The Domesday of Colchester.*

PART II.

|NHABITANTS.-It is somewhat strange that the Survey does not record the total number of burgesses, or the total number of houses, either T.R.E. or T.R.W. We may, however, discover from a financial entry that the number of houses in the tota civitas was 450 T.R.E.; and by a careful analysis of the Survey we can account for about the same number as existing in 1086. This figure (which would imply a population of somewhat over 2,000 souls) seems curiously small when compared with the "Hundred of Norwich" with its 1,300 burgesses T.R.E., or even the "Half-Hundred of Ipswich" with its 538 burgesses T.R.E.; or, to take the case of a sister colonia, the civitas of Lincoln, with its 970 inhabited houses T.R.E., must have had more than double the population. Colchester had clearly been distanced in the race, and had been relatively receding in importance.

The lengthy list of burgesses which forms the bulk of the Survey affords us more information than would at first sight appear probable. According to Mr. Freeman,

A long list is given of English burgesses who kept their houses, followed by a list of possessions within the borough which had passed into the hands of Norman owners.§

But this is not so. The list is, to some extent, divided into two, but several Normans -among them landowners in the countyare to be found in the first half, while the second half contains at least two names of

English owners who have kept their houses.* Nor are the estates in the latter part "possessions within the borough," for the term burgus, as I have shown, is only used twice in the Survey, and is then strictly applied to the space within the walls. If we examine the first half, headed, "Isti sunt Burgenses Regis qui reddunt consuetudinem," we find the names of 276 burgesses, several of them owning many houses and a few owning none-the grand total of their houses being 355. Their land, which was divided into unequal plots, amounted to no less than 1,296 acres of arable and 51 of meadow. Most of the plots were but a few acres in extent, often but one or two, and suggest a very large element of "peasant proprietors," dwelling probably on their little holdings, of which many must have been

distant from the walls. There were also several properties of from twenty to thirty acres; and the whole effect produced is that of a land-owning community, with scarcely any traces of a landless, trading element. Hence, we may presume, the relative sparseness of population; hence also the want of development in the community. Among the burgesses we find seven priests and nearly twenty women, one of the latter, Leofleda, being perhaps the wealthiest of the townsfolk, with her three houses, her twenty-five acres, and her mill.‡ The pure English element is of course predominant in the names, and lingered long among the fields and copses after fashion had banished it from the font.§ But Hacon and Tovig, Osgod and Segrim, were names that told of Norse descent. And followers of the Conqueror as well figured among the king's burgesses. Rossel and Dottel occur among the names, as do Walter and Got Hugh.

Ralph Pinel, the Lord of Bromley,* is among them also, but has declined, after the manner. of his comrades, to pay the dues on the houses which he holds, as a burgess, within the walls. Two other Normans, with the singular names of Half White (Dimidius Blancus) and William Sin (Willielmus Peccatum), are under-tenants of lands in the county.‡ Tescho (Tedesco?), another foreigner, has also withheld his burgage-dues. Even St. Eadmund figures on the burgess roll of Colchester. A puzzling problem is presented by two Englishmen, "Consilio Godwine" and "Consilio Elfheah." What office did these men hold, consilio being evidently an official prefix? Were they, as at St. Edmunds, in later days, the nominees of the king's reeve, the men who convened the moot of the hundred, and carried the horn of office ? Nor must we omit "Wulfwine the Crier," the only bearer of that venerable office recorded in the pages of Domesday. It is a singular coincidence that "a parcel of land called the Towne Clapper' was still to be found at Colchester as late as the sixteenth

ii. 39, 77, 78.

§ "Abbas Sti. Eadmundi ii. domus et xxx. acras" (ii. 105). A century later he owned "duas ecclesias in Colecestrâ" (J. de Brakelonde).

"Et nominati sunt eâdem horâ duo burgenses Godefridus et Nicholaus ut essent præfecti, habitâque disputatione de cujus manu cornu acciperent, quod dicitur mot-horn, tandem illud receperunt de manu prioris" (J. de Brakelonde, 54). Cf. the Pusey horn, Seymour horn, Boarstall horn, &c., as cases of horn-tenure. It is but fair to Mr. Coote to point out that he might here discover a trace of the long-lost duumviri (Romans of Britain, 354, 358).

༈། ii. 1o4, "Uluuin monitor." I follow Ducange in rendering monitor as "crier," though I should myself prefer "the wakeman," on the analogy of that primitive officer at Ripon, who originally blew "a horn every night at nine of the clock" (compare the vesper-horn of the Swiss Alps) as a police warning to the inhabitants. (For details see Gent's Ripon, pp. 101-2.) But we should also compare "the Burghmote horn" at Canterbury, by which the governing assembly was summoned "from time immemorial" down to 1835 (Hasted's Kent, 1800, xi. p. 29; Brent's Canterbury, 1879, p. 233), unless this should be rather identified with the horn mentioned in the note above. It should be observed that at Ripon the mere "wakeman" developed into the mayor, while at Canterbury the convener degenerated

into the crie

century.*

Mr. Gomme may be able to tell us whether we may here discover the trace of an immemorial custom conspicuous in the Aryan system.+

The precise status of the owners in the second half of the list is not easy to determine. Among them are the names of great Norman landowners, but their possessions, like those of the English burgesses, were all charged with quit rent to the Crown, though they had mostly endeavoured to evade payment.§ The distinction, therefore, if any, must be sought in jurisdiction, and not in tenure. Both classes were equally entitled to share in the common pasture.

LEXDEN. The boundaries of the civitas of Colchester are plainly to be discovered in Domesday. The Colne was its northern limit, for beyond it, as we shall see, lay the King's Wood, of which the Survey could take no cognizance. On the east it extended beyond the Colne over the outlying lands of Greenstead, closed in to the north by wood and waste. Its southern portion, subsequently known as West Donyland, was by far the most extensive, and embraced the swelling uplands between the valleys of the Colne and of the "Roman river." On the west, it was protected by no natural boundaries, and was there consequently most open to aggression, even in the days before the legionaries of Rome had stormed the ramparts which to this day remain. It here adjoined the Lordship of Stanway, one of those which had passed at the Conquest from the hands of Harold into those of King William. * Among the obit-lands confiscated under Edward VI.

See Mr. Gomme's invaluable Introduction to the Index of Municipal Offices, p. 35, where a Bellman's acre is quoted. There was also at Colchester a Hangman's pond, and a Parson's acre will be found below, while a Knave's acre still remains in the grounds of the Hythe Rectory.

See "Manorial Houses." Earl Eustace, Sweyn of Essex, Ralph Peverel, Geoffrey de Magnaville, Hamo (Fitz-hamon), and Eudo (of Rye) occur among the