Book the entries were
arranged under Wapentakes alone, and the headings of the 'Hundreds'
omitted. In the case of Sawley alone the heading slipped in,
immediately preceding the entry of the Manor, as it must have done
on the original return. It is thus that I account for the mention of
'leets' slipping into the Norfolk Domesday, in two cases, from the
original return;[47] just as, in Cambridgeshire, the total assessments
of Impington and Chatteris have slipped, from the original returns,
into the _Inq. Eliensis_,[48] though duly omitted in Domesday Book.
One more point should be noticed. The somewhat mysterious entry of
land belonging 'ad defensionem de Swepestone' is at once made clear
when we compare it with that 'Defensio x. acrarum', to which I have
appealed[49] in discussing 'Wara', and which, like the 'wered' of the
Northamptonshire geld-roll,[50] refers to assessment for Danegeld.
We will now collate some of our 'Hundreds' with the relative entries
in Domesday.
LODINGTON HUNDRED
(1086) (1124-29)
_Skeffington_
Rex 12 Norman de Verdon 8-1/2
Richard Basset 3-1/2
_Tugby_
Rex 6 Norman de Verdon 6
_Allexton_
Countess Judith 6 King David's fee 5-1/4
Rex 3/4
_Lodington_
Robert de Buci 12 Richard Basset 12
_Twyford_
Rex 4-1/2 Richard de Rullos 8-3/4
_Thorpe Sackville_
Henry de Ferrers 8-3/4
_East Norton_
[?Rex 3] [Richard Basset] 1-1/4
Robert dispensator 4-1/2 Walter de Beauchamp 6
Geoffrey de la Guerche 4-1/2 Roger de Mowbray 4-3/4
------- ------
12 12
TILTON HUNDRED
_Tilton_
Rex 2 Rex 1-3/4
Robert Despencer 3 Walter de Beauchamp 3
Archbishop of York 1 Archbishop 1
--------- --------
6 5-3/4
_Newton Burdet_
Geoffrey de la Guerche 6 Walter de Beauchamp 4
Hubert _serviens_ 1/2 Roger de Mowbray 8
_Loseby_
Countess Judith 9 King David 12
_Whadborough_
Rex 3 Rex 4
_Halsted_
Rex 2-3/4 Norman de Verdon 2-3/4
BEBY HUNDRED
_Beby_
Crowland Abbey 10-1/2 Crowland Abbey 12
_Keyham_
Rex 4 Rex 4
_Hungerton_ 9
_Sileby_
Hugh de Grantmesnil 8-1/2 Earl of Leicester 9-13/16
Earl of Chester 3
Rex 3-1/4 Richard Basset 2
Robert de Ferrers 1-1/4
BARKBY HUNDRED
_Barkby_[51]
Robert de Todeni 18 'Belvoir' 5
_Hambleton_
'Belvoir' 6
_Barkby Thorpe_
Adeliza de Grentmesnil 1-1/2 Earl of Leicester 1-1/2
_Thurmaston_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 10
{Canons [of St Mary de
Hugh de Grentmesnil 3-1/2 {Castro, Leicester][52] 3
_Croxton_
Rex 2-3/16
_Newbold Folvile_
Henry de Ferrers 1 Robert de Ferrers 1-1/2
_Barnesby_
Rex 4-5/8 Rex 3-1/16
Earl of Leicester 1-5/8
_Gaddesby_
Rex 8-3/8 Rex 8-9/16
Rex 1 Bishop of Lincoln 1
Countess Judith 2 Earl of Leicester 1-1/16
Richard Basset 1/2
King David 2
HUNDRED OF ASHBY
_Ashby Folvile_
Countess Judith 4[53] King David 5
Countess Judith 1-1/2 Hugh of Leicester 1
Humfrey _camerarius_ 1[54]
_Humberston_
Hugh de Grentmesnil? Roger de Ramis 8
Walter de Mustere 1
Ralf de Martinwast 3
_Belgrave_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 7 Earl of Leicester 12
Adeliza de Grentmesnil 1
_Thurmaston_
Earl of Leicester [10]
_Burstall_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 6 Earl of Leicester 9
_Wanlip_
'In manu Regis' 4 Earl of Leicester 7
Hugh de Grentmesnil 2 Earl of Leicester 6[55]
REARSBY HUNDRED
_Reresby_
Robert de Buci 1-3/4 Richard Basset 5
Rex 1-7/8 Earl of Chester 2-1/2
Countess Judith 2-1/2 King David 4-1/2
_Queneborough_
Geoffrey de la Guerche 9 'Belvoir' 12
_Syston_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 9 Earl of Leicester 12
_Brooksby_
Earl of Chester 2 Earl of Chester 5
Countess Judith 3/4 King David 1
_Quenby_
Robert de Todeni 2 'Belvoir' 6
Robert de Todeni (in
South Croxton) 4
_Thurcaston_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 9 Earls [of Leicester] 8
_Cropston_
_Rothley_
Rex 5 Rex 5
DALBY HUNDRED
_Great Dalby_
Bishop of Lincoln 8 Bishop of Lincoln 9-1/2
Robert de Buci 1 Ralf Basset 1-3/8
Humfrey Cam. 1 William 'Gam' 1
_Frisby_
Rex (Barrow) 1 Earl of Chester 4
Rex 8 Rex 8
_Retherby_
Rex (Barrow) 2-3/4 Earl of Chester 6
_Ashfordby_
Rex (Rothley) 12 Earl of Leicester 13
Radulfus Framen 3-1/2
_Wartnaby_
Rex 6 Rex 6
HUNDRED OF DALBY ON THE WOLDS
_Dalby on the Wolds_
Ralf fitz Hubert 9 Edward of Salisbury 9
Earl of Leicester 3
_Grimston_
Rex 2-13/16 Rex 2-13/16
Robert de Buci 3 Richard Basset 3
_Saxelby_
Rex 1 Rex 1
Earl of Leicester 5
_Sileby_
Hugh de Grentmesnil 8-1/2 Earl of Leicester 6
_Cossington_
Earl of Chester 6 Earl of Chester 6
_Hoton_
Robert de Lorz 4 Robert de Jor' 2
_Thrussington_
Guy de Raimbercurt 12 Thomas 10-1/4?
Guy de Raimbercurt [18] Roger de Mowbray 1-3/4?
'_Wilges_'
Robert de Buci 2 Roger de Mowbray 2
_Ragdale_
Robert de Buci 6 Roger de Mowbray 6
_Hoby_
Thomas 7-1/4
Dru de Bevrere 4-1/4 'Albemarle' 4-3/4
HUNDRED OF TONG
_Tong_
Henry de Ferrers 21-1/2 Robert de Ferrers 12
_Kegworth_
Earl of Chester 15 Earl of Chester 15
_Worthington_
Henry de Ferrers 4 3 or 12
In the case of this last Hundred our survey records a conflict of
testimony and, in so doing, mentions incidentally (as would Domesday)
the witness of the Hundred-court. Henry de Ferrers in the Domesday
Survey, is credited with 21-1/2 car. in 'Tunge cum omnibus
appendiciis', and with four in 'Werditone' (i. 233). But here Tong,
'cum appendiciis', is reckoned at twelve car. only. There remained,
therefore, to be accounted for a large balance of car., and these
the men of the Hundred assigned to his Manor of Worthington. It
is desirable to analyse some of the fiefs in our survey, and, by
comparison with Domesday, to trace their descent or origin.
_Roger de Mowbray's fief_
(1124-29) (1086)
car [Geoffrey de la Guerche]
Picwell and Lucerthorp 15 Pichewelle and Luvestorp 14
East Norton 4-3/4 East Norton 4-1/2
Newton Burdet 8 Newton Burdet 6
Thrussington 1-3/4
[Robert de Buci]
Wileges 2 Wilges 2
Rachedale 6 Ragendele 6
[Geoffrey de la Guerche]
Somerby 6 Dalby 4
Dalby 1-7/8 Dalby 2-1/2
Gillethorp 3 Godtorp 3-1/2
Burg 1 Burg 1
Eastwell 6 Eastwell 6
Melton 15 Melton
Burton 11-7/8 Burton 11-7/8
[Fredebie 9-5/16 Fredebie 10]
Chirchebia 24 Cherchebi (17 + 7) 24
Kettleby 9(?) Chettlebi 8
Sixtenebia 4-1/2 Sistenebi (2-1/2 + 2) 4-1/2
Alebia 9 Alebia 7-3/4
Wyfordebia 1-1/2 Wordebia 1-1/2
Goutebi 6 Goutebi 6
Stacthirn 8 Stachetone 8-1/4
_Anschitel's fief_
car car
Scanketon' 2 Scantone 2 Robert de Veci.
Chiburd 12 Chiborne 12 Robert de Veci.
_Edward of Salisbury's fief_
Dalby on the }
Wolds } 9 Dalbi 9 Ralf fitz Hubert.
_William Meschin's fief_
Seustern 5 Seustern 5 William Lovet.
_Henry de Albini's fief_
Scegla 2 Sela 2 Nigel de Albini.
_Gilbert's son's fief_
Sproxcheston 2 Sprotone 2 Godfrey de Cambrai.
_William Chamberlain's fief_
Great Dalby 1 Dalby 1 {Hunfridus Camerarius.
_Thomas's fief_
car car
Thrussington 10-3/4}
Hoby 7-1/4} 18 Thrussington 18 Guy de Raimbercurt.
_Count of Mortain's fief_
Broctone 12 Broctone 12 Rex.
Knipton 8-3/4 Cnipeton 8-3/4 Rex.
Croxton 24 Croxton 24 Rex.
Harestan 12 Horstan 12 Rex.
_Alan de Craon's fief_
Stoneby 8 Stoneby 8 Guy de Craon.
Waltham 2-1/2 Waltham 2-1/2 Guy de Craon.
Sproxton 3 Sproxton 2 Guy de Craon.
_William de Albini's fief_
Cold Overton 12 Cold Overton 12 Dru de Bevrere.
Knipton 3-1/4 Knipton 3-1/4 Robert de Todeni.
Herdebi and
Plungar 17 Herdeby 17 Robert de Todeni.
Stacthirn 8-1/2 Stacthirn 9-3/4 Robert de Todeni.
Bottlesford 32 Bottlesford 24(?) Robert de Todeni.
_Henry Tuchet's fief_
Claxton 10-7/8 Claxton 6 } Robert Hostiarius.
}10-1/2
Howes 4-1/2} Robert Hostiarius
_Richard Basset's fief_
Langton 3-1/4
Chiburd 1
Skeffington 3-1/2 Skeffington 3-1/2 Rex.
Lodington 12 Lodington 12 Robert de Buci.
Sileby 2 Sileby 2-1/4 Rex.
Gaddesby 1/2
Reresby 5 Reresby 1-3/4 Robert de Buci.
Grimstone 3 Grimstone 3 Robert de Buci.
Overton 4 Overton 4 Robert de Buci.
Kettleby and } Holwell 5 }
Holwell } 9 Kettleby 6 } Robert de Buci.
Goatby 6 Goatby 6 Robert de Buci.
Scaldeford Scaldeford 1/2 Robert de Buci.
Wymondham }
and Thorpe } 3-1/2 Wymondham 3-1/2 Robert de Buci.
Hardebi 1 Hertebi 1 Robert de Buci.
The fief of Richard Basset is that of a typical man, of one of those
trusted officials who flourished under Henry I. We know not the fate
of Robert de Buci, a Domesday baron in Leicestershire and Northants;
but as two, at least, of his Leicestershire estates passed, we have
seen, to Mowbray, it was, we may infer, forfeiture or escheat that
brought his fief into the king's hands, and enabled him to divide it
among his own favourites. We learn from the evidence to which I am
coming that the eight carucates in Swinford and Walcote, and the two
in little Ashby which Robert de Buci had held in 1086, were in the
hands of Geoffrey Ridel ninety years later. We may then infer, though
they are not included in the sphere of our survey, that they had been
obtained, like the rest, by Basset _temp._ Hen. I.[56]
The elaborate fine made at Leicester, June 31, 1176,[57] has an
important bearing on the Bassets' Leicestershire possessions. Not only
does it specify the lands they held at Swinford (with Walcote), Ashby,
and Fleckney, but it mentions their fee of Madeley, Staffordshire. Now
the descent of this Staffordshire fee can be traced by charters on the
same roll.[58] One of these (No. 12) is a confirmation, by Robert
de Stafford, of Madeley to Geoffrey Ridel, to be held as his
'antecessores' had held it. This was Geoffrey, son of Richard Basset,
by Maud Ridel, as is shown by the fact that the first witness to the
charter is Hervey de Stretton, who held two knights' fees of Stafford
in 1166,[59] and that another is Robert Bagot, who held a quarter of
a fee,[60] while Geoffrey Ridel himself then held one, namely,
Madeley.[61] But the enrolling scribe confused him with his (maternal)
grandfather and namesake (d. 1120), and thus wrongly assigned this
charter to the reign of Henry I, and threw the whole descent into
utter confusion. The right clue is found in a charter of Robert 'de
Toni' (_i.e._ de Stafford), 'conceding' Madeley to Robert 'de Busa'
(_alias_ 'de Busci'), 'per servitium unius militis'.[62] This fee,
therefore, must have come to the Bassets with the rest of the Buci
estates; and we thus learn that this must have been late in the reign
of Henry I, for the names of the witnesses to this charter prove that
it must be subsequent to 1122.[63]
As Robert de Buci was then in possession, it cannot have been, here at
least, till later that Basset succeeded him.
Among the points to be observed in the descent of the above fiefs are
Edward of Salisbury's succession to that of Ralf fitz Hubert,[64]
the appearance of Henry de Albini, founder of the Cainho line, as
successor to Nigel, and the portions of the great Belvoir fief, held
in Domesday by Robert de Todeni, now owned by Robert de L'Isle and
William de Albini 'Brito'. In the midst of great but vanished names,
it is pleasant to meet with one, at least, still surviving in the male
line: William de Gresley, holder of Linton (a Derbyshire hamlet close
to Gresley), had succeeded, there and at 'Widesers', Nigel, a tenant
of Henry de Ferrers in 1086 (D.B., i. 233_b_).[65] In this 'Nigel',
therefore, it would seem, we have Nigel de Stafford, Lord of Drakelow
(D.B., i. 278).
I will close with the names of those who had succeeded the Domesday
tenants-in-chief.
HEIRS
Count of Meulan Earl of Leicester
Earl Aubrey (Escheat)
'Countess' Godgifu
'Countess' Ælfgifu Earl of Chester (Donnington)
Earl of Chester Earl of Chester
Hugh de Grentmesnil Earl of Leicester
Henry de Ferrers Robert de Ferrers
Robert de Todeni William de Albini
Robert de Veci [Anschitil]
Roger de Busli [Honour of Blyth]
{ Walter de Beauchamp
Robert Dispensator { Robert Marmion
{ Henry Tuchet (10-7/8)
Robertus Hostiarius, (10-1/2)
Ralf Mortimer
Ralf fitz Hubert Edward of Salisbury
Guy de Raimbercurt [Thomas]
Guy de Craon Alan de Craon
William Peverel Honour of Peverel
William Buenvaslet Comes War'?
William Loveth Will. Meschin
Geoffrey Alselin
Geoffrey de 'Wirce' [Escheat]
Godfrey de Cambrai the son of Gilbert
Gunfrid de Cioches
Humfrey Camerarius Willelmus Camerarius
Drogo de Bevrere Albemarle
Nigel de Albini Henry de Albini
'Countess' Judith King David
[Footnote 1: Q.R., Misc. Bdle. 558, I.P.R., 8113; Knight's
Fees, Com. Leic.]
[Footnote 2: See pp. 75-6.]
[Footnote 3: MS. 'in'.]
[Footnote 4: Langton, Thorpe Langton, Tur Langton, Shangton.]
[Footnote 5: Kibworth, Burton Overy, Carlton Curlieu.]
[Footnote 6: Knossington, Owston, Picwell and Leesthorpe,
Newbold, Burrow, Baggrave, Marefield.]
[Footnote 7: Skeffington, Allexton, Thorpe and Twyford, East
Norton.]
[Footnote 8: MS. 'in'.]
[Footnote 9: MS. 'Archid'.]
[Footnote 10: Tilton, Loseby, Whadborough, Halstead.]
[Footnote 11: Interlined.]
[Footnote 12: Beeby, Keyham, Hungerton, [? Sileby].]
[Footnote 13: MS. injured here.]
[Footnote 14: Barkby, Hambleton, Thorpe, Thurmaston, South
Croxton, Barsby, Gaddesby.]
[Footnote 15: Ashby, Humberstone, Belgrave, Thurmaston,
Birstall, Wanlip, Ansty.]
[Footnote 16: Rearsby, Queensborough, Syston, Brooksby,
Rothley, Thurcaston, Cropston.]
[Footnote 17: Great Dalby, Frisby, Rotherby, Asfordby,
Wartnaby.]
[Footnote 18: Dalby on the Wolds, Grimston, Saxelby, Sileby,
Cossington, Hoton.]
[Footnote 19: Thrussington, Ragdale, Hoby.]
[Footnote 20: MS. illegible.]
[Footnote 21: Tong, Kegworth, Worthington.]
[Footnote 22: MS. 'in'.]
[Footnote 23: Loughborough, Charley, Dishley, Garendon,
Thorpe, Hathern.]
[Footnote 24: Belton, [? Coleorton], Worthington, Staunton
Harold, Castle Donington, Whitwick.]
[Footnote 25: Diseworth, Hathern, Linton (Derby), Blackfordby,
Ravenstone, Snibston.]
[Footnote 26: Seal (Nether and Over), Bogthorpe, Appleby,
Stretton on le Field, Donisthorpe, Swepston, Oakthorpe, Ashby,
Pakington, Osgathorpe.]
[Footnote 27: Blank in MS.]
[Footnote 28: Sheepshed, Whatton, Lockington.]
[Footnote 29: Cold Overton, Somerby, Burrow, Dalby, Withcote,
Newbold.]
[Footnote 30: Eastwell, Eaton, Branston.]
[Footnote 31: Melton Mowbray, Burton Lazars, Freeby.]
[Footnote 32: Kirby Bellars, Abkettleby, Sysonby.]
[Footnote 33: Nether Broughton, Thorpe, Brentingby, Wyfordby,
Abkettleby, Holwell.]
[Footnote 34: Scalford, Goadby, Knipton.]
[Footnote 35: MS. 'in'.]
[Footnote 36: Waltham, Stonesby, Coston.]
[Footnote 37: Barkstone, Saltby, [? Bescoby], Garthorpe.]
[Footnote 38: Sproxton, Seustern, Buckminster, Saxby.]
[Footnote 39: Clawson, Hose.]
[Footnote 40: Stapleford, Wymondham, Edmondthorpe.]
[Footnote 41: Harby, Plungar, Stathern.]
[Footnote 42: Bottesford, Muston, Normanton.]
[Footnote 43: Croxton, Harston.]
[Footnote 44: See the valuable list, for Dorset, in Mr Eyton's
_Key to Domesday_, p. 143.]
[Footnote 45: The Lincolnshire 'Hundred'.]
[Footnote 46: Waters' _Survey of Lindsey_, p. 5; _Eng. Hist.
Rev._, v. 100; _supra_, p. 73.]
[Footnote 47: _Supra_, p. 90.]
[Footnote 48: Ed. Hamilton, pp. 113, 116.]
[Footnote 49: _Supra_, p. 101.]
[Footnote 50: _Supra_, p. 127.]
[Footnote 51: Including Hambleton and Hungerton (6) in
Domesday.]
[Footnote 52: By grant of Robert, Count of Meulan.]
[Footnote 53: In Newbold.]
[Footnote 54: In Barnsby.]
[Footnote 55: Given (as 24 virgates) to Leicester Abbey.]
[Footnote 56: See also _supra_, p. 130.]
[Footnote 57: _Infra_, p. 388.] (See T.N. at end)
[Footnote 58: _Sloane Cart._, xxxi. 4.]
[Footnote 59: _Liber Rubeus_, Ed. Hall, p. 266.]
[Footnote 60: _Ibid._, p. 268.]
[Footnote 61: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 62: _Sloane_, xxxi. 4, No. 10.]
[Footnote 63: They are 'Nigellus de Aubeni, Ran[ulfus] Comes
Cestrie, Galfridus Cancellarius, Simon decanus Lincolnie,
Willelmus fil' Reg', Thomas de Sancto Johanne, Willelmus
de Aubeny Brito, Unfridus de Bohun et alii.' The Dean's
occurrence so late is worth noting.]
[Footnote 64: Compare 'The Barons of Criche' (_Academy_, June
1885).]
[Footnote 65: That William was his son is proved by the
Ferrers _Carta_ (1166), which enters 'Willelmus filius
Nigelli' as the tenant of four fees under Henry I, and as
succeeded, in 1166, by his son Robert.]
THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE SURVEY
(HEN. I-HEN. II)
This 'Hydarium' of Northamptonshire is found in a Peterborough
Cartulary (Cott. MS. Vesp. E. 22, fo. 94 _et seq._). It is drawn up
Hundred by Hundred, like the surveys of Leicestershire and of Lindsey,
and is, therefore, probably connected with the assessment of Danegeld.
Although it is of special value for reconstituting the Domesday Vills,
the assessment it records so often varies from that which is found in
Domesday that we cannot institute a close comparison. The introduction
of a 'parva virgata' further complicates the reckoning. That the
original document was written on a roll is shown by the use of the
phrase 'per alium rotulum'. The statement on fo. 97_b_ that
there ought, at one place, to be half a hide more 'per rotulos
Wyncestr[ie]', would seem to refer to Domesday; but on the next page
we read:
In Pytesle Abbas de Burgo v. hid. [et] dim. set tamen in
Rotulis Wyncestr[ie] vi. hid. et iii. parvas virgatas.
Since Domesday records this holding as 'v. hid. et una virgata terræ',
the reference (if the text of the survey is right) must clearly be to
some other record preserved in the national treasury.
I append about a fifth of the Survey as a specimen of the whole.
HOKESLAWE
Twywell. Albr[icus] camerar[ius] ii. hidas de feudo Abbatis
de Thorneya. Ibidem de feudo Comitis David. Ibidem de feudo
Abbatis Burgi i. magnam virgatam.
In Slipton i. hidam et unam virgatam de feudo Will'i de Corcy.
Ibidem Ricardus filius Hugonis ii. partes unius hidæ de feudo
Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus nepos Abbatis tertiam partem unius hidæ
de eodem feudo.
In Suburc [Sudboro'] ii. hidas [et] dim. de feudo
Westmonaster'.
In Lofwyc [Luffwick] Th----[1] i. hidam et unam virgatam de
feudo de Deneford. Ibidem Radulfus Fleming i. virgatam et
dim. de feudo Comitis David. Ibidem Wydo frater ejus i. magnam
virgatam de feudo de Thorneya.
In Drayton Albr[icus] camerar[ius] dimidiam hidam de feudo
R[egis].
In Yslep [Islip] idem Albri[cus] de feudo Regis. Ibidem
iiii^{or.} sokemanni Regis i. hidam de feudo Westmonaster'.
In Audewyncle [Aldwinkle] Abbas de Burgo iiii. hidas [et]
dimidiam quas Ascelinus de Waterville tenet. Ibidem Galfridus
de Glynton i. magnam virgatam de feudo Glovernie pertinens ad
Barton. Ibidem Ricardus filius Wydonis iii. hidas dim. virg.
minus de feudo Regine [_sic_].
Item in Benifeld [Benefield] Willelmus le Lisurs iii. magnas
virg. de feudo Regis.
In Bernewelle [Barnwell] Robertus de ferariis vi. hidas et i.
magnam virg. de feudo Regis. Ibidem Reginaldus le Moyne vi.
hidas de feudo de Rammeseye.
In Lilleford Willelmus Olyfart v. hidas de feudo Regis Scotie.
NAUEFORD
In Tytheni [? Tichmarsh] Robertus de Ferr[ers] x. hid. Ibidem
Ascelinus de Waterville iii. hid. et i. virg. et tres partes
dim. hid. de Burgo.
In Thrapston Radulfus fil. Oger ii. hid. et i. virg. de feudo
de Brunne. Ibidem Robertus filius Edelinæ i. hid. et i. virg.
de feudo de Clare.
In Torpe et Achirche Ascelinus de Waterville vi. hid. [et]
dim. de feudo Burgi.
In Clopton Walterus i. hid. et i. virg. de feudo Regis. Ibidem
iii. hid. [et] dim. de feudo Burgi. Ibidem Ascelinus dim. hid.
de feudo Burgi.
Wadenhowe [Wadenhoe]. Albricus de Ver ii. hid. et i. virg. de
feudo Regis David. Ibidem Wymunt de Stok[e] i. virg. de feudo
Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus Infans ii. parvas virg. de eodem feudo.
Ibidem Wivienus de Chirchefelde dim. hid. de eodem feudo.
Ibidem Galfridus de Gonthorp ii. hid. de eodem feudo. In
Catteworthe i. hid. [et] dim. de feudo Burgi.
POKEBROC
In Pokebroc Robertus de Cauz i. hid. et. i. virg. de feudo
Regis. Ibidem Walterus de Clopton ii. hid. et dim. de feudo
Burgi. Ibidem Rogerus Marmium i. hid. et i. virg. de eodem
feudo.
In Armeston [Armston] de Burgelay ii. hid. [et] dim. de eodem
feudo. Ibidem Turkil i. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Wydo
Maufee i. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Galfridus de Gunthorp
ii. partes dim. hid. de eodem feudo. Ibidem Tedrik' iii.
partes de dim. hid. de eodem feudo.
In Pappele [Papley] i. hid.
In Lillington [Lutton] i. hid.
In Hennington Berengerus le Moyne ii. hid. [et] dim. de feudo
de Rammes[eye]. Ibidem Ricardus filius Gilberti i. hid. et i.
virg. et dim. de feodo Burgi. Ibidem Wydo Maufe dim. hid. et
dim. virg. de eodem feodo. Ibidem Reginaldus le Moyne dim.
hid. et dim. virg. de eodem feodo.
In Kynesthorp [Kingsthorp] Walterus de Lodington i. hid. et i.
virg. de feodo Burgi. Ibidem Willelmus de Chirchetot dim. hid.
de feodo Regis.
In Therninge [Thurning] Rogerus Marmioun iii. parvas virg. de
feodo Burgi.
In Ayston [Ashton] Abbas de Burgo iiii. hid. in dominico.
Ibidem Papilun dim. hid. de eodem feodo. Ibidem Leuenoth dim.
hid. de eodem feodo.
In Undele [Oundle] Abbas in dominico vi. hid. Ibidem Vivien i.
parvam virg.[2]
DUO HUNDRED DE NASSO
In Stinton Willelmus de Lisurs ii. hid.
In Bernak Fulco paynel iii. hid.[3]
In Wirthorpe Abbas Croylaund ii. hid. Ibidem de feodo Eudonis
Dapiferi i. virg.
In Eston [Easton] Simon i. hid. [et] dim.
In Peychirche [Peakirk]. In Etton. In Northburgo dim. virg.
In dominico Abbatis de Burgo sancti Petri lxx. hid. et iii.
virg. et dim.
HUNDRED DE SUTTON
In eadem villa [King's Sutton] Dominus Rex habit in dominico
iiii. hid.
In eadem villa Willelmus de Quency i. hid. [et] dim. et parvam
virg. terre de Comitat[u] Leycestr[ie]. Ibidem Alfredus viii.
parvas virg. de Gilberto de Pinkeny. Ibidem Paganus i. hid.
et dim. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is] Leycestri[ie],
Robertus filius Osberti tenuit.
In Evenle i. hid. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is]
Leyc[estrie].
In Preston dim. hid. de feodo Comit[is] Leyc[estrie].
In Croulton [Croughton] iiii{^or.} parvas virg. de feodo
Comit[is] Leyc[estrie]. Ibidem Sewar' i. hid. et ii. parvas
virg. de feodo Leyc[estrie]. Ibidem Brien filius Comitis i.
hid. [et] dim. et ii. parvas virg. de feodo de Walinford.
In Neubottle Regis [_sic_] de Reynes vi. hid. et i. parvam
virg. de feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie], Willelmus de Lepyn
tenuit.
In furningho [Farningho] iiii. hid. de feodo Comitis
Leyc[estrie].
In Cherlington [Charlton] Maynardus i. hid. [et] dim. et i.
parvam virg. Ibidem Simon Chendut i. hid. [et] dim. de feodo
de Berkamstede et i. parvam virg. Ibidem Odo dapifer viii.
parvas virg. de feodo de Colescestra.
In Gremesbir' [Grimsbury] Aunsel' de Chokes ii. hid. et iiii.
parvas virg. scil. quarta pars ii. hid.
In Middleton Willelmus Me[s]chin i. hid. et dim. et i. parvam
virg. de feodo Willelmi de Curcy.
In alia Middleton [Middleton Chenduit] Simon Chendut ii. hid.
de feodo de Berkamstede.
In Thayniford [Thenford] Mainfenn de Walrentone i. hid. Ibidem
Robertus Basset i. hid. de feodo de Walingford.
In Ayno [Aynho] Willelmus de Mandeville iii. hid.
In Middelton monachi de sancto Eu'ald[4] ii. hid.
In Walton i. hid. cum ii. virg. in Sutton quas Suouild tenuit.
In Gildeby i. hid. et vii. parvas virg. de feodo de Mortal'
[_sic_].
HUNDRED DE ALBODESTOWE
In Chacombe iiii. hid. de feodo Episc. Lincoln.
In Evenle ii. hid. et [_sic_] i. parvam virg. minus quas Alouf
de Merke tenuit.
In Thorpe [Thorpe-Mandeville] ii. hid.
In Stanes [Stene] Gilbertus de Pinkeny ii. hid.
In Colewyth [Culworth] Willelmus ii. hid. et iiii. parvas
virg. Ibidem Otuer i. hid.
In Stotebyr[e] [Stotesbery] ii. hid. quas monachi Norht'[5]
tenent.
In Rodestone [Radston] ii. hid. de feodo Comitis Cestr[ie].
In Wytefeld [Whitfield] Gilbertus de Monte ii. hid. et ii.
virg. in dominico.
In Merston [Merston St Lawrence] Radulfus Murdac iiii. hid. de
feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie].
In Siresham Thomas Sorel i. hid. [et] dim. Ibidem Comes
Leyc[estrie] i. parvam virg. Ibidem Gilo dim. hid. Ibidem
Willelmus filius Alui' [? Alan] iiii. parvas virg.
In Helmendene [Helmedon] Willelmus de Torewelle iiii. hid. de
feodo Comitis Leyc[estrie].
In Chelverdescote dim. hid. Idem. Comes Leyc[estrie].
In Brackle et Hausho [Hawes] idem Comes vii. hid. [et] dim.
HUNDRED DE WARDON
In Wardon Ricardus foliot[6] ii. hid. [et] dim. et i. magnam
virg., scilicet quarta pars i. militis de feodo Regis in
capite.
In Estone [Aston] et Apeltreya [Apeltre] Willelmus de Bolonia
vii. hid. de feodo Comitis de Mandeville.
In Bottolendon [Boddington] Fulco Paynel[7] ii. hid. una ex
illis de feodo Cestr[ie]. Ibidem Willelmus Meschin i. hid.
Ibidem i. hid. de feodo Episcopi Lincoln.
The only writer, it would seem, who has used this important survey is
Bridges, who refers to it throughout in his _Northamptonshire_ as of
the time of 'Henry II'. A good instance of the confusion caused by
this assumption is seen in the remarks of Bridges as to Barnack (ii.
491), where he is puzzled by our record, giving as its lord, not
Gervase Paynell, but Fulc Paynell (who was really his grandfather).
To refute his conclusion, it is sufficient to refer to the first name
entered--that of 'Albricus Camerarius'. This was no other than Aubrey
de Vere, a trusted minister of Henry I, who was made by him
Great Chamberlain in 1133, and who was slain in May 1141.[8] His
Northamptonshire estate descended to his younger son, Robert, who,
as 'Robertus filius Albrici Camerarii', made his return as a
Northamptonshire 'baron' in 1166.[9] There can, therefore, be no
confusion between Aubrey the Chamberlain (d. 1141) and his eldest son
and namesake. Yet if, from the occurrence of his name, we pronounced
the date of this survey to be 1133-41, we should be in error. There
are names belonging to an earlier, as to a later, date than this.
Among the earliest are 'Ricardus filius Wydonis', the son and
successor of Guy de Raimbercurt, a great Domesday tenant-in-chief;
Walter fitz Winemar, whose father was both a tenant _in capite_ and
under-tenant in Domesday; and Ralf fitz Oger, whose name illustrates
the value of these early surveys; for the entry proves that Oger, the
Northamptonshire tenant-in-chief (D.B., i. 228), was identical with
Oger 'Brito', the Lord of Bourne, Linc. (i. 364_b_), and that the son
and successor of this Oger was Ralf. We also recognize Roger Marmion,
who was succeeded, under Henry I, by Robert; Nigel de Albini, the
founder of the house of Mowbray; Michael de Hanslape, who died under
Henry I; and 'Robertus filius Regis', who became Earl of Gloucester
_circ._ 1122. Other tenants, living _temp._ Hen. I, are William
de Mandeville,[10] William Meschin, Richard Basset, Viel (Vitalis)
Engaine, Baldwin fitz Gilbert, and Brian fitz Count. As for Ascelin
de Waterville and Alouf de Merke, they are found as under-tenants in
Domesday itself. On the other hand, such a name as 'Comes Warenn de
Morteyn' points to the latter years of Stephen's reign, or to the
early days of that of Henry II; while the mention of the earldoms of
Arundel, Ferrers (Derby) and Essex preclude, of course, an earlier
date than 1140.
After careful examination, I propound the solution that this survey
was originally made under Henry I, and was subsequently corrected here
and there, to bring the entries up to date, down to the days of Henry
II. The late transcriber, to whom we owe the survey in its present
form, has incorporated these additions and corrections in a single
text with the most bewildering result. We trace exactly the same
process in the Red Book of the Exchequer. In the Black Book the
later additions that were made to the barons' _cartae_ of 1166 are
distinguished by the difference in handwriting. But in the Red Book
these interpolations are found transcribed in the same hand as the
genuine original returns. To the uninitiated this has been the cause
of no small confusion. So, too, in the above list of Peterborough
knights (p. 157), the very first entry, made _temp._ Hen. I, has
been carried on by a later hand to the time of Henry III. But there
Stapleton, who transcribed the list, carefully discriminated between
the two.[11] It is probable that the lists of Abingdon knights,
published in the Abingdon cartulary, are rendered untrustworthy in
places from the same cause of error.
The transcriber's ignorance is clearly shown by such a name as 'Comes
Mauricius', which is evidently his erroneous extension of an original
'Comes Maur'', _i.e._ Count of Mortain! So also we are enabled to
detect proof of the theory I advance in such an entry as 'Willelmus
Meschin de feodo Wellelmi de Curcy'; for William de Curcy held,
_temp._ Henry II, the barony held by William Meschin (his maternal
grandfather, according to Stapleton[12]) _temp._ Henry I. Thus, the
original entry will have run 'William Meschin', while a later hand,
in his grandson's days, will have added, by way of substitution, 'De
feodo William de Curcy'.[13] Our transcriber, combining the two, has,
of course, made nonsense of the whole. The same explanation applies to
the entry, 'Robertus filius Regis de feodo Glovernie', where the first
three words represent the original entry, while the others were added,
probably under Henry II, to connect the holding with the fief of [the
Earl of] Gloucester. 'Brien filius Comitis de feodo de Wallin[g]ford'
is another instance in point, and so, I suspect, is 'Odo [_sic_]
dapifer de feodo de Colcestra'; for I take it that the entry was
originally made in the lifetime of Eudo Dapifer (d. 1120) and that, as
his 'honour' passed into the King's hands, the 'de feodo de Colcestra'
was added at a later time.[14]
I have given sufficient of the survey to prove that, in spite of
confusion and corruption, it possesses a real value. If we take, for
instance, Polebrook ('Pochebroc'), a township of five hides, we find
that in Domesday (221_b_, 228) Eustace ('the Sheriff') held a hide and
a quarter _in capite_ and three hides and three quarters as a tenant
of Peterborough Abbey (see p. 138). Now our survey shows us the former
holding in the hands of Robert de Cauz, while the other has been
broken up, two-thirds of it passing to Walter 'de Clopton' and
one-third to Roger Marmion.
Just below, in the case of Hemington, also a Vill of five hides, which
was equally divided between the Abbeys of Peterborough and Ramsey,
we read in Domesday that 'iii. milites' held the Peterborough
half (221_b_). Our survey enables us to distinguish their
tenancies--Richard fitz Gilbert holding a hide and three-eighths; Guy
Maufe, five-eighths of a hide, and Reginald le Moyne the same.[15] But
we can go further and identify the first, from his holding, as the son
of Gilbert Fauvel, the Domesday tenant (see p. 138); while the second
was the heir, and probably the son of Roger Malfed (see p. 132).
One more instance may be given. Our survey reckons Clapton
('Cloptone') as five and a quarter hides, of which 'Walter' held one
and a quarter _in capite_. Here again he had succeeded Eustace, whose
Domesday estate at 'Dotone' (228) ought, as Bridges conjectured, to
have been entered 'Clotone'.[16] On the other hand, his tenancy of the
Abbot at 'Clotone' had been broken up, half a hide of it passing to
Ascelin de Waterville. All this goes to show that the fief of Eustace
the Sheriff did not, as has been alleged, descend to his heirs.
Such an entry as 'In Lilleford, Willelmus Olyfart v. hidas de feudo
Regis Scotiæ' is peculiarly suggestive. It reminds us that David
Holyfard, godson of King David of Scotland, and his protector in
1141, was the founder of the house of Oliphant; and in the family's
possession of Lilford (which was held of the Countess Judith in 1086)
we see the origin of their Scottish connection. William 'Olifard'
was of Northamptonshire, and Hugh 'Olifard' of Huntingdonshire in
1130;[17] while Hugh 'Olifart' (of Stoke) was a knight of the Abbot of
Peterborough in rather earlier days. The earliest member of the house,
however, it would seem, on record is Roger Olifard, who witnessed
(doubtless as his tenant) Earl Simon's charter to St. Andrew's,
Northampton, granted, probably, not later than 1108. This, of course,
is but one of the cases in which the son of a Norman house settled in
Scotland through its King's connection with the earldoms of Huntingdon
and Northampton.
At the close of the survey I have here discussed there is a list
of the knights of Peterborough (fos. 99_b_, 100) holding in
Northamptonshire. It ought to be carefully compared with the one
I have examined above (p. 131), being, it seems probable, about a
generation later. Such entries as these, at least, are conclusive for
the holding to which they refer:
Paganus de Helpestun terciam Roger fil[ius] Pagan[i] in
partem unius militis Helpestun terciam partem i.
(_Chronicon Petroburgense_, militis (Vesp. E. xxii.,
p. 171). fo. 100).
In the same way, Roger Marmion had been succeeded by Robert. This
second list is of special value from the fact that the Peterborough
_carta_ of 1166 gives no particulars of the knights or of their fees.
[Footnote 1: Or Sh----.]
[Footnote 2: See _Chronicon Petroburgense_, p. 158.]
[Footnote 3: See Bridges' _Northamptonshire_, ii. 491.]
[Footnote 4: St. Evroul, Grantmesnil's in Domesday.]
[Footnote 5: St Andrew's Priory, Northampton.]
[Footnote 6: The heir of Guy de Raimbercurt.]
[Footnote 7: Clearly Fulk Paynel the first, Founder of Tykford
Priory.]
[Footnote 8: _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 81.]
[Footnote 9: See also as to Twywell itself. _Mon. Ang._, ii.
603:
'Ego Albericus, regis camerarius terram de Twiwell quamdiu vixero
de domino abbate Guntero et monachis de Thorneya per talem
conventionem teneo adfirmam.'
'Ego Robertus filius Albrici camerarii regis terram de Twiwelle
quamdiu vixero de domino abbate Roberto et monachis de Thorneia
per eandem conventionem in feodi firmam teneo per quam
conventionem pater meus ante me tenuit.'
The Great Chamberlain occurs again on fo. 97_b_, where we
read:
'In alia Adington Albric[us] Camerar[ius], ii. hid. de feodo
Regis.']
[Footnote 10: If, as probable, the son of the Domesday Baron.]
[Footnote 11: _Chronicon Petroburgense_, pp. 168-9.]
[Footnote 12: _Holy Trinity Priory, York_, p. 35.]
[Footnote 13: Since this was written I have come across
a curious confirmation of the hypothesis advanced. In the
Lindsey Survey (Ed. Greenstreet), an entry on fo. 20, in the
original ran: 'Comes Odo [tenet] in Aldobi', above which a
later hand has interlined, 'De feodo Comitis Albemerle'. It
is curious that in the same survey another later
interlineation--'Comes Lincoln'--was, though distinguished by
Hearne, incorporated with the text by Mr Waters (see p. 151).]
[Footnote 14: Eudo was identified with Colchester.]
[Footnote 15: Giving a total of 2-5/8, instead of 2-1/2--a
trivial discrepancy.]
[Footnote 16: It is singular that in Sussex the 'Cloninctune'
of Domesday is, conversely, an error for 'Doninctune'. The
source of the error in both cases must have been the likeness
of 'cl' to 'd' in the original returns, on which these names
cannot have begun with a capital letter.]
[Footnote 17: _Rot. Pip._, 31 Hen. I.]
THE INTRODUCTION OF KNIGHT SERVICE INTO ENGLAND[1]
'The growth of knighthood is a subject on which the greatest
obscurity prevails; and the most probable explanation of its
existence in England, the theory that it is a translation into
Norman forms of the thegnage of the Anglo-Saxon law, can only
be stated as probable.'--STUBBS, _Const. Hist._, i. 260.
In approaching the consideration of the institutional changes and
modifications of polity resulting from the Norman Conquest, the
most conspicuous phenomenon to attract attention is undoubtedly the
introduction of what it is convenient to term the feudal system.
In the present paper I propose to discuss one branch only of that
process, namely, the introduction of that military tenure which
Dr Stubbs has termed 'the most prominent feature of historical
feudalism'.
In accordance with the anticataclysmic tendencies of modern thought,
the most recent students of this obscure problem have agreed to adopt
the theory of gradual development and growth. The old views on
the subject are discredited as crude and unhistorical:[2] they are
replaced by confident enunciation of the theory to which I have
referred.[3] But when we examine the matter closely, when we ask for
details of the process by which the Anglo-Saxon thegn developed into
the Norman knight, we are met at once by the frank confession that
'between the picture drawn in Domesday and the state of affairs which
the charter of Henry I was designed to remedy, there is a difference
which the short interval of time will not account for'.[4] To meet
this difficulty, to account for this flaw in the unbroken continuity
of the series, a _Deus ex machinâ_ has been found in the person of
Ranulf Flambard.
Now this solution of the difficulty will scarcely, I venture to think,
bear the test of investigation. It appears to have originated in Dr
Stubbs' suggestion that there must have been, between the days of
Henry I and of William I, 'some skilful organizing hand working with
neither justice nor mercy'[5]--a suggestion subsequently amplified
into the statement that it is to Ranulf Flambard 'without doubt that
the systematic organization of the exactions' under William Rufus
'is to be attributed',[6] and that by him 'the royal claims were
unrelentingly pressed', his policy being 'to tighten as much as
possible the hold which the feudal law gave to the king on all
feudatories temporal and spiritual'.[7] There is nothing here that can
be called in question, but there is also nothing, be it observed, to
prove that either 'feudal law' or 'military tenure' was introduced by
Ranulf Flambard. Indeed, with his usual caution and unfailing sound
judgment, our great historian is careful to admit that 'it is not
quite so clear' in the case of the lay as of the church fiefs 'that
all the evil customs owed their origin to the reign of William
Rufus'.[8] And, even if they did, they were, it must be remembered,
distinctly abuses--'evil customs', as Henry I himself terms them in
his charter--namely (in the matter we are considering), '_excessive_
exactions in the way of reliefs, marriages and wardships, debts to
the crown, and forfeiture. In the place,' we are told, 'of _unlimited_
demands on these heads, the charter promises, not indeed fixed
amercements, but a return to ancient equitable custom'.[9] All this
refers, it will be seen, to the abuse of an existing institution,
not to the introduction of a new one. The fact is that Ranulf's
proceedings have been assigned a quite exceptional and undue
importance. Broadly speaking, his actions fall under a law too often
lost sight of, namely, that when the crown was strong it pressed,
through the official bureaucracy, its claims to the uttermost;
and when it found itself weak, it renounced them so far as it was
compelled. Take, for instance, this very charter issued by Henry I,
when he was 'playing to the gallery', and seeking general support:
what was the value of its promises? They were broken, says Mr Freeman,
to the Church;[10] they were probably broken, says Dr Stubbs, to
the knights;[11] and they were certainly broken, I may add, to the
unfortunate tenants-in-chief, whom the Pipe-Roll of 1130 shows us
suffering from those same excessive exactions, of which the monopoly
is assigned to Ranulf Flambard, and which 'the Lion of Justice' had so
virtuously renounced. I might similarly adduce the exactions from the
Church by that excellent king, Henry II (1159), 'contra antiquum morem
et debitam libertatem'; but it is needless to multiply examples of
the struggle between the interests of the crown and those of its
tenants-in-chief, which was as fierce as ever when, in later days, it
led to the provisions of the Great Charter. What the barons, lay and
spiritual, complained of from first to last, was not the feudal system
that accompanied their military tenure, but the abuse of that system
in the excessive demands of the crown.
Mr Freeman, however, who had an equal horror of Ranulf Flambard and of
the 'feudal system', did not hesitate to connect the two more closely
even than Dr Stubbs, though invoking the authority of the latter in
support of his extreme views. The passages to which I would invite
attention, as expressing most concisely Mr Freeman's conclusions, are
these:
The system of military tenures, and the oppressive
consequences which were held to flow from them, were a work of
the days of William Rufus.
If then there was any time when 'the Feudal System' could be
said to be introduced into England, it was assuredly not in
the days of William the Conqueror, but in the days of William
the Red. It would be more accurate to say that all that we
are really concerned with, that is, not an imaginary 'Feudal
System', but a system of feudal land-tenures, was not
introduced into England at all, but was devised on English
ground by the malignant genius of the minister of Rufus.[12]
As the writer's line of argument is avowedly that of Dr Stubbs, it is
only necessary to consider the point of difference between them. Where
his predecessor saw in Henry's charter the proof that Ranulf Flambard
had abused the existing feudal system by 'excessive' and 'unlimited'
demands, Mr Freeman held, and endeavoured to convince us, that he
had introduced not merely abuses of the system, but the actual system
itself.[13] The question virtually turns on the first clause of the
charter;[14] and it will not, I think, be doubted that Dr Stubbs
is right in adopting its natural meaning, namely, that the novelty
introduced by Ranulf was not the _relevatio_ itself, but its abuse in
'excessive exactions'. Indeed, even Mr Freeman had virtually to admit
the point.[15] If, then, the argument breaks down, if Ranulf cannot be
shown to have 'devised' military tenure, how are we to bridge over the
alleged chasm between the date of Domesday (1086) and that of Henry's
charter (1100)? The answer is simply that the difficulty is created
by the very theory I am discussing: it is based on the assumption that
William I did not introduce military tenure,[16] combined with the
fact that 'within thirteen years after the Conqueror's death, not only
the military tenures, but the worst abuses of the military tenures,
were in full force in England'.[17] But, here again, when we examine
the evidence, we find that this assumption is based on the silence,
or alleged silence, of Domesday Book.[18] Now no one was better aware
than Mr Freeman, as an ardent student of 'the great Record', that to
argue from the silence of Domesday is an error as dangerous as it is
common. Speaking from a rather wide acquaintance with topographical
works, I know of no pitfall into which the local antiquary is more
liable to fall. Wonderful are the things that people look for in the
pages of the great survey; I am always reminded of Mr Secretary Pepys'
writing for information as to what it contained 'concerning the sea
and the dominion thereof'.[19] Like other inquests, the Domesday
Survey--'the great inquest of all', as Dr Stubbs terms it--was
intended for a special purpose; special questions were asked, and
these questions were answered in the returns. So with the 'Inquest of
Sheriffs' in 1170; so also with the Inquest of Knights, if I may so
term it, in 1166. In each case the questions asked are, practically,
known to us, and in each they are entirely different. Therefore, when
Mr Freeman writes:
The survey nowhere employs the feudal language which became
familiar in the twelfth century. Compare, for instance,
the records in the first volume of Hearn's _Liber Niger
Scaccarii_. In this last we find something about knights' fees
in every page. In Domesday there is not a word--[20]
it is in no spirit of captious criticism, but from the necessity of
demolishing the argument, that I liken it to basing conclusions on the
fact that in the census returns we find something about population
in every page, while in the returns of owners of land there is not a
word. As the inquest of 1166 sought solely for information on knights
and their fees, the returns to it naturally contain 'something about
knights' fees in every page'; on the other hand, 'the payment or
nonpayment of the _geld_ is a matter which appears in every page of
the survey' [of 1086] because 'the formal immediate cause of taking
the survey was to secure its full and fair assessment'.[21] Nor is
this all. When the writer asserts that 'in Domesday there is not a
word' about knights' fees, he greatly overstates his case, as indeed
is shown by the passages he proceeds to quote. I shall be able to
prove, further on, that knights' fees existed in cases where Domesday
does not mention them, but even the incidental notices found in the
Great Survey are quite sufficient to disprove its alleged silence on
the subject. As Mr Freeman has well observed:
Its most incidental notices are sometimes the most precious.
We have seen that it is to an incidental, an almost accidental
notice in the Survey that we owe our knowledge of the great
fact of the general redemption of lands.[22]
Here then the writer does not hesitate to base on a single accidental
notice the existence of an event quite as widespread and important as
the introduction of knight service.[23]
I have now endeavoured to make plain one of the chief flaws in the
view at present accepted, namely, that it is mainly grounded on
the negative evidence of Domesday, which evidence will not bear the
construction that has been placed upon it--and further that, even if
it did, we should be landed in a fresh difficulty, the gulf between
Domesday and Henry's charter being only to be bridged by the
assumption that Ranulf Flambard 'devised' and introduced military
tenure, with its results--an assumption, we have seen, which the facts
of the case not only fail to support, but even discountenance wholly.
Let us pass to a second difficulty. When we ask the advocates of the
view I am discussing what determined the number of knights due to
the crown from a tenant-in-chief, we obtain, I venture to assert, no
definite answer. At times we are told that it was the number of his
hides; at times that it was the value of his estate. Gneist, who has
discussed the matter in detail, and on several occasions, has held
throughout, broadly speaking, the same view: he maintains that 'since
Alfred's time the general rule had been observed that a fully equipped
man should be furnished for every five _hidæ_, but it had never been
established as a rule of law as in the Carlovingian legislation':[24]
consequently, he urges, 'a fixed standard for the apportionment of the
soldiery was wanting' at the time of the Conquest, and this want was
a serious flaw in the Anglo-Saxon polity. William resolved to make the
system uniform, and
the object that the royal administration now pursued for
a century was to impose upon the whole mass of old and new
possessors an equal obligation to do service for reward. The
standard adopted in carrying out this system was approximately
that of the five hides possession of the Anglo-Saxon period;
yet with a stricter rating according to the value of the
produce.[25]
The difficulty encountered in ascertaining this value was a main cause
of the Domesday Survey being undertaken. This is Gneist's special
point on which he invariably insists: 'Domesday book laid the basis
of a roll of the crown vassals';[26] upon it, 'in later times, the
fee-rolls were framed'.[27] By its evidence, 'according to the extent
and the nature of the productive property, could be computed how
many shields were to be furnished by each estate, according to the
gradually fixed proportion of a £20 ground rent'.[28] For 'the _feuda
militum_ thus computed are no knights' fees of a limited area',[29]
but 'units of possession', the unit being £20 in annual value.
Dr Stubbs, on the other hand, while rejecting the view that military
service, since the days of Alfred, had been practically fixed at one
warrior for every five hides,[30] leans nevertheless to the belief
that the knight's fee was developed out of the five-hide unit, and
that the military 'service' of a tenant-in-chief was determined by the
number of such units which he possessed. But, as he also recognizes
the £20 unit, there will be less danger of misrepresenting his views
if I append _verbatim_ the relevant passages:
The customary service of one The value of the knight's fee
fully armed man for each five hides must already have been fixed
was probably the rate at which the --twenty pounds a year.[32]
newly endowed follower of the king
would be expected to discharge his
duty ... and the number of knights
to be furnished by a particular
feudatory would be ascertained by
inquiring the number of hides that
he held.[31]
The number of hides which the It cannot even be granted that
knight's fee contained being known, a definite area of land was
the number of knights' fees in any necessary to constitute a
particular holding could be easily knight's fee; ... It is
discovered.[33] impossible to avoid the
conclusion that the extent of a
All the imposts of the ... Norman knight's fee was determined by
reigns, were, so far as we know, rent and valuation rather than
raised on the land, and according acreage, and that the common
to computation by the hide: ... the quantity was really expressed
feudal exactions by way of aid ... in the twenty librates, etc.
were levied on the hide.[34] [35]
The variation in the number of
hides contained in the knight's
fee.[36]
Mr Freeman's views need not detain us, for he unhesitatingly accepts
Dr Stubbs' arguments as proving that the Norman military tenure was
based on 'the old service of a man from each five hides of land'.[37]
We find then, I submit, that the recognized leaders of existing
opinion on the subject cannot agree among themselves in giving us a
clear answer, when we ask them what determined the amount of 'service'
due from a Norman tenant-in-chief, or, in other words, how that
'service' was developed in unbroken continuity from Anglo-Saxon
obligations.
The third point that I would raise is this. Even assuming that the
amount of 'service' bore a fixed proportion--whether in pecuniary or
territorial units--to the extent of possession, we are, surely, at
once confronted by the difficulty that the owner of _x_ units of
possession would be compelled, for the discharge of his military
obligations, to enfeoff _x_ knights, assigning a 'unit' to each. A
tenant-in-chief, to take a concrete instance, whose fief was worth
£100 a year, would have to provide _ex hypothesi_ five knights; if, as
was quite usual, he enfeoffed the full number, he would have to assign
to each knight twenty librates of land (which I may at once, though
anticipating, admit was the normal value of a knight's fee), that
is to say, the crown would have forestalled Henry George, and the
luckless _baro_ would see the entire value of his estate swallowed up
in the discharge of its obligations.[38] What his position would be
in cases where, as often, he enfeoffed more knights than he required,
arithmetic is unable to determine. I cannot understand how this
obvious difficulty has been so strangely overlooked.
The fourth and last criticism which I propose to offer on the subject
is this. If we find that under Henry II--when we meet with definite
information--a fief contained, as we might expect, more 'units of
possession' than it was bound to furnish knights (thus leaving a
balance over for the _baro_ after sub-infeudation), we must draw one
of two conclusions: either this excess had existed from the first; or,
if the fief (as we are asked to believe) was originally assessed up to
the hilt for military service, that assessment must, in the interval,
have been reduced. In other words, Henry I--if, as Dr Stubbs in one
place suggests,[39] he was the first to take a 'regular account of the
knights' fees'--must have found the land with a settled liability of
providing one knight for every five hides, and must, yet, have reduced
that liability of his own accord, on the most sweeping scale, thus,
contrary to all his principles, ultroneously deprived himself of the
'service' he was entitled to claim.
Having completed my criticisms of the accepted view, and set forth its
chief difficulties, I shall now propound the theory to which my own
researches have led me, following the same method of proof as that
adopted by Mr Seebohm in his _English Village Community_, namely
working back from the known to the relatively unknown, till the light
thrown upwards by the records of the twelfth century illumines
the language of Domesday and renders the allusions of monks and
chroniclers pregnant with meaning.
1. THE 'CARTAE' OF 1166
In the formal returns (_cartae_) made to the exchequer in 1166 by
the tenants-in-chief (_barones_) of England, of which the official
transcripts are preserved in the _Liber Niger_ and the _Liber Rubeus_,
we have our earliest glimpse of the organization of that purely feudal
host among whom our lands had been parcelled out to be held, as I
shall show, by military service. We have, therefore, in them our best
starting-point for an inquiry into the origin and growth of military
tenure in England.
It may be well perhaps, at the very outset, to contrast these _cartae_
of 1166 with those of the Domesday Inquest eighty years before.[40]
For the essentially feudal character of the former is at once, by the
comparison, thrown into relief. The original returns of the Domesday
Inquest were made Hundred by Hundred; those of 1166 were made fief
by fief. The former were made by the jurors of the Hundred-court; the
latter by the lord of the fief. Thus, while the one took for its
unit the oldest and most familiar of native organizations, the other,
ignoring not only the Hundred, but even the shire itself, took for its
unit the alien organization of the fief.[41] The one inquest strictly
continued, the other wholly repudiated, the Anglo-Saxon system.
It is consequently worse than lost labour to examine these two
inquests, based as they are on opposite systems, and giving us as they
do a cross-division as if they were but successive editions of the
national register or rate-book.
The first point to be considered is this: What was the information
which the tenants-in-chief were called upon to supply in these
returns? It was _not_, as Dr Stubbs and others have supposed,
the amount of 'service' due from each fief to the crown.[42] The
information asked for was _the number of 'milites' actually enfeoffed_
by each 'baron' and his predecessors in title, with the number
of 'servitia' due from each such 'miles' to the 'baron'. In this
distinction, missed by Dr Stubbs, we find the key to the problem. The
crown, we shall see, must previously have known the total amount of
'service' due from each fief; but what it did not know, and what it
wished to know, was the number of knights' fees which, up to 1166, had
been created on each fief.
Although there is great diversity in the form of return adopted--a
diversity which imparts to the _cartae_ a pleasant flavour of
character--it may fairly be assumed that, as in similar cases, they
were called for throughout the realm by one uniform writ. If we may
deduce the purport of that writ from the collation of those returns
which refer to it most explicitly, we must infer that the information
asked for was to be given under four heads:
(1) How many knights had been enfeoffed before the death of
Henry I?
(2) How many have been enfeoffed since?
(3) How many (if any) remain to be enfeoffed to complete the
'service' due from the fief. Or, in other words, what is
the balance of your 'service' remaining chargeable to your
'demesne'?
(4) What are the names of your knights?
In support of these statements I append the whole of the relevant
returns.
BISHOP OF EXETER ARCHBISHOP OF YORK BISHOP OF DURHAM
Praecepistis mihi Praecipit dignitas Praecepit nobis,
quod mandarem vobis vestra omnibus domine, vestra
per breve meum fidelibus vestris sublimitas, quod
sigillatum et apertum, clericis et laicis, literis nostris
non quot servitia qui de vobis sigillatis, extra
militum vobis debeam, tenent de capite sigillum
sed (1) quot habeam in Eboracsira, ut pendentibus, vobis
milites feffatos de mandent vobis per mandaremus (1) quot
tempore Regis Henrici literas suas, extra milites feffatos
avi vestri, et (2) sigillum pendentes haberemus de veteri
quot post mortem (1) quot milites feffamento et
ipsius, et (3) quot quisquis habeat de (2) de novo,
sint super dominium veteri feffamento scilicet, anno et
meum.[43] de tempore Regis die quo Rex Henricus
Henrici avi vestri, fuit vivus et
scilicet de die et mortuus et de [_sic_]
anno quo ipse fuit post mortem ejus ...
vivus et mortuus, (3) super dominium
et (2) quot habeat vero nostrum, de quo
de novo feodamento similiter mandare
feffatos post mortem præcepistis, etc.
bonae memoriae avi (pp. 416, 418).
vestri ejusdem, et
(3) quot feoda
militum sint super
dominium
uniuscujusque, et
(4) omnium illorum
nomina, tam de novo
feffamento quam de
veteri feffatorum
quae sint in illo
brevi scripta, quia
vultis quod si
aliqui ibi sunt qui
vobis nondum
fecerunt ligantiam,
et quorum nomina
non sunt scripta in
rotulo vestro, quod
infra dominicam
primam xl^{ae}
ligantiam vobis
faciant (p. 412).
HERBERT DE ENGELARD DE ROBERT DE
CASTELLO STRATTONE BRINTONE
Michi et comparibus Michi et ceteris Michi et aliis
meis mandastis ut comparibus meis comparibus meis per
vobis per breve qui de vobis litteras vestras
nostrum pendens tenemus in capite innotuistis ut per
extra sigillum, per litteras fidem et ligantiam
mandaremus (1) quot vestras mandastis quam vobis debemus
milites antiquitus ut vobis per breve per breve nostrum
feodatos de tempore nostrum pendens pendens extra
Regis Henrici avi extra sigillum sigillum mandaremus
vestri habeamus et mandaremus (1) quot milites
(2) quot de novo (1) quot milites haberemus de veteri
feodamento.... Et habeamus de veteri feodamento de tempore
hii omnes ligantiam feodamento de Henrici Regis avi
et homagium vobis tempore Henrici vestri, et (2) quot
fecerunt (pp. 275-6). Regis avi vestri, milites haberemus de
et (2) quot novo feodamento post
habeamus de novo tempus Regis Henrici
feodamento (p. 276). avi vestri, et (3)
quot milites habeamus
super dominium
nostrum....
Et vobis quidem et
filio vestro
ligantiam et
homagium fecerunt
(p. 277).[44]
Let me here break off for a moment to consider one of the most
important points suggested by this great inquest, namely, the issue of
the writs under which it was held. It has been generally assumed that
each tenant received his writ direct from the crown; and a casual
reading of the _cartae_ might, perhaps, favour such a view. I have,
however, been led to the conclusion that a general writ was issued to
the sheriff of each county, and that its terms were communicated by
him to the several tenants-in-chief, whose _capita baroniæ_ lay within
his jurisdiction.
Baderun of Monmouth has heard the writ read out in the county
court;[45] Earl Patrick also has heard the writ read out.[46] William
fitz Siward derives from the sheriff, he tells us, his knowledge of
the writ:[47] even the bishop of Chester has received his instructions
from the sheriff.[48] But more especially do I rely upon the return
of the Archbishop of York because he recites the tenor of the writ
in terms which can leave no doubt that it was addressed, through the
sheriff, to the whole shire collectively.[49] If the Archbishop of
York did not receive a special writ, we may fairly infer that no other
tenant can have done so.
Further, I believe that as the 'barons' received their instructions
from the sheriffs, so they also sent in their returns through those
officers. The memorandum, for instance, on the missing _carta_ of
Osbert fitz Hugh informs us that it was brought to the exchequer by
William de Beauchamp. Now, William de Beauchamp was sheriff of
the shire. This would account for the grouping of the returns 'per
singulos comitatus', as Swereford expresses it, and indeed this
arrangement would but follow the existing practice of collecting the
scutage shire by shire.
Returning now to the terms of the inquiry, it is obvious that the
tenant (_baro_) to whom such queries were addressed must of necessity
have belonged to one of these three classes--
(_a_) Those who had created _the exact number_ of knights'
fees sufficient to discharge their 'service'.
(_b_) Those who had created _more_ than sufficient.
(_c_) Those who had created _less_ than sufficient.
This last class requires some explanation. When the number of knights'
fees created was not sufficient to discharge the baron's 'service',
the balance of that service remained charged on the non-infeudated
portion of his fief, that is, on the 'demesne', and was technically
said to be 'super dominium'. It is all-important that this should
be grasped, for it might otherwise be supposed that such a phrase as
'quot milites super dominium' implied the existence of actual knights
enfeoffed on the demesne, which, to those who realize the working of
the system of knight-service, is an absolute contradiction in terms.
This, it will be found, beautifully explains the first article of the
Assize of Arms (1181)--that every tenant is to keep in stock harness
for as many knights 'quot habuerit feoda militum in dominio suo'.[50]
That is to say, that if, after deducting the knights actually
enfeoffed, there remained due from his fief a balance of
knight-service, he must keep in readiness harness sufficient for
those knights whom he would have to provide himself to discharge that
balance.[51]
Having made this point clear, I now pass to the immediate object
of the inquest of 1166. What that object was, no one has as yet
discovered. Dr Stubbs, for instance, in his preface to the Pipe-Roll
of 1166, writes: 'On the immediate purpose for which the inquiry was
made--and it can scarcely be doubted that it was for the collection of
a scutage--we shall look for further information in the rolls of the
succeeding years.' My own researches enable me to assert that this
inquest formed part of a financial revolution hitherto ignored, which
deserves to be compared with those other innovations in administration
and finance that characterized the latter half of the twelfth century
in England.
When we come to place side by side the returns of 1166 and the
payments made upon those returns in 1168, we find (at least, on the
lay fiefs) the same distinction in both between 'the old feoffment'
and 'the new'. But while the _returns_, as we saw, were made under
three heads,[52] the _payments_ were made under two, namely, under
the two feoffments. The reason of this difference can be established
beyond dispute: the exchequer clerks had, in every instance, added the
returns under the _third_ head to those under the _first_, and classed
them together as 'old feoffment'. This is one of the points which, I
think, have never been hitherto explained.
Plenty of examples might be given, but these two will suffice. Walter
de Aincurt returns 24 fees _de veteri_, 5 _de novo_, and 11 _super
dominium_. The exchequer, in 1168, records him as paying on 35 fees
_de veteri_, and on 5 _de novo_.[53] Richard de Haie returns 11
fees _de veteri_, 4 _de novo_, and 5 _super dominium_. The exchequer
records him as paying on 16 _de veteri_, and 4 _de novo_.
The main point, however, on which I propose to insist, is that these
returns were intended to provide, and, as a matter of fact, did
provide a new feudal assessment, wholly superseding the old one, in no
case to the advantage of the tenant, but in many to the advantage
of the crown. The _modus operandi_ was as follows. Instead of either
adhering to the old assessment (_servitium debitum_), or uniformly
substituting a new one based on the fees actually created, the crown
selected in every case whichever of these two systems told in its own
favour and against the tenant of the fief. If he had enfeoffed fewer
knights than his _servitium debitum_ required, the crown retained that
_servitium_ as the irreducible minimum of his assessment; but if he
had created an excess of fees, the crown added that excess to his
pre-existing assessment and increased the 'service' due from him
_pro tanto_. This discovery is no conjecture, but is capable of
arithmetical demonstration.
It should be noticed how skilfully the queries were framed in the
inquest of 1166, to entrap the unwary tenant, and make him commit
himself to the facts. If his enfeoffed knights were short of the
required number, he was caught under the third query; if, on the other
hand, he had an excess, he was caught under the others. Now, did the
'barons', when they made their returns, anticipate this sweeping and
unwelcome reform? Presumably not. They appear to have drawn up their
_cartae_ carefully and willingly, few of those who had an excess of
knights taking even the precaution of mentioning their _servitium
debitum_.[54] The church, moreover, from the terms in which her
payments are thenceforth entered (_vide infra_), must have uniformly
and systematically adopted an attitude of protest. Yet there is no
trace of such protest in her returns. May we then infer that the crown
sought to deliberately entrap its tenants? Two circumstances might
favour that view. In the first place the tenants had to make their
returns _extra sigillum pendentes_, thereby solemnly committing
themselves;[55] in the second, the tenants would, of course, have been
tempted to conceal or understate their excess of knights, had they
foreseen the use that the crown would make of their returns.
The question may very fairly be asked, 'What check had the crown upon
a tenant in the event of the latter omitting some of his "excess"
fees?' The answer is supplied, I think, by a clause in the invaluable
return of the northern primate. He there requests that his return may
be accepted 'without prejudice', as a lawyer would say, in case of his
omitting some small fees. That is to say, these formal returns might
be brought up as evidence against tenants-in-chief who had omitted
some of their fees, proving that they had thereby themselves disowned
their right to the fees in question.[56]
Two points strike one strongly in the preparation of these returns.
The first of these is the difficulty experienced in compiling a
correct list of under-tenants and their holdings; the second is
the employment of the 'Inquest' as a means of ascertaining the
particulars.
Taking the former of these, we find Hugh Wac writing, 'si amplius
inquirere possim, notificabo vobis'; and Guarine 'de Aula', 'si plus
possim inquirere, faciam vobis scire'; so too the Bishop of Ely, 'de
hiis vero certi sumus, et si amplius inquirere poterimus libenter
vobis significabimus'; and the Bishop of Bath, 'si certiorem inquirere
poterimus veritatem, nos illam vobis significabimus'; and Alfred of
Lincoln, 'si plus inquiri potest, inquirere faciemus'. The Bishop of
Exeter makes his return, 'sicut eam diligentius inquirere potui';
the Abbot of Tavistock, 'quantum inde sollicitius inquirendo scire
potuit'. Hugh de Lacy, in a postscript to his return, adds a fee 'quod
oblitus sum'; while the Earl of Clare has to send in a subsequent
rider, containing an entry, 'quod ego postquam misi cartam ...
recordatus sum'.
From this difficulty it is a short step to the inquests which it seems
in some cases to have necessitated. The Abbot of Ramsey heads
his return, 'Haec est inquisitio'; the Earl of Warwick similarly
commences, 'Hoc est quod inquisivi per homines'. Earl Patrick makes
his return, 'secundum quod de probis et antiquis hominibus meis
inquirere potui'. 'Fecimus inquirere,' writes the Bishop of Bath, 'per
legales homines meos.... Haec autem per eos inquisivimus.'
This brings us directly to the very important inquest referred to in
the _carta_ of the Earl of Arundel:
Dominus noster Rex Henricus quadam contentione quae surrexit
inter milites de honore de Arundel de exercitu quodam de
Walliis, elegit iiij. milites de honore, de melioribus et
legalioribus, et antiquioribus ... et fecit eos recognoscere
servitia militum de honore, et super legalitatem et sacramenta
eorum inde neminem audire voluit.
Mr Eyton argued elaborately on genealogical grounds that this inquest
must have taken place under Henry I, but indeed it is quite obvious
from the language of the _carta_ itself that this was so. It is,
consequently, worthy of notice for its bearing on 'the sworn inquest'.
While on this subject, attention may be called to the unique entry
in the Pipe-Roll of 12 Henry II (1166): 'Alanus de Munbi debet xl.
s. quia non interfuit Jurat' feodorum militum' (p. 8). Investigation
proves (through what is known as the Lindsey Survey) that Alan was an
under-tenant of the honour of Brittany, the successor of that Eudo who
held in Mumby _temp._ Domesday. This fact throws light on the entry,
by suggesting that the inquest referred to concerned the honour
of Brittany, the number of fees in which was then and subsequently
doubtful.
But to return. It is infinitely easier to trace the change brought
about by the inquest of 1166 in the case of the church fiefs than of
the lay ones. For on the former it was uniform and glaring. Previously
to 1166 the church tenants had paid on their _servitium debitum_
alone; after 1166 they paid, as a rule, on all the fees actually
created upon the fief. Thus the assessment of the Bishop of Durham was
raised at a blow from ten fees to more than seventy.[57] There were
several equally striking cases among the prelates. Now, whether or not
the church tenants feared something of the kind, they had generally
been careful in their returns to set forth their _servitium debitum_,
and when, in 1168, they were uniformly assessed on their total of
fees, their uniform protest is expressed in the formula 'quos non
recognoscit' applied to the payment on their excess knights. Such is
the meaning of this puzzling formula which is peculiar to the church
fiefs.[58] In these cases it wholly replaces the _de veteri_ and _de
novo_ assessment which, from 1166, was applied to the lay fiefs.
II. THE SERVITIUM DEBITUM
The essential feature we have to keep in view when examining the
growth of knight service is the _servitium debitum_, or quota of
knight service due to the crown from each fief.
This has, I venture to think, been obscured and lost sight of in
the generalizations and vague writing about the 'gradual process'
of development. It is difficult for me to traverse the arguments of
Gneist, Stubbs and Freeman, because we consider the subject from such
wholly different standpoints. For them the introduction of knight
service means the process of sub-infeudation on the several fiefs;
for me it means the grant of fiefs to be held from the crown by knight
service. Thus the process which absorbs the attention of the school
whose views I am opposing is for me a matter of mere secondary
importance. The whole question turns upon the point whether or not the
tenants-in-chief received their fiefs to hold of the crown by a quota
of military service, or not. If they did, it would depend simply on
their individual inclinations, whether, or how far, they had recourse
to sub-infeudation. It was not a matter of principle at all; it was,
as Dr Stubbs himself put it, 'a matter of convenience',[59] a mere
detail. What we have to consider is not the relation between the
tenant-in-chief and his under-tenants, but that between the king
and his tenants-in-chief: for this was the primary relation that
determined all below it.
The assumption that the Conqueror cannot have introduced any new
principle in the tenure of land lies at the root of the matter.
Assuming this, one must of course seek elsewhere for the introduction
of knight service. Have not the difficulties of the accepted view
arisen from its exponents approaching the problem from the wrong point
of view? The tendency to exalt the English and depreciate the Norman
element in our constitutional development has led them I think,
and especially Mr Freeman, to seek in Anglo-Saxon institutions an
explanation of feudal phenomena. This tendency is manifest in their
conclusions on the great council:[60] it colours no less strongly
their views on knight service. In neither case can they bring
themselves to adopt the feudal standpoint or to enter into the feudal
spirit. It is to this that I attribute their disposition to bring the
crown face to face with the under-tenant--or 'landowner' as they would
prefer to term him--and so to ignore, or at least to minimize the
importance of the tenant-in-chief, the 'middleman' of the feudal
system. Making every allowance for the policy of the Conqueror in
insisting on the direct allegiance of the under-tenant to the crown,
and thereby checking the disintegrating influence of a perfect feudal
system, the fact remains what we may term the 'military service'
bargain was a bargain between the crown and the tenant-in-chief, not
between the crown and his under-tenants. It follows from this that so
long as the 'baron' (or 'tenant-in-chief') discharged his _servitium
debitum_ to the crown, the king had no right to look beyond the
'baron', who was himself and alone responsible for the discharge of
this service. It is, indeed, in this responsibility that lies the
key to the situation. If the under-tenant of a knight's fee failed to
discharge his service, it was not to him, but to his lord, that the
crown betook itself. 'I know nothing of your tenant,' was in effect
the king's position; 'you owe me, for the tenure of your fief, the
service of so many knights, and that service must be performed,
whether your under-tenants repudiate their obligations to yourself or
not'. In other words the 'baron' discharged his service to the king,
whereas the baron's under-tenants discharged theirs to their lord.[61]
So the _Dialogus_ speaks of the under-tenant's 'numerum militum quos
domino debuerat'.
Let us then apply ourselves directly to the quotas of military service
due from the 'barons' to the crown, and see if, when ascertained, they
throw any fresh light on the real problem.
No attempt, so far as I know, has ever been made to determine these
quotas, and indeed it was the utter want of trustworthy information
on the subject that led Swereford to undertake his researches in
the thirteenth century. Those researches, unfortunately, leave us
no wiser, partly from his defective method and want of the requisite
accuracy; partly from the fact that what he sought was not abstract
historical truth, but practical information bearing on the existing
rights of the crown. We must turn therefore to the original
authorities: (1) the _cartae baronum_, (2) the annual rolls. These were
the two main sources of Swereford's information, as they must also be
of ours. In the next part of this paper I shall deal with the evidence
of the rolls, as checking and supplementing the _cartae baronum_.
I shall analyse the church fiefs first, because we can ascertain,
virtually with exactitude, the _servitium debitum_ of every prelate
and of every head of a religious house who held by knight service.
The importance of these figures, together with the fact that they have
never, so far as I know, been set forth till now, has induced me to
append them here in full detail.
SEE SERVICE DUE SEE SERVICE DUE
knights knights
Canterbury 60 Bath 20
Winchester 60 London 20
Lincoln 60 Exeter 17-1/2[62]
Worcester 50 [60] 'Chester' 15
Norwich 40 Hereford 15
Ely 40 Durham 10
Salisbury 32 Chichester 4 [2]
York 20 [7]
Every English See then in existence is thus accounted for with the
solitary and significant exceptions of Carlisle and Rochester. The
latter See, we know, had enfeoffed knights for their names (_temp._
Henry I, I think, from internal evidence) are recorded in the _Textus
Roffensis_ (p. 223);[63] the former had been created after the date
when, as I shall argue, the Conqueror fixed the knight service due
from the fees.
In the above list the figures in brackets refer to the assessments
previous to 1166. Three changes were made at, or about, that date. The
Bishop of Worcester, in accordance with the protest he had made from
the beginning of the reign, obtained a reduction of his quota from
sixty knights to fifty; while the Archbishop of York's _servitium_
was raised from seven knights to twenty, and that of the Bishop of
Chichester from two knights to four. These changes are known to us
only from the details of the prelate's scutages; there is nothing to
account for them in the relevant _cartae_, and we can only infer from
the formula _quos recognoscit_ that the two bishops whose _servitia_
were increased acquiesced in the justice of the crown's claim.
Proceeding to the 'service' of the religious houses:
HOUSE SERVICE DUE HOUSE SERVICE DUE
knights knights
Peterborough 60 Wilton 5
Glastonbury 40 [60] Ramsey 4
St Edmundsbury 40 Chertsey 3
Abingdon 30 St Bene't of Hulme 3
Hyde 20 Cerne[64] 2 [3]
St Augustine's 15 Pershore 2 [3]
Westminster 15(?) Malmesbury 3
Tavistock 15(?) Winchcombe 2
Coventry 10 Middleton 2
Shaftesbury 7 [10] Sherburne 2
St Alban's 6 Michelney 1
Evesham 5 Abbotsbury 1
The changes of assessment on religious houses were few, and are thus
accounted for. Glastonbury, which paid on sixty knights in the first
two scutages of the reign, paid on forty in the third and in
those which followed. Pershore paid on three in the first scutage,
protesting that it was only liable to two, and from 1168 it was only
rated at two. Shaftesbury, which had paid on ten knights in the first
scutage, was assessed at only seven in the third scutage and those
which followed. Cerne also succeeded in getting its assessment reduced
from three knights to two. With these changes should be compared the
letter of Bishop Nigel of Ely to Ramsey Abbey certifying that it was
only liable to an assessment of four knights. Two cases remain which
require special treatment--Tavistock and Westminster.
Although Tavistock, in the first scutage, appears to have paid on the
anomalous assessment of ten and a half knights its payment on fifteen
in the two succeeding ones may fairly be taken as evidence that this
was its _servitium debitum_.[65] Its abbot, however, made no reference
to that _servitium_ in his return, and--by an exception to the regular
practice in the case of church fiefs--we find him charged, not on the
fees, (1) 'quos recognoscit', (2) 'quos non recognoscit', but on those
which were enfeoffed 'de veteri', and 'de novo' just as if he were a
lay tenant. As his fees 'de veteri' were sixteen, this figure recurs
in successive scutages, until in 3 John we find him contesting as
to one knight ('unde est contentio') who, doubtless, represented the
difference between fifteen and sixteen.
The case of Westminster presents considerable difficulty, the entries
relating to its payments of scutage being very puzzling. The abbey's
fees lay chiefly in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire--especially
Worcestershire--and it is under this county that we find it ultimately
(_i.e._ from 1168 onwards) assessed at fifteen fees, an assessment
which the abbot himself seems to have claimed, in the first scutage,
as the right one.
Taking then the _servitium debitum_ of all the church fiefs, at their
earliest ascertainable assessment, we obtain this result:
Bishops 458-1/2
Heads of religious houses 318
Capellaria de Bosham 7-1/2
-------
Grand total 784[66]
Far more difficult is the calculation of the _servitium debitum_ from
the lay fiefs. The list which follows is constructed from the evidence
of the _cartae_ and the rolls, and, though substantially correct, is
liable to emendation in details. It only comprises those fiefs the
_servitium_ of which I have been able to ascertain with certainty or
probability.
Robert 'filius Regis' 100[67]
Earl Ferrers 80 (? 60)[68]
Honour of Totness 75
Honour of Tickhill 60 (?)[69]
Robert de Stafford 60
Count of Eu 60 (?)[70]
Earl Warrenne 60 (?)[71]
Lacy of Pontefract 60
Roger de Mowbray 60[72]
Earl of Essex 60
Walter fitz Robert (of Essex) 50
Honour of Richmond 50[73]
Gervase Paynell 50
Reginald de St Valery 50 (?)[74]
Patrick, Earl of Salisbury 40
Walter de Aincurt 40
William de Montfichet 40
Payn de Montdoubleau 40[75]
William de Roumare 40 (?)[76]
Hubert de Rye 35
Hubert fitz Ralf (Derbyshire) 30
Walter de Wahulle 30
William fitz Robert (Devon) 30
William de Traci 30[77]
Robert de Valoines 30[77]
Maurice de Craon 30[77]
William de Albini (of Belvoir) 30[77]
Bernard Balliol 30[78]
Roger de Arundel 30[79]
Walter de Mayenne 30 (?)[80]
Robert de Albini (Bucks) 25
Robert fitz Hugh 25
Alfred of Lincoln 25
Ralf Hanselin 25
William de Braose 25[81]
Oliver de Traci 25[81]
Gerard de Limesi 25 (?)[82]
Walter Waleran 20
Richard de Hay 20
Honour of Holderness 20
William de Windsor 20
Hugh de Bayeux 20
William de Vesci 20 (?)[83]
Daniel de Crevec[oe]ur 20 (?)[84]
Thomas de Arcy 20 (?)[85]
Hugh de Dover 15
Walter Bret 15
Baderon de Monmouth 15
Earl Richard de Redvers 15[86]
Adam de Brus 15
Hamo fitz Meinfelin 15
Osbert fitz Hugh 15 (?)[87]
? Hugh de Scalers 15[88]
? Stephen de Scalers 15
Gilbert de Pinkeni 15
Geoffrey Ridel 15
Robert Foliot 15
Robert de Choques 15
Robert de Caux 15
William Paynell 15 (?)
Richard de Reimes 10
Roger de Buron 10
Richard fitz William 10
William fitz Alan 10
Richard de Cormeilles 10
Roger de Kentswell 10
William Trussebut 10
Nigel de Lovetot 10
Manasser Arsic 10
Richard de Montacute 10
Wandrille de Courcelles 10
Walter de Bolebec (Bucks) 10
Robert de Hastings 10
Lambert de Scotenni 10
Drogo de Montacute 10 (?)[89]
William de Reimes 10 (?)[90]
William de Helion 10 (?)[91]
Graeland de Thani of Essex owed seven and a half knights (the half of
fifteen), and Roger de Berkeley probably the same. Those who owed a
_servitium_ of five knights were Robert fitz Harding, Baldwin Buelot,
Simon de Cancy, Nigel de Lovetot (of the honour of Tickhill), Amfry de
Cancy, Hugh de Dover (of the honour of Brunne),[92] Walter de Bolebec
(Northumberland), Robert de Brus, Roger Bertram, and probably Stephen
de Bulmer,[93] and Herbert 'de Castello'.
The cases in which the _servitium_ can be shown not to have been a
multiple of five are comparatively few. That of Simon de Beauchamp of
Bedford was 54, of William Fossard 33-1/2, of Humphrey de Bohun 30-1/2,
of William Malet 20-1/6, of Robert de Beauchamp (of Somerset) 17, of
William fitz John (of Harptree) 13-3/4, of William Blund 12, of Hugh
Wac 10-1/8, of William de Ros, William fitz John (of Weston) and
William de Beauchamp (of Worcestershire) 7, of John de Bidun and
Jocelin de Lovaine 5-1/2.[94] But these, it will be seen, are quite
insufficient to overthrow the accumulated array of evidence on the
other side, and some of them are, doubtless, capable of explanation.
The Bohun fief, for instance, in 1162 paid on exactly 30 fees.
It is impossible to resist the inference, from such evidence as we
have, that the amount of the _servitium debitum_ was a matter of
custom and tradition, and could not usually be determined by reference
to written grants or charters. On this point the returns of three
Essex tenants are most instructive, while their similarity is so
striking, that, as in the case of the Shropshire _formulæ_, it can
scarcely be due to accident. The Earl of Essex closes with the words:
'et homines mei dicunt mihi quod debeo Domino Regi lx. milites'.
Walter fitz Robert, who follows him, writes: 'et hoc mihi homines mei
intelligere faciunt, quod debeo inde Regi servitium de l. militibus'.
William de Montfichet ends thus: 'et hoc faciunt homines mei mihi
intelligere--quod pater meus deserviebat per xl. milites'. With these
expressions we may compare those of William fitz Alan's tenants, who
assert that his Norfolk fief 'non debet domino Regi nisi i. militem
... ut antiqui testantur'; that his Shropshire fief 'non debet Regi
nisi x. milites in exercitu ... sicut antiqui testantur'; and that, as
to his Wiltshire fief, 'non sumus certi quod servitium debeat Regi
de hoc tenemento'. The Abbot of Chertsey, also, states his _servitium
debitum_ with the proviso 'secundum quod scire possumus'. These
expressions explain the uncertainty as to the _servitium debitum_ in
such cases as the See of Worcester and Ramsey Abbey.[95]
The same principle applies to the relation between the tenant-in-chief
and his under-tenant. Thus the very first entry in the _cartae_ runs as
follows:
Willelmus de Wokindone iiij. milites et dimidium; et praeter
hoc, ex testimonio curiae meae, dimidium exigo, quem ipse se
non debere defendit.
Of another tenant on the same fief we read: 'praeter hoc, _ex
testimonio curiae meae_, adhuc j. militem exigo'. Here, we see, appeal
is made not to record evidence, but to oral testimony. So, too, the
Bishop of Exeter adds this clause to his return:
Et praeter hos omnes, sicut _a multis audivi_, comes
Gloucestriæ, et comes Hugo, et comes de Clare debent tenere
de Exoniensi Episcopo; sed nullum ei servitium faciunt vel
recognoscunt.
Surely in all such cases as these the obvious inference is that the
tenant had been enfeoffed _sine carta_, or in the very words of
the Provisions of the Barons (1259) 'feofatus sine carta a tempore
conquestus vel alio antiquo feofamento' (§ 1).
And now for my theory. No one can have even glanced at the lists I
have compiled without being instantly struck by the fact that the
'service' is reckoned in round numbers, and is almost invariably
_a multiple of 5, if not of 10_.[96] This discovery, of course, is
absolutely destructive of the view that it always represented the
number of five-hide (or £20) units contained in the fief. Further, the
number of differing fiefs assessed at precisely the same figure proves
that the assessment was wholly arbitrary and cannot have been even the
round sum which approximated most nearly the number of such units.[97]
What then was the true determinant in the light of these conclusions?
I reply--_the unit of the feudal host_.
'On the continent,' writes Gneist, 'fifty _milites_, or at least
twenty-five, were reckoned to one banneret; in England, in proportion
to the smaller scale of enfeoffments, a smaller number appears to have
formed the unit of the _constabularia_.'[98] He is right: the English
_constabularia_, where I find it referred to, consists of _ten_
knights.[99] It is interesting to trace this unit and its multiples
recurring in the narratives of Irish warfare, under Henry II, and in
other struggles.[100] We meet with it also in the grant by the Empress
to Geoffrey de Mandeville, in 1141, of 'feodum et servicium xx.
militum' and in Stephen's grant to him of 'lx milites feudatos'.[101]
The next step is to show that the Normans were familiar with
_servitium debitum_ in terms of the ten-knight unit when they landed
in England. For this we have only to refer to Wace. For in the 'Roman
de Rou', as quoted by Mr Freeman himself, we find William fitz Osbern
assuring the duke as to his barons:
Vostre servise dobleront:
Ki solt mener vint chevaliers
Quarante en merra volontiers,
E ki de trente servir deit
De sesante servir vos velt,
E cil ki solt servir de cent
Dous cent en merra bonement.[102]
The _servitium debitum_, therefore, was a standing institution in
Normandy, and 'to the mass of his (William's) followers', as Mr
Freeman frankly admits,[103] a 'feudal tenure, a military tenure, must
have seemed the natural and universal way of holding land'. When we
find them and their descendants holding their fiefs in England, as
they had been held in Normandy, by the service of a round number of
knights, what is the simple and obvious inference but that, just as
Henry II granted out the provinces of Ireland to be held as fiefs
by the familiar service of a round number of knights,[104] so Duke
William granted out the fiefs he formed in England?
If to escape from this conclusion the suggestion be made that
these _servitia debita_ were compositions effected by English
_antecessores_, it need only be answered that the fiefs acquired were
wholly new creations, constructed from the scattered fragments of
Anglo-Saxon estates. And though in the case of the church fiefs this
objection might not apply, yet we have evidence, as I shall show, to
prove that their _servitia_ also were determined by the conqueror's
will, as indeed might be inferred from their close correspondence with
those of the lay barons.
But if the lands of the conquered realm were so granted to be held by
a _servitium debitum_ of knights, the key of the position is won, and
the defenders of the existing view must retire along the whole line;
for, as Mr Freeman himself observed, 'Let it be once established that
land is held as a fief from the crown on condition of yielding certain
services to the crown, and the whole of the feudal incidents follow
naturally.'[105]
I am anxious to make absolutely clear the point that between the
accepted view and the view which I advance, no compromise is possible.
The two are radically opposed. As against the theory that the military
obligation of the Anglo-Norman tenant-in-chief was determined by the
assessment of his holding, whether in hidage or in value, I maintain
that the extent of that obligation was not determined by his
holding, but was fixed in relation to, and expressed in terms of, the
_constabularia_ of ten knights, the unit of the feudal host. And I,
consequently, hold that his military service was in no way derived or
developed from that of the Anglo-Saxons, but was arbitrarily fixed by
the king, from whom he received his fief, irrespectively both of
its size and of all pre-existent arrangements. Such propositions, of
course, utterly and directly traverse the view which these passages
best summarize:
The belief that William I divided the English landed property
into military fees is erroneous.... According to the extent
and the nature of the productive property it could be
computed how many shields were to be furnished by each
estate, according to the gradually fixed proportion of a £20
ground-rent.[106]
There is no ground for thinking that William directly or
systematically introduced any new kind of tenure into the
holding of English lands. There is nothing to suggest any such
belief, either in the chronicles of his reign, in the Survey,
which is his greatest monument, in the genuine or even in the
spurious remains of his legislation.... As I have had to point
out over and over again, the grantee of William, whether the
old owner or a new one, held his land as it had been held in
the days of King Edward.[107]
There can be no doubt that the military tenure ... was itself
introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed
in the case of the feudal usages in general. We have no light
on the point from any original grant made by the Conqueror
to a lay follower; but ... we cannot suppose it probable that
such gifts were made on any expressed condition, or accepted
with a distinct pledge to provide a certain contingent of
knights for the king's service.[108]
If my own conclusions be accepted, they will not only prove
destructive of this view, but will restore, in its simplicity, a
theory which removes all difficulties, and which paves the way to a
reconsideration of other kindred problems, and to the study of that
aspect of Anglo-Norman institutions in which they represent the feudal
spirit developed on feudal lines.
III. SCUTAGE, AID, AND 'DONUM'
Precious for our purpose as are the _cartae_ of 1166, their evidence,
as it stands, is incomplete. It needs to be supplemented by the early
Pipe-Rolls of Henry II's reign. By collating these two authorities we
obtain information which, singly, neither the one nor the other could
afford. All those entries on the rolls which relate to _scutagia_,
_auxilia_ or _dona_ require to be extracted and classified before we
can form our conclusions. Hitherto, historians have remained content
with repeating Swereford's _obiter dicta_, as extracted from the
_Liber Rubeus_ by Madox, without checking these statements by the
evidence of the rolls themselves.
The question of Swereford's authority is one which it is absolutely
necessary to deal with, because his statements have been freely
accepted by successive historical writers, and have formed, indeed,
the basis on which their conclusions rest. Now the presumption is
naturally in favour of Swereford's knowledge of his subject. His
introduction to the _Liber Rubeus_ is dated 1230, and he tells us that
he had been at work among the records in the days of King John, under
William of Ely[109] himself: he wrote with the actual rolls before
him; he had been intimate with the leading officials of the exchequer,
and enjoyed full knowledge of its practice and its traditions. I
cannot wonder that, this being so, his positive assertions should have
been readily believed, or that Mr Hall, when, for a short time, I was
associated with him in preparing the Red Book for the press, should,
with a kindly bias in favour of so venerable an authority, have shrunk
from my drastic criticism of his famous introduction to that volume.
On the other hand we have Swereford's own admission that he worked
from the rolls alone.[110] These rolls are, for all purposes, as
accessible to us as they were to him, while we possess the advantage
of having, in contemporary chronicles, sources of information which
he did not use, and with which, indeed, he shows no sign of being even
conversant. We must go, therefore, behind Swereford and examine for
ourselves the materials from which he worked.
Passing, for the present, over minor points, I would fix on the 'Great
Scutage', or 'Scutage of Toulouse', as the test by which Swereford's
knowledge and accuracy must stand or fall. If he is in error on this
matter, his error is so grievous and so far-reaching that it must
throw the gravest doubt on all his similar assertions. The date of
the expedition against Toulouse was June 1159 (the host having been
summoned at Mid-Lent): from the chroniclers we learn that, to provide
the means for it, and especially to pay an army of mercenaries,
a great levy was made in England and beyond sea. The roll of the
following Michaelmas records precisely such a levy, and the payments
so recorded must have been made for the expenses of this campaign. But
we can go further still; we can actually prove from internal evidence
that sums accounted for on the roll of 1159 were levied expressly
for the Toulouse campaign.[111] Yet we are confidently informed by
Swereford that this levy was for a Welsh war, and that the scutage
of Toulouse is represented by the levies which figure on the rolls
of 1161 and 1162. He appears to have evolved out of his inner
consciousness the rule that a scutage, though fixed and even paid in
any given year, was never accounted for on the rolls till the year
after.[112] But as even this rule will not apply to his calculation
here, one can only suggest that he was absolutely ignorant of the date
of the Toulouse campaign.[113] The value of Swereford's calculations
is so seriously affected by this cardinal error, that one may reject
with less hesitation his statement that the scutage of 1156 was
taken for a Welsh war, and not, as there is evidence to imply, for a
campaign against the king's brother. Swereford, again, may be pardoned
for his ignorance of the fact that scutage existed under Henry
I,[114] but when he unhesitatingly assigns the Domesday Survey to
the fourteenth year of the Conqueror (1079-80), he shows us that the
precision of his statements is no proof of their accuracy. On both
these points he has misled subsequent writers.[115]
The incredible ignorance and credulity even of officials at the time
are illustrated by the fact that the Conqueror was generally believed
to have created 32,000 knights' fees in England, and that Swereford
plumed himself on his independence in doubting so general a
belief.[116] His less sceptical contemporary, Segrave, continued to
believe it, and even Madox hesitates to reject it.
