If we examine any reputable set of land-books, those of Worcester, for example, or those of Abingdon and try to trace the history of those very hides the existence of which is chronicled by Domesday Book, we shall often fail. This was to be expected. Any one who has ‘read with a conveyancer’ will know that many difficulties are apt to arise when an attempt is made to identify the piece of land described in one with that described in another and much older document. In the days before the Conquest many causes were perplexing our task. We have spoken of them before, but will recall them to memory. New assessments were sometimes made, and thenceforth an estate which had formerly contained five hides might be spoken of as having only four. New villages were formed, and the hides which had been attributed to one place would thenceforth be attributed to another. Great landlords enjoyed a large power of rearranging their lands, not only for the purposes of their own economy, but also for the purposes of public finance. In some cases they had collected their estates into a few gigantic maneria each of which would pay a single round sum to the king[1631]. Lastly, the kings gave and the kings took away. The disendowment of churches and simple spoliation were not unknown; exchanges were frequent; no series of land-books is complete. But when some allowance has been made for the effects of these causes, we shall see plainly that, if the charters are to account for the facts displayed by Domesday Book, then the manses of the charters, even of the earliest charters, can not have been of much less extent than the hides of the Norman record. We know of no case in which a church, whatever its wealth of genuine and spurious parchments, could make a title to many more manses than the hides that it had in 1086[1632].
Gifts of villages.
Another test of continuity may be applied. In the Conqueror’s day a village in the south of England will very commonly be rated at five or some low multiple of five hides, ten, fifteen or twenty[1633]. Now we have argued above that the land-book of an Anglo-Saxon king generally, though not always, disposes of an integral village or several integral villages, and if we look at the land-books we shall commonly see that the manses or hides which they describe as being at a single place are in number five or some low multiple of five. We open the second volume of the Codex Diplomaticus and analyze the first hundred instances of royal gifts which do not bear a condemnatory asterisk and which are not gifts of small plots in or about the towns of Canterbury and Rochester. In date these land-books range from A.D. 840 to A.D. 956. In sixty out of a hundred cases the number of manses is 5 or a multiple of 5. In eighteen it is 5; in sixteen 10; in six 15; in thirteen 20; in three 25; in one 30; in one 80; in two 100. There are a few small gifts; one of a yokelet; six of 1 manse; four of 2 manses; five of 3. The great bulk of the gifts range from 5 to 25 manses. Only four out of 100 exceed 25; of these four, one is of 30, another of 80, while two are of 100. At this rate of progress and if the manse had no more than some 30 acres, we shall have extreme difficulty in accounting for the large territories which on the eve of the Conquest were held by the churches of Wessex, and by those very churches which have left us cartularies that are only too ample. This is not all. If these manses were but yard-lands, then, unless we suppose that the average village was a tiny cluster, it is plain enough that the kings did not usually give away integral villages, and yet a church’s lordship of integral villages and even of divers contiguous villages is one of the surest and most impressive traits that the Conqueror’s record reveals.
Gifts of manses in villages.
Parenthetically we may admit that the king is not always giving away a whole village. Nasse has contended that when a land-book professes to dispose of a certain number (x) of manses at the place called X, and then sets forth the boundaries of X, we must not infer that the whole of the land that lies within those boundaries is comprised in the grant[1634]. The proof of this consists of a few instances in which, to all appearance, two different tracts of land are conveyed by two different books and yet the boundaries stated in those two books are the same. We will allege one instance additional to those that have been mentioned by others. In 969 Bishop Oswald of Worcester gave to his man Æthelweard seven manses, whereof five lay in the place called Tedington. The book which effected this conveyance states the bounds of Tedington[1635]. In 977 the same bishop gave to his man Eadric three manses at Tedington by a book which describes the boundaries of that place in just the same manner as that in which they were set forth by the earlier charter[1636]. Some care, however, should be taken before we assume that the two deeds which deal with land at X dispose of different tracts; for book-land had a way of returning to the king who gave it; also the gift of one king was sometimes confirmed by another; and even if the one book purports to convey x and the other y manses, we must call to mind the possibility that there has been a reassessment or a clerical error. Still it seems to be fairly well proved that there are cases in which the x manses which the donor gives are but some of the manses that lie within the meres drawn by his deed of gift. This certainly deserves remark. At first sight nothing could look more foolish than that we should painfully define the limits of the village territory and yet leave undefined the limits of that part of the village territory which we are giving away. But this practice is explicable if we remember the nature of a manse in a village. It consists of many scattered strips of arable land and of rights over uncultivated waste. To define the limits of the whole territory is important, for the donee should know how far his cattle can wander without trespass. To specify each acre-strip would, on the other hand, be a tedious task and would serve no profitable end. However, there can be little doubt that very generally what a charter bestows is the whole of the land of which the boundaries are described, and therefore the whole territory of a village or of several neighbouring villages.
The largest gifts.
But at the moment the charters which will be the most instructive will be those which attribute to a single place some large number of hides. In these the champions of a small hide have found their stronghold. They see perhaps 100 hides ascribed to the place called X; they look for that place in modern maps and gazetteers and then tell us that in order to pack our 100 hides within the parochial boundary we must reduce the size of the hide to 30 acres at the most.
The Winchester estate at at Chilcombe.
The dangers that beset this process may be well illustrated by the documents relating to one of the most interesting estates in all England, the great Chilcombe estate of the church of Winchester, which stretched for many a mile from the gates of the royal city of the West Saxon kings. Let us follow the story as the monks told it in a series of charters, few of which have escaped Kemble’s asterisk. In the first days of English Christianity, Cynegils, king of the West Saxons, gave the Chilcombe valley to St. Birinus. King after king confirmed the gift, but it was never put into writing until the days of Æthelwulf. He declared by charter that this land should defend itself for one hide. This was part of that great tithing operation which puzzles the modern historian[1637]. In 908 Edward the Elder confirmed this act by a charter in which he declared that the land at Chilcombe (including that at Nursling and Chilbolton) contained 100 manses, but that the whole was to be reckoned as a single manse. He also remarked that the land included many villae[1638]. The next book comes from Æthelstan; the whole valley (vallis illuster Ciltecumb appellata) with all its appendages was to owe the service of a single manse[1639]. Two charters were obtained from Edgar. However much land there might be at Chilcombe, it was to defend itself for one hide[1640]. A writ of similar import, which Kemble has accepted, was issued by Æthelred the Unready[1641]. It said that there were a hundred hides at Chilcombe and proceeded to allot them thus:—
| Æstun | 4 | Easton |
| Afintun and Ufintun | 5 | Avington and Ovington |
| Ticceburn | 25 | Titchbourne |
| Cymestun | 5 | Kilmiston |
| Stokev | 5 | Bishopstoke |
| Brombrygce and Oterburn | 5 | Brambridge and Otterbourne |
| Twyfyrde | 20 | Twyford |
| Ceolbandingtun | 20 | Chilbolton |
| Hnutscilling | 5 | Nursling |