DOMESDAY SURVEY 



exacted 56 in money weighed and assayed, with 10 'by tale ' in re- 

 spect of the (market) toll, and from Wendover 38 of money weighed 

 and assayed. From Brill was exacted as much as from Wendover, be- 

 sides 12 of similar money 'for the forest,' although it had formerly 

 paid but 18 by tale. Buckingham, again, which under King Edward 

 had ' rendered' no more than 10 by tale, was now called upon to pay 

 16 in blanch (albo) silver. 



The technical term ' blanch silver,' in use at the Exchequer of the 

 twelfth century, has had some learning expended on it. Our Bucking- 

 hamshire evidence tends to show that Domesday used it as equivalent to 

 ' weighed and assayed ' money ; and this is considered probable by the 

 latest writers on the subject. 1 In that case the payment in blanch silver 

 involved an increased exaction of about a shilling in the pound. 8 It 

 should be observed that the three manors in which the king had succeeded 

 Harold made their payments, one of them in ' weighed and assayed ' 

 money, and two in ' blanch silver.' This, as in the case of the other 

 manors, supports the view that the two phrases meant the same thing. 

 The character of these payments deserves careful study, because they are 

 peculiar to the king's demesne. Even the seventh and last manor 

 entered under ' Terra Regis,' namely (part of) Biddlesden, is not so dis- 

 tinguished, it being only an escheat and not part of the demesne ; the 

 lands of Earl Aubrey, which he had lost before the Survey, are normally 

 entered apart, under his name, in Domesday, but probably because he 

 had held but this estate in the county they are here, as it were, tacked 

 on to the king's lands. 



The manors which Harold had held present some difficulty. It 

 seems to have been the practice of the Conqueror to look on these as 

 his peculiar spoil and to annex them to the Crown demesne ; and accord- 

 ingly in Buckinghamshire (Princes) Risborough, together with Harold's 

 lands in Swanbourne and in Upton near Slough, underwent this fate. On 

 the other hand, Wooburn was given to Remi, Bishop of Lincoln, while 

 Harold's share of Ellesborough was held at the time of the Survey by 

 William son of Ansculf (de Picquigny). But of the latter manor 

 Domesday records, in a slightly obscure phrase, that his father Ansculf 

 had obtained it, by the king's command, in exchange for half Risborough 

 ' contra Radulfum Talgebosch.' The character and object of this ex- 

 change is complicated by the fact that Ansculf certainly, and Ralf (we 

 shall find) probably, had been sheriffs of this county, for sheriffs, as 

 Domesday shows in the adjoining county of Herts, were apt at times to 

 confuse the king's manors with their own. All that we can say is 

 that Ansculf must have somehow obtained possession of a moiety of 

 Princes Risborough, and that he was given the Ellesborough estate 

 as compensation for its loss. 



The difficulty is caused not so much by the fact that the Wooburn 

 and Ellesborough estates were valued at the time of the Survey like any 



1 The editors of the Dialogus de Scaccario for the Clarendon Press (1902), p. 34. 



2 Ibid. p. 31. 



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