THE DOMESDAY SURVEY it recovered from these troubles, and the occasional further fall in value under Norman domination. The statistics of ploughs and ploughlands are, in Hertfordshire, extremely precise, and enable us to learn on every manor the deficiency, if any, in plough oxen both on the lord's demesne and on the land in the peasants' hands. It must not be supposed that these animals, the driving power, as it were, of the agricultural machine, were the only stock comprised in the returns, but the abstracts of these returns in Domesday Book omitted, in Hertfordshire, the rest. 1 We obtain how- ever, in a single instance, an accidental glimpse of the numerous other requisites for stocking an estate. When Humfrey (d'Ansleville) took over from his lord Eudo Dapifer an estate in Hertford Hundred con- taining 2 ploughlands he received therewith 68 beasts, 350 sheep, 150 swine, 50 goats, a mare (doubtless for breeding), and a pound's worth of cloths and vessels (fo. 139). But these figures probably are quite abnormal. We obtain some valuable particulars on the stocking of Hertfordshire manors from the curious twelfth-century leases of those belonging to the canons of St. Paul's, Kensworth, Caddington, Ardeley and Sandon. 1 Oxen, cows, horses, sheep and swine formed the live stock in fixed quantities, the prices ranging, some sixty years after the Domesday Survey, from 3^. to 5-r. for horses and oxen, ^d. to $d. for sheep, and 8*/. to od. for swine. The great importance of the plough oxen and the value of hay for their keep are reflected in the entry of water-meadows in terms of the oxen and their feed. We can trace clearly in Domesday Book the richness of the meadows in the river valleys and their painful scarcity in the uplands. Digswell, of which the arable land required 3 plough teams, that is 24 oxen, had only meadow enough for 2 out of this number ; Abbot's Langley, with the same requirements, had only meadow for i ox ; while a nice calculation showed that Datchworth, with its 1 6 plough oxen, had only ' meadow for half an ox ' ! Several estates indeed appear to have had none at all. On the other hand, down in the Lea valley, from the junction of the Ash southwards, Stanstead Abbots had sufficient meadow for its 16 plough teams, and Amwell, on the opposite bank, presents the same figures and seems even to have had some hay to sell in addition. Hoddesdon, Broxbourne, Wormley and Cheshunt all had sufficient meadow, and Broxbourne, like Amwell, had more than sufficient, the hay in excess being worth 4-r. a year. Cheshunt could provide hay not only for its 23 plough teams but for ' the horses on the demesne,' of whose existence, by the way, we should not otherwise have heard. Even up the little valley of the Rib not only Thundridge but Standon had sufficient meadow for the oxen, but higher up, where the valley divides, Braughing had only hay for 3 of its 1 1 teams and Westmill only enough for 6 out of its 24. It will thus be seen that the study of the meadows as entered 1 See p. 264 above.
- See The Domesday of St. Paufs (Camden Society), pp. 124, 128, 1345.
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