As an appendix to this paper, I give the pedigree of the Domesday MSS. according to the views I have expressed.265 203 It will be observed that I do not touch the Liber Exoniensis. Neglect of the Document 147 THE NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GELD-ROLL. HIS remarkable document was printed by Sir Henry THIS remarkable documeral 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 into 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.1 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 1 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. 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 3 I opposed in 1886 (Domesday Studies, pp. 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 Inquisitio 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). 3 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 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 infinitesimal; in Yorkshire it was slight; but in the Midlands, which had long been the battle-ground of rival feudal magnates, it was so extensive that, as here in Northamptonshire after the Conquest, there was more land exempted as "waste" than there was capable of paying. Before leaving this subject I briefly compare the cases of Northamptonshire and of East Sussex. In the former, we have seen, it is only our document that preserves for us evidence of the ravages in 1065; Domesday does not record them, because they had then (1086) been repaired. But in East Sussex, the entries are fuller; and as was observed by Mr. Hayley, an intelligent local antiquary : It is the method of Domesday Book, after reciting the particulars relating to each Manor, to set down the valuation thereof, at three several periods, to wit, the time of King Edward the Confessor, afterwards when the new tenant entered upon it, and again at the time when the survey was made. Now it is to be observed in perusing the account of the Rape of Hastings in that book, that in several of the Manors therein at the second of these periods, it is recorded of them that they were waste, and from this circumstance it may upon good ground be concluded what parts of that Rape were marched over by, and suffered from the ravages of the two armies of the Conqueror and King Harold; and indeed, the situations of those Manors is such as evidently shows their then devastated state to be owing to that cause.4 Mr. Freeman's treatment of this theory was highly characteristic. In the Appendix he devoted to the subject 5 he first contemptuously observed of the allusion to Harold's army: This notion would hardly have needed any answer except from the sort of sanction given to it by the two writers who quote Mr. Hayley. I do not believe that any army of any age ever passed through a district without doing some damage, but to suppose that Harold systematically harried his own kingdom does seem to me the height of absurdity. 4 Quoted in Ellis's Introduction to Domesday, i. 315-6. 5 Norm. Cong., iii. 741-2. |