DOMESDAY SURVEY ease, where the abbey of Hide wisely provided for fast days by a toll of 38,500 herrings, and this manor also paid a composition of jir4 for porpoises [marsuins, or sea-pigs, the record calls them). The coast manors possessed a further source of revenue in their saltpans, of which the survey mentions 285, averaging 30^. in value. Of these no fewer than one hundred were on the abbot of Fecamp's manor of 'Rameslie ' in the neighbourhood of Rye and Hastings ; and their importance is attested by an entry under Pevensey Hundred, showing that the Count of Mortain has retained in his own hands eleven saltpans belonging to the manor of Hailsham, and that he held, as a complete holding, four saltpans in Hooe. Although the iron mines in Sussex had been worked at least as early as the time of the Romans, only one mine [ferraria) is mentioned in the survey, that being in the hundred of East Grinstead and formerly appurtenant to the royal manor of Ditchling. A quarry worth ()s. 4^. occurs under Iping and another at Stedham valued at 6s. %d., and a third worth loj. lod. under ' Greteham.' In Bignor there was a ' molaria ' or quarry for mill-stones, valued at ^s. This completes the list of sources of manorial revenue given in the survey ; the special cases of the boroughs will be treated in the section on the Sussex boroughs at the end of this chapter. On the condition of the population of Sussex, Domesday throws little light. Freemen occur only as pre-Conquest tenants and have no place in the Norman classification, being no doubt for the most part absorbed into the ranks of the villeins. Of the services of these last we learn nothing, though we have one glimpse of their organization in the mention of the reeve of Tangmere, who received 20s. from the issues of the manor which it was his duty to collect. Although the villeins in the eleventh century were absolutely at the disposal of their lord and were theoretically mere chattels they often had in practice an amount of liberty to which legally they had no claim. Thus they might even attain to such a measure of comparative independence as to farm the manor to which they belonged, or a portion of it. As this point is of much importance, the Sussex evidence may here be summarized. Mr. Round has referred to it when dealing with the adjoining county of Hampshire,' where we read of two of St. Swithin's manors, that ' villeins held and hold ' Alverstoke, while at Millbrook ' villeins held it and hold it ; there is no hall there ' ; the Sussex instances are more numerous, and belong, as Mr. Round observed, to Brighton and its neighbourhood. At Brighton itself we have the three allodial owners, one of whom had a hall, while the shares of the others were held by villeins ; at Aldrington to the west ' villeins held ' the outlyer of Beeding T.R.E., and we also read that ' villeins held ' another outlyer of Beeding in Lewes rape. Bevendean to the east had been held by 'villeins of Keymer,' and of estates in Iford, adjoining it on the east, we read ' Has terras tenuerunt villani.' Bulmer had been ' y.C.H. Hants, i. 442. 367
