commensurate."

Gneist repeats this figure, but holds

that "as far as we may conjecture by reference to later statements, the number of shields may be fixed at about 30,000."

" 186

On the wondrous estimate of 60,000 I have more to say. Started by Ordericus,187 this venerable fable has been handed down by Higden and others, till in the Short History of the English People it has attained a world-wide circulation.188 Dr. Stubbs has rightly dismissed the statement "as one of the many numerical exaggerations of the early historians" 189 but neither he nor any other writer has detected, so far as I know, the peculiar interest of the sum. What that interest is will be seen at once when I say that Ordericus, who asserts that the Conqueror had so apportioned the knight-service "ut Angliae regnum lx. millia militum indesinenter haberet" (iv. 7), also alleges that the number present at the famous Salisbury assembly (1086) was 60,000. It is very instructive to compare this "body whose numbers were handed down by tradition as no less than sixty thousand," 190 with the "sixty thousand horsemen " 191" ut ferunt sexaginta millia equitum "-of thirteen years earlier, and with the number of the Norman invaders, "commonly given at sixty thousand," 192 of seven

186 Const. Hist., i. 157. Dr. Stubbs rightly rejects Mr. Pearson's "conjecture that the number of 32,000 applied to the hides, and that the number of knights' fees, calculated at five hides each, would be 6,400."

187 "His temporibus militiam Anglici regni Rex Willelmus conscribi fecit et lx. millia militum invenit, quos omnes, dum necesse esset, paratos esse praecepit."

188 "A whole army was by this means encamped upon the soil, and the king's summons could at any moment gather sixty thousand knights to the royal standard."

189 Const. Hist., i. 264. Compare pp. 16, 17.

190 Freeman (Norm. Conq., iv. 694).

191 Ib., iv. 562.

192 Ib., iii. 387. In Social England (i. 373) we read that "William is believed to have landed in England with at least 60,000 men, 50,000 horse and 10,000 foot." But on turning to p. 306 of that great effort of co-operative genius, we learn that only "some of William's ships carried

The "Sixty Thousand" Knights

291

years earlier still. It is Ordericus, too, who states that the treasure in Normandy at the death of Henry I. was £60,000. His father seems to have left behind him the same sum at Winchester, for, though the chronicle left the amount in doubt, "Henry of Huntingdon," Mr. Freeman observed, with a touch of just sarcasm, "knew the exact amount of the silver, sixty thousand pounds, one doubtless for each knight's fee." 193 He also reminds us, as to the crusade of William of Aquitaine, that "Orderic allows only thirty thousand. In William of Malmesbury they have grown into sixty thousand. Figures of this kind, whether greater or smaller, are always multiples of one another." 194

Fantosme

Pursuing the subject, we learn from Giraldus that the Conqueror's annual income was 60,000 marcs.195 speaks of marshalled knights as

Meins de seisante mile, e plus de seisante treis,

and the author of the Anglo-Norman poem on the conquest of Ireland gives the strength of the Irish host, in 1171, as 60,000 men. Even "Sir Bevis," if I remember right, slew in the streets of London 60,000 men; and Fitz Stephen asserts that, in Stephen's reign, London was able to turn out 60,000 foot.196 It may, also, not be without significance that 60,000 Moors are said to have been slain at Navas de Tolosa, and that William of Sicily was said to have bequeathed to Henry II. three distinct sums of 60,000 each.197

The fact is that "sixty thousand" was a favourite phrase for a great number, and that "sixty" was used in this

horses to the number of from three to eight-as well as men." So the number of his ships (396, according to Wace) is as great a difficulty as the proportions of Noah's Ark.

193 William Rufus, i. 17.

194 Ib., i. 313.

195 "Annui fiscales redditus . . . ad sexaginta millia marcarum summam implebant."

196 "Sexaginta millia peditum" (p. 4).

197 66 Sexaginta millia silinas de frumento, sexaginta millia de hordeo, sexaginta millia de vino" (Richard of Devizes, ed. Howlett, p. 396).

sense just as the Romans198 had used it in classical times and just as Russian peasants (I think I have read) use it to this day. The "twice six hundred thousand men," who were burning to fight for England,199 and the £180,000 (60,000 × 3) of Gervase (1159), are traceable, doubtless, to the same source.

