Small vills.
Between eastern and western England there were differences visible to the natural eye. With these were connected unseen and legal differences, partly as causes, partly as effects. But for the moment let us dwell on the fact that many an English vill has very few inhabitants. We are to speak hereafter of village communities. Let us therefore reflect that a community of some eight or ten householders is not likely to be a highly organized entity. This is not all, for these eight or ten householders will often belong to two, three or four different social and economic, if not legal, classes. Some may be sokemen, some villani, bordarii, cotarii, and besides them there will be a few servi. If a vill consists, as in Devonshire often enough it will, of some three villani, some four bordarii and some two servi, the ‘township-moot,’ if such a moot there be, will be a queer little assembly, the manorial court, if such a court there be, will not have much to do. These men can not have many communal affairs; there will be no great scope for dooms or for by-laws; they may well take all their disputes into the hundred court, especially in Devonshire where the hundreds are small. Thus of the visible vill of the eleventh century and its material surroundings we may form a wrong notion. Often enough in the west its common fields (if common fields it had) were not wide fields; the men who had shares therein were few and belonged to various classes. Thus of two villages in Gloucestershire, Brookthorpe and Harescombe, all that we can read is that in Brostrop there were two teams, one villanus, three bordarii, four servi, while in Hersecome there were two teams, two bordarii and five servi[53]. Many a Devonshire township can produce but two or three teams. Often enough our ‘village community’ will be a heterogeneous little group whose main capital consists of some 300 acres of arable land and some 20 beasts of the plough.
Importance of the east.
On the other hand, we must be careful not to omit from our view the rich and thickly populated shires or to imagine or to speak as though we imagined that a general theory of English history can neglect the East of England. If we leave Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk out of account we are to all appearance leaving out of account not much less than a quarter of the whole nation[54]. Let us make three groups of counties: (1) a South-Western group containing Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire: (2) a Mid-Western group containing the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, Stafford and Warwick: (3) an Eastern group containing Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The first of these groups has the largest; the third the smallest acreage. In Domesday Book, however, the figures which state their population seem to be these[55]:—
| South-Western Group: | 49,155 |
| Mid-Western Group: | 33,191 |
| Eastern Group: | 72,883 |
These figures are so emphatic that they may cause us for a moment to doubt their value, and on details we must lay no stress. But we have materials which enable us to check the general effect. In 1297 Edward I. levied a lay subsidy of a ninth[56]. The sums borne by our three groups of counties were these:—
| South-Western Group: | 4,038 |
| Mid-Western Group: | 3,514 |
| Eastern Group: | 7,329 |
There is a curious resemblance between these two sets of figures. Then in 1377 and 1381 returns were made for a poll-tax[57]. The number of polls returned in our three groups were these:—
| 1377 | 1381 | |
| South-Western Group: | 183,842 | 106,086 |
| Mid-Western Group: | 158,245 | 115,679 |
| Eastern Group: | 255,498 | 182,830 |
No doubt all inferences drawn from medieval statistics are exceedingly precarious; but, unless a good many figures have conspired to deceive us, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk were at the time of the Conquest and for three centuries afterwards vastly richer and more populous than any tract of equal area in the West.