The firma unius noctis.
No doubt the King’s gafol may partly have been paid in money. But so far as it was paid in kind it must have been carried by his tenants to his Winchester palace, or one of his other manors, according to the system prevalent at the time, followed for centuries after in West Wales, viz. the system of the ‘night’s entertainment’ (firma unius noctis)—a system followed by tribal chieftains and their Royal successors in Scandinavia as well as in Britain.
When the Domesday survey was made of what was once West Wales there was found still existing, especially in Dorsetshire, the survival of a very practical arrangement of Royal food rents which may have been in use in King Ine’s time and date back possibly before the West Saxon conquests.
Some portions of the ‘terra Regis’ scattered about the county of Dorset are grouped in the survey so that each group might supply the firma unius noctis, the money equivalent of which is stated to be 104l., i.e. 2l. per night’s entertainment for one night each week in the year. This mode of providing the firma unius noctis is illustrated by the legend which represents King Ine himself and his queen as moving from manor to manor for each night’s entertainment, their moveable palace of poles and curtains being carried before them from place to place upon sumpter mules.
Now, if we might regard the gesithcundman as one of a class to whom ten hides or twenty hides had been allotted by King Ine on a system providing in this practical way inter alia for the night’s entertainments, it would be natural that the food rent of the unit of ten hides should be fixed. And further, it would be natural that if the gesithcundman should wish to throw up his post and desert the land entrusted to his management he should be restricted, as we have seen, by conditions intended to secure that the provision for the King’s entertainment or gafol in lieu of it should not materially suffer.
The gesithcundman sometimes evicted.
We have seen that as the ealdorman was to lose his ‘shire’ if he let go a thief, so the gesithcundman was to pay a fyrdwite, and to lose his land if he neglected the fyrd. It was possible, then, that he might have to be evicted. And a clause in the Dooms of Ine has already been quoted which seems to refer to the eviction of a gesithcundman.
Be gesiðcundes monnes dræfe of londe.
(68) If a gesithcundman be driven off land.
Gif mon gesiðcundne monnan adrife, fordrife þy botle næs þære setene.