DOMESDAY SURVEY 



fee. The slight reduction of the Bishop of Chichester's geld from i68 

 hides to i 60 hides i virgate may possibly have been intended to place him 

 on an equality with the archbishop. When we turn to the lay barons 

 the same lack, of apparent method in the reductions is noticeable, but 

 when we find the assessment of the Count of Mortain reduced from 520 

 hides to 401, that of William de Warenne from 597 to 526, Earl Roger 

 from 768 to 648, the Count of Eu from 190 to 172 and William de 

 Braiose from 425 to about 132, it is scarcely overbold to assume that 

 the rape of Pevensey was assessed at 400 hides, that of Lewes at 525, 

 Earl Roger's holding at 650, Hastings rape at 175, and that of Bramber 

 at probably 150 (the Braose figures are rather puzzling). For the geld 

 from these round numbers of hides the sheriffs of the several rapes were 

 no doubt responsible to the sheriff of the county, and naturally the 

 assessment within each rape was so adjusted as to benefit the lord of 

 that rape ; that is to say, instead of reducing the liability of each manor, 

 vill or hundred, by an amount proportionate to its share of the whole, 

 the two or three principal demesne manors of the tenant-in-chief had 

 their liability very greatly reduced, while the remaining manors were 

 left practically unaffected.' Thus Earl Roger's manors of Singleton and 

 Harting were reduced respectively from 97I hides to 47 and from 80 

 to 48 ; in Lewes rape Iford was cut down from 58 to 36, Rodmell 

 from 64 to 33, and Patcham from 60 to 40. The Count of Mortain 

 did things on a still larger scale, reducing the 48 hides of Firle and the 

 50 hides of Willingdon to nothing. In the rape of Hastings the 

 reductions are so slight as to be hardly worth notice, while in that of 

 Bramber on the contrary almost every manor is more or less reduced, 

 though here again the greatest fall is in the case of William de Braose's 

 demesne manor of Washington, reduced from 59 hides to nothing. 



An additional argument in favour of the rape having been a fiscal 

 unit is the association in Domesday and contemporary records of the 

 terms rape and geld, an association so intimate tha.tfons rapiim became a 

 technical expression signifying exemption from geld, and it was possible 

 to write either : ' Tunc se dejhidebat pro 41 hidis modo pro nichilo quia 

 nunquam geldavit' (fo. 27), or ' Una virga est insuper que non geldat quia 

 est f oris rapum ' (fo. ibb). Here we have a double equation, se defendebat 

 (was assessed) answering to geldavit (paid geld) and foris rapum to non 

 geldavit.^ A number of instances of the use of the phrase foris rapum 

 occur in Domesday, and in the deeds of this period in the cartulary of 

 Lewes Priory ; an especially good example is the grant by William 

 Malfed of certain lands which ' owe no hidage or other service quia sunt 

 de forsrapy 



Before leaving the subject of the geld we may note the remarkable 

 case of ' Esseswelle ' Hundred, which, as is stated both at the beginning 



' Mr. Round drew attention to this arrangement in Domesday Studies (pp. ill, 113), and inferred 

 that it involved the reduction being later than the process of sub-infeudation. 



2 The use of nunquam in the restricted sense of ' never since the Conquest ' should be noted, and 

 can be paralleled from several other passages. 



3 Cott. Vesp. F. XV. fo. 43. 



I 361 46 



