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

by Frederic William Maitland

The villagers as co-owners.

Then one notable case meets our eye in which the ownership of land, of arable land, seems to be attributed to a village community. In Goldington, a village in Bedfordshire, Walter now holds a hide; there is land for one team and meadow for half a team. ‘The men of the vill held this land in common and could sell it[584].’ Apparently the men of the vill were Ælfwin Sac a man of the Bishop of Lincoln who held half a team-land and ‘could do what he liked with it,’ nine sokemen who held three team-lands between them, three other sokemen who held three team-lands, and Ælfmær a man of Asgil who held three team-lands[585]. How it came about that these men, besides holding land in severalty, held a tract in common, we are left to guess. Nor can we say whether such a case was usual or unusual. Very often in Little Domesday we meet an entry which tells how x free men held y acres and had z teams; for example, how 15 free men held 40 acres and had 2 teams[586]. In general we may well suppose that each of them held his strips in severalty, but we dare not say that such a phrase never points to co-ownership.

The waste land of the vill.

Then as to such part of the land as is not arable:—Even in the free village a few enclosed meadows will probably be found; but the pasture ground lies open for ‘the cattle of the vill.’ At the date of the survey, though several Norman lords have estates in one vill, the common formula used in connexion with each estate is, not ‘there is pasture for the cattle of this manor, or of this land,’ but ‘there is pasture for the cattle of the vill.’ Occasionally we read of ‘common pasture’ in a context which shows that the pasture is common not to several manorial lords but to the villeins of one lord[587]. In the hundred of Coleness in Suffolk there is a pasture which is common to all the men of the hundred[588]. But, as might be expected, we hear little of the mode in which pasture rights were allotted or regulated. Such rights were probably treated as appurtenances of the arable land:—‘The canons of Waltham claim as much wood as belongs to one hide[589].’ If the rights of user are known, no one cares about the bare ownership of pasture land or wood land:—it is all one whether we say that Earl Edwin is entitled to one third of a certain wood or to every third oak that grows therein[590].

Co-ownership of mills.

Sometimes the ownership of a mill is divided into so many shares that we are tempted to think that this mill has been erected at the cost of the vill. In Suffolk a free man holds a little manerium which is composed of 24 acres of land, 1¹⁄₂ acres of meadow and ‘a fourth part of the mill in every third year[591]’:—he takes his turn with his neighbours in the enjoyment of the revenue of the mill. We may even be led to suspect that the parish churches have sometimes been treated as belonging to the men of the vill who have subscribed to erect or to endow them. In Suffolk a twelfth part of a church belongs to a petty manerium which contains 30 acres and is cultivated by two bordiers with a single team[592]. When a parish church gets its virgate by ‘the charity of the neighbours[593],’ when nine free men give it twenty acres for the good of their souls[594], we may see in this some trace of communal action.

The system of virgates in a free village.

Incidentally we may notice that the system of virgate holdings seems quite compatible with an absence of seignorial control. In the free village, for example in Orwell, we shall often find that one man has twice, thrice or four times as much as another man:—the same is the case in the manorialized villages of Middlesex, where a villein may have as much as a hide or as little as a half-virgate; but all the holdings will bear, at least in theory, some simple relation to each other. Thus in Orwell the virgates are divided into thirds and quarters, and in several instances a man has four thirds of a virgate. In Essex and East Anglia, though we may find many irregular and many very small holdings, tenements of 60, 45, 40, 30, 20, 15 acres are far commoner than they would be were it not that a unit of 120 acres will very easily break into such pieces. Domesday Book takes no notice of family law and its ‘vendere potuit’ merely excludes the interference of the lord and does not imply that a man is at liberty to disappoint his expectant heirs. Very possibly there has been among the small folk but little giving or selling of land.

The virgates and inheritance.

Nor is a law which gives the dead man’s land to all his sons as co-heirs a sufficient force to destroy the system of hides and virgates when once it is established by some original allotment. In the higher ranks of society we see large groups of thegns holding land in common, holding as the Normans say ‘in parage.’ We can hardly doubt that they are co-heirs holding an inheritance that has not been physically partitioned[595]. Sometimes it is said of a single man that he holds in parage[596]. This gives us a valuable hint. Holding in parage implies that one of the ‘pares,’ one of the parceners,—as a general rule he would be the eldest of them—is answerable to king and lord for the services due from the land, while his fellows are bound only to him; they must help him to discharge duties for which he is primarily responsible[597]. This seems the import of such passages as the following—‘Five thegns held two bovates; one of them was the senior (the elder, and we may almost say the lord) of the others[598]’—‘Eight thegns held this manor; one of them Alli, a man of King Edward, was the senior of the others[599]’—‘Godric and his brothers held three carucates; two of them served the third[600]’—‘Chetel and Turver were brothers and after the death of their father they divided the land, but so that Chetel in doing the king’s service should have help from Turver his brother[601]’—‘Siwate, Alnod, Fenchel and Aschil divided the land of their father equally, and they held in such wise that if there were need for attendance in the king’s host and Siwate could go, his brothers were to aid him [with money and provisions]; and on the next occasion another brother was to go and Siwate like the rest was to help him; and so on down the list; but Siwate was the king’s man[602].’ No doubt similar arrangements were made by co-heirs of lowlier station[603]. The integrity of the tenement is maintained though several men have an interest in it. In relation to the lord and the state one of them represents his fellows. When the shares become very small, some of the claimants might be bought out by the others[604].