How strangely different from these wild figures are the sober facts of the case! The whole of the church fiefs, as we have seen, were only liable to find 784 knights, a number which, small as it was, just exceeded the entire knightservice of Normandy as returned in 1171. As to the lay fiefs it is not possible to speak with equal confidence. I have ventured to fix the approximate quota of 104 (more or less), of which 92 are in favour of my theory: 48 fiefs, of five knights and upwards, remain undetermined.200 If the average of knights to a fief were the same in the latter as in the former class, the total contingents of the lay barons would amount, apparently, to 3,534 knights; but, as the latter one includes such enormous fiefs as those of Gloucester and of Clare, with such important honours as those of Peverel and Eye, we must increase our estimate accordingly, and must also make allowance for fiefs omitted and for those owing less than five knights (which are comparatively unimportant).

Making, therefore, every allowance, we shall probably be safe in saying that the whole servitium debitum, clerical and lay, of England can scarcely have exceeded, if indeed it reached, 5,000 knights.

Indefinite though such a result may seem, it is worth obtaining for the startling contrast which it presents to

198 Sexaginta accipitur indefinite de magno numero. Sexcenti saepe usurpatur pro numero ingenti et indefinito" (Forcellini, Totius Latinitatis Lexicon).

199❝Bis sex sibi millia centum " (Carmen de bello Hastingensi).

200 It must be clearly understood that these figures cannot be absolutely accurate. Some honours are omitted, it seems, in the returns from which we have to work, and for these allowance must be made.

A Fee was not Five Hides

293

the 60,000 of Ordericus, to the 32,000 of Segrave,201 and to the 30,000 of Gneist. The only writer, so far as I know, who has approximated, by investigating for himself, the true facts of the case, is Mr. Pearson; 202 but his calculations, I fear, are vitiated by the unfortunate guess that the alleged 32,000 fees were really 6,400 of 5 hides each. It is a hopeless undertaking to reconcile the facts with the wild figures of medieval historians by resorting to the ingenious devices of apocalyptic interpretation.

V. THE NORMAL KNIGHT'S FEE.

Much labour has been vainly spent on attempts to determine the true area of a knight's fee. The general impression appears to be that it contained five hides. Mr. Pearson, we have seen, based on that assumption his estimate of 6,400 fees, and other writers have treated the fee as the recognised equivalent of five hides. The point is of importance, because if we found that the recognised area of a knight's fee was five hides, it would give us a link between the under-tenant (miles) and the Anglo-Saxon thegn. But, as Dr. Stubbs has recognised, the assumption cannot be maintained; no fixed number of hides constituted a knight's fee.

The circumstance of a fee, in many cases consisting of five hides, is merely, I think, due to the existence of fivehide estates, survivals from the previous régime. We have an excellent instance of such fees in a very remarkable document, which has hitherto, it would seem, remained unnoticed. This is a transcript, in Heming's Cartulary, of a hidated survey of the Gloucestershire Manors belong

201 "[1235] Sicut Stephanus Segrave . . . asserebat et affirmabat vetus scutagium ad xxxii. millia scuta assumabatur et irrotulabatur; et ad tantundem plene et plane potuit novum scutagium de novis terris assumari" (Ann. Monast., i. 364).

202 "Nine thousand for all England would be a large estimate at any time in the twelfth century" (Early and Middle Ages, i. 375).

ing to the see of Worcester. I believe it to be earlier than Domesday itself, in which case, of course, it would possess a unique interest. Here are the entries, side by side, relating to the great episcopal Manor of Westbury (on Trym), Gloucestershire.

The three five-hide holdings, we find, figure in both alike, but Gilbert fitz Thorold's holding of three hides and a half appears in addition in Domesday. The inference, surely, would seem to be that Gilbert was enfeoffed between the date of the survey recorded in the Cartulary and the date of the Domesday Survey. If so, the former survey is, as I have suggested, the earlier; and in that survey we have the three tenants of five-hide holdings described eo nomine as the bishop's milites.

In the cartae of 1166 we have fees of 5 hides,204 of 4,2 205 of 6,206 of 10,207 of 2,2 208 and even of 2; 209 also of 5 carucates,210 of 11,211 and of 14.212 Cartularies, however, are richer in evidence of this discrepancy. Thus the six fees of St. Albans contained 40 hides (an average of 6

203 The italics represent Anglo-Saxon characters. 204 Lib. Rub., pp. 188, 214, 237, 238, 292.