Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth CenturiesRound, John Horace
History
Feudal England: Historical Studies on the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Round, John Horace
Domesday book; Feudalism -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- History -- Norman period, 1066-1154; Normans -- Great Britain
This remarkable document was printed by Sir Henry Ellis (1833) in
his _General Introduction to Domesday_ (i. 184-7) from the fine
Peterborough Cartulary belonging to the Society of Antiquaries (MS.
60). I shall not, therefore, reprint it here, but will give the
opening entry as a specimen of its style:
This is unto Suttunes (Sutton) hundred, that is an hundred
hides. So it was in King Edward's day. And thereof is
'gewered' one and twenty hides and two-thirds of a hide, and
[there are] forty hides inland and ten hides [of] the King's
ferm land, and eight and twenty hides and the third of a hide
waste.
We have seen (_supra_, p. 59) that Ellis not only erred, but even led
Dr Stubbs into error, as to the character of the 'hundreds' enumerated
in this document. Except for that, I cannot find any real notice taken
of it, although it has been in print over sixty years. It appears to
be not even mentioned in Mr Stuart Moore's volume on _Northamptonshire
in Domesday_; and no one, it seems, has cared to inquire to what date
it belongs, or what it really is.[1]
Now, although written in old English, it is well subsequent to the
Conquest, for it mentions _inter alia_ 'Rodbertes wif heorles',
who, we shall find, was Maud, wife of the Count of Mortain. It also
mentions William and Richard Engaine, Northamptonshire tenants in
Domesday. On the other hand, it cannot be later than 1075, for it
speaks of lands held by 'the lady, the King's wife'; and this was
Edith, Edward's widow, whose Northamptonshire lands passed to King
William at her death in 1075. Of the very few names mentioned, one
may surprise and the other puzzle us. The former is that of 'the Scot
King', holding land even then in a shire where his successors were to
hold it so largely: the other is 'Osmund, the King's writer', in whom
one is grievously tempted to detect the future Chancellor, Saint and
Bishop. But, apart from his identity, his peculiar style, exactly
equating, as it does, the Latin 'clericus regis', emboldens me to make
the hazardous suggestion that we possibly have in this document an
English rendering of a Latin original, executed in the Peterborough
_scriptorium_.
For what was the purpose of the document? It may be pronounced without
hesitation to be no other than a geld-roll, recording, it would seem,
a levy of Danegeld hitherto unknown.[2] There are three features which
it has in common with the rolls of 1084: it is drawn up hundred by
hundred; it records the exemption of demesne; and it specifies those
lands that had failed to pay their quota.[3]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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