6. LOCAL GOVERNMENT

 

In common with the rest of the Northern Danelaw, Nottinghamshire had a distinctive form of local government to which all non-royal estates were subject. The basic unit of organisation and assessment was the carucate. In practice, it was a conventional rating, but its name, the Latin form of the Anglo-Danish plogsland, ploughland, indicates that, in theory at least, it was related to arable land and the plough.[1] As a unit of assessment, it therefore differed from the hide of southern and western England which, by way of contrast, was notionally related to the total resources - arable, pasture, and woodland - required by one family.[2] Like the hide, however, the carucate was not just the assessment for the collection of Danegeld. It was the basic unit for all manner of public and communal services.[3] The carucation of the county, then, is of vital importance to an understanding of the fabric of administration in the shire.

            Unfortunately, it is not possible to reconstruct the system in Nottinghamshire in any great detail for there are a number of deficiencies in the data. First, unlike in Lincolnshire and Roteland, no records of carucate quotas for each wapentake have survived to guide the student through the vaguaries of the Domesday  text,[4]  and  twelfth-century geld surveys from which they can be reconstructed are not extant.[5] Second, in common with the rest of Domesday Book, the Nottingham-shire folios probably contain many errors, and no where is this more apparent than in the record of assessment, especially where fractions are involved. A comparison of the figures of the Lincolnshire Domesday with those of the c.1115 Lindsey Survey reveals that the problem is widespread and suggests that the extreme brevity of the text is probably responsible.[6] Thus, the difference between a third part and three parts, that is, one third and three quarters, is often only indicated by a slightly different contraction mark.[7] Many such errors may be sus-pected from the impossibly clumsy fractions that sometimes emerge from the Nottinghamshire villar totals.[8] Third, there are probably many omissions in the account of the county. Some, indeed, can be identified from the text itself: sokeland of Bathley and Colston (Basset) is described in two breves, but there is apparently no account of the manorial capita to which it belonged.[9] If not subsumed in other entries,[10] they were  probably just forgotten.[11] Other omissions may remain, but they are undetectable since no early surveys can be used to identify them. Finally, duplication of material introduces in-accuracies which, again, are not always apparent. It often arises in the description of land in which two tenants-in-chief had an interest. Thus, it is likely that all forinsec soke entries in the Nottinghamshire text are duplicated in one way or another, for each tenant-in-chief made a return of his interest in the land.[12] But duplication can also be a function of procedure. The compiler of the text may have had recourse to two different sources, and failed to recognise that they referred to the same land, or inadvertently used the same source twice. Thus, a single parcel of land in Grimston appears three times in the king's breve.[13] The first reference is probably directly derived from an early geographically arranged source, while the second and third, a compound entry and a more detailed account of the same land, were probably taken from estate management records.[14] Elsewhere all such errors and inconsistencies can be identified by reference to standard units of local government. In Lincolnshire, for example, the universal incidence of the twelve-carucate hundred is a useful datum for checking aberrant statistics.[15] But in Nottinghamshire, the same device cannot be employed. The low rate of carucation results in very large hundreds, and it is usually impossible to determine which entries are in the same hundred.

            However, if the whole system cannot be reconstructed, certain characteristics are apparent. In the first place, it is clear  that a three carucate unit was common in the distribution of the burden of taxation.[16] This is most obvious where the estate was conterminous with the vill. In the 95 cases in the Nottinghamshire folios, 69 of the holdings are assessed at three carucates or a fraction, either a half or a third, or a multiple, of the same unit.[17] The phenomenon, however, is common in many other vills: the assessment of individual estates apparently exhibits no system, but the total is derived from the same unit. In Papplewick, for example, there are two holdings assessed at five bovates, and two carucates and three bovates, a total of three carucates.[18] Elsewhere settlements are combined to make up a three-carucate unit. Thus, Cossall, consisting of two estates with a total assessment of one and a half carucates, and Strelley, encompassing three manors likewise with an assessment of one and a half carucates, probably constituted a single unit, again with a combined total of three carucates to the geld.[19] The unit is found throughout the county with the exception of the wapentake  of Thurgarton. There a curious nine-bovate unit is found in twelve of the 30 vills of the division.[20] No system is apparent in the remaining 18 settlements. It  has  not  proved possible to reconstruct a hundred in this wapentake,[21] and it is therefore not clear how these assessments were combined. It is possible, however, that the unit represents a 25% reduction of the standard villar quota - that is nine bovates represents one and a half carucates, two carucates and two bovates, three carucates, etc. But this is probably unlikely for there is no sign of a reduction in the assessment of Alstoe Wapentake in Roteland which gelded with Thurgarton,[22] and the procedure is probably unprecedented in the North.[23] Alternatively, the unit may attest to the survival of a pre-carucation unit. In 956 South-well was assessed at twenty manses, and its Domesday assessment of twenty two  and a half carucates is precisely  twenty nine-bovate units.[24] In some parts of the East Midlands, however, manses and manentes seem to represent vills rather than hides, and it is not clear whether the two terms had the same meaning in Nottinghamshire.[25] Neither ex-planation is entirely satisfactory, but, regardless of origins, the phenomenon attests to the local distribution of assessment and emphasis-es the fact that, at this level per se, there was no standard system.[26] It is probably unlikely, then, that the three-carucate unit as such functioned as a vill in the legal sense. It is true that there must have been some organisation of communities at this level, but there is no evidence that the unit was represented at the enquiry, and, from the five examples that we have, it does not seem to be a subdivision of the hundred. As in Roteland, there is no consistent pattern. Vestiges of a three-carucate structure can be detected in the two Broxtow hundreds and in Alstoe. The wapentake of Martinsley, however, appears to have been divided into three vills of four carucates each.[27] Moreover, there is no obviously consistent relationship between the unit and the structure of local government in the later Middle Ages. With but few exceptions, the composition of the vills of the early fourteenth-century Nomina Villarum bears no relationship to patterns of carucation.[28] As elsewhere, the system of local government probably underwent considerable changes in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[29]

