The task of reconstructing the economic life of Saxon England is not easy, and while the document translated below (No. 1) vividly analyses the obligations and rights of the various classes of tenants and officers on Saxon estates of the eleventh century, it raises many difficulties and is probably only true for the more settled parts of the country. It affords, however, clear proof of a high agricultural and social development; and though the exact significance of specific terms, and the status of different classes, may remain obscure, a comparison of the Rectitudines and the Gerefa[2] with later extents and custumals, and with Domesday Book itself, establishes the essential continuity of English economic life and customs, notwithstanding the shock of the Norman Conquest.
The further study of Domesday Book will undoubtedly yield valuable results supplementing the information derived from Saxon documents. While it is primarily a supreme example of the defining spirit and centralising energy of the conquering race, it is also a permanent record of England before and at the time of the Norman invasion. Especially, perhaps, is this apparent in the detailed descriptions of the boroughs, which at once set forth Saxon customs and illustrate the effects of the Conquest. The extracts given below are intended to show in brief, first, the methods both of the commissioners who conducted the survey, and of the officials who reduced the information to a common form;[3] second, the fiscal preoccupation of the government; third, the origin and character of the early borough, especially manifest in the case of Wallingford (No. 5), and fourth, the different classes of tenants, free and unfree. Of particular interest are the following features: the manner of levying the feudal army (No. 6), the evidence of the looser organisation of the Eastern Counties, and the greater degree of freedom prevailing among tenants in the Danelaw (Nos. 4 and 8), the ample franchises that might be enjoyed by a great Saxon prelate (No. 7), the saltpans of Worcestershire (No. 9), and the gildhall of the burgesses of Dover (No. 3).
AUTHORITIES
The more accessible writers dealing with the subject of this section are:—Kemble, The Saxons in England; Maine, Village Communities in the East and West; Seebohm, The English Village Community; Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, The Growth of the Manor, and, English Society in the Eleventh Century; Andrews, The Old English Manor; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law; Ballard, The Domesday Boroughs, and, The Domesday Inquest; Round, Domesday Studies, and, The Domesday Manor (Eng. Hist. Rev. xv.); Stubbs, Constitutional History, and, Lectures on Mediæval History; Ellis, Introduction to Domesday Book; Gomme, The Village Community; de Coulanges, Origin of Property in Land; Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England; Petit Dutaillis, Studies Supplementary to Stubbs' Constitutional History.
Almost the whole of Domesday Book has now been translated and is printed county by county in the Victoria County History series.
For a general survey of the Saxon period the student should refer to Cunningham, Growth of English Industry and Commerce, Mediæval Times, pp. 28-133.
1. Rights and Duties of all Persons [Rectitudines Singularum Personarum. Cambridge, Corpus Christi, 383], c. 1000.
The Thegn's Law.—The thegn's law is that he be worthy of his book-right,[4] and that he do three things for his land, fyrdfare,[5] burhbote[6] and bridge-work. Also from many lands a greater land-service arises at the king's command, such as the deer-hedge at the king's abode and provision of warships (scorp to fyrdscipe)[7] and sea-ward and head-ward[8] and fyrd-ward, almsfee and churchscot, and many other diverse things.
The Geneat's Service.—Geneat-service is diverse according to the custom of the estate. On some he must pay land-gafol[9] and grass-swine[10] yearly, and ride and carry and lead loads, work, and feast the lord, and reap and mow and cut the deer-hedge and maintain it, build and hedge the burh,[11] bring strange wayfarers to the tun, pay churchscot and almsfee, keep head-ward and horse-ward, go errands far and near whithersoever he be told.
The Cotter's Service.—The cotter's service is according to the custom of the estate. On some he must work for his lord each Monday throughout the year and for three days each week in harvest. On some he works through the whole harvest every day and reaps an acre of oats for a day's work, and he shall have his sheaf which the reeve or lord's servant will give him.[12] He ought not to pay land-gafol. It bents him to have 5 acres; more, if it be the custom of the estate; and if it be less, it is too little, because his work shall be oft required; he shall pay his hearth-penny on Holy Thursday, as all free men should; and he shall defend his lord's inland,[13] if he be required, from sea-ward and the king's deer-hedge and from such things as befit his degree; and he shall pay his churchscot at Martinmas.