DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Perhaps the very irregularity of these arrangements may be the result of 

 a liberty that tended to licence. It is significant that in Suffolk the carucates 

 break up, not into virgates or bovates, quarters and eighths, based on the 

 plough-team, but into many small fractions, groups of acres, based on the 

 individual freeholder. Suffolk does not know the virgatarius or the bovatarius, 

 but it is the stronghold of the small liber homo}^ The leet system was political 

 and administrative rather than agrarian. The leets, as parts of the hundred, 

 were concerned not only with taxation but with justice and police, and 

 possibly also with military service. The 1 2th-century survey of the abbey of 

 St. Edmund, which gives the names of the Thingoe leets," connects them 

 with ' suit [secta) of court,' and records of Sudbury that ' nullam sectam 

 facit in hundreto, nee de aliquo reddet, nisi tamen coram justiciis errantibus, 

 et tunc est coram illis pro quarta parte hundredi, scilicet pro tribus letis. 

 Sunt enim in hundredo cum ilia 12 lete.'" This jurisdictional function still 

 survives in the court leet, which again connects with the police institution of 

 frankpledge." 



One point, at least, seems to stand out clearly in the midst of much that 

 is vague and uncertain. The vill or township, rather than the manor, appears 

 as the original gelding unit.^* The 12th-century survey notes that the leets 

 are made up of vills : ' In hundredo de Tinghowe sunt xx villae ex quibus 

 constituuntur ix lete,' '' and the lineal measurements are frequently given for 

 the whole vill, coupled with the geld. ' Canappetuna habet v quarentenas 

 in longitudine et ii in latitudine et 6\d. de gelto.' ' Totum Brantham habet 

 leugam in longo et dimidiam in lato & i^d. de gelto.'*" In one case, even, 

 the only mention of a vill, Chattisham (Cefessa), in Samford Hundred, is the 

 entry of its lineal measurements and geld pence. No agrarian or ' tenurial ' 

 details are given." If the scattered fragments of the vills in the Domesday 

 Survey be joined together, the geld assessment and the lineal measurements 

 for the whole vill will be found attached sometimes to a manor, sometimes to 

 a non-manorial estate, to the holding of a single tenant, or to the farm 

 worked by a group of freemen. This diversity in the position of the geld 

 entry, which is illustrated in the following table, may indicate that the vill 

 was both measured and assessed as a whole, and that the responsibility for the 

 geld lay on the township, not on individual landholders, or manorial lords, 

 though the assessment is often connected with the largest holding in 

 the vill." 



" VinogradofF, £wj/. Soc. in the Eleventh Cent. 36, 196 et seq. 



" Above, p. 361. Gage, Suffolk, xii, et seq. From Liber de Consuetudinibus monasterii Sancti Edmundi. 



" The curious position of Sudbury, as a quarter of the hundred, assessed at the heavy geld of 6od. will be 

 discussed later. In connexion with the above passage from the Liber de Consuetudinibus cf. the famous jingle in 

 the ' BecwoeS,' or Saxon law formula, ' ne gyrne ic pines, ne laeSes ne landes, ne sace ne socne,' which seems 

 to link the ' land or leet ' with jurisdiction ; Liebermann, Ger.. der Angelsachsen ; Glossary, ' laet ' cf Select 

 Pleas in Manorial Courts (Selden Soc), p. Ixxv. Prof Maitland and Mr. Round quote Skeat to show that the 

 Danish ' laegd ' is a division for military conscription, and Mr. Round points out the analogy with the East 

 Anglian leet, 'a division of the country for purposes of taxation ' ; Feud. Engl. 1 01. 



" Vinogradoff, Engl. Soc. in the Eleventh Cent. 197, 214-17. " Ibid. 391. 



" Gage, Suffolk, xii. ~ Dom. Bk. fol. 287^, 303. 



" Ibid. 2873 ; 'Cetessa habet viii quarentenas in Ion. et vi in lat. et (s\d. de g(elto).' 



" The substance of this and the preceding five paragraphs was originally read as a paper in Professor 

 VinogradofF's Seminar at Oxford. 



36s 