            It is not possible, then, to examine the nature of any local government unit at the level of the community. It was either not represented in the Domesday enquiry, or has left no trace in the text. More is known about the hundred. It was probably this institution which provided the basic form and structure of the survey,[30]  and  its  role suggests that it played an important part in the fabric of county administration. As we have seen, the Danelaw hundred was assessed at twelve carucates. The land of the king, however, was not incorporated into the system. Thus, in Farnsfield, Walter de Aincurt had two bovates of land. One was in the soke of Southwell, and the other in the soke of the king, but it nevertheless belonged to the hundred of Southwell.[31] It was clearly considered exceptional that the king's land was within a hundred in this way, and it was therefore felt necessary to record the fact. This characteristic of the hundred is also found in Lincolnshire. The Lindsey Survey preserves the record of wapentake quotas for the whole of the north of the county.[32] Each of the three ridings of the division is assessed at almost exactly 50 hundreds, and the figures are evidently not coincidental, nor ad hoc, for two wapentakes, geographically in the South Riding, are accounted in the North to bring the assessment of the three ridings into parity.[33] The pattern clearly reflects basic administrative arrangements, but the land of the king, apart from a few small escheats, is not included in the figures. The hundred was otherwise universal in Roteland, Lincolnshire, and Derbyshire,[34] and there is evidence that it was so in Nottinghamshire.[35]

  The functions of the hundred were many and varied, but it was essentially a 'public' institution. Apart from the land of the king,  no estate was outside of its tale, and it seems to have had little regard for the intricacies of estate structure.[36] As we have seen,[37] this was of the essence of the institution since it was a function of a carucation imposed upon the counties of the Northern Danelaw from above. Unlike the jurisdiction associated with the soke in the eleventh century, it was thus independent of tenure. It is true that in 1086 the Lincolnshire hundreds of Freiston, Normanton, and Willoughby belonged to the manor of Caythorpe,[38] but this was the exception for manor and hundred were rarely conterminous. In the majority of cases, each encompassed elements of tenurially discrete estates and, like the wapentake, had not been appropriated to any particular individual interest.[39] It was, in fact, an important element in the royal, in the sense of public, administration of the shire. It was the basic unit of taxation, and probably also had a military role. But it also functioned as a communal organisation - it could witness charters and was a party to decisions which affected the whole of a community.[40] Its most important and fundamental function, however, was in the maintenance of law and order. In the account of the shire customs of Nottinghamshire it is recorded that:

In Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, if the king's peace, given by his hand or seal, be broken, a fine is paid by eighteen hundreds, each hundred, eight pounds. The king has two parts of this fine, the earl the third, that is, twelve hundreds pay to  the  king  and six to the earl.[41]

Almost exactly the same formula is found in the Lincolnshire and Yorkshire folios,[42] but it was evidently widely understood in the North. The immediate source is probably related to Æthelred's Wantage Code (c.1000, probably 997).

1.1....the peace which the ealdorman and the king's reeve give in the meeting of the Five Boroughs, that is to be atoned for with twelve hundred [sic].

1.2. And the peace which is given in the meeting of one borough is to be atoned for with six hundred; and that which is given in a wapentake is to be atoned for with a hundred, if it is broken; and that which is given in an alehouse is to be atoned for, if no one is killed, with twelve oras.[43]

In York, breach of sanctuary was amended by the same penalties, and the liberties of the archiepiscopal minster were also enjoyed by the churches of Beverley, Ripon, Durham, and Hexham.[44] The hundred in this context does not primarily imply the twelve-carucate hundred of the Northern Danelaw, although the Domesday Book formulation presupposes it since the hundred paid the fine. It refers to the basic penalty for breach of the peace, for eight pounds is a long hundred, that is, 120, of sixteen-pence Danish oras.[45] The Domesday hundred, then, is so named because it was responsible for the fine. By implication, it must also have been responsible for the maintenance of law and order and  was thus in essence a tithing. As such, it shares many characteristics with the tithings of the south, the leet of East Anglia, and possibly the five-hide unit.[46]

            As we have seen,[47] it is not possible to reconstruct the whole system: the uncertainties of the Domesday statistics, and the high incidence of composite entries, have defeated all attempts. Two hundreds have, however, been identified in the wapentake of Broxtow, and two others can be suggested. North and South Muskham and part of Carlton (-on-Trent) were assessed at twelve carucates,[48] and, occupying a corner of the wapentake of Lythe, may thus have constituted a hundred in 1086. The detached portion of the wapentake of Broxtow in Rushcliffe, comprising Costock, Wysall, Rempstone, Thorpe (-in-the-Glebe) and part of Willoughby (-in-the-Wolds), may also have been a hundred. It is assessed at eleven carucates and six and three quarter bovates, and, unlike the surrounding estates, the teamland figures of the constituent estates are the same as the geld carucates.[49] However, the approximate number of hundreds in the county can be calculated, and the pattern of carucation reconstructed, from the total assessment of Nottinghamshire. The Domesday Book statistics for each wapentake are set  out  in  figure 14. Those duplicate entries that have been identified have been excluded[50] and allowances have been made for possible irregularities in wapentake structure. Compound entries which encompass undifferentiated land in more than one wapentake have been added to the total of the wapentake in which the bulk of the land was situated. Thus, the nine carucates and two bovates assessment of Laneham in Bassetlaw, with its berewicks of Askham, Beckingham, Saundby, Bole, (West) Burton, Wheatley, and Leverton, has been included in Oswaldbeck since all but one of the manor's appurtenances were situated in the wapentake. Two further adjustments must be made to the figures. First, the assessment of Alstoe Wapentake in Roteland was equally divided between Thurgarton and Broxtow, and twelve carucates must therefore be added to both.[51] Second, the assessment of the land of the king must be subtracted since it was not incorporated into the hundred.