The persistent assertion that the _Cartae Baronum_ were connected
with, and preliminary to, the _auxilium ad filiam maritandam_ of
1168 is undoubtedly to be traced to Swereford's _ipse dixit_ to that
effect. He distinctly asserts that the aid was fixed (_assisum_) in
the thirteenth year (1167), that the returns (_cartae_) were made in
the same year (1167), and that the aid was paid and accounted for in
the fourteenth year (1168).[117] Modern research, however, has shown
that the returns were made quite early in 1166, while the youthful
Matilda, we know, was not married till October 1168. This throws an
instructive light on Swereford's _modus operandi_. Finding from the
rolls that the payments made in 1168 were based on the returns in the
_cartae_, and not being acquainted with the date of the latter, he
jumped to the conclusion that they must have been made in 1167, it
being his (quite unsupported) thesis that all levies were fixed in the
year preceding that in which they were accounted for on the rolls.
Proceeding further, we find him explaining (p. 9) that he omits the
aid of 1165, 'quoniam probata summa auxilii propter hoc non probatur
numerus militum'. And yet this aid, the last to be taken before the
returns of 1166, is of special value and importance for the very
purpose he speaks of. It is, indeed, an essential element in the
evidence on which I build; and this compels me to discuss the point in
some detail.
Those who contributed towards this aid either (1) gave arbitrary sums
for the payment of _servientes_--whose number was almost invariably
some multiple of five--or (2) paid a marc on every fee of their
_servitium debitum_. We are only here concerned with those who adopted
the latter course. Now let us take the case of those who adopted this
alternative in the counties of Notts and Derby, and compare their
payments with their _servitium debitum_ as known to us from other
sources.
PAYMENTS (1165) SERVICE (1166)
_marcae_ knights
Hubert fitz Ralf 30 30
Ralf Halselin 25 25
Robert de 'Calz' 15 15
Roger de Burun 10 10
In this case there is no doubt as to the _servitium debitum_, for it
is ascertained from the _cartae_ themselves. Having then proved, by
this test, the exact correspondence of the payments, I turn to the
case of Devonshire.
PAYMENTS (1165) SERVICE (1166)
_marcae_ knights[118]
Robert 'filius Regis' 100 (?)
William de Traci 30 (?)
William de Braose 25 (?)
Oliver de Traci 25 (?)
Abbot of Tavistock 15 15
William fitz Reginald 1 1
Ralf de Valtort 1 1
Robert fitz Geoffrey 1 1
Here we are supplied by this roll with four important _servitia_ which
would otherwise be absolutely unknown to us. And they happen to be of
special interest. For while the _carta_ of William de Braose returns
twenty-eight fees, and that of Oliver de Traci twenty-three and a half
(though he pays on thirty and a half),[119] their payments in 1165,
by revealing their _servitium debitum_, show us that their fiefs
represent the two halves of the Honour of Barnstaple (which,
therefore, was assessed at 50 knights) then in their respective hands.
Again, William de Traci returns his fees in his _carta_ as twenty-five
and three-quarters, and says nothing about any balance on his
_dominium_, as he should have done. Hence we should not have known his
_servitium_ but for the roll of 1165.
Swereford's extraordinary failure to understand this roll aright
is possibly due to the fact that most of the relevant payments are
entered without mention of their object. He seems to have been very
dependent upon the rolls explaining themselves, and to have worked in
the spirit of a copying clerk rather than of an intelligent student.
One more example of his errors will suffice. In his abstracts from the
aid 'ad maritandam primogenitam filiam regis' (1168), we read:
Abbas Gloucestriæ de promissione, sed non numeratur quid;
sed in rotulo praecedenti dicitur:--Abbas Gloucestriæ debet
xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d. de veteri scutagio Walliae.
Now (1) the amount of the abbot's contribution is duly entered on the
roll ('xl. marcas de promissione de eodem auxilio'), and it is not
paid in respect of fees, but is a voluntary proffer; (2) the phrase
in the preceding roll is not 'de veteri _scutagio_', but 'de veteri
_exercitu'_; (3) the payment there recorded represents a contribution
of fifty _servientes_, and had nothing to do with scutage, for the
abbot (as Swereford should have known) did not hold by military
service, and ought not, therefore, to figure in his lists at all.[120]
Let us turn, therefore, to the rolls themselves. Now, although the
language of the exchequer was not so precise as we could wish, it
is possible, more or less, to distinguish and classify these levies.
Thus, we have of course a typical 'aid' in the levy for the marriage
of the king's daughter (1168), while, on the other hand, we have an
equally typical 'scutage' in 1156, in the payments made by the church
tenants in lieu of military service.
On the institution of 'scutage' there has been much misconception.
It is placed by our historians among the great innovations wrought by
Henry II, who is supposed by them to have introduced it in 1156.[121]
Here we see, once again, the danger of seeking our information on such
points secondhand, instead of going straight to the fountainhead for
ourselves.
John of Salisbury implies that scutage was no novelty in 1156 when he
writes, not that the king imposed it, but that he '_could not remit_
it'. This inference is at once confirmed by the appearance of scutage
_eo nomine_ in the reign of Henry I.
The following charter is found in the (MS.) _Liber Eliensis_ (Lib.
III), No. xxi, and in the Cottonian MS. Nero A. 15:
H. rex Anglorum Archiepiscopis, Episcopis, Abbatibus,
Comitibus, etc. Salutem. Sciatis me condonasse Ecclesiæ S.
Ætheldredæ de Ely pro Dei amore et anima Patris et Matris
meae et pro redemptione peccatorum meorum, et petitione Hervei
ejusdem Ecclesie Episcopi 40 libras de illis 100 libris
quas predicta Ecclesia solebat dare de _Scutagio_ quando
_Scutagium_ currebat[122] per terram meam Anglie: ita quod
Ecclesia amodo inperpetuum non dabit inde nisi 60 libras
quando _Scutagium_ per terram evenerit, et ita inperpetuum
sit de predictis libris Ecclesia predicta quieta. T. Rogero
Episcopo Saresberiensi, Gaufrido Cancellario meo et Roberto
de Sigillo et Willelmo de Tancarvilla et Willelmo de Albineio
Pincerna et Radulfo Basset et Gaufrido de Clintona et Willelmo
de Pondelarche. Apud Eilinges in transitu meo.
This is followed by (No. xxii) a grant of Chatteris Abbey to the
church of Ely;[123] and this again is followed, in a register of
Chatteris Abbey,[124] by a remission of 6s 7d Wardpenny hitherto
paid by that abbey. The first and third charters receive singular
confirmation, being thus accounted for in the Pipe-Roll of Henry I:
Et idem Episcopus debet ccxl. li. ut rex clamet eum quietum
de superplus militum Episcopatus, et ut Abbatia de Cateriz sit
quieta de Warpenna (p. 44).
This entry, moreover, connects the _scutagium_ with the system of
knight-service (_superplus militum_).
It is delicious to learn, on comparing the records, that the virtuous
king who made these grants for the weal of his parents' souls and the
remission of his own sins, extorted from the church, for making them,
an equivalent in hard cash.[125]
Again, the (MS.) Cartulary of St Evroul contains a confirmation by
Randulf, Earl of Chester (1121-29) of his predecessor (d. 1120) Earl
Richard's benefaction, 'liberam et quietam ab _escuagio_', etc., etc.
The list of the Abbot of Peterborough's knights (see p. 131) is a
further illustration of knight-service _temp._ Henry I, while the
entry as to Vivian, who was enfeoffed by Abbot Turold: 'servit pro
milite _cum auxilio_' (_Chron. Petrob._, p. 175), must refer to the
somewhat obscure 'auxilium militum' of the period. So also, it would
seem, must the curious charter of Eustace, Count of Boulogne,[126]
in which he speaks of his knights serving: 'sive _in nummis_, sive
in exercitu, sive in guarda', under Henry I. Most important of all,
however, is a passage on which I have lighted since this essay first
appeared. In reading through the letters of Herbert (Losinga), Bishop
of Norwich (d. 1119), I found this appeal to the Bishop of Salisbury,
in the king's absence from England:
In terris meis exiguntur quinquaginta libræ pro placitis, cum
earundem terrarum mei homines nec in responsionem nec in facto
peccaverint.[127] Item _pro militibus sexaginta libræ_ quos [?
quas] tanto difficilius cogor reddere, quanto annis præteritis
mea substantia gravius attenuata est (Ed. Giles, p. 51).
The sum is that to which the Ely contribution is reduced by the above
charter, and the death of the writer in 1119 proves the early date of
the payment.
Indeed, a little consideration will show that payment in lieu of
military service, which was the essential principle of scutage,
could be no new thing. The two forms which this payment might
assume--payment to a substitute, or payment to the crown--both appear
in Domesday as applicable to the fyrd; the former is found in the
'Customs' of Berkshire, the latter in other passages. From the very
commencement of knight service, the principle must have prevailed;
for the 'baron' who had not enfeoffed knights enough to discharge his
_servitium debitum_, must always have hired substitutes to the amount
of the balance. Nor is this a matter of supposition: we know as a
fact, from the _Abingdon Chronicle_ and the _Ely History_, that under
William I knights were so hired.[128] Here it should be noted, as a
suggestive fact, that the 'forty days' of military service, though
bearing no direct proportion either to the week or to the month, do so
to the marc and to the pound. The former represents 4d, and the
latter 6d, for each day of the military service.[129] It may fairly
be assumed that this normal 'scutage' would be based on the estimated
cost of substitutes paid direct. Thus the only change involved would
be that the tenant would make his payments not to substitutes, but to
the crown instead.
There is a valuable entry bearing on this point in the roll of 8 Henry
II (p. 53). We there read:
Et in liberatione vii. militum soldariorum de toto anno quater
xx. et iiii. li. et xviii. s. et viii. d. Et in liberatione
xx. servientium de toto anno xxx. li. et vi. s. et viii. d.
Et in liberatione viii. Arbalist' viii. li. et xvi. sol. Et in
liberatione v. vigilum et i. Portarii vi. li. et xvi. d.
This represents 8d a day to each of the seven knights for a year
of 364 days, which, be it observed, corresponds precisely with the
statements in the _Dialogus_: 'Duo milites bajuli clavium quisque
in die viii. [den.] _ratione militiae_; asserunt enim quod equis
necessariis et armis instructi fore teneantur', etc. (i. 3). And so,
we see, a scutage of two marcs, such as that which was raised for
the expedition of Toulouse (1159), would represent, with singular
accuracy, 8d a day for the forty days of feudal service, or exactly
a knight's pay. Again the pay of the _serviens_, recorded in this
passage, works out at a penny a day for a year of 364 days, which has
an important bearing, we shall find, on the roll of three years later
(11 Henry II). A similar calculation shows that the porter received 2d
a day, and the _vigil_ 1d--the very pay assigned him in the _Dialogus_
(i. 3). There is another similar passage in the roll of 14 Henry II
(p. 124):
Et in liberatione i. militis et ii. Portariorum, et ii.
vigilum de Blancmost' xviii. li. et v. sol. Et in liberatione
xl. servientum de Blancmust' de xxix. septimanis xxxiii. li.
et xvi. s. et viii. d. Et xx. servientibus qui remanserunt
xxiii. septimanas xiii. li. et viii. s. et iiii. d.
Here again the knight's pay works out at 8d a day, while the porters,
the watchmen, and the _servientes_ received 1d. Specially valuable,
however, are the entries (to which no one, I think, has drawn
attention) relating to the small standing guards kept up in the summer
months at 'Walton' and Dover.[130] Eventually the payments to these
guards were made from the central treasury ('exitus de thesauro'), and
are therefore appended, on the rolls, to the list of _combustiones_
where no one would think of looking for them.
On the roll of 10 Henry II we find: 'Liberatio iiii. militum et ii.
servientum de Waletone a festo Ap. Phil' et Jac' usque ad festum S.
Luce xxiiii. li. et xx. d.' This works out at exactly 8d a day for the
_miles_, and 1d for the _serviens_. On the roll of the next year the
five knights at Dover are paid £25 for 150 days' service, or exactly
8d a day each. So too on the roll of the thirteenth year we read:
'Liberatio iiii. militum de Waletone xxiii. li. et ix. s. et iiii. d.
de clxxvi. diebus.... Et ii. servientibus de clxxvi. diebus xxix. sol.
et iiii. d.' Here again the _miles_ gets 8d, the _serviens_ 1d a day.
It is needless to multiply instances, but it may be added that similar
calculations show the sailors of Richard's crusading fleet to have
received 2d and their boatswains 4d a day.
It is, perhaps, possible to trace a complete change of policy in this
matter by the crown. The Conqueror, we may gather from divers hints,
was anxious to push forward the process of sub-infeudation, that as
many knights as possible might be actually available for service. As
the chief danger lay, at first, in the prospect of English revolt
it was clearly his policy to strengthen to the utmost that 'Norman
garrison', as we may term it, which the feudal system enabled him
to quarter on the conquered land.[131] But as the two races slowly
coalesced, the nature of the danger changed: it was no longer a
question of Norman _versus_ Englishman, but of danger to the crown
from war abroad and feudal revolt at home. Thenceforth its policy
would be no longer to encourage personal service, but rather payment
in lieu thereof, which would provide the means of hiring mercenaries,
a more trustworthy and useful force. Clearly the accession of the
Angevin house would, and did, give to this new policy a great impetus.
The first levy to which the rolls bear witness is that of 1156. As
this was only raised from the _church_ fiefs, Henry II was, as yet,
confining himself strictly to the precedent set him, as we know, in
his grandfather's reign. This levy was at the rate of _one pound_ on
the fee, and was made on the old assessment (_servitium debitum_).
I have already shown that the levy in question was not, as alleged, an
innovation. Dr Stubbs writes: 'The peculiar measure of the second
year was the collection of scutage from the knights' fees holding
of ecclesiastical superiors,[132] a measure which met with much
opposition from Archbishop Theobald at the time';[133] and speaking
of William of Newburgh, he suggests that 'possibly in William's
estimation the consent of St Thomas took from the scutage on church
fees its sacrilegious character'.[134] But if the institution was
fully recognized under Henry I, how was it 'sacrilegious'? Theobald's
'opposition' in 1156 can only be inferred from the king's reply
explaining the necessity for the levy,[135] and was clearly directed,
not against the principle, but by way of appeal against the necessity
in that instance. Miss Norgate holds that 'no resentment seems to have
been provoked by the measure', although she sees in it 'the origin of
the great institution of scutage'.[136] Then there is the question of
the object for which the levy was made. Swereford says 'pro exercitu
Walliæ',[137] and this misled, through Madox, Dr Stubbs (who wrote
'the scutage of 1156 was also for the war in Wales',[138]) and
Gneist.[139] The former writer, however, has elsewhere[140] pointed
out that 'its object was to enable Henry to make war on his brother';
and Miss Norgate gives the same explanation.[141] Swereford's error, I
believe, can undoubtedly be traced to an entry on the Pipe-Roll of the
third year (1157) recording the payment by the Abbot of Abbotsbury of
two marcs 'de exercitu Walie'.[142] But this must refer to the
Welsh campaign of that year, not to the foreign trouble of the year
before.[143]
The next levy was 'the scutage of Toulouse' in 1159. This, 'the great
scutage' of Miss Norgate,[144] is, strange as it may seem, on the
Pipe-Roll itself almost uniformly styled not a scutage, but a _donum_.
The explanation given by Swereford is wholly inadequate, and is this:
'Intitulaturque illud scutagium _De Dono_ ea quidem, ut credo, ratione
quod non solum prelati qui tenentur ad servitia militaria sed etiam
alii abbates, de Bello et de Salopesbiria et alii tunc temporis
dederunt auxilium'.[145]
Miss Norgate, adopting this explanation, writes:
The reason doubtless is that they were assessed, as the
historians tell us, and as the roll itself shows, not only
upon those estates from which services of the shield were
explicitly due, but also upon all lands held in chief of the
crown, and all church lands without distinction of tenure; the
basis of assessment in all cases being the knight's fee, in
its secondary sense of a parcel of land worth twenty pounds a
year. Whatever the laity might think of this arrangement,
the indignation of the clergy was bitter and deep. The wrong
inflicted on them by the scutage of 1156 was as nothing
compared with this, which set at nought all ancient precedents
of ecclesiastical immunity, and actually wrung from the church
lands even more than from the lay fiefs.[146]
I am obliged to quote the passage _in extenso_, because, in this case,
the accomplished writer betrays a singular confusion of ideas, and
misrepresents not only the levy, but also the point at issue. The
whole passage is conceived in error, error the more strange because
Miss Norgate enjoyed over her predecessors the advantage of writing
with the printed roll before her. The lay estates were not, as implied
('all lands held in chief of the crown'), in any way exceptionally
assessed: in no case was the basis of assessment the unit alleged by
the writer; and as to the 'church lands', a reference to the roll will
show that all over England there were only eight cases in which those
not owing 'services of the shield' contributed (and that in no way as
an assessment on imaginary knights' fees) to this levy, while in six
out of the eight their contributions were so insignificant that their
collective amount barely exceeded £50.[147]
The true explanation is probably to be found in the fact that only a
portion of the tax was raised by way of scutage. As this great levy
has been wrongly supposed to have consisted of a scutage alone,[148]
and as it played an important part in the development of direct
taxation, I propose to set forth, for the first time, the various
methods by which the money was raised. These were eight in number:
I. (FIXED) A _donum_ of two marcs on the fee from the
under-tenants of the church, raised _by fiefs_ on the old
assessment (_servitium debitum_).
II. (FIXED ?) A _donum_ of (it is said) two marcs on the fee
from the under-tenants of the lay barons, raised partly _by
counties_ and partly _by fiefs_.
III. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from the church tenants-in-chief
themselves, irrespective of their fees.
IV. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from some of the non-feudal
religious houses (tenants _in elemosina_, and not by military
service).
V. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from the towns.
VI. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from the sheriffs.
VII. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from the Jewries.
VIII. (ARBITRARY) A _donum_ from the moneyers.
Of these, the _first_ was strictly regular, being merely a repetition
of the scutage of 1156, at the rate of two marcs instead of twenty
shillings. The _second_ presents some difficulty. Subject to
correction, there are some fifteen cases in which the payment is made
separately by fiefs, and in which the rate is clearly two marcs, while
there are twenty-two in which the _milites_ of the county pay as a
group through the sheriff, and in which, therefore, we cannot actually
test the rate of the levy or the manner of raising it. Swereford's
_ipse dixit_ as to the rate in these latter cases was probably based
on analogy, here our only guide.
With the _third_ and _fourth_ divisions we return to sure ground.
To them I invite particular attention, because it is to them (and
especially to the third) that apply the complaints of the church
chroniclers, and not (as has always, but erroneously, been supposed)
to the perfectly legitimate levy of two marcs on the fee. It is
necessary to emphasize the fact that the matter has been wholly
misunderstood. The bitter complaint of John of Salisbury that
Henry, on this occasion, 'omnibus (contra antiquum morem et debitam
libertatem) indixit ecclesiis ut _pro arbitrio_ ejus satraparum suorum
conferrunt in censum', would have been without meaning had it referred
(as alleged) to the latter levy (or even to the insignificant sums
contributed _ut supra_ by eight foundations); but when we learn that,
over and above this legitimate levy, a far larger sum was arbitrarily
wrung from the church, the truth and justice of the protest are
at once made evident. I here give two tables illustrative of this
exaction. Each is divided into three columns. In the first column
I give the number of the knights due from each bishopric and each
religious house. In the second column I give the marcs due, and paid
on this occasion, on the old assessment (_servitium debitum_). In the
third will be found the exaction complained of, namely, the _dona_
extorted from the spiritual 'barons' themselves.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |_Donum_ of Knights|_Donum_ of Tenant|
|Sees |Knights due | (in marcs) |(in marcs) |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|Winchester | 60 | 120 | 500 |
|Lincoln | 60 | 120 | 500 |
|Worcester | 60 | 120 | 200 |
|Norwich | 40 | 80 | 200 |
|Bath | 20 | 40 | 500 |
|London | 20 | 40 | 200 |
|Exeter | 17-1/2 | 35 | 150 |
|Chester | 15 | 30 | 100 |
|Durham | 10 | 20 | 500 |
|York | 7 | 14 | 500 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|Total | -- | 619 | 3,350 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------
| | |_Donum_ of Knights|_Donum_ of Tenant|
|Religious Houses |Knights due | (in marcs) | (in marcs) |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|Peterborough | 60 | 120 | 100 |
|St Edmund's | 40 | 80 | 200 |
|Glastonbury | 40 | 80 | -- |
|Abingdon | 30 | 60 | 60 |
|Hyde | 20 | 40 | 150 |
|St Augustine's | 15 | 30 | 220 |
|St Alban's | 6 | 12 | 100 |
|Evesham | 5 | 10 | 60 |
|Wilton | 5 | 10 | 20 |
|Ramsey | 4 | 8 | 60 |
|St Benet of Hulme | 3 | 6 | 30 |
|Pershore | 3 | -- | 7-1/2 |
|Chertsey | 3 | 6 | 60 |
|Cerne | 3 | 6 | -- |
|Winchcombe | 2 | 4 | 7-1/2 |
|Middleton | 2 | 4 | -- |
|Sherburne | 2 | -- | 10 |
|Abbotsbury | 1 | 2 | 7-1/2 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
|Total | -- | 482 | 1,092-1/2 |
----------------------------------------------------------------------
We thus obtain a grand total of 1,101 marcs raised from the church
by legitimate scutage, and 4,442-1/2 (or, adding the _dona_ from
non-feudal houses, 4,700) marcs by special imposition.[149] This
distinction at once explains the real extortion of which churchmen
complained;[150] and shows that it had nothing to do with scutage, but
was a special imposition on the church fees from which the lay ones
were exempt.[151] The idea of the impost was not improbably the
adjustment of inequalities in cases where the knight-service was a
quite inadequate assessment; the precedent created was not forgotten,
and it proved in later days a welcome source of revenue.
The discovery of this exaction identifies, it will be seen, in spite
of Swereford's error, the levy accounted for on the roll with the
famous 'scutage of Toulouse'. And if even further proof were needed,
it is found in an incidental allusion which clinches the argument.
Giraldus Cambrensis (iii. 357) refers to Bishop Henry of Winchester
assembling all the priests of his diocese 'tanquam ad auxilium
postulandum (dederat enim paulo ante quingentas marcas regi Henrico
_ad expeditionem Tholosanam_)'. The sum here named is that which he
paid in 1159, as my table shows. Its destination is thus established,
as also, it may be noted, the means by which he was expected to recoup
himself.
As to the scutage on the lay fiefs, the general impression, broadly
speaking, is that Henry replaced his English feudal host by an army of
mercenaries paid from the proceeds of a scutage of two marcs per fee
on all lands held by military service.[152] But is that impression
confirmed by the evidence of the rolls? Without setting forth the
evidence in detail, I may sum it up as amounting to this: that the
grouped payments found under twenty-two counties[153] present, I
think, a total of 1,895 marcs, while those of the fiefs which paid
separately amounted to 666. This gives us a grand total of 2,561
marcs, representing, of course, 1,280 knights. Now although the amount
of knight service due to the crown from its English realm has been, as
we shall see, absurdly exaggerated, the above number, I need scarcely
say, must represent a minority of the knights due from the lay fiefs.
This sets the matter in quite another aspect. In spite of the passage
in Robert de Monte, on which the accepted view is based,[154] the roll
presents proof to the contrary, and indeed the words of Robert show
that he knew so little of the levy in England as to believe that it
was wholly arbitrary. There are, perhaps, indications that the fiefs
which, on this occasion, paid scutage, were largely those in the
king's hands,[155] and if we add to these the escheated honours, of
which the scutage would be paid through the sheriffs, we must conclude
that the great bulk of the tenants who had a choice in the matter
served abroad with their contingents and did not pay scutage.
Before taking leave of 'the great scutage', another point demands
notice. Gervase of Canterbury sets forth its proceeds in terms of
great precision:
_Hoc anno_ rex Henricus scotagium sive scutagium _de Anglia_
accepit, cujus summa fuit centum millia et quater viginti
millia librarum argenti (i. 167).
Quite desperate attempts have been made to reconcile this statement
with the actual sums raised. In his preface to the _Gesta Henrici
Regis_, Dr Stubbs suggests that Gervase included in his total the
scutage of two years later (1161), but adds that, if so, the rolls are
very incomplete. In his _Constitutional History_ he speaks of 'this
[scutage] and a very large accumulation of treasure from other
sources, amounting, according to the contemporary writers, to
£180,000' (i. 457), but admits, in a footnote, that 'the sum is
impossible', and throws out as probable a different explanation. Miss
Norgate writes that 'the proceeds, with those of a similar tax levied
upon Henry's other dominions, amounted to some £180,000'.[156] But
Gervase distinctly states that this sum was raised _from England_. Now
the actual sum raised, _by scutage_, in England (1159) was £2,440 in
all, as I reckon it, while the special clerical impost produced some
£3,130 in addition. Consequently, no ingenuity can save the credit of
Gervase. He was not, after all, worse than his fellows. We shall find
that when mediæval chroniclers endeavour to foist on us these absurd
sums they require much bolder handling than they have ever yet
received.
Pass we now to the _third_ levy, that of 1161. For this the rate was
again _two marcs_ on the fee according to Swereford (followed, of
course, by subsequent writers), though the study of the roll (7 Henry
II) reveals that in many cases, on the lay fiefs at least, the rate
was _one_ marc. Both this and the levy of the following year are most
difficult to deal with in every way. We have seen that an entry on the
roll of 1163 led Swereford to believe that the levy of 1161 was made
for the Toulouse campaign, and Dr Stubbs has made the suggestion that
it might have been raised to defray 'debts' incurred on that
occasion;[157] but the difficulties in the way of accepting this view
seem insuperable.[158]
The _fourth_ levy, which is that of 1162 (8 Henry II), was at the
rate of _one_ marc, and is recorded by Swereford, but not by Dr
Stubbs.[159] Though richer in names than that of 1161, it is even
less useful for our purpose, as the sums entered are most irregular,
perhaps owing to the adoption of a new method of collection.[160]
Neither of these levies affords, in the absence of corroboration,
trustworthy evidence on the _servitium_ of any lay fief.
The _fifth_ levy, on the other hand, in 1165 (11 Henry II), affords
most valuable evidence, although it is ignored by Swereford and by
those who have followed him. It is, however, of a singular character.
The money was raised, we gather from the roll, on two different
systems:
(I) By a _fixed_ payment at the rate of one marc on the fee (old
assessment).
(II) By an _arbitrary_ payment of certain mysterious sums, which prove
to be multiples of the unit 15s 3d. But there is no fixed proportion
to be traced between the amount paid and the number of _servitia_ due.
Numerous instances are found of a single knight's fee being charged
with a sum equivalent to five of these mysterious units. Magnates,
again, are found paying apparently strange sums, which prove on
dissection to represent 50, 100, 200 and even 300 of these units.
The clue to the mystery is found in an entry on the Pipe-Roll of the
following year (12 Henry II), which proves that this unit was the
pecuniary equivalent of a _serviens_, and that the various payers had
'promised' the king so many _servientes_ for the war in Wales.[161]
Such 'promises' were evidently offers, made independently of the
actual service due from the 'promising' party. Following up this clue,
we see that the Abbot of Abingdon must, like the Bishop of Hereford,
have promised 100 'serjeants',[162] that the Abbot of St Alban's must
have done likewise,[163] while the Bishop of London must have promised
150, _in addition_, be it noted, to paying a scutage of a marc on each
knight's fee (20) of his _servitium debitum_.[164] For the rolls of
1162 and 1163 prove that he had duly paid the scutage of the former
year, and that this was a further payment. The varying form of these
entries should be observed, for it was evidently quite immaterial to
the clerks whether they wrote '5 serjeants' or their equivalent--76
shillings and 3 pence.[165] Taking the pay of the _serviens_ at 1d a
day, the unit in question would represent six months' pay (for a year
of 366 days).
But, for our present purpose, we must confine ourselves to the scutage
proper. The passage on which I would specially dwell is the entry
on the roll in which the _custos_ of the archbishopric of Canterbury
'reddit compotum de cxiii. li. de Militibus de Archiepiscopatu de ii.
Exercitibus' (p. 109).[166] In the first place, we have here, surely,
witness to the _two_ Welsh campaigns of this year, which Mr
Eyton adopts, following Mr Bridgeman,[167] but which Miss Norgate
rejects.[168] Secondly, this sum resolves itself, on analysis,
into two constituents of 84-3/4 marcs each. Now the return for the
archbishopric the following year is: 'Archiepiscopus habet iiij^{xx.}
et iiij^{or.} et dimidium et quartam partem feffatos.'[169] Having set
forth this exact corroboration, I will briefly trace the _servitium_
of the See. In 1156 and 1159 it pays no scutage when the other church
fiefs do, but within six months of Theobald's death it pays to the
scutage of 1161 on a _servitium_ of sixty knights, being then in the
hands of the crown. Under Becket, in 1162, it is once more omitted;
but in 1165 it again pays, as we have seen, and now not on sixty
knights but on 84-3/4. In 1168 it contributes, on the same amount, to
the _auxilium_, and in 1172, but the latter year is the first in which
the _recognoscit_ formula is employed, enabling us to determine that,
as in 1161, the _servitium debitum_ was sixty knights.
The typical difference between these sixty knights and the 84-3/4
actually enfeoffed will serve to illustrate the point on which I
insist throughout. Had the fee been held by its tenant, he would
have raised 84-3/4 marcs, paid sixty to the crown, and kept 24-3/4 for
himself.[170] But when a _custos_ held the fief, he could keep
nothing back, and therefore paid over the whole. We have, I think, an
illustration of the same kind in the payment (p. 202, note 76) by the
_custos_ of the Romare fief, 'de noviter feffatis' (_noviter_, be it
observed not yet _de novo_).
Having brought the levies down to 1165, I hope it has now been made
clear that the officials of the exchequer were well aware of the
amount of _servitium debitum_ from every fief, the levies being always
based on the said amount. Swereford, therefore, was quite mistaken in
the inference he drew from the inquest of 1166:[171] indeed, his words
prove that he completely misunderstood the problem.
This was the last levy raised previous to the making of the returns
(_cartae_) in 1166. These returns were followed in 1168 by the first
levy on the new assessment. I have already dealt with the changes
which this new assessment involved, but I would here again insist upon
the fact that the church and the lay fiefs were not dealt with alike,
the latter being assessed wholly _de novo_, while the former retained
their old assessments, while accounting separately, and under protest,
for the fees in excess of their _servitium debitum_. So far as the lay
fiefs were concerned, their _servitia_, congenital with Norman rule,
were now swept away. Here, from the single county of Northumberland,
are three cases in point:
1162 1168
De scutagio Walteri de Bolebec. Walterus de Bolebec redd. comp.
In thesauro v. marcae.[172] de iiii. marcis et dim. de eodem
auxilio.
Idem debet xlviii. s. et v. d. pro
tribus Militibus et ii^{abus.}
terciis partibus
Mil. de Novo feffamento.
De scutagio Stephani de Bulemer. Stephanus de Bulemer redd.
In thesauro v. marcae. comp. de iiii. marcis de eodem
auxilio.
Idem debet xxiii. s. et iiii. d.
de i. milite et dim. et quarta
parte Mil. de Novo feffamento.
De scutagio Radulfi de Wircestria. Radulfus de Wigornio redd. comp.
In thesauro i. marca.[173] de i. marca de eodem auxilio pro
i. milite.
Idem debet xiii. s. de dim. Mil.
et de i. tercia et de i. septima
parte Mil. de Novo feffamento.
The change thus made by the restless king was permanent in its effect,
and thenceforth the only assessment recognized was that based upon the
fees, which, by 1166, had been created de veteri and de novo.[174]
Before leaving the subject of this levy, there is one point on which
I would touch. When we find, as we often do, that the sum paid in 1168
in respect of a fief does not tally with the number of fees recorded
in the _cartae_, we must remember that in the _Liber Niger_ and _Liber
Rubeus_ we have not the original _cartae_, but only transcripts
liable to clerical error. Checking the _cartae_ by these payments, we
constantly find cases in which the number of fees should be slightly
greater than is recorded in the _carta_.[175] I suspect that the
transcriber, in these cases, has omitted entries in the original
_carta_, and this suspicion is strongly confirmed by the fact that
where the original return enables us to test the transcript, we
find in the great _carta_ for the honour of Clare that the original
transcriber has omitted half a fee of William de Hastinges, has left
out altogether the entry 'Reginaldus de Cruce, _dimidium militem_',
and has changed the quarter fee of Geoffrey fitz Piers into half a
fee; while in that of the Bishop of Chichester, Robert de Denton's
half fee is converted into a whole one. The later (Red Book)
transcriber has made a further omission.
Another source of discrepancy may be found in the dangerous
resemblance of formulae. Thus the _carta_ of Ranulf fitz Walter
records three and three-quarter fees duly accounted for. Yet his
payment in 1168 is not £2 10s but £2 4s 5d. The explanation is
that the holding was really three and one-third fees,[176] but
the transcriber read 'iij[^{a.}] pars' (one-third) as 'iij. partes'
(three-quarters).
How easily such errors arose may be seen in the elaborate entries on
Simon de Beauchamp's fief. Here the formula 'decem denarios quando
Rex accipit marcam de milite', correctly reproduced in the Black Book,
becomes 'x. denarius', etc., in the Red Book. The former expression
means '_tenpence_ in the marc' (_i.e._ one-sixteenth of a fee);
whereas the latter is equivalent to '_the tenth penny_ in the marc'
(_i.e._ one-tenth of a fee), and upsets the whole reckoning. The
correct formula is a not uncommon one and should be compared with the
'de xx. solidis viii. denarios' (eightpence in the pound) which
is given as the holding of two knights of the honour of Clare, and
represents the thirtieth of a fee.[177]
Lastly, I think that, on further examination, there are three fiefs of
which the _servitia debita_, though at first sight irregular,[178] may
fairly be brought into line as multiples of the _constabularia_.
That of Bohun, though implied by the _carta_ to be thirty and a half
knights, paid in the fifth and eighth years on exactly thirty; that of
Malet, though similarly given as twenty and one-sixth in the _carta_,
is returned in the _Testa de Nevill_ as exactly twenty;[179] that
of Beauchamp of Hacche, though distinctly given as seventeen in the
_carta_, will be found, on careful collation of the rolls for 7 and 8
Hen. II, to be claimed by the exchequer as 17 + 3, _i.e._ 20.
Here also, perhaps, it may be allowable to glance at the foreign
parallels to fiefs of sixty fees and smaller multiples of five. There
is a charter of Charles the Fair (1322-28) 'qua Alphonsum de Hispania
"Baronem et Ricum Hominem" Navarræ creat; et, ut Baronis et Rici
Hominis statum manu tenere possit, eidem de gratia speciali 60
militias [knight's fees] in regno sua Navarræ concedit modo consueto
tenendos et possidendos',[180] while an edict of earlier date
proclaims: 'De Vasvassore [_i.e._ baron] qui _quinque milites_ habet,
per mortem [? pro morte] ejus, emendetur 60 unciæ auri cocti, et
per plagam [? pro plaga] 30, et si plures habuerit milites, crescat
compositio sicut numerus militum.'[181]
IV. THE TOTAL NUMBER OF KNIGHTS DUE
'Ad hoc solicitius animum direxi ut per regna Angliæ debita Regi
servitia militaria quatinus potui plenissime percunctarer.'[182] So
writes Swereford, who proceeds to explain that neither the famous
Bishop Nigel himself, nor his successor, Bishop Richard, nor William
of Ely (_ut supra_) had left any certain information on the subject;
while he (Swereford) could not accept the common belief that
the Conqueror had created _servitia_ of knights to the amount of
32,000.[183] The cause of his failure is found in the fact that he
confused two different things: (1) the _debita Regi servitia_, which
formed the only assessment of fiefs down to 1166; (2) the assessment
based on the _cartae_ of 1166, which superseded the _debita servitia_,
and is not evidence of their amount.[184] But then, as I have already
explained above, the exchequer official was concerned only with the
actual claims of the crown; for him the original 'service due' had a
merely academic interest.
There are two estimates for the total of which we are in search. One
is 32,000 knights; the other 60,000.
'Stephen Segrave,' Dr Stubbs reminds us, 'the minister of Henry III,
reckoned 32,000 as the number' (which confirms Swereford's
statement); but he himself wisely declines to hazard 'a conjectural
estimate',[185] adding that 'the official computation, on which the
scutage was levied, reckoned in the middle of the thirteenth century
32,000 knights' fees, but the amount of money actually raised by
Henry II on this account, in any single year, was very far from
commensurate'. Gneist repeats this figure, but holds that 'as far
as we may conjecture by reference to later statements, the number of
shields may be fixed at about 30,000'.[186]
On the wondrous estimate of 60,000 I have more to say. Started by
Ordericus,[187] this venerable fable has been handed down by Higden
and others, till in the _Short History of the English People_ it
has attained a world-wide circulation.[188] Dr Stubbs has rightly
dismissed the statement 'as one of the many numerical exaggerations
of the early historians';[189] but neither he nor any other writer
has detected, so far as I know, the peculiar interest of the sum. What
that interest is will be seen at once when I say that Ordericus, who
asserts that the Conqueror had so apportioned the knight-service 'ut
Angliæ regnum lx. millia militum indesinenter haberet' (iv. 7), also
alleges that the number present at the famous Salisbury assembly
(1086) was 60,000. It is very instructive to compare this 'body
whose numbers were handed down by tradition as no less than sixty
thousand',[190] with the 'sixty thousand horsemen'[191]--'ut ferunt
sexaginta millia equitum'--of thirteen years earlier, and with
the number of the Norman invaders, 'commonly given at sixty
thousand',[192] of seven years earlier still. It is Ordericus, too,
who states that the treasure in Normandy at the death of Henry I was
£60,000. His father seems to have left behind him the same sum at
Winchester, for, though the chronicle left the amount in doubt, 'Henry
of Huntingdon,' Mr Freeman observed, with a touch of just sarcasm,
'knew the exact amount of the silver, sixty thousand pounds, one
doubtless for each knight's fee'.[193] He also reminds us, as to the
crusade of William of Aquitaine, that 'Orderic allows only thirty
thousand. In William of Malmesbury they have grown into sixty
thousand. Figures of this kind, whether greater or smaller, are always
multiples of one another'.[194]
Pursuing the subject, we learn from Giraldus that the Conqueror's
annual income was 60,000 marcs.[195] Fantosme speaks of marshalled
knights as
_Meins de_ seisante mile, _e plus de seisante treis,_
and the author of the Anglo-Norman poem on the conquest of Ireland
gives the strength of the Irish host, in 1171, as 60,000 men. Even
'Sir Bevis', if I remember right, slew in the streets of London 60,000
men; and Fitz Stephen asserts that, in Stephen's reign, London was
able to turn out 60,000 foot.[196] It may, also, not be without
significance that 60,000 Moors are said to have been slain at Navas
de Tolosa, and that William of Sicily was said to have bequeathed to
Henry II three distinct sums of 60,000 each.[197]
The fact is that 'sixty thousand' was a favourite phrase for a
great number, and that 'sixty' was used in this sense just as the
Romans[198] had used it in classical times and just as Russian
peasants (I think I have read) use it to this day. The 'twice six
hundred thousand men', who were burning to fight for England,[199] and
the £180,000 (60,000 × 3) of Gervase (1159), are traceable, doubtless,
to the same source.
How strangely different from these wild figures are the sober facts
of the case! The whole of the church fiefs, as we have seen, were
only liable to find 784 knights, a number which, small as it was, just
exceeded the entire knight service of Normandy as returned in 1171. As
to the lay fiefs it is not possible to speak with equal confidence. I
have ventured to fix the approximate _quota_ of 104 (more or less),
of which ninety-two are in favour of my theory: forty-eight fiefs, of
five knights and upwards, remain undetermined.[200] If the average of
knights to a fief were the same in the latter as in the former class,
the total contingents of the lay barons would amount, apparently, to
3,534 knights; but, as the latter one includes such enormous fiefs as
those of Gloucester and of Clare, with such important honours as those
of Peverel and Eye, we must increase our estimate accordingly, and
must also make allowance for fiefs omitted and for those owing less
than five knights (which are comparatively unimportant).
Making, therefore, every allowance, we shall probably be safe in
saying that the whole _servitium debitum_, clerical and lay, of
England can scarcely have exceeded, if indeed it reached, 5,000
knights.
Indefinite though such a result may seem, it is worth obtaining for
the startling contrast which it presents to the 60,000 of Ordericus,
to the 32,000 of Segrave,[201] and to the 30,000 of Gneist. The only
writer, so far as I know, who has approximated, by investigating
for himself, the true facts of the case, is Mr Pearson;[202] but his
calculations, I fear, are vitiated by the unfortunate guess that the
alleged 32,000 fees were really 6,400 of five hides each. It is a
hopeless undertaking to reconcile the facts with the wild figures
of mediæval historians by resorting to the ingenious devices of
apocalyptic interpretation.
V. THE NORMAL KNIGHT'S FEE
Much labour has been vainly spent on attempts to determine the true
area of a knight's fee. The general impression appears to be that
it contained five hides. Mr Pearson, we have seen, based on that
assumption his estimate of 6,400 fees, and other writers have treated
the fee as the recognized equivalent of five hides. The point is of
importance, because if we found that the recognized area of a knight's
fee was five hides, it would give us a link between the under-tenant
(_miles_) and the Anglo-Saxon thegn. But, as Dr Stubbs has recognized,
the assumption cannot be maintained; no fixed number of hides
constituted a knight's fee.
The circumstance of a fee, in many cases consisting of five hides, is
merely, I think, due to the existence of five-hide estates, survivals
from the previous _régime_. We have an excellent instance of such
fees in a very remarkable document, which has hitherto, it would seem,
remained unnoticed. This is a transcript, in Heming's Cartulary, of a
hidated survey of the Gloucestershire Manors belonging to the See of
Worcester. I believe it to be earlier than Domesday itself, in which
case, of course, it would possess a unique interest. Here are the
entries, side by side, relating to the great episcopal Manor of
Westbury (on Trym), Gloucestershire.
CARTULARY DOMESDAY
Ad _uuestbiriam_[203] pertinent Huesberie. Ibi fuerunt et sunt l.
l. hide. xxxv. hidas in dominio hidae.... De hac terra hujus
habe_t_[203] Manerii tenet Turstinus filius Rolf
episcopus, et milites sui habent v. hidas in Austrecliue et
xv. hidas. In icena_t_une v. Gislebertus filius Turold iii.
hidas, In com_t_una v. hidas, hidas et dimidiam jn Contone, et
In b_i_scopes s_t_oke v. hidas. Constantinus v. hidas jn
Icetune.... De eadem terra hujus
Manerii tenet Osbernus Gifard v.
hidae et nullum servitium facit....
Quod homines tenent (valet) ix.
libras.
The three five-hide holdings, we find, figure in both alike, but
Gilbert fitz Thorold's holding of three hides and a half appears in
addition in Domesday. The inference, surely would seem to be that
Gilbert was enfeoffed between the date of the survey recorded in
the Cartulary and the date of the Domesday Survey. If so, the former
survey is, as I have suggested, the earlier; and in that survey we
have the three tenants of five-hide holdings described _eo nomine_ as
the bishop's _milites_.
In the _cartae_ of 1166 we have fees of 5 hides,[204] of 4,[205]
of 6,[206] of 10,[207] of 2-1/2,[208] and even of 2;[209] also of 5
carucates,[210] of 11,[211] and of 14.[212] Cartularies, however, are
richer in evidence of this discrepancy. Thus the six fees of St Albans
contained 40 hides (an average of 6-2/3 hides each), the figures being
5-1/2, 7, 8-1/2, 6, 5-1/2, 7-1/2.[213] So too in the Abingdon Cartulary
(ii. 3) we find four fees containing 19 hides, three containing 14, a
half-fee 4, a fee and a half 13, one fee, 10, 5, 9. On the other hand,
if we take 20 _librates_ as the amount of the fee--which it was already,
as Dr Stubbs observes, in the days of the Conqueror--the _cartae_
confirm that conclusion.[214] We must therefore conclude that the
knight's fee, held by an under-tenant, consisted normally of an estate,
worth £20 a year, and was not based on the 'five hides' of the
Anglo-Saxon system.
VI. THE EARLY EVIDENCE
We will now work upwards from the _cartae_ to the Conquest.
Allusions to early enfeoffment are scattered through the _cartae_
themselves. Henry fitz Gerold begins his return: 'Isti sunt milites
Eudonis Dapiferi', and Eudo, we know, 'came in with the Conqueror'. We
learn from another return (_Lib. Rub._, p. 397) that Henry I had given
William de Albini, 'Pincerna, de feodo quod fuit Corbuchun xv. milites
feffatos'. Now this refers to 'Robertus filius Corbution', a Domesday
tenant in Norfolk. The _Testa_, again, comes to our help. Thus we
learn from Domesday that Osbern the priest _alias_ Osbern the sheriff
(of Lincolnshire) was William de Perci's tenant at Wickenby, co.
Lincoln, but the _Testa_ entry (p. 338_a_) proves that William had
enfeoffed him in that holding by the service of one knight.[215] So
too Count Alan (of Brittany) had enfeoffed his tenant Landri at Welton
in the same county for the service of half a knight (_ibid._, 338_b_),
and we find his son, Alan fitz Landri, tenant there to Count Stephen,
a generation later than Domesday, in the Lindsey Survey. The barony of
Bywell in Northumberland, we read in the _Testa_(p. 392_a_), had been
held by the service of five knights[216] since the days of William
Rufus, who had granted it on that tenure.[217] After this we are not
surprised to learn that the barony of Morpeth had been held 'from the
Conquest' by the service of four knights, and that of Mitford as
long by the service of five (_ibid._, p. 392_b_), or that those of
Calverdon, Morewic, and Diveleston had all been similarly held by
military service 'from the Conquest'. In Herefordshire, again, John
de Monmouth is returned as holding 'feoda xv. militum a conquestu
Anglie'.[218] So too Robert Foliot claims in his _carta_ (1166)
that his predecessors had been enfeoffed 'since the conquest of
England';[219] and William de Colecherche, that his little fief was
'de antiquo tenemento a Conquestu Angliae' (_L.R._, p. 400); Humphrey
de Bohun enumerates the fees 'quibus avus suus feffatus fuit in primo
feffamento quod in Anglia habuit' (_ibid._, p. 242), and refers to his
grandfather's subsequent enfeoffments in the days of William Rufus
(p. 244), while Alexander de Alno similarly speaks of sub-infeudation
'tempore Willelmi Regis' (p. 230). To take one more instance from the
_cartae_, an abbot sets forth his _servicium_ due to Henry, 'sicuti
debuit antiquitus regibus predecessoribus ejus' (p. 224). This brings
us to the instructive case of Ramsey Abbey.
Dr Stubbs refers to a document of the reign of William Rufus as 'proof
that the lands of the house had not yet been divided into knights'
fees'.[220] But he does not mention the striking fact that the special
knight service for which the abbot was to be liable is distinctly
stated to have been that for which his 'predecessors' had been
liable.[221] As this charter is assigned to 1091-1100, the mention of
'predecessors' would seem to carry back this knight service very far
indeed. And we have happily another connecting link which carries
downwards the history of this knight service, as the above-named
charter carries it upwards. This is the entry in the Pipe-Roll of
1129-30:
Abbas de Ramesia reddit compotum de xlviij. li. xj. s. et
vj. d. pro superplus militum qui requirebantur de Abbatia (p.
47).[222]
Further, we have a notable communication to the abbot from Bishop
Nigel of Ely, which must refer to the scutage of 1156 or to that of
1159 (probably the former):
Sciatis quod ubi Ricardus clericus[223] reddidit compotum de
scutagio militum vestrorum ad Scaccarium ego testificatus sum
vos non debere regi plusquam quatuor milites, et per tantum
quieti estis et in rotulo scripti.[224]
Lastly, we have the return in the Black Book (1166):
Homines faciunt iiii. milites in communi in servitium domini
regis, ita quod tota terra abbatiae communicata est cum eis
per hidas ad prædictum servitium faciendum.
Prof Maitland, writing on the Court of the Abbey of Ramsey, in the
thirteenth century, observes that:
The Abbot is bound to provide four knights, and (contrary to
what is thought to have been the common practice) he has not
split up his land into knights' fees so that on every occasion
the same four tenants shall go to the war ... the process by
which the country was carved out into knights' fees seems in
this case to have been arrested at an early stage.[225]
The case of Ramsey was undoubtedly peculiar, but in the third volume
of the Cartulary, now published, we have (pp. 48, 218) fuller versions
of the Abbot's return in 1166. The second of these is specially
noteworthy, and reads like a transcript of the original return.[226]
Here we see separate knights' fees duly entered, with the customary
formula 'debet unum militem'. But the service was certainly provided
in 1166 and afterwards 'per hidas'. Further inquiry, therefore, is
needed; but we have in any case, for Ramsey, a chain of evidence which
should prove of considerable value for the study of this difficult
problem.
The phenomenon, however, for which we have to account is the
appearance from the earliest period to which our information extends
of certain quotas of knight-service, clearly arbitrary in amount, as
due from those bishops and abbots who held by military service. When
and how were these _quotas_ fixed? The answer is given by Matthew
Paris--one of the last quarters in which one would think of
looking--where we read that, in 1070, the Conqueror
episcopatus quoque et abbatias omnes quae baronias tenebant,
et eatenus ab omni servitute seculari libertatem habuerant,
sub servitute statuit militari, inrotulans episcopatus
et abbatias _pro voluntate sua_ quot milites sibi et
successoribus suis hostilitatis tempore voluit a singulis
exhiberi (_Historia Anglorum_, i. 13).
This passage (which perhaps represents the St Albans tradition) is
dismissed by Dr Stubbs as being probably 'a mistaken account of the
effects of the Domesday Survey'.[227]
But the Abingdon Chronicle, quite independently, gives the same
explanation, and traces the _quota_ of knights to the action taken by
the Crown:
Quum jam regis edicto in annalibus annotarentur quot de
episcopiis quotve de abbatiis ad publicam rem tuendam
milites (si forte hinc quid causae propellendae contingeret)
exigerentur, etc.[228]
Moreover, the Ely Chronicle bears the same witness, telling us that
William Rufus, at the commencement of his reign,
_debitum servitium quod pater suus imposuerat_ ab ecclesiis
violenter exigit.[229]
It also tells us that, when undertaking his campaign against Malcolm
(1072), the Conqueror
jusserat tam abbatibus quam episcopis totius Angliae _debita
militiae obsequia_ transmitti;[230]
and it also describes how he fixed the _quota_ of knights due by an
arbitrary act of will.[231] The chronicler, like Matthew Paris, lays
stress upon the facts that (1) the burden was a wholly new one; (2)
its incidence was determined by the royal will alone.[232]
Here, perhaps, we have the clue to the (rare) clerical exemptions from
the burden of military tenure, such as the abbeys of Gloucester and of
Battle.[233]
The beginnings of sub-infeudation consequent on the Conqueror's action
are distinctly described in the cases of Abingdon and Ely, and alluded
to in those of Peterborough[234] and Evesham. At the first of these,
Athelelm
primo quidem stipendariis in hoc utebatur. At his sopitis
incursibus ... abbas mansiones possessionum ecclesiae
pertinentibus inde delegavit, edicto cuique tenore parendi de
suae portionis mansione.[235]
At Ely, the abbot
habuit ex consuetudine, secundum jussum regis, prætaxatum
militiae numerum infra aulam ecclesiae, victum cotidie de manu
celerarii capientem atque stipendia, quod intollerabiliter et
supra modum potuit vexare locum.... Ex hoc compulsus quasdam
terras sanctæ Ædeldredae invasoribus in feudum permisit tenere
... ut in omni expeditione regi observarent, [et] ecclesia
perpetim infatigata permaneret.[236]
For Canterbury we have remarkable evidence, not, it would seem,
generally known. In Domesday, of course, Lanfranc's _milites_ figure
prominently; but the absence of a detailed return in 1166 leaves their
names and services obscure. Now in the Christ Church Domesday there
is a list of the Archbishop's knights,[237] in which are names
corresponding with those of his tenants in 1086. It can, therefore,
be little, if at all, later than the Conqueror's reign. It is drawn
up exactly like a _carta_ of 1166, giving the names of the knights
and the service due from each. Its editor, instead of printing this
important document in full, has, unfortunately, given us six names
only, and--mistaking the familiar 'd[imidium]' and 'q[uarterium]'
of the list for 'd[enarios]' and 'q[uadrans]'--asserts that the
contributions of the knights are 'evidently ... expressed in terms
of the shilling and its fractions',[238] thus missing the essential
point, namely, that they are expressed in terms of knight service.
As Lanfranc had done at Canterbury, as Symeon at Ely, as Walter
at Evesham, as Athelelm at Abingdon, so also did Geoffrey at
Tavistock,[239] and so we cannot doubt, did Wulfstan at Worcester.
The _carta_ of his successor (1166) distinctly implies that before his
death he had carved some thirty-seven fees out of the episcopal fief.
Precisely as at Ely, he found this plan less intolerable than the
standing entertainment of a roistering troop of knights.[240]
The influence of nepotism on sub-infeudation, in the case of
ecclesiastical fiefs, is too important to be passed over. On every
side we find the efforts of prelates and abbots thus to provide for
their relatives opposed and denounced by the bodies over which they
ruled. The Archbishop of York in his _carta_ explains the excessive
number of his knights: 'Antecessores enim nostri, non pro necessitate
servitii, quod debent, sed quia cognatis et servientibus suis
providere volebant, plures quam debebant Regi feodaverunt.' The
Abbot of Ely, we are told by his panegyrist, enfeoffed knights by
compulsion, 'non ex industria aut favore divitum vel propinquorum
affectu'.[241] Abbot Athelelm of Abingdon, says his champion,
enfeoffed knights of necessity;[242] but a less friendly chronicler
asserts that, like Thorold of Peterborough, he brought over from
Normandy his kinsmen, and quartered them on the abbey lands.[243] The
Tavistock charter of Henry I restored to that abbey the lands which
Guimund, its simoniacal abbot (1088-1102), had bestowed on his brother
William. Abbot Walter of Evesham and his successor persisted in
enfeoffing knights 'contradicente capitulo'.[244]
So, during a vacancy at Abbotsbury under Henry I, 'cum Rogerus
Episcopus habuit custodiam Abbatiæ, duas hidas, ad maritandam quandam
neptem suam, dedit N. de M., contradicente conventu Ecclesiæ'.[245]
Henry of Winchester has left us a similar record of the action of his
predecessors at Glastonbury.[246] His narrative is specially valuable
for the light it throws on the power of subsequent revocation, perhaps
in cases where the corporate body had protested at the time against
the grant. Of this we have a striking instance in the grants of Abbot
Æthelwig of Evesham, almost all of which, we read, were revoked by
his successor.[247] Parallel rather to the cases of Middleton and
Abbotsbury (_vide cartas_) would be the action of William Rufus during
the Canterbury vacancy.[248]
It was to guard against the nepotism of the heads of monastic houses
that such a clause as this was occasionally inserted:
Terras censuales non in feudum donet: nec faciat milites nisi
in sacra veste Christi.[249]
And by their conduct in this matter, abbots, in the Norman period,
were largely judged. But this has been a slight digression.
Now that I have shown that in monastic chronicles we have the
complement and corroboration of the words of Matthew Paris, I propose
to quote as a climax to my argument the writ printed below. Startling
as it may read, for its early date, to the holders of the accepted
view, the vigour of its language convinced me, when I found it, that
in it King William speaks; nor was there anything to be gained by
forging a document which admits, by placing on record, the abbey's
full liability.[250]
W. Rex. Anglor[um] Athew' abbati de Euesh[am] sal[u]tem.
Precipio tibi quod submoneas omnes illos qui sub ballia et
i[us]titia s[un]t quatin[us] omnes milites quo mihi debent
p[ar]atos h[abe]ant ante me ad octavas pentecostes ap[ud]
clarendun[am]. Tu etiam illo die ad me venias et illos quinque
milites quos de abb[at]ia tua mihi debes tec[um] paratos
adducas. Teste Eudone dapif[er]o Ap[ud] Wintoniam.[251]
Being addressed to Æthelwig, the writ, of course, must be previous
to his death in 1077, but I think that we can date it, perhaps, with
precision, and that it belongs to the year 1072. In that year,
says the Ely chronicler, the Conqueror, projecting his invasion to
Scotland, 'jusserat tam abbatibus quam episcopis totius Angliae debita
militiae obsequia transmitti', a phrase which applies exactly to the
writ before us. In that year, moreover, the movements of William fit
in fairly with the date for which the feudal levy was here summoned.
We know that he visited Normandy in the spring, and invaded Scotland
in the summer, and he might well summon his baronage to meet him on
June 3rd, on his way from Normandy to Scotland, at so convenient a
point as Clarendon. The writ, again, being witnessed at Winchester,
may well have been issued by the king on his way out or back.
The direction to the abbot to summon similarly all those beneath his
sway who owed military service is probably explained by the special
position he occupied as 'chief ruler of several counties at the
time'.[252] We find him again, two years later (1074), acting as
a military commander. On that occasion the line of the Severn was
guarded against the rebel advance by Bishop Wulfstan, 'cum magna
militari manu, et Ægelwius Eoveshamnensis abbas cum suis, ascitis sibi
in adjutorium Ursone vicecomite Wigorniae et Waltero de Laceio cum
copiis suis, et cetera multitudine plebis'.[253] The number of knights
which constituted the _servitium debitum_ of Evesham was five then
as it was afterwards, and this number, as we now know, had been fixed
_pro voluntate sua_, in 1070, by the Conqueror.
We find allusions to two occasions on which the feudal host was
summoned, as above, by the Conqueror, and by his sons and successors.
William Rufus exacted the full _servitium debitum_ to repress the
revolt at the commencement of his reign.[254] Henry I called out the
host to meet the invasion of his brother Robert.[255] In both these
instances reference is made to the questions of 'service due' that
would naturally arise,[256] and that would keep the _quotas_ of knight
service well to the front. That these _quotas_, however, as I said
(_supra_, p. 205), were matter of memory rather than of record, is
shown by a pair of early disputes.[257]
Let us pass, at this point, to the great survey. I urged in the
earlier portion of this paper that the argument from the silence
of Domesday is of no value. Even independently of direct allusions,
whether to the case of individual holders, or to whole groups such
as the _milites_ of Lanfranc, it can be shown conclusively that the
normal _formulae_ cover unquestionable military tenure, tenure by
knight service.[258]
An excellent instance is afforded in the case of Abingdon Abbey (fol.
258_b_-9_b_), because the _formulae_ are quite normal and make 'no
record of any new duties or services of any kind'.[259] Yet we are
able to identify the tenants named in Domesday, right and left,
with the foreign knights enfeoffed by Athelelm to hold by military
tenure,[260] owing service for their fees 'to Lord as Lord'. There
are some specially convincing cases, such as those of Hubert, who
held five hides in a hamlet of Cumnor,[261] and whose fee is not only
entered in the list of knights:[262] but is recorded to have been
given before Domesday for military service.[263] Another case is
that of William _camerarius_, who held Lea by the service of
one knight;[264] so too with the Bishop of Worcester's Manor of
Westbury-on-Trym, where the _homines_ of Domesday appear as _milites_
in a rather earlier survey.[265]
Again, take the case of Peterborough. The Northamptonshire possessions
of that house are divided by Domesday (fol. 221) into two sections,
of which the latter is headed 'Terra hominum ejusdem ecclesiae', and
represents the sub-infeudated portion, just as the preceding section
contains the _dominium_ of the fief.[266] Here 'Terra hominum ejusdem'
corresponds with the heading 'Terra militum ejus' prefixed to the
knights of the Archbishop of Canterbury (fol. 4). The Peterborough
_homines_ are frequently spoken of as _milites_ (fol. 221_b_,
_passim_), and even where we only find such _formulae_ as
'Anschitillus tenet de abbate' we are able to identify the tenant as
Anschetil de St Medard, one of the foreign knights enfeoffed by Abbot
Turold.[267]
But it is not only on church fiefs that the Domesday under-tenant
proves to be a feudal _miles_. At Swaffham (Cambridgeshire) we read in
Domesday (fol. 196) 'tenet Hugo de Walterio [Gifard]'.[268] Yet in
the earlier record of a _placitum_ on the rights of Ely, we find this
tenant occurring as '_Hugo de bolebec_ miles _Walteri Giffard_', while
in 1166 his descendant and namesake is returned as the chief tenant on
the Giffard fief. The same _placitum_ supplies other illustrations of
the fact.[269] The cases taken from the Percy fief and from the honour
of Britanny afford further confirmation, if needed, of the conclusions
I draw.[270]
It will startle the reader, doubtless, to learn that there is in
existence so curious a document as a list of knights' fees drawn up
in Old English. Headed 'these beth thare Knystene londes', etc., and
terming a knight's fee a 'knystesmetehom', it has been placed by
the Editors of the new _Monasticon_ (ii. 477) among documents of the
Anglo-Saxon era, but belongs, I think (from internal evidence), to
about the same period as the _cartae_ (1166). The original is extant
in a Cartulary now in the British Museum.
VII. THE WORCESTER RELIEF (1095)
It was urged in the earlier part of this paper that Ranulf Flambard
had been assigned a quite unwarrantable share in the development of
feudalism in England. But so little is actually known of what his
measures were that they have hitherto largely remained matter of
inference and conjecture. It may be well, therefore, to call attention
to a record which shows him actually at work, and which illustrates
the character of his exactions by a singularly perfect example.
The remarkable document that I am about to discuss is printed in
Heming's 'Cartulary' (i. 79-80).[271] It is therefore most singular
that it should be unknown to Mr Freeman--to whom it would have been
invaluable for his account of Ranulf's doings--as it occurs in the
midst of a group of documents which he had specially studied for his
_excursus_ on 'the condition of Worcestershire under William'.[272]
It is a writ of William Rufus, addressed to the tenants of the See
of Worcester on the death of Bishop Wulfstan, directing them to pay
a 'relief' in consequence of that death, and specifying the quota
due from each of the tenants named. The date is fortunately beyond
question; for the writ must have been issued very shortly after the
death of Wulfstan (January 18, 1095), and in any case before the
death of Bishop Robert of Hereford (June 26, 1095), who is one of the
tenants addressed in it. As the record is not long, and practically,
as we have seen, unknown, one need not hesitate to reprint it.
W. Rex Anglorum omnibus Francis et Anglis qui francas terras
tenent de episcopatu de Wireceastra, Salutem. Sciatis quia,
mortuo episcopo, honor in manum meam rediit. Nunc volo, ut de
terris vestris tale relevamen mihi detis, sicut per barones
meos disposui. Hugo de Laci xx. libras. Walterus Punher xx.
libras. Gislebertus filius turoldi c. solidos. Rodbertus
episcopus x. libras. Abbas de euesham xxx. libras. Walterus
de Gloecestra xx. libras. Roger filius durandi [quietus per
breve regis][273] x. libras. Winebald de balaon x. libras.
Drogo filius Pontii x. libras. Rodbert filius Sckilin c.
solidos. Rodbert stirmannus lx. solidos. Willelmus de
begebiri xl. solidos. Ricardus & Franca c. solidos. Angotus
xx. solidos. Beraldus xx. solidos. Willelmus de Wic xx.
solidos. Rodbertus filius nigelli c. solidos. Alricus
archidiaconus c. solidos. Ordricus dapifer[274] xl. libras.
Ordricus blaca[275] c. solidos. Colemannus[276] xl. solidos.
Warinus xxx. solidos. Balduuinus xl. solidos. Suegen filius
Azor xx. solidos. Aluredus xxx. solidos. Siuuardus xl.
solidos. Saulfus xv. libras. Algarus xl. solidos. Chippingus
xx. solidos.
Testibus Ranulfo capellano & Eudone dapifero & Ursone de
abetot. Et qui hoc facere noluerit, Urso & bernardus sasiant
et terras et pecunias in manu mea.
The points on which this document throws fresh light are these.
First, and above all, the exaction of reliefs by William Rufus and
his minister, which formed so bitter a grievance at the time, and
to which, consequently, Dr Stubbs and Mr Freeman had devoted special
attention. On this we have here evidence which is at present unique.
It must therefore be studied in some detail.
Broadly speaking, we now learn how 'the analogy of lay fiefs was
applied to the churches with as much minuteness as possible'.[277] One
of the respects in which the church fiefs differed from those of
the lay barons was, that on the one hand they escaped such claims as
reliefs, wardships and 'marriage', while, on the other, their tenants,
of course also escaped payment of such 'aids' as those 'ad filium
militem faciendum' or 'ad filiam maritandam'. In this there was a fair
'give and take'. But Ranulf must have argued that bishops and abbots
who took reliefs from their tenants ought, in like manner, to pay
reliefs to the crown. This they obviously would not do; and, indeed,
even had they been willing, it would have savoured too strongly of
simony. And so he adopted, as our record shows, the unwarrantable
device of extorting the relief from the under-tenants direct. This
was not an enforcement, but a breach, of feudal principles; for an
under-tenant was, obviously, only liable to relief on his succession
to his own fee.[278]
It would be easy to assume that this was the abuse renounced by Henry
I.[279] But _distinguo_. The above abuse was quite distinct from the
practice of annexing to the revenues of the crown, during a vacancy,
the temporalities. This, which was undoubtedly renounced by Henry,
and as undoubtedly resorted to by himself and by his successors
afterwards, was, however distasteful to the church,[280] a logical
deduction from feudal principles, and did not actually wrong any
individual. It could thus be retained when the crown abandoned such
unjust exactions as the Worcester relief, and it afforded an excellent
substitute for wardship, though practically mischievous in the impulse
it gave to the prolongation of vacancies.
There are many other points suggested by the record I am discussing,
but they can only be touched on briefly. It gives us a singularly
early use of the remarkable term 'honour', here employed in its
simplest and strictly accurate sense; the same term was similarly
employed, we have seen, in the case of Abingdon (1097), where we also
find the fief described as reverting to the crown _vacante sede_.[281]
It further alludes to a special assessment by 'barons' deputed for
the purpose; it affords a noteworthy formula for distraint in case of
non-payment; and it gives us, within barely nine years of the great
survey itself, a list of the tenants of the fee, which should prove of
peculiar value.
If the sums entered be added up, their total will amount to exactly
£250. It is tempting to connect this figure with a _servitium debitum_
(_teste episcopo_) of fifty fees at the 'ancient relief' of £5 a fee;
but we are only justified in treating it as one of those round sums
that we find exacted for relief under Henry II, especially as its
items cannot be connected with the actual knights' fees. The appended
analysis will show the relation (where ascertainable) of sums paid to
hides held.
DOMESDAY, 1086 THE RELIEF, 1095
_h._ _v._ _£_ _s._
Roger de Laci 23 2 Hugh de Laci 20 0
Walter Ponther 10 2 Walter Punther 20 0
Gilbert fitz Thorold 7 2 Gilbert fitz Thorold 5 0
Bishop of Hereford 5 0 Bishop Robert [of Hereford] 10 0
Abbot of Evesham 9 0 Abbot of Evesham 30 0
Walter fitz Roger 8 0 Walter de Gloucester 20 0
Durand the sheriff 6 0 Roger fitz Durand 10 0
Winebald de Balaon 10 0
Drogo 10 0 Drogo fitz Ponz 10 0
Schelin 5 0 Robert fitz Schilin 5 0
Robert Stirman 3 0
Anschitil 2 0 Anschitil de Colesbourne 10 0
Roger de Compton 1 0
Eudo 1 3 Eudo 3 0
William de Begeberi 2 0
Richard & Franca 5 0
Ansgot 1 2 Angot 1 0
Berald 1 0
William de Wick 1 0
Robert fitz Nigel 5 0
Ælfric the archdeacon 4 0 Ælfric the archdeacon 5 0
Orderic} 6 1 Orderic the _Dapifer_ 40 0
Orderic} Orderic Black 5 0
Coleman 2 0
Warine 1 10
Baldwin 2 0
Swegen fitz Azor 1 0
Alfred 1 10
Siward 5 0 Siward 2 0
Sawulf 15 0
Ælfar 2 0
Cheping 1 0
-----------------
£250 0
The comparison of these two lists suggests some interesting
conclusions. Roger de Laci, forfeited early in the reign for treason,
had been succeeded by his brother Hugh. 'Punher' supplies us with the
transitional form from the 'Ponther' of Domesday to the 'Puher' of
the reign of Henry I. The identity of the names is thus established.
Walter fitz Roger has already assumed his family surname as Walter
de Gloucester, and his uncle Durand has now been succeeded by a son
Roger, whose existence was unknown to genealogists. The pedigree of
the family in the Norman period has been well traced by Mr A. S. Ellis
in his paper on the Gloucestershire Domesday tenants, but he was of
opinion that Walter de Gloucester was the immediate successor in the
shrievalty of his uncle, Durand, who died without issue. This list, on
the contrary, suggests that the immediate successor of Durand was his
son Roger, and that if, like his father, he held the shrievalty, this
might account for the interlineation remitting, in his case, the sum
due. In this Roger we, surely, have that 'Roger de Gloucester' who was
slain in Normandy in 1106, and whom, without the evidence afforded by
this list, it was not possible to identify.[282]
The chief difficulty that this list presents is its omission of the
principal tenant of the see, Urse d'Abetot. One can only assign it to
the fact of his official position as sheriff enabling him to secure
exemption for himself, and perhaps even for his brother, Robert
'Dispensator'. Their exemption, however accounted for, involved an
arbitrary assessment of all the remaining tenants, irrespective of the
character or of the extent of their tenure. With these remarks I must
leave a document, which is free from anachronism or inconsistency, and
as trustworthy, I think, as it is useful.
It is my hope that this paper may increase the interest in the
forthcoming edition of the _Liber Rubeus_ under the care of Mr Hubert
Hall, and that it may lead to a reconsideration of the problems
presented by the feudal system as it meets us in England. Nor can
I close without reminding the reader that if my researches have
compelled me to differ from an authority so supreme as Dr Stubbs, this
in no way impugns the soundness of his judgment on the _data_ hitherto
known. The original sources have remained so strangely neglected,
that it was not in the power of any writer covering so wide a field
to master the facts and figures which I have now endeavoured to set
forth, and on which alone it is possible to form a conclusion beyond
dispute.
[Footnote 1: Reprinted, with additions, from the _English
Historical Review_.]
[Footnote 2: 'The belief which has come down to us from
Selden, and the antiquarian school, a belief which was
hitherto universally received, that William I divided the
English landed property into military fees, is erroneous, and
results from the dating back of an earlier [? later] condition
of things.'--GNEIST, _Const. Hist._, i. 129.]
[Footnote 3: 'There can be no doubt that the military tenure,
the most prominent feature of historical feudalism, was itself
introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed
in the case of the feudal usages in general.'--STUBBS, _Const.
Hist._, i. 261.]
[Footnote 4: Stubbs, _C.H._, i. 260-1. So too Freeman.]
[Footnote 5: Stubbs, _C.H._, i. 261.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, i. 298.]
[Footnote 7: _Ibid._, i. 298, 301.]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, i. 300.]
[Footnote 9: _Select Charters_, p. 96.]
[Footnote 10: _Norm. Conq._, v. 380.]
[Footnote 11: _C.H._, i. 581.]
[Footnote 12: _N.C._, v. 377; cf. _History of William II_, pp.
335, 337, 'The whole system, a system which logically hangs
together in the most perfect way, was the device of the same
subtle and malignant brain.']
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, p. 374.]
[Footnote 14: 'Si quis baronum meorum, comitum sive aliorum
qui de me tenent, mortuus fuerit, heres suus non _redimet_
terram suam sicut faciebat tempore fratris mei, sed justa et
legitima relevatione _relevabit_ eam.']
[Footnote 15: 'In that charter the military tenures are
taken for granted. What is provided against is their being
perverted, as they had been in the days of Rufus, into engines
of oppression.'--_N.C._, v. 373.]
[Footnote 16: _N.C._, v. 372; _C.H._, i. 261.]
[Footnote 17: _N.C._, v. 373.]
[Footnote 18: Palgrave, as Mr Freeman observes, 'strongly and
clearly brought out the absence of any distinct mention of
military tenures in Domesday'. Dr Stubbs more cautiously
wrote: 'The wording of the Domesday Survey does not imply that
in this respect the new military service differed from the
old.' (_C.H._, i. 262.) Mr Freeman confidently asserts:
'Nothing is more certain than that from one end of Domesday
to the other, there is not a trace of military tenures as they
were afterwards understood.... We hear of nothing in Domesday
which can be called knight-service or military tenure in
the later sense.' (_N.C._, v. 370, 371.) Mr Hunt (_Norman
Britain_) follows the same line, and Gneist, vouching
Palgrave, Stubbs, and Freeman, repeats the argument. (_C.H._,
i. 130.)]
[Footnote 19: 'I spoke to Mr Falconberge to look whether he
could out of Domesday Book give me anything concerning the sea
and the dominion thereof' (1661).]
[Footnote 20: _N.C._, v. 465.]
[Footnote 21: _N.C._, v. 4.]
[Footnote 22: _Ibid._, p. 42.]
[Footnote 23: As so much stress has been laid on the argument
from Domesday, it is desirable further to demonstrate its
worthlessness by referring to the Lindsey Survey (_vide
supra_, p. 149). This survey can only be a few years
previous to 1120, and was therefore made at a time when, _ex
hypothesi_, feudal tenures had been established for some time.
Yet here, also, page after page may be searched in vain for
any mention of 'knights' or 'fees'.]
[Footnote 24: Gneist, _C.H._, i. 132.]
[Footnote 25: Gneist, _C.H._, i. 118.]
[Footnote 26: _Ibid._, i. 156, 133, 124.]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, i. 130.]
[Footnote 28: _Ibid._, i. 156.]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, i. 133.]
[Footnote 30: Stubbs, _C.H._, i. 192. I do not quite
understand the passage that 'it is probable that the complete
following out of the Frank idea [exact proportion of service
to hides] was reserved for Henry II, unless his military
reforms are to be understood, as so many of his other measures
are, as the revival and strengthening of anti-feudal and
pre-feudal custom'. (_Ibid._) The allusion is, clearly, to the
assize of arms; but was that assize based on fixed quantities
of land? Mr Little has discussed the five-hide question in the
_English Historical Review_, xvi. pp. 726-9 (_vide supra_, p.
65).]
[Footnote 31: _Ibid._, i. 262.]
[Footnote 32: _Ibid._, i. 262.]
[Footnote 33: _C.H._, i. 386.]
[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, i. 581.]
[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, i. 264-5.]
[Footnote 36: _Ibid._, i. 432.]
[Footnote 37: 'The growth of the system of knights' fees out
of the older system of hides is traced by Stubbs. The old
service of a man from each five hides of land would go on,
only it would take a new name and a new spirit' (_N.C._, v.
866).]
[Footnote 38: This argument, of course, applies, _mutatis
mutandis_, to a five-hide unit as well.]
[Footnote 39: _C.H._, i. 265.]
[Footnote 40: Henry of Huntingdon (p. 207) speaks of the
Domesday returns by the same name (_cartae_).]
[Footnote 41: _Domesday Book_ occupies a medial position,
being arranged under counties, but within each county, under
fiefs.]
[Footnote 42: Compare the _carta_ of the bishop of Exeter,
_Præcepistis mihi quod mandarem vobis_ non _quod servitia
militum vobis debeam_, etc. Dr Stubbs writes: 'The king issued
a writ to all the tenants-in-chief of the crown, lay and
clerical, directing each of them to send in a cartel or report
of the number of knights' fees for the service of which he was
legally liable.'--_Const. Hist._, i. 584.]
[Footnote 43: The bishop of 'Coventry' expresses it: 'numerum
... eorum si quos in dominio tenemus, et eorum nomina' (p.
263).]
[Footnote 44: These references are to the pages of the
forthcoming edition of the _Liber Rubeus_. It will be observed
that the second three returns are too closely alike for
accidental coincidence; the three Shropshire 'barons' who
made them must have been in some communication. Note here the
remarkable use of the term 'compares'.]
[Footnote 45: Audivi praeceptum vestrum in consulatu
Herefordiae.]
[Footnote 46: Audito praecepto vestro.]
[Footnote 47: Praeceptum vestrum, per totam Angliam
divulgatum, per vicecomitem vestrum Northumberlande ad me,
sicut ad alios, pervenit.]
[Footnote 48: Mandavit nobis ... Vicecomes Stephanus, ex parte
vestra quatinus, etc.]
[Footnote 49: Praecepit dignitas vestra omnibus fidelibus
vestris, clericis et laicis, qui de vobis tenent in capite in
Eboracsira ut mandent, etc.... Quorum ego unus, etc.]
[Footnote 50: It should be scarcely necessary to warn the
reader against confusing the _dominium_, or non-infeudated
portion of the entire fief, with the _dominium_, or demesne
portion, of each Manor upon that fief.]
[Footnote 51: An instance in point is afforded by the Bardolf
barony (_i.e._ fief) _temp._ John: 'Heres Dodon' Bardulf tenet
feoda xxv. militum per totum. Inde xv. milites sunt feoffati
et x. feoda sunt super dominium' (_Testa de Nevill_, p. 19).]
[Footnote 52: (1) Old feoffment, (2) new feoffment, (3)
demesne.]
[Footnote 53: He and his successors are consequently found
paying, time after time, on thirty-five fees.]
[Footnote 54: William de Beauchamp, of Worcestershire, is
virtually a solitary exception. He inserts, _cavendi causa_,
this significant clause: 'De hiis praenominatis non debeo Regi
nisi servitium vii. militum, nec antecessores mei unquam plus
fecerunt, sed quia dominus Rex praecepit michi mandare quot
milites habeo et eorum nomina, ideo mando quod istos [_i.e._
16] habeo fefatos de veteri feffamento; sed non debeo Regi
nisi servitium vii. militum.' But William was a sheriff at the
time, and may have had special information which put him on
his guard.]
[Footnote 55: Compare the case of the Irish bishops six years
later (1172), who sent the king 'litteras suas in modum
cartae extra sigillum pendentes' (Howden). Note also that the
addition of the seal made the return essentially a _carta_.
In Normandy, the tenants by knight-service were only required
(1172) to seal the return (_breve_) of their _servitium
debitum_.]
[Footnote 56: The point is of some importance in its bearing
on the right of the individual to assess himself, which is
held in this case to have been exercised. 'The assessment,'
writes Dr Stubbs, 'of the individual depended very much on
his own report, which the exchequer had little means of
checking.'--_C.H._, i. 585.]
[Footnote 57: By one of those slips so marvellously rare in
his writings Dr Stubbs writes that 'the Bishop of Durham's
service for his demesne land was that of ten knights, but it
was not cut up into fees' (i. 263). What the bishop said was
that he owed no service for his demesne, because there were
already over seventy fees created on his fief, though he only
owed ten.]
[Footnote 58: This is one of the points on which Madox is
completely at sea. He quotes the case of the Bishop of Durham
(1168) as an instance of 'Doubts about the number of knights'
fees' (_Baronia Anglica_, p. 122); and he writes, of the above
uniform formula: 'This uncertainty about the number of
the fees frequently happened in the case of ecclesiastical
persons, Bishops, and Abbots.'--_Exchequer_, i. 647.]
[Footnote 59: _C.H._, i. 264.]
[Footnote 60: See my papers on 'The House of Lords; the
Transition from Tenure to Writ' (_Antiquary_, October and
December 1884, April 1885).]
[Footnote 61: See, for instance, the language used in the
_carta_ of Ralf de Worcester (p. 441): 'Teneo de vobis in
capite de veteri fefamento feodum i. militis, unde debeo vobis
facere servitium i. militis. Et de eodem feodo Jordanus Hairum
debet mihi facere iiii.^{am.} partem servitii,' etc. In Normandy
(1172), the phrase ran: 'quot milites unusquisque baronum
deberet ad servicium regis, et quot haberet ad suum proprium
servicium'.]
[Footnote 62: Sometimes Exeter pays on 15-1/2 (14, 33, Hen.
II), but 17-1/2 (2, 5, 7, 18 Hen. II) is the normal amount.
The explanation of this odd number is found in the _Testa
de Nevill_ (p. 226) where ('Veredictum militum de Rapo de
Arundel') we read: 'Episcopus Exoniensis tenet de Domino Rege
de Capellaria de Boseham vii. feoda militum et dimidium.' The
Bosham estate (as belonging to Osbern) had formed part of the
episcopal fief in Domesday, but (the bishops having founded
a church there) we find it assessed and paying separately as
7-1/2 fees.]
[Footnote 63: I have found a case bearing upon this point and
reported at great length (Thorpe's _Registrum Roffense_, pp.
70 _et seq._). It arose from an attempt of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, in 1253, to distrain the Bishop of Rochester for
the 'auxilium ad filium regis primogenitum militem faciendum'.
The bishop 'posuit se super recordum rotulorum de Scaccario,
per quos rotulos poterit et illa quam rex contra episcopum et
etiam illa quam archiepiscopus contra episcopum movit questio
diffiniri. Didicerat enim episcopus per unum fidelem amicum
quem in scaccario tunc habebat quod nunquam tempore alicujus
regis pro aliquo feodo episcopatus aliquod fuit regi factum
servicium vel datum scutagium.... Unde consulebat quod
audaciter poneret se episcopus super recordum rotulorum de
Scaccario, nichil enim tenet episcopus per baroniam de rege,
sed per puram elemosinam, quod non est dicendum de aliquo
episcopatu Anglie, nec de Archiepiscopatu, nisi dumtaxat de
Karleolen. Cumque cum audacia institisset episcopus, quod
decideretur per rotulos de Scaccario quibus creditur in omnibus
illis sicut sancto evangelio', etc., etc. The barons of the
exchequer examined the rolls, 'a tempore primi conquestus' (?)
and reported: 'nusquam invenerunt episcopum Roffensem solvisse
aut dedisse aliquod servicium regibus temporale'. But the
dispute was not finally decided till 1259. The clue to the
matter is found in the Canterbury 'Domesday Monachorum' (8th
Report Hist. MSS. i. 316), where a list of the archbishop's
knights, perhaps coeval with Domesday (_vide infra_, p. 236),
is headed by 'Episcopus Roffensis' with a _servitium_ of ten
knights to the Primate.]
[Footnote 64: Cerne had to provide 'ten' knights _ad wardam_
at Corfe Castle, or 'two' _ad exercitum_ (_vide_ cartam).]
[Footnote 65: This indeed is proved by an extract quoted by
Madox (_Exchequer_) from the Roll of 22 Hen. II (rot. 10_a_).]
[Footnote 66: The effect of all the changes of assessment we
have traced under Henry II would only be the reduction of this
total to 774.]
[Footnote 67: Roll of 11 Hen. II. (This was, of course, the
son of Henry I by Edith.)]
[Footnote 68 The custos of his fief paid scutage for eighty
knights in 1159, but he speaks 'de meis lx. militibus' in his
_carta_.]
[Footnote 69: The undoubted assessment in 1162. Afterwards it
is found paying on sixty and a fraction.]
[Footnote 70: 'Lx. milites ... habere solebat pater meus'
(_Carta_).]
[Footnote 71: This figure is given in the _Liber Niger_, but
is really derived from his recorded payments.]
[Footnote 72: Tot habuit milites feodatos ... scilicet lx. de
antiquo feodo (_Carta_).]
[Footnote 73: In Yorkshire alone. In all England, many more.]
[Footnote 74: This figure is taken from the payments in 1161
and 1172.]
[Footnote 75: Roll of 11 Hen. II.]
[Footnote 76: _Ibid._ It is impossible, within the compass
of a note, to discuss the two consecutive and most important
entries on the Roll (pp. 37-8), which represent a payment
by the Earl of Chester on 20 fees, 'pro feodo Turoldi
vicecomitis', and by Richard de Camville on 40 fees, 'pro
feodo Willelmi de Romara'. I called attention to the former
entry in the _Academy_ (April 21, 1888), but did not at that
time explain it. Mr R. E. G. Kirk undertook to explain 'its
real meaning' (_Genealogist_, v. 141), which, however, he
completely mistook (_ibid._, July 1891). The two entries, I
think, should be read together as relating to the estates
of the famous Lucy, the common ancestress of the earl and
of William. If so, they may refer to a fief with an original
_servitium_ of 60 knights, of which one-third was in the hands
of the Earl of Chester, and two-thirds in that of his cousin.
Independently of the light they throw on the obscure history
of this divided and contested fief, they are of value for the
unique reference (in this Roll) to 'noviter feffati' (_vide
infra_). The total (including these) for the two fiefs is
66-31/80. There is no return for the earl's Lindsey fief in
1166, but William de Roumare's return acknowledges 57 fees.
If to these we add the 9-1/2 fees which, it says, had formerly
existed in addition, we obtain 66-1/2. This suggests that the one
fief of 1166 represents the two of 1165. It should be added
that the Hampshire fief of William de Roumare is paid for as
20 fees in 1159 and 1162, and was similarly accounted for by
Richard de Camville in both these years.]
[Footnote 77: Roll of 11 Hen. II.]
[Footnote 78: He omitted to send in a _carta_ in 1166; but,
both before and after, he paid on 30 fees.]
[Footnote 79: He twice pays on 30 fees before 1166, in which
year his fief was held by Gerbert de Percy. Subsequently, as
the honour of Poerstoke (Poorstock), it always pays on 30.]
[Footnote 80: This is a very difficult case. Walter's _carta_
might easily be read as implying a _servitium debitum_ of 20
fees, and his fief paid on 29 _de veteri_ and 1-1/2 _de novo_.
But careful scrutiny reveals that the words 'hos iiij^{or.}
milites qui has predictas terras tenent' are preceded by _six_
names. If they refer, either to the four names immediately
preceding, or (which is more probable) to the four knights who
held his lands but rendered him no service, the total of his
_servitium debitum_ would, in either case, be 30.]
[Footnote 81: Roll of 11 Hen. II.]
[Footnote 82: He paid on 25 fees in 1162.]
[Footnote 83: 'Feodum xx. militum de rege de veteri feffamento
quod pater suus tenuit' (_carta_).]
[Footnote 84: He paid on 20 fees in 1161, but the subsequent
assessment of the fief varies considerably.]
[Footnote 85: He paid on 20 fees in 1162 and 1165, and
returned his fees in 1166 as 20 _de veteri_ and 3/4 _de novo_.]
[Footnote 86: The scutages record him as paying always on
15 knights _quos recognoscit_--the formula for _servitium
debitum_.]
[Footnote 87: His payment on 15 fees in 1161 probably
represents his _servitium debitum_. His total enfeoffments
were 23.]
[Footnote 88: Hugh and Stephen de Scalers are the names given
in the _cartae_, but Henry and William de Scalers held the
fiefs at the time.]
[Footnote 89: He paid 10 marcs in 1168, though his _carta_
only records 9-5/6 fees.]
[Footnote 90: A difficult fief to deal with, but almost
certainly the half of an original Reimes fief owing 20 knights
(_vide supra_).]
[Footnote 91: Apparently 15 at first, and 10 later.]
[Footnote 92: _i.e._ the Peverel Honour of Bourne,
Cambridgeshire (held in Domesday by Picot, the Sheriff), not
Bourne, Lincolnshire, held by the Wakes.]
[Footnote 93: He only pays on 5 fees in 1162, and the excess
_de novo_ in his _carta_ is accounted for, he says, by the
necessities of his position.]
[Footnote 94: This is not proved for the latter fief.]
[Footnote 95: Compare with these allusions to a traditional
_servitium debitum_ the significant words of Wace (_Roman de
Rou_):
'Ne ke jamez d'ore en avant,
Ço lor a miz en covenant,
N'ierent de servise requis,
Forz tel ke solt estre al paiz,
E tel come lor ancessor
Soleient fere a lor Seignor,'--
which are the reply to the fears of the barons (_Norm. Conq._,
iii. 298):
'Li servise ki est doblez
Creiment k'il seit en feu tornez,
Et en costume seit tenu
Et par costume seit rendu (lines 11272 _et seq._).']
[Footnote 96: It can be shown that the 'service' in Normandy
was based on precisely the same five-knight unit.]
[Footnote 97: 'The estates of the twenty greatest feodaries in
Domesday Book contain, according to the ordinary computation,
793, 439, 442, 298, 280, 222, 171, 164, 132, 130, 123, 119,
118, 107, 81, 47, 46 and 33 knights' fees.'--Gneist (_Const.
Hist._, i. 334).]
[Footnote 98: _C.H._, i. 289.]
[Footnote 99: For instance, the Abbot of St Edmund's
'quinquaginta milites' are spoken of as 'milites de quatuor
constabiliis' with 'decem miles de quinta constabilia'
(_Memorials of St Edmunds_, Ed. Arnold, i. 269, 271).]
[Footnote 100: Robert fitz Stephen lands with 30 knights,
Maurice de Prendergast with 10, Maurice fitz Gerald with 10,
Strongbow with 200, Raymond the Fat with 10, Henry himself
with either 400 or 500, etc.]
[Footnote 101: See my _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 103.]
[Footnote 102: Lines 11253 _et seq._ The figures, however, are
far too large, and savour of poetic licence.]
[Footnote 103: _N.C._, v. 368.]
[Footnote 104: Meath with a _servitium debitum_ of 100,
Limerick of 60, Cork with two _servitia_ of 30 each.]
[Footnote 105: _N.C._, v. 378.]
[Footnote 106: Gneist, _C.H._, i. 129, 156.]
[Footnote 107: Freeman, _N.C._, v. 372, 371.]
[Footnote 108: Stubbs, _C.H._, i. 261.]
[Footnote 109: Mr Hall informs me that is the name of the
official referred to.]
[Footnote 110: 'Prout rumor ex rotulis ad me devenit.']
[Footnote 111: See p. 221 _infra_.]
[Footnote 112: 'Et nota quod quandocumque assidentur scutagia,
licet eodem anno solvantur, annotantur tamen in annali anni
sequentis' (_Red Book_, ed. Hall, p. 8).]
[Footnote 113: It is just possible that the source of his
error is to be found in a solitary entry on the roll of 1163:
'Advocatus de Betuna reddit compotum de vi. li. xiii. s. iiii.
d. de auxilio exercitus de Tolusa' (p. 9)--which refers to the
levy of 1161.]
[Footnote 114: 'Temporibus enim regis Henrici primi ... nec
inspexi vel audivi fuisse scutagia assisa' (p. 5).]
[Footnote 115: _Vide supra_, p. 118 note.]
[Footnote 116: 'Illud commune verbum in ore singulorum tunc
temporis divulgatum.']
[Footnote 117: See _Red Book of the Exchequer_, pp. 5, 8.]
[Footnote 118: See list of church fiefs.]
[Footnote 119: His _carta_ is corrupt.]
[Footnote 120: 'Abbas Gloucestrie tenet omnes terras in libera
elemosina.'--_Testa_, p. 77.]
[Footnote 121: 'A new impost specially levied (1156) upon some
of the ecclesiastical estates, under the name of _scutage_'
(Norgate's _Angevin Kings_, i. 433). 'The famous scutage, the
acceptance of a money composition for military service, alike
for the old English service of the fyrd' [this, of course, is
a misconception], 'and for the newer military tenures, dates
from this (1159) time' (Freeman's _Norman Conquest_, v. 674).
'The term _scutage_ now (1156) first employed.... As early as
his second year (1156) we find him collecting a scutage, a new
form of taxation' (Stubbs' _Const. Hist._, i. 454, 458, 581,
590).]
[Footnote 122: The phrase 'debet scutagium quando currit' is
of course, a normal one.]
[Footnote 123: 'Teste Gaufrido Cancellario et Willelmo de
Albineio Pincerna et Gaufrido de Clintona et Pagano fil
Johannis. Apud Sanctum Petrum desuper Divam.']
[Footnote 124: Cott. MS. Julius A., i. 6, fo. 74_a_.]
[Footnote 125: These charters have an independent value for
the light they throw, in conjunction with the roll, on the
movements of the king. The roll itself alludes to the occasion
on which the king crossed from Eling--'ex q[uo] rex
mare transivit de Eilling[es]'--and as it is assigned to
Michaelmas, 1130, the entry cannot refer to his departure at
that very date, especially as these charters are not paid for
among the _nova_ proceedings of the year. They must therefore
have been granted at his previous departure (August 1127),
when he must have crossed from Eling and have gone to S.
Pierre sur Dive (and Argentan) in Normandy. Pleas were heard
before him at Eling on this occasion (_Rot. Pip._, pp.
17, 38), and are referred to in a charter of Stephen to
Shaftesbury Abbey.]
[Footnote 126: Printed in _Athenæum_, December 2, 1893.]
[Footnote 127: Cf. _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 105.]
[Footnote 128: 'Abbas locum sibi commissum munita manu militum
secure protegebat; et primo quidem stipendiariis in hoc
utebatur' (_Cart. Abingdon_, ii. 3). 'Unde abbas tristis
recedens conduxit milites', etc. (_Historia Eliensis_, p.
275). So too Bishop Wulfstan is found 'pompam militum secum
ducens qui stipendiis annuis', etc. (W. Malmesb.)]
