COMPLETION OF THE DOMESDAY BOOK
A.D. 1086
CHARLES KNIGHT
When William the Conqueror had been some years established in his English realm, he found himself confronted with a feudal baronage largely composed of men who had gone with him from Normandy, where many of them had reluctantly bowed to his command. They were jealous of the royal power and eager for military and judicial independence within their own manors. The Conqueror met this situation with the skill of political genius. He granted large estates to the nobles, but so widely scattered as to render union of the great land-owners and hereditary attachment of great areas of population to separate feudal lords impossible. He caused under-tenants to be bound to their lords by the same conditions of service which bound the lords to the crown, to which each sub-tenant swore direct fealty. William also strengthened his position as king by means of a new military organization and by his control of the judicial and administrative systems of the kingdom. By the abolition of the four great earldoms of the realm he struck a final blow at the ambition of the greater nobles for independent power. By this stroke he made the shire the largest unit of local government. By his control of the national revenues he secured a great financial power in his own hands.
A large part of the manors were burdened with special dues to the crown, and for the purpose of ascertaining and recording these William sent into each county commissioners to make a survey, whose inquiries were recorded in the Domesday Book, so called because its decision was regarded as final. This book, in Norman-French, contains the results of his survey of England made in 1085-1086, and consists of two volumes in vellum, a large folio of three hundred and eighty-two pages, and a quarto of four hundred and fifty pages. For a long time it was kept under three locks in the exchequer with the King's seal, and is now kept in the Public Record Office. In 1783 the British Government issued a fac-simile edition of it, in two folio volumes, printed from types specially made for the purpose. It is one of the principal sources for the political and social history of the time.
The Domesday Book contains a record of the ownership, extent, and value of the lands of England at the time of the survey, at the time of their bestowal when granted by the King, and at the time of a previous survey under Edward the Confessor. Of the detailed registrations of tenants, defendants, live stock, etc., as well, as of contemporary social features of the English people, the following account presents interesting pictures.
The survey contained in the Domesday Book extended to all England, with the exception of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Durham. All the country between the Tees and the Tyne was held by the Bishop of Durham; and he was reputed a count palatine, having a separate government. The other three northern counties were probably so devastated that they were purposely omitted. Let us first see, from the information of Domesday Book, by "what men" the land was occupied.
First, we have barons and we have thanes. The barons were the Norman nobles; the thanes, the Saxon. These were included under the general designation of liberi homines, free men; which term included all the freeholders of a manor. Many of these were tenants of the King "in capite"—that is, they held their possessions direct from the Crown. Others of these had placed themselves under the protection of some lord, as the defender of their persons and estates, they paying some stipend or performing some service. In the Register there are also liberae feminae, free women. Next to the free class were the sochemanni or "socmen," a class of inferior land-owners, who held lands under a lord, and owed suit and service in the lord's court, but whose tenure was permanent. They sometimes performed services in husbandry; but those services, as well as their payments, were defined.
Descending in the scale, we come to the villani. These were allowed to occupy land at the will of the lord, upon the condition of performing services, uncertain in their amount and often of the meanest nature. But they could acquire no property in lands or goods; and they were subject to many exactions and oppressions. There are entries in Domesday Book which show that the villani were not altogether bondmen, but represented the Saxon "churl." The lowest class were servi, slaves; the class corresponding with the Saxon theow. By a degradation in the condition of the villani, and the elevation of that of the servi, the two classes were brought gradually nearer together; till at last the military oppression of the Normans, thrusting down all degrees of tenants and servants into one common slavery, or at least into strict dependence, one name was adopted for both of them as a generic term, that of villeins regardant.
Of the subdivisions of these great classes, the Register of 1085 affords us some particulars. We find that some of the nobles are described as milites, soldiers; and sometimes the milites are classed with the inferior orders of tenantry. Many of the chief tenants are distinguished by their offices. We have among these the great regal officers, such as they existed in the Saxon times—the camerarius and cubicularius, from whom we have our lord chamberlain; the dapifer, or lord steward; the pincerna, or chief butler; the constable, and the treasurer. We have the hawkkeepers, and the bowkeepers; the providers of the king's carriages, and his standard-bearers. We have lawmen, and legates, and mediciners. We have foresters and hunters.
