THE DOMESDAY BOOK 
author of the life of St. Bega,’ the custom of payment in kind survived 
in Coupland for many years after the date of the latest of these charters. 
He tells us that at a certain time a controversy had arisen between the 
lord of that barony and his tenants about a custom by which oxen used 
to be paid as a tax (gua boves solebant dominis pensari), from whence the 
tribute (pensio) was called in English ‘noutegheld,’ but in Latin the pay- 
ment of oxen (persolutio boum). The writer was not clear for what cause, 
in what places, or at what time the custom had grown into use, but men 
were sued and compelled to pay more than they judged that they ought 
to pay. The dispute, raging for a long time, was at last settled by 
arbitration. Adam son of Ailsi, a man of some weight in the district 
at that time, was selected to adjudicate between the parties. Seduced by 
a lying spirit, in the opinion of the narrator, he gave it as his award that 
the claims of the lord of Coupland were just and that the tenants were 
accustomed from ancient days to render what was demanded. From 
the date in which it is known that Adam son of Ailsi lived,? the 
payment of the geld in cattle cannot have ceased in that district 
before 1230. In the Exchequer itself there was a tradition of this 
sort of payment at the date when the Dra/ogus was compiled, where 
the author states that in the primitive state of the kingdom after the 
Conquest, as they had learned from their forefathers, not weights of gold 
or silver, but solely victuals were paid to the kings from their lands, 
and those who had been appointed for that purpose knew how much 
came from separate estates. This arrangement, he says, continued up to 
the time of Henry I, and he himself had seen such things done, the 
royal officials reducing them to a money payment and putting their value 
to the sheriff’s account.” Though the meaning of noutgeld, and the 
various phrases employed to represent it, cannot be any longer disputed, 
it is quite certain that the payment in cattle* had at a very early period 
been commuted for a payment in money. 
It is well to remember that the custom of cornage was not 
indigenous to the four northern counties, though we are not aware that 
1 Cotton MSS. Faustina, B. iv. ff. 122~39 (Vita S. Bege et de miraculis eiusdem) : Life and 
Miracles of Sancta Bega, pp. 34, 69, ed. G. C. Tomlinson, Carlisle, 1842. 
® Adam son of Helsi or Ailsi was a contemporary with such well-known men as Thomas de 
Newton, Guy prior of St. Bees, and William parson of Wirkinton, so that the date given in the 
text cannot be very far wrong (Reg. of Sz. Bees, MS. L. i. 29 5; Harleian MS. 434). E. W. Robertson 
was of opinion that tribute in cattle was the universal custom in primitive times. As coinage prevailed 
at an earlier date in the southern counties of England, traces of the custom of payment in cattle 
became extinct there sooner than in Wales and the northern counties. If this criterion be accepted, 
the social condition of Cumberland made but slow progress (Historical Essays, pp. xxx. 38, 133, 146, 
164). 
a, Dialogus de Scaccario, bk. i. pt. iv. 7; Stubbs, Se/ect Charters, p. 185 ; Madox, Dialgus, p. 20. 
The value of this tradition is questioned by Mr. J. H. Round (Commune of London and other Studies, 
. 68-9). 
o * The name of the geld is evidence enough in itself that it was once assessed in cattle. ‘Nout’ is 
a word in vernacular use by old-fashioned people in many places in Cumberland at the present day. 
The nout-house or the nout-shed is sometimes heard instead of cow-house or cow-shed. Robert Anderson, 
the dialect poet of the county, says : ‘I’ve fodder’d the naigs and the nowt.’ Other instances will occur 
to persons acquainted with local literature. 
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