THE DOMESDAY SURVEY amount of the arable land thus indicated. A sweeping entry on the fief of the bishop of Worcester tells us that ' In omnibus his Maneriis non possunt esse plus carucas quam dictum est' (fo. 174)/ But in the next column we read of Bockelton, a manor of the bishop of Hereford, that ' ibi possunt esse plus iiii carucx.' There were several manors on the fief of Osbern Fitz Richard short of their complement of ploughs, Elmbridge, for instance, having only ten, though it ought to have had twenty (fo. ij6b). At Hagley, a manor of William Fitz Ansculf, there were but six ploughs, eight short of the complement ; and at Churchill, another of his manors, though six ploughs could be employed, there was but one, which was ' in demesne' (fo. 177). One has to render caruca by plough, but its really important element was the team of eight oxen,^ and the stocking of a manor consisted chiefly in providing oxen for its ploughs. A curious entry under OfFenham (fo, 175(^) informs us that there were there ' oxen for one plough ' {i.e. a team of eight), ' but they drag stone to the church' ; that is, doubtless, the new build- ings which had risen at Evesham under abbot Walter. When we turn from the land to the men who dwelt on it, we are confronted by a hierarchy of classes bewildering enough in its variety. Indeed, it would be difficult in any county to find a greater variety. Working downwards, we have first the ' barons ' or tenants-in-chief, and then their under-tenants,^ with whom we must group the name- less ' milites,' who would hold of the ' barons ' by knight-service. Next would come the class described vaguely as ' Francigenas.' Beyond the fact that they were Frenchmen by birth, it is not easy to say of whom this class was composed. In Heming's Cartulary we read that the great abbot iEthelwig ' was dreaded even by the Frenchmen themselves,' * while the Ely document spoken of above (p. 272) describes the Domes- day Survey as made on the oaths ' of the sheriff and of the barons and of their Frenchmen (Jrancigenarum) , and of the whole county, etc' The word seems, indeed, to be a ' wide' one, for of the 26 ' francigenas ' allotted by Ellis to Worcestershire two (at Snodsbury) are entered as ' francigeuce servientes ' (fo. 174^). It is interesting, in connection with this entry, to note that Domesday, at Church Lench, enters one 'franci- gena' (fo. 175), and that the parallel entry in an Evesham cartulary styles him ' quidam serviens.' ^ It is probable that many of these ' francigens' were 'Serjeants' of various kinds whose services were rewarded by land. Of the ' Radchenistres ' or ' Radmanni ' something has been said
- Professor Maitland inadvertently states that this entry is found *at the end of the
account of the bishop of Worcester's triple hundred of Oswaldslaw ' {Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 423-4). This is not so ; the entry covers several places outside that Hundred. ^ Thus the Lippard entry (fo. 174) : ' i caruca et vi boves,' is equivalent to i| plough (teams).
- These, as in the striking case of Urse, were themselves also, sometimes, tenants-in-
chief elsewhere.
- 'et ab ipsis Francigenis timebatur' (I. 270).
6 Cott. MS. Vesp. B. XXIV. fo. 6. I 273 T