Coming to the inferior officers and artificers, we have carpenters, smiths, goldsmiths, farriers, potters, ditchers, launders, armorers, fishermen, millers, bakers, salters, tailors, and barbers. We have mariners, moneyers, minstrels, and watchmen. Of rural occupations we have the beekeepers, ploughmen, shepherds, neatherds, goatherds, and swineherds. Here is a population in which there is a large division of labor. The freemen, tenants, villeins, slaves, are laboring and deriving sustenance from arable land, meadow, common pasture, wood, and water. The grain-growing land is, of course, carefully registered as to its extent and value, and so the meadow and pasture. An equal exactness is bestowed upon the woods. It was not that the timber was of great commercial value, in a country which possessed such insufficient means of transport; but that the acorns and beech-mast, upon which great herds of swine subsisted, were of essential importance to keep up the supply of food. We constantly find such entries as "a wood for pannage of fifty hogs." There are woods described which will feed a hundred, two hundred, three hundred hogs; and on the Bishop of London's demesne at Fulham a thousand hogs could fatten. The value of a tree was determined by the number of hogs that could lie under it, in the Saxon time; and in this survey of the Norman period, we find entries of useless woods, and woods without pannage, which to some extent were considered identical. In some of the woods there were patches of cultivated ground, as the entries show, where the tenant had cleared the dense undergrowth and had his corn land and his meadows. Even the fen lands were of value, for their rents were paid in eels.
There is only mention of five forests in this record, Windsor, Gravelings (Wiltshire), Winburn, Whichwood, and the New Forest. Undoubtedly there were many more, but being no objects of assessment they are passed over. It would be difficult not to associate the memory of the Conqueror with the New Forest, and not to believe that his unbridled will was here the cause of great misery and devastation. Ordericus Vitalis says, speaking of the death of William's second son, Richard: "Learn now, my reader, why the forest in which the young prince was slain received the name of the New Forest. That part of the country was extremely populous from early times, and full of well-inhabited hamlets and farms. A numerous population cultivated Hampshire with unceasing industry, so that the southern part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with the products of the land. When William I ascended the throne of Albion, being a great lover of forests, he laid waste more than sixty parishes, compelling the inhabitants to emigrate to other places, and substituted beasts of the chase for human beings, that he might satisfy his ardor for hunting." There is probably some exaggeration in the statement of the country being "extremely populous from early times." This was an old woody district, called Ytene. No forest was artificially planted, as Voltaire has imagined; but the chases were opened through the ancient thickets, and hamlets and solitary cottages were demolished.
It is a curious fact that some woodland spots in the New Forest have still names with the terminations of ham and ton. There are many evidences of the former existence of human abodes in places now solitary; yet we doubt whether this part of the district plentifully supplied Winchester with food, as Ordericus relates; for it is a sterile district, in most places, fitted for little else than the growth of timber. The lower lands are marsh, and the upper are sand. The Conqueror, says the Saxon Chronicle, "so much loved the high deer as if he had been their father." The first of the Norman kings, and his immediate successors, would not be very scrupulous about the depopulation of a district if the presence of men interfered with their pleasures. But Thierry thinks that the extreme severity of the Forest Laws was chiefly enforced to prevent the assemblage of Saxons in those vast wooded spaces which were now included in the royal demesnes.
All these extensive tracts were, more or less, retreats for the dispossessed and the discontented. The Normans, under pretence of preserving the stag and the hare, could tyrannize with a pretended legality over the dwellers in these secluded places; and thus William might have driven the Saxon people of Ytene to emigrate, and have destroyed their cottages, as much from a possible fear of their association as from his own love of "the high deer." Whatever was the motive, there were devastation and misery. Domesday shows that in the district of the New Forest certain manors were afforested after the Conquest; cultivated portions, in which the Sabbath bell was heard. William of Jumièges, the Conqueror's own chaplain, says, speaking of the deaths of Richard and Rufus: "There were many who held that the two sons of William the King perished by the judgment of God in these woods, since for the extension of the forest he had destroyed many inhabited places (villas) and churches within its circuit." It appears that in the time of Edward the Confessor about seventeen thousand acres of this district had been afforested; but that the cultivated parts remaining had then an estimated value of three hundred and sixty-three pounds. After the afforestation by the Conqueror, the cultivated parts yielded only one hundred and twenty-nine pounds.
