MARTYR WORTHY
One of the old-world villages, some few miles above Winchester, lying in a reach of the river Itchen of unusual beauty and charm.
the order to extinguish fires and put out lights—probably as much a wise precaution to diminish risk of fire in crowded towns built mainly of wood as directly political in purpose,—was first promulgated here. Here first of all curfew was rung, as it has rung nightly ever since. Formerly it rang from the little church of St. Peter in the Shambles, behind Godbiete; now it rings from the old Guild Hall—the Hall, in earlier days, of the Guild Merchant of Winchester.
Another event which affected the popular imagination even more profoundly was the great survey of the kingdom, the results of which were embodied in the Domesday Book, so called because, as Rudborne says, “it spareth no one, just like the great Day of Doom.” The compilation of it was regarded as a great act of oppression. “Inquisition was even made as to how many animals sufficed for the tillage of one hide of land.” In reality it was an act of statesmanlike administration, the object of which was to collect accurate information for the purpose of assessing ‘geld,’ or dues for military service. Exact assessment for taxes is evidently not a modern terror merely, nor is the modern income tax-payer the only one who has objected to inquisitorial modes of assessment.
Winchester and London were omitted from Domesday Book altogether—an omission which was repaired, as far as Winchester is concerned, in Henry I.’s reign, when the Winchester Domesday Book, as it was called, was compiled. Needless to say, Domesday Book was merely the popular name for it; its real name was the Rotulus Wintoniensis, or Book of Winchester, sometimes termed Rotulus Regis or King’s Book. Domesday Book was kept at Winchester, and a copy of it at Westminster. The original is now in the Rolls Office.
It is certainly noteworthy that Winchester should have given birth to the two most valuable records of national history which this country has ever possessed, two records which no other nation can find any parallel to, viz. the English Chronicle and the Domesday Book. The value of the latter is that it gives us in absolutely unquestionable form the raw material of history, unwarped by personal bias, uncoloured by tradition. By means of it we can put to exact test many of the time-honoured statements, accepted for generation after generation without question or demur, and in that fierce crucible many and many a legendary tradition treasured hitherto as current historical coin, has been melted down and revealed as a spurious token merely. Such a one we probably have in the story already related of Abbot Alwyn and the monks of Newan Mynstre; the story of the afforestation of the New Forest is another. But the New Forest, though local, is rather beyond our scope: the reader is referred to the fuller volume on Hampshire for a discussion of this topic: and, indeed, the story of Norman Winchester is full enough as it is—replete with many a thrilling scene, many a notable historical figure. William himself, strong, stern, far-seeing and determined, a leader among men, towering head and shoulders above his contemporaries, capable of cruelty, hard and grasping, indeed, as were all who strove to rule in those stern days, but never small or moved by petty spite. “He nothing common did or mean,” might almost be said of him. And side by side with him, Lanfranc the Italian, smooth, supple, astute—like William, a master mind, a great man, but with the greatness of the ecclesiastical statesman rather than of the saint or even the scholar; and in sharp contrast Walkelyn the Norman, the high-minded, the conscientious, the ascetic—a scholar and a devotee rather than a statesman; and after these a host of minor personalities, striking and interesting enough, too, in their way. Foremost among these stands Waltheof, Earl of Huntingdon, son of the great Siward, Earl of Northumbria. A picturesque and pathetic figure he is, with certain virtues and high qualities all unfitted for his time.
Poor Waltheof—like Saul of old, his outward man striking and tall and goodly to look upon,—was the idol of William’s Saxon subjects. But the fair exterior covered after all but a weak and irresolute soul, no match for the master mind of William, who read him through and through as a reader reads his book. Yet though in his weakness William despised him, in his popularity William feared him, and when denounced by his treacherous Norman wife for the merely colourable part he had played in the Bridal of Norwich—