Page:VCH Herefordshire 1.djvu/368

 A HISTORY OF HEREFORDSHIRE elsewhere explained/" the Rhuddlan entry in Domesday proves that this privilege existed ' in Hereford et in Bretuill,' and was granted to both by William Fitz Osbern,"* whose act bore fruit far and wide in the customs of English boroughs.''" The king, at the time of the Survey, held the city ' in demesne ' and received from it the large sum of £bo a year, paid by tale in assayed pennies. Under his predecessor the reeve [prepositus) had rendered but £12 to the king and ^6 — the earl's ' third penny ' of the revenue — to Earl Harold. Towards raising this sum he received the whole of the king's dues set forth in the description of the city, save the three reserved pleas of the crown [i.e. the forfeitures accruing from them). Hereford is an instance of a town which had its ' render ' sharply raised by the Conqueror ; Shrewsbury had rendered as much as £t,o before the Conquest, and yet was only called upon for £^0 at the time of the Survey, but Domesday shows that it had lost in houses and in inhabitants ; to the east, Worcester was only called on for j(^23 5J., though it had yielded _£i8, if not more, before the Conquest. The quit-rent of a house at Hereford (within the walls) was jld., and at Shrews- bury about the same,"' but at Hereford every burgess paid 4^. in addition for horse hire [ad locandos caballos), besides having work to perform at Marden. Outside Hereford the only burghal element is found, somewhat unex- pectedly, in connexion with the castles of Norman lords. At Clifford Castle there was a borough {burgus) with sixteen ' burgesses ' ; at Wigmore Castle there was a borough {burgus) which already rendered to its lord £;j a year ; at Richard's Castle Osbern Fitz Richard had twenty-three homines in castello; and at Ewyas Harold Henry de Ferrers had two messuages in castello. These are interesting examples of that type of urban community which gathered about a feudal castle in a county so highly feudalized and so exposed to devastation as Herefordshire then was. Local finance and administration were at this time closely connected. Hereford is believed to be almost, if not quite, alone among the county towns dealt with in Domesday in being so distinctly entered as farmed by its reeve. The entry which informs us of this is immediately followed by the state- ment that ' Inter civitatem et xviii maneria qui in Hereford reddunt firmas suas computantur cccxxxv lib. et xviii sol. exceptis placitis de hund' et de comi- tatu.' Noting, as we pass, that computantur is a technical Exchequer term, we are struck by the largeness of the total. This is accounted for by the fact that half of these eighteen manors were outside the county and had been financially annexed to it by the act of William Fitz Osbern.''" Most of them lay in Worcestershire, where the county finance presents the closest parallel. For, there also, we have the king's revenue entered as derived from three sources : (i) the county town, (2) his demesne manors, (3) the pleas in (the courts of) the county and the hundreds. But the actual figures are there given for all three sources, while in Herefordshire we have none for the '" Studies in Peerage and Family Hist. 183. *'* Cf. note 50, above. '■'■' See the late Miss Bateson's brilliant monograph on ' The Laws of Breteuil,' Engl. Hist. Rev. xv. '^* As 252 burgesses (all with houses) rendered £j i6s. %d., the average would be as nearly as possible yia'. Horn. Bk. (Rec. Com.), i, 252. "' These are the manors surveyed on fol. liob. They must have contributed nearly ;^loo to the total, but the payments of the various manors are so differently reckoned that the details of the total sum would require elaborate discussion. 300