Each village community was self-contained, and had its own officers. Although Domesday Book was not compiled in order to ascertain the condition of the Church and its ministers, and frequently the mention of a parish church is omitted where we know one existed, the presbyter, or priest, is often recorded. Archbishop Egbert’s Excerptiones ordained that “to every church shall be allotted one complete holding (mansa), and that this shall be free from all but ecclesiastical services.” According to the Saxon laws every tenth strip of land was set aside for the Church, and Domesday shows that in many villages there was a priest with his portion of land set apart for his support.
Then there was a prepositus, bailiff or reeve, who collected the lord’s rents, assisted by a bedellus, beadle or under-bailiff. Bovarii, or oxherds, looked after the plough-teams. The carpentarius, or carpenter; the cementarius, or bricklayer; the custos apium, or beekeeper; the faber, or smith; the molinarius, or miller—were all important officers in the Norman village; and we have mention also of the piscatores (fishermen), pistores (bakers), porcarii (swineherds), viccarii (cowmen), who were all employed in the work of the village community.
Domesday Book enables us to form a fairly complete picture of our villages in Norman and late Saxon times. It tells us of the various classes who peopled the village and farmed its fields. It gives us a complete list of the old Saxon gentry and of the Norman nobles and adventurers who seized the fair acres of the despoiled Englishmen. Many of them gave their names to their new possessions. The Mandevilles settled at Stoke, and called it Stoke-Mandeville; the Vernons at Minshall, and called it Minshall-Vernon. Hurst-Pierpont, Neville-Holt, Kingston-Lysle, Hampstead-Norris, and many other names of places compounded of Saxon and Norman words, record the names of William’s followers, who received the reward of their services at the expense of the former Saxon owners. Domesday Book tells us how land was measured in those days, the various tenures and services rendered by the tenants, the condition of the towns, the numerous foreign monasteries which thrived on our English lands, and throws much light on the manners and customs of the people of this country at the time of its compilation. Domesday Book is a perfect storehouse of knowledge for the historian, and requires a lifetime to be spent for its full investigation.
CHAPTER XI
NORMAN CASTLES
Castle-building—Description of Norman castle—A Norman household— Edwardian castles—Border castles—Chepstow—Grosmont—Raglan—Central feature of feudalism—Fourteenth-century castle—Homes of chivalry— Schools of arms—The making of a knight—Tournaments—Jousts—Tilting at a ring—Pageants—“Apollo and Daphne”—Pageants at Sudeley Castle and Kenilworth—Destruction of castles—Castles during Civil War period.
Many an English village can boast of the possession of the ruins of an ancient castle, a gaunt rectangular or circular keep or donjon, looking very stern and threatening even in decay, and mightily convincing of the power of its first occupants. The new masters did not feel very safe in the midst of a discontented and enraged people; so they built these huge fortresses with strong walls and gates and moats. Indeed before the Conquest the Norman knights, to whom the weak King Edward the Confessor granted many an English estate, brought with them the fashion of building castles, and many a strong square tower began to crown the fortified mounds. Thence they could oppress the people in many ways, and the writers of the time always speak of the building of castles with a kind of shudder. After the Conquest, especially during the regency of William’s two lieutenants, Bishop Odo and Earl William Fitz-osbern, the Norman adventurers who were rewarded for their services by the gift of many an English manor, built castles everywhere. The wretched men of the land were cruelly oppressed by forced labour in erecting these strongholds, which were filled “with devils and evil men.” Over a thousand castles were built in nineteen years, and in his own castle each earl or lord reigned as a small king, coining his own money, making his own laws, having power of life and death over his dependants, and often using his power most violently and oppressively.