i 4 6 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



Whether these hundreds are typical of the county or no, 

 these figures show that a large proportion of the inhabitants 

 of England in 1066 were extra-manorial, and owned lands 

 which owed service to none but the King or the King's 

 grantee. They were in possession of ancient freeholds, and 

 did not derive their land from the grant of any lord. 



Another point to be noticed is the large number of pre- 

 Conquest vills of which there was no lord. The case of 

 Orwell has already been referred to, and at the risk of 

 repetition, it must be again stated that Orwell was by no 

 means an exceptional case. Brize Norton (Oxon.) was 

 another vill which in pre-Conquest days had no lord, and 

 will be discussed on the next page. Eight freemen held 

 Knighton and The Down, in the Isle of Wight, in allodium 

 of King Edward, 1 and Lisland was held by five freemen 

 in allodium. 2 And even in many vills of which the large 

 proportion belonged to one magnate or another, there were 

 often many freeholders owing service to no one but the King, 

 and deriving their lands from the grant of no lord. Almost 

 every page of the Cambridgeshire Inquest will show this 

 feature, and Mr. Round quotes many cases, in his introduction 

 to the Hertfordshire Domesday in the Victoria County History 

 of that county. 



3. THEIR CONDITION IN IO86 



That " the thin red line of the Norman Conquest " pro- 

 duced changes in the economic position of the tillers of the 

 soil, is admitted on all hands, and a careful study of Domesday 

 Book will show that these changes were decidedly for the 

 worse. Possibly the greatest change was the entire dis- 

 appearance of the freeholders in many counties. The 114 

 liberi homines and the 105 allodiaries of Sussex had entirely 

 disappeared ; the 1032 sokemen of Cambridgeshire had 

 decreased to 213. By this we mean not that 819 sokemen 

 1 D. B., I. 39 b i. 2 id., I. 39 b 2. 



