A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE Hen. II.), to have been over jC^oOj but which clearly included, at that date, royal manors which, at the time of Domesday, were ' farmed ' under Herefordshire together with the revenue from Worcester itself. This last revenue consisted, at the time of Domesday, of ^23 5/. ' by weight ' annually, for which the sheriff was responsible. Part of this sum had accrued on the forfeiture of Eadwine, who, as the local Earl, had drawn from the city £S a year under the Confessor, the Crown at that time receiving only ^10 'beyond the rent {censum) of the houses.'^ A curious comphcation is introduced in the case of Worcester by the special rights of the Bishop, who was there entitled, like the Earl, to his ' third penny,' and who received, in right of it, £^k under the Confessor and ^8 under the Conqueror, in addition to holding a number of houses as appurtenant to one of his manors (fo. 173^). His rights appear to be traceable to a most remarkable endowment, in the time of king Alfred, which Professor Maitland paraphrases thus : iEthelred and iEthelflaed, the ealdorman and lady of the Mercians, have, at the request of the bishop, built a burh at Worcester, and they declare that of all the rights that appertain to their lordship both in market {ceapstowe) and in street, within the borough and without, they have given half to God and St. Peter,^ with the witness of king Alfred and all the wise of Mercia. The lord of the church is to have half of all, be it land-fee, or fiht-wite, stealing, wohceapung (fines for buying or selling contrary to the rules of the market), or borough-wall-scotting.^ Kemble, who printed in full a translation of the actual charter, spoke of it as 'a valuable instrument and one which supplies matter for reflection in various ways.' * The charter twice mentions the market, and also confirms the Bishop's rights ' without the market-place,' as enjoyed by his predecessors. I think, therefore, that we might connect the ceapstowe of this document with that forum (market-place) of Wor- cester in which, says Domesday, the Bishop had 25 houses in addition to the other houses that he held in the city. Returning to the payments made by the sheriff, as recorded in Domesday, the most interesting, perhaps, and most instructive are the sums which represented a commutation for the profits of jurisdiction in the courts of the shire and of the several Hundreds. In Worcestershire, as in Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Northamptonshire, and Oxfordshire, the King was entitled to receive annually ^T 10 for a hawk and twenty shillings for a sumpter-horse, while the Queen was entitled to £c^ in each of these counties except Wiltshire. But in Worcestershire it is specially recorded that the hawk is a Norway {norresc) hawk ; in Worcestershire the sheriff ' We are, unfortunately, not given, as we are under some towns, any details of these houses, but Heming's Cartulary (Ed. Hearne) preserves a list (pp. 290-1) of twelve 'mansiones' held by the monks of Worcester ' in burgo regis,' and paying him a penny or twopence a year each (with ' service ' once a year), except one which paid him 7^</., and another 15^.
- Then the patron saint of the church of Worcester.
' Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 194.
- Saxons in England, II. 328-331. The charter excludes from the rights granted to the
Bishop the wain-shilling and load-penny from Saltwic {i.e. Droitwich). These terms remind us of the caretedes and summa of Domesday. 242
