第 12 页

104. Above, p. 125.

105. D. B. ii. 186: 'In Sterestuna tenuit 1 liber homo S. Aldrede T. R. E. et Stigandi erat soca et saco in Hersam, set nec dare nec vendere poterat terram suam sine licentia S. Aldrede et Stigandi.'

106. D. B. ii. 376.

107. D. B. ii. 401 b: 'Eodem tempore fuerunt furati equi inventi in domo istius Brungari, ita quod Abbas cuius fuit soca et saca et Rodbertus qui habuit commendationem super istum venerunt de hoc furto ad placitum, et sicut hundret testatur discesserunt amicabiliter sine iudicio quod vidissed (sic) hundret.'

108. E.g. D. B. ii. 35 b: 'quas tenuerunt 2 sochemanni et 1 liber homo.'

109. D. B. ii. 28 b: 'Huic manerio iacent 5 sochenmanni quorum 2 occupavit Ingelricus tempore Regis Willelmi qui tunc erant liberi homines.'

110. D. B. ii. 83: '3 sochemanni tenentes libere.' -- Ibid. 88 b: 'tunc fuit 1 sochemannus qui libere tenuit 1 virgatam.' -- Ibid. 58: 'in hac terra sunt 13 sochemanni qui libere tenent.'

111. D. B. i. 212 b, Bedf.: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt 4 sochemanni quorum 3 liberi fuerunt, quartus vero unam hidam habuit, sed nec dare nec vender.e potuit.'

112. D. B. i. 35 b, 'Isti liberi homines ita liberi fuerunt quod poterant ire quo volebant.' -- Ibid. ii. 187: '5 homines... ex istis erant 4 liberi ut non possent recedere nisi dando 2 solidos.'

113. Round, Feudal England, 34.

114. D. B. ii. 59 b, Essex: 'quod tenuerunt 2 liberi homines... set non poterant recedere sine liceintia illius Algari.' -- Ibid. 216 b, Norf.: 'Ibi sunt 5 liberi homines S. Benedicti commendatione tantum... et ita est in monasterio quod nec vendere ned forisfacere pot[uerunt] extra ecclesia set soca est in hundredo.' -- Ibid. i. 137 b, Herts: 'duo teigni..... vendere non potuerunt.' -- Ibid. i. 30 b, Hants: 'Duo liberi homines tenuerunt de episcopo T. R. E. sed recedere cum terra non potuerunt.'

115. Above,p. 135, note 1.

116. E.g. D. B. i. 129 b: 'In hac terra fuerunt 5 sochemanni de 6 hidis quas potuerunt dare vel vendere sine licentia dominorum suorum.'

117. Above, p. 132, note 1.

118. E.g. D. B. ii, 358: '7 liberos homines... hi poterant dare vel vendere terram set saca et soca et commendatio et servitium remanebant Sancto [Edmundo].'

119. D. B. ii. 186: 'In Sterestuna tenuit unus liber homo S. Aldredae T. R. E. et Stigandi erat soca et saco in Hersam.' -- Ibid. 139 b: 'habuit socam et sacam... de commendatis suis.'

120. D. B. i. 141.

121. Liebermann, Leges Edwardi, p. 72. The most important passage is Leg. Edw. 12 sect. 4: 'Manbote in Danelaga de villano et de socheman 12 oras [=20 sol.]: de liberis hominibus 3 marcas [=40 sol.].'

122. A study of the Hundred Rolls might prepare us for this result. One jury will call servi those whom another jury would have called villani. See e.g. R. H. ii. 688 ff.

123. D. B. ii. 189, b. 190.

124. D. B. ii. 318: 'In Suttona tenet idem W. [de Cadomo] de R. Malet 2 liberos homines commendatos Edrico 61 acr[arum] et sub 1 ex ipsis 5 liberi [sic] homines.' -- Ibid. 321 b: 'In Caldecota 6 liberi homines commendati Leuuino de Bachetuna 74 acr. et 7 liberi homines sub eis commend[ati] de 6 acr. et dim.'

