Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/317

 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY is found paying, independently of hhjirma, ^^13 (not jC^ 0' ' ^o'' hawk and sumpter-horse ' under Henry II, ; and in this county alone is the source of these payments explained. Domesday having recorded that the sheriff pays £,ij 'by weight ' for {de) the county, and £16 in the form of the above three payments, goes on to tell us that ' Hs xvii librs ad pensum et xvi librae ad numerum sunt de placitis comitatus et Hundretis ' (fo. 172).* The 'county,' therefore, for which he paid the £ij means the county court, that is, the profits arising from the pleas there held, while the £16 represented the profits derived from the Hundreds. On these latter profits the best evidence is found in some curious calculations of the time of Henry II., printed in The Red Book of the Exchequer.^ These, unfortunately, do not include Worcestershire, where the total sum given in Domesday {£16) strikes one as very small. But, as will be seen in the text, the sheriff records his protest against even this amount being exacted from him when seven out of the twelve Hundreds were so completely in the hands of the Church that he did not receive from them anything at all. The highly favoured Abbey of Westminster seems to have obtained a further exemption, for Domesday records that it was alleged to have been given by king Edward the pro- fits even of his special pleas. Evidence on quite another subject can be obtained from the above passage dealing with the Worcestershire Hundreds. It will have been observed that some of the money, such as that which was derived from the profits of the ' county,' was payable ' by weight,' ^ that is, in silver pennies (the coin actually in use), which the scales had proved to be of full weight. But occasionally, as with the profits of the Hundreds, a different reckoning is used ; the money is payable ' by tale ' only without being weighed. Now we can, in this case, obtain a useful piece of information by setting out the compound addition that Domesday records. X libras denariorum de xx in ora c solidos reginas ad numerum xx'i solidi de xx'' in ora [Total] xvi librae ad numerum This sum, as it seems to me, proves the absolute identity, in the minds of the compilers of Domesday, between pounds ' by tale ' and pounds reckoned ' at 20 pence to the ounce.' We have become so accustomed to think of the ' pound ' as a coin that it almost requires an effort to realize that it then possessed its original meaning of a pound in weight (of silver). This pound, in Worcestershire at the time, was divided into twelve ounces, and we consequently find payments, at various places in the ^ See Domesday text below for translation. ^ The Worcestershire Domesday sometimes uses an alternative form ' ad peis ' for the customary 'ad pondus.' 243
 * Ed. Rolls Series, pp. 774-778.