The Treasury at Winchester

145

years later:-" vasa diversi generis aurea et argentea." Lastly, there is a piece of evidence which has not yet been adduced, namely, that in his Expugnatio Hibernica (1188), Giraldus, speaking of that ring and letters which John of Salisbury declared had been brought by him from the Pope, and were "still stored in the Royal Treasury," writes of

Annulum aureum in investituræ signum

qui statim simul

cum privilegio in archivis Wintoniæ repositus fuerat.

Giraldus certainly must have looked on the Royal Treasury at Winchester as the only recognised repository for all such objects as these.

Mr. Hall, indeed, has gradually modified his original position that "Ingulphus saw the Domesday register, as it now exists, at Westminster," and that it was sent there for good from Winchester "early in the reign of Henry I.," but he still places the establishment of "the" Treasury at Westminster, in my opinion, too early. It is the gradual decay of Winchester as the capital and seat of adminstration that makes it difficult to say positively when or how the national records, Domesday Books among them, were transferred to Westminster. We have seen at least that, in its early days, the "Liber de Wintonia," as it styles itself, had its home within the walls of the Royal castle of Winchester; and I cannot but think, now as at first, that it began by visiting Westminster for Exchequer sessions only.

268

In any case, we have seen its witness appealed to on a far earlier occasion than had hitherto been known. In my paper on "An Early Reference to Domesday," 64 I quoted an even earlier mention of the "Descriptio Angliæ," but here again the reference seems to make rather to the Domesday Survey itself than to Domesday Book, the "Liber de Thesauro."

B.H.

909 Athenæum, 27th Nov., 1886.

263 See also Domesday Studies, 547 note."
264 Domesday Studies, 539 et sq.

L

As an appendix to this paper, I give the pedigree of the Domesday MSS. according to the views I have expressed.

Original Returns.

652

265 It will be observed that I do not touch the Liber Exoniensis.
266 Possibly at second-hand, see p. 7 note, and Addenda.

Neglect of the Document

147

THI

THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

GELD-ROLL.

HIS remarkable document was printed by Sir Henry Ellis (1833) in his General Introduction to Domesday (i. 184-187) from the fine Peterborough Cartulary belonging to the Society of Antiquaries (MS. 60). I shall not, therefore, reprint it here, but will give the opening entry as a specimen of its style :

This is unto Suttunes (Sutton) hundred, that is an hundred hides. So it was in King Edward's day. And thereof is "gewered" one and twenty hides and two-thirds of a hide, and [there are] forty hides inland and ten hides [of] the King's ferm land, and eight and twenty hides and the third of a hide waste.

We have seen (supra, p. 59) that Ellis not only erred, but even led Dr. Stubbs into error, as to the character of the "hundreds" enumerated in this document. Except for that, I cannot find any real notice taken of it, although it has been in print over sixty years. It appears to be not even mentioned in Mr. Stuart Moore's volume on Northamptonshire in Domesday; and no one, it seems, has cared to enquire to what date it belongs, or what it really is.'

Now, although written in old English, it is well subsequent to the Conquest, for it mentions inter alios "Rodbertes wif heorles," who, we shall find, was Maud, wife of

'I have found, since this was written, that it was printed by Mr. T. O. Cockayne in his little-known Shrine (pp. 205-208), and pronounced by him (in error) to be "evidently" of the date 1109-1118.

the Count of Mortain. It also mentions William and Richard Engaine, Northamptonshire tenants in Domesday. On the other hand, it cannot be later than 1075, for it speaks of lands held by "the lady, the king's wife"; and this was Edith, Edward's widow, whose Northamptonshire lands passed to King William at her death in 1075. Of the very few names mentioned, one may surprise and the other puzzle us. The former is that of "the Scot King," holding land even then in a shire where his successors were to hold it so largely : the other is "Osmund, the King's writer," in whom one is grievously tempted to detect the future Chancellor, Saint and Bishop. But, apart from his identity, his peculiar style, exactly equating, as it does, the Latin "clericus regis," emboldens me to make the hazardous suggestion that we possibly have in this document an English rendering of a Latin original, executed in the Peterborough scriptorium.

2

For what was the purpose of the document? It may be pronounced without hesitation to be no other than a geldroll, recording, it would seem, a levy of Danegeld hitherto unknown. There are three features which it has in common with the rolls of 1084: it is drawn up hundred by hundred; it records the exemption of demesne; and it specifies those lands that had failed to pay their quota."

Its salient feature is one that, at first sight, might seem to impugn its authenticity. This is the almost incredible amount of land lying "waste." If we confine our attention to the land liable to geld represented by the first and fourth columns in my analysis below, we see that by far the

2 I opposed in 1886 (Domesday Studies p,p. 86, 87) the accepted view that no Danegeld was levied by the Conqueror till the winter of 1083-4 and discussed (ibid., 88-92) the Inqisuitio Geldi, which, as Mr. Eyton showed (Key to Domesday), belongs to that date. It has been persistently confused with the Exon Domesday (being bound up with it), as by Mr. Jones, in his Wiltshire Domesday (pp. xxxvii., 153 et sq.), and Professor Freeman (Quart Review, July, 1892, p. 22).

"It was connected, I find, by Mr. Cockayne with military service, not with Danegeld.

A Record of Devastation

149

larger proportion of it is entered as "waste": yet this witness to a terrible devastation is the best proof of its authenticity; for it sets before us before us the fruits of those ravages in the autumn of 1065, which are thus described by Mr. Freeman, paraphrasing the English chronicle:

Morkere's Northern followers dealt with the country about Northampton as if it had been the country of an enemy. They slew men, burned corn and houses, carried off cattle, and at last led captive several hundred prisoners, seemingly as slaves. The blow was so severe that it was remembered even when one would have thought that that and all other lesser wrongs would have been forgotten in the general overthrow of England. Northamptonshire and the shires near to it were for many winters the worse.

Mr. Freeman, had he read it, would have eagerly welcomed our record's striking testimony to the truth of the Chronicle's words.

The devastation that our roll records had been well repaired at the time of Domesday; but we obtain a glimpse of it in the Rockingham entry :-"Wasta erat quando rex W. jussit ibi castellum fieri. Modo valet xxvi. sol." (i. 220)

But it is not only that the entries of "waste" on our roll are thus explained: they further prove it to be, as I have urged, a "Danegeld" roll. For when.we compare it with the Pipe roll of 2 Hen. II. (1156), we find the latter similarly allowing for the non-receipt of geld from land "in waste"; and it is specially noteworthy that the portion thus "waste" is in every case, as on our roll, entered after the others. The fact that the geld was remitted on land that had been made "waste is now established by collation of these two records.

Incidentally, it may be pointed out that as our document bears witness to the devastation of Northamptonshire in 1065, so the first surviving roll of Henry II. illustrates the local range of devastation under Stephen. In Kent, which had been throughout under the royal rule, the waste was