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neighbouring community would be E. and W.2 It was this mass of Fields the "prairie land" of the time, unconsidered because unmeasured and uncultivated, which must have constituted the bulk of most of the Osgoldcross manors when the Domesday Survey was compiled. As they produced nothing to their owners, they were not deemed taxworthy; as there was nothing upon them from which the common enemy could levy an exaction, they were not required to contribute to the common defence.

Having thus dealt with my main thesis, I may note that a few other incidentals were reported upon by the Domesday Commissioners, though their value for revenue purposes could not have amounted to much; there were a dozen mills and two sites for others, while there were a few acres of meadow, 3, 4 or 6-in an exceptional case there were said to be 24. And in Tateshalle the Recapitulation adds to the statement given in the body of the Report, that there was alms-land to the amount of two carucates, apparently a tithe of the whole manor, and probably the portion still called "Spital" (or Hospital) Hardwick in which instance two out of eighteen may well have been roughly considered as the tenth. Moreover, as many as ten manors had churches, but they were mainly clustered in the western half of the Wapentake.

Although the Field-land was neglected, these churches which were generally in the close neighbourhood of the lord's demesne, if they were not an actual portion of it, and the mills which were for the greater part in the valleys and on the streams, though the practice was beginning to obtain of placing them on the bordering hills (see ante, p. 103), are

2 This is analogous to the method by which the roads, which give access to the territory of one of the larger communities, are frequently defended by interlocking lands from encroachments and trespass. Thus each road by which Pontefract is approached passes through alternate closes of Carleton and Pontefract, Poutefract and Tanshelf, Pontefract and Ferrybridge, or Pontefract and Purston, as the case may be. When such boundaries have become concealed by buildings, there is in the present day occasional difficulty in understanding on

what principle they were made. The remark in this note furnishes the key: it was an intentional interlocking for mutual protection against strays, and one of each of the series of Closes still retains the name of "Greave," in one or other of its forms, as signifying a manorial officer. 3 This sense of the word Field as

implying outer space, has survived in our expressions "coal field," "field of view," and the field" in heraldry; implying in each case all that is not taken up otherwise by special and specified ob jects.

specified with painstaking exactitude; the mills, because as they produced a toll to the lord it was easy to charge him with a percentage of the receipts; the churches, because each had a special allotment of glebe land, which had been brought into profitable cultivation. It may be well therefore to enumerate and particularise each in the comparatively small area with which we have to deal.

And first with regard to the mills, which were at Ackworth (paying 16d.), Adlingfleet (10s.), Moss (68.), Norton (5s.), Darrington (3s.), Eggbrough (3s.), Kirk Smeaton (2s.), Tateshalle or Pontefract (3=42s.), Hampole (= 3s.), and Smeaton (2 9s. 4d.); while others were projected and provided for at South Elmsall and Thorp (Audlin), as I have already shown (ante, pp. 100-104, and as will be seen with greater fulness from the accompanying tables.

But with respect to the church provision for this part of Yorkshire, more may be said than can be summed up in a single paragraph. Foremost, it may be observed that Osgoldcross was comparatively well provided for. The Church of England was a plant of slow but steady growth, and the Domesday Survey surprises, and as it were fossilizes for our examination, the stage of growth which it had reached in the very year in which that great record was compiled. Indeed when I notice the clear tale that Domesday tells, and which I am about however partially and feebly to unfold, I am utterly surprised that Her advocates do not take more advantage of that marvellous compilation, proving as it does irrefutably and irrefragably that the Church is no creation of the State, or of the King as primary owner; its founders were the local owners of the soil, in the second or third degree. The Church is a Squire Church, rather than a State Church, as is well illustrated by a consideration (even if only by way of contrast) of the eleventh century church provision for the two neighbouring Wapentakes of Staincross and Osgoldcross, as we find it reported in Domesday.

In the portion of the former Wapentake which had fallen to the Earl of Morton, there was but one Domesday church, that at Tankersley, while the much larger part of the Wapentake which belonged to the fee of Ilbert de Lascy had no more. But Osgoldcross, which had welcomed its early settlers with a smiling natural fertility far superior to

that of its neighbour Wapentake, had as many as eleven recorded in the Survey, each with its accompanying endowed priest. The Wapentake possessed no more; and these were mainly in the immediate neighbourhood of Pontefract, its official centre and the great seat of its intellectual and mental activity. Pontefract, Ackworth, Badsworth, Darrington, Featherston, Nostell, Fryston, (Kirk) Smeaton, South Kirkby and Womersley, alone possessed churches, and Adlingfleet in the eastern extremity of the Wapentake. These were of course all parsonages or rectories; as Ackworth, Badsworth and Smeaton continue to be; for the time of "appropriation" and consequent vicarages had not yet come.

It has been asserted that in some instances churches already existing escaped recognition in the Survey. But if such were the case in some parts of the country, emphatically it was not so in Osgoldcross, for there is not even a suspicion that there was any church at all in Osgoldcross at the time of the Survey, other than those I have named. And it is important to notice that the history of the foundation of every later parish church can be ascertained with sufficient clearness and certainty. At Burg (Wallis) and Owston they were so much the foundation of the squire,the owner in the third degree, that they were even erected on a portion of his park ; at Bramwith and at Kellington they were built by the owner in the second degree, the lord of the fee, who consequently owned the advowson and presented the incumbent, till in the case of Kellington he gave his right to the newly founded Knights Templars at Hirst, on the opposite side of the water; while, as far as Campsall is concerned, the peculiarly twelfth century practice established there of endowing the church in medieties, one by the lord (de Lascy) the other by his tenant (de Reineville), sufficiently proclaims the date of its foundation. In that instance, the presentation was made alternately for at least a century, the two medieties being ultimately consolidated in the hands of the second Henry de Lascy, the great Earl of Lincoln.

4 One of the writers in "Domesday Studies" (p. 442) says,-"the coupling of the Presbyter with the Ecclesia is perhaps nowhere more marked than in the Wapentake of Skyrack . . . . : here are mentioned thirty distinct places

having churches, and no less than twenty-five of them are said to have a presbyter also." In Osgoldcross, in this respect far outrunning Sky rack, every one such church had its priest, enumerated in the Record.

Internal evidence shows that the parish system was superimposed upon the then existing condition of things about 1180, at which time manors which had no churches were made subordinate in ecclesiastical matters to those which possessed them; Ackworth, Kirk Smeaton and Kirk Bramwith being hemmed in by manors which had churches, were constituted parishes by themselves; but Ferrybridge was made to depend on (Water) Fryston, Houghton upon Castleford, Stapleton upon Darrington, Purston upon Featherston, &c., while the large district between Swinefleet and Womersley which comprised twelve manors with only one church, that at Snaith, remained so constituted as

enormous parish of above forty square miles, till not much more than half a century ago.

THE following tables contain all the information with regard to the manors of Osgoldcross, which is scattered in the Domesday Survey. The particulars are collected under the heads of the medieval parishes.

[The figures within brackets refer (1) to the Domesday volume, now in the Public Record Office, and (2) to the Photozincographic Copy for Yorkshire. S. P. and M. under the head of Extent, respectively signify "Silva Pastilis" (woody pasture) and Manor.]

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II.-ADLINGFLEET.

Adlingfleet, 1848 acres; Eastoft, 1439 acres; Fockerby, 910 acres ; Haldenby, ADLINGFLEET Parish, 5616 acres.

1419 acres.

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Badsworth, 1546 acres; Upton, 1113 acres; Thorp [Audlin] including Rogerthorp, 1311 acres.

BADSWORTH Parish, 3970 acres.

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