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East Anglia and the Danelaw

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

R. H. C. Davis
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Extract

IT has been, and still is, the considered opinion of many scholars that the freemen and sokemen who figure so prominently in the Domesday Survey of the northern and eastern counties of England were the descendants of the rank-and-file of the Danish armies of the ninth century. The theory is not based on any precise knowledge of Scandinavian peasant-society in the ninth century, but on the geographical distribution of the free peasantry in England. It was first propounded by E. W. Robertson in 1862:

In the Danelage, … omitting Yorkshirefrom the calculation, between a third and a fourth of the entire population were classified either as liberi homines or as socmen. … Free Socage, the very tenure of which is sometimes supposed to have been peculiarly a relic of Anglo-Saxon liberty, appears to have been absolutely unknown except among the Danes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 5 , January 1955 , pp. 23 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1955

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References

page 23 note 1 Robertson, E. W., Scotland under her Early Kings (1862), ii. 269 ff.Google Scholar, and compare ii. 458–9. The figures on which he bases his argument are given on ii. 274, and are:

page 23 note 2 Steenstrup, J. C., Normannerne, iv (Copenhagen 1882), 102 ffGoogle Scholar.

page 23 note 3 Seebohm, F., The English Village Community (1883), pp. 85ffGoogle Scholar.

page 24 note 1 Vinogradoff, P., English Society in the Eleventh Century (1908), p. 417Google Scholar.

page 24 note 2 Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England (1943), p. 511Google Scholar.

page 24 note 3 Stubbs, W., The Constitutional History of England (6th ed., 1897), i. 216Google Scholar.

page 24 note 4 Maitland, F. W., Domesday Book and Beyond (1897), p. 139Google Scholar.

page 26 note 1 Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel, ed. Plummer, C. (1892), s.a. 890Google Scholar.

page 26 note 2 Ibid., s.a. 880. Compare Stenton, F. M., The Danes in England (British Academy, 1927), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

page 26 note 3 Monumenta Historica Britannica, ed. Petrie, H. (1848), p. 516Google Scholar.

page 27 note 1 The figures are from Dodwell, Barbara, ‘The Free Peasantry of East Anglia in Domesday’, Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Soc., xxvii. 148Google Scholar.

page 27 note 2 Douglas, D. C., The Social Structure of Mediaeval East Anglia (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, vol. ix, 1927), p. 50Google Scholar.

page 27 note 3 Douglas, p. 49.

page 27 note 4 Douglas, p. 50.

page 27 note 5 Dodwell, , art. cit., p. 154Google Scholar.

page 28 note 1 The Kalendar of Abbot Samson of Bury St. Edmunds, ed. Davis, R. H. C., (Camden Third Series, vol. lxxxiv, 1954), p. xliiiGoogle Scholar; Whitelock, D., Anglo-Saxon Wills (1930), no. xxvii (c. 1022–43)Google Scholar.

page 28 note 2 Turner, G. J., A calendar of the feet of fines relating to the county of Huntingdon (Cambridge Antiq. Soc., 1913), pp. lxxxiii ff.Google Scholar, based an argument in favour of the 100-acre carucate on a passage from Roger of Hoveden, (R.S., iv. 46–7)Google Scholar which he seems to have misunderstood. The passage (also printed in Stubbs' Select Charters (9th ed.), pp. 249–50) describes the sharp practice whereby, for the aid of 1198, 5s. was levied, not from each carucate or hide, but from the ‘wainage of a plough’ which was declared to be 100 acres.

page 28 note 3 The carucage of Suffolk hundreds is given by MissLees, B. A. in the Victoria County History, Suffolk, i. 360Google Scholar. For leets (or letes) see Johnson, C. in Victoria County History, Norfolk, ii. 204–11Google Scholar, and The Kalendar of Abbot Samson, pp. xv–xxx.

page 28 note 4 Douglas, pp. 29–30. Cf. Tait, in E.H.R., xliii. 94–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For land-reclamation in the district, see Miller, E., The Abbey and Bishopric of Ely (1951), p. 95Google Scholar. In the Broadland, where (in contrast to the Fenland) Scandinavian place-names are common, the tenement is called by English or Latin names (e.g. eruing).

page 29 note 1 West, J. R., St. Benet of Holme, 1020–1210 (Norf. Rec. Soc., nos. ii and iii. 1932), pp. 258—9Google Scholar, and Douglas, D. C., Feudal Documents from the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds (1932), p. cxxGoogle Scholar. In the case of St. Benet of Holme, 75% of the twelfth-century names were of post-Norman origin or else neither definitely Old English or Scandinavian in origin. Of the remaining 25%, the proportion of Scandinavian to Old English names was 58:81.

page 29 note 2 Ekwall, E., ‘The proportion of Scandinavian settlers in the Danelaw’, Saga Book of the Viking Society, xii. 22Google Scholar.

page 29 note 3 Liber Eliensis, ed. Stewart, D. J. (1848), pp. 128, 149Google Scholar.

page 29 note 4 Compare the lists in Douglas's, Feudal Documents, pp. 25–44Google Scholar, with those in The Kalendar of Abbot Samson, pp. 1–72. See also the list of religious said by Hermann to have been attendant on St. Edmund's shrine c. 925–39: Leofric the deacon, Leofric the priest, Alfric the priest, Bomfild the priest, Kenelm the deacon, Eilmund the priest, and Adulf, later bishop of Elmham (Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, ed. Arnold, T., Rolls Series, i. 30Google Scholar).

