THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



district covered by the Surrey Domesday, has arrived at a very different 

 conclusion on the actual state of Southwark at the time of the Norman 

 Conquest. 



A few fishermen's huts were all that remained of the suburb . . . Five 

 hundred years of battle . . . had not left of Southwark, once so beautiful a 

 suburb, more than these poor huts and ruins of huts (pp. 43-4). 



It is certain at least from the Domesday entry that Southwark had 

 then a ' minster ' of its own, a tidal creek where ships were moored and 

 where they discharged their goods, a ' strande,' which was perhaps Bank- 

 side, and a ' water street,' which must have had inhabitants. As the 

 lord of Ditton received in rent 500 herrings, while 2,000 went to God- 

 stone, it is clear that a herring fishery was carried on from Southwark ; 

 and if we may not actually infer that a detailed survey of the place is 

 among the omissions of Domesday, we may at least gather that it was 

 already of some little importance, especially as, when we meet with it 

 again some forty years later, it is formally recognized as a borough. 1 



The miscellaneous information afforded by Domesday, the inform- 

 ation which, so to speak, it only contains by accident, is often the most 

 interesting. But there is not much of it in Surrey. I have elsewhere 

 explained that the great Survey was distinctly connected with danegeld 

 and its payment, and not with the liability of the fiefs to render knight 

 service. 2 No conclusions therefore can be drawn from its almost system- 

 atic silence on the latter subject. In Surrey it records not only the 

 hidation (or liability to ' geld ') but also, where it was discovered, the 

 failure to pay the tax. Of a hide in Emleybridge Hundred, we read that 

 it has * never ' paid ' geld ' since Richard of Tunbridge received it (fo. 

 35). Such an entry as this affords proof that 'geld' had been levied 

 several times during the reign of William. 3 The alleged silence of 

 Domesday on the ' system of feudal land tenures ' was held by Professor 

 Freeman to show that these had as yet no existence. Nevertheless in 

 Surrey, as indeed in other districts, 4 we have incidental glimpses of 

 enfeoffment and even of subenfeoffment. Wadard, whom the bishop 

 of Bayeux had enfeoffed at Ditton, had himself subenfeoffed there a 

 tenant, who owed him, besides a money rent, ' the service of one knight ' 

 (fo. 32). Under Henry I. and Henry II. Ditton is duly found as held 

 of his successors the Arsics by knight-service. 6 At Banstead also Richard, 

 the bishop of Bayeux' tenant, had subenfeoffed others, who held there 

 ' of him (fo. 31^). Both on the church and on the lay fiefs the process 



1 Pipe Roll 31 Hen. I., pp. 50, 52. * See Feudal England, pp. 228-30. 



3 See Domesday Studies, I. 868, for the importance of this point. 



4 See Feudal England, pp. 306-7. 



6 ' Dittonam et Kersintone tenuit Triheram Picot in tempore regis Henrici pro servitio ij mili- 

 tum' (see < Carta Manasseri Arsic ' in Liber Rubeus, p. 303). It is unfortunately necessary to caution 

 the student against the official edition of the Liber Rubeus (ed. Hall) in the Rolls Series (see The Commune 

 of London and other Studies, pp. xv.-xvii.), the editor of which imagined the above ' Dittona ' to be some- 

 where in Oxfordshire, while he identified ' Kersintone ' in one place as Garsington and in another 

 (tentatively) as Keston (p. 1,223). As a matter of fact it was neither, but Cassington, co. Oxon, 

 where five hides were held in 1086, as at Ditton, by Wadard. 



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