A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE yet that borough can hardly be Northampton, of which the survey is separate and complete (fo. 219). If the 'port,' from which 'Portland' was named,' had indeed been Northampton, the entry should clearly have been found in the survey of that town. So far back, I discovered, as the beginning of the last century, this difficulty had been felt by Mr. Morton, who first printed the Northamptonshire Domesday. In his un- published notes thereon * he ingeniously suggested that, as following Casterton, this entry might refer, not to Northampton, but to Stamford ; and he induced Peck, in his Annals of Stamford to adopt this view. Unfortunately, neither of these writers tried to identify at Stamford any locality of the name ; and, by ill luck, the churches named (All Saints' and St. Peter's) are found both at Stamford and at Northampton. It seems to be clear that no ' portland ' has been met with hitherto at Northamp- ton, but I have also searched the histories of Stamford in vain for such a name.^ The difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that Stamford stood in three counties, and that its Rutland portion was then in North- amptonshire. We shall see below that its own survey includes a piece of Northamptonshire supposed to have been unsurveyed.* The only suggestion one can offer is that, as this ' Portland ' is measured in ' carucates ' {carucatas), it would probably be found in that ' Danish ' district where land was so measured. Now when we turn to the survey of the Lincolnshire boroughs in Domesday (fos. 336—7), we find ' carucates ' of land mentioned under Lincoln, Stamford, and Tork- sey. Moreover, under Lincoln we actually find one carucate belonging to a church of All Saints and half a carucate to St. Mary's (now the cathedral) in like fashion as with ' Portland.' ° It would seem, there- fore, most probable that the ' Portland ' of which we are in search was not connected with Northampton, but was a portion of Stamford field appurtenant to the king's manor of Casterton, and carrying with it cer- tain dues from Stamford town. Leaving now the Crown revenues and the survey of Northampton itself, let us turn to the rural districts, with their primitive agriculture, their struggling industries, and their great tracts of woodland. As we might expect, the proportion of ' serfs,' ^ which is highest in the west and south-west of England, is lower in Northamptonshire (ten per cent.) than in the counties to its west and south, where it ranges from thirteen to fifteen per cent., though it is substantially higher than we read that ' It is not known where the demenses of Portland were situated, but they were probably part of the adjoining meadows' (I. 7). Dr. Cox, who edited Vol. II., succeeded in identifying a 'Port meadow' (pp. 164, 166) and has shown its position on his map.
- Port-reeve, Port-way, Port-soken, and the well-known Port-meadow at Oxford were
similarly derived from ' port,' a market-town. 2 Add. MS. 3560 (Brit. Mus.) fos. 159-165. ^ Blore's Rutland, under Casterton, gives no assistance ; nor can I find this ' portland ' mentioned either in the Hundred Rolls or in the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.
- See p. 285.
^ ' Quarta carucata adjacuit in zecclesia omnium sanctorum. . . . Residuam dimi- diam carucatam terrae habuit et habet Sancta Maria de LLncolia.*
- See Mr. Seebohm's English Village Community.
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