“Candleshoe wapentake says that Ivo Taillebois ought to have that which he claims in Ashby against Earl Hugh; namely one mill and one bovat of land, although the soke belongs to Grainham.“Concerning the two carucates of land which Robert Dispensator claims against Gilbert de Gand in Screnby through Wiglac, his predecessor [antecessor], the wapentake says that the latter only had one carucate, and the soke of that belonged to Bardney. But Wiglac forfeited that land to his lord Gilbert, and soRobert has nothing there according to the witness of the Riding.“In the same Screnby Chetelbern claims one carucate against Gilbert de Gand through Godric [but the jurors], say that he only had half a carucate, and the soke of that belonged to Bardney, and Chetelbern’s claim is unjust according to the wapentake, because his predecessor forfeited the land. The men of Candleshoe wapentake with the agreement of the whole Riding say that Siwate and Alnod and Fenchel and Aschel equally divided their father’s land among themselves in King Edward’s time, and held it so that if there were need to serve with the king and Siwate could go the other brothers assisted him. After him the next one went and Siwate and the next assisted him and so on with regard to all, but Siwate was the king’s man.”
“Candleshoe wapentake says that Ivo Taillebois ought to have that which he claims in Ashby against Earl Hugh; namely one mill and one bovat of land, although the soke belongs to Grainham.
“Concerning the two carucates of land which Robert Dispensator claims against Gilbert de Gand in Screnby through Wiglac, his predecessor [antecessor], the wapentake says that the latter only had one carucate, and the soke of that belonged to Bardney. But Wiglac forfeited that land to his lord Gilbert, and soRobert has nothing there according to the witness of the Riding.
“In the same Screnby Chetelbern claims one carucate against Gilbert de Gand through Godric [but the jurors], say that he only had half a carucate, and the soke of that belonged to Bardney, and Chetelbern’s claim is unjust according to the wapentake, because his predecessor forfeited the land. The men of Candleshoe wapentake with the agreement of the whole Riding say that Siwate and Alnod and Fenchel and Aschel equally divided their father’s land among themselves in King Edward’s time, and held it so that if there were need to serve with the king and Siwate could go the other brothers assisted him. After him the next one went and Siwate and the next assisted him and so on with regard to all, but Siwate was the king’s man.”
In these passages the actual working of the Domesday Inquest is very clearly displayed. In the first place we see that all really turns on those ancient local assemblies the wapentake and hundred courts. Not only do they supply the requisite information through the representative jurors to the commissioners, but it is by their verdict that the latter are guided in their pronouncements upon disputed claims. If Ivo Taillebois receives his seisin of that mill and oxgang of land in Ashby it will be because the wapentake court of Candleshoe has assigned it to him rather than the earl of Chester. This simple procedure has a great future before it; if the king can compel the local courts to give a sworn verdict to his officers,so in specific cases he can of his grace permit private persons to use these bodies in the same way. The Domesday Inquest is the noble ancestor of the Plantagenet “assizes,” and through them, by direct descent, of the jury in its perfected form. But the action of the local courts becomes doubly significant when we remember their composition. The affairs of the greatest people in the land, of the king himself, are being discussed by very humble men, men, as we have seen, carefully chosen so as to represent Frenchmen and Englishmen alike. Nothing is a more wholesome corrective of exaggerated ideas as to the severance and hostility of the two races than a due remembrance of the part which both played in the Domesday Inquest.
Equally important is the respect which is clearly being paid in the above discussions to the strict forms of law, of English law in particular. No very knotty problems arise in the course of our simple extract, but we can see that a Norman baron will often have to stand or fall in his claim according to the interpretation of some old English legal doctrine. We know from other sources that the intricacies of the rules which in King Edward’s time determined the rights and status of free men became a thing of wonder to the men of the twelfth century, and we may suspect that the Domesday commissioners were frequently tempted to cut these obsolete knots. But so far as is practicable, they are maintaining that the Norman must succeed to just the legal position ofhis English “antecessor”; Robert the Dispensator cannot claim the land which has been forfeited by Wiglac to Gilbert de Gand.
Lastly, one is always tempted to forget that twenty years had passed between the death of King Edward and the making of the Domesday Survey. Our attention is naturally and rightly concentrated on the great change which substituted a Norman for an English land-holding class, so that we are apt to ignore the struggles which must have taken place among the conquerors themselves in the division of the spoil; struggles none the less real because, so far as we can see, they were carried on under the forms of law. Death and confiscation had left their mark upon the Norman baronage; the personnel of Domesday Book would have been very different if the record had been drawn up a dozen years earlier. But, even apart from this, it was inevitable that friction should arise within the mass of Norman nobility as it settled into its position in the conquered land. The Domesday Inquest afforded a grand opportunity for the statement and adjustment of conflicting claims, and examples may generally be found in every few pages of Domesday Book.
The last point in connection with the survey which calls for special notice is the origin of the name by which it is universally known. “Domesday Book” is clearly no official title; it is a popular appellation, of which the meaning is not quitefree from doubt. Officially, the record was known as the “Book of Winchester,” from the city in which it was kept; it was cited under that name when the abbot of Abingdon, in the reign of Henry I., proved by it the exemption of certain of his estates from the hundred court of Pyrton, Oxfordshire. The best explanation of its other, more famous name may be given in the words of Richard Fitz Neal, writing under Henry II.:
“This book is called by the natives, ‘Domesdei,’ that is by a metaphor the day of judgment, for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last scrutiny may by no craft be evaded, so when a dispute arises concerning those matters which are written in this book, it is consulted, and its sentence may not be impugned nor refused with safety.”[339]
“This book is called by the natives, ‘Domesdei,’ that is by a metaphor the day of judgment, for as the sentence of that strict and terrible last scrutiny may by no craft be evaded, so when a dispute arises concerning those matters which are written in this book, it is consulted, and its sentence may not be impugned nor refused with safety.”[339]
On the whole this explanation probably comes near the truth. We may well believe that to the common folk of the time, this stringent, searching inquiry into their humble affairs may have seemed very suggestive of the last great day of reckoning. Viewed in this light the name becomes invested with an interest of its own; it is an abiding witness to the reluctant wonder aroused by the making of this, King William’s greatest work and our supreme record.
Penny of William I.
Penny of William I.
Penny of William I.
Penny of William I.
Penny of William I.
Penny of William I.