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 Elf heah." 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

1

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. 104, "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

The portion of the lordship nearest to Colchester was known as the Berewite of Lexden,* and early in the Survey the tale of wrong is thus told by the Burgesses :

Et burgenses calumpniantur v. hidas de Lexsendena ad consuetudinem et Scotum civitatis quæ jacuerunt ad prædictam terram quam tenebat Godricus (ii. 104).

On this most instructive entry Mr. Freeman observes :

We see the burgesses of Colchester already forming a recognized body, holding common lands, and claiming other common lands as having been unjustly taken from them.+

We have here an excellent instance of the necessity for minute investigation if we would interpret aright the facts recorded in the Survey. For (1) the land was not "common land," but "belonged to the land which Godric held" (2) The burgesses did not claim the ownership, but merely the power of rating (" ad consuetudinem," &c.).§

This claim should be compared with an entry in the Survey of Chester.||

In each case the grievance was the same. The rateable area of the civitas had been wrongfully lessened, and the land-gafol (the consuetudo, or crown quit-rent) on that portion had been transferred to the owner of the land, though the Crown continued to exact the same sum from the community, among whom the remaining landowners had to make up the deficiency. Notice that this implies the existence of a fixed commutation.¶ If we now turn to the opposite side of this picture, as presented by the description of Stanway, we detect at once the guilt

§ This "claim" of the burgesses in 1086 is singularly analogous to their claim in 1810, when they asserted their right to rate the castle and its bailey, which had previously been deemed an exempt district.

Terra in quâ est templum Sancti Petri, quam Robertus de Rodeland clamabat ad teinland, sicut diratiocinavit comitatus, nunquam pertinuit ad manerium extra civitatem sed ad burgum pertinet; et semper fuit in consuetudine regis et comitis sicut (terra) aliorum burgensium (i. 262 b.).

For the meaning of "Scot" in this case see "Finance."

of the king's reeves.* The total value of the Stanway lordship had increased 50 per cent. since the days of the Confessor.† Further proof of its wrongful extension is found in the suspicious entry under Lexden of "xvi. socmanni de ii. hidis et xxxvi. acris," formerly, we may presume, burgesses of Colchester. Nor is it without significance that a mere "berewite" had swollen to such proportions.§ It is singular to note that the invasio would have been contra regem, but that it happened to be the aggression of a Royal reeve on the rights of Royal burgesses.

When

GREENSTEAD. The point to observe in the description of this division is that it stood on a different footing from the rest of the civitas. It had been held by one man, and not by a crowd of burgesses; it had been held free from that rent to the Crown which was paid by the rest of Colchester. we remember that it also lay outside the geographical limits of the ancient Camulodunum, we are tempted to combine the two facts, and to look upon it as a late addition, and not an integral part of the original English civitas. Is it too fanciful an assumption that the latter was co-extensive with its British predecessor? Greenstead had belonged, T. R. E., to Godric,** a "freeman." * See Mr. Freeman's admirable exposure of their doings in his Appendix on The King's Reeves in vol. v. p. 811.

+ Tunc valuit totum xxii. libros; modo Petrus inde recipit xxxiii. libros; and iii. libros de gersuma (ii. 5.) This Petrus was Peter de Valonges, then sheriff and fermor of the king's manors.

These "sokemen" held about as much land as the better class of burgesses, and apparently lived on their holdings. This change of burgesses into sokemen confirms Professor Stubbs' statement (i. 409)--"The burgage tenure answers to the socage of the rural manors." For a similar transfer of sokemen see ii. 100:-"Addidit Hamo dapifer ii. sochemannos quos invasit super regem." Also i. 137.

§ I attribute to this extension of Lexden the present proximity of that parish to the town walls. The rights of the burgesses were, however, effectually restored, and the later lords of Lexden did suit and service at their court.

That this depended on the land and not the owner is shown by Godric's possessions south of the Colne being all charged with consuetudo.

¶ Greenstead appears, oddly enough, in the sixteenth century as "Greenstead Peutrice' (Rot. Pat., 1557), a name savouring of the Wealhcyn.