[Footnote 129: It is singular that in his admirable work, _The
English Village Community_, pp. 38-9, Mr Seebohm connects 'the
normal acreage of the hide of 120 a., and of the virgate of 30
a., with the scutage of 40s per knight's fee', and argues that
'in choosing the acreage of the standard hide and virgate, a
number of acres was probably assumed corresponding with the
monetary system, so that the number of pence in the _scutum_
should correspond with the number of acres assessed to its
payment'. It need hardly be observed that the institution of
scutage was, on the contrary, long posterior to that of a hide
of 120 acres.]
[Footnote 130: Walton was at the mouth of the Orwell and
the Stour, and was thus an exposed port towards
Flanders as Dover was towards France. It is noteworthy that
when the Earl of Leicester did invade England from Flanders a
few years later, it was at 'Walton' that he landed.]
[Footnote 131: Compare Will. Pict.: 'Custodes in castellis
strenuos viros collocavit ex Gallis traductos, quorum fidei
pariter ac virtuti credebat, cum multitudine peditum et
equitum, ipsis opulenta beneficia distribuit,' etc.]
[Footnote 132: Should not this rather be 'from ecclesiastical
tenants-in-chief holding by military service'? For it was
neither collected from knights' fees, nor with reference to
their existing number.]
[Footnote 133: Preface to _Gesta Henrici Regis_, II. xciv.
So too _Const. Hist._, i. 454: 'The practice was, as we learn
from John of Salisbury, opposed by Archbishop Theobald'; and
(i. 577) 'Archbishop Theobald had denounced the scutage of
1156'; and (_Early Plant._, p. 54) 'he made the bishops,
notwithstanding strong objections from Archbishop Theobald,
pay scutage'.]
[Footnote 134: Preface to _Gesta Henrici Regis_, II. xcviii.]
[Footnote 135: 'Honori et utilitati ecclesiae tota mentis
intentione studiosius invigilabit. Verum interim', etc. John
of Salisbury (Ep. cxxviii). Note that 'ecclesiae' is the
church at large, not the See of Canterbury.]
[Footnote 136: _Angevin Kings_, i. 443.]
[Footnote 137: _Red Book_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 138: Preface to _Gesta Henrici Regis_, II. xcv.]
[Footnote 139: _Const. Hist._, i. 454.]
[Footnote 140: _Ibid._, i. 164.]
[Footnote 141: _Angevin Kings_, i. 458. Both writers quote the
passage from John of Salisbury (Ep. xcxviii), on which this
explanation is based.]
[Footnote 142: His _servitium debitum_ was one knight.]
[Footnote 143: The force for the Welsh campaign was raised,
as we learn from Robert de Monte (_alias_ de Torigni), 'by
demanding that every three knights should, instead of serving
in person, equip one of their number', as Dr Stubbs rightly
puts it (_Const. Hist._, i. 589), and not, as he elsewhere
writes (preface to _Gesta Henrici Regis_, II. xciv.), by
requiring every two to add to themselves a third, 'by which
means, if we are to understand it literally, 90,000 knights
would appear from 60,000 knights' fees'. The real number would
probably be under 2,000.]
[Footnote 144: 'This impost, which afterwards came to be known
in English history as the "Great Scutage"' (_Angevin Kings_,
i. 459).]
[Footnote 145: _Liber Rubeus_, p. 6.]
[Footnote 146: _Angevin Kings_, i. 461.]
[Footnote 147: The abbots of Shrewsbury, Thorney, and
Croyland; the abbesses of Barking, Winchester, and Romsey. The
total of their _dona_ amounted to £51 13s 4d.]
[Footnote 148: Not, however, by Dr Stubbs (Preface to _Gesta
Henrici Regis_, II. xciv-xcvi).]
[Footnote 149: Dr Stubbs, independently, reckons the total
payments of the church at £3,700 (_Gesta Henrici Regis_),
which does not differ greatly from the above calculation
(£3,167 6s 8d). ]
[Footnote 150: 'Ille quidem gladius quem in sancte matris
ecclesiae viscera vestra paulo ante manus immerserat cum ad
trajiciendum in Tolosam exercitum tot ipsam marcarum millibus
aporiastis.' Gilbert Foliot (Ep. cxciv).]
[Footnote 151: 'Nec permisit ut ecclesiae saltem proceribus
coaequarentur in hac contributione vel magis exactione
tam indebita quam injusta.' John of Salisbury (Ep. cxlv).
Swereford, though confused in his account of the tax, points
out that levy was made 'non solum super praelatos, verum _tam
super ipsos_, quam super milites suos' (_L.R._, p. 6).]
[Footnote 152: Gneist, for instance, writes: 'The first
general imposition took place in 5 Henry II for the campaign
against Toulouse, with two marcs per fee from all crown
vassals' (_C.H._, i. 212).]
[Footnote 153: Entered as 'Dona militum comitatus', not to
be confused with the 'dona comitatus', a special levy of the
following year (6 Hen. II), raised, it will be found, from the
western counties, from Stafford in the north to Devonshire in
the south.]
[Footnote 154: 'Rex ... nolens vexare agrarios milites ...
sumptis lx. solidis Andegavensium in Normannia de feudo
uniuscujusque loricae et de reliquis omnibus tam in Normannia
quam in Anglia, sive etiam aliis terris suis, secundum hoc
quod ei visum fuit, capitales barones suos cum paucis secum
duxit, solidarios vero milites innumeros' (p. 202, ed.
Howlett).]
[Footnote 155: This was certainly the case with the fiefs
of Simon de Beauchamp and the Earl Ferrers, two of the most
considerable.]
[Footnote 156: _Angevin Kings_, i. 462.]
[Footnote 157: 'A second scutage was raised in the seventh
year, probably for payment of debts incurred for the same war,
the assessment being in this, as in the former case, two marcs
to the knight's fee.' (Preface to _Gesta Henrici Regis_, p.
xcv.)]
[Footnote 158: If it was raised for this purpose, it must have
been levied either (1) from _all_ tenants-in-chief, which it
certainly was not; or (2) from the _same_ contributors as in
1159, which a comparison of the two rolls will at once show
it was not; or (3) from a _new_ set of contributors, which was
also not the case, for the prelates, the Ferrers fief, etc.,
are found contributing as before.]
[Footnote 159: _Const. Hist._, i. 582.]
[Footnote 160: Instead of a fief paying _en bloc_, it seems to
have paid through the sheriffs of the counties in which it was
situate.]
[Footnote 161: "Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi.
libris et v. solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal'"
(p. 84).]
[Footnote 162: 'Abbas de Abendona reddit compotum de lxxvi.
libris et v. solidis de promise sione servientium in Waliam'
(rot. 11 Hen. II, p. 74).]
[Footnote 163: 'Abbas de Sancto Albano reddit compotum de
lxxvi. libris et v. solidis de Exercitu' (_ibid._, p. 19).]
[Footnote 164: 'Episcopus Lond' reddit compotum de xiii.
libris et vi. sol. et viii. den. de Servicio militum.... Idem
reddit compotum de cxiiii. marcis et v. sol. de promissione
servientium Walie' (_ibid._, p. 19).]
[Footnote 165: 'Willelmus de Siffrewast reddit compotum de
lxxvi. sol. et iii. den.... Hugo de Bochelanda reddit compotum
de. v. servientibus' (_ibid._, p. 75). Compare the love of
variety in Domesday, _supra_, pp. 41, 42, 77.]
[Footnote 166: 'Scutagium de ii. exercitibus' in next roll
(rot. 12 Hen. II).]
[Footnote 167: _Itinerary of Henry II_, p. 79 _et seq._
Compare also the payment from the Giffard fief 'de secundo
exercitu' (p. 25).]
[Footnote 168: _Angevin Kings_, ii. 180, note.]
[Footnote 169: _Liber Rubeus_, p. 193.]
[Footnote 170: This was the point on which Abbot Sampson
insisted, against his knights, at St Edmund's. In the case
of Canterbury, the inquest of 1163 would have ascertained the
actual number of the archbishop's knights and their fees.]
[Footnote 171: Ignorasse quidem haec [debita] servitia
militaria Regis ... successores subsequentium argumento non
immerito potuit dubitare: quia cum Rex Henricus ... traderet,
a quolibet sui regni milite marcam unam ... exegit, publico
praecipiens edicto quod quilibet praelatus et baro quot
milites de eo tenerent in capite publicis suis instrumentis
significarent' (_Liber Rubeus_, p. 4).]
[Footnote 172: 'Teneo de vobis ... feodum i. militis, unde
debeo vobis facere servitium i. militis' (_carta_).]
[Footnote 173: 'De hoc predicto feodo debet Regi v. milites'
(_Carta_).]
[Footnote 174: It must always be remembered that, as explained
above, in cases where the requisite number of knights had not
been enfeoffed by 1166, the balance _de dominio_ was added to
those actually created, as _de veteri_ together.]
[Footnote 175: Thus Daniel de Crevec[oe]ur pays on one fee
(_de veteri_) more than his _carta_ records, William de Tracy
on half a fee (_de veteri_), Adam de Port on one, the Earl
of Gloucester on two, the Earl of Warwick on two and a half,
Maurice de Craon on one, the Abbot of Hulme on a quarter of a
fee, William de Albini (Pincerna) on one, Henry de Lacy on one
and a half, William de Vescy on one, Bertram de Bulemer on
a half, and William Paynell on one (these figures are all
subject to correction). The case of William de Vescy is
specially conspicuous, because the nineteen fees enumerated
are distinctly spoken of as twenty.]
[Footnote 176: This brings it into relation with the
_Constabularia_ of which it thus formed just a third.]
[Footnote 177: The same formula is found in Domesday applied
to hidation in East Anglia, where the assessment of Manors is
expressed not in terms of the hide, but in fractions of the
pound. (_Vide supra_, p. 89.)]
[Footnote 178: _Vide supra_, p. 205.]
[Footnote 179: 'Willelmus Malet tenet Cari de Domino Rege et
alias terras suas per servicium viginti militum' (p. 163).]
[Footnote 180: Ducange (1887), ii. 581.]
[Footnote 181: _Ibid._, viii. 255. Ducange indeed asserts that
five knights was the qualification in Normandy for barony,
but the statement is based on a mistaken rendering and is
elsewhere disproved.]
[Footnote 182: _Liber Rubeus_, p. 4.]
[Footnote 183: 'Illud commune verbum in ore singulorum, tunc
temporis divulgatum, fatuum reputans et mirabile, quod in
regni conquisitione Dux Normannorum, Rex Willelmus, servitia
xxxii. militum infeodavit' (_ibid._).]
[Footnote 184: Swereford, it is clear, failed to grasp the
great change of assessment in 1166.]
[Footnote 185: _Const. Hist._, i. 432.]
[Footnote 186; _Ibid._, i. 157. Dr Stubbs rightly rejects Mr
Pearson's conjecture that the number of 32,000 applied to the
hides, and that 'the number of knights' fees, calculated at
five hides each, would be 6,400'.]
[Footnote 187: 'His temporibus militiam Anglici regni Rex
Willelmus conscribi fecit et lx. millia militum invenit, quos
omnes, dum necesse esset, paratos esse praecepit.']
[Footnote 188: 'A whole army was by this means encamped upon
the soil, and the king's summons could at any moment gather
60,000 knights to the royal standard.']
[Footnote 189: _Const. Hist._, i. 264. Compare pp. 16, 17.]
[Footnote 190: Freeman (_Norm. Conq._, iv. 694).]
[Footnote 191: _Ibid._, iv. 562.]
[Footnote 192: _Ibid._, iii. 387. In _Social England_ (i. 373)
we read that 'William is believed to have landed in England
with at least 60,000 men, 50,000 horse and 10,000 foot'. But
on turning to p. 306 of that great effort of co-operative
genius, we learn that only 'some of William's ships carried
horses to the number of from three to eight--as well as men'.
So the number of his ships (396, according to Wace) is as
great a difficulty as the proportions of Noah's Ark.]
[Footnote 193: _William Rufus_, i. 17.]
[Footnote 194: _Ibid._, i. 313.]
[Footnote 195: 'Annui fiscales redditus ... ad sexaginta
millia marcarum summam implebant.']
[Footnote 196: 'Sexaginta millia peditum' (p. 4).]
[Footnote 197: 'Sexaginta millia silinas de frumento,
sexaginta millia de hordeo, sexaginta millia de vino'
(_Richard of Devizes_, ed. Howlett, p. 396).]
[Footnote 198: 'Sexaginta accipitur indefinite de magno
numero. Sexcenti saepe usurpatur pro numero ingenti et
indefinito' (Forcellini, _Totius Latinitatis Lexicon_).]
[Footnote 199: 'Bis sex sibi millia centum' (_Carmen de bello
Hastingensi_).]
[Footnote 200: It must be clearly understood that these
figures cannot be absolutely accurate. Some honours are
omitted, it seems, in the returns from which we have to work,
and for these allowance must be made.]
[Footnote 201: '[1235] Sicut Stephanus Segrave ... asserebat
et affirmabat vetus scutagium ad xxxii. millia scuta
assumabatur et irrotulabatur; et ad tantundem plene et plane
potuit novum scutagium de novis terris assumari' (_Ann.
Monast._, i. 364).]
[Footnote 202: 'Nine thousand for all England would be a
large estimate at any time of the twelfth century' (_Early and
Middle Ages_, i. 375).]
[Footnote 203: The italics represent Anglo-Saxon characters.]
[Footnote 204: _Lib. Rub._, pp. 188, 214, 237, 238, 292.]
[Footnote 205: _Ibid._, pp. 211, 214.]
[Footnote 206: _Ibid._, pp. 214, 292.]
[Footnote 207: _Lib. Rub_., p. 292.]
[Footnote 208: _Ibid._, pp. 200, 210.]
[Footnote 209: _Ibid._, p. 210.]
[Footnote 210: _Ibid._, pp. 390, 444.]
[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, p. 429.]
[Footnote 212: _Ibid._, pp. 431-2.]
[Footnote 213: M. Paris, _Additamenta_, p. 436. This list,
which seems scarcely known, is very valuable for its early
date, being, I think, about contemporaneous with the _cartae_
of 1166.]
[Footnote 214: _L.R._, pp. 229, 245, 356.]
[Footnote 215: 'Et predictus Willelmus dedit predictas
tres carucatas terre Osberto vicecomiti pro servicio unius
militis.']
[Footnote 216: Together with castle-guard of thirty knights at
Newcastle.]
[Footnote 217: 'Post tempus domini Regis Willelmi Ruffi, qui
eos feoffavit.']
[Footnote 218: _Testa_, p. 69.]
[Footnote 219: 'Post Conquestum Angliae' (_Liber Rubeus_, p.
332).]
[Footnote 220: _Const. Hist._, i. 263.]
[Footnote 221: 'Et deinceps tres (milites) mihi habeat _sicut
antecessores sui faciebant_ in septentrionali parte fluminis
Tamesie' (1091-1100).--_Ramsey Cartulary_, i. 234.]
[Footnote 222: Compare the Ely entry (_supra_ p. 213) for
'superplus'.]
[Footnote 223: Could this have been Richard fitz Nigel
himself?]
[Footnote 224: _Ramsey Cartulary_, i. 255. Compare with
this expression 'in rotulo scripti', the Conqueror's
command (_infra_), that the number of knights 'in annalibus
annotarentur'.]
[Footnote 225: Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, p. 50.]
[Footnote 226: It enables us to correct such an entry in the
Black Book as 'Radulfus Maindeherst', by identifying him with
Ralph Mowyn, the tenant at Hurst. It supplies an entry as to
Henry de 'Wichetone' (Whiston) which is omitted in _L.R._,
and entered in _L.N._, with wrong name and wrong holding; and,
better still, it shows that Silvester of Holwell held only 2
hides, not 12, as given in error, both in _L.N._, and _L.R._
The existence of this error in both bears, of course, on their
relation (cf. p. 287, _supra_).]
[Footnote 227: _Const. Hist._, i. 357. Gneist writes that
Matthew's statement 'is for good reasons called in question by
Stubbs' (_C.H._, i. 255, note).]
[Footnote 228: _Cartulary of Abingdon_, ii. 3.]
[Footnote 229: _Historia Eliensis_ (ed. 1848), p. 276.]
[Footnote 230: _Ibid._, p. 274.]
[Footnote 231: 'Praecepit illi (_i.e._ abbati) ex nutu regis
custodiam xl. militum habere in insulam.' _Ibid._, p. 275.
This is the very _servitium debitum_ that appears under Henry
II.]
[Footnote 232: Compare for the initiative of the crown, the
Domesday phrase, 'miles jussu regis', and the statement that
Lanfranc replaced the drengs of his See by knights at the
royal command ('Rex praecepit.')]
[Footnote 233: Madox writes (_Baronia Anglica_, p. 114)
bitterly and unjustly: 'In process of time, several of the
religious found out another piece of art. They insisted that
they held all their land and tenements in frankalmoigne,
and not by knight-service.' In the cases he quotes, 'this
allegation' was perfectly correct, and was recognized as such
by the judges.]
[Footnote 234: Turoldus vero sexaginta et duo hidas terrae de
terra ecclesiae Burgi dedit stipendiariis militibus' (_John of
Peterborough_, ed. Giles).]
[Footnote 235: _Cart. Abingdon_, ii. 3.]
[Footnote 236: _Liber Eliensis_, p. 275.]
[Footnote 237: 'De militibus Archiepiscopis.' 8th Report on
Historical MSS., i. 316.]
[Footnote 238: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 239: A charter of Henry I (_Mon. Ang._, vi. 496)
addressed 'Willelmo Episcopo Exoniensi et Ricardo filio
Baldwini vicecomiti' (see p. 256) contains the clause:
'Prohibeo ne aliquis præter monachos ipsas terras amplius
teneat vel alias aliquas quæ de dominio ecclesie fuerunt,
exceptis illis quas Gaufridus abbas dedit _ad servicium
militare_.' Abbot Geoffrey is said to have died in 1088. A
curious difficulty has been raised about the words in italics.
It is argued in Alford's _Abbots of Tavistock_ (p. 68) that
as, according to Mr Freeman, military tenures did not exist in
Abbot Geoffrey's day, there was perhaps a second abbot of that
name to whom that charter refers. But he is only introduced by
Mr Alford under protest; and we see now that there is no need
for him. Henry's charter being witnessed by Ralph, Archbishop
of Canterbury, William, the King's son, and the Count of
Meulan, at Odiham, belongs, I may observe to 1114-16.]
[Footnote 240: 'Quis stipendii annuis quotidianisque
cibis immane quantum populabantur' (Will. Malmesb., _Gesta
Pontificum_).]
[Footnote 241: _Liber Eliensis_, p. 275.]
[Footnote 242: _Cart. Abingdon_, ii. 3.]
[Footnote 243: _Ibid._, p. 2331: 'misit ... in Normanniam pro
cognatis suis, quibus multas possessiones ecclesiae dedit et
feoffavit, ita ut in anno lxx. de possessionibus ecclesiae eis
conferret.']
[Footnote 244: Cott. MS. Vesp. B. xxiv. f. 8, 'Randulfus
frater abbatis Walterii habet in Withelega iii. hidas de
dominio, etc., etc. ... dono Walterii Abbatis contradicente
capitulo'. This was the 'Rannulfum [_sic_] fratrem ejusdem
Walteri abbatis ... qui cum fratre suo tenebat illud placitum'
(_temp._ Will. I), whom the Bishop of Worcester's knights
challenged to trial by battle (Heming's _Chart. Wig._, ed.
Hearne, p. 82). His holding was represented in 1166 by the
fees of Randulf de Kinwarton and Randulf de Coughton. Other
cases of contested enfeoffment by Abbots Walter and Robert are
those of Hugh Travers and Hugh de Bretfertun.]
[Footnote 245: See the _carta_ of 1166, which explains how
this holding became half a fee.]
[Footnote 246: 'Miles quidam, Odo nomine, dono praedecessoris
mei Sifridi abbatis, ob graciam cusjusdam consobrinae suae,
quam idem Odo conjugem duxerat ... tria maneria de dominio
sibi astrinxerat ... invitis fratribus. Alius quidam ... dono
abbatis ... tamen absque fratrum consensu manerium possidebat'
(_Domerham_, p. 306).]
[Footnote 247: 'De his terris quas, ut diximus, suo tempore
acquisivit, quibusdam bonis hominibus pro magna necessitate et
honore ecclesiae dedit, et inde Deo et sibi fideliter quamdiu
vixit serviebant' (_Chronicon Evesh._, p. 96). His successor,
Walter (1077-86), incited by his own young relatives, 'noluit
homagium a pluribus bonis hominibus quos praedecessor suus
habuerat suscipere eo quod terras omnium, si posset, decrevit
auferre' (_ibid._, p. 98). In the result, 'dicitur quod fere
omnes milites hujus abbatiae haereditavit' (_ibid._, p. 91).]
[Footnote 248: He begged Anselm that 'terras ecclesiae
quas ipse rex, defuncto Lanfranco, suis dederat pro statuto
servicio, illis ipsis haereditario jure tenendas, causa sui
amoris, condonaret' (_Eadmer_).]
[Footnote 249: Foundation charter of Alcester Priory.]
[Footnote 250: Three other documents are found on the same
folio. Of these the first is addressed to Lanfranc, Odo of
Bayeux, Bishop Wulfstan, and Urse d'Abetot, and witnessed by
Bishop Geoffrey (of Coutances) and (like our writ) by Eudo
Dapifer, being also witnessed, like it, at Winchester. It is
noteworthy that it grants Æthelwig the Hundred of Fishborough
'in potestate et _justitia_ sua'.]
[Footnote 251: Cott. MS. Vesp. B. xxvi. f. 15[18].]
[Footnote 252: 'Rex commisit ei curam istarum partium terrae
... ita ut omnium hujus patriae consilia atque judicia fere in
eo penderent' (_Hist. Evesham_).]
[Footnote 253: Florence of Worcester.]
[Footnote 254: 'Cernens itaque rex grande sibi periculum
imminere, debitum servitium ... exigit' (_Liber Eliensis_, p.
276).]
[Footnote 255: 'Rex Henricus contra fratrem suum Robertum,
Normanniae comitem, super se in Anglia cum exercitu venientem,
totius regni sui expeditionem dirigit' (_Cart. Abingdon_, ii.
121).]
[Footnote 256: In the former case, between the crown and
its tenant; in the latter, between the tenant and his
under-tenant.]
[Footnote 257: 'Idem [Godcelinus de Riveria] dicebat se non
debere facere servitium, nisi duorum militum, pro feudo quem
tenebat de ecclesia, et abbas et sui dicebant eum debere
servitium trium militum' (_Cart. Abingdon_, ii. 129). 'Cum a
quodam duos milites ad servicium regis exigerem (tantum enim
inde deberi ab olim a commilitonibus didiceram) ipse toto
conatu obstitit, unius dumtaxat se militis servicio obnoxium
obtestans.'--Henry, Abbot of Glastonbury (_Domerham_, p.
318).]
[Footnote 258: Thus undermining Mr Freeman's argument: 'We
hear of nothing in Domesday which can be called knight-service
or military tenure in the later sense; the old obligations
would remain; the primeval duty of military service, due, not
to a lord as lord, but to the state and to the king as its
head, went on,' etc. (_Norm. Conq._, v. 371).]
[Footnote 259: _Norm. Conq._, v. 865.]
[Footnote 260: _Cartulary of Abingdon_, ii. 3-7.]
[Footnote 261: 'In Winteham tenet Hubertus de Abbate v. hidas
de terra villanorum' (i. 58_b_).]
[Footnote 262: 'Hubertus i. militem pro v. hidis in Witham'
(p. 4).]
[Footnote 263: 'In Wichtham de terra villanorum curiae
Cumenore obsequi solitorum, illo ab abbate cuidam militi
nomine Huberto v. hidarum portio distributa est' (p. 7).]
[Footnote 264: See _Cart. Ab._, ii. 138. Cf. _Domesday_, i.
58_b_: 'Willelmus tenet de abbate Leie.']
[Footnote 265: See p. 231.]
[Footnote 266: This distinction, it will be found, is
preserved in Henry's Charter of Liberties (1101): 'nec ...
aliquid accipiam [1] de dominico ecclesiae vel [2] de hominibus
ejus'.]
[Footnote 267: See my paper on 'The Knights of Peterborough',
_supra_, p. 131.]
[Footnote 268: In the transcript of the original return it is:
'habet hugo de bolebech ... de waltero giffard'.]
[Footnote 269: _Inquisitio Eliensis_ (_O._ 2. 1), f. 210, _et
seq._ (see below, page 349).]
[Footnote 270: See p. 166.]
[Footnote 271: Hemingi _Chartularium_ (ed. Hearne), 1723.]
[Footnote 272: _Norman Conquest_, vol. v.]
[Footnote 273: Interlineation.]
[Footnote 274: _Dapifer_ to Bishop Wulfstan.]
[Footnote 275: He witnessed, as 'Ordric Niger', the
_conventio_ between Bishop Wulfstan and Abbot Walter of
Evesham, and was perhaps Bishop Wulfstan's reeve (Heming, p.
420).]
[Footnote 276: Probably Bishop Wulfstan's chancellor.]
[Footnote 277: Although, from his ignorance of this document,
Dr Stubbs was not aware of Ranulf's _modus operandi_, its
evidence affords a fresh illustration of his unfailing
insight, and of his perfect grasp of the problem even in the
absence of proof. 'The analogy', he writes, 'of lay fiefs
was applied to the churches with as much minuteness as
possible.... Ranulf Flambard saw no other difference between
an ecclesiastical and a lay fief than the superior facilities
which the first gave for extortion.... The church was open to
these claims because she furnished no opportunity for reliefs,
wardships, marriage, escheats, or forfeiture' (_Const. Hist._,
pp. 298-300).]
[Footnote 278: It has been urged to me that relief on _mutatio
domini_ was a recognized practice, but I cannot find proof of
it in English feudalism.]
[Footnote 279: 'Nec mortuo archiepiscopo, sive episcopo,
sive abbate, aliquid accipiam de dominico ecclesiae vel de
hominibus ejus donec successor in eam ingrediatur.']
[Footnote 280: There is a very important allusion to it, as
introduced under Rufus, in the _Abingdon Cartulary_, ii. 42:
'Eo tempore [1097] infanda usurpata est in Anglia consuetudo,
ut si qua prelatorum persona ecclesiarum vita decederet mox
honor ecclesiasticus fisco deputaretur regis.']
[Footnote 281: Compare the words of the chronicle on the
king claiming to be heir of each man, lay or clerk, with the
expression 'honor in manum meam rediit'.]
[Footnote 282: 'Rogerium de Glocestra, probatum militem, in
obsessione Falesiae arcubalistae jactu in capite percussum'
(_William of Malmesbury_, ii. 475).]
PART II
HISTORICAL STUDIES
NORMANS UNDER EDWARD THE CONFESSOR
It is probable that in spite of all the efforts of that school which
found in Mr Freeman its ablest and most ardent leader, the 'fatal
habit', as he termed it at the outset of his _magnum opus_ 'of
beginning the study of English history with the Norman Conquest
itself', will continue, in practice, to prevail among those who have
a choice in the matter. It was characteristic of the late Professor
to assign the tendency he deplored to 'a confused and unhappy
nomenclature', for to him names, as I have elsewhere shown,[1] were
always of more importance than they are to the world at large. More to
the point is the explanation given by Mr Grant Allen, who attributes
to the unfamiliar look of Anglo-Saxon appellatives the lack of
interest shown in those who bore them. And yet there must be, surely,
a deeper cause than this, an instinctive feeling that in England our
consecutive political history does, in a sense, begin with the Norman
Conquest. On the one hand it gave us, suddenly, a strong, purposeful
monarchy; on the other it brought us men ready to record history, and
to give us--treason though it be to say so--something better than the
arid entries in our jejune native chronicle. We thus exchange aimless
struggles, told in an uninviting fashion, for a great issue and a
definite policy, on which we have at our disposal materials deserving
of study. From the moment of the Conqueror's landing we trace a
continuous history, and one that we can really work at in the light
of chronicles and records. I begin these studies, therefore, with the
Conquest, or rather with the coming of the Normans. For, as Mr Freeman
rightly insisted, it is with the reign of Edward the Confessor that
'the Norman Conquest really begins':[2] it was 'his accession' that
marked, in its results, 'the first stage of the Conquest itself'.[3]
As he, elsewhere, justly observed of Edward:
Normandy was ever the land of his affection.... His heart was
French. His delight was to surround himself with companions
who came from the beloved land, and who spoke the beloved
tongue, to enrich them with English estates, to invest them
with the highest offices of the English kingdom.... His real
affections were lavished on the Norman priests and gentlemen
who flocked to his court as to the land of promise. These
strangers were placed in important offices about the royal
person, and before long they were set to rule as Earls and
Bishops over the already half conquered soil of England....
These were again only the first instalment of the larger gang
who were to win for themselves a more lasting settlement four
and twenty years later. In all this the seeds of the Conquest
were sowing, or rather ... it is now that the Conquest
actually begins. The reign of Edward is a period of struggle
between natives and foreigners for dominion in England.[4]
One has, it is true, always to remember that if Edward, on his
mother's side, was a Norman, so was Harold, as his name reminds us, on
his mother's side, a Dane. Nor is it without significance that, on the
exile of his house (1051), he fled to the Scandinavian settlers on
the Irish coast, and found, no doubt, among them those who shared his
almost piratical return in 1052.[5] The late Professor's bias against
all that was 'French', together with his love for the 'kindred' lands
of Germany and Scandinavia, led him, perhaps, to obscure the fact that
England was a prey which the Dane was as eager to grasp as the Norman.
But this in no way impugns the truth of his view that 'the Norman
tendencies of Edward' paved the way for the coming of William. Nor can
we hesitate to begin the study of the Norman Conquest with the coming
of those, its true forerunners--
'Ke Ewart i aveit menéz
Et granz chastels è fieux dunez,'
and with whom may be said to have begun the story of Feudal England.
Professor Burrows is entitled to the credit of setting forth the
theory, in his little book upon the Cinque Ports,[6] that Edward the
Confessor 'had evidently intended to make the little group of Sussex
towns, the "New Burgh" [? afterwards Hastings], Winchelsea, and Rye, a
strong link of communication between England and Normandy', by placing
them under the control of Fécamp Abbey. He holds, indeed, that Godwine
and Harold had contrived to thwart this intention in the case of the
latter; but this, as I shall show in my paper on the Cinque Ports,
arises from a misapprehension. This theory I propose to develop by
adding the case of Steyning, Edward's grant of which to Fécamp is well
known, and has been discussed by Mr Freeman. It might not, possibly,
occur to any one that Steyning, like Arundel, was at that time a port.
But in a very curious record of 1103, narrating the agreement made
between the Abbot and De Braose, the Lord of Bramber, it is mentioned
that ships, in the days of the Confessor, used to come up to the
'portus S. Cuthmanni' [the patron saint of Steyning], but had been
lately impeded by a bridge that had been erected at Bramber. Here
then was another Sussex port placed in Norman hands. Yet this does not
exhaust the list. Mr Freeman seems to have strangely overlooked the
fact that the great benefice of Bosham, valued under the Confessor
at £300 a year, had been conferred by Edward on his Norman chaplain,
Osbern, afterwards (1073) Bishop of Exeter, whose brother, in the
words of the Regius Professor, was the 'Duke's earliest and dearest
friend', and who, of course, was of kin both to William and to
Edward. Now this Bosham, with Thorney Island, commanded a third Sussex
harbour, Chichester haven.[7]
But at London itself also we find the Normans favoured. The very
interesting charter of Henry II, granted by him, as Duke of the
Normans, in 1150 or 1151, to the citizens of Rouen, confirms them in
possession of their port at Dowgate, as they had held it from the days
of Edward the Confessor.[8] Here then we have evidence--which seems
to have eluded the research of our historians, both general and
local--that, even before the Conquest, the citizens of Rouen had a
haven of their own at the mouth of the Walbrook, for which they were
probably indebted to the Norman proclivities of the Confessor.
The building of 'Richard's Castle' plays a most important part in
Mr Freeman's narrative of the doings of the Normans under Edward the
Confessor. We hear of its building, according to him, in September
1051:
Just at this moment another instance of the insolence and
violence of the foreigners in another part of the kingdom
served to stir up men's minds to the highest pitch. Among the
Frenchmen who had flocked to the land of promise was one named
Richard the son of Scrob, who had received a grant of lands in
Herefordshire. He and his son Osbern had there built a castle
on a spot which, by a singularly lasting tradition, preserves
to this day the memory of himself and his building. The
fortress itself has vanished, but its site is still to be
marked, and the name of Richard's castle, still borne by the
parish in which it stood, is an abiding witness of the deep
impression which its erection made on the minds of the men of
those times.... Here then was another wrong, a wrong perhaps
hardly second to the wrong which had been done at Dover. Alike
in Kent and Herefordshire, men had felt the sort of treatment
which they were to expect if the King's foreign favourites
were to be any longer tolerated.[9]
Accordingly, Godwine, Mr Freeman wrote, demanded (September 8,
1051) 'the surrender of Eustace and his men and of the Frenchmen of
Richard's Castle'. In a footnote to this statement, he explained that
'"the castle" [of the Chronicle] undoubtedly means Richard's
Castle, as it must mean in the entry of the next year in the same
Chronicle'.[10] Of the entry in question (1052) he wrote: '"The
castle" is doubtless Richard's Castle.... Here again the expressions
witness to the deep feeling awakened by the building of this
castle.'[11] So, too, in a special appendix we read:
A speaking witness to the impression which had been made
on men's minds by the building of this particular Richard's
Castle, probably the first of its class in England, is given
by its being spoken of distinctively as 'the castle' even
by the Worcester chronicler (1052; see p. 309), who had not
spoken of its building in his earlier narrative.[12]
We have, thus far, a consistent narrative. There was in Herefordshire
one castle, built by Richard and named after him. It had been the
cause of oppression and ravage, and its surrender, as such, had been
demanded by Godwine in 1051. A year later (September 1052) Godwine
triumphs; 'it was needful to punish the authors of all the evils that
had happened' (p. 333); and 'all the Frenchmen' who had caused them
were at last outlawed. But now comes the difficulty, as Mr Freeman
pointed out:
The sentence did not extend to all the men of Norman birth or
of French speech who were settled in the country. It was meant
to strike none but actual offenders. By an exception capable
of indefinite and dangerous extension, those were excepted
'whom the King liked, and who were true to him and all his
folk' (ii. 334).... We have a list of those who were thus
excepted, which contains some names which we are surprised to
find there. The exception was to apply to those only who had
been true to the king and his people. Yet among the Normans
who remained we find Richard, the son of Scrob, and among
those who returned we find his son Osbern. These two men were
among the chief authors of all evil (ii. 344).
That is to say, the Lord of Richard's castle, on whose surrender and
punishment Godwine had specially insisted, was specially exempted, as
guiltless, when Godwine returned to power.[13]
In me, at least, this discrepancy aroused grave suspicion, and I
turned to see what foundation there was for identifying the offending
garrison of 1051 with that of Richard's castle. I at once discovered
there was none whatever.
We have here, in short, one of those cases, characteristic, as I
think, of the late Professor's work, in which he first formed an idea,
and then, under its spell, fitted the facts to it without question.
The view, for instance, of the unique position of Richard's castle as
'_the_ castle' at the time is at once rendered untenable by the fact
that, on the return of Godwine, Normans fled 'some west to Pentecostes
castle, some north to Robert's castle', in the words of the
Chronicle.[14] Moreover, the former belonged to Osbern, 'whose
surname was Pentecost' (_cognomento Pentecost_), who, as we learn from
Florence, was forced to surrender it and leave the country, as was
also the fate of another castellan, his comrade Hugh.[15]
It is important to observe the clear distinction between Richard, son
of Scrob, of Richard's castle, and Osbern Pentecost, of Pentecost's
castle, of whom the former was allowed to remain, while the latter was
exiled. But it is another peculiarity of Mr Freeman's work that he
was apt to confuse different individuals bearing the same name.[16]
In this instance, he boldly assumed that 'Pentecost, as we gather
from Florence [?] ... is the same as Osbern, the son of Richard of
Richard's castle, of whom we have already heard so much' (ii. 329),
although the latter, a well-known man, is always distinguished as a
son of his father, and never as Pentecost. And he further assumes that
'Pentecost's castle' was identical with Richard's castle, 'the first
cause of so much evil' (_ibid._). These identifications led him into
further difficulty, because Osbern, the son of Richard, is found
afterwards holding 'both lands and offices in Herefordshire' (ii.
345). To account for this, he further assumes as 'certain that Osbern
afterwards returned' (_ibid._). This assumption led him on to suggest
that others also returned from exile, and that 'their restoration was
owing to special entreaties of the King after the death of Godwine'
(ii. 346). The whole of this history is sheer assumption, based on
confusion alone.
Now let us clear our minds of this confusion, and keep the two
castellans and their respective castles apart. On the one hand,
we have Richard, the son of Scrob, who was left undisturbed at his
castle, and was succeeded there by his son Osbern;[17] on the other
hand, we have Osbern, 'whose surname was Pentecost', and who had to
surrender his castle, to which the guilty Normans had fled, and to go
into exile. Can we identify that castle? I would venture to suggest
that it was no other than that of Ewyas Harold in the south-west
corner of Herefordshire, of which Domesday tells us that Earl William
had _re_-fortified it ('hoc castellum refirmaverat'), implying that it
had existed, and been dismantled before the Conquest. It heads, in the
great survey, the possessions of Alfred of Marlborough, and although
its holder T.R.E. is not mentioned, we read of the two Manors which
follow it: 'Hæc duo maneria tenuit Osbernus avunculus Alveredi T.R.E.
quando Goduinus et Heraldus erant exulati' (i. 186). Mr Freeman, of
course, assumed that this Osbern was identical with Osbern, the son
of Richard, the Domesday tenant-in-chief. This assumption is not only
baseless, but also most improbable: for Alfred was old enough to be
father-in-law to Thurstan (Mortimer), a Domesday tenant, and would
scarcely therefore be young enough to be nephew to another Domesday
tenant-in-chief. I would suggest that his uncle was that Osbern
'Pentecost' who had to surrender his castle and flee on the return
of Godwine and Harold. This would exactly fit in with the Domesday
statement, as also with the dismantling of Ewyas Castle.[18]
Ewyas Harold fits in also with the chronicle's mention of the Normans
fleeing 'west' to Pentecost's castle.
We have now seen that Richard's castle did not stand alone, and that
there is nothing to identify it with that Herefordshire castle ('ænne
castel') of which the garrison had committed outrages in 1051, and
which is far more likely, so far as our evidence goes, to have been
'Pentecost's Castle'. Mr Freeman rightly called attention to 'the firm
root which the Normans had taken in Herefordshire before 1051, which
looks very much as if they had been specially favoured in these parts'
(ii. 562); and he argued from this that Earl Ralf had probably
ruled the shire between 1046 and 1050. The Earl would naturally
have introduced the foreign system of castles, as he did the foreign
fashion of fighting on horseback. Indeed, speaking of the capture of
Hereford in 1055, Mr Freeman wrote:
It is an obvious conjecture that the fortress destroyed by
Gruffyd was a Norman castle raised by Ralph. A chief who
was so anxious to make his people conform to Norman ways of
fighting would hardly lag behind his neighbour at Richard's
castle. He would be among the first at once to provide himself
with a dwelling-place and his capital with a defence according
to the latest continental patterns (ii. 391).
But if this is so, he would have built it while he ruled the shire (as
Mr Freeman believed he probably did) from 1046 to 1050, and would,
in any case, have done so on taking up its government in 1051.[19]
Consequently he would have had a castle and garrison at Hereford in
1052. But Mr Freeman, describing Gruffyd's raid in that year into
Herefordshire, and finding a castle mentioned, assumed that it could
only be Richard's castle,[20] although, a few lines before, he had
admitted the existence of other castles in the shire.[21] Even in 1067
he would have liked to hold that Richard's castle was the only one
in Herefordshire, but the words of the chronicle were too clear for
him.[22]
I have endeavoured to make clear my meaning, namely, that Mr Freeman's
view that 'Richard's castle' stood alone as '_the_ castle', and that
Richard and his garrison were the special offenders under Edward the
Confessor, is not only destitute of all foundations, but at variance
with the facts of the case. When we read of Herefordshire (1067) that
The Norman colony, planted in that region by Eadward and
so strangely tolerated by Harold, was still doing its work.
Osbern had been sheriff under Edward, even when Harold was
Earl of the shire, and his father Richard, the old offender,
still lived (iv. 64)--
we must remember that the conduct of Harold was only strange if
Richard, as Mr Freeman maintained, was 'the old offender'. If,
as Florence distinctly tells us, he was, on the contrary, void of
offence, Harold's conduct was in no way strange.[23]
Let us now turn from the Herefordshire colony, planted, I think, not
so much by King Edward as by his Earl Ralph, just as Earl William
(Fitz Osbern) planted a fresh one after the Conquest.
Among the Normans allowed to remain, on the triumph of Godwine's
party in 1052, Florence mentions 'Ælfredum regis stratorem'. On him Mr
Freeman thus comments:
Several Ælfreds occur in Domesday as great landowners, Ælfred
of Marlborough (Osbern's nephew) and Ælfred of Spain, but it
is not easy to identify their possessions with any holder of
the name in Edward's time. The names Ælfred and Edward and the
female name Eadgyth seem to have been the only English names
adopted by the Normans. The two former would naturally be
given to godsons or dependants of the two Althelings while in
Normandy [_i.e._ after 1013].[24]
An appendix, in the first volume, devoted to Ælfred the giant--who
appears in Normandy, _circ._ 1030--claims that Ælfred is a name so
purely English that the presumption in favour of the English birth of
any one bearing it 'in this generation is extremely strong',[25]
and that it was only adopted by 'a later generation of Normans'. Mr
Freeman seems to have been unaware that in Britanny the name of
Alfred enjoyed peculiar favour. I find it there as early as the
ninth century,[26] while I have noted in a single cartulary seventeen
examples between 1000 and 1150. Among these are 'Alfridus frater
Jutheli' (_ante_ 1008) and Juthel, son of Alfred (1037). Now, at the
Conquest, 'Judhael, who from his chief seat took the name of Judhael
of Totnes, became the owner', in Mr Freeman's words, 'of a vast estate
in Devonshire, and extended his possessions into the proper Cornwall
also'. But we know from charters that this Judhael was the son of an
Alfred, and was succeeded by another Alfred, who joined Baldwin of
Redvers at Exeter in 1136.[27] In the same county, as Mr Freeman
reminds us, we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'.
In all this I am working up to the suggestion that the well-known
Alfred of Lincoln was not, as Mr Freeman holds, an Englishman,[28] but
a Breton. We have not only the overwhelming presumption against any
considerable tenant-in-chief being of English origin, but the fact
that his lands were new grants. When we add to this fact that his
heir (whether son or brother) bore the distinctively Breton name of
Alan,[29] we may safely conclude that Alfred was not only a foreigner
but a Breton. But the strange thing is that we do not stop there;
we have a Jool (or Johol) of Lincoln, who died in 1051[30] after
bestowing on Ramsey Abbey its Lincolnshire fief.[31] Thus we have an
Alfred and a Juhel 'of Lincoln', as we have an Alfred and a Juhel
'of Totnes'; and in Juhel of Lincoln we must have a Breton settled in
England under the Confessor.
The name of 'Lincoln' leads me to another interesting discovery. 'Both
Alfred of Lincoln and the sheriff Thorold,' Mr Freeman wrote, 'were
doubtless Englishmen.'[32] And speaking of Abbot Turold's accession
in 1070, he observed that Turold was 'a form of the Danish Thorold, a
name still [1070] familiar in that part of England, one which had been
borne by an English sheriff'.[33]
Now this Thorold (_Turoldus_) has been the subject of much speculation
by Mr Stapleton, Mr Freeman,[34] etc., in connection with William
Malet and the mysterious Countess Lucy, but the facts about him are
of the scantiest, nor, I believe, has any one succeeded in finding him
actually mentioned in the Conqueror's reign, though he is referred to
in Domesday. This, however, I have now done, lighting upon him in a
passage of considerable interest _per se_. In the 'De miraculis sancti
Eadmundi' of Herman we read that when Herfast, Bishop of Thetford,
visited Baldwin, Abbot of St Edmund's, to be cured of an injury to his
eye, the Abbot induced him to renounce his claim to jurisdiction over
the Abbey:
In sacri monasterii vestiario, præsentibus ejusdem loci
majoris ætatis fratribus, sed etiam accitis illuc ab abbate
quibusdam regis primoribus, qui dictante justitia in
eadem villa regia tenebant placita. Quorum nomina, quamvis
auditoribus tædio, tamen sunt veræ rationis testimonio;
videlicet Hugo de Mundford, et Rogerius cognomento Bigot,
Richardus Gisleberti comitis filius, ac cum eis
_Lincoliensis Turoldus_ et Hispaniensis Alveredus, cum aliis
compluribus.[35]
The date of this incident can be fixed with certainty as 1076-79; and
it is of great interest for its mention both of the eyre itself and
of those 'barons' who took part in it; there can be no question that
'Turoldus' was the mysterious Thorold, sheriff of Lincolnshire, taking
his name from Lincoln.[36] He was, therefore, not 'an English sheriff'
of days before the Conquest, but a Norman--as were his fellows--who
died before Domesday.[37]
The name of William Malet, connected with that of Thorold, reminds
me of a suggestion I once made,[38] that he held Aulkborough in
Lincolnshire, T.R.E., 'and was, to that extent, as M. le Prêvost held,
"established in England previously to the Conquest"'.
Stapleton, whose name in such matters rightly carries great weight,
maintained that because the Manor was held in 1086 by Ivo Tailbois,
and is stated in Domesday 'to have previously belonged to William
Malet', it must have been alienated by William by a gift in frank
marriage with a daughter, who must, he held, have married Ivo. But
I pointed out, firstly, that 'it is not the practice of Domesday to
enter Manors held _in maritagio_ thus', and gave an instance (i. 197)
'where we find Picot holding lands from Robert Gernon, which lands
are entered in the Gernon fief with the note: "Has terras tenet Picot
Vicecomes de Roberto Gernon in maritagio feminæ suæ."' I can now, by
the kindness of Dr Liebermann, add the instance of the Mandeville fief
in Surrey, where we read of 'Aultone': 'De his hidis tenet Wesman
vi. hidas de Goisfrido filio comitis Eustachii; hanc terram dedit ei
Goisfridus de Mannevil cum filia sua' (i. 36).[39] In addition to this
argument I urged that 'in default of any statement to the contrary, we
must always infer that the two holders named in the survey are (_A_)
the holder T.R.E., (_B_) the holder in 1086'. This would make William
Malet the holder T.R.E.
Another 'Norman' on whom I would touch is 'Robert fitz Wimarc', so
often mentioned by Mr Freeman. I claim him too as a Breton, on his
mother's side at least, if Wimarc, as seems to be the case, was his
mother, for that is a distinctively Breton name. Mr Freeman queried
the Biographer's description of him as 'regis consanguineus', when
at Edward's death-bed;[40] but he is clearly the 'Robertus regis
consanguineus' of the Waltham charter.[41] He was also of kin to
William.[42]
The last on my list is Regenbald 'the Norman chancellor of Edward',
as Mr Freeman termed him throughout. He must have had, I presume, some
authority for doing so: but I cannot discover that authority; and,
in its absence, the name, from its form, does not suggest a Norman
origin.[43] Of Regenbald, however, I shall have to speak in another
paper.
[Footnote 1: _Quarterly Review_, June 1892, pp. 9, 10.]
[Footnote 2: _Norm. Conq._, i. 525, 526.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 4: _Norm. Conq._, ii, 29, 30.]
[Footnote 5: Mr Freeman admits that his crews 'probably
consisted mainly of adventurers from the Danish Saxons of
Ireland, ready for any enterprise which promised excitement
and plunder' (_N.C._, ii. 313).]
[Footnote 6: _Historic Towns: Cinque Ports_, pp. 26-9.]
[Footnote 7: See for Osbern, Mr A. S. Ellis's _Domesday
Tenants in Gloucestershire_, p. 18. May not Peter, William's
chaplain, Bishop of Lichfield, 1075, have similarly been the
Peter who was a chaplain of Edward?]
[Footnote 8: Chèruel's _Histoire de Rouen pendant l'époque
communale_, i. 245.]
[Footnote 9: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 136-8.]
[Footnote 10: _Ibid._, p. 140.]
[Footnote 11: _Ibid._, p. 309.]
[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 607.]
[Footnote 13: 'Norman Richard still held his castle in
Herefordshire' (Hunt's _Norman Britain_, p. 69).]
[Footnote 14: Mr Clark refers to this passage, adding: 'So
that these places, probably like Richard's castle, were in
Norman hands' (_M.M.A._, i. 37).]
[Footnote 15: 'Osbernus vero, cognomento Pentecost, et socius
ejus Hugo sua reddiderunt castella.']
[Footnote 16: I have noted several cases in point, that of
Walter Giffard being the most striking. But we also read in
_William Rufus_ (ii. 551) that 'Henry, son of Swegen,
who comes so often under Henry the Second, is the unlucky
descendant of Robert, son of Wymarc', that is to say, Henry
'of Essex', who was a son of Robert, not of Swegen, and who
belonged to a wholly different family and district.]
[Footnote 17: 'Worse than all, the original sinners of the
Herefordshire border, Richard and his son Osbern, were still
lords of English soil, and holders of English offices' (iv.
53).]
[Footnote 18: Named, as Mr Freeman pointed out, after Harold,
son of Earl Ralph, not after Harold, son of Godwine.]
[Footnote 19: 'That Ralph succeeded Swegen on his final
banishment in 1051, I have no doubt at all' (ii. 562).]
[Footnote 20: '"The castle" is doubtless Richard's castle....
Here again the expressions witness to the deep feeling
awakened by the building of this castle' (ii. 309).]
[Footnote 21: 'The Norman lords whom Eadward had settled
in Herefordshire proved but poor defenders of their adopted
country. The last continental improvements in the art of
fortification proved vain to secure the land' (_ibid._).]
[Footnote 22: Florence (1067) speaks of the 'Herefordenses
castellani et Richardus filius Scrob' as the opponents
of Eadric. I could almost have fancied that the words
'Herefordenses castellani' referred to 'the castle' in
Herefordshire (see vol. ii. p. 139); but the words of the
Worcester chronicler 'þa castelmenn on Hereforda' seem to fix
the meaning to the city itself' (iv. 64).]
[Footnote 23: I have no hesitation in offering these
criticisms, because Mr Freeman's views have been embraced
throughout by Mr Hunt, who has followed closely in his
footsteps. For instance:
'A private fortress ... would 'It was the first fortress which
seem even stranger to us now was raised in England for the
than it seemed to our indulgence of private insolence
forefathers when Richard the and greed, and not for the
son of Scrob raised the first protection of Englishmen; it was
castle on English ground' to be the first of many, and the
(_Norm. Conq._, v. 640). evil deeds which Richard's men
wrought were a foretaste of the
evil times when fortresses such
as his were common in the land'
(_Norman Britain_, p. 64).
Mr Hunt, therefore, survives to defend the position.]
[Footnote 24: Vol. ii., p. 345.]
[Footnote 25: Vol. i., p. 747.]
[Footnote 26: About 849; Alfret Machtiern, 868; Alfritus
tyrannus, 871; Alfrit presbyter, 872; filius Alurit, 879.]
[Footnote 27: Gesta Stephani.]
[Footnote 28: iii. (2nd ed.) 780; iv. 214.]
[Footnote 29: See the Lindsey Survey.]
[Footnote 30: _Ramsey Cartulary_, iii. 167.]
[Footnote 31: _Ramsey Cartulary_, i. 208, ii. 74. _Domesday_,
i. 346_b_.]
[Footnote 32: iii. (2nd ed.) 780.]
[Footnote 33: iv. (1st ed.) 457.]
[Footnote 34: _Ibid._, 778-80. Mr Freeman spoke of him as 'a
kind of centre' for the inquiry, and stated that in Domesday
346_b_ we have 'Turoldus vicecomes' as a benefactor of
Spalding priory. This is an error, for the words there are
'dedit S. Gutlaco' (_i.e._ Crowland). He also urged that 'we
must not forget the Crowland tradition' about him 'preserved
by the false Ingulf'. But the fact is that 'Ingulf' made
him into _two_ (1) 'Thuroldus Vicecomes Lincoln', whose
benefaction to Crowland (D.B., i. 346_b_) was confirmed in 806
(!) and subsequently (pp. 6, 9, 15, 19), (2) 'quidam vicecomes
Lincolniæ, dictus Thoroldus ... de genere et cognatione illius
vicedomini Thoroldi qui quondam', etc. (p. 65). It is the
one living in '1051', to whom the Spalding foundation was
assigned.]
[Footnote 35: _Memorials of St Edmund's Abbey_, i. 63-4.
Herman wrote from personal knowledge.]
[Footnote 36: There are plenty of instances of this practice,
as at Exeter, Salisbury, Gloucester, Leicester, etc.]
[Footnote 37: It may be well here to allude to a still more
remarkable commission, some twenty years later, namely in
1096, when William Rufus sent 'in quadragesima optimates
suos in Devenesiram et in Cornubiam et Exoniam, Walcalinum,
videlicet, Wyntonensem episcopum, Randulphum regalem
capellanum, Willelmum Capram, Hardinum Belnothi filium (_i.e._
Elnoth or Eadnoth; _see_ Greenfield's _De Meriet pedigree_,
p. 6) ad investiganda regalia placita. Quibus in placitis
calumpniati sunt cuidam [_sic_] mansioni abbacie Taviensis,'
etc. (Tavistock cartulary in _Mon. Ang._, ii. 497). This
eyre cannot be generally known, for Mr T. A. Archer, in his
elaborate biography of Ranulf Flambard, does not mention it.
The association of Bishop Walkelin with Ranulf is specially
interesting because they are stated to have been left by the
king next year (1097) as joint regents of the realm. The name,
I may add, of 'Willelmus filius Baldwini' among those to whom
the consequent charter is addressed (_Mon. Ang._, ii. 497), is
of considerable importance, because it is clearly that of
the sheriff of Devon, and is proof therefore that Baldwin
the sheriff (Baldwin, son of Count Gilbert) had left a son
William, who had succeeded to his shrievalty by 1096, and who
was in turn succeeded by his brother, Richard fitz Baldwin,
sheriff under Henry I.]
[Footnote 38: _Genealogist_, viii. 4.]
[Footnote 39: Dr Liebermann asks whether Geoffrey's daughter
was not thus 'the first wife, else unknown, of the future King
of Jerusalem'.]
[Footnote 40: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 576.]
[Footnote 41: _Ibid._, ii. 673.]
[Footnote 42: _Ibid._, iii. 416.]
[Footnote 43: Mr A. S. Ellis has suggested that 'Elward filius
Reinbaldi' (D.B., i. 170_b_) King's thegn in Glo'stershire
'was evidently a son' of the chancellor. This suggestion
is highly probable, and in any case, the thegn bearing this
English name, it may fairly be presumed that his father
Reinbald was not of Norman birth.]
MR FREEMAN AND THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS
[Greek: Hotan ho ischyros kathôplismenos phylassê tên heautou aulên,
en eirênê estin ta hyparchonta autou. epan de ischyroteros autou
epelthôn nikêsê auton, tên panoplian autou airei eph' hê epepoithei.]
It might well be thought the height of rashness to attempt criticism,
even in detail, of Mr Freeman's narrative of the Battle of Hastings.
For its story, as his champion has well observed, is 'the centre and
the very heart of Mr Freeman's work; if he could blunder here in
the most carefully elaborated passage of his whole history he could
blunder anywhere; his reputation for accuracy would be gone almost
beyond hope of retrieving it'.[1] And indeed, it may fairly be
described as Mr Freeman's greatest achievement, the point where he is
strongest of all. He himself described the scene as the 'battle which
is the centre of my whole history', and reminded us that
on its historic importance I need not dwell; it is the very
subject of my history.... Looking also at the fight simply
as a battle, it is one of the most memorable in all military
history.
That is the first point. The second is that in his battle pieces
our author was always at his best. Essentially a concrete historian,
objective as Macaulay in his treatment, he loved incident and action;
loved them, indeed, so well, that he could scarcely bring himself to
omit the smallest details of a skirmish:
E ripenso le mobili
Tende, e i percossi valli,
E 'l campo dei manipoli,
E l'onda dei cavalli.
Precentor Venables has well described
that wonderful discourse, one of his greatest triumphs--in
which, with flashing eye and thrilling voice, he made the
great fight of Senlac--as he loved to call it, discarding the
later name--which changed the fortunes of England and made her
what she is, live and move before his hearers.
My third point is that his knowledge of the subject was unrivalled.
He had visited the battlefield, he tells us, no less than five times,
accompanied by the best experts, civil and military, he could find; he
had studied every authority, and read all that had been written, till
he was absolutely master of every source of information. He had
further executed for him, by officers of the Royal Engineers, an
elaborate plan of the battle based on his unwearied studies. Never was
historian more splendidly equipped.
Thus was prepared that 'very lucid and quite original account of
the battle', as Mr G. T. Clark describes it, which we are about to
examine; that 'detailed account of the battle' that Mr Hunt, in his
_Norman Britain_, describes as written 'with a rare combination of
critical exactness and epic grandeur'.
THE NAME OF 'SENLAC'
Before we approach the great battle, it is necessary to speak plainly
of the name which Mr Freeman gave it, the excruciating name of
'Senlac'. It is necessary, because we have here a perfect type of
those changes in nomenclature on which Mr Freeman insisted, and which
always remind one of Macaulay's words:
Mr Mitford piques himself on spelling better than any of
his neighbours; and this not only in ancient names, which he
mangles in defiance both of custom and of reason.... In such
cases established usage is considered as law by all writers
except Mr Mitford ... but he proceeds on no principle but that
of being unlike the rest of the world. Every child has heard
of Linnæus; therefore Mr Mitford calls him Linné. Rousseau is
known all over Europe as Jean Jacques; therefore Mr Mitford
bestows on him the strange appellation of John James.
None of Mr Freeman's peculiar 'notes' is more familiar than this
tendency, and none has given rise to bitterer controversy or more
popular amusement. 'Pedantry' was the charge brought against him, and
to this charge he was as keenly sensitive as was Browning to that of
'obscurity'. Of both writers it may fairly be said that they evaded
rather than met the charge brought against them. The Regius Professor
invariably maintained that accuracy, not 'pedantry', was his true
offence. Writing, in the _Fortnightly Review_, on 'The Study of
History', he set forth his standing defence in these words:
I would say, as the first precept, Dare to be accurate. You
will be called a pedant for doing so, but dare to be accurate
all the same.
He who shall venture to distinguish between two English
boroughs, between two Hadriatic islands when the authorized
caterer for the public information thinks good to confound
them, must be content to bear the terrible name of pedant,
even if no worse fate still is in store for him.
Was, then, our author a mere pedant, or was this the name that
ignorance bestowed on knowledge? For an answer to this question,
'Senlac' is a test-case. 'Every child', in Macaulay's words, had heard
of the Battle of Hastings; it was known by that name 'all over Europe'
from time immemorial. Unless, therefore, that name was wrong, it was
wanton and mischievous to change it; and, even if changed, it was
indefensible to substitute the name of Senlac, unless there is proof
that the battle was so styled when it was fought.
As to the first of these points, the old name was in no sense wrong.
Precisely as the battle of Poitiers was fought some miles from
Poitiers, so was it with that of Hastings. Yet we all speak of
the Battle of Poitiers, although we might substitute the name of
Maupertuis more legitimately than that of Senlac. The only plea that
Mr Freeman could advance was that people were led by the old name to
imagine that the battle was fought at Hastings itself! Of those who
argue in this spirit, it was finely said by the late Mr Kerslake that
instead of lifting ignorance to competence by teaching what
ought to be known, they cut down what ought to be known to the
capacity of those who are deficient of that knowledge. Instead
of making them understand the meaning of the ancient and
established word 'Anglo-Saxon', they disturb the whole world
of learning with an almost violent attempt to turn out of use
the established word, which has been thoroughly understood for
ages.
The simple answer to Mr Freeman's contention is, that it is needless
to make the change in histories, because those who read them learn
that the fight was at Battle; while as to those who do not read
histories, it is obvious that such a name as 'Senlac' will in no way
lighten their darkness.
The change, therefore, was uncalled for. But it was not merely
uncalled for; it was also absolutely wrong. 'To the battle itself,' Mr
Freeman wrote, 'I restore its true ancient name of Senlac.' In so
doing the writer acted in the spirit of those who 'restore' our
churches and who gave that word so evil a sound in the ears of all
archæologists, Mr Freeman himself included. I am reminded of the
protest of the Society of Antiquaries on hearing 'with much regret
that a fifteenth-century pinnacle' at Rochester Cathedral 'is in
danger of destruction in order that a modern pinnacle, professing to
represent that which stood in the place in the twelfth century, may be
set up in its stead'. Precisely such a 'restoration' is Mr Freeman's
'Senlac'. Professing to represent the ancient name of the battle, it
is substituted for that name which the battle has borne from the days
of the Conqueror to our own. In William of Malmesbury as in Domesday
Book we read of 'the Battle of Hastings' (_Bellum Hastingense_), and
all Mr Freeman's efforts failed admittedly to discover any record or
any writer who spoke of the Battle of Senlac (_Bellum Senlacium_)
save Orderic alone. Now Orderic wrote two generations after the battle
was fought; the name he strove to give it fell from his pen stillborn;
and the fact that this name was a fad of his own is shown by what Mr
Freeman suppressed, namely, that Orderic, in the same breath, tells
us that Battle Abbey was founded as 'c[oe]nobium Sanctæ Trinitatis
Senlac', whereas we learn from Mr Freeman himself that
the usual title is 'ecclesia Sancti Martini de Bello',
'ecclesia de Bello', or, as we have seen, in English 'þæt
mynster æt þære Bataille'. The fuller form, 'Abbas Sancti
Martini de loco Belli', appears in Domesday, 11_b_: but it is
commonly called in the Survey 'ecclesia de Labatailge'.
So much for Orderic's authority.
So violent an innovation as this of our author's could not
pass unchallenged. Mr Frederic Harrison threw down the gauntlet
(_Contemporary Review_, January 1886), attacking, in a brilliant and
incisive article, Mr Freeman's 'pedantry' along the whole line. But he
chiefly complained of
a far more serious change of name that the 'Old English'
school have introduced; which, if it were indefinitely
extended, would wantonly confuse historical literature. I mean
the attempt to alter names which are the accepted landmarks of
history. It is now thought scholarly to write of 'the Battle
of _Senlac_' instead of 'the Battle of _Hastings_'. As every
one knows, the fight took place on the site of Battle Abbey,
seven miles from Hastings; as so many great battles, those of
Tours, Blenheim, Cannæ, Chalons, and the like, have been named
from places not the actual spot of the combat.
But since for 800 years the historians of Europe have spoken
of 'the Battle of Hastings', it does seem a little pedantic
to rename it.... The sole authority for 'Battle of Senlac' is
Orderic, a monk who lived and wrote in Normandy in the next
century. Yet, on the strength of this secondary authority, the
'Old English' school choose to erase from English literature
one of our most familiar names.
Mr Freeman's rejoinder must be noticed, because singularly
characteristic. Treating Mr Harrison 'de haut en bas', he expressed
surprise that his friends should expect him to reply to an article
which had merely amused him, and--unable, of course, to adduce any
fresh authority for 'Senlac'--denounced his critic for a 'reckless
raid into regions where he does not know the road'. For this charge
there was no foundation in the matter of which we treat. Mr Freeman
persisted that he had given the battle 'the only name that I found for
it anywhere' (which we have seen was not the case), and sarcastically
observed that 'so to do is certainly "pedantic", for it conduces to
accuracy'.
The truth is simply that the site of the battle had no name at all. As
the professor himself wrote:
The spot was then quite unoccupied and untilled; nothing in
any of the narratives implies the existence of any village or
settlement; our own Chronicle only describes the site as
by 'the hoar apple-tree' ('He com him togenes æt þære haran
apuldran').
Consequently, when men wished to speak of the great conflict, they
were driven, as in similar cases, to term it the Battle of Hastings,
or, if they wished to be more exact, they had to describe it, by
periphrasis, as fought on 'the site which is now called Battle'.
Henry of Huntingdon, our author tells us, is guilty, though otherwise
well informed, of 'a statement so grotesquely inaccurate as
that Harold "aciem suam construxit in _planis Hastinges_"'. Why
'grotesque'? It would be strictly accurate to describe a battle, even
seven miles from Salisbury, as fought on Salisbury Plain; while, as
to the word 'plain', his horror of field-sports may have caused Mr
Freeman's ignorance of the fact that another such stretch of Sussex
Down is known as 'Plumpton Plain'.[2] But the fact is that the whole
difficulty arose from that singular narrowness that cramped our
author's mind, and that lies at the root, when rightly understood,
of his most distinctive tenets. For he was a pedant, after all.
And, observe, this 'pedantry' did, in practice, conduce not to true
accuracy, but to the very reverse. Paradoxical though this may sound,
it is literally true. Let us take a striking instance. In his account
of the attack on Dover in 1067, Mr Freeman argued, 'from the distinct
mention of _oppidum_ and _oppidani_ in Orderic', that it was not the
castle, as supposed, but the town that was attacked. And so convinced
was he of this, that he forced his authorities into harmony with his
view against their plain meaning. This was because he was not aware
that Orderic--'my dear old friend Orderic', as in one place he terms
him--was in the habit of using _oppidum_ for castle. He must
have afterwards discovered this; for his theory was tacitly and
significantly dropped, and the old version substituted, in a
subsequent edition. Again, an article on 'City and Borough', which he
contributed to _Macmillan's Magazine_, was based on the fundamental
assumption that _civitas_, in the Norman period, must have had a
specialized denotation. The fact that, on the contrary, the same town
is spoken of as a _civitas_ and as a _burgus_, cuts the ground
from under this assumption, and, with it, destroys the whole of its
elaborate superstructure. Our author's method, in short, placed him in
standing conflict with every authority for his period. Never was 'the
sacredness of words' treated as of less account; never, indeed, were
words more wantonly changed. What would Mr Freeman have said had he
known that the compilers of that sacrosanct record, Domesday Book
itself, revelled in altering the wording of the sworn original
returns? Such was the spirit of the men whose language he strove to
limit by a terminology as precise as that of modern philosophy.
I may have wandered somewhat from 'Senlac', but my object was to show
that Mr Freeman misunderstood twelfth-century writers by assigning to
them his own peculiarities. It did not in any way follow from their
speaking of a 'Battle of Hastings' that they 'grotesquely' supposed it
to have been fought at the town itself: they allowed themselves an
elasticity, both in word and phrase, which was so alien to himself
that he could not realize its existence, and therefore accused them of
ignorance because their language was different from his. In the same
spirit he would never admit that the 'Castellum Warham' of Domesday
Book was no other than Corfe Castle, although, as Mr Eyton and Mr Bond
have shown, the fact is certain.
But the _crux_ is yet to come. To any one acquainted with 'Old
English' it must instantly occur that 'Senlac' is not an English name.
Mr Freeman glided over this by simply ignoring the difficulty, but was
he aware that the name in question, as 'Senlecque' (or 'Senlecques'),
is actually found--in France? One is reminded of his own criticism on
the name 'Duncombe Park':
When the lands of Helmsley were made to take the name of
Duncombe, a real wrong was done to geography.... How came a
_combe_ in Yorkshire? The thing is a fraud on nomenclature as
great as any of the frauds which the first Duncombe, 'born to
carry parcels and to sweep down a counting-house', contrived
to commit on the treasury of the nation.
How came a French 'Senlac' in 'Old English' Sussex? The name is as
obviously foreign as 'Senlis' itself, and the occurrence, in later
days of 'Santlachæ' as a local field-name, cannot avail against this
fact, or prove that this open down, in days before the Conquest, could
have borne such a title. Therefore, when Mr Freeman wrote that the
English king 'pitched his camp upon the ever memorable heights of
Senlac', he was guilty, not only of anachronism, but of a 'real wrong
to geography', and, in the name of accuracy, he introduced error.[3]
I have gone thus carefully into this matter because the name has been
meekly adopted by historians, and even by journalists, thereby proving
the power of that tendency to fashion and imitation on which, in his
_Physics and Politics_, Mr Bagehot loved to insist. For my part I make
an earnest appeal to all who may write or teach history to adhere
to the 'true ancient name' of the Battle of Hastings, and to reject
henceforward an innovation which was uncalled for, misleading, and
wrong.[4]
THE PALISADE
The distinctive peculiarity of the English tactics, we learn from Mr
Freeman at the outset, is found in an entirely novel device introduced
on this occasion by Harold. Instead of merely forming his troops in
the immemorial array known as the shield-wall, he turned 'the battle
as far as possible into the likeness of a siege',[5] by building
around them a 'palisade' of solid timber. How large a part this
'palisade' plays in Mr Freeman's story may be gathered from the fact
that it is mentioned at least a score of times in his account of the
great battle. This 'fortress of timber', with its 'wooden walls', had
'a triple gate of entrance', and was composed of 'firm barricades of
ash and other timber, wattled in so close together that not a crevice
could be seen'.
It would be easier for me to deal with this 'palisade' if one could
form a clear idea of what it represented to Mr Freeman's mind.
Judging from the passages quoted above, and from his praising Henry
of Huntingdon for his 'admirable comparison of Harold's camp to a
castle';[6] I was led to believe that he imagined precisely such a
timber wall as crowned in those days a castle mound. Such a defence
is well shown in the Bayeux Tapestry, crowning the castle mound which
William threw up at Hastings. Now, this very parallel is suggested
by Mr Freeman himself. Describing Harold's position as 'not without
reason called a fortress' [where?] he suggested that 'its defences
might be nearly equal to those of William's own camp at Hastings' (p.
447). Following up this parallel, we find Mr Freeman writing of this
latter:
A portion of English ground was already entrenched and
_palisaded_, and changed into a Norman fortress (p. 418)....
He saw the carpenters come out with their axes; he saw the
fosse dug, and the _palisade_ thrown up (p. 419). They had
already built a fort and had fenced it in with a _palisade_
(p. 420).
Without binding Mr Freeman down to a defence precisely of this
character--and, indeed, in this as in other matters, he may not even
himself have formed a clear idea of what he meant--it gives us, I
think we may fairly say, a general idea of his 'palisade'. It
was certainly no mere row of stakes,[7] no heap of cottage window
frames,[8] no fantastic array of shields tied to sticks,[9] no
'_abattis_ of some sort'[10] that Mr Freeman had in view, whatever
his champions may pretend. As for the defenders of the 'palisade',
they cannot even agree among themselves as to what it really was.
Mr Archer produces a new explanation, only to throw it over almost
as soon as it is produced.[11] One seeks to know for certain what
one is expected to deal with; but, so far as it is possible to learn,
nobody can tell one. There is only a succession of dissolving views,
and one is left to deal with a nebulous hypothesis.[12]
Mr Freeman wrote of his 'palisade' as a mere 'development of the usual
tactics of the shield-wall'; but this is an obvious misconception.
It might, indeed, be used as a substitute for the 'shield-wall', and
would enable the troops behind it to adopt a looser formation; but to
suppose that they were ranged 'closely together in the thick array of
the shield-wall', with this second wall in front of them, is surely
absurd. Till the 'wooden walls' were broken the 'shield-wall' was
needless. To retain the disadvantages of its close order, when that
order had been rendered needless, would have been simply insane. Yet
this insanity, in our author's eyes, was 'the master-skill of Harold'.
Was there time, moreover, to construct such a fortress, if 'the battle
followed almost immediately', as we learn, 'on the arrival of Harold'?
Lastly, would there be material on the spot for a palisade (see ground
plan) about a mile in length?[13] These awkward points may not have
occurred to Mr Freeman; but to others they will, I think, cause some
uneasiness. Let us then examine Mr Freeman's authorities for the
existence of this palisade.
MR FREEMAN'S AUTHORITIES FOR IT
In his note on 'The Details of the Battle of Senlac' (iii. 756),
Mr Freeman explained that he had given the authorities on which his
statements rested, adding:
Each reader can therefore judge for himself how far my
narrative is borne out by my authorities.
Loyally keeping to this principle, I propose to test his statements
by the authorities he gives for them himself. I therefore address
myself to the passages in Henry of Huntingdon and in Wace.
(1) _Henry of Huntingdon_
The passage relied on by the historian is this:
Quum ergo Haroldus totam gentem suam in una acie strictissime
locasset _et quasi castellum inde construxisset_[14]
impenetrabiles erant Normannis (iii. 444, note).
Mr Freeman thus paraphrased Henry's words:
He occupied and fortified, as thoroughly as the time and the
means at his command would allow, a post of great natural
strength, which he made into what is distinctly spoken of as a
castle (_ibid._).[15]
Although the writer made it his complaint against one of the editors
in the Rolls series that he could not 'construe his Latin', we see
that the same failing led him here himself into error. _Inde_ refers,
and can only refer, to Harold's troops themselves. A fortress Harold
wrought; but he wrought it of flesh and blood: it was behind no
ramparts that the soldiers of England awaited the onset of the
chivalry of France.
The metaphor, of course, is a common one. Henry of Huntingdon himself
recurs to it, when describing that 'acies', at the Battle of Lincoln,
which Stephen 'circa se ... strictissime collocavit' (p. 271), as
Harold, he wrote, 'gentem suam in una acie strictissime locasset'
(p. 203). For he shows us Stephen's 'acies' assailed 'sicut
castellum'.[16] In the same spirit an Irish bard tells us how his
countrymen, on the battlefield of Dysert O'Dea (May 10, 1318), closed
in their ranks, 'like a strong fortress', as their enemies surged
around them. It was felicitous, indeed, to describe as 'quasi
castellum' that immovable mass of warriors girt by their
shield-wall,[17] that 'fortress of shields', as Mr Freeman termed
it, at Hastings itself (iii. 492), at Stamford Bridge (iii. 372), at
Maldon (i. 272), and even in earlier days (i. 151).
It was Mr Freeman's initial error in thus materializing a metaphor
(through misconstruing his Latin) that first led me to doubt the
existence of the 'palisade'. His champion, Mr Archer, in his first
article,[18] was ominously silent as to this error: in the second, he
had to confess of this passage, the first of Mr Freeman's proofs, that
he himself 'should never think of using it to prove a palisade'.[19]
_Exit_, therefore, Henry of Huntingdon.
(2) _Wace_
Two passages, and two alone, are in question--
(A) ll. 6991-4, which Mr Freeman has paraphrased thus:
WACE MR FREEMAN
Heraut a le lieu esgarde, He occupied the hill; he
Closre le fist de boen fosse, surrounded it on all its
De treis parz laissa treis entrees accessible sides by a palisade,
Qu'il a garder a commandees. with a triple gate of entrance,
and defended it to the south by
an artificial ditch (iii. 447).
My criticism on this has been from the first that Wace here speaks
_only_ of a ditch, and that Mr Freeman has not only introduced here
the alleged palisade, from which Wace's 'fosse' was quite distinct,
but has also transferred to that palisade the 'treis entrees' of the
fosse. That Mr Freeman did treat the 'palisade' and the 'fosse' as
distinct and considerably apart is proved by this passage:
The Normans had crossed the [_sic_] English fosse, and were
now at the foot of the hill with the palisades and the axes
right before them (iii. 476).
The 'fosse' is that 'artificial ditch' of which Mr Freeman speaks in
the above passage, the only one of which he does speak. Therefore,
that 'artificial ditch' was, in his view, down in the valley to the
south, and had nothing to do with that 'palisade' which he placed on
the hill. There is thus no possible doubt as to Mr Freeman's view. On
his own showing, the above lines make no mention of a palisade on the
hill.[20]
(B) ll. 7815-26: The passage in question runs thus:
Fet orent devant els _escuz_
De fenestres è d'altres fuz,
Devant els les orent levez,
Come cleies joinz è serrez;
Fait en orent devant closture,
N'i laissierent nule jointure,
Par onc Normant entr'els venist
Qui desconfire les volsist.
D'escuz e d'ais s'avironoent,
Issi deffendre se quidoent
Et s'il se fussent bien tenu,
Ia ne fussent le ior vencu.
In his first edition, writing, I believe, under the influence of
Taylor's version, Mr Freeman gave these lines in a footnote to his
narrative of the battle, and appears to have then looked on them as
describing his palisade.[21] But in his 'second edition, revised', in
preparing which he went 'minutely through every line, and corrected or
improved whatever seemed to need correction or improvement' (p. v), he
transferred these lines to his appendix on the battle, where he wrote
concerning them as follows:
[(At Maldon) the English stood, _as at Senlac_, in the array
common to them and their enemies--a strong line, or rather
wedge, of infantry, forming a wall with their shields (i.
271).][22]
Of the array of the shield-wall we have often heard already,
as at Maldon (see vol. i. p. 271), but it is at Senlac that we
get the fullest descriptions of it [_sic_] all the better for
coming in the mouths of enemies. Wace gives his description,
12941:
'Fet orent devant els escuz
De fenestres è d'altres fuz;
Devant els les orent levez.
. . . . .
Et s'il se fussent bien tenu
Ja ne fussent li jor vencu.'
So William of Malmesbury, 241. 'Pedites omnes cum bipennibus,
conserta ante se scutorum testudine, impenetrabilem cuneum
faciunt; quod profecto illis eâ die saluti fuisset,
nisi Normanni simulatâ fugâ more suo confertos manipulos
laxassent.' So at the battle of the Standard, according to
Æthelred of Rievaux (343), 'scutis scuta junguntur, lateribus
latera conseruntur' (iii. 763-4).
The unquestionable meaning of Mr Freeman's words is that Wace's lines
(like the other passages) describe the time-honoured shield-wall,
'the fortress of shields, so often sung of alike in English and in
Scandinavian minstrelsy' (iii. 372).
Appealing to this, his own verdict, in my original article,[23] I
spoke of these lines as referring to the 'shield-wall', and maintained
that 'escuz' meant shields, not 'barricades'. This also, it will be
seen, must have been Mr Freeman's view, when he pronounced these lines
to be a description of the shield-wall. I therefore declared that
the only evidence he adduced for his palisade had been demonstrably
obtained by misconstruing his Latin, and (on his own showing) by
mistranslating his French.
This has been my case from the first: it remains my case now.
Unlike our forefathers on the hill of battle, I will not be decoyed
into breaking 'the line of the shield-wall'.[24]
MY ARGUMENT AGAINST IT
In order to show clearly that I adhere to my original position, I need
only reprint my argument as it appeared in the _Quarterly Review_.
It is clear that if he (Mr Freeman) found it needful, in his
story of the great battle, to mention this barricade about
a score of times, it must have occupied a prominent place in
every contemporary narrative. And yet we assert without fear
of contradiction that (dismissing the 'Roman de Rou') in no
chronicle or poem, among all Mr Freeman's authorities, could
he find any ground for this singular delusion; while the
Bayeux Tapestry itself, which he rightly places at their
head, will be searched in vain for a palisade, or for
anything faintly resembling it, from beginning to end of the
battle.[25]
On this passage we take our stand: it is the very essence of
our case. We made our statement 'without fear of contradiction';
and it is not contradicted. Moreover, we can now further
strengthen it by appealing to Baudri's poem,[26] an authority of
the first rank, in which, as in the others, there is no allusion
to the existence of any 'palisade'.
It will be observed that, in this passage, we expressly excluded
Wace's poem. We did so because--although, as we have seen, Mr
Freeman failed to produce from it any proof of a palisade--we
preferred to leave it an open question whether Wace did or did
not believe the English to have fought behind a palisade. In
rebutting Mr Freeman's evidence, that question did not arise.
There is another argument that we refrained from bringing
forward because we thought it superfluous. The Normans, of
course, as Mr Freeman reminds us, magnified the odds against
them: 'Nothing but the special favour of God could have given
his servants a victory over their enemies, which was truly
miraculous' (p. 440). William of Poitiers, he adds (p. 479),
sets forth their difficulties in detail:--
'Angli nimium adjuvantur superioris loci opportunitate, quem
sine procursu tenent, et maxime conferti; atque ingenti quoque
numerositate suâ atque validissimâ corpulentiâ; præterea
pugnæ instrumentis, quæ facile per scuta vel alia tegmina viam
inveniunt.'
Now William who was not only a contemporary writer, but, says
Mr Freeman (p. 757), 'understood' the site, had, obviously,
every inducement to include, among the difficulties of the
Normans, that special 'development', which according to
Mr Freeman (pp. 444, 468), 'the foresight of Harold' had
introduced on this occasion, and which, he assures us,
involved 'a frightful slaughter' of the Normans. And yet this
writer is absolutely silent, both here and throughout the
battle, as to the existence of a barricade of any sort or
kind.[27]
Here I would briefly refer to certain misrepresentations. Mr Archer
claimed, in his original article (_Cont. Rev._, 344) to 'mainly
rely' upon Wace, on the ground that I did so myself. I was obliged
to describe this statement at once as 'the exact converse of the
truth'.[28] For it will be seen, I expressly excluded Wace from the
authorities on whom I relied, and specially rested my case, from
the first, on the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry. It is much to be
regretted that Mr Archer has deliberately repeated his statement,[29]
though even his ally reluctantly admits that it was 'not very happily
worded'.[30]
Mr Archer might well seek to avoid the Bayeux Tapestry, for its
evidence is dead against him, and he cannot explain it away. His
first attempt was a brief allusion, accepting its authority without
question, but suggesting that it might represent that part of the
line where the barricade was absent.[31] Of this suggestion I at
once disposed by showing that it is 'not only absolutely without
foundation, but is directly opposed to Mr Freeman's theory,
and, indeed, to his express statements'.[32] Forced to drop this
explanation, my opponent, in his next article, fell back on the
desperate device of repudiating the authority of the Tapestry,[33]
'the most authentic record' of the battle according to the late
Professor, who was never weary of insisting on its 'paramount
importance'. On my showing, beyond the possibility of question,
that this amounted to rejecting everything that Mr Freeman had
written on the subject,[34] Mr Archer once more shifts his tactics,
and now writes thus:
If any fact in Hastings is more certain than another, it
is that at the beginning of the battle the main body of
the English was posted _on a hill_. Now 'the priceless
record'--the Bayeux Tapestry--represents them _on a plain_. If
the Tapestry could leave out this central feature--the hill of
Senlac--from its picture of the _opening_ battle, still more
easily could it leave out the intricate barriers upon the
hill.[35]
This _ad captandum_ argument is disposed of as easily as the others.
The Tapestry does not concern itself with landscape, and shows us
neither a hill nor a plain. It could not, on a narrow strip, show us
'the hill of Senlac', but it could--and would--show us the alleged
palisade. For not only does it strive under every difficulty to
represent such objects as churches, castles and houses, but it
faithfully shows us the 'palisade'[36] raised by William at Hastings
itself. And if it be urged that it could not depict men fighting
behind such a defence, let us turn to the scene at Dinan. If we
compare it with the opening scene of the great battle itself, we see
precisely similar horsemen advancing to the attack, similar infantry
resisting that attack, and similar spears flying between them. But at
Dinan the defenders have a palisade, and on the hill of battle they
have not.[37]
But although the evidence of the Bayeux Tapestry, Mr Freeman's
own supreme authority, remains absolutely unshaken, it must not
be supposed that I rely on that evidence alone. I attach as much
importance as ever--and so will, I think, all prejudiced persons--to
the other portion of my argument, that if there had been a barricade
playing so important a part in the battle that Mr Freeman found it
needful to mention it at least a score of times, it is practically
inconceivable that all the authorities I enumerate should have
absolutely ignored its existence. Judging from Mr Freeman's own
experience, it would be simply impossible to describe the battle
without mentioning the 'palisade'.
It is very significant that when we turn to a real feature of the
English line, namely its close array, we find the above authorities as
unanimous in mentioning the fact as they are in ignoring that 'curious
defence',[38] those 'intricate barriers', as Mr Archer terms them,
'upon the hill'.[39]
The fight has raged so fiercely around this 'palisade' that I have
been obliged to discuss it at somewhat disproportionate length. But to
sum up, we have now seen, firstly, that the alleged palisade was a
new 'development', and needs, as such, special proof of its existence;
secondly, that of Mr Freeman's proofs, one at least must admittedly be
abandoned, while he himself has impugned the other;[40] thirdly, that
the evidence, both positive and presumptive, is altogether opposed to
the existence of a palisade. In the narrative of the battle we shall
find Mr Freeman interpolating the alleged defence solely from his own
imagination, such references proving, on inquiry, to be imaginary and
imaginary alone.[41]
THE SHIELD-WALL
It is a pleasure to find myself here in complete agreement with Mr
Freeman. In his very latest study of the battle Mr Freeman wrote as
follows:
The English clave to the old Teutonic tactics. They fought on
foot in the close array of the shield-wall.[42]
Mr Archer says they cannot have done so.[43] There was also, according
to Mr Freeman, a barricade, in front of--and distinct from--the
shield-wall, being a special development which, he tells us, 'the
foresight of Harold' had introduced on this occasion (pp. 444, 468).
The barricade is denied by me, the shield-wall by Mr Archer. Whichever
of us is right, Mr Freeman's accuracy is, in either case, equally
impugned.
It is essential to remember that Mr Freeman, throughout, treated the
palisade and the shield-wall as _separate and distinct_. Thus he wrote
so late as 1880:
Besides the palisade the front ranks made a kind of inner
defence with their shields, called the shield-wall. The Norman
writers were specially struck with the close array of the
English.[44]
So in his great work we read of 'the shield-wall _and the_ triple
palisade still unbroken' (iii. 467). Later still 'the shield-wall
still stood _behind the_ palisade' (p. 487). Even when 'the English
palisade was gone _the English shield-wall_ was still a formidable
hindrance in the way of the assailants (p. 491). The array of the
shield-wall was still kept, though now without the help of the
barricades' (p. 491). Here we have the very phrase of note NN, 'the
array of the shield-wall',[45] and it is shown beyond question that
Mr Freeman's shield-wall, whatever Mr Archer may pretend, was quite
distinct from the palisade, and was a shield-wall 'pure and simple'.
Let it also be clearly understood what Mr Freeman meant by that 'array
of the shield-wall', of which the disputed passage in Wace was, he
held, a description. He shows us the whole English army 'ranged so
closely together in the thick array of the shield-wall, that
while they only kept their ground the success of an assailant was
hopeless'.[46] He describes them as, 'a strong line, or rather wedge,
of infantry, forming a wall with their shields',[47] and he ascribes
their defeat to their 'breaking the line of the shield-wall'.[48]
Of this shield-wall my opponent rashly wrote:
The Reviewer's [_sic_] theory of an extended shield-wall
vanishes like smoke. If Wace is any authority ... the question
is settled once and for all. There was no extended shield-wall
at Hastings.[49]
Of course, 'the Reviewer's theory' here is no other than Mr Freeman's
own.
If, in spite of the above evidence, it should still be pretended by
anyone that the plain meaning of Mr Freeman's words is not their
meaning, I will refer them not to my own interpretation, but to that
of Mr Freeman's friend and colleague, the Rev W. Hunt, who wrote in
the historian's lifetime, 'at his request' and by his 'invitation',
and whose proofs were revised by Mr Freeman himself.[50] This is Mr
Hunt's version:
Set in close array behind a palisade forming a kind of
fortification, _shoulder to shoulder and shield to shield_,
the army of Harold presented a steady and immovable front to
the Norman attack ... Fatal was the national formation of the
English battle, when _men stood in the closest order, forming
a wall with their shields_. While no mode of array could be
stronger so long as the line remained unbroken it made it hard
to form the line again.[51]
So, again, in his life of Harold:
All the heavy-armed force fought in close order, _shield
touching shield_, so as to present a complete wall to the
enemy.[52]
Here we have no tortuous imaginings, but, in plain and straightforward
words, 'what historians in general evidently mean' when they speak of
a 'shield-wall', what it meant to Mr Freeman, what it means to Mr Hunt,
and it is admitted, to myself.[53] Such was the English shield-wall,
according to Mr Freeman, at 'Senlac'; it was what Mr Archer definitely
declares it cannot possibly have been.
Lastly, as to the ground on which Mr Archer pronounces impossible a
continuous shield-wall[54]--namely, that the English could not have
fought in such close order,[55] and that the axe-men being 'shieldless
... could not have formed the shield-wall'; one need only confront him
with Mr Freeman's words.
MR FREEMAN MR ARCHER
Referring to the mode of fighting It is enough for me that common
of an English army in that age, sense, the tapestry, Wace,[58]
and to 'the usual tactics of the our Italian chronicler, and his
shield-wall', Mr Freeman wrote of later Old French translator all
'the close array of the show that the English axe-men
battle-axe men' (p. 444). He had could not or did not form the
already written of 'the English shield-wall (_English
house carls with their ... huge Historical Review_, ix. p. 14).
battle-axes', accustomed to Possibly they [the house carls]
fight in 'the close array to the may have formed a genuine
shield-wall.'[56] shield-wall; but while forming
it they cannot have been _using_
'They still formed their the 'bipennis', or the two-handed
shield-wall and fought with axe (_Ibid._, p. 20, note).
their great axes.'[57]
I am compelled to repeat what I said in the _Quarterly Review_.
We almost hesitate to waste our own and our readers' time on
a writer who, professing to vindicate Mr Freeman's view as
against us, devotes his energies to proving that view to be
utterly absurd.[59]
Nor will Mr Archer derive comfort from 'our only English "specialist"
on mediaeval warfare';[60] who holds, as I had pointed out, that 'the
English axemen' did fight 'arranged in a compact mass'.[61]
It is significant that the fact Mr Archer so confidently rejects is
precisely that on which I am at one with Mr Freeman, Mr Hunt, and Mr
Oman, and to which the original authorities bear witness with peculiar
unanimity. Thus William of Poitiers, an authority of the first rank,
describes the English as 'maxime conferti', speaks of their 'nimia
densitas', and proceeds to dwell on the terrible effect of their
weapon, the famous battle-axe. William of Malmesbury tells us that the
axemen 'impenetrabilem cuneum faciunt'. Even Mr Archer's authority,
Wace, writes of these warriors:
A pie furent _serrement_.
Baudri describes the English as 'consertos',[62] and the _Brevis
Relatio_ as 'spissum agmen'. Bishop Guy writes of the 'spissum
nemus Angligenarum', and styles them 'densissima turba'; Henry of
Huntingdon, we saw, tells us that they were arranged 'in una acie
strictissime', and were thus 'impenetrabiles Normannis'.
No feature of the great battle is more absolutely beyond dispute. It
was the denseness of the English ranks that most vividly struck
their foes. 'Shield to shield, and shoulder to shoulder', as Æthelred
describes them at the Battle of the Standard, they wedged themselves
together so tightly that the wounded could not move, nor even the
corpses drop. And so they stood together, the living and the dead.[63]
And we must remember that this mass of men was 'ranged so closely
together in the thick array _of the shield-wall_, that while they only
kept their ground the success of an assailant was hopeless'.[64] The
Conqueror saw, Mr Freeman reminds us, 'that his only chance was to
tempt the English to break their shield-wall'.[65] I need not insist
on the point further: I need not even have said so much, but that some
of those who read these pages may not have realized the true
character of Mr Archer's phantasies. The 'scutorum testudo', as
William of Malmesbury describes the famous shield-wall,[66] is
depicted, with his usual painstaking care, by the designer of the
Bayeux Tapestry. We read of the 'testudo' at Ashdown fight, even
in the days of Alfred;[67] it was, again, with the shield-wall
that 'glorious Æthelstan' won the day on the hard-fought field of
Brunanburh (937);[68] we hear of it at Maldon (991), where Brihtnoth,
we read, 'bade his men work the war-hedge',--'that is, had made his
men form the shield-wall, a sort of fortress made by holding their
shields close together'.[69] And we do, in Mr Freeman's words, meet
with it 'down to the end', when the war-hedge of Maldon was wrought
anew, by Harold, on the hill of battle, and stood once more as if a
fortress--'quasi castellum'.
THE DISPOSITION OF THE ENGLISH
To render clear the problem involved, I must first sketch as briefly
as possible the nature of the ground the English held. The hill of
battle is so fully described in Mr Freeman's narrative that I here
need only explain that it was a long narrow spur of the downs, running
nearly east and west, of which the south front was defended by the
English and attacked by the Normans. The one and only point that is
certain is that 'on the very crown of the hill', the site of the high
altar in the future, was erected the standard of Harold.[70] This,
then, the centre of the hill, was the centre of the English host.
But the ground to which our attention is directed, as having 'really
played the most decisive part in the great event of the place', lay
to the west of this, 'where the slope is gentlest of all, where the
access to the natural citadel is least difficult'.[71] Mr Freeman
assumes that this ground--the 'English right', as he terms it--where
the 'ascent is easiest in itself', was allotted to 'the least
trustworthy portion of the English army', to 'the sudden levies of the
southern shires'.[72] For this assumption, I hasten to add, there is
no authority whatever. He further assumes that the first English to
leave their post, in pursuit of the enemy, 'were, of course, some of
the defenders of the English right'.[73] William, he holds, at the
crisis of the battle, resolved to draw them again from their post by a
partial feigned retreat, that 'meanwhile another division might reach
the summit through the gap thus left open'. Accordingly, tempted by
this stratagem, 'the English on the right wing rushed down and
pursued', and their error proved 'fatal to England'.[74]
The Duke's great object was now gained; the main end
of Harold's skilful tactics had been frustrated by the
inconsiderate ardour of the least valuable portion of his
troops. Through the rash descent of the light-armed on the
right, the whole English army lost its vantage-ground. The
pursuing English had left the most easily accessible portion
of the hill open to the approach of the enemy.... The main
body of the Normans made their way on to the hill, no doubt by
the gentle slope at the point west of the present buildings.
The great advantage of the ground was now lost; the Normans
were at last on the hill.[75]
Such is Mr Freeman's explanation of how the battle was won,[76] for in
this episode he discovers the decisive turning-point of the day.[77]
Now, let us consider what is involved in the theory here set forth.
