A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE 
Houghton Regis and Luton.’ The first and last of these were assessed 
at 30 hides apiece, the other at 10 hides. In the form of the revenue 
derived from these three manors we detect at once a note distinctive 
of Crown demesne in the half day’s ferm (dimidiam diem ad firmam 
regis) that was due from each of them. ‘The constituents of this antique 
render are specified as wheat, honey, and the other things recognized as 
part of it, the honey being probably required for mead. But in addition 
to this traditional due there was also a money payment, amounting to 
£22 from Leighton, £30 from Luton, and £10 from Houghton, payable 
in each case in weighed money. This is an unusual feature, but there is 
nothing in the text to show that it is a Norman addition. Of the an- 
tiquity of the miscellaneous dues there can be no question, for they are 
found occurring similarly in other counties ; for the queen’s use Leighton 
and Houghton contributed each 2 ounces and Luton 4 ounces of gold; 
for a sumpter-horse and for the king’s hounds various amounts were paid, 
the payment for the former being here grouped with others. The pay- 
ment, however, for a sumpter-horse alone is found in Domesday as 
twenty shillings. In addition to all these payments Ivo (not Ralf) 
Tallebosc had enacted, it would seem, an additional payment (mzsit de 
cremento) of £7 apiece in the case of Leighton and Luton and of £4 in 
that of Houghton, partly in weighed and partly in assayed silver, with 
an ounce of gold further from each of them to the sheriff himself. 
The closest parallel to the dues from these royal manors is found in 
the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire, where several royal manors, in 
the days of Edward the Confessor, paid their rent to the Crown partly 
in ‘three days’ ferm’ (firmam trium dierum) and partly in money. Wheat 
and honey are specified, in their case also, as comprised in the ‘ferm,’ 
but malt (4rasium) is mentioned in addition. In Cambridge this pay- 
ment in kind had been commuted for money ; in Bedfordshire, appar- 
ently, it had not. The additional payments for special purposes due from 
the Bedfordshire manors are not mentioned in Cambridgeshire, and only 
occur, it would seem, elsewhere in Domesday among the payments due 
from counties as a whole. 
The churches of the three royal manors were, as was usually the 
case, important and richly endowed; but they must be reserved for 
treatment in another section below. The point which remains to be 
considered here is the arbitrary action of Ralf (not Ivo) Tallebosc in 
annexing manors and altering hundreds when in charge of the Crown 
demesne. In the manor of Leighton Buzzard he had, we read, incor- 
porated two considerable estates which had formerly belonged to private 
owners; in that of Houghton Regis he had similarly incorporated 
Sewell ; and in that of Luton, Biscot. In these last two cases the added 
estates were actually taken out of their Hundreds by Ralf, though he 
seems to have compensated the Hundred of Flitt by robbing another 
Hundred for its benefit. 
1 Dunstable is not mentioned, because it was subsequently created, on the royal demesne, by Henry 
L., the bulk of it being taken from Houghton Regis. 
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