A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



taken. The original idea appears to have been to compile the volume 

 in fasciculi of 8 folios each, the contents of which alone should appear 

 on the recto of the first folio. When these fasciculi were bound to- 

 gether to form the volume, the list of their contents would become use- 

 less and would therefore be deleted. But it was soon found that this 

 plan would not work in practice, as the fiefs could not be adjusted to 

 fasciculi of 8 folios. The idea was consequently abandoned, and reliance 

 placed only on the list for the whole county which covers the recto of 

 the first folio in the case of all three of the eastern counties. 



It would be imagined from this list on the opening page of the 

 volume that the survey of Essex closes with what it terms ' Invasiones.' 

 But these, on the contrary, are followed by a long separate survey of 

 what is styled ' The Hundred of Colchester.' The position here assigned 

 to Colchester is well worthy of notice, for it contrasts with that accorded 

 to Ipswich and to Norwich. The latter, followed by Yarmouth and 

 Thetford, is surveyed at the end of the first division of the king's land 

 in Norfolk (fos. 116-8), while Ipswich is found at the end of all the 

 king's land in Suffolk (fo. 290). But the three towns have this in com- 

 mon ; they are all accorded separate treatment. 



I shall now therefore add a short separate introduction to that 

 survey of Colchester which stands altogether apart from that of the rest 

 of the county. 



COLCHESTER 



Speaking at the Colchester Congress of the Archaeological Institute, 

 in 1876, Professor Freeman called attention to the rich field of study 

 presented by the lengthy survey of Colchester in Domesday Book. 1 To 

 this survey I subsequently devoted a series of papers in the Antiquary 

 (1882), and it is also referred to more than once in Professor Maitland's 

 volume, Domesday Book and Beyond. It is hardly possible, indeed, to 

 accord it adequate treatment in the space here available, more especially 

 as the text is corrupt and some of the entries extremely difficult. 



A glance at the Domesday map will show that the ' Hundred of 

 Colchester,' if coterminous, as it doubtless was, with the present borough, 

 comprised a considerable area. Three terms are used in the survey for 

 what it calls Colchester hundret, civitas and burgus. One must not 

 linger over these terms, tempting though it be to do so ; but I will 

 briefly state that I hold the burgus to represent the walled enclosure, 108 

 acres in area, the ' burh ' repaired by Edward the Elder, where it 

 ' tobroken was,' in 92 1* Civitas, on the other hand, is a difficult term, 

 one of those to which Domesday students have been apt to attach, in my 

 opinion, too definite a meaning. Mr. Freeman, who was always eager 

 to discover an exactness and a significance in a terminology which re- 

 joiced in being free from both, spoke of Domesday as a document ' in 



1 Archttohgical Journal, vol. xxxiv. 67-70. 



z For the ' due domus in burgo ' appurtenant to Greenstead and the ' ii domus in burgo ' which 

 formed part of the endowment of St. Peter's must have been within the walls. 



414 



