Its salient feature is one that, at first sight, might seem to impugn its authenticity. This is the almost incredible amount of land lying 'waste'. If we confine our attention to the land liable to geld represented by the first and fourth columns in my analysis below, we see that by far the larger proportion of it is entered as 'waste': yet this witness to a terrible devastation is the best proof of its authenticity; for it sets before us the fruits of those ravages in the autumn of 1065, which are thus described by Mr Freeman, paraphrasing the English chronicle:
Morkere's Northern followers dealt with the country about Northampton as if it had been the country of an enemy. They slew men, burned corn and houses, carried off cattle, and at last led captive several hundred prisoners, seemingly as slaves. The blow was so severe that it was remembered even when one would have thought that that and all other lesser wrongs would have been forgotten in the general overthrow of England. Northamptonshire and the shires near to it were for many winters the worse.
Mr Freeman, had he read it, would have eagerly welcomed our record's striking testimony to the truth of the Chronicle's words.
The devastation that our roll records had been well repaired at the time of Domesday; but we obtain a glimpse of it in the Rockingham entry: 'Wasta erat quando rex W. jussit ibi castellum fieri. Modo valet xxvi. sol.' (i. 220).
But it is not only that the entries of 'waste' on our roll are thus explained: they further prove it to be, as I have urged, a 'Danegeld' roll. For, when we compare it with the Pipe-Roll of 2 Henry II (1156), we find the latter similarly allowing for the non-receipt of geld from land 'in waste'; and it is specially noteworthy that the portion thus 'waste' is in every case, as on our roll, entered after the others. The fact that the geld was remitted on land that had been made 'waste' is now established by collation of these two records.
Incidentally, it may be pointed out that as our document bears witness to the devastation of Northamptonshire in 1065, so the first surviving roll of Henry II illustrates the local range of devastation under Stephen. In Kent, which had been throughout under the royal rule, the waste was infinitesimal; in Yorkshire it was slight; but in the Midlands, which had long been the battle-ground of rival feudal magnates, it was so extensive that, as here in Northamptonshire after the Conquest, there was more land exempted as 'waste' than there was capable of paying.
Before leaving this subject I briefly compare the cases of Northamptonshire and of East Sussex. In the former, we have seen, it is only our document that preserves for us evidence of the ravages in 1065; Domesday does not record them, because they had then (1086) been repaired. But in East Sussex, the entries are fuller; and as was observed by Mr Hayley, an intelligent local antiquary:
It is the method of Domesday Book, after reciting the particulars relating to each Manor, to set down the valuation thereof, at three several periods, to wit, the time of King Edward the Confessor, afterwards when the new tenant entered upon it, and again at the time when the survey was made. Now it is to be observed in perusing the account of the Rape of Hastings in that book, that in several of the Manors therein at the second of these periods, it is recorded of them that they were waste, and from this circumstance it may upon good ground be concluded what parts of that Rape were marched over by, and suffered from the ravages of the two armies of the Conqueror and King Harold; and indeed, the situations of those Manors is such as evidently shows their then devastated state to be owing to that cause.[4]
Mr Freeman's treatment of this theory was highly characteristic. In the Appendix he devoted to the subject[5] he first contemptuously observed of the allusion to Harold's army:
This notion would hardly have needed any answer except from the sort of sanction given to it by the two writers who quote Mr Hayley. I do not believe that any army of any age ever passed through a district without doing some damage, but to suppose that Harold systematically harried his own kingdom does seem to me the height of absurdity.