DOMESDAY SURVEY 



FOR the study and illustration of the Northamptonshire portion 

 of the Conqueror's great survey, we possess some peculiar advan- 

 tages. A Peterborough Abbey manuscript in the possession of 

 the Society of Antiquaries contains a list of the county Hun- 

 dreds, with the number of hides in each, these being severally classified. 

 In a paper devoted to this document, which, so far as is at present 

 known, is absolutely unique, I showed that it was really a ' geld '-roll 

 older than the Domesday Survey, drawn up in connection with that 

 land-tax commonly known as the Danegeld, but in Domesday almost in- 

 variably styled ' geld ' simply.^ To the same manuscript we are in- 

 debted for a list of the knights of Peterborough, that is, of the abbey's 

 tenants who held by knight-service, together with the lands they held. 

 This ' descriptio ' is of much service for the illustration of Domesday.^ 

 Lastly, in what I have styled ' the Northamptonshire Survey,' we have a 

 corrupt, but important document, which gives us the tenure of estates in 

 the county about the middle of the twelfth century, and, being drawn 

 up Hundred by Hundred, enables us to trace clearly enough the Hun- 

 dreds existing at the time of the Conquest, which we could not have 

 done without it, as the names of the Hundreds in Domesday are, for the 

 Northamptonshire portion, untrustworthy and misleading. Although 

 the object of this survey was, doubtless, the right assessment of the 

 ' geld,' its entries throw a welcome light on the descent of the local fiefs 

 in a period of peculiar darkness.' 



The features of interest in the Domesday Survey differ widely 

 according to the county. In Northamptonshire there is a marked 

 absence of those incidental entries bearing on personal, political, or legal 

 history, in which some portions of the great survey are comparatively 

 rich. On the other hand, thanks to the auxiliary information afforded 

 by the sources mentioned above, it is possible to obtain important results 

 from the Domesday assessments of the manors, and to identify the 

 tenants and undertenants named in the famous record in more cases and 

 with more precision than is feasible in some counties. There is much 



' See * The Northamptonshire Geld-roU ' {Feudal England, pp. 147-156). 



^ See 'The Knights of Peterborough' {Ibid., pp. 156-168). 



' 'The Northamptonshire Survey' {Ibid., pp. 215-224), and pp. 357-389 below). 



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