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The Terrae Occupatae of Cornwall and the Exon Domesday
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
Professor Galbraith has recently dealt with the copy of a Southwestern Geld Roll which is preserved in the volume published by the Record Commission under the title of ‘Exon Domesday,’ on the last folio of which it is referred to as an Inquisitio Gheldi. He has argued — persuasively, though without removing all doubts — that the tax record was not only contemporaneous with, but in part dependent on and derived from, the information obtained by the royal commissioners of the southwestern Domesday circuit. Their main object was to provide the central government with the preliminary digest of the ‘original returns’ of the Domesday survey from which the so-called Exchequer Domesday, or volume I of Domesday Book, was finally compiled. According to Galbraith this digest, which was sent on to Winchester, was a fair copy of the rough draft that still survives in the volume referred to above, the Exon Domesday.
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References
1 Galbraith, V. H., ‘The Date of the Geld Rolls in Exon Domesday,'3 English Historical Review [= EHR] 65 (1950) 1–17; Domesday Book: seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi Regis Angliae (Text [vols. I and II] ed. Farley, Abraham, n. p. 1783; Indices and Introduction [vol. III] and Additamenta [vol. IV] ed. Ellis, Henry Sir, Record Commission, n. p. 1816) IV fol. 532. (Hereafter cited as DB).Google Scholar
2 Galbraith, , ‘The Making of Domesday Book,’ EHR 57 (1942) 161–77.Google Scholar
3 DB IV foll. 495-525. Folio 494 is blank, except for the words Comsvmatvm est on the verso; the Devonshire account ends at the top of fol. 506b; the Cornwall account begins at the top of fol. 507 and ends at the top of fol. 508b; and the Somerset account begins immediately thereafter; fol. 525b is blank, fol. 526 contains the heading Isti Sunt Hundreti de Svmerseta, and the continuation of the Inquisitio Geldi for Somerset begins on fol. 526b. Even allowing for the rearrangement and rebinding of the manuscript before its publication, it is clear that the three accounts of Terrae Occupatae stand apart from the rest of Exon Domesday as a distinct though related section of the manuscript.Google Scholar
4 Baring, , ‘The Exeter Domesday,’ EHR 27 (1912) 309–18.Google Scholar
5 The Victoria History of the County of [= VCH] Devon (ed. Page, Wm.; London 1906) I 377; VCH Somerset (ed. Page, Wm.; London 1906) I 426-31; VCH Cornwall (ed. Page, Wm.; London 1924) I 45f. and 57f.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Galbraith's, ‘Making of Domesday Book’ cited above, n. 2; Douglas, D. C. (ed.), The Domesday Monachorum of Christ Church Canterbury (London 1944) 16-25; Reginald Lennard in EHR 61 (1946).Google Scholar
7 Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis: subjicitur Inquisitio Eliensis (ed. Hamilton, N. E. S. A.; London 1876). The Inquisitio Eliensis may in part have been derived from original returns, but more probably it was based upon a ‘local Domesday’ for each of either two or three circuits. Galbraith, , ‘Making of Domesday Book’ 167-70.Google Scholar
8 Cf. the references cited by Galbraith, , op. cit. 175f.; VCH Norfolk (ed. Page, Wm.; London 1906) II 2–4; and VCH Somerset I 408 and 426f.Google Scholar
9 The claims or disputes noticed by the first four T.O. entries appear, in Exon Domesday, under the fee of the bishop of Exeter; the next three concern the king and are entered under the Exon heading Terrae Regis Dominicae in Cornugalliae (though not in the same order as the T.O. entries); the eighth and ninth T.O. entries correspond with Exon entr es under the heading Terrae Mathildis Reginae in Cornugallia; the tenth T.O. entry concerns the bishop of Exeter again, and the Exon text notices the claim under the bishop's fee; the next two T.O. entries concern land taken from a royal manor by the count of Mortain, whose corresponding Exon notices appear under the fee of Mortain; the next nine entries deal with deprivations suffered by St. Petrock at the hands of the king, the count of Mortain, or the latter's tenants, and in Exon are all entered under the fee of St. Petrock; the twenty-second T.O. entry concerns a royal manor ‘invaded’ by the count of Mortain, to which the only a lusion in Exon occurs under the royal demesne in Devonshire; the following two entries concern losses suffered by St. Michael and the abbey of Tavistock, both of which are entered in Exon under their fees; and the last entry is a brief notice concerning a royal manor whose details are spelled out at some length by Exon under the same heading as that in which the fifth, sixth, and seventh entries are noticed. Even more revealing is the following analysis. The injured parties are (according to the T.O. entries, in order): the bishop of Exeter (entries 1 to 4), the king (5 to 7), St. Petrock (8 and 9), the bishop ol Exeter (10), the king (11 and 12), St. Petrock (13-21), the king (22), St. Michael (23), the abbey of Tavistock (24) and the king (25).Google Scholar
