THE DOMESDAY SURVEY their ' other things appertaining to the ferm ' ; for Professor Maitland shrinks from ' attempts to measure the flood of beer ' that our ancestors then consumed.' In addition to these payments in kind (or their money commutations), Northamptonshire was bound to make a yearly gift to the queen of (apparently) £^.^ Those of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were ^5 each. In Bedfordshire a different system prevailed ; from three royal manors the queen received in all eight ' ounces of gold ' (nearly jCs)- To the interesting subject of ' the queen's gold ' a chapter is devoted by the author of the Dialogue on the Ex- chequer, but when he wrote (under Henry II.) the amount that she could claim on payments to the King was still under discussion. It must be remembered that not only the queen, but the king also received money from these counties, as well as his wheat and honey and other payments in kind. As it is now the fashion to detect archaic survivals in nursery rhymes, one may perhaps be permitted to suggest that we obtain a glimpse of that royal household to which these Domes- day entries relate in those venerable and familiar lines : — The king was in the parlour, Counting out his money ; The queen was in her closet. Eating bread and honey. ' What the money was which the king (or his agents) counted is by no means a simple question. The payments were made in silver pennies {denarii) ; but these might be reckoned ' by tale ' simply, or might be due on the basis of twenty pence to the ounce, or again, as with the sum due from the county at large, might be payable in ' assayed {blancas) pounds of twenty pence to the ounce,' or, lastly, as at Finedon, ' weighed pounds of twenty pence to the ounce.' The chaos of systems prevaihng at the Treasury was simplified under Henry I., and it may not, even under William, have been as bad as it seems, for the Domesday scribes had a habit, most misleading to the student, not only of using alternative phrases, but also of omitting at times as surplusage the qualifying phrases they added at others. The revenue derived by the Crown from Northamptonshire was swelled by sundry items. Prominent among these were the profits of jurisdiction, or, as it was termed, ' soc ' {socd). Both ' soc ' and ' soch- men ' are of frequent occurrence in the Domesday Survey of the shire, but the meaning of these terms is too vague, and the whole subject too technical for discussion here. The latest and most authoritative study is that of Professor Maitland, to which the reader is referred.* It is, how- ever, of great importance and of much local interest to observe that Northamptonshire, in Domesday, is distinguished from the counties ' Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 438, 441. » Domesday combines this ' gift ' with the payment due for hay, but the latter is entered separately under Wiltshire (fo. 64A), and its deduction would leave £S- ' Mr. Stevenson, however, thinks that the honey may have been used for makmg mead.
- Domisday Book and Beyond, pp. 66-79 ('The sokemen '), 80-107 ('Sake and Soke').
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