'Harold's skilful tactics', we find, consisted in entrusting his
weakest point, the least defensible portion of his position, to 'the
least trustworthy portion of the English army'. The natural result
of these insane tactics was that his weak point was forced, and the
English right turned.[78] And Mr Freeman, having made this clear,
complains of 'the criticisms of monks on the conduct of a consummate
general', and insists that 'nowhere is Harold's military greatness
so distinctly felt as when ... we tread the battlefield of his own
choice'. But there is worse to come. Such tactics as these would
have been mad enough, even if these raw peasants had stood behind a
barricade; but if, as I hold, that barricade is a purely imaginary
creation, we ask ourselves what would have happened to these unhappy
creatures, protected by no 'shield-wall', and armed with 'such rustic
weapons as forks and sharp stakes',[79] when, first riddled by Norman
arrows and then attacked by Norman infantry, they were finally, broken
and defenceless, charged by heavy cavalry. The first onslaught would
have scattered them to the winds, and have won, in so doing, the key
of the English position.[80] Remembering this, it is strange to learn
that 'the consummate generalship of Harold is nowhere more
conspicuously shown than in this memorable campaign', and that his was
'that true skill of the leader of armies, which would have placed both
Harold and William high among the captains of any age'. But if the
generalship of Harold was shown by entrusting to his worst troops his
weakest and most important point, while posting 'the flower of the
English army' just where his ground was strongest, what are we to say
of 'the generalship of William, his ready eye, his quick thought', if
he failed to detect and avail himself of this glaring blunder? For
instead of concentrating his attack upon Harold's weak point, he left
it to be assailed, we learn, by 'what was most likely the least
esteemed' portion of his host,[81] while he himself with his picked
troops dashed himself against an impregnable position like a mad bull
against a wall. 'We read,' says Mr Freeman, 'with equal admiration of
the consummate skill with which Harold chose his position and his
general scheme of action, and of the wonderful readiness with which
William formed and varied his plans.' For myself, I should have
thought that the tactics he describes--tactics which stirred him to a
burst of admiration for 'the two greatest of living captains'--would
have disgraced the most incompetent commander that ever took the
field.
But Harold, after all, was no fool. Are we then justified in accusing
him of this supreme folly? Mr Freeman held that 'the relative position
of the different divisions in the two armies seems beyond doubt'.
There is, however, as I said, absolutely no evidence for Mr Freeman's
assumption that the English right was entrusted to the raw levies.
Against it is the fact that in this quarter the first assault was
soonest repulsed: against it also is all analogy drawn from the
study of English tactics. Snorro's description of Stamfordbridge is
evidence, at least, that 'the fortress of shields' had a continuous
line of bucklers along its whole front: Æthelred gives us the reason
in his story of the Battle of the Standard; namely, that it was the
front line which had to meet the shock ('periculosum dicebant si primo
aggressu inermes armatis occurrerent'). It was therefore an essential
principle of tactics 'quatinus armati armatos impeterent, milites
congrederentur militibus'.[82] Therefore on Cowton Moor (1138), as (I
hold) on the hill of Battle (1066), we find the 'strenuissimi milites
in prima fronte locati'.[83]
The words 'and the lighter troops behind them', which originally
followed here, have been objected to by Miss Norgate, who had
originally made the same statement,[84] but who now wishes to withdraw
it.[85] Henry of Huntingdon, however--like Æthelred, a contemporary
authority--agrees with him in describing the dismounted knights,
men with shields and _loricæ_ like the 'housecarls' at Hastings, as
forming an 'iron wall' along the English front.[86] If then mailed
warriors formed the front line, it is difficult to see where the
'inermis plebs', as Æthelred terms it, could be but 'behind them'. The
fact is that the Battle of the Standard, for which we have excellent
authorities, is of no small value for the study of the Battle of
Hastings, as my opponents seem to be uncomfortably aware. 'The
tactics,' Mr Freeman admits, 'were English.' We find there again
the same dense array,[87] the same tactics for defence, though now
rendered less passive by the development of the bowman.[88] There can,
I think, be little question, if we combine the several accounts, that
the Standard, with the older chiefs around it, formed the kernel of
the host;[89] that the rude levies of the shire were massed round
about them;[90] and that the outer rim was formed by the mailed
knights, with the archers crouching for shelter behind their 'iron
wall'.
Harking back to Sherstone fight (1016), we encounter precisely the
same formation. 'The King,' Mr Freeman writes, 'placed his best troops
in front, and the inferior part of his army in the rear.'
And he added, 'we must remember these tactics when we come to the
great fight of Senlac'.[91] This was, unhappily, just what he failed
to do. 'William of Poitiers,' he strangely complained, 'has his head
full of Agamemnon and of Xerxes, but this obvious analogy does not
seem to have occurred to him.' Have we also the reason why our
author himself overlooked these obvious analogies in the fact that to
illustrate the Battle of Hastings he quotes some five and twenty times
from the Odyssey and the Iliad, from Herodotus and Xenophon, from
Æschylus, Plutarch, and Dio Cassius; from Livy, Tacitus, Ammianus, and
even Ælius Spartianus? In his later edition, however, he inserted in
a footnote the words: 'On placing the inferior troops in the rear, see
the tactics of Eadmund at Sherstone.'[92] 'In the _rear_?' Yes, but
that is precisely my contention. The assumption that I am assailing is
that they formed the _wings_.
But we are not even here at the end of Mr Freeman's confusion. He had
meanwhile, in another work, published about the same time as the first
edition of his third volume, written thus:
As far as I can see, King Harold put these bad troops _in the
back_ ... But his picked men he put _in front_, where the best
troops of the enemy were likely to come.[93]
This is exactly my own view; it is that 'essential principle of
tactics' on which I have insisted throughout, and on which Miss
Norgate has rashly endeavoured to pour contempt.[94] Mr Freeman,
moreover, further on, wrote of his 'light armed' as 'the troops _in
the rear_',[95] which is again my contention. What seems to have
happened is that he got into his head (I can imagine how) that the
'light-armed' formed the wings, and arranged the battle on that
assumption. Then remembering, when it was too late, that, according to
his own precedent, they ought to have been in the rear, he hesitated
to introduce a change which would affect his whole theory of the
battle, and compel him to approach it _de novo_.[96]
But indeed, even apart from this, it seems doubtful, examining Mr
Freeman's narrative, whether he had formed a clear conception of how
the English troops were arranged, and whether, if so, he kept it in
view, consistently, throughout. If we honestly seek to learn what his
conception was, a careful comparison of pp. 472, 473, 475, 490, and
505, with the ground-plan, will show that the whole right wing was
composed of 'light-armed troops, who broke their line to pursue'. And
this view seems to be accepted and defended by Miss Norgate, who,
writing as his champion, declares that to her the conclusion embodied
in his ground-plan 'seems irresistible'.[97] On the other hand, pp.
471, 480, 487, and 732 most undoubtedly convey the impression that,
as I have maintained, the heavy-armed English were extended along the
whole front,[98] and that their defeat, in Mr Freeman's words (p.
732), was 'owing to their breaking the line of the shield-wall'. I
suspect that he was led thus to contradict himself by the obvious
concentration of his interest on 'the great personal struggle which
was going on beneath the standard' (p. 487). Here, as is often the
case throughout his work, Mr Freeman's treatment of his subject was
essentially dramatic. To bring his heroes into high relief, he thrust
into the background the rest of his scene as of comparatively small
account. In this spirit, for instance, he wrote:
A new act in the awful drama of that day had now begun. The
Duke himself, at the head of his own Normans, again pressed
towards the standard.... A few moments more and the mighty
rivals might have met face to face, and the war-club of the
Bastard might have clashed against the lifted axe of the
Emperor of Britain (p. 483).
Homer, doubtless, would have made them meet; but a great dramatic
opportunity was lost: the 'mighty rivals' seem never to have got
within striking distance. Meanwhile, however, the warring hosts are
left quite in the background; their fate is that of a stage crowd
engaged in a stage battle. I do not mean, of course, that Mr Freeman
ignores them, but that he was so engrossed in the personal exploits of
his heroes as to be impatient of that careful study which the battle
as a whole required, and comparatively careless of consistency in his
allusions to the English array.
The charge, in short, that I have brought throughout against the
disposition of the English in Mr Freeman's narrative is that his view,
'with all that it involves, was based on no authority, was merely the
offspring of his own imagination, and was directly at variance with
the only precedent that he vouched for the purpose'.[99] There is
absolutely not a scrap of evidence that--as shown on the 'accurate'
ground-plan--the English army was drawn up in three divisions, the
'housecarls' forming the centre, and the 'light-armed' the two wings.
We do not even know that it formed an almost straight line.[100]
The whole arrangement is sheer guesswork, and analogy, here our only
guide, is wholly against it.
I cannot insist too strongly on the charge I have here made. It is
no 'matter of secondary importance';[101] nor is it the case that my
argument as to the 'palisade' is, as Mr Archer pretended, 'the only
definite and palpable charge' that I bring 'against Mr Freeman's
account of the great battle'.[102] For, as I wrote from the very
first, 'rejecting Mr Freeman's views on the groupings of the English
host, we reject with them _in toto_ the story he has built upon
them'.[103]
My own view is based upon the fact that, in the military tactics as in
the military architecture of the age, the defence trusted largely to
its power of passive resistance: this was the essential principle of
the ponderous Norman keep; and precisely as the walls of that keep
were formed of an ashlar face of masonry backed by masses of rubble,
so the fighting line of a force standing on the defensive was composed
of a compact facing of heavily-armed troops backed by a rabble of
half-armed peasants, or at best by what we may term the light infantry
of the day. When the foe was advancing to the attack, these rear lines
could discharge such weapons as they possessed--darts, arrows, stones,
etc.--from behind the shelter of their comrades,[104] while at the
moment of actual shock they would form a passive backing, which would
save the front ranks from being broken by the enemy's impact. As the
great object of the attack was to break through the line, a formation
which virtually gave the advantage now possessed by a solid over a
hollow square would naturally commend itself to the defence.
Now in these tactics we have the key to the true story of the battle.
But, first, we must dismiss from our minds Mr Freeman's fundamental
assumption, and understand that the English 'hoplites' were not massed
in the centre, but were extended along the whole front, precisely as
they were in battles fought both before and after. The fighting face
of Harold's host was composed of this heavy soldiery, clad in helmets
and mail. Arrayed in the closest order, they presented to an advancing
enemy the aspect of a living rampart ('quasi castellum').
How the Normans attacked that rampart it will now be my task to show.
THE NORMAN ADVANCE
From Telham Hill Duke William scanned that living rampart, and saw
clearly that 'his only chance was to tempt the English to break their
shield-wall'.[105] It is chiefly from Baudri's poem that we learn how
he set about it.[106]
There is no question that the fight began with an advance of the
Norman infantry. William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy are in complete
accordance on the fact.[107] But as my description of the infantry has
been challenged,[108] I may show that it is quite beyond dispute.[109]
To my argument, as reprinted below, it has been objected that I
fail 'to take account of the distinction between light-armed and
heavy-armed infantry'.[110] It will be seen that my argument turns,
not on the armour, but on the _weapons_ of the foot. I have challenged
my opponents to produce mention of any weapons but crossbows,[111] or
bows and arrows, and need scarcely say that they cannot.
Describing the 'armour and weapons of the Normans', Mr Freeman,
avowedly following the Tapestry, represented the infantry as all
archers,[112] and divided them into two classes: (1) those 'without
defensive harness'; (2) those who 'wore the defences common to the
horse and foot of both armies ... the close-fitting coat of mail ...
and the conical helmet'.[113] Now this division is exactly reproduced
in the words of William of Poitiers, who divides his 'pedites' into
two classes, distinguished only by the fact that in one were the
'firmiores et loricatos'. He does not say that the latter were _not_
archers, or crossbowmen, nor did Mr Freeman venture to assign them
any other weapons.[114] Bishop Guy, moreover, distinctly tells us
that they were crossbowmen (_vide infra_). The advance, therefore, in
modern language, consisted of skirmishers, represented by archers and
perhaps some crossbowmen; supports, namely, crossbowmen who, as a
somewhat superior class, would mostly have defensive armour; and,
lastly, the cavalry as reserve.[115]
Now what was the intention of this advance? Mr Freeman assumed,
without hesitation, that the foot 'were to strive to break down the
palisades ... and so to make ready the way for the charge of the
horse' (p. 467); that 'the infantry were, therefore, exposed to the
first and most terrible danger' (_ibid._); 'that the French infantry
had to toil up the hill, and to break down the palisade' (p.
477).[116] But we find, on reference, that the above writers say
nothing of any such intention, and do not even mention the existence
of a palisade.[117] Moreover, the only weapons they speak of are
crossbows and bows and arrows, which are scarcely the tools for
pioneers. But William of Poitiers puts us on the track of a very
different explanation: 'Pedites itaque Normanni propius accedentes
_provocant_ Anglos, missilibus in eos vulnera dirigunt atque necem'.
Here Baudri comes to our aid:
Nam neque Normannus consertos audet adire
Nec valet a cuneo quemlibet excipere.
Arcubus utantur dux imperat atque balistis;
Nam prius has mortes Anglia tunc didicit.
Tunc didicere mori quam non novere sagitta
Creditur a cælo mors super ingruere
Hos velut a longe comitatur militis agmen,
Palantes post se miles ut excipiat.
The Normans dared not face the serried ranks of the English: the maxim
that cavalry should not charge unbroken infantry was asserting itself
already. But the only means of breaking those ranks, of throwing the
English into confusion, was to gall them by archers and slingers till
some of them should sally forth, when their assailants would turn tail
and leave them to be caught in the open and ridden down. As Bishop Guy
expresses it:
Præmisit pedites committere bella sagittis,
Et balistantes inserit in medio,
Quatinus infigant volitantia vultibus arma,
Vulneribusque datis ora retro faciant,
Ordine post pedites sperat stabilire Quirites
These tactics, says Baudri, were crowned with success; the maddened
English, as they dashed forth to strike their tormentors to the
ground, were cut off in every direction by the horsemen waiting their
chance:
Tunc præ tristitia gens effera præque pudore
Egreditur palans, insequiturque vagos.
Normanni simulantque fugam fugiuntque fugantes,
Intercepit eos undique præpes equus.
Ilico cæduntur; sic paulatim minuuntur,
Nec minuebatur callidus ordo ducis.
This account is both intelligible and consistent, but differs wholly
from that of Mr Freeman. It had, however, been virtually anticipated
by Mr Oman, who in his _Art of War in the Middle Ages_ (p. 25), points
out, with much felicity, that
the archers, if unsupported by the knights, could easily
have been driven off the field by a general charge. United,
however, by the skilful tactics of William, the two divisions
of the invading army won the day. The Saxon mass was subjected
to exactly the same trial which befell the British squares in
the battle of Waterloo: incessant charges by a gallant cavalry
were alternated with a destructive fire of missiles. Nothing
can be more maddening than such an ordeal to the infantry
soldier, rooted to the spot by the necessities of his
formation.
Let us compare the two theories. Mr Freeman's, here again, is not even
consistent. He first tells us that for the knights to charge, with
'the triple palisade still unbroken, would have been sheer madness';
in fact it was 'altogether useless' for them to advance until the
infantry had broken down the palisade.[118] But this the infantry
failed to do,[119] whereupon--the cavalry charged 'the impenetrable
fortress of timber' (p. 479)! One is surely reminded of the immortal
Don, when 'a todo el galope de Rocinante', he charged the windmill.
My own theory involves no such inconsistencies. I hold--not as a
conjecture based on a hypothetical palisade, but on the excellent
authority of Baudri and William of Poitiers, that the infantry
were used for the definite purpose of galling the English by their
missiles, and so enticing them to leave their ranks and become a prey
to the horse. As soon as their line had thus been broken, the cavalry
were to charge.
Up to this point, the English army, as a whole, had kept its
formation; but now the strain on its patience had become too great to
be borne. Breaking its ranks, with one accord, the whole host rushed
upon its foes, and drove them before it in confusion right up to the
Duke's post:
Tandem jactura gens irritata frequenti,
Ordinibus spretis irruit unanimis.
Tunc quoque plus solito fugientum terga cecidit,
Et miles vultum fugit ad usque ducis.
This explains what had always been to me a difficulty, namely, the
panic-stricken flight of the Normans at this stage of the battle. That
they should have 'lost heart' (p. 480) at the firmness of the English
is natural enough; but that they should have 'turned and fled'
(_ibid._) from a force which did not pursue them seemed improbable.
The difficulty is solved by Baudri's mention of the wild onslaught
by the English. Moreover, Bishop Guy's description of the rout of
the assailants--which Mr Freeman assigned to this stage of the
battle--agrees well with that of Baudri:
Anglorum populus, numero superante, repellit
Hostes inque retro compulit ora dari;
Et fuga ficta prius fit tunc virtute coacta;
Normanni fugiunt, dorsa tegunt clipei.
Again, Baudri's poem suggests a novel view by its definite statement
that the Normans in their flight reached the Duke's post. Mr Freeman
imagined that the Duke himself had been fighting in the front line
(pp. 479, 480), but a careful comparison of his two authorities,
William of Poitiers and Bishop Guy (p. 482), will show that, on the
contrary, they support Baudri's statement. Each speaks of the Duke
as 'meeting' (_occurrens_--_occurrit_) the fugitives, a difficulty
which Mr Freeman evaded by writing that 'he met _or pursued_ the
fugitives'.
From this flight the Normans were rallied by the desperate efforts of
the Duke himself, who, as is usual at such moments, was believed to
have fallen. I deem this episode a fixed point, and it conveniently
divides the battle. All our four leading authorities--the Tapestry,
William of Poitiers, Bishop Guy, and Baudri--are here in complete
agreement. William describes the Duke as 'nudato insuper capite';
Guy tells us that 'iratus galea nudat et ipse caput'; Baudri writes
'subito galeam submovet a capite'; in the Tapestry, 'William (writes
Dr Bruce), when he wishes to show himself in order to contradict the
rumour that he has been killed, is obliged to lift his helmet
almost off his head' (p. 98). It is singular that so striking and
well-established an episode is wholly ignored by Wace.
THE FOSSE DISASTER
The serious character of the assailants' flight is duly recognized by
Mr Freeman.[120] We could have no more eloquent witness to the fact
than the admission even by William of Poitiers that the Duke's Normans
themselves gave way, or the description of them by Bishop Guy as 'gens
sua victa'. The only point in question here is whether what I call
'the fosse disaster' was an incident of this headlong flight or
happened at a later stage of the battle. Mr Freeman, discussing 'the
order of events',[121] faced the difficulty frankly, observing that
Guy had placed the feigned flight before what I have termed above the
dividing incident of the day, and that this view 'may be thought to be
confirmed by the Tapestry', etc., etc. We have here perhaps the most
difficult problem raised in the course of the battle, and one which
it would be easier and safer to pass over in silence. As to Guy, I
suggest, as a possible solution--it does not profess to be more--that
what he was describing was not the great feigned flight but the lesser
man[oe]uvres of the same character described by Baudri above. He
may, of course, have transferred to these the importance of the later
episode. On the real flight, at least, he is sound. Of the Tapestry
I would speak with more confidence. 'In the nature of things,' Mr
Freeman wrote, 'exact chronological order is not its strongest point'
(p. 768). But in this case there was nothing to make it depart from
that order, no reason why it should not place the incident of 'the
fosse disaster' after the central incident of the day, instead of
before, if that were its right position. Moreover, it is here, we
find, in the closest agreement with Wace; and though I claim, as did
Mr Freeman, the right of rejecting his testimony when wholly
unsupported (as still more, when opposed to probability), yet such
marked agreement as this is not to be lightly cast aside.
In any case, nothing can be more unfortunate than Mr Freeman's
treatment of what he describes as the 'great slaughter of the French
in the western ravine' (p. 489). This is a scene invented by Mr
Freeman alone, and illustrates the peculiar use he made, at times,
of his authorities. There is no question that the Norman knights
suffered, in the course of the day, at least one such disaster as the
nobles of France at Courtrai (1302) or her cuirassiers at Waterloo.
But five authorities, so far as one can see, place the incident in the
thick of the battle, while three others assign it to the pursuit of
the defeated English. It is not strange, therefore, that some writers
should have held that there was but one such incident: Mr Freeman,
however, holds that there were two; and I expressly disclaim
questioning his view, the matter being one of opinion. Assuming then,
as he does, that the episode occurred in the course of the battle,
I turn to the spirited version of Wace, as Mr Archer defies me to
'impeach Wace's authority' (p. 346). The 'old Norman poet' is here
very precise. He first tells us (ll. 7869-70, 8103-6) that the English
had made a 'fosse', which the Normans had passed unnoticed in their
advance.[122] These passages Mr Freeman accepts without question (p.
476). But then Wace proceeds to state (ll. 8107-20) that the Normans,
driven back, as we have seen, by the English, tumbled, men and horses,
into this treacherous 'fosse' and perished in great numbers. Now Wace,
far from standing alone, is here in curiously close agreement with
the Tapestry of Bayeux. Two successive scenes in that 'most authetic
record' are styled 'Hic ceciderunt simul Angli et Franci in pr[oe]lio;
hic Odo episcopus baculum tenens confortat pueros.' Wace describes
these scenes in thirty-six lines (ll. 8103-38), devoting eighteen
lines to the first and the same number to the second. Actual
comparison alone can show how close the agreement is. Henry of
Huntingdon, we may add, independently confirms the statement that
English as well as French perished in the fatal fosse.[123]
Now all this is quite opposed to Mr Freeman's 'conception of the
battle'. He had, therefore, to adapt, with no gentle hands, his
authorities to his requirements. Cinderella's stepmother, when her
daughter's foot could not be got into the golden shoe, armed herself,
we read, with axe and scissors, and trimmed it to the requisite shape.
With no less decision the late Professor set about his own task.
Wace's evidence he simply suppressed; Henry of Huntingdon's he
ignored; but that of the Bayeux Tapestry could not be so easily
disposed of. I invite particular attention to his treatment of this,
his 'highest authority'. Retaining in its natural place (pp. 481-2)
the second of the two scenes we have described, he threw forward the
one preceding it to a later stage of the battle (p. 490). Nor did his
vigorous adaptation stop even here. The scene thus wrenched from its
place depicts a single incident: mounted Normans are tumbling headlong
into a ditch at the foot of a mound, on which 'light-armed' English
stand assailing them with their weapons. The fight is hand to hand;
the bodies touch. And yet the Professor treats this scene as a
description of two quite separate events happening at a distance from
each other. These he terms (p. 489) the 'stand of the English at the
detached hill'; and the 'great slaughter of the French in the western
ravine'. But on referring to his own ground-plan, we find that this
'ravine' and the 'detached hill' were a quarter of a mile apart, with
the slopes of the main hill between them.
My criticism here is twofold. In the first place, Mr Freeman
endeavoured to conceal the liberties he had taken with his leading
authority. No one would gather from his narrative of the battle that
any such violence had been used; nor would anyone who read of the
'hill' episode that 'the scene is vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p.
489), and, subsequently, of the 'ravine' disaster, that 'this scene
is most vividly shown in the Tapestry' (p. 490), imagine that 'the
incidents of the ravine and the little hill' (p. 768) are in the
Tapestry one and the same. In the second place, the large part which
the writer's own imagination plays in his narrative of the fight is
here clearly seen. There is nothing, for instance, in any authority to
connect 'the western ravine' with 'the great slaughter of the French'.
It is placed by those who mention it in a 'fosse', 'fossatum', or
'fovea'. 'If Wace is any authority,' to quote Mr Archer's words, 'the
question is settled once and for all';[124] the slaughter took place
not in the 'ravine', but in a ditch which according to him, the
English had dug to the south of the hill, and which, according to
Henry of Huntingdon, they had cunningly concealed. Mr Freeman produces
no authority in support of his own fancy; his only argument is that
the slaughter
must have happened somewhere to the south or south-west of the
hill. The small ravine to the south-west seems exactly what is
wanted (p. 771).
The 'western ravine' however, does not fulfil these requirements
(see ground-plan, where it lies to the north-west of the hill);
while Wace's 'fosse', which--though here ignoring it--he had already
accepted, lay, as required, to the south of the hill. Wace
mentions another instance (ll. 1737-50) in which this stratagem was
adopted,[125] but whether our ditch was dug, as he states, expressly
or not, the fact of its existence does not depend on his evidence
alone.
To resume: accepting provisionally Mr Freeman's view (iii. 770) that
there were two disasters to the horse, one 'happening comparatively
early in the battle', and the other 'which William of Poitiers,
Orderic and the Battle chronicler place at the very end of the
battle', as occurring in the pursuit of the defeated English, we find
that the former is mentioned by five writers. The Tapestry and Wace
agree absolutely in making it an episode of the real flight of the
Normans before the great rally; Henry of Huntingdon assigns it to the
great feigned flight, later in the battle; William of Malmesbury
seems to make it happen during the pursuit by the Normans after their
feigned flight; the anonymous writer quoted by Andresen (ii. 713) from
Le Prevost may be left out of the question. Yet, in spite of all this
contradiction, Mr Freeman assigns this striking episode, not as a
conjecture, but as historic fact, to the pursuit of the English by
the 'Bretons'[126] after the feigned flight (p. 489). Let me make my
position clear. We expect an historian to weigh, as an expert, the
evidence before him: we look to him for guidance where that evidence
is conflicting. But we have a right to protest against the statement,
as historic fact, of hypotheses which cannot be established, and which
are quite possibly wrong. Where the evidence is flatly contradictory,
the fact that it is so should be made clear; conflicting statements
should not be evaded, nor evidence, such as that of the Tapestry,
appealed to, when it proves to be opposed to, not in favour of, the
writer's hypothesis. Dealing with the Conqueror's march on London,
after his great victory, Mr Parker has insisted with much force, on
the principle for which I am contending.
Though, by leaving out here and there the discrepancies, the
residue may be worked up into a consecutive and consistent
series of events, such a process amounts to making history,
not writing it. Amidst a mass of contradictory evidence, it
is impossible to arrive at any sure conclusion.... It is,
however, comparatively easy to piece together such details
as will fit of the various stories, and still more easy to
discover reasons for the results which such mosaic work
produces ... [but] it cannot be reasonably regarded as real
history. The method by which the results are obtained bears
too close a resemblance to that by which ... some of the
legends described in the fifth chapter have come to be
accepted as historical narratives.[127]
That is the danger. Such a narrative as that which Mr Freeman has
given us must 'come to be accepted as historical' if allowed to pass
current without a grave warning. It will doubtless be replied that in
his appendices, he frankly admits that 'it is often hard to reconcile
the various accounts'; but the question at issue is whether one is
justified when, as here, the various accounts are not only 'hard' but
impossible to reconcile, in constructing a definite narrative at all,
instead of honestly admitting that the matter must be left in doubt.
THE GREAT FEIGNED FLIGHT
There is no feature of the famous battle more familiar or more certain
than that of the feigned retreat. It is necessary here to grasp Mr
Freeman's view, because he discovers in this man[oe]uvre and its
results the decisive turning point of the day.[128]
That there was a great feigned flight, which induced a large portion
of the English to break their formation and pursue their foes, is
beyond question.[129] But Mr Freeman, on this foundation, built up a
legend, for which, we shall find, there exists no evidence whatever.
He first assumed that it was 'most likely' the left wing of the
assailants which 'turned in seeming flight'[130] (p. 488), and that
it was, consequently, 'the English on the right wing' who 'rushed down
and pursued them'. Thus:
Through the rash descent of the light-armed on the right,
the whole English army lost its vantage ground. The pursuing
English had left the most easily accessible portion of the
hill open to the approach of the enemy (p. 490).
The result, of course, was that 'the main body of the Normans made
their way on the hill, no doubt by the gentle slope' at this point
(_ibid._).
The great advantage of the ground was now lost; the Normans
were at last on the hill. Instead of having to cut their way
up the slope, and through the palisades, they could now
charge to the east right against the defenders of the standard
(_ibid._).
These words are most important. They set forth Mr Freeman's theory
that Harold now found the Normans charging down upon his right flank
instead of attacking him in front. It was in this sense I wrote 'that
his weak point was forced, and the English right turned', as the
natural result of the 'insane' tactics attributed to him by his
champion.[131] The man[oe]uvre assigned by Mr Freeman to the Duke is,
in fact, that by which Marlborough won the battle of Ramillies, where
he got on to the hill by dislodging the French right, and then wheeled
to his own right, outflanking the French centre.
When we turn from this elaborate theory to the authorities on which it
is supposed to be based, we find, with some astonishment, that it is
all sheer imagination. William of Poitiers, on whom the writer seemed
mainly to rely for the feigned flight, states that:
Normanni sociaque turba ... terga dederunt, fugam ex industriâ
simulantes--
words which distinctly imply that this feigned flight was general.
Henry of Huntingdon merely writes: 'Docuit Dux Willelmus _genti
suæ_ fugam simulare.' No one, certainly, says or implies that it was
restricted to the left wing. As for the theory that 'the main body of
the Normans' were, by this man[oe]uvre, enabled to seize the western
portion of the hill, and thus attack Harold on his flank, it is more
imaginary, if possible, still.
The fact is that, as I explained in my original article,[132] Mr
Freeman had wholly misconceived the nature of William's man[oe]uvre.
The feigned flight was not a simple (as he supposed), but a combined
movement. The best account of that movement is found in the Battle
Chronicle:
Tandem strenuissimus Boloniæ comes Eustachius clam, callida
præmeditata arte--fugam cum exercitu duce simulante--super
Anglos sparsim agiliter insequentes cum manu valida a tergo
irruit, _sicque et duce hostes ferociter invadente ipsis
interclusis utrinque_ prosternuntur innumeri.
This precise statement, which Mr Freeman omits,[133] affords the clue
we seek, explaining the words of William of Poitiers, 'interceptos et
inclusos undique mactaverunt'. The retreat of the pursuing English
was cut off by the Count's squadrons, and, caught 'between two fires',
they were cut down and butchered. The supposition that, while this was
going on, the main body of the Normans was riding on to the hill is
baseless. The whole host, we have seen, were below, surrounding the
English who had left the hill. Had Mr Freeman kept in mind, as he had
intended to do, the employment of this old Norman device at the relief
of Arques (1053), he would have seen more clearly what really happened.
But this, precisely as with his Sherstone precedent, he failed to do.
THE RELIEF OF ARQUES
To illustrate the feigned flight by analogy, I append this passage
relating to the stratagem at Arques.
A plan was speedily devised; an ambush was laid; a smaller
party was sent forth to practise that stratagem of pretended
flight which Norman craft was to display thirteen years later
[1066] on a greater scale. The Normans turned; the French
pursued; presently the liers-in-wait were upon them, and the
noblest and bravest of the invading host were slaughtered or
taken prisoners before the eyes of their king (iii. 133).
The man[oe]uvre is elaborately described by Wace (ll. 3491-514) in a
passage which ought to be compared, in places, with that on the great
'feinte fuie' itself (ll. 8203-70).
He carefully distinguishes the two parties essential to the
stratagem:[134]
Partie pristrent des Normanz,
Des forz e des mielz cumbatanz,
. . . . .
Puis pristrent une autre partie, etc., etc.
The latter detachment turned in flight and decoyed some of the leading
Frenchmen past the spot where the ambush was laid. Then, facing round,
they caught their rash pursuers 'between two fires'. I have shown
above, from the 'precise statement' which is found in the 'Battle
Chronicle', that the great man[oe]uvre which deceived the English was
a similarly combined one. Mr Freeman, completely missing this point,
makes the Norman 'division', which did not take part in the flight
'ride up the hill' (p. 490), where its slopes were deserted, whereas,
on the contrary, they thrust themselves between the pursuers and the
hill, and then charged on their rear, riding, of course, not on to,
but away from the hill.
So close is the Arques parallel that in Wace we find the same words
occurring in both cases:
A cels kis alouent chazant Engleis les aloent gabant
E quis alouent leidissant E de paroles laidissant
Sunt enmi le vis tresturne, ....
E Franceis sunt a els mesdle (ll. Torne lor sunt enmi le vis
3501-4); ....
E as Engleis entremesler (ll.
8241-2, 8262-4);
while William of Malmesbury describes the French king as thus 'astutia
insidiis exceptus', just as he describes Harold, in turn as thus
'astutiâ Willelmi circumventus'. Mr Freeman quoted both passages, yet
failed to note the parallel.
I speak, it will be seen, of 'the relief of Arques'. As my critic so
rashly assumed that in my original article I exhausted Mr Freeman's
errors,[135] I may point out that this subject introduces us, at once,
to fresh ones. Our author, for instance, held that Arques was not
relieved. Let us see. We are first rightly told, on the authority
of William of Poitiers, that the Duke blockaded the stronghold
(_munitio_) by erecting a _castellum_ at its foot (p. 128). On the
next page we are told that the latter was 'a wooden tower'--which is
precisely what it was not--and that it 'is described as a _munitio_'
by William of Poitiers, whereas that term, as we have just seen,
denoted, on the contrary, the rebel stronghold itself. Then we
are told that the French king marched to the relief of the rebels,
bringing with him 'a good stock of provisions, of corn, and of wine'
for the purpose, but 'was far from being successful in his enterprise'
(p. 131). In fact, he 'went home, having done nothing towards the
immediate object of his journey--the relief of the besieged' (p.
137). Mr Freeman added in a note: 'So I understand the not very
clear statement of William of Poitiers that the King went away.' Now,
William's statement (which is quoted by him) is absolutely clear:
_Perveniens tamen quo ire intenderat_, Rex exacerbatissimis
animis summâ vi præsidium attentavit: Willelmum ab ærumnis uti
eriperet, pariter decrementum sui, stragem suorum vindicaret.
The King, that is, in spite of the ambush, reached his destination
(the blockaded stronghold) and then furiously attacked the _castellum_
below, with the double object of raising the blockade and of avenging
the death of his followers. Wace is, if possible, even more explicit.
After describing the affair of the ambush, he proceeds thus:
Les somiers fist apareilier,
La garisun prendre e chargier,
_À la tur d'Arches fist porter_,
Il meisme fu al mener (II. ll. 3519-22).
Arques, therefore, was duly relieved; the blockading party being only
strong enough to defend, when attacked, its own _castellum_.
We will certainly not say of Mr Freeman that he had not read his
Wace 'with common care'--to quote from his criticism on Professor
Pearson--but really, when _more suo_ he corrected _ex cathedrâ_ the
faults of others, he might at least have made sure of his facts. We
will take (from the narrative of the Battle of Hastings) the case of
the knighting of Harold on the eve of the Breton war:
WACE MR FREEMAN
E Heraut out iloc geu, Mr Planché says that Wace lays
E par la Lande fu passez, the scene at Avranches. He probably
Quant il fu duc amenez, refers to the Roman de Rou, 13723,
Qui a Aurenches donc esteit but the knighthood is not there
E en Bretaigne aler deueit, spoken of (p. 229).
_La le fist li dus chevalier_
[ll. 13720-5].
But it is only the feigned flight that connects the Battle of Hastings
with Arques and its blockade. We read, as the battle is about to
begin, of 'the aged Walter Giffard, the lord of Longueville, the hero
of Arques and Mortemer' (p. 457). As our author breaks the thread
of his narrative (pp. 128-37) to tell us in detail about those whose
names occur in it, we need not scruple in this instance to do the
same. Turning back, therefore, we read:
The chief who now commanded below the steep of Arques lived
to refuse to bear the banner of Normandy below the steep
of Senlac ... and to found, like so many others among the
baronage of Normandy, a short-lived earldom in the land which
he helped to conquer (p. 123).
In the act of that refusal he is thus described:
Even in the days of Arques [1053] and Mortimer [1054] he was
an aged man, and now [1066] he was old indeed; his hair was
white, his arm was failing (p. 465).
Yet we meet the veteran again, a generation later, as 'old Walter
Giffard, now [1090] Earl of Buckingham, in England ... the aged
warrior of Arques and Senlac' (_W.R._, i. 231). 'Nor do we wonder,' we
read, 'to find,' among the supporters of William Rufus in 1095, 'the
name of Walter Giffard, him [_sic_] who appeared as an aged man forty
years before' (_W.R._, i. 472). But even Mr Freeman admits that 'we
are somewhat surprised to find', among the opponents of Henry I in
1101, 'now at the very end of his long life, the aged Walter Giffard,
lord of Longueville, and Earl of Buckingham' (_W.R._, ii. 395).
Surprised? We are indeed; for, if he was 'an aged man' half a century
before, what must he have been when he joined the rebels in 1101?
It reminds one of a delightful passage in the quaint 'Memorie of the
Somervells', where the artless author, speaking of the action, in
1213, of his ancestor 'being then near the nyntieth and fourth year of
his age', observes:
What could have induced him ... to join himself with the
rebellious barrons at such an age, when he could not act any
in all human probabilitie, and was as unfit for counsel, is a
thing to be admired, but not understood or knowne.
One need scarcely point out that Mr Freeman has confused two
successive bearers of the name. The confusion is avoided by the
Duchess of Cleveland in her work on 'The Battle Abbey Roll', as it had
been by Planché and previous writers.
I here notice it chiefly as illustrating Mr Freeman's ready acceptance
of even glaring improbabilities.
But one of the most singular flaws in the late Professor's work was
his evident tendency to confuse two or more persons bearing the same
name. Three or four Leofstans of London were rolled by him into one;
Henry of Essex was identified with a Henry who had a different
father and who lived in Cumberland; while a whole string of erroneous
conclusions followed, we saw, from identifying Osbern 'filius Ricardi'
with Osbern 'cognomine Pentecost'.[136] It is strange that one who was
so severe on confusion of identity where places were concerned[137]
should have been, in the case of persons, guilty of that confusion.
SUMMARY
I would now briefly recapitulate the points I claim to have
established. We have seen, in the first place, that Mr Freeman's
disposition of the English forces is, with all that it involves,
nothing but a sheer guess--a guess to which he did not consistently
adhere, and to which his own precedent, moreover, is directly opposed.
Secondly, as to the 'palisade' which formed, according to him, so
prominent a feature of the battle, we have found that of the passages
he vouched for its existence only one need even be considered; and
that one, according to himself, where he last quotes and deals with
it, describes, not a palisade but the time-honoured 'array of the
shield-wall'.[138] Then, passing to the battle and taking it stage by
stage, I have shown that on its opening phase he went utterly astray
in search of an imaginary assault on a phantom palisade; we have
seen how another such guess transported to 'the western ravine'
a catastrophe which, even on his own showing, must have happened
somewhere else, and assigned it to a stage of the battle which is
quite possibly the wrong one. We have watched him missing the point
of the great feigned flight and failing to see how Norman craft caught
the English in a trap. And lastly, the critical man[oe]uvre of the
day, by which the Duke's great object was gained, and 'the
great advantage of the ground lost' to the English, proves on
inquiry--although introduced, like other assertions, as a historic
fact--to be yet another unsupported guess: for the statement that by
this man[oe]uvre 'the Normans were at last on the hill' and could thus
'charge to the east right against the defenders of the Standard' there
is absolutely no foundation.
We have now--confining ourselves to points as to which there can be no
question--examined Mr Freeman's account of the Battle of Hastings. It
is, as I showed at the outset, the very crown and flower of his work,
and it is, I venture to assert, mistaken in its essential points. Must
it, then, be cast aside as simply erroneous and misleading? Hardly. In
the words of his own criticism on Mr Coote's _Romans in Britain_: 'It
ought to be read, if only as a curious study, to show how utterly
astray an ingenious and thoroughly well-informed man can go.' For
there is the true conclusion. The possession of exhaustive knowledge,
the devotion of unsparing pains--neither of these were wanting. Then
'wanting is--what?' Men have differed and will always differ, as to
how history should be written; but on one point we are all agreed. The
true historian is he, and he only, who, from the evidence before him,
can divine the facts. Other qualities are welcome, but this is the
essential gift. And it was because, here at least, he lacked in that,
in spite of all his advantages, in spite of his genius and his zeal,
our author, in his story of this battle, failed as we have seen.
Mr Freeman held that his predecessors, Thierry and Sir Francis
Palgrave, 'singularly resemble each other in a certain lack of
critical power'. His own lack, as I conceive it, was of a somewhat
different kind. For if he studied the text and weighed the value of
his authorities, yet he was often liable to danger from his tendency
to a _parti pris_. Setting out with his own impression, he read his
texts in the light of that impression rather than with an open mind.
Thus we might say of his 'very lucid and original account' of the
great battle, as he said of Mr Coote's work: 'The truth of the whole
matter is that all this very ingenious but baseless fabric has been
built upon the foundation of a single error.' Had he not stumbled at
the outset over that 'quasi castellum', he might never have erected
that 'ingenious but baseless fabric'. As it is, while the battle
should be largely rewritten, preserving only such incidents as are
taken straight from the authorities, the accompanying plan must be
wholly destroyed. Till then, as Dr Stubbs has said of the discovery
that 'Ingulf' was a forgery, 'it remains a warning light, a wandering
marshfire, to caution the reader not to accept too abjectly the
conclusions of his authority'.
What then remains, it may be asked, of Mr Freeman's narrative? When
one remembers its superb vividness, carrying us away in spite of
ourselves, one is tempted to reply, in his own words on the saga of
Stamfordbridge:
We have, indeed, a glorious description which, when critically
examined, proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than a
battlepiece in the Iliad.... Such is the magnificent legend
which has been commonly accepted as the history of this famous
battle.... And it is disappointing that, for so detailed and
glowing a tale, we have so little of authentic history to
substitute (pp. 365-8).
For, as he has so justly observed, when dismissing as 'mythical'
this 'famous and magnificent saga' (pp. 328-9), 'a void is left which
history cannot fill, and which it is forbidden to the historian to
fill up from the resources of his own imagination'.
Accepting the principle here enunciated by Mr Freeman himself, I do
not merely reject demonstrably erroneous statements. I protest
against his giving us a narrative drawn 'from the resources of his
own imagination'. It is no answer to say that his guesses cannot be
actually proved to be wrong; the historian cannot distinguish too
sharply between statements drawn from his authorities and guesses,
however ingenious, representing imagination alone. No one I am sure,
reading Mr Freeman's brilliant narrative, could imagine how largely
his story of the battle is based on mere conjecture.
What the battle really was may be thus tersely expressed--it was
Waterloo without the Prussians. The Normans could avail nothing
against that serried mass.
Dash'd on every rocky square,
Their surging charges foam'd themselves away.
As Mr Oman has so well observed, the Norman horse might have surged
for ever 'around the impenetrable shield-wall'.[139] It was only, as
he and Mr Hunt[140] have shown, by the skilful combination of horsemen
and archers, by the maddening showers of arrows between the charges of
the horse, that the English, especially the lighter armed, were stung
into breaking their formation and abandoning that passive defence
to which they were unfortunately restricted. 'While no mode of array
could be stronger so long as the line remained unbroken, it made it
hard to form the line again.'[141] Dazzled by the rapid movements
of their foes, now advancing, now retreating, either in feint or in
earnest, the English, in places, broke their line, and then the Duke,
as Mr Oman writes, 'thrust his horsemen into the gaps'.[142] All this
is quite certain, and is what the authorities plainly describe. Let
us, then, keep to what we know. Is it not enough for us to picture
the English line stubbornly striving to the last to close its broken
ranks, the awful scene of slaughter and confusion, as the Old Guard
of Harold, tortured by Norman arrows, found the horsemen among them
at last, slashing and piercing right and left. Still the battle-axe
blindly smote; doggedly, grimly still they fought, till the axes
dropped from their lifeless grasp. And so they fell.
Mr Archer, when he first came forward to defend 'Mr Freeman's account
of the great battle',[143] observed that I claimed 'here to prove
the entire inadequacy of Mr Freeman's work', that I held him 'wrong,
completely wrong in his whole conception of the battle'.[144] And he
admitted that
'such a contention, it will at once be perceived, is very
different from any mere criticism of detail; it affects the
centre and the very heart of Mr Freeman's work. If he could
blunder here in the most carefully elaborated passage of his
whole history, he could blunder anywhere; his reputation for
accuracy would be gone almost beyond hope of retrieving it'
(p. 336).
'Blunder', surely, is a harsh word. I would rather say that the
historian is seen here at his strongest and at his weakest: at his
weakest in his tendency to follow blindly individual authorities
in turn, instead of grasping them as a whole, and, worse still,
in adapting them, at need, to his own preconceived notions; at his
strongest, in his Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live
and move before us. Not in vain has 'the wand of the enchanter', as an
ardent admirer once termed it, been waved around Harold and his host.
We are learning from recent German researches how the narratives of
early Irish warfare are 'perfectly surrounded with magic'; how, for
instance, at the battle of Culdreimne 'a Druid wove a magic hedge,
which he placed before the army as a hindrance to the enemy'. But
spells are now no longer wrought
With woven paces and with waving hands;
and the Druid's hedge must go the way of our own magician's
'palisade'.
But, as I foresaw, in his eagerness to prove, at least, the existence
of a palisade, my critic was soon reduced to impugning Mr Freeman's
own supreme authority, and at last to throwing over Mr Freeman
himself. 'Incidit in Scyllam cupiens vitare Charybdim.' Sneering[145]
at what the historian termed his 'highest', his 'primary' authority,
that 'precious monument', the Bayeux Tapestry--merely because it will
not square with his views--he rejects utterly Mr Freeman's theory as
to its date and origin,[146] and substitutes one which the Professor
described as 'utterly inconceivable'.[147] He has further informed us
that 'common sense' tells him that the English axemen cannot possibly
have fought 'in the close array of the shield-wall', as Mr Freeman
says they did.[148] And then he finally demolishes Mr Freeman's
'conception of the battle' by dismissing 'an imaginary
shield-wall',[149] and assuring us that the absurd vision of 'an
extended shield-wall vanishes like smoke'.[150]
It is impossible not to pity Mr Freeman's would-be champion. Scorning,
at the outset, the thought that his hero could err 'in the most
carefully elaborated passage of his whole history',[151] his attitude
of bold defiance was a joy to Mr Freeman's friends.[152]
[Greek: amphi d' ar' autô baine leôn hôs alki pepoithôs,
prosthe de hoi dyry t' esche kai aspida pantos eisên,
ton ktamenai memaôs hos tis tou g' antios elthoi,
smerdalea iachôn.]
But his wildly brandished weapon proved more deadly to friend than
foe: he discovered, as I knew, he could only oppose me by making
jettison of Mr Freeman's views. Of this we have seen above examples
striking enough; but the climax was reached in his chief contention,
namely, that the lines in the _Roman de Rou_, which describe, Mr
Freeman asserted, 'the array of the shield-wall',[153] cannot, on many
grounds, be 'referred to a shield-wall'.[154] No contradiction could
be more complete. So he now finds himself forced to write:
I do not say--I have _never_ said--that I agree with every
word that Mr Freeman has written about the great battle; but I
do regard his account of Hastings as the noblest battle-piece
in our historical literature--perhaps in that of the
world.[155]
'O most lame and impotent conclusion!' We are discussing whether that
account is 'right', not whether it is 'noble'. To the splendour of
that narrative I have borne no sparing witness. I have spoken of its
'superb vividness', I have praised its 'epic grandeur', I have dwelt
on the writer's 'Homeric power of making the actors in his drama live
and move before us', and have compared his tale with the 'glorious
description' in the saga of Stamfordbridge. But the nearer it
approaches to the epic and the saga, the less likely is that stirring
tale to be rigidly confined to fact.
I will not say of Mr Archer, 'his attack must be held to have failed',
for that would imperfectly express its utter and absolute collapse.
The whole of my original argument as to the narrative of the battle
remains not merely unshaken, but, it will be seen, untouched. Mr
Archer himself has now pleaded that 'the only' point he 'took up
directly' was that of the disputed passage in Wace;[156] and here he
could only make even the semblance of a case by deliberately ignoring
and suppressing Mr Freeman's own verdict (iii. 763-4), to which, from
the very first, I have persistently referred. In his latest, as in
his earliest article, he adheres to this deliberate suppression, and
falsely represents 'Mr Freeman's interpretation' as 'a palisade or
barricade' alone.[157]
Those who may object to plain speaking should rather denounce the
tactics that make such speaking necessary. When my adversary claims
that his case is proved, if the disputed passage does not describe a
shield-wall, he is perfectly aware that Mr Freeman distinctly asserted
that it did. To suppress that fact, as Mr Archer does,[158] can only
be described as dishonest.
Judging from the desperate tactics to which my opponent resorted,
it would seem that my 'attack' on Mr Freeman's work cannot here be
impugned by any straightforward means. The impotent wrath aroused
by its success will lead, no doubt, to other attempts equally
unscrupulous and equally futile. But truth cannot be silenced, facts
cannot be obscured. I appeal, sure of my ground, to the verdict
of historical scholars, awaiting, with confidence and calm, the
inevitable triumph of the truth.
CONCLUSION
'History is philosophy teaching by examples.' In one sense the period
of the Conquest was, as Mr Freeman asserted in his preface, 'a period
of our history which is full alike of political instruction and of
living personal interest'. In one sense, it is an object-lesson never
more urgently needed than it is at the present hour. Only that lesson
is one which Mr Freeman could never teach, because it is the bitterest
commentary on the doctrines he most adored. In the hands of a patriot,
in the hands of a writer who placed England before party, the tale
might have burned like a beacon-fire, warning us that what happened
in the past, might happen now, today. The Battle of Hastings has its
moral and its moral is for us. An almost anarchical excess of liberty,
the want of a strong centralized system, the absorption in party
strife, the belief that politics are statesmanship, and that oratory
will save a people--these are the dangers of which it warns us, and to
which the majority of Englishmen are subject now as then. But Mr
Freeman, like the Bourbons, never learnt, and never forgot. A democrat
first, an historian afterwards, History was for him, unhappily, ever
'past politics'. If he worshipped Harold with a blind enthusiasm, it
was chiefly because he was a _novus homo_, 'who reigned purely by the
will of the people'. He insisted that the English, on the hill of
battle, were beaten through lack of discipline, through lack of
obedience to their king; but he could not see that the system in which
he gloried, a system which made the people 'a co-ordinate authority'
with their king, was the worst of all trainings for the hour of battle;
he could not see that, like Poland, England fell, in large measure,
from the want of a strong rule, and from excess of liberty. To him the
voice of 'a sovereign people' was 'the most spirit-stirring of earthly
sounds'; but it availed about as much to check the Norman Conquest as
the fetish of an African savage, or the yells of Asiatic hordes. We
trace in his history of Sicily the same blindness to fact. Dionysius
was for him, as he was for Dante, merely--
Dionisio fero
Che fe' Cicilia aver dolorosi anni.
But, in truth, the same excess of liberty that left England a prey to
the Normans had left Sicily, in her day, a prey to Carthage: the
same internal jealousies paralysed her strength. And yet he could not
forgive Dionysius, the man who gave Sicily what she lacked, the rule
of a 'strong man armed', because, in a democrat's eyes, Dionysius was
a 'tyrant'. That I am strictly just in my criticism of Mr Freeman's
attitude at the Conquest, is, I think, abundantly manifest, when even
so ardent a democrat as Mr Grant Allen admits that
a people so helpless, so utterly anarchic, so incapable of
united action, deserved to undergo a severe training from
the hard task-masters of Romance civilization. The nation
remained, but it remained as a conquered race, to be drilled
in the stern school of the conquerors.[159]
Such were the bitter fruits of Old-English freedom. And, in the teeth
of this awful lesson, Mr Freeman could still look back with longing
to 'a free and pure Teutonic England',[160] could still exult in the
thought that a democratic age is bringing England ever nearer to her
state 'before the Norman set foot upon her shores'.
But the school of which he was a champion has long seen its day. A
reactionary movement, as has been pointed out by scholars in America,
as in Russia[161] has invaded the study of history, has assailed
the supremacy of the Liberal school, and has begun to preach, as the
teaching of the past, the dangers of unfettered freedom.
Politics are not statesmanship. Mr Freeman confused the two. There
rang from his successor a truer note when, as he traversed the seas
that bind the links of the Empire, he penned those words that appeal
to the sons of an imperial race, sunk in the strife of parties or
the politics of a parish pump, to rise to the level of their high
inheritance among the nations of the earth. What was the Empire, what
was India--we all remember that historic phrase--to one whose ideal,
it would seem, of statesmanship, was that of an orator in Hyde Park?
Godwine, the ambitious, the unscrupulous agitator, is always for him
'the great deliverer'. Whether in the Sicily of the 'tyrants', or the
England of Edward the Confessor, we are presented, under the guise of
history, with a glorification of demagogy.
No man ever deserved a higher or a more lasting place in
national gratitude than the first man who, being neither King
nor Priest, stands forth in English history as endowed with
all the highest attributes of the statesman. In him, in
those distant times, we can revere the great minister, the
unrivalled parliamentary leader, the man who could sway
councils and assemblies at his will, etc., etc.[162]
We know of whom the writer was thinking, when he praised that
'irresistible tongue';[163] he had surely before him a living model,
who, if not a statesman, was, no doubt, an 'unrivalled parliamentary
leader'. Do we not recognize the portrait?--
The mighty voice, the speaking look and gesture of that old
man eloquent, could again sway assemblies of Englishmen at his
will.[164]
The voice which had so often swayed assemblies of Englishmen,
was heard once more in all the fulness of its eloquence.[165]
But it was not an 'irresistible tongue', nor 'the harangue of a
practised orator', of which England stood in need. Forts and soldiers,
not tongues, are England's want now as then. But to the late Regius
Professor, if there was one thing more hateful than 'castles', more
hateful even than hereditary rule, it was a standing army. When the
Franco-German war had made us look to our harness, he set himself at
once, with superb blindness, to sneer at what he termed 'the panic',
to suggest the application of democracy to the army, and to express
his characteristic aversion to the thought of 'an officer and a
gentleman'.[166] How could such a writer teach the lesson of the
Norman Conquest?
'The long, long canker of peace' had done its work--'vivebatur enim
tunc pene ubique in Anglia perditis moribus, et pro pacis affluentia
deliciarum fervebat luxus.'[167] The land was ripe for the invader,
and a saviour of Society was at hand. While our fathers were playing
at democracy, watching the strife of rival houses, as men might now
watch the contest of rival parties, the terrible Duke of the Normans
was girding himself for war. _De nobis fabula narratur._
[Footnote 1: Mr T. A. Archer (_Contemporary Review_, March
1893, p. 336).]
[Footnote 2: Mr Freeman saw nothing grotesque in Orderic's
description of Exeter, as 'in plano sita' (_Norm. Conq._, iv.
153), though its site 'sets Exeter distinctly among the hill
cities' (Freeman's _Exeter_, p. 6).]
[Footnote 3: That I may not be accused of passing over any
defence of Mr Freeman, I give the reference to Mr Archer's
letter in _Academy_ of November 4, 1893, arguing, as against
Mr Harrison, that the story of a great 'naval engagement' in
1066 may probably be traced 'to the seaside associations of
the name Hastings'. Unfortunately for him, Mr Freeman himself
had quoted this wild story (iii. 729) and suggested quite a
different explanation, namely, that it originated, not in the
Battle of Hastings, but in some real 'naval operations'.]
[Footnote 4: Since this passage appeared in print my opponents
themselves have written of the Battle of Hastings [_sic_], and
Mr Archer has admitted that 'to speak of Senlac in ordinary
conversation, or in ordinary writing, is a piece of pedantry'
(_Academy_ _ut supra_). On my own use of the word before I had
examined Mr Freeman's authority, see p. 273.]
[Footnote 5: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 444.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 757.]
[Footnote 7: Mr Archer writes: '_Pel_ is literally "stake",
and originally, of course, represented the upright or
horizontal stakes which go to make a palisade' (_English
Historical Review_, ix. 6).]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, p. 10. The word which Mr Freeman (and
others) rendered 'ash' is rendered 'windows of farm dwellings'
by Mr Archer (see below, p. 308).]
[Footnote 9: Mr Archer would have us believe that 'Mr Freeman
really had in his mind ... a real wall of real shields and
stakes' (_English Historical Review_, 16), and that the
English would 'strap up their shields to the stakes', would
combine 'their shields and poles', and so forth (20).]
[Footnote 10: This is Mr Oman's third and (up to now) final
explanation (_Academy_, June 9, 1894).]
[Footnote 11: _English Historical Review_, ix. 232.]
[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, ix. 232-3, 237-8, 240.]
[Footnote 13: The difficulty of hauling timber even a short
distance over broken and hilly ground 'in an October of those
days' (_N.C._, iii. 446) must not be forgotten.]
[Footnote 14: The italics are Mr Freeman's own.]
[Footnote 15: He even spoke of it as 'the main castle' (_Arch.
Journ._, xl. 359).]
[Footnote 16: Miss Norgate (_Angevin Kings_) follows him,
speaking of their assailants striving 'to assault them as if
besieging a fortress'. One is reminded of Mr Freeman's remark
as to Hastings, that Harold turned 'the battle as far as
possible into the likeness of a siege' (see above).]
[Footnote 17: 'Men ranged so closely together in the thick
array of the shield-wall' (iii. 471).]
[Footnote 18: _Cont. Rev._, March 1893.]
[Footnote 19: _English Historical Review_, ix. 12.]
[Footnote 20: My detailed reply to Mr Archer's attempt to
confuse the 'fosse' and the palisade will be found in _ibid._,
ix. 213, 214.]
[Footnote 21: He paraphrased 'escuz de fenestres è d'altres
fuz' as 'firm barricades of ash and other timber'.]
[Footnote 22: I supply the passage in square brackets (the
italics are my own) from the earlier volume to explain Mr
Freeman's reference.]
[Footnote 23: _Quarterly Review_, July 1892, p. 14.]
[Footnote 24: I am loth to introduce into the text the
wearisome details of controversy, especially where they are
_nihil ad rem_, and have no bearing on my argument. But, lest
I should be charged with ignoring any defence of Mr Freeman, I
will briefly explain in this note the attitude adopted by his
champions.
In the _Contemporary Review_ of March 1893, Mr T. A. Archer
produced a reply to my original article (_Quarterly Review_,
July 1892), or rather, to that part of it which dealt with the
Battle of Hastings. Declaring my attack on the palisade to
be my 'only definite and palpable charge against Mr Freeman's
account' (p. 273) which, it will be found, is not the case--he
undertook to 'show Mr Freeman to have been entirely right in
the view he took of the whole question' (p. 267). To do this,
he deliberately suppressed the fatal passage (iii. 763-4) I
have printed above--to which, in my article, I had prominently
appealed--in order to represent me as alone in seeing a
description of the shield-wall in Wace's lines (p. 267).
He then insisted that 'there are six distinct objections to
translating this passage as if it referred to a shield-wall'
(p. 270).
Instantly reminded by me (_Athenæum_, March 18, April 8,
1893), that Mr Freeman himself had taken it as a description
of the shield-wall, and challenged to account for the fact,
again charged (_Quarterly Review_, July 1893, p. 88), with
'ignoring a fact in the presence of which his elaborate
argument collapses like a house of cards', further challenged
(_Academy_, September 16, 1893) to reconcile Mr Freeman's
words (iii. 763-4), with his representation of the historian's
position, Mr Archer continued to shirk the point, till in the
_English Historical Review_ of January 1894, he grudgingly
confessed that 'the discovery that a shield-wall (of some sort
or other) was implied in this so-called "crucial passage", is
due to Mr Freeman' (p. 3), but he and Miss Norgate endeavoured
to urge that it could not be as I imagined, the shield-wall
that he had always spoken of (pp. 3, 16, 62). Even this
feeble evasion, now seems to be dropped since I disposed of it
(_ibid._, 225-7).]
[Footnote 25: _Quarterly Review_, July 1892, p. 15.]
[Footnote 26: See below, p. 284.]
[Footnote 27: _Quarterly Review_, July 1893, p. 84.]
[Footnote 28: _Athenæum_, March 18, 1893.]
[Footnote 29: _English Historical Review_, ix. 40.]
[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, p. 58.]
[Footnote 31: _Cont. Rev._, 351.]
[Footnote 32: _Quarterly Review_, July 1893, pp. 93-4.]
[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, ix. 27, 28.]
[Footnote 34: _English Historical Review_, 219-25.]
[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, ix. 607. The italics are Mr Archer's
own. His own trusted authority, Wace, posts the English in 'un
champ' (ii. 7729, 7769)!]
[Footnote 36: _Norman Conquest_, iii. 419, 420.]
[Footnote 37: No one, of course, would treat the Tapestry like
a modern illustrated journal; but if it be fairly treated,
in Mr Freeman's spirit, one's real wonder is that, under
such obvious limitations, the designer should have been so
successful as he has. Nowhere, perhaps, is the painstaking
accuracy of the Bayeux Tapestry better seen than in its
miniature representation of the fortress at Dinan. It shows us
the _motte_, or artificial mound, surrounded by its ditch,
and even the bank beyond the ditch, together with the wooden
bridge springing (as we know it did in such castles) from that
bank to the summit of the mound.
As to Mr Archer's attempts to show that Mr Freeman in one or
two instances did not value so highly as he did what he deemed
the supreme authority for the battle, I need only print Mr
Freeman's words, parallel with his own comments, to show how
their character is distorted.
MR FREEMAN MR ARCHER
The testimony of Florence is He rejects the Tapestry's account
confirmed by a witness more of Harold's coronation,
unexceptionable than all, by following Florence of Worcester's
the earliest and most statement--that Harold was
trustworthy witness on the crowned by Aldred, Archbishop
Norman side, by the of York--in avowed
contemporary Tapestry ... in opposition to his own reading of
every statement but one.... the Tapestry, i.e. that Harold
The Tapestry implies--_it can was crowned by Stigand.
hardly be said directly to
affirm_--that the consecrator
was Stigand (iii. 582). The
representation in the
Tapestry is singular. _It
does not show Stigand
crowning or anointing Harold_
(iii. 620).
It has been remarked by Mr He rejects _in toto_ the
Planché and others, that at Tapestry's version of Edward the
this point the order of time Confessor's death, for that
is forsaken; the burial of 'priceless record' makes _Edward
Eadward is placed before his buried before he died!_ Mr
deathbed and death. On this Freeman, and perhaps not
Dr Bruce says _very truly_: altogether without reason,
'the seeming inconsistency follows the saner notion of other
is very easily explained', authorities, that Edward died
etc., etc. (iii. 587) ... I before he was buried (_English
do not think that any one Historical Review_, ix. 607).
who makes the comparison
minutely (between the
Tapestry and the Life) will
attach much importance to
the sceptical remarks of Mr
Planché (_ibid._).
One would hardly imagine from Mr Archer's sneers that Mr Freeman
had really vindicated the Tapestry from its 'seeming inconsistency',
did one not know him, as a writer, to be _capable de tout_.]
[Footnote 38: _Cont. Rev._, p. 351.]
[Footnote 39: _English Historical Review_, ix. 607.]
[Footnote 40: I wish, as I have done throughout, to make
it absolutely clear that I am here concerned only with Mr
Freeman's rendering of Wace. If we are to go outside that
rendering and discuss Wace _de novo_, it is best to do so in a
fresh section. This I hope to do below, when I shall discuss
the question of his authority (which has not yet arisen),
and shall also propound my own explanation of the now famous
disputed passage.]
[Footnote 41: In my first article (_Quarterly Review_, July
1892, pp. 15-16) I pointed out that the great weight attached
to Mr Freeman's statements had of course 'secured universal
acceptance' for the palisade, and that it figures 'now in
every history'. Mr Archer, in his latest paper, refers to
these remarks (_English Historical Review_, ix. 602) and
triumphantly charges me with self-contradiction in having
myself once accepted it, like every one else. He refers to
an incidental allusion by me in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_ so many years ago that I was unaware of its
existence. I am particularly glad to be reminded of the fact
that I did allude, in early days, to the 'palisade' and to
'Senlac', for it emphasizes the very point of my case, namely,
that that mischievous superstition of Mr Freeman's unfailing
accuracy must be ruthlessly destroyed lest others should be
taught, as I was, to accept his authority as supreme.
My opponent writes:
'Mr Round ... in direct contradiction to the _Quarterly_
reviewer, has found for it [the palisade] an authority in
William of Poitiers, and _has gone far beyond Mr Freeman
himself in giving us the name of the man who first broke it
down_.'
How has Mr Archer produced the alleged 'contradiction'? He has
taken a passage from my notice of Robert de Beaumont, written
years before I had made any independent investigation of the
Battle of Hastings, and when I thought, like the rest of
the world, that I might, here at any rate, safely follow Mr
Freeman, when it was only a matter of a passing allusion to
the fight. The following parallel passages will prove, beyond
the shadow of doubt, that I here merely followed Mr Freeman,
accepting his own authority--William of Poitiers--for the
incident. Any one in my place would have done the same. But
Mr Archer asserts that, on the contrary, I went 'far beyond
Mr Freeman himself in giving us the name of the man who first
broke it down'. Let us see if this definite statement is true:
MR FREEMAN MY ARTICLE
The new castle was placed in Of these [sons] Robert fought at
the keeping of Henry, the Senlac ... [and] was _the first
younger son of Roger of to break down the English
Beaumont. A great estate in palisade_ ... he was rewarded
the shire also fell to with large grants in
Henry's elder brother, Warwickshire, and Warwick Castle
Robert, Count of Melent, who, was entrusted to his brother
at the head of the French Henry--_Dict. Nat. Biog._, iv. 64.
auxiliaries, had been _the (Mr Freeman's works, of course,
first to break down the are given among the authorities
English palisade_ at for the article.)
Senlac--_Norman Conquest_,
iv. [1871] 191-2. See also
iii. 486, and _Will. Rufus_,
i. 185, ii. 135, 402.
So much for Mr Archer's assertion that I made an independent
statement not found in Mr Freeman's pages. It is obviously
impossible to conduct a controversy with an opponent who does
not restrict himself to fact.]
[Footnote 42: _William the Conqueror_ (1888), p. 90.]
[Footnote 43: 'Had they done so, they must have been set so
close that they could not have used their weapons with any
freedom' (_Cont. Rev._, p. 346).]
[Footnote 44: _Short History_, p. 79.]
[Footnote 45: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 763, _ut supra_.]
[Footnote 46: _Ibid._, iii. p. 471.]
[Footnote 47: _Ibid._, i. 271; cf. _W.R._, ii. 411.]
[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, iii. 732.]
[Footnote 49: _Cont. Rev._, 348.]
[Footnote 50: _Norman Britain_ (S.P.C.K.), p. vi.]
[Footnote 51: _Ibid._, pp. 79, 80.]
[Footnote 52: _Dict. Nat. Biography_ (1890), xxx. 424.]
[Footnote 53: _English Historical Review_, ix. 2.]
[Footnote 54: _Cont. Rev._, p. 348.]
[Footnote 55: _Ibid._, p. 346.]
[Footnote 56: _Quarterly Review_, July 1893, p. 90.]
[Footnote 57: _Old English History_, p. 335.]
[Footnote 58: Wace, of course, is the only one worth
mentioning of the three last, and even his 'decisive words'
prove to be only a personal opinion ('_ço me semble_') that
the axeman's shield must have hampered him (see _Cont. Rev._,
348, and _Norm. Conq._, iii. 765).]
[Footnote 59: _Q.R._, July 1893, p. 91.]
[Footnote 60: _English Historical Review_, ix. 607.]
[Footnote 61: Oman's _Art of War in the Middle Ages_, 24 (see
_Q.R._, July 1893, p. 90).]
[Footnote 62: Compare (as Mr Freeman does) Æthelred's
description of the English array of the Battle of the
Standard: 'lateribus latera conseruntur'.]
[Footnote 63: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 491.]
[Footnote 64: _Ibid._, p. 471.]
[Footnote 65: _Old English History_, p. 334.]
[Footnote 66: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 764; cf. _English Historical
Review_, ix. 18.]
[Footnote 67: 'This is the _shield-wall_, the famous tactic
of the English and Danes alike. We shall hear of it in all
the great battles down to the end.' (Freeman's _Old English
History_, p. 112.)]
[Footnote 68: _Ibid._, p. 155.]
[Footnote 69: _Ibid._, p. 196.]
[Footnote 70: _Norm. Conq._, iii. viii.]
[Footnote 71: _Ibid._, pp. 445-6.]
[Footnote 72: _Ibid._, p. 472.]
[Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 480.]
[Footnote 74: _Norm. Conq._, iii. pp. 488, 490.]
[Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 490.]
[Footnote 76: 'The battle was lost through the error of those
light-armed troops who, in disobedience to the King's orders,
broke their line to pursue' (_Ibid._, 505).]
[Footnote 77: 'The day had now turned decidedly in favour of
the invaders' (_Ibid._, 491). I am obliged to quote these two
passages, because my opponents have not shrunk from impugning
(_Cont. Rev._, 353; _English Historical Review_, ix. 70) the
accuracy of the words in the text (which are from _Q.R._, July
1892, p. 17).]
[Footnote 78: _Q.R._, July 1893, 101.]
[Footnote 79: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 472.]
[Footnote 80: To have placed some of them as an advanced post
on the 'small detached hill' in front would have been to leave
them _en l'air_, exposed to certain destruction from an attack
which they could not check. For Mr Freeman held that, even if
occupied by an outpost, it was only by the 'light-armed'. (See
_Q.R._, July 1893, pp. 99, 100.)]
[Footnote 81: On what ground are the Bretons so described?
Guy, quoted by Mr Freeman (iii. 459) writes of them here:
'Gensque Britannorum quorum decus exstat in armis, Tellus ni
fugiat est fuga nulla quibus'.]
[Footnote 82: I have replied in _English Historical Review_
(ix. 255) to Miss Norgate's characteristic quibble (_ibid._,
p. 75) that these quotations apply to the Scottish army
alone--for the principle applies alike to 'armati' and
'armatos', to 'milites' and to 'militibus'.]
[Footnote 83: Down to this point the present section is all
reprinted from my original article (_Q.R._, July 1892), as not
calling for any alteration or correction.]
[Footnote 84: 'The general mass of the less well-armed troops
of the shire in the rear.' (_England under the Angevin Kings_,
i. 290.)]
[Footnote 85: _English Historical Review_, ix. 611.]
[Footnote 86: When the Scotch, he writes, 'amentatis
missilibus et lanceis longissimis super aciem equitum
nostrorum loricatam percutiunt, quasi muro ferreo offendentes,
impenetrabiles [compare the 'impenetrabiles' ranks of
the English at Hastings, _supra_, p. 276] invenerunt....
Equitantes enim nulla ratione diu persistere potuerunt
contra milites loricatos pede persistentes et immobiliter
coacervatos' (pp. 264-5). Miss Norgate follows him, writing:
'The wild Celts of Galloway dashed headlong upon the English
front, only to find their spears and javelins glance off from
the helmets and shields of the knights as from an iron wall.']
[Footnote 87: 'Tota namque gens Normannorum et Anglorum in una
acie circum Standard conglobata, persistebant immobiles'
(Hen. Hunt). 'Australes, quoniam pauci erant, in unum cuneum
sapientissime glomerantur' (_Æth. Riv._).]
[Footnote 88: It is no less interesting than curious that
the Bayeux Tapestry enables us to see how the archers
were combined with the mailed knights at the Battle of the
Standard. It shows us (on its principle of giving a type) an
English archer of whom Mr Freeman has well observed: 'He is a
small man without armour crouching under the shield of a tall
Housecarl, like Teukros under that of Aias' (iii. 472). So
Æthelred writes that the mailed warriors 'sagittarios ita sibi
inseruerunt ut, _militaribus armis protecti_, tanto acrius
quanto securius vel in hostes irruerent, vel exciperent
irruentes'.]
[Footnote 89: 'Proceres qui maturioris ætatis fuerunt ...
circa signum regium constituuntur, quibusdam altius ceteris
in ipsa machina collatis' (_Æth. Riv._). 'Circum Standard in
pectore belli condensantur' (_Ric. Hex._).]
[Footnote 90: 'Reliqua autem multitudo undique conglomerata
eos circumvallabat' (_ibid._).]
[Footnote 91: _Norm. Conq._, i. 383.]
[Footnote 92: _Ibid._, iii. 472.]
[Footnote 93: _Old English History_, p. 331.]
[Footnote 94: _English Historical Review_, ix. 75.]
[Footnote 95: _Old English History_, p. 333.]
[Footnote 96: Miss Norgate, unable to deny the glaring
'self-contradiction' involved in Mr Freeman's words, dismisses
it as a 'matter of secondary importance' (_English Historical
Review_, ix. 74).]
[Footnote 97: _English Historical Review_, ix. 74.]
[Footnote 98: _Q.R._, July 1892, p. 19.]
[Footnote 99: _Q.R._, July 1893, pp. 102-3; cf. _Q.R._, July
1892, p. 18; _English Historical Review_, ix. 254.]
[Footnote 100: It might, for all we know, have formed a
crescent or semi-circle, its wings resting strongly on the
rear-slopes of the hill; or even a 'wedge', as, indeed, Mr
Freeman twice described it (i. 271, iii. 471).]
[Footnote 101: _English Historical Review_, ix. 74.]
[Footnote 102: _Cont. Rev._, p. 353.]
[Footnote 103: _Q.R._, July 1892, p. 19.]
[Footnote 104: Since this passage appeared (as it stands) in
my original article (_Q.R._, July 1892, p. 19), I have noted
a curious confirmation in Æthelred's words where he speaks
of the archers at the Battle of the Standard as 'militaribus
armis protecti [ut] tanto acrius quanto securius vel in hostes
irruerent, vel exciperent irruentes'. For, as I wrote (p. 20),
'it would naturally be they who, like cavalry in modern times,
would harass and follow up a retreating foe'.]
[Footnote 105: _Old English History_, p. 334.]
[Footnote 106: For Baudri's poem see _Q.R._, July 1893, pp.
73-5. As to Baudri's authority, I need only repeat what I
wrote in the _English Historical Review_ (ix. 217): 'Mr Archer
endeavours, of course, to pooh-pooh it. Now I call special
attention to the fact that the test I apply to Baudri is that
which Mr Freeman applied to the Tapestry, the obvious test of
internal evidence. But Mr Archer's ways are not as those of
other historians: instead of examining, as I did, Baudri's
account in detail he dismisses it on the ground that the
writer's "description _of the world_" at that date could
not be accurate (_ibid._, 29). We are not dealing with his
"description of the world"; we are dealing with his lines on
the battle of Hastings.']
[Footnote 107: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 467, 477.]
[Footnote 108: _English Historical Review_, ix. 42-3, 603.]
[Footnote 109: Though I have already done so in _English
Historical Review_, ix. 250.]
[Footnote 110: _English Historical Review_, ix. 42.]
[Footnote 111: Mr Freeman rendered the 'sagittis armatos et
balistis' of William by 'archers, slingers, and crossbowmen'.
'Balistæ' can hardly mean slings _and_ crossbows, and I think,
on consideration, it is best referred to the latter; but the
question is not of much importance.]
[Footnote 112: So, too, in _Arch. Journ._, xl. 359: 'You
may call up the march of archers and horsemen across the low
ground between the hills.']
[Footnote 113: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 462. I regret that I must
call attention to the fact that I gave (_English Historical
Review_, ix. 250) this precise reference for my statement
that, according to Mr Freeman, the infantry were all archers,
explaining that in another passage (p. 467) William of
Poitiers had led him to take a somewhat different view. Mr
Archer, however, has printed (_English Historical Review_, ix.
603) the other passage (p. 467) in triumph by the side of my
statement. He further denies that Mr Freeman held, even on p.
462, that the infantry were all archers. Anyone can test the
value of Mr Archer's denial for himself by referring to
_Norm. Conq._, iii. 462, where he will find that Mr Freeman,
describing the Norman host, mentions no infantry but archers.]
[Footnote 114: As he had merely copied from the Tapestry on p.
462, so he copied William of Poitiers on p. 467.]
[Footnote 115: The distinction between archers and crossbowmen
is of little or no consequence, the missile being common to
both.]
[Footnote 116: My opponents complain that in the former
passage Mr Freeman assigns this task to 'the heavier foot'
only; but my point is that no palisade is here mentioned,
and no attack on it by _any_ infantry, heavy or light, and no
weapons assigned to that infantry of any use for the purpose.]
[Footnote 117: This is an excellent instance of what I said
as to Mr Freeman's 'imaginary' references to the now famous
palisade. I have challenged my opponents to disprove my
statement that none of Mr Freeman's own authorities says
anything here of a palisade. And, of course, they cannot do
so.
Here is another instance in point. We read on pp. 486-7 that
Robert of Beaumont was specially distinguished in the work of
breaking down the 'barricade' (see also _supra_, p. 273). But
when we turn to William of Poitiers, the authority cited,
we find no mention of a 'barricade', but read only of him
'irruens ac sternens magnâ cum audaciâ'. As the writer had
just described how the Duke '_stravit_ adversam gentem', we see
that Robert, in his charge, laid low, not a barricade, but
'adversam gentem'.
This brings me to an extraordinary case of mediaeval
plagiarism. The author of the Ely history has applied this
description of Robert's exploits to the Conqueror himself at
Ely (_Liber Eliensis_, pp. 244-5). The passages 'Exardentes
Normanni--deleverunt ea', 'Egit enim quod--magna cum audacia',
'Scriptor Thebaidos vel Æneidos', _et seq._, are all 'lifted'
bodily from William's narrative of the Battle of Hastings and
applied to the storming of the Isle of Ely!]
[Footnote 118: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 467.]
[Footnote 119: 'The Norman infantry had now done its best, but
that best had been in vain' (_ibid._, 479).]
[Footnote 120: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 481.]
[Footnote 121: _Ibid._, 767-8.]
[Footnote 122:
'Un fosse ont d'une part fait
Qui parmi la champaigne vait
* * * *
En la champaigne out un fosse:
Normanz l'aueient adosse
En beliuant l'orent passé
Ne l'aueint mie esgarde.'
I had followed Taylor in my rendering of this passage; but
Miss Norgate (_English Historical Review_, ix. 46) would
prefer to say that the Normans did not heed, than that they
did not notice the fosse. 'The passage,' as she says, 'is
somewhat obscure.']
[Footnote 123: Miss Norgate has rightly pointed out (ix.
47) that Henry places the disaster during the great feigned
flight.]
[Footnote 124: _Cont. Rev._, p. 348.]
[Footnote 125: Compare the death of Robert Marmion, at
Coventry, under Stephen, when he fell into one of the ditches
he had dug to entrap the enemy's horse. The passage quoted by
Andresen in his Wace (ii. 713) from Michel's notes to Benoit
is very precise: 'Fecerant autem Angli foveam quandam caute et
ingeniose, quam ipsi ex obliquo curantes maximam multitudinem
Normannorum in ea præcipitaverant. Et plures etiam ex eis
insequentes et tracti ab aliis in eadem perierunt.']
[Footnote 126: See below, p. 292.]
[Footnote 127: _Early Oxford_, pp. 191, 192. And see my
preface.]
[Footnote 128: See above, p. 278, for Mr Freeman's view.]
[Footnote 129: 'Angli vero, illos putantes vere fugere,
c[oe]perunt post eos currere volentes eos si possent
interficere' (_Brevis Relatio_). 'Ausa sunt, ut superius,
aliquot millia quasi volante cursu, quos fugere putabant
urgere' (_Will. Pict._).]
[Footnote 130: Though admitting, in a footnote, that the
'Brevis Relatio' was opposed to this assumption.]
[Footnote 131: _Supra_, p. 278.]
[Footnote 132: _Q.R._, July 1892, p. 20.]
[Footnote 133: Miss Norgate has indignantly retorted (_English
Historical Review_, ix. 50) that Mr Freeman 'only' omitted
the words from 'sicque' onwards. But it is precisely on these
words that my statement is based. Mr Freeman, moreover, did
not even quote the rest _à propos_ of the feigned flight,
where we should look for it.]
[Footnote 134: So does Will. Gem., as quoted by Mr Freeman
(iii. 133): 'de suis miserunt si quos forte hostium a regio
c[oe]tu abstraherent, quos illi in latibulis degentes incautos
exciperent.' See also my Addenda.]
[Footnote 135: _Cont. Rev._, p. 354.]
[Footnote 136: See above, p. 251.]
[Footnote 137: See above, p. 259.]
[Footnote 138: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 763-4.]
[Footnote 139: _Social England_, i. 299. 'Mr Oman, like Mr J.
H. Round, knows nothing of the famous "palisade", but only
of the "shield-wall" of the English' (_Speaker_, December 2,
1893).]
[Footnote 140: _Norman Britain_, p. 79.]
[Footnote 141: _Ibid._, p. 80.]
[Footnote 142: _Social England_, p. 300.]
[Footnote 143: _Cont. Rev._, p. 353.]
[Footnote 144: _Ibid._, p. 335.]
[Footnote 145: _English Historical Review_, ix. 607.]
[Footnote 146: _Ibid._, ix. 219-25.]
[Footnote 147: _Ibid._, 224, 257.]
[Footnote 148: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 469; and _supra_, p. 356.]
[Footnote 149: _Cont. Rev._, 352.]
[Footnote 150: _Ibid._, 348.]
[Footnote 151: _Cont. Rev._, 335-6.]
[Footnote 152: 'The Reviewer ... tells us that ... Mr Freeman
... is wrong, completely wrong, in his whole conception of the
battle.... His attack must be held to have failed' (_Cont.
Rev._, pp. 335, 353).]
[Footnote 153: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 763.]
[Footnote 154: _Cont. Rev._, p. 349. Cf. Mr Archer's articles
_passim_.]
[Footnote 155: _English Historical Review_, ix. 22.]
[Footnote 156: _English Historical Review_, ix. 607.]
[Footnote 157: _Ibid._, ix. 606. _Supra_, p. 269.]
[Footnote 158: _Ibid._, ix. 606, 607. My readers are invited
to refer to this article and to that in the _Cont. Rev._
(March 1893), and test my statement for themselves.]
[Footnote 159: _Anglo-Saxon Britain_, p. 172.]
[Footnote 160: _Norman Conquest_, iii. 454.]
[Footnote 161: e.g. Vinogradoff and Dr Andrews.]
[Footnote 162: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 352.]
[Footnote 163: _Ibid._, 327.]
[Footnote 164: _Ibid._, 326.]
[Footnote 165: _Ibid._, 332.]
[Footnote 166: 'We shall get rid of the talk about "an officer
and a gentleman".' (_Macmillan's_, xxiv. 10).]
[Footnote 167: _Vita Wlstani_.]
MASTER WACE
MR FREEMAN MR ARCHER
Of the array of the shield-wall Now, there are six distinct
we have often heard already as objections to translating this
at Maldon, but it is at Senlac passage [of Wace] as if it
that we get the fullest referred to a shield-wall. These
descriptions of it, all the objections are, of course, of
better for coming in the unequal value; but some of them
mouths of enemies. Wace gives would, by themselves, suffice to
his description, 12941:--(_Norm. overthrow such a theory (_Cont.
Conq._, iii. 763). Rev._, 349).
In discussing Mr Freeman's treatment of the great battle, we saw
that the only passage he vouched for the existence of a palisade[1]
consisted of certain lines from Wace's _Roman de Rou_, which he
ultimately declared to be, on the contrary, a description of 'the
array of the shield-wall'.[2] The question, therefore, as to their
meaning--on which my critics have throughout endeavoured to represent
the controversy as turning--did not even arise so far as Mr Freeman
was concerned. Still less had I occasion to discuss the authority of
Wace, Mr Freeman's explicit verdict on the lines (iii. 763-4) having
removed them, as concerns his own narrative, from the sphere of
controversy.
The case, however, is at once altered when Mr Archer insists on
ignoring Mr Freeman's words, and makes an independent examination of
the lines, quoting also other passages which were not vouched by Mr
Freeman, as proving 'beyond the shadow of a doubt that Wace did
mean to represent the English at Hastings as fighting behind a
palisade'.[3] So long as I make it clearly understood that this
question in no way affects the controversy as to Mr Freeman, I am
quite willing to discuss the question thus raised by Mr Archer.
It is most naturally treated under these three heads:
(1) Did Wace believe and assert that there was a palisade?
(2) If so, what weight ought to be attached to his authority?
(3) If we reject it, can we explain how his mistake arose?
WACE'S MEANING
I have elsewhere[4] discussed 'the disputed passage' (_supra_, p.
267), and agreed with Mr Archer that there are 'four views which have
been suggested' as to its meaning.[5] Two of them, I there showed,
were successively held by Mr Freeman, and the two others successively
advanced by Mr Archer. When I add (anticipating) that, according to M.
Paris, 'le passage de Wace présente quelque obscurité',[6] and that
M. Meyer introduced yet another element of doubt in a special kind
of shield ('de grands écus') not previously suggested, it will be
obvious, quite apart from any opinion of my own, that the passage
presents difficulties.
So long as I only dealt with Mr Freeman's work, I found on his
admission that the passage described the shield-wall.[7] Now that we
are leaving his work aside, I fall back on my own conclusion, namely,
that the passage is with equal difficulty referred either to a
palisade or to a shield-wall. The word 'escuz', it will be seen,
occurs twice in the passage. Mr Archer held, at first, that in neither
case did it mean real 'shields',[8] but he afterwards assigned that
meaning to the second of the two 'escuz', while still rendering the
first 'in a metaphorical sense'.[9] It is obvious that when Mr Freeman
took the lines to describe 'the array of the shield-wall', he must
have done so on the ground that 'escuz' meant 'shields'. That is my
own contention. While fully recognizing the obstacles to translating
'the disputed passage' as if it referred throughout to a shield-wall,
I maintain that 'escu' means shield, as a term 'which is one of the
commonest in Wace' and invariably means shield.[10] But to cut short
a long story, it was decided by Mr Gardiner to settle this issue by
submitting the disputed passage to the verdict of MM. Gaston Paris
and Paul Meyer. In spite of my protest, this was done without my
articles and my solution of the problem[11] being laid before them
at the same time. A snap verdict was thus secured before they had
seen the evidence. I am sure that Mr Gardiner must have thought this
fair, and editors, we know, cannot err; but it seems to me quite
possible that these distinguished French scholars were not familiar
with the shield-wall, an Old English tactic, and were not aware that
this information was the great feature of the battle. Had all this,
as I wished, been duly set before them, their verdict would, of
course, have carried much greater weight.
But having said this much, I frankly admit that their verdict is in
favour of Mr Archer's contention, and, so far as the first 'escuz' is
concerned, against my own.[12] They may not agree in detail with each
other, or with either of Mr Archer's views, but, on the broad issue,
he has a perfect right to claim that their verdict is for him so
long as he does not pretend that it also confirms 'Mr Freeman's
interpretation', by ignoring the historian's own latest and explicit
words.[13] It must also be remembered that this admission in no way
diminishes the obscurity of the passage, which, as we have seen,
is beyond dispute, and which forms an important element in my own
solution of the problem.[14]
Having now shown how the matter stands with regard to 'the disputed
passage', I need not linger over those which Mr Freeman ignored,
and which Mr Archer adduced to strengthen his views as to the main
passage. I have dealt with these elsewhere,[15] and need here
only refer to ll. 8585-90, because that passage raises a point of
historical interest quite apart from personal controversy. I have
maintained that it can only be accepted at the cost of 'throwing
over Mr Freeman's conception of the battle',[16] and have proved, by
quoting his own words, that he placed the standard with Harold at his
foot 'in the very forefront of the fight'.[17] I do not say that he
was right in doing so: he was, I think, very probably wrong, and was
influenced here, as elsewhere, by his dramatic treatment of Harold.
But as this can only be matter of opinion, I have not challenged his
view; I only say that those who accept it cannot consistently appeal
to a passage in Wace which places the standard in the rear of the
English host.
WACE'S AUTHORITY
Assuming then, for the sake of argument, that Wace mentions a defence
of some kind,[18] even though not consistently[19] in front of the
English troops, let us see whether his statement is corroborated,
whether it is in harmony with the other evidence, and whether, if
it is neither corroborated nor in such agreement, his authority is
sufficient, nevertheless, to warrant its acceptance.
As to corroboration, Mr Archer undertook 'to produce corroborative
evidence from other sources';[20] but this at once dwindled down to
one line--'tending in the same direction'[21]--from Benoît de St Maur,
who does not even mention a palisade.[22] There is therefore, on his
own showing, not a shred of corroborative evidence.
As to the second point, I may refer to my arguments against the
palisade,[23] where I showed that none of our authorities is here in
agreement with Wace.
We come, therefore, to our third point, namely, the weight to
which Wace's testimony, when standing alone, is entitled. Here,
as elsewhere, I adhere to my position. As I have written in the
_Quarterly Review_:
Even if Wace, clearly and consistently, mentioned a palisade
throughout his account of the battle, we should certainly
reject the statement of a witness, writing a century after it,
when we find him at variance with every authority (for that
is our point), just as Mr Freeman rejected the bridge at
Varaville,[24] or the 'falsehood' of the burning of the ships,
or the 'blunder' of making the Duke land at Hastings, or his
anachronisms, or his chronology. For, 'of course', in the
Professor's own words, 'whenever he [Wace] departs from
contemporary authority, and merely sets down floating
traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest events
which he records, his statements need to be very carefully
weighed'.[25]
Let me specially lay stress upon the points on which, when Wace and
the Tapestry differ, the preference is given by Mr Freeman himself to
the Tapestry as against Wace:
Had the tapestry been a work of later date, it is hardly
possible that it could have given the simple and truthful
account of these matters which it does give. A work of the
twelfth or thirteenth century[26] would have brought in, _as
even honest Wace does in some degree_, the notions of the
twelfth or thirteenth century. One cannot conceive an artist
of the time of Henry II, still less an artist later than the
French conquest of Normandy, agreeing so remarkably with the
authentic writings of the eleventh century (iii. 573).
[In the Tapestry] every antiquarian detail is accurate--the
lack of armour on the horses (iii. 574). [But] Wace speaks of
the horse of William fitz Osbern as 'all covered with iron'
(iii. 570).
Wace again, is 'hardly accurate' (iii. 765), we read, as to the
English weapons, because he differs from the Tapestry. As to Harold's
wound, 'Wace places it too early in the battle' (iii. 497); Mr Freeman
follows the Tapestry. As to the landing of the Normans at Pevensey:
_Venit ad Pevenesæ_, says the Tapestry ... Wace ... altogether
reverses the geography, making the army land at Hastings, and
go to Pevensey afterwards' (iii. 402).
As to the 'Mora', the Duke's ship, the Tapestry shows 'the child with
his horn'; Wace describes him 'Saete et arc tendu portant'. Mr Freeman
adopts the 'horn' (iii. 382). Harold, says Mr Freeman, was imprisoned
at Beaurain.
This is quite plain from the Tapestry: 'Dux eum ad Belrem et
ibi eum tenuit'. Wace says, 'A Abevile l'ont mené....' This I
conceive to arise from a misconception of the words of William
of Jumièges (iii. 224).
This illustrates, I would remind Mr Archer, the difference between a
primary authority and a mere late compiler.
To these examples I may add Wace's mention of Harold's _vizor_
(_ventaille_). Mr Freeman pointed out the superior accuracy of the
Tapestry in 'the nose-pieces' (iii. 574), and observed that 'the
vizor' was a much later introduction (iii. 497).[27] Here again we
see the soundness of Mr Freeman's view that Wace could not help
introducing 'the notions' of his own time into his account of the
battle. Miss Norgate admits that he 'transferred to his mythical
battles the colouring of the actual battles of his own day', but
urges that these narratives illustrate the 'warfare of Wace's own ...
contemporaries'.[28] Quite so. But the battle of Hastings belonged
to an older and obsolete style of warfare. That is what his champions
always forget. If Miss Norgate's argument has any meaning, it is that
the men who fought in that battle were 'Wace's own contemporaries'.
But, even where Wace's authority is in actual agreement with the
Tapestry, Mr Freeman did not hesitate to reject, or rather, ignore it,
as we saw in the matter of the fosse disaster.
As to Wace's sources of information, and the _prima facie_ evidence
for his authority, a question of considerable interest is raised. Mr
Archer discusses it from his own standpoint.[29] On Wace's life,
age and work, facts are few and speculations many. These have been
collected and patiently sifted in Andresen's great work, with the
following result:
Wace was certainly living not merely in 1170,[30] but in 1174, for
he alludes to the siege of Rouen (August 1174) in his epilogue to the
second part of the 'Roman'.[31] It is admitted on all hands, though Mr
Archer does not mention it, that he did not even begin the third part
till after the coronation of the younger Henry (June 14, 1170).[32]
Allowing for its great length, he cannot have come to his account
of the battle _at the very earliest_ till 1171, 105 years after the
event. For my part, I think that it was probably written even some
years later. But imagine in any case an Englishman, ignorant of
Belgium, writing an account of Waterloo, mainly _from oral tradition_,
in 1920.
Mr Archer contends that Wace was born 'probably between the years 1100
and 1110' (_ante_, p. 31). Andresen holds that the earliest date we
can venture to assign is 1110,[33] forty-four years after the battle.
Special stress is laid by Mr Archer on Wace's oral information:
He had seen and talked with many men who recollected things
anterior to Hastings and the Hastings campaign. Among his
informants for this latter was his own father, then, we may
suppose, a well-grown lad, if not an actual participator in
the fight (_ante_, p. 32).
'We may suppose'--where all is supposition--exactly the contrary. If
Wace was born, as we may safely say, more than forty years after the
battle, 'we may suppose' that his father was not even born before it.
All this talk about Wace's father is based on ll. 6445-7, of which
Andresen truly remarks, 'Die Verse "Mais co oi dire a mon pere, Bien
m'en souient mais Vaslet ere, Que set cenz nes, quatre meins, furent",
u.s.w., sind viel zu unbestimmt gehalten, so dass wir aus ihnen streng
genommen nicht einmal entnehmen können, ob der Vater im Jahre 1066
schon auf der Welt war oder nicht' (p. lxx). I venture to take my own
case. Born within forty years of Waterloo, I can say with Wace that I
remember my father telling me, as a boy, stories of the battle. But
he was born after it. The information was second-hand. Over and over
again does Mr Archer lay stress on the fact (_ut supra_) that Wace
gives us 'the reminiscences of the old heroes who fought at Hastings
as no one else has cared to do'.[34] I must insist that Wace himself
nowhere mentions having seen or spoken to them. He does mention having
seen men who remembered the great comet (Mr Archer italicizes the
lines[35]); but this exactly confirms my point. For when Wace _had_
seen eyewitnesses he was careful, we see, to mention the fact. Men
would remember the comet, though little children at the time. One
of my own very earliest recollections is that of a great comet, even
though it did not create the sensation of the comet in 1066. Wace had
talked with those who had been children, not with those who had been
fighting men, in 1066.
