Part 19

And as we go backwards the township seems to lose such definiteness as is given to it by the police law of the thirteenth century[611]. This was to be expected, for such law implies a powerful, centralized state, which sends its justices round the country to amerce the townships and compel these local communities to do their duties. Once and once only does the township appear in the Anglo-Saxon dooms. This is in a law of Edgar. If a man who is on a journey buys cattle, then on his return home he must turn them onto the common pasture, 'with the witness of the township.' If he fails to do so, then after five nights the townsmen are to give information to the elder of the hundred, and in that case they and their cattle-herd will be free of blame, and the man who brought the cattle into the town will forfeit them, half to the lord and half to the hundred. If, on the other hand, the townsmen fail in the duty of giving information, their herd will pay for it with his skin[612]. The township has very little organization of which the state can make use. It does not seem even to have an 'elder' or head-man, and, from the threat of a flogging, we may gather that its common herdsman will be a slave. Purchases of cattle can not be made 'with the witness of the township'; the purchaser ought to seek out two or three of those twelve standing witnesses who are appointed for every hundred[613]. So again, in the twelfth century we see the finder of a stray beast bringing it into the vill; he conducts it to the church-door and tells his story to the priest, the reeve and as many of the best men of the vill as can be got together. Then the reeve sends to the four neighbouring vills, calls in from each the priest, the reeve and three or four men and recounts the tale in their presence. Then on the following day he goes to the head-man of the hundred and puts the whole matter before him and delivers up the beast to him, unless indeed the place where it was found straying was within the domain of some lord who had sake and soke[614]. Here again, the organization of the township appears to be of a most rudimentary kind. It has no court, unless its lord has sake and soke; it has no power to detain an estray for safe custody. In this very simple case it requires the help of other vills and must transmit the cause to the hundred court. And so again, though there may be some reason for thinking that at one time the murder fine--the fine payable if the slayer of a foreigner was not arrested--was primarily exigible from the vill in which the corpse was found, the hundred being but subsidiarily liable, still this rule seems to have been soon abandoned and the burden of the fine, a fine far too heavy for a single vill, was cast upon the hundred[615]. For all this, however, the law knew and made use of the township. The Domesday commissioners required the testimony of the priest, the reeve and six _villani_ of every vill. So soon as the law about suit to the hundred court becomes at all plain, the suit is due rather from vills than from men, and the burden is discharged by the lord of the vill or his steward, or, if neither of them can attend, then by the priest, the reeve and four of the vill's best men[616].

[The free village and Norman government.]

How could these requirements be met by a vill which had no lord? It would be a fair remark that the existence of such vills is not contemplated by the Norman rulers. The men who will represent the vill before the Domesday commissioners will in their eyes be _villani_. This assumption is becoming true enough. We have seen Orwell full of sokemen; in 1086 there is never a sokeman in it; there is no one in it who is above the rank of a villein. Count Roger and Walter Giffard, Count Alan and Geoffrey de Mandeville can make such arrangements about the suit of Orwell, the reeveship of Orwell, as they think fit. Everywhere the Frenchmen are consolidating their manors, creating demesne land where their English _antecessores_ had none, devising scientific frontiers, doing what in them lies to make every vill a manor. Thus is evolved that state of things which comes before us in the thirteenth century. The work of the foreigners was done so completely that we can see but very little of the institutions that they swept away.

[Organization of the free village.]

On the whole, however, we shall do well not to endow the free township of the Confessor's day with much organization. We may be certain that, at least as a general rule, it had no court; we may doubt very gravely whether it always had any elder, head-man, or reeve. Often it was a small and yet a heterogeneous, and a politically distracted body. Some of its members might be attached to the house of Godwin, some had sworn to live and die for the house of Leofric. Just because it is free it has few, if any, communal payments to make. Only if it comes under a single lord will it have to render a provender rent, a _tailla_ or _gersuma_. As a sphere for communal action there remains only the regulation of the arable lands, the woods and waste. We can not say for certain that these give scope for much regulation. The arable strips are held in severalty; if by chance some of them are held in common, this in all probability is a case rather of co-ownership than of communal ownership. The pasture rights may well be regarded as appurtenances of the arable strips. The practice of 'co-aration' need not be enforced by law; the man who will not help his neighbours must be content to see his own land unploughed. The course of agriculture is fixed and will not be often or easily altered. The 'realism' which roots every right and duty in a definite patch of soil, the rapid conversion of new arrangements into immemorial customs, the practice of taking turn and turn about, the practice of casting lots, these will do much towards settling questions such as our modern imaginations would solve by means of a village council. No doubt, from time to time a new departure is made; new land is reclaimed from the waste, perhaps the pasture rights are stinted or redistributed, a mill is built or a church is endowed;--but all this requires no periodic assemblies, no organization that we dare call either permanent or legal. Once in five years or so there may be something to be done, and done it will be by a resolution of the villagers which is or calls itself an unanimous resolution. If the Cambridgeshire townships had been landowning corporations, each of them would have passed as a single unit into the hands of some Norman baron. But this did not happen. On the contrary, the Norman barons had to content themselves with intermixed strips; the strips of Ælfgar's men went to Count Roger, the strips of Edith's men went to Count Alan. We are far from denying the existence of a communal sentiment, of a notion that somehow or another the men of the vill taken as a whole owned the lands of the vill, but this sentiment, this notion, if strong was vague. There were no institutions in which it could realize itself, there was no form of speech or thought in which it could find an apt expression. It evaded the grasp of law. At the touch of jurisprudence the township became a mere group of individuals, each with his separate rights[617].

