Page:VCH Essex 1.djvu/437

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THE DOMESDAY SURVEY it records, as a rule, the live stock. This rule is by no means invariable, and, even where the numbers are recorded, we are not always told whether they had increased or diminished in the interval between the death of the Confessor and the date of the Domesday Survey. But where this latter information is given, it is of considerable interest. We may take as an exceptionally good instance Aubrey de Vere's manor of (Earls) Colne : cows beasts sheep swine goats rounceys 1066 ... 20 19 120 60 60 3 1086 ... 45 160 80 80 4 There were also in 1086 '6 asses and 20 mares,' so that we have such variety of stock as is not recorded, perhaps, anywhere else in the county. The first point to strike us here is the vague use of the term ' beasts ' (animalia}, which is generally recognized as equivalent to animalia ofiosa, that is, cattle kept for other purposes than that of draught. The (Earls) Colne entry is but one of several which suggest, as I have pointed out in notes to the text, that cows, though sometimes separately named, must often be included in the term ' beasts ' (animalia]. We have here another illustration of that looseness of terminology that is so distinctive of the Domesday scribe and so alien from our own usage. Its position on the banks of the river from which it derived its name made the manor, as Domesday shows, rich in the meadow land required for its head of stock, besides providing it with the two watermills it possessed then as now, Domesday naming them, as usual, immediately after the meadow. The live stock entered in Domesday was that of the lord on his demesne. Of this we are reminded by the occasional addition of the words ' in dominio.' There are several records by which light is thrown on the system of stocking manors in the century after Domesday. The early leases of St. Paul's record, for certain manors, the live as well as the dead stock which the ' farmer,' at the close of his lease, had to restore to the canons ;' the Pipe Rolls record the expense incurred in stocking or re-stocking manors which had come by escheat into the king's hands ;* and the Rotulus de Dominabus (1185), a century after Domesday, which contains estimates of the amount of stock required on manors belonging to wards in the king's hands to make them fully productive. Both these latter records assume that a manor must increase in annual value when fully stocked. 8 But this, though it seems obvious, does not follow in 1 At Wickham St. Paul's, for instance (Domesday of St. Pauri, p. 122), he had to produce 16 (plough) oxen (worth 28 pence each), 4 horses (worth 10 shillings), eight score sheep (at 4 pence each), 24 swine (at 5 pence each), a sow with 9 porkers (worth 19 pence), and 36 goats (at 4 pence each). These figures contrast with Domesday's two plough-teams in demesne, 2 rounceys (i.e. horses), 4 beasts, 23 swine, 50 sheep, and 24 goats (see p. 442 below).

  • In 1167 two of the escheated manors of Henry of Essex, Stoke(-by-Nayland) and Prittlewell, had

to be re-stocked. For the former there were bought 5 oxen, 6 cows, 80 sheep, 5 sows, and 1 1 porkers, at a cost of 3 61. J. ; for the latter, I ox, 2 boars, and 82 sheep, at a cost of i i6/. $J. (Pipe Roll, 13 Hen. II. p. 153). B It valued the manor of Rickling as worth 15 without stock and zo if properly stocked (p. 40). At Rochford, where there was no stock on the manor, its value was reckoned at it if properly stocked, that is, if supplied with 6 cows, i bull, 10 sows, I boar, 2 plough-teams, 250 sheep and 25 rams (p. 39). The proportion of I to 10 was then observed with rams and boars. At about the same time (i 181) it 367