6. The Manor

This brings us face to face with a question that we have hitherto evaded. What is a manor? The word manerium appears on page after page of Domesday Book, but to define its meaning will task our patience. Perhaps we may have to say that sometimes the term is loosely used, that it has now a wider, now a narrower compass, but we cannot say that it is not a technical term. Indeed the one statement that we can safely make about it is that, at all events in certain passages and certain contexts, it is a technical term. We may be led to this opinion by observing that in the description of certain counties -- Middlesex, Buckingham, Bedford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Derby, Nottingham, Lincoln, York -- the symbol M, which represents a manor, is often carried out into the margin, and is sometimes constrasted with the S which represents a soke and the B which represents a berewick. This no doubt has been done -- though it may not have been very consistently done -- for the purpose of guiding the eye of officials who will turn over the pages in search of manors. But much clearer evidence is forthcoming. Throughout the survey of Essex it is common to find entries which take such a form as this: 'Thurkil held it for two hides and for one manor'. 'Brithmaer held it for five hides and for one manor'; 'Two free men who were brothers held it for two hides and for two manors'; 'Three free men held it for three manors and for four hides and twenty-seven acres;(1*) in Sussex again the statement 'X tenuit pro uno manerio'(2*) frequently occurs. Such phrases as 'Four brothers held it for two manors, Hugh received it for one manor,(3*) -- 'These four manors are now for one manor'(4*) -- 'Then there were two halls, now it is in one manor,'(5*) -- 'A certain thegn held four hides and it was a manor,(6*) -- are by no means unusual.(7*) A clerk writes 'Elmer tenuit' and then is at pains to add by way of interlineation 'pro manerio.'(8*) 'Eight thegns held this manor, one of them, Alwin, held two hides for a manor; another, Ulf, two hides for a manor; another, Algar, one hide and a half for a manor; Elsi one hide, Turkill one hide, Lodi one hide, Osulf one hide, Elric a half-hide'(9*) -- when we read this we feel sure that the scribe is using his terms carefully and that he is telling us that the holdings of the five thegns last mentioned were not manors. And then Hugh de Port holds Wallop in Hampshire 'for half a manor.'(10*) But let us say at once that at least one rule of law, or of local custom, demands a definition of a manerium. In the shires of Nottingham and Derby a thegn who has more than six manors pays a relief of ? to the king, but if he has only six manors or less, then a relief of 3 marks to the sheriff.(11*) It seems clear therefore that not only did the Norman rulers treat the term manerium as an accurate term charged with legal meaning, but they thought that it, or rather some English equivalent for it, had been in the Confessor's day an accurate term charged with legal meaning. The term manerium seems to have come in with the Conqueror,(12*) though other derivatives frow the Latin verb manere, in particular mansa, mansio, mansiuncula had been freely employed by the scribes of the land-books. But these had as a rule been used as representatives of the English hide, and just for this reason they were incapable of expressing the notion that the Normans desired to express by the word manerium. In its origin that word is but one more name for a house. Throughout the Exeter Domesday the word mansio is used instead of the manerium of the Exchequer record, and even in the Exchequer record we way find these two terms used interchangeably: -- 'Three free men belonged to this manerium; one of them had half a hide and could withdraw himself without the licence of the lord of the mansio.'(13*) If we look for the vernacular term that was rendered by manerium, we are likely to find it in the English heal. Though this is not connected with the Latin aula, still these two words bearing a similar meaning meet and are fused in the aula, haula, halla of Domesday Book. Now this term stands in the first instance for a house and can be exchanged with curia. You may say that there is meadow enough for the horses of the curia,(14*) and that there are three horses in the aula;(15*) you may speak indifferently of a mill that serves the hall,(16*) or of the mill that grinds the corn of the court.