DOMESDAY SURVEY Domesday scribe to a rigid consistency of language which the whole record shows to have been to a remarkable degree alien to his nature. Mr. Round has shown that the terms ' manerium ' and 'terra' were often used indifferently as equating one another,' and the conclusion to be drawn from this is expressed by Professor Vinogradoff ' when he says that ' we find the hall, the grange, and the berewick as constitutive elements and adjuncts of the manor, and this shows that the essence of the manor consisted in its economic organization — it was an estate to begin with, whatever other meanings and applications the term may have had.' The manor, alike in name and feudal significance, was a still young institution of Norman origin, probably partially introduced into England by the foreign favourites of the Confessor. The invaders on their arrival found a certain number of manors existing, formed many more themselves, and applied the term to any estate whose organization approximated, however loosely, to the condition of a manor. It is not unnatural that there should be the same confusion between a manor and an estate during the early childhood of the manorial system that we find when that system was moribund in the eighteenth century. At the same time the term had a certain significance, though vague and in- determinate, and it is necessary to examine what light is afforded by the portion of Domesday here under examination. It is clear that the essential feature of the manor was its hall ; so far was this the case that the two were regarded as equivalent, and it was possible to write ' in his duabus terris nisi una halla ' (fo. 261^), or the converse but similar phrase, ' tunc fuerunt ii halls modo in uno manerio ' (fo. 27). This 'hall' appears in the concrete as an actual building — the manor-house or court — under 'Apedroc,' where a virgate is mentioned where the Count has his hall as Harold had before him (fo. 2 lb). In it Professor Maitland thought he saw the house at which the geld was paid,^ a theory which derives some support from a phrase used of Westmeston — ' non fuit ibi halla neque geldavit ut dicunt ' (fo. 27), but which has been shown by Mr. Round ^ to be based on insuffi- cient grounds, so far at least as certain counties are concerned. Another phrase which equates with hall is ' caput manerii ', which occurs under Ditchling, where six copses are said to have belonged ' ad caput manerii' (fo. 25^), or again under ' Nerewelle,' where Robert 'the cook ' is said to hold the ' caput manerii ' (fo. 1 8) with two virgates. In this last phrase one is tempted to see the Saxon ' heafod-bodel ' ; and indeed the mansio or manerium in its primitive sense of a manse is almost a translation of the bodel — the abode, and points us back to our former conclusion that the manor in its origin was an estate centering upon the house of the landlord or his representative. This seems as far as our evidence will safely carry us, and so far our conclusions are applicable to any county, but we have now to consider in what respects the manors of Sussex differed from those of other districts. 1 Engl. Hist. Rev. xv. 293. 2 Growth of the Manor, p. 301. a Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 107. ■■ Engl. Hist. Rev. xv. 293-5. 355
