THEIR CONDITION IN 1066 



The fact that some of the allodiaries are stated to hold of a 

 subject need cause us no difficulty ; for we have already seen that 

 by this expression the Domesday scribes implied that the ser- 

 vices due in respect of a holding were rendered to a subject to 

 whom they had been granted by the King. It does not appear 

 impossible that the Norman scribes applied the term "allodium " 

 to property that was held by unwritten title, or by folk-right. 1 



It was necessary to enter into these complicated legal 

 questions concerning tenure, to enable us to approach a ques- 

 tion of more practical interest : Was the bulk of the popula- 

 tion in 1066 free or servile ? We have identified the Domesday 

 villans, bordars, and sokemen with the geburs, cottagers, 

 and geneats of the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum ; but 

 the latter document expressly states that these three classes 

 were free, and paid their hearthpenny on Holy Thursday, 

 " as every freeman should do ; " and I have not been able to 

 find in Domesday Book any evidence that they had lost their 

 status of freemen or their wergild of 2ocxr. The statistics of 

 population given by Sir Henry Ellis relate to the year 1086, 

 and so are no help to us. And it is only in the three eastern 

 counties that the numbers of the tenants in 1066 are given. 

 Possibly some of them are guess-work, but we must take them 

 for what they are worth. A count of the pre-Conquest in- 

 habitants of the estates of the Abbey of St. Edmund's in the 

 hundreds of Thinghoe, Lackford, and Babenberg in Suffolk, 

 may be tabulated as follows : 



1 D. B, and B,, 154 n, 257. 



