A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



a matter of fact we arrive by this process at an average for the Southwell 

 terra carucae, which is simply inconceivable on any theory of the acreage of 

 the plough-land. On the Eytonian equation of 1 2 furlongs to the leuca 

 the above land would contain 21,600 acres, which divided among the 

 24 Southwell plough-lands would give us an average of no less than 

 900 acres to the plough-land. Even if we adopt Mr. Round's suggestion 

 of 8 furlongs to the ' league,' we shall have an average of 600 acres to 

 account for. Nor can we obtain relief by assuming that while the state- 

 ment about ' arable land ' relates to the whole manor the number of 

 plough-lands only refers to part of it ; the latter is given in connexion 

 with the assessment figures, and undoubtedly refers to the whole. Probably 

 there does not occur elsewhere in Domesday so violent a discrepancy 

 between recorded area and estimated plough-lands x ; a discrepancy in our 

 case which no allowance reasonably to be made for the uncertainty of early 

 lineal measurements will reduce to workable proportions. On the other 

 hand if we use for our divisor the number (90) of actual teams existing 

 on the manor we shall be able (on Mr. Round's equation of 8 furlongs 

 = i league) to assign an average of 160 acres to each team; a sufficiently 

 neat quotient, but one which only throws up the artificiality of the 

 plough-lands into stronger relief. 



Of course the population enumerated in the above table is much too 

 large to be contained in any one rural manor, and Domesday, after its 

 statement of value, tells us that ' in Southwell there are reckoned (numer- 

 antur] twelve berewicks.' Now we possess a copy of a charter dated 

 958 which purports to be a grant by King Eadwig to (arch) bishop 

 Oskytel (of York) of 20 cassates of land at Southwell. 3 This charter 

 is more than probably spurious, but it contains a list of the lands belong- 

 ing to Southwell which, whether the document be genuine or not, 

 represents the earliest statement of the constituent vills of the manor 

 which has come down to us, and it may accordingly be used to illustrate 

 the Domesday text. These lands are said to be Halloughton, Upton, 

 Halam, Bleasby, Goverton, Gibsmere, Fiskerton, Morton, Normanton, 

 Farnsfield, and Kirklington, all of which at the present day form part of the 

 manor of Southwell. Here we account for eleven of our twelve unnamed 

 berewicks, the first four of which are not mentioned in Domesday at all, 

 while Upton only comes in incidentally under Rolleston. Parts of the 

 other berewicks which lay outside the archbishop's land are described in 

 due course, but in every case but one the soke over them is said to 

 belong to Southwell. This one exception casually reveals a fact of 

 considerable importance, for on Walter de Aincurt's land occurs the 

 entry : ' In Farnsfield Walter has two bovates of land assessed to the 



1 Compare Domesday Book and Beyond, 434, where a number of other instances are compared. 

 The arable land entered at Rolleston (Staffs.), Professor Maitland's extreme example, only gives 360 acres 

 to the team-land. 



Birch, Cartul. Sax,lO2<). If genuine, this would be a highly important document, for it distinctly 

 asserts that the archbishop possessed sac and soc over his Southwell estate. But the text is very corrupt, 

 and the list of witnesses seems to have been modelled upon the attestations to the charter of Edgar, 

 which precedes it in the Liber Albus. 



218 



