DOMESDAY SURVEY 



EJCASHIRE as a county finds no place in Domesday Book ; to 

 obtain a view of it as a whole it is necessary to search for its 

 component parts in the returns of two other counties. At the 

 date of the survey the lands forming the southern half of the 

 present county were taken with Cheshire, 1 under the title of 'The land 

 between Ribble and Mersey,' of which the return occupies little more than 

 a page and a half of the record (f. 269^). The lands comprised within the 

 northern portion were included in Yorkshire, the details being found at the 

 end of the return of the land held by the king (ff. 30 1, 302)," except for 

 seven manors which are entered in the return of the lands held by Roger of 

 Poitou (f. 332)*; these two sets of entries together occupy only three-quarters 

 of a page. That these items were thus disconnected was due not only to the 

 fact that there was no such comital entity as ' the shire of Lancaster ' at this 

 time, but also to the circumstance that the lands originally granted in this 

 district to Roger of Poitou, which embraced the greater part of these regions, 

 were at the time of the survey almost entirely in the hands of the king. 



These disconnected returns, when brought together and examined, yield 

 but little satisfactory information as to the holders of lands in 1086, and but 

 few details of the condition and value of these regions. Those for the land 

 between Ribble and Mersey are the fullest, but possess the tantalizing cha- 

 racteristic, common to other great manors comprising many berewicks or 

 dependent manors, of being a summary rather than a detailed survey. The 

 returns for the district north of the Ribble are even less satisfactory, and 

 consist of little more than lists of manors with their geldable areas, or rather 

 assessments, after the manner of a geld-book. 



The impression left upon the mind by a careful study of these returns 

 is that a general picture of the state of these regions at the time of the 

 conquest and immediately afterwards may be broadly sketched from the 

 materials here provided, but that no detailed or precise description is possible. 

 One important feature which presents itself at the outset of our examination 

 of this record is that we have to deal with regions upon the borderland of the 

 ancient kingdoms of Mercia, Northumbria, and Cumbria, possessing all the 

 unstable characteristics of debatable lands subject to conquest and colonization 

 by the ruler of any one of these three principalities, followed by re-conquest 

 and re-colonization, perhaps often repeated. This position of insecurity and 

 instability was further accentuated by the opportunity for foreign invasion 

 afforded by the long irregular coastline with its bays and estuaries, extending 



1 There is no evidence that the district was under the jurisdiction of the sheriff and shire-mote of 

 Chester. There is reference to shire-mote and (shire-)reeve, but nothing to show what shire-mote and sheriff" 

 is meant. 



3 The facsimile edition of Domesday Book (1861) omits the return of half the manor of Burrow, and 

 erroneously includes the Yorks manor of Oulston (f. 330). 



3 Roger's name is omitted in the list of tenants in chief (f. 298^). 



269 