(17*) But further, you may say that in Stonham there are 50 acres of the demesne land of the hall in Creeting, or that in Thorney there are 24 acres which belong to the hall in Stonham,(18*) or that Roger de Rames has lands which once were in the hall of St Edmund,(19*) or that in the hall of Grantham there are three carucates of land,(20*) or that Guthmund's sake and soke extended only over the demesne of his hall.(21*) We feel that to such phrases as these we should do no great violence were we to substitute 'manor' for 'hall.' Other phrases serve to bring these two words very closely together. One and the same page tells us, first, that Hugh de Port holds as one manor what four brothers held as two manors, and then, that on another estate there is one hall though of old there were two halls:(22*) -- these two stories seem to have the same point. 'Four brothers held this; there was only one hall there.'(23*) 'Two brothers held it and each had his hall; now it is as one manor.'(24*) 'In these two lands there is but one hall.'(25*) 'Then there were two halls; now it is in one manor.'(26*) 'Ten manors; ten thegns, each had his hall'(27*) 'Ingelric set these men to his hall... Ingelric added these men to his manor.'(28*) We do not contend that manerium and halla are precisely equivalent. Now and again we shall be told of a manerium sine halla(29*) as of some exceptional phenomenon. The term manerium has contracted a shade of technical meaning; it refers, so we think, to a system of taxation, and thus it is being differentiated from the term hall. Suppose, for example, that a hall or manor has meant a house from which taxes are collected, and that some one removes that house, houses being very portable things:(30*) 'by construction of law,' as we now say, there still may be a hall or manor on the old site; or we may take advantage of the new wealth of words and say that, though the hall has gone, the manor remains: to do this is neater than to say that there is a 'constructive' hall where no hall can be seen. Then again, manerium is proving itself to be the more elastic of the two terms. We may indeed speak of a considerable stretch of land as belonging to or even as 'being in' a certain hall, and this stretch may include not only land that the owner of the hall occupies and cultivates by himself or his servants, but also land and houses that are occupied by his villeins:(31*) still we could hardly talk of the hall being a league long and a league wide or containing a square league. Of manerium, however, we may use even such phrases as those just mentioned.(32*) For all this, we can think of no English word for which manerium can stand, save hall; t鷑, it is clear enough, was translated by villa, not by manerium. If now we turn from words to look at the things which those words signify, we shall soon be convinced that to describe a typical manerium is an impossible feat, for on the one hand there are enormous maneria and on the other hand there are many holdings called maneria which are so small that we, with our reminiscences of the law of later days, can hardly bring ourselves to speak of them as manors. If we look in the world of sense for the essence of the manerium we shall find nothing that is common to all maneria save a piece of ground -- very large it may be, or very small -- held (in some sense or another) by a single person or by a group of co-tenants, for even upon a house we shall not be able to insist very strictly. After weary arithmetical labours we might indeed obtain an average manor; we might come to the conclusion that the average manor contained so many hides or acres, possibly that it included land occupied by so many sokemen, villeins, bordiers, serfs; but an average is not a type, and the uselessness of such calculations will soon become apparent. We may begin by looking at a somewhat large manor. Let it be that of Staines in Middlesex, which is held by St Peter of Westminster.(33*) It is rated at 19 hides but contains land for 24 plough-teams. To the demesne belong 11 hides and there are 13 teams there. The villeins have 11 teams. There are: --

