THE 



NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



SURVEY 



(i2TH CENTURY) 



THE darkest and the most difficult period for topographical and 

 for family history is that which succeeds the Domesday Survey 

 and extends throughout the greater part of the 1 2th century. 

 The absence of records for this period is more especially to be 

 regretted because of the great changes that it witnessed in the holding of 

 land. Within less than a hundred years of the Conquest, fiefs great and 

 small, some of them indeed colossal, had, from sundry causes, escheated 

 to the Crown, placing at its disposal ample means of rewarding not only 

 the supporters of the king who had secured possession, but also the new 

 ministerial body, which, under the Norman administration, was rising 

 rapidly to power. 



For Northamptonshire, happily, we possess a manuscript which 

 enables us, to a certain extent, to bridge the gulf I have described.' It 

 was till recently supposed that the adjoining county of Lincolnshire 

 possessed, in a survey of Lindsey made under Henry I., ' the sole record 

 of its kind, and that no similar return of the landowners of any other 

 county is known to exist. '^ But, in Feudal England, I was able to pro- 

 duce a Leicestershire Survey of the same kind, and to deal with part of 

 that Northamptonshire Survey of which a full and annotated translation 

 will be found below. We have thus, for three adjoining counties, sur- 

 veys which, although distinct, resemble one another in character ; for 

 they are all drawn up, not by fiefs, as is the record in Domesday Book, 

 but by Hundreds or by Wapentakes, as were the surveys from which, by 

 rearrangement, Domesday Book was compiled. Moreover, the object 

 of all three was the ascertainment and recording of those changes in the 

 tenure of land which threw the liability for its Danegeld on another set 

 of holders than those entered in Domesday. 



While, by their system of arrangement, they enable us to recon- 

 struct the Hundreds and the ' vills ' which were torn asunder for 

 Domesday Book, these surveys enable us further to detect frequently 

 readjustment of assessed values, that is of the liability to the ' geld,' as 



' Cott. MS. Vesp. E. XXII., fos. 94 et uq. 

 * See Mr. Chester Waters' edition of that Survey, p. 2. 



357 



