A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



driven by poverty to take the step. Birth, however, was probably its 

 cause in most cases, for the servile status of the serf's children was rigidly 

 enforced. The recognised existence, at Bristol, of a slave mart was only 

 typical of a traffic that must have prevailed in other places also ; at 

 Lewes, which, it may be pointed out, must then have been a port, the 

 toll on the sale of a man was fourpence. Men thus sold as slaves may 

 obviously have come from anywhere, and there was nothing to prevent 

 slaves from Bristol being brought up the Severn to Worcester. We are 

 told of the Domesday ' servus ' that ' earlier and later documents oblige 

 us to think of him as a slave, one who in the main has no legal rights ; 

 he is the theow of the Anglo-Saxon dooms.' ^ The density of the servile 

 population in Devon and Cornwall supports the obvious presumption 

 that the conquered Britons supplied, throughout the West of England, 

 the bulk of the original serfs ; and, in his valuable chapter on the sub- 

 ject. Dr. Andrews pointed out that the earliest gloss for ancilla ' is wyln, 

 and it is also the most frequent, thus showing the use to which the 

 Welsh women were put who were captured in the conquest.'^ But this 

 reduction of the conquered race, in the West of England, to slavery needs, 

 of course, to be carefully distinguished from the subsequent acquisition 

 of serfs by purchase or capture in war. Above all is caution needed in 

 dealing with the bondwomen ('ancillae') of Domesday, of whom Worces- 

 tershire is said to contain the largest number, Mr. Eyton, a great 

 Domesday student, argues, possibly with good reason, that the absence 

 of 'ancills,' on the pages of the Survey, is no evidence of their non- 

 existence : 



The Ancilla, or female serf, is never spoken of in the Somerset Survey, only once 

 in the Dorset Survey, only once in the Survey of StafiFordshire. What follows ? 

 Surely . . . that in certain counties the serf-wfife w^as hardly ever reckoned 

 among the agricultural staff of an estate.^ 



It must be remembered that the instructions given, so far as we know 

 them, to the Domesday commissioners* directed a return of the ' servi,' 

 but not of the ' ancillee.' There may therefore have been uncertainty 

 as to whether they ought to be entered or not, and a consequent 

 diversity in practice. Professor Maitland even hints that the serfs 

 themselves may in some districts have been omitted rather than non- 

 existent,' while in others their numbers may be swollen by embracing a 

 wider class." 



' Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 27. 



* The Old English Manor, p. 198. 

 ^ Staffordshire Domesday, p. 6. 



* See p. 272 above. 



® Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 23-4. 



® ' Nor can we be sure that the enumeration of the servi is always governed by one 

 consistent principle. In the shires of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcester we read of 

 numerous ancilla — in Worcestershire of 677 servi and loi ancilla — and this may make us 

 think that in this district all the able-bodied serfs are enumerated, whether or no they have 

 cottages to themselves ' [Ibid. p. 34). The Professor's figures, as explained above, are those 

 given in error by Ellis. 



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