I need only invite attention to one more point. Mr Archer assures
us that 'Wace is a very sober writer', with 'something of the shrewd
scepticism' of modern scholars.[36] What shall we say then, of his
long story (ll. 7005-100) of the night visit, by Harold and Gyrth,
to the Norman camp, to which Mr Archer appeals as evidence for the
_lices_ (l. 7010)? 'Nothing,' replies Mr Freeman (iii. 449), 'could be
less trustworthy.... No power short of divination could have revealed
it.'[37] Mr Archer tells us he has only space for one instance[38]
of Wace's conscientiousness. That instance is his story of the
negotiation between William and Baldwin of Flanders on the eve of the
Conquest. Of this story Mr Freeman writes:
Of the intercourse between William and Baldwin in his
character of sovereign of Flanders Wace has a tale which
strikes me as so purely legendary that I did not venture to
introduce it into the text.... The whole story seems quite
inconsistent with the real relations between William and
Baldwin (iii. 718-19).
Comment is superfluous.
Having now shown that Wace's evidence is not corroborated, is not
in accordance with that of contemporary witnesses, and cannot on
the sound canons of criticism recognized by Mr Freeman himself, be
accepted under these circumstances, I propose to show that my case can
be carried further still, and that I can even trace to its origin the
confused statement in his 'disputed passage' which is said to describe
a palisade or defence of some sort or other.
WACE AND HIS SOURCES[39]
In studying the authorities for the Battle of Hastings, I was led to a
conclusion which, so far as I know, had never occurred to any one. It
is that William of Malmesbury's 'Gesta Regum' was among the sources
used by Wace. Neither in Korting's elaborate treatise, 'Ueber die
Quellen des Roman de Rou', nor in Andresen's notes to his well-known
edition of the 'Roman' (ii. 708), can I find any suggestion to this
effect. Dr Stubbs, in his edition of the 'Gesta Regum', dwells on the
popularity of the work both at home and abroad, but does not include
Wace among the writers who availed themselves of it; and the late Mr
Freeman, though frequently compelled to notice the agreement between
Wace and William, never thought, it appears, of suggesting the theory
of derivation; indeed, he speaks of the two writers as independent
witnesses, when dealing with one of these coincidences.[40] The
more one studies Wace, the more evident it becomes that the 'Roman'
requires to be used with the greatest caution. Based on a _congeries_
of authorities, on tradition, and occasionally of course, on the
poetic invention of the _trouveur_ it presents a whole in which it is
almost impossible to disentangle the various sources of the narrative.
Before dealing with the passage which led me to believe that the
'Gesta Regum' must have been known to Wace, I will glance at some
other coincidences. We have first the alleged landing of William at
Hastings instead of Pevensey. On this Mr Freeman observed:
_Venit ad Pevenesæ_, says the Tapestry. So William of
Poitiers and William of Jumièges. William of Malmesbury says
carelessly, _Placido cursu Hastingas appulerunt_. So Wace,
who altogether reverses the geography, making the army land at
Hastings and go to Pevensey afterwards.[41]
Here William of Malmesbury, who was probably using 'Hastingas'
as loosely as when he applied that term to Battle, appears to be
responsible for the mistake of Wace, who may have tried to harmonize
him with William of Jumièges by making the Normans proceed to Pevensey
after having landed. Take again the hotly disputed burial of Harold at
Waltham. On this question Mr Freeman writes:
William of Malmesbury, after saying that the body was given to
Gytha, adds _acceptum itaque apud Waltham sepelivit_.... Wace
had evidently heard two or three stories, and, with his usual
discretion, he avoided committing himself, but he distinctly
asserts a burial at Waltham.[42]
This, then, is another coincidence between the two writers, while,
as before, Wace found himself in the presence of a conflict of
authorities. On yet another difficult point, the accession of Harold,
I see a marked agreement, though Mr Freeman did not. Harold, according
to William of Malmesbury, _extorta a principibus fide, arripuit
diadema_, and _diademate fastigiatus, nihil de pactis inter se et
Willelmum cogitabat_. Wace's version runs:
Heraut ki ert manant è forz
Se fist énoindre è coroner;
Unkes al duc n'en volt parler,
Homages prist è féeltez
Des plus riches è des ainz nes.
Not only is the attitude of Wace and William towards Harold's action
here virtually identical, but the mention of his exaction of homage
seems special to them both.
The passages, however, on which I would specially rest my case are
those in which these two writers describe the visit of Harold's spies
to the Norman camp before the battle of Hastings. This legend is
peculiar to William of Malmesbury and Wace, and though it may be
suggested that they had heard it independently, the correspondence--it
will, I think, be admitted--is too close to admit of that solution.
I print these passages side by side:
WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY WACE
Premisit tamen qui numerum Heraut enveia dous espies
hostium et vires specularentur. Por espier quels compagnies
E quanz barons e quanz armez
Aueit li dus od sei menez.
Ia esteient a l'ost uenu,
Quant il furent aparceu
Quos intra castra deprehensos A Guillaume furent mene,
Willelmus circum tentoria duci, Forment furent espoente.
moxque, largis eduliis pastos, Mais quant il sout que il quereient
domino incolumes remitti jubet. E que ses genz esmer ueneient,
Par tos les tres les fist mener
E tote l'ost lor fist mostrer;
Bien les fist paistre e abeurer,
Pois les laissa quites aler,
Nes volt laidir ne destorber.
Redeuntes percunctatur Haroldus Quant il vindrent a lor seignor,
quid rerum apportent: illi, verbis Del duc distrent mult grant enor.
amplissimis ductoris magnificam Un des Engleis, qui out veuz
confidentiam prosecuti, serio Les Normans toz res e tonduz,
addiderunt pene omnes in exercitu Quida que tuit proueire fussent
illo presbyteros videri, quod E que messes chanter peussent,
totam faciem cum utroque labio Kar tuit erent tondu e res,
rasam haberent; ... subrisit rex Ne lor esteit guernon remes.
fatuitatem referentinum, lepido Cil dist a Heraut que li dus
insecutus cachinno, quia non Aueit od sei proueies plus
essent presbyteri, sed milites Que chevaliers ne altre gent;
validi, armis invicti. (§ 239) De co se merueillout forment
Que tuit erent res e tondu.
E Heraut li a respondu
Que co sunt cheualiers uaillanz,
Hardi e proz e combatanz.
'N'ont mie barbes ne guernons,'
Co dist Heraut, 'com nos auons.'
(ll. 7101-34)
The story is just one of those that William of Malmesbury would have
picked up, and Wace has simply, in metrical paraphrase, transferred it
from his pages to his own.
Yet another story, on which Mr Freeman looked with some just
suspicion, is common to these two writers, and virtually to them
alone. It is that of 'the contrast between the way in which the night
before the battle was spent by the Normans and the English' (iii.
760). Wace, says Mr Freeman, 'gives us the same account' as William
'in more detail', while William 'gives us a shorter account'. I
here again append the passages side by side, insisting on the fact
mentioned by Mr Freeman, that Wace expands the story 'in more detail':
Itaque utrinque animosi duces Quant la bataille dut ioster,
disponunt acies.... Angli, ut La noit auant, c'oi conter,
accepimus, totam noctem insompnem Furent Engleis forment haitie
cantibus potibusque ducentes. Mult riant e mult enueisie.
Tote noit maingierent e burent,
. . . . . Onques la noit en lit ne jurent.
Mult les veissiez demener,
Treper e saillir e chanter.
. . . . .
Contra Normanni, nocte tota E li Normant e li Franceis
confessioni Tote noit firent oreisons
peccatorum vacantes, mane E furent en afflictions.
Dominico corpore communicarunt. De lor pechiez confes se firent,
(§§ 241, 242) As proueires les regehirent,
E qui nen out proueires pres,
À son ueisin se fist confes.
. . . . .
Quant les messes furent chantees,
Qui bien matin furent finees....
(ll. 7349-56, 7362-8, 7407-8)
This brings me to my destination, namely, § 241 of the 'Gesta Regum'.
We may divide this section into three successive parts: (1) the
description of the way in which the English spent the night--which is
repeated, we have seen, by Wace; (2) the array of the English, with
which I shall deal below; (3) the dismounting of Harold at the foot
of the standard. I here subjoin the parallels for the third, calling
special attention to the phrases, 'd'or e de pierres (auro et
lapidibus)' and 'Guil. pois cele victoire Le fist porter a l'apostoire
(post victorium papae misit Willelmus).'
Rex ipse pedes juxta vexillum Quant Heraut out tot apreste
stabat cum fratribus, ut, in E co qu'il uolt out commande
commune periculo aequato, nemo Enmi les Engleis est uenuz,
de fuga cogitaret. Vexillum Lez l'estandart est descenduz
illud post victoriam papae Lewine e Guert furent od lui
misit Willelmus, quod erat Frere Heraut furent andui,
in hominis pugnantis figura, Assez out barons enuiron;
auro et lapidibus arte Heraut fu lez son gonfanon.
sumptuosa intextum. Li gonfanon fu mult vaillanz,
D'or e de pierres reluissanz.
Guill. pois cele victoire
Le fist porter a l'apostoire,
Por mostrer e metre en memoire
Son grant conquest e sa grant
gloire.
(ll. 7853-66)
The only part of § 241 which remains to be dealt with is the second.
The two passages run thus:
Pedites omnes cum bipennibus Geldons engleis haches portoent
conserta ante se _scutorum_ E gisarmes qui bien trenchoent
testudine, impenetrabilem Fait orent deuant els _escuz_
cuneum faciunt; quod profecto De fenestres e d'altres fuz,
illis _ea die_ saluti fuisset, Deuant els les orent leuez,
nisi Normanni, simulata fuga Comme cleies joinz e serrez;
more suo confertos manipulos Fait en orent deuant closture,
laxassent. N'i laissierent nule iointure,
(§ 241) Par onc Normant entr'els venist
Qui desconfire les volsist.
D'escuz e d'ais s'auironoent,
Issi deffendre se quidoent;
Et s'il se fussent bien tenu,
Ia ne fussent _le ior_ uencu.
(ll. 7813-26)
Mr Freeman, of course, observed the parallel, but, oddly enough,
missed the point. He first quoted the lines from Wace, and then
immediately added, 'So William of Malmesbury' (iii. 764), thus
reversing the natural order. The word that really gave me the clue
was the _escuz_ of Wace. It was obvious, I held, that, here as
elsewhere,[43] it must mean 'shield'; and Mr Freeman consequently saw
in the passage an undoubted description of the 'shield-wall' (iii.
763). Moreover, the phrase _lever escuz_ is, in Wace, a familiar one,
describing preparation for action, thus, for instance:
Mult ueissiez Engleis fremir
. . . . .
Armes saisir, escuz leuer.
(ll. 8030, 8033)
On the other hand, there are, in spite of Mr Freeman, undoubted
difficulties in rendering the passage as a description of the
'shield-wall', just as there are in taking _escuz_ to mean
'barricades' (iii. 471). The result was that, perhaps unconsciously,
Mr Freeman gave the passage, in succession, two contradictory
renderings (iii. 471, 763). Now, starting from the fact that the
disputed passage supported, and also opposed both renderings, I
arrived at the conclusion that it must represent some confusion of
Wace's own. He had, evidently, himself no clear idea of what he was
describing. But the whole confusion is at once accounted for if
we admit him to have here also followed William of Malmesbury. His
_escuz_--otherwise impossible to explain--faithfully renders the
_scuta_ of William, while the latter's _testudo_, though strictly
accurate, clearly led him astray. The fact is that William of
Malmesbury must have been quite familiar with the 'shield-wall', if
indeed he had seen the fyrd actually forming it.[44] Wace, on the
contrary, living later, and in Normandy instead of England, cannot
have seen, or even understood, this famous formation, with which his
cavalry fight of the twelfth century had nothing in common. It is
natural therefore that his version should betray some confusion,
though his _Fait en orent deuant closture_ clearly renders William of
Malmesbury's _conserta ante se scutorum testudine_. There is no
question as to William's meaning, for a _testudo_ of shields is
excellent Latin for the shield-wall formed by the Romans against a
flight of arrows. Moreover, the construction of William's Latin
(_conserta_) accounts for that use by Wace of the pluperfect tense on
which stress has been laid as proof that the passage must describe a
'barricade'.[45] That Wace could, occasionally, be led astray by
misunderstanding his authority, is shown by his taking Harold to
Abbeville, after his capture on the French coast, a statement which
arose, in Mr Freeman's opinion, 'from a misconception of the words of
William of Jumièges (iii. 224)'. No one, I think, can read
dispassionately the extracts I have printed side by side, without
accepting the explanation I offer of this disputed passage in Wace,
namely, that it is nothing but a metrical, elaborate, and somewhat
confused paraphrase of the words of William of Malmesbury.
Passing from William of Malmesbury to the Bayeux Tapestry, we find a
general recognition of the difficulty of determining Wace's knowledge
of it. I can only, like others, leave the point undecided. On the
other hand, his narrative, as a whole, does not follow the Tapestry;
on the other, it is hard to believe that the writer of II. 8103-38
had not seen that famous work. His description of the scene is
marvellously exact, and the Tapestry phrase, in which Odo _confortat
pueros_--often a subject of discussion--is at once explained by his
making the _pueri_ whom Odo 'comforted' to be--
Vaslez, qui al herneis esteient
E le herneis garder deueient.
Of these varlets in charge of the 'harness' he had already spoken (ll.
7963-7). The difficulty of accounting for Wace, as a canon of Bayeux,
being unacquainted with the Tapestry is, of course, obvious. But
in any case he cannot have used it, as we do ourselves, among his
foremost authorities.
In discussing his use of William of Jumièges, we stand on much surer
ground. It certainly strikes one as strange that in mentioning the
obvious error by which Wace makes Harold receive his wound in the eye
early in the fight (l. 8185), before the great feigned flight, Mr
Freeman does not suggest its derivation from William of Jumièges,
though he proceeds to add (p. 771):
I need hardly stop to refute the strange mistake of William of
Jumièges, followed by Orderic: 'Heraldus ipse in primo militum
progressu ['Congressu', _Ord._] vulneribus letaliter confossus
occubuit'.
But a worse instance of the contradictions involved by the patchwork
and secondary character of Wace's narrative is found in his statement
as to Harold's arrival on the field of battle. 'Wace,' says Mr
Freeman, 'makes the English reach Senlac on Thursday night' (p. 441).
So he does, even adding that Harold
fist son estandart drecier
Et fist son gonfanon fichier
Iloc tot dreit ou l'abeie
De la Bataille est establie.
(ll. 6985-8)
But Mr Freeman must have overlooked the very significant fact that
when the battle is about to begin, Wace tells a different story, and
makes Harold only occupy the battlefield on the Saturday morning:
Heraut sout que Normant vendreient
E que par main se combatreient:
Un champ out _par matin_ porpris,
Ou il a toz ses Engleis mis.
_Par matin_ les fist toz armer
E a bataille conreer.
(ll. 7768-72)
I have little doubt that he here follows William of Jumièges:
'[Heraldus] in campo belli apparuit mane', and that he was thus led to
contradict himself.
Mr Freeman had a weakness for Wace, and did not conceal it: he
insisted on the poet's 'honesty'. But 'honesty' is not knowledge; and
in dealing with the battle, it is not allowable to slur over Wace's
imperfect knowledge. Mr Freeman admits that 'probably he did not know
the ground, and did not take in the distance between Hastings and
Battle' (p. 762). But he charitably suggests that 'it is possible
that when he says "en un tertre s'estut li dus" he meant the hill of
Telham, only without any notion of its distance from Hastings'.
But, in spite of this attempt to smooth over the discrepancy, it is
impossible to reconcile Wace's narrative with that of Mr Freeman. The
latter makes the duke deliver his speech at Hastings, and then march
with his knights to Telham, and there arm. But Wace imagined that they
armed in their quarters at Hastings ('Issi sunt as tentes ale'), and
straightway fought. The events immediately preceding the battle are
far more doubtful and difficult to determine than could be imagined
from Mr Freeman's narrative, but I must confine myself to Wace's
version. I have shown that his account is not consistent as to
the movements of Harold, while as to the topography, 'his primary
blunder', as Mr Freeman terms it, 'of reversing the geographical
order, by making William land at Hastings and thence go to Pevensey',
together with his obvious ignorance of the character and position of
the battlefield, must, of course, lower our opinion of his accuracy,
and of the value of the oral tradition at his disposal.
To rely 'mainly'[46] on such a writer, in preference to the original
authorities he confused, or to follow him when, in Mr Freeman's words,
he actually 'departs from contemporary authority, and merely sets down
floating traditions nearly a hundred years after the latest events
which he records'--betrays the absence of a critical faculty, or the
consciousness of a hopeless cause.
[Footnote 1: Dismissing _ut supra_ the 'fosse' passage, which
neither mentions nor implies it, together with the passage
from Henry of Huntingdon.]
[Footnote 2: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 763-4. I have shown in the
_English Historical Review_ (ix. 225) that he meant here by
the shield-wall 'exactly what he meant by it elsewhere', a
shield-wall and nothing else.]
[Footnote 3: _Cont. Rev._, 344.]
[Footnote 4: _English Historical Review_, ix. 231-40.]
[Footnote 5: _English Historical Review_, ix. 2.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, 260.]
[Footnote 7: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 763-4.]
[Footnote 8: _Cont. Rev._, p. 348.]
[Footnote 9: _English Historical Review_, ix. 17-20.]
[Footnote 10: I explained, in one of my replies to Mr Archer,
that this statement applied _only_ to its usage '_in Wace_'
(_Academy_, September 16, 1893), but, characteristically, he
has not hesitated to suppress this explanation, and renew his
sneers at my knowledge of 'Old French', on the ground of a
statement which, I had explained, was not my meaning (_English
Historical Review_, ix. 604). It is difficult to describe such
devices as these.
Common as the word is in Wace, I have never found any other
instance of its use (_i.e._ by him) in a metaphorical sense,
nor, if there is one, has Mr Archer attempted to produce it.]
[Footnote 11: _Infra_, pp. 313-18.]
[Footnote 12: _English Historical Review_, ix. 260.]
[Footnote 13: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 736-7.]
[Footnote 14: The word 'fenestres', for instance, which Mr
Archer first rendered 'ash', out of deference to Mr Freeman
and his predecessors, but subsequently 'windows' (_English
Historical Review_, ix. 18), is either a corruption or quite
inexplicable. 'If it pleases Mr Archer,' as I wrote (_ibid._,
236), 'to construct a barricade, of which "windows" are the
chief ingredient, on an uninhabited Sussex down, in 1066, he
is perfectly welcome to do so.' I may add that the rendering
adopted by the two French scholars does not in the least alter
my view as to the improbability, or rather absurdity, of the
suggestion.]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid._, ix. 244.]
[Footnote 16: _Q.R._, July 1893, p. 95.]
[Footnote 17: _English Historical Review_, ix. 251-3. I
was careful to add that 'if it be claimed that his text is
contradictory, this would but prove further how confused his
mind really was as to the battle' (p. 252). Mr Archer, as I
anticipated, now prints, as a conclusive reply (_ibid._, ix.
603), words which look the other way, ignoring, as usual, the
quotations on which I explicitly relied. He has thereby, as
I said, only proved how confused, here as elsewhere, Mr
Freeman's conception was.]
[Footnote 18: Mr Archer now prefers to leave its details
doubtful (_English Historical Review_, ix. 606).]
[Footnote 19: As I have shown in _ibid._, ix. 244-5.]
[Footnote 20: _Cont. Rev._, 344.]
[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, 346.]
[Footnote 22: I have shown (_Academy_, September 16, 1893) by
reference to Godefroi and Michel that either Mr Archer or
they must here have been ignorant of Old French. The former
alternative seems to be accepted.]
[Footnote 23: _Supra_, pp. 269-70.]
[Footnote 24: The case of the battle of Varaville, in 1058,
is precisely similar in this respect to that of the Battle of
Hastings. Of the former Mr Freeman writes: 'Wace alone speaks,
throughout his narrative, of a bridge. All the other writers
speak only of a ford' (iii. 173). Now Wace's authority was
better for this, the earlier battle, because, says Mr Freeman,
he knew the ground. Yet the Professor did not hesitate to
reject his 'bridge'. So again, in 'the campaign of Hastings',
Mr Freeman rejects 'the falsehood of the story of William
burning his ships, of which the first traces appear in Wace'
(iii. 408). So much for placing our reliance upon Wace, when
he stands alone.]
[Footnote 25: _Q.R._, July 1893, p. 96.]
[Footnote 26: Mr Archer's limit is 1066-1210.]
[Footnote 27: We have, I suspect, a similar instance, in
Wace's _gisarmes_ (ll. 7794, 7814, 8328, 8332, 8342,
8587, 8629, 8656). An excellent vindication of the Bayeux
Tapestry--oddly enough overlooked by Mr Freeman--namely, M.
Delauney's 'Origine de la Tapisserie de Bayeux prouvée par
elle-même' (Caen, 1824)--discusses the weapons, the author
observing: 'La hache d'armes ressemble à celle de nos sapeurs;
celle des temps postèrieurs au xi^{e} siècle à, dans les
monuments, une espèce de petite lance au-dessus de la douille
du côté opposé au tranchant' (see Jubinal, _La Tapisserie de
Bayeux_, p. 17). This exactly describes the true _gisarme_, a
later introduction. So again, Wace makes the _chevalier_ who
has hurried from Hastings exclaim to Harold:
'Un chastel i ont ia ferme
De _breteschese_ de fosse' (ll. 6717-8),
whereas _bretasches_ of course were impossible at the time.
One is reminded of the description, by Piramus, of the coming
of the English, when 'over the broad sea Britain they sought':
'Leuent bresteches od kernels,
Ke cuntrevalent bons chastels,
De herituns [? hericuns] e de paliz
Les cernent, si funt riulez
Del quer des cheygnes, forze e halz,
Ki ne criement sieges ne asalz.'
(_Vie Seint Edmund le Rey_, ll. 228-33.)]
[Footnote 28: _English Historical Review_, ix. 66.]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, 31-7, 17-18, and throughout his paper.]
[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, ix. 32.]
[Footnote 31: 'Al siege de Rouen le quidierent gaber' (l.
62).]
[Footnote 32: 'Demn nicht etwa am Schlusse, sondern gleich
zu Anfang des genannten Theiles' (l. 179) 'spricht er von den
drei Königen Heinrich die er gesehen und gekannt' (p. xciv).]
[Footnote 33: 'Nimmt man das Jahr 1110 als Geburtsjahr des
Dichters an', etc. (p. xciv).]
[Footnote 34: _English Historical Review_, ix. 33. It need
scarcely be said that these 'old heroes' would be found rather
in England than in Normandy.]
[Footnote 35: _Ibid._, ix. 17.
'Assez vi homes qui la virent,
Qui ainz e pois longues vesquirent.']
[Footnote 36: _Ibid._, ix. 33.]
[Footnote 37: Compare his scornful rejection (iii. 469-71) of
Wace's tales in ll. 7875-950.]
[Footnote 38: _English Historical Review_, ix. 34.]
[Footnote 39: Reprinted from _ibid._, October 1893.]
[Footnote 40: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 783.]
[Footnote 41: iii. 402, note 2.]
[Footnote 42: iii. 782.]
[Footnote 43: I mean, as I explained above, elsewhere in
Wace.]
[Footnote 44: He describes, as Mr Freeman observed, King Henry
bidding the English 'meet the charge of the Norman knights
by standing firm in the array of the ancient shield-wall'
(_William Rufus_, ii. 411).]
[Footnote 45: _Cont. Rev._, March 1893, p. 351.]
[Footnote 46: 'It is upon Wace that we shall mainly rely.'
_Cont. Rev._, p. 344.]
NOTE ON THE PSEUDO-INGULF
I owe to my friend Mr Hubert Hall the suggestion that the great battle
described by the Pseudo-Ingulf as taking place between the English
and the Danes in 870--and all accepted as sober fact by Turner in his
_History of the Anglo-Saxons_--may be a concoction based on the facts
of the battle of Hastings. This is also the theory Mr Freeman advanced
as to Snorro's story of the battle of Stamford Bridge. The coincidence
is very striking. In both narratives the defending force is formed
with 'the dense shield-wall';[1] in both it breaks at length that
formation; in both it is, consequently, overwhelmed; and in both cases
the attacking force consists of horsemen and archers. But the most
curious coincidence is found in the principal weapon of the defending
force. In Snorro's narrative, as Mr Freeman renders it, 'a dense wood
of spears bristles in front of the circle to receive the charge of the
English horsemen';[2] in the Pseudo-Ingulf the defending force 'contra
violentiam equitum densissimam aciem lancearum prætendebant'.[3] Such
a defence savours of the days when the knight, fighting on foot with
his lance,[4] had replaced the housecarl with his battle-axe: it was
not that of Harold's host, but one which we meet with in the twelfth
century.
There are marks, however, in the Pseudo-Ingulf, of study, not merely
of the Battle of Hastings, but of William of Malmesbury's account
of it. From him, it would seem, are taken the words 'testudo' and
'tumulus'. The first parallel passages are these:
WILLIAM 'INGULF'
Conserta ante se _scutorum In unum cuneum conglobati,
testudine_, impenetrabilem ... _testudinem clypeorum_
cuneum faciunt. prætendebant.
Again, after the disaster caused, in each case, by a feigned flight,
we have the rally thus described:
WILLIAM 'INGULF'
nec tamen ultioni suæ defuere, in quodam campi _tumulo_ cetera
quin crebro consistentes ... planitie aliquantulum altiore
occupato _tumulo_, Normannos, in orbem conferti, barbaros
calore succensos acriter ad arietantes diutissime
superiora nitentes, in vallem sustinuerunt ... suum sanguinem
dejiciunt. vindicantes.
The Pseudo-Ingulf alludes but briefly to the Battle of Hastings
itself. Yet here again we have traces of William of Malmesbury's words
in 'nec de toto exercitu, præter paucissimos eum aliquis concomitatur'
and 'more gregarii militis manu ad manum congrediens', which phrases
are applied to Harold.
[Footnote 1: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 367.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 365.]
[Footnote 3: Ed. 1684, p. 21.]
[Footnote 4: _Vide supra_, p. 279. Cf. the fight at Jaffa,
August 5, 1192.]
REGENBALD, PRIEST AND CHANCELLOR
No better illustration could be given of the fact that valuable
historical evidence may lurk, even in print, unknown, than the
charters printed, from the Cirencester Cartulary, by Sir Thomas
Phillips in _Archæologia_ (1836).[1] One can imagine how highly
prized they would have been by Mr Freeman, had he only known of their
existence.
Regenbald, of whom Sir Thomas would seem never to have heard, was the
first Chancellor of England.[2] Mr Freeman called him, I know not
on what authority, 'the Norman chancellor of Eadward'. Whatever
his nationality, it is well established that he was that king's
chancellor. He occurs repeatedly in Domesday, where he is
distinguished as 'Canceler', 'Presbyter', and 'de Cirencestre'.
We learn also from its pages that he held land in at least three
counties--Berkshire, Herefordshire, and Dorset T.R.E.--and that
he seems to have received further grants from King William in his
return.[3]
The three charters of which I treat are found in the Cirencester
Cartulary and are in Anglo-Saxon. The first is one of King Edward's in
favour of 'Reinbold min preost', and is a confirmation to him of soc
and sac, toll and team, etc., as his predecessors had enjoyed it 'on
Cnutes kinges daie'. The third is a notification from King William
that 'ic hæbbe geunnen Regenbald minan preoste eall his lond' as 'he
hit under Ed[w]earde hædde mine meie'. The chief points to be noticed
here are that the land is granted _de novo_, not confirmed, and that
the Conqueror speaks of Regenbald as 'minan preoste', implying that he
has taken him into his service.
It is the second of these charters that is of quite extraordinary
importance. I here append it _in extenso_ as printed by Sir Thomas
Phillips:
'Vyllelm king gret Hereman b. & Wulstan b. & Eustace eorl & Eadrich
& Bristrich & ealle mine þegenes on [W]yltoneshyre & on Glouc'shyre
fronliche & ic cuþe eo[w] ic habbe geunnan Reinbold mina preost [þt]
land æt Esi & [þt] land æt Latton & ealle þæra þinge [þt] þar to lið
binnan port & buten mið sace & mið socne s[w]a full and s[w]a forð
s[w]a his furmest on hondan stodan Harald kinge on ællan þingan on
dæge & æfter to atheonne s[w]a s[w]a ealra lefest ys & ic nelle nenna
men geþafian [þt] him fram honda teo ænig þære þinga þæs þa ic him
geunne habbe bi minan freonshype.'
The relevant entry in Domesday speaks for itself:
Reinbaldus presbyter tenet Latone et Aisi. Duo taini tenuerunt
pro II. Maneriis T.R.E. Heraldus comes junxit in unum.
Geldabat pro ix. hidis (68_b_).
If the charter were nothing more than a grant from the Conqueror to
a private individual of lands duly entered in Domesday, it would, I
believe, as such be unique. Historians have long and vainly sought
for any genuine charter of the kind; and here it has been in print for
nearly sixty years.
But the document, I hope to show, does far more for us than this: it
opens a new chapter in the history of the Norman Conquest.
We first notice that the writ is addressed not to Norman, but to
English authorities. The only exception is Count Eustace, who was, of
course, not a Norman, and who was known in England before the Conquest
as brother-in-law to Edward the Confessor. The obvious inference is
that, at the time this writ was issued, Norman government had not yet
been set up in the district. Urse d'Abetot, for instance, the dreaded
sheriff of Worcestershire, would probably have been addressed in
conjunction with Bishop Wulstan had he been then in power. But we know
that he came into power soon after the Conquest, for he had time to be
guilty of oppression and to be rebuked for it by Ealdred before that
Primate's death in 1069. But as our writ is of this early date, it
must be previous to the treason of Count Eustace in 1067. It must
therefore belong to the beginning of that year, when William had only
recently been crowned king.
We see then here, I think, the Conqueror, in his first days as an
English king, addressing his subjects, in a part of the realm not yet
under Norman sway, and doing so in their own tongue and in the forms
to which they were accustomed. As King Edward in his charter to
Regenbald had greeted bishops, earls, and sheriffs, so here his
successor greets two bishops, 'Eustace Eorl', and two Englishmen
representing the power of the sheriff. And so again in his charter to
London he began by greeting the Bishop and the Portreeve.[4]
The writ, it will be seen, is addressed to the authorities of
Gloucestershire and Wilts. The estate lay in the latter county, but
the connection of Regenbald de 'Cirencestre' with Glo'stershire may
account for the inclusion of that county. Can we identify 'Eadrich'
and 'Bristrich' with any local magnates? With some confidence I boldly
suggest that the latter was no other than the 'Bristricus' of the Exon
Domesday, that famous Brihtric, the son of Ælfgar, who, to quote from
the appendix Mr Freeman devotes to him, 'appears distinctly as a great
landowner in most of the western shires', one from whose vast domains
was carved out later the great Honour of Gloucester. Until now, all we
have known of him has been derived from the Domesday entries of his
estates T.R.E. and from the legend which associates his name with that
of Queen Matilda. But this charter enables us to say that he was
living and still holding his great position in the west in the early
days of William's reign.[5]
From 'Bristric' I turn to 'Eadric', and ask if we may not here
recognize 'Eadric the Wild' himself? This can only be matter of
conjecture, but it is certain that these two Englishmen are here
assigned the place that would be given to a sheriff, and that 'Eadric
the Wild'--'quidam præpotens minister', as Florence terms him--was a
magnate in the west (Herefordshire and Shropshire) at the time of the
Conquest. Mr Freeman terms him 'a man about whom we should gladly know
more'. It is stated by Orderic that he was one of those who came in
and submitted to William at the outset. But Mr Freeman held it 'far
more likely that he did not submit till a much later time',
because Florence says of him in William's absence: 'se dedere Regi
dedignabatur'. Orderic's statement, however, is not denied, and
Florence's words seem to me quite explicable by the hypothesis that
Eadric had refused the 'dangerous honour', as Mr Freeman terms it, of
following William to Normandy in 1067 among 'his English attendants
or hostages'. Harried, in consequence, by his Norman neighbours, he
retaliated by ravaging Herefordshire in August of that year; while
Count Eustace also threw off his allegiance and made his descent on
Dover.
If the identity of 'Eadric' is matter of conjecture, that of 'Eustace
eorl' is certain. But no one has known, or even suspected, that he
held, at this period, high position in the west. It may be that, as I
have already hinted, he was sent by William to a district, as yet
only nominally subject, as being, from his previous connection with
England, less obnoxious than a Norman was likely to prove. It would
be refining overmuch to suggest that William might also intend to
establish him as far as possible from his base of operations at
Boulogne.
In any case, we have in this charter a welcome addition to our scanty
knowledge of that obscure period when William, as it were, was feeling
his feet as an English king. Nor is it its least important feature
that it shows us William, contrary to what Mr Freeman held to be his
fundamental rule, speaking of his predecessor as 'Harald kinge'.
Before taking leave of Regenbald, we may glance at one of the Domesday
entries relating to his lands. Mr Freeman, in two distinct passages,
wrote as follows:
An entry in 99 reads as if the The rights of the antecessor are
same Regenbald had been defrauded handed on to the grantee of his
of land by a Norman tenant of his land.... So in Exon 432.
own. 'Ricardus tenet in Rode i. 'Ricardus interpres habet
hidam, quam ipse tenuit de i. hidam terræ in Roda quam ipse
Rainboldo presbytero licentia emit de Rainboldo sacerdote
regis, ut dicit. Reinbold vero [Eadward's chancellor?] per
tenuit T.R.E.' licentiam regis, ut dicit qui
(_Norm. Conq._, v. 751) tenuit eam die qua Rex E.
fuit[6] et mortuus.'
(_Ibid._, p. 784)
Although these two passages are found in two different appendices, the
entries thus diversely adduced, are, of course, one and the same. But,
it will be seen, the 'tenuit' of Domesday is equated by the 'emit' of
the Exon book. One of the two must be wrong. I should accept the
Exon text because 'emit licentia regis' is the right Domesday phrase,
because it makes better sense, and because it is a sound principle of
textual criticism that the Exchequer scribe was more likely to write
the usual 'tenuit' for the exceptional 'emit' than the Exon scribe
to do the converse. I should then read the passage thus: 'emit de
Rainboldo sacerdote--per licentiam regis, ut dicit--qui tenuit eam
die', etc.
If my view be adopted, we here detect noteworthy error in our great
and sacrosanct record.
The charter of Henry I to Cirencester Abbey--in which he had placed
Canons Regular, and of which he claimed to be the founder--sets, as it
were, the coping-stone on the story of Regenbald.[7] In it we read:
Dedi et concessi ... totam tenuram Reimbaldi presbyteri in
terris et ecclesiis, et ceteris omnibusquæ subscripta sunt....
De rebus autem predictis quæ fuerunt Rembaldi hec statuimus.
The details of Regenbald's possessions are given, and are of special
value for collation with Domesday. They set him before us not only as
a landowner in five different counties, but also as the first great
pluralist. Sixteen churches, rich in tithes and glebe--one might
really term them 'fat livings'--had passed into the hands of Regenbald
'the priest'. From the king's phrase, '_dedi_ et concessi', he would
seem to have been not merely confirming an endowment by Regenbald, but
granting lands which had escheated to himself.[8]
And this conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the king, while
granting them, especially reserved the life interest of the Bishop of
Salisbury and of two others--one of them, alas! a bishop's nephew--who
must have acquired their rights since Regenbald's death.
This charter, apart from its contents, is of great interest from its
mention of the place where and the time when it was granted, together
with its list of witnesses. These were the two Archbishops, the
Bishops of Salisbury, Winchester, Lincoln, Durham, Ely, Hereford, and
Rochester: Robert 'de Sigillo', Robert de Ver, Miles of Gloucester,
Robert d'Oilli, Hugh Bigot, Robert de Curci, Payne 'filius Johannis et
Eustacio et Willelmo fratribus ejus, et Willelmo de Albini Britone'.
The charter was granted 'apud Burnam in transfretatione mea anno
incarnationis Domini MCXXXIII. regni vero mei XXXIII.'; and 'Burna',
as I have elsewhere shown,[9] was Westbourne in Sussex, on the border
of Hampshire, then in the king's hands by forfeiture and near the
coast. Here therefore we see the king, when leaving England for the
last time, surrounded by his prelates and ministers, and are enabled
to say positively who were with him. I would note the predominance of
the official class represented by the Bishops of Salisbury, Lincoln,
and Ely, by the late chancellor, the Bishop of Durham, and by laymen
who are found specially entrusted with administrative work. A long
list of witnesses such as this is specially characteristic of the
closing period of the reign,[10] and, of course, always possesses
biographical value.[11]
Another English writ of the Conqueror, which may be profitably
compared with that we have discussed, is found in one of the
cartularies of Bury St Edmund's.[12] Its address, as rendered in the
transcript, runs:
William [_sic_] kyng gret Ægelmær Bischop and Raulf Eorl and
Nordman and ealle myne thegnaes on Sudfolke frendliche.
This writ is obviously previous to the deposition of Bishop Æthelmær
in April, 1070, but how far previous it is not easy to say. 'Nordman'
is clearly the sheriff of Suffolk, who appears in Domesday as
'Normannus Vicecomes' (II. 438). His name affords presumption, though
not proof, that he was of English birth;[13] and as his Domesday
holding consisted only of rights over two Ipswich burgesses (which he
may have acquired during his shrievalty) he is hardly likely to have
been one of the conquering race. Of the third official, Earl Ralf, we
know a good deal. Mr Freeman was much puzzled by this 'somewhat
mysterious person',[14] but eventually came to the conclusion that
'there were two Ralfs in Norfolk, father and son, the younger being
the son of a Breton mother: the elder was staller under Edward and
Earl under William'. The younger was the Earl of Norfolk (or 'of the
East Angles'), who rebelled and was forfeited in 1075; the elder was
that 'Rawulf' who, in the words of the chronicle, 'wæs Englisc and
wæs geboren on Norðfolce'. Putting our evidence together, I lean
strongly to the view that we have here, as in the case of Regenbald,
a writ addressed to English authorities before Norfolk had passed
into the hands of Norman authorities. Mr Freeman held that a passage
in Domesday (II. 194), to which he had given much attention, should
be read--'Hanc terram habuit A[rfastus] episcopus in tempore
utrorumque [Radulforum]', and that therefore 'the elder Ralph was
living as late as 1070, in which year the episcopate of Erfast
begins'. But the context clearly shows that we should read 'A[ilmarus]
episcopus', and that, therefore, the elder Ralf died before Æthelmær
was deposed. Moreover, Norwich, we are specially told, was entrusted
by the Conqueror to William fitz Osbern before his departure from
England in March 1067. William was placed, some two years later, in
charge of York castle, and we read in Mr Freeman's work that 'the man
who now (autumn, 1069) commanded at Norwich, and who was already,
or soon afterwards, invested with the East-Anglian Earldom, was the
renegade native of the shire, Ralf of Wader'.[15] This, it will be
seen, contradicts his own, and supports my reading of the Domesday
passage quoted above. Everything therefore points to the 'Raulf Eorl'
of our writ dying or being deposed shortly after the Conquest.
Before taking leave of this writ we may note that, dealing as it does
with Suffolk, it is addressed to Earl Ralf as Earl, not merely of
Norfolk, but of East Anglia. This is of some importance, because Mr
Freeman wrote, speaking of the Regents appointed in 1067:
There was no longer to be an Earl of the West Saxons or an
Earl of the East Angles.... Returning in this to earlier
English practice, the Earl under William was to have the rule
of a single shire only, or if two shires were ever set under
one Earl they were at least not to be adjoining shires. The
results of this change have been of the highest moment. (iv.
70.)
Yet on page 253, as we have seen, we read of 'the East Anglian
Earldom', and on page 573 that the younger Ralph 'had received the
Earldom of East Anglia'--Florence of Worcester distinctly terming him
'East-Anglorum comite'. Mr Freeman, indeed, was led by this passage to
style him 'Earl of Norfolk or of the East Angles'.[16] I believe this
latter style to be perfectly correct, and, as I have shown in my
_Geoffrey de Mandeville_ (p. 191), to apply even to the Bigod earldom
in the days of Stephen.
The curious English writ that has suggested these considerations ought
to be compared with a Latin one, also in favour of St Edmund's, on
which I lighted in examining the 'Registrum Album' of the Abbey. It is
one of those exceedingly rare documents that find their correlatives
in Domesday. The words of the writ are these:
W. rex Anglor' E. epo. B. Abbi W. Malet salm. sciatis vos
mei fideles me concessisse servitium de Liuremere quam Werno
hactenus de me tenuit sancto Ædmundo Et filia Guernonis in
vita sua de Abbate B. tenuit.[17]
The last clause is clearly an addition by the cartulary scribe.
Now this charter being addressed, like the other, to Æthelmær
('Ethelmerus'), Bishop of the East Angles, is, of course, previous to
April 1070. I should, therefore, also place it previous to the capture
of William Malet at York in September 1069. But this, unlike the
other date, is matter of probability rather than of proof. Mr Freeman
believed that William returned, and died 'in the marshes of Ely'
(1071), but this is only a guess in which I cannot concur.[18] In
any case, we have evidence here of this well-known man having held a
position in Suffolk (where he owned the great Honour of Eye) analogous
to that of sheriff. He may have succeeded Northman in that office.
The relevant Domesday entry is as follows:
Hujus terram rex accepit de abbate et dedit Guernoni depeiz
[de Peiz]. Postea licencia regis deveniens monachus reddidit
terram. (363_b_.)
The charter records, I take it, the 'licencia regis' of Domesday.[19]
[Footnote 1: Vol. xxvi., p. 256.]
[Footnote 2: Not counting Leofric, styled 'regis cancellarius'
by Florence in 1046.]
[Footnote 3: See my life of him in _Dictionary of National
Biography_.]
[Footnote 4: It might even be suggested that not only this
charter but the Essex writ in favour of Deorman (addressed to
Bishop William and Swegen the sheriff) belonged to the same
early period. Compare, however, the Conqueror's Old English
writ that I have discussed ('Londoners and the Chase') in the
_Athenæum_ of June 30, 1894.]
[Footnote 5: It is a noteworthy coincidence that 'Brihtricus
princeps' and 'Eadricus princeps' are among the witnesses to
Harold's Waltham charter in 1062, which Regenbald himself also
attests as Chancellor.]
[Footnote 6: _sic._]
[Footnote 7: See _Monast. Anglic._, ii. 177.]
[Footnote 8: It is possible, I think, that the only endowment
entered to the church at Cirencester in Domesday, viz., two
hides at Cirencester, had been originally given by Regenbald.]
[Footnote 9: Henry I, at 'Burne' (_English Historical Review_,
1895).]
[Footnote 10: As in the charters to Aubrey de Vere (_Baronia
Anglica_, 158) and William Mauduit.]
[Footnote 11: Here, it would seem, is further proof of
the Bishops of Ely and Durham assuming their styles before
consecration (_infra_, pp. 366-7).]
[Footnote 12: Harl. MS., 743, fo. 8_d_.]
[Footnote 13: Mr Freeman held him to be an Englishman.]
[Footnote 14: _Norm. Conq._ (2nd Ed.), iii. 773. Cf. 1st Ed.,
iii. 752-3; iv. 277.]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid._ (1st Ed.), iv. 252-3.]
[Footnote 16: _Ibid._ (2nd.), iii. 773.]
[Footnote 17: Add. MS., 14,314, fo. 32_b_ (pencil).]
[Footnote 18: See my letter on 'the death of William Malet' in
_Academy_ of August 26, 1884.]
[Footnote 19: Since this paper was written, there has
appeared the valuable Bath Cartulary (Somerset Record Society)
containing a most remarkable charter (p. 36), which should
be closely compared with those to Regenbald. It is issued by
William the King and William the Earl, and must undoubtedly be
assigned to the former's absence from England, March-December
1067. It shows us therefore William fitz Osbern acting
as Regent and anticipating the office of the later Great
Justiciar by inserting in the document his own name. This
charter, like that to Regenbald, is addressed to the still
English authorities of an unconquered district.]
THE CONQUEROR AT EXETER
'And y seide nay, and proved hit by Domesday.'[1]
For a companion study to the Battle of Hastings, one could not select
a better subject than the Siege of Exeter by William in 1068. It is
so, because, in the tale of the Conquest, 'No city of England', in Mr
Freeman's words, 'comes so distinctly to the front as Exeter':[2] and
because, as editor of 'Historic Towns', he chose Exeter, out of all
others, as the town to be reserved for himself.[3] 'Its siege by
William', we are told, 'is one of the most important events of his
reign';[4] but it was doubtless the alleged 'federal' character
of Exeter's attitude at this crisis that gave its story for him an
interest so unique. This episode, moreover, has many advantages: it
is complete in itself; it is rich in suggestion; it is taken from the
period in which the Professor described himself as 'most at home'; and
its scene is laid within his own borders, his own West Saxon land. It
presents an admirable test of Mr Freeman's work at the point where he
was admittedly strongest, and his thoroughly typical treatment of it
affords a perfect illustration of the method he employed.
The year 1067 was drawing to its close when the Conqueror, summoned
back from Normandy by the tidings of pressing danger, returned to
spend his Christmas at Westminster amidst 'the sea of troubles which
still awaited him in his half-conquered island-kingdom'.[5] Threatened
at once by foes within and without the realm, he perceived the vital
necessity of severing their forces by instant suppression of the
'rebellions' at home, _swift_ suppression before the invaders were
upon him, _stern_ suppression before the movement spread. Let us bear
in mind these twin motives, by which his policy must at this juncture
have been shaped, the need for _swiftness_, with invasion in prospect,
and the need for _sternness_ as a warning to 'rebels'.
Of all the 'rebellious' movements on foot, that at Exeter, as Mr
Freeman admits, was 'specially hateful in William's eyes'.[6] It was
against Exeter, therefore, that the Conqueror directed his first blow.
In the depths of winter, in the early days of the new year, 'he fared
to Devonshire'. Such is the brief statement of the English Chronicle.
We hear of William at Westminster; we next hear of him before the
walls of Exeter: all that intervenes is a sheer blank. Of what
happened on this long westward march not a single detail is preserved
to us in the Chronicle, in Orderic or in Florence. Now it is precisely
such a blank as this that, to Mr Freeman, was irresistible. We shall
see below how, a few months later, we have, in William's march from
Warwick to Nottingham, a blank exactly parallel.[7] There also Mr
Freeman succumbed to the temptation. He seized, in each case, on
the empty canvas, and, by a few rapid and suggestive touches, he has
boldly filled it in with the outlines of historical events, not merely
events for which there is no sufficient evidence, but events which can
be proved, by demonstration, to have had no foundation in fact.
The scene elaborated by Mr Freeman to enliven the void between
the departure from London and the entrance into Devonshire is THE
RESISTANCE AND THE DOWNFALL OF 'THE CIVIC LEAGUE'.[8] This striking
incident in the Exeter campaign I propose to analyse without further
delay.
It must, in the first place, be pointed out that we have no proof
whatever of this 'Civic League' having even existed. To apply Mr
Freeman's words to his own narrative:
The story is perfectly possible. We only ask for the proof.
Show us the proof;... then we will believe. Without such a
proof we will not believe.[9]
For proof of its existence Mr Freeman relies on a solitary passage in
Orderic.[10] But Orderic, it will at once be seen, does not say that
any such league was effected; he does not even say that the league
which was contemplated was intended to be an exclusively Civic League.
What he does say is that the men of Exeter sought for allies in the
neighbouring coasts (_plagæ_)[11] and in other cities. The Dorset
townlets, such as Bridport, with its 120 houses, would scarcely
represent these 'cities'. Mr Freeman assumed, however, that 'the Civic
League' was formed, assumed that the Dorset towns had 'doubtless'
joined it, and finally assumed that they were 'no doubt' besieged by
William in consequence.[12] These assumptions he boldly connected
with the entries on the towns in Domesday, entries which we shall
analyse below, and which are not only incorrectly rendered, but are
directly opposed to the above assumptions.
What, then, is the inference to be drawn? Simply this. The 'Civic
League' must share the fate of the 'palisade on Senlac'. The sieges
which took place 'probably' never took place at all; the League never
resisted; the League never fell; in short, there is not a scrap of
evidence that there was ever such a League at all. The existence of
such a League would be, unquestionably, a fact of great importance.
But its very importance imperatively requires that its existence
should be established by indisputable proof. Of such proof there is
none. One can imagine how severely Mr Freeman would have handled
such guesses from others. For he wrote of a deceased Somersetshire
historian who boldly connects the story of Gisa with the banishment of
Godwine:
One is inclined to ask with Henry II, 'Quære a rustico illo
utrum hoc somniaverit?' But these things have their use. Every
instance in the growth of a legend affords practice in the art
of distinguishing legend from history.
It should, however, in justice be at once added that this story did
not originate wholly with Mr Freeman himself. He refers us on the
subject of the League to his predecessor, Sir Francis Palgrave. The
brilliant imagination of that graceful writer was indeed led captive
by the fascinating vision of 'the first Federal Commonwealth', yet he
did not allow himself, when dealing with the facts, to deviate from
the exact truth. His statement that Exeter '_attempted to form_ a
defensive confederation' reproduces with scrupulous accuracy Orderic's
words. And even when he passed from fact to conjecture, there was
nothing in his conjecture at variance from fact. From him we have no
suggestion that the Dorset towns resisted William or 'stood sieges'.
It was left for Mr Freeman to carry into action Palgrave's line of
thought, and, by forcing the evidence of the Domesday Survey into
harmony with the story he had evolved, to show us, in his own words,
'the growth of a legend'. For, as he observed with perfect truth:
What we call the growth of a story is really the result of
the action of a number of human wills. The convenient metaphor
must not delude us into thinking that a story really grows
of itself as a tree grows. In a crowd of cases ... the story
comes of a state of mind which does not willingly sin against
historical truth, but which has not yet learned that there is
such a thing as historical truth.
Had Mr Freeman done so himself? Did he ever really learn to
distinguish conjecture from fact? One asks this because within the
covers of a single work, his _English Towns and Districts_, that Civic
League which in the _Norman Conquest_ is said to have existed 'no
doubt', is in one place said to have existed 'perhaps', and in another
is set forth as an undoubted historic fact:
Exeter stood forth for one moment ... the chief of a
confederation of the lesser towns of the West.... A
confederation of the western towns, with the great city of the
district at their head, suddenly started into life to check
the progress of the Conqueror.
Finally, in his 'Exeter' (1887), the same story again appears, without
a word of caution, as absolute historic fact. Exeter, we read, was
the head of a gathering of smaller commonwealths around her;
... the towns of Dorset were in league with Exeter.... We
have no record of the march, but it is plain that the towns of
Dorset were fearfully harried.
Through all Mr Freeman's work we trace this same tendency to confuse
his own conjectures with proved historic fact.
For the details of this fearful harrying we are referred to the
Domesday Survey. It was 'no doubt', we learn, when William marched on
Exeter (1068), that
Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham, and Shaftesbury underwent that
fearful harrying, the result of which is recorded in Domesday.
Bridport was utterly ruined; not a house seems to have been
able to pay taxes at the time of the Survey. At Dorchester,
the old Roman settlement, the chief town of the shire, only a
small remnant of the houses escaped destruction. These facts
are signs, etc., etc.
'These facts', we find, will not bear investigation. To refute them in
the case of Bridport, 'there is nothing to be done but to turn to the
proper place in the great Survey'. Following this, his own, precept,
we learn that there is nothing in Domesday of our author's 'utter
ruin'; and that so far from 'not a house' being 'able to pay taxes',
Domesday tells us that four-fifths of the houses then existing could
and did pay them. Here, again, the errors arose from not reading
Domesday 'with common care'. The entry runs: 'Modo sunt ibi c. domus,
et xx. sunt ita destitutæ', etc. The meaning, of course, is that
twenty houses were impoverished. Mr Freeman must have hurriedly
misconstrued his Latin, and read it as a hundred and twenty. No
error that he detected in Mr Froude could be worse than representing
Bridport, on the authority of Domesday, as the greatest sufferer among
the Dorset towns, when Domesday itself proves that it suffered least
of all. And so, too, with Dorchester. On turning to Domesday, we learn
with surprise that the 'small remnant' of houses remaining there was
eighty-eight as against one hundred and seventy-two in the days
of King Edward. From an appendix of our author's to which we are
referred, we glean the fact that
at Dorchester, out of a hundred and seventy-two houses no
less than a hundred and twenty-eight were 'penitus destructæ a
tempore Hugonis vicecomitis usque nunc'.
Here, again, Mr Freeman's error can be traced beyond the possibility
of question, to a misreading of Domesday: the entry runs, 'modo sunt
ibi quater xx. et viii. [88] domus, et c. [sunt] penitus destructæ'.
Mr Freeman must have hurriedly ignored the 'quater', and then added
the 'twenty-eight' thus evolved to the hundred houses that were
destroyed. All this Mr Freeman did, and we have in 'that great record,
from which there is no appeal', the proof of the fact. Clearly, in the
notable words of M. Bémont (_Revue Historique_), 'il est prudent de
revoir après lui les textes qu'il invoque'.[13]
The strange thing is that Sir Henry Ellis's work, though 'far from
being up to the present standard of historical scholarship', could
have saved him, here also, from error, as it gives the correct figures
from Domesday.
But passing from 'facts' to theories, we find Mr Freeman holding
that 'no doubt', 'doubtless', 'probably', the destruction recorded in
Domesday was wrought by the Conqueror himself in 1068. Why should this
guesswork be substituted for history, when we have 'always the means',
as our author himself wrote, 'of at once turning to the law and
testimony to see whether these things are so'? A glance at Domesday
effectually disposes of Mr Freeman's theory; for the Survey is here
peculiarly explicit: with anxious care, with painful iteration, it
assures us that, in the case of Wareham, the devastation was wrought
'a tempore Hugonis vicecomitis', and that, in the case of Shaftesbury
and in the case of Dorchester, it was wrought 'a tempore Hugonis
vicecomitis usque nunc'. These categorical statements are conclusive:
they place the whole of the devastation subsequent to the accession of
the Norman sheriff, Hugh FitzGrip. Mr Eyton, in his work on the Dorset
Domesday, held that they fix it as having occurred between 1070 and
1084; the words, however, 'usque nunc' carry it on down to 1086, and,
but that I must now come to Exeter, I could show the real bearing of
these allusions to Sheriff Hugh.
The breakdown, when tested, of the alleged 'Civic League' strangely
vindicates the sound insight of that sagacious historian who
explicitly asserted that the English boroughs
never, as was the case in Scotland and in Germany, adopted
a confederate bond of union, or organized themselves in
leagues.[14]
Yet, in his _English Towns and Districts_, Mr Freeman was led by his
own tale of the resistance of the western lands and their capital to
argue from it as from a proved historic fact:
When Exeter stood forth for one moment ... _the chief of a
confederation of the lesser towns of the West_ ... we see that
the path was opening by which Exeter might have come to be
another Lübeck, the head of a Damnonian Hanse, another Bern,
the mistress of the subject-lands of the western peninsula.
Such a dream sounds wild in our ears.[15]
It does indeed. But it does so for the reason that it is founded on
a fact which has no historic existence. Yet, for Mr Freeman, with his
fertile imagination afire with the glories of ancient Greece and of
countless mediaeval Commonwealths, this same 'wild dream' possessed an
irresistible fascination. 'It is none the less true', he hastened to
add, that
when a confederation of the western towns, with the great city
of the district at their head, suddenly started into life to
check the progress of the Conqueror, it shows that a spirit
had been kindled, etc., etc.... It is worth while to stop and
think how near England once was to running the same course as
other lands, etc., etc.[16]
Returning now to sober fact, let us ask how the city of Exeter came
into William's hands. This is the pivotal point on which the whole
story revolves. On this point Mr Freeman spoke with no uncertain
sound: the city was 'taken by means of a mine'.[17] It was, he wrote,
'by undermining the walls that William at last gained possession
of the city', the citizens being thus forced 'to submit
unreservedly'.[18] He added, contrasting the success of William with
the failure, in 1003, of Swend:
William might have been beaten back from Exeter as Swend had
been, if the military art of Normandy in William's days had
not been many steps in advance of the military art of Denmark
in the days of Swend.
This allusion to 'Swend' involves a perfect tangle of confusion.
Turning back a couple of pages, we are reminded that on Penhow,
'sixty-seven years before (1001), Swend, of Denmark, driven back from
the city, had found his revenge' (p. 154). Guided by a footnote, we
turn for information to the earlier volume to which the author refers
us, only to learn that it was not Swegen, but the adventurer Pallig
who was driven back from Exeter in 1001 (i. 307), while 'of
Swegen himself we hear nothing in English history for nine years
(994-1003)'.[19] Moreover, when Swegen did come--in 1003--invading
England to avenge the massacre of Saint Brice, he was not 'driven back
from the city', but, on the contrary, 'stormed and plundered it' (p.
315), for 'the citizens who had beaten back Pallig had no chance of
beating back Swegen' (_Exeter_, p. 27). Moreover, the suggestion
that the Danes would not have been able to attack and breach the city
wall is in direct conflict with the evidence quoted by Mr Freeman
himself. Not only did Pallig, in 1001, direct his attack against the
wall,[20] but 'Swegen', we read, in 1003, 'Civitatem Exanceastram
infregit'.[21] Now, speaking of 1063, Mr Freeman wrote that 'the
expression of Florence "infregit" seems to fall in with' his view
that William breached the wall. That is to say that, according to
Mr Freeman, 'Swend' was 'beaten back' (which he was not), because he
could not breach the walls, which is precisely what, on his showing,
Swegen succeeded in doing. Could confusion further go?
For his statement that 'William's mine advanced so far that part of
the wall crumbled to the ground, making a practicable breach' (p.
156), Mr Freeman relied on an ingenious combination of Orderic's
statement that the Conqueror 'obnixe satagit cives desuper impugnare
et subtus murum suffodere' with William of Malmesbury's assertion that
he triumphed 'divino scilicet adjutus auxilio, quod pars muralis
ultro decidens ingressum illi patefecerit'. He argued that, on
the supposition that 'Exonia' is the right reading in William of
Malmesbury, his 'story, allowing for a little legendary improvement,
fits so well into Orderic's as to support the theory of a breach'. The
argument is ingenuous and plausible, nor can it be lightly dismissed.
But whether the words of Orderic imply, of necessity, a mine or
not,[22] the real point is that he does not mention a breach. He
speaks of William's efforts, but he does not say they were successful.
It is difficult to suppose that William of Poitiers, of whom Orderic
is here the mouthpiece, would not have mentioned his hero's success,
had success rewarded his efforts. We are reduced then, as the sole and
unconfirmed authority for Mr Freeman's absolute statement--or rather
as the legend from which he 'infers' the facts he states--to the
words of William of Malmesbury. Now William was classed, by Mr Freeman
himself, among those writers whose 'accounts are often mixed up with
romantic details', so that 'it is dangerous to trust them' (i. 258);
and he pointed out of the murder of Edward that:
In the hands of William of Malmesbury the story becomes a
romance.... The _obiter dictum_ of William of Malmesbury that
Ælfhere had a hand in Edward's death is contrary to the whole
tenor of the history ... (i. 265).
If there is thus, on Mr Freeman's showing, need for accepting with
some caution a statement made by William alone, there is further, in
this special case, the consideration that even if his story does refer
to Exeter, the phrase, '_leviter_ subegit' is justly queried by Mr
Freeman;[23] and that William here deals in hyperbole and miracle.
Indeed, when we find Mr Freeman writing: 'I infer this from William
of Malmesbury', we are reminded of his words on his predecessor's
treatment of the legend of Siward: 'Such stuff would not be worth
mentioning, had not Sir Francis Palgrave inferred from it the
existence of an historical Tostig, Earl of Huntingdon' (iv. 768-9).
I will not express an opinion of my own, but will quote from Mr
Freeman's able essay on 'The Mythical and Romantic Elements in Early
English History'.[24] In it he expressly disclaimed
sympathy with the old pragmatizing or euhemeristic school
of mythological interpretation.... The pragmatizers take
a mythical story; they strip it by an arbitrary process
of whatever seems impossible; they explain or allegorize
miraculous details; and having thus obtained something
which possibly may have happened, they give it out as
something which actually did happen.... It will never
do to take the tale of Troy, to leave out all
intervention of the gods, and to give out the remnant as
a piece of real Grecian history (p. 3).
This criticism would seem to apply to the 'legendary' tale that the
walls of Exeter fell down, like those of Jericho, by supernatural
intervention. At least, we may say of the breaching of the walls, when
given out 'as something which actually did happen', what was said of
the possible siege of Oxford, this same year, by Mr Freeman:
The direct evidence for a siege of Oxford is so weak that the
tale cannot be relied on with any certainty (iv. 188).
Having now examined the direct evidence for the statement that the
citizens were forced to surrender unconditionally to William by
the successful breaching of their walls, I propose to show that the
acceptance of this statement does violence not only to the facts of
the case, but to all that is known of William's character, to the
English Chronicle, and to Domesday; and I shall prove that it rests
beyond dispute 'on the foundation of a single error'.
Assuming for the moment the accuracy of Mr Freeman's version, namely,
that the city had been placed, by a breach, absolutely at William's
mercy, what treatment of its citizens would his character and his
whole career lead us to expect? 'At all stages of his life,' as
Mr Freeman observed, paraphrasing the famous words of the English
Chronicle (1087), 'if he was _debonnair_ to those who would do his
will, he was beyond measure stern to all who withstood it' (ii. 167).
Again, speaking of his march on Exeter, the Professor insisted on the
fact that 'the policy of William was ever severity to those who
withstood him, and gentleness to those who submitted to his yoke'.[25]
How he applied this principle in practice was shown at Romney and at
Dover in 1066. Romney had successfully resisted the landing of a party
of Normans,[26] and William was resolved to avenge the deed.
It was his policy now, as ever, to be harsh whenever he met
with resistance, and gentle to all who submitted easily....
Harrying then as he went, William reached Romney. The words
which set forth his doings there are short, pithy, and
terrible. He took what vengeance he would for the slaughter of
his men (iii. 533-4).
Dover, on the contrary, made no resistance, but surrendered before he
'had thrown up a bank, or shot an arrow'. It was, therefore, 'plainly
his policy to show himself mild and _debonnair_ as it had been his
policy at Romney to show himself beyond measure stark'.[27]
Such being William's settled principle, what might the citizens of
Exeter expect? Even before the siege began the fear that they had
sinned too deeply for forgiveness made them disown the capitulation
their leaders had arranged.[28] The reference is doubtless to conduct
similar to that which had brought upon Romney William's merciless
vengeance.[29] But how stood the case at its close?
(1) They were rebels. And for these 'rebels, as they were deemed in
Norman eyes' (iv. 135), confiscation was the penalty (iv. 127-8).
(2) 'The movement at Exeter' was not merely a rebellion, but one which
was 'specially hateful in William's eyes' (iv. 140).
(3) They had been guilty of 'cruel and insulting treatment' to
William's earlier emissaries (iv. 138).
(4) They had offered William himself an 'insult as unseemly as it was
senseless' (iv. 155).
(5) They had flung to the winds their own capitulation with such
audacity that William 'ira repletus est' (iv. 152).
(6) They had offered a prolonged and desperate resistance, costing the
lives of many of his men (iv. 156).
Verily, in William's eyes, the cup of Exeter's iniquities must have
been exceedingly full.
Even in cases of ordinary resistance his practice, we learn, was so
uniform that Mr Freeman could take it for granted, 'after the fall of
Exeter', that
the heavy destruction which fell on the town of Barnstaple,
in the north-western part of Devonshire, and the still heavier
destruction which fell on the town of Lidford, might seem to
show that these two boroughs were special scenes of resistance
(iv. 163).[30]
Therefore, in the aggravated case of Exeter, we could but expect him
to deal with its citizens as he had dealt with those of Alençon,[31]
and as he was to deal, hereafter, with the sturdy defenders of
Ely.[32] A fearful vengeance was their certain doom. There was,
moreover, as I stated at the outset, a need for sternness at this
juncture that might justify William, apart from vengeance, in
inflicting such signal punishment as should deter all other 'rebels'.
Yet what do we find? The citizens, we read, were 'favourably
received', and 'assured of the safe possession of their lives and
goods'. Nay, William even 'secured the gates with a strong guard of
men whom he could trust in order to preserve the goods of the citizens
from any breaches of discipline'.[33] The dreaded Conqueror, 'post tot
iras terribilesque minas', had suddenly become mild as a lamb, and Mr
Freeman accepts it all quite as a matter of course.
Such conduct would, surely, have been a positive premium on revolt.
A castle, of course, was raised; but this was inevitable, whether
a town submitted peaceably or not. For instance, 'it is plain', Mr
Freeman wrote, 'that Lincolnshire submitted more peaceably, and was
dealt with more tenderly, than most parts of the kingdom' (iv.
216); but 'a castle was, of course, raised at Lincoln, as well as
elsewhere', and 'involved the destruction of a large number of houses'
(217-8), very many more than at Exeter.
One 'penalty', however, remains as the price that Exeter was called
upon to pay for all her guilt. This, we read, was 'the raising of its
tribute to lessen the wealth which had enabled it to resist'.[34] For
its wealth is admitted. Now, before criticizing Mr Freeman's view,
let us clearly understand what that view was. Taking, as is right,
his latest work--though his view had not altered--we read of Exeter in
1050:
The city which had been the morning-gift of Norman Emma
was now, along with Winchester, part of the morning-gift
of English Edith, daughter of Godwine, sister of Harold. At
Exeter she was on her own ground; the royal revenues within
the city were hers.[35]
In 1086, we learn:
The whole payment was eighteen pounds yearly. Of this sum six
pounds--that is the earl's third penny--went to the Sheriff
Baldwin.... The other twelve pounds had formed part of the
morning-gift of the lady, and though Edith had been dead
eleven years, they are entered separately as hers.[36]
So far, all is consistent and clear enough. But we find it immediately
added that:
This regular yearly payment of eighteen pounds had taken the
place of various uncertain payments and services.... Thus the
citizens of Exeter, who had offered to pay to William what
they had paid to former kings, found their burthens far
heavier than they had been in the old time. And the lady,
while she lived, reaped her full share of the increased
contributions of her own city.[37]
Or, as expressed in his great work:
The money payment was now raised from an occasional half-marc
of silver to eighteen pounds yearly. The rights of the old
lady were not forgotten, and Eadgyth received two-thirds of
the increased burthen laid upon her morning-gift.[38]
If the 'twelve pounds had formed part of the morning-gift of the
lady', and were accordingly received by her, as we learn,[39] in
the days of King Edward, how could they possibly form part of a new
'burthen' laid upon Exeter, as a punishment for its resistance, by
William? And if the only payment due, under Edward, was an occasional
half-marc of silver 'for the use of the soldiers'[40] what were 'the
royal revenues' from Exeter that Edith was drawing in 1050? A moment's
thought is enough to show that Mr Freeman's statements contradict
themselves, as, indeed, he must have seen, had he stopped to think.
But this he sometimes failed to do.
The whole source of Mr Freeman's confusion was his inexplicable
misunderstanding of the Domesday entry on the city.[41] We must first
note that both his predecessors--Palgrave, who was lacking in
'critical faculty', and Ellis, who was 'far from being up to the
present standard of historical scholarship'--had read this entry
rightly, and given, independently, its gist. It will best enable my
readers to understand the point at issue if I print side by side the
paraphrases of Exeter's offer given by Palgrave and by our author.
PALGRAVE FREEMAN
Tribute or gafol they would We are ready to pay to him the
proffer to their king such as tribute which we have been used
was due to his predecessors.... to pay to former kings.... The
They (1) would weigh out the city paid in money only when
eighteen pounds of silver; (2) London, York, and Winchester
the geld would be paid, if paid, and the sum to be paid was
London, York, and Winchester a single half-marc of silver.
submitted to the tax; and (3) When the king summoned his _fyrd_
if war arose, the king should to his standard by sea or by land,
have the quota of service Exeter supplied the same number of
imposed upon five hydes of men as were supplied by five hides
land.... But the citizens of land.... But the men of Exeter
refused to become the men ... of would not, each citizen personally,
their sovereign; they would become his men; they would not
not ... allow the Basileus to receive so dangerous a visitor
enter within their walls. within their walls.[42]
I have numbered the clauses in Palgrave's paraphrase which render the
three successive clauses in the Domesday Book entry. The first refers
to the _firma_ of the town, payable to its lord (the king);[43] the
second to the 'geld' (tax), payable to the king _qua_ king;[44] the
third to its military service.[45] The distinction between the three
clauses is admirably seen under Totnes (i. 108, _b_), and the sense
of Domesday is absolutely certain to any one familiar with its
formulas.[46]
The 'commutation of geldability' (as Mr Eyton termed it) was by no
means peculiar to Exeter. Totnes paid, 'when Exeter paid', the same
sum of half a marc 'pro geldo'. Bridport paid the same 'ad opus
Huscarlium regis' (75), Dorchester and Wareham a marc each, and
Shaftesbury two marcs (Eyton's _Dorset Domesday_, 70-72). In these
Dorset instances, one marc represented an assessment of ten hides.
What Mr Freeman did was to confuse the first clause with the second,
and to suppose that both referred to the 'money payment' of the town,
the first under William, the second under Edward. He thus evolved
the statement that under William 'the money payment was raised from
an occasional half-marc of silver to eighteen pounds yearly'. This
is roughly equivalent to saying of a house rented at fifty pounds,
and paying a tax of one pound, that its 'money payment' was raised
from one pound to fifty.
But this confusion, with all its results, is carried further still.
Edith's share of the eighteen pounds is entered in Domesday as 'xii.
lib[ras] ad numerum'. This Mr Freeman rightly gave as the amount in
1086;[47] but turning back a few pages, we actually read that
In Domesday twelve houses in Exeter appear as 'liberæ ad
numerum in ministeriis Edid reginæ'.[48]
This is, of course, the same entry, only that here our author changed
pounds into houses, and _libras_ into _liberæ_. What idea was conveyed
to his mind by a house 'libera ad numerum' I do not profess to
explain. But, oddly enough, as he here turned pounds into houses, so
in a passage of his _William Rufus_ he turned houses into pence.[49]
The essence of the whole matter is that the 'burdens' to which Exeter
was subject were not raised at all, but remained precisely the same
as had been paid to former kings. And this fact is the more notable,
because, as Mr Freeman had to admit, 'even the tribute imposed by
William' [on his own hypothesis] 'was not large for so great a city',
and, one may add, a rich one.[50] Indeed, it was so small as to fairly
call for increase.[51] Even Lincoln, which, according to Mr Freeman,
received 'favourable' treatment from William, had its 'tribute largely
raised'[52] in fact, more than trebled.[53] What we have to account
for, therefore, is the fact that a city which had defied, insulted,
and outraged William, received not only 'a free pardon',[54] but
peculiar favour at his hands.
The paradox itself is beyond dispute, whatever may be said of my
solution.
For a solution there is. Only it is not to miracles or legends, nor
to the flatterings of courtly chaplains that we must look to learn the
truth, but, in the words of a memorable essay, to 'the few unerring
notices in Domesday and the chronicles'.[55] As yet we have not, it
must be remembered, heard the story from the English side. Let us
turn, therefore, to the English version, to what Mr Freeman described
as 'the short but weighty account in the Worcester Chronicle, which
gives hints which we should be well pleased to see drawn out at
greater length'.[56] These hints I shall now examine, though I doubt
if Mr Freeman's friends will be well pleased with the result.
We have in the Chronicle a straightforward story, not only
intelligible in itself, but also thoroughly in harmony with the known
facts of the case. The king finds himself compelled to lay formal
siege to Exeter ('besæt þa burh'); he is detained before its walls day
after day ('xviii. dægas') in the depth of an English winter, 'and
þær wearð micel his heres forfaren'. The need for sternness was there
indeed; but swiftness was to him, for the moment, a matter of life
and death. Held at bay by those stubborn walls, learning the might
of those 'two generals'--January and February--in whom the Emperor
Nicholas put his trust, William was in sore straits. Take Mr Freeman's
own words:
The disaffected were intriguing for foreign help;... there
was a chance of his having to struggle for his crown against
Swend of Denmark;... men were everywhere seeking to shake off
the yoke, or to escape it in their own persons. Even where no
outbreak took place local conspiracies were rife.[57]
Swend was in his rear, half England on his flank; before him reared
their head the walls of dauntless Exeter.[58] In that bleak wilderness
of frost and snow his men were falling around him, and, in very
bitterness of spirit, the Conqueror bowed himself for need. So, at
least, I boldly suggest. He fell back on his 'arts of policy', and set
himself to win by alluring terms the men whom he could not conquer.
In the words of the Chronicle, he promised them well ('ac he heom well
behet').
This solution, of course, differs _toto cælo_ from Mr Freeman's
narrative. We have seen that he blindly accepted the statements of
that 'abandoned flatterer', William of Poitiers (whom Orderic had here
'doubtless followed'[59])--against whom he elsewhere warned us--and
combined them with a miracle from William of Malmesbury, which he
euhemerized in the style that he himself had ridiculed in Thierry.[60]
And as he could not harmonize the courtly version with the 'short but
weighty account' in the Chronicle he cut the knot by dismissing the
latter, and pronouncing his own version 'the most likely'.[61]
Resuming the narrative, we learn that the thegns--the party of
non-resistance from the first--must have seized this opportunity for
impressing on their 'concives' the necessity of embracing the offer,
whereupon the latter, in the words of the Chronicle, 'gave up the town
because the thegns had betrayed them'. It is just possible that the
word 'geswicon' may point to some direct treachery, but it seems best
and most naturally explained as referring to their unpatriotic advice,
which would naturally appear to English eyes a 'betrayal' of the
national cause. There can be little doubt, from the admissions of
William of Poitiers (through the mouth of Orderic), that the terms of
agreement included not only a free pardon for all past offences, and
for the city's aggravated resistance, but also security for person and
property from plunder by the Norman soldiery. And the witness of 'the
great record' implies that 'the Exeter patricians', as Mr Freeman
styled them[62]--'the civic aristocracy'[63]--gained their original
selfish aim, and secured an undertaking that they should not pay a
penny more than their 'tributum ex consuetudine pristina'.
What security, it may be asked, could they obtain for the terms they
seem to have exacted? Bold as it may seem, I would here venture to
read between the lines, and to make the suggestion--it is nothing
more--that when there issued from the gates 'the clergy of the city,
bearing their sacred books and other holy things' (as Mr Freeman
rendered the words of Orderic), the real object of their coming forth
was to make the king swear upon their relics[64] to the observance
of the terms they had obtained. It was indeed the irony of fate if
William, who was ever insisting on the breach of Harold's oath, was
driven, by the force of circumstances, to take such an oath himself.
But, it may be urged, should we be justified in treating thus
drastically the witness of Orderic, or rather, of William of Poitiers?
At Alençon, I reply, in Mr Freeman's words:
William of Poitiers is silent altogether, both as to the
vengeance and as to the insult. Neither subject was perhaps
altogether agreeable to a professed panegyrist (_Norm. Conq._,
ii. 285).
Stronger, however, is the case of Le Mans, and more directly to the
point. 'William,' we read, 'followed the same policy against Exeter
(1068) which he had followed against Le Mans' (1063);[65] and so, in
1073, we find him 'calling on the men of Le Mans, as he had called on
the men of Exeter', to submit peacefully, and escape his wrath.[66]
Unlike 'the Exeter patricians', indeed, 'the magistrates of Le Mans'
did receive the king peacefully within their walls; they did not incur
the guilt of offering armed resistance. But the essential point at Le
Mans is that
the Norman version simply tells how they brought the keys of
the city, how they threw themselves on William's mercy, and
were graciously received by him. The local writer speaks
in another tone. The interview between the king and the
magistrates of Le Mans is described by a word often used to
express conferences--in a word, _parliaments_--whether between
prince and prince, or between princes and the estates of their
dominions. They submitted themselves to William's authority
as their sovereign, but they received his oath to observe the
ancient customs and _justices_ of the city. Le Mans was no
longer to be a sovereign commonwealth, but it was to remain a
privileged municipality.[67]
The words 'acceptis ab eo sacramentis, tam de impunitate perfidiæ quam
de conservandis antiquis ejusdem civitatis consuetudinibus'[68] would
apply exactly to the case of Exeter, and William may well have done
there what he actually did, we here read, at Le Mans. There would have
been at Exeter even greater need for an oath, in that its 'perfidia'
had been so much the worse.
But now comes the curious parallel. Though quoting and scrutinizing so
closely the meagre accounts of the Exeter campaign, Mr Freeman seems
to have oddly overlooked the significant words of Florence, although,
of course, familiar with his narrative. Florence, we find, employs a
phrase corresponding with that in the _Vetera Analecta_.
FLORENCE 'VET AN'
Cives autem _dextris acceptis_ _Acceptis ab eo sacramentis_
regi se dedebant. ... sese et sua omnia dederunt.
Mr Freeman argues from the case of Le Mans that _dedere_ in these
times did not imply the fulness of a Roman _deditio_.[69] But we
are not merely dependent upon this. The words, 'dextris acceptis', I
contend, imply a promise and a pledge for its performance, and cannot
therefore be reconciled with an unconditional surrender.
Now if it were not for the fortunate preservation of the _Vetera
Analecta_ in the case of Le Mans, Mr Freeman would there also, as at
Exeter, have been hoodwinked by 'the Norman version'.[70] I am anxious
not to employ a phrase which might be deemed offensive or unjust, so
I restrict myself to that which he himself applied to his predecessor,
Palgrave, when, speaking of the story of Eadric and his brother,
he wrote that Sir Francis Palgrave 'swallowed the whole tale'.[71]
Whether my solution be accepted or not, it is, I repeat, conjectural.
I have, at least, shown that there is a mystery to be solved, that Mr
Freeman's version fails to solve it, and that, so far from Domesday
recording the punishment inflicted upon Exeter, it actually heightens
the mystery of the case by proving that Exeter obtained exceptionally
favourable treatment.
It is not merely a question of how Exeter fell. The issue illustrates
the policy and affects the character of William. The lame manner
in which Mr Freeman accounts for his sudden conversion from fury to
lamb-like gentleness is no less unsatisfactory than his treatment of
the 'weighty account' in the Chronicle when he found that this, his
valued authority, rendered the problem difficult. Even at Le Mans more
was needed than merely to print both stories. The fact that we find in
'the Norman version' the truth conveniently glossed over ought to be
insisted on and duly applied. Time after time in Mr Freeman's work we
find him paraphrasing patches of chronicles, under the impression that
he was writing history. The statements of witnesses are laid before
us, neatly pieced together, but they are not subjected to more than
a perfunctory cross-examination. Even if the accurate reproduction of
testimony were all that we sought from the historian, we should not,
so far as Domesday is concerned, obtain it in this instance. But
the case of Exeter is one where something more is needed, where even
accuracy is not sufficient without the possession of that higher gift,
the power of seizing upon the truth when the evidence is misleading
and contradictory. The paraphrasing of evidence is the work of a
reporter; from the historian we have a right to expect the skilled
summing-up of the judge.
[Footnote 1: Letter from John Shillingford, Mayor of Exeter,
1447.]
[Footnote 2: _Exeter_ (1887), p. 34.]
[Footnote 3: It was also the subject of a special paper in his
'Historic Towns and Districts' (1883) reprinted from _Arch.
Journ._, xxx. 297, pp. 49 _et seq._, and _Sat. Rev._, xxix.
764-5.]
[Footnote 4: _Sat. Rev._, xxix. 765.]
[Footnote 5: _Norman Conquest_, iv. 123. The metaphor of a
'sea' waiting in an 'island' is sufficiently original to be
deserving of notice.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, iv. 140.]
[Footnote 7: See 'The alleged destruction of Leicester',
_infra_, p. 347.]
[Footnote 8: iv. 151. 'It is certain', Mr Freeman had written,
'that what William had to strive against in the West was a
league of towns' (_Sat. Rev._, xxix. 765).]
[Footnote 9: _Cont. Rev._, June 1877, p. 22. See also
Preface.]
[Footnote 10: 'Hi nimirum socios e plagis finitimis inquiete
arcessebant ... alias quoque civitates ad conspirandum in
eadem legationibus instigabant.' _Ord. Vit._, 510 A (quoted in
_Norman Conquest_, iv. 140).]
[Footnote 11: Mr Freeman rendered it 'neighbouring shires',
but I am not at all sure that, taken in conjunction with
the words just before about the accessibility of Exeter from
Ireland and Brittany, and those just after, about 'mercatores
advenas', _plagæ_ does not refer to the shores from which
these merchants came.]
[Footnote 12: The boroughs of Dorset were doubtless among
the towns which had joined in the Civic League. Probably
they stood sieges and were taken by storm (_Norm. Conq._, iv.
151).]
[Footnote 13: Mr Archer deemed it sufficient reply to all
these 'trifling blunders' to admit that 'Mr Freeman did
misread 128 for 100' (_Cont. Rev._, March 1893, p. 337). I
invite comparison of the errors I have corrected, and of all
the edifice built upon them, with this disingenuous attempt to
represent them as unimportant 'slips' (_ibid._, p. 354).]
[Footnote 14: Stubbs' _Const. Hist._, i. 625.]
[Footnote 15: Stubbs' _Const. Hist._, i. 71.]
[Footnote 16: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 17: _Norm. Conq._, iv. xiii, and marginal note on p.
156.]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, p. 156.]
[Footnote 19: _Ibid._, i. 289.]
[Footnote 20: 'Dum murum illius destruere moliretur' (quoted
from Florence, on i., p. 309).]
[Footnote 21: Quoted from Florence, on i., p. 315.]
[Footnote 22: It seems possible, at least, that they might
describe a direct attack on the foot of the walls.]
[Footnote 23: I would here compare William's description of
the Conqueror's 'peaceful progress' to London after his great
victory, which better evidence, Mr Freeman observed, 'quite
upsets' (iii. 533).]
[Footnote 24: _Essays_, 1st series.]
[Footnote 25: _Exeter_, p. 36.]
[Footnote 26: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 412.]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, iii. 536-7.]
[Footnote 28: 'Supplicia pro reatu nimis metuebant.']
[Footnote 29: 'Militibus crudeliter et contumeliose illuserant
quos ipse de Normannia miserat et tempestas ad portum illorum
appulerat.']
[Footnote 30: So too we read of Torkesey, a little later on,
that it suffered so 'severely as to suggest the idea that
William met with some serious resistance at this point'
(_Ibid._, iv. 217); while speaking of the 'Fall of Chester',
Mr Freeman wrote: 'We know that the resistance which William
met with in this his last conquest was enough to lead him to
apply the same stern remedy which he had applied north of the
Humber. A fearful harrying fell on city and shire, and on the
lands round about' (_Ibid._, iv. 314-5).]
[Footnote 31: 'The Conqueror, faithful to his fearful
oath, now gave the first of that long list of instances of
indifference to human suffering', etc. (_Ibid._, ii. 285).]
[Footnote 32: 'At Ely, as at Alençon, the Conqueror felt no
scruple against inflicting punishments which to our notions
might seem more frightful than death itself' (_Ibid._, iv.
476).]
[Footnote 33: _Ibid._, iv. 160.]
[Footnote 34: _English Towns and Districts_.]
[Footnote 35: _Exeter_ (1887), p. 32.]
[Footnote 36: _Ibid._, pp. 43-4.]
[Footnote 37: _Ibid._, p. 44.]
[Footnote 38: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 162.]
[Footnote 39: _Exeter_, p. 32.]
[Footnote 40: _Exeter_, p. 44; _Norm. Conq._, iv. 147.]
[Footnote 41: This grave confusion, with all that it involves,
was one of the 'trifling slips', as Mr Archer terms them
(_Cont. Rev._, p. 354), exposed in my original article
(_Q.R._, July 1892). Such a description is either dishonest,
or must imply that Mr Archer, who boasts that he has 'a
sterner criterion' than myself (_English Historical Review_,
ix. 606), deems such errors of no consequence.]
[Footnote 42: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 146-7.]
[Footnote 43: 'Hec reddit xviii. lib. per annum' (100).]
[Footnote 44: 'Hæc civitas T.R.E. non geldabat nisi quando
Londonia et Eboracum et Wintonia geldabant, et hoc erat
dimidia marka Argenti ad opus militum' (100).]
[Footnote 45: 'Quando expeditio ibat per terram aut per mare,
serviebat hæc civitas quantum v. hidæ terræ' (100).]
[Footnote 46: The practice in the Survey of Devon was to state
the render in 1086, and, if it had been different formerly,
to add a note to that effect. Thus we read on 100_b_: 'Reddit
xlviii. lib. ad pensam. Ante Balduinum reddebat xxiii. lib.'
So, too, of Totnes: 'Inter omnes redd' viii. lib. ad numerum.
Olim reddebant iii. lib. ad pensam et arsuram' (108_b_).]
[Footnote 47: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 162.]
[Footnote 48: _Ibid._, 139.]
[Footnote 49: Reading 'Eudo Dapifer [tenet] v. denarios',
where Domesday (ii. 106) has, of course, 'v. d[omus]'.]
[Footnote 50: Mr Freeman held that Domesday hinted it might be
classed with London, York, and Winchester (_Norm. Conq._,
iv. 147; _Exeter_, 45), and quotes William of Malmesbury's
description of its wealth and importance. Even in earlier
days, he wrote, 'both the commercial and the military
importance of the city were of the first rank' (i. 308).]
[Footnote 51: The _firma_ of Gloucester had been raised to
£60, and that of Chester to over £70, while at Wallingford,
where the king had about as many houses as at Exeter, it was
£80.]
[Footnote 52: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 213.]
[Footnote 53: 'T.R.E. reddebat civitas Lincolia regi xx.
libras et comiti x. libras. Modo reddit c. libras ad numerum
inter regem et comitem' (D.B., i. 336_b_).]
[Footnote 54: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 160.]
[Footnote 55: Mr Freeman's 'Pedigrees and Pedigree-makers'
(_Cont. Rev._, June 1887, p. 33).]
[Footnote 56: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 151.]
[Footnote 57: _Ibid._, iv. pp. 103, 118. So too _ibid._, p.
126: 'There was the imminent fear of an invasion from Denmark,
and the threatening aspect of the still independent west and
north. William had need of all his arts of war and policy to
triumph over the combination of so many enemies at once.']
[Footnote 58: 'Cives eam tenebant furiosi, copiosæ
multitudinis, infestissimi mortalibus Gallici generis.'--_Ord.
Vit._]
[Footnote 59: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 146.]
[Footnote 60: It is curious to see how Thierry waters down the
miracle: 'Son cheval, glissant sur le pavé, s'abattit et le
froissa dans sa chute.' Of course this is likely enough to
have been the kernel of truth in the legend, but no man has a
right to tell the tale in this shape as if it were undoubted
fact.--_Norm. Conq._, iv. 291.]
[Footnote 61: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 151-2.]
[Footnote 62: _Ibid._, 146.]
[Footnote 63: _Ibid._, p. 147.]
[Footnote 64: Cf. the familiar phrase, 'Tactis sacris
evangeliis', with Orderic's words here, 'sacros libros'.]
[Footnote 65: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 151.]
[Footnote 66: _Ibid._, 559.]
[Footnote 67: _Ibid._, 560.]
[Footnote 68: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 69: _Norm. Conq._, iv. 560.]
[Footnote 70: 'Edicta regalia suis opportune intimavit, et
urbanis imperiose mandavit, ut prudenter sibi consulerent'
(_Ord Vit._, ii. 255).]
[Footnote 71: _Ibid._, i. 662.]
THE ALLEGED DESTRUCTION OF LEICESTER (1068)
This question was raised and discussed by Mr Freeman in his _History
of the Norman Conquest_ (iv. 196-7). We there read as follows:
Is it possible that in the case of Leicester, at least, no
power was left either to follow or to resist? While we have no
evidence either way on which we can rely with confidence, one
of those secondary and local records, which sometimes contain
fragments of authentic tradition, suggests, in a perfectly
casual way, that a doom fell upon Leicester, which might,
doubtless, with some exaggeration, be spoken of as utter
destruction. And this incidental hint may perhaps draw
some indirect confirmation from the highest evidence of
all [Domesday] ... and it may be that Leicester earned its
overthrow by a defence worthy of a borough which was to give
its name to the greatest of England's later worthies.
The 'record' referred to is quoted in a footnote, and is a history
of the foundation of Leicester Abbey, one of a class of narratives
notoriously inaccurate and corrupt:
Robertus Comes Mellenti, veniens in Angliam cum Willelmo Duce
Normanniæ, adeptus consulatum Leycestriæ, ex dono dicti Ducis
et Conquestoris Angliæ, _destructa prius civitate Leicestriæ_
cum castello et ecclesia infra castellum tempore prædicti
Conquestoris, reædificavit ipsam æcclesiam Sancta Mariæ infra
castellum.
Now, it strikes one in the first place as somewhat unlikely that
William, on his arrival at Leicester, should find a castle to destroy.
But, further, how could Robert have obtained the 'consulatus' of
Leicester from the Conqueror, when he is well known to have first
obtained it (under very peculiar circumstances) from Henry I? If this
known event has been so glaringly ante-dated, may not the alleged
'destruction' be so likewise? These it may be said are only
doubts. But, as it happens, we can not only discredit the suggested
'destruction' in the days of the Conqueror: we can actually fix its
date as the reign of Henry I.
We learn from Orderic that the town of Leicester ('urbs Legrecestria')
was divided into four quarters, of which Ivo de Grantmesnil possessed
two, one in his own right, and one (which was the King's share) as the
King's reeve and representative. We also learn that he was among the
'seditiosi proceres', who rebelled against Henry in 1101, and that of
these, 'aliqui contra fideles vicinos guerram arripuerunt et gremium
almæ telluris rapacitatibus et incendiis, cruentisque cædibus
maculaverunt'. Ivo is again mentioned by Orderic in 1102, not only
among the 'proditores' of the previous year, who were now called to
account, but also as a special ringleader in that internecine conflict
to which he had already referred. He tells us that Henry
Ivonem quoque, quia guerram in Anglia c[oe]perat et vicinorum
rura suorum incendia combusserat (quod in illa regione crimen
est inusitatum nec sine grave ultione fit expiatum), rigidus
censor accusatum nec purgatum ingentis pecuniæ redditione
oneravit, et plurimo angore tribulatum mæstificavit.
In short, as Dr Stubbs reminds us, Ivo 'has the evil reputation of
being the first to introduce the horrors of private warfare into
England'. Bearing in mind the divided authority from which Leicester
suffered, and the statement that Ivo, ruling half the town, plundered
and made fierce war upon his neighbours, we arrive at the conclusion
that the 'destruction', which, in the _Monasticon_ narrative, precedes
the accession of the Count of Meulan to the _comitatus_ of Leicester,
may be assigned, without a shadow of doubt, to the struggle of 1101.
On Ivo's disgrace, as is well known, the wily Count stepped at once
into his shoes, 'et auxilio regis suâque calliditate totam sibi
civitatem mancipavit, et inde consul in Anglia factus'. There is no
reason to doubt the statement that St Mary 'de Castro' was rebuilt
and refounded by Count Robert after his obtaining this position at
Leicester.
It is singular that just as the _Monasticon_ seems to have misled Mr
Freeman at Leicester, so it is responsible for Thierry's 'story of the
fighting monks of Oxford', at about the same time, a story of which Mr
Freeman wrote that 'the whole story is a dream', and 'would not have
been allowable even in an historical novel' (iv. 779-80).
ELY AND HER DESPOILERS (1072-5)
The elaborate record of this trial is only found, I believe, in the
Trinity College (Cambridge) MS., O. 2, 1 (fos. 210_b_-213_b_) from
which it has been printed by Mr Hamilton in his _Inquisitio Comitatus
Cantabrigiensis_ (pp. 192-5). This 'placitum', therefore, would seem
to have remained unknown till the publication of that work (1876).
The date of this important document can be fixed within a few years.
It mentions Earl Waltheof among those before whom the plea was
held, so that it cannot be later than 1075; and as it also mentions
'Rodulfus comes', it is evidently previous to the revolt of the earls
in that year. On the other hand, it is later than the death of William
Malet, for it mentions his son Robert as in possession, and later,
therefore, than the restoration of Waltheof at the beginning of 1070.
Moreover, it is subsequent to the death of Stigand ('post obitum
illius'). Now Stigand was not even deposed till the spring of 1070;
and we know from Domesday and other sources that he lived some time
afterwards. We may safely say, therefore, that this 'placitum' did not
take place till after the suppression of the Ely revolt in the autumn
of 1071. Practically, therefore, our document belongs to the years
1072-1075. Now, as Abbot Thurstan did not die till 1076--the date
given in the _Liber Eliensis_, and accepted by Mr Freeman--it follows
that this great act of restitution in favour of the Abbey took place
under Abbot Thurstan himself, a fact unmentioned by the chroniclers,
and unsuspected by Mr Freeman, who held that he found no favour in
William's eyes.
The great length of this document--so important for its bearing on
Domesday--precludes its discussion in detail. But its opening clause
must be given and some of its features pointed out.