The grants of land to huntsmen (venatores) are common in Hampshire, as in other parts of England; and it appears to have been the duty of an especial officer to stall the deer—that is, to drive them with his troop of followers from all parts to the centre of a circle, gradually contracting, where they were to stand for the onslaught of the hunters. In the survey many parks are enumerated. The word hay (haia), which is still found in some of our counties, meant an enclosed part of a wood to which the deer were driven.
In the seventeenth century this mode of hunting upon a large scale, by stalling the deer—this mimic war—was common in Scotland. Taylor, called the "Water Poet," was present at such a gathering, and has described the scene with a minuteness which may help us to form a picture of the Norman hunters: "Five or six hundred men do rise early in the morning, and they do disperse themselves divers ways; and seven, eight, or ten miles' compass, they do bring or chase in the deer in many herds—two, three, or four hundred in a herd—to such a place as the noblemen shall appoint them; then, when the day is come, the lords and gentlemen of their companies do ride or go to the said places, sometimes wading up to the middle through bourns and rivers; and then they being come to the place, do lie down on the ground till those foresaid scouts, which are called the 'tinkhelt,' do bring down the deer. Then, after we had stayed there three hours or thereabouts, we might perceive the deer appear on the hills round about us—their heads making a show like a wood—which being followed close by the tinkhelt, are chased down into the valley where we lay; then all the valley on each side being waylaid with a hundred couple of strong Irish greyhounds, they are let loose as occasion serves upon the herd of deer, that with dogs, guns, arrows, dirks, and daggers, in the space of two hours fourscore fat deer were slain."
Domesday affords indubitable proof of the culture of the vine in England. There are thirty-eight entries of vineyards in the southern and eastern counties. Many gardens are enumerated. Mills are registered with great distinctness; for they were invariably the property of the lords of the manors, lay or ecclesiastical; and the tenants could only grind at the lord's mill. Wherever we find a mill specified in Domesday, there we generally find a mill now. At Arundel, for example, we see what rent was paid by a mill; and there still stands at Arundel an old mill whose foundations might have been laid before the Conquest. Salt works are repeatedly mentioned. They were either works upon the coast for procuring marine salt by evaporation, or were established in the localities of inland salt springs. The salt works of Cheshire were the most numerous, and were called "wiches." Hence the names of some places, such as Middlewich and Nantwich. The revenue from mines offers some curious facts. No mention of tin is to be found in Cornwall. The ravages of Saxon and Dane, and the constant state of hostility between races, had destroyed much of that mineral industry which existed in the Roman times. A century and a half after the Conquest had elapsed before the Norman kings had a revenue from the Cornish iron mines. Iron forges were registered, and lumps of hammered iron are stated to have been paid as rent. Lead works are found only upon the king's demesne in Derbyshire.
Fisheries are important sources of rent. Payments of eels are enumerated by hundreds and thousands. Herrings appear to have been consumed in vast numbers in the monasteries. Sandwich yielded forty thousand annually to Christ Church in Canterbury. Kent, Sussex, and Norfolk appear to have been the great seats of this fishery. The Severn and the Wye had their salmon fisheries, whose produce king, bishop, and lord were glad to receive as rent. There was a weir for Thames fish at Mortlake. The religious houses had their piscinae and vivaria—their stews and fish-pools.
Domesday affords us many curious glimpses of the condition of the people in cities and burghs. For the most part they seem to have preserved their ancient customs. London, Winchester, and several other important places are not mentioned in the record. We shall very briefly notice a few indications of the state of society. Dover was an important place, for it supplied the king with twenty ships for fifteen days in a year, each vessel having twenty-one men on board. Dover could therefore command the service of four hundred and twenty mariners. Every burgess in Lewes compounded for a payment of twenty shillings when the king fitted out a fleet to keep the sea.
