THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



and Evesham/ while we can not only identify this officer in Domesday 

 (fo. lyib)-, where ' Edric Stirman ' is entered as having held 5 hides at 

 Hindlip, but can recognise him in ' Edric de Hindelep ' at the final 

 settlement before the Domesday Commissioners between bishop Wulf- 

 stan and abbot Walter.* That the duty of this naval service was fully 

 recognised down to the Conquest is seen in the mention of ' navigia ' as 

 having been due from the 10 hides at Bishampton/ One is tempted, 

 were it not rash, to suggest that if the service were due at the rate of 

 one man from 5 hides,* the complement of ' the bishop's ship ' would be 

 just sixty men, which seems to have been the number of the crew in the 

 great war-galley introduced by Alfred/ 



When we turn from the sea to the land service our chief difficulties 

 begin. For beyond the entry, under Bishampton, of ' expeditiones ' 

 being due, Domesday is silent on the fyrd save for the passage on the 

 liability to military service at the opening of the county survey. 

 Heming's Cartulary, however, is more explicit on the matter. In addi- 

 tion to the above mention of Eadric as leader of the Bishop's ' exercitus,' 

 its report of the great trial between Worcester and Evesham represents 

 the Bishop as claiming ' geldum regis et servitium et expeditiones in 

 terra et in mari ' from the abbot in respect of the 15 hides at Hampton 

 (by Evesham),^ while William's writ, which follows, asserts the Bishop's 

 right there to 'geldum et expeditionem et cetera mea servitia.'^ The 

 writ of the bishop of Coutances, before whom the case was tried, certifies 

 that the 1 5 hides at Hampton ' debent placitare et geldum et expe- 

 ditionem et cetera legis servitia . . . persolvere ' in the Bishop's 

 Hundred of Oswaldslow.* This decision is referred to no less than three 

 times in Professor Maitland's learned work on Domesday Book and Beyond? 

 The one conclusion that can, I think, be safely drawn from the evidence 

 before us is that the Bishop's Hundred of Oswaldslow had to provide 

 a fixed quota of men to the King's fyrd^ irrespective of its population. 

 It is only on this hypothesis that we can explain the bishop's anxiety 

 to assert the liability of each estate to provide its proportionate con- 

 tingent. I have elsewhere shown that this system, in force before the 



* Heming's Cartulary, I. 80. 



* Ibid. pp. 76, 297. Another steersman (the recognised chief officer of a galley) is 

 found in Worcestershire at Pershore, where Domesday (fo. 174^) shows us 'Turchil stirmannus 

 regis Edwardi ' holding land in the time of that King, to whom Pershore had belonged. 



^ Domesday, fo. 173. The somewhat difficult phrase in William's writ commanding the 

 trial between Worcester and Evesham refers the judges to the day ' qua novissime, tempore 

 regis Edwardi, geldum acceptum fuit ad navigium faciendum' (Heming's Cartulary, I. 78), as 

 if the service were commuted for money. 



* See Feudal England^ pp. 45, 67-9, 232-4, and Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 

 156-9. 



^ 'Some had sixty oars, some more' (Anglo-Saxon Chron., II. 74). I agree with Sir 

 James Ramsey {Foundations of England) that the oarsmen were also the fighting crew. 



« Heming's Cartulary, I. 80. '' Ibid. 78, 83. * Ibid. 77. 



^ pp. 85, 159, 308. I can hardly agree with his paraphrase that 'the men of two 

 villages, Hamton and Bengeworth, were bound to pay geld and to fight along with the bishop's 

 men ' (p. 308), for the duty seems, as he had pointed out just before, to have been incumbent 

 on the hides rather than the men, and to have been discharged by a few individuals. 



249 



