Domesday Book and its satellites, 1. Domesday and legal history, 2. Domesday a geld book, 3. The danegeld, 3. The inquest and the geld system, 5. Importance of the geld, 7. Unstable terminology of the record, 8. The legal ideas of century xi. 9.

The geographical basis, 9. The vill as the unit, 10. Modern and ancient vills, 12. Omission of vills, 13. Fission of vills, 14. The nucleated village and the vill of scattered steads, 15. Illustration by maps, 16. Size of the vill, 17. Population of the vill, 19. Contrasts between east and west, 20. Small vills, 20. Importance of the east, 21. Manorial and non-manorial vills, 22. Distribution of free men and serfs, 23. The classification of men, 23. The classes of men and the geld system, 24. Our course, 25.

The servus of Domesday, 26. Legal position of the serf, 27. Degrees of serfdom, 27. Predial element in serfdom, 28. The serf and criminal law, 29. Serf and villein, 30. The serf of the Leges, 30. Return to the servus of Domesday, 33. Disappearance of servus, 35.

The boors or coliberts, 36. The continental colibert, 37. The English boor, 37. Villani, bordarii, cotarii, 38. The villein’s tenement, 40. Villeins and cottiers, 41. Freedom and unfreedom of the villani, 41. Meaning of freedom, 42. The villein as free, 43. The villein as unfree, 45. Anglo-Saxon free-holding, 46. Free-holding and seignorial rights, 47. The scale of free-holding, 49. Free land and immunity, 50. Unfreedom of the villein, 50. Right of recapture, 50. Rarity of flight, 51. The villein and seignorial justice, 52. The villein and national justice, 52. The villein and his land, 53. The villein’s land and the geld, 54. The villein’s services, 56. The villein’s rent, 57. The English for villanus, 58. Summary of the villein’s position, 60. Depression of the peasants, 61. The Normans and the rustics, 61. Depression of the sokemen, 63. The peasants on the royal demesne, 65.

Sochemanni and liberi homines, 66. Lord and man, 67. Bonds between lord and man, 67. Commendation, 69. Commendation and protection, 70. Commendation and warranty, 71. Commendation and tenure, 71. The lord’s interest in commendation, 72. The seignory over the commended, 74. Commendation and service, 74. Land-loans and services, 75. The man’s consuetudines, 76. Nature of consuetudines, 78. Justiciary consuetudines, 78.

Sake and soke, 80. Private jurisdiction in the Leges, 80. Soke in the Leges Henrici, 81. Kinds of soke in the Leges, 82. The Norman kings and private justice, 83. Sake and soke in Domesday, 84. Meaning of soke, 84. Meaning of sake, 84. Soke as jurisdiction, 86. Seignorial justice before the Conquest, 87. Soke as a regality, 89. Soke over villeins, 90. Private soke and hundredal soke, 91. Hundredal and manorial soke, 92. The seignorial court, 94. Soke and the earl’s third penny, 95. Soke and house-peace, 97. Soke over houses, 99. Vendible soke, 100. Soke and mund, 100. Justice and jurisdiction, 102. Soke and commendation, 103. Sokemen and ‘free men,’ 104. Holdings of the sokemen, 106.

What is a manor? 107. Manerium a technical term, 107. Manor and hall, 109. Difference between manor and hall, 110. Size of the maneria, 110. A large manor, 111. Enormous manors—Leominster, Berkeley, Tewkesbury, Taunton, 112. Large manors in the Midlands, 114. Townhouses and berewicks attached to manors, 114. Manor and soke, 115. Minute manors in the west, 116. Minute manors in the east, 117. The manor as a peasant’s holding, 118. Definition of a manor, 119. The manor and the geld, 120. Classification of men for the geld, 122. Proofs of connexion of the manor with the geld, 122. Land gelds in a manor, 124. Geld and hall, 124. The lord and the man’s taxes, 125. Distinction between villeins and sokemen, 125. The lord’s subsidiary liability, 126. Manors distributed to the Frenchmen, 127. Summary, 128.

Manorial and non-manorial vills, 129. The vill of Orwell, 129. The Wetherley hundred of Cambridgeshire, 131. The Wetherley sokemen, 134. The sokemen and seignorial justice, 135. Changes in the Wetherley hundred, 135. Manorialism in Cambridgeshire, 136. The sokemen and the manors, 137. Hertfordshire sokemen, 138. The small maneria, 138. The Danes and freedom, 139. The Danish counties, 139. The contrast between villeins and sokemen, 140. Free villages, 141. Village communities, 142. The villagers as co-owners, 142. The waste land of the vill, 143. Co-ownership of mills and churches, 144. The system of virgates in a free village, 144. The virgates and inheritance, 145. The farm of the vill, 146. Round sums raised from the villages, 147. The township and police law, 147. The free village and Norman government, 149. Organization of the free village, 149.

