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2.5 Domesday Suffolk
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Domesday Book, Volume II, Little Domesday, is, in its way, as unique as Volume I,
Great
Domesday, since it is the actual circuit return (No. VII) for the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and
Essex, drawn up by the legati somewhere in East Anglia and returned to Winchester. It was never
abbreviated, and so never included in Volume I. Had this been done, it would itself have long since
disappeared, and the modern historian would have been much less well informed concerning the
most populous and prosperous region in all England. In Little Domesday we can trace the way in
which the legati struggled against peculiar difficulties to comply with the requirements of the 'terms
of reference' under which they acted. The result is a volume, drawn up in the same form as Volume
I, but on a far more generous scale; for it contains details about the stock on the demesne, or
home farm of each manor, details about population both in 1066 and 1086, and—most
exciting of
all—a mass of evidence regarding the actual procedure in court, such as is nowhere found in
Volume I. This is of great importance, for it shows how firmly the procedure of the legati was based
upon the evidence of the hundredal juries, whose testimony far exceeds that of the county. In
Norfolk, for example, the 'men of the Hundred' testify (testantur) or say (dicunf] something on more
than fifty occasions, while the evidence of the county is nowhere mentioned. Much the same is true
of Suffolk, while in Essex the county testifies half a dozen times, and the Hundred about forty. To
all this we must add the many instances of testimony from sheriffs and individual barons, each
instance generally involving a conflict of evidence in court. The final impression is of mixed wonder
and admiration that this vast waste of statistics was ever completed at all. For nowhere else in
England were there so many humble 'freemen' and 'soc- men', who are here seen so stubbornly
claiming their rights. |
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On the other hand, it is most unlikely that any written document of the testimony
of the hundredal
juries— such as that for Cambridgeshire was ever made in East
Anglia; for Volume II constantly
refers to each tenant-in-chiefs lands as forming a separate 'breve' or schedule, and it is here that
Robert Malet mentions the 'day on which he was listed' (inbreviatus). There are, too, repeated cross-
references from one baron's breve to another. So from the very beginning the legati seem to have
been thinking of a feudal return arranged under the names of the king (who also has his 'breve') and
of each tenant-in-chief. And this, of course, is implicit in the terms of reference under which the
legati acted.
A single instance may serve to illustrate the wealth of incidental information supplied
by Little
Domesday. It relates to the manor of Hoxne, the site of the bishopric of Suffolk (f. 379a).
Translated, it reads:
In this manor there was
a market in the time of King Edward, and after King William
arrived; and it used to sit (sedebat) on Saturday; and William Malet made his castle at
Eye; and on the same day that there was a market in the bishop's manor, William Malet
set up (fecit) another market in his castle, and the bishop's market was so worsened
(peioratum) as to be worth very little (parum); and now it meets on Friday. But the market
at Eye meets on Saturday. William Malet holds it by the King's gift.
When one turns from the printed text to the manuscript it is at once seen to present
a violent
contrast to Volume I. For a full appreciation of the contrast presented by the two volumes, the
originals ought to be examined. Such differences as that the leaves of one are half as large again
as those of the other, and that the former is drawn up in double, but the latter in single column,
dwarf the comparatively minor contrasts of material and handwriting. So too the fullness of the
details in the second volume obscure the fact of its workmanship being greatly inferior to that of the
first.
In place of a volume written in splendid, expert curial script, Volume II is the work
of many non-
curial penmen, writing—with greatly varying skill—the
ordinary minuscules found in monastic
writings of the time. The conclusion is forced upon us that the two books are of wholly different
provenance: and since Volume I was made at Winchester, Volume II was not. The entries of the
Little Domesday Book, are more cumbrous and untidy than those of the main Domesday Book.
They give the impression of being more hastily compiled. They were very hastily compiled, and a
close analysis of the quires provides the final link in the evidence that Volume II was itself the local
circuit return. For Volume II is no more than a very hasty fair copy of an earlier draft and is, as
we
should expect, full of errors, not the least of which is the omission of Burgh Apton, which must
have been in the exemplar. This conclusion is further supported by the list of holders of land in
Norfolk, where lay barons' names precede those of bishops and abbots, which the Winchester
abbreviator would certainly have corrected had the volume emanated from there. The scribes of
Volume II, hastily copying their material, often make use of the first person unconsciously retaining
the direct speech of their source.
'In the King's breve for
Essex (f. 2 b) the scribe even writes 'Afterwards we recovered
(recuperavi-mus] a hide which one of Harold's socmen held in the time of King Edward.'
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The Victorians were fascinated by the collection of the geld in which they seemed
to see the early
existence of the Direct Taxation which was such a feature of the nineteenth century. They all
agreed that the primary motive of the whole Survey was to reassess this ancient 'custom' on a
'new, fair and equitable basis'. However we look at it, this was a hopeless anachronism and one
that could have been corrected even then from Little Domesday. For in East Anglia geld collection
was arranged on a system unique in all England. The villages there were elaborately grouped in a
system of 'leets', each village paying so much for every pound paid by the Hundred. Geld could
therefore only have been reassessed on the basis of these 'leets', which Volume II fails to
distinguish. Nor is their arrangement recorded anywhere until a century later, and then only for the
lands of the Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury. But, all this apart, the Domesday Survey was
immediately preceded by an inquisitio geldi, the object of which was to discover 'non-paying hides'.