Figure 14: the assessment of the Nottinghamshire wapentakes.

WAPENTAKE

 TOTAL GELD

KING'S LAND

GELDABLE LAND

NOTES

 

  car. bov.

  car. bov.

  car. bov.

 

Newark (½)

  46   5 7/10

 

  46   57/10

  a

Lythe (½)

  42  

   0   6

  41  

  e

Rushcliffe (½)

  53  

 

  53  

  b

Oswaldbeck (½)

  43   14/5

  11   47/30

  43   517/30

 c,d

 + Martinsley?

  12   0

 

 

 

Bassetlaw (1)

 112   0

  29   2

  82   6

 c,e

Thurgarton (1)

  74  

   0   1

  86  

  f

 + half Alstoe

  12   0

 

 

  g

Broxtow (1)

  90  

  16  

  86  

  b

 + half Alstoe

  12   0

 

 

  g

Bingham (1)

  92   22/3

   7   1

  85   12/3

 a,b

NOTES

a. Part of Staunton in Newark Wapentake belonged to Orston in Bingham (Thoroton i, 303-5.

b. Half of Adbolton has been added to Bingham (Notts. DB, 10,55n). The total includes  part of Willoughby-in-the-Wolds (Notts. DB, 16,5n) which is otherwise accounted in Broxtow.

c. The assessment of Laneham cannot be determined since a total of nine carucates and two bovates is given for the whole manor without qualification. Although locally in Bassetlaw, the settlement has therefore been included in Oswaldbeck since most of the estate was situated in that wapentake.

d. The assessment of the soke of Oswaldbeck has been subtracted from the total assessment of the wapentake. It is not absolutely clear, however, that it was held by King Edward in 1066, although this seems very likely in the light of the relationship between the estate and the king's manor of Mansfield. See chapter 9.

e.  Kersall, locally in Lythe, is assessed with Kneesall, and its assessment has therefore been included in Bassetlaw.

f. It has been assumed that the soke of Southwell held by tenants-in-chief other than the archbishop of York is duplicated in the assessment of the manor of Southwell (Notts. DB, 5,4). See Appendix 1.

g. Half of the assessment of the Roteland wapentake of Alstoe belonged to Thurgarton and half to Broxtow (Rutland DB, R1). Martinsley was also an integral element in the sheriff of Nottingham's bailiwick. There is no indication, however, to which wapentake it belonged, although Oswaldbeck is a possibility (see below).

            The resulting totals remain gross approximations, but nevertheless a pattern is discernible. Bassetlaw, Thurgarton, Broxtow, and Bingham are all assessed at within two carucates  of seven hundreds, and the totals are evidently not coincidental for the addition of Alstoe to Thurgarton and Broxtow is clearly intended to make up their quotas to this figure. The assessment of the four remaining wapentakes is more erratic. But, if the Roteland wapentake of Martinsley is added to Oswaldbeck, three would be rated at within four carucates of three and a half hundreds. The assessment of Rushcliffe remains anomalous, but there is later evidence to suggest that all four were indeed originally assigned a quota at half the rate of the larger wapentakes. As early as 1123-35 Newark is called a half wapentake, and in the Pipe Rolls of  the late twelfth century Oswaldbeck, Lythe, and Rushcliffe are similarly termed,[52] while in 1275 several Nottinghamshire juries declared that Bassetlaw, Thurgarton, Broxtow, and Bingham were whole wapentakes, and Oswaldbeck, Rushcliffe, Lythe, and Newark half wapentakes.[53] Such references lend credibility to the pattern of assessment reconstructed from the Domesday data, and it can, with some confidence, be concluded that a standard quota was imposed on four of the county's wapentakes, and the remaining four were assessed at half the rate. The Domesday statistics point to a seven-hundred unit and, if this was applied consistently, a total shire liability of 42 hundreds. This total is very close  to the actual assessment of geldable land in Nottinghamshire and Roteland of 43 hundreds, 8 carucates, and 5 bovates.[54]

            The assessment of the county is extremely light compared with the burden of taxation imposed upon Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, and York-shire,[55] and it is therefore possible that it had enjoyed a reduction in carucation at some time before the Conquest. In Lincolnshire, the close relationship between geld carucates and local government probably precluded a beneficial re-assessment of this kind. Variations in liability seem to have been effected by reducing the amount of money levied on the hundred.[56] A similar procedure was followed in Yorkshire,[57] and the Domesday quotas were evidently those that  were  originally imposed upon the counties. Stenton has suggested, however, that the Nottinghamshire teamland figures represent a higher carucation that pre-dates that of 1066.[58] The information is recorded in each entry immediately after the statement of tax liability, and appears to indicate the total amount of land available in terms of the number of ploughs that could be employed. The figures, however, are obviously artificial, for they are usually round sums and, like the geld, frequently duodecimally based. Moreover, the number of working teams usually exceeds the recorded teamlands. It is not possible to determine the exact total of teamlands for  the information is wanting in some 91 entries, but there were at least 1255 as against 1991 actual teams in the county as a whole.[59] The teamland, then, is clearly a conventional assessment of some kind. The figures for the hundreds of Alstoe, Martinsley, and Broxtow suggest that, like the geld, it was not a measured rating of individual estates, but was distributed from above through the hundred, for in all three instances a distinctive quota appears to have been imposed upon each division. Each of the Alstoe hundreds was rated at 24 teamlands and Martinsley at 48, while the two Broxtow hundreds were, exceptionally for Nottinghamshire, assessed at the same rate as the carucates to the geld.[60]

