Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/337

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DOMESDAY SURVEY It is singular that in the Welsh districts entered at the commencement of the survey of Gloucestershire, swine take the place of sheep as render, and this is also the case at Ewyas (Lacy), where Roger de Laci used to get ' fifteen sestiers of honey and fifteen swine ' from his men. The render of sheep found in Archenfield is found also, one may observe, in Somerset. Several manors in that county are entered as paying a customary due of sheep and lambs to the king's manor of North Curry in the proportion of a sheep with a lamb for each hide.'^ In Herefordshire the due was similarly payable to the king's manor of Linton. In addition to the obligations dealt with above, the men of Archenfield paid to the king ten shillings for hearth money {fumagio) ; and from each of them, if a 'free man,' was due (as from a burgess of Hereford ^*) his war horse [caballus) and arms — and if a ' villein ' an ox — at his death. It would seem probable that these terms represent the Welsh uchelwr and taeog^ but whether this due is the Welsh Ebediw is doubtful in view of its close assimilation to the English ' heriot.' One notes with some surprise the free man's war horse in Archenfield, remembering how the Welsh invariably fought on foot and how even the English of Herefordshire were unused to fighting them on horseback, though Earl Ralf compelled them to do so in 1055. Lastly, there was the duty of attendance at ' shiremoot ' and hundred court, the former limited to a delegation of six or seven leading men. The reference to a hundred court is important because we should infer from the Domesday survey that ' Archenfield ' was a district by itself, not comprised in any hundred. But there must obviously have been a court of some kind at which the penalties enumerated by Domesday as due from the Welsh by

  • custom ' could be enforced.

The hundred of Wormelow,*" which now represents, in the main, Archenfield, is only once mentioned in Domesday (immediately after Archen- field), and has only one manor assigned to it, namely, ' Westwood,' a manor of which the limits, and indeed the identity, are obscure. But Westwood was given to St. Peter's, Gloucester, as ' in Jerchenfeld,' and its church was in the deanery of Archenfield. As, however, we find it in Domesday assessed in hides, it must have represented an English conquest of old standing." On the right bank of the River Wye lay Baysham, not hidated, and reckoned ambiguously by Domesday as ' in fine Arcenefelde.' Below it again, further down, the king's manor of Cleeve with Wilton and Ash represents another English conquest on the right bank, for we find it duly hidated and reckoned as in Brooms Ash Hundred. Yet, economically, it was still Welsh in part ; ^ See Domesday, fol. 92, and F.C.H. Somen, i, 428, In one case a 5-hide manor pays 30 pence, evidently in commutation for five sheep with their lambs : this, if applied to Archenfield, would give us forty sheep for the 20 shillings of commutation. '° ' Cum caballo serviens.' So also the Bayeux tapestry : ' Hie exeunt caballi de navibus.' Cf. the Spanish ' caballero ' (our ' cavalier.') " This term is rendered ' villanus ' in the Latin translation of the Welsh laws, and subsequently ' bilain.' ^' ' Anglos contra morem in equis pugnare jussit' (Florence of Wore). The Welsh laws recognize a somewhat similar service in the ' rhaith gwlad ' or ' verdict of the country,' in which those liable had to participate.

  • ° It takes its name from Wormelow tump (an obvious pleonasm) between Llanwarne and Much

Dewchurch. See also p. 299 below.

  • ' Domesday records that one of its hides ' has the Welsh custom,' and the others the English, and a

Welshman paying a rent in honey is found on part of the manor. An entry relating to the Dore valley shows the same distinction. 269