84 LAND REFORM 



This remarkable work is called the Domesday 

 Book, and contains the most minute information 

 touching all the farms of the kingdom. It gives the 

 names of all the holders of land in Edward the 

 Confessor's time and at the time of the survey. It 

 states the number of hides of land in each manor, of 

 the villeins, servi, free men, cottiers, and tenants in 

 socage. It records the quantity of wood, meadow, 

 and pasture, and the number of mills and fishponds, 

 and states the gross value thereof in the Confessor's 

 time and at the time of the survey ; and sets out the 

 value of what each freeman possessed, in each of the 

 two reigns. The number of oxen, cows, and swine is 

 also given.^ 



every holding were given : " Baldwin holds Ghent. There is land for 

 twenty-five ploughs, and as many are there, and twenty serfs and forty 

 two among the villeins and bordars and five swineherds rendering forty 

 four swine. There is a mill returning thirty pence and ten acres of wood 

 and one hundred acres of pasture. Formerly it was worth twelve pounds. 

 Now it is worth ten pounds," etc. etc. (From the part of Domesday Book 

 which relates to Devonshire, translated and edited by the "Domesday" 

 Committee of the Devonshire Association.) 



^ Though a digression, it is interesting to notice the good kind of 

 domestic legislation which was carried out in those, so called, dark ages, 

 especially under the Norman and Plantagenet kings. Our present Local 

 Authorities might, with gain, study those old statutes. The question of 

 adulteration is dealt with in no namby-pamby way. The butcher and the 

 baker had to be careful about the weight and quality of their wares ; the 

 brewer was warned, at his peril, to brew nothing but pure beer. A paper 

 read last year before the Sanitary Institute showed that sickness and 

 death lurked in the filthy stuff used in stuffing the cheap bedding usually 

 sold to the poorer classes. Statute ii Henry VII, chap. 19, directs that 

 no one shall make, obtain, or put to sale any mattresses or bedding 

 unless made of "clean stuff, clean wool or clean flocks," under pain of 

 forfeiture of "all such unlawful wares." Statute 27 Edward III, chap. 11, 

 deals with the question of "forestalling" merchandise or food in a 

 manner that would greatly trouble the speculators in cotton and grain of 

 the present day. Slaughter-houses must be outside a town lest "the air 

 within become corrupt." There are many other acts of a similar character 

 dealing with the domestic life of the people. 



