Page:VCH Surrey 1.djvu/338

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A HISTORY OF SURREY who was the successor of Miles, is found liable to pay 60 shillings, which represents an assessment of 30 hides on his holding. 1 This is a decisive and a striking instance. It can also be shown that Cuddington, on which the assessment had been reduced from 26 hides to 7, was liable for 25 hides in the year 1 130. That the old assessment of the Confessor's days may not have been restored in every instance is probable not only from the total for the county being somewhat lower in 1130, but also from the fact that we find in Berkshire two manors of which the assessments had been reduced from 40 hides to 6, and from 20 hides to 6 re- spectively, and the owners of which are found on the Pipe Roll of 1130 paying large sums to retain these low assessments. 2 It has been needful to discuss in some detail this important question, for its study proves that the Norman kings did not hesitate to raise in their own favour even the assessments admitted by Domesday Book itself. When from the subject of assessment we turn to that of valuation, we again find that it involves a question of national history. It has been argued by Mr. Baring that the Domesday evidence enables us to trace the march of the Normans after the Battle of Hastings and to check the somewhat meagre statements by the chroniclers on the subject. 3 That William marched through Surrey, leaving London on his right, is, of course, an historical fact ; but Mr. Baring holds that we can go further and trace the line of his march. For Domesday records the value of manors not only under Edward the Confessor and in 1086, but also at the time when the Normans received them. It was at this last period that those which had been harried betrayed the fact by a sharp fall in their values. These three valuations are shown in the figures given below, those within square brackets representing the lowered values when the manors were received. Mr. Baring thinks that William advanced by ' Lewis- ham (16, [12], 30) and Camberwell 12, [6], 14, within striking distance of Southwark, to a camp at Battersea (80, [30], 75).' He argues that From Camberwell a loop of damage runs twenty miles south to Blechingley and Westerham, touching five-and-twenty manors, together T.R.E. 305, after- wards 187.* These ... lie only a mile or two apart in a line, though a looped line, and mark, no doubt, the track of a foraging expedition. . . . But William did not stay long before London. He could not cross the river, and after burning Southwark he apparently marched to Mortlake (32, [ IO ]> 38), and thence by Combe and Maiden (together 1 1, [6], u) to Molesey, Ditton, and Walton (together 34, [20], 43). He does not, however, seem to have followed the river further, but to have struck south fifteen miles to Guildford, where we find damage at Shalford (16, [9], 20), Bramley (40, [30], 60), and Godalming (25, [20], 30).' From

  • Pipe Roll 31 Hen. I., p. 51.

2 See my paper in Domesday Studies (I. 1 14-5), and Pipe Roll 31 Hen. I., pp. 123, 125. 8 See p. 277, note 2 above. I have endeavoured in my Introduction to Domesday for the Victoria History of Northamptonshire to trace, by the same evidence, the march of the Northern earls through that county in 1065.

  • That is to say they had fallen in value to that extent, when the Normans received them, since

the days of Edward the Confessor. Mr. Baring gives their names as ' Tooting, Merton, Ewell, Cud- dington, Banstead, Woodmansterne, Chipstead, Merstham, Gatton, Nutfield, Blechingley, Chivington, Godstone, Oxstead, Tandridge, Titsey, Limpsfield, Westerham ; then back by Woldingham, Tillingdon, Farley, Chelsham, Beddington, Wallington, and Carsh(aulton).' 6 English Historical Review, XIII. 19. 278