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 alias '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 Regis | Waste | Total | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sutton | 21⅔ | 40 | 10 | 28⅓ | 100 | [100] | |
| Warden | 17¾ | 40 | 41¼ | 99 | [99] | ||
| Cleyley | 18 | 40 | 42 | 100 | [100] | ||
| Gravesend | 18½ | 35 | 5 | 41½ | 100 | [100] | |
| 'Eadbolds Stow' | 23½ | 45 | 5 | 26½ | 100 | [100] | |
| 'Ailwardsley' | 16½ | 40 | [6½] | 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 | [3½] | 29½[10 ] | 110 | [109] | |
| Neuesland | [80½][11] | 59 | [8] | 12½ | [160] | ||
| Navisford | 15 | 14 | 33 | 62 | [62] | ||
| Polebrook | 10 | 20 | 32 | 62 | [62] | ||
| Newbottlegrove | 44⅞ | 72 | 33⅛ | 150 | [150] | ||
| Gilsborough | 16 | 68 | 66 | 150 | [150] | ||
| Spelho | 20½ | [Borough 25] | [16] | 28½ | 90 | [90] | |
| Wiceslea W. | 10 | 40 | 30 | 80 | [80] | ||
| Wiceslea E. | 15 | 34 | 31 | 80 | [80] | ||
| 'Stotfald' | 9⅛ | 40 | 50⅛ | 99¼ | [100] | ||
| Stoke | 18 | [10] | 12 | [40] | |||
| Higham | 49½ | 44 | 56 | 149½ | [150] | ||
| 'Malesley' | 12 | 30 | 8 | 30 | 80 | [80] | |
| Corby | 8½ | 12¼ | 12¼ | [?4] | 10¾ | 47¾ | [47] |
| Rothwell | 10 | 20 | 7½ | [7½] | 45[12] | [60] | |
| 'Andwertheshoe' | [?26][13] | 25 | 39 | [90] | |||
| Ordlingbury | 29½ | 24½ | 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 3½ 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 3½ 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.
[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.
[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).
[3] It was connected, I find, by Mr Cockayne with military service, not with Danegeld.
[4] Quoted in Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, i. 315-6.
[5] Norm. Conq., iii, 741-2.
[6] The phrase employed by Mr Freeman in criticizing Professor Pearson.
[7] See Ellis, ut supra.
[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.
[9] Wrongly given by Ellis and Cockayne as 'xviii'.
[10] Wrongly given by Ellis as 'viii. and xx'.
[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.
[12] There is no entry for 'waste' in this hundred, so that possibly the words 'xv. hida westa' are omitted.
[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'.
[14] Monasticon, vi. 1090.
[15] Infra, p. 175.
[16] Infra, p. 173.
[17] See my paper on 'The great carucage of 1198' (English Historical Review, iii, 501 et seq.).
[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.
[19] Domesday Studies, pp. 117-9.