DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Table 3 

 Peasantry in Dorset in 1086" 



Class 

 Bordarii 

 Villani 



Servi .... 

 Cosces .... 

 Cotcirii 

 Coliberti 



Censores (gabulalores in Exon.) 

 Homines 

 Ancille 



Servientes Francigeni 

 Presbyteri 

 Faber .... 



ToT.'iL . . . . . 7,217 (7,241) 



a Column (i) lists the totals for each class as calculated by the 

 author from the figures given in the Dorset Domesday survey, 

 and column (2) the totals for the same classes as calculated by 

 Sir Henry Ellis in his General Introduction to Domesdav Book 

 (1833), ii. 438. 



b This number appears to include the 3 priests recorded at 

 Hinton (no. 31), who were tenants of the king. 



The latter must be the villani. As the more prosperous class, they are usually enumer- 

 ated first. 3'' Their exact status and the actual composition of the class as a whole are 

 difficult to establish, but they were clearly not serfs. Although the word villanus in 

 Domesday may conveniently be translated as 'villein', it had not by that date acquired 

 the connotation of someone unfree that it had in later centuries. In 1086 it meant simply 

 a man who lived in a vill, and was equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon word tunesman.-^° The 

 class of villani must have included men who would have been described as geburs in 

 pre-Conquest documents, but this is not to say that the two classes were coterminous. 

 Men like the 4 villani holding 3 hides of land at Wraxall (nos. 328 and c) for rent could 

 not have been classified as geburs, and among the villani of Domesday there must be 

 included men who at one time had been free ceorls but had become economically 

 dependent on a Norman lord. There is evidence that men whom pre-Conquest docu- 

 ments would have called geneats (and Domesday itself, in some instances, radknights) 

 were sometimes included among the villani.^^ That some similar change had taken place 

 in Dorset is suggested by a comparison of the Domesday description of Iwerne Minster 

 (no. 131), belonging to Shaftesbury Abbey, and the description of the same manor 

 preserved in a survey of the abbey's land about 1130. The survey states that the 

 chaplain of Iwerne Minster had de imoquoque genet i daiwenie ambrani. The Domesday 

 description of the manor records only 29 villani and 20 bordars. The evidence of the 

 later survey suggests that some of these men were, or had been, geneats.-*^ In Dorset 

 many manors were very small and were held by quite large groups of thegns in 1066, 

 and it is plain that some of these thegns can have been hardly more prosperous in 

 economic terms than the villani. In two instances it seems almost as if the pre-Conquest 

 thegns or their heirs had survived as dependents of a Norman lord and were classed as 

 villani in Domesday. Kingcombe (no. 247), assessed at 34 virgates, was held by 5 

 thegns T.R.E. In 1086 it belonged to Ernulf of Hesdin. He does not seem to have had 

 any demesne there, and the only peasants were 5 villani, holding a plough. Another of 

 Ernulf's manors. North Poorton (no. 249), assessed at \ hide, was held by 7 thegns 



^' They do not always come first. At Beaminster (no. 

 46) there were xix bordarii et ii villani et ii coscez ; at Wai 

 (no. 163) Hi cosces citni uno villano habent imam carucam; 

 and at Spetisburj' (no. 173) ibi est iinus bordarius et iinus 

 villanus. But in general the villani precede the bordars, 



cotsets, and cottars. 



■•» V.C.H. Hunts, i. 324. 



•" F. M. Stenton, Anglo-Saxon Eng. 471. 



« B. M. Harl. MS. 61, ff. 4SV-46. 



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