A HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE 



A good illustration of this is afforded by a local transaction about a 

 century after Domesday. The manors of Robert d'Ouilly in the survey 

 are headed by Chaddleworth and Letcombe (Bassett), of which the for- 

 mer had woodland yielding ten swine, but the latter none. When 

 Richard Basset, under Henry II, restored to Abingdon Abbey the 

 rights at Chaddleworth bestowed on it by his predecessor he reserved 

 for himself in its woodland these rights : wood for his own fire and for 

 his kitchen, when he was in those parts, rods and poles for making 

 (sheep) folds and fence around his court, timber for (repairing) his 

 mills at Letcombe, and entry for the swine on his demesne at Let- 

 combe free of pannage. 1 The inference is that at Letcombe he was 

 dependent for all this on the somewhat distant woodland at Chaddle- 

 worth. 



We may now at last approach the towns, of which there were several 

 in the county. The origin of these is various, but presents no difficulty. 

 Wallingford, by far the most important, had been a Roman station, and 

 must have owed its origin, like Oxford, to the ford from which it is 

 named. It occupies in Domesday the peculiar position assigned to 

 county towns. As Professor Maitland has observed, it ' precedes the 

 rubric 'Terra Regis.' 1 The compilers of Domesday 'do not locate it on 

 the Terra Regis ; they do not locate it on any man's land ; it stands out- 

 side the general system of general land tenure.'* This he holds to be 

 due to ' the tenurial heterogeneity of the burgesses ' in such towns, 

 Wallingford, like Oxford, being an excellent example of the type. 4 It 

 is not possible to do justice in the space at one's disposal here to all the 

 points of interest in that survey of the borough 8 which occupies nearly 

 a page of Domesday Book. 



Oxford and Wallingford in a sense were both border towns, for in 

 Oxford there were certain Berkshire interests, 6 and in Wallingford there 

 were more houses belonging to Oxfordshire than to Berkshire manors. 

 This is well seen in the useful and instructive map compiled by Mr. 

 Ballard, 7 where Wallingford is shown in a central position relatively to 

 these manors. The ownership of these houses raises a difficult problem, 

 which is discussed at length by Prof. Maitland, and even more fully by 

 Mr. Ballard. Here one can only say that a careful distinction must be 

 drawn between houses held apart from any other property, and houses 



1 ' De bosco autem quod predicte terre adjacet, cum fuero in provincia ilia retineo ad focum coram me 

 faciendum et coquinam mearn, et virgas, et palas ad faldes et sepes circa curiam meam faciendas et 

 arbores ad molendina mea de Ledecumba, si in bosco illo inveniri poterunt,. . . . et porci mei de Lede- 

 cumba de dominio quieti sint de pasnagio ' (Chron. Ab. 189-190). 



2 Domesday Book and Beyond, 177. 3 Ibid. p. 178. * Ibid. pp. 179-80. 



B In this account of Wallingford it is twice styled a borough (burgus) and its inhabitants are burgesses 

 (burgenses). Reading is the only other Berkshire town styled a borough by Domesday. Mr. Ballard 

 (The Domesday Boroughs, 5) states that it applies the term ' civitas ' to Wallingford, but I do not find 

 that this is so (see p. 316 below). 



Under the King's manor of Steventon there is a remarkable entry that there belonged to it in 

 Oxford thirteen houses, worth 12s. 6d., and a meadow worth a pound, and that they believed Robert 

 d'Ouilly (the great man of the town) to be holding them, but had no knowledge thereof, as it was in 

 another shire. A house in Oxford is also assigned to another Berkshire manor. 



* Facing p. 28 in his book, The Domesday Boroughs. 



310 



