DOMESDAY SURVEY Peculiar Position of the County, p. 263. Its Welsh Districts, p. 265. Assessment, p. 270. William Fitz Osbern as Earl, p. 270. Castles, p. 272. Harold as Earl, p. 274. The Norman Barons, p. 275. A Welsh Lord, p. 280. The Church Lands, p. 28 c. The Leominster Lands, p. 284. The Agricultural Population, p. 286. Work and Dues, p. 291. Mills, Fisheries, and Woodlands, p. 293. Droitwich and its Salt, p. 295. Hereford and its Burgesses, p. 296. Other ' Boroughs,' p. 300. Finance and Administra- tion, p. 300. The Domesday Hundreds, p. 301. Problems of Identification, p. 303. 'Lude' and Ludlow, p. 305. SO numerous are the features of interest presented by the Herefordshire portion of Domesday that it is scarcely possible in an introduction to do justice to them all. The position of the county on the Welsh March was the chief cause of those characteristics which, even in the pages of the great record, grim with statistics and finance, reveal a stirring and troubled life, a life sharply distinguished from that of the normal county where men ploughed and sowed in the shadow of the king's peace, free from the ever-present fear of the watchful enemy at the gate. To that position had been due, even before the Conquest, the arrival of mailed knights, men of the Norman duke, sent to defend the border ; the con- struction of their castles to command the valleys exposed to the Welsh invader ; the possession by Hereford burgesses of a warrior's horse and arms, with the liability to service when Wales was invaded in turn ; and the curious customary services due from the men of Archenfield, who formed the van or the rearguard when the English host was assailing the Welsh, as the tenants by cornage on the Scottish border formed it when the Scotch were the foe. To it again, after the Conquest, was due the exceptional position of William Fitz Osbern, for whom Herefordshire, as will be seen, was made a palatine earldom, and to whose commanding position and restless activity in the region the Domesday Survey bears invaluable and striking witness. Whether we turn to the important record of the local customs or to the entries relating to Leo- minster as the type of a great composite manor, or to the glimpses of historical events, or to the important descriptions of agricultural tenants and their services, we find on every side materials for study and speculation, and have much, especially, to learn from the clash of rival systems along a border dividing two races with widely differing institutions ; a border which was ever shifting with the ebb and flow of conquest. For we must not think of the Herefordshire of Domesday as co-extensive with ikp present county, or even as a district limited by any established boundaries. What Harold had recovered with his light infantry, what William Fitz Osbern and his mailed horsemen could hold at the lance's point, that, at the moment of the great Survey, was all part of Herefordshire — no more and 263
