第 3 页

Armingford Hundred

Non-servile population Servi Total

Abingdon 19 0 19 Bissingbourn 35 3 38 Clapton 19 0 19 Croydon 29 0 29 Hatley 18 3 21 Litlington 37 6 43 Melbourn 62 1 63 Meldreth 44 7 51 Morden 43 11 54 Morden Alia 50 0 50 Shingay 18 0 18 Tadlow 27 4 31 Wendy 12 4 16 Whaddon 44 6 50

Total 457 45 502

Here in fourteen vills we have an average of thirty-two non-servile households for every vill. Now even in our own day a parish with thirty-two houses, though small, is not extremely small. But we should form a wrong picture of the England of the eleventh century if we filled all parts of it with such vills as these. We will take at random fourteen vills in Staffordshire held by Earl Roger.(28*)

Non-servile population Servi Total

Claverlege 45 0 45 Nordlege 9 0 9 Alvidelege 13 0 13 Halas 40 2 42 Chenistelei 11 0 11 Otne 7 1 8 Nortberie 20 1 21 Erlide 8 2 10 Gaitone 16 0 16 Cressvale 8 0 8 Dodintone 3 0 3 Modreshale 5 0 5 Almentone 8 0 8 Metford 7 1 8

Total 200 7 207

Here for fourteen vills we have an average of but fourteen non-servile. households and the servi are so few that we may neglect them. We will next look at a page in the survey of Somersetshire which describes certain vills that have fallen to the lot of the bishop of Coutances.(29*) Here we have on the average but eleven non-servile households for each village, and even if we suppose each servus to represent a household, we have not fourteen households. Yet smaller vills will be foUnd in Devonshire, many vills in which the total number of the persons mentioned does not exceed ten and near half of these are servi. In Cornwall the townships, if townships we ought to call them, are yet smaller; often we can attribute no more than five or six families to the vill even if we include the servi.

Non-servile population Servi Total Winemeresham 8 3 11 Chetenore 3 1 4 Widicumbe 21 6 27 Harpetrev 10 2 12 Hotune 11 0 11 Lilebere 6 1 7 Wintreth 4 2 6 Aisecome 11 7 18 Clutone 22 1 23 Temesbare 7 3 10 Nortone 16 3 19 Cliveham 15 1 16 Ferenberge 13 6 19 Cliveware 6 0 6

Total 153 36 189

Unless our calculations mislead us, the density of the population in the average vill of a given county varies somewhat directly with the density of the population in that county; at all events we cannot say that where vills are populous, vills will be few. As regards this matter no precise results are attainable; our document is full of snares for arithmeticians. Still if for a moment we have recourse to the crude method of dividing the number of acres comprised in a modern county by the number of the persons who are mentioned in the survey of that county, the outcome of our calculation will be remarkable and will point to some broad truth.(30*) For Suffolk the quotient is 46 or thereabouts; for Norfolk but little larger;(31*) for Essex 61, for Lincoln 67; for Bedford, Berkshire, Northampton, Leicester, Middlesex, Oxford, Kent and Somerset it lies between 70 and 80, for Buckingham, Warwick, Sussex, Wiltshire and Dorset it lies between 80 and 90; Devon, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford are thinly peopled, Cornwall, Stafford, Shropshire very thinly. Some particular results that we should thus attain would be delusive. Thus we should say that men were sparse in Cambridgeshire, did we not remember that a large part of our modern Cambridgeshire was then a sheet of water. Permanent physical causes interfere with the operation of the general rule. Thus Surrey, with its wide heaths, has, as we might expect, but few men to the square mile. Derbyshire has many vills lying waste; Yorkshire is so much wasted that it can give us no valuable result; and again, Yorkshire and Cheshire were larger than they are now, while Rutland and the adjacent counties had not their present boundaries. For all this, however, we come to a very general rule: -- the density of the population decreases as we pass from east to west. With this we may connect another rule: land is much more valuable in the east than it is in the west. This matter is indeed hedged in by many thorny questions; still, whatever hypothesis we may adopt as to the mode in which land was valued, one general truth comes out pretty plainly, namely, that, economic arrangements being what they were, it was far better to have a team-land in Essex than to have an equal area of arable land in Devon. Between eastern and western England there were differences visible to the natural eye. With these were connected unseen and legal differences, partly as causes, partly as effects. But for the moment let us dwell on the fact that many an English vill has very few inhabitants. We are to speak hereafter of village communities. Let us therefore reflect that a community of some eight or ten householders is not likely to be a highly organized entity. This is not all, for these eight or ten householders will often belong to two, three or four different social and economic, if not legal, classes. Some may be sokemen, some villani, bordarii, cotarii, and besides them there will be a few servi. If a vill consists, as in Devonshire often enough it will, of some three villani, some four bordarii and some two servi, the 'township-moot,' if such a moot there be, will be a queer little assembly; the manorial court, if such a court there be, will not have much to do. These men cannot have many communal affairs; there will be no great scope for dooms or for by-laws; they may well take all their disputes into the hundred court, especially in Devonshire where the hundreds are small. Thus of the visible vill of the eleventh century and its material surroundings we may form a wrong notion. Often enough in the west its common fields (if common fields it had) were not wide fields; the men who had shares therein were few and belonged to various classes. Thus of two villages in Gloucestershire, Brookthorpe and Harescombe, all that we can read is that in Brostrop there were two teams, one villanus, three bordarii, four servi, while in Hersecome there were two teams, two bordarii and five servi.(32*) Many a Devonshire township can produce but two or three teams. Often enough our 'village community' will be a heterogeneous little group whose main capital consists of some 300 acres of arable land and some 20 beasts of the plough. On the other hand, we must be careful not to omit from our view the rich and thickly populated shires or to imagine or to speak as though we imagined that a general theory of English history can neglect the East of England. If we leave Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk out of account we are to all appearance leaving out of account not much less than a quarter of the whole nation.(33*) Let us make three groups of counties: (1) a South-Western group containing Devon, Somerset, Dorset and Wiltshire: (2) a Mid- Western group containing the shires of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Salop, Stafford and Warwick: (3) an Eastern group containing Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. The first of these groups has the largest; the third the smallest acreage. In Domesday Book, however, the figures which state their population seem to be these:(34*) --