3 villeins with a half-hide apiece. 4 villeins with a hide between them. 8 villeins with a half-virgate apiece. 36 bordiers with 3 hides between them. 1 villein with 1 virgate. 4 bordiers with 40 acres between them. 10 bordiers with 5 acres apiece. 5 cottiers with 4 acres. 8 bordiers with 1 virgate. 3 cottiers with 9 acres. 13 serfs. 46 burgesses paying 40 shillings a year.

There are 6 mills of 64 shillings and one fish-weir of 6s. 8d. and one weir which renders nothing. There is pasture sufficient for the cattle of the vill. There is meadow for the 24 teams, and in addition to this there is meadow worth 20s a year. There is wood for 30 pigs; there are 2 arpents of vine yard. To this manor belong four berewicks. Altogether it is worth ?5 and formerly it was worth ?0. -- This is a handsome manor. -- The next manor that is mentioned would be a fairer specimen. It is Sunbury held by St Peter of Westminster.(34*) It is rated at 7 hides and there is land for but 6 teams. To the demesne belong 4 hides and there is one team there. The villeins have 4 teams. There are: --

A priest with a half-virgate. 8 villeins with a virgate apiece. 2 villeins with a virgate. 5 bordiers with a virgate. 5 cottiers. 1 serf.

There is meadow for 6 teams and pasture enough for the cattle of the vill. Altogether it is worth ? and has been worth ?. Within this one county of Middlesex we can see wide variations. There are manors which are worth ?0 and there are manors which are not worth as many shillings. The archbishop's grand manor at Harrow has land for 70 teams;(35*) the Westminster manor of Cowley has land for but one team and the only tenants upon it are two villeins.(36*) But far larger variations than these are to be found. Let us look at a few gigantic manors. Leominster in Herefordshire had been held by Queen Edith together with sixteen members.(37*) The names of these members are given and we may find them scattered about over a wide tract of Herefordshire. In this manor with its members there were 80 hides. In the demesne there were 30 teams. There were 8 reeves and 16 beadles and 8 radknights and 238 villeins, 75 bordiers and 82 male and female serfs. These in all had 230 teams; so that with the demesne teams there were no less than 260. Further there were Norman barons paying rents to this manor. Ralph de Mortemer for example paid 15s and Hugh de Lacy 6s. 8d. It is let to farm at a rent of ?0 and besides this has to support a house of nuns; were it freed from this duty, it might, so thinks the county, be let at a rent of ?20. It is a most interesting manor, for we see strong traces of a neat symmetrical arrangement: -- witness the 16 members, 8 reeves, 8 radknights, 16 beadles; very probably it has a Welsh basis.(38*) But we have in this place to note that it is called a manor, and for certain purposes it is treated as a single whole. For what purposes? Well, for one thing, it is let to farm as a single whole. This, however, is of no very great importance, for landlords and farmers may make what bargains they please. But also it is taxed as a single whole. It is rated at the nice round figures of 80 hides. No less handsome and yet more valuable is Berkeley in Gloucestershire.(39*) It brought in a rent of ?70 of refined money. It had eighteen members which were dispersed abroad over so wide a field that a straight line of thirty miles would hardly join their uttermost points.(40*) 'All the aforesaid members belong to Berkeley.' There were 29 radknights, 162 villeins, 147 bordiers, 22 coliberts, 161 male and female serfs, besides some unenumerated men of the radknights; on the demesne land were 54 1/2 teams; and the tenants had 192. Tewkesbury also is a splendid manor. 'When it was all together in King Edward's time it was worth ?00,' though now but ?0 at the most can be had from it and in the turmoil of the Conquest its value fell to ?2.(41*) It was a scattered unit, but still it was a unit for fiscal purposes. It was reckoned to contain 95 hides, but the 45 which were in demesne were quit of geld, and matters had been so arranged that all the geld on the remaining 50 hides had, as between the lord and his various tenants, been Tewkesbury; the members were dispersed abroad; but 'they gelded in Tewkesbury.'(42*) No list of great manors would be complete without a notice of Taunton.(43*) 'The bishop of Winchester holds Tantone or has a mansion called Tantone. Stigand held in in King Edward's day and it gelded for 54 hides and 2 1/2 virgates. There is land for 100 teams, and besides this the bishop in his demesne has land for 20 teams which never gelded.' 