DOMESDAY SURVEY 



closely the facts preserved to us agree with the hypothesis of a method of assess- 

 ment by progressive distribution of a fixed burden. On this hypothesis Norfolk 

 has thirty-six hundreds to Suffolk's twenty-four, because its estimated rateable 

 value as a county is to the estimated rateable value of Suffolk as 3 to 2. The 

 county is then divided into hundreds, and the hundred into leets. We cannot, 

 as has been said already, always see clearly into how many leets each hundred 

 was divided, but the tables give evidence of the balancing of district against 

 district and parish against parish. Thus in Gallow hundred we find a 

 tendency to divide the whole hundred into units, each paying a shilling. 

 Smethden hundred seems to favour a 4-shilling unit, while West Flegg is 

 divided into two halves, one consisting of four half-crown units, while the 

 other half is irregularly broken up. There, however, we find Burgh 

 St. Margaret clearly set off against RoUesby, each township paying 25I pence, 

 and the more closely the tables are examined the more clearly this principle 

 of subdivision within the district will appear. 



We may now examine the material before us a little more in detail. 

 Before, however, reviewing the statements of Domesday on the tenants-in- 

 chief, we may consider for a moment the nature of the units of which their 

 estates were made up. These seem to be classed by the commissioners as 

 manors and berewicks. The vexed question ' What was a Manor ? ' we may 

 put aside for the present,^ noting, however, the use of mansus in one instance 

 as apparently equivalent to manerium? We may be content to assert that 

 most of the land mentioned in Domesday for Norfolk either is a manor, or 

 lies in a manor. We are led to define a ' berewick ' as an outlying estate 

 which is not an economic unit, which ' lies in ' a manor ; we may perhaps 

 guess that it has no Aula of its own. Thus we hear that Bawsey was a 

 manor and counts as a manor, but is actually a berewick in Glosthorp.' So 

 Bio Norton, which was a manor in King Edward's time, has been made a 

 berewick of Lopham.* Thornage has four berewicks, Brinton, Saxling- 

 ham, Beckham, and Hempstead,^ the third of which is some way off. Isling- 

 ton, a berewick of Fincham, was in another hundred." We hear how 

 Bishop Aylmer made two sokemen in Fring into a berewick of Sedgeford.' 

 Finally we learn that one-third of the church of Hindolveston was in the 

 berewick of Wood Norton.^ The analogy of the parish church and its 

 chapelries thus suggested seems the readiest explanation, and we may venture 

 the conclusion that the manor was the economic unit on which the berewicks 

 depended. Such were the units of which the great holdings were composed. 



The holders of the land are divisible into three great classes : the great 

 lords, clerical and lay, who held of the king in chief, i.e. directly, without 

 any mesne lord, the free tenants who held under them, and the servile or 

 semi-servile population, who are not regarded by Domesday with much more 

 concern than the plough oxen which they drove. Above all these classes 

 comes the great landholder of the realm, the king himself. 



The description of King WiUiam's lands in Norfolk occupies about a fifth 

 of the entire survey, and includes the account of the boroughs of Norwich, 

 Thetford, and Yarmouth. The first section, which precedes the account of 



' Cf. Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 107-129. Engl. Hist. Rev. (J. H. Round), vol. xv, 293-302. 

 ' Dom. Bk. f. 121. The expression caput manerii occurs at Deopham, ibid. f. 227. 

 ' Ibid. f. 153*. ' Ibid. f. 178^. ' Ibid. f. 192. " Ibid. f. 209. 



' Ibid. f. 1933. " Ibid. f. 192. 



292 



