THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



of Professor Maitland in his Domesday Book and Beyond,^ and of Dr. 

 Andrews in The Old English Manor? Both these writers used, of 

 necessity, Mr. Seebohm s maps,^ but neither they nor Mr. Seebohm him- 

 self have drawn attention to the singular constancy, in a large group of 

 counties, of the ratio borne by the serfs to the rest of the population. 

 This ratio, according to the map, was in Worcestershire, Buckingham- 

 shire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire 15 per cent., in Hants and Dorset 

 16 per cent., in Shropshire 17 and in Devon 18 per cent., while in 

 Oxfordshire it was 14 and in Warwickshire and Herefordshire 13 per 

 cent. Here, however, it may be well to observe that the whole of these 

 calculations rest on the figures given by Ellis, and these are affected by 

 a misapprehension from which Ellis suffered. He altogether failed, I 

 find, to understand the Domesday formula ' inter servos et ancillas,' which 

 only meant that the numbers of the class were given jointly, instead of 

 separately. Ellis imagined that, in these cases, no numbers at all were 

 given,* and he omitted them accordingly. In Worcestershire this 

 formula occurs on two manors of the church of Worcester which follow 

 one another in the Survey (fo. 174), Wolverley and Alvechurch, on 

 which there were 1 3 serfs and bondwomen. It is found again at Rushock 

 (fo. \']']b) and Chaddesley Corbett (fo. 178), which had twelve more 

 between them. But to these we must add the serfs and bondwomen on 

 the Worcestershire manors entered on fo. i8o(^.^ As these amounted to 

 no fewer than 45, we have to increase the servile population allotted by 

 Ellis to the county by 70 in all, making it 848 instead of 778. It 

 would be only by a careful examination of the whole Survey, county by 

 county, that the effect of his misapprehension on the figures he gives 

 could be determined ; but in Herefordshire it must have excluded, on 

 the lordship of Leominster alone, the 82 'inter servos et ancillas' who 

 were there on the eve of the Conquest. The same formula occurs in 

 several cases in Gloucestershire, and as at Tewkesbury alone there were 

 50 ' inter servos et ancillas,' Ellis' calculations, for that county, must be 

 gravely affected. 



Breadth of view, however, is essential in Domesday study, and it is 

 not probable that the necessary correction would materially affect the 

 distribution of the servile population in the country. If, therefore, the 

 proportion of serfs was about the same in Worcestershire as it was in 

 Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, it can scarcely be contended that their 

 numbers in the first of these counties were due to its proximity to the 

 Welsh border. It seems probable that the servile population was re- 

 cruited from several distinct sources. Capture in warfare was but one ; 

 crime reduced some to serfage, and others voluntarily entered that state, 



^ pp. 26-36. Reference may also be made to the chapter on ' The Unfree ' in The 

 History of English Law by Professors Maitland and Sir F. Pollock ; but this applies mainly 

 to the servitude of a later period. 



* Macmillan & Co. (1892), pp. 181-201. 



^ Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 23 ; The Old English Manor, pp. 182-3. 



* Introduction to Domesday, II. 454 (note 4), 500 (note i). 

 ^ See p. 239 above. 



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