            None of these characteristics necessarily indicates that the teamland is an ancient assessment. Stenton, in his examination of the Nottinghamshire evidence, based his conclusions on the grounds that the figures were larger than the geld carucates, but in some way, if not necessarily regularly, related to them.[61] This argument,  however,  is illogical. If two sums are related, one may have been derived from the other, but there is no way of determining the base without further information. Teamlands could just as easily be later than carucates to the geld. Indeed, it has recently been argued that the articles of the Domesday enquiry imply that the commissioners were required to re-assess the liability of each parcel of land to royal incidents, for they were asked to enquire whether 'more could be had than at present', and the teamland figures are a record of this re-assessment.[62] Although the term caruca, plough, was used, the rate was varied to reflect the economic potential of each type of estate or economy, whether pastoral or arable. There is considerable force in this argument. First, the information throughout the country is usually given in the present tense. In the Nottinghamshire folios the verb is omitted; there is just a bald statement 'land for x ploughs'. In Roteland, however, the formula is unequivocal. 'In Alstoe Wapentake there are two hundreds, in each twelve carucates of land to the geld, and in each one there can be 24 ploughs'.[63] This information certainly looks like a statement of the potential of the estate in 1086. Second, the information was evidently not a matter of record, like the assessment to the geld, for it is omitted in 17% of  all entries. Almost all of these relate to land in soke, accounting for 35% of all entries of this type, for which no other details - population or stocking - are given. Moreover, teamland figures are wanting in almost all waste entries, whether  manorial and soke, in which no TRW value is given. It seems likely, then, that the teamland is in some way related to the recorded issues of estates in 1086. Where the land was waste, the commissioners could not make an assessment, or the lord could not furnish them with the relevant information, and, by necessity, teamland figures were omitted. It is true that, with the exception of the two hundreds identified in Broxtow Wapentake, no consistent relationship has been found between teamlands and other items of information in individual entries. This, however, is hardly significant. In the Derbyshire and Staffordshire estates of Burton Abbey, the teamland figures correlate well with working teams only if the oxen of censarii recorded in an early twelfth-century survey are added.[64] Rent-paying peasants had evidently been omitted for some reason from Domesday Book,[65] but the land they tilled was included in the teamland figures. We cannot assume, then, that the Nottinghamshire Domesday gives us all the relevant data. Population figures, ploughs, and value are probably only accurate in so far as  they  relate  to  the issues of the lord's demesne. Teamlands, however, are more likely to reflect the potential of the whole community.[66] Therefore, we cannot expect the two different types of data to be correlated in any meaningful sense.

            It is unlikely, then, that the teamland figures are evidence of a former, heavier, assessment of the county. Indeed, it is probable that, as elsewhere in the East Midlands, the Domesday carucation is that of the original assessment of the county in notional ploughlands, for standard quotas are assigned to each wapentake. In itself, this does not necessarily imply that the major divisions of the shire were, like the hundred, a function of carucation. It may merely indicate that pre-existing units were re-assessed. But the concept of the half wapentake does suggest that the two institutions constituted an integrated system, and therefore, by implication, shared a common origin, for it implies that there was an appropriate size of wapentake and number within the county. This is not inconsistent with the evidence of the Wantage Code. Breach of the peace given in the wapentake was amended by one hundred which was one sixth of the penalty exacted in the borough, that is, the proto-shire court.[67] In some sense, then, six wapentakes were equivalent to a shire. As we have seen,[68] this is the precise number of divisions that is  implied  by  the  carucation  of  Nottinghamshire. Although there were eight separate divisions, four were assessed at half the rate of the remaining four, giving a total of six full wapentakes (4×½+4=6). The same pattern can also be discerned in Derbyshire, and the principle influenced the grouping of wapentakes in Lincolnshire.[69] Thus, it seems likely that wapentakes and carucation were intimately related as an instrument of royal authority which were introduced at the same time.