page 30 note 1 Skeat, W. W., The place-names of Suffolk (Camb. Antiq. Soc. 1913)Google Scholar; Ekwall, E. in Introduction to the Survey of English Place Names (Place Name Soc., vol. i, pt. i, pp. 81–2)Google Scholar, and in Darby, H. C., An Historical Geography of England before 1800 A.D. (1948), p. 151Google Scholar.

page 30 note 2 Stenton, F. M., ‘The Scandinavian Colonies in England and Normandy’, Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc., 4th series, xxvii (1945), 10Google Scholar.

page 31 note 1 Introduction to the Survey of English Place Names (Place Name Soc., 1924) p. 82Google Scholar.

page 31 note 2 Chronicle, s.a. 885.

page 31 note 3 Reaney, P. H., The Place Names of Essex (P.N.S., 1935), p. 339Google Scholar.

page 31 note 4 Asser's Life of King Alfred, ed. Stevenson, W. H. (1904), p. 140Google Scholar.

page 31 note 5 Ekwall, in Introduction to the Survey of English Place Names, pp. 81–2Google Scholar. The villages with the highest land in two hundreds of Flegg have English names, Caister, Winterton, Somerton and Martham. Except at Caister and Yarmouth, there is no evidence of pre-Scandinavian settlements in these two hundreds. See Victoria County History, Norfolk, vol. i, and Clarke, Rainbird, ‘Norfolk in the Dark Ages, 400–800 A.D.’, Norfolk and Norwich Archaeological Soc., xxvii (1939–1940), 163–249Google Scholar.

page 32 note 1 Dodwell, , art. cit., p. 155Google Scholar.

page 33 note 1 Liebermann, F., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1916), i. 126Google Scholar.

page 33 note 2 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 259, n. 1Google Scholar, and Vinogradoff, , The Growth of the Manor (1905), pp. 132 and 240–1Google Scholar, and Liebermann, iii. 83.

page 33 note 3 The Kalendar of Abbot Samson, pp. xli–xlvii.

page 34 note 1 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 259Google Scholar.

page 34 note 2 Chadwick, H. M., Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (1905), p. 50Google Scholar.

page 34 note 3 ‘By the northern law the touch of oar or sail conferred freedom so that every thrall who crossed the sea into England by so doing became a leysing’ (or freedman), (Robertson, E. W., Scotland under her Early Kings, ii. 281Google Scholar).

page 35 note 1 Could this be true not only of East Anglia, but also of England as a whole? See Maitland, , Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 21–2Google Scholar.

page 35 note 2 Darby, H. C., The Domesday Geography of Eastern England (1952), figs. 100, 101, 102Google Scholar.

page 35 note 3 Darby, figs. 20 and 36. In East Anglia the geld was levied in a manner that assumed that every hundred contained 100 hides, every double-hundred 200 hides, and so on.

page 35 note 4 Lees, B. A. in Victoria County History, Suffolk, i. 371–2Google Scholar.

page 36 note 1 Round, J. H., Feudal England (1895), pp. 71–2Google Scholar.

page 36 note 2 Leges Edwardi Confessoris, c. 33 (Liebermann, i. 660).

page 36 note 3 Whitelock, D., ‘The Conversion of the Eastern Danelaw’, Saga Book of the Viking Society, xii. 159–76Google Scholar.

page 37 note 1 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 345–7Google Scholar.

page 37 note 2 Liber Eliensis, pp. 123, 129.

page 37 note 3 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 498–9Google Scholar; Steenstrup, , Normannerne, iv. 35–39Google Scholar; and Symeon Dunelmensis Opera et Collectanea (ed. Hinde, H., Surtees Soc., vol. li, 1868), i. 221Google Scholar.

page 37 note 4 Stenton, , Anglo-Saxon England, p. 499Google Scholar.

page 37 note 5 Whitelock, D., ‘Wulfstan and the so-called laws of Edward and Guthrum’, E.H.R., lvi. 19Google Scholar. In this article she shows that the so-called laws of Edward and Guthrum refer, not to East Anglia in the tenth century, but to Northumbria in the eleventh. Liebermann was consequently mistaken in quoting these laws as evidence that East Anglia formed part of the Danelaw in the ninth century.

page 37 note 6 William, of Malmesbury, , Gesta Regum (Rolls Series), i. 188Google Scholar: ‘cum numerentur in Anglia triginta duo pagi, illi jam sedecim invaserant’. Cf. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (E), s.a. 1013. According to Alfred and Guthrum's treaty, on the other hand, Middlesex would not have been in Guthrum's kingdom.

page 38 note 1 ii Cnut, 71, 2 and 3 (for the date of which, see Whitelock, in E.H.R., lxiii. 433–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar). For the major emendatio forisfaeture, see, besides Domesday Book, the so-called Leges Edwardi Confessoris, c. 33.

page 38 note 2 Chadwick, , Anglo-Saxon Institutions, pp. 198–201Google Scholar.

page 38 note 3 Stenton, , Types of Manorial Structure in the Northern Danelaw (Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, ii, 1910), pp. 87–90Google Scholar. A similar conclusion is reached by Lennard, Reginald in ‘The Origin of the Fiscal Carucate’, Economic Hist. Rev., xiv (1944–1945), 51–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page 39 note 1 Vita Sancti Oswaldi (written at Ramsey, c. 995–1005) in Historians of the Church of York, ed. Raine, J., Rolls Series, i. 404Google Scholar. Hinguar and Hubba were, according to Abbo of Fleury, the Danes who attacked East Anglia in 869 (Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, ed. Arnold, , i. 8Google Scholar).