The higher ranks of men, 150. Dependent tenure, 151. Feudum, 152. Alodium, 153. Application of the formula of dependent tenure, 154. Military tenure, 156. The army and the land, 157. Feudalism and army service, 158. Punishment for default of service, 159. The new military service, 160. The thegns, 161. Nature of thegnship, 163. The thegns of Domesday, 165. Greater and lesser thegns, 165. The great lords, 166. The king as landlord, 166. The ancient demesne, 167. The comital manors, 168. Private rights and governmental revenues, 168. The English state, 170.

Borough and village, 172. The borough in century xiii., 173. The number of the boroughs, 173. The aid-paying boroughs of century xii, 174. List of aids, 175. The boroughs in Domesday, 176. The borough as a county town, 178. The borough on no man’s land, 178. Heterogeneous tenures in the boroughs, 179. Burgages attached to rural manors, 180. The burgess and the rural manor, 181. Tenure of the borough and tenure of land within the borough, 181. The king and other landlords, 182.

The oldest burh, 183. The king’s burh, 184. The special peace of the burh, 184. The town and the burh, 185. The building of boroughs, 186. The shire and its borough, 186. Military geography, 187. The Burghal Hidage, 187. The shire’s wall-work, 188. Henry the Fowler and the German burgs, 189. The shire thegns and their borough houses, 189. The knights in the borough, 190. Burh-bÓt and castle-guard, 191.

Borough and market, 192. Establishment of markets, 193. Moneyers in the burh, 195. Burh and port, 195. Military and commercial elements in the borough, 196. The borough and agriculture, 196. Burgesses as cultivators, 197. Burgage tenure, 198. Eastern and western boroughs, 199. Common property of the burgesses, 200. The community as landholders, 200. Rights of common, 202. Absence of communalism in the borough, 202. The borough community and its lord, 203. The farm of the borough, 204. The sheriff and the farm of the borough, 205. The community and the geld, 206. Partition of taxes, 207. No corporation farming the borough, 208. Borough and county organization, 209. Government of the boroughs, 209. The borough court, 210. The law-men, 211. Definition of the borough, 212. Mediatized boroughs, 212. Boroughs on the king’s land and other boroughs, 215. Attributes of the borough, 216. Classification of the boroughs, 217. National element in the boroughs, 219.

Object of this essay, 220. Fundamental controversies over Anglo-Saxon history, 221. The Romanesque theory unacceptable, 222. Feudalism as a normal stage, 223. Feudalism as progress and retrogress, 224. Progress and retrogress in the history of legal ideas, 224. The contact of barbarism and civilization, 225. Our materials, 226.

The lands of the churches, 226. How the churches acquired their lands, 227. The earliest land-books, 229. Exotic character of the book, 230. The book purports to convey ownership, 230. The book conveys a superiority, 231. A modern analogy, 232. Conveyance of superiorities in early times, 233. What had the king to give? 234. The king’s alienable rights, 234. Royal rights in land, 235. The king’s feorm, 236. Nature of the feorm, 237. Tribute and rent, 239. Mixture of ownership and superiority, 240. Growth of the seignory, 241. Book-land and church-right, 242. Book-land and testament, 243.

What is folk-land? 244. Folk-land in the laws, 244. Folk-land in the charters, 245. Land booked by the king to himself, 246. The consent of the witan, 247. Consent and witness in the land-books, 247. Attestation of the earliest books, 248, Confirmation and attestation, 250. Function of the witan, 251. The king and the people’s land, 252. King’s land and crown land, 253. Fate of the king’s land on his death, 253. The new king and the old king’s heir, 254. Immunity of the ancient demesne, 255. Rights of individuals in national land, 255. The alod, 256. Book-land and privilege, 257. Kinds of land and kinds of right, 257.