Ad illud placitum quo pontifices Gosfridus et Remigius, consul
vero Waltheuus, necnon vicecom[ites] Picotus atque Ilbertus
jussu Willelmi Dei dispositione Anglor[um] regis, cum omni
vicecomitatu sicut rex preceperat, convenerunt, testimonio
hominum rei veritatem cognoscentium determinaverunt terras que
injuste fuerant ablate ab ecclesia sancte Dei genitricis
Marie de insulâ ely ... quatinus de dominio fuerant,
tempore videlicet regis Ædwardi, ad dominium sine alicujus
contradictione redirent quicunque eas possideret.
The mention of Count Eustace among those withholding lands proves
that at the date of this document he was already restored to his
possessions. Another individual whose name occurs several times in
this document is Lisois ('De Monasteriis'), the hero of the passage of
the Aire. Collating its evidence with that of Domesday, we find that
Lisois had been succeeded, at the date of the great record, by
the well-known Eudo Dapifer in a fief, ranging over at least five
counties--Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Essex--in all of which Domesday records his name as the predecessor of
Eudo. This is of the more interest because Mr Freeman wrote:
The only notice of this Lisois which I can find in Domesday
is in ii. 49_b_, where he appears in possession, but seemingly
illegal possession, of a small holding in Essex.
So again we have in our document this passage relating to Stigand:
He sunt proprie ville monasterii insule Ely quos Stigandus
archipresul tenebat, unde per annum victum fratribus reddidit
tantum quantum pertinet ad hoc. Has vero tenet rex noster W.
post obitum illius, Methelwald et Crokestune et Snegelwelle et
Dictun.
Now Stigand, according to the _Liber Eliensis_ 'quasdam illius optimas
possessiones sicut Liber Terrarum insinuat, ad maximum loci dispendium
retinuit'. Our document identifies these 'possessiones' with Methwold
and Croxton in Norfolk, Snailwell and Ditton in Cambridgeshire, and
thus disposes of Mr Freeman's very unfortunate suggestion--advanced,
of course, to justify Stigand--that the _Liber Eliensis_ here referred
to a tiny Hampshire estate, which the Abbey had held under Stigand
T.R.E.[1]
In my paper on Domesday I have pointed out the importance of this
document in its bearing on socmen and their services, while we saw
in investigating knight service that its language affords, in this
matter, a valuable gloss on that of Domesday. Close examination of its
details shows that the aggressions on the Abbey's property which it
records, were, in spite of the verdict on this occasion, persisted in,
if not increased. Those, for instance, of Hardwin may be recognized in
the duplicate entries in Domesday Book, representing the conflicting
claims.[2] On persons as on lands we have some fresh information.
Ilbert the Sheriff was, I believe, identical with that 'Ilbert de
Hertford', who is alluded to in Domesday (i. 200), and would thus be
a pre-Domesday Sheriff of Herts.[3] The entry, 'tenet Rotbertus
homo Bainardi in Reoden de soca', when compared with the holding of
'Rienduna' by Ralf 'Baignardi' in Domesday (ii. 414), suggests that
we have in Bainard the father (hitherto unknown) of this Domesday
tenant-in-chief. Bainard would thus be a Christian name, as was also
Mainard, which occurs in this same document.
[Footnote 1: D.B., i. 40_b_.]
[Footnote 2: See p. 32 _supra_.]
[Footnote 3: Domesday (i. 200_b_) styles him, 'Ilbertus de
Hertford', and connects him with 'Risedene', a Hertfordshire
Manor. On the other hand, the I.C.C. makes him 'Ilbertus de
Hereforda' (p. 56), and 'Ilbertus vicecomes' is actually found
in Herefordshire (D.B., i. 179_b_). But what could he be doing
in Cambridgeshire?]
THE LORDS OF ARDRES
In the _History of the Norman Conquest_ (2nd ed.) we read of Eustace
of Boulogne:
An incidental notice of one of his followers throws some light
on the class of men who flocked to William's banners, and on
the rewards which they received. One Geoffrey, an officer of
the Abbey of Saint Bertin at Saint Omer, who had the charge of
its possessions in the County of Guines, sent his sons, Arnold
and Geoffrey, to the war ... and in the end they received
a grant of lands both in Essex and in the border shires of
Mercia and East-Anglia, under the superiority of their patron
Count Eustace (iii. 314).
In an Appendix on 'Arnold of Ardres', which Mr Freeman devoted to this
subject (iii. 725-6), he gave the 'Historia Comitum Ardensium' (of
Lambert of Ardres) for his authority, and he verified, by Domesday,
the Manors which Lambert assigns to 'these adventurers', holding
that a Bedfordshire estate was omitted, while 'Stebintonia', which he
identified with Stibbington, Hunts, was wrongly included, as it was
'held of Count Eustace by Lunen'.
The first point to be noticed here is that 'these adventurers' were
the sons (as Lambert explains) not of any 'Geoffrey', a mere Abbey
officer, but of a local magnate, Arnold, Lord of Ardres. The next is
that Lambert was quite correct in his list of Manors.
In the fourth series of his historical essays Mr Freeman included a
paper on 'The Lords of Ardres', for which he availed himself of Dr
Heller's edition of Lambert in the _Monumenta_ (vol. xxiv). In this
edition the passage runs:
Feodum Stevintoniam et pertinencias eius, Dokeswordiam,
Tropintoniam, Leilefordiam, Toleshondiam, et Hoilandiam (cap.
113, p. 615).
Dr Heller, on this, notes:
Secundum 'Domesday Book' recepit Ernulfus de Arda Dochesworde,
Trupintone (com. Cantabrig.) et Stiventone (comit. Bedford)
a comite Eustacio ... e contra Toheshunt [_sic_] Hoiland,
Leleford recepit ab eodem comite Adelolfus de Merc (prope
Calais).
This note enabled Mr Freeman to identify 'Adelolfus' (which he had
failed to do in the _Norman Conquest_), though he must have overlooked
the identification of 'Stevintonia' (namely Stevington, Beds.), for we
find him still writing:
But of the English possessions reckoned up by our author two
only ... can be identified in Domesday as held by Arnold ...
The local writer seems to have mixed up the possessions of
Arnold with those of a less famous adventurer from the same
reign, Adelolf--our Athelwulf--of Merck (pp. 184-5).
And he again insisted that 'Arnold had other lands in Bedfordshire'.
We will now turn to an entry in the _Testa de Nevill_ from the
'milites tenentes de honore Bononie':
Comes de Gines tenet xii. milites, scilicet--in
Bedefordescire, in _Stiveton_ et Parva Wahull III milites,
in Cantabr' in _Dukesword_, et _Trumpeton_ III milites ... in
Essex, _Tholehunt_ et Galdhangr' III milites, in _Hoyland'_ et
_Lalesford_ ibidem III milites.
Here we have all the Manors mentioned by Lambert (with their
appurtenances) assigned to the Count of Guines, the heir of Arnold
of Ardres; and we can thus believe the _Testa_ entry (p. 272) of
Tolleshunt and Holland, 'quas idem comes et antecessores sui tenuerunt
de conquestu Angliæ'. But the _Testa_ does more than this; it informs
us that Holland and Lawford were held of the Count by 'Henry de Merk'.
Now, 'Adelolf' de Merk is found in Domesday holding many Manors direct
from Eustace of Boulogne, and these Manors are divided in the _Testa_
between his descendants Simon and Henry de Merk.[1] It is, therefore,
possible that he held the three Essex Manors in 1086, not directly
from Count Eustace, but, like his descendant, from their under-tenant
(Arnold). This raises, of course, an important question as to
Domesday.[2]
It is interesting to observe that the village of Marck in the Pas de
Calais has, through Adelolf and his heirs, transferred its name to the
Essex parish of Mark's Tey, though not to that of Marks Hall (so named
in Domesday).
While on the subject of the Lords of Ardres, it may be convenient
to give the reference to a letter of mine to the _Academy_ (May 28,
1892), explaining that Lambert's 'Albericus Aper', who puzzled Dr
Heller and Mr Freeman, was our own Aubrey de Vere, first Earl of
Oxford, and that Lambert's statement (accepted by Mr Freeman) as to
the parentage of Emma, wife of Count Manasses, had been disproved by
Stapleton.
[Footnote 1: An interesting charter belonging to the close of
Stephen's reign shows us Queen Matilda compensating Henry 'de
Merch' for his land at Donyland (one of these Manors)--which
she was giving to St John's, Colchester--'de redditibus
transmarinis ad suam voluntatem'. Another and earlier charter
from her father and mother (printed by Mr E. J. L. Scott in
the _Athenæum_ of December 2, 1893) has Fulco de merc and M.
de merc among the witnesses.]
[Footnote 2: The non-appearance of Arnold's brother,
'Geoffrey', in Domesday which has been deemed a difficulty,
is accounted for by Lambert's statement that he made over his
English possessions to Arnold.]
EARLY IRISH TRADE WITH CHESTER AND ROUEN[1]
The eighth report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts
speaks of the records of the city of Chester as 'beginning with Henry
the Second's writ of licence to the citizens of Chester to trade in
Durham [_sic_] as they were wont to do in the time of Henry the First'
(p. xv). The records themselves are similarly described in the actual
report on them (pp. 355-403) as 'beginning with a curious writ,
addressed by Henry the Second to his bailiffs of the city of Durham'
[_sic_]. This, which is among those items spoken of as 'especially
interesting and important', figures thus as the head of the calendar:
(1) Henry II. Licence to the burgesses of Chester to buy and
sell at Durham [_sic_] as they were wont to do in the time of
Henry I--'Henricus Dei gratia Rex Anglie et Dux Normannie
et Aquitanie et Comes Andegavie balluis [_sic_] de Dunelina
[_sic_] salutem:--Precipio quod Burgenses Cestrie possint
emere et vendere ad detaillum [_or_ doraillum] apud Dunelinam
[_sic_] habendo et faciendo easdem consuetudines quas
faciebant tempore Regis Henrici avi mei et easdem ibi habeant
rectitudines et libertates et liberas consuetudines quas
tempore illo habere solebant, teste, Willelmo filio Ald'
dapifero Apud Wintoniam.
Durham is not only a most improbable place for such a writ to refer
to, but is also an impossible rendering of the Latin name. The
interest and importance of this 'curious writ' has, in short, been
obscured and lost through the ignorance of Mr J. C. Jeaffreson, to
whom the report was entrusted. The charters which follow the writ, and
which are printed on the same page, refer to this writ as relating to
Ireland; and the town, of course, to which it refers is not Durham but
Dublin (_Duuelina_).
We have, therefore, in this writ an almost, if not quite, unique
reference by Henry II to Dublin in the days of his grandfather, and a
confirmation of the 'libertates', etc., which the men of Chester had
then enjoyed there, just as if his grandfather had been in his own
position. Secondly, we have here record evidence, not merely of a
recognized connection, but of what might be termed treaty relations
between the traders of Chester and the Ostmen of Dublin, long previous
to the Conquest of Ireland, thus confirming Mr Green's observation,
'the port of Chester depended on the trade with Ireland, which
had sprung up since the settlement of the Northmen along the Irish
Coasts'.[2] And this has, of course, a bearing on the question of 'a
Danish settlement' at Chester. Thirdly, we learn from this document
that at the date of its issue Dublin was governed by bailiffs of the
King (_ballivi sui_).
What, then, was its date? The clue, unfortunately, is slight; but it
may not improbably belong to the close of 1175 or early part of
1176. This brings us to the interesting question, why was such a
writ issued? Remembering that during his stay at Dublin (November
1171-January 1172) Henry II had granted that city to his men of
Bristol, we may hold it in accordance with the spirit of the time,
and, indeed, a matter of virtual certainty, that Bristol would have
striven on the strength of this grant to exclude 'its rival port'
(_Conquest of England_, p. 443) from the benefits of the Dublin trade.
Chester would, therefore, appeal to the King on the strength of its
antecedent rights, and would thus have obtained from him this writ,
recognizing and confirming their validity.
The Domesday customs of the city (i. 262_b_) contain a curious
allusion to its Irish trade:
Si habentibus martrinas pelles juberet prepositus regis ut
nulli venderet donec sibi prius ostensas compararet, qui hoc
non observabat xl. solidis emendabat ... Hæc civitas tunc
reddebat de firma xlv. lib et iii. timbres pellium martrinium.
There is nothing to show where these marten skins came from, or why
they are mentioned under Chester alone. But on turning to the customs
of Rouen, as recorded in the charters of Duke Henry (1150-1) and King
John (1199), we find they were imported from Ireland.
Quæcunque navis de Hibernia venerit, ex quo caput de Gernes
[Guernsey] transierit, Rothomagum veniat, unde ego habeam
de unaquâque nave unum tymbrium de martris aut decem libras
Rothomagi, si ejusdem navis mercatores jurare poterint se ideo
non mercatos fuisse illas martras ut auferrent consuetudinem
ducis Normanniæ, et vicecomes Rothomagi de unaquaque habeat
viginti solidos Rothomagi et Camerarius Tancarvillæ unam
accipitrem aut sexdecim solidos Rothomagi.
Giraldus Cambrensis, it may be remembered, alludes to the abundance of
martens in Ireland,[3] and describes how they were captured. We thus
have evidence in Domesday of the Irish trade with Chester, even in the
days of Edward the Confessor.
[Footnote 1: The error as to the Chester writ was explained by
me in a letter to the _Academy_ (No. 734).]
[Footnote 2: _Conquest of England_, p. 440.]
[Footnote 3: 'Martrinarum copia abundant hic silvestria'
(_Top. Hib._, i. 24).]
WALTER TIREL AND HIS WIFE
In his detailed examination of all the evidence bearing on the death
of William Rufus, the late Mr Freeman carefully collected the few
facts that are known relative to Walter Tirel. They are, however, so
few that he could add nothing to what Lappenberg had set forth (ii.
207) in 1834. He was, however, less confident than his predecessor as
to the identity of Walter Tirel with the Essex tenant of that name in
Domesday. I hope now to establish the facts beyond dispute, to restore
the identity of Walter Tirel, and also to show for the first time who
his wife really was.
The three passages we have first to consider are these, taking them in
the same order as Mr Freeman:
Adelidam filiam Ricardi de sublimi prosapia Gifardorum
conjugem habuit, quæ Hugonem de Pice, strenuissimum militem,
marito suo peperit (_Ord. Vit._).
Laingaham tenet Walterus Tirelde R. quod tenuit Phin dacus pro
ii. hidis et dimidia et pro uno manerio (_Domesday_, ii. 41).
Adeliz uxor Walteri Tirelli reddit compotum de x. marcis
argenti de eisdem placitis de La Wingeham (_Rot. Pip._, 31
Hen. I).
Dealing first with the Domesday entry, which comes, as Mr Freeman
observed, 'among the estates of Richard of Clare', I would point out
that though Ellis (who misled Mr Freeman) thought that 'Tirelde' was
the name, the right reading is 'tenet Walterus Tirel de R[icardo]',
two words (as is not unusual) being written as one. Turning next to
the words of Orderic, we find that Lappenberg renders them 'Adelaide,
Tochter des Richard Giffard', and Mr Freeman as 'a wife Adelaide
by name, of the great line of Giffard'. But there is no trace of a
Richard Giffard, nor can 'Adelida' herself be identified among the
Giffards. The explanation of the mystery, I hold, is that she was the
daughter, not of a Giffard, but of Richard _de Clare_, by his wife
Rohese, daughter of Walter Giffard the elder. It is noteworthy that
Orderic employs a precisely similar expression in the case of another
Adeliza, the daughter of Robert de Grentmesnil. He terms her 'soror
Hugonis de Grentemaisnil de clara stirpe Geroianorum', though she was
only descended from the famous Geroy through her mother. Richard's
daughter was sufficiently described as 'Adelida filia Ricardi', just
as her brothers were known as 'Gilbertus filius Ricardi', 'Rogerus
filius Ricardi', etc. The position of that mighty family was such that
this description was enough, and they were even known collectively as
the 'Ricardi', or 'Richardenses' (_Mon. Ang._, iv. 609). This is well
illustrated by the passage in the Ely writer, describing Adeliza's
brother Richard, Abbot of Ely, as
parentum undique grege vallatus, quorum familiam ex Ricardis
et Gifardis constare tota Anglia et novit et sensit. Ricardi
enim et Gifardi, duæ scilicet ex propinquo venientes familiæ,
virtutis fama et generis copia illustres effecerat.
The above forms are curious, but not without parallel. Thus the
descendants of Urse d'Abetot are spoken of as 'Ursini' in Heming's
Cartulary. Æthelred of Rievaulx speaks of 'Poncii' and 'Morini' as
present at the battle of the Standard; Gerald, in a well-known passage
(v. 335), speaks of the 'Giraldidæ' and 'Stephanidæ', and Orderic, we
have seen, of the 'Geroiani'.
The doubly influential character of this descent is well illustrated
in this passage (_quantum valeat_) from the chronicle of St John's
Abbey, Colchester.
Parcebatur tamen Eudoni, propter genus uxoris ipsius Rohaisæ:
erat enim hæc de genere nobilissimo Normannorum, filia
scilicet Ricardi, qui fuit filius Gilbert Comitis, duxitque
Rohaisam uxorem, quæ erat soror Willelmi Giffardi, Episcopi
Wintoniæ. Itaque, cum fratres et propinqui junioris Rohaisæ
quoslibet motus machinaturi putarentur, si contra maritum
ipsius aliquid durius decerneretur, sic factum est ut
interventu predicti Episcopi, etc., etc.
This passage is, I believe, the sole evidence for the real parentage
of Bishop William. It was clearly unknown to Canon Venables, who wrote
the Bishop's life for the _Dictionary of National Biography_.
Like most of these 'foundation' histories, this document is in part
untrustworthy. But it is Dugdale who has misread it, and not the
document itself that is responsible for the grave error (_Baronage_,
i. 110) that Eudo's wife was 'Rohese, daughter of Walter Giffard, Earl
of Buckingham'. Here again, as in the Tirel case, the daughter of a
Clare, by a Giffard, is converted into a Giffard. The error arose from
referring the 'qui' to Eudo instead of to his father-in-law,
Richard. The 'Historia' is perfectly consistent throughout in
its identification of the younger Rohese, of whom it states that
'commorata est marito annis triginta duobus, cui ante habiles annos
nupta est' (iv. 609).
In asserting under 'Clare' (_Baronage_, i. 208) that Eudo married the
widow (not the daughter) of Richard, Dugdale relied on another and
more inaccurate document (_Mon. Ang._, v. 269) which actually does
speak of
Rohesia una sororum Walteri [Giffard secundi]--duas plures
enim habuit--conjuncta in matrimonio Ricardo filio Gilberti,
qui in re militari, tempore Conquestoris, omnes sui temporis
magnates præcessit--
as marrying Eudo Dapifer after her husband's death. But we must decide
in favour of the Colchester narrative: Eudo's wife was her daughter
and namesake.
We see then that Walter Tirel was son-in-law to Richard de Clare, who
had enfeoffed him in 'Laingaham' before 1086. Now this 'Laingaham'
was Langham in Essex, just north of Colchester, which gives us an
important clue. Walter's widow 'Adeliz' was in possession in 1130
(_Rot. Pip._, Hen. I) because, as we have seen, it was probably given
her by her father 'in maritagio'. But her son Hugh held it under
Stephen, and Anstis saw among the muniments of the Duchy of Lancaster
a mortgage of it by Hugh to Gervase 'Justiciar of London'. I have not
yet identified this 'mortgage', but the confirmation of it to Gervase
de Cornhill by Earl Gilbert de Clare, as chief lord of the fee, is
extant,[1] and its first witness is Earl Gilbert of Pembroke, so that
it cannot be later than 1148, or earlier than 1138 (or 1139). Moreover
in yet another quarter (Lansdown MS. 203, 15 dors.) we find a copy of
a charter by this latter Earl Gilbert, belonging to the same occasion,
which runs as follows:
Com. Gilb. de Penbroc omnibus hominibus Francis et Anglis sal.
Sciatis me concessisse illam convencionem et vendicionem quam
Hugo Tirell fecit Gervasio de Chorhella de manerio suo de
Laingham parte mea. Nam Comes de Clara ex parte sua illud idem
concessit, de cuius feodo predictum manerium movet.
Both charters contain the curious 'movet' formula, in England so rare
that I think I have not met with any other instance. It is, of course,
equivalent to the regular French phrase: 'sous sa mouvance'. This
mortgage or sale was probably effected as a preliminary to the crusade
of 1147, in which Hugh Tirel is known to have taken part. Now the
above Gervase, as I have shown in my _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, was no
other than Gervase de Cornhill, and after his death we find Langham
duly in the possession of his son, Henry de Cornhill.[2] The chain of
evidence is thus complete, and the identity of the Tirels and of their
Manor placed beyond question.
But returning to the parentage of Walter's wife, we find that it
raises a curious question by the family circle to which it introduces
us. For we now learn that Gilbert and Roger, sons of Richard de
Clare, who were present at Brockenhurst when the King was killed,
were brothers-in-law of Walter Tirel, while Richard, another
brother-in-law, was promptly selected to be Abbot of Ely by Henry I,
who further gave the see of Winchester, as his first act, to William
Giffard, another member of the same powerful family circle.[3]
Moreover, the members of the house of Clare were in constant
attendance at Henry's court, and 'Eudo Dapifer', whose wife was a
Clare, was one of his favourites. I do not say that all this points
to some secret conspiracy, to which Henry was privy, but it shows at
least that he was on excellent terms with Walter Tirel's relatives.
I have explained in my article on the Clares in the _Dictionary of
National Biography_ that there has been much confusion as to the
family history. As the errors are very persistent, it may perhaps
be of some service, especially for identifying names, if I append
a pedigree for the period of the Tirel connection, which will
distinguish the descendants of Count Gilbert, 'illustrious in his
forefathers and his descendants'.
Two charters will illustrate the attendance of the family at court
in the early days of Henry I. An interesting charter belonging
to Christmas, 1101, is attested by 'Gislebertus filius Ricardi
et Robertus filius Baldwini et Ricardus frater ejus', while the
attestations to one of September 3, 1101, comprise 'G[islebertus]
filius R[icardi] R[ogerus] (or R[obertus]) frater suus W[alterus]
frater suus.... R[obertus] (or R[icardus]) filius B[aldwini].'[4]
Among the most persistent of errors are those which identify Richard
'filius Baldwini' with Richard de Redvers (who was of a different
family and died long before him), and which make this compound Richard
an Earl of Devon.
Planché endeavoured to slay the former of these errors--which,
originating in the _Monasticon_, is embalmed in Dugdale's
_Baronage_--as Taylor had previously done in his 'Wace', and the
Duchess of Cleveland has rightly observed in her _Battle Abbey
Roll_ (1889) that 'there is not the slightest authority for assuming'
the identity. But the necessity for again correcting the error is
shown by its reappearance in Mr Freeman's _Exeter_ (1887) and by the
life of Baldwin de Redvers, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_,
by Mr Hunt, which begins by stating that he was 'the eldest son of
Richard, Earl of Devon, the son of Baldwin de Moeles', whereas his
father was not an Earl, and was not the son of Baldwin de Moeles.
I may also take this opportunity of pointing out that (as is shown in
my _Geoffrey de Mandeville_) Richard fitz Gilbert (d. 1136) was not an
earl, the earldom of Herts having been ante-dated like that of Devon.
Dugdale again has omitted, because he failed to identify, another
daughter of the house of Clare, who made a most interesting match.
This was 'Adelidis de Tunbridge', wife of William de Percy, a niece
and namesake, I confidently suggest, of Walter Tirel's wife. She seems
to have brought into the Percy family the names of Richard and Walter.
The charters which establish, I think, her identity are those of
Sallay Abbey, in which Maud (widow of William, Earl of Warwick) and
her sister Agnes (ancestress of the later Percies) speak of their
mother as 'Adelidis de Tunbridge' (_Mon. Ang._, v. 512-13). She can
only, therefore, in my opinion, have been a daughter of Gilbert 'de
Tunbridge'; and with this conclusion the dates harmonize well. Yet
another daughter was Margaret, wife of William de Montfichet, who
brought into that family the names of Gilbert and Richard.
[Illustration: Family tree]
Count Gilbert,
of Brionne.
Benefactor to Bec.
Murdered 1040
|
--------------------------------------------(connect to
| Richard de Bienfaite)
|
Albreda=(1) Baldwin (2) Emma
de Meules, =
_alias_ de Clare, |
_alias_ Baldwin of |
Exeter, _alias_ |
Baldwin the |
Sheriff [of Devon]. |
Benefactor to Bec |
| (connect
| to Roger,
| 'filius Ricardi')
------------------------------------------- -----
| | |
William,[1] Robert,[2] Richard, Gilbert,
'filius Baldwini', 'filius Baldwini', 'filius Baldwini', 'filius Baldwini',
Sheriff of Devon, held Brionne Sheriff of _alias_ Gilbert
1090 (see p. 256). against Robert Devon, 1129. de Tunbridge,
Benefactor to Bec of Normandy Died 1136.[3] mar. Adeliza
in 1090. Benefactor to Bec de Clermont
Benefactor to Bec (see p. 394)
|
----------------------------------------(connect
| | to Baldwin,
| | 'filius Gilberti')
| | |
Richard, Gilbert, Walter,[7]
'filius Gilberti,' 'filius Gilberti', 'filius Gilberti,'
d. 1136[3] Earl of Pembroke. of Maldon.
| Protector of Went on crusade
V St Neot's[5] _circ._ 1147
a quo the |
Earls of V
Hertford
(connect to
Count Gilbert
of Brionne)
----
|
Richard = Rohese, dau. of
de Bienfaite, Walter Giffard.
_alias_ 'filius Benefactress of
Gilberti', _alias_ St Neot's Priory
'filius Comitis |
Gilberti', _alias_ |
'de Tunbridge', |
_alias_ 'de Clare'. |
Founder of St |
Neot's Priory |
(cell to Bec) |
|
(connect to |(connect
Gilbert, |to Robert
'filius Baldwini') |'filius
------------------------------------------------ Ricardi')
| | |
Roger, Walter, Richard,
'filius Ricardi', 'filius Ricardi', 'filius Ricardi',
living 1130 ob. s. p. Monk of Bec,
ob. s. p. Founder of Abbot of Ely 1100.
Benefactor to Tintern Abbey, Died 1107
Bec[4] 1131,
living 1136[5]
(connect
to Walter,'
'filius Gilberti')
-----------------------------------------
| | |
Baldwin, Adelidis Rohese,[8]
'filius Gilberti', 'de Tunbridge' mar. Baderon
_alias_ Baldwin mar. William de Monmouth
de Clare. de Percy
Founder of Deeping |
Priory (Benedictine) |
and Bourne Priory V
(Austin)
(connect
to Richard
'filius Ricardi')
----------------------------------------
| | |
Robert, Rohese, Adeliza = Walter
'filius Ricardi', 'filia Ricardi', 'filia Ricardi', | Tirel,
d. (after Easter) mar. Eudo Dapifer died at | Lord of Poix,
1136. _circ._ 1088 Conflans, an | under-tenant
Bur. at St Neot's, He died 1120. offshoot of Bec, | of his
(? Dapifer Regis) She died 1121, _circ._ 1138 | father-in-law,
| and was buried | 1086
| at Bec |
| |
--------------------------------
| | Hugh
Walter Maude = William Tirel,
'filius "Roberti', 'de Senliz'. | de Albini Lord of Poix,
'Dapifer Regis[6] Benefactress | 'Brito' Benefactor to Bec.
(see p. 360) to St Neot's V Went on crusade 1147
|
V
[Footnotes from Family Tree:
[Footnote 1: 'Baldwinus vero genuit Rodbertum, et Guillelmum,
Richardum, nothumque Guigerum' (Ord. Vit.). This last was a
monk of Bec. 'Baldwinus frater istius [Ricardi] Willelmum,
Robertum et Ricardum cum tribus sororibus genuit' (_Mon.
Ang._, v. 269). The authority is not good, but is confirmed
_aliunde_. It is not proved that William was a son of Emma.]
[Footnote 2: 'Baldwino patri meo Molas et Sapum reddidit [Rex
W.] et filiam amitæ suæ uxorem dedit' (_Ord. Vit._)]
[Footnote 3: 'Eodem anno obierunt plures ex principibus
Angliæ.... Ricardus filius Gisleberti Robertus filius Ricardi,
patruus ejus, Ricardus filius Baldwini, consobrinus ejus'
(_Robert of Torigni_).]
[Footnote 4: 'Mortuis autem absque liberis Rogero et
Waltero.']
[Footnote 5: 'Oportet me habere in custodia et defensione
mea omnes res Becci sicut ecclesie que fundata est ab
antecessoribus meis' (Cartulary of St Neot's, fo. 73).]
[Footnote 6: Ancestor of the fitzWalters of Dunmow and of
Baynard's Castle, who are accordingly spoken of by Fantôme as
'Clarreaus'--a word which has puzzled his editor, Mr Howlett.]
[Footnote 7: _Mon. Ang._ iv. 597. _Formul Ang._ p. 40.]
[Footnote 8: _Mon. Ang._, iv. 597.]]
[_To face page_ 359.]
We have yet to deal with one more member of this historic house,
Baldwin fitz Gilbert, or Baldwin de Clare, ancestor, through his
daughter and heir, of the family of Wake. I had always suspected
that Baldwin fitz Gilbert, the recognized grandfather of Baldwin Wac
(1166), could be no other than Baldwin, son of Gilbert de Clare, a
well-known man. But Dugdale, under 'Wake' (i. 539) positively asserts
that the former was 'brother to Walter de Gant, father of Gilbert de
Gant, the first Earl of Lincoln of that family'. This proves, however,
on inquiry, to be based on an almost incredible blunder. Dugdale
actually relied on a charter,[5] which includes Baldwin among the
Clares, and which he himself under 'Clare' rightly so interprets
(_Baronage_, i. 207_b_). There is, therefore, no ground for deriving
Baldwin from De Gant, or for rejecting his identity with that Baldwin
_de Clare_, who addressed the troops on behalf of Stephen at the
battle of Lincoln.[6]
Having made several additions to the pedigree of De Clare, I have also
to make one deduction in Robert fitz Richard's alleged younger son
'Simon, to whom he gave the Lordship of Daventry in Northamptonshire'
(_Baronage_, i. 218). This erroneous statement is taken from a
monastic genealogy (blundering as usual) in the Daventry Cartulary.[7]
The documents of that house show at once that Simon was the son of
Robert fitz 'Vitalis' (a benefactor to the house in 1109), not of
Robert fitz Richard, and was not, therefore, a Clare. Nor was he lord
of Daventry.
But Dugdale's most unpardonable blunder is his identification of Maud
'de St Liz', wife of William de Albini Brito. He makes her sixty years
old in 1186 (p. 113), and yet widow of Robert fitz Richard, who died
in 1134 (p. 218), finally stating that 'she died in _anno_ 1140'
(_ibid._)! Here, as in the case of Eudo Dapifer, William's wife was
the daughter, not the widow. In both cases the lady was a Clare.
The fact is certain from his own authority, the cartularies of St
Neot's.[8] We have a grant that 'Rob[ertus] filius Ric[ardi]', at fo.
79_b_, grants from 'Matildis de Sancto Licio (_al._ "Senliz") filia
Roberti filii Ricardi' on the same folio, and on the preceding one
(fo. 79) this conclusive one as to her husband:
Ego Willelmus de Albineio Brito et Matild' uxor mea dedimus et
concessimus ecclesiam de Cratefeld deo et ecclesie Sci. Neoti
et monachis Beccensibus pro anima Roberti filii Ricardi et
antecessorum meorum.
Then follows their son's confirmation, as 'Willelmus de Albeneio
filius Matillidis de Seint Liz'. Next, 'Willelmus de Albeneio filius
Matild' de Senliz', gives land, 'quam terram Domina Matild' Senliz
mater mea eis prius concesserat'--her said grant of land in Cratfield
duly following as from 'Matild de Senliz filia Roberti filii Ricardi'.
Further, we have Walter fitz Robert (fitz Richard) confirming this
grant by his sister Matildis. Finally, we learn that Cratfield
belonged to her in 'maritagio'. Now (as 'Cratafelda') it belonged in
Domesday to Ralf Baignard. His honour, on his forfeiture, was given
to Robert fitz Richard, who was thus able to give Cratfield 'in
maritagio' to his daughter. Here then is independent proof of what
her parentage really was, and further independent proof, if needed, is
found in this entry (1185):
Matillis de Sainliz que fuit filia Roberti filii Richardi, et
mater Willelmi de Albeneio est de donatione Domini Regis et
est lx. annorum (_Rot. de Dominabus_, p. 1).
We thus learn that, as with Avicia 'de Rumilly', daughter of William
Meschin, it was possible for a woman to bear, strange though it may
seem, the maiden name of her mother. Clearly, Maud was the widow of
William de Albini, who sent in his _carta_ (under Leicestershire) in
1166, and died, as I reckon, from the Pipe Rolls, in November 1167.
She was not, as alleged, the widow of the William who fought at the
Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.
Lastly, we come to the parentage of Walter Tirel himself. Mr Freeman
wrote that this was 'undoubted', that 'Walter was one of a family of
ten, seemingly the youngest of eight sons' of Fulc, Dean of Evreux,
and that 'he became, by whatever means, Lord of Poix in Ponthieu
and of Achères by the Seine' (_W. Rufus_, II, 322, 673).[9] But the
mystery of his rise is not lessened by the fact that, as Mr Freeman
put it, most accounts 'connect him with France rather than with
Normandy'. Closer investigation suggests that Orderic in no way
identifies the Walter Tirel of 1100 with the son of Dean Fulc, and
shows indeed that his French editors had specially declared the two to
be distinct. In short, Walter had nothing to do with Dean Fulc or with
Normandy, but was, as categorically stated, a Frenchman, the third of
his name who occurs as Lord of Poix. Père Anselme identifies him with
the second (who occurs in 1069), but he is probably identical with the
third, who occurs in an agreement with the Count of Amiens, 1087,
and who, with his wife 'Adelice', founded the Priory of St Denis de
Poix,[10] and built the Abbey of St Pierre de Sélincourt. It was he
who was father of Hugh the Crusader.[11]
Here may be mentioned another name by which Walter seems to have been
known. I take it from the twelfth century chronicle of Abbot Simon
in the 'Chartularium Sithiense',[12] which appears to have eluded Mr
Freeman's researches when he made his collection of all the versions
of the death of William Rufus:
Willelmus prioris Willelmi regis Angliæ filius, eodem anno a
Waltero _de Bekam_, ex improviso, interficitur. Qui, cum rege
in saltu venatum iens, dum sagitta cervum appeteret, eadem
divinitus retorta, rex occiditur. Cujus interitus sancte
recordationis viro Hugoni, abbati Cluniacensi est præostensus,
etc., etc.
The testimony of a St Omer writer on the deed of the Lord of Poix is,
even if traditionary, worth noting; but I do not profess to explain
the 'Bekam'.[13]
If we now turn to the French writers, we find that the special work
on the family is that of M. Cuvillier-Morel-d'Acy,
'Archiviste-Généalogiste'.[14] It savours, however, of Peerage rather
than of History, and relies for its expansion of Père Anselme's
somewhat jejune narrative[15] on private MS. collections instead of
original authorities. This work was followed by an elaborate monograph
on 'Poix et ses Seigneurs' by M. l'Abbé Delgove,[16] who accepts
the former writer's genealogy without question, though dealing more
critically with the charters of foundation for the Priory of St Denis
de Poix. He admits that these charters are not authentic in their
present form, but accepts their contents as genuine. Now the endowment
of St Denis, according to them, included two marcs out of the tithes
'de Lavingaham en Angleterre'. Here, though these writers knew it not,
we have again our Essex Langham, the 'Lawingeham' of the Pipe-Roll. Is
this the reason why Walter required the consent of his wife 'Adeline'
and son Hugh to the grant?
Neither of these writers knew of the English evidence, nor did they
solve the mystery of Walter Tirel's wife, whom they, like Lappenberg,
imagined to be the daughter of a Richard Giffard. This tends to
diminish our trust in the pedigree they give. They took a Walter
Tirel to England at the Conquest, but only because Wace mentions the
'Pohiers', or men of Poix, and because the name of Tirel is found in
the Battle Roll. In their view, Hugh Tirel, Lord of Poix, the crusader
of 1147, was grandson of the famous Walter. Now Orderic, whose
evidence on the point they ignore, says, as we have seen, he was the
son; and as the chronicler was contemporary both with father and son,
we cannot think him mistaken. Moreover, the Pipe-Roll of 1130 cannot
be harmonized with their pedigree. Adeliz, wife (? widow) of Walter
Tirel, then answered for Langham, and could not be 'Adeline dame de
Ribecourt', who was dead, according to both writers, before 1128 (or
1127), and who could not, in any case, have aught to do with Langham.
But there is other evidence, unknown to these French writers, which
proves that the version they give must be utterly wrong. Among the
archives at Evreux there is a charter of Hugh Tirel to the Abbey of
Bec, granting 'decem marcas argenti in manerio quod dicitur Lavigaham'
to its daughter-house of Conflans, where, he says, his mother had
taken the religious 'habit', and retired to die. The Priors of
Conflans, and [St Denis of] Poix are among the witnesses; and we read
of the charter's date:
Hoc concessum est apud piceium castrum anno M.cxxxviii. ab
incarnatione dominica viii. idus martii.
Even if we make this date to be 1139, we here find Hugh in possession
of Poix and Langham at that date, whereas the French writers tell
us that he only succeeded in 1145, and that his father died in that
year.[17] The above charter, moreover, points to his mother having
survived his father, and died at Conflans as a widow. Until,
therefore, evidence is produced in support of the French version, we
must reject it _in toto_.
I close this study with an extract from that interesting charter by
which Richard I empowered Henry de Cornhill to enclose and impark
his woods at Langham, the same day (December 6, 1189) on which he
empowered his neighbours the burgesses of Colchester to hunt the fox,
the hare and the 'cat' within their borders. The words are:
Sciatis nos dedisse et concessisse Henrico de Cornhell'
licentiam includendi boscum suum in Lahingeham et faciendi
sibi ibidem parcum, et ut liceat illi habere omnes bestias
quos poterit ibi includere.[18]
Thus did the wealthy Londoner become a country squire seven centuries
ago. Nor is it irrelevant to observe that the 'Langham Lodge coverts'
are familiar to this day to those who hunt with the Essex and Suffolk.
[Footnote 1: Duchy of Lancaster: Grants in boxes, A. 157. It
is there described as 'conventionem et venditionem quam
Hugo Tirell' fecit Gervasio de cornhella de manerio suo de
lauhingeham', which implies an actual sale rather than a
mortgage. The seal of Earl Gilbert, with the three chevrons
on his shield, is, I claim, an earlier instance, by far, of
coat-armour on a seal than any hitherto known (see my paper in
_Arch. Journ._, ii. 46).]
[Footnote 2: Duchy of Lancaster: Royal Charters, No. 42.]
[Footnote 3: A metrical epitaph, preserved by Rudborne, claims
for him a descent from Charlemagne, which implies that he,
like Walter's wife, was 'de sublimi prosapia Gifardorum' (see
p. 355 _supra_).]
[Footnote 4: See also _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, p. 329.]
[Footnote 5: Old _Monasticon_, i. 245_b_; and _vide infra_, p.
393. A curious sketch of the above scene in a MS. of Henry of
Huntingdon (Arundel MS. 148) depicts Baldwin with two of the
Clare chevrons on his shield, and a marginal note, almost
illegible, duly describes him as grandfather of Baldwin Wac.
This sketch is overlooked in the British Museum catalogue of
drawings.]
[Footnote 6: See also _Rot. Pip._, 31 Hen. I, and my _Geoffrey
de Mandeville_.]
[Footnote 7: _Mon. Ang._, v. 178.]
[Footnote 8: Cott. MS. Faustina A. iv. See also Addenda.]
[Footnote 9: Mr Freeman rendered Walter Map's 'Achaza' by
'Achères'. But as the Tirels always styled themselves 'Sires
de Poix Vicomtes d'_Equesnes_' it is probable that the latter
was meant.]
[Footnote 10: His gift was confirmed by Geoffrey, Bishop of
Amiens, who died in 1116.]
[Footnote 11: The essential reference occurs in the charter of
1069 granted by Ralf, Count of Amiens, which mentions 'Symon
filius meus et Gualterus Gualteri Tirelli natus' (Archives
depart. de le Somme: Cartulaire de N.D. d'Amiens, No. 1, fo.
91). These were the first and second known bearers of the
name. The latter occurs in a St Riquier charter of 1058. Poix
was some fifteen miles from Amiens, and its lordship was of
considerable importance. A charter of 1030 to Rouen Cathedral
is said to contain the name 'Galtero Tyrello, domino de
Piceio'.]
[Footnote 12: _Cartulaire de l'Abbaye de St Bertin_
(_Documents Inédits_), pp. 267-8.]
[Footnote 13: I find entered in the Cartulary of Hesdin
(Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) on fo. 29, a notification
'quia Walterus Tireel et filius eius Hugo hospitem unum eum
omni mansione ... apud villam Verton concesserunt', and that
they have granted freedom from toll 'apud Belram ... coram
militibus suis'. Could 'Bekam' possibly be a misprint for
'Belram' [Beaurain]?]
[Footnote 14: _Histoire Genealogique et Héraldique de la
Maison des Tyrel, Sires, puis Princes de Poix_, etc., etc.
(2nd Ed.) 1869.]
[Footnote 15: Vol. vii., pp. 820 _et seq._]
[Footnote 16: _Memoires de la Société d'Antiquaires de
Picardies_ (1876), xxv. 287 _et seq._]
[Footnote 17: M. l'Abbé Delgove produces (p. 369) a precisely
similar case, in which a deed of 1315 proves John Tirel to
have been already in possession of Poix, although, according
to the family history, he did not die till 1315. This throws
doubts, he admits, on M. Cuvillier-Morel-d'Acy's chronology.]
[Footnote 18: Duchy of Lancaster, Royal Charter, No. 42.
_Supra_, p. 357.]
WALDRIC, WARRIOR AND CHANCELLOR
The importance of fixing the sequence of chancellors, for
chronological purposes and especially the dating of charters, is very
great. Waldric, who preceded Ranulf as chancellor to Henry I, was,
as a warrior and then a bishop, a man of mark. It has hitherto been
supposed, as by Mr Archer (who wrote his life for the _Dictionary of
National Biography_), that his latest appearance as chancellor was
early in 1106, before the King's departure for Normandy. His feat in
taking Duke Robert prisoner at Tinchebrai (September 28, 1106) is well
known, but was believed to be the only evidence of his presence in
Normandy with the King. There is, however, in _Gallia Christiana_
(vol. xi) a valuable charter recording a 'causa seu placitum', decided
before King Henry at Rouen, November 7, 1106, among those present
being 'Waldricus qui tunc temporis erat regis cancellarius'. We can
trace, therefore, his tenure of the office up to that date.
There is some doubt and difficulty as to another charter. Foss
believed that Waldric was the 'Walterus Cancellarius' who is found in
a charter to Tewkesbury of '1106'.[1] This charter is printed in the
_Monasticon_ (ii. 66) from an Inspeximus _temp._ Henry IV. There is,
however, a better Inspeximus on the Charter Roll of 28 Edward I[2]
(No. 16), in which the name is clearly Waldric. But the difficulty is
that the same Inspeximus contains another version of this charter (No.
2), with a fuller list of witnesses.[3] I have examined the roll for
myself, and there is no doubt as to the date, for the clause runs:
Facta est hec carta Anno.... ab incarnacione domini M^{o}
centesimo vii^{o} apud Wintoniam.
The other version, in the body of the charter, contains the
words, 'Anno Dominicæ Incarnationis millesimo centesimo sexto
apud Wintoniam'. I have always looked with some suspicion on these
Tewkesbury charters,[4] and that suspicion is not lessened by the
double version of this, or by the name of the last witness in that of
1107, namely, 'Roger de Pistres'. The only known bearer of that name
was dead before Domesday, though this witness may just possibly
be identical with Roger de Gloucester (son, I hold, of Durand de
Pistres[5]) who was killed in 1106.
On the whole, it is safer to deem that Waldric's last appearance as
chancellor, at present known, is in the Rouen charter of November
1106. Ranulf, his successor, first appears as Foss pointed out,[6]
in a charter to St Andrew's Priory, Northampton.[7] Its date is
determined by the appearance among the witnesses of Maurice, Bishop
of London (d. September 26, 1107) and of Ranulf himself as chancellor,
combined with the statement appended to the charter that it was
granted in the King's eighth year ('octavo imperii sui anno'). One
must not attach too great importance to these clauses, which did not,
as a rule, form part of the original charter, but in this case the
names of the witnesses point to Easter--September 1107; and it is just
possible to assign to the eighth year the close of the Westminster
gathering, at the beginning of August, when this charter to St
Andrew's may well have been granted.
Miss Norgate holds that Bishop Roger 'probably resumed' the
chancellorship in 1106, on Waldric's elevation to the Bishopric of
Laon,[8] but I do not know of any evidence to that effect.
[Footnote 1: _Judges of England_, i. 140.]
[Footnote 2: _30th Report of Deputy-Keeper_, p. 203.]
[Footnote 3: _Ibid._, p. 204.]
[Footnote 4: See _Geoffrey de Mandeville_, 421, 431-2.]
[Footnote 5: See p. 245 _supra_.]
[Footnote 6: _Judges of England_, i. 79.]
[Footnote 7: _Monasticon_, v. 191.]
[Footnote 8: _England under the Angevin Kings_, i. 22.]
A CHARTER OF HENRY I (1123)
A good illustration of the value of charters for chronological and
biographical purposes is afforded by one which Henry I granted to the
church of Exeter. It is printed in the _Monasticon_ under Plimpton,
to the foundation of which priory it is asserted to have been
preliminary. That foundation is assigned to 1121. The charter,
however, is also found among those confirmed by Henry VIII
(Confirmation Roll, I Henry VIII, p. 5, No. 13), with a list of
witnesses arranged in correct order; whereas the _Monasticon_ version
is taken from the pleadings under Richard II (Coram Rege, Hil. 2
Richard II, Rot. 20, Devon), and records the witnesses in grievous
disorder. The explanation of such disorder is that the clerk in the
latter case was not familiar with the system on which the attestations
to these charters were arranged, the names of the leading witnesses
being placed in a line above the others. This will be made evident
from the two lists of witnesses:
_Right Order_ _Wrong Order_
King Henry
Queen Adeliza Queen Adeliza
William, Archbishop of Canterbury William, Archbishop of Canterbury
Thurstan, Archbishop of York Robert, Earl of Gloucester
Richard, Bishop of London Thurstan, Archbishop of York
William, Bishop of Winchester William, Earl of Surrey
Roger, Bishop of Salisbury Roger, Bishop of Salisbury
Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln Roger, Earl of Warwick
Evrard, Bishop of Norwich Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln
Hervey, Bishop of Ely Robert, Earl of Leicester
Ralf, Bishop of Chichester Evrard, Bishop of Norwich
Ranulf, Bishop of Durham Hugh Bigot, _dapifer_
Robert, Bishop of Coventry Hervey, Bishop of Ely
'Theold', Bishop of Worcester William de Pirou, _dapifer_
Bernard, Bishop of St David's Ralf, Bishop of Chichester
Richard, Bishop of Hereford William d'Aubeny
Godfrey, Bishop of Bath Ranulf, Bishop of Durham
Geoffrey the Chancellor Nigel d'Aubeny
Geoffrey, Abbot of St Peter's, Robert, Bishop of Coventry
Winchester
Osbert, Abbot of Tavistock Richard fitz Baldwin
Thurstan, Abbot of Sherborne 'Theold', Bishop of Worcester
Vincent, Abbot of Abingdon Baldwin de Redvers
Seffrid, Abbot of Glastonbury Bernard, Bishop of St David's
Robert, Earl of Gloucester Johel de Berdestaple
William, Earl of Surrey Richard, Bishop of Hereford
David, Earl of Huntingdon Guy de Totness
Ranulf, Earl of Chester Godfrey, Bishop of Bath
Roger, Earl of Warwick Robert de Cadentona [_sic_]
Robert, Earl of Leicester Geoffrey the Chancellor
Hugh Bigot, _dapifer_ William fitz Odo
William de Pirou, _dapifer_ Geoffrey, Abbot of St Peter's,
William d'Aubeny Winchester
Nigel d'Aubeny Goislin de Pomereda
Richard fitz Baldwin Osbert, Abbot of Tavistock
Baldwin de Redvers Rainald de Valle Torta
Johel de Berdestaple Thurstan, Abbot of Sherborne
Guy de Totness William fitz Richard
Robert de 'Badentona' Vincent, Abbot of Abingdon
William fitz Odo Herbert de Alneto
Goislin de Pomereda Seffrid, Abbot of Glastonbury
Rainald de Valle Torta Humfrey de Bohun
William fitz Richard William, Abbot of Cerne
Herbert de Alneto Walter fitz Thurstan[1]
Humfrey de Bohun
Walter fitz Thurstan
It is obvious that this charter was granted before the death of
the Bishop of Worcester (October 20, 1123), and before the King's
departure from England (June 1123). But it must be subsequent to the
death of the previous chancellor, Ranulf (Christmas 1122), and to the
appointment or consecration (February 1123) of Archbishop William. The
narrow limit thus ascertained points to the Easter court of 1123 at
Winchester, the great gathering of bishops and earls implying some
such occasion. Easter fell that year on April 15th.
Now two sees had fallen vacant at the beginning of the year, those of
Lincoln and of Bath. Lincoln was given to Alexander, whether at
Easter (Winchester), as stated by Henry of Huntingdon, or in Lent, as
asserted by the continuator of Florence; but he was not consecrated
till July 22nd. Bath was bestowed on Godfrey, whose consecration did
not take place till August 26th, though Henry of Huntingdon assigns
his appointment, like that of Alexander, to Easter (Winchester). Both
these bishops, it will be seen, attest the above charter, which proves
that it cannot be earlier than Easter (April 15th), while the evidence
below practically limits it to the Easter court at Winchester.
The first point to be observed is that these two bishops attest
as such (not as 'elect') long before their consecration. As it is
generally held that bishops never did so, this point is of importance
(always assuming the accuracy of the evidence) for its bearing
on other charters.[2] Secondly, four of the witnesses--the
two archbishops, the Bishop of St David's, and the Abbot of
Glastonbury--are said by the continuator to have left for Rome after
Alexander's appointment. From this charter it is clear that they did
not leave till after Easter. The third point is that Earl Roger of
Warwick had, at the date of this charter, succeeded his father, Henry.
Turning to Geoffrey the chancellor, we find in this charter perhaps
his earliest appearance. Foss, in his useful work, is here a year out.
He wrongly assigned the death of the preceding chancellor, Ranulf,
to Christmas 1123, instead of Christmas 1122, and he assumed that our
charter must be subsequent to Bishop Godfrey's consecration (August
26, 1123), and, in fact, that it belonged to 1124 (to which year he
wrongly assigned the death of Bishop Theowulf). It is important for
chronological purposes to date the change of chancellor correctly. I
have already determined (p. 481) the date of Ranulf's accession to the
post.
The correction of this date of Ranulf's death affects that of the
foundation of Laund Priory, Leicestershire, which is assigned by
Nichols and by the Editors of the _Monasticon_ to 'about 1125'. As the
foundation charter is addressed to William, Archbishop of Canterbury,
and Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, it must be subsequent to Alexander's
promotion in the spring of 1123 (if not to his consecration on June
22nd). This is admitted by Foss, who accepts the charter without
question. There is nothing in the document to excite suspicion, nor do
I impugn it without reluctance. But the awkward fact remains that it
is witnessed by Ranulf the chancellor, who died, as we have seen, at
the beginning of 1123, and actually in the lifetime of Bishop Robert,
Alexander's predecessor at Lincoln. There can be no question as to
Ranulf's death, for the sequence of events is inexorable. Henry
of Huntingdon tells us that (1) the king spent Christmas (1122) at
Dunstable; that (2) he went thence to Berkhampstead, where Ranulf was
accidentally killed; that (3) he then visited Woodstock, where Bishop
Robert met with an equally sudden death; that (4) at the Purification
(February 2, 1123) he gave the See of Canterbury to William of
Corbeuil; that (5) he gave (at Winchester) the See of Lincoln to
Alexander at Easter. It is singular that the members of the foundation
had two strings to their bow, another charter of Henry I being adduced
for Inspeximus. Its witnesses imply a later date, and their names do
not involve any chronological difficulty.
We have in this Exeter charter one of the earliest attestations
(according to my theory) of Robert as Earl of Gloucester. It should be
noted that he takes at once precedence of all other earls, just as he
had taken, before his elevation, precedence of all laymen under the
rank of earl.
Of the barons most are familiar. Richard fitz Baldwin was the son and
successor of the famous Baldwin of Exeter, and was, like him, sheriff
of Devon (see p. 237). Baldwin de Redvers was the son of Richard de
Redvers, and became subsequently first earl of Devon (the confusion
of these two families, from the similarity of name, seems to be
incorrigible).[3] The lords of the great honours of Barnstaple and
Totnes[4] are followed by Robert of Bampton, who had succeeded to the
Domesday fief of Walter de Douai, and who, as I have shown (_English
Historical Review_, v. 746), was afterwards a rebel against Stephen.
Goislin de Pomerey was the heir of Ralf de Pomerey, the Domesday
baron; and Reginald (Rainaldus) de Vautort was a great under-tenant of
the honour of Mortain. William fitz Richard I identify with that
great Cornish magnate, whose daughter and heiress carried his fief to
Reginald, afterwards Earl of Cornwall. Herbert de Alneto also was a
Cornish baron, father of that Richard who, in 1130, paid £100 for his
succession (_Rot. Pip._, 31 Henry I, p. 158). Specially interesting,
however, is the name of William fitz Odo, in whom I detect not the
William fitz _Otho_, of Essex and Middlesex (with whom he is confused
in the Index to the 1130 Pipe-Roll), but the son of 'Odo filius
Gamelin'; a Devonshire tenant-in-chief (D.B., i. 116_b_). I see him in
that '--filius Odonis', who is entered on the damaged Devonshire
roll (_Rot. Pip._, 31 Henry I, p. 157) in connection with thirty-four
shillings, which proves that he held a considerable estate. The fief
of 'Odo filius Gamelin' was assessed at 21-3/16 hides, representing in
Devon large estates.[5]
[Footnote 1: It will be observed that this list omits the
Bishops of London and Winchester and the Earls of Huntingdon
and Chester, but adds the Abbot of Cerne.]
[Footnote 2: An excellent instance of this practice is found,
ten years later, in the case of Bishop Nigel, who attested
three charters in 1133, before the king's departure, as Bishop
of Ely, though he was not consecrated till some months later.
They are those found in _Monasticon_, vi. 1174, 1274, and that
which granted the chamberlainship to Aubrey de Vere.]
[Footnote 3: It has found its way, under 'Baldwin', into the
_Dictionary of National Biography_.]
[Footnote 4: The _Guido de Totteneys_ of this charter seems to
be identical with the _Wido de Nunant_ of the charter granted
by Henry II to this priory. This conjecture is confirmed
by the entry in the Pipe-Roll of 31 Hen. I: 'Wido de Nunant
reddit comp. de x. marcis pro concessione ferie de Totneis'
(p. 154). There is a story quoted by Dugdale, under Totnes
priory, from the records of the abbey of Angers, that Juhel
'of Totnes', the Domesday baron, was expelled by William
Rufus, and his lands given to Roger de Nunant. I certainly
find Roger de Nonant attesting in 1091 the foundation charter
of Salisbury Cathedral in conjunction with William fitz
Baldwin (see pp. 330, 472); and Manors belonging to Juhel in
1086 are found afterwards belonging to Valletort, Nonant's
successor, as part of his honour of Totnes. But it would seem
that Juhel retained part of his honour of Barnstaple, while
the Nonants held the rest as the honour of Totnes. Indeed, he
must have held both _capita_ so late as 1113, when, say the
monks of Laon, 'venimus ad castrum, quod dicitur Bannistaplum,
ubi manebat quidam princeps nomine Joellus de Totenes', etc.
(_Hermannus_, ii. 17), adding that they afterwards visited
Totnes 'præfati principis castrum' (_ibid._, 18).]
[Footnote 5: Reprinted, with additions, from _English
Historical Review_.]
THE ORIGIN OF THE NEVILLES
It is difficult to believe that so interesting a genealogical question
as the origin of this famous house should have remained as yet
undetermined. I have shown above (p. 137) that we can identify in
Domesday Gilbert and Ralph de Neville, the earliest bearers of the
name in England, as knightly tenants of the Abbot of Peterborough; but
the existing house, as is well known, descends from them only through
a female. It is at its origin in the male line that I here glance. The
innumerable quarters in which, unfortunately, information of this kind
has been published makes it impossible for me to say whether I have
been forestalled. So far, however, as I can find at present, two
different versions are in the field.
First, there is Dugdale's view that Robert fitz Maldred, their
founder, was 'son of Dolfin, son of Earl Gospatric, son of Maldred
fitz Crinan by Algitha daughter of Uchtred, Earl of Northumberland,
who was son-in-law to King Æthelred'. This was, apparently, Mr
Shirley's view, for, in his _Noble and Gentle Men of England_
he derives the Nevilles from 'Gospatric, the Saxon Earl of
Northumberland', though he makes Robert fitz Maldred his
_great_-grandson, as Rowland had done in his work on the House of
Nevill (1830), by placing Maldred between Dolfin and Robert fitz
Maldred. Even that sceptical genealogist, Mr Foster, admitted in
his peerage their descent from this Earl Gospatric. The immediate
ancestry, however, of their founder, Robert fitz Maldred, can be
proved, and is as follows:
Dolfin,
fitz Uchtred,
received 'Staindropshire'
from the Prior of Durham,
1131. (_Feod. Prior. Dun._ 56, 140)
|
__________________|________________________
| |
| |
Meldred Patrick
fitz Dolfin, fitz Dolfin
(F.P.D. 53, 100, 140) (F.P.D. 100)
| d. 1195-6
|___________________________________________
| |
| |
Isabel = Robert Gilbert
de Neville | fitz Meldred fitz Meldred
| of Raby (F.P.D. 53, 54)
|
Geoffrey
de Neville
Drummond's _Noble British Families_ (1842) set out a new origin for
the family without any hesitation, and this was adopted by the Duchess
of Cleveland, whose elaborate work on the _Battle Abbey Roll_ has much
excellent genealogy. Their patriarch Dolfin was now made the son
of that Uchtred, who was a grandson and namesake of Dugdale's Earl
Uchtred, _temp._ King Æthelred. A chart pedigree is required to show
the descent of the earls:
(1) Earl (2) (3)
= Uchtred, = =
| slain 1016 | |
___________| _____________| |________
| | | |
| | | |
Earl Earl Gospatric Ealdgyth,
Ealdred Eadwulf | mar. Maldred
| | | fitz Crinan
| | | |
daughter, | | |
mar. Siward | | |
| Earl UCHTRED Earl
| Osulf | Gospatric
| | ___________|________
| | | | |
Earl Eadwulf Dolfin Waltheof Gospatric
Waltheof, 'Rus', of Carlisle, of Dunbar
beheaded 1075 living 1080 1092
No authority, unfortunately, is given for the identity of this Uchtred
with Uchtred, father of Dolfin, and the assumption of that identity
involves the conclusion that Eadwulf 'Rus', who took the lead in the
murder of Bishop Walcher (1080), was brother to Dolfin who received
Staindrop in 1131, and uncle to a man who died in 1195 or 1196!
We cannot therefore accept this descent as it stands, or carry the
pedigree at present beyond Dolfin fitz Uchtred (1131). But as this
Dolfin, when doing homage to the Prior of Durham for Staindrop,
reserved his homage to the kings of England and of Scotland, as well
as the Bishop of Durham, he was, no doubt, a man of consequence, and
was probably of high Northumbrian birth. It may be worth throwing
out, as a hint, the suggestion that his father Uchtred might have been
identical with Uchtred, son of Ligulf, that great Northumbrian thegn
who was slain at Durham in 1080. But this is only a guess. One cannot,
in fact, be too careful, as I have shown in my two papers on 'Odard of
Carlisle' and 'Odard the Sheriff',[1] in identifying two individuals
of the same Christian names, when, in these northern districts, the
names in question were so widely borne. The Whitby cartulary, for
instance, proves that Thomas de Hastings was (maternal) grandson
of Alan, son of Thorphin 'de Alverstain', son of Uchtred (son of
Gospatric), which Uchtred gave the Church of Crosby Ravensworth to the
abbey in the time, it would seem, of William Rufus. But who Gospatric,
his father, was has not been clearly ascertained. The skilled
genealogists of the north may be able to decide these points, and to
tell us the true descent of 'Dolfin, the son of Uchtred'.
[Footnote 1: _Genealogist_, N.S., v. 25-8; viii. 200.]
THE ALLEGED INVASION OF ENGLAND IN 1147
When Mr Richard Howlett, in the preface to his edition of the _Gesta
Stephani_ for the Rolls series, announced that we were indebted to its
'careful author' for the knowledge of an invasion of England by
Henry FitzEmpress in 1147, 'unrecorded by any other chronicler', and
endeavoured at considerable length to establish this proposition,[1]
it was received, from all that I can learn, with general incredulity.
As, however, in the volume which he has since edited, he reiterates
his belief in this alleged invasion,[2] it becomes necessary to
examine in detail the evidence for a discovery so authoritatively
announced in the pages of the Rolls series.
The accepted view of Henry's movements has hitherto been that, by his
father's permission, in the autumn of 1142 he accompanied the Earl of
Gloucester to England; that he remained there about four years; that,
by his father's wish, at the end of 1146 or beginning of 1147 he
returned from England; that he then spent two years and four months
over sea; that in the spring of 1149 he again came to England, and was
knighted at Carlisle by the king of Scots on May 22nd. As to the above
long visit, commencing in 1142, Gervase of Canterbury is our chief
authority, but the other chroniclers (omitting for the present the
_Gesta Stephani_) harmonize well with his account. Gervase and Robert
of Torigni alike mention but one arrival of Henry (1142) and one
departure (1146 or 1147), thus distinctly implying there was then
only one visit--namely, that visit which Gervase tells us lasted four
years. The only slight discrepancy between Gervase and Robert is found
in the date of Henry's departure. Robert places that event under 1147,
and mentions that Henry visited Bec May 29th in that year. There is
also, Mr Howlett has pointed out, charter evidence implying that Henry
was back in Normandy in March or April. Now Gervase says distinctly
that he was away from England two years and four months. The
chroniclers, Gervase included, say that he returned to England in the
middle of May 1149. Counting back the two years and four months, this
would bring us to January 1147, as the date of his departure from
England. But there is a charter of his to Salisbury Cathedral, tested,
as Mr Howlett observes, at Devizes, April 13, 1149. If this evidence
be trustworthy, it would take us back to December 1146, instead of
January 1147. It is easy to see how Gervase may have included in 1146,
and Robert in 1147, an event which appears to have taken place about
the end of the one or the beginning of the other year.
Much has been made of the alleged circumstance that Gervase assigned
the Earl of Gloucester's death to 1146, whereas he is known to have
died in 1147. But reference to his text will show that he does nothing
of the kind. Writing of Henry's departure at the close of 1146, he
tells us that the earl was destined never to see him again, for
he died in November [_i.e._ November 1147]. He is here obviously
anticipating.
Such being the evidence on which is based the accepted view of
Henry's movements, let us now turn to the _Gesta Stephani_. Though Mr
Howlett's knowledge of the period is great and quite exceptional, I
cannot but think that he has been led astray by his admiration for
this fascinating chronicle. Miss Norgate sensibly observes that 'there
must be something wrong in the story' as actually preserved in the
_Gesta_,[3] but Mr Howlett, unwilling to admit the possibility of
error in his chronicle, boldly asserts that the 'romantic account'[4]
of Henry's adventures which it contains does not refer to his visit
in 1149, but to a hitherto unknown invasion in 1147. He appears to
imagine that the only objection in accepting this story is found in
the fact that Henry was but just fourteen at the time.[5] But this
is not so. Putting aside this objection, as also the silence of other
chroniclers, there remains the chronological difficulty. How is the
alleged visit to be fitted in? Its inventor, who suggests 'about April
1147', for its date, must first take Henry back to Normandy (why or
when he does not even suggest) and then bring him back to England as
an invader, neither his alleged going or coming being recorded by any
chronicler. Then he assigns to his second return to Normandy (after
the alleged invasion) the only passages in Gervase and Robert which
speak of his returning at all. Surely nothing could be more improbable
than that Henry should rush back to England just after he had left it,
and had returned to his victorious father, and this at a time when his
cause seemed as hopeless there as it was prosperous over the sea.
The evidence of the _Gesta Stephani_ would have, indeed, to be beyond
question if we are to accept, on its sole authority, so improbable
a story. But what does that evidence amount to? The _Gesta_, unlike
other chronicles, not being arranged chronologically under years, the
only definite note of time here afforded in its text is found in the
passage, 'Consuluit [Henricus] et avunculum [_sic_] Glaorniæ comitem,
sed ipse suis sacculis avide incumbens, rebus tantum sibi necessariis
occurrere maluit'.[6]
As Earl Robert is known to have died in the autumn of 1147, the word
_avunculus_ does, undoubtedly, fix these events as prior to that date.
But is not _avunculus_ a slip of the writer for _cognatus_? Is not the
reference to Earl William rather than to his father, Earl Robert?[7]
Such a slip is no mere conjecture; the statement that Earl Robert was
too avaricious to assist his beloved nephew in his hour of need is not
only absolutely contrary to all that we know of his character, but is
virtually discredited by the _Gesta_ itself when its author tells us,
further on:
Comes deinde Glaorniæ ut erat regis adversariorum
strenuissimus et ad magna quevis struenda paratissimus,
iterum atque iterum exercitum comparare, jugi hortaminis et
admonitionis stimulo complices suos incitavit; illos minis,
istos promissis sibi et præmiis conjugare; quatinus omnes
in unam concordiam, in unum animum conspirati, exercitum e
diverso ad idem velle repararent, et collectis undecumque
agminibus, vive et constanter in regem insurgerent.[8]
How can such language as this be reconciled with the statement as to
Earl Robert's apathy at the very time when Henry's efforts offered him
a unique opportunity of pursuing his war against the king? Mr Howlett
does not attempt to meet, or even notice, this objection. Moreover,
when the _Gesta_ proceeds to describe Earl William of Gloucester as
devoted to his own pleasures rather than to war,[9] we see that the
conduct so incredible in his father would in him be what we might
expect.
I will not follow Mr Howlett in his lengthy argument relative to the
knighting of Eustace and Henry, because he himself admits that it is
based only on conjecture.[10] It is sufficient to observe that if the
'romantic' narrative in the _Gesta_ refers to the events of 1149,[11]
then the knighting of Eustace, which is a pendant to that narrative,
belongs, as the other chroniclers assert, to 1149. The statement,
I may add, that Henry applied for help to his mother, by no means
involves, as Mr Howlett assumes, her presence in England at the time.
I would suggest, then, that the whole hypothesis of this invasion
in 1147 is based on nothing more than a confusion in the _Gesta_. Mr
Howlett, indeed, claims that 'mediaeval history would simply disappear
if the evidence of chroniclers were to be treated in this way,[12]
and detects 'among some modern writers a tendency to incautious
rejection', etc.[13] But he himself goes out of his way to denounce,
in this connection, as a 'blundering interpolation' a passage in John
of Hexham, which he assigns to notes being 'carelessly misplaced' and
'ignorantly miscopied'.[14] The _Gesta_, to my knowledge, is by no
means immaculate; its unbroken narrative and vagueness as to dates
render its chronology a matter of difficulty; and the circumstance
that the passage in dispute occurs towards its close renders it
impossible to test it as we could wish by comparison with later
portions. The weakness of Mr Howlett's case is shown by his desperate
appeal to 'the exact precedent' set by Fulk Nerra, and no talk about
the contrast presented by 'physical science' and that 'fragmentary
tale of human inconsistencies which we term history' can justify the
inclusion of this alleged invasion as a fact beyond dispute in so
formal and authoritative a quarter as the preface to a Rolls volume.
[Footnote 1: _Chronicles_, Stephen, Henry II, Richard I, vol.
iii. pp. xvi-xx, 130.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, vol. iv. pp. xxi-xxii.]
[Footnote 3: _England under the Angevin Kings_, i. 377.]
[Footnote 4: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 5: 'The invasion of England by Henry in 1147, when
he was but a boy of fourteen, a piece of history which
has hitherto been rejected solely on the ground of
improbability.'--Preface (_ut supra_), p. xxi.]
[Footnote 6: _Gesta_ (ed. Howlett), p. 131.]
[Footnote 7: There is a precisely similar slip, by John of
Salisbury, in the _Historia Pontificalis_ (Pertz, xx. 532),
where the 'Duke' of Normandy is referred to in 1148 as 'qui
modo rex est' (_i.e._ Henry). Mr Howlett himself has pointed
out (_Academy_, November 12, 1887) that the author 'slipped in
the words "qui modo rex est", and thus transferred to Henry a
narrative which assuredly relates to his father'. The slip in
question, as he observed, had sadly misled Miss Norgate.]
[Footnote 8: _Gesta_ (ed. Howlett), p. 134.]
[Footnote 9: 'Successit in comitatum suum Willelmus filius
suus, senior quidem ætate, sed vir mollis, et thalamorum magis
quam militiæ appetitor' (_Gesta_, ed. Howlett, p. 134).]
[Footnote 10: Mr Howlett incidentally claims that knighthood
was a necessary preliminary to comital rank, and appeals to
the fact that the younger Henry was even carefully knighted
before his coronation (_Gesta_, p. xxii). But what has he to
say to the knighting of Earl Richard of Clare, by Henry VI,
and more especially to the knighting of Malcolm, already
Earl of Huntingdon and king of Scots, by Henry II, in 1159?
(_Robert of Torigni_, p. 203).]
[Footnote 11: Mr Howlett asserts (_Gesta_, p. 130, note) that
'when Henry made his better known visit in 1149 his acts were
quite different' from those recorded in the _Gesta_. But if,
as he himself admits, in 1149 Henry visited Devizes on his
way to Carlisle, what more natural than that he should pass
by Cricklade and Bourton (the two places mentioned in the
_Gesta_), which lay directly on his road?]
[Footnote 12: Preface to _Gesta_, p. xx.]
[Footnote 13: Preface to _Robert of Torigni_, p. xxii.]
[Footnote 14: Preface to _Gesta_ (_ut supra_), p. xvi.]
THE ALLEGED DEBATE ON DANEGELD (1163)
The great importance attached by historians to the financial dispute
at the council of Woodstock in 1163 renders it desirable that the
point at issue should be clearly stated and understood. As I venture
to believe that the accepted view on the matter in dispute is
erroneous, I here submit the reasons which have led me to that
conclusion. 'Two most important points,' writes Dr Stubbs, 'stand
out' on this occasion: (1) 'this is the first case of any express
opposition being made to the king's financial dealings since the
Conquest'; (2) 'the first fruit of the first constitutional opposition
is the abolition of the most ancient property-tax [danegeld] imposed
as a bribe for the Danes'.[1] It is with the second of these points
that I propose especially to deal.
The passage which forms our best evidence is found in Grim's _Life of
St Thomas_, and its relative portion is as follows:
Movetur quæstio de consuetudine quadam quae in Anglia
tenebatur. Dabantur de hida bini solidi ministris regis
qui vicecomitum loco comitatus servabant, quos voluit rex
conscribere fisco et reditibus propriis associare. Cui
archiepiscopus in faciem restitit, dicens, non debere eos
exigi pro reditibus, 'nec pro reditu', inquit, 'dabimus eos,
domine rex, salvo beneplacito vestro: sed si digne
nobis servierint vicecomites, et servientes vel ministri
provinciarum, et homines nostros manutenuerint, nequaquam eis
deerimus in auxilium.' Rex autem aegre ferens archiepiscopi
responsionem, 'Per oculos Dei', ait, 'dabuntur pro reditu, et
in scriptura regis scribentur'.
On this passage Dr Stubbs thus comments:
A tax so described can hardly have been anything else than the
danegeld, which was an impost of two shillings on the hide,
and was collected by the sheriffs, being possibly compounded
for at a certain rate and paid by them into the exchequer. As
the danegeld from this very year 1163 ceases to appear as a
distinct item of account in the Pipe-Rolls, it is impossible
to avoid connecting the two ideas, even if we may not identify
them. Whether the king's object in making this proposition was
to collect the danegeld in full amount, putting an end to
the nominal assessment which had so long been in use, and so
depriving the sheriffs of such profits as they made from it,
or whether he had some other end in view, it is impossible now
to determine; and consequently it is difficult to understand
the position taken by the archbishop.[2]
The attempt to identify the payment in dispute with the danegeld does
indeed lead to the greatest possible difficulties, and Miss Norgate,
who follows closely in Dr Stubbs' footsteps, is no more successful in
answering them;[3] for, in the first place, the words of Grim do not
apply to the danegeld if taken in their natural sense; and in the
second the proceeds of the danegeld were already royal revenue, and
were duly paid in, as such, at the exchequer. To meet this latter and
obvious difficulty Dr Stubbs suggests that:
as the sums paid into the exchequer under that name (danegeld)
were very small compared with the extent of land that paid the
tax, it is probable that the sheriffs paid a fixed composition
and retained the surplus as wages for their services (etc.).[4]
So, too, Miss Norgate urges that the danegeld 'still occasionally made
its appearance in the treasury rolls, but in such small amount that
it is evident the sheriffs, if they collected it in full, paid only
a fixed composition to the crown, and kept the greater part as a
remuneration for their own services'.[5] Now this suggestion raises
the whole question as to the revenue from danegeld. We are told that
'the danegeld was a very unpopular tax, probably because it was the
plea on which the sheriffs made their greatest profit ... having
become in the long lapse of years a mere composition paid by the
sheriff to the exchequer, while the balance of the whole sums exacted
on that account went to swell his own income'.[6]
As against this view I venture to hold that the danegeld was in no way
compounded for, but that every penny raised by its agency was due to
the royal treasury, leaving no profit whatever to the sheriff. The
test is easily applied: let us take the case of Dorset. The Domesday
assessment of this county, according to the late Mr Eyton, who had
investigated it with his usual painstaking labour, and collated it
with the geld-rolls of two years before, was about 2,300 hides.[7]
This assessment would produce, at two shillings on the hide, about
£230. Now the actual amount accounted for on the Pipe-Roll of 1130 is
£228 5s; on that of 1156 it is £228 5s; and on that of 1162, the last
levy, it is £247 5s.[8] There is certainly no margin of profit for
the sheriff here. In other counties, we find that the proceeds of the
danegeld in 1130, 1156, and 1162, whilst slightly fluctuating, roughly
correspond, as, indeed, they were bound to do, the Domesday assessment
remaining unchanged.[9] I can, therefore, find no ground for the
alleged discrepancy between the amounts accounted for by the sheriffs
and those which the assessment ought to have produced.
This being so, the solitary explanation suggested for Henry's action
falls to the ground, and it becomes clear that the payment in dispute
could not have been the danegeld, as the proposed change could not
increase the amount it produced already. As a matter of fact, the last
occasion on which danegeld _eo nomine_ was levied was in 1162, but
to connect that circumstance with the Woodstock dispute of 1163 is an
instance of the _post hoc propter hoc_ argument, more especially as
the danegeld was not in dispute, still less its abolition. On the
contrary, the primate desired to keep things as they were. What,
then, was this mysterious payment but the _auxilium vicecomitis_,
or 'sheriffs' aid'? Garnier distinctly states that this is what it
was,[10] and Grim's words no less unmistakably point to the same
conclusion. To institutional students of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries the _auxilium vicecomitis_ is familiar enough. It
was, writes Dr Stubbs, a 'payment made to the sheriff for his
services',[11] and was, it may be added, a customary charge, varying
in amount,[12] paid over locally to the sheriffs. It may fairly be
said to have stood to the danegeld in the relation of rates to taxes.
On this hypothesis the difficulties of the case vanish at once, and
Henry's object is made plain. To add this regular annual levy to
his own revenues would be all clear gain, and would relieve him _pro
tanto_ from the necessity of spasmodic and irregular taxation. As for
the sheriffs and the districts beneath their sway, they were possibly
to be left to their own devices to find a substitute for the lost
'aid', like a modern county council bereft of its wheel tax; for
the thought suggests itself that Henry was attempting to reverse the
process that we have lately witnessed, by relieving the taxes at
the expense of the rates, instead of the rates at the expense of
the taxes. Whether, therefore, the attitude of the primate can be
described as 'opposition to the king's will in the matter of taxation'
is perhaps just open to question. He took his stand on the sure ground
of existing 'custom', recognized at that time as binding on all.[13]
One is tempted to discern a grim irony in Henry's action when he
promptly proceeded to turn the tables on his old friend by appealing
to the _avitæ consuetudines_ as obviously binding on so rigid a
constitutional purist as the primate.[14]
[Footnote 1: _Early Plantagenets_, pp. 69, 70. So, too, Miss
Norgate: 'It seems, therefore, that for the first time in
English history since the Norman Conquest the right of the
nation's representatives to oppose the financial demands
of the crown was asserted in the Council of Woodstock, and
asserted with such success that the king was obliged not
merely to abandon his project, but to obliterate the last
trace of the tradition on which it was founded' (_Angevin
Kings_, ii. 16).]
[Footnote 2: _Const. Hist._, i. 462; so, too, _Early
Plantagenets_, pp. 68-70; and _Select Charters_, p. 29,
where it is described as 'Henry's proposal to appropriate the
sheriffs' share of danegeld'.]
[Footnote 3: _Angevin Kings_, ii. 15, 16.]
[Footnote 4: _Early Plantagenets_, p. 69.]
[Footnote 5: But the Auctor Anonymus makes it clear that the
king was not asking for the balance of the sums raised, but
for the entirety: 'duo illi solidi ... si in unum conferuntur
immensum efficere possunt cumulum'.]
[Footnote 6: Stubbs' _Const. Hist._, i. 381, 582.]
[Footnote 7: _Dorset Domesday_, p. 144.]
[Footnote 8: Thus accounted for (_Rot. Pip._, 8 Hen. II):
£ s. d.
Paid in 141 10 0
Paid out previously 63 0 0
Allowed for remissions 20 1 2
Balance due 22 13 10
-----------------
247 5 0
N.B. The roll sums up the remissions as £21 [_sic_] 1s 2d, but
the total of the items is £20 1s 2d.]
[Footnote 9: Oxfordshire, for instance, where the amounts were
£239 9s 3d, £249 6s 5d, £242 0s 10d; or Wiltshire, where they
run £388 13s 0d, £389 13s 0d, £388 11s 11d.]
[Footnote 10: _L'Aide al Vescunte_, as quoted by Miss Norgate,
who observes thereon, 'This payment, although described as
customary rather than legal, and called the "sheriffs' aid",
seems really to have been nothing else than the danegeld....
His (Garnier's) story points directly to the danegeld.']
[Footnote 11: _Const. Hist._, i. 382.]
[Footnote 12: In this detail alone Grim appears to have
confused it with the uniform two shilling rate of the
danegeld. The record in the _Testa de Nevill_ (pp. 85, 86)
of the 'auxilium vicecomitis', due from the Vills in the
Wapentake of Framelund (Leic.), illustrates well the payment.]
[Footnote 13: Thus the statement that he 'declared at
Woodstock that the lands of his church should not pay a penny
to the danegeld' (_Const. Hist._, i. 578) misrepresents his
position by making him repudiate his undoubted obligation.]
[Footnote 14: This and the preceding and succeeding papers are
reprinted from the _English Historical Review_.]
A GLIMPSE OF THE YOUNG KING'S COURT (1170)
The charter given below is cited by Madox as evidence that in the days
of Henry II the exchequer was still 'sometimes holden in other places'
than Westminster. Contrary to his usual practice, he does not print
the charter; so, wishing to ascertain what light it might throw on
the private transaction it records, I referred to its original
enrolment.[1] Finding that its evidence would prove of some historical
value, I decided to edit it for the use of students.[2]
Willelmus comes de Essex' omnibus hominibus [et] amicis suis,
Francis [et] Anglis, clericis [et] laicis, tam futuris quam
presentibus, salutem. Sciatis me dedisse [et] concessisse
[et] hac carta mea confirmasse Rogero filio Ricardi [et]
suis heredibus villam de Aynho cum omnibus pertinen[ciis]
in escambio pro Cunctonia hereditarie tenendam de me [et]
heredibus meis sibi [et] heredibus suis per servicium unius
militis [et] dimidii, libere et quiete [et] honorifice sicut
unquam antecessores mei liberius [et] honorificencius eam
tenuerunt [et] habuerunt; scilicet in bosco [et] in plano,
in pratis et pascuis, in viis [et] semitis, in aquis, [et]
molendinis, [et] in omnibus predicte ville adjacentibus.
Et insuper dedi [et] concessi predicto Rogero filio Ricardi
terram de Wlauynton' quam pater meus comes Gal[fridus] dedit
Willelmo de Moretonio, per servicium michi faciendum quod
predictus Willelmus patri meo facere debuit, hereditarie
tenendum [_sic_] de me [et] heredibus meis, illi [et]
heredibus suis. Quare volo [et] firmiter precipio quod ista
donacio rata [et] inconcussa permaneat. Et notum sit omnibus
quod istud eschambium factum fuit apud Wynconiam [_sic_]
ad Scaccarium coram domino Rege Henrico filio regis Henrici
Secundi [et] Baronibus suis. Tes[et]e [_sic_]
Reg' comite, Bac'[3] de Luc[i], Willelmo de Sancto Johanne,
Galfrido Archidiacono Cantuar', Ricardo Archidiacono
Pick[tavensi], Hunfrido de Buh[un] constant[e],[4] Manser'
Biset dap[ifero], Gilberto Malet dap[ifero], Hugone de
Gundvil[la], Alano de Nevill[a], Thoma Basset, Willelmo filio
Audel[ini], Johanne Mereschal, Roberto de Bussone, Johanne
const[abulario] Cestr[iae], Ranulpho de Glanvile, Gaufrido de
Say, Gerard de Kanvill[a], Oseberto filio Ricardi, David de
Jarpenvilla, Ricardo filio Hugonis, Johanne Burd, Willelmo
filio Gill[eberti], Roberto de Sancto Claro, Johanne de Roch,
Hasculfo Capellano, Henrico clerico, Roberto clerico, qui hanc
cartam scripsit, [et] multis aliis.
The purpose of the charter is soon disposed of; it records a grant by
the Earl of Essex to Roger fitz Richard (who had married the earl's
aunt 'Alice of Essex'[5]) of Aynho, Northants, in exchange for
Compton, co. Warwick. Both Manors were in the Mandeville fief, and
the former was to be held, as the latter had been (in 1166[6]), 'per
servicium unius militis et dimidii'.
The interest of the document is to be sought in its witnesses, and
its place of testing, and above all in the date which, I hope to show,
they suggest. The mention of the two inseparable archdeacons proves
that this date cannot be later than 1174, and consequently, as the
young king was present, must have been previous to his revolt in 1173,
and therefore to his departure from England about the close of 1172.
On the other hand, the date must be subsequent to June 1170, when
the young king was crowned, and therefore probably to the meeting at
Fréteval (July 22, 1170), at which the Archdeacon of Canterbury was
present.
Thus we obtain a limit of date. Within this limit we may exclude
the young king's stay in England after the departure of the two
archdeacons (December 1170), as also his subsequent presence in
England in 1171-2 while his father was in Ireland, for William fitz
Aldelin was in Ireland with him. Indeed, we are told by Giraldus (v.
286) that when the king left Ireland (April 1172) William was left
behind in charge of Wexford.[7] As the young king then accompanied his
father over sea, the only period remaining (except July-December 1170)
to which we could assign the document is August-November 1172, when he
visited England, with his consort Margaret, for his second coronation.
This ceremony took place at Winchester, but we cannot tell whether
William fitz Aldelin had yet returned from Ireland, or whether any
other of our witnesses were present on that occasion.[8]
But if we turn to the other possible period, the latter half of 1170,
we find an occasion when six of the witnesses to the above charter
can actually be shown to have been present, under circumstances of
peculiar interest, with the young king at Winchester.
The evidence of charters is so deficient at this period of the reign
that from August 1170 to June 1171, Mr Eyton could only adduce two
charters 'quite problematically' and one more 'safely', as he claims,
but erroneously, as his own pages show.[9] If, then, our charter
belongs to this period, its evidence is proportionately valuable. Now
all that we know of the movements of the young king at the time
is that he was at Westminster on October 5th, and that he kept his
Christmas at Winchester. Mr Eyton's book must here be used with great
caution. He has been misled by R. de Diceto (i. 342)[10] into the
statement that Henry was at Woodstock when Becket sought to visit him
in December; and adds--by a confusion, it would seem, with his October
movements--'The young king is at Windsor' (December 4th[11]). Henry
was neither at Woodstock nor Windsor at this time, but at Winchester.
Becket's biographers are unanimous in stating that he sent his envoy
before him to the young king at Winchester.
Landing on December 1st, and entering Canterbury next day, the primate
(says William fitz Stephen), 'post octo dierum moram in sede',[12]
sent Richard, prior of Dover (who was destined to be his own
successor), to the young king to ask permission to visit him 'tanquam
regem et dominum suum'. Richard 'veniens Wintoniam, regem invenit, ubi
optimates regni ... coegerat'.[13]
The purpose of this special assembly was connected with the scheme for
an irregular election to the vacant sees, at the court of the elder
king, by deputations whom his son was to send over.[14] Prior Richard
was confronted by the young king's guardians (three of whom attest
our charter).[15] He himself, on receiving the application, sent (as
I read it) to consult Geoffrey Ridel, who was believed to know his
father's wishes, and who, with the Archdeacon of Poitiers, was at
Southampton, waiting to cross.[16] Turning, for their movements, to
William fitz Stephen, we learn that, while on their way to cross from
a Kentish port, the two archdeacons, on entering the county, learnt
that the primate had arrived at Canterbury, and, turning their horses'
heads, made for a more westerly port.[17] Southampton clearly was the
port they made for, and on their way thither they must have visited
the young king at Winchester. This is admitted in the case of
Geoffrey, who went there, says Becket, to lay before him the complaint
of the excommunicated bishops.
I believe that our charter belongs to this occasion, when the two
attesting archdeacons were at Winchester. _Reg'_ no doubt is Earl
Reginald of Cornwall, who was certainly present at the same time[18]
and who is probably referred to in 'li cunte' of Garnier. This will
establish the presence of six of our witnesses. Of the others, Richard
de Luci takes precedence as justiciar; Alan de Nevill, Thomas Basset,
and the great Glanville were, like the two archdeacons and the three
guardians of the king, members of the judicial body; Humfrey de Bohun,
Gilbert Malet, and Manasser Bisset were present as officers of the
household; John, constable of Chester, was (then or afterwards)
son-in-law to the grantee's wife, and Geoffrey de Say was the son
of the earl's aunt; Osbert fitz Richard and David de Jarpenville
(probably John de Rochelle also) were among the earl's feudal tenants
and are found attesting another of his charters; and Hasculf was the
enterprising chaplain who had plotted to carry off the late earl's
corpse and present it to the nuns of Chicksand. The only person whose
presence need puzzle us is the Earl of Essex himself; for William fitz
Stephen[19] asserts that he was despatched from Henry's court after
the arrival there of the excommunicated prelates and the Archdeacon
of Poitou. Either, then, he had previously paid a flying visit to
Winchester, or he must have been absent when this transaction was
recorded.
[Footnote 1: Madox gives a misleading reference. The charter
occurs among the Clavering enrolments of m. 17 (not 19) of the
L.T.R. Memoranda of the Exchequer, containing the Michælmas
_communia_ of 5 Edward II.]
[Footnote 2: Mr Hubert Hall, of the Public Record Office,
kindly undertook to transcribe the charter for me.]
[Footnote 3: Read _Ric[ardo_].]
[Footnote 4: Read _constab[ulo_].]
[Footnote 5: See my paper on 'Who was Alice of Essex?' in the
_Essex Arch. Transactions_.]
[Footnote 6: 'Rogerus filius Ricardi i. militem et tres
partes unius militis.' Probably the quarter fee was a separate
holding.]
[Footnote 7: Humfrey de Bohun also and Hugh de Gundeville were
left behind at Waterford.]
[Footnote 8: Foss (_Judges of England_, i. 235) states
positively that Hugh de Gundeville did not leave Ireland
till 1173, at the time of the rebellion. This, if true,
would dispose at once of an 1172 date for our charter; but,
unfortunately, he does not give his authority, and I have not
succeeded in finding it.]
[Footnote 9: _Court, etc., of Henry II_, pp. 147, 154. The
Archdeacon of Canterbury attests the Chinon charter, which Mr
Eyton 'safely' assigns to the middle of October 1170, adding
that he had 'apparently been with the king ever since the
peace of Fréteval' (July 22nd). But he is known to have been
with the young king at Westminster on October 5th, as indeed
Mr Eyton elsewhere observes (p. 151).]
[Footnote 10: Becket, he says, visited London on his way, 'ad
videndam faciem novi regis, qui tunc temporis morabatur apud
Wdestoc' [_sic_].]
[Footnote 11: 'Court of King Henry the Younger' (Eyton, pp.
151-2).]
[Footnote 12: _Materials_, p. 121. William of Canterbury
places Richard's despatch 'post aliquot dies reditus sui'
(_ibid._, i. 106).]
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, i. 106; so Garnier (p. 166, Ed.
Hippeua)--
'Le juefne Rei aveit à Wincestre trové.
Là èrent del pais li barun assemblé.']
[Footnote 14: _Ibid._, 106; so Garnier--
'Pur c'èrent assemblé cele genz à cel jur,
Et li prince et li cunte et des baruns plusur.']
[Footnote 15: 'Veniens itaque legatus ad curiam, convenit
tutores regis ... Willelmum de Sancto Johanne, Willelmum
filium Aldelinae, Hugonem de Gundulfivilla, Randulfum
Stephani' (i. 108-9).]
[Footnote 16: 'Qui de portu Suthamtune transfretaturi erant'
(i. 111). Geoffrey sent back a scornful reply (see also
Garnier) expressing his wonder that the young king could think
of meeting a man who meant to disinherit him. This statement
agrees with Becket's own complaint (vii. 406) that his
_archidiabolus_ Geoffrey was instructed to make this charge.]
[Footnote 17: III. 120. 'Duo archidiaconi ... jam in Cantiam
venerant, ad regem illac transfretaturi. Audito autem
quod archiepiscopus appulsus Cantuariae esset, lora statim
diverterunt, ad occidentals maris portus tendentes.' This
convicts Mr Eyton of error in asserting that on December 1st
the two archdeacons were at Dover, waiting to cross (p. 149).]
[Footnote 18: _Ibid._, i. 111.]
[Footnote 19: _Memorials_, iii. 127.]
THE FIRST KNOWN FINE (1175)
In his masterly introduction to _Select Pleas of the Crown_,[1]
Professor Maitland, with his usual skill, discusses the evolution of
the _Curia Regis_ and the relation of the central to the itinerant
courts. An appendix to this introduction is devoted to 'early fines';
and the conclusion arrived at, as to the date when regular fines
began, is that 'the evidence seems to point to the year 1178
or thereabouts, just, that is, to the time when King Henry was
remodelling the Curia Regis; thenceforward we have traces of a fairly
continuous series of fines' (p. xxvii). More definitely still, in his
latest work, he traces the existence of fines 'from the year 1179'.
The earlier document I here print from the valuable cartulary of
Evesham (_Vesp._ B. xxiv., fo. 71, etc.) is, I contend, a true fine,
and is fortunately dated with exactitude (July 20th):
Hæc est finalis concordia facta in curia domini Regis apud
Evesham ad proximum festum sancte Margarete post mortem
comitis Reginaldi[2] Cornub' coram Willelmo filio Audelini
et Willelmo filio Radulfi et Willelmo Basset et aliis
justiciariis domini regis qui ibi tunc aderant, inter Rogerum
filium Willelmi et Robertum Trunket de terra de Ragl' unde
placitum fuit inter eos in curia domini Regis. Scilicet quod
predictus Wibertus Trunket clamavit quietam predicto Rogero
terram illam de Ragl' et [_sic_] feud[um] et hereditatem suam
et totum jus suum quod in predicta terra habebat, et ipse
trunchet reddidit in curia domini Regis terram illam de Ragl'
in manu [_sic_] abbatis de Evesham, et ipse abbas ibi statim
in curia Regis reddidit eam predicto Rogero. Pro hac autem
concessione dedit predictus Rogerus predicto trunchet xx.
marcas argenti, et predictus abbas dedit truchet unum anulum
argenteum cum cural.
The transcript of this fine is immediately followed by a royal charter
confirming it, and establishing Roger in possession:
H. dei gratia ... Sciatis me concessisse et presenti carta
confirmasse finem que factus fuit in curia mea inter, etc.,
etc. ... et Wibertus eam reddidit solutam et quietam in manu
abbatis de evesham de cujus feodo terra illa est.... Et
ideo volo et firmiter precipio.... Test. Willelmo Audelin',
Willelmo filio Radulfi, Willelmo Basset, Berteram de Verdun,
Gaufrido Salvagio. Apud Evesham.
Mr Eyton, to whom this fine was unknown, does not, in his _Court and
Itinerary of Henry II_, include Evesham among the places visited by
the king in 1175, but makes him visit Feckenham about October (p.
196). But as we learn from the above fine that Henry was at Evesham
on July 20th, Mr Eyton's conclusions must be reconsidered. Henry,
according to him, was at Woodstock July 8th and at Nottingham August
1st. Now this latter date is derived from a Nottingham charter (p.
193), among the witnesses to which are William fitz Audelin 'Dapifer',
William Basset, and William fitz Ralf, the very three justices
before whom our fine had been levied at Evesham on July 20th. I hold,
therefore, that Henry proceeded (possibly through Lichfield, as
Mr Eyton asserts) from Woodstock to Nottingham _via_ Evesham; and,
further, that he visited Feckenham (to the north of Evesham) on
this occasion, and not, as Mr Eyton imagined, in October. We find
accordingly that of the Feckenham charters quoted by that writer (p.
