DOMESDAY SURVEY 



latter who were independent landholders, and will to that extent invali- 

 date the conclusions which Professor Freeman based upon their presence 

 in our county. The professor made the presence or absence of king's 

 thegns the test by which to determine whether a county had submitted 

 peaceably or the reverse to the Conqueror, and he argued that the 

 presence of the class in such considerable numbers in Nottinghamshire 

 showed that the king's favour had been bought by an early submission 

 on the part of the shire to his rule. 1 But apart from the question of 

 mere numbers it has been shown in other volumes of this series that the 

 king's thegns were considered to be of inferior status to the tenants in 

 chief by military service, and even in this county the number of 

 Englishmen holding land in 1086 bears a very small proportion to the 

 great crowd of the disinherited. 3 



The position of the borough of Nottingham in the survey deserves 

 notice, for it reflects one of the most important facts in the history of 

 the shire. Until the reign of Elizabeth Nottinghamshire was united 

 with Derbyshire under one sheriff, and from a chance reference in the 

 Domesday account of Derby borough to ' the witness of the two shire 

 courts ' we know that this arrangement must already have prevailed in 

 1086.* The association of the counties is implied in the order in which 

 their surveys are entered in Domesday, for the account of Derbyshire 

 comes first, followed on folio 280 by the descriptions of Nottingham 

 and Derby, to each of which a column is assigned ; the next folio, which 

 is devoted to certain customs relating to the two counties jointly, being 

 succeeded by the survey of Nottinghamshire. It is rather important to 

 follow carefully the structure of the account which is given of Nottingham 

 itself. First comes the description of the borough as it stood in the 

 Confessor's time, with special reference to its agricultural condition, and 

 to the king's fiscal rights there. Next we have an account of some 

 changes which took place in the borough between the Conquest and 

 1086, and then comes the usual description of the state of things existing 

 at the date of the survey, with a specification of those who held houses 

 in the borough. This is followed by the account of a small agricultural 

 estate which the king possessed in Nottingham, and then in reality begins 

 the statement of general customs with which the reverse of the folio is 

 occupied. 



Like the great majority of English boroughs Nottingham was 

 ' farmed ' or set to rent as a single whole, and as generally was the case 

 its 'ferm' had been largely increased by the Conqueror.* In King 



1 Norman Conquest, iv, 197. 



1 This point has been considered in the V. C. H. Northants, \, 294 ; and Derb. i, 307. 



* On this ground Mr. Round has suggested (Geoffrey de Mandeviilt, 193) that the Ferrers earldom 

 consisted of the joint shrievalty of Notts, and Derby, and that this was the reason why Nottingham 

 never became a separate earldom before Richard II conferred the title on Thomas Mowbray. If we 

 can trust the copy given in the Mart, (vi, 97) the connexion of the two counties is proved by the 

 foundation charter of Bredon Priory, Leicestershire, where Earl Robert de Ferrers appears as ' Robertas 

 comes de Notingham.' 



4 On the payments made by boroughs in 1086 see Mr. Round's paper on Domesday finance in 

 Domesday Studies. 



235 



