THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



* in pledge,' and he was also probably the ' Robert ' who held of William 

 Fitz Corbucion one of his manors in pledge. And we find him else- 

 where in Domesday thus acquiring land. Possibly he had wrung 

 money out of the burgesses of Oxford ; possibly he had farmed to his 

 advantage the royal manors of Warwickshire. 1 



Before discussing the sources of rural wealth we may see what we 

 can learn from Domesday's account of Warwick. The great Survey is 

 always disappointing when it is dealing with the towns ; even of those 

 which it does not ignore its account is meagre and obscure. The two 

 points which it seems to have concerned itself with recording are (i) the 

 king's rights and dues, (2) the payment of the king's ' geld,' that ' geld ' 

 which may almost be described as the raison d'etre of Domesday. 



We should first note the position occupied by Warwick in the 

 Survey, implying that it stood in some way apart. Professor Maitland 

 has attached significance to the position thus assigned to county towns " by 

 Domesday ; it places them, he says, 'outside the general system of land 

 tenure.' And the cause of this he finds in what he terms ' the tenurial 

 heterogeneity of the burgesses.' At Warwick, says the record, ' the 

 king has 113 houses in his demesne, and the king's barons have 112, 

 from all of which the king receives his 'geld.' It then draws up a roll 

 of the houses held by the ' barons," and incidentally we may observe that 

 it accounts for 121, not for ii2. 3 We recognize every 'baron' on the 

 list as holding land of the king in chief somewhere in the county, 

 though we have to reckon as ' barons ' for the purpose not only the lady 

 Christina, but even ' Luith ' the nun. The record then tells us that all 

 these houses belong to the lands which the said barons hold outside the 

 borough and are valued with them. This is another distinctive feature 

 of county towns in Domesday, and it has given rise to much theorizing, 4 

 which has failed, however, to gain acceptance. 



The difficulty in dealing with these houses is that, on analysing the 

 Survey, we can only discover in all twenty-three houses entered under rural 

 manors as appurtenant to them in Warwick. The Bishop of Worcester's 

 manors reveal seven houses instead of nine ; those of Ralf de Limesi 

 seven instead of nine ; those of Robert de Stafford four instead of six. 

 Of the other 'barons' Hugh de Grentmesnil has two instead of four, and 

 Turchil one instead of four ; William Fitz Corbucion alone has two as in 

 the borough list. The only explanation one can offer is that the missing 

 houses are included in the values of other manors without their existence 

 being mentioned. The vagaries of Domesday are endless/ 



Alveston and Bishop's Hampton, south-west of Warwick, are 

 credited with three and with four houses respectively ; Budbrooke, 



1 The other local case of holding land in pledge is at Chesterton, to which I have referred on 

 p. 276. 



3 Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 176-7. 



' This may be due to a scribal miscript, such as sometimes occurs in Domesday, 'cxii.' being 

 written in error for ' cxxi." 



4 Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 179-90. 



6 Apart from these houses Hugh de Grentmesnil had ' two burgesses in Warwick ' appurtenant 

 to his manor of Mars ton. 



I 289 37 



