Page:VCH Buckinghamshire 1.djvu/281

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DOMESDAY SURVEY

1,000, Hitcham with 500, Wooburn with its 300, the two Marlows, producing respectively 1,000 and 500, and finally Medmenham and Hambleden with 1,000 each. The only productive 'fishery' away from the Thames was at West Wycombe, where 1,000 eels were ob- tained ; but, in addition to those procured from mills, 100 are entered as obtained at Shabbington, and 125 at Clifton Reynes, the 'stick' of 25 being the unit for eels. Lastly, a fishstew is mentioned at Caversfield, an outlying portion of the county in Oxfordshire.

At Long Crendon Walter Giffard had already ' a park for beasts of the chase,' and at Oakley, some five miles away, the woodland, we read, would feed two hundred swine, did it not lie in ' the King's park.' Oakley, which was sometimes distinguished as ' in Bernwod,' lay in Bernwood Forest and adjoined Brill, a hunting seat of our early kings, from which several of their charters are dated. The issues of the forest are entered under Brill in Domesday as £12 ' arsas et pensatas.' That hawking was important as well as hunting, is brought home to us by the entry of a falcons' eyry at Chalfont St. Peter.

Horses are rarely mentioned in Domesday, but we read that at High Wycombe there was meadow sufficient for ' the horses of the court ' as well as for the ploughteams.[1] At Dorney on the Thames there was meadow ' for the horses ' as well as for the three plough- teams ; at Wraysbury, where we should expect extensive meadows, there was meadow for only five of the seventeen teams employed, but there was also enough to provide hay for the lord's 'beasts' (animalia). On the archbishop's manor of ' Nedreham ' (in Haddenham and Cudding- ton) an exceptional entry records that it produced eight days' ferm of hay for him. At this point perhaps one may mention the (horse)loads of salt which the king's manor of Princes Risborough was entitled to receive from a salter at Droitwich. The only vineyard entered in the county was a small one at Iver.

Having now dealt with the dues, payments, and sources of profit that deserve special notice, we may glance at the few but interesting entries that relate to parish churches. Those on the Crown manors were usually well endowed, and appear in the Survey as held in plurality by favourites of the king. The chief of such pluralists was Reinbald, a favourite of Edward as of William, but in this county he only held a hide at Boveney, which belonged to the church of the Crown manor of Cookham on the Berkshire bank of the Thames, a church which had a large glebe in its own county, and which King Edward had given him. It was the local bishop, Remi of Lincoln, late of Dorchester (Oxon), who held the chief endowments. His was the church of Aylesbury, with its great appurtenant manor of Stoke Mandeville, and with its valuable right to church scot from the whole area of ' the eight hundreds round about Aylesbury,' an ancient due of which we read in the Domes-

  1. This implies extensive meadows, for though the Domesday entry is unusual in form, it involves meadow for thirty plough-teams (240 oxen) as well as for the lord's horses. But so extensive was the river frontage that the manor had no fewer than six mills.

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