A HISTORY OF DORSET 



of the Dorset section have not sunived. Apart from the incomplete descriptions of the 

 five counties of Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, the Exon. Domes- 

 day contains the Geld Rolls for all five counties, including three distinct versions of the 

 Wiltshire Rolls, lists of terre occupate for Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall, and sum- 

 maries of the fiefs of some barons, notably the Abbot of Glastonbury. The descriptions 

 of the manors in Exon. Domesday are fuller than those in the Exchequer text, especially 

 in recording the livestock statistics which the author of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 

 found so shocking. '° Many surnames and occupations are recorded in Exon. Domesday 

 and omitted in the Exchequer text. Exon. Domesday regularly distinguishes between 

 the demesne, which the Exchequer text records sporadically, and the land of the 

 t/V/a/;/," which the Exchequer text does not mention at all. The phraseology of Exon. 

 Domesday is very diflFuse, in strong contrast to the brevity of the Exchequer text, and 

 the numerous differences in terminology and the spelling of place and personal names 

 have given rise to the belief that the two versions are 'independent copies of the same 

 original'.'- It was also suggested bv Reichel that the sections for Cornwall, Devon, and 

 Somerset were compiled at Exeter from the original returns, while the sections for 

 Dorset and Wiltshire w^ere made at Winchester, from an Exchequer digest of the ori- 

 ginal returns.'-' This view, which seems on the face of it unlikely, is not borne out by any 

 significant differences between the Dorset section and the rest of Exon. Domesday. 

 More recently, however, the theory has been adopted that the Exchequer text for the 

 south-western counties was derived from Exon. Domesday.'-* 



Apart from the question of place and personal names there are discrepancies between 

 the two texts which are difficult to explain if one is based upon the other although on 

 balance the general resemblance of the two texts makes it difficult to believe that they 

 are quite independent of each other. The Exon. Domesdav for Dorset covers the land of 

 the king, with the exception of the two manors formerly held by Countess Goda, the 

 land of the Countess of Boulogne, the lands of Cerne Abbey, Abbotsbur}- Abbey, 

 Athelney Abbey, Tavistock Abbey, and INIilton x^bbey, the lands of William of 

 Moyon, Roger Arundel, Serle of Burcy, the wdfe of Hugh fitz Grip, and Walter de 

 Claville. In all, i6o of the 515 manors recorded in the Exchequer text are also in 

 Exon. Domesday, covering about one-third of the total hidage of the county. As has 

 been said above, Exon. Domesdav contains information not in the Exchequer text; it is 

 also true that the Exchequer text contains items of information which do not appear in 

 Exon. Domesday. At Spetisbury (nos. 274 and Ixxxiv) there were two pieces of pasture, 

 one piece measuring 5^ furlongs by 2 furlongs and in alio loco another piece measuring 

 7.\ furlongs by i^ furlong. According to the Exchequer text this second piece of land lay 

 super aquain but these words do not appear in the Exon. entrv. There is a more serious 

 omission in the Exon. account of the borough of Shaftesburv. The Exchequer text says 

 that the Abbess of Shaftesbury had there 151 burgesses, 20 mansiones vacuus, and a 

 garden, the whole rendering 65^., but none of these details is in the Exon. account of the 

 borough. 



The most serious discrepancy in the arrangement of manors concerns the land of the 

 king. In the Exchequer text the six manors which had belonged to King Edward, 

 beginning with Portland, come first, followed, with a separate heading, by the 



'"'... nor indeed (it is a shame to relate but it seemed '^ O. von Feilitzen, Pre-Conquest Personal Sanies of 



no sham.e to him to do) one ox nor one cow nor one pig Dom. Rk. g, n. i. 



which was there left out, smd not put down in his record' : " \'.C.H. Devon, i. 375-80. 



Anglo-Saxon Chron., a revised translation ed. D. White- '■• R. Welldon Finn, 'The Immediate Sources of the 



lock and others, 161-2. Exch. Domesday', Bull. John Rylands Libr. xl. 47-78; 



" For a discussion of villani and other classes of Ga\hTZ\X\i, Making of Dotn. Bk. cap. WW. 

 peasants, see pp. 14—20. 



