A HISTORY OF ESSEX mansiones terrae ' is of some interest. ' Mansio ' is one of the terms used vaguely in Domesday ; in Essex it clearly means ' manor ' in the phrase ' dominus mansionis ' found under Hanningfield and Sutton, and, apparently, in the somewhat mysterious ' non est de suis c mansionibus ' found under Orsett (fos. 9^, z6b); but at Horndon-on-the-Hill (fo. 97) two ' mansiones ' have been ' taken away ' by Godwine from a manor of one and a half hides, so that these can hardly have been anything but houses. In a single column of a single page in the other volume of Domesday (i. 8) we learn that to one Kentish manor there belonged ' iii mansiones terrae in Rovecestre ' and to another ' ii mansurae terras in Cantuaria.' Here, it will be seen, we have not only the same phrase as at Colchester, but an obvious equation of it with ' mansurae terras.' ! And, further, as the word ' terrae ' is surplusage, indifferently used or not after acra, carucata, and so forth, I think the mansurce terrce were simply the mansurce which meet us throughout the survey of Norwich ; and as masura is once used instead of mansura at Norwich, we may treat these words as identical ; indeed, returning to Kent, we have a manor to which were appurtenant 'in Cantuaria iii masurae ' (i. 9).* Lastly, in Fordwich all the houses seem to be entered as ' masuras terrae,' of which there were nearly a hundred (fo. 12). Here then again we have plain warning of the survey's loose terminology ; and we need not see in Godric's four ' mansiones terrae ' more than houses in Colchester. The next entry is connected with the first as relating to five hides at Lexden which the burgesses asserted to have belonged to Godric's Greenstead estate, although (as the Domesday map shows) Lexden lay on the opposite side of the borough. I showed in my original paper that Mr. Freeman had misread and misunderstood this important passage, and discussed its meaning both there * and at greater length in Domesday Studies (pp. 122-31). The grievance of the burgesses was the same as at Shrewsbury and, apparently, at Chester. The ' rateable area ' had been wrongfully lessened, and the sums due from the portion in dispute were thus lost to the burgesses, from whom however the Crown con- tinued to exact the same total amount. This must imply a fixed com- mutation, for the grievance would have otherwise no meaning.* Oddly enough the same grievance is again found recurring at Colchester some years later in the chronicle of St. John's Abbey, according to which Eudo ' dapifer ' came to the rescue of the townsfolk in their difficulty. Terras damnatorum . . . dum nemo coleret exigebantur tamen plenaliter fiscalia, et hac de causa populus valde gravabatur. Has ergo terras Eudo sibi vendicavit ut pro his fisco satisfaceret et populum eatenus alleviaret. 5 1 On fo. 5 are entered 80 ' mansurae terras ' in Rochester as appurtenant to two of the bishop's manors. 2 On fo. 10 there are several other instances, and mansura and masur<t are both used at Canterbury (fo. 2). s Antiquary, vi. 7.
- But compare, on this point, Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 207-8. As Mr. Eyton,
in his Dorset Domesday (p. 72), well puts the point : 'A reduced number of contributors had to make good the same total of taxation as had been formerly borne by many.' 5 Printed in the St. John's Cartulary (Roxburghe Club) and in the Monasticon. The authority of the narrative of course can only be accepted valeat quantum, so far as it exalts Eudo, the founder of the abbey, but it is good evidence as to the system and the grievance from which the burgesses suffered. 416
