36 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
after the Norman Conquest, a.d. 1086, when the Saxon had long 
been settled in the land, and civilisation, and with it husbandry 
and the allied arts, had made substantial advance. We cannot put 
the entire population of the county, free and unfree, at more than 
35,000 even then. 1 Exeter immediately before the Norman Con- 
quest had about four hundred houses, and an estimated population 
of 3,000 would certainly be in excess. The three other boroughs 
of the county — Barnstaple, Lydford, and Totnes — had each about 
a hundred houses — Barnstaple somewhat less, and Lydford and 
Totnes ten or a dozen more. Their respective populations could 
not have exceeded 800. 2 Of the smaller towns and manors we 
have an exact return. Thus the population of Crediton, from which 
the episcopal see had only been removed a generation previously, 
in 1050, was but 407. 
We are apt to regard Dartmoor as having always borne its dis- 
tinctive character, and to mislead ourselves by reasoning from this 
false premise. Gaunt and bare its higher regions probably were 
throughout our Stone and Bronze Periods, as now • but its valleys 
and outskirts in the days of the dwellers in the ancient hut rings 
were indistinguishable in natural characteristics from the county 
generally. Woods and heaths, broken only in their gloomy mono- 
tony by strips of water-made meadow skirting the wider river 
valleys, were the leading features not of Dartmoor and its borders 
only, but of all Dunmonia, and the scanty population was scattered 
indifferently throughout its wilds. Dartmoor is simply the last 
refuge of the chief traces of these ancient days — a pre-historic 
island, girdled and wasted by the encroaching waves of an aggres- 
sive civilisation. The very name is a proof of later differentiation. 
Dunmonia, Deuffnynt, the "land of hills," or the "land of deep 
valleys," whichever version we accept as parent of the modern 
"Devon," are but two modes of stating the same physical features, the 
ancient names of Dartmoor and the shire alike. Only when clearing 
and enclosure had varied the characteristics of the lowlands, did 
our upland country receive its distinctive name. Not until Norman 
1 The late Mr. R. J. King considered that an estimate of 40,000 was "pro- 
bably far exceeding the reality." — Forest of Dartmoor, p. 90. 
2 2,500 for Exeter, and 600 to 700 for Barnstaple, Lydford, and Totnes, 
are more probable figures. 