10 This analysis is based upon the identification of place names and hundreds as they are shown on the Domesday map, VCH Cornwall I 45.Google Scholar
11 E.g. DB IV foll. 200, 101b, 101, 111b (corresponding with the first, fifth, sixth, and eighth T.O. entries).Google Scholar
12 E. g. DB IV fol. 201 (three entries corresponding with the second, third, and fourth T.O. entries).Google Scholar
13 DB IV foll. 204b-205 and 181b.Google Scholar
14 DB IV foll. 101-101b, 111b-112, 238-238b, 98-99, and 208b.Google Scholar
15 DB IV foll. 199-201.Google Scholar
16 The ‘occupation’ in T.O. entry no. 6 (count of Mortain against the king) is noticed in Exon under the royal demesne (DB IV fol. 101); the repetition in the eleventh and twelfth T.O. entries under the fee of Mortain (foll. 238-238b). St. Petrock’s loss of custom in the eighth T.O. entry is noticed in Exon under the royal demesne (fol. 111b); the repetition in the fifteenth T.O. entry is entered in Exon under the fee of St. Petrock (fol. 205).Google Scholar
17 For the text of these entries, see below, p. 162.Google Scholar
18 For the text of the eighth T.O. entry and its Exon equivalent, see below, p. 164; for the fifteenth, DB IV foll. 205 and 507b.Google Scholar
19 DB IV fol. 258b.Google Scholar
20 In this and the following quotations, words enclosed in parentheses have been inserted in the text by interlineation, according to the Record Commission edition of the text. From this edition one cannot learn whether these interlineations are in the same hand, or even whether they are contemporary. Answers to these questions, however, do not affect the arguments presented here. E. f. u. et m. (i.e., Edwardus fuit uiuus et mortuus) has not been extended.Google Scholar
21 A final argument against the derivation of Terrae Occupatae exclusively from feudal returns is that the entries concerning the king and the bishop of Exeter are scattered through the document, and their order is different from that in which they appear in Exon. These facts are difficult to account for on the assumption that Terrae Occupatae might be based on a series of (complete) feudal returns. Mr. Welldon Finn, who has recently dealt with two Exon repetitions in another connection, has thrown us off the right track when he explains their relations as being in ‘historical order.’ No evidence requires the conclusion that there are two stages represented by Exon duplications; rather it is two different kinds of sources which explain them. E.g., the ‘curial scribe’ who wrote Exon fol. 153b could not have been condensing the duplicate entry on fol. 467, because the latter does not mention the tenant-in-chief given in the former — unless we suppose special knowledge on the part of the scribe (which is too handy a method of solving Domesday textual problems). Welldon Finn, R., ‘The Evolution of Successive Versions of Domesday Book,’ EHR 66 (1951) 561–64.Google Scholar
22 In this and the following quotations, italics are employed to indicate important verbal differences.Google Scholar
23 If the manuscript was produced by a scribe writing from dictation, the identity of spelling may have arisen from the scribe's having required so outlandish a name to be spelled out for him letter by letter. From the printed edition one cannot, of course, tell whether Exon's h was written by the scribe of the text or by the hand of a corrector, but it is difficult to imagine why a corrector should make the addition in this case when other variations in spelling on the same and the following folio did not attract his attention. It may be significant that the three other corrections in this group of Exon entries agree with the wording and spelling of Terrae Occupatae. The b of ab has been marked for deletion by a dot under the letter; Alsi has been changed by interlineation (though the name is not underlined for deletion) to read, correctly, Briennus; and the phrase quam ten& de comite is added by interlineation (the ampersand is frequently found in Exon for the letters et within a word, while the T. O. scribe never uses it in that way, either writing ten‘ or more usually spelling out tenet; and when he does use it for the conjunction he frequently adds an abbreviation mark, viz. &’). All four of these corrections, and also the two interlineations in Terrae Occupatae, could have been made by the scribe of either text (or later corrector) with the text of the other before him — but only after each text as a whole had been copied from other material. In addition to these instances, there is one interlineation elsewhere in the Exon text which could not come from Terrae Occupatae. Google Scholar
