POLITICAL HISTORY 



Mersey ' was severed from Northumbria and attached to Mercia. This is 

 nowhere expressly recorded, but the Mercian magnate Wulfric Spot, the 

 founder of Burton Abbey, in his will (dated 1002), bequeathed to his sons 

 extensive lands ' betweox Ribbel and Maerse and in Wirhalum ' (Wirral) ; in 

 Domesday Book the district is found surveyed in close association with 

 Cheshire ; and, unlike Northumbria, divided into hundreds and assessed in 

 hides, while from other sources we know that it was now in the Mercian 

 diocese of Lichfield." It does not seem, however, to have been included in 

 the Mercian earldom, the crown up to the Norman Conquest retaining it as 

 royal domain ; it still bore traces of the old Northumbrian connexion." 



The character of this district as a thinly-populated march in the hands 

 of the crown is well marked in the details supplied in Domesday. Its six 

 hundreds were great royal manors, each with its aula^"^ large tracts of which 

 had been granted out to the thegns, drengs, radmans and liberi homines on 

 a tenure including agricultural and hunting services, which after the Conquest 

 came to be regarded in the greater part of the kingdom as badges of villeinage.'" 



The rents of these tenants and other revenue from the six hundredal 

 manors amounted in 1066 to ^\\t, 2s. 2d'." Who was responsible to the 

 crown for the collection and payment of this sum ? Had the district 'between 

 Ribble and Mersey ' a separate administration or was it placed under the 

 control of the sheriff of Cheshire, as Rutland was looked after by the sheriff of 

 Nottinghamshire ? '* In the one case the shire-moot which the thegns of 

 West Derby Hundred were bound to attend '^ would be a local assembly, in 

 the other the shire-court of Cheshire. In support of the latter alternative it 

 has been urged that the survey of the district is tacked on to that of Cheshire 

 in Domesday, that their hide assessment may originally have been a joint 

 one,** that some thegns under the Confessor, like Wulfric Spot under Ethelred, 



"The dialect of South Lancashire belongs to the Midland type ; Trans. Engl. Dialect. Soc. xix, 13. 

 It is true that Midland features also occur in the dialect of Amounderness, but they may be the result 

 of influence from the region between Ribble and Mersey. The place-names of the latter district present 

 more similarities to those of Cheshire (some names are found in both, e.g. Adlington, Chorley), than to 

 those of Amounderness, though allowance must be made for the much stronger Scandinavian influence north 

 of the Ribble. For Wulfric Spot's will see Kemble, Cod. Dipl. No. 1 298. 



It is just possible that some of the Mercian characteristics of South Lancashire may be older than the 

 annexation in the tenth century. The Northumbrian victory of Chester was followed (doubtless owing to 

 Penda's victories) by a Mercian settlement of Cheshire, and it is conceivable that the land between Ribble 

 and Mersey was Mercian for a time in the seventh century. 



" For instance, the assessment in 480 carucates had seemingly been brought into line with that of hidated 

 Mercia, and subjected to a huge reduction (to be explained no doubt by its royal ownership) by reckoning 

 6 carucates as i hide. The hundreds were sometimes called wapentakes. 



" This perhaps throws some light on the origin of the hundred system. For traces in the south of 

 England of the early importance of villae regales as administrative centres see Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon 

 Institutions, 241, sqq. 



" See f.C.H. Lanes, i, 276. The actual work was no doubt done by their men, as is expressly stated 

 in the case of the reaping. Their tenure may be compared with that of the thegns to whom Bishop Oswald 

 of Worcester 'loaned' land between 962 and 992 (Maitland, Domesday Bk. and Beyond, 308), and that of the 

 drengs of Durham and Northumberland recorded in the Boldon Book and in the Testa de NevilL 



" Dom. Bk. i, 270. " Ibid, i, 293^. '' Ibid, i, 269^. 



" Maitland, op. cit. 458, where it is erroneously assumed that each carucate would pay the same geld as 

 a Cheshire hide. The number of hides assigned to Cheshire in Domesday is about 540, including 

 the 2 1 hides at which the hundred of Atiscros, now in Flintshire, was assessed. If this could be accepted as 

 pointing to an original 520, the 80 hides of between Ribble and Mersey,' would make up a round 600 ; 

 but the 'County Hidage' attributed by Dr. Liebermann to the eleventh century gives Cheshire 1,200 hides; 

 Maitland, op. cit. 355. Assuming that Cheshire here includes South Lancashire, a reduction of 50 per cent, 

 before 1066 would mean that 3 and not 6 carucates were originally reckoned to the Lancashire hide. Against 

 the inclusion of between Ribble and Mersey ' is the fact that Cheshire itself (including lands now in Wales) 

 contained twelve hundreds in 1086. 



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