Willelmus comes Albemarlie archiepiscopo Ebor[acensi] et capitulo et omnibus matricis ecclesie filiis salutem. Noverit paternitas vestra me dedisse et concessisse deo et sancte Marie et sancte Bege in Copelandia et omnibus (sic) vi vaccas in perpetuam elemosinam reddendas anno omni quo meum Noutegeld debuerit fieri. Hanc autem donacionem feci pro animabus omnium antecessorum meorum et antecessorum uxoris mee Cecilie. Testibus, etc....
Willelmus comes Albemarlie omnibus hominibus suis tam futuris quam presentibus salutem. Sciatis quod dedi et presenti carta confirmavi Deo et sancte Marie et sancte Bege et monachis de sancta Bega vi vaccas de meo Nautegeld (sic) unoquoque anno, quando accipio Nautegeld in Copuland, etc.[577] ...
Now it is a most interesting fact that in Durham also we find, as in Coupland, a payment in cows (“vaccas de metride”) made by townships in connection with their payment of “cornage.”[578] From the above important charters, it would seem that the two dues went together. In Durham there is a classical passage for the “cornage” proper, quoted by those who have dealt with “cornage,” but not by Mr. Hall. In a charter of Henry I., which I assign to 1128–9, he speaks of “cornagium de Bortona ... scilicet de unoquoque animali ij d.”[579] This is precisely the source of “cornage” which Mr. Hall desires to “disregard.” And if further proof were needed of the non-identity of “cornage” with castle-ward, it is found in the fact that, as in Northumberland, both dues existed simultaneously in Durham, vills which paid cornage being also liable to provide men for castle-ward (“castlemanni”).[580]
XIV
Bannockburn
As Sir Henry Howorth has so truly observed, in a presidential address to the members of the Archæological Institute, the transition from the chronicle to the record as a source of mediæval history is one of the most striking and hopeful features in recent historical research. And in no respect, perhaps, has the study of original records modified more profoundly the statements of mediæval chroniclers than in the matter of the figures they contain. Dealing with the introduction of knight-service into England, I was led to give some instances in point,[581] and specially to urge that “sixty thousand” occurs repeatedly as a conventional number ludicrously remote from the truth. It is now, I believe, generally accepted that my estimate of about five thousand for the number of knights’ fees in England[582] is nearer the truth than the “sixty thousand” which, in his History, Mr. Green accepted. But we still read in ‘Social England’ (i. 373) that William I. “is believed to have landed ... with at least 60,000 men”; nor did Mr. Freeman himself reject the statement of Orderic that “sixty thousand” men were gathered on Salisbury Plain for the “Mickle Gemót” of August 1, 1086. We who saw, only last summer, the difficulty of there assembling a force scarcely so large, even with all the modern facilities of transport and organization, can realize, more forcibly than ever, the incredibility of the fact.
“Stephen Segrave,” Dr. Stubbs reminds us, “the minister of Henry III., reckoned 32,000 as the number” of knights’ fees; and even so late as 1371, ministers allowed a parliamentary grant to be calculated on the belief that there were 40,000 parishes in England, when there were, as a fact, less than 9,000.[583] So too, as is well known, Fitz Ralph, archbishop of Armagh, declared at Avignon, that at Oxford, in his early days, there were 30,000 students, although it is probable that they cannot have exceeded 3,000 in number.[584] It is even said that Wycliffe doubled Fitz Ralph’s estimate.
There is nothing, therefore, strange in the fact that two centuries and a half after the Norman Conquest, we still find absurd numbers assigned to armies in the field and accepted with thoughtless readiness, even by modern historians. This, we shall see, has been the case, among many other battles, with that of Bannockburn (1314).
The ultimate “authority” for the numbers engaged at this ever memorable fight is Barbour’s Brus. Of Edward that romancer wrote:
He had of fechtaris with hym tha