98 



The position of this game enclosure is Hezetree Hundred, which, so far as 

 I can determine, inchided most of the parishes lying on the north-western edge 

 of the county, and extended southwards at least as far as Eardisland parish. 

 Possibly it may be Burriugton, on the edge of Mocktree (Mudtree) Forest, or 

 is it Beniolduiie, may be identical with Bitrltoti, a hamlet of Burghill ? The 

 latter is rendered probable by the fact that Hugo held lands in adjoining par- 

 ishes of Credenhill and Stretton. 



Two other officers must be mentioned before we ijuit the subject. The 

 bailiff (ijrepositus), and the harvest-inspector (bedellus) were very important 

 functionaries. The former (if prepositus vill») superintended the work of all 

 the viUiens on the manor, and no doubt corresponded with the reeve — the 

 '■ slender colerike man " — whose portrait is drawn by Chaucer in his picture of 

 the Canterbury pilgrims. The bedel — one was settled at Pion, and several at 

 Leominster or elsewhere — either looked after the crops or else acted as a 

 sort of bailiff or reeve. 



With regards to to the products of Herefordshire in Domesday times we 

 cannot say much. It was then, as now, an agricultural county, and one may 

 add a game-preserving county. Indeed we find that the only rent jjaid by 

 some tenants in the Golden Valley, Becce in Valle Stradelm, in those days was 

 a hawk and a couple of hounds (p. xvii), and a large extent of the county was 

 waste land wherein the lords could do little else than foUow the chase. Yet 

 the rivers were even then not unproductive. Payments in fish are often 

 mentioned, and fisheries (piscaria) were evidently highly valued ; but so far 

 as I have yet seen there is only one distinct reference to salmon, and that is 

 under the head of M. Marcle, where one hide of land (I suppose abutting on 

 the river) paid a rent of six salmon. The rent of most of the fisheries and of 

 some of the mills seems usually to have been returned in eels. Thus the 

 fishery at Sarnesfield (which it would be diflficult to find nowadays) paid a rent 

 'if (lOO eels. Honey, again, was a jjroduct of considerable value, and the bee- 

 keeper (meHtariiJ are often specially mentioned. No doubt it supplied in some 

 measure the lack of cane-grown sugar, which, as Mr. Lowe reminds us in his 

 Budget, enters so largely into most of our food manufacture. Still more im- 

 portant was the supply of salt, which was provided for in a somewhat curious 

 way. Attached to several places in the county, e.(;. , Tupsley, Ledbury, UUings- 

 wick, and Morton, was an interest in the salt works or salt pits of the 

 Cheshire or Worcestershire districts. These districts went by the generic 

 term of " wick," and the phrase in Domesday which expressed the connection 

 to which I referred was "saUna," or "pars salinse " in "wick." Those mem- 

 bers of our club who are acquainted with the eastern side of Herefordshire are 

 aware that traces of smelted iron are to be found at long distances from the 

 nearest known ironworks. It has, I think, generally been thought that the 

 Romans were the first to develope to any great extent the workings in the 

 Forest of Dean, and that they sometimes transported the ore to other places 

 lor the purpose of Ijeing smelted. Why they should have done so when an 



