DOMESDAY SURVEY 



6 per cent., as against 1 5 per cent, in Northamptonshire. In part it is probable 

 that this difference between two contiguous counties is to be explained by the 

 large tracts of unmanorialized sokeland in the former, for the Domesday serf 

 was essentially connected with the demesne land of his manor, where he 

 would seem to have taken charge of his lord's ploughs and oxen. No 

 consistent ratio, such as obtains in some of the southern counties, can be 

 made out in Leicestershire between the number of demesne ploughs and the 

 number of serfs on a manor, and in general the serfs tend to be found 

 only on the more valuable estates in the shire. An interesting accompani- 

 ment of the Leicestershire servus is the ancilla or serf wife, who is entered at 

 Tur Langton, Lutterworth, Foxton, Barrow on Soar, Kegworth, and a dozen 

 other manors in the county. It is obvious that she must have existed else- 

 where, but she is probably only entered in the description of those manors 

 where she held some definite position, being, for instance, in charge of the 

 manorial dairy, and even so we must allow for the caprice of the Domesday 

 scribe in the matter of her inclusion in the survey. The ancilla figures 

 largely in the description of such western counties as Worcester and 

 Hereford, but not at all in the surveys of Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, 

 and in only two entries in Nottinghamshire, so that her casual appear- 

 ance in Leicestershire gives us a useful hint that the distinction between the 

 social arrangements of the east and west may not really have been so sharp 

 and significant as is sometimes assumed. 



The town of Leicester is of peculiar interest in English municipal 

 history as the one borough of high rank in regard to which the king's fiscal 

 rights, elsewhere jealously guarded by the royal exchequer, came to pass into 

 the hands of a subject." By 1 130 at least the earl of Leicester was possessed 

 of all the dues from the town which in other boroughs were matters of 

 crown revenue, and a great proportion of the land and houses within 

 Leicester belonged directly to the earl of the shire. This being the case, it is 

 not a little curious that the count of Meulan, the future earl of Leicester, held 

 no land whatever in the county town in 1086, although his manor of Aylestone 

 lay just outside the borough walls. The means by which he came to obtain 

 his great position in Leicester are described by Ordericus Vitalis in the well- 

 known passage to which we have referred above, and which deserves 

 quotation here at length : 



The town of Leicester formerly had four lords, the king and the bishop of Lincoln, earl 

 Simon, and Ivo son of Hugh (de Grentemaisnil). The aforementioned count of Meulan 

 craftily gained his position by means of Ivo's share, who was governour of the town (municeps) 

 and sheriff and the king's farmer; and through the king's assistance and his own cunning he 

 gained possession of the whole city, and thereupon, being created an earl in England, he sur- 

 passed all the magnates of the realm and nearly all his own kinsfolk in wealth and power. 60 



The possessions of these four lords are revealed clearly enough in 

 Domesday. Earl Simon's quarter of the town is represented by the twenty- 

 eight houses and six carucates of borough land held by the Countess Judith, 

 whose daughter Maud had married the first Senliz earl of Northampton. 

 The bishop of Lincoln's estate is described with the rest of his fief apart from 



" Pollock and Maitland, Hist, ofEngl. Law, \, 638 : 'The king can convey away his lordship, but in 

 England it is not common to find a borough of high rank that has been mediatized. Leicester is the great 

 example.' 



60 Ord. Vit. Hist. Eccles. iv, 168. 



301 



