A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



Church,' and it should have returned to the Church after his death. It 

 was seized nevertheless by Edward of Salisbury. At Therfield ./Elfric 

 the priest had held land ' under the abbot of Ramsey without power to 

 sell except by permission of the abbot' (fo. 141^). This may not have 

 been a case of holding under a lease, but it is clearly implied that the 

 land should not have passed, as it did, into the hands of Hardwin 

 d'Eschalers. 



The wealth of the county at the time of Domesday was almost 

 wholly derived from its rural manors. First in importance, as contri- 

 buting to that wealth, was the plough with its team of 8 oxen ; then 

 came the water-meadows that provided hay for the oxen, the ' pasture ' 

 that afforded feed for the live stock of lord and peasant, the woodland in 

 which were fattened vast herds of swine, the fisheries, as they were 

 termed, which paid a rent in eels, and the water-mills to which the 

 peasants took their corn to be ground. Hertfordshire was notably free 

 from what Domesday terms ' waste,' that is from traces of ravage in 

 which manors had been spoiled of their stock and land thrown out of 

 cultivation. On the other hand, we may note a general decrease in the 

 values assigned to the manors in 1086 as compared with that which is 

 assigned to them under Edward the Confessor. Those, for instance, of 

 the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of Winchester, the first 

 two tenants-in-chief (fo. 133), work out in aggregate as follows 



T.R.E. 

 3 s - T> 



' When received ' 



Li 13*- z d - 



In 1086 



Here we have a sharp drop due to the struggles of the Conquest and a 

 partial recovery at the time of the Survey. This is much as might be 

 expected, and is very frequent in Domesday ; but what is remarkable in 

 Hertfordshire is that, in the place of recovery, we have sometimes a 

 further diminution in value. Here are some typical manors, each from 

 a different fief 



These instances illustrate sufficiently the damage which the troubles of 

 the Conquest inflicted on the shire's prosperity, the slowness with which 



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