Importance of seignorial justice, 258. Theory of the modern origin of seignorial justice, 258. Sake and soke in the Norman age, 259. The Confessor’s writs, 259. Cnut’s writs, 260. Cnut’s law, 261. The book and the writ, 261. Diplomatics, 262. The Anglo-Saxon writ, 264. Sake and soke appear when writs appear, 265. Traditional evidence of sake and soke, 267. Altitonantis, 268. Criticism of the earlier books, 269. The clause of immunity, 270. Dissection of the words of immunity, 272. The trinoda necessitas, 273. The Ángild, 274. The right to wites and the right to a court, 275. The Taunton book, 276. The immunists and the wite, 277. Justice and jurisdiction, 277. The Frankish immunity, 278. Seignorial and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 279. Criminal justice of the church, 281. Antiquity of seignorial courts, 282. Justice, vassalage and tenure, 283. The lord and the accused vassal, 284. The state, the lord and the vassal, 285. The landrÍca as immunist, 286. The immunist’s rights over free men, 288. Sub-delegation of justiciary rights, 289. Number of the immunists, 289.

Note: The Ángild Clause, 290.

The book and the gift, 293. Book-land and service, 294. Military service, 295. Escheat of book-land, 295. Alienation of book-land, 297. The heriot and the testament, 298. The gift and the loan, 299. The precarium, 300. The English land-loan, 301. Loans of church land to the great, 302. The consideration for the loan, 303. S^t. Oswald’s loans, 303. Oswald’s letter to Edgar, 304. Feudalism in Oswald’s law, 307. Oswald’s riding-men, 308. Heritable loans, 309. Wardship and marriage, 310. Seignorial jurisdiction, 310. Oswald’s law and England at large, 311. Inferences from Oswald’s loans, 312. Economic position of Oswald’s tenants, 312. Loan-land and book-land, 313. Book-land in the dooms, 314. Royal and other books, 315. The gift and the loan, 317. Dependent tenure, 317.

Subjection of free men, 318. The royal grantee and the land, 318. Provender rents and the manorial economy, 319. The church and the peasants, 320. Growth of the manorial system, 321. Church-scot and tithes, 321. Jurisdictional rights of the lord, 322. The lord and the man’s taxes, 323. Depression of the free ceorl, 324. The slaves, 325. Growth of manors from below, 325.

Theories which connect the manor with the Roman villa, 326. The Rectitudines, 327. Discussion of the Rectitudines, 328. The Tidenham case, 329. The Stoke case, 330. Inferences from these cases, 332. The villa and the vicus, 333. Manors in the land-books, 334. The mansus and the manens, 335. The hide, 336. The strip-holding and the villa, 337. The lord and the strips, 338. The ceorl and the slave, 339. The condition of the Danelaw, 339.

Free villages, 340. Ownership by communities and ownership by individuals, 341. Co-ownership and ownership by corporations, 341. Ownership and governmental power, 342. Ownership and subordinate governmental power, 343. Evolution of sovereignty and ownership, 343. Communal ownership as a stage, 344. The theory of normal stages, 345.

Was land owned by village communities? 346. Meadows, pastures and woods, 348. The bond between neighbours, 349. Feebleness of village communalism, 349. Absence of organization, 350. The German village on conquered soil, 351. Development of kingly power, 351. The free village in England, 352. The village meeting, 353. What might have become of the free village, 353. Mark communities, 354. Intercommoning between vills, 355. Last words, 356.

What was the hide? 357. Importance of the question, 357. Hide and manse in Bede, 358. Hide and manse in the land-books, 358. The large hide and the manorial arrangement, 360. Our course, 361.

Permanence and change in agrarian history, 362. Rapidity of change in old times, 363. Devastation of villages, 363. Village colonies, 365. Change of field systems, 365. Differences between different shires, 366. New and old villages, 367.

History of land measures, 368. Growth of uniform measures, 369. Superficial measure, 370. The ancient elements of land measure, 372. The German acre, 373. English acres, 373. Small and large acres, 374. Anglo-Saxon rods and acres, 375. Customary acres and forest acres, 376. The acre and the day’s work, 377. The real acres in the fields, 379. The culturae or shots, 379. Delimitation of shots, 380. Real and ideal acres, 381. Irregular length of acres, 383. The seliones or beds, 383. Acres divided lengthwise, 384. The virgate, 385. Yard and yard-land, 385. The virgate a fraction of the hide, 385. The yard-land in laws and charters, 386.

The hide as a measure, 387. The hide as a measure of arable, 388. The hide of 120 acres, 389. Real and fiscal hides, 389. Causes of divergence of fiscal from real hides, 390. Effects of the divergence, 392. Acreage of the hide in later days, 393. The carucate and bovate, 395. The ox-gang, 396. The fiscal carucate, 396. Acreage tilled by a plough, 397. Walter of Henley’s programme of ploughing, 398.

