DOMESDAY SURVEY 



community. It would certainly be very possible to exaggerate the 

 significance of this fact ; situated as it was at the point where the 

 ' Ryknield Street ' crosses the Derwent Derby was a natural place for a 

 trading centre, and we read that receipts from its tolls form part of the 

 revenue which it furnished to the king. But we read in much greater 

 detail about its ploughlands, mills, woodland and meadows, which are 

 described in the same terms as those of an ordinary country manor. It 

 must be admitted that no support can be derived from Derby for the 

 ' garrison theory ' L of the borough. We find no references to * wall 

 work,' nor to military service of any kind, nor yet do any rural manors 

 appear to have possessed houses appurtenant to them in the borough. 8 

 The general impression left by the Domesday account of Derby is that of 

 a group of traders superimposed upon an economic organisation of the 

 land such as was common to the whole of the county. 



The revenue which the king derived from a borough may be divided 

 into two heads, which are kept well apart in the case of Derby. First 

 comes the sum which the borough contributed to the county ' geld ' ; 

 Derby was assessed at 12 carucates, Nottingham at 6. s In the second 

 place there is the ' farm ' of the borough, a round sum of money repre- 

 senting several distinct sources of revenue which the burgesses paid to 

 the king, or, rather, to his officer the sheriff. 4 At Derby this sum in 

 King Edward's time was 24, in which the prevalent duodecimal system 

 reckoningis still evident; by the time of the Survey it had risen 10^30 'with 

 the mills and the vill of Litchurch.' The twin borough of Nottingham 

 likewise paid 30 by way of farm, but, in addition, rendered 10 from 

 the mint. Now Domesday contains no mention of any mint at Derby, 

 and yet we know, from the evidence of the coins themselves, that money 

 was struck there in the Conqueror's time, 6 a fact which illustrates the 

 danger of arguing from the omissions of the great Survey. We are, 

 however, given one very important statement relating to the pre--Conquest 

 finance of Derby when we are told that ' two parts belonged to the king 

 and the third part to the earl of rent and toll and forfeiture, and of every 

 customary due.' This 'third part,' which belonged to the earl, is clearly 

 the ' tertius denarius redditus burgi ' ; and we have in this passage a 

 distinct proof that here at least it was assigned to the earl in the period 

 preceding the Conquest, just as from the Warwickshire portion of 

 Domesday we learn that the quite distinct ' tertius denarius placitorum 

 comitatus ' was also in that case a recognised possession of the earl in the 

 Conqueror's time. 6 



A rather unexpected feature of Derby as it appears in Domesday is 

 the ecclesiastical character of many of the entries relating to it. No 



1 Maitland Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 188 et seqq. 



8 The importance of the agricultural side of borough life is discussed in Maitland's Township and 

 Borough. 



3 For the round sums of geld cast upon the boroughs see Mr. Round in Domesday Studies, i. 117. 



* See for a full discussion of the farm of the borough the article on Domesday Finance, ibid. i. 



6 Numismatic Chrm. vol. ( 1 904,) iii. 260. 



' V.C.H. Warm. i. 273. For the distinction between these two sources of comital revenue see 

 Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville. 



309 