            This conclusion is at variance with received opinion. Whether associated with the jurisdiction of a popular assembly, multiple estate, or shire, the wapentake is seen to be in some way identical with the large soke.[70] In many parts of the Danelaw, there is indeed a close relationship between the two institutions, for they are frequently conterminous. The soke of Newark, for example, was entirely situated within the eponymous wapentake. This coincidence, however, is by no means general. The soke of Mansfield extended into three, and Folking-ham in Lincolnshire into five, wapentakes.[71] In both instances there is no direct relationship between the institutions, and it would be difficult to explain this pattern in terms of the fragmentation of a single administrative unit. In such cases, it looks as if the institution of the wapentake has entirely different origins from that of the estate. There is no doubt that this conclusion is substantially correct for the dues which the lords of the soke and wapentake  expected were different. The former had title to the sokeland in so far as he enjoyed its farm and jurisdiction. These rights, sake and soke, excluded the king from the estate, and conferred the fines and forfeitures of his land and men upon the lord. In this sense, the holder of sake and soke, toll and team enjoyed the king's two pennies.[72] The rights of the lord of a wapentake were of a different order. It is true that the bishop of Lincoln is said to have had sake and soke over the wapentake of Newark,[73] but this statement is clearly incorrect. He did not have title to all the land in the wapentake, and the abbot of Peterborough had sake and soke, toll and team in Collingham.[74] Indeed, if sake and soke, toll and team were the essence of the bishop's rights, then the list of those so privileged in Domesday Book would imply a proliferation of private wapentakes.[75] In fact, suit was normally paid in the thirteenth century from land which had enjoyed the liberties in the eleventh. The abbot of Peterborough or his attorney, for example, attended the court of the wapentake of Newark once every fortnight for his land in Collingham.[76] Evidently the lord of the wapentake was only entitled to the soke of the king and/or earl. Thus, the bishop of Lincoln could have all of the customs of the king and the earl in the wapentake of Newark, but this did not conflict with the right of those with sake and soke, toll and team to the king's two pennies from the land of their men. The  point  is  made  explicit  in  the  Lincolnshire Clamores. St. Mary of Stow had two thirds of the soke of forfeitures in the wapentake of Well, and the earl the remaining third, over all the thanes within the division. Ulchil, Asfort, Restelf, and Ulmer, however, had sake and soke over their land and men in Sturton (by Stow) hundred.[77] The soke of the wapentake, then, conferred rights to the forfeit-ures of the thanes, but they themselves still enjoyed the forfeitures and dues of their men if they held with sake and soke. In return they made suit on the behalf of their tenants. Thus, a jury declared in c.1106 that all the archbishop of York's tenants were free of suit to the wapentake and shire, but the bailiff of each manor attended court to do right for them.[78] Thus, it is clear that, unlike the tenure of sake and soke, toll and team, the soke of the wapentake in no way conferred title to land.[79]

            The soke and wapentake, then, were clearly independent institut-ions. It is therefore not surprising that their courts were frequently quite distinct. In Newark, for example, the sokemen paid suit to the court of the soke, and the knights to that of the wapentake.[80] Where the two courts were held together, it is likely that there was still a distinction between the tenants of the soke and the suitors of the wapentake. The coincidence of soke and wapentake, then, is probably no more than ad hoc. As ville regales, many soke centres must have  been  a natural choice for the centre of a new institution. Likewise, traditional meeting places were probably employed where appropriate. Elsewhere, more convenient divisions were made to suit local circumstances. There is therefore no direct relationship between wapentake and soke.

            We can suggest, then, that the wapentake was instituted in Notting-hamshire at  the same time as carucation as part of an integrated structure of local government initiated by the king. We have no concrete evidence to elucidate the nature of royal administration, if such existed separately from estate management, before  this date. However, as elsewhere in the country, it seems likely that it centred upon royal estates which survived, if somewhat fragmented, to appear as the large sokes of Domesday Book. The new organisation did not supersede this more ancient institution - indeed, sokes were still vital in the eleventh and twelfth centuries[81]- it merely supplemented it. The wapentake, like the hundred of East Anglia, appears to have been imposed upon the structure of the soke to coordinate the king's forfeitures in a more coherent  fashion.[82] The imposition of a quota of twelve-carucate hundreds would suggest that its basic function was related to the maintenance of law and order. Indeed, like the hundred, all who paid geld were in some respects responsible to it. Thus, even though a lord may have had the forfeitures of an estate, the earl's penny was usually reserved,[83] and the tenants were still within the soke of the wapentake for the regulation of the tithings, even if only in the  Great Courts, or the early equivalent of the sheriff's tourn.[84]

Since carucation and local government were intimately related, the date of the one gives some idea of the origins of the other. Two dates have been proposed. Stenton, recently followed by Professor Sawyer, has argued that the occurrence of the hide in early eleventh-century landbooks, and the absence of a penalty for breach of the peace of the twelve-carucate hundred in the Wantage Code, imply an early eleventh-century date for carucation.[85] Charles Phythian-Adams, however, has challenged this conclusion. He argues that the carucate and the hide were different types of assessment, and may therefore have co-existed. He looks to the wapentake, 'the organ of duodecimalized diffusion', to provide an upper date of the mid tenth century when the institution first makes its appearance in the sources. He concludes that the grouping of the Leicestershire wapentakes around Leicester itself suggests a date before 918.[86] There is some substance in this argument. The oxgang, a subdivision of the the ploughland, does indeed appear in late tenth-century Yorkshire charters alongside the hide. Edgar, for example, granted an estate of twenty hides in Sherburn (Yorks) to Aslakr in 963, but the appurtenances listed in the charter are measured in oxgangs. Already at this time, it would seem, there was a tax assessment based upon arable land, the rationale of carucation.[87] Moreover, as we have already seen,[88] the hundred was in essence a territorially based tithing. It is therefore not surprising that it does not appear as an institution that gave peace in Æthelred's Code, for it was in no position to do so. Although there is some later evidence to suggest that the hundred met in formal sessions at appointed times, it cannot have constituted a court in its own right. Its role on these occasions was almost certainly confined to the witness of transactions in other types of court.[89] However, the penalty of eight pounds, that is, a long hundred of sixteen-pence Danish oras, that gave the institution its name, does appear in the first two articles of the Wantage Code. The peace which the ealdorman and the king's reeve gave in the meeting of the Five Boroughs was to be atoned for with twelve hundred, that in the borough with six hundred.[90] Further, a system of territorial tithings was probably already in existence in the Northern Danelaw as early as the reign of Edgar. The law code issued at Wihtbordesstan between 962 and 963 (IV Edgar) declared that:

2.1....it is my will that secular rights be in  force among the Danes according to as good laws as they can best decide upon.

