CHAPTER V

DOMESDAY BOOK AND THE MANORS

§ 34. The Survey ordered by William I.

It was very natural that when William the Norman had conquered England he should wish to ascertain the capabilities of his kingdom, both in regard to military defence and for purposes of taxation, and that he should endeavour to gain a comprehensive idea of the results of his conquest. He therefore ordered a grand survey of the kingdom to be made, and sent commissioners into each district to make it. These officials were bidden to make a long list of enquiries about all the estates in the realm, including the following points-The name of each manor; who held it in the time of King Edward the Confessor; how many "hides" there were in the manor, or, in other words, the rateable value of the estate; how many ploughs there were on the estate, whether belonging to the lord or the villeins; how many villeins, homagers, cottars, or slaves there were; how many free tenants and tenants in socage (socmen); how much wood, meadow, and pasture; and the number of mills and fish ponds. They were further to enquire what had been added to or taken away from the estate—that is, the depreciations and improvements; the gross value in the time of King Edward (T.R.E.), the present value in the time of King William (T.R.W.); how much each free man or socman had, and whether any advance could be made in the value. The results of this great survey, taken separately in counties, were then sent to Winchester, then the capital city, and there methodised, enrolled, and codified as we now

1 It is almost impossible to fix the value of the hide as a measurement. It was never expressly determined, nor is it so fixed in Domesday; Ellis, Introd., i. 145 sqq.; Birch, Domesday, 229. Cunningham (i. 120) puts it at 60 to 80 modern acres under crop, or an area of 120, including land fallow, under the then system of agriculture.

see them. The inquisition was probably commenced in the year 1085, and completed in the year following. It contains the earliest and most reliable statistics for English industrial history, and it is to be regretted that no adequate general table or analysis of this great work has yet been made by a competent economic authority, or that historians do not use it more copiously for gaining a knowledge of the social and economic conditions of the time. For this latter purpose it is absolutely unrivalled.

§ 35. The Population given by Domesday.

Before presenting a few main features gathered from the large mass of facts thus recorded, it may be well to remark that of the 40 counties into which England is now divided, six are not included in the survey. Those omitted are Monmouth, Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, Durham, and Lancashire. But of these Lancashire had not yet been made a separate county, and part of it therefore appears in the survey of Yorkshire and Cheshire. Monmouth was at that time entirely Welsh, and the other counties-those in the North-were still desolate and wasted by the ruthless severity of William's well-known devastation (1069-70 A.D.). After his march from the Humber to the Tyne, not one inhabited village was to be seen on the road between York and Durham, and many of those whom the sword had spared died of starvation in the nine years' famine which followed this dreadful punishment. The more westerly parts of the North were hardly yet conquered at the time of the survey. The statistics of the other 34 counties are, however, pretty full; and from them we gather that the total population must have been, in round numbers, rather under two million persons. The population actually given is 283,242, but this only includes the able-bodied men, and it should be multiplied by five to give the general total of actual inhabitants. This multiplication gives about 1,400,000, and allowing 1 Birch, Domesday, p. 25; Ellis, i. 153.

3

2 Pearson, Hist. of Eng., i. 361, and Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 292, v. 42.

3 See Ellis, Introduction to Domesday, Vol. II. p. 514.

for omissions or careless enumeration (as e.g. in Yorkshire 1), we may say not much more than 1,800,000 for the whole land. Small as this number may seem, it was not doubled till the reign of Charles II.2

The population of the different counties is interesting, and is exhibited in the following tables, first in order of actual numbers, and secondly in order of density proportionate to the area of each county. It will be noticed at once that the eastern and southern counties were the most populous at that time, as was to be expected in a period when the number of the population depended, much more closely than it does now, upon the yield of agricultural produce and the development of agriculture generally.

I. TABLE OF ACTUAL POPULATION IN DIFFERENT COUNTIES, as given in Domesday.

* It must be remembered the figures represent only able-bodied males.

1 See Domesday, f. 302 A, about the manors "ad Prestune"—" sixteen are cultivated by a few men, but how many men there are is not known." 2 Pearson, Hist. of England, i. 377.

It is in some respects, perhaps, rather remarkable that the first three most populous counties are Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex; but this seems to have been due to the wool (and other) trade with Flanders and the Continent, for it must be remembered that at that time the eastern counties' ports were much frequented. Next to these in population come the Southern and Midland counties.

§ 36. The Wealth of various Districts.

The distribution of wealth among the various counties is also interesting, as may be seen from the following table of the twenty-one leading counties of that time, with the approximate value of the rents paid by the manors therein, deduced from Domesday. Here the Eastern and Southern

1 This table is compiled from data given (for another purpose) by Pearson, Hist. of Eng., Vol. I., Appx. D. Though necessarily only approximate, it still seems fairly reliable.

counties rank highest, Kent coming first, then Essex, Norfolk, and Sussex, while Oxford takes rather a higher place, and Middlesex (excluding London) a low one.

The table is as

Approx. Rental.

£ 8. d.

Generally speaking, then, we may say that the east and south of England contained the richest, best tilled, and most populous parts of the country. Their downs and wolds afforded good pasturage for sheep and cattle, while the woods in every district formed excellent fattening grounds for swine, of which large numbers were kept. The hollows at the foot of the downs in the south and west, the river flats of the eastern counties, and the low gravel hills in other parts contained the best and easiest land to work. The chief towns were London, Bristol, Norwich, Lincoln, 1 Curiously enough, London, Bristol, and Winchester do not appear separately in the survey, but are only mentioned casually. For other important towns, cf. p. 89.

1