196), one is witnessed by all three of our officers, William fitz
Audelin 'Dapifer', William fitz Ralf, and William Basset; one by
William fitz Audelin and William fitz Ralf; and the third by William
fitz Ralf and William Basset.
Now, working from the Pipe-Rolls, Mr Eyton discovered that:
while the king was in Staffordshire there were pleas held in
that county which are expressed to have been held by William
fitz Ralph, Bertram de Verdon, and William Basset _in curia
Regis_ (p. 193).
He also noted that
the Pipe-Roll of 1175, after duly recounting the results of
the ordinary assizes, held by William de Lanvall and Thomas
Basset (who appear to have visited York while the king was
there), contains the following (in regard to a different kind
of judicature than that at which the two justiciars presided),
and which probably took place in a court of which the king in
person was president:
'Placita et conventiones per Willelmum filius Radulfi,
Bertram de Verdon, et Willelmum Basset, in curia Regis.' These
_Placita_ were apparently nothing more than fines with the
crown (p. 194).
So, too, he found that at Northampton
the three justiciars who had attended him in his special
_curia_ in Staffordshire and at York, negotiated a fine by
Robert de Nevill, 'pro rehabenda saisina de Uppetona quæ fuit
Radulfi de Waltervilla' (p. 194).
My own evidence proves that the same three justiciars had been with
him, earlier in the summer, in his special _curia_ at Evesham, where
an actual fine was levied.
Thus we have proof that in the summer of 1175 the king was accompanied
on his progress by a special group of justices, with whose assistance
he held pleas, just as, a generation later, John, in his ninth
year, 'was journeying about the country with three judges in his
train--Simon Pateshull, Potterne, and Pont Audemer'.[3] While he
was doing this, as Eyton has shown, two great eyres were going
on throughout the country, one of them conducted by William de
Lanvall[ei] and Thomas Basset, the other by Ranulf de Glanville and
Hugh de Cressi. It is noteworthy that all these four are found, with
William fitz Audelin, among the witnesses to a royal charter assigned
by Mr Eyton--rightly, no doubt--to the king's stay at York (_circ._
August 10, 1175), as they also are among the witnesses to the
Nottingham charter mentioned above (p. 385), assigned by Eyton to
August 1st. The latter, therefore, brings together the king's own
party of three or four justices with the four justices in eyre.
The great importance of this royal _iter_ consists in its bearing on
the evolution of the _curia regis_. The years 1175 and 1176 form a
critical epoch in this institutional development. Dr Stubbs, writing
on this subject, reminds us that 'the first _placita curiæ regis_
mentioned by Madox are in 1175' (i. 600), and speaks of the 'two
circuits of the justices in 1175, and the six circuits of the judges
in 1176' (_ibid._). So far, indeed, all is clear. The two judicial
eyres of 1175 are known to us from the Pipe-Rolls; the six of 1176 are
found in the chronicles also, for they were settled by the Assize of
Northampton in January of that year (i. 484-5). The really difficult
subject is the king's own _iter_, for which, we have seen, there is
clear evidence, but of which Dr Stubbs, working from Madox, seems to
have been unaware. His words are:
All the eighteen justices of 1176 were officers of the
Exchequer; some of them are found in 1175 holding 'placita
curiæ regis' in bodies of three or four judges, and not in the
same combinations in which they took their judicial journeys.
We can scarcely help the conclusion that the new jurisprudence
was being administered by committees of the general body of
justices, who were equally qualified to sit in the Curia and
Exchequer, and to undertake the fiscal and judicial work of
the eyre.
[_Note_: For instance, in 1176, William fitz Ralf, Bertram de
Verdun, and William Basset hear pleas in Curia Regis touching
Bucks. and Beds.; yet on the eyre, these two counties are
visited by three other judges, etc.]
These statements are based on Madox's extracts from the Pipe-Rolls,[4]
which afford, however, more definite evidence than Dr Stubbs
discovered. In the Pipe-Roll of 1175 and its immediate successor
we find 'Placita _in Curia Regis_' held by a single group of
judges--William fitz Ralf, Bertram de Verdon, and William Basset
(Thomas Basset is a substitute in one case and William fitz Audelin,
we have seen, in another)--quite distinct from the 'placita' of the
justices in eyre, which were not described as 'in curia regis'. The
view, therefore, that I now advance is that these pleas, 'in curia
regis', were held by a separate group of judges in the train of the
king himself, whose _iter_ began at Reading, June 1175.[5] It was
there, I believe, that were held the 'placita' for Bucks and Beds,
duly recorded in the Pipe-Roll of 1175. That this royal _iter_
was continued through the Exchequer year 1175-6 seems to be well
established, and the chronological difficulty of distinguishing
between the two years renders the discovery of a fixed point, such as
that afforded by the Evesham fine, of special value. Its evidence also
establishes the presence of the king in person,[6] whose charter of
confirmation should be carefully noted on account of its reciting the
fine.
Having now traced the royal _iter_, of which the pleas are
distinguished on the Pipe-Rolls as held 'in curia regis', I turn to
the circuits of the judges. I have fortunately lighted, in the
course of my researches, on two more fines earlier than any known to
Professor Maitland. And, better still, one of these is the original
document itself. The date of the first is July 1 and of the second
June 29, 1176. The justices named in each case are those who are
known to have gone the circuits, in which Leicester and Oxford were
respectively comprised.[7] The importance of these documents demands
that they should be printed _in extenso_.
I
Hec est finalis concordia facta apud Legr[ecestr]am proxima
die Jovis post proximum festum apostolorum petri et pauli
postquam Hugucio legatus Rome pervenit in Angliam,[8] coram
Hugonem de Gundevile et Willelmo filio Radulfi et Willelmo
Basset, Justiciariis domini Regis, et ceteris Baronibus qui
ibi tunc aderant Inter Galfridum Ridel et Bertramum de Verdun
de terra de Madeleye, unde placitum fuit inter eos in curia
Domini Regis, Videlicet quod Galfridus Ridel dedit Bertrammo
[_sic_] de Verdun feodum I militis in Leycest'syre, scilicet
servitium viii. car. terre quas Robert Devel tenet in
Swineford et in Walecote et servitium ii. car. terre quas
Walterus de Folevile tenet in parva Essebi et servitium I car.
terre quam peverel tenet in Flekeneye, et servitium i. car.
terre quam Hardeui[nus] tenet in eadem Flekeneye. Et has xii.
car. terre dedit ei et concessit in feodo et hereditate per
servicium unius militis. Et in Staffordesyre dedit predictus
Galfridus prenominato Bretamo [_sic_] xii. bov. terre quas
habebat in Crokestene de feodo de Madelye et servitium de
Foxwiss et de Hanekote per v. sol. inde annuatim reddendos
Galfrido pro omnibus que ad illum pertinent. Has vero terras
in Leycest'syre et in Staffordsyre dedit Galfridus Ridel et
concessit Bertramo et heredibus suis tenendas de illo et de
heredibus suis in feodo et hereditate libere et quiete per
prenominatum servitium pro omnibus que ad illum pertinent, et
pro ista donatione et concessione Bertrammus [_sic_] de Werdun
[_sic_] totam calumpniam quam habuit versus Galfridum in
Madeleye quietum clamavit de illo et de heredibus suis
Galfrido Ridel et heredibus suis.[9]
II
Hec est finalis concordia que facta fuit apud Ox[eneforde] in
curia Regis coram Ricardo Giffard et Rogero filio Reinfr[idi]
et Johanne de Caerdif Justitiis Regis ... proximum festum
apostolorum petri et pauli postquam dominus Rex cepit
ligantiam baronum Scotie apud [Ebo]racum[10] inter Canonicos
Oseneie et Ingream et tres filias eius scilicet Gundream et
Isabella et Margaretam de terre de Oxenef[orde] unde placitum
fuerat inter eos in curia Regis scilicet quod Ingrea et tres
filie sue prenominate clamaverunt predictis canonicis quietam
terram illam in Oxenenef[orde] de se et de heredibus suis pro
xx. sol. quos canonici illi dederunt et omne jus quod in eadem
terra habebant quietum illis clamaverunt.[11]
It will be observed that the Oxford fine is described as made 'in
curia regis', while the Leicester one is not. It would seem, then,
that in spite of the distinction drawn at first on the rolls, the
phrase 'curia regis' was already creeping in as describing a court at
which the king was not present.
I have also discovered, in MS., a 'fine' of some ten or twelve years
earlier, most valuable for comparison with those which I have here
discussed. We have there a similar charter of confirmation, in
which the king describes the transaction as 'finem illum quem Abbas
Willelmus de Hulmo fecit coram me',[12] and the document confirmed,
moreover, describes itself as a 'finis' between the Abbot of Holme
and William and Henry de Neville, brothers.[13] But the form is very
different from that of the true fine, which is fully developed in
our example of 1175. The Holme 'fine' may be safely assigned to March
1163-March 1166,[14] and as it was 'made' at Westminster, it not
improbably belongs to the series of proceedings there _circ._ March 8,
1163. It may fairly be presumed that if, at the date of this fine,
the fully developed form existed it would have been duly employed
at Westminster on this occasion. We may therefore safely assert,
at least, that it came into use between the dates of these two
transactions.
As bearing on the evolution of the fine, the charter of Henry II,
confirming a 'finis et concordia', and assigned by me to 1163-70,[15]
ought to be compared with the Holme charter, as indicating, perhaps,
some advance, through the close resemblance between the clauses, in
these royal charters, confirming the fine points to an almost common
stage of development.
HOLME LEWES
Quare volo et firmiter precipio Et ideo volo et firmiter precipio
quod finis ille sicut coram me ut finis iste et concordia
factus est stabilis sit, et stabilis sit et firma maneat et
firmiter et inconcusse ex inconcusse inter eos teneatur,
utraque parte teneatur. sicut facta fuit coram me et
utrobique concessa.
The part played by William fitz Audelin in the affairs, at this time,
of Ireland, gives also some importance to this proof of his presence
at Evesham on July 20, 1175. It brings us, indeed, in contact with the
great 'Laudabiliter' controversy. Miss Norgate holds that William fitz
Audelin was sent to Ireland in charge (with the Prior of Wallingford)
of that contested document in 1175.[16] Professor Tout, in his
biography of William, writes on the contrary, oddly enough, that he
was 'sent in 1174 or 1175' [_sic_] on this mission, but 'soon left
Ireland, for he appears as a witness of the treaty of Falaise in
October 1174 [_sic_], and in 1175 and 1176 he was constantly
in attendance at court in discharge of his duties as steward or
seneschal'.[17] This confusion, however, is slight when compared with
the statements as to William's tenure of the government of Ireland. It
is agreed that he was sent to succeed Earl Richard (who died April 5,
1176); but while Miss Norgate holds that 'early in the next year
Henry found it necessary to recall him',[18] Professor Tout places his
recall in 1179, consequent on complaints against him to the king in
January of that year. Without undertaking to decide the question, I
may suggest that William had returned to England by May 1177--for
he is proved by charters to have attended the Oxford council of that
date--when Henry replaced him, as governor, by Hugh de Lacy, but
entrusted him, as Hoveden states, with Wexford. We have only to assume
that Gerald, by mistake, assigns to 1172 his Wexford appointment,
which really belonged to 1177 (Professor Tout thinks this probable),
and then the solution I suggest satisfies all the requirements.
William fitz Audelin, I may add, has been peculiarly the sport of
genealogists. Having been selected by them as ancestor to the great
Irish house of Burke ('De Burgo') he was further transformed, by a
flight of fancy even wilder than usual, into a lineal descendant of
Charlemagne. Who he really was seems to have remained unknown, for his
life in the _Dictionary of National Biography_ treats with suspicion,
though duly mentioning, his alleged descent from Charlemagne.
Moreover, his very name would seem to have been left in doubt.
It would, of course, be difficult to distinguish 'Aldelinus' from
'Aldelmus' in MS., and I confess to having looked on the latter--which
is the form adopted by Professor Tout in the _Dictionary of National
Biography_, as by Miss Norgate and others--as probable enough from
its likeness to the English 'Aldhelm'. But the 'fitz Audeline' of
the Anglo-Norman poem on the Conquest of Ireland seems decisive.
'Willelmus filius Audelini, domini regis dapifer' was the style he
used in his own charters.[19]
Having always kept a look-out for him in Yorkshire, I recognized
William at once in a charter which is among those abstracted in the
Report on the Portland MSS.[20] This is a confirmation by Roger de
Mowbray of a grant to Fountains by 'Aldelin de Aldefeld and Ralph
his son and his other sons'. Among the witnesses are 'Ralph son
of Aldelin, William his brother', and at the close, 'Amelin son
of Aldel'. Now, if we turn to the _cartæ_ of 1166, we find, under
Yorkshire, that Ralph 'filius Aldelin' held half a knight's fee of
Roger de Mowbray, and William filius Aldelin one fee of Henry de
Lacy. Here we recognize the two brothers mentioned in the charters
above.[21] The small fief of William 'filius Aldelin' himself is
entered under Hampshire, where it is described as 'terra quam dominus
Rex dedit Willelmo filio Aldelin, Marscallo suo, cum Juliana filia
Roberti Dorsnelli'.
It is through this Juliana that we obtain the coping-stone of proof.
Her charter granting Little Maplestead, Essex, to the Hospitallers,
has for its first witness 'Radulfo filio Adelini', who, as we have
seen above, was her husband's brother.[22] And he is also the first
witness to William's confirmation of her gift.[23]
The parentage and the true name of William fitz Audelin are thus, at
length, clearly established.
[Footnote 1: Vol. i. (Selden Society).]
[Footnote 2: 'Reg.' MS. The earl died July 1, 1175. This fine
further confirms the accuracy of the _Gesta Henrici_ (see
Eyton, p. 192).]
[Footnote 3: Maitland's _Select Pleas of the Crown_, I. xv.]
[Footnote 4: _History of the Exchequer_ (Ed. 1711), pp. 64,
65.]
[Footnote 5: Eyton's _Itinerary_ p. 191.]
[Footnote 6: Prof Maitland has explained that this presence
was formal (_Select Pleas of the Crown_, I. xiv).]
[Footnote 7: Except that Robert fitz Bernard's place is taken
by John of Cardiff.]
[Footnote 8: October 27, 1175.]
[Footnote 9: Sloane Charter xxxi. 4, No. 34. See also
Addenda.]
[Footnote 10: August 1175.]
[Footnote 11: Cotton Charter, xi. 73 (original).]
[Footnote 12: Galba, E., II. fo. 31_b_.]
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._, 62_b_.]
[Footnote 14: The witnesses to the fine and the charter
confirming it included Richard Archdeacon of Poitiers and
Robert Earl of Leicester. The former gives us the limit March
1163, and the king was not in England in the lifetime of the
latter after March 1166.]
[Footnote 15: See my _Ancient Charters_, pp. 67-8.]
[Footnote 16: 'It is acknowledged on all hands that there is
no sign of any attempt on Henry's part to publish the letter
in Ireland ... before 1175. In that year Gerald states that
the letter was read ... at Waterford.' _English Historical
Review_, viii. 44. Cf. p. 31. See also _Angevin Kings_, ii.
182.]
[Footnote 17: _Dictionary of National Biography_. I differ
wholly from both writers, and take the view, based on record
evidence, that, contrary to the accepted belief, William
visited Ireland some two years earlier.]
[Footnote 18: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 183.]
[Footnote 19: The name of 'Audelin' is extant as a surname. I
have met with it in London.]
[Footnote 20: 13th Report Hist. MSS., App. ii., p. 4. We are
indebted, I believe, to Mr Maxwell Lyte for these interesting
abstracts.]
[Footnote 21: The name seems to be preserved in Thorpe-Audlin
(_vulgo_ Audling), a township in the West Riding of Yorkshire,
some 4-1/2 miles from Pontefract.]
[Footnote 22: It seems to be printed only in a footnote to
Morant's _Essex_ (i. 282). 'Radulfo filio Willelmi domini mei'
is a witness, which certainly suggests that William had been
married before.]
[Footnote 23: See _Monasticon_. Prof Tout seems to have been
unaware of these charters of William, one of which is dated.
Indeed he only says that William 'is said to have married'
Juliana, giving the _carta_ (1166) as his authority.]
THE MONTMORENCY IMPOSTURE
Many a jest has been levelled at the Irish family of Morres for
seeking and obtaining permission from the Crown, some eighty years
ago, to assume the glorious name of 'De Montmorency', in lieu of their
own, as having been originally that of their family.[1] They have
since borne, as is well known, not merely the name, but even the
arms and the proud device of that illustrious house. Moreover,
the introduction of the name Bouchard, borne by the present Lord
Mountmorres, proves the determination of the family to persist in
their lofty pretensions.
I am not aware whether these pretensions have ever been regularly
exposed: they seem to have been thought too fantastic for serious
criticism. At the same time, it must be remembered that they have been
formally and officially recognized by Sir W. Betham as Deputy Ulster,
by the English crown (on the strength of his statement) and by the
Chevalier De la Rue, 'garde-général des archives du Royaume', on the
French side, in 1818. On the other hand, it must not be forgotten that
MM. de Montmorency at the time, in spite of the repeated and strenuous
appeals of the Morres family, declined to admit their claim to be
members of the house of Montmorency.
To the indignant protest of Col. Hervey Morres (styling himself 'de
Montmorency-Morres') against this action of the French house, we owe
the most complete exposition of the case on behalf of his family.[2]
On it, therefore, my criticisms will be based. Nor will these
criticisms be destructive only: they will show that the pedigrees
upheld by Col. Morres and his opponents were both alike erroneous,
and will establish the real facts, which, it will be found, completely
vindicate the accuracy of Giraldus Cambrensis.
The controversy hinged on a well-known personage. 'Herveius de Monte
Mauricii', as Giraldus terms him. The French house, taking their
stand on the historians of their family, insisted that he was the only
Montmorency who had gone to Ireland in his time, and that as he had,
admittedly, left no legitimate issue, the Morres claim was untenable.
The Irish house contended that, on the contrary, others of the family
had come over also, and that they were lineally descended from one
of Hervey's brothers, but the whole story undoubtedly sprang from the
mention of this Hervey--the sole connecting link--and from the curious
form in which Giraldus chose to latinize his name.
Now Duchesne, the historian of the house of Montmorency, whose version
Desormeaux and Père Anselme did but follow in the main, wrote thus of
Hervey:
Il espousa Elizabeth de Meullent veuve de Gislebert de Claire,
Comte de Pembroc en Angleterre et mère de Richard de Claire,
surnommé Strongbow, Comte de Pembroke, dompteur de l'Hibernie,
duquel à raison de cette alliance un Autheur du temps le
qualifie parastre ou beaupère (p. 92).[3]
But this 'Autheur' is Giraldus Cambrensis, on whom Duchesne based his
account, and who, we find, does not speak of Hervey as stepfather, but
as paternal uncle of Strongbow:
Herveius de Monte Mauricii, vir quoque fugitivus a facie
fortunæ, inermis et inops, ex parte Richardi comitis cujus
_patruus_ erat, explorator potius quam expugnator advenit (i.
3).
Duchesne's version, therefore, is out of court, although it was
repeated by Père Anselme, and even adopted in the _Genealogist_ by so
skilled and able a genealogist as Mr G. W. Watson.[4]
Col. Hervey Morres went so far as to accuse Duchesne and Desormeaux
'd'adulation, d'immoralité, et de mauvaise foi' in giving this account
of his great namesake; and he proceeded to substitute a version of
his own, severing the hapless man and converting him into two! To make
this clear, I must print the essential part of the pedigree as given
by him.
Hervé
de Montmorency
|
-------------------------------------------
| | |
Bouchard Geoffroi Hervé,
de Montmorency dit le Riche 1st Bishop
V | of Ely [1109-31]
|
-------------------------------
| |
Adelaide = Hervé Robert, fils de
de de Montmorency Geoffroi, fils
Clermont | de Hervé
| |
| |
---------------- -----------------------
| | | | |
Guillaume, HERVÉ, Etienne, Jordan HERVÉ,
ob. s. p. fils de Hervé, d. 1136, V Connétable
chamberlain to aged 56 or 57 d'Irelande,
Henry II, 1182 | ob. s. p. 1205
|
|
Robert,
fils d'Etienne
The explanation is extremely simple: the whole pedigree is concocted
with a view to making the Irish Hervey uncle to Robert fitz Stephen.
This was done to satisfy the supposed requirements of Giraldus, whose
words Col. Morres thus triumphantly quoted:
Robertus Stephanides ... Inter cæteros _Herveius de
Montemaurisco_ ROBERTI PATRUUS, _nepoti suo se_ comitem
præbuit (p. 77).
Unfortunately for him, he had gone, not to Giraldus, but to
'Stonyhurst de rebus Hibernicis i. 69-70, _d'après Giraldus
Cambrensis'_. Stonyhurst had carelessly made Giraldus speak of Hervey
as uncle, not to Earl Richard, but to Robert fitz Stephen, and the
pedigree was accordingly constructed to fit this error. When the error
is corrected, the pedigree collapses; and the very passage which is
quoted to confirm it at once unmasks the concoction.
And now having made it clear that both sides were in error, I shall
set forth the true explanation of the words of Giraldus. The clue is
given us by those Deeping charters which, oddly enough, Col. Morres
duly quoted and appealed to. The first is found in the _Monasticon_,
ii. 601:
Adeliz, uxor Gilberti filii Ricardi et Gillebertus, et
Baldewinus, et Rohaisia pueri Gilberti episcopo Lincolniensi
... salutem.... Hiis testibus, Gilberto filio Gilberti,
Galterio, _Hervæo_, Baldwino fratribus ejus et Rohaisia sorore
eorum, etc., etc.
The next is the confirmation of this grant by Robert Bishop of Lincoln
(ob. 1123) as 'donum Adelidæ _de Montemoraci_' (p. 602). The third is
a charter of 'Adeliz, mater comitis Gilberti' (p. 603), who is also
styled in the Thorney Register 'Adelitia de Claromonte'. Col. Morres
also relied much on a grant to Castleacre by 'Adalicia de Claromonte',
to which the first witness is 'Her. de Montemorentino',[5] but the
relationship of the witness to the grantor is not stated.
Gilbert (1) Adeliz (2) [? Bouchard]
fitzRichard = of Clermont = de Montmorenci
of Clare |
__________|__________________________ |_____
| | | | |
Richard Gilbert Walter | Hervey
fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert | de Montmorenci,
slain 1136 Earl of of Clare | Constable
Pembroke | of Ireland
| __|________________
| | |
Richard Baldwin Rohaisia
fitzGilbert, fitzGilbert
Earl of Pembroke, of Clare
'Strongbow'
Hervey de Montmorency is also mentioned in the Bilegh Abbey
confirmation charter of Richard I, but it gives us no information.
We have now, however, sufficient evidence to recover the true
genealogy, which is interesting enough. This shows us how Hervey was
'paternal uncle' to Strongbow,[6] and why he witnessed his mother's
charter (_ut supra_) with his brothers and sister, but did not join in
their grant. We see, also, how Duchesne's error arose from his making
the widow not of Gilbert, but of his son and namesake the first Earl
of Pembroke, marry a Montmorenci. The error is not surprising in the
case of such a family as the Clares, whose alliances and ramifications
are made specially puzzling by the repetition of their Christian
names.
On the other hand, the 'dimidiation' of Hervey in the pedigree put
forward by the Morres family was merely the fruit of the resolve to
make him at all costs uncle to Robert fitz Stephen, as the words of
Giraldus were supposed to require, in their misquoted form.
Poor Hervey has, indeed, been the sport of genealogists and
historians. Mr Dimock, in his Rolls edition of Giraldus, renders his
name as 'Mont-Maurice', Miss Norgate as 'Mountmorris',[7] Mrs Green as
Mount Moriss,[8] Mr Hunt, who has written his life in the _Dictionary
of National Biography_ as Mount-Maurice, and even Mr Orpen, in
his admirable edition of the Anglo-Norman poem on the Conquest, as
'Montmaurice' (p. 335). This last is the strangest case, because the
forms found in the poem are 'Mumoreci' and 'Momorci', while, as
Mr Orpen duly points out, it is 'Munmoreci' in the Register of St
Thomas's, and 'Mundmorici' in the Cartulary of St Mary's (p. 266).
Hervey was constable to his nephew Earl Richard's troops in Ireland,
and described himself as 'Marescallus Domini Regis de Hibernia, et
senescallus de tota terra Ricardi Comitis'.
Having now shown that the alleged descent can be absolutely disproved
so far as concerns the only Montmorenci whose name occurs in
connection with Ireland, I proceed to glance at his supposed
relatives, none of whom, it is important to remember, even bore the
name of Montmorency.
The chart pedigree printed above (p. 357) will show how Robert fitz
Stephen was converted into a Montmorenci, though the parentage of
his father Stephen, constable of Cardigan, is wholly unknown. It
need scarcely be said that no proof is, or can be, given for this
filiation; but the following passage on Stephen is an excellent
illustration of the sort of evidence which is vouched for this wholly
imaginary pedigree:
Ce seigneur, très-jeune encore, en 1087, confirma
conjointement avec son père et son aïeul Hervé, fils de
Bouchard, la donation faite par Turillus le Gros à l'abbaye de
St. Florent de Saumur de certaines bénéfices.
Sig. Hervei filii Burchardi, Sig. Roberti filii ejus, Sig.
Stephani militis ejus.
All that is needed, we are told, is to read grandson ('petit fils')
instead of _filius_ for Robert, and great-grandson for _miles_--on the
ground that _miles_ sometimes meant 'un jeune homme'! Such is a type
of the 'proofs' on which this pedigree rests. But its absurdities
and inconsistencies go even further than this. The dates work out as
follows:
Hervey de Montmorency
|
Geoffrey 'le Riche'
|
Robert fitzGeoffrey
tenant-in-chief 1166
|
-------------------------------------------
| | |
Stephen, Hervey, Geoffrey,
born. _circ._ 1080, d. 1205 d. 1211
died 1136, having
witnessed above
charter in 1087
|
Robert fitz Stephen
Thus Stephen, who was born about 1080, and was a witness in 1087,
would be _son_ to a man who flourished in 1166, and _brother_ to men
who died in 1205 and 1211.[9]
But what are we to say when we learn further that this Stephen, who
died in '1136', is the 'Stephanus de Marisco' who appears in the
_Liber Niger_ as a tenant of the Bishop of Ely in 1166! The probable,
and indeed only, explanation is that Col. Morres did not even know
when the returns in the _Liber Niger_ were compiled. Their real date
again destroys this cock-and-bull pedigree, or genealogical nightmare,
which, for sheer topsy-turveydom, has, I venture to assert, never been
surpassed.
I strongly suspect that the whole story arose from the occurrence in
Ireland, in the thirteenth century, of the latinized name 'De Marisco'
or 'De Mariscis', which represents of course, neither Montmorenci nor
Morres, but simply Marsh. Genealogists, no doubt, were attracted by
the form 'De Monte Maurisco' into tracing a connection; but, so far
as can be understood, Col. Morres discarded this resemblance, and
represented his alleged ancestors as 'seigneurs de Mariscis ou
des marches' in England, connecting them with the fen district in
Cambridgeshire. It would be easy to show that the early pedigree
positively teems with absurdities similar to those I have already
exposed, but it would be sheer waste of time to devote any more
attention to proofs, which Col. Morres proudly boasted were 'vérifiés
avec la plus scrupuleuse attention par l'autorité competente et
sanctionnés désormais par l'autorisation du prince qui gouverne
aujourd'hui l'empire britannique' (p. 25).
I do not hesitate to say that a more impudent claim was never
successfully foisted on the authorities and the public. The chief
sinner in the matter was, of course, Sir W. Betham, who certified
(June 29, 1815) that this audacious concoction was 'established
on evidence of the most unquestionable authority, chiefly from the
ancient public records' (p. 203). The Crown naturally could only
accept the statement of its own officer of arms, and accordingly
described the alleged descent as being duly proved and recorded.[10]
As for the French expert, the Chevalier de la Rue, of whose
investigation and favourable verdict (April 17, 1818) so much has been
made, it will scarcely be believed that he actually, with the sole
exception of the _Monasticon_, did not attempt to verify the 'proofs'
set before him! It will be seen from his own words that his decision
was subject to their genuineness:
Toutes les citations puisées par monsieur de Morrès dans les
monuments, registres, et terriers publics d'Angleterre
étant, _comme je n'en doute pas_, aussi exactes que celles du
Monasticon (p. 37).
The value of his loudly-trumpeted verdict may be estimated from this
admission.
It is only right that MM. de Montmorency and all those in France who
are interested in historical genealogy should understand that no
one among ourselves, whose opinion is worth having, would dream of
defending this gross usurpation. We may hope and believe that in the
present day no officer of arms would behave like Sir W. Betham,
and certify, as 'established on evidence of the most unquestionable
authority' a descent which is not merely 'not proven', but can be
absolutely disproved. It cannot be stated too emphatically, or known
too widely, that the house of Morres has no more right, by hereditary
descent, to the name and arms of 'De Montmorency' than any of the
numerous families of Morris, or indeed, for the matter of that, the
family of Smith.[11]
[Footnote 1: See, for instance, the _Complete Peerage_ of G.
E. C. _sub_ 'Frankfort de Montmorency'.]
[Footnote 2: _Les Montmorency de France et les Montmorency
d'Irlande, ou Précis historique des démarches faites à
l'occasion de la reprise du nom de ses ancêtres par la branche
de Montmorency-marisco-morres._ Paris, 1828.]
[Footnote 3: _Histoire de la maison de Montmorency_. Paris,
1624.]
[Footnote 4: Vol. x., p. 6.]
[Footnote 5: Blomefield's _Norfolk_, ix. 5.]
[Footnote 6: Since this article was written, Mr Hunt's life of
Hervey has appeared in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ He has arrived
at precisely the same conclusions as myself.]
[Footnote 7: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 101, 112.]
[Footnote 8: _Henry the Second_, p. 159.]
[Footnote 9: 'Etienne de Mariscis [_sic_] ... fut tué en 1136
par les Gallois lorsqu'il gouvernait ce pays' (p. 74). 'Il
n'était agé lors de sa mort que de cinquante six ou cinquante
sept ans' (p. 75).]
[Footnote 10: _London Gazette_, September 9, 1815; _Dublin
Gazette_, August 12, 1815.]
[Footnote 11: For an even more illustrious foreign descent,
see my paper, 'Our English Hapsburgs: a great delusion'
(_Genealogist_, N.S., x. 193).]
THE OXFORD DEBATE ON FOREIGN SERVICE (1197)
Great importance is rightly assigned to the first instances of 'a
constitutional opposition to a royal demand for money',[1] of which
the two alleged earliest cases are 'the opposition of St Thomas to the
king's manipulation of the danegeld [1163], and the refusal by St Hugh
of Lincoln to furnish money for Richard's war in France [1197]'.[2]
These two precedents are always classed together: Dr Stubbs writes of
St Hugh's action:
The only formal resistance to the king in the national
council proceeds from St Hugh of Lincoln and Bishop Herbert
of Salisbury, who refuse to consent to grant him an aid in
knights and money for his foreign warfare ... an act which
stands out prominently by the side of St Thomas's protest
against Henry's proposal to appropriate the sheriff's share of
danegeld.[3]
And Mr Freeman repeats the parallel:
Thomas ... withstands, and withstands successfully, the
levying of a danegeld.... As Thomas of London had withstood
the demands of the father, Hugh of Avalon withstood the
demands of the son. In a great council ... [he] spoke up for
the laws and rights of Englishmen ... no men or money were
they bound to contribute for undertakings beyond the sea.[4]
Having already discussed the earlier instance,[5] and advanced the
view that the Woodstock debate [1163] did not relate to danegeld at
all, but to an attempt of the king to seize for himself the _auxilium
vicecomitis_ (a local levy) I now approach the later instance.
'This occasion,' we read, 'is a memorable one':[6] it is that of
an 'event of great importance',[7] of 'a landmark in constitutional
history'.[8] No apology, therefore, is needed for endeavouring to
throw some further light on an event of such cardinal importance. But,
to clear the ground, let us first define what we mean by 'opposition
to a royal demand for money'. However autocratic the king may have
been--and on this point there is not only a difference of opinion
but a difference in fact corresponding with his strength at any given
period--there were limits set by law or custom (or, should we rather
say, limits, both written and unwritten?) beyond which he could not
pass. 'Domesday', for instance, was a written limit: if the king
claimed from a Manor assessed at ten hides the danegeld due from
twenty, the tenant need only appeal to 'Domesday' (_poneret se super
rotulum Winton'_). Or, again, if from a feudal tenant owing the
forty days' service the king were to claim eighty days, he would be
transgressing unwritten custom as binding as a written record. But
outside these limits there lay a debatable ground where that elastic
term _auxilium_ proved conveniently expansive. It was here that the
crown could increase its demands, and here that a conflict would arise
as to where the limit should be placed, a conflict to be determined
not by law, but by a trial of strength between the crown and its
opponents. We have, then, to decide to which of these spheres the
action of St Hugh should be assigned, whether to that of the lawyer
appealing to the letter of the bond, or to that of the popular leader
opposing the demands of the king, though they did not contravene the
law. If one may use the terms, for convenience sake, it was a question
of law or a question of politics; and only if it was the latter had it
a true constitutional importance.
The two chief accounts of the Oxford debate are found in _Roger
Hoveden_ and the _Magna Vita St Hugonis_. As they are both printed in
_Select Charters_, I need not repeat them here. There is, however, an
independent version in the _Vita_ of Giraldus Cambrensis, which it may
be desirable to add:
In Anglicanam coepit [rex] ecclesiam duris exactionibus
debacchari. Unde collecto in unum regni clero, habitoque
contra insolitum et tam urgens incommodum districtiore
consilio, verbum ad importunas pariter et importabiles
impositiones contradictionis et cleri totius pro ecclesiastica
libertate responsionis, in ore Lincolnensis tanquam personae
prae ceteris approbatae religionis authenticae magis communi
omnium desiderio est assignatum (vii. 103-4).
Gerald's editor impugns the correctness of these statements, on the
grounds that the assembly was not clerical merely and that the bishop
did not speak on behalf of the whole church. But the passage seems to
me to refer to a meeting of the clergy in which it was decided that St
Hugh should be their spokesman at the council. Of the other objection
I shall treat below.
According to Hoveden, Richard asked for either (1) three hundred
knights who would serve him, at their own costs, for a year, or (2) a
sum sufficient to enable him to hire three hundred knights for a
year at the rate of three shillings a day. The _Magna Vita_, however,
implies that the former alternative alone was laid before the council.
The grounds on which St Hugh protested are thus given by our two
authorities:
Respondit pro se, quod ipse in hoc voluntati regis nequaquam
adquiesceret, tum quia processu temporis in ecclesiae suae
detrimentum redundaret, tum quia successores sui dicerent,
'Patres nostri comederunt uvam acerbam, et dentes filiorum
obstupescunt' (Hoveden).
Scio equidem ad militare servitium domino regi, sed in hac
terra solummodo exhibendum, Lincolniensem ecclesiam teneri;
extra metas vero Angliae nil tale ab ea deberi. Unde mihi
consultius arbitror ad natale solum repedare ... quam hic
pontificatum gerere et ecclesiam mihi commissam, antiquas
immunitates perdendo, insolitis angariis subjugare (_Magna
Vita_).
Two points stand out clearly--one that St Hugh took his stand on the
prescriptive rights of his church, rights infringed by the king's
demand; the other, that he spoke for himself alone, not for the
church, still less for the barons, and least of all for the nation.
Our authorities, however, are so vague that they leave in doubt the
precise point 'taken' by the saintly prelate. Mr Freeman, we have
seen, confidently assumes that he 'spoke up for the laws and rights of
Englishmen'; Miss Norgate holds that he took up the position of Thomas
and Anselm as 'a champion of constitutional liberty',[9] whatever that
may mean; even Dr Stubbs claims that he 'acted on behalf of the nation
to which he had joined himself'.[10]
I venture to think that the clue to the enigma is to be found in quite
another quarter. In the chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond we find a
most instructive passage, which refers, it cannot be doubted, to the
same episode. The story is told somewhat differently, but the point
raised is the same. King Richard, we are told, demanded that knights
should be sent him from England, in the proportion of one from every
ten due by the church 'baronies'. The _servitium debitum_ of St
Edmund's being forty, the abbot was called upon to send four.[11] That
the principle of joint equipment, which had been adopted under Henry
II in 1157,[12] and again I think by Longchamp in 1191,[13] was
resorted to on this occasion is the more probable because a few years
later (1205) we find King John similarly demanding 'quod novem milites
per totam Angliam invenirent decimum militem, bene paratum equis et
armis, ad defensionem regni nostri'. I admit, however, that it is not
mentioned in the other versions of our episode, and Jocelin speaks
only of the demand upon the church fiefs. But the point is that
when the abbot consulted his tenants as to sending the four knights
required, they protested that they were liable to pay scutage, but not
to serve out of England.[14] Now this is a _locus classicus_ on the
institution of scutage. Its bearing I shall examine below, after
finishing the story. The abbot, we read, finding himself in a strait,
crossed the sea in search of the king, who told him that a fine would
not avail; he wanted men, not money.[15]
Surely we have here the key to the position taken by St Hugh. When he
claimed that his fief was not bound 'ad servitium militare ... extra
metas Angliae' he cannot have referred to the payment of scutage, for
that had been paid by his predecessors and himself without infringing
the liberties of their church.[16] He must, therefore, have referred
not to 'money', but to _personal_ service outside the realm. But was
this exemption peculiar to the church of Lincoln? If we find the same
privilege existing at St Edmund's and at Salisbury, may we not infer
that the church contingents were only bound to serve in person
for 'defence, not defiance',[17] and that we have here the perfect
explanation of the fact that scutage, as commutation for service, is
an institution, when it first appears, peculiar to church fiefs? The
mediaeval dread of creating a precedent preyed on the abbot as on the
saint. From the council of Lillebonne to the Bedford _auxilium_ (1224)
it was always the same cry:
Creiment k'il seit en feu tornez
Et en costume seit tenu
Et par costume seit rendu.
It was in this spirit that Hugh of Avalon, I take it, made his stand:
other prelates might waive the point, in consideration of the king's
necessities, but he, at least, would never allow a standing exemption
to be broken through and thus impaired for all time.
His attitude, we are told, proved fatal to the scheme, compelling the
king and his ministers to abandon it in impotent wrath. But perhaps
his biographer exaggerates the defeat, for the Bishop of Salisbury,
we know, had to purchase the king's pardon for his action by a heavy
fine, while the Abbot of St Edmund's had to compromise the matter
by the payment of a large sum.[18] It seems probable that similar
compromises would be arranged in other cases where the request was not
complied with.
If, then, I am right in the solution I offer, St Hugh must have taken
the narrowest ground, and have acted on behalf of ecclesiastical
privilege, and only incidentally even for that, his protest being
limited to his own church.[19] And, further, it follows that, like
St Thomas, he was acting strictly on the defensive. To say that his
action affords 'the first clear case of the refusal of a money grant
demanded directly by the crown, and a most valuable precedent, for
later times',[20] is, I submit with all respect, to set it in a quite
erroneous light. In 1197, as in 1163, the crown was trying to infringe
on well-established rights, and St Hugh like St Thomas, resisted that
infringement, so far as his own rights were concerned, just as he
would have resisted an attempt of the crown to deprive his see of a
Manor, of feudal services, or of goods. The crown might take its pound
of flesh, but more than that it should not have; never, through any
action of his, should his church be deprived of its prescriptive
rights.[21]
Here this article originally closed; but I am tempted to refer to one
touching on the same subject which appeared a year later in the pages
of the same review.[22] Alluding to 'the question of foreign service'
as a prominent grievance under John,[23] I wrote:
Ralf of Coggeshall, and Walter of Coventry, assert that the
northern barons denied their liability to foreign service
in respect of lands held in England. John retorted that the
principle had been admitted in the days of his father and
his brother, and therefore claimed it _tanquam debitum_. This
justifies the fears expressed sixteen years before by St
Hugh of Lincoln, and explains what I termed, in examining his
action, the mediaeval dread of creating a precedent.[24]
The final loss of Normandy had, of course, altered the case, but even
while it still formed part of an English King's possessions, there
must always have been scope for argument as to feudal obligations. To
quote once more from the same article:
The question must have been complicated by the growth of the
king's dominions. Did the feudatories owe service to the king,
as their lord, in whatever war he was engaged? Or were they
only bound to follow him as King of England? Or were they, as
holding _a conquestu_, only bound to serve in the dominions
of the Conqueror who enfeoffed them, i.e. in England and
Normandy?[25]
On the death of the Conqueror, the question would arise for the King
of the English and the Duke of the Normans were no longer one and the
same. It comes to the front accordingly in a gathering of the barons
at Winchester, which Mr Freeman assigns to Easter, 1090.[26] Orderic,
here his authority, places it under 1089, and although his chronology
is not to be always blindly followed, there is no ground for supposing
here that the date is wrong. When he is following out a story or
carried on by allusion, Orderic, like other chroniclers, anticipates
or wanders in his dates; but this gathering has no connection with
what precedes or follows; there is, therefore, nothing to account for
his placing it under 1089, if it really belonged to 1090.
But the point to which I would call attention is the nature and
intention of this gathering. Orderic writes:
Confirmatus itaque in regno, turmas optimatum ascivit, et
Guentoniæ congregatis, quæ intrinsecus ruminabat sic ore
deprompsit.
Mr Freeman attaches to the speech that follows no small importance.
Holding that the king 'was now ready to take the decisive step of
crossing the sea himself or sending others to cross it', he pointed
out that:
even William Rufus, in all his pride and self-confidence, knew
that it did not depend wholly on himself to send either native
or adopted Englishmen on such an errand. He had learned enough
of English constitutional law not to think of venturing on
a foreign war without the constitutional sanction of his
kingdom. In a Gemot [_sic_] at Winchester, seemingly the
Easter Gemot of the third year of his reign, he laid his
schemes before the assembled Witan [_sic_], and obtained their
consent to a war with the Duke of the Normans.[27]
Of course, in reading Mr Freeman's works we must reconcile ourselves
to 'Gemot' and 'Witan' being thrust upon us at every turn, however
radically false a conception these words may convey. At the close of
his dealing with this episode, he refers us, as a parallel, to the
'full Gemot' of 1047, in which 'the popular character of the assembly
still', we learn, 'impresses itself on the language of history'. Now
Orderic describes those who were summoned to our Winchester gathering
as 'turmas optimatum'; he makes William begin his speech 'nostri
egregii barones'; and he places in his mouth language essentially
feudal and Norman:
Nunc igitur commoneo vos omnes, qui patris mei homines
fuistis, et feudos vestros in Normannia et Anglia de illo
tenuistis[28] ... c[oe]nobia quæ patres nostri construxerunt
in Neustria ... Decet ergo ut, sicut nomen ejus [_i.e._
Willelmi] et diadema gero, sic ad defensionem patriæ inhæream
ejus [_i.e._ Normanniæ] studio.
Mr Freeman expressed astonishment and delight at William's
'constitutional language', and declared that though, in its actual
wording, the speech, of course, was Orderic's:
the constitutional doctrines which he has worked into his
speech cannot fail to set forth the ordinary constitutional
usage of the time. Even in the darkest hour in which England
had any settled government at all, etc., etc.[29]
And then follows the usual lament for 'the days of King Eadward',
when it was not a 'cabinet', but a crowd, that dealt with the delicate
question of peace or war.
Now even the late Professor's most ardent followers cannot represent
my criticism here as 'trifling', or unimportant. Mr Freeman, I hold,
had misconceived the matter altogether. The whole thing is sheer
delusion. William's appeal, as set before us, was not the fruit of
studies in English 'constitutional law': it was the appeal of a feudal
lord to 'barons' holding by feudal tenure. Should there be any one
who feels the slightest doubt upon the question, let him turn to Mr
Freeman's own account of the great 'Assembly of Lillebonne'. He could
not himself avoid a passing glance at the parallel, when he wrote
that 'William the Red had as good reasons to give for an invasion
of Normandy as his father had once had to give for an invasion of
England'.[30] Contrasting that Assembly (1066) with an English Gemot,
he wrote that 'in William's Assembly we hear of none but barons'.[31]
Precisely. But that remark is equally true of his son's Assembly at
Winchester.[32] And when we learn, a few years later, the
composition of his Assembly, we find it admittedly restricted to
tenants-in-chief.[33] Of the two Assemblies, that of Lillebonne
revealed a more active opposition, showed more 'parliamentary
boldness', than that of Winchester.[34] The latter merely applauded,
we read, the King's appeal. Like his father, he appealed to his barons
to follow him on foreign service; like him also, he pleaded his wrongs
and the justice of his righteous cause.
Of the two, the father seems, as I have said, to have met with more
opposition than the son. One might therefore produce an argument _ad
absurdum_, and contend that, on Mr Freeman's showing, an English King
was not less, but more, absolute than a Norman Duke. In any case we
have now seen that the ideas about 'constitutional usage', and so
forth, imported here by Mr Freeman, were nothing but a figment of
his brain. The Assembly of Winchester no more resulted from 'English
constitutional law' than did the Assembly of Lillebonne, convened for
a similar purpose. William Rufus had to deal with barons who could not
be anxious to invade Normandy merely to make him Duke of the Normans.
If they had any preference in the matter, it would be rather for
Robert than for William, for a weak rather than a strong ruler;
but, apart from preference, the barons would be loth to engage in
internecine warfare merely for the personal advantage of one brother
or the other. This was seen in the peaceful close of the invasion
by Duke Robert, as with that of Duke Henry half a century later. The
question, in short, that arose in 1066, when a Duke of the Normans
asked his barons to make him King of the English, arose once more in
the days of his son, when a King of the English asked his barons to
make him Duke of the Normans.
It was here no question of 'the laws and rights of Englishmen':[35] it
was to no folkmoot that William Rufus spoke. When we read of the King
in his court, composed of his tenants-in-chief,[36] as surrounded by
'no small part of the nation',[37] when we hear of the mass of
'the Assembly ... crying Yea, yea';[38] when we learn that 'a
great numerical proportion, most likely a numerical majority, were
natives',[39] we are fairly prepared for the astounding statement
that:
The wide fields which had seen the great review and the great
homage in the days of the elder William, could alone hold the
crowd which came together to share in the great court of doom
which was holden by the younger.[40]
For we see that in all these fantasies of a brain viewing plain facts
through a mist of moots and 'witan', we have what can only be termed
history in masquerade.
[Footnote 1: Stubbs' _Const. Hist._ (1874), i. 510.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 577.]
[Footnote 3: _Select Charters_ (1870), pp. 28-9. So too,
preface to _Rog. Hoveden_ (1871): 'It may be placed on a par
with St Thomas's opposition to Henry II in 1163' (iv., pp.
xci-xcii). So also _Early Plantagenets_ (1876), p. 126, and
_Const. Hist._, i. 510.]
[Footnote 4: _Norm. Conq._, v. 675, 695.]
[Footnote 5: See above, p. 377.]
[Footnote 6: _Early Plantagenets_, p. 126.]
[Footnote 7: _Const. Hist._, i. 509.]
[Footnote 8: _Ibid._, p. 510, and pref. to _Rog. Hoveden_,
iv., pp. xci-xcii.]
[Footnote 9: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 350.]
[Footnote 10: _Early Plantagenets_, p. 126.]
[Footnote 11: 'Precepit rex Ricardus omnibus episcopis et
abbatibus Angliae ut de suis baroniis novem milites facerent
decimum, et sine dilacione venirent ad eum in Normanniam,
cum equis et armis in auxilium contra Regem Franciae. Unde et
abbatem oportuit respondere de iiii. militibus mittendis' (ed.
Camden Soc, p. 63).]
[Footnote 12: 'Præparavit maximam expeditionem ita ut duo
milites de tota Anglia tertium pararent ad opprimendum
Gualenses.' _Robert de Torigni_.]
[Footnote 13: 'Tertium cum omnibus armis totius Angliae
militem die nominato mandavit venire Wintoniam.' Ric. Devizes
(Rolls Series), p. 409.]
[Footnote 14: 'Cumque summoneri fecisset omnes milites suos,
et eos inde convenisset, responderunt feudos suos, quos de
Sancto Ædmundo tenuerunt, hoc non debere, nec se nec patres
eorum unquam Angliam exisse, set scutagium aliquando ad
praeceptum regis dedisse' (_ibid._).]
[Footnote 15: 'Abbas vero in arcto posito, hinc videns
libertatem suorum militum periclitari, illinc timens ne
amitteret saisinam baronie sue pro defectu servicii regis,
sicut contigerat Episcopo Lundonensi [? Lincolnensi] et multis
baronibus Angliæ, statim transfretavit, et ... in primis
nullum potuit facere finem cum rege per denarios. Dicenti
ergo se non indigere auro nec argento, sed quatuor milites
instanter exigenti', etc. (_ibid._).]
[Footnote 16: 'In quibis conservandis sive exhibendis hactenus
fere per tredecim annos a rectis praedecessorum meorum
vestigiis non recessi' (_Magna Vita_).]
[Footnote 17: 'Ad publicam rem tuendam' (_Abingdon Cart._, ii.
3).]
[Footnote 18: 'Quatuor milites stipendiarios optulit abbas.
Quos cum rex recepisset, apud castellum de Hou misit. Abbas
autem in instanti eis xxxvi. marcas dedit ad expensas xl.
dierum. In crastino autem venerunt quidam familiares regis,
consulentes abbati ut sibi caute provideret, dicentes werram
posse durare per annum integrum vel amplius, et expensas
militum excrescere et multiplicari in perpetuum dampnum ei et
ecclesiae suae. Et ideo consulebant ut, antequam recederet
de curia, finem faceret cum rege, unde posset quietus esse
de militibus predictis post xl. dies. Abbas autem, sano
usus consilio, centum libras regi dedit pro tali quietantia'
(_Jocelin_, p. 63). It is noteworthy that thirty-six marcs
would represent just three shillings a day (for forty days)
for each knight, the very sum named by Hoveden. In 1205
the pay named in John's writ was two shillings a day (home
service), but both these sums are largely in excess of the
eight pence a day paid, as we have seen, under Henry II, the
discrepancy being incomprehensible, unless the higher wage
implied a larger following.]
[Footnote 19: Dr Stubbs held [1870] that he acted 'not
on ecclesiastical but on constitutional grounds' (_Select
Charters_, p. 28), though he subsequently [1871] doubted
whether 'the grounds of the opposition' were 'ecclesiastical
or constitutional' (Pref. to _Hoveden_, iv., p. xci), and even
admitted that 'the opposition of St Hugh was based not on
his right as a member of the national council, but on the
immunities of the church' (_Const. Hist._, i. 578).]
[Footnote 20: _Hoveden_, iv., xcii.]
[Footnote 21: 'Antiquas immunitates perdendo.']
[Footnote 22: 'An Unknown Charter of Liberties.' _English
Historical Review_, viii. 288 _et seq._]
[Footnote 23: See Dr Stubbs' Pref. to _W. Coventry_, p. lxiv.]
[Footnote 24: _English Historical Review_, viii. 293.]
[Footnote 25: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 26: _Will. Rufus_, i. 222.]
[Footnote 27: _Ibid._, i 222.]
[Footnote 28: Mr Freeman quotes this passage and duly renders
it in his text (i. 232).]
[Footnote 29: _Ibid._, i. 22.]
[Footnote 30: _Ibid._, i. 222.]
[Footnote 31: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 290.]
[Footnote 32: 'Turmas optimatum'--'barones'. Cf. _supra_, pp.
247, 262.]
[Footnote 33: _Will. Rufus_, ii. 56-7.]
[Footnote 34: _Norm. Conq._, iii. 294-6, 298.]
[Footnote 35: _Supra_, p. 398.]
[Footnote 36: At Salisbury, January 13, 1096.]
[Footnote 37: _Will. Rufus_, ii. 57.]
[Footnote 38: _Ibid._, 59.]
[Footnote 39: _Ibid._, 57.]
[Footnote 40: _Ibid._, 56.]
RICHARD THE FIRST'S CHANGE OF SEAL (1198)
With the superficial student and the empiric politician, it
is too common to relegate the investigation of such changes
to the domain of archæology. I shall not attempt to rebut
the imputation; only, if such things are archæology, then
archæology is history.--STUBBS, Preface to _R. Hoveden_, IV,
lxxx.
Historical research is about to pass, if indeed it is not already
passing, into a new sphere--the sphere of Archæology. The central idea
of that great advance which the present generation has witnessed in
the domain of history has been the rebuilding of the historical
fabric on the relatively sure foundation of original and contemporary
authorities, studied in the purest texts. Chronicles, however, are not
inexhaustible: for many periods they are all too few. The reaper has
almost done his work; the turn of the gleaner has come. The smaller
_quellen_ of history have now to be diligently examined and made to
yield those fragments of information which will supplement, often
where most needed, our existing stock of knowledge.
But this is not our only gain as we leave the broad highways trodden
by so many before us. Those precious fragments which are to form our
spoils will enable us to do more than supplement the statements of
our standard chroniclers: they will afford the means of checking, of
testing, by independent evidence, these statements, of submitting our
witnesses to a cross-examination which may shake their testimony and
their credit in a most unexpected manner.
As an instance of the results to be attained by archæological
research, I have selected Richard the First's celebrated change of
seal. Interesting as being the occasion on which the three lions first
appear as the Royal arms of England--arms unchanged to the present
day--it possesses exceptional historical importance from the
circumstances by which it was accompanied, and which led, admittedly,
to its adoption.
Historians have agreed, without the least hesitation, to refer this
event to the year 1194, and to place it subsequent to the truce of
Tillières or about the beginning of August. 'That Richard I,' writes a
veteran student,[1] 'adopted a new seal upon his return from the Holy
Land is a matter of notoriety.' Speed, in fact, had shown the way. We
are told by him that 'the king caused [1194] a new broad seale to
be made, requiring that all charters granted under his former seale
should be confirmed under this, whereby he drew a great masse of money
to his treasurie'.[2] The Bishop of Oxford, with his wonted accuracy,
faithfully reproduces the statement of Hoveden (the original and sole
authority we shall find for the story), telling us that 'Amongst other
oppressive acts he [Richard] took the seal from his unscrupulous
but faithful chancellor, and, having ordered a new one to be made,
proclaimed the nullity of all charters which had been sealed with the
old one.'[3] Mr Freeman similarly places the episode just before 'the
licenses for the tournaments' (August 20, 1194), and consistently
refers to Dr Stubbs's history.[4] Miss Norgate, in her valuable work,
our latest authority on the period, assigns the event to the same
date, and tells us that 'Rog. Hoveden's very confused account of the
seals is made clear by Bishop Stubbs'.[5] Mr Maitland, in his noble
edition of 'Bracton's Note-book', gives a case (ii. 69) in which a
charter sealed 'secundo sigillo Regis Ricardi' was actually produced
in court (1219), and explains that 'Richard had a new seal made in
1194', referring to Hoveden for his authority.[6]
It should be observed that all these writers rely merely on Hoveden,
none of them throwing any light on the process of confirmation, or
telling us how it was effected, and whether any traces of it remain.
An independent writer, M. Boivin-Champeaux, in his monograph on
William Longchamp, discusses the episode at some length, and
asserts that the repudiated documents were 'assujettis, pour leur
revalidation, à une nouvelle et coûteuse scellure'. Like the others,
however, he relies on the authority of Hoveden, and consequently
repeats the same date.
In the course of examining some ancient charters, I recognized one
of them as nothing less than an actual instance of a confirmation
consequent on this change of seal. But its incomprehensible feature
was that the charter was confirmed on August 22, 1198, having
originally been granted, 'sub primo sigillo', so recently as January
7th preceding. How could this be possible if the great seal had been
changed so early as August 1194, and if the first seal, as stated
by Dr Stubbs, was 'broken' on that occasion? Careful and prolonged
research among the charters of the period (both in the original and in
transcripts) has enabled me to answer the question, and to prove that
(as, of course, the above charter implies) the change of seal did
not take place in 1194, but 1198, and between January and May of that
year.
Original charters under the second seal, confirming grants under
the first, are distinctly rare. I have found, as yet, but one in
the Public Record Office, and only two at the British Museum. But
of originals and transcripts together I have noted twenty-eight. The
dates of the original grants range from September 5, 1189, to January
7, 1198 (1197-8), and of the confirmations from May 27, 1198, to April
5, 1199.[7]
In a single instance there is fortunately preserved not only the text
of the confirmation charter, but also that of the original grant.[8]
From this we learn that the charter of confirmation did not
necessarily give the wording, but only the gist ('tenor') of the
original grant. We are thus brought to the instructive formula
invariably used in these charters:
Is erat tenor carte nostre in primo sigillo nostro. Quod quia
aliquando perditum fuit, et, dum capti essemus in alem[anniâ],
in aliena potestate constitutum, mutatum est. Huius autem
innovationis testes sunt Hii, etc., etc.
We may here turn to the passage in Hoveden [ed. Stubbs, iii. 267]
on which historians have relied, and see how far the reasons for the
change given in the charters themselves correspond with those alleged
by the chronicler.
Fecit sibi novum sigillum fieri, et mandavit, per singulas
terras suas, quod nihil ratum foret quod fuerat per vetus
sigillum suum; tum quia cancellarius ille operatus fuerat inde
minus discrete quam esset necesse, tum quia sigillum illud
perditum erat, quando Rogerus Malus Catulus, vicecancellarius
suus, submersus erat in mari ante insulam de Cipro, et
præcepit rex quod omnes qui cartas habebant venirent ad novum
sigillum ad cartas suas renovandas.
In both cases we find there are two reasons given; but while one of
these is the same in both, namely the temporary loss of the seal
when Roger Malchael was drowned, the other is wholly and essentially
different. The whole aspect of the transaction is thus altered. To
illustrate this I shall now place side by side the independent glosses
of the Bishop of Oxford and of M. Boivin-Champeaux:
Richard's first seal was lost Sur deux exemplaires usuels du
when the vice-chancellor was grand sceau, le premier, que
drowned between Rhodes and Cyprus portait le vice-chancelier
in 1190; but it was recovered Mauchien, avait été perdu lors
with his dead body. The seal that de l'ouragan qui, en vue de
was now broken must have been the Chypre avait assailli la flotte
one which the chancellor had used Anglo-Normande, le second était
during the king's absence. resté en Angleterre; mais il
Richard, however, when he was at avait subi, par suite de la
Messina, had allowed his seal to revolution du 10 octobre, de
be set to various grants for nombreuses vicissitudes.
which he took money, but which Richard se prévalut de ces
he never intended to confirm. circonstances jointes au
Therefore probably he found it désaveu de la trève de Tillières
convenient now to have a new pour publier un édit aux termes
seal in lieu of both the former duquels tous les actes publics
ones, although he threw the blame passés sous son règne, qui
of the transactions annulled upon avaient été légalisés avec les
the chancellor. The importance of anciens sceaux étaient frappés
the seal is already very great. de nullité et assujettis, pour
(_Const. Hist._, i. 506, note.) leur revalidation â une nouvelle
et coûteuse scellure. Cette
ordonnance aurait pu, à la
rigueur, se colorer, si elle
n'avait concerné que les actes
accomplis pendant l'expédition
et la captivité du roi; mais le
comble de l'impudence et de
l'iniquité était de l'appliquer
même à ceux qui avaient précéde
son départ ou suivi son retour
(p. 223).
Thus both writers assume that there were two seals, one which remained
in England with the chancellor, and one which accompanied the king
to the east. They further (though Dr Stubbs is somewhat obscure) hold
that the two excuses given refer respectively to the two seals, thus
discrediting both. But when we turn to the charters themselves, we
find but one seal mentioned, and to that one seal alone both the
excuses refer. The king explains that on two occasions it was, so to
speak, 'out on the loose'--(1) when his vice-chancellor was drowned;
(2) when he himself was captured in Germany. This was, of course, the
seal which accompanied him to the east.[9] The king makes no allusion
to any other or to the chancellor. Such charters and grants as are
known to us all proceed from the king himself, either before he left
Messina or after he had reached Germany on his return. No charter or
grant of Longchamp, as representing him, is known. In short, the whole
of our record evidence points one way: the charters which the king
proclaimed must be confirmed, and which we find brought to him for
that purpose were those which he had himself granted, and no other.
Lastly, even had we nothing before us but the passage in Hoveden which
all have followed, I contend that it may, and indeed ought to be,
read as referring to a single seal. But it is, as Miss Norgate justly
observes, 'very confused', from its allusion to the chancellor's use
of the seal. That allusion, however, would most naturally refer to the
truce of Tillières, and not to the use of a separate seal in England.
Therefore even if we accepted, which I do not, Hoveden's statement, it
would not warrant the inference that has been drawn.
Again, when Miss Norgate writes of the 'withdrawal of the seal from
William', and when Dr Stubbs tells us that the king 'took the
seal from' him, these statements may have two meanings. But M.
Boivin-Champeaux is more precise: 'L'emploi de ces procédés emportait
le mépris et la violation non seulement de tous les actes étrangers
au chancelier, mais encore de tous ceux où il avait mis la main. Il ne
pouvait décemment conserver les sceaux. Le roi les lui enleva.' This
is a distinct assertion that Longchamp was deprived of his office. Yet
all our evidence points to the conclusion that he remained chancellor
to the day of his death.
Dismissing Hoveden for the time, and returning to the testimony of the
charters, we have seen that they point to the event we are discussing
having taken place in 1198, between January 7, at which date the first
seal was still in use, and May 27, when charters were already being
brought for confirmation under the second seal. Passing now from the
charters to the seals still in existence, we learn from Mr Wyon's
magnificent work[10] (which has appeared since I completed my own
investigation) that the first seal was still in use on April 1,
1198,[11] while an impression of the second is found as early as May
22, 1198.[12] Thus our limit of time for the change is narrowed to
April 1-May 22, 1198.[13] The evidence of the charters and of the
seals being thus in perfect harmony, let us see whether this limit
of date corresponds with a time of financial difficulty. For, so
desperate a device as that of the king's repudiation of his charters
would only have been resorted to at a time of extreme pressure. What
do we find? We find that the time of this change of seal corresponds
with the great financial crisis of Richard's reign. The Church had
at length lost patience, and had actually in the Council at Oxford
(December 1197) raised a protest. The 'want of money', in Miss
Norgate's words, was 'a difficulty which ... must have seemed
well-nigh insurmountable'. Preparations were being made for a huge
levy at five shillings on every ploughland. It was at this moment
that the desperate king repudiated all the charters he had granted
throughout his reign, and proclaimed that they must be 'brought to him
for confirmation; in other words ... paid for a second time'.[14]
Let us now look at the other chroniclers. R. Coggeshall is independent
and precise:
Accessit autem ad totius mali cumulum, juxta vitæ ejus
terminum, prioris sigilli sui renovatio, quo exiit edictum
per totum ejus regnum ut omnes cartæ, confirmationes, ac
privilegiatæ libertates quæ prioris sigilli impressione
roboraverat, irrita forent nec alicujus libertatis vigorem
obtinerent, nisi posteriori sigillo roborarentur. In quibus
renovandis et iterum comparandis innumerabilis pecunia
congesta est (p. 93).
This is in complete accordance with the now ascertained fact that
Richard changed his seal, and regranted the old charters, within the
last year of his life. Similarly independent and precise evidence is
afforded by the Annals of Waverley:
MCXCVIII. Anno X. regis Ricardi præcepit idem rex omnes cartas
in regno suo emptas reformari, et novo sigilli sui impressione
roborari, vel omnes cassari, cujuscunque dignitatis aut
ordinis essent, qui vellent sua protectione defensari, vel
universa bona sua confiscari.[15]
Further, we read in the Annals of Worcester[16] and in the _Historia
Major_ of M. Paris (ii. 450-451)[17] that in 1198, 'circaque festum
sancti Michaelis, mutatæ sunt carte quas prius fecerat rex Ricardus,
novo sigillo suo'. Now this Michaelmas fell just in the heart of the
period within which the process of confirmation is proved to have been
going on.
We see, then, that the evidence (1) of the seals, (2) of the charters,
(3) of the circumstances of the time, (4) of other chroniclers, all
concur in pointing to the spring of 1198. And now we will lastly
appeal to Hoveden against himself. After telling us of the king's
proclamation on the refusal of the religious to contribute to the
carucage in the spring of 1198, he adds:
Præterea præcepit idem rex ut omnes, tam clerici quam laici,
qui cartas sive confirmationes habebant de sigillo suo veteri
deferrent eas ad sigillum suum novum renovandas, et nisi
fecerint, nihil quod actum fuerat per sigillum suum vetus
ratum haberetur (iv. 66).
This passage, which ought to be compared with Coggeshall, is merely
ignored by Dr Stubbs. Miss Norgate, however, boldly explains it as 'a
renewal of the decree requiring all charters granted under the king's
old seal to be brought up for confirmation under the new one'
(ii. 356). But the passage stands by itself, as describing a new
measure.[18]
The only conclusion to be drawn from this cumulative evidence is that
the earlier passage in Hoveden (1194) which has been so universally
accepted, must be rejected altogether. Against the facts I have
adduced it cannot stand.
Incredible though it may seem that a court official, a chronicler
so able and well informed, indeed, in the words of his editor, 'our
primary authority for the period',[19] should have misstated so
grossly an event, as it were, under his own eyes, we must remember
that 'Hoveden's personality is to a certain degree vindicated by a
sort of carelessness about exact dates'.[20] Yet even so, 'few are
the points', our supreme authority assures us, 'in which a very
close examination and collation with contemporary authors can detect
chronological error in Hoveden'.[21] Nor, of the eight anachronisms
laboriously established by Dr Stubbs, does any one approach in
magnitude the error I have here exposed. The importance of every
anachronism in its bearing on the authorship of the chronicle is by
him clearly explained.
How far does the rejection of this statement on the change of seal
affect the statement which precedes it as to the Truce of Tillières?
Hoveden places the latter and the former in the relation of cause and
effect:
Deinde veniens in Normanniam moleste tulit quicquid factum
fuerat de supradictis treugis, et imputans cancellario suo hoc
per eum fuisse factum, abstulit ab eo sigillum suum, et fecit,
etc. (iii. 267).
This is rendered by Dr Stubbs in the margin: 'He annuls the truce and
all the acts of the chancellor passed under the old seal.' The passage
has also been so read by M. Boivin-Champeaux (p. 221); but if that is
the meaning, which I think is by no means certain, Hoveden contradicts
himself. For he speaks five months later of the truce ('Treuga quæ
inter eos statuta fuerat duratura usque ad festum omnium sanctorum')
as not having stopped private raids on either side.[22] R. de Diceto,
mentioning the truce (ii. 120), says nothing of it being annulled, nor
does R. Newburgh in his careful account. On the contrary, he implies
that it held good, though the terms were thought dishonourable to
Richard (ii. 420). I should, therefore, read Hoveden as stating simply
that Richard was much annoyed at ('moleste tulit') its terms, and was
wroth with the chancellor for accepting them.
In addition to correcting the received date for Richard the First's
change of seal, the evidence I have collected enables us, for the
first time, to learn how and to what extent the confirmation of
the charters was effected. We find that it was no sweeping process,
carried out on a single occasion, but that it was gradually and slowly
proceeding during the last eleven months of the king's life. Here,
then, is the explanation of another fact (also hitherto overlooked),
namely that only a minority of the charters were ever confirmed
under the second seal.[23] For the king's death abruptly stopped the
operation of that oppressive decree which was being so reluctantly
obeyed.
It should be superfluous for me to add that, in thus correcting
previous statements, I have not impeached the accuracy of our greatest
living historian, who could only form his judgment from the evidence
before him. The result of my researches has been to show that the
evidence itself breaks down when submitted to the test of fact.
_Granted_ _at_ _Confirmed_
1. 16 April, 1194[24] Winchester 27 May, 1198
2. 2 December, 1189 Canterbury 15 June, 1198
3. 10 October, 1189 Westminster 1 July, 1198
4. 28 November, 1189 Canterbury 1 July, 1198
5. 1 July, 1190 Dangu 3 July, 1198
6. 5 September, 1189 Westminster 30 July, 1198
7. 17 September, 1189 Geddington 30 July, 1198
8. 25 April, 1194 22 August, 1198
9. 12 December, 1194 Chinon 22 August, 1198
10. 7 January, 1198 Vaudreuil 22 August, 1198
11. 8 December, 1189 Dover 10 September [1198]
12. 6 December, 1189 Dover 15 September [1198]
13. 14 March, 1190 Nonancourt 18 September, 1198
14. 23 March, 1190 Rouen 19 September, 1198
15. 29 November, 1189 Canterbury 9 October, 1198
16. 6 October, 1189 Westminster 20 October, 1198
17. 7 December, 1189 Dover 24 October, 1198
18. 23 March, 1190 Rouen 5 November, 1198
19. 7 December, 1189 Dover 10 November, 1198
20. 17 September, 1189 Geddington 12 November [1198]
21. 28 November,[25] 1189 Canterbury 13 November, 1198
22. 27 July, 1197 Isle d'Andely 14 November, 1198
23. 10 November, 1189 Westminster 30 November, 1198
24. 5 August, 1190 Marseilles 7 December, 1198
25. September, 1197 Rouen 17 December, 1198
26. 1189 [No place] 24 January, 1199
27. 15 April, 1190 Evreux 3 March, 1199
28. 22 June, 1190 Chinon 11 March, 1199
29. 25 April, 1194 Portsmouth 5 April, 1199
_at_ _Grantee_ _Authority_
1. Lions Robert fitz Roger Cart. Ant. EE. 6
2. Château Gaillard Hugh Bardulf Cart. Ant. EE. 10
3. Château Gaillard Ely Cart. Ant. JJ. 43
4. Château Gaillard Ely Cart. Ant. NN. 26
5. Château Gaillard William Longchamp Cart. Ant. JJ. 46
6. Lire Rievaulx Abbey Rievaulx Cartulary
(Surtees Soc.), p. 308
7. Lire Rievaulx Abbey Rievaulx Cartulary
(Surtees Soc.), p. 308
8. Thomas Basset Hist. MSS., 9th
Report, ii. 404
9. Roche d'Orival Alan Basset Cott. Cart. xvi. 1
(Rymer i. 67)
10. Roche d'Orival Alan Basset Anc. Deeds, Ser. A.
No. 5924
11. Château Gaillard Shaftesbury Abbey Harl. MS. 61, fo. 26
12. Château Gaillard Peterborough Abbey Cart. Ant. EE. 21
13. Château Gaillard Waltham Abbey Cart. Ant. RR. 7 & 8
14. Château Gaillard Roger de Sancto Manveo Cart. Ant. BB. 6
15. Château Gaillard Fontevrault Cart. Ant. F. 1
16. Lions St Leonard's, Stratford Add. MS. 6, 166,
fo. 341
17. Château Gaillard Stratford Langthorne Abbey Cart. Ant. E. 1
18. Château Gaillard St Jacques de Boishallebout Add. Cart. (Brit.
Mus.) No. 3
19. Château Gaillard Boxley Abbey Cart. Ant. Q. 8
20. Château Gaillard St Alban's Abbey Ancient Deeds,
A. 1050
21. Château Gaillard Tynmouth Priory Cart. Ant. BB. 18
22. Château Gaillard Llanthony Abbey Cart. Ant. B. 26
23. Lions The Templars Deville's Transcripts
24. Lions Church of Durham Surtees Soc., vol.
IX. p. lvi.
25. 'Sanctum Ebruskum' Domus Dei (Southampton) Cart. Ant. D. 30
26. Cahagnes Spalding Priory Add. MS. 5844, fo. 228
27. Château du Loir Gilbert fitz Roger Hist. MSS., 10th
Report, 325
28. Chinon W. Briwerre Great Coucher II.
1, 67 IV. (1, 2)
29. [No place] Noel 'serviens' Cart. Ant. D. 30
[Footnote 1: Canon Raine, _Historiæ Dunelmensis Scriptores
Tres_ (Surtees Soc.), p. 379.]
[Footnote 2: Speed's History (1611).]
[Footnote 3: _Const. Hist._, i. 506.]
[Footnote 4: _Norman Conquest_, v. 693. Compare _The Office of
the Historical Professor_, pp. 16, 17: 'In a long and careful
study of the Bishop of Chester's writings ... I have never
found a flaw in the statement of his evidence. If I have now
and then lighted on something that looked like oversight, I
have always found in the end that the oversight was mine and
not his.']
[Footnote 5: _England under the Angevin Kings_, ii. 343.]
[Footnote 6: I have been able to identify this very charter.]
[Footnote 7: This is the only confirmation I have found later
than March 3. If the date can be relied on, it is of special
interest as being the day before the king died.]
[Footnote 8: Charters to W. Briwere, June 22, 1190, and March
11, 1199 (1198-9), transcribed in the Great Coucher (Duchy of
Lancaster).]
[Footnote 9: Dr Stubbs, indeed, writes, as we have seen, that
'the seal that was now broken must have been the one which the
chancellor had used during the king's absence'. But Longchamp
had been ejected from the chancellorship in October 1191,
whereas Richard limits the period of abuse to the duration of
his captivity, which did not begin till December 20, 1192.]
[Footnote 10: _The Great Seals of England_ (Stock), p. 149.]
[Footnote 11: Its impression is attached to a charter tested
at Tours, now at Lambeth Palace. If the date of this charter
is correctly given, it is an important contribution to the
Itinerary of Richard.]
[Footnote 12: _Ibid._, p. 19.]
[Footnote 13: It is singular that Mr Wyon, while giving these
_data_, should himself assign the change to '_circ._ 1197',
and still more singular that he should elsewhere (p. 20)
accept the usual passage from Hoveden (iii. 267).]
[Footnote 14: Miss Norgate (1194), ii. 343.]
[Footnote 15: _Annales Monastici_, ii. 251.]
[Footnote 16: _Ibid._, iv. 389 (Vespasian E, iv.).]
[Footnote 17: Faust A. 8. fo. 136. It is a striking instance
of the confusion and blundering to be met with even in our
best chronicles that M. Paris (_Chron. Maj._, ii. 356) has
an independent allusion to the king's change of seal (as
a 'factum Ricardi regis enorme') in which he gives us a
circumstantial account of the event and of the prior of St
Alban's going over to France to secure the confirmation, 'cum
effusione multæ pecuniæ et laboris', but assigns it to the
year 1189. Hoveden's error pales before such a blunder as
this, which has been accepted without question by the learned
editor, Dr Luard.]
[Footnote 18: Hoveden, by placing it wrongly (p. 66) _after_
Hubert's resignation (p. 48), to which it was some two months
previous, has misled Miss Norgate into the belief that it was
the work of his successor, Geoffrey.]
[Footnote 19: Stubbs' _Hoveden_, iv., xxxii.]
[Footnote 20: _Ibid._, p. xxv.]
[Footnote 21: _Ibid._, p. xxxi.]
[Footnote 22: iii. 276. This distinctly implies that the truce
had been nominally in full force. Note that it is here spoken
of as '_till_ All Saints', while in the document itself (iii.
259) it is made for a year _from_ All Saints. Miss Norgate
(ii. 367) speaks of it as 'till All Saints' (1195), but I
think it was made from July 1194 to All Saints 1195.]
[Footnote 23: I have not found a single charter of municipal
liberties, though the reign was so rich in them, among these
confirmations. Nor since this article first appeared, in
1888 (_Arch. Rev._, vol. i.), have I found more than four
additional cases of resealed charters, raising the total
to twenty-eight. Of these a detailed list is given on pp.
442-15.]
[Footnote 24: 'Scilicet die secunda coronationis nostræ.']
[Footnote 25: 'December' in Cart. Ant., which date is accepted
in Gibson's 'Monastery of Tynmouth'.]
COMMUNAL HOUSE DEMOLITION
There was a strange custom peculiar to the ancient community of the
Cinque Ports, which has not, so far as I know, been found elsewhere in
England. If a member of any one of these towns was elected to serve
as Mayor or 'Jurat' (the governing bodies consisting of a Mayor and
twelve 'Jurats'), and refused to accept the office, his house was
publicly demolished by the community. An extract from the Custumal of
Sandwich, headed 'Pena maioris electi recusantis officium suum', will
make the custom clear:
Si maior sic electus officium suum recipere noluit, primo et
secundo et tercio monitus, tota communitas ibit ad capitale
messuagium suum, si habuerit proprium, et illud cum armis
omnimodo quo poterit prosternat usque ad terram.... Similiter
quicunque juratus fuerit electus, et jurare noluerit, simile
judicium.[1]
Although the custom of house demolition is apparently, as I have
said, peculiar in England to the Cinque Ports, it was of widespread
occurrence abroad. Thither, therefore, we must turn our steps in order
to investigate its history.
It is in Flanders and in Northern France, and in Picardy, most of
all, that we find this singular custom prevailing, and discover its
inseparable connection with the institution of the _Commune_. It would
seem that the penalty of house demolition was originally decreed for
offences against the _commune_ in its corporate capacity. Thierry,
basing his conclusions mainly on the charters of the _commune_ of
Amiens and the daughter-charter of Abbeville writes:
Celui qui se soustrait à la justice de la Commune est puni
de banissement, et sa maison est abattue. Celui qui tient
des propos injurieux contre la Commune encourt la même peine.
Voilà pour les dispositions communes aux chartes d'Amiens et
d'Abbeville, c'est-à-dire pour celles qui authentiquement sont
plus anciennes que l'acte royal de 1190. Si l'on ne s'y arrête
pas et qu'on relève dans cet acte d'autres dispositions,
probablement primitives aussi, on trouvera les peines du crime
politique, _l'abatis de maison_ et le banissement, appliquées
à celui qui viole sciemment les constitutions de la Commune et
à celui qui, blessé dans une querelle, refuse la composition
en justice et refuse pareillement de donner sécurité à son
adversaire.
Une peine moindre, car elle se réduit à ce que la maison du
délinquant soit abattue s'il n'aime mieux en payer la valeur,
est appliquée à celui qui addresse des injures au Maire dans
l'exercice de ses fonctions, et à celui qui frappe un de
ses Jurés devant les magistrats, en pleine audience. Ainsi
l'abatis de maison, vengeance de la Commune lésée ou offensée,
était à la fois un châtiment par lui-même et le signe
qui rendait plus terrible aux imaginations la sentence de
banissement conditionnel ou absolu. Il avait lieu dans la
plupart ... des communes du nord de la France avec un appareil
sombre et imposant; en présence des citoyens, convoqués à
son de cloche, le Maire frappait un coup de marteau contre
la demeure du condamné, et des ouvriers, requis pour service
public, procédaient à la démolition qu'ils poursuivaient
jusqu'à ce qu'il ne restât plus pierre sur pierre.[2]
The public character of the ceremony, which was no less marked at
Sandwich (_vide supra_), is well illustrated in the _Ordonnances_
of Philip of Alsace (_circ._ 1178) on the powers of his _baillis_ in
Flanders:
Domus diruenda Judicio Scabinorum, post quindenam a scabinis
indultam, quandocunque comes præceperit, aut ballivus ejus,
diruetur a communia villæ, campana pulsata per Scabinos; et
qui ad diruendam illam non venerit, in forisfacto erit, etc.,
etc.
This ringing of the communal bell--parallel to the moot-bell of
England--is an important feature in the matter. Without insisting
upon a stray allusion, one may ask whether an entry in the Colchester
records in the sixteenth century, threatening that if an offending
burgess does not make amends, the town will 'ring him out of his
freedom', may not be explained by this practice.
There are plenty of other early instances of this house demolition in
recognized _Communes_. At Bruges we read (_circ._ 1190): 'Si scabini
voluerint domum eius prosternere, poterunt', etc., etc. So, too,
at Roye, the charter (_circ._ 1183) provides: 'Domus forisfactoris
diruetur si Major voluerit, et si Major redempcionem accipiet de
domibus diruendis', etc., etc.... 'Si quis extraneus ... forisfactum
fecerit ... Major et homines ville ad diruendam domum ejus exeant; quæ
si sit adeo fortis ut vi Burgensium dirui non possit, ad eam diruendam
vim et auxilium conferemus'.[3] So essential was the power of
distraint, as we might term it, given to the community over its
members, by the possession of a house, that it was sometimes made
compulsory on a new member to become possessed of a house within a
year of his joining. This was the case at Laon, one of the oldest
of the _Communes_, the charter of Louis VI (1128) providing that
'Quicunque autem in Pace ista recipiatur, infra anni spatium aut domum
sibi edificet, aut vineas emet ... per que justiciari possit, si
quid forte in eum querele evenerit'. Where, in the absence of such
provision, the culprit had no house to be demolished, it would seem
that, in some cases, he had to procure one, for the express purpose of
being demolished, before he could be restored to his membership. Thus,
at Abbeville, the charter of _Commune_ provides that 'si domum
non habuerit, antequam villam intret, domum centum solidorum, quam
communia prosternat, inveniet'.
Thierry pointed out how the 'commune' of north-eastern France found
its way, through its adoption in Normandy, to the opposite corner of
the country 'sur les terres de la domination Anglaise'.[4] The
form 'jurats' adopted by the Cinque Ports for the members of their
governing body suggests, indeed, some connection with Gascony, to
which region, as Thierry observed, it more especially belongs.[5] I
was much struck, when visiting Bayonne, with its interesting municipal
history. Thierry alludes to its peculiar character;[6] and, as the
town had commercial relations with the Cinque Ports, and illustrates,
moreover, the tendency of a commercial port to adopt, from other
regions, a constitution peculiar to itself, I shall here give from its
local customs the provisions as to house demolition.
Appended to John's charter granting a _communa_ to Bayonne (April 19,
1215) we find a code of communal ordinances based partly on those
in the Rouen and Falaise charters and partly on the customs of La
Rochelle. In this code the penalty of destroying the offender's house
was decreed for a magistrate who accepted bribes,[7] for a citizen
who shirked his military service,[8] for a perjured man,[9] for a
thief.[10]
It again appears as the penalty for receiving bribes in the local
Custumal assigned to 1273: 'La soe maison sera darrocade, et que
jameis ed ni son her no hage juridiccion en le communi.' In the
foundation-charter granted to Sanabria by Alphonso IX of Leon, in
1220, we find this penalty similarly assigned to perjury ('que la su
casa sea derribada por esta razon'); but when the charter was altered
by Alphonso X (September 1, 1258), the penalty was commuted for a
pecuniary fine of sixty 'sueldos', on the ground that the destruction
of the house was an injury to the city and to himself.[11] This is
important as affording an instance of the actual introduction of
commutation.
Now, my contention is that, as the practice of communal house
demolition wandered down into Gascony, and thence actually crossed
the Pyrenees into Spain, so--in the opposite direction--it crossed the
channel and established itself in the Cinque Ports. As these
movements become better understood, we are learning to treat them
scientifically, and to trace them through their growth to their
origin. In the case of the _commune_, the principle of filiation
enables us to accomplish this with remarkable success.
But, it may be asked, is there any instance, on the other side of the
channel, of house demolition being the penalty prescribed for refusal
to accept office as Mayor or Jurat? It is, I reply, at Amiens the very
penalty prescribed for that offence! The Custumal of Amiens contained
these two clauses:
Et convient que chis qui pris est faiche le serment de le
mairie; et se il ne veult faire, on abatera se maison, et
demourra en le merchy du roy au jugement de esquevins.
Derekief se li maires qui eslus seroit refusoit le mairie et
vausist souffrir le damage, jà pour che ne demouerroit qu'il
ne fesist l'office; et se aucuns refusoit l'esquevinage, on
abateroit sa maison et l'amenderoit au jugement de esquevins,
et pour chou ne demoureroit mie que il ne fesist l'office de
l'esquevinage.[12]
Thierry, who was ignorant of the Cinque Ports custom--as the
historians of the Cinque Ports appear to have been ignorant of that
at Amiens--describes this provision as 'loi remarquable en ce qu'elle
faisait revivre et sanctionnait par des garanties toutes nouvelles ce
principe de la législation romaine, que les offices municipaux sont
une charge obligatoire'.[13] But this brings us face to face with
the difficult and disputed question of the persistence of Roman
institutions. Personally, I have always thought it rash to accept
similarity as proof of continuity. Here, for instance, the occurrence
of this practice at Sandwich might lead to the inference that the
institutions of Sandwich were of direct Roman origin. Yet, if this
practice was imported from France, we see how erroneous that inference
would be. A _reductio ad absurdum_ of this rash argument, as I have
elsewhere pointed out, would be found in the suggestion that every
modern borough rejoicing in the possession of aldermen had derived its
institutions continuously from Anglo-Saxon times. In the particular
instance of this practice, we should note that it occurs (_a_) in that
portion of France where the municipal development was least Roman
in character; (_b_) in a peculiar and original form--the 'garanties
toutes nouvelles' of Thierry.
Again, we find the infliction of fines for non-acceptance of municipal
office a familiar custom in England even to the present day. These
fines were undoubtedly commutations for an original expulsion from
the community; and at Colchester, for example, we have a case of a man
being deprived of 'his freedom' for declining the office of alderman,
and of his having to make 'submission' and pay a fine before it was
restored. The fact is, that in every community, whether urban or
rural, where office was a necessary but burdensome duty--like modern
jury-service or mediaeval 'suit'--a penalty had to be imposed upon
those who declined to discharge it. The peculiarity of the Sandwich
and Amiens cases consists not in the imposition of a penalty, but in
the character of the penalty imposed.
Pass we now from the consideration of this penalty to the wider and
important conclusions suggested by its local occurrence.
I have always been puzzled by the peculiar phenomena presented by the
'Cinque Ports' organization. To other writers it would seem to
present no such difficulty; but to me it is unique in England, and
inexplicable on English lines. In that able monograph of Professor
Burrows,[13] which is the latest contribution on the subject, the
writer, I venture to think, leaves the problem as obscure as ever.
I shall now, therefore, advance the suggestion, which has long been
taking form in my mind, that the 'Cinque Ports' corporation was
of foreign origin, and was an offshoot of the communal movement in
Northern France.
From Picardy, which faced the Cinque Ports, they derived, I believe,
their confederation. To quote Thierry:
La région du nord, qui est le berceau, et pour ainsi dire la
terre classique des communes jurées, comprend la Picardie,
l'Artois, etc.... Parmi ces provinces, la Picardie est celle
qui renferme le plus grand nombre de communes proprement
dites, où cette forme de régime atteint le plus haut degré
d'indépendance et où dans ses applications, elle offre le plus
de variété. Les communes de Picardie avaient en général toute
justice, haute, moyenne et basse. Nonseulement dans cette
province les chartes municipales des villes se trouvaient
appliquées à de simples villages, dont quelques-uns n'existent
plus, mais encore _il y avait des confédérations de plusieurs
villages ou hameaux réunis en municipalités sous une charte et
une magistrature collectives_.[14]
Let me briefly summarize the arguments on which I base my hypothesis:
(1) There is no parallel to the Cinque Ports confederation in
England,[15] but there is in Picardy.
(2) The very name 'Cinque Ports' betrays a foreign origin,[16] as does
the fact that the oath taken by the King's Warden to the Corporation
was termed, not an oath, but a 'serement' (as in France).
(3) The English Merchant-Guild[17] and the English 'Alderman'[18] were
unknown to the Cinque Ports constitutions; but they all possessed the
typical constitution of the _communes_ of Northern France, namely a
Mayor, with a Council of twelve, these twelve councillors having the
French name of _Jurats_.[19]
(4) In the Cinque Ports, as in the French _Communes_, we find side
by side with this elective administration, a royal officer, with us a
Warden, with them the _Sénéchal_ (or _Prévôt_ or _Bailli_) _du Roi_.
(5) The very same penalty of house demolition for refusal to accept
office as Mayor or Jurat was exacted in the Cinque Ports (and nowhere
else in England) as at Amiens.
I do not contend that the French 'commune' was adopted intact by the
Cinque Ports, for, of course, it was not so. In the matter of names
alone, they are not styled a 'commune', nor are the members of their
community termed 'jurés' (_jurati_), but 'barons' (_barones_).
The study, however, of the 'commune' in France itself reveals the
adaptation to environment it underwent on transplantation. And, the
salient feature of the Cinque Ports organization, the fact that they
formed a single community, possessing a single assembly, and receiving
a joint charter, is paralleled most remarkably in the joint 'communes'
of Picardy, containing from four to eight separate 'Vills'.[20]
It would be very satisfactory if the French 'communes' could throw
light on the obscure title of 'barons' appertaining to the men of the
Cinque Ports, and to them, I maintain (against Professor Burrows),
alone among English burgesses. I have elsewhere shown that there
is evidence of the use of this term at an earlier period than is
supposed, viz., in the early years of Stephen;[21] but on its origin
the 'commune' throws no light. One can only quote the parallel
afforded by the 'commune' of Niort, and this is taken from a late
document (1579). Its officers are said to hold of the King 'à droit
de baronie, à foi et homage-lige, au devoir d'un gant ou cinq
sols tournois, pour tous devoirs, payables à chaque mutation de
seigneur'.[22] This 'devoir' is parallel, it will be seen, to the
'canopy-service' (or 'Honours at Court') of the Cinque Ports, rendered
as it was, in practice, 'à chaque mutation de seigneur'. It is
noteworthy that a French royal charter of 1196 contains the clause:
'prefati quatuor ville exercitum et equitationem novis debent _sicut
alie communie nostre_';[23] but one can scarcely connect this with the
naval service of the Cinque Ports. Yet it was part, undoubtedly, of
the communal principle that the 'commune' should hold directly of the
King, and not of any mediate lord, and this principle would explain
the style 'barones regis' applied to the men of the Cinque Ports.
To sum up, there are features about the Cinque Ports organization
which can only be accounted for, it seems to me, by the hypothesis
here advanced. If this novel solution be accepted,[24] a question
at once arises as to the date at which this communal confederacy was
established. From what we know of the origin of the 'commune', we can
scarcely believe in its adoption here till a generation, at least,
after the Conquest. 'Only the least informed and most sceptical,'
writes Professor Burrows, 'have placed the act of incorporation
later than the date of the Conqueror',[25] but a wider knowledge of
municipal institutions would lead to the opposite conclusion. It
is possible that the reign of Henry I may have witnessed the
superimposing of a communal confederacy on the existing institutions
of the several ports; it is impossible, at any rate, to trace it in
Domesday, and difficult, indeed, to reconcile with its existence the
evidence afforded by the Great Survey. It is conceivable that the
position already attained, in the Conqueror's days, by Dover, may have
served as a model for the other Ports, when they learnt the power of
the principle that lay at the root of the _commune_--'L'union fait la
force'.[26]
[Footnote 1: Boys' _Sandwich_, p. 431.]
[Footnote 2: _Monographie de la Constitution communale
d'Amiens_ (_Essai sur l'Histoire ... du Tiers-Etat_, pp.
347-8). The charter of Abbeville prescribed this penalty
('domus ejus et omnia ad ejus mancionem pertinentia
prosternantur') for homicide, which lies outside the class of
'political offences'. Giry, in his _Etablissements de Rouen_
(1883), speaks of the 'abattis de maison' as 'caractéristique
du droit municipal du Nord' (i. 431), but I do not find that
he anywhere mentions it as the penalty appointed for refusing
office.]
[Footnote 3: _Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France_,
xi., p. 228.]
[Footnote 4: So also p. 263, where he calls attention to
'l'établissement de la constitution communale de Rouen et de
Falaise dans quatre des provinces annexées au XII^{e} siècle à
la domination anglo-normande'; and to 'cette adoption de la
commune jurée selon le type donné par les grandes villes de la
Normandie, événement auquel contribua sans doute la politique
des rois d'Angleterre'.]
[Footnote 5: 'À Bordeaux ... le principal titre de
magistrature était celui de Jurats, titre qu'on retrouve dans
une foule de villes, depuis la Gironde jusqu'au milieu de la
chaîne des Pyrénées' (p. 247).]
[Footnote 6: 'Au milieu de cette unité d'organisation
administrative et judiciaire la ville de Bayonne se
détache, et contraste avec toutes les autres. On la voit, au
commencement du XIII^e siècle, abandonner le régime municipal
indigène et chercher de loin une constitution éstrangère,
celle des communes normandes, transportée et perfectionée
dans les villes du Poitou et de la Saintonge; c'est une double
cause, la suzeraineté des rois d'Angleterre étendue de la
Normandie aux Pyrénées, et le commerce d'une ville maritime,
qui amène ainsi aux extrémités de la zone municipale du Midi
la commune jurée dans sa forme native, avec toutes ses règles
et ses pratiques' (p. 249).]
[Footnote 7: 'La soe maizon, so es del marie o d'aquet quiu
loguer aura pres, sera darrocade seins contredit.']
[Footnote 8: 'E en merce de la comunie, de sa maizon
darrocar.']
[Footnote 9: 'Sera en merce dou maire e dous pars de sa maizon
darrocar.']
[Footnote 10: 'La maison ons ed estaue sera abatude per les
justizies de la comunie.']
[Footnote 11: 'Ca esto tornarie en dano de Nos e de la nuestra
Puebla.' (_Boletin de la real Academia de la Historia_,
October 1888.)]
[Footnote 12: 'Ancienne Coutume d'Amiens' (_Recueil des Monum.
ined. de l'Histoire du Tiers-Etat_, I. pp. 159, 160).]
[Footnote 13: He refers us to the Theodosian Code. Lib.
XII, tit. 1, 'de decurionibus', and D., Lib. I, tit. 4, 'de
muneribus et honoribus'.]
[Footnote 13 (sic): _Cinque Ports_ (Historic Towns Series), by
Montagu Burrows.]
[Footnote 14: _Essai sur l'Histoire du Tiers-Etat_, p. 240.
(The italics are my own.)]
[Footnote 15: The Danish 'Five Boroughs' stand apart, as a
temporary confederation, the character of which we do not
know.]
