THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



is found paying, independently of hhjirma, ^^13 (not jC^ 0' ' ^o'' hawk 

 and sumpter-horse ' under Henry II, ; and in this county alone is the 

 source of these payments explained. Domesday having recorded that 

 the sheriff pays £,ij 'by weight ' for {de) the county, and £16 in the 

 form of the above three payments, goes on to tell us that ' Hs xvii librs 

 ad pensum et xvi librae ad numerum sunt de placitis comitatus et 

 Hundretis ' (fo. 172).* The 'county,' therefore, for which he paid the 

 £ij means the county court, that is, the profits arising from the pleas 

 there held, while the £16 represented the profits derived from the 

 Hundreds. On these latter profits the best evidence is found in some 

 curious calculations of the time of Henry II., printed in The Red Book 

 of the Exchequer.^ These, unfortunately, do not include Worcestershire, 

 where the total sum given in Domesday {£16) strikes one as very small. 

 But, as will be seen in the text, the sheriff records his protest against 

 even this amount being exacted from him when seven out of the twelve 

 Hundreds were so completely in the hands of the Church that he did 

 not receive from them anything at all. The highly favoured Abbey of 

 Westminster seems to have obtained a further exemption, for Domesday 

 records that it was alleged to have been given by king Edward the pro- 

 fits even of his special pleas. 



Evidence on quite another subject can be obtained from the above 

 passage dealing with the Worcestershire Hundreds. It will have been 

 observed that some of the money, such as that which was derived from 

 the profits of the ' county,' was payable ' by weight,' ^ that is, in silver 

 pennies (the coin actually in use), which the scales had proved to be of 

 full weight. But occasionally, as with the profits of the Hundreds, a 

 different reckoning is used ; the money is payable ' by tale ' only without 

 being weighed. Now we can, in this case, obtain a useful piece of 

 information by setting out the compound addition that Domesday 

 records. 



X libras denariorum de xx in ora 

 c solidos reginas ad numerum 

 xx'i solidi de xx'' in ora 



[Total] xvi librae ad numerum 



This sum, as it seems to me, proves the absolute identity, in the minds 

 of the compilers of Domesday, between pounds ' by tale ' and pounds 

 reckoned ' at 20 pence to the ounce.' We have become so accustomed 

 to think of the ' pound ' as a coin that it almost requires an effort to 

 realize that it then possessed its original meaning of a pound in weight 

 (of silver). This pound, in Worcestershire at the time, was divided into 

 twelve ounces, and we consequently find payments, at various places in the 



^ See Domesday text below for translation. 

 * Ed. Rolls Series, pp. 774-778. 



^ The Worcestershire Domesday sometimes uses an alternative form ' ad peis ' for the 

 customary 'ad pondus.' 



243 