A 6-shilling geld was certainly collected in the year 1086 on the basis of this Inquest, but it had
no
direct connection with the Survey. To have carried out this immense Survey merely or even chiefly
in order to reassess the geld would then have been to use a steam hammer to crack a nut. The
true nature of Norman finance is first disclosed to us in the Pipe Rolls, of which the earliest is that
of 31 Henry I (i 129—30), which contains the record of a geld
at 2 shillings on the hide; but this was
no more than an item in an intricate matrix of feudal finance. Its chief features, which certainly
reach back to William I's reign, can be summarized as follows:
1. Each county owed an
annual 'farm' to the Crown based upon its rents and rights of the
royal demesne, and the profits of justice.
2. This revenue fluctuated
from year to year, as estates escheated to the Crown by the
death of tenants-in-chief either without heirs or by reason of rebellion.
3. From every tenant-in-chief
the Crown took 'a relief from the heir to a barony on his
father's death, or sold to another baron the 'wardship' of an heir under age. The Crown also
exacted a payment on the marriage of an heiress; and finally, from time to time, took an
'aid' or a 'scutage' from the king's tenants-in- chief.
4. The Crown received
the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbacies.
5. A very large amount
came from 'fines' of all kinds paid by tenants-in-chief either for
special privileges or for regaining the king's favour after a quarrel.
6. In the early twelfth-century
'geld', an immemorial 'custom', was collected annually, and it
is safe to say that by the close of William I's reign, geld was already thought of as if not an
annual occurrence one collected at the discretion of the Crown. But it was hedged about
by many personal exemptions from payment and the total exemption of 'demesne' lands:
and, when the figures are known in the twelfth century, brought in only about £3,000 in any
one year.
The purpose of the Survey was directed towards the first five of these categories.
But it was
preceded by a special geld inquest in the same year. The Survey wrung from the tenants-in-chief
for the first time a comprehensive acknowledgement of their individual assets, as well as informing
the Crown of the full value of royal demesne.
It was thus essentially a record in a feudal world of the wealth of tenants-in-chief,
whose earldoms
and baronies were made up of estates generally spread over a number of counties. The ancient
administrative and financial system of counties and Hundreds in England thus provided the only
practical way of measuring the wealth of an essentially new feudal order based on the homage of
tenants-in-chief—earls, barons, and other lesser figures—
owing knight service to the Crown, and
all the other incidents of tenure mentioned above. Little Domesday sets before us in minute detail
the extraordinary complexities of individual, humble tenure on which landed wealth depended. In
Great Domesday most of this was sacrificed, as ephemeral, in favour of a manageable summary. |
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One other question is raised by the survival of Little Domesday: Were the legati who
drew it up
aware that the central government had decided to epitomize their findings ? The meticulous manner
in which they strove to record the age-long confusions of land-holding in East Anglia rather
suggests that each circuit thought of its return as the final record. The answer to this question is,
perhaps, supplied by the rubrication of the volume. In Volume II each county begins with a list of
the tenants-in- chief whose 'fees' are afterwards summarized in it. At some time after its completion
the book was rubricated in red paint, that is to say, the prefatory list of tenants was numbered on
f.
i—in Essex I-LXXXVIII, in Norfolk I-LXVI, and in Suffolk I-LXXVI;
and these red numbers inserted in
the margin at the beginning of each fee. Exactly the same procedure was followed in Great
Domesday, where we have already seen that in no single county does this prefatory list entirely
correspond with the text that follows. In Little Domesday on the other hand, the prefatory list of
tenants-in-chief agrees exactly with the text that follows, and from time to time the scribes have
listed and later crossed out in the margins the next group of fees to be entered. But a glance at
these prefatory lists in Little Domesday suggests that the scribes had not allowed proper space for
the insertion of the rubricated numbers. It seems most likely that the whole of the rubrication of
Volume II was added as an afterthought when Volume II it was promoted to rank with Volume I as
part of the final Domesday. In short, they were making the best of a bad job. Indeed, it is quite
possible that for Volume II the central authorities despaired of making a workable epitome when
they received this maze of statistics, and decided that they would have to 'make do' with it by
adding a crude rubrication to harmonize with Volume I. This possibility agrees with the rubricated
colophon on the last folio, identifying the volume with the rest of the Survey, where they were
careful to add that a like Survey was carried out in all the other English counties.
One last feature seems to show that Volume II was made in the provinces, and not at
Winchester.
The record of the towns, and some of them were considerable, is not in Little Domesday put at the
head of the county, but set out in full in the course of the text in accordance with the hundredal
sequence invariably pursued in this volume. Thus in East Anglia, as elsewhere, the legati collected
from a jury of each Hundred a minute description of every estate in it. But this was no more than a
first step, and we have no knowledge of any written record in this circuit drawn up on the lines of
the I.C.C. These verdicts of the Hundreds must have been checked against the facts of tenure
submitted by the land stewards of the earls, barons, and other tenants-in-chief, and this information
must have been laboriously tendered to the legati behind the scenes or at least out of court, where
so much time was clearly consumed in trying to harmonize conflicting testimony. It is possible,
and indeed not unlikely, that the legati had already before them the breve or schedule of each great
landowner when the hundred juries delivered their verdicts in open court. |
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