Domesday’s three statements, 399. Northern formulas, 404. Southern formulas, 405. Kentish formulas, 406. Relation between the three statements, 406. Introduction of statistics, 407. Explanation of statistics, 407. Acreage, 407. Population, 408. Danegeld, 408. Hides, carucates, sulungs, 408. Reduced hidage, 410. The teamlands, 410. The teams, 411. The values, 411. The table of ratios, 411. Imperfection of statistics, 412. Constancy of ratios, 413.

The team, 413. Variability of the caruca, 414. Constancy of the caruca, 414. The villein’s teams, 415. The villein’s oxen, 416. Light and heavy ploughs, 417. The team of Domesday and other documents, 417.

The teamland, 418. Fractional parts of the teamland, 418. Land for oxen and wood for swine, 419. The teamland no areal unit, 419. The teamlands of Great and the teams of Little Domesday, 420. The Leicestershire formulas, 420. Origin of the inquiry touching the teamlands, 421. Modification of the inquiry, 423. The potential teams, 423. Normal relation between teams and teamlands, 424. The land of deficient teams, 425. Actual and potential teamlands, 426. The land of excessive teams, 427. Digression to East Anglia, 429. The teamland no areal measure, 431. Eyton’s theory, 431. Domesday’s lineal measure, 432. Measured teamlands, 433.

Amount of arable in England, 435. Decrease of arable, 436. The food problem, 436. What was the population? 436. What was the field-system? 437. What was the acre’s yield? 437. Consumption of beer, 438. The Englishman’s diet, 440. Is the arable superabundant? 441. Amount of pasturage, 441. Area of the villages, 443. Produce and value, 444. Varying size of acres, 445. The teamland in Cambridgeshire, 445.

The hides of Domesday, 446. Relation between hides and teamlands, 447. Unhidated estates, 448. Beneficial hidation, 448. Effect of privilege, 449. Divergence of hide from teamland, 450. Partition of the geld, 451. Distribution of hides among counties and hundreds, 451. The hidage of Worcestershire, 451. The County Hidage, 455. Its date, 456. The Northamptonshire Geld Roll, 457. Credibility of The County Hidage, 458. Reductions of hidage, 458. The county quotas, 459. The hundred and the hundred hides, 459. Comparison of Domesday hidage with Pipe Rolls, 460. Under-rated and over-rated counties, 461. Hidage and value, 462. One pound, one hide, 465. Equivalence of pound and hide, 465. Cases of under-taxation, 466. Kent, 466. Devon and Cornwall, 467. Cases of over-taxation, 468. Leicestershire, 468. Yorkshire, 469. Equity and hidage, 470. Distribution of hides and of teamlands, 471. Area and value as elements of geldability, 472. The equitable teamland, 473. Artificial valets, 473. The new assessments of Henry II., 473.

Acreage of the fiscal hide, 475. Equation between hide and acres, 475. The hide of 120 acres, 476. Evidence from Cambridgeshire, 476. Evidence from the Isle of Ely, 476. Evidence from Middlesex, 477. Meaning of the Middlesex entries, 478. Evidence in the Geld Inquests, 478. Result of the evidence, 480. Evidence from Essex, 480. Acreage of the fiscal carucate, 483. Acreage of the fiscal sulung, 484. Kemble’s theory, 485. The ploughland and the plough, 486. The Yorkshire carucates, 487. Relation between teamlands and fiscal carucates, 487. The fiscal hide of 120 acres, 489. Antiquity of the large hide, 489.

The hide beyond Domesday, 490. Arguments in favour of small hides, 490. Continuity of the hide in the land-books, 491. Examples from charters of Chertsey, 492. Examples from charters of Malmesbury, 492. Permanence of the hidation, 493. Gifts of villages, 494. Gifts of manses in villages, 495. The largest gifts, 496. The Winchester estate at Chilcombe, 496. The Winchester estates at Downton and Taunton, 498. Kemble and the Taunton estate, 499. Difficulty of identifying parcels, 500. The numerous hides in ancient documents, 501. The Burghal Hidage, 502. The Tribal Hidage, 506. Bede’s hidage, 508. Bede and the land-books, 509. Gradual reduction of hidage, 510. Over-estimates of hidage, 510. Size of Bede’s hide, 511. Evidence from Iona, 512. Evidence from Selsey, 513. Conclusion in favour of the large hide, 515. Continental analogies, 515. The German Hufe, 515. The KÖnigshufe, 516. The large hide on the continent, 517. The large hide not too large, 518. The large hide and the manor, 519. Last words, 520.