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

by Frederic William Maitland

The manor and the geld.

A manor is a house against which geld is charged. To the opinion that in some way or another the definition of a manor is intimately connected with the great tax we shall be brought by phrases such as the following: ‘Richard holds Fivehide of the Earl which Brihtmær held in King Edward’s time for forty acres and for a manor[512].’—‘Two free men who were brothers, Bondi and Ælfric held it for two hides and for two manors[513].’ When we say that a man holds land ‘as’ or ‘for’ (pro) forty acres, we mean that his holding, be its real size what it may, is rated to the geld at forty acres. If we add the words ‘and as (or for) one manor,’ surely we are still speaking of the geld. For one moment the thought may cross our minds that, besides a tax on land, there has been an additional tax on ‘halls,’ on houses of a certain size or value; but this we soon dismiss as most unlikely. To raise but one out of many objections: had there been such a house-tax, it would have left plain traces of itself in those ‘Geld Inquests’ of the south-western counties that have come down to us. Rather we regard the matter thus:—The geld is a land-tax, a tax of so much per hide or carucate. In all likelihood it has been assessed according to a method which we might call the method of subpartitioned provincial quotas. The assumption has been made that a shire or other large district contains a certain number of hides; this number has then been apportioned among the hundreds of that shire, and the number allotted to each hundred has been apportioned among the vills of that hundred. The common result is that some neat number of hides, five, ten or the like is attributed to the vill[514]. This again has been divided between the holdings in that vill. Ultimately it is settled that for fiscal purposes a given holding contains, or must be deemed to contain, this or that number of hides, virgates, or acres. Thus far the system makes no use of the manerium. But it now has to discover some house against which a demand may be made for every particular penny of geld. Despite the ‘realism’ of the system, it has to face the fact that, after all, taxes must be paid by men and not by land. Men live in houses. It seeks the tax-payer in his house. Now, were all the occupiers of land absolute owners of the land that they occupied, even were it true that every acre had some one person as its absolute owner, the task would be simple. A schedule of five columns, such we are familiar with, would set forth ‘Owner’s Name,’ ‘Place of Residence,’ ‘Description of Geldable Property,’ ‘Hidage,’ ‘Amount due.’ But the occupier is not always the owner; what is more, there is no absolute ownership. Two, three, four persons will be interested in the land; the occupier will have a lord and that lord a lord; the occupier may be a serf, a villein, a sokeman; there is commendation to be considered and soke and all the infinite varieties of the power to ‘withdraw’ the land from the lord. Rude and hard and arbitrary lines must be drawn. Of course the state will endeavour to collect the geld in big sums. It will endeavour to make the great folk answer for the geld which lies on any land that is in any way subject to their power; thus the cost of collecting petty sums will be saved and the tax will be charged on men who are solvent. The central power may even hold out certain advantages to the lord who will become responsible for the geld of his tenants or justiciables or commended men. The hints that we get in divers counties that the lord’s ‘inland’ has borne no geld seem to point in this direction, though the arrangements about this matter seem to have varied from shire to shire[515]. On the pipe rolls of a later day we see that the geld charged against the magnates is often ‘pardoned.’ For one reason the king can not easily tax the rich; for another he can not easily tax the poor; so he gets at the poor through the rich. The small folk will gladly accept any scheme that will keep the tax-collector from their doors, even though they purchase their relief by onerous promises of rents and services. The great men, again, may find advantage in such bargains; they want periodical rents and services, and in order to obtain them will accept a certain responsibility for occasional taxes. This process had gone very far on the eve of the Conquest. Moreover the great men had enjoyed a large liberty of paying their geld where they pleased, of making special compositions with the king, of turning some wide and discrete territory into a single geld-paying unit, of forming such ‘manors’ as Taunton or Berkeley or Leominster.

Classification of men for the geld.

