22 SYMBOLICAL TRANSFER. the eighth century Ethelred, on a visit to Medesham, gave to the brethren he found there 30 manentes, and confirmed the gift by placing on the Gospels' Book a sod taken from the place. Again a purchase of lands from the king was ratified in the king's chamber by placing a sod from the land on the Gospels' Book in the presence of the bishop. This symbolism might well find no record in the books, but would play a prominent part in transfers of Heir-land and manorial holdings under the old customary law, where its dramatic character would impress the memory of the witnesses. And the customs still existing in manors of symbolical transfer, as by a straw at Wintringham in Lincolnshire, or by a rod in some of the Norfolk manors, have probably the same origin. CHAPTER II. THE EVIDENCE OF DOMESDAY BOOK. THE question remains to what extent the land of England was held under one or other of these tenures. We fortunately have in Domesday Book an exhaustive enumeration of the classes into which the landowners and cultivators of England fell 20 years after the Conquest. The land was then held and tilled as follows': Out of the 283,242 persons enumerated in Domesday, over 270,000 are thus accounted for, the balance being composed of Burgenses, 7968; tradesmen and artizans, as presbyteri, 994, ancillae, 467, salinarii, 108, porcarii, 427, fubri, 64, etc., and foreigners; Francigenae, etc. 352, Walenses, 111. At the time of Domesday, therefore, the land of England can be looked at under two aspects: I. The 9271 greater landowners, holding of the king or of tenants in chief, who between them held together with the king nearly all the cultivated land in the country; the greater part of this land was in manors, each divided into two parts, the lord's domain, and the land held in villeinage by the copyhold tenants of the manor. II. From the second point of view, all this land was cultivated by the socage and villein tenants, in all some 236,307 men. The majority of the former held manorially by free tenure, the latter manorially by servile tenure, and the villein tenants in addition cultivated much of the domain land by the work they owed to the lord. Nearly all the occupied land in the kingdom would therefore have to be considered under two heads: I. The rights of alienation and succession as possessed by its lords. II. Those rights as possessed by its cultivators. Now if we look at the land-system before the Conquest the same double aspect is presented: the land as held after the Conquest by the 9000 feudal landowners was probably held before the Conquest by nobles and thegns as Heir-land or Bookland, Heir-land being the older form of holding, while some slight portion was in estates of Folc-land and laen-land. No settled forms of feudal tenure existed though much of the book-land was held with a reversion to the donor, and in the reign of Edward the Confessor there are the germs of feudalism: e.g. "Godwin comes tenuit B. de rege Edwardo sicut Allodium'." The Conqueror gives to the Abbey of Westminster the manor of Everslea "cum omnibus rebus et consuctudinibus et legibus sicut quatuor socmanni de Edwardo rege pro iii maneriis in Allodio libere tenuerunt." The meaning of the term allodium as used in Domesday is not quite certain; in later times it is used to 1 f. 22, b, and other instances, see Ellis, 1. 54-56. Cotton MS. cited Ellis, 1. 56, n. translate "Book-land,” a word which only occurs once in Domesday'. The term occurs most often in Sussex, where more than 80 landowners are described as allodiarii, or as holding land T. R. E. per allodium, in many cases as a manor. These entries are not scattered over the county, but occur in batches in particular localities. The term probably signifies an estate either of Heir-land or of Boc-land, with a power of alienation and devise then unfettered. Its freedom is shown by the constant Sussex entry "nunquam geldavit," showing the free estate, as compared with the entry "geldavit" in a serf county like Wiltshire. Looked at from above therefore we have the superior landowners with their grants and alienations of land, their wills and charters, filling the Codex Diplomaticus, which however from the nature of the tenures is almost entirely confined to transactions in Book-land, the mass of Heir-land changing hands without any formal records surviving. And these grants usually, by the boundaries of the land granted, clearly show that a community in form manorial was settled on the land2. Looked at from the inferior side we have the numerically important class of geburs, or villani, and bordarii, whose services and position are depicted in the Rectitudines Singularum Personarum. At the time of Domesday, it is estimated that 21 million acres out of 5,000,000 in cultivation were tilled by this class, and that the lord's demesne, for which they furnished much of the labour, would account for another two million acres, leaving some 750,000 acres to be tilled by the sochmanni and libere tenentes. Now it is certain that after the Conquest the socmen and libere tenentes are in the vast majority of instances the free tenants of the manor, usually holding portions of the lord's demesne, or tilling land reclaimed from the lord's waste. And these libere tenentes may often hold other land on the manor by villein or servile tenure. The explanation of their existence appears to me to depend on two causes. First they represent smaller freeholders whom weakness and the growth 1 "quod tenuerunt duo liberi homines do Rege Edwardo in bochelande." Larkins, Domesday of Kent, p. 45, 1. 21. 2 Scebohm, V. C., pp. 127, 128. of feudal tendencies have led to commend themselves to a lord, and receive land, which would naturally be on his demesne, from him to cultivate by a free tenure. That this is so is shown by the striking fact that the sochmanni and liberi homines in Domesday are found almost entirely in the Danish districts of England'. Now the Danish settlers with their customs of freedom preserved in their districts individual independence, as opposed to dependence on a lord, longer than the rest of England. It is not therefore surprising that these districts should be found to be the stronghold of small landowners at the time of Domesday; and we may take it that the sochmanni and libere tenentes of Domesday represent the last of the smaller landowners, who held out as allodial and independent proprietors. Undoubtedly much of this change of the smaller landholders into men under the protection of a lord, and the absorption of the land which they had held in free tenure into the manor of their lord, took place immediately after the Conquest, for we have the process recorded in numerous entries in Domesday. At Haddiscoe in Norfolk we see the process of commendation: "hic sochmannus commendavit se Alwino tempore Wilhelmi regis, et erat inde saisitus quando rex dedit terram Rogero Bigoto." In Gloucestershire, "they who held these lands in King Edward's time put themselves and their lands under the protection of Brihtric" At Bedfont in Middlesex "three sokemen did not belong to the manor in King Edward's time"." At Tring in Hertfordshire we have a very full account: "Engelric held this manor in the time of King Edward, and there were two sokemen there, vassals of Osulf; they held two hides and might sell them : |