2.1a. Among the English, however, that is to be in force which I and my councillors have added to the decrees of my ancestors, for the benefit of all nations.

2.2. Nevertheless, this measure is to be common to all the nations, whether Englishmen, Danes, or Britons, in every province of my dominion, to the end that poor man and rich may possess  what  they rightly acquire, and a thief may not know where to dispose of stolen goods, although he steal anything, and against their will they be so guarded against, that few of them shall escape

3. Namely, then, it is my will that every man is to be under surety both within the boroughs and outside the boroughs.

3.1. and witness is to be appointed for each borough and for each hundred.

6. And every man is with their witness to buy and sell all goods that he buys and sells, in either a borough or a wapentake.[91]

Since the tithing, hundred, wapentake, and carucation are so closely associated, the passage is clearly of great significance. The existence of the tithing in itself does not imply carucation. But the standard quotas of the Nottinghamshire wapentakes, and the half wapentakes, suggest that there was an intimate relationship between the institution and the hundred. The existence of the one presupposes the other. Thus, it is very likely that the tithing of IV Edgar was in fact the twelve-carucate hundred. Indeed, the responsibility of the whole community for the maintenance of law and order is implied as early as the first code of Edgar's reign.[92] There is, then, no objection to an early date for carucation.

            It is unlikely, however, that the system was introduced much before the late tenth century. In the law codes of Athelstan, there is no indication of a territorial tithing for, with the exception of the special case of urban peace gilds, warranty was vouched by the lord or kin.[93] As a function of a new concept of local government,  then,  the carucation of Domesday Book must have been introduced at a later date. Indeed, it seems likely that it was part of a concerted royal strategy to settle the North after the uncertainties of the middle years of the century. Closely related to the organisation of the Five Boroughs, the system was probably designed to break the long-established bonds between the Danes of the East Midlands and York by fostering a separate identity and effecting control by introducing  a strong system of public and royal government.[94] But the innovations were not just a result of a purely local initiative. In the mid tenth century, the kings of  England seem to have taken an active interest in the workings of local government. The Hundred Ordinance was promulgated in the reign of Eadwy or the early years of Edgar, and was intended to institute reforms and tighten up procedure in the administration of the southern shires.[95] Edgar's fourth code made provisions for tithings throughout his kingdom. It was legislation for a realm that was coming into being. The administration introduced into the Northern Danelaw illustrates the nature of the departure. It was a system which was no longer tied to estates and their associated jurisdiction. The old organisation - the royal sokes and popular courts - continued to function. But the king's dues, both new and old, were articulated through the royal system from which no freeman was exempt. The crown had always reserved certain rights in land. The tenure of booked estates was dependent upon the acquittal of the trinoda necessitas. Now these duties were acquitted through the wapentake and the shire. It was a new departure which marked the transition from personal to territorial  sovereignty.



[1] Lincs. DB, x.

[2] ASE, 279.

[3] D. R. Roffe, 'The Lincolnshire Hundred', Landscape History 3, (1981), 30-3.

[4]  Lincs. DB, 237-60; BL Harl. MSS 742, Spalding Priory Register, f.244b; Rutland DB, R1-3. Only the Roteland figures are contemporary with Domesday Book (see chapter 3). The quotas for Lindsey alone survive in the Lindsey Survey of c.1115, but the burden of taxation had not change since 1066 (Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 34). The Spalding Register, a fourteenth-century source, records that there were eleven hundreds in the Lincolnshire wapentake of Skirbeck. The significance of this reference is not clear for Domesday Book suggests that there were only seven hundreds in 1066. However, it may represent an authentic tradition, for, if the figure is accepted, it would bring the total geld quota for the division of Holland to 25 hundreds, which is exactly half of the standard quota for each of the ridings of Lindsey.

[5] See, for example, the Leicester Survey (C. F. Slade, The Leicestershire Survey c.1130, Leicester 1956).

[6] Lincoln Archives Office, Longley Deposit, 7.

[7] See, for example, Notts. DB, 9,72. 12,16.

[8] See, for example, Basingfield (Notts. DB, 9,81. 10,13).

[9] Notts. DB, 24,3. 27,2;3.

[10] Colston may have been included in the account of Granby for Wiverton and Salterford, soke and inland of the former, are enrolled under the description of the latter. However, no trace of Osbern son of Richard's fee has been found in Granby in the later Middle Ages, and it is therefore possible that the identifying name of his Domesday manor is that of a unit of local government and actually refers to Colston.

[11]  Omissions are always difficult to demonstrate since many estates and settlements are hidden by the procedures of the enquiry rather than simply omitted (D. R. Roffe, 'Domesday Book and the Local Historian', The Nottinghamshire Historian 37, (1986), 3-5). Notable examples, however, are the monasteries of Crowland, Ramsey, and Thorney,  although oversight on the  part  of  the  commissioners  is  unlikely  to  be  an explanation for all the lands of the three foundations are enrolled. The especial liberties of some institutions and estates may have been responsible for their omission.

[12] See chapter 3. Since the commissioners worked from seigneurial returns as well as geld list, the same parcel of land could easily be enrolled in separate breves. Forinsec entries are particularly prone to duplication in this way. Each tenant-in-chief returned an account of his interest in a tenement, and thus land in x is enrolled in breve A because its soke belonged to A's manor in y. But it is also entered in breve B because B actually held the land.

[13] Notts. DB, 1,17; 24; 27.

