DOMESDAY SURVEY 



this phenomenon occurs. In addition there is the fact that in 1086 these 

 urban houses are clearly sources of profit to their lords, and an equally 

 plausible explanation of the attribution of town houses to rural manors 

 may be found in the assumption that the former were the abode of men 

 whose place it was to supply the manors to which they were assigned 

 with such articles of commerce as could only lawfully be bought and sold 

 under the stringent conditions of witness and warranty which obtained within 

 the burghal area.' 3 



There is every reason to suppose that both Anglo-Saxon thegns and 

 Anglo-Norman lords were sensible of the profit which would accrue to them- 

 selves if their men were to obtain the freedom of the borough market, and that 

 the connexion here and there, as at Leicester, manifested between town and 

 country property in Domesday has its origin rather in a desire for commercial 

 advantage than in any rule of public law. In this connexion it is very 

 significant that the borough was the seat of the county mint, and was, there- 

 fore, the centre of monetary exchange for the district ; nor should we forget 

 that in days when the county town was periodically thronged with visitors to 

 the shire court, to which all freemen in theory owed suit and service, it was 

 no small advantage to a lord to possess houses at which he himself and the 

 men from the various manors of his fief might receive entertainment during 

 the sessions of the assembly. 63 



In King Edward's time, however, Leicester had been burdened with a 

 definite if small amount of military service ; it was bound to supply twelve 

 burgesses to serve with the king if he led an army by land, and it would send 

 four horses to London for transport work if the expedition were by sea. 

 Before the Conquest the borough or, as it is described in Domesday, the 

 ' city ' had made the king an annual payment of 30, according to the excep- 

 tional scale of 20 pennies to the ' ora ' or silver ounce, and I 5 sestars of honey. 

 King William derived a revenue of 42 IQJ. by weight 'from all the renders 

 of the city and shire,' a phrase which leaves it an open question whether the 

 30 from Leicester itself had been increased or not. Quite apart from the 

 * farm' of the city came the 20 which was rendered from the mint, one- 

 third of which was in the hands of Hugh de Grentemaisnil, and, in addition 

 to this, the king received from Leicester town and county 20 shillings for a 

 sumpter horse, and the enormous sum of jTio for a hawk, figures which repeat 

 themselves in the description of the neighbouring county of Northampton. 64 

 With regard to the borough lands of Leicester we only read incidentally 

 of land in, or belonging to, the borough held by the bishop of Lincoln 

 and the Countess Judith ; but we need not doubt that in addition to 

 being a centre of trade at the point where the Foss Way crossed the main 

 road from London to the Trent Valley, Leicester was also an agricultural 

 community like its fellows of Nottingham and Derby. It is an un- 

 fortunate circumstance that Domesday makes no definite statement as to 

 the assessment of Leicester to the geld, a burden which is generally sharply 



The ' Garrison Theory ' of the borough was enunciated by Professor Maitland in Dam. Bk. and 

 Beyond, section 'The Boroughs,' and was worked out in some detail by Mr. A. Ballard in his book on 

 The Domesday Boroughs. The commercial side of the question was expressed by Miss Bateson in a review of 

 the latter work, Engl. Hist. Rev. xx, 143-56. 



w Compare the duty of hospitium, not infrequently found at this time in a burghal connexion. 



M V.C.H. Northampton, i, 274, Warwick, \, 271, and Worcester, \, 242. 



33 