South-Western Group: 49,155 Mid-Western Group: 33,191 Eastern Group: 72,883

These figures are so emphatic that they may cause us for a moment to doubt their value, and on details we must lay no stress. But we have materials which enable us to check the general effect. In 1297 Edward I levied a lay subsidy of a ninth.(35*) The sums borne by our three groups of counties were these: --

?

South-Western Group: 4,038 Mid-Western Group: 3,514 Eastern Group: 7,329

There is a curious resemblance between these two sets of figures. Then in 1377 and 1381 returns were made for a poll-tax.(36*) The number of polls returned in our three groups were these: --

1377 1381

South-Western Group: 183,842 106,086 Mid-Western Group: 158,245 115,679 Eastern Group: 255,498 182,830

No doubt all inferences drawn from medieval statistics are exceedingly precarious; but, unless a good many figures have conspired to deceive us, Lincolnshire, Norfolk and Suffolk were at the time of the Conquest and for three centuries afterwards vastly richer and more populous than any tract of equal area in the West. Another distinction between the eastern counties and the rest of England is apparent. In many shires we shall find that the name of each vill is mentioned once and no more. This is so because the land of each vill belongs in its entirety to some one tenant in chief. We may go further: we may say, though at present in an untechnical sense, that each vill is a manor. Such is the general rule, though there will be exceptions to it. On the other hand, in the eastern counties this rule will become the exception. For example, of the fourteen vills in the Armingford hundred of Cambridgeshire there is but one of which it is true that the whole of its land is held by a single tenant in chief. In this county it is common to find that three or four Norman lords hold land in the same vill. This seems true not only of Cambridgeshire, but also of Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, and some parts of Yorkshire. Even in other districts of England the rule that each vill has a single lord is by no means unbroken in the Conqueror's day and we can see that there were many exceptions to it in the Confessor's. A careful examination of all England vill by vill would perhaps show that the contrast which we are noting is neither so sharp nor so ancient as at first sight it seems to be: nevertheless it exists.

