A HISTORY OF SUSSEX survival in Sussex of the interesting and ancient rent in kind known as the ' Firma unius noctis ' or ' Firma unius diei.' The three are King Edward's manors of Eastbourne and Beddingham in east Sussex and Beeding in the west. In the case of the last named we are told that it was worth £()^ ^s. 6d., which is sufficiently near the £ioc, which Mr. Round has shown to be the usual value of the ' day's farm.' ' The other two manors are unfortunately not valued, and there is no trace of any other manor or group of manors having originally rendered this ferm, though the curious valuation of Ditchling at ^80 5J. 6d. suggests its former union with another estate valued at ^i k, which cannot how- ever be traced with any degree of certainty. Nor is there any trace of the peculiarity which marked the royal manors which paid this ' day's farm' in Hampshire — their not being hidated ;' with the exception of a piece of pasture land belonging to Stoughton and a piece of land in the suburb of Chichester, Sussex was completely assessed in hides. When we turn from the consideration of manorial revenue to that of its sources it is natural to deal first with the most important of these — the arable land. This is estimated in Sussex by the number of ploughs which would be required to till the land of the manor, each plough team being reckoned, in other counties and therefore presumably in Sussex, as of eight oxen, for the use of horses in ploughing was in the eleventh century though not unknown yet quite unusual, and indeed on the Sussex Downs the ploughteam of magnificent black oxen is still a common and most picturesque sight. The ploughteams actually existing on the manor were divided into those on the demesne, or home farm, and those of the villeins,' and though usually corresponding to the estimated number were sometimes far fewer, as at Trotton where there were only five ploughs although there was employment for thirty-six, and sometimes in excess, the most notable instances being South Mailing, where there were ninety-four ploughs though the number required was estimated at fifty, and Ditchling, where sixty ploughlands supported ninety-nine and a half ploughs. Nor did the ploughlands bear any definite relation to the hidage ; thus, South Mailing rated at eighty hides had only fifty ploughlands, while Rotherfield with twenty- six ploughlands was rated at only three hides. For the whole county the number of hides and ploughlands is nearly equal, but their relative values were subject to great local variation ; thus the ratio of hides to ploughlands was in the rape of Hastings approximately one to two, in Pevensey one to one, in Lewes eight to seven, in Bramber three to two, and in Earl Roger's rape nine to eight — the hidage being here taken at its pre-Conquest figure. ' V.C.H. Hants, i. 402. 2 Ibid. 3 Mr. Round points out that the endowment of Lewes Priory affords remarkable evidence on this point. William de Warenne's foundation charter (now in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris) grants to the abbey of Cluni ' terram duarum carrucarum in proprio in Suamberga cum viUanis ad eam pertinenti- bus . . . et viUam Falemetam ubi sunt tres carruce proprie cum his omnibus que ad eam pertinent.' On turning to Domesday we find that the monks had two ploughlands on the demesne of their estate at Iford in Swanborough Hundred, and two on their demesne at Falmer, thus showing that the gr«nt referred expressly to the demesne, to which the rest of the manor was looked on as appurtenant. 364
