Page:VCH Hertfordshire 1.djvu/348

 A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 46 'burgesses ' worth to the abbey no less than 11 14^. a year 'from tolls and other issues of the vill.' But if burgesses had already clustered around the abbey's walls, the great fortress of Berkhampstead, as a seat of the count of Mortain, had proved no less attractive ; its ' burbium ' already contained 52 burgesses. 1 Trade, in the form of local markets, was already faintly beginning in somewhat unexpected places ; from 10 traders (mercatores) at Cheshunt the count of Mortain was receiving i os. a year ; at Ashwell, on the Cambridgeshire border, there were 14 burgesses, and nearly 50.;. a year accrued to the abbot of Westminster ' from the toll and other customary dues of the borough ' (sic) ; even at Stanstead Abbots we read of ' 7 burgesses,' but as the 24^. received from them included the profits of the meadow and the woodland, they cannot have been of much account. Possibly the junction of the Stort and the Lea had given rise to an infant trade. A few miscellaneous matters remain to be noted. One of the most tragic events referred to in the pages of Domesday is the forfeiture of earl Ralf of Norfolk as the result of his abortive rising in 1075. There are allusions to this sensational episode under Munden and Wallington (fos. 137, 140), but we cannot tell what connection earl Ralf had with Hertfordshire. A forfeiture of another kind receives illustration in the county. There is a curious statement in Heming's Cartu/ary, which relates to the monastery of Worcester, that under Cnut an order was made that any one four days in arrear with his payment of ' geld ' (land tax) forfeited ipso facto his land, which then passed to the first person who came forward and paid the tax (i. 278). Now, under the fief of Peter de Valognes, we read that he took the lands of a certain sokeman into the king's hands ' pro forisfactura de gildo regis se non reddidisse ' (fo. 141), though the men of the shire bore witness that it had always been exempt from ' geld.' This is a typical instance of oppression by a Norman sheriff. 8 Again the Domesday use of ' manor ' receives illustra- tion from the land of Deorman (fo. 142). Professor Maitland holds that in Domesday ' manor ' is ' a technical term,' that it meets us ' as an accurate term charged with legal meaning.' ' And this meaning he sets himself to discover. As he observes, ' the symbol M which represents a manor is often carried out into the margin ' ; and this is the case with Walkern, a lo-hide manor. Moreover Watton, which immediately precedes it, is styled by Domesday a terra only, not a manerium. And yet we have but to look lower down in the column to read of an outlying estate : ' HEBC terra est appreciata in Watone M[anerio] derman.' We thus learn that manerium was not a technical term, but was used alterna- tively with terra by the Domesday scribes.* Although the identification of the place-names entered in the record is best dealt with, as a rule, at the place where the name occurs, it seems 1 See also p. 280 above. 8 Ralf ' Taillgebosc,' of whom we heard above (p. 284) is found similarly obtaining land at Sharn- brook, Beds, by paying the charge on it himself when the tenant failed to do so (fo. 2 1 66). 3 Domes Jay Book and Beyond, pp. 107-8. 4 See farther on this point my paper in the EngKsh Historical Review, rv. 293-302. 296