NOTES ON THE MANOR OP FOKDINGTOK. 161 



Now you dwunt go to tell I that you be any ways belonging to our 

 dear wold Parson Moule 1 " " Yes, his son." " Parson Moule's 

 son ! So 'tis, and I not to mind ye." Whereupon he snatched my 

 hand and kissed it, there in the middle of the crowd. 



Here ends what I know and have gathered about the system 

 and folks as I remember them. As to the history of the Manor 

 in remote times, as bearing on that system, I can say almost 

 n othing. Of course you will ask what Domesday tells us. I 

 cannot, and what is more, Eyton seemingly cannot, quite answer 

 this : " Rex tenet Dorcestre et Fortitone et sutone et Gelingeham 

 et Frome." There is the difficulty. These royal demesnes are all 

 grouped together, and we cannot say what portion of the particulars 

 about them belong to Fordington specially. " In dominio sunt vii. 

 carucse et xx. servi ; et xii. coliberti et cxiiii. villani et quater 

 viginti et ix. bordarii habentes xlix. carucas." That is all we 

 know. As a conjecture I would hazard the idea that the whole 

 places, half places, and farthing holds, in a degree, represented the 

 holdings of the Fordington villani, bordarii, and coliberti of 

 Domesday, respectively. And these Domesday holdings, I think 

 we may suppose, were sub-divisions of the 10 or 12 Roman 

 " Centurise," the " limites " of which, doubtless, lasted on to the 

 end of the Latino-British Dominion, which died here in Dorset very 

 hard indeed. Further, I venture to ask if Great Field, with its 

 theoretical divisions of Poundbury, Middle, Castle, and Lower 

 Fields, and its customary cultivation of these fields, in their crowd 

 of lawns, each with one class of crop in rotation, may not have been 

 an actual survival of the Saxon "Out Field," and the "closes " of 

 the "In Field." My idea is that the "Garden Field" above 

 described represented the bare fallow whereby the Saxons rested 

 the land. But this by the way. The Manor appears to have been 

 first granted away as a fief by King Henry II. In after times it 

 seemed to gravitate to the Earldom of Cornwall. In King Edward 

 the First's time, Edward, Earl of Cornwall, held it. It passed in 

 the next reign to Piers Gaveston's widow. King Edward III. 

 annexed it again to the Earldom of Cornwall and Principality of 



