A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE places. In south Bedfordshire, for instance, not far off, we read of Ralf Taillebosc, of whom we heard above, adding to the king's manors of Leighton, Houghton and Luton lands which had not belonged to them under Edward the Confessor (fos. 209, 209^), while in the same county he had swept into the hands of the king's reeves a number of small estates which had been held by sokemen or by thegns (fo. 2 1 S^). 1 In such cases the king would expect to receive an increased rent (crementuni) in consideration of such addition. The Hitchin group of manors was ' farmed ' by the sheriff as a whole, and consequently Domesday records its value at the end of the whole group. It should be carefully observed that Hitchin itself (as apart from the rectory manor) is not separately valued, nor are its old appurtenant estates; but those which had been added to Hitchin by Harold or by Norman sheriffs have their values recorded, except in the case of Wymondley. It may also be noted that the value of the sokemen appurtenant, under the Confessor, is reckoned separately from that of ' Hitchin,' as was also the case with the great royal manor of Rothley in Leicestershire (fos. 230, 230^). The third of the features I described above as of special interest in Hertfordshire is the light that the Domesday Survey throws on the personality of its landowners. We are even now but feeling our way to an understanding of the system on which land was held in England on the eve of the Norman Conquest. For we have to view that system through the eyes of Norman barons accustomed only to feudal institutions and seeing everywhere dependent tenure and the ' manors ' to which they were used. And it is now recognized that, under the Confessor, there were tendencies, if not developments, which gave them to some extent an excuse for taking the view they did. In one of those brilliant passages by which he has illumined the subject Professor Maitland writes as follows If now we look at that English state which is the outcome of a purely English history, we see that it has already taken a pyramidal or conical shape. It is a society of lords and men. At its base are the cultivators of the soil, at its apex is the king. This cone is as yet but low. Even at the end of William's reign the peasant seldom had more than two lords between him and the king, but already in the Confessor's reign he might well have three. . . . Still a great change took place in the substance of the cone, or if that substance is made up of lords and men and acres, then in the nature of, or rather the relation between, the forces which held the atoms together. Every change makes for symmetry, simplicity, consolidation. Some of these changes will seem to us predestined. ... If England was not to be for ever a prey to rebellious and civil wars, the power of the lords over their men must have been not indeed increased, but territorialized ; the liberty of ' going with one's land to what- ever lord one chose ' must have been curtailed. As yet the central force embodied in the kingship was too feeble to deal directly with every one of its subjects, to govern them and protect them. The intermediation of the lords was necessary ; the state could not but be pyramidal ; and while this was so the freedom that men had of for- saking one lord for another . . . was akin to anarchy.* 1 A further illustration is afforded by a Norfolk entry (ii. fo. lf) : 'To this manor were added 2 free men by Ralf Talibosc in the time of King William. The Hundred (court) testifies this.' A survey of their land follows.
- Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 1701.
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