At Oxford the king could command the services of twenty burgesses whenever he went on an expedition; or they might compound for their services by a payment of twenty pounds. Oxford was a considerable place at this period. It contained upward of seven hundred houses; but four hundred and seventy-eight were so desolated that they could pay no dues. Hereford was the king's demesne; and the honor of being his immediate tenants appears to have been qualified by considerable exactions. When he went to war, and when he went to hunt, men were to be ready for his service. If the wife of a burgher brewed his ale, he paid tenpence. The smith who kept a forge had to make nails from the king's iron. In Hereford, as in other cities, there were moneyers, or coiners. There were seven at Hereford, who were bound to coin as much of the king's silver into pence as he demanded. At Cambridge the burgesses were compelled to lend the sheriff their ploughs. Leicester was bound to find the king a hawk or to pay ten pounds; while a sumpter or baggage-horse was compounded for at one pound.
At Warwick there were two hundred and twenty-five houses on which the king and his barons claimed tax; and nineteen houses belonged to free burgesses. The dues were paid in honey and corn. In Shrewsbury there were two hundred and fifty-two houses belonging to burgesses; but the burgesses complained that they were called upon to pay as much tax as in the time of the Confessor, although Earl Roger had taken possession of extensive lands for building his castle. Chester was a port in which the king had his dues upon every cargo, and where he had fines whenever a trader was detected in using a false measure. The fraudulent female brewer of adulterated beer was placed in the cucking-stool, a degradation afterward reserved for scolds.
This city has a more particular notice as to laws and customs in the time of the Confessor than any other place in the survey. Particular care seems to have been taken against fire. The owner of a house on fire not only paid a fine to the king, but forfeited two shillings to his nearest neighbor. Marten skins appear to have been a great article of trade in this city. No stranger could cart goods within a particular part of the city without being subjected to a forfeiture of four shillings or two oxen to the bishop. We find, as might be expected, no mention of that peculiar architecture of Chester called the "Rows," which has so puzzled antiquarian writers. The probability is that in a place so exposed to the attacks of the Welsh they were intended for defence. The low streets in which the Rows are situated have the road considerably beneath them, like the cutting of a railway; and from the covered way of the Rows an enemy in the road beneath might be assailed with great advantage.
In the civil wars of Charles I the possession of the Rows by the Royalists, or Parliamentary troops, was fiercely contested. Of their antiquity there is no doubt. They probably belong to the same period as the Castle. The wall of Chester and the bridge were kept in repair, according to the survey, by the service of one laborer for every hide of land in the county. It is to be remarked that in all the cities and burghs the inhabitants are described as belonging to the king or a bishop or a baron. Many, even in the most privileged places, were attached to particular manors.
The Domesday survey shows that in some towns there was an admixture of Norman and English burgesses; and it is clear that they were so settled after the Conquest, for a distinction is made between the old customary dues of the place and those the foreigner should pay. The foreigner had to bear a small addition to the ancient charge. No doubt the Norman clung to many of the habits of his own land; and the Saxon unwillingly parted with those of the locality in which his fathers had lived. But their manners were gradually assimilated. The Normans grew fond of the English beer, and the English adopted the Norman dress.
The survey of 1085 affords the most complete evidence of the extent to which the Normans had possessed themselves of the landed property of the country. The ancient demesnes of the crown consisted of fourteen hundred and twenty-two manors. But the king had confiscated the properties of Godwin, Harold, Algar, Edwin, Morcar, and other great Saxon earls; and his revenues thus became enormous. Ordericus Vitalis states, with a minuteness that seems to imply the possession of official information, that "the king himself received daily one-and-sixty pounds thirty thousand pence and three farthings sterling money from his regular revenues in England alone, independently of presents, fines for offences, and many other matters which constantly enrich a royal treasury." The numbers of manors held by the favorites of the Conqueror would appear incredible, if we did not know that these great nobles were grasping and unscrupulous; indulging the grossest sensuality with a pretence of refinement; limited in their perpetration of injustice only by the extent of their power; and so blinded by their pride as to call their plunder their inheritance. Ten Norman chiefs who held under the crown are enumerated in the survey as possessing two thousand eight hundred and twenty manors.
