Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/323

 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY and Evesham/ while we can not only identify this officer in Domesday (fo. lyib)-, where ' Edric Stirman ' is entered as having held 5 hides at Hindlip, but can recognise him in ' Edric de Hindelep ' at the final settlement before the Domesday Commissioners between bishop Wulf- stan and abbot Walter.* That the duty of this naval service was fully recognised down to the Conquest is seen in the mention of ' navigia ' as having been due from the 10 hides at Bishampton/ One is tempted, were it not rash, to suggest that if the service were due at the rate of one man from 5 hides,* the complement of ' the bishop's ship ' would be just sixty men, which seems to have been the number of the crew in the great war-galley introduced by Alfred/ When we turn from the sea to the land service our chief difficulties begin. For beyond the entry, under Bishampton, of ' expeditiones ' being due, Domesday is silent on the fyrd save for the passage on the liability to military service at the opening of the county survey. Heming's Cartulary, however, is more explicit on the matter. In addi- tion to the above mention of Eadric as leader of the Bishop's ' exercitus,' its report of the great trial between Worcester and Evesham represents the Bishop as claiming ' geldum regis et servitium et expeditiones in terra et in mari ' from the abbot in respect of the 15 hides at Hampton (by Evesham),^ while William's writ, which follows, asserts the Bishop's right there to 'geldum et expeditionem et cetera mea servitia.'^ The writ of the bishop of Coutances, before whom the case was tried, certifies that the 1 5 hides at Hampton ' debent placitare et geldum et expe- ditionem et cetera legis servitia. . . persolvere ' in the Bishop's Hundred of Oswaldslow.* This decision is referred to no less than three times in Professor Maitland's learned work on Domesday Book and Beyond? The one conclusion that can, I think, be safely drawn from the evidence before us is that the Bishop's Hundred of Oswaldslow had to provide a fixed quota of men to the King's fyrd^ irrespective of its population. It is only on this hypothesis that we can explain the bishop's anxiety to assert the liability of each estate to provide its proportionate con- tingent. I have elsewhere shown that this system, in force before the found in Worcestershire at Pershore, where Domesday (fo. 174^) shows us 'Turchil stirmannus regis Edwardi ' holding land in the time of that King, to whom Pershore had belonged. ^ Domesday, fo. 173. The somewhat difficult phrase in William's writ commanding the trial between Worcester and Evesham refers the judges to the day ' qua novissime, tempore regis Edwardi, geldum acceptum fuit ad navigium faciendum' (Heming's Cartulary, I. 78), as if the service were commuted for money. 156-9. ^ 'Some had sixty oars, some more' (Anglo-Saxon Chron., II. 74). I agree with Sir James Ramsey {Foundations of England) that the oarsmen were also the fighting crew. « Heming's Cartulary, I. 80. '' Ibid. 78, 83. * Ibid. 77. ^ pp. 85, 159, 308. I can hardly agree with his paraphrase that 'the men of two villages, Hamton and Bengeworth, were bound to pay geld and to fight along with the bishop's men ' (p. 308), for the duty seems, as he had pointed out just before, to have been incumbent on the hides rather than the men, and to have been discharged by a few individuals. 249
 * Heming's Cartulary, I. 80.
 * Ibid. pp. 76, 297. Another steersman (the recognised chief officer of a galley) is
 * See Feudal England^ pp. 45, 67-9, 232-4, and Domesday Book and Beyond, pp.