[265] It will be observed that I do not touch the Liber Exoniensis.
[266] Possibly at second-hand, see p. 20 note (Footnote: [9], above), and [Addenda].
THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GELD-ROLL
This remarkable document was printed by Sir Henry Ellis (1833) in his General Introduction to Domesday (i. 184-7) from the fine Peterborough Cartulary belonging to the Society of Antiquaries (MS. 60). I shall not, therefore, reprint it here, but will give the opening entry as a specimen of its style:
This is unto Suttunes (Sutton) hundred, that is an hundred hides. So it was in King Edward's day. And thereof is 'gewered' one and twenty hides and two-thirds of a hide, and [there are] forty hides inland and ten hides [of] the King's ferm land, and eight and twenty hides and the third of a hide waste.
We have seen (supra, p. 59) that Ellis not only erred, but even led Dr Stubbs into error, as to the character of the 'hundreds' enumerated in this document. Except for that, I cannot find any real notice taken of it, although it has been in print over sixty years. It appears to be not even mentioned in Mr Stuart Moore's volume on Northamptonshire in Domesday; and no one, it seems, has cared to inquire to what date it belongs, or what it really is.[1]
Now, although written in old English, it is well subsequent to the Conquest, for it mentions inter alias 'Rodbertes wif heorles', who, we shall find, was Maud, wife of the Count of Mortain. It also mentions William and Richard Engaine, Northamptonshire tenants in Domesday. On the other hand, it cannot be later than 1075, for it speaks of lands held by 'the lady, the King's wife'; and this was Edith, Edward's widow, whose Northamptonshire lands passed to King William at her death in 1075. Of the very few names mentioned, one may surprise and the other puzzle us. The former is that of 'the Scot King', holding land even then in a shire where his successors were to hold it so largely: the other is 'Osmund, the King's writer', in whom one is grievously tempted to detect the future Chancellor, Saint and Bishop. But, apart from his identity, his peculiar style, exactly equating, as it does, the Latin 'clericus regis', emboldens me to make the hazardous suggestion that we possibly have in this document an English rendering of a Latin original, executed in the Peterborough scriptorium.
For what was the purpose of the document? It may be pronounced without hesitation to be no other than a geld-roll, recording, it would seem, a levy of Danegeld hitherto unknown.[2] There are three features which it has in common with the rolls of 1084: it is drawn up hundred by hundred; it records the exemption of demesne; and it specifies those lands that had failed to pay their quota.[3]