A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



Hen. II.), to have been over jC^oOj but which clearly included, at that 

 date, royal manors which, at the time of Domesday, were ' farmed ' 

 under Herefordshire together with the revenue from Worcester itself. 

 This last revenue consisted, at the time of Domesday, of ^23 5/. ' by 

 weight ' annually, for which the sheriff was responsible. Part of this 

 sum had accrued on the forfeiture of Eadwine, who, as the local Earl, had 

 drawn from the city £S a year under the Confessor, the Crown at that 

 time receiving only ^10 'beyond the rent {censum) of the houses.'^ A 

 curious comphcation is introduced in the case of Worcester by the 

 special rights of the Bishop, who was there entitled, like the Earl, to his 

 ' third penny,' and who received, in right of it, £^k under the Confessor 

 and ^8 under the Conqueror, in addition to holding a number of houses 

 as appurtenant to one of his manors (fo. 173^). His rights appear to 

 be traceable to a most remarkable endowment, in the time of king 

 Alfred, which Professor Maitland paraphrases thus : 



iEthelred and iEthelflaed, the ealdorman and lady of the Mercians, have, at the 

 request of the bishop, built a burh at Worcester, and they declare that of all the rights 

 that appertain to their lordship both in market {ceapstowe) and in street, within the 

 borough and without, they have given half to God and St. Peter,^ with the witness of 

 king Alfred and all the wise of Mercia. The lord of the church is to have half of 

 all, be it land-fee, or fiht-wite, stealing, wohceapung (fines for buying or selling 

 contrary to the rules of the market), or borough-wall-scotting.^ 



Kemble, who printed in full a translation of the actual charter, spoke 

 of it as 'a valuable instrument and one which supplies matter for 

 reflection in various ways.' * The charter twice mentions the market, 

 and also confirms the Bishop's rights ' without the market-place,' as 

 enjoyed by his predecessors. I think, therefore, that we might connect 

 the ceapstowe of this document with that forum (market-place) of Wor- 

 cester in which, says Domesday, the Bishop had 25 houses in addition 

 to the other houses that he held in the city. 



Returning to the payments made by the sheriff, as recorded in 

 Domesday, the most interesting, perhaps, and most instructive are the 

 sums which represented a commutation for the profits of jurisdiction in 

 the courts of the shire and of the several Hundreds. In Worcestershire, 

 as in Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Oxfordshire, the 

 King was entitled to receive annually ^T 10 for a hawk and twenty shillings 

 for a sumpter-horse, while the Queen was entitled to £c^ in each of these 

 counties except Wiltshire. But in Worcestershire it is specially recorded 

 that the hawk is a Norway {norresc) hawk ; in Worcestershire the sheriff 



' We are, unfortunately, not given, as we are under some towns, any details of these 

 houses, but Heming's Cartulary (Ed. Hearne) preserves a list (pp. 290-1) of twelve 'mansiones' 

 held by the monks of Worcester ' in burgo regis,' and paying him a penny or twopence a 

 year each (with ' service ' once a year), except one which paid him 7^</., and another 15^. 



* Then the patron saint of the church of Worcester. 

 ' Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 194. 



* Saxons in England, II. 328-331. The charter excludes from the rights granted to the 

 Bishop the wain-shilling and load-penny from Saltwic {i.e. Droitwich). These terms remind us 

 of the caretedes and summa of Domesday. 



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