**Probably identical with "Godric of Colchester," a holder in East Donyland, T. R. E. (ii. 30).

Dying before the Conquest, his sons had divided* it into four parts, which they had subsequently forfeited. Two of them the Conqueror had retained, one he had granted to Earl Eustace, and one to a certain Waleran, who had died shortly before the Survey, and whose son John now possessed it. This division should be carefully compared with that at Lammarsh, on the borders of Suffolk, as illustrating the retention of Old English boundaries.‡ The shares of the four brothers had here been exactly equal in value, though one of them comprised the church, and the other the mill of the hamlet. On their forfeiture, their shares were kept intact, except that the mill was now divided among the four. It is noteworthy that the church was apparently not worth dividing. Godric had owned here four" mansiones terræ." This obscure term would seem in this case to mean "capital messuages." May they not have been the farmsteads of the respective shares ? If so, that of Earl Eustace would be now represented by "Greenstead Hall," and one of the king's would be "Greenstead Park."** To the King's shares belonged two houses within the burh,†† and three houses in Green

* I follow Mr. Freeman's reading. The original is dimiserunt.

He was a large owner in Suffolk, &c. He appears at Henny (ii. 101) as succeeding to an invasio of his father Waleran (cf. ii. 84). Waleran was of a somewhat "invasive" disposition, and had seized a house in Colchester, which the monks of St. Audoen claimed in right of their lordship of Mersea (ii. 22). It does not appear here. Was he the Waleran FitzRalph who gave lands at Pantfield, Essex, 1076?

See ii. 74. Two brothers had divided it into two shares (one twice the size of the other) T. R. E. Those shares were kept quite distinct after Ralph Peverel received the manor, and were held by separate tenants.

Thus making the shares unequal. See "Mills." Probably it had no glebe land. The church remained till recently a very ancient structure.

According to Ellis (ii. 242) "In the return for Essex, the two words mansio and manerium were considered as synonymous." But these mansiones

terra are seen to have been only homesteads.

** The Earl's share and those of the King passed to Eudo, who granted them to St. John's. One of them was made a park by the Abbot. The church (standing on Eustace's land), passed to Eudo, carrying the tithes with it. He granted them also to St. John's.

++"Quibus pertinent duo domus in burgo."

stead were held from Waleran by Turstin Wiscard.*

THE KING'S LANDS.

"Dominium regis in colecestrâ cii acræ terræ de quibus sunt x prati in quibus sunt x bordarii. Et ccxl acræ inter pasturam et fructetam, et hoc totum jacet ad firmam regis" (ii. 107).

The first point to notice here is the use of the term "demesne." In one sense the whole civitas was "in demesne" of the Crown, but in its aspect of a Crown manor it had, like any other manor,† a portion set apart as the peculiar demesne of the Lord,+-a kind of imperium in imperio. The rest of the civitas was the út-land, or geneat-land, from which accrued the gafol, or tribute which was due to the king qua lord, and formed the consuetudo of the Survey.§

* Afterwards given by Eudo to St. John's (Carta Eudonis). Proved to have stood in Greenstead by Waleran's Inq., taken at Colchester 8 Ed. IV. quarter was afterwards given to St. Botolph's, it is not known by whom. I have discovered the donor in a Hastings who married John's heiress (Rot. Pip., 31 H. I.).

"The manorial possessions of the sovereign did not differ from those of his subjects." They were regarded as landed estate. (Hale, Domesday of St. Paul's, xxxiii.)

Vulgo terræ dominicales (Spelman).

§ The identity of the landgafol in the Old English towns with the tributum of the Roman colonists is a cardinal point in Mr. Coote's theory (Romans in Bri tain, pp. 252-259, 366, &c.). His argument is briefly this. The tributum of the Romans was paid after the English Conquest to the English kings, in the early period of the Monarchy. It was then "remitted to the Roman subjects, in respect of land in the shires" (territoria) but still levied upon the houses of the same Romans in the boroughs" (p. 257.) This latter portion he indentifies with the landgafol, "not a rent, but a permanent land tax" (p. 367) a payment made by the citizens to the king" (p. 366.) From this view I must differ wholly. It is essential to distinguish the fiscalia or public burdens (practically the geldum) paid as a tax to the king quá king, from the consuetudo or head-rent paid to the king quâ lord, just as it would be paid to any private lord of a subject town or even of a manor (for this same term consuetudo is used of manorial rents throughout the Survey-a further illustration of the close analogy between town and country in Old English days). This confusion partly proceeds from Mr. Coote's theory of the territorium, which I have disproved above, and which blinded him to the true territorial character of the Old English town. He accordingly assumed that the land-gafol was only paid on house property, and it is a fatal objection to his theory that we here find it paid by land also within the borders of the territorial civitas,