[Footnote 16: Professor Burrows makes light of this name,
asserting that 'it is hard to say when the French form came
into common use' (p. 56). But 'the five Cinque Ports', which
he admits to be the correct style, is a pleonasm which proves
the 'Cinque' to be older than the 'Five'.]
[Footnote 17: 'London and the Cinque Ports stand isolated
from their fellows in the common absence of the institution'
(Burrows, p. 43).]
[Footnote 18: 'The same may be said of the office of
"Alderman" ... The term seems to be only accidentally, if not
erroneously, used' (_ibid._, p. 44).]
[Footnote 19: The mayor and his twelve _pairs_, _jurats_
(or _jurés_) or _échevins_, were an essential feature of the
_commune_, and spread with the communal movement.]
[Footnote 20: _Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France_,
xi. 231, 237, 245, 277, 291, 308, 315. The text must now be
modified in the light of my further criticism, in the next
paper, of the early date alleged for the confederation of the
Ports.]
[Footnote 21: This was written in reliance on the statement by
Mr Howlett (_Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II
and Richard I_, vol. iii., p. xl) that an interesting writ he
quoted from 'the cartulary of St Benet-at-Hulme' was 'safely
attributable to the year 1137'. It is a writ of Robert, Earl
of Leicester, acting as justiciary, and 'gives', says Mr
Howlett, 'a clear idea of the Earl's position at the opening
of the reign'. As he has made himself master of the period,
and has specially studied its manuscript sources, I accepted
his assurance without question. But as it subsequently struck
me that such a writ was more likely to be issued by the Earl
when justiciary under Henry II, I referred to the cartulary
and found that the writ contained the words 'avi regis',
proving it, of course, to belong to the reign, not of Stephen,
but of Henry II:
'R. Com(es) leg(recestriæ) Baronibus regis de Hastingg' salutem.
Precipio quod abbas et monachi de Hulmo teneant bene et in pace
et juste terras suas in Gernemut ... sicut eas melius tenuerunt
tempore Regis H. _avi regis_ ... T. R. Basset per breve
regis de ultra mare' (Galba E. 2, fo. 33_b_).
We can only, therefore, say of its date that it is previous to
the Earl's death in 1168. In any case, however, it is of much
interest as connecting Yarmouth with Hastings alone, not, as
alleged, with the Cinque Ports as a whole. This is in perfect
accordance with the fact that John's charter to Hastings in
1205 duly mentions its rights at Yarmouth, of which there is
no mention in his charters to the other ports.
I have noted in this same cartulary, and on the same page, an
interesting confirmation by Henry II to the Abbey of the land,
'quam lefwinus et Robertus presbyteri et Bonefacius et ceteri
barones mei de Hastingges eidem ecclesie dederunt in Gernemut'
apud Den ... Test' Thom' cancellario. Apud Westmonasterium'.
The name of Thomas fixes the date as not later than 1158.
In the charters of 1205, the people of Hastings are styled
'barons', but those of the other ports only 'homines'.]
[Footnote 22: This represents the 'esporle' of South-Western
France (cf. p. 243, n. 278).]
[Footnote 23: _Recueil_ (_ut supra_), xi. 277.]
[Footnote 24: I can find no trace of it in Professor
Burrows' careful _résumé_ of the factors in the Cinque Ports
organization.]
[Footnote 25: _Cinque Ports_, p. 56.]
[Footnote 26: Professor Burrows is very severe on those who
question the alleged charter of Edward the Confessor to the
Ports and 'the sweeping franchises' that it conferred (pp.
55-6, 59). But the sole evidence for its alleged existence is
the charter of 1278, which does not even, I think, necessarily
imply it. For the allusion to the liberties the Ports
possessed in the days of Edward and his successors might well
be taken from such a charter as that of Henry II to Lincoln,
in which he grants to the citizens all the liberties 'quas
habuerunt tempore Edwardi et Willelmi et Henrici regum
Anglorum'. This does not imply that those kings had granted
charters.
[The result of my further investigation has been to develop
much further the position here _Arch. Rev._, December 1889,
adopted, and to modify accordingly the closing paragraph in
the text.]]
THE CINQUE PORTS CHARTERS
I have allowed the preceding paper to stand as it was written, in
spite of the rejoinder by Professor Burrows, entitled, 'The Antiquity
of the Cinque Ports Charters'.[1]
So far as regards my French analogies, Professor Burrows adopts the
argument that I have not proved a parallel sufficiently close and
complete. But this does not meet my contention: (1) that in the Cinque
Ports organization we find peculiar words and things; (2) that these
peculiarities are not found elsewhere in England; (3) that they are
found in France. Admitting, however, that 'the earliest title is
Norman French', the Professor urges that Edward the Confessor was
a 'half-Norman king', and that 'nothing is more likely than that he
should grant his charter to the Confederation under a Norman name'.[2]
This brings us at once to Edward's alleged charter; and, indeed, my
critic recurs at the outset to his belief in 'the Ports having been
chartered as a Confederation by Edward the Confessor' (p. 439). At the
close of the article he reminds us again that he 'accepted the charter
of Edward the Confessor as a faithful landmark, and showed how the
history of our early kings and their institutions appeared to coincide
with the statement'. But he adds that 'if proof can be brought against
the issue of such a charter', he will be 'the first to recognize it'.
It is curious that my critic cannot perceive what must be obvious to
all those who are familiar with 'the history of our early kings and
their institutions', namely that the _onus probandi_ rests, not, as
he alleges, on those who question, but on those who maintain the
startling proposition that Edward the Confessor issued such a charter
of incorporation. Nothing short of proof positive could induce us
to accept so unheard-of an anticipation of later times. That proof
Professor Burrows claims to find in the great charter of Edward I to
the Ports. He contends that, according to this document, Edward 'saw'
the Confessor's charter,[3] and blames me for omitting its statement
to that effect (p. 443). Unfortunately he quotes the words, as indeed
he had done in his book, from an English translation only, and that a
misleading one. The actual words (as given by Jeake), confirms to the
Ports their liberties as held:
temporibus Regum Angliæ Edwardi, Willelmi primi et secundi,
Henrici regis proavi nostri, et temporibus Regis Richardi
et Regis Johannis avi nostri et Domini Henrici Regis patris
nostri per cartas eorundem, sicut cartæ illæ quas iidem
Barones nostri inde habent, et quas inspeximus, rationabiliter
testantur.
In this peculiar wording we notice two points: (1) that it divides the
kings into two groups, and that Henry II is placed in the first group,
not, as we should expect, with his sons; (2) that Edward does not
say that he has 'inspected' charters of all the kings named, but only
'cartæ _illæ_ quas iidem Barones nostri inde habent'.[4] I claim,
therefore, to read the words as not implying that Edward had actually
seen any charter older than that of Richard, whose name heads what I
have termed the second group of kings. It is noteworthy that Richard's
is the earliest charter of which the contents are known to ourselves.
But let us see how the matter stands with reference to previous
charters. Professor Burrows holds that the form of Edward I's charter
'certainly supposes that the former charters were granted' also to the
Ports collectively.[5] Indeed, he 'need not point out', we read, 'that
the charters referred to are charters to the Confederation, not to
separate Ports' (p. 444). Where do we find them? 'That the charter of
Henry,' we are told (p. 439), 'which we know about from those of his
sons, has no more survived than those of his predecessors, has always
seemed to me an argument of some weight.' But no charter of Henry II
to the Confederation is spoken of by his sons. We have in the _Rotuli
Chartarum_ what Professor Burrows terms, 'the series of six charters,
dated June 6, and 7, 1205'. Each Port on this occasion received a
separate charter, and in each case reference is made to that Port's
charter from Henry II. Of a collective charter we hear nothing.
Nor are John's charters even identical in form: to quote once more
Professor Burrows:
It should also be noted that the franchises of Sandwich are
to be such as the town enjoyed in the reigns of 'William and
Henry'; of Dover, as in that of Edward'; of Hythe, as in those
of 'Edward, William I, William II, and Henry'.[6]
And in none of them is any charter mentioned earlier than that of
Henry II.
These charters of John are most important, but have not, so far as
I know, received scientific treatment. The charter to Hastings is in
many ways distinct from the others. It alone speaks of the 'Honours
at Court', the rights at Yarmouth, and the ship-service due, and alone
mentions that this service was rendered 'pro hiis libertatibus'. The
charter to Rye and Winchelsea is modelled on that of Hastings, and
neither of them goes back beyond the charter of Henry II. The charters
to Dover and to Hythe, it will be found, are closely parallel, and in
both cases the privileges are to be enjoyed as in the times of Edward,
William I, William II, and Henry (I). Sandwich has her liberties
confirmed as in the days of Henry I, King William, 'and our
predecessors'; Romney as in the days of Henry I.
If it be urged that the rights of Yarmouth, though only specified in
the Hastings charter, were included under general liberties in the
charters to the other Ports, I appeal, in reply, to that writ of
Henry II[7] which treats the Barons of Hastings alone as possessing
authority at Yarmouth. The charter and the writ confirm one another.
We see, then, that when we interpret the great charter of Edward I to
the Ports (1278) in the light of evidence, not of supposition, we find
that Henry II and John did grant separate charters to the different
Ports as to other towns (not a collective charter to them all), and
that these therefore must have been the charters referred to in the
general confirmation of 1278. In other words, it was Edward I,
not Edward the Confessor, who granted the first 'Charter to the
Confederation', as a whole. Utterly subversive though it be of
Professor Burrows' view, this is the only conclusion in harmony with
the known facts.
Thus the sole result of examining my critic's evidence is to make me
carry my scepticism further still. I now hold that even so late as
the days of John, the Ports had individual relations to the crown,
although their relations _inter se_ were becoming of a closer
character, as was illustrated by the fact that their several charters
were all obtained at the same time. Hastings alone, as yet, had rights
at Yarmouth recognized: hers were the only portsmen styled 'barons' by
the crown.
It is always, in these matters, necessary to bear in mind that the
local organization was apt to be ahead of the crown, and that communal
institutions and municipal developments might be winked at for a time
to avoid formal recognition. In this way I believe the rights and
privileges belonging in strictness to Hastings alone were gradually
extended in practice to the other ports. There is, for instance, a St
Bertin charter granted by the so-called 'barons of Dover', although
the formal legend on their seal styles them only 'burgesses'. The
portsmen may all in practice have been loosely styled 'barons',
even though Hastings alone had a special right to that distinction.
Professor Burrows speaks of 'its acknowledged claim to be the
Premier Port of the Confederation' as 'a circumstance of the greatest
significance in our inquiry',[8] and here I entirely agree with him.
But I cannot think his explanation of that pre-eminence in any way
satisfactory. He lays great stress on 'the identification lately
established beyond any reasonable doubt between the town in the Bourne
valley and the "New Burgh" of Domesday Book'. I have searched long and
in vain for this identification, but, whether it be accepted or not,
it throws no light on the old town, the King's town, of Hastings.[9]
The importance of Hastings before the Conquest is shown not only by
the action of its ships in 1049, but also by its possessing a mint.
Yet the only mention of this town in Domesday is the incidental entry
that the Abbot of Fécamp had 'in Hastings' appurtenant to his Manor of
Brede, 'iiii. burgenses et xiiii. bordarios'.[10] One is fairly driven
to the bold hypothesis that Hastings, which ought to have figured at
the head of the county survey (as did Dover in Kent), was one of the
important towns wholly omitted in Domesday.[11] The fact that its
ship-service, when first mentioned, was as large as that of Dover is a
further proof of its importance.
The geographical position of Hastings also severs its case, as widely
as do its privileges, from those of the Kentish ports. It is therefore
difficult to resist the impression that the distinction in John's
charter had a real origin and meaning. The 'barons' of Hastings were,
I believe, the men of the _King's_ town (not, as alleged, the
Abbot's) and so far from the Abbot's men being admitted to share their
distinction, we find the latter, at Rye and Winchelsea, styled in
John's charter 'homines', not even 'homines nostri'.
The accepted view as to Rye and Winchelsea is thus set forth by
Professor Burrows:
The Confessor had evidently intended to make the little group
of Sussex towns, the 'New Burgh', Winchelsea, and Rye, a
strong link of communication between England and Normandy; but
Godwin and Harold had contrived to prevent the two latter from
becoming the property of the Abbey of Fécamp, to which Edward
granted them in the early part of his reign; and this formed
one of the Norman grievances. William promised to restore them
to the Abbey, and when he had conquered England he kept his
word.... Of the grant of Winchelsea and Rye to the same Abbey
as part of the lands of Steyning we have distinct evidence in
the charter of resumption issued by Henry III in 1247 (p. 27;
cf. _supra_, p. 248).
Although this view has always been held by local historians and
antiquaries, it seems to me obvious that there must be error
somewhere. Rye and Winchelsea belonged geographically to the Abbey's
lordship of Brede in the extreme west of the county; its lordship of
Steyning was in East Sussex. On examining for myself the charter of
resumption and comparing it with the Abbey's claims as to Brede at the
_quo warranto_ inquiry, I discovered the solution of the mystery.
Rye and Winchelsea were not, as alleged, appurtenant to Steyning, but
belonged to the Manor of Brede. The Abbey, however, claimed on
behalf of its Manor of Brede (including Rye and Winchelsea) all the
franchises granted to Steyning, contending that they were meant to
extend to all its lands in Sussex. This claim was urged and recognized
in the case of the charter of resumption (1246), the source of the
whole misapprehension.
But to return to the 'barons', Professor Burrows, discussing the
title, writes thus:[12]
It is admitted that the title was at first only held by the
Portsmen in common with the citizens of several other places,
as that of a responsible man in a privileged community, of a
'baro' or 'vir' of some dignity; but, of course, not in the
least in the sense of a 'baron' such as the word came to mean
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
I do not know which were these 'several other places'; but I think the
word 'baron' can be shown to have here had a definite connotation.
The exemption from 'wardship and marriage', for instance, granted
by Edward I (1278), implies that these 'barons' were subject to the
burdens of tenants-in-chief, while their extraordinary appeal, after
the battle of St Mahé (1293), to 'the judgment of their peers, earls,
and barons'[13] has not, so far as I know, received the attention it
deserves. By such a phrase the Cinque Ports 'barons' virtually claimed
the privilege of peers of the realm.
But one must not wander too far along these tempting paths. When
tradition is replaced, as it may be in part, by evidence, we shall
have, not improbably, to unlearn much that now passes current as
genuine Cinque Ports history. On the other hand, there may be in store
for us glimpses of much that is interesting and new.[14]
Apart, however, from problems as yet difficult and obscure, we shall
be standing on sure ground in asserting that the charter of Edward I
is the first that was granted to the Ports collectively, and that the
rights and liberties it confirmed were those which had been granted
to the separate ports by Henry II and John, and which it then made
uniform and applicable to the whole confederation. As at London,[15]
we have always to remember that communal institutions might develop
locally before their existence is proved by the crown's formal
recognition. Delay in that recognition is not proof of their
non-existence. What complicates so greatly the study of the Cinque
Ports polity is the difficulty of disentangling its three component
elements: the old English institutions common to other towns; the
special relation to the crown in connection with their ship-service;
and the foreign or communal factor on which I have myself insisted. No
impartial student, I believe, will deny that I have fairly established
the existence of this third element. Its relative importance and its
sphere of action must remain, of course, as yet matter of conjecture.
[Footnote 1: _Archæological Review_, iv. 439-44.]
[Footnote 2: _Ibid._, p. 441.]
[Footnote 3: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 64.]
[Footnote 4: Had he seen them all, the wording would have run,
'per cartas eorundem, quas iidem', etc.]
[Footnote 5: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 63.]
[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, p. 71.]
[Footnote 7: _Supra_, p. 421.]
[Footnote 8: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 26.]
[Footnote 9: The Professor's argument that 'the lordship of
St Denis over the Saxon Hastings had ceased--probably when the
Northmen took possession of the Seine valley and blocked out
the French; that of Fécamp was the renewal of the old idea
on an adjoining territory' (_Cinque Ports_, p. 27), is as
baseless as that which follows it as to Winchelsea and Rye.
For the 'charter of Offa, king of the Mercians' (p. 25),
granting Hastings to St Denis, has been conclusively shown by
Mr Stevenson to be a forgery.]
[Footnote 10: One cannot, of course, speak positively without
seeing that 'identification' on which Professor Burrows
relies. But, unless there is evidence to the contrary, it
seems difficult to resist the conclusion that this estate
of the Abbey 'in Hastings' was identical with that which it
actually possessed in the Bourne Valley. For this by no means
included the whole 'town in the Bourne Valley', but only that
portion of it at the foot of the West Hill, which is bordered
by Courthouse Street, Bourne Street, John Street, and High
Street, together with St Clement's Church and its block of
buildings (_Sussex Arch. Coll._, xiv. 67). And this conclusion
is strengthened by the fact that in Domesday its rents are 63s
'in Hastings', and 158s in the 'novus burgus', while at the
Dissolution they were only 35s 4d in Hastings. In that case
we must after all look for the 'novus burgus' of Domesday at
Winchelsea or Rye.
Nor is the history of Hastings harbour at all as clear as
could be wished. 'The ancient Harbour once occupied', no
doubt, 'Priory Valley' (_Cinque Ports_, p. 9); but I can find
no trace of a haven 'formed by the Bourne between the East
and West Hills', which replaced it on its silting-up. On
the contrary, the old map of Hastings in 1746 (_Sussex Arch.
Coll._, vol. xii) shows us the 'haven' (with ships) in the
Priory Valley to the west of the Castle Hill. Was not this
a later harbour (1637), and the real original one out to the
south?]
[Footnote 11: Chichester, Lewes, and Pevensey are all duly
entered, under the names of their respective lords.]
[Footnote 12: _The Cinque Ports_, pp. 77-9.]
[Footnote 13: _The Cinque Ports_, p. 123. Compare the
banishment of the Despencers (1321) by the 'piers de la terre,
countes et barouns'.]
[Footnote 14: The courts of the Cinque Ports, for instance,
greatly need investigation. One can only throw out as a mere
conjecture the suggestion that if the Court of Guestling
derived its name, as Professor Burrows admits is probable,
from Guestling (the _caput_ of a Hundred), midway between
Hastings and Winchelsea, it may have been originally a
_Sussex_ Court for the Hastings group, while the Court of
Broadhill--afterwards 'Broderield' and 'Brotherhood' (_The
Cinque Ports_, p. 178)--may have been the Kentish one. The
admitted corruption in the traditional derivation of both
names, together with the court's change of _locale_, shows
how much obscurity surrounds their true origin. Few, I
think, would accept Professor Burrows' view that, because the
Brodhull, when we first have record of it, was held 'near the
village of Dymchurch' (p. 46), it was named from 'the "broad
hill" of Dymchurch, which may well have been some portion of
the wall which extended for three miles along the beach' (p.
47). As the Guestling was not a court of 'Guests', so 'the
broad hill', from which the meeting derived its name, must
have been originally somewhere else than down 'on Dymchurch
beach' (p. 75), between Romney Marsh and the sea.]
[Footnote 15: See my paper on the origin of 'The Mayoralty of
London', in _Archæological Journal_ (1894).]
ADDENDA
Pages 20, 107. In case I should not have made sufficiently clear my
views as to the filiation of the Domesday MSS., it may be well to
explain that what I deny on p. 21 is that the _Inq. Com. Cant._
and the _Inq. El._ can both have been copied from a third document
intermediate between them and the original returns. But, as I state
on pp. 20, 123, it cannot be _proved_ that the _Inq. Com. Cant._ was
itself transcribed direct from the original returns, as it might,
possibly, be only a copy of an earlier transcript of these returns.
Page 30. A remarkable instance of the occasional untrustworthiness of
the figures given in these texts is afforded by the Manors of Stretham
and Wilburton, co. Cambridgeshire, which were farmed together. The
correct figures for their ploughteams were these:
Dominium Homines Total
Stretham 4[1] 5 9
Wilburton 3[2] 4 7[3]
__ __
7 9
The footnotes show the errors.
Thus the A text, which is the best known, gives two figures out of
three wrongly for Wilburton, and Mr Pell, by accepting as genuine
these two erroneous figures, was led to quite erroneous conclusions.
Pages 68-9. The parallel for this system of counting by threes and
sixes is found in the wergild of Scandinavia, with its _rétt_ of 3
marcs, or 6, or 12, the 6 or the 12 _aurar_, the 12 ells or the 12
feet of _vadmal_.
For the _formulæ_ on p. 68 an instructive parallel is found in the
Frostathing's Law:
If a _haulld_ wounds a man, he is liable to pay 6
_baugar_ (rings) to the king, and 12 _aurar_ are in each ring
... a _lendrmann_ 12, a jarl 24, a king 48, 12 _aurar_ being
in each ring.
Thus we find in Scandinavia the counterpart of the system of counting
found in the 'Danish' districts of England, just as we find in Angeln
and Ditmarsh the counterpart of the 'hide', with its four 'yards',
found in southern England (_Archæologia_, xxxvii. 380).
Page 105. For the election of _juratores_ we may compare the
Abingdon Abbey case, under Henry II: 'ex utroque parte seniores viri
eligerentur qui secundum quod eis verum videretur ... jurarent; ...
segregati qui jurarent diversis opinionibus causam suam confundebant'.
For juries of eight or sixteen we may compare Jocelin de Brakelonde's
narrative of a suit for an advowson in 1191: 'delatum est juramentum
per consensum utriusque partis sexdecim legalibus de hundredo'.
Page 126. Compare here Mr Freeman's text (iii. 413-4):
There can be little doubt that William's ravages were not only
done systematically, but were done with a fixed and politic
purpose.... It is impossible to doubt that the systematic
harrying of the whole country round Hastings was done with the
deliberate purpose of provoking the English king.... The work
was done with a completeness which shows that it was something
more than the mere passing damage wrought by an enemy in need
of food.
Domesday is appealed to, as in the Appendix, for this view.
Page 205. Though I have spoken in the text of _William_ de Montfichet,
following, like Dugdale, the _Liber Niger_, I have since found that
the tenant of the fief, in 1166, was his son Gilbert, the _carta_
being wrongly assigned in the _Liber Niger_ itself to William. There
are similar and instructive errors to be found in it.
Page 244. The succession of Schelin, the Domesday under-tenant by his
son Robert, in 1095 identifies the former with Schelin, the Dorset
tenant-in-chief, from whom Shilling Ockford took its name, and who was
succeeded in Dorset also by his son Robert (_Montacute Cartulary_).
Pages 293-4. To guard (as I have to do at every turn) against
misrepresentation, I may explain that the Battle Chronicle is the
primary authority I follow for the feigned flight. Its words 'fugam,
cum exercitu duce simulante', distinctly assert that the Duke himself,
with the main body of his army, 'turned in seeming flight'. It must,
surely, be because this evidence is quite opposed to Mr Freeman's view
that he ignored it in his text (pp. 488-90). The essential point to
grasp, according to my own view, is that a detachment, told off for
the purpose, thrust itself between the pursuing English and the hill
to cut off their retreat, and that the main body of the Normans then
faced about. The English, one may add, are hardly likely to have
ventured down into the plain unless the feigned flight was so general
as to make them think they could safely do so.
Pages 311-12. 'Mainly from oral tradition.' This refers, of course, to
Mr Archer's contention.
Page 356. On the great influence, by their connection, of the Clares
see also the _Becket Memorials_ (iii. 43), where Fitz Stephen writes
(1163):
Illi autem comiti de Clara fere omnes nobiles Angliæ
propinquitate adhærebant, qui et pulcherrimam totius regni
sororem habebat, quam rex aliquando concupierat.
We are reminded here of the curious story in the _Monasticon_ (iv.
608) that, some forty years before, Roheis de Clare, the wife of Eudo
Dapifer, was, on his death (1120), destined by her brethren for the
second wife of Henry I, a story which illustrates, at least, the
position attributed to the family.
Pages 357-8. The Montfichet match is not shown in the chart pedigree,
nor is the important marriage of Adeliza, another daughter of Gilbert
(fitz Richard) de Clare, to Aubrey de Vere, the Chamberlain, which is
well ascertained (_Geoffrey de Mandeville_, pp. 390-2). By him she had
_inter alios_ a daughter, with the Clare name of 'Rohese', who married
Geoffrey de Mandeville, first Earl of Essex (_ibid._). The existence
of this Adeliza may be held to be against my affiliation of 'Adelidis
de Tunbridge', which avowedly is only a conjecture.
Page 360. A chart pedigree is here given to illustrate the connection
of Robert fitz Richard (de Clare), through his wife, with the Earls of
Northampton and the Scottish kings:
Earl (1) = Maud = (2) David
Simon | dau. of Earl | of Scotland
d. '1115'| Waltheof | King 1124
| | d. 1153
___________| |__________
| | |
Earl Maud = Robert Henry
Simon de Senlis | fitz Richard of Scotland
d. 1153 d. '1140' | d. 1136 d. 1152
____________________| ______________|________
| | | | |
Walter Maud Malcolm William David
fitz Robert 'de Senlis,' King 1153 King 1166 Earl 1184
d. 1198 'aged 60' d. 1166 d. 1214 d. 1219
in 1185
Robert fitz Richard and his children (see p. 389) are included in this
pedigree, in order to show that their ages present no chronological
difficulty, and that the length of time they survived him is clearly
due to his marrying rather late in life.
Page 388. I have identified a third fine, since this book was in type,
as belonging to the great circuits of 1176. It proves that they began
early in the year.
As a corollary to my conclusions on pp. 386-7, I should like to allude
to the well-known changes in 1178-80. Great importance is attached to
the passage in the _Gesta Regis Henrici_, which describes how the king
selected five justices 'de privata familia sua' in the place of the
eighteen previously appointed, who as I read the passage, were to
accompany his court. I cannot think that this reform, if it took
place, enured, for the central body that we really meet with from 1179
onwards is, it seems to me, distinctly different. It consists of the
Bishops of Winchester, Ely, and Norwich, whom, says R. de Diceto, in a
passage to which the Bishop of Oxford rightly draws attention, Henry,
in 1179, appointed 'archijustitiarios regni', with Glanvill, who soon
became a chief justiciar with them. These four continue to hold a
position severed from that of the other justices, of whom some act
with them at one time and some at another. The earliest appearance at
present known to me of this well-defined central group is at Oxford,
February 11, 1180. We there find the three bishops associated with
five justices, headed by Ranulf Glanvill, recorded on a fine. Now, we
happen to know that the king was at Oxford about this very time, for
he decided there on the issue of his new coinage.[4] His presence
would account for this gathering of the four leading justiciars, so
that we need not hesitate to connect the two phenomena. We have
then here record evidence of the true _personnel_ at the time of the
central judicial body, together with the fact of its presence with
the king, the fact which had not till now been proved, on his progress
through the land.
[Footnote 1: A, B, and C give this figure as 3 (p 141). Their
own title requires 4.]
[Footnote 2: A, B, and C give this figure as 3 (p. 141), but
elsewhere (wrongly) as 4 (p. 101).]
[Footnote 3: A gives this figure as 6 (p. 101), but B and C,
rightly, as 7.]
[Footnote 4: So Eyton (p. 230), not giving his authority; nor
have I found it.]
INDEX
Abetot, Urse d', 129, 141-5^{12}, 147-8, 159, 238^{250}, 239, 245,
324, 356
Abingdon Abbey: its knights, 179, 239-40
Airy, Revs. W. and B. R., 55-6
Albini 'Brito', William de, 172, 173;
his wife, 359-60
Albini, Henry de, 163, 171, 173-4
---- Nigel de, 174, 179
Alfred, the name of, 254;
_see also_ Lincoln
Alfred of Espagne (not Spain), 254, 255
Alfred of Marlborough, 252, 254
Alneto, Herbert de, 369
Amiens: Custumal of, 419
Andrews, Dr, 303^{161}
'Anglicus numerus'--_see_ Hundred
Archer, Mr T. A., 256^{37}, 263^{4}, 264, 265, 266-7, 269, 270-3,
284^{106}, 289, 290, 364, 431;
his remarkable statement, 273^{41};
champions Prof Freeman, 300;
throws him over, 300-1;
contradicts him flatly, 301-2, 306;
opposes him wrongly, 274-7;
his tactics, 302, 307-8, 309;
his knowledge of Old French, 309^{22};
on Wace's age and sources, 311-12;
on his sobriety, 313;
on Prof Freeman's errors, 334^{13}, 340^{1}
Archers: use of, 280, 283^{104}, 284-7
'Archijustitiarii,' the, 433
Ardres, the lords of, 351-2
Armorial bearings: earliest, 357^{1}, 359^{5}
Arms of England, Royal, 406
Arques, The relief of, 294-6
Arundel, Earl of: his _carta_ [1166], 196
---- Earldom of, 153
Assessment, the system of, 430;
Anglo-Saxon, 48 _sqq._;
reduced, 51-5, 64;
independent of area or value, 62;
said to be determined by area, 80, 82,
by value, 63;
origin of, 82 _sqq._
Assessment for danegeld, 378-9
---- in East Anglia, 88-91;
in Kent, 91 _sqq._, 95;
exemption from, 95-7;
changes of, 129;
of Abingdon and Worcester Abbeys, 140;
in Lindsey, 149:
_see also_ Vills; _Wara_
_Auxilium_--_see_ Scutage
Aynho, Northants, 381
Bainard, Ralf, 350, 360
Baldwin (de Clare), the Sheriff, 256^{37}, 340, 341^{46}, 359, 394-5;
his sons, _ib._ 357-8, 369
Bampton, Robert of, 367, 369
Barbery Abbey, 157
Barnstaple, Fief of, 369;
Honour of, 212
_Barones_ were tenants-in-chief, 102
Barons--_see_ Cinque Ports
Basset family and fief, 129
---- Ralf, 160, 169
---- Richard, 161-5, 172-3
---- Thomas, 381, 384, 386, 387
---- William, 385-8
Bath, Godfrey, Bishop of, 366, 367-8
Baudri: his poem, 269, 284, 286, 287-8
Bayeux Tapestry, 264, 269, 270-2, 276-7, 280^{88}, 288-9, 290, 300,
310, 318
Bayonne, Custumal of, 418
Beauchamp, family and fief, 141-8, 159, 160-3
Beauchamp, Maud de, 156, 158-9
---- Philip de, 163
Beaumont, Robert de, 273^{41}
Becket, Thomas; his opposition in 1163, 377, 379-80, 398;
his movements in 1170, 383, 402
Bedfordshire, Assessment in, 55-8
Bell: Ringing of the town, 417
Bémont, M. Ch., 334
Berkshire, Hidation in, 63-4
Betham, Sir W., 392, 397
Bigot, Roger, 255
Birch, Mr de Gray, 18, 118^{250}, 140
Bishops: knight service of, 198-9, 220;
their style before consecration, 327^{11}, 367-8
Blois--_see_ Peter
Boivin-Champeaux, M., 407, 408-10, 412
Bosham: _Capellaria de_, 199^{62}, 201, 249
Boulogne, Eustace, Count of, 250, 256, 293, 324, 325, 349, 351
Boulogne, Eustace (the younger), Count of, 214
Bourne (Cambridgeshire), Honour of, 204
Bourne (Lincoln): descent of, 136-7
Brakelond, Jocelin de, 400-1, 402^{18}, 431
Bretons, 254-5, 256-7, 291;
their alleged inferiority, 279^{81}
_Breve abbatis_, the: its meaning, 35, 36, 115-6
Brihtric, son of Ælfgar, 323, 324-5
Bristol: its trade with Ireland, 354
Britanny, Honour of, 196
Buci, Robert de, 129, 172-3
Buckinghamshire, Hidation in, 64
Burkes: origin of the, 390-1
'Burna' (Westbourne), 327
Burrows, Prof Montagu, 248, 420-1, 422-9
Cahors, Patrick de, 95
Cambridge: its wards, 68;
its 'lawmen', 79;
alleged earldom of, 152-3
Cambridgeshire, hundreds of: analysed, 48-55--_see also Inquisitio_;
Picot
_Camerarius_, Aubrey de Vere, 175, 178-9, 432;
his son Robert, 179
'Candidus'--_see_ Hugh 'Candidus'
Canterbury, See of: its knights, 199, 236
Canterbury, Geoffrey (Ridel), Archdeacon of, 381, 382, 383-4, 388
_Cartæ_ of 1166, 189 _sqq._, 210-11, 225, 228, 396;
sealing of, 194;
their evidence, 198-9 _sqq._;
errors in, 226-7, 234, 431
_Caruca_, the Domesday: contained eight oxen, 40, 41
Carucate: 120 acres in the, 42^{75}, 67;
as a measure of assessment, 66 _sqq._, 73, 78, 79-82;
connected with the plough team, 95
Castle-guard, 200^{64}, 232^{216}
Castles built in England, 249-53
Chancellors--_see_ Geoffrey, Ranulf, Regenbald, Waldric
Charters, the re-sealed [1198], 412-15
Chester: Earls of, 151-3;
'lawmen' of, 79;
its trade with Dublin, 353-4
Chokes, Anselin de, 177
Church, the: exactions from the, 221, 242-3, 400, 410
Cinque Ports: their system of 'purses', 88^{183};
peculiar penalty in, 416 _sqq._;
confederation of, 420-1, 422-4;
its name, 421
Cinque Ports: Barons of, 421-2, 428-9;
'honours at court', 422, 425
Cinque Ports: their charters, 424-6, 429;
their courts, 429^{14};
their complex polity, 429
Cirencester Charters, The: 323, 326
Civic League, an alleged, 331-3
_Civitas_, meaning of, 262
Clare family and fief, 226, 355-60, 394, 431-2.
_See_ Baldwin
Clare, Baldwin Fitz Gilbert de, 134, 179, 359, 394
Clare, Richard Fitz Gilbert de, 255, 355
Clermont, Adeliz de, 394
Cleveland, Duchess of, 297, 358, 371
Clinton--_see_ Glynton
Cockayne, Mr T. O., 124^{1}, 125^{3}, 128^{9}
Colchester: Charter to, 363;
municipal custom at, 417
_Commendatio_, 36-40
Commune: offences against the, 416-420;
spread of the, 418-19;
its independent growth, 426, 429
_Constabularia_, the, 206, 208, 227
_Consuetudines_: due from sokemen and freeman, 36-9
Corfe Castle, 263
Cornhill, Gervase de, 357
---- Henry de, 363
Cornwall, assessment in, 62;
low, 84, 86;
_see also_ Devon
Cornwall, earldom of, 369
---- Reginald, Earl of, 381, 384, 385
Counties, groups of: defined by assessment, 85-6
Courcy, William de, 180
Coutances, Geoffrey, Bishop of, 114-15, 238^{250}
Craon, Alan de, 164, 172, 174
Crown, Power of the, 399
_Curia Regis_, The, 385-9, 405, 432-3;
mention of, 120.
_See Placita_
Danegeld: normal, 55, 91;
its origin, 82-83;
its local incidence, 84-6;
its connection with the Hundred, 88-91, 125, 128, 130;
early levy of, 124-5;
remitted on 'waste', 125;
unpaid, 128-9;
its assessment, 165-6, 379;
alleged debate on, 377;
not compounded for, 378
Danish districts: assessment of the, 66, 67-8, 430;
the 'long' hundred in, 66-7;
limits of, 67-8, 79, 94;
carucated, 82-3.
_See_ 'Six carucates'
_Dare_--_see Recedere_
_Defensio_: represents assessment, 102, 166
De La Rue, Chevalier, 392, 397
Delgove, M. l'Abbé, 361-2
Democracy: its failure, 302-5
Derbyshire: a Danish district, 68;
low assessment of, 85;
possible Hundreds in, 165-6
Devon: assessment in, 61-2;
low, 84, 86;
earldom of, 358, 369;
Sheriffs of, 236^{239}
_Dialogus de Scaccario_, 121-2
'Dispensator', Robert, 141-5, 147-8, 155, 158-9, 245
Distraint, 243
Domesday Book: omissions in, 26-7, 35, 41;
errors in, 28-30, 41, 44^{76}, 44^{77}, 44^{78}, 47, 74, 113, 119,
180-1, 326;
general excellence, 29-30;
duplicate entries in, 30-5, 350;
not a verbal transcript, 31-5;
analysis required, 56, 64, 82, 88;
its love of variety, 31, 34, 77, 223-4;
Leets mentioned in, 90;
its compilation, 118;
_Liber de Wintonia_, 118;
its two volumes, 119-20;
its date, 118, 209-10;
used by the pseudo-Ingulf, 120;
first mention of, 120-1;
_Liber de thesauro_, 121;
preserved at Winchester, 121-2;
removed to Westminster, 121-2;
names of tenants in, 131-3, 137-9;
its alleged silence as to feudal tenures, 184-5, 240;
contrasted with returns of 1166, 189-90;
mentions knight service, 236
Domesday Hide--_see_ Hide
---- MSS: pedigree of, 122-3, 430
---- Survey, the: how executed, 102-6, 114-15;
styled _Descriptio_, 118, 122
---- of St Paul's, The, 92-4
---- tenants, and their heirs, 104-5, 106, 109-10, 128-30, 131-4,
137-9, 141-8, 150-2, 154-5, 158-9, 166-74, 179-81, 231-2, 232-3,
237, 240-1, 244-5, 251-2, 254, 256, 350, 355-6, 358, 369, 431
_Dominium_: meaning of, 193
_Donum_--_see_ Scutage
Dorset boroughs in Domesday, 99, 331-4, 341;
_see_ Civic League
Dorset, the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96, 99
Dover: as a Cinque Port, 425, 426;
Garrison of, 216
Droitwich, survey of, 146, 148
Dublin: its trade with Chester, 353-4
Dugdale, Sir William: his errors, 356, 359-60
Eadgyth--_see_ Edith
Eadric the wild, 253^{22}
Eadric (? the wild), 323, 325
Earldoms of two counties, 328
East Anglia--_see_ Norfolk, Suffolk
Edith, wife of Edward the Confessor, 124, 129, 340, 342
Edward the Confessor: his foreign tastes, 248, 428;
his priest, Regenbald, 323;
his alleged charter to the Cinque Ports, 422-6
Edward I: his Cinque Ports charter, 424, 425, 426, 428-9
Ellis, Mr A. S., 249^{7}, 257^{43}
---- Sir Henry: ignored the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18;
misrepresented the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 59;
edited the _Inq. El._, 107;
on date of Domesday, 118^{250};
on its mention, 120;
prints the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 124;
on Domesday jurors, 140;
unduly depreciated by Prof Freeman, 334, 341;
on Walter Tirel, 355
Elmley Castle, descent of, 145^{12}
Elton, Mr C., 95
Ely: charters to church of, 213;
its knights, 236;
despoiled of lands, 349-50;
_see also Placitum_
Ely, Nigel, bishop of, 327, 368^{2}
---- William, bishop of: _see_ Longchamp
Enfeoffment: _sine carta_, 206;
antiquity of, 232,
special, 132;
_See_ Feoffment
Engaine family and fief, 124, 129-30, 132, 179
Eschalers, Hardwin d', 31, 32, 117
'Escuz', meaning of, 307-8, 317-18
Essex, Alice of, 381
---- Geoffrey, Earl of, 381, 432
---- William, Earl of, 381, 384
Eudo Dapifer, 131, 180;
his fief, 350
his wife, 356, 358, 432
Euremou (Envermeu), Hugh de, 132-134, 137
Eustace, sheriff of Hunts, 138, 180-1
Evesham: Henry II at, 385-6, 390
---- Abbey: its knights, 237-8;
its service, 238;
Æthelwig, abbot of, 238-9;
Walter, abbot of, 237-8^{247}
Evidence, treatment of historical, 291-292, 336-7, 343, 344, 346, 376
Ewald, Mr A. C., 118^{250}
Ewyas Harold, 252
Exaggerations of chroniclers, 222, 228-9
Exchequer: early mention of, 146-7;
at Winchester, 381
Exchequer Rolls, 199-200, 209 _sqq._
Exeter: military service of, 65;
the Conqueror's siege of, 330 _sqq._;
breaching of its walls, 335-7;
besieged by Swegen, 335-6;
offends William, 338-9;
is favoured by him, 339;
its alleged penalty, 340;
its tribute, 340-2, 344-5;
baffles William, 343;
is 'betrayed', 344;
parallel with Le Mans, 345
Exeter, Baldwin of: _see_ Baldwin
_Exoniensis, Liber_: _see Liber Exoniensis_
Eyton, Mr: on the Domesday hide, 42, 47^{83-5}, 63;
his methods, 46, 62, 98-100, 150;
his Somerset book, 61, 98;
on the Leicestershire hide, 76;
on the Devonshire hide, 84;
on assessment in Lincolnshire, 86;
on the _firma unius noctis_, 99;
on the comital Manors of Somerset, 100;
his 'Key to Domesday', 99-100, 165^{44};
on Domesday Book, 118;
on the Lindsey Survey, 153-4;
on Danegeld, 378;
on Henry II, 382-4, 385-7, 433^{4}
Falvel (Fauvel), Gilbert, 138, 180
Faritius, Abbot, 120
Fécamp Abbey, grants to, 248-9, 427-8
Feoffment: the 'old' and 'new', 190-2, 194, 196-7.
_See_ Enfeoffment
Feudal Court, the, 205-6
Feudalism in England: underrated, 7-8, 208, 245, 248, 403-5.
_See_ Knight-service
Fiefs: descent of, 171-4;
'Mouvance' of, 357;
the chief lay ones, 201-5;
succession to, 129-30, 132-3, 134, 138-9, 144-5, 147-8, 160, 171-4
Fifield: origin of the name, 66
Finance--_see_ Danegeld
Fine, an early Leicestershire, 173
Fines: Introduction of, 385 _sqq._, 432-3;
development of, 389-90
_Firma unius noctis_, 96-100
Fitz Audelin, William, 353, 381-2, 385-6, 387, 390-1
Fitz Count, Brian, 177
Fitz Dolfin, Patrick, 370
---- Uchtred, 370
Fitz Maldred, Gilbert, 370
---- Robert, 370
Fitz Odo, William, 369
Fitz Osbern, Earl William, 328, 329^{19}
Fitz Ralf, William, 385-8
Fitz Richard, William, 369
Fitz Stephen, Robert, 394-6
Fitz Uchtred, Dolfin, 370, 371-2
Fitz Walters, Origin of the, 359-60, 432
Fitz Winemar, Walter, 179
Five boroughs, the, 67^{136}, 68
Five hides: a unit of assessment, 47 _sqq._;
even in towns, 48, 130;
connected with military service, 48, 65-6, 187-8;
conspicuous in Oxon and Berks, 63-4;
in Bucks, Wilts and Middlesex, 64;
originates place-names, 66;
its origin, 82 _sqq._;
its antiquity, 83;
not a knight's fee, 231-2;
_see also_ Towns
Five knights: unit of military service, 204-5, 206, 227, 232-3
Flambard, Ranulf: his alleged action, 182-4, 186;
his real action, 241-3, 256^{37}
Fleming, Ralf and Guy, 175
Foliot, Richard, 178
Food-rents--_see_ Wales
Foreign Service: Liability to, 398 _sqq._;
exemption from, 399-400, 401-2;
a moot obligation, 403, 405
Freeman, Professor: unacquainted with the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18;
ignores the Northamptonshire geld-roll, 125;
confuses the _Inquisitio geldi_, 124;
his contemptuous criticism, 126, 261, 295-6, 332, 346;
when himself in error, 126-7;
his charge against the Conqueror, 127, 431;
on Hugh d'Envermeu, 132-3;
on Hereward, 133-6;
his 'certain' history, 251, 331;
his 'undoubted history', 134-5, 360-1;
his 'facts', 333;
on Heming's cartulary, 140;
on Mr Waters, 155^{23};
on the introduction of feudal tenures, 183-6, 207, 213^{121},
236^{239}, 239^{258};
on the knight's fee, 188;
on Ranulf Flambard, 184;
on the evidence of Domesday, 185-6;
underrates feudal influence, 198, 404-5;
on scutage, 213^{121};
overlooks the Worcester relief, 241;
influenced by words and names, 247, 262;
on Normans under Edward, 248 _sqq._;
his bias, 248, 302-4;
on Richard's castle, 249 _sqq._;
confuses individuals, 251-2, 296-7, 358;
his assumptions, 251;
on the name Alfred, 254;
on the Sheriff Thorold, 255-6;
on the battle of Hastings, 258 _sqq._;
his pedantry, 259-63;
his 'palisade', 264 _sqq._, 273-4, 285, 287, 297, 300, 309;
misconstrues his Latin, 265-6, 333-4;
his use of Wace, 267-9, 270, 272^({40}), 274, 289;
on William of Malmesbury, 268, 314-17, 336;
his words suppressed, 269^{24}, 301-2;
on the Bayeux Tapestry, 269-72;
imagines facts, 272-3, 285^({117}), 297, 331;
his supposed accuracy, 273^{41}, 274, 295, 333-4, 336, 340-1, 342;
right as to the shield-wall, 273-7;
his guesses, 277-8, 279-80, 282, 289, 291-2, 297, 298-9, 331-3,
347, 351;
his theory of Harold's defeat, 278, 292-3;
his confused views, 280-1, 309, 335-6, 340-1, 342;
his dramatic tendency, 282;
evades difficulties, 287-8, 346;
his treatment of authorities, 290, 343-4;
on the relief of Arques, 295;
misunderstands tactics, 293-4, 297;
on Walter Giffard, 296-7;
his failure, 298;
his special weakness, 298, 300;
his splendid narrative, 298, 301;
his Homeric power, 300;
on Harold and his Standard, 308;
on Wace, 309-11, 313;
on Regenbald, 326;
on Earl Ralf, 327-8;
on William Malet, 329;
on the Conqueror's earldoms, 328-9;
his Domesday errors and confusion, 126-7, 326, 328, 333-4, 339-42,
351-2;
on 'the Civic League', 331-3;
his wild dream, 335;
his special interest in Exeter, 330;
on legends, 336-7;
on Thierry, 344, 348;
his method, 346;
on Lisois, 350;
on Stigand, 350;
on Walter Tirel, 360-1;
on St Hugh's action [1197], 398;
on the Winchester Assembly, 403-5;
distorts feudalism, 404;
on the King's court, 405;
on Richard's change of seal, 407;
necessity of criticizing his work, 11-12, 273
Fyfield--_see_ Fifield
Gant, Walter de, 155
Gardiner, Prof, 307
Gaunt, Agnes de, 165
Geld-roll--_see_ Danegeld, Northamptonshire
Genealogy--_see_ Domesday tenants, Fitz Audelin, Marmion,
Montmorency, Neville, Tirel
'Gemot', the: not feudal, 404-5
Geoffrey the Chancellor, 366, 368
Geroy and his offspring, 355
Gervase, Chronology of, 373-4
_Gesta Stephani_, authority of, 374-6
'Gewered', 124--_see Wara_
Giffard, the aged Walter, 296;
his daughter Rohese, 355, 356
---- William, Bishop of Winchester, 356
Giffards, greatness of the, 355-6, 357-8
Glanvile, Ranulf de, 381, 384, 433
Glastonbury Abbey: its knights, 237, 239^{257}
Gloucester, Family of De, 244-5
---- Robert, Earl of, 154, 179, 180, 369, 374-5
---- William, Earl of, 375
Glynton, Geoffrey de, 175
Gneist, Dr R.: on knight-service, 182^{2}, 186^{24}, 206^{97},
208^{106}, 228
Godwine, Prof Freeman on, 304
Grantmesnil, Ivo de, 347-8
Green, Mr J. R.: on Chester, 353;
on the Danish districts, 67^{136}, 79;
Greenstreet, Mr J., on the Lindsey Survey, 149-50, 153-4
Gresley, William de, 163, 174
Gross, Dr C., on the Coroner, 105^{212}
Grouping of Vills for assessment, 48 _sqq._;
_see also_ Vills
Guines, Count of, 352
Gundeville, Hugh de, 381, 382^{7}, 382^{8}, 383^{15}, 388
Hale, Archdeacon, 92
Hall, Mr Hubert, 121, 122, 209, 245, 321, 381^{2}
Hamilton, Mr N. E. S. A.: edits the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 18, 349;
rates it too highly, 22-3;
edits the _Inq. El._, 107
Hampshire, the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96-7
Hanslape, Michael de, 179
Hapsburgs, the English, 397^{11}
Harding, son of Eadnoth, 256^{37}
Harold: half a Dane, 248;
his tactics, 265-6, 276, 277-9, 280-3;
styled king by William, 323, 325
Hardy, Sir T. D., 18
Harrison, Mr F., 261, 263^{3}
Hastings, 248;
in Domesday, 427;
its barons, 422, 426-7, 428;
its charter, 425;
its harbour, 427-8
Hastings, Battle of, 258 _sqq._, 431 (_see_ Table of Contents)
Hastings, ravages near, 126-7, 431
Henry I: his favourites, 160, 172-3, (358);
charters of, 213, 236^{239}, 237, 358, 364-5;
he exacts military service, 239;
and the Church, 243;
his Cirencester charter, 326-7;
his Plimpton charter, 366-9
Henry II: his alleged invasion in 1147, 373;
his movements in 1142-9, 373-4, 375-6;
his action in 1163, 377, 379, 380, 398;
his movements in 1175-6, 385-8;
confirms fines, 385, 389;
his Cinque Ports charters, 422^{21}, 425-6, 429;
his writ for Chester, 353;
his legal reforms, 432-3
Henry (King), son of Henry II: his court at Winchester, 381 _sqq._;
his movements in 1170-1174, 382
Hereford Castle, 252-3.
_See also_ Ralf
Herefordshire, Normans in, 249-54
Hereward 'the Wake', 132-6
Hertford, earldom of, 358
Hertfordshire, assessment in, 59
Hesdin, Ernulf de, 95
_Hidarii_: their relation to the hide, 94
Hide, the Domesday: four virgates in, 24^{14}, 41-2, 430;
a hundred and twenty acres in, 43-7;
not an areal measure, 62-3,
but a term of assessment, 63, 82-3, 96;
peculiar use of the word in Leicestershire, 76-8,
and in Lancashire, 79;
the alleged double, 92-4;
its origin, 430
Hide, the areal, 66-7
---- of Lancashire, 79
---- of Leicestershire, 76
Historical evidence, treatment of--_see_ Evidence
Historical Research, present sphere of, 406
Historical Truth, 332
'Honour': the term, 243
'Hostiarius', Robert: his fief, 34-5
House, Communal demolition of, 416, _et seq._
Hoveden, accuracy of, 407, 408-9, 410, 412-413
Howlett, Mr R., 373-6, 422^{21}
Hugh 'Candidus': value of his chronicle, 133-4, 135^{15};
on the Peterborough fees, 137
Hundred: quartering of the, 49 _sqq._, 58, 90;
it was assessed as a whole, 51-55, 62, 82;
the unit for the Domesday Survey, 54;
and for collection of Danegeld, 54, 85-6, 88-91;
the 'double', 58;
and the 'half', 59, 70, 83;
the triple, 60;
its relation to 100 hides, 59, 87-8;
its origin, 87;
how named, 165
Hundred Court: used for the Domesday Survey, 102-4, 105, 114;
witness of, 170
Hundred, the Leicestershire, 74-6, 160, 165-6
Hundred: the 'Long', 66-8
---- of twelve carucates, the, 69-74, 77-8, 166
Hunt, Rev. W., 250^{13}, 253^{23}, 259, 275, 276, 299, 358, 395
Hunter, Rev. J., 56
Hunting: connected with Pytchley, 129-30;
with Langham, 362-3
Huntingdonshire, assessment in, 58
Husting, the Court of, 105
Hythe: its charter, 426
Ilbert, the sheriff, 350
Ingulf, the pseudo-, 120, 122, 132, 136-7, 154, 255^{34};
uses William of Malmesbury, 321-2
_Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis_, the:
its discovery, 17;
is a transcript of the Domesday returns, 19, 123, 430;
its system, 20;
collated with the _Inq. El._, 20-2;
specimen of, 21;
its omissions, 23-5;
errors in, 25-6, 31, 36, 45, 46;
special information in, 36;
illustrates the _caruca_, 41,
and the Domesday hide, 42;
often omits _terra regis_, 46-7, 50^{88};
value of its Vill-assessments, 47 _sqq._, 52;
its lists of jurors, 102 _sqq._;
its variants from the _Inq. El._, 108-11
_Inquisitio Comitatus Eliensis_, the, 17-18, 19, 106-18;
edited by Sir Henry Ellis, 106-7;
again by Mr Hamilton, 18;
its origin, 20-1;
specimen of, 21;
its value, 28-9;
its texts, 30, 103-4, 107, 112, 114-15, 123, 430;
represents a return, 114;
ordered by the Conqueror's writ, 105, 114;
errors in, 107-8, 113;
its variants from the _Inq. Com. Cant._, 108-10;
its lost original, 111;
its constituents, 111, 115;
its special information, 112-13;
its heading and its date, 115;
materials employed for it, 115, 430;
including Domesday Book (Vol. II), 116, 120;
analysis of its contents, 116-18
_Inwara_, 101
Irvine, Mr Fergusson, 79
Jeaffreson, Mr J. Cordy, 353
John, King: demands service abroad, 402-3;
his charters to the Cinque Ports, 425-6, 429
Jones, Mr: on Wilts, in Domesday, 125^{2}
Jumièges, William of, 314, 318, 319
_Jugum_, the Kentish: its four 'virgates', 95
Juhel: a Breton name, 254-5
---- 'of Lincoln', 255;
_see also_ Thorold
'Jurats', the, 416, 421
Jurors of the Domesday Survey, 102-6, 430-1;
half English and half foreigners, 104;
variants in lists of, 108-10;
in Herts, 115
Kemble, Mr J. M.: on the hide, 62
Kent: low assessment of, 86;
the _sulung_ of, 92-5;
the 'lathes' of, 94^{197};
its landowners, 95;
under Stephen, 125-6
Knight-service; its introduction into England, 182 _sqq._;
how determined, 186-9, 206;
returns of, 189 _sqq._;
'_super dominium_', 191-2, 193-194;
the '_servitium debitum_', 194-195, 197 _sqq._, 212, 219,
220, 225, 227, 228, 234, 239;
in Normandy, 206^{96}, 207, 230;
in Ireland, 207;
introduced by the Conqueror, 207, 234-6;
the author's theory of, 206-8;
aggregate of, 228, 230
Knight-service: of bishops, 399-401
Knight's fees: standard of, 186-9, 231-232;
return of, 189-90 _sqq._;
views on, 208;
number of, 210-11, 228-30;
Old-English list of, 241
Knights: Inquest of [1166], 185, 189-190 _sqq._, 210-11;
through the sheriffs, 191-2;
its object, 193 _sqq._;
how conducted, 195-6;
effect on Church fiefs, 196-7;
depends on tradition, 205-6
Knights: Joint Equipment of, 400;
Payment of, 214-6, 235-6;
wages of, 399-400, 402^{18}
Laci family and fief, 141-4, 145, 244
Lancashire, the 'hide' in, 79
Lanfranc, Archbishop, 114, 235^{232}, 236
Langham, Essex, 355, 357, 362
'Laudabiliter', the 'Bull', 390
Laund Priory: when founded, 368
Law, Constitutional: studied by William Rufus, 403
Leets: mentioned in Domesday, 90, 166;
found a century later as groups of Vills, 89
Leicester: alleged destruction of [1068], 331^{7}, 347;
Justices at [1176], 388;
Military Service of, 68
Leicester, Hugh de, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164
Leicestershire Survey, the, 74-6, 80-2, 160, _sqq._
_Liber Exoniensis_: 42^{72}, 122^{265}, 125^{2}
---- _Niger_, 179, 189, 226, 431.
_See_ 'Cartæ'
---- _Rubeus_, 179, 189, 192^{44}, 209, 226, 245
_Liberi homines_: their tenure, 37^{52}, 38-40
Liebermann, Dr F., 256
Lincoln: Alfred of, 255;
Colswegen of, 131, 132;
Earldom of, 151-3;
the 'long' hundred at, 66;
William's treatment of, 342:
_see also_ Juhel, Thorold
Lincoln, Alexander, Bishop of, 327, 366, 367, 368
---- St Hugh of: opposes the Crown, 398 _sqq._;
in the cause of privilege, 402
Lincoln, Simon, dean of, 173^{63}
Lincolnshire: a Danish district, 67, 68;
assessment in, 86
Lindsey Survey, the, 69-73, 149 _sqq._, 160, 180^{13}, 186^{23}, 196
L'Isle, Robert de, 164, 165, 174
Lisures, Fulc, de, 130
---- William de, 176, 177
Little, Mr: on the five-hide unit, 65
London: its Norman port at Dowgate, 249
Londoners and the chase, 324^{4}
Longchamp, William, 400, 407, 409-10, 414-15
Longevity, remarkable, 296
Lords, the House of: its feudal origin, 198^{60}
Luard, Dr H. R., 411^{17}
Luci, Richard de, 381, 384
Lucy, The Countess, 151-2, 153, 154, 255
Madeley (Staffs.), descent of, 173
Madox: on church fees, 197^{58}
Maitland, Prof: on the Hundred, 87;
on the Leet, 90;
on the Ramsey knights, 234;
on fines, 385, 388;
on Richard's seals, 407
Malchael, drowning of Roger, 408-9
Maldon, Battle of, 266, 268, 277
Malet, William, 255, 256, 329, 349;
his death, 134
Malmesbury, William of, 268, 276, 277, 291, 295;
used by Wace, 313-18;
by 'Ingulf', 322;
his legends, 315-316, 336
Man, Isle of: 'sheaddings' in, 71^{145}
Mandeville, Geoffrey de, 256.
_See_ Essex
Mandeville, William de, 177, 179
Manor, the two-field and the three-field, 79-82
Manors 'de Comitatu', 100
Marmion family and fief, 143, 145, 155-9, 176, 179, 180, 181;
name, 158
Marriage, rival claims settled by, 159
Marsh (_De Marisco_), Family of, 396-7
Marten skins: Ireland exports, 354
Martinwast, Ralf de, 162, 168
Matilda, wife of King Stephen, 352^{1}
Maud, Queen of Henry I, presides over suit, 120
Mayoralty, Compulsory, 416, 419-20, 421
Merc (Marck) family and fief, 351-2
---- Alouf de, 177, 179
Meschin, Ranulf, 150-2
---- William, 152-3, 164, 171, 174, 177, 178, 179, 180, 360
Meulan, Robert, Count of, 140, 142-3, 145, 154-5, 347-8
Meyer, M. Paul, 307
Middlesex, Hidation in, 64
Monasteries, knight-service of, 200-1, 220, 233-8
Montfichet, William de, 202, 205;
his wife, 358;
their son Gilbert, 431
Montfort, Hugh de, 255
Montmorency claim, the, 392 _sqq._
Moore, Mr Stuart, 124
Morkere, Earl, 125
Morres--_See_ Montmorency
Mortain, Robert, Count of, 124, 128;
his wife, 124, 128
Mortain, Stephen, Count of, 160, 164-165, 172, 180
Moustiers, Lisois de, 38, 349-50
Mowbray, Roger de: his fief, 171
Mustere, Walter de, 162
Nepotism, Ecclesiatical, 236-8, 326-7
Neville family and fief, 137-8, 370
---- their origin, 370-2
---- Alan de, 381, 384
Nomenclature, loose Norman, 138^({21}), 178-9, 360-1
Norfolk, assessment in, 88 _sqq._
---- Ralf, Earl of, 327-8, 349
Norgate, Miss Kate, 213^{121}, 217-18, 222, 224, 266^{16}, 269^{24},
279^{82}, 280^({84, 86}), 281^{96}, 282, 289^{122, 123}, 293^{133},
311, 365, 374, 375^{7}, 377^{1}, 378, 379^{10}, 390-1, 395, 400, 407,
409, 410-12, 412^{18, 22};
on scutage, 217-18, 222
Norman Conquest, the: a starting point, 247-8
Normans under Edward, 247 _sqq._
Northamptonshire: its geld-roll, 124-130;
its devastation in 1065, 125;
its Hundreds, 59, 128;
its 'hidation', 67^{136}
Northamptonshire Survey, the, 175-81
Nottinghamshire: a Danish district, 68;
low assessment of, 85-6
Odards, two, 371
Oger 'Brito': his son Ralf, 176, 179
Olifard family, 181
---- William, 176
Oliphant--_see_ Olifard
Oman, Mr, 265^{10}, 276, 286, 299
_Oppidum_, meaning of, 262
Ordericus Vitalis, 260-2, 291, 331, 336, 347-8, 360-1, 362
Osbern, Bishop of Exeter, 249
---- the son of Richard, 249-52, 253
---- 'Pentecost', 251-2
Osmund, 'the King's writer', 124
Oswaldslow Hundred, 141-4
Oxen--_see Caruca_
Oxford, justices at [1176], 389, [1180], 433
Oxford, Aubrey, first Earl of, 352
Oxfordshire, Hidation in, 63
Palgrave, Sir Francis, 17-18, 332, 341, 346
Palmer, Mr C. F. R., 157^{29}
Paris, M. Gaston, 307
Paynel, Fulk, 148, 177, 178
Pearson, Prof.: on knight service, 231
Pedantry is not accuracy, 262
Pedigree-makers, 134, 390-1, 394-7
Pell, Mr O.: his theories, 30, 41, 46, 63, 66, 74^{149}, 76, 101, 430
Pembroke, Gilbert, Earl of, 357, 393-4
---- Richard, Earl of, 393-4
Pepys, Samuel: on Domesday Book, 185
Percy, William de: his wife, 358-9
Peter of Blois: his alleged chronicle, 120, 154
Peterborough, Cartulary of, 124;
its _scriptorium_, 124--_see_ Hugh
Peterborough, Turold, Abbot of, 135-6
Peterborough, knights of, 131-9, 181, 214, 240
Picardy, the Commune in, 416-17, 418, 420-1
Picot, Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, 31, 103, 104, 117, 138, 204^{92},
349
Pistres, Roger de, 244-5, 364
_Placita_, 115, 214^{125}, 349, 387-8;
_regia_, 255;
_regalia_, 256^{37};
_in curia regis_, 386-8;
_abbatis_, 132
_Placita_, early: in Cambridgeshire, 104;
in Dorset, 105;
in London, 105;
in Hants, 214^{125}
_Placitum_, the great Ely, 37-8, 39, 349
Plagiarism, medieval, 285^{117}
Plimpton Priory, royal charter to, 366
Plough--_see Caruca_
Ploughland--_see Carucate_
Plumpton Plain, 262
Pluralist, the first great, 326-7
Poitiers, William of, 270, 273^{41}, 276, 284, 285-6, 287, 288, 291,
292-4, 295, 336, 343-5
Pomerey family, 369
Port, Henry de, 161
Precedent, dread of creating a, 401, 403
Puher family, 145, 244
Quency, William de, 177
Raimbercurt, Guy de, 31, 35, 117, 170, 178^{6};
his son Richard, 175, 179
Ralf, Earl of Hereford, 252-4
Ramis, Roger de, 162
Ramsey Abbey: knight-service of, 233-234;
its _carta_, 234
Ranulf, the chancellor, 365, 367, 368
_Recedere, potuit_: a phrase distinguishing tenure, 28, 31,
32-4, 35-40
Records, historical value of, 406
Red Book of the Exchequer--_see Liber Rubeus_
Redvers, Baldwin de, 367, 369
Regenbald, the chancellor, 257, 323 _sqq._
Regent, the Justiciar as, 329^{19}
Relief, the feudal, 241-3
'Ricardi': Clares so styled, 355
Richard I: his demand in 1197, 398-402;
his change of seal [1198], 406 _sqq._;
his captivity, 408, 409;
his want of money, 399, 410;
angry with Longchamp, 412-13;
his movements, 414;
his Cinque Ports charter, 425
Richard the son of Scrob, 249-54
Richard's castle: descent of, 145, 147-8;
building of 249 _sqq._
Ridel, Geoffrey (I and II), 173;
(II), 388
Robert, son of Wimarc, 251^{16}, 256-7
Rochester, See of: its knight-service, 199^({63})
Rollos, Richard de--_see_ Rullos
_Rotuli Wincestrie_, 175
Rouen: its trade with Ireland, 354;
Henry I at, 364
Roumare, William de, 151-3, 202
Rullos, Richard and William de, 136-7, 161
Rutland in Domesday, 68^{137}, 73, 84^{173}
Rye--_see_ Winchelsea
_Saca_--_see Soca_
St Bertin, Abbey of, 351, 361^{12}
St Edmund's Abbey: its knights, 400-1;
Baldwin, Abbot of, 255, 329
St John, Thomas de, 173^{63}
---- William de, 381, 383^{15}
St Medard, Anschetil de, 131, 240
Salisbury, Edward of, 162, 171, 173, 174
Salisbury, Herbert, Bishop of, 398, 401-402
Salisbury, Roger, Bishop of, 213, 214, 327
Sandwich: Custumal of, 416, 419-20;
its charter, 425
Sawley, the 'Hundred' of, 73, 165-6
_Scalariis_--_see_ Eschalers
Scotland, David, King of, 160-5, 174, 175, 176, 432
Scotland, Malcolm, King of, 124, 432
Scrivelby, descent of, 158
Scutage, 209 _sqq._;
antiquity of, 212-15, 217 _sqq._;
on church fiefs, 401
Seal, Richard I's change of, 406 _sqq._
Seebohm, Mr F., 40, 83-4, 86, 92, 93-5, 97, 189, 215^{129}
'Senlac', the name of, 259-63
Senlis, Matilda de, 360, 432
_Servientes_, pay of, 215-16, 223-4
Sheriff's aid, the, 379
Sheriffs named from county town, 138-9
Sherstone, battle of, 280-1
Shield-wall, the, 264, 265, 266, 268-9, 273-7, 284, 300-1, 306, 307,
317-18, 321.
_See_ 'Testudo'
Sicily, Prof Freeman on, 303
Six carucates a unit of assessment, 66-76, 79-82, 160;
Scandinavian, 430
'Sixty thousand', loose use of, 228-9
Skeat, Prof: on 'leet', 90
Snorro, 321
_Soca_, 28-9, 31, 32-3, 35-40, 112;
detached from tenure, 100-101
Soke of Eadulfsness, the, 94
Sokemen, 28-9, 31, 32-3, 35-40
_Solanda_: not identical with _solinum_, 91-4;
referred to a prebend, 93
_Solinum_: the Kentish _sulung_ or ploughland, 91-5;
its four _juga_, 95
Somerset: assessment in, 61;
the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96-9;
comital Manors of, 100
Stafford, Robert de, 173
Staffordshire, low assessment of, 85-6
Stamford: its wards, 68
Standard, battle of the, 276^({62})-277^{67}, 279-80
Stapleton, 131, 132^{4}, 352;
on the Lindsey Survey, 149;
on William Meschin, 151-2, 153^{14};
on the Marmions, 155-9;
Lambert's statement disproved by, 352
Stephen, King, devastation under, 125;
_see also_ Mortain
Stevenson, Mr W. H., 149;
on Mr Pell's theories, 63;
on the 'long' hundred, 66;
on the hundred of land, 70^{143};
on the Leicestershire 'hide', 77-8;
on the St Denis charters, 427^{9}
Steyning: granted to Fécamp, 249, 428
Stigand, archbishop, 349-50
Stubbs, Dr (Bishop of Oxford): on the hide, 47^{85};
on the hundred, 54, 87-8;
misled by Ellis, 59, 124;
on Stephen's earldoms, 152;
on the origin of knight-service, 182-4;
on the knight's fee, 187-9, 232;
on the _Cartæ Baronum_, 189 _sqq._;
on personal assessment, 195^{56}, 196^{57};
on scutage, 217-18;
on joint equipment, 218^{143};
on feudal tenures, 208^{108}, 234;
on aggregate of knights, 228-9;
on knights' fees, 233;
his insight, 54, 242, 245, 334^{14}, 335^{15};
on 'Ingulf' 298;
on the Woodstock debate, 377, 398;
on danegeld, 377-8;
on Becket's opposition, 380^{13};
on the _curia regis_, 387-8, 432-3;
on St Hugh's opposition [1197], 398, 400, 402^{19};
on archæology, 406;
on Richard's change of seal, 407-10, 411-15
Sudbury, peculiar position of, 90
Sudely, John de, 147
Suffolk: assessment in, 88 _sqq._;
Nordman, sheriff of, 327, 329
Sussex ports, Normans at, 249;
_see also_ Cinque Ports
Swereford, errors of, 118^{250}, 198, 209-10, 212, 217-18, 225, 228
Tamworth, descent of, 156, 158-9
Tavistock Abbey, military service of, 201, 236
Taxation--_see_ Danegeld, Assessment
Taylor, Canon Isaac: his theory of assessment, 62, 80^{166}-81;
on the carucate, 66^{133};
on the hundred, 74^{151}
'Testudo' (shield-wall), 277, 317-18, 321
Thegn, the: qualification of, 65-6;
in Yorkshire, 69
'Thegnland', 35-40
Thierry, Mons.: on the Commune, 416-17, 418
Thinghoe, hundred of: inquest on, 88
Thorold (of Lincoln) the Sheriff--_see_ Turold
Tillières, Truce of, 406, 409, 412-13
Tirel, Walter, 355 _sqq._;
his parentage, 360-1;
his wife Adeliz (de Clare), 355-6, 362-3;
their son Hugh, 355, 357, 361, 362-3;
the family, 360-2
Toeni family and fiefs, 146
Toni, Robert de--_see_ Stafford
Totnes, Honour of, 369^{4}
---- Juhel de, 254-5, 367, 369^{4}
Toulouse, the 'scutage' of, 209-10, 215, 218-23
Tout, Prof T. F.: on Hereward, 134^{11}-136;
on William Fitz Audelin, 390
Towns: assessed on same system as Vills, 48, 55, 58, 59, 60, 64-5,
130
Tracy family--_see_ Sudeley
Treasury, the Royal: at Winchester, 121-2;
its contents, 121-2
Trithing: in Lindsey, 70;
an equal division, 71
Tuchet, Henry, 165, 172, 174
Turold, the sheriff, 202^{76}, 255-6
Vautort, Reginald de, 369
_Vendere_--_see Recedere_
Verdon, Bertram de, 387-8
Verdon, Norman de, 161-3, 166-7
Vere, Aubrey de--_see Camerarius_
Vills, grouping of, 49 _sqq._, 63^{122}, 71-3, 75, 88-91, 96-7, 99
Vinogradoff, Prof P., 92, 93-5, 101, 303^{161}
Vincent, Mr J. A. C., 67, 154^{15}
Virgate, the Domesday: 30 acres in, 42;
essentially a quarter, 50, 430;
in Kent a quarter of the _jugum_ and even of an acre, 95;
the 'parva', 175
Wace: Master, 306 _sqq._;
Prof Freeman's use of, 267-9, 289, 309-11, 319-20;
the disputed passage in, 267, 302, 306;
its four or five renderings, 307, 317-18;
Prof Freeman's final view of it, 268, 300-1, 306, 308, 317;
contradicted by Mr Archer, 301-2, 306;
his accuracy, 271, 309-10, 313-14;
on the 'fosse' disaster, 289-91;
on the feigned flight, 294-5;
his 'escuz', 307;
lacks corroboration, 309;
his errors, 310;
his anachronism, 310-11;
his late date, 311;
his sobriety, 312-13;
his sources, 313-20
Wake family and fief, 134, 136-7;
pedigree of, 359
Walchelin, Bishop of Winchester, 114-15
Waldric, the Chancellor, 364
Wales, food-rents in, 84, 97
Waltheof, Earl, 349
Walton, garrison of, 216
Wapentake, the: in Lindsey, 70, 76, 149;
in Holland, 73;
in Rutland, 73;
in Yorkshire, 80;
in Leicestershire, 160
_Wara_, 35, 60^{114}, 166;
its meaning in Domesday, 100-2;
in the Burton Cartulary, 101
Warenne, William de, 37
Warwick: military service of, 68
---- Roger Earl of, 367, 368
'Waste': on the rolls, 125-6, 128;
in Domesday, 126-8;
under Stephen, 126
Waters, Mr Chester, 62;
on the Lindsey Survey, 149-52, 153-4, 155, 160, 166^{46} 180^{13};
on the Marmions, 158-9
Webb, Mr P. C., 17-18, 118^{250}
William I: introduces knight-service, 207, 232, 234-6, 239;
writs of 114, 238;
his tactics, 285-6, 293, 294, 299;
his charter to Regenbald, 324;
his English writs, 324-5, 327-8, 329;
his 'licentia', 326-7, 329;
his siege of Exeter, 330 _sqq._;
his great danger [1067], 330;
his alleged harrying, 333;
his policy, 337-8, 343, 346;
his vengeance, 339;
raises castles, 339;
increases town tributes, 342;
his treatment of Exeter and Le Mans, 345;
favours Ely Abbey, 349;
his Lillebonne assembly, 401, 405
William II: exacts military service, 235, 239;
did not introduce it, 182-4;
his extortions, 241-3;
his dealings with the Church, 241-3;
his appeal to the barons, 403-5;
studies constitutional law, 404;
his court at Salisbury, 405^{36}
Wiltshire: the _firma unius noctis_ in, 96, 98.
_See also_ Jones
Winchelsea and Rye, 248;
their charter, 425-6;
members of 'Brede', 428
Winchester: early suit at, 120;
the Royal treasury in its castle, 120-2, 175;
Exchequer at, 381;
feudal assembly at, 403-405
Winchester, Henry Bishop of, 237
Windows, strange use of, 308^{14}
Winemar, Walter Fitz, 179
Wirral peninsula, the, 79
Witan--_see_ Gemot; Lords
Woodstock, council at, 377, 398-9
Worcester, see of: its knights, 231, 236, 240, 241 _sqq._
Worcestershire: assessment of, 60;
survey, 140-8
Wording, alteration of, 22, 34-5
Writs addressed through sheriff [1166], 192-3
Wyon, Mr, 410
Yarmouth, rights of Hastings at, 422^{21}, 425-6
Yorkshire: a Danish district, 68-9;
its assessment, 73-4, 79-81
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
^ denotes a superscript.
The ligature æ is not necessarily consistent in its use, e.g.
'mediæval' is used more in Part I of this book, but not in Part II;
'mediaeval' is used in both parts.
The original book contained a Foreword, which is not present in the
scans from which this book derives.
'Foreword ... page 7' has been removed from the Table of Contents.
Page 51: Text and table were slightly re-arranged for better flow.
Page 138: 'Lincolnshire' could be an error for 'Lincolnescire'
or 'Lincolnescira', both appearing on page 137.
(p. 137): "Hugh Candidus wrote of the former:
Heres Galfridi de Nevile tenet in Lincolnescire,..."
Page 251: "as we gather from Florence [?] ..."
64 Floriacensis Vigorinensis: John of Worcester (fl. 1095-1140),
chronicler, the author of the world history formerly attributed to
Florence of Worcester.
Survives in five twelfth-century manuscripts.
Holinshed's last citation is under 1115, ... ~ CATALOGUE OF
PRINCIPAL SOURCES USED IN 1577 EDITION OF HOLINSHEDS CHRONICLES
COMPILED BY HENRY SUMMERSON [http://www.cems.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/
Catalogue%20of%20principal%20sources.....pdf]
'Stamford Bridge' and 'Stamfordbridge' both appear more than once
in this book, and in the First edition. Two instances of
'Stamfordbridge' have been corrected to 'Stamford Bridge', to
correspond to the First edition.
Page 323 (in Chaper 'REGENBALD, PRIEST AND CHANCELLOR'): A Charter
in Anglo-Saxon has been restored from the 1st edition (1895).
Anglo-Saxon letters in this Charter include:
þ = (lower-case) thorn;
[W] representing Capital Wynn;
[w] representing lower-case wynn;
ð = (lower-case) eth;
[þt] representing thorn with stroke, an abbreviation for þæt
þ and ð are also used elsewhere in the book.
Page 381: The printer has used a symbol to simulate a mediaeval
scribe's abbreviarion of 'et'.
This has been replaced in this .txt version of the book by [et].
Pages 412-415: The 2-page table which interrupted the text has been
removed to the end of the chapter (as it was in the First edition),
and the page numbers and footnote numbers amended.
As the table is spread across two pages, line numbers have been
added to connect the two pages.
The column headings run:
_Granted_ _at_ _Confirmed_ _at_ _Grantee_ _Authority_
Line 1. of the first table is followed by line 1. of the second
table, and so on. The brackets between lines 6. and 7. have been
removed, and the common information duplicated, to enable the two
sets of line-numbers to co-relate.
Page 432: 'enured' = 'inured' = (legal) 'took effect', etc.
Errata:
Many printer's errors, nearly all absent from the first edition,
appear to have been introduced by a careless printer working from a
copy of the first edition. Abbreviated titles, 'Mr.', 'Prof.', etc.,
in the First edition have mostly appeared in this edition as 'Mr',
'Prof', etc. These have been retained. Incorrect punctuation has
been repaired without comment, except in the Index. Here the printer
of this edition has replaced many of the colons of the First edition
with commas, and added extra commas after sub-listings. These have
been retained. Double quotes were used in the first edition; single
quotes in this edition. This has led to some confusion where ' is
used for both an abbreviation and a following end quote ('').
Other errors are listed below.
Page 10, Footnote 3: '1404' corrected to '430'.
"See p. 430."
Page 24: 'invinit' corrected to 'invenit'. (Correct in 1895 ed.)
"... et vendere potuit, et iiii^{tam.} partem unius Avere
vicecomiti invenit."
Page 26: 'defend [ebat]' corrected to 'defend[ebat]'.
"Pro v. hidis se defend[ebat] semper."
Page 29: 'vig.' corrected to 'virg.', (as 1895 ed.).
"i. 198 (_b_) 1. 'tenet Durand ... i. hidam et i. virg.', _for_
'tenet Durand i. hidam et dim. virg.'"
Page 30, footnote 38: 'earucis' corrected to 'carucis'.
'carucis' is a ploughland; 'earucis' does not exist.
"... 'vi. carucis ibi est terra'. See _Addenda_.]"
Page 33: 'licentiat' corrected to 'licentia', (as 1895 ed.).
"Absque eius licentia dare terram suam potuerunt,..."
Page 33: 'receder' corrected to 'recedere', (as 1895 ed.).
"Potuerunt recedere cum terra ad quem dominum voluerunt."
Page 34: 'teræ' corrected to 'terræ', (as 1895 ed.).
"Robertus hostiarius tenet de rege ii. car. terræ in Howes."
Page 34, footnote 44: 'ne musad' corrected to 'nemus ad'
"'silua ad sepes refici.' (I.C.C.) = 'nemus ad claud. sepes'
(D.B.)."
Page 36: 'abbats' corrected to 'abbatis', (as 1895 ed.).
"Non potuit dare nec vendere absque licentia abbatis."
Page 37, footnote 54: 'commdantione' corrected to 'commendatione',
(as 1895 ed.).
"[... 'In soca et commendatione abbatis de eli' (D.B., ii. 441).]"
Page 66, footnote 133: 'Curacate' corrected to 'Carucate', (as 1895
ed.).
"Mr Stevenson, perhaps, is rather too severe on Canon Taylor's
'Carucate' remarks in the _New English Dictionary_."
Page 68: 'emenadtionis' corrected to 'emendationis', (as 1895 ed.).
"Hujus emendationis habet rex ii. partes, comes terciam."
Page 72: '65' corrected to '63'.
"Lastly, to complete the parallel with the Leicestershire Hundreds
_infra_, we may take this case (_cf._ p. 63, note 122.)"
Page 81, footnote 169: '43' (11 (2 + 3 + 3 + 43).) corrected to '3'.
"... These assessments would give us 24 (6 + 6 + 6 + 3 + 3) + 24
(4 + 6 + 10 + 2 + 2) + 18 (3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3) + 11
(2 + 3 + 3 + 3)."
Page 89, footnote 184: 'constituuntut' corrected to 'constituuntur',
(as 1895 ed.).
"'In hundredo de Tinghowe sunt xx. villæ ex quibus constituuntur
ix. lete, quas sic distinguimus.' Gage's Suffolk, p. xii."
Page 90: eim[idium] corrected to 'dim[idium]', (as 1895 ed.)
"'Hund[redum] et dim[idium] de Clakelosa de x. leitis' (ii.
212_b_)."
Page 93: '_sullung solanda_'corrected to '_sullung_ or _solanda_',
(as 1895 ed.).
"... shows that in the Kentish district, and in Essex, where the
_sullung_ or _solanda_ takes the place of the hide,..."
Page 95: 'basse' corrected to 'bases'.
"Mr Seebohm bases this statement on Anglo-Saxon evidence,..."
Page 95: 'Cland. A. IV' corrected to 'Claud. (for Claudius) C. IV'.
('The bookcases of Sir Robert Cotton's library were identified by
busts of Roman emperors.
Cf.
'A. IV' corrected to 'C. IV' (Wrong in 1895 ed., correct in
Elton's book).)
"Mr Elton, in his well-known _Tenures of Kent_, attaches
considerable importance to a list, 'De Suylingis Comitatus Kantiæ
et qui eas tenent;...' in the Cottonian MS., Claud. C. IV, which
he placed little subsequent to Domesday."
Page 96: 'numquam' and 'nunquam' are interchangeable; they both mean
'never', or 'not'.
Page 96: 'indominio' corrected to 'in dominio', (as 1895 ed.).
"Rex tenet in dominio _Basingestoches_."
Page 101: 'p. 61' corrected to 'p. 60'.
"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)."
Page 107: Missing tag for footnote 219 added to page (as 1895 ed.).
Page 109: 'p[ræ] fectus' corrected to 'p[ræ]fectus' and 'hui [us]'
corrected to 'hui[us]'
"Ric[ardus] p[ræ]fectus hui[us] hundreti" (TN: words italicised
in text).
Page 113: 'Abllot's' corrected to 'Abbot's'.
"Abbot's sokeman 8(Acres) 20(Pence)"
Page 116: '_brere_' corrected to '_breve_'.
"et sunt scriptæ in _breve regis_ (i. 178)."
Page 117: "... by by...." First 'by' replaced with 'but'.
"is arranged not by Hundreds but by fiefs."
Page 117: 'dermodesdun a' corrected to 'dermodesduna', (as 1895
ed.).
"In dermodesduna tenuerunt xxv. liberi homines...."
Page 122: 'Huntington' corrected to 'Huntingdon', (as 1895 ed.).
"and Henry of Huntingdon states that '... inter thesauros reposita
usque hodie servantur'."
Page 147: 'hidæet' corrected to 'hidæ et'.
"Summa lx. hidæ et dimidia."
Page 151: '1212' corrected to '1122'.
"Consequently Hugh, the youngest brother, can have been only a boy
in 1122."
Page 151: '50' corrected to '60'.
"... two knights' fees of Stafford in 1166,[59] and that another
is Robert Bagot, who held a quarter of a fee,[60] while Geoffrey
Ridel himself then held one, namely, Madeley.[61]"
Page 161: 'ed' corrected to 'de'. (Roger de Moubray)
"In Picwell et in Lucerthorp de feudo Rogeri de Moubray xv. car."
Page 173: 'June 31st'. This agrees with the 1895 ed., but may refer
to a document of 1st July, 1176. (see page 388, paragraph beginning:
"Having now traced the royal _iter_, of which the pleas are....").
Page 177: 'Comitis[is]' corrected to 'Comit[is]', to match similar.
"In Evenle i. hid. et i. parvam virg. de feodo Comit[is]
Leyc[estrie]."
Page 189 (et seq.): 'I. THE CARTAE OF 1166'. The 3rd impression
agrees with the 1st Edition (1895). Subsequent 'cartæ' in this
chapter (3rd impression) do not. All instances of 'cartæ' in this
chapter have been corrected to 'cartae', as 1895 ed.
Page 208, Footnote 106: 'Gnesit' corrected to 'Gneist'.
"[Footnote 106: Gneist, _C.H._, i. 129, 156.]"
Page 212: _cartae_ corrected to '_carta_.
"For while the _carta_ of William de Braose returns twenty-eight
fees,..."
Page 212: 'xxxviij. lij. s. vj. d.' corrected to
'xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d.' (38 pounds, 2 shillings, 6 pence)
"Abbas Gloucestriæ de promissione, sed non numeratur quid;
sed in rotulo praecedenti dicitur:--Abbas Gloucestriæ debet
xxxviij. l. ij. s. vj. d. de veteri scutagio Walliae."
Page 213: 'Charteris Abbey' corrected to 'Chatteris Abbey'.
Chatteris is a town about ten miles from Ely. Charteris appears to
be in Scotland. r/t is a not uncommon printer's error in older
books.
Page 215, Footnote 128: 'millitum' corrected to 'militum'.
"So too Bishop Wulfstan is found 'pompam militum secum ducens qui
stipendiis annuis', etc. (W. Malmesb.)"
Page 217: 'Archibishop' corrected to 'Archbishop'.
"... Archbishop Theobald...."
Page 224, Footnote 161: This edition used single quotes, where
earlier editions used double quotes. Sometimes this leads to
confusion:
'Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v.
solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal'' (p. 84).
where the following would have been clearer:
[... "Episcopus de Heref' reddit compotum de lxxvi. libris et v.
solidis de promiss[ione] c. Servientium de Wal'" (p. 84).]
(Heref' and Wal' are abbreviations).
Page 230: 'restoring' corrected to 'resorting'.
"It is a hopeless undertaking to reconcile the facts with the wild
figures of mediæval historians by resorting to the ingenious
devices of apocalyptic interpretation." (as 1895 ed.)
Page 253, Footnote 22: 'pa' corrected to 'þa', as in 1895 ed.
"... but the words of the Worcester chronicler 'þa castelmenn on
Hereforda' seem to fix the meaning to the city itself'"
Page 254: 'Althelings' corrected to 'Athelings', as in 1895 ed.
"The two former would naturally be given to godsons or dependants
of the two Athelings while in Normandy [_i.e._ after 1013]."
Page 254: 'Britio' corrected to 'Brito' as in 1895 ed.
"... we have another Breton tenant-in-chief, 'Alvredus Brito'."
Page 255: 'Al veredus' corrected to 'Alveredus'.
"... et Hispaniensis Alveredus, cum aliis compluribus."
Page 256: 'Leibermann' corrected to 'Liebermann'.
"I can now, by the kindness of Dr Liebermann, add the instance of
the Mandeville fief in Surrey,..."
Page 256: 'Wesmam' corrected to 'Wesman' as in 1895 ed.
"'De his hidis tenet Wesman vi. hidas de Goisfrido filio comitis
Eustachii;..."
Page 261: 'pæt mysnter æt pære Bataille' corrected to
'þæt mynster æt þære Bataille'.
"... the usual title is 'ecclesia Sancti Martini de Bello',
'ecclesia de Bello', or, as we have seen, in English
'þæt mynster æt þære Bataille'."
Page 261: 'pære' corrected to 'þære'.
"('He com him togenes æt þære haran apuldran')."
Page 273: 'in' corrected to 'it'.
"... the palisade, and that it figures 'now in every history'."
Page 285, Footnote 117: '_stravil_' corrected to '_stravit_.' as
1895 ed.
"As the writer had just described how the Duke '_stravit_ adversam
gentem',..."
Page 289, Footnote 122: 'foosse' corrected to 'fosse'.
"... than that they did not notice the fosse."
Page 289, Footnote 123: 'smewhat' corrected to 'somewhat'.
"'The passage,' as she says, 'is somewhat obscure.'"
Page 292, Footnote 129: 'quas ivolante' corrected to 'quasi
volante'.
"'Ausa sunt, ut superius, aliquot millia quasi volante cursu,
quos fugere putabant urgere' (_Will. Pict._).]"
Page 295: '_d' Arches_' corrected to '_d'Arches_' (as 1895 ed.)
"_À la tur d'Arches fist porter_,"
Page 300, Footnote 148: 'Coonq.' corrected to 'Conq.'
"[Footnote 148: _Norm. Conq._, ii. 469; and _supra_, p. 356.]"
Page 301, Footnote 152: missing 'is' inserted, as in 1985 ed.
"[Footnote 152: 'The Reviewer ... tells us that ... Mr Freeman
... is wrong, completely wrong,...']"
Page 318: 'II.' corrected to 'll.' (lines), as in 1895 ed.
"it is hard to believe that the writer of ll. 8103-38 had not
seen that famous work."
Page 327: 'Buro nam' corrected to 'Burnam', as 1895 ed.
"The charter was granted 'apud Burnam in transfretatione mea anno
incarnationis Domini MCXXXIII...."
Page 329, Footnote 17: '14, 314' but corrected to '14,314'.
"Add. MS., 14,314, fo. 32_b_ (pencil)."
Page 335: 'Lubeck' corrected to 'Lübeck'.
"... we see that the path was opening by which Exeter might have
come to be another Lübeck, the head of a Damnonian Hanse,..."
Page 355: 'daous' corrected to 'dacus', as 1895 ed.
Laingaham tenet Walterus Tirelde R. quod tenuit Phin dacus pro ii.
hidis et dimidia et pro uno manerio (_Domesday_, ii. 41).
Page 358, Footnote 1: 'Guillelum' corrected to 'Guillelmum', as 1895
ed.
"'Baldwinus vero genuit Rodbertum, et Guillelmum,...'"
Page 358, Footnote 6: 'Boynard's' corrected to 'Baynard's', and
'Fatome' corrected to 'Fantôme' as 1895 ed.
"Ancestor of the fitzWalters of Dunmow and of Baynard's Castle,
who are accordingly spoken of by Fantôme as 'Clarreaus'--a word
which has puzzled his editor, Mr Howlett."
Page 360: 'Acheres' corrected to 'Achères', as 1895 ed.
"... Lord of Poix in Ponthieu and of Achères by the Seine'..."
Page 368: 'p. 481' corrected to p. 365'.
I have already determined (p. 365) the date of Ranulf's accession
to the post.
Page 369: (Richard fitz Baldwin, a sheriff of Devon):
'page 237' corrected to 'page 236, note 239'
"... Ricardo filio Baldwini vicecomiti...."
Page 369, footnote 4: 'pp. 330, 472' corrected to 'pp. 256,
footnote 37; 358'
"... in conjunction with William fitz Baldwin (see pp. 256,
footnote 37; 358")
Page 369, Footnote 4: Three instances of 'Nunant' corrected to
'Nonant', as 1895 ed.
[1st ed. has Nunant for the previous 3 occurrences of the name, but
Nonant here and the next 2 occurrences. Possibly the variation may
be deliberate and reflect the spelling in the sources.]
Page 371: There would appear to be some error here. The family
tree (also in the 1st ed.) disagrees with the text, where Dolfin
is said to be the son of Uchtred and brother of Eadwulf.
Page 377: 'notros' corrected to 'nostros', as 1895 ed.
"... et servientes vel ministri
provinciarum, et homines nostros manutenuerint,..."
Page 381: 'pertinen [ciis]' corrected to 'pertinen[ciis]', as 1895
ed.
"... suis heredibus villam de Aynho cum omnibus pertinen[ciis]...."
Page 394: 'ROBERT I' corrected to 'ROBERTI', as 1895 ed.
"Robertus Stephanides ... Inter cæteros _Herveius de
Montemaurisco_ ROBERTI PATRUUS, _nepoti suo se_ comitem
præbuit (p. 77)."
Page 400: 'sevitium' corrected to 'servitium', as 1895 ed.
"Scio equidem ad militare servitium domino regi,..."
Page 402, Footnote 18: 'consuelentes' corrected to 'consulentes', as
1895 ed.
"In crastino autem venerunt quidam familiares regis, consulentes
abbati ut sibi caute provideret,..."
Page 417, Footnote 2: 'donus' corrected to 'domus', as 1895 ed.
"('domus ejus et omnia ad ejus mancionem pertinentia prosternantur')"
Page 424: 'confirms' corrected to 'confirm', as 1895 ed.
"The actual words (as given by Jeake), confirm to the Ports their
liberties as held:..."
Page 430, Footnote 10: 'sitting' corrected to 'silting', as 1895 ed.
"... but I can find no trace of a haven 'formed by the Bourne
between the East and West Hills', which replaced it on its
silting-up."
Page 432: 'p. 389' corrected to 'p. 359'.
"Robert fitz Richard and his children (see p. 359) are included in
this pedigree,"
Page 438: 'habour' corrected to 'harbour'
"Hastings, harbour, 427-8, and Footnote 10."
Page 442: Index numbers: 555, 558-60 removed. Correct for First
Edition; too high for 3rd Impression.
Index: The Index was unreliable.
Though most page numbers were correct, some page numbers belonged
to the first edition, and had not been correctly translated, or
not removed after translation; some were merely incorrect. All
page numbers were checked, and retained, amended, or deleted
without TN comment, except where the error was not simply numerical.
As the Footnotes have now been removed from the ends of pages to
the ends of Chapters, there is no longer the connection from the
Index page reference to a footnote, which may have held the only
information on the page to the Index topic. Accordingly, where the
information sought is only in the footnote, the footnote number, as
a superscript, has been added to the page number in the Index, e.g.
"Ellis, Mr A. S., 249^{7}, 257^{43}"
Index: 'Feif' corrected to 'Fief'.
"Barnstaple, Fief of,..."
Index: 'Beauchamp, Maud de, 156, 158-9'.
The reference to p. 158 is to 'Matilda Beauchamp'. 'Matilda' and
'Maud' were apparently interchangeable, so this reference would
be correct.
However, p. 159 has:
"... in their rivalry for Tamworth,[36] the Marmions embraced
the cause of Stephen, and the Beauchamps that of Maud, their
variance being terminated under Henry II by a matrimonial
alliance."
Surely this Maud is not Maud de Beauchamp, as the entry implies,
but the Empress Maud, daughter, and surviving heir, of Henry I,
and mother of Henry II; and bitter rival of her cousin, Stephen
of Blois, crowned King of England, while she was not quite
crowned Queen.
Index: 'Couut' corrected to 'Count'.
"Fitz Count, Brian,..."
Index: 'Hamslape' corected to 'Hanslape'.
"Hanslape, Michael de, 179"
Index: 'Knight's-fees' corrected to 'Knight's fees', as 1895 ed.
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