FOOTNOTES:

[547] D. B. ii. 174: 'Hec villa fuit in duobus maneriis T. R. E.' Ibid. i. 164: 'De his 2 villis fecit Comes W. unum manerium.'

[548] Inquisitio, 77-9.

[549] This result comes out correctly if 1H=4V=120A. For the state of this vill T. R. W. see Round, Feudal England, 40.

[550] His plot at Orwell is said to belong to Harlton. Then at Harlton we find an Achil with sokemen under him, and though in D. B. he is described as a king's thegn, this is not incompatible with his being the man of Harold for some of his lands. At Barrington Achillus Danaus homo Haroldi has a holding of 40 acres.

[551] Inquisitio, 86.

[552] Ibid. 68.

[553] Ibid. 43, 44, 45, 73, 76.

[554] D. B. i. 195.

[555] D. B. i. 139: 'De consuetudine 1 averam inveniebat cum Rex in scyra veniebat, si non 5 den. reddebat.' D. B. i. 190, '[Sochemanni in Fuleberne] reddunt per annum 8 libras arsas et pensatas et unoquoque anno 12 equos et 12 inguardos si Rex in vicecomitatu veniret, si non veniret 12 sol. et 8 den.; T. R. E. non reddebant vicecomiti nisi averas et inguardos vel 12 sol. et 8 den. et superplus invasit Picot [vicecomes] super Regem.'

[556] Wratworth has completely disappeared from the modern map; its territory seems to be included in that of the present Orwell. See Rot. Hund. ii. 559 and Lysons, Magna Britannia, ii. 243. A small hamlet called Malton seems to represent it. Whitwell also is no longer the name of a village, while the modern Coton is not mentioned in D. B. There is now a Whitwell Farm near the village of Coton, but in the parish of Barton. The modern Coton does not seem to be the ancient Whitwell, for on Subsidy Rolls we may find Whitwell annexed to Barton and Coton to Grantchester.

[557] The figures in our first column represent the division of the vill among the Norman lords. H. V. A. stand for Hides, Virgates, Acres. By C. and B. we signify the Carucae and Boves for which 'there was land.'

[558] There is some small error in this case.

[559] A small conjectural emendation.

[560] The Inq. Com. Cant. says 6 hides.

[561] An error of one hide in the particulars. The two records do not fully agree.

[562] A small emendation justified by Inq. Eliensis (Hamilton, p. 110).

[563] Ælfgar died before King Edward; Freeman, Norman Conquest, ed. 3, iii. 469, places his death in or about 1062.

[564] The history of the earldoms during Edward's reign is exceedingly obscure. See Freeman's elaborate note: Ibid., 555. In particular Cambridgeshire seems to have lain now in one and now in another earldom. Thus it comes about that Cambridgeshire sokemen are commended some to Ælfgar, some to Waltheof, some to Harold, some to Gyrth. Ælfgar, for example, had at one time been earl in East Anglia. Men who had commended themselves to an earl would, unless they 'withdrew themselves,' still be his men though he had ceased to be earl of their county.

[565] See above, p. 105. Observe how frequently our record speaks of 'sochemanni _homines_ Algari' and the like. These sokemen are Ælfgar's men; but are not properly his sokemen.

[566] Inq. Com. Cant. 110. This is from the Inquisitio Eliensis. Compare p. 83.

[567] Inq. Com. Cant. 77-8.

[568] Rot. Hund. ii. 558.

[569] One instance may suffice. In Sawston (Rot. Hund. ii. 575-80) are three manors, _A_, _B_, _C_; _A_ has a sub-manor. One Thomas Dovenel holds in villeinage of the lord of _A_; in villeinage of the lord of _B_; in freehold of the lord of _B_; in freehold of a tenant of the lord of _B_; in freehold of a tenant of a tenant of the lord of _B_.