This enormous transfer of property did not take place without the most formidable resistance, but when a period of tranquillity arrived came the era of castle-building. The Saxons had their rude fortresses and intrenched earthworks. But solid walls of stone, for defence and residence, were to become the local seats of regal and baronial domination. Domesday contains notices of forty-nine castles; but only one is mentioned as having existed in the time of Edward the Confessor. Some which the Conqueror is known to have built are not noticed in the survey. Among these is the White Tower of London. The site of Rochester Castle is mentioned. These two buildings are associated by our old antiquaries as being erected by the same architect. Stow says: "I find in a fair register-book of the acts of the bishops of Rochester, set down by Edmund of Hadenham, that William I, surnamed Conqueror, builded the Tower of London, to wit, the great white and square tower there, about the year of Christ 1078, appointing Gundulph, then Bishop of Rochester, to be principal surveyor and overseer of that work, who was for that time lodged in the house of Edmere, a burghess of London." The chapel in the White Tower is a remarkable specimen of early Norman architecture.
The keep of Rochester Castle, so picturesquely situated on the Medway, was not a mere fortress without domestic convenience. Here we still look upon the remains of sculptured columns and arches. We see where there were spacious fireplaces in the walls, and how each of four floors was served with water by a well. The third story contains the most ornamental portions of the building. In the Domesday enumeration of castles, we have repeated mention of houses destroyed and lands wasted, for their erection. At Cambridge twenty-seven houses are recorded to have been thus demolished. This was the fortress to overawe the fen districts. At Lincoln a hundred and sixty-six mansions were destroyed, "on account of the castle."
In the ruins of all these castles we may trace their general plan. There were an outer court, an inner court, and a keep. Round the whole area was a wall, with parapets and loopholes. The entrance was defended by an outwork or barbacan. The prodigious strength of the keep is the most remarkable characteristic of these fortresses; and thus many of these towers remain, stripped of every interior fitting by time, but as untouched in their solid construction as the mounts upon which they stand. We ascend the steep steps which lead to the ruined keep of Carisbrook, with all our historical associations directed to the confinement of Charles I in this castle. But this fortress was registered in Domesday Book. Five centuries and a half had elapsed between William I and James I. The Norman keep was out of harmony with the principles of the seventeenth century, as much as the feudal prerogatives to which Charles unhappily clung.
We have thus enumerated some of the more prominent statistics of this ancient survey, which are truly as much matter of history as the events of this beginning of the Norman period. There is one more feature of this Domesday Book which we cannot pass over. The number of parish churches in England in the eleventh century will, in some degree, furnish an indication of the amount of religious instruction. By some most extraordinary exaggeration, the number of these churches has been stated to be above forty-five thousand. In Domesday the number enumerated is a little above seventeen hundred. No doubt this enumeration is extremely imperfect. Very nearly half of all the churches put down are found in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. The Register, in some cases, gives the amount of land with which the church was endowed. Bosham, in Sussex, the estate of Harold, had, in the time of King Edward, a hundred and twelve hides of land. At the date of the survey it had sixty-five hides. This was an enormous endowment. Some churches had five acres only; some fifty; some a hundred. Some are without land altogether. But, whether the endowment be large or small, here is the evidence of a church planted upon the same foundation as the monarchy, that of territorial possessions.
The politic ruler of England had, in the completion of Domesday Book, possessed himself of the most perfect instrument for the profitable administration of his government. He was no longer working in the dark, whether he called out soldiers or levied taxes. He had carried through a great measure, rapidly, and with a minuteness which puts to shame some of our clumsy modern statistics. But the Conqueror did not want his books for the gratification of official curiosity. He went to work when he knew how many tenants-in-chief he could command, and how many men they could bring into the field. He instituted the great feudal principle of knight-service. His ordinance is in these words: "We command that all earls, barons, knights, sergeants, and freemen be always provided with horses and arms as they ought, and that they be always ready to perform to us their whole service, in manner as they owe it to us of right for their fees and tenements, and as we have appointed to them by the common council of our whole kingdom, and as we have granted to them in fee with right of inheritance."
