A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



places. In south Bedfordshire, for instance, not far off, we read of Ralf 

 Taillebosc, of whom we heard above, adding to the king's manors of 

 Leighton, Houghton and Luton lands which had not belonged to them 

 under Edward the Confessor (fos. 209, 209^), while in the same county 

 he had swept into the hands of the king's reeves a number of small 

 estates which had been held by sokemen or by thegns (fo. 2 1 S^). 1 In such 

 cases the king would expect to receive an increased rent (crementuni) in 

 consideration of such addition. The Hitchin group of manors was 

 ' farmed ' by the sheriff as a whole, and consequently Domesday records 

 its value at the end of the whole group. It should be carefully observed 

 that Hitchin itself (as apart from the rectory manor) is not separately 

 valued, nor are its old appurtenant estates; but those which had been 

 added to Hitchin by Harold or by Norman sheriffs have their values 

 recorded, except in the case of Wymondley. It may also be noted that 

 the value of the sokemen appurtenant, under the Confessor, is reckoned 

 separately from that of ' Hitchin,' as was also the case with the great 

 royal manor of Rothley in Leicestershire (fos. 230, 230^). 



The third of the features I described above as of special interest in 

 Hertfordshire is the light that the Domesday Survey throws on the 

 personality of its landowners. We are even now but feeling our way to 

 an understanding of the system on which land was held in England on 

 the eve of the Norman Conquest. For we have to view that system 

 through the eyes of Norman barons accustomed only to feudal institutions 

 and seeing everywhere dependent tenure and the ' manors ' to which they 

 were used. And it is now recognized that, under the Confessor, there 

 were tendencies, if not developments, which gave them to some extent 

 an excuse for taking the view they did. In one of those brilliant passages 

 by which he has illumined the subject Professor Maitland writes as 

 follows 



If now we look at that English state which is the outcome of a purely English 

 history, we see that it has already taken a pyramidal or conical shape. It is a society 

 of lords and men. At its base are the cultivators of the soil, at its apex is the king. 

 This cone is as yet but low. Even at the end of William's reign the peasant seldom 

 had more than two lords between him and the king, but already in the Confessor's 

 reign he might well have three. . . . Still a great change took place in the substance 

 of the cone, or if that substance is made up of lords and men and acres, then in the 

 nature of, or rather the relation between, the forces which held the atoms together. 

 Every change makes for symmetry, simplicity, consolidation. Some of these changes 

 will seem to us predestined. ... If England was not to be for ever a prey to 

 rebellious and civil wars, the power of the lords over their men must have been not 

 indeed increased, but territorialized ; the liberty of ' going with one's land to what- 

 ever lord one chose ' must have been curtailed. As yet the central force embodied in 

 the kingship was too feeble to deal directly with every one of its subjects, to govern 

 them and protect them. The intermediation of the lords was necessary ; the state 

 could not but be pyramidal ; and while this was so the freedom that men had of for- 

 saking one lord for another . . . was akin to anarchy.* 



1 A further illustration is afforded by a Norfolk entry (ii. fo. \\\lf) : 'To this manor were added 

 2 free men by Ralf Talibosc in the time of King William. The Hundred (court) testifies this.' A 

 survey of their land follows. 



* Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 1701. 



274 



