A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



county, reckoned in ounces (of silver).* To say that money was payable 

 * at 20 pence to the ounce ' means that a payment ' by tale ' of 20 silver 

 pennies discharged, irrespective of their weight, the liability to pay an 

 ounce of silver. Similarly, a pound paid ' by tale ' meant that the 

 payment could be made in the form of 240 pennies. As I have shown 

 in Feudal England, the Domesday scribes delighted in using alternative 

 phrases for the same thing ; but, although we might have suspected the 

 identity of the two formulas employed above, there is no other passage in 

 Domesday, I believe, that proves that identity, which might otherwise 

 have been questioned.* 



While on the subject of the coin, something ought to be said about 

 the moneyers of Worcester. For a further source of royal revenue is 

 found in their customary payments. At Worcester, however, Domesday 

 tells us only that each moneyer used to pay 20 shillings, on a change of 

 coinage, when he ' received the (fresh) dies at London.' The same 

 payment was due from the moneyers of Dorchester and Bridport and of 

 Lewes ; but although we gather under Hereford that the moneyers had 

 to go somewhere to receive their new dies, it seems to be only under 

 Worcester that the place is stated to be London. 



There was one source of royal revenue which is not here mentioned, 

 although it must have existed. This was the proceeds of the forests. 

 When the records of the revenue emerge, half a century after Domesday, 

 we find the census of the royal forests kept distinct from thtjirma of the 

 shire. Under Henry II., we learn from the Pipe Rolls, there was paid 

 for the forest of Feckenham £zo a year and £t, for Malvern chase. The 

 extent of forest shown in Domesday as then existing in the county must 

 have produced, at the date of the Survey, some revenue for the Crown.' 



Although we have had to deal first, as Domesday does, with the 

 Crown and its rights, the interests of the Church in this county were 

 infinitely greater than those of the Crown. Not only was the sheriff, the 

 King's officer, excluded, by the privileges of the Church, from seven out 

 of twelve hundreds ; as tenants-in-chief, the four houses of Worcester, 

 Westminster, Evesham, and Pershore held between them more than half 

 of the assessed value of the county.* The largest share by far was that 

 of ' the Church of Worcester.' In addition to its great Hundred of 

 Oswaldslow, reckoned at 300 hides, it possessed 94 hides, outside it, in 

 the county, which the Henry I. Survey speaks of as ' in Kinefolka.'* 

 Next to Worcester came Westminster with its 200 hides ; then the 100 



* See the Domesday text, passim. 



* For in at least two passages (fos. 34, 38^) ' librae ad numerum de xx«' in ora ' are 

 found, as if the two formulas had independent meanings. 



' See further, for the forests, p. 270 below. 



* i.e. of the 'hides' recorded in Domesday. The hide, as explained above, was not an 

 areal measure, but only a unit of assessment. 



^ See Feudal England, p. 174. This curious word should, perhaps, be compared with 

 that ' Haliwerfolc,' which, as Mr. Lapsley has explained in his learned monograph on The 

 County Palatine of Durham, was employed, in the 1 2th century, ' to indicate the territorial 

 soke or franchise of the Bishop ' of Durham. 



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