It will be noticed that the area of these lands is given in acres and not in hides or carucates.* The reason of this is to be found in their not lying together, though the bulk of them (as shown on the map) formed a compact parcel.

The expression "hoc totum jacet ad firmam regis," has been wrongly translated "is let out to ferm by the king." It should be rendered "belongs to" (the strict meaning of jacet ad) "the King's Ferm." That is to say, the estate must have been rented by the collective burgesses, and the rent formed part of the Ferm they paid to the Crown.+ When King Stephen handed over eighteen acres of these lands to the Hospital of St. Mary Magdalen, an equivalent portion (3s. 5d.) of the total rent paid by the burgesses was thenceforth paid by the brethren.

Ten borders (x. bordarii) were the only labourers on this demesne. "The bordarii of the Survey," says Ellis, "appear at various times to have received a great variety of interpretations." The fact, it should be noticed, which is clearest in connection with them is that, here at any rate, they formed the class into which the villani were sinking and the servi rising. Now when we learn what these "bordars" really were, we shall perceive the significance of this change. We find them at Colchester the only labourers on the demesne lands. This corresponds precisely with the observations of Mr. Larking in Kent, and Mr. Eyton in Dorset. They were the lord's ploughmen,

* They occur in the 1130 Pipe-Roll as dominicæ carucata regis, but this was a conventional formula. + Just as their ferm was raised by 40s. while they rented the King's Wood.

So at Stanway, "Tunc xii. villani, post et modo ix. Tunc x. bordarii post et modo xii." At Lexden, one villain had sunk to a bordar, and one serf had risen to the same. On St. Peter's land, at Colchester, one serf had risen to be a bordar, &c. &c. striking instance will be found at Writtle, in Essex (ii. 5) where the villani had been reduced from 97 to 73, and the servi from 23 to 18, while the bordarii had increased from 36 to 60.

A very

§ The bordarii were, strictly speaking, the labourers of the demesne lands of the manor (Domesday of Kent, App. xxi.). So too on pp. 167-8.

"The bordarii, so far from being 'cottars' (as lord Coke supposed) or 'dwellers on the border of an Estate'.... dwelt round the court-house, the centre of the manor. Doubtless they constituted the highest class of farm labourers employed on the

the labourers, as we should say, on the home farm. Now observe that this change in their relative numbers corresponded with a simultaneous change in the amount of land under cultivation. We find that between the days of the Confessor and the period of the Survey there was little or no diminution in the demesne land under cultivation,* but a great falling off in the number of tenants (villani) and their teams.† Thus, the marked increase in the bordarii would be due, not to the conversion of út-land into demesne, but to the necessity of providing additional labour on the demesne to replace the prædial services rendered by the former villains.‡ And so one phenomenon serves to explain the other, and to throw fresh light on this obscure but important period. J. H. ROUND.

(To be continued.)

The Preservation of Parish Registers.

HE short Bill for this purpose, brought in and prepared by Mr. Borlase and Mr. Bryce, will, we hope, shortly become law; meanwhile, it may not be amiss to note its provisions, and the need there is for them.

Parish registers have had an existence of 300 years; they were instituted by Cromwell under Henry VIII., when, as Ecclesiastical

estate. They were housed, fed, appointed, and directed by the steward or bailiff" (Dorset Domesday, p. 49.) Thus Ellis' view (p. 83) that "bordari were merely cottagers" is wrong. Hale (Regist. Worc. xiii.) confessed that how the bordarii differed from them (the villani) does not plainly appear. Jones (Domesday of Wilts, liv.) believed the demesne was worked by servi.