[570] Rot. Hund. ii. 580.

[571] On four out of the five manors the rent is 2_s._ 3_d._; on the fifth 3_s._ 0_d._

[572] Inq. Com. Cant. 41.

[573] D. B. i. 137 b.

[574] D. B. i. 141 b.

[575] Inq. Com. Cant., pp. 108-110. As names of the Abbot of Ely's sokemen in Meldreth and neighbouring villages we have Grimmus, Alsi Cild, Wenesi, Alsi, Leofwinus, Ædricus, Godwinus, Almarus, Aluricus frater Goduuini, Ædriz, Alsi Berd, Alricus Godingessune, Wenestan, Alwin Blondus, Alfuuinus, Aluredus, Alricus Brunesune, Alware, Hunuð, Hunwinus, Brizstanus. This does not point to a preponderance of Norse or Danish blood.

[576] Owing to the wasted condition of Yorkshire, the information that we obtain of the T. R. E. is meagre and perfunctory. But what seems characteristic of this county is a holding of two or three ploughlands which we might fairly call an embryo manor.

[577] See the early extents in Cart. Rams. iii. Thus (242) at Hemingford: 'R. V. tenet tres virgatas et dimidiam et sequitur hundredum et comitatum.... R. H. tenet duas virgatas et sequitur hundredum et comitatum.' Elsworth (249): 'R. filius T. duas virgatas. Pro altera sequitur comitatum et hundredum; pro altera solvit quinque solidos.' Brancaster (261): 'Cnutus avus Petri tenebat terram suam libere in tempore Regis Henrici et sequebatur comitatum et hundredum, et fuit quietus ab omni servitio.' See also Vinogradoff, Villainage, 411 ff.

[578] Some thirty years ago the whole political world of England was agitated by controversy about 'the compound householder.' Was he to have a vote? The historian of the nineteenth century will not treat the compound householders as forming one homogeneous class of men whose general status could be marked off from that of other classes. Nor, it is to be hoped, will etymological guesses lead him to believe that the compound householder held a compound house. He will say that a landlord 'compounded for' the rates of the aforesaid householder. _Mutatis mutandis_ may not the villein have been the compound householder of the eleventh century?

[579] D. B. ii. 204: '3 liberi homines ... semper arant cum 3 bobus.'

[580] D. B. ii. 184 b.

[581] D. B. ii. 192 b.

[582] D. B. i. 211.

[583] D. B. i. 218 b. Compare the 'dimidius porcus' of ii. 287.

[584] D. B. i. 213 b: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt homines villae communiter et vendere potuerunt.'

[585] D. B. i. 210, 212 b, 213 b.

[586] D. B. i. 214: 'In Meldone Johannes de Roches occupavit iniuste 25 acras super homines qui villam tenent.' This is a vague phrase.

[587] e.g. D. B. i. 112 b: 'Colsuen homo Episcopi Constantiensis aufert ab hoc manerio communem pasturam quae ibi adiacebat T. R. E. et etiam T. R. W. quinque annis.'

[588] D. B. ii. 339 b.

[589] D. B. i. 140 b.

[590] D. B. i. 75: 'tercia vero pars vel tercia quercus erat Comitis Eduini.'

[591] D. B. ii. 404 b: 'et in tercio anno quarta pars mol[endini].'

[592] D. B. ii. 291 b.

[593] D. B. ii. 24 b.

[594] D. B. ii. 438.

[595] D. B. i. 83: 'sex taini in paragio,' 'quatuor taini in paragio.' Ibid. 83 b: 'novem taini in paragio.' Ibid. 168 b: 'quinque fratres tenuerunt pro 5 maneriis et poterant ire quo volebant et pares erant.'

[596] D. B. i. 96 b: 'dim. hida quam tenebat T. R. E. unus tainus in paragio.' Ibid. 40: 'Brictric tenuit de episcopo in paragio.'

[597] But it was possible for several men to be holding in parage and yet for each of them to have a separate _manerium_. This seems to imply that their holdings were physically separate and that each holding was separately liable for geld, though as regards other matters, e.g. military service, the division was ignored.

[598] D. B. i. 291.

[599] D. B. i. 145 b.

[600] D. B. i. 341.

[601] D. B. i. 354.

[602] D. B. i. 375 b: 'Siuuate et Alnod et Fenchel et Aschil equaliter et pariliter diviserunt inter se terram patris sui T. R. E. et ita tenuerunt ut si opus fuit expeditione Regis et Siuuate potuit ire, alii fratres iuverunt eum. Post istum, ivit alter et Siuuate cum reliquis iuvit eum; et sic de omnibus. Siuuate tamen fuit homo Regis.'

