DOMESDAY SURVEY 



and last of these places ; but serfs, ' ancillae,' and ' censores ' alike are en- 

 tirely absent from the remainder of the survey. We shall not explain 

 their casual appearance on geographical grounds, for if Stapleford and 

 Bilborough are close to the border of Derbyshire, where the servile 

 population reaches "j per cent., Laxton is within 7 miles of Lincolnshire, 

 where, so far as the evidence of Domesday goes, there were no serfs at 

 all. No doubt the proportion of the servile class is usually supposed to 

 have reached its lowest point in the Danelaw, yet there were nearly 700 

 serfs in Leicestershire, while as for Nottinghamshire the fact that the 

 servi are confined to three fiefs entered in the middle of the survey 

 would alone make any conclusions based on their numbers in this county 

 extremely precarious. No freemen, strictly so called (liberi homines] , occur 

 in Nottinghamshire, but we notice seven franci homines, who may be either 

 franklins or Frenchmen, 1 at Newark, and one francus homo is to be found 

 on William Peverel's portion of Langar. But the Liber de Welbeck gives one 

 most interesting glimpse of an older order of society in its account of Norton 

 Cuckney. The story runs that a certain 'Joceus the Fleming' came to 

 England with the Conqueror, and received land in Cuckney. In the 

 same vill there was dwelling one Gamelbere, who had held 2 carucates of 

 land before the Conquest as a ' dreng,' on condition of shoeing the king's 

 palfrey when he came to Mansfield, and of performing such duties as 

 belonged to a holding of 2 carucates whenever there was need of military 

 service in Wales. Gamelbere (the name is pure Danish) died in the 

 time of Henry I, having presumably continued to hold his land according 

 to pre-Conquest conditions of tenure up to his death, and the king gave 

 his 2 carucates to Richard, son of the above-mentioned 'Joceus the 

 Fleming.' 2 It is impossible to corroborate this story from Domesday 

 evidence, for neither ' Joceus ' nor Gamelbere is mentioned in the 

 survey ; but there seems no reason to doubt its truth, nor the fact 

 that in 1086 there was still to be found in Nottinghamshire one 

 of that class of ' drengs ' who figure prominently in the land between 

 Ribble and Mersey, and maintained their ancient tenures in the 

 north for centuries after Domesday, but of whose existence we 

 can find only the slenderest traces after the Conquest south of the 

 Humber. 3 



The Nottinghamshire survey is not a very favourable specimen of 

 the workmanship of the Domesday scribes. The earls, as we have seen, 

 are entered before the ecclesiastical tenants, one folio is entirely vacant, 

 and there are numerous blank spaces in the manuscript, while erasures, 

 interlineations, and marginal entries are frequent. The account of the 

 king's manor of Mansfield is somewhat unintelligible at first sight. It 



1 Probably the former. See Mr. Round's remarks in P.C.H. Warwickshire, i, 285. 



' Mm. Angl., vi, 872 



3 The most complete account of drengage is contained in Prof. Maitland's article on Northumbrian 

 tenures, Eng. Hist. Rev. v, 625 et seq. See also Lapsley in Amer. Hist. Rev. ix, 670-695, and V. C.H. 

 Durham, i, 284291. It may be noted that the Worksop Priory documents contain references to 

 land 'ad Inwara(m) ' and 'ad Utwara(m) ' so late as the reign of Henry II. See Atherueum, 24 June, 

 1905. 



243 