[14] See chapter 2. Duplication of material in the same breve may usually indicate the use of two different documents.

[15] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 30.

[16] VCH Notts i, 209.

[17] The phenomenon is even more noticeable in Derbyshire where most of the estates are conterminous with vills or settlements. Where estate structure is relatively simple, that is, where there is little fragmentation, we might expect to observe the basic characteristics of carucation.

[18] Notts. DB, 10,21. 30,29.

[19] Notts. DB, 10,36. 13,12. 10,27-28. 30,31; VCH Notts i, 210-11.

[20] VCH Notts i, 209-10.

[21] Notts. DB, 18,6n suggests one, but the construct is not convincing. See chapter 3.

[22] Rutland DB, R1.

[23] In Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, variations in the rate of taxation were effected by levying different sums of money on either the carucate or, more likely, the hundred (Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 34; W. E. Kapelle, The Norman Conquest of the North, London 1979, 97). The method is directly comparable to the mode of geld collection in East Anglia based upon the leet (D. C. Douglas, The Social Structure of Mediaeval East Anglia, Oxford 1927, 193-202).

[24] ECNE, 111; P. Lyth, 'The Southwell Charter of 956 AD: an Exploration of its Boundaries', TTS 86, (1982), 60.

[25] The sixty Domesday vills of Hamenstan Wapentake in Derbyshire, for example, seem to be represented by the 60 manentes of a charter of 926 (ECNE, 103-4; D. R. Roffe, The Derbyshire Domesday, Darley Dale 1986, 26-7).

[26] VCH Notts i, 210.

[27] See figures 6 and 8.

[28] FA v, 103-11. Certain characteristics may, however, have survived. Probably as in 1086  (see chapter 3), Bole was divided between two vills in 1315. But generally, the fabric of local government changed completely.

[29] Roffe, 'The Lincolnshire Hundred', 36. In Lincolnshire there are indications that the twelve-carucate hundred, in its essentials a communal institution, was already becoming subject to the lord's court by the time of Domesday. It was only in the relatively free society of the fenland of Holland that pre-Conquest structures survived into the High Middle Ages. In Derbyshire both vills and wapentakes were continually remodelled with the progressive extension of seigneurial liberties, notably the assumption of rights to view of frankpledge (D. R. Roffe, 'The Origins of Derbyshire', Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, forthcoming 1986).

[30] See chapter 3.

[31] Notts. DB, 11,17.

[32] Lincs. DB, 237-60.

[33] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 34.

[34] In Derbyshire the separate administration of the terra regis is reflected in the structure of vills in the later Middle Ages. Ancient demesne is always situated in its own vill in the fourteenth century, and thus the same settlement is divided between two units of local government when both the king and a tenant-in-chief held land within it (Roffe, 'Origins of Derbyshire').

[35] See chapter 3.

[36] Lincs. DB, 26/53.

[37] See chapter 3.

[38] Lincs. DB, 37/2.

[39] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 33-5. In Derbyshire private, 'in-trinsic', wapentakes had emerged by the thirteenth century (Roffe, 'Origins of Derbyshire').

[40] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 30-33.

[41] Notts. DB, S1.

[42] Lincs. DB, p9/31-2; Yorks. DB, C38.

[43] EHD i, 403.

[44] FE, 73; Visitations and Memorials of Southwell Minster, ed. A. F. Leach, London 1891, 192-5; The Priory of Hexham: its Chroniclers, Endowments, and Annals, ed. J. Raine, Surtees Soc. 44, (1864), 61-2.

[45] 120×16d=1920d=8 pounds (EHD i, 403; VCH Derbys i, 320).

[46] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 36.

[47] Chapter 3.

[48] Notts. DB, 5,2; 5. 8,2. 12,11-14. 30,7; 46. M. W. Bishop, Nottinghamshire County Archaeologist, County Hall, Nottingham, has suggested that Carlton probably refers to Little Carlton at OS SK775571 in the parish of South Muskham (pers.comm.).

[49] Notts. DB, 9,94. 10,11; 53. 15,5. 9,90. 10,54. 15,6. 1,60. 9,91-3. 30,26; 35. Part of Willoughby (-in-the-Wolds) seems to have been in the wapentake of Rushcliffe and therefore in another, unidentified, hundred (see Notts. DB, 16,5n). Notts. DB, 16,12, has been identified as Willoughby in Walesby seemingly on the basis of wapentake sequence alone. It is a later addition to the end of the breve, however, and is  more likely to refer to Willoughby-in-the-Wolds for its teamlands are equal to its assessment to the geld, a characteristic of Broxtow, but not of Bassetlaw. With this adjustment, the hypothetical hundred would be assessed at just over twelve carucates.

[50] See Appendix 1.

[51] Rutland DB, R1.

[52] The Registrum Antiquissimum of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln i, ed. C. W. Foster, Lincoln 1931, 21; PR 15 Henry II, 66; PR 26 Henry II, 139; PR 27 Henry II, 13; PR 28 Henry II, 17.

[53] RH ii, 301, 309, 318.

[54] Stenton postulated a standard quota of eight hundreds (VCH Rutland i, 126-7). However, he was not aware that the king's land was administered separately.

[55] C. M. Mahany, D. R. Roffe, 'Stamford: the Development of an Anglo-Scandinavian Borough', Anglo-Norman Studies V: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 1982, ed. R. A. Brown, Woodbridge 1983, 214-5.

[56] Roffe, 'Lincolnshire Hundred', 34.

[57] Kapelle, Norman Conquest of the North, 97.

[58] VCH Notts. i, 212-13; Lincs. DB, xv.

