DOMESDAY SURVEY 



torial division hrepp^ it is at least as likely that it might be derived 

 from the Saxon rap^ a (measuring) rope/ or reaps^ a space. It would 

 seem improbable that the Conqueror should divide one county alone 

 in England in this manner ; but on the other hand, it must be 

 remembered that Sussex was of unique importance to the Normans as 

 the key of England, its ports being the shortest and most direct route 

 between the two countries. It was therefore necessary for William to 

 secure his lines of communication by placing them in the hands of 

 men bound to him by the closest ties of blood and service, such as 

 Robert of Mortain, his half-brother ; the Count of Eu ; the great Roger de 

 Montgomery, his cousin and trusted officer ; William deWarenne, whose 

 wife seems to have been the Conqueror's step-daughter ; and William de 

 Braose. It was especially important to secure the fencible ports of 

 Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, Steyning, Arundel and Chichester, while 

 the necessity of protecting the Unes of communication from the coast 

 to London and the midlands in the always possible event of one of the 

 tenants-in-chief proving rebellious would favour the shaping of these 

 fiefs or baronies into a series of parallel strips running north and south. 

 Thus only by a most improbable political combination could the road 

 from Normandy to London be blocked. 



A further argument in favour of the Norman origin of the rape 

 is to be found in the fact that, as will be shown later, the rapes appear 

 to have been essentially geldable units and to have been granted by the 

 Conqueror to their tenants at an arbitrary assessment of a round 

 number of hides, which bore no such definite relation to the pre- 

 Conquest assessment of the same districts as we should have expected 

 had those districts enjoyed the same organization before as after the 

 Conquest. Also the apparent application of the term rape^ to the 

 liberty of Battle Abbey (fo. \^b) which we know to have been 

 formed by grant of William I. suggests that the other rapes must also 

 have been of Norman formation. 



Again, the far greater frequency with which the rapes are referred 

 to by their possessorial than by their territorial titles suggests a recent 

 institution, which is further borne out by the fact that the outlying 

 portions of many manors were in the Confessor's time scattered 

 through the county without regard to the boundaries of the rapes, 

 though after the Conquest all such outlying portions were cut off from 

 the parent manor and included in the body of the rape within which 

 they lay. Finally, we may notice that the boundary between the 

 rapes of WiUiam de Warenne and William de Braose cut through the 

 two hundreds of Windham and Fishergate, and was therefore probably 

 of more recent establishment than they ; and it will be seen later that 

 these hundreds were probably of no great antiquity. 



' Lower {Compendious Hist, of Suss. i. p. vii.) quotes from a ' recent publication by an able 

 French antiquary (Herichcr) ' the following passage :—' We shall find in Normandy a great number 

 of the names of those chiefs to whom Rollo distributed Neustria by the cord—" suis fidelibus terrain 

 funiculo divisit." ' 



2 But see below, p. 375. 



I 353 45 



