THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



When the forfeiture of the earl's son and successor (1074) placed all his 

 lands at the disposition of the Crown, it confirmed his endowments to 

 his two abbeys, and commuted the tithes of Martley and Suckley for 

 seventy-five shillings a year (as stated in the charter cited in the foot- 

 note), which sum, accordingly, is found on the 12th century Pipe Rolls, 

 allowed year by year to the sheriff of Worcestershire. And even in 

 'the hundred years' war' we find the Crown impounding, as held for the 

 benefit of aliens, endowments originally bestowed by earl William Fitz 

 Osbern.* 



This is hardly the place to discuss the Earl's aggressions on the 

 manors belonging to the monks of Worcester or those that were laid to 

 the charge of his satellites, Gilbert Fitz Turold and Ralf de Bernai,^ but 

 attention may be drawn to the fact that his lands were mostly near the 

 Herefordshire border.' His possession, however, of Feckenham as well 

 as Hanley (Castle) suggests that he had an eye to the hunting in 

 Feckenham Forest as in Malvern Chase. 



We have now examined some of the causes which either modified 

 the limits of the shire or accounted for the survey of part of it under 

 another county. In spite, however, of these influences, and of the fact 

 that, as we shall see below, he miscalculated altogether the assessment of 

 Droitwich, Professor Maitland's remarkable conclusions are not materially 

 affected, and Worcestershire remains, in the light of his results, one of 

 the most instructive counties in England for the study of assessment and 

 taxation in Anglo-Saxon times. 



It was chiefly, we saw at the outset, as a record of assessment for 

 taxation that Domesday Book was compiled. But of great importance 

 also to the Crown was the evidence it afforded on the pecuniary rights, 

 apart from taxation, to which the King was entitled. In the rural 

 districts these were derived from the profits of jurisdiction and from his 

 own lands ; in the towns their sources were more complex. The system of 

 composition under which these rights were ' farmed ' was obviously one 

 that needed enquiry, with a view to revision, from time to time. The 

 importance of the Worcestershire evidence, on this subject, in Domes- 

 day is that it enables us to trace, on the one hand, the beginnings of 

 that composition for the royal rights in a county which was known as 

 the firma comitatus^ and that it indicates, on the other, the sources of 

 certain payments which are found elsewhere in the Survey with no clue 

 to their origin. Taking these points in order, we learn that the sheriff, 

 at the time of Domesday, was paying annually a lump sum of ^(^123 \s. 

 ' by weight ' {ad pensuni) ' from the demesne manors of the King.' This 

 sum was the nucleus of x}s\2lX. Jirma comitatus which seems, in 1160 (6 



1,077). Allusions to these endowments, and those of Lyre, will be found in the Domesday 

 text below, under the several localities. 



' The monks of Cormeilles sold their tithes at HoUoway to Bordesley Abbey for six and 

 eightpence a year (Madox's Formulare, p. 300). 



* Sheriff of Herefordshire under the Earl. 

 Martley, Suckley, Eldersfield, and Hanley (Castle). 



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