[59] VCH Notts. i, 212.

[60] Figure 8; Rutland DB, R1; 2.

[61] VCH Notts. i, 212.

[62] S. Harvey, 'Domesday Book and Anglo-Norman Governance', TRHS, 5th ser. 25, (1975), 186-9.

[63] Rutland DB, R1.

[64] J. F. R. Walmsley, 'The 'Censarii' of Burton Abbey and the Domesday Population', North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies 8, (1968), 73-80.

[65]  (Derbys. DB, 1,11-15; 27-30). It is true that much of the area was waste in 1086, but the lands are identical in form to the large 'multiple estates' of Notting-hamshire and Lincolnshire, and, indeed, are usually called sokes in later mediaeval documents. It seems very likely, then, that there was a large class of free peasants in eleventh-century Derbyshire that was not recorded in Domesday Book (Roffe, Derbyshire Domesday, 18-19). The partiality of the evidence in this respect is probably a common feature of circuit 6. Liberi, censarii, and sokemen, for example, are legion in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Huntingdonshire sources, but are not noted in the Domesday text (VCH Hunts ii, 288; D. R. Roffe, 'Introduction', Domesday Book: Huntingdonshire, ed. A. Williams, forthcoming 1987). It is probably in the Lincolnshire folios alone that anything like a comprehensive account of sokemen was attempted (P. Stafford, The East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages, Leicester 1985, 20-1, 160). Clearly Domesday population statistics cannot be used as a measure of the extent of freedom in society (D. R. Roffe, 'Domesday Book and the Local Historian', The Nottinghamshire Historian 37, (1986), 3-5).

[66] This is evidently true where manor and vill or settlement are con-terminous. It may also be apparent, however, where the assessment of one holding seems to include that of another. See, for example, Notts. DB, 11,3 and 13,13, 11,9. 12,7. 12,22 and 30,3, and 1,24. 9,41.

[67] EHD i, 403. In the late tenth century, the courts of the Five Boroughs were subject to the jurisdiction of the ealdorman and king's reeve within the meeting of the whole confederacy. It was not until the early eleventh century that the borough court became autonomous and the shrieval system of the post-Conquest period emerged (Stafford, East Midland, 141-2; Roffe, 'Origins of Derbyshire').

[68] Above.

[69] See chapter 8.

[70] TMS, 43-6; H. M. Cam, 'Manerium cum Hundredo: the Hundred and the Hundred Manor', EHR 47, (1932), 355-76. Pauline Stafford has anticipated the argument presented here by suggesting that the wapentake is a late tenth-century, English, innovation, but provides no evidence for the assertion (East Midlands, 142). R. H. C. Davis has argued the case for a late date for the hundreds of East Anglia in The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St Edmunds and Related Documents, London 1954, xliv-v.

[71] Notts. DB, 1,17-30; Lincs. DB, 24/82-105.

[72] The earl's penny, however, was almost always reserved (Notts. DB, S5).

[73] Notts. DB, S5.

[74] Notts. DB, S5.

[75] Private, intrinsic, wapentakes are found in Derbyshire, but appear to be a twelfth- or thirteenth-century phenomenon (Roffe, 'Origins of Derbyshire').

[76] Documents Relating to the Manor and Soke of Newark-upon-Trent, ed. M. W. Barley, TSRS 16, 27, 42. Many other examples can be found in the Hundred Rolls.

[77] Lincs. DB, 71/9, 10. Bishop Bloet received the third penny of the wapentake in the reign of William Rufus (ibid., xxxix).

[78] Visitation and Memorials of Southwell, 195-6.

[79] Thus. Well was granted to St. Mary of Stow by Earl Leofric of Mercia, although he retained the third penny of the wapentake. The transaction, however, was independent of the monastery's right to the soke qua land of Stow which was almost conterminous with the wapentake. In common with church itself, the estate already belonged to the bishop of Dorchester (Anglo-Saxon Charters, ed. A. J. Robertson, Cambridge 1956, 213).

[80] Barley, Newark, xxxii; TMS, 44.

[81] See chapter 9.

[82] The Kalendar of Abbot Samson, xliv-v.

[83] Notts. DB, S5.

[84] P. Wormald, 'Æthelred the Lawmaker', Æthelred the Unready, ed. D. Hill, Oxford 1978, 65-8.

[85] TMS, 88-90; P. H. Sawyer, From Roman Britain to Norman England, London 1978, 196.

[86] C. Phythian-Adams, Continuity, Fields, and Fission, Leicester 1978, 20.

[87] Early Yorkshire Charters i, ed. W. Farrer, Edinburgh 1914, 18-23.

[88] Above.

[89] In Lincolnshire the institution witnessed charters (F. M. Stenton, Documents Illustrative of the Social and Economic History of the Danelaw, London 1920, nos. 93-4). An early thirteenth-century charter records that the two hundreds of Gedney, Sutton, Lutton, and Tydd were party to the division of marshland in Holland, and stood warranty in the event of loss occasioned by any claim of the bishop of Ely (ibid., lxviii-lxix). In all cases, the great magnates of the area were taking the initiative, and there is no sense in which the transactions can be said to be taking place in the hundred court.

[90] EHD i, 403; VCH Derby i, 320; see above.

[91] EHD i, 399.

[92] P. Wormald, 'Æthelred the Lawmaker', 65-8.

[93] EHD i, 382; H. R. Loyn, The Governance of Anglo-Saxon England, London 1983, 140-7; CLH, 230-49.

[94] See chapter 10.

[95] EHD i, 393-4.