A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



with slight verbal differences in the Yorkshire and Lincoln surveys, 



runs : 



In Snotingeham scyre et in Derbescyre pax regis manu vel sigillo data, si fuerit 

 infracta emendatur per xviii hundrez. Unumquodque hund : viii libras. 



Now 8 represents 120 'ores,' that is 100 according to the ' Anglicus 

 Numerus ' which was followed in the Danelaw, and this fact becomes signi- 

 ficant when we read in a statement of the privileges of the church of 

 York : ' Si quis enim quemlibet . . . infra atrium ecclesiae caperet 

 et retineret, universali judicio vi hundreth emendabit. In hundreth 

 viii librae continentur.' 1 In 1106 these privileges were declared to 

 apply to the church of Southwell, 8 so that we are justified in extending 

 their application into Nottinghamshire, and by combining this passage 

 with the above quotation from Domesday we see that the ' hundred ' 

 was i oo ' ores,' and that most probably on this account the sum of 8 

 came itself to be described as a ' hundred.' This is not the place in 

 which to discuss the meaning of these ' hundreds ' as fiscal groups, which 

 has been treated by Mr. Round in Feudal England, nor can we enter 

 into the difficult question of their possible connexion with the territorial 

 hundreds mentioned here and there in the body of the survey of this county, 

 but we may note that the Lindsey survey shows us that the Lincolnshire 

 ' hundred ' normally contained 1 2 carucates, which, as .8 represents 

 12 marks as well as 120 ores, illustrates in a striking way the neatness 

 and artificiality of early fiscal arrangements. 3 



Nottinghamshire was one of those counties in which we may 

 suspect that the compilers of Domesday did not deal very consistently 

 with certain classes of society included in the original returns. 4 Two 

 very important classes, slaves at one end of the social order and rent- 

 paying tenants (here styled ' censores ') at the other, are mentioned just 

 sufficiently often to prove that nothing in the instructions issued to the 

 Domesday commissioners directed their exclusion from the returns, but 

 appear in our portion of the survey in a way which suggests that their 

 entry depended on the caprice of the scribes. Thus not a single ' censor ' or 

 serf appears on the first fifteen folios of the Nottinghamshire survey; but at 

 Colwick, the first manor entered on the fief of William Peverel, we meet 

 with two serfs, and at Gonalston two ' censores ' occur. On the next folio 

 two serfs are entered at Stapleford, and four at Bilborough, and two serfs 

 appear at Bulcote on the succeeding fief of Walter de Aincurt. The 

 scribes would seem to have been more exact in their description of 

 Geoffrey Alselin's land which follows, for in addition to the serfs who 

 are found, in number five, six, and one respectively at Laxton, Stoke with 

 Gedling, and Burton Joyce, an ' ancilla ' or female serf is entered at the first 



1 Feudal England, 73. 



* A statement of these privileges is entered in the (MS.) Liber Albus of Southwell. 

 3 feudal England, 7 5 . 



* The unsystematic methods of the scribes in matters of secondary importance for their purposes are 

 illustrated in another way. In Notts, there occurs only one instance, at Gunthorpe, of the tallage 

 (tailla) which is a prominent feature of the Lincoln survey, and cannot reasonably be supposed to have 

 been levied on a single manor only in the former county. 



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