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

by Frederic William Maitland

Now we are not putting this forward as a list of those English towns that were the most prosperous in the middle of the twelfth century. We have made no mention of flourishing seaports, of Dover, Hastings, Bristol, Yarmouth. Nor is this a list of all the places that are casually called burgi on rolls of Henry II.’s reign. That name is given to Scarborough, Knaresborough, Tickhill, Cirencester and various other towns. New tests of ‘burgality’ (if we may make that word) are emerging and old tests are becoming obsolete. We see too that some towns are dropping out of the list of aid-paying boroughs. In 1130 Wallingford has thrice failed to pay its aid of £15 and the whole debt of £45 must be forgiven to the burgesses pro paupertate eorum[706]. So Wallingford drops out of this list. Probably Buckingham has dropped out at an earlier time for a similar reason. But still this list, especially in the form that it takes in Henry I.’s time, is of great importance to those who are going to study the boroughs of Domesday Book. It looks like a traditional list. It deals out nice round sums. It is endeavouring to keep Wallingford on a par with Gloucester and above Northampton. It is retaining Winchcombe.

The boroughs in Domesday.

If we make the experiment, we shall discover that this catalogue really is a good prologue to Domesday Book. We will once more visit the counties which form the second zone. The account that our record gives of Hertfordshire has a preface. That preface deals with the borough of Hertford and precedes even the list of the Hertfordshire tenants in chief. Buckingham in Buckinghamshire and Oxford in Oxfordshire are similarly treated. In Gloucestershire the city of Gloucester and the borough of Winchcombe are described before the body of the county is touched. In Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire[707], Shropshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire[708] and Yorkshire the same procedure is adopted: the account of the shire’s city or borough precedes the account of the shire. In Lincolnshire the description of the county is introduced by the description of Lincoln and Stamford; also of Torksey, which had been a place of military importance and seems to have been closely united with the city of Lincoln by some governmental bond[709]. Convenient arrangement is not the strong point of ‘Little Domesday’; but what is said therein of Colchester is said at the very end of the survey of Essex, while Norwich, Yarmouth and Thetford stand at the end of the royal estates in Norfolk, and Ipswich stands at the end of the royal estates in Suffolk.

Southern boroughs in Domesday.

If now we enter the southern zone and keep in our minds the scheme that we have seen prevailing in the greater part of England, we shall observe that the account of Kent has a prologue touching Dover, Canterbury and Rochester. In Berkshire an excellent account of Wallingford precedes the rubric Terra Regis. Four places in Dorset are singled out for prefatory treatment, namely, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and Shaftesbury. In Devon Exeter stands, if we may so speak, above the line, and stands alone, though Barnstaple, Lidford and Totness are reckoned as boroughs. Of the other counties there is more to be said. If we compare the first page of the survey of Somerset with the first pages that are devoted to its two neighbours, Dorset and Devon, we shall probably come to the conclusion that the compilers of the book scrupled to put any Somerset vill on a par with Exeter, Dorchester, Bridport, Wareham and Shaftesbury. In each of the three cases the page is mapped out in precisely the same fashion. The second column is headed by Terra Regis. A long way down in the first column begins the list of tenants in chief. The upper part of the first column contains in one case the account of Exeter, in another the account of the four Dorset boroughs, but in the third case, that of Somerset, it is left blank. In Wiltshire Malmesbury and Marlborough stand above the line; but, if we look to the foot of the page, we shall suspect that the compilers can not easily force their general scheme upon this part of the country. In Surrey no place stands above the line. Guildford is the first place mentioned on the Terra Regis; Southwark seems to be inadequately treated on a later page. The case of Sussex is like that of Somerset; the list of the tenants in chief is preceded by a blank space. In Hampshire a whole column is left blank. On a later page the borough of Southampton has a column to itself; in the next column stands the Terra Regis of the Isle of Wight. And now let us turn back to the Middlesex that we have as yet ignored. Nearly two columns, to say nothing of some precedent pages, are void[710].

The boroughs and the plan of Domesday Book.

Now we must not be led away into speculations which would be vain. We must not, for example, inquire whether the information that had been obtained touching London and Winchester was too bulky to fill a room that had been left for it. We must not inquire whether something was to be said of Chichester or Hastings, of Ilchester or of Bristol that has not been said. But apparently we may attribute to King William’s officials a certain general idea. It is an idea which suits the greater part of England very well, though they find difficulties in their way when they endeavour to impose it on some of the counties that lie south of the Thames. The broad fact stands clear that throughout the larger part of England the commissioners found a town in each county, and in general one town only, which required special treatment. They do not locate it on the Terra Regis; they do not locate it on any man’s land. It stands outside the general system of land tenure.

The borough on no man’s land.

For a while, then, let us confine our attention to these county towns, and we shall soon see why it is that they are rarely brought under any rubric which would describe them as pieces of the king’s soil or pieces of some one else’s soil. The trait to which we allude we shall call (for want of a better term) the tenurial heterogeneity of the burgesses. In those boroughs that are fully described we seldom, if ever, find that all the burgesses have the same landlord. Of course there is a sense in which, according to the view of the Domesday surveyors and of all later lawyers, every inch of borough land is held of one landlord, namely, the king; but in that sense every inch of England has the same landlord. The fact that we would bring into relief is this, that normally the burgesses of the borough do not hold their burgages immediately of one and the same lord; they are not ‘peers of a tenure’; the group that they constitute is not a tenurial group. Far rather we shall find that, though there will be some burgesses holding immediately of the king, there will be others whose titles can be traced to the king only through the medium of other lords. And the mesne lord will often be a very great man, some prelate or baron with a widespread honour. Within the borough he will, to use the language of Domesday Book, ‘have’ or ‘hold’ a small group of burgesses, and sometimes they will be reckoned as annexed to or as ‘lying in’ some manor distant from the town. It seems generally expected that the barons of the county should have a few burgages apiece in the county town. This arrangement does not look new. Seemingly the great men of an earlier day, the antecessores of the Frenchmen, have owned town-houses: not so much houses for their own use, as houses or ‘haws’ (hagae) in which they could keep a few ‘burgesses.’

Heterogeneous tenures in the boroughs.