THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



In spite of the clearness of this passage Mr. Freeman came, as I 

 showed in 1882,* to extraordinary grief over it, connecting it, in his 

 William Rufus (ii. 4645), with 'the common land of the burgesses' 

 entered in Domesday and with the Domesday entry of Eudo's houses in 

 Colchester, in which he read ' d[omus] ' as ' denarios ' ! 



I suggested, in my original paper, that the suspicious growth in 

 value of Stanway since the days of the Confessor * might have something 

 to do with the extension of its ' berewite ' of Lexden at the hands of 

 the king's officers.* 



After these two preliminary entries we plunge into a long list of 

 the holders of houses and of land, which is probably unrivalled 

 in Domesday, though short ones of the same character are found 

 under Norwich and Oxford. The number of houses would seem to 

 have been about 450, both at the death of the Confessor and in 1086. 

 I may here quote my summary of this remarkable list : 



If we examine the first half headed 'Isti sunt Burgenses Regis qui reddunt 

 consuetudinem' we find the names of 276 burgesses, several of them owning many 

 houses and a few owning none, the grand total of their houses being 355. Their 

 land, which was divided into unequal plots, amounted to no less than 1,296 acres of 

 arable and 5 1 of meadow. Most of the plots were but a few acres in extent, often 

 but one or two, and suggest a very large element of ' peasant proprietors,' dwelling 

 probably on their little holdings, of which many must have been distant from the walls. 

 There were also several properties of from 20 to 30 acres ; and the whole effect pro- 

 duced is that of a land-owning community, with scarcely any traces of a landless, 

 trading element. Hence, we may presume, the relative sparseness of population ; hence 

 also the want of development in the community. Among the burgesses we find seven 

 priests and nearly twenty women, one of the latter, Leofleda, being perhaps the 

 wealthiest of the townsfolk, with her three houses, her 25 acres and her mill. The 

 pure English element is of course predominant in the names, and lingered long among 

 the fields and copses after fashion had banished it from the font. But Hacon and Tovig, 

 Osgod and Segrim, were names that told of Norse descent. And followers of the 

 Conqueror as well figured among the king's burgesses. 4 



The only correction I would now make is that I take the acres to 

 be rather ' geld ' acres than measures of area. This view is supported 

 by the prevalence of 2o-acre, i5~acre, lo-acre and 5-acre holdings. 

 Although we cannot divide the list into two sharply defined portions 

 for some Normans are found in the first portion and some natives in the 

 second there is clearly a break where the record, after giving the hold- 

 ings of the burgesses, adds that * isti burgenses ' a rather emphatic 

 phrase have 5 1 acres of meadow. The next portion begins with the 

 very interesting entry of the separate estate held by Hamo ' dapifer,' in 

 which, as at Faulkborne and Totham, his predecessor was Thurbern. 

 It included * i curia,' an admittedly difficult word. But its use here 

 seems to be illustrated by the entry of the bishop's curia at Norwich, in 

 which were fourteen houses.' In addition, it would seem, to this 

 ' court ' he had a ' hall ' of his own, which enjoyed the exceptional 

 privilege of being free from dues to the king. His fifteen burgesses 



1 Antiquary, vi. 989. ' See p. 431 below. 



* Antiquary, vi. 7. * Ibid. vi. 5. 



6 'Et homines episcopi x domus et in propria curia episcopi xiiii mansure ' (fo. 117). 



I 417 53 



