Domesday Book and Beyond: Three Essays in the Early History of England

by Frederic William Maitland

The team.

Now we may start with what seems to be the most objective of our three statements, that which gives us C, the number of teams. We know that in A there is an element of estimation, of assessment; we may fear that this is true of B also; but an ox or a team ought to be a fact and not a theory. At the outset, however, a troublesome question arises. We have assumed that whenever our record speaks of a caruca it means eight oxen. On the other hand, there are who maintain that whereas the carucae of the demesne consisted of eight, those ascribed to the villeins comprised but four oxen[1372], and others have thought that the strength of Domesday’s caruca varied from place to place with the varying practice of divers agriculturists.

Variability of the caruca.

But, in the first place, it is abundantly clear that the clerk who compiled the account of Cambridgeshire from the original verdicts held himself at liberty to substitute ‘half a team’ for ‘four oxen’ and ‘four oxen’ for ‘half a team[1373].’ In the second place, the theory of a variable caruca would in our eyes reduce to an absurdity the practice of stating the capacity of land in terms of the teams and the oxen that can plough it. We are carefully told about each estate that ‘there is land for b teams, or for b´ oxen, or for b teams and b´ oxen.’ Now if a ‘team’ has always the same meaning, we have here a valuable truth. If, on the other hand, a ‘team’ may mean eight or may mean four oxen, we are being told next to nothing. The apparently precise ‘there is land for 4 teams’ becomes the useless ‘there is land for 32 or 16 or for some number between 32 and 16 oxen.’ What could the statesmen, who were hoping to correct the assessment of the danegeld, make of so vague a statement? They propose to work sums in teams and teamlands. They spend immense pains in ascertaining that here there is ‘land for half a team’ or ‘land for half an ox.’ We are accusing them of laborious folly unless we suppose that they can at a moment’s notice convert teams into oxen.

The caruca a constant.

If it be allowed that in the statement (B) about the number of teamlands the term caruca has always the same meaning, we cannot stop there, but must believe that in the statement (C) about the number of teams this same meaning is retained. Often enough when there is equality between teamlands and teams (C = B), the entry takes the following form:—There is land for b teams and ‘they’ are there[1374]. What are there? The teams for which ‘there is land’: those teams which are serving as a measure for the capacity of land. Let us try the two modes of interpretation on the first lines that strike our eye. Here we have two successive entries, each of which tells us that ‘there is land for 6 teams[1375].’ If the caruca is a constant, we have learnt that in one particular there is equality between these estates. If the caruca is a variable, we have learnt nothing of the kind. Let us see what we can gain by reading further. In the one case there were 3 teams on the demesne and the villeins had 6¹⁄₂; in the other there were 2 teams on the demesne, the villeins had 2 and the sokemen 2. We want to know whether the second of these estates is under-teamed or over-teamed. There is land for 6 teams and there are 6 teams on it; but 2 of these teams belong to villeins and 2 to sokemen. If we give the villeins but 4 oxen to the team, how many shall we give the sokemen? Shall we say 6? If so, there are 36 oxen here. Is that too many or too few or just enough for the arable land that there is? That is an unanswerable question, for the king’s commissioners have been content with the statement that the number of oxen appropriate to this estate lies somewhere between 23 and 49

The villeins’ teams.

Surely when we are told that 8 sokemen have ‘2 teams and 6 oxen’ or that 9 sokemen and 5 bordiers have ‘3 teams and 7 oxen[1376],’ we are being told that the teams in question have no less than eight oxen apiece. Surely when we are told that there are 23 villeins and 5 bordiers with 2 teams and 5 oxen[1377], we are being told that the teams of these villeins are not teams of four. And what are we to say of cases in which a certain number of teams is ascribed to a number of persons who belong to various classes, as for example when 6 villeins and 7 bordiers and 2 sokemen are said to have 3 teams and 5 oxen[1378], or where 3 villeins, 2 bordiers, a priest and a huntsman are said to have one team and 6 oxen[1379], or where 19 radknights ‘with their men’ are said to have 48 teams[1380]? Even if we suppose that the officers of the exchequer have tables which tell them how many oxen a caruca implies when it is attributed to a Northamptonshire sokeman or a Gloucestershire radknight, we are still setting before them insoluble problems. The radknights of Berkeley ‘with their men’ have 48 teams:—this may cover less than 200 or more than 300 oxen. And yet the record that is guilty of this laxity will tell us how in Bedfordshire Terra est dimidio bovi, et ibi est semibos[1381].

The villeins’ oxen.

The main argument that has been urged in favour of a variable caruca is that which, basing itself on later documents, protests that a villein ought not to have more than two oxen[1382]. Now true it seems to be that if by the number of the teams belonging to the villani and bordarii of Domesday Book we divide the number of villani plus half the number of bordarii (and this would be a fair procedure), we shall obtain as our quotient a figure that will be much nearer to 2 than to 4. But it must be common ground to all who read our record that some villeins are much better supplied with oxen than are their neighbours, and that some villeins have whole teams, whatever a ‘team’ may mean. There is so much difference in this respect between manor and manor that we are not justified in talking of any particular number of oxen as the normal outfit of the villanus, and outside of Domesday Book we have far too little evidence to sanction the dogma that the average number must stand close to 2[1383]. Even the villein virgater on the monastic manors of the thirteenth century is often expected to have four oxen, and his having eight is a possibility that must be contemplated[1384].