24 DB IV foll. 201 and 507.Google Scholar
25 DB IV foll. 507b and 199; I fol. 120b.Google Scholar
26 VCH Cornwall I 46.Google Scholar
27 Lennard, R., ‘A Neglected Domesday Satellite,’ EHR 58 (1943) 38.Google Scholar
28 E.g. DB IV foll. 181 (Antony), 206b (Launceston), 207 (St Neot), 240b (Degembris), and 245b Trenans-Austel). Each of these manors lies in a different hundred, and all but the last two are listed under a different tenant-in-chief.Google Scholar
29 DB IV fol. 507b.Google Scholar
30 DB IV fol. 112.Google Scholar
31 ‘Erat saisitus abbas Tauestochensis ea die qua rex Willelmus misit barones suos ad inquirendas terras Angliae, et antecessor suus ante eum fuerat idem saisitus, et per barones regis inde desaisitus fuit propter hoc quod testati sunt Angli quod ad abbatiam non pertinuit ea die qua rex E. uiuus et mortuus fuit.’ DB IV fol. 178b. Werrington is not mentioned in the Devonshire Terrae Occupatae. Cf. Finberg, H. P. R., ‘The Early History of Werrington,’ EHR 59 (1944) 237–51.Google Scholar
32 Douglas, , Domesday Monachorum 81–98.Google Scholar
33 Douglas, (ed.), Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds (British Academy Records of the Social and Economic History of England and Wales 8; London 1932) 3–24.Google Scholar
34 Ballard, Adolphus (ed.), An Eleventh-Century Inquisition of St. Augustine’s, Canterbury (British Academy Records 4.ii; London 1920).Google Scholar
35 Hunt, Wm. (ed.), Two Chartularies of the Priory of St. Peter at Bath (Somerset Record Society 7; 1893) 67f.Google Scholar
36 The prominence of the count of Mortain in the Cornwall Terrae Occupatae reflects rather his tenurial position as greatest tenant-in-chief than an interest which he might be supposed to have had in the document.Google Scholar
37 DB I foll. 208-208b and 373-377b.Google Scholar
38 ‘Ecclesiae sancti Petrochii adiacet i hida terrae quam abstulerat sancto petrocho Haraldus… sed postea Willelmus rex praeceperat iudic um nde teneri et per iust c am aecclesiam sancti Paetrochi resaisiri.’ DB IV fol. 204b. This entry immediately precedes the nine notices of losses sustained by St. Petrock which are also mentioned in Terrae Occupatae, a fact which suggests that the information was available to, but deliberately omitted by, the T.O. scribe. If this inference is sound, the nature of the document must have been that of agenda for future use rather than simply a record of legal interest.Google Scholar
39 DB IV fol. 178b (cf. note 31 above).Google Scholar
40 E.g.: ‘…habent inde sigillum regis Edwardi. Eustachius modo habet eam sine liberatore et sine breu et sine sais tore.’ DB I fol. 208.Google Scholar
41 Southern, R. W., ‘Ranulf Flambard and Early Anglo-Norman Administration,’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (4th Ser.) 16 (1933) 95–128.Google Scholar
42 Finberg, , ‘Werrington’ (n. 31 above) 246f. Although Round, Davis, and Southern accepted the account as evidence of a ‘judicial eyre’ in 1096, it may be urged that such a term is anachronistic for this date and that the evidence cannot be pressed so far. Cf. Fnberg, , op. cit. 247 and Poole, A. L., From Domesday Book to Magna Carta (Oxford 1951) 399 n. 4. But if Ranulf Flambard, who was one of the optimates referred to above, could be called by Henry of Huntingdon placitor…totius Angliae, it does not seem unreasonable for a monk of Tavistock to describe the same royal official as presiding over regalia placita — that is, if we understand by that phrase pleas of and before a royal commission rather than ‘pleas of the crown’ (cp. Finberg, , op. cit. 247) in the later sense. It may be instructive, in this connection, to recall that the so-cal ed ‘order for holding shire and hundred courts’ of Henry I (c. 1109-11) deals explicitly with only three matters: the frequency of their meeting, the appropriate court for hold ng a placitum de divisione terrarum vel de preoccupatione, and the duty of attendance quin sequantur placita mea et judicia mea , Stubbs, Wm. (ed.), Select Charters (9th ed. by Davis, H. W. C.; Oxford 1913) 122.Google Scholar
43 It may be noteworthy that while lists of Terrae Occupatae are preserved in Exon Domesday for Devonshire, Cornwall, and Somerset (in that order), the Tavistock narrative states that the king’s optimates were sent in Devenesiram et Cornubiam et Exoniam. For another instance of judicial activity in the reign of William II concerning a dispute noticed in Domesday, see DB I fol. 228 (Isham, Northamptonshire); and Cartularium Monasterii de Rameseia (ed. Hart, W. H., Rolls Series; London 1884-93) I 233f.Google Scholar
44 Otherwise, we should expect a more leisurely or later effort to have produced a more nearly complete list of disputes, without the repetitions and without the contradiction in the Carworgy entry noticed above.Google Scholar