A HISTORY OF NOTTINGHAMSHIRE 



great band of seventeenth-century antiquaries. It is perhaps the 

 greatest merit of Thoroton's work that he fully grasped the essential fact 

 that the key to all manorial history lies in the distribution of land recorded 

 in Domesday, and that he carried out this principle with such thorough- 

 ness that, so far as the work of identification is concerned, independent 

 investigation can often do little more than confirm his minuteness and 

 accuracy. The extent of his knowledge, and the strength with which he 

 applied it to the narrow but all-important study of manorial descent, 

 make his book one of the best, as it is one of the earliest, examples of the 

 systematic treatment of Domesday for purposes of local history. 



NOTE 



The reader should bear in mind that the date of the Domesday Survey is 1086; and that 

 'the time of King Edward' normally means the date of his death (5 January, 1066). The 

 Domesday ' carucate ' was a unit of assessment containing 8 ' bovates.' The essential portion 

 of the plough was its team of oxen, eight in number. The 'demesne' was the lord's portion 

 of the manor, the peasantry holding the rest of it under him. 



It must always be remembered that when Domesday speaks of a place as held by a certain 

 tenant it does not follow that the whole of it is thereby meant ; as the vills often comprised 

 other manors which form the subject of separate entries. 



In the survey of this county manors, berewicks, and soc-land are distinguished as a rule 

 by the letters M., B., S., preceded by a numeral in cases where several pre-Conquest estates 

 have been united. 



Domesday Form 



1. Bcrnedesclawe 

 Bcrnedelawe 

 Bernesedelawe 

 Bernesedelaw 



2. Brocolvestou 

 Brolvestou 

 Brochelestou 1 



3. Bingameshou 

 Bingehamhou 



4. Torgartone 

 Turgastune 1 



5. Newerca . 

 Newerce . 



6. Riseclive 



THE NOTTINGHAMSHIRE WAPF.NTAKES 



Modern Form 



Bassctlaw 



Broxtow 



Bin;ham 



Thurgarton 



Newark 



Rushcliffe 



1 These forms occur in the Rutland introduc- 

 tion. 



1. Sudwelle = Southwell (trans, p. 274). 



2. Bliduorde = Blidworth (trans, p. 281). 



3. Pluntre = Plumtree (trans, p. 283). 

 And in the AIGRUN [Averham] entry, 



p. 281, it is said that to this manor belong 

 five sochmen in other hundreds. 



This may suggest a system of small territorial 

 hundreds such as occurs in the Leicester Survey. 



246 



