The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

VII. THE DOMESDAY SURVEY OF THE VILLA OF WESTMINSTER.

It may be worth while to test the value of the key which the results of this inquiry have put into our hand by applying it to the Domesday description of a particular manor.

Survey of Westminster.

For this purpose the survey of the manor of [p098] Westminster may be chosen as one of great national and historical interest. It is as follows:[120]—

• In the villa where is situated the church of St. Peter [i.e. the abbey] the abbot of the same place holds 1312 hides [i.e. land rated at so much]. There is land for 11 plough teams.
• To the demesne belong 9 hides and 1 virgate, and there are 4 plough teams.
• The villeins have 6 plough teams, and one more might be made.
• There are 9 villani with a virgate each.
  • 1 villanus with a hide.
  • 9 villani with a half-virgate each.
  • 1 cottier with 5 acres.
  • 41 cottiers rendering a shilling each yearly for their gardens.
• There is meadow for 11 plough teams,
  • Pasture for the cattle of the village,
  • Wood for 100 pigs.
• There are 25 houses of the abbot's soldiers and of other men, who render 8s. per annum or 10l. in all; when he received them, the same; in the time of King Edward, 12l.
• This manor was and is in the demesne of the Church of St. Peter of Westminster.
• In the same villa Bainiardus holds 3 hides of the abbot. There is land for 2 plough teams, and they are there, in demesne, and one cottier. Wood for 100 pigs. Pasture for cattle. Four arpents of vineyard newly planted. All these are worth 60s.; when he received them, 20s.; in the time of King Edward, 6l. This land belonged, and belongs, to the Church of St. Peter.

The abbot's manor.

The open fields.

It is clear from this description that the village which nestled round the new minster just completed by Edward the Confessor, was on a manor of the abbot. It consisted of 25 houses of the abbot's immediate followers, 19 homesteads of villani, 42 cottages with their little gardens, and one of them with 5 acres of land. There was also the larger homestead of the sub-manor of the abbot's under-tenant, with a single cottage and a vineyard of 4 half-acres newly planted. There was meadow enough by the river side to make hay for the herd of oxen [p099] belonging to the dozen plough teams of the village, and pasture for them and other cattle. Further round the village in open fields were about 1,000 acres of arable land mostly in the acre strips, lying no doubt in their shots or furlongs, and divided by green turf balks and field-ways. Lastly, surrounding the whole on the land side were the woods where the swineherd found mast for the 200 pigs of the place. On every one of these points we have the certain evidence of sworn eye-witnesses.

Incidental evidence.

And so with little variation must have been the condition of things in all material points twenty years earlier,[121] when King Edward lay on his death-bed and wandered in his mind, and saw in his delirium two holy monks whom he remembered in Normandy, who foretold to him the coming disasters to the realm, which should only be ended when 'the green tree, after severance from its trunk and removal for the space of three acres (trium jugerum spatio), should return to its parent stem, and again bear leaf and fruit and flower.' It may be that the delirious king as 'he sat up in bed' dreamily gazed through the window of his chamber upon the open fields, and the turf balks dividing the acres. The green tree may have been suggested to his mind by an actual tree growing out of one of the balks. The uneven glass of his window-panes would be just as likely as not as he rose in his bed to sever the stem from the root to his eye, moving it apparently three acres' breadth higher up the open field, restoring it again to its root as he sank back on his pillow. The very delirium of [p100] the dying king thus becomes the most natural thing in the world when we know that all round were the open fields, and balks, and acres. Without this knowledge even the learned and graphic historian of the Norman Conquest can make nothing of the 'trium jugerum spatio,' and casts about for other renderings instead of the perfectly intelligible right one.[122]

Further incidental evidence.

Once more; the contemporary biographer of Edward the Confessor, with the accuracy of one to whom Westminster was no doubt familiar, tells us that 'the devout king destined to God that place, both for that it was near unto the famous and wealthy city of London, and also had a pleasant situation amongst fruitful fields lying round about it, with the principal river running hard by, bringing in from all parts of the world great variety of wares and merchandise of all sorts to the city adjoining; but chiefly for the love of the apostle, whom he reverenced with a special and singular affection.' [123] Even the delicate historical insight of the late historian of the abbey, to whom all its picturesque surroundings were so dear, failed to catch the full meaning of this passage. Whilst referred to in a note it becomes paraphrased thus in the text:—'By this time also the wilderness of Thorney was cleared; and the crowded river with its green meadows, and the sunny aspect of the island, may have had a charm for the king whose choice had hitherto lain in the rustic fields of Islip and Windsor.' [124] Yes, 'meadows of Thorney' there were, [p101] on which the oxen of a dozen plough teams were grazing, but the contemporary writer's 'fruitful fields lying round about the place' were the 1,000 acres of corn land of which Dean Stanley was unconscious. No blame to him, for what economic student had sufficiently understood the Domesday Survey to tell him that every virgate of the villani of the 'villa ubi sedet Æcclesia Sancti Petri' was a bundle of strips of arable land scattered all over the three great fields stretching away from the village, and the river, and the 'meadows of Thorney' for a mile or two round?