A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



it, under the ' Terra Regis.' Twyford, mentioned above as another 

 Domesday omission, appears in local history as a chapelry of Hurst, 

 but even Hurst itself is not entered in the Survey. Of this the 

 explanation is that it appears under Whistley (Hurst), one of Abingdon 

 Abbey's manors. 



The present map of Berkshire preserves but trifling traces of men 

 of the Domesday age. Although by no means holding an extensive 

 fief in the county, Ralf de Mortemer has set his stamp more surely than 

 any other of its barons on the Berkshire of to-day. Pinkneys Green 

 commemorates, it is true, that Picard house of Picquigny which had 

 Ghilo for its ancestor, but in ' Mortimer ' Ralf s surname has actually 

 supplanted the Stratfield of which Domesday found him in possession, 

 through the transition stage of Stratfield Mortimer. One of his pre- 

 decessors there was a Hampshire thegn, Cheping, whom he had 

 succeeded, in that county, at many places, his estates in the Hampshire 

 Stratfields touching his Berkshire property. It is interesting to find 

 that Oidelard, his tenant at Peasemore and Hodcott, held under him in 

 no fewer than five other counties including Hampshire. Kingston 

 Bagpuize preserves the name of a Domesday under-tenant, but in all 

 the county there is no such striking survival as at East Garston, where 

 in its present form, an almost inevitable corruption, we may still dis- 

 tinguish the ton held before the Conquest by Esegar, staller and sheriff 

 of Middlesex, Geoffrey de Mandeville's predecessor. 1 It has, indeed, 

 been alleged that ' Ulvritone ' (now represented by Newbury) was a 

 name similarly formed from ' Ulward,' which was that of its previous 

 lord. But the only name from which it could be formed is Wulfric, 

 not Wulfward. 



Like the rest of England at the time of the Survey, Berkshire had 

 very few sources of wealth, and these were almost exclusively found in 

 land and stream. Traffic there was upon the Thames and along the 

 ancient ways, but trade, which scarcely lay within the province of the 

 Survey, was as yet in its infancy. 



With monotonous iteration the ploughlands and the ploughs are 

 recorded in entry after entry, nor is there anything special in the features 

 they present to detain us. The character of soils does not change, and 

 probably a great sweep of cornfields extended from Wallingford to the 

 Hanneys, and from Abingdon to the Ilsley downs, where the vast open 

 fields distinctive of the Middle Ages are kept in memory by the names 

 of Milton Field, Harwell Field, Hagbourne Field and the rest. The 

 great plough with its eight oxen toiled across these broad spaces guided, 

 at least on the lord's demesne, by the serfs of whom we read. I have 

 argued that these serfs are normally found in the proportion of two to 

 each demesne plough-team, 2 and to take but one instance, we find that on 

 the lordship of Sonning, although it consisted of scattered manors, there 



1 A recent attempt to restore the original name has failed, but its form is well established. It was 

 ' Esegarestone ' in 1 185, and in the thirteenth century (Testa), and ' Esgarton ' so late as 1351. 

 , Worcestershire, vol. i. 275. 



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