A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



round it (Leicestershire excepted) by the large number of its sochmanni. 

 This fact is best brought out in Mr. Seebohm's work, The English Village 

 Community} It is there seen that, while in Northamptonshire the pro- 

 portion of ' sochmanni ' was 1 3 per cent, of the population, it was only 

 I per cent, in Huntingdonshire, 3 per cent, in Bedfordshire, and ^ per 

 cent, in Bucks. In Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, where free men 

 (' liberi homines ') are found instead of ' sochmanni,' the proportion is 

 only ^ and ^ per cent. There remains the intensely ' Danish ' Leicester- 

 shire, where the proportion is more than twice as high as in Northants, 

 namely 28 per cent. It is clearly seen, in Mr. Seebohm's maps, that 

 these ' sochmanni ' were, as he asserts, the class characteristic of the 

 ' Danish ' district of England, so that we have here further evidence of 

 that ' Danish ' settlement and influence in the shire of which I claimed 

 to find traces in the assessment of its northern portion.* Although 

 certain dues, which varied in amount and in character, were derived from 

 these ' sochmanni ' by those who had rights over them, they admittedly 

 held a higher and a freer position than the ' villeins.' 



The consideration of ' soc ' and ' sochmen ' has somewhat drawn us 

 away from the subject of the Crown and its revenue. We have yet to 

 deal with Northampton itself and the rights which the king had there. 

 So far as the ' geld,' or land tax was concerned, I have argued, on the 

 evidence of the local ' geld-roU,* that the borough was assessed, in the 

 Hundred of Spelho, at 25 'hides,'^ as were Bath and Shaftesbury at 20, 

 Chester and Huntingdon at 50.* But the king drew from the boroughs 

 a revenue, as distinct from the tax. This revenue was derived partly 

 from dues, such as the profits of jurisdiction, and tolls, partly from those 

 houses which lay in his ' demesne ' ; for a borough, like a rural manor, 

 consisted of two portions — the demesne, here in the king's lands, and the 

 houses held by private persons, mainly tenants-in-chief. At Northamp- 

 ton, the sixty burgesses' houses which king Edward had held in his 

 demesne had suffered some diminution by ' waste,' but a ' new borough,' 

 such as arose in several towns under the Conqueror, already contained 

 forty burgesses as an addition to the king's ' demesne.' The three great 

 tenants-in-chief of the county held between them ninety-two houses, a 

 hint, surely, that these houses were appurtenant, as was so often the case, 

 to their rural manors. This conclusion is confirmed by a study of the 

 other names of those who held houses in the town, most of whom will 

 be recognised as holders of manors in the shire. The number of houses 

 entered, in all, seems to be about 316. This total is rather smaller, it 

 seems, than that of the houses at Leicester, but exceeds the total at War- 

 wick. In annual value, the houses varied from threepence to sixteen- 

 pence ; but a shilling was about the typical value. The actual letting 

 value, however, may have been greater. The disproportion between 

 the nominal values, then and now, of property is greater perhaps 



* See pp. 86-89, ^"'^ ^^^ maps there given by Mr. Seebohm. 



* See p. 268 above. 



' *Fif and xx. hida byrigland.' * Feudal England, p. 156. 



276 



