Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/310

 A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE the Conquest by the monk Heming at the instance of bishop Wulfstan." Broadly speaking, its contents consist of three divisions : first, in order of date, are the charters before the Conquest ; next are the docu- ments and narrative relating to the period of the Conquest ; thirdly comes a brief survey of the lands held by the monastery of Worcester, which I assign to the reign of Henry I., and which is of some importance for collation with the Domesday text.^ For the rival monastery of Evesham we have its local chronicle in print ^ and its MS. cartularies.* In one of the latter there is found a valuable survey of Droitwich, of which I shall speak below, and in another a fragment of a survey belong- ing to the reign of Stephen.^ Lastly, we have, in the Testa de Nevill (pp. 43-4), and in the Red Book of the Exchequer, (pp. 566—7), a part of the returns to the great Inquest of 121 2, which was not unworthy of comparison with the Domesday Survey itself And to these must be added a remarkable return for the bishop of Worcester's fief,® which I assign with certainty, from internal evidence, to the reign of John. Neither its importance nor its early date has hitherto, it seems, been realized. Some assistance may also be derived, for the rural economy of Domesday, from a study of the 1 3th century survey of the manors belonging to the monastery of Worcester, which was printed by archdeacon Hale.' The main object of Domesday Book, — it is now recognised by scholars, — was the record of the liability of the land to the tax known as Danegeld, or, as Domesday styles it, ' geld.' ' One great purpose,' as Professor Maitland has observed, ' seems to mould both its form and its substance ; it is a geld-book.' * The first subject, therefore, to be dis- cussed in the survey of Worcestershire is the principle on which the county was assessed. Down to very recent years it had been generally assumed that the ' hide ' of Domesday was a measure of land, although there was no agreement as to the area it represented. But we now know that this term, so prominent on the pages of Domesday, denoted only a unit of assessment irrespective of area or value.* By a purely artificial arrange- ment, counties, hundreds, and ' vills ' (or, to speak loosely, villages), were respectively assessed in lump sums, based, it is essential to remember, on a ' five-hide unit.' Thus, for instance, Cropthorne with Netherton was assessed at 50 hides, Fladbury at 40, Broadway and Bromsgrove at 30 each, Chaddesley (Corbett) at 25, Kidderminster at 20, Worcester at 15, Droitwich (we shall find) at 10, and Rushock at 5. In one instance, that Maitland holds that ' where Heming's work can be tested, it generally gains credit ' {Ibid.). the paper below on ' Some Early Worcestershire Surveys.' ^ It is Vol. 29 of the Rolls Series. ^ For both of these see Feudal England, pp. 1 77-8 and pp. 327-331 below. ^ Testa de Nevill, pp. 4 1 -2. ' Registrum Prioratus Beata Maries IVigorniensis (Camden Society). ^ See my Feudal England, pp. 44-49, and Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 450 et seq. 236
 * Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 227. It was printed by Hearne in 1723. Professor
 * See my paper on 'The Worcestershire Survey' in Feudal England, pp. 169-180, and
 * MS. Cott. Vesp. B. XXIV. and MS. Harl. 3,763.
 * Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 3.