"Ricardus basset et Albericus de Ver reddunt Compotum de M marcis argenti de superplus Comitatuum, quas habent in custodia" (p. 63).
Here we have the very same phrase as that in the Inquest of Sheriffs, while the enormous "superplus" of a thousand marcs must represent the excess of receipts over the amount required for the firmæ, which excess, the counties being "in custodia," fell to the share of the Crown. Thus we obtain the right explanation of the employment in this capacity of royal officers, and we further get a glimpse, which we would not lose, of one of those administrative changes which, as under Henry II., tell of a system of government as yet empirical and imperfect.
It is clear that this measure was no mere development, but a sudden and unforeseen step. For in the case of Essex, the scene of our story, William de Eynsford ("Æinesford"), a Kentish landowner, had leased the county for five years, from Michaelmas, 1128, the consideration he paid for his lease being a hundred marcs (£66 13s. 4d.). Early in the second year of his lease, that is between Michaelmas, 1129, and Easter, 1130, he must have been superseded by the royal custodes, on the king taking the county into his own hands. He, however, received "compensation for disturbance," four-fifths of his hundred marcs ("de Gersoma") being remitted to him in consideration of his losing four out of his five years' lease. All this we learn from the brief record in the Roll (p. 63).
Another point that should be here noticed is the use of the term "Gersoma." Retrospectively, its use in this Roll illustrates its use in Domesday. In those cases, where a firmarius was willing, as a speculation, to give for an estate more than its fixed rental (firma), he gave the excess "de Gersoma," either in the form of a lump sum, or in that of an annual payment.
APPENDIX J.
THE GREAT SEAL OF THE EMPRESS.
(See p. [116].)
There yet remains one point, in connection with this remarkable charter, perhaps the most striking, certainly the most novel, of all. This is that of the seal. According to the transcript in the Ashmole MSS., the legend "in circumferentia sigillo" was this: "Matildis Imperatrix Rom' et Regina Angliæ."
Now, that any such seal was designed for the Empress has never been suspected by any historian. We cannot, on a question of royal seals, appeal to a higher or more recognized authority than Mr. Walter de Gray Birch. He has written as follows on the subject:—
"The type of seal of the empress which is invariably fixed to every document among this collection that bears a seal is that used by her in Germany as 'Queen of the Romans.'... From this date (1106) to that of her death, which took place on the 16th of December, A.D. 1167, long after the solution of the troubles of the years 1140-1142 in England, she was accustomed to use this seal, and this only. It has never been suggested by any writer upon the historic seals of England that Mathildis employed any Great Seal as Queen of England, made after the conventional characteristics which obtain in the Great Seals of Stephen, her predecessor, or of her son, King Henry II. The troubled state of this country, the uncertain movements of the lady, the unsettled confidence of the people, and the consequent inability of attending to such a matter as the engraving of a Great Seal—a work, it must be borne in mind, involving some time and care—are, when taken together, more than sufficient causes to account for the continued usage of this type; although we may fairly presume that it was intended to supersede this foreign seal with one more consentaneously in keeping with English tradition."[872]