These words, "in fee, with right of inheritance," leave no doubt that the great vassals of the crown were absolute proprietors, and that all their subvassals had the same right of holding in perpetuity. The estate, however, reverted to the crown if the race of the original feoffee became extinct, and in cases, also, of felony and treason. When Alain of Bretagne, who commanded the rear of the army at the battle of Hastings, and who had received four hundred and forty-two manors, bowed before the King at Salisbury, at the great council in 1085, and swore to be true to him against all manner of men, he also brought with him his principal land-sittende men (land-owners), who also bowed before the King and became his men. They had previously taken the oath of fealty to Alain of Bretagne, and engaged to perform all the customs and services due to him for their lands and tenements. Alain, and his men, were proprietors, but with very unequal rights. Alain, by his tenure, was bound to provide for the King as many armed horsemen as the vast extent of his estates demanded. But all those whom he had enfeoffed, or made proprietors, upon his four hundred and forty-two manors, were each bound to contribute a proportionate number. When the free service of forty days was to be enforced, the great earl had only to send round to his vassals, and the men were at his command.
By this organization, which was universal throughout the kingdom, sixty thousand cavalry could, with little delay, be called into the field. Those who held by this military service had their allotments divided into so many knights' fees, and each knight's fee was to furnish one mounted and armed soldier. The great vassals retained a portion of their land as their demesnes, having tenants who paid rents and performed services not military. But, under any circumstances, the vassal of the crown was bound to perform his whole free service with men and horses and arms. It is perfectly clear that this wonderful organization rendered the whole system of government one great confederacy, in which the small proprietors, tenants, and villeins had not a chance of independence; and that their condition could only be ameliorated by those gradual changes which result from a long intercourse between the strong and the weak, in which power relaxes its severity and becomes protection.
In the ordinance in which the King commanded "free service" he also says, "we will that all the freemen of the kingdom possess their lands in peace, free from all tallage and unjust exaction." This, unhappily for the freemen, was little more than a theory under the Norman kings. There were various modes of making legal exaction the source of the grossest injustice. When the heir of an estate entered into possession he had to pay a "relief," or heriot, to the lord. This soon became a source of oppression in the crown; and enormous sums were exacted from the great vassals. The lord was not more sparing of his men. He had another mode of extortion. He demanded "aid" on many occasions, such as the marriage of his eldest daughter, or when he made his eldest son a knight. The estate of inheritance, which looks so generous and equitable an arrangement, was a perpetual grievance; for the possessor could neither transmit his property by will nor transfer it by sale. The heir, however remote in blood, was the only legitimate successor.
The feudal obligation to the lord was, in many other ways, a fruitful source of tyranny, which lasted up to the time of the Stuarts. If the heir were a minor, the lord entered into possession of the estate without any accountability. If it descended to a female, the lord could compel her to marry according to his will, or could prevent her marrying. During a long period all these harassing obligations connected with property were upheld. The crown and the nobles were equally interested in their enforcement; and there can be little doubt that, though the great vassals sometimes suffered under these feudal obligations to the king, the inferior tenants had a much greater amount of oppression to endure at the hands of their immediate lords. But if the freemen were oppressed in the tenure of their property, we can scarcely expect that the landless man had not much more to suffer. If he committed an offence in the Saxon time, he paid a "mulct"; if in the Norman, he was subjected to an amerciament. His whole personal estate was at the mercy of the lord.
Having thus obtained a general notion of the system of society established in less than twenty years after the Conquest, we see that there was nothing wanting to complete the most entire subjection of the great body of the nation. What had been wanting was accomplished in the practical working out of the theory that the entire land of the country belonged to the King. It was now established that every tenant-in-chief should do homage to the king; that every superior tenant should do homage to his lord; that every villein should be the bondman of the free; and that every slave should, without any property however limited and insecure, be the absolute chattel of some master. The whole system was connected with military service. This was the feudal system. There was some resemblance to it in parts of the Saxon organization; but under that organization there was so much of freedom in the allodial or free tenure of land that a great deal of other freedom went with it. The casting-off of the chains of feudality was the labor of six centuries.