8S THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



Another point to be noticed is that Domesday Book 

 makes no distinction between King William's private pos- 

 sessions and the Crown lands. To-day, Sandringham is 

 King Edward's private property, and Windsor is Crown land. 

 Such distinctions are too subtle for the Domesday Com- 

 missioners, who classed all the land occupied by the King as 

 " Terra Regis," whether it was his by inheritance from King 

 Edward or by the forfeiture of those who had fought against 

 him. There is a passage in the Norfolk Domesday which 

 speaks of lands belonging to the kingdom, which had been 

 given by the Confessor to Earl Ralph ; l and in both Norfolk 

 and Suffolk certain lands are described as being " Terra Regis 

 de regione ; " 2 but in these passages the contrast appears to 

 be between the ancient demesne of the Crown and the lands 

 that had been forfeited to the King. 



Next to the King in the list of landowners come the 

 dignitaries of the Church, the archbishops and bishops of 

 the English sees, and the heads of various abbeys English 

 and foreign that held land in England ; among them appear 

 the names of some foreign bishops who held lands, not jure 

 ecclesia, but jure baronies, not as Churchmen, but as statesmen. 

 Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, and Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances, 

 the King's half-brother and nephew, held large estates which 

 were not annexed to the sees they held, and on this account 

 their possessions are excluded from the calculations which 

 follow. 



Omitting Cheshire, Yorkshire, and Suffolk, where the 

 figures are so involved that a calculation is impossible to one 

 whose time is limited, the possessions of the Church repre- 

 sented 25 per cent, of the assessment of the country in 1066, 

 and 26 J per cent, of its cultivated area in 1086 ; but, as in 

 the case of the royal possessions, these lands were unequally 

 distributed. South of the Thames, the Church paid 38} 

 per cent, of the geld in 1066, and owned 31^ per cent, of the 

 1 D, B., II. 119 b. 2 Id., II. 144, 281 b. 



