Page:Mediaevalleicest00billrich.djvu/182



HERE is little doubt that at the date of the Domesday Survey, Leicester was a flourishing town. Historians have been misled by the alleged total destruction of Leicester, which is said to have occurred in the year 1068, and consequently the borough has been represented as being, at the date of the Domesday Survey, in a ruinous and depopulated state. The only record of this supposed destruction is contained in the Register of Leicester Abbey, the M.S. of which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. But there is every reason to think that the destruction to which the Abbey scribe referred did not occur in 1068. On the contrary Mr. J. H. Round assigns it, for various good reasons, and "without a shadow of doubt," to the rebellion of Ivo de Grantmesnil in 1101. Moreover, of the 322 houses registered in Domesday book, as then standing within the borough of Leicester., four only are said to have been then "waste," or uninhabited, — a fact which is quite inconsistent with a recent sack. These tenements were those held of the King in capite, and there may have been others. However, on the basis of five persons to each of 318 houses, the number of the occupants of those tenements would be about 1600, and they formed the great bulk of the community. The whole of the population would not exceed 2000.

Two thousand inhabitants may seem few for a town of any importance, but it must be remembered that the whole of the population of England did not at that time reach two millions, and no town had more than a few thousand occupants. Mr. F. W. Maitland, multiplying the "recorded men" in Domesday by five, makes the total population of England at that time only 1,375,000. Winchester, one of the largest towns, is estimated to have contained between 6000 and 8000. Colchester had over 2000.

After the Conquest the population of the town increased but slowly. It was held in check by the hard life of those 140