Thus, on analyzing the king's manors in Essex, I find that the teams in demesne had only decreased from 69 to 62, but those of his tenants from 318 to 228. So, too, on the Bishop of London's lands, the demesne teams continued to be 30, while those of his tenants had decreased from 159 to 91 !

+ So at Orsett: "Tunc xxxiiii carucæ hominum Modo xxii. Tunc xxxiii villani, Modo xxii." (ii. 9.)

This could of course be effected either by converting the villanus or servus into a bordarius, or by engaging labourers from elsewhere.

Vicegerent, he issued the Injunction of 1538, ordering "every parson of every church to keep one book wherein he write the day and year of every wedding, christening, and burial," with minute directions for its safe custody "in one sure coffer with two locks and two keys." Parish registers, as such, may be said to have closed with the Civil Registration Act of 1837, when the State undertook the duty, and the General Register Office was formed in London.

Mr. Borlase has lately reprinted from the Law Magazine of May, 1878, an article by Mr. Taswell Langmead, with a preface by himself, in which the necessity of collecting and preserving, arranging and indexing parish registers as national records, both valuable and interesting, is earnestly pleaded, and the urgent need for it set forth; Mr. Borlase's Bill is added; and the two "printed by Pewtress & Co.," in twenty-five pages. The Bill provides for what should be done, and how to effect it; the essay furnishes the arguments, or rather the reasons, why it should become law as an Act of Parliament. The Bill itself is of but twelve short sections, or of nine besides the title and interpretation clauses. Its main provision is the transfer to the custody of the Master of the Rolls of all parish registers, and also of any transcripts-thereby embracing the Bishops' Transcripts originating with the Injunction of Queen Elizabeth -prior to the 1st of July, 1837-i.e., prior to the Civil Registration Act; it provides for their removal; for the validity after removal; for indexes and extracts; for the use of them in evidence ; for inventories, and the like; and for expenses. By an important last clause, and as it were supplemental, the Act is extended to all cathedrals and collegiate churches or hospitals, and to their burialgrounds, and to ministers though not parochial.

Parish registers are therefore now passing into a new and further phase. Two important dealings with them have before taken place prior to the Civil Registration Act of 1836, which entirely changed their character. In 1813 the registers of each parish in England started afresh with a new set of books, and since that date they have been kept on one uniform system, so that the year 1813 may be taken as one departure marking the

end of the old and the beginning of the modern registers. This was effected by what is now remembered as Rose's Act, and also remembered for a conspicuous example of carelessness; one section imposing the penalty of fourteen years' transportation for falsifying a register, and another directing that half the penalty should be received by the informer. Excellent as were the important improvements then introduced, especially in the form of registration, so as to form, as we say, a division between the old and the modern registers, and constituting of itself an era in their history, there is little doubt that the fresh set of books carried with it this misfortune, that it caused the old books to be treated with even less care than formerly. At any rate, at the next dealing with them, in 1831, the Population Abstract Return, printed by order of Parliament two years after, discloses a strange account of the then parish re-gisters. The answers of incumbents, 4,000 letters of special explanations, are deposited in the British Museum, and occupy six big folio volumes. It thereby appeared that, after 300 years of clerical custody, out of about 11,000 parishes, half the registers prior to the year 1600 had utterly disappeared, and not above 812 registers commenced in 1538, the year of their institution. Canon LXX., under James I., in 1603, an important mark in the history of registers, and stringent in its careful regulations, seems also to have been signalized by the commencement thereabouts of nearly 2,500 registers, and so downwards; while about 600 or 700 have commenced only since 1750, and some even in the present century. Few registers which have survived are perfect from their commencement; gaps of ten, twenty, thirty years are frequent; volumes are lost, leaves torn out, single entries obliterated, whether by damp or mildew, or by fraud. An immense number have been destroyed accidentally by fire. Such are some among the entries on the return; sufficiently piquant are some others: "twenty years ago, churchwarden, a shopkeeper, used some of the registers to enfold his goods;" "early registers are reputed to have been burnt;""registers deficient, 1800 to 1811, owing to the ruinous state of the church;" "all registers previous (to 1794) destroyed;" "earlier registers burnt in a fire,