A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



survival in Sussex of the interesting and ancient rent in kind known as 

 the ' Firma unius noctis ' or ' Firma unius diei.' The three are King 

 Edward's manors of Eastbourne and Beddingham in east Sussex and 

 Beeding in the west. In the case of the last named we are told that it 

 was worth £()^ ^s. 6d., which is sufficiently near the £ioc, which Mr. 

 Round has shown to be the usual value of the ' day's farm.' ' The 

 other two manors are unfortunately not valued, and there is no trace of 

 any other manor or group of manors having originally rendered this 

 ferm, though the curious valuation of Ditchling at ^80 5J. 6d. suggests 

 its former union with another estate valued at ^i k, which cannot how- 

 ever be traced with any degree of certainty. Nor is there any trace of 

 the peculiarity which marked the royal manors which paid this ' day's 

 farm' in Hampshire — their not being hidated ;' with the exception of 

 a piece of pasture land belonging to Stoughton and a piece of land in 

 the suburb of Chichester, Sussex was completely assessed in hides. 



When we turn from the consideration of manorial revenue to that 

 of its sources it is natural to deal first with the most important of these 

 — the arable land. This is estimated in Sussex by the number of ploughs 

 which would be required to till the land of the manor, each plough 

 team being reckoned, in other counties and therefore presumably in 

 Sussex, as of eight oxen, for the use of horses in ploughing was in the 

 eleventh century though not unknown yet quite unusual, and indeed on 

 the Sussex Downs the ploughteam of magnificent black oxen is still a 

 common and most picturesque sight. The ploughteams actually 

 existing on the manor were divided into those on the demesne, or home 

 farm, and those of the villeins,' and though usually corresponding to the 

 estimated number were sometimes far fewer, as at Trotton where there 

 were only five ploughs although there was employment for thirty-six, 

 and sometimes in excess, the most notable instances being South 

 Mailing, where there were ninety-four ploughs though the number 

 required was estimated at fifty, and Ditchling, where sixty ploughlands 

 supported ninety-nine and a half ploughs. Nor did the ploughlands 

 bear any definite relation to the hidage ; thus, South Mailing rated at 

 eighty hides had only fifty ploughlands, while Rotherfield with twenty- 

 six ploughlands was rated at only three hides. For the whole county 

 the number of hides and ploughlands is nearly equal, but their relative 

 values were subject to great local variation ; thus the ratio of hides to 

 ploughlands was in the rape of Hastings approximately one to two, in 

 Pevensey one to one, in Lewes eight to seven, in Bramber three to two, 

 and in Earl Roger's rape nine to eight — the hidage being here taken 

 at its pre-Conquest figure. 



' V.C.H. Hants, i. 402. 2 Ibid. 



3 Mr. Round points out that the endowment of Lewes Priory affords remarkable evidence on this 

 point. William de Warenne's foundation charter (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) grants to 

 the abbey of Cluni ' terram duarum carrucarum in proprio in Suamberga cum viUanis ad eam pertinenti- 

 bus . . . et viUam Falemetam ubi sunt tres carruce proprie cum his omnibus que ad eam pertinent.' 

 On turning to Domesday we find that the monks had two ploughlands on the demesne of their estate 

 at Iford in Swanborough Hundred, and two on their demesne at Falmer, thus showing that the gr«nt 

 referred expressly to the demesne, to which the rest of the manor was looked on as appurtenant. 



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