'With all its appendages and customs it is worth ?54 12d.' 'Tantone' then is valued as a whole and it has gelded as a whole. But 'Tantone' in this sense covers far more than the borough which bears that name; it covers many places which have names of their own and had names of their own when the survey was made.(44*) We might speak of the bishop of Exeter's manor of Crediton in Devon which is worth ?5 and in which are 264 villeins and 73 bordiers,(45*) or of the bishop of Winchester's manor of Chilcombe in Hampshire where there are nine churches,(46*) but we turn to another part of England. If we wish to see a midland manor with many members we may look at Rothley in Leicestershire.(47*) The vill at Rothley itself is not very large and it is separately valued at but 62s. But 'to this manor belong the following members,' and then we read of no less than twenty-one members scattered over a large area and containing 204 sokemen who with 157 villeins and 94 bordiers have 82 teams and who pay in all ?1 8s. 1d. Their rents are thus reckoned as forming a single whole. In Lincolnshire Earl Edwin's manor of Kirton had 25 satellites, Earl Morcar's manor of Caistor 16, the Queen's manor of Horncastle 15.(48*) A Northamptonshire manor of 27 hides lay scattered about in six hundreds.(49*) It is common enough to see a town-house annexed to a rural manor. Sometimes a considerable group of houses or 'haws' in the borough is deemed to 'lie in' or form part of a manor remote from its walls. Thus, to give but two examples, twelve houses in London belong to the Bishop of Durham's manor of Waltham in Essex; twenty-eight houses in London to the manor of Barking.(50*) Not only these houses but their occupants are deemed to belong to the manor; thus 80 burgesses in Dunwich pertain to one of the Ely manors.(51*) The berewick (bereuita)(52*) also frequently meets our eye. Its name seems to signify primarily a wick, or village, in which barley is grown; but, like the barton (bertona) and the grange (grangia) of later days, it seems often to be a detached portion of a manor which is in part dependent on, and yet in part independent of, the main body. Probably at the berewick the lord has some demesne land and some farm buildings, a barn or the like, and the villeins of the berewick are but seldom called upon to leave its limits; but the lord has no hall there, he does not consume its produce upon the spot, and yet for some important purposes the berewick is a part of the manor. The berewick might well be some way off from the hall; a manor in Hampshire had three berewicks on the mainland and two in the Isle of Wight.(53*) Then again in the north and east the manor is often the centre of an extensive but very discrete territory known as its soke. One says that certain lands are 'soke' or are 'the soke,' or are 'in the soke' of such a manor, or that 'their soke belongs' to such a manor. One contrasts the soke of the manor with the 'inland' and with the berewicks.(54*) The soke in this contest seems to be the territory in which the lord's rights are, or have been, of a justiciary rather than of a proprietary kind.(55*) The manor of the eastern counties is a discrete, a dissipated thing. Far from lying within a ring fence, it often consists of a small nucleus of demesne land and villein tenements in one village, together with many detached parcels in many other villages, which are held by 'free men' and sokemen. In such a case we may use the term manerium now in a wider, now in a narrower sense. In valuing the manor, we hardly know whether to include or exclude these free men. We say that the manor 'with the free men' is worth so much,(56*) or that the manor 'without the free men' is worth so much,(57*) that the manor is worth ?0 and that the free men pay 40 shillings,(58*) that Thurmot had soke over the manor and over three of the free men while the Abbot of Ely had soke over the other three.(59*) From one extreme we may pass to the other extreme. If here were huge manors, there were also tiny manors. Let us begin in the south-west of England. Quite common is the manor which is said to have land for but one team; common also is the manor which is said to have land for but half a team. This means, as we believe, that the first of these manors has but some 120 acres of arable, while the second has but 60 acres or thereabouts. 'Domesday measures' are, it is well known, the matter of many disputes; therefore we will not wholly rely upon them, but will look at some of these 'half-team' manors and observe how much they are worth, how many tenants and how much stock they have upon them.