A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



46 'burgesses ' worth to the abbey no less than 11 14^. a year 'from 

 tolls and other issues of the vill.' But if burgesses had already clustered 

 around the abbey's walls, the great fortress of Berkhampstead, as a seat of 

 the count of Mortain, had proved no less attractive ; its ' burbium ' 

 already contained 52 burgesses. 1 Trade, in the form of local markets, 

 was already faintly beginning in somewhat unexpected places ; from 

 10 traders (mercatores) at Cheshunt the count of Mortain was receiving 

 i os. a year ; at Ashwell, on the Cambridgeshire border, there were 

 14 burgesses, and nearly 50.;. a year accrued to the abbot of Westminster 

 ' from the toll and other customary dues of the borough ' (sic) ; even at 

 Stanstead Abbots we read of ' 7 burgesses,' but as the 24^. received from 

 them included the profits of the meadow and the woodland, they cannot 

 have been of much account. Possibly the junction of the Stort and the 

 Lea had given rise to an infant trade. 



A few miscellaneous matters remain to be noted. One of the most 

 tragic events referred to in the pages of Domesday is the forfeiture of 

 earl Ralf of Norfolk as the result of his abortive rising in 1075. There 

 are allusions to this sensational episode under Munden and Wallington 

 (fos. 137, 140), but we cannot tell what connection earl Ralf had with 

 Hertfordshire. A forfeiture of another kind receives illustration in the 

 county. There is a curious statement in Heming's Cartu/ary, which 

 relates to the monastery of Worcester, that under Cnut an order was 

 made that any one four days in arrear with his payment of ' geld ' (land tax) 

 forfeited ipso facto his land, which then passed to the first person who 

 came forward and paid the tax (i. 278). Now, under the fief of Peter 

 de Valognes, we read that he took the lands of a certain sokeman into 

 the king's hands ' pro forisfactura de gildo regis se non reddidisse ' (fo. 

 141), though the men of the shire bore witness that it had always been 

 exempt from ' geld.' This is a typical instance of oppression by a 

 Norman sheriff. 8 Again the Domesday use of ' manor ' receives illustra- 

 tion from the land of Deorman (fo. 142). Professor Maitland holds that 

 in Domesday ' manor ' is ' a technical term,' that it meets us ' as an 

 accurate term charged with legal meaning.' ' And this meaning he sets 

 himself to discover. As he observes, ' the symbol M which represents a 

 manor is often carried out into the margin ' ; and this is the case with 

 Walkern, a lo-hide manor. Moreover Watton, which immediately 

 precedes it, is styled by Domesday a terra only, not a manerium. And 

 yet we have but to look lower down in the column to read of an outlying 

 estate : ' HEBC terra est appreciata in Watone M[anerio] derman.' We 

 thus learn that manerium was not a technical term, but was used alterna- 

 tively with terra by the Domesday scribes.* 



Although the identification of the place-names entered in the record 

 is best dealt with, as a rule, at the place where the name occurs, it seems 



1 See also p. 280 above. 



8 Ralf ' Taillgebosc,' of whom we heard above (p. 284) is found similarly obtaining land at Sharn- 

 brook, Beds, by paying the charge on it himself when the tenant failed to do so (fo. 2 1 66). 



3 Domes Jay Book and Beyond, pp. 107-8. 



4 See farther on this point my paper in the EngKsh Historical Review, rv. 293-302. 



296 



