A HISTORY OF ESSEX court, and even of the Domesday commissioners themselves at work on the king's behalf. Dealing first with the evidence of Domesday on the changes wrought by the Conquest in the distribution of land, we turn to the manors held by King William himself, and are struck at once by the salient fact that in Essex not a single manor had been held by Edward the Confessor. The surveys of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk begin, as was usually the case, with the valuable manors in which King William had succeeded his predecessor on the throne. Why did Essex in this respect differ from other counties ? Could it have contained no manors that were ' ancient demesne ' of the Crown ? In seeking an answer to this question we may find assistance perhaps in the adjoining county of Hertford. There also, of the manors held by the king himself, not one is entered as having been held by Edward. I have elsewhere suggested that this may be explained, at least in the case of Hitchin, by far the greatest of them all, by the fact that Harold had obtained possession of the Crown's ' ancient demesne.' 1 There is strong reason, I think, to believe that in Essex also this had happened. Another solution indeed is suggested by Professor Maitland, although he seems not to have observed, or at least not have addressed himself to the special case of Essex. Writing on the king's manors in Domesday Book and Beyond (pp. 1 668), he speaks of ' comital manors ' : King William is much richer than King Edward was. The Conqueror has been chary in appointing earls, and consequently he has in his hand, not only the royal manors, but also a great many comital manors. . . . One of the best marked features of Domesday Book, a feature displayed on page after page, the enormous wealth of the house of Godwin, seems only applicable by the supposition that the earlships and the older ealdormanships had carried with them a title to the enjoyment of wide lands. ... A great deal of simple rapacity is laid to the charge of Harold by jurors whose testimony is not to be lightly rejected ; but the greater part of the land ascribed to Godwin, his widow and his sons, seems to consist of comitales villa. That the vast estates of Harold in Essex were partly, at least, Crown lands we have incidental hints. Domesday itself, surveying the great lordship of Writtle, tells us first that Harold had held it, and then mentions that a hide ' in Writtle ' held by the Bishop of Hereford had belonged to ' the king's fee ' (in feudo regis] . This entry is repeated later under the name of the Bishop of Hereford, with the difference only that the hide in question is said to have belonged to ' Harold's fee ' (feudo Haroldi)? This surely suggests that Harold's fee had been the king's. But I base my conclusion rather on the peculiar character of the manors found in Harold's hands. Writtle itself had rendered ' x noctes de firma,' and Brightlingsea, Lawford and Newport ' 2 nights ' each. This archaic system of providing ' feorm ' for the household was normally characteristic of ' ancient demesne ' of the Crown, 3 and the only other Essex manor on which it was found was that which Earl ./Elfgar had held at Baddow. With these introductory remarks we turn to Harold's lands, and 1 Victoria History of Hertfordshire, i. 278. z See pp. 434, 460. 8 Compare, for instance, Eyton's Key to Domesday : Dorset Survey, p. 80. 336
