DOMESDAY SURVEY 



The other two passages in which legal terms occur relate to Wal- 

 lingford and to Kintbury. At Wallingford we have a group of ten 

 householders who had no rent to pay and who enjoyed, as Professor 

 Maitland renders the passage, ' blood, if blood was shed there, and the 

 man was received inside before he was challenged by the King's reeve, 

 except on Saturday, for then the King had the forfeiture on account of 

 the market ; and for adultery and larceny they had the forfeiture in 

 their houses, but the other forfeitures were the King's.' On this 

 difficult but important passage he comments thus : 



We cannot hope to recover the intricate rules which governed these affairs, rules 

 which must have been as intricate as those of our ' private international law.' But 

 the description of Wallingford tells us of householders who enjoy the ' forfeitures ' 

 which arise from crimes committed in their own houses, and a suspicion may cross 

 our minds that the right to these forfeitures is not in its origin a purely jurisdictional 

 or justiciary right. However, these householders are great people (the Bishop of 

 Salisbury, the Abbot of St. Albans are among them), their town houses are considered 

 as appurtenant to their rural manors, and the soke over the manor comprehends the 

 town house. 1 



With this explanation I cannot agree, for only the ten householders at 

 the end of the list, of whom nine were natives and, therefore, of small 

 account, enjoyed, as I read the passage myself, these privileges. More 

 to the point is the Southwark entry appositely cited by the same 

 writer : ' If any one in the act of committing an offence was there 

 challenged, he paid the amends to the King, but if, without being 

 challenged, he escaped under a man who had sake and soke, that man 

 had the amends.' The Wallingford entry is important for its bearing 

 on the question of soke and ' house-peace. " 



It must not be overlooked that in the above entry we incidentally 

 learn of the existence of a Saturday market at Wallingford. Professor 

 Maitland comments on the market-day exception : 



In the Wallingford of the Confessor's day there were many persons who had sake 

 and soke within their houses. If any one spilt blood and escaped into one of these 

 houses before he was attached, the owner received the blood-wite. But it was not so 

 on Saturdays, for then the money went to the King ' because of the market.' Thus 

 the King's borough-peace seems to be intensified on market-days ; on those days it 

 will even penetrate the houses of the immunists. 3 



The Kintbury entry records, as the same writer expresses it, the 

 grant by King Edward to one of his foresters of ' half a hide of land 

 free from all custom except the King's forfeiture, such as larceny, homi- 

 cide, ham-fare, and peace-breach,' 4 that is to say, the grant conveyed 



1 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 98. 



* For Professor Maitland writes : ' A much more difficult case comes before us at Warwick. We 

 first hear of the town houses that are held by great men as parts of their manors, and then we hear that 

 '' besides these houses are in the borough nineteen burgesses who have nineteen houses with sake and 

 soke and all customs " [and so had them T.R.E.] ' (pp. cit. pp. 98-9). For this phenomenon he pro- 

 pounds the doctrine of ' house-peace ' as against that of ' soke ' at Wallingford ; but, by my reading, the 

 two cases fall into line as precisely alike. 



3 Op. cit. p. 193. Op. cit. p. 79. 



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