[603] D. B. i. 206: 'sex sochemanni id est Aluuoldus et 5 fratres eius habuerunt 4 hid. et dim. ad geldum.'

[604] D. B. i. 233: 'Hanc terram tenuerunt 2 fratres pro 2 maneriis, et postea emit alter ab altero partem suam et fecit unum manerium de duobus T. R. E.'

[605] D. B. i. 127 b: 'Hoc manerium tenent villani ad firmam canonicorum.'

[606] D. B. i. 162 b.

[607] D. B. i. 69.

[608] D. B. ii. 118 b Yarmouth: 'De gersuma has 4 libras dant burgenses gratis et amicitia.'

[609] Thus D. B. iv. 568: 'Due ville reddunt 30 sol. de cornagio.' Ib. 570: 'Queryngdonshire reddit 76 sol. de cornagio.'

[610] Black Book of Peterborough, _passim_.

[611] Hist. Engl. Law, i. 550.

[612] Edgar IV. 8. 9.

[613] Ibid. 6.

[614] Leg. Edw. Conf. 24.

[615] Leg. Edw. Conf. 15. Compare Leg. Henr. 91; Leg. Will. Conq. I. 22; Leg. Will. Conq. III.. 3.

[616] Leg. Henr. 7 § 7.

[617] It is possible that the entry (i. 204) which tells how the sokemen of Broughton enjoyed the smaller _wites_ points to a free village court; but we have put another interpretation upon this; see above, p. 99.

§ 8. _The Feudal Superstructure._

[The higher ranks of men.]

It remains that we should speak very briefly of the higher ranks of men and the tenure by which they held their land. Little accurate information can be extorted from our record. The upper storeys of the old English edifice have been demolished and a new superstructure has been reared in their stead. It is not the office of Domesday Book to tell us much even of the new nobility, of the services which the counts and barons are to render to the king in return for their handsome endowments:--as to the old nobility, that has perished. Still there are some questions that we ought to ask.

[Dependent tenure.]

The general theory that all land tenure, except indeed the tenure by which the king holds land in demesne, is dependent tenure, seems to be implied, not only by many particular entries, but also by the whole scheme of the book. Every holder of land, except the king, holds it of (_de_) some lord, and therefore every acre of land that is not royal demesne can be arranged under the name of some tenant in chief. Even a church will hold its land, if not of the king, then of some other lord[618]. The terms of the tenure are but very rarely described, for Domesday Book is no feodary. Just now and again a tenure _in elemosina_ is noticed and in some of these cases this term seems already to bear the technical sense that it will have in later days; the tenant owes a spiritual, but no secular service[619]. A few instances of what later lawyers would call a 'tenure by divine service,' as distinct from a tenure in frank-almoin, may be found[620]. A few words here and there betray the existence of tenure by knight's service and of castle guard[621]. In the _servientes Regis_ who have been enfeoffed in divers counties we may see the predecessors of the tenants by serjeanty[622]. We shall remark, however, the absence of those abstract terms which are to become the names of the various tenures. We read of _servientes_, _sochemanni_, _villani_, _burgenses_, but not of _seriantia_[623], _socagium_, _villenagium_, _burgagium_. As we pursue our retrogressive course through the middle ages, we do not find that the law of personal condition becomes more and more distinct from the law of land tenure; on the contrary, the two become less and less separable.

[_Feudum._]

It has sometimes been said that a feudal tenure was the only kind of land tenure that the Norman conquerors could conceive. In a certain sense this may be true, but we should have preferred to say that probably they could not easily conceive a kind of tenure that was not dependent:--every one who holds land (except he be the king) holds it of someone else. The adjective 'feudal' was not in their vocabulary, and their use of the word _feudum_--occasionally we meet the older _feum_[624]--is exceedingly obscure. Very rarely does it denote a tenure or a mass of rights; usually, though it may connote rights of a certain order, it denotes a stretch of land; thus we may read of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux, thereby being meant the territory which the bishop holds. Occasionally, however, we hear of a man holding land _in feudo_. One instance may be enough to show that such a phrase did not imply military tenure:--'William the Chamberlain held this manor _in feudo_ of the Queen [Matilda] at a rent of £3 a year and after her death he held it in the same fashion of the king[625].' All sense of militariness, and all sense of precariousness, that the word has ever had in its continental history, seems to be disappearing. Already the process has begun which will make it applicable to every person who has heritable rights in land. William the Chamberlain is, we take it, already a fee farmer, that is, a rent-paying tenant with heritable rights[626]. As to the word _beneficium_, which _feum_ or _feudum_ has been supplanting, we shall hardly find it with its old meaning. It seems to be holding its own only within the sphere of ecclesiastical rights, where the 'benefice' will survive until our own day[627].

[_Alodium._]