In King Edward’s day, the occupiers of the soil might, so it seems to us, be divided by the financier into three main classes. In the first class we place the man who has a manor. He has, that is, a house at which he is charged with geld. He may be a great man or a small, an earl or a peasant; he may be charged at that house with the geld of a hundred hides or with the geld of fifteen acres. In the second class we place the villeins, bordiers, cottiers. The geld apportioned to the land that they occupy is demanded from their lord at his manor, or one of his manors. How he recoups himself for having to make this payment, that is his concern; but he is responsible for it to the king, not as guarantor but as principal debtor. But then, at least in the east and north, there are many men who fall into neither of these classes. They are not villeins, they are sokemen or ‘free men’; but their own tenements are not manors; they belong to or ‘lie in’ some manor of their lord. These men, we think, can be personally charged with the geld; but they pay their geld at their lord’s hall and he is in some measure bound to exact the payment.

Proofs of connexion between the manor and the geld.

Any thing that could be called a strict proof of this theory we can not offer; but it has been suggested by many facts and phrases which we can not otherwise explain. In the first place, our record seems to assume that every holding either is a manor or forms part of a manor[516]. Then we are told how lands ‘geld’ at or in some manor or at the caput manerii. Thus lands which lie many miles away from Tewkesbury, but which belong to the manor of Tewkesbury, ‘geld in Tewkesbury[517].’ Sometimes the same information is conveyed to us by a phrase that deserves notice. A piece of land is said to ‘defend itself’ in or at some manor, or, which is the same thing, to have its wara or render its wara, that is to say, its defence, its answer to the demand for geld, there[518]. ‘In Middleton two sokemen had 16 acres of land and they rendered their wara in the said Middleton, but they could give and sell their land to whom they pleased[519].’ When we are told that certain lands are in warnode Drogonis or in warnode Archiepiscopi, it is meant that the lands belong to Drogo or the Archbishop for the purpose of ‘defence’ against the geld[520]. It is not sufficient that land should be taxed, it must be taxed ‘in’ some place, which may be remote from that in which, as a matter of physical fact, it lies[521]. One clear case of a free tenant paying his geld to his lord is put before us:—‘Leofwin had half a hide and could withdraw with his land and he paid geld to his lord and his lord paid nothing[522].’ Besides this we have cases in which the lord enjoys the special privilege of collecting the geld from his tenants and keeping it for his own use[523]. A remarkable Kentish entry tells us that at Peckham the archbishop had an estate which had been rated at six sullungs, and then that ‘of the land of this manor a certain man of the archbishop held a half-sullung which in King Edward’s day gelded with these six sullungs, although being free land it did not belong to the manor save for the purpose of the scot[524].’ Here we have land so free that the one connexion between it and the manor to which it is attributed consists in the payment of geld—it gelds along with the other lands of the manor. In the great lawsuit between the churches of Worcester and Evesham about the lands at Hamton, the former contended that these lands should pay their geld along with the other estates of the bishop[525].

Land gelds in a manor.

Let us observe the first question that the commissioners are to ask of the jurors. What is the name of the mansio? Every piece of geldable land is connected with some mansio, at which it gelds. Let us observe how the commissioners and the jurors proceed in a district where the villae and the mansiones or maneria are but rarely coincident. The jurors of the Armingford hundred of Cambridgeshire are speaking of their country vill by vill. They come to the vill of Abington[526]. Abington, they say, was rated at five hides. Of these five hides the king has a half-hide; this lies in Litlington. Earl Roger has one virgate; this lies in his manor of Shingay. Picot the sheriff has a half-virgate; this lies and has always lain in Morden. In what sense important to the commissioners or their master can a bundle of strips scattered about in the fields of Abington be said to lie in Litlington, in Shingay, or in Morden? We answer that it gelds there.

Geld and hall.

Hence the importance of the hall. It is the place where geld is demanded and paid. A manor without a hall is a thing to be carefully noted, otherwise some geld may be lost[527]. A man’s land has descended to his three sons: if ‘there is only one hall,’ but one demand for geld need be made; if ‘each has his hall,’ there must be three separate demands. When we are told that two brothers held land and that each had his house (domus) though they dwelt in one court (curia), a nice problem is being put before us:—Two halls, or one hall—Two manors or one manor[528].