A better known contrast there is. The eastern counties are the home of liberty.(37*) We may divide the tillers of the soil into five great classes; these in order of dignity and freedom are (1) liberi homines, (2) sochemanni, (3) villani, (4) bordarii, cotarii, etc., (5) servi. The two first of these classes are to be found in large numbers only in Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire. We shall hereafter see that Cambridgeshire also has been full of sokemen, though since the Conquest they have fallen from their high estate. On the other hand, the number of servi increases pretty steadily as we cross the country from east to west. It reaches its maximum in Cornwall and Gloucestershire; it is very low in Norfolk, Suffolk, Derby, Leicester, Middlesex, Sussex; it descends to zero in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. This descent to zero may fairly warn us that the terms with which we are dealing may not bear precisely the same meaning in all parts of England, or that a small class is apt to be reckoned as forming part of a larger class. But still it is clear enough that some of these terms are used with care and express real and important distinctions. Of this we are assured by a document which seems to reproduce the wording of the instructions which defined the duty of at least one party of royal commissioners.(38*) We are about to speak of the mode in which the occupants of the soil are classified by Domesday Book, and therefore this document deserves our best attention. It runs thus: -- The King's barons inquired by the oath of the sheriff of the shire and of all the barons and of their Frenchmen and of the whole hundred, the priest, reeve and six villani of every vill, how the mansion (mansio) is called, who held it in the time of King Edward, who holds it now, how many hides, how many plough-teams on the demesne, how many plough teams of the men, how many villani, how many cotarii, how many servi, how many liberi homines, how many sochemanni, how much wood, how much meadow, how much pasture, how many mills, how many fisheries, how much has been taken away therefrom, how much added thereto, and how much there is now, how much each liber homo and sochemannus had and has: -- All this thrice over, to wit as regards the time of King Edward, the time when King William gave it, and the present time, and whether more can be had thence than is had now.(39*) Five classes of men are mentioned and they are mentioned in an order that is extremely curious: -- villani, cotarii, servi, liberi homines, sochemanni. It descends three steps, then it leaps from the very bottom of the scale to the very top and thence it descends one step. A parody of it might speak of the rural population of modern England as consisting of large farmers, small farmers, cottagers, great landlords, small landlords. But a little consideration will convince us that beneath this apparent caprice there lies some legal principle. We shall observe that these five species of tenants are grouped into two genera. The king wants to know how much each liber homo, how much each sochemannus holds; he does not want to know how much each villanus, each cotarius, each servus holds. Connecting this with the main object of the whole survey, we shall probably be brought to the guess that between the sokeman and the villein there is some broad distinction which concerns the king as the recipient of geld. May it not be this: -- the villein's lord is answerable for the geld due from the land that the villein holds, the sokeman's lord is not answerable, at least he is not answerable as principal debtor for the geld due from the land that the sokeman holds? If this be so, the order in which the five classes of men are mentioned will not seem unnatural. It proceeds outwards from the lord and his mansio. First it mentions the persons seated on land for the geld of which he is responsible, and them it arranges in an 'order of merit.' Then it turns to persons who, though in some way or another connected with the lord and his mansio, are themselves tax-payers, and concerning them the commissioners are to inquire how much each of them holds. Of course we cannot say that this theory is proved by the statement that lies before us; but it is suggested by that statement and may for a while serve us as a working hypothesis. If this theory be sound, then we have here a distinction of the utmost importance. For one mighty purpose, the purpose that is uppermost in King William's mind, the villanus is not a landowner, his lord is the landowner; on the other hand, the sochemannus is a landowner, and is taxed as such. We are not saying that this is a purely fiscal distinction. In legal logic the lord's liability for the geld that is apportioned on the land occupied by his villeins may be rather an effect than a cause. A lawyer might argue that the lord must pay because the occupier is his villanus, not that the occupier is a villanus because the lord pays. And yet, as we may often see in legal history, there will be action and reaction between cause and effect. The geld is no trifle. Levied at that rate of six shillings on the hide at which King William has just now levied it, it is a momentous force capable of depressing and displacing whole classes of men. In 1086 this tax is so much in everybody's mind that any distinction as to its incidence will cut deeply into the body of the law. Now this classification of men we will take as the starting point for our enterprise. If we could define the liber homo, sochemannus, villanus, cotarius, servus, we should have solved some of the great legal problems of Domesday Book, for by the way we should have had to define two other difficult terms, namely manerium and soca. It would then remain that we should say something of the higher strata of society, of earls and sheriffs, of barons, knights, thegns and their tenures, of such terms as alodium and feudum, of the general theory of landownership or landholdership. We will begin with the lowest order of men, with the servi, and thence work our way upwards. But our course cannot be straightforward. There are so many terms to be explained that sometimes we shall be compelled to leave a question but partially answered while we are endeavouring to find a partial answer for some yet more difficult question.