THE DOMESDAY SURVEY equal footing with the military tenants-in-chief; Domesday ranks them, where they are numerous, even after the Serjeants. There may not, therefore, in practice have existed much difference between the thegns who held of the king and those who held of great qobles, such as his half-brother. In Northamptonshire we find a group of thegns holding of the count of Mortain and ranked, like those who held of the king, after his Norman tenants. Five at least of these were holding lands they had held before. A similar group is found on the fief of the countess Judith, and here again four at least were still holding lands they had held under the Confessor. Even with such additions as these the Englishmen here who weathered the Conquest were few and their holdings small. But the virtual absence of king's thegns must not lead us to infer that all the English holders had lost their lands. No discussion of the settlement of the county under William the Conqueror would be complete without some reference to the system of castle-guard. For although it is not even alluded to in the Domesday survey of Northamptonshire, this marked feature of the feudal system must have been already introduced.^ An important entry under Rock- ingham (fo. 220) tells us of the castle being there constructed by com- mand of king William ; and its garrison, we subsequently find, was provided by making it a charge on the barony of Warden, held in 1086 by Guy de ' Reinbuedcurt.' Its fifteen knights had to serve at the castle, a service commuted, it would seem, within a century of the Conquest for a payment of five shillings from each knight's fee.' Northampton castle was garrisoned by the knights of another local barony, that of Gunfrei de ' Cioches,' the fifteen fees of which are afterwards found liable to an annual payment of ten shillings each in commutation. Yet another local barony, that of the Pinkeneys, was liable to provide knights for castle-guard at Windsor, each of its fifteen fees being charged, at a later time, with a pound a year for the purpose. One Northampton- shire manor, that of Hartwell, owed the ward of two knights to the distant castle of Dover. So improbable might this seem that, in the lists of manors owing such service, which are found in The Red Book of the Exchequer^ ' Hertwelle ' has been officially supposed to be some place in Kent.' Its liability is accounted for by the fact that it was obtained, in the Norman period, by Walchelin Maminot, whose barony was charged with a quota of guard at that important fortress. The two knights due from Hartwell had to serve, every year, fifteen days each, so that the subsequent commutation of a pound a year for the two repre- sented eightpence a day, which, as I have shown,* was a knight's pay under Henry II.
- A valuable hint to this effect is given by the incidental mention, under a Bucks manor,
of a liability to provide knights for castle-guard at Windsor (fo. 15'^)-
- See the interesting return (probably of 11 70) printed in The Red Book of the Exchequer,
p. cclxxxi. Peterborough Abbey knights also went on guard there. ' The Red Book of the Exchequer, ed. Hubert Hall (Rolls Series), p. 1205.
- Feudal England, pp. 271, 272.
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