Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

by John Horace Round

Cartulary	Domesday
Ad uuestbiriam[203] pertinent l. hide. xxxv. hidas in dominio habet[203] episcopus, et milites sui habent xv. hidas. In icenatune v. hidas, In comtuna v. hidas, In biscopes stoke v. hidas.	Huesberie. Ibi fuerunt et sunt l. hidae.... De hac terra hujus Manerii tenet Turstinus filius Rolf v. hidas in Austrecliue et Gislebertus filius Turold iii. hidas et dimidiam jn Contone, et Constantinus v. hidas jn Icetune.... De eadem terra hujus Manerii tenet Osbernus Gifard v. hidae et nullum servitium facit.... Quod homines tenent (valet) ix. libras.

The three five-hide holdings, we find, figure in both alike, but Gilbert fitz Thorold's holding of three hides and a half appears in addition in Domesday. The inference, surely would seem to be that Gilbert was enfeoffed between the date of the survey recorded in the Cartulary and the date of the Domesday Survey. If so, the former survey is, as I have suggested, the earlier; and in that survey we have the three tenants of five-hide holdings described eo nomine as the bishop's milites.

In the cartae of 1166 we have fees of 5 hides,[²⁰⁴] of 4,[²⁰⁵] of 6,[²⁰⁶] of 10,[²⁰⁷] of 2½,[²⁰⁸] and even of 2;[²⁰⁹] also of 5 carucates,[²¹⁰] of 11,[²¹¹] and of 14.[²¹²] Cartularies, however, are richer in evidence of this discrepancy. Thus the six fees of St Albans contained 40 hides (an average of 6⅔ hides each), the figures being 5½, 7, 8½, 6, 5½, 7½.[²¹³] So too in the Abingdon Cartulary (ii. 3) we find four fees containing 19 hides, three containing 14, a half-fee 4, a fee and a half 13, one fee, 10, 5, 9. On the other hand, if we take 20 librates as the amount of the fee—which it was already, as Dr Stubbs observes, in the days of the Conqueror—the cartae confirm that conclusion.[²¹⁴] We must therefore conclude that the knight's fee, held by an under-tenant, consisted normally of an estate, worth £20 a year, and was not based on the 'five hides' of the Anglo-Saxon system.

VI. THE EARLY EVIDENCE

We will now work upwards from the cartae to the Conquest.

Allusions to early enfeoffment are scattered through the cartae themselves. Henry fitz Gerold begins his return: 'Isti sunt milites Eudonis Dapiferi', and Eudo, we know, 'came in with the Conqueror'. We learn from another return (Lib. Rub., p. 397) that Henry I had given William de Albini, 'Pincerna, de feodo quod fuit Corbuchun xv. milites feffatos'. Now this refers to 'Robertus filius Corbution', a Domesday tenant in Norfolk. The Testa, again, comes to our help. Thus we learn from Domesday that Osbern the priest alias Osbern the sheriff (of Lincolnshire) was William de Perci's tenant at Wickenby, co. Lincoln, but the Testa entry (p. 338a) proves that William had enfeoffed him in that holding by the service of one knight.[²¹⁵] So too Count Alan (of Brittany) had enfeoffed his tenant Landri at Welton in the same county for the service of half a knight (Ibid., 338b), and we find his son, Alan fitz Landri, tenant there to Count Stephen, a generation later than Domesday, in the Lindsey Survey. The barony of Bywell in Northumberland, we read in the Testa (p. 392a), had been held by the service of five knights[²¹⁶] since the days of William Rufus, who had granted it on that tenure.[²¹⁷] After this we are not surprised to learn that the barony of Morpeth had been held 'from the Conquest' by the service of four knights, and that of Mitford as long by the service of five (Ibid., p. 392b), or that those of Calverdon, Morewic, and Diveleston had all been similarly held by military service 'from the Conquest'. In Herefordshire, again, John de Monmouth is returned as holding 'feoda xv. militum a conquestu Anglie'.[²¹⁸] So too Robert Foliot claims in his carta (1166) that his predecessors had been enfeoffed 'since the conquest of England';[²¹⁹] and William de Colecherche, that his little fief was 'de antiquo tenemento a Conquestu Angliae' (L.R., p. 400); Humphrey de Bohun enumerates the fees 'quibus avus suus feffatus fuit in primo feffamento quod in Anglia habuit' (Ibid., p. 242), and refers to his grandfather's subsequent enfeoffments in the days of William Rufus (p. 244), while Alexander de Alno similarly speaks of sub-infeudation 'tempore Willelmi Regis' (p. 230). To take one more instance from the cartae, an abbot sets forth his servicium due to Henry, 'sicuti debuit antiquitus regibus predecessoribus ejus' (p. 224). This brings us to the instructive case of Ramsey Abbey.

Dr Stubbs refers to a document of the reign of William Rufus as 'proof that the lands of the house had not yet been divided into knights' fees'.[²²⁰] But he does not mention the striking fact that the special knight service for which the abbot was to be liable is distinctly stated to have been that for which his 'predecessors' had been liable.[²²¹] As this charter is assigned to 1091-1100, the mention of 'predecessors' would seem to carry back this knight service very far indeed. And we have happily another connecting link which carries downwards the history of this knight service, as the above-named charter carries it upwards. This is the entry in the Pipe-Roll of 1129-30:

Abbas de Ramesia reddit compotum de xlviij. li. xj. s. et vj. d. pro superplus militum qui requirebantur de Abbatia (p. 47).[²²²]

Further, we have a notable communication to the abbot from Bishop Nigel of Ely, which must refer to the scutage of 1156 or to that of 1159 (probably the former):

Sciatis quod ubi Ricardus clericus[²²³] reddidit compotum de scutagio militum vestrorum ad Scaccarium ego testificatus sum vos non debere regi plusquam quatuor milites, et per tantum quieti estis et in rotulo scripti.[²²⁴]