THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



huscarlium.' These payments deserve to be compared and contrasted 

 with this at Colchester. 



Perhaps the most difficult entry in the whole survey of Colchester 

 is that which relates to what appears to be the common land of the 

 burgesses. Professor Maitland writes of it : 



Concerning Colchester there is an entry which perhaps ascribes to the community 

 of burgesses the ownership or the tenancy of fourscore acres of land and of a strip 

 eight perches in width surrounding the town wall ; but this entry is exceedingly 

 obscure. 1 



The entry in question runs : 



In commune burgensium iiii. xx acrar terrac ; et circa murum viii percae ; de quo 

 toto per annum habent burgenses Ix sol. ad servicium regis, si opus fuerit, sin autem in 

 commune dividunt. 



The learned Professor observes further, ' as to this most difficult passage,' 

 that 



Perhaps the most natural interpretation of it is that the community or commune of 

 the burgesses holds this land and receives by way of rent from tenants, to whom it is 

 let, the sum of 60 shillings a year, which, if this be necessary, goes to make up what 

 the borough has to pay to the king or otherwise is divisible among the burgesses. But, 

 as Mr. Round rightly remarks, 60 shillings for this land would be a large rent.* 



The great importance of this passage lies in the fact that, as is pointed 

 out by the same writer, ' traces are few in Domesday Book of any 

 property that can be regarded as the property of a nascent municipal 

 corporation, and even of any that can be called the joint or common 

 property of the burgesses.' ' I need not here recount these traces as set 

 forth by Professor Maitland, but I may call attention to Domesday's use 

 of the rare phrase ' in commune,' a few pages further on. Of the ' new 

 borough ' founded, since the Conquest, at Norwich, we read that 



Tola hec terra burgensium erat in dominio comitis Radulfi, et concessit earn regi in 

 commune ad faciendum burgum inter se et regent (fo. 1 1 8). 



This may possibly serve to illustrate the Colchester entry. As to the 

 land which forms its subject, I advanced the view 4 that it was doubtless 

 identical with the * Borough Field ' (or c Fields ') which we meet with 

 in old maps and deeds as lying to the south of the London Road, at the 

 back of the present Grammar School, and which appears to have com- 

 prised the site of the great Roman cemetery.' The ' eight perches about 

 the wall ' would seem to represent the ditch and mounds which origi- 

 nally formed its outworks. 



The last entry in the Colchester survey is that which relates to St. 

 Peter's church and its endowment. With the exception of Greenstead 

 church, spoken of above, this is the only one mentioned in the survey, 

 which is in striking contrast to the numerous churches and chapels 

 mentioned at Ipswich and Norwich. The explanation of this contrast 

 is found in the fact that Domesday only concerned itself with churches 



1 Domes Jay Book and Beyond, p. 201. * Ibid. * Ibid. p. 200. 



* dntifuary, vi. 97. 



' A ' Portmanncsfcld ' is mentioned in an early charter of St. John's Abbey, Colchester (Cartulary, 

 p. 321). There was a ' Porrmen's meadow' at Ipswich (compare p. 418, note 7 above). 



423 



