Page:VCH Worcestershire 1.djvu/351

 THE DOMESDAY SURVEY of Professor Maitland in his Domesday Book and Beyond,^ and of Dr. Andrews in The Old English Manor? Both these writers used, of necessity, Mr. Seebohm s maps,^ but neither they nor Mr. Seebohm him- self have drawn attention to the singular constancy, in a large group of counties, of the ratio borne by the serfs to the rest of the population. This ratio, according to the map, was in Worcestershire, Buckingham- shire, Wiltshire, and Gloucestershire 15 per cent., in Hants and Dorset 16 per cent., in Shropshire 17 and in Devon 18 per cent., while in Oxfordshire it was 14 and in Warwickshire and Herefordshire 13 per cent. Here, however, it may be well to observe that the whole of these calculations rest on the figures given by Ellis, and these are affected by a misapprehension from which Ellis suffered. He altogether failed, I find, to understand the Domesday formula ' inter servos et ancillas,' which only meant that the numbers of the class were given jointly, instead of separately. Ellis imagined that, in these cases, no numbers at all were given,* and he omitted them accordingly. In Worcestershire this formula occurs on two manors of the church of Worcester which follow one another in the Survey (fo. 174), Wolverley and Alvechurch, on which there were 1 3 serfs and bondwomen. It is found again at Rushock (fo. ']']b) and Chaddesley Corbett (fo. 178), which had twelve more between them. But to these we must add the serfs and bondwomen on the Worcestershire manors entered on fo. i8o(^.^ As these amounted to no fewer than 45, we have to increase the servile population allotted by Ellis to the county by 70 in all, making it 848 instead of 778. It would be only by a careful examination of the whole Survey, county by county, that the effect of his misapprehension on the figures he gives could be determined ; but in Herefordshire it must have excluded, on the lordship of Leominster alone, the 82 'inter servos et ancillas' who were there on the eve of the Conquest. The same formula occurs in several cases in Gloucestershire, and as at Tewkesbury alone there were 50 ' inter servos et ancillas,' Ellis' calculations, for that county, must be gravely affected. Breadth of view, however, is essential in Domesday study, and it is not probable that the necessary correction would materially affect the distribution of the servile population in the country. If, therefore, the proportion of serfs was about the same in Worcestershire as it was in Buckinghamshire and Hampshire, it can scarcely be contended that their numbers in the first of these counties were due to its proximity to the Welsh border. It seems probable that the servile population was re- cruited from several distinct sources. Capture in warfare was but one ; crime reduced some to serfage, and others voluntarily entered that state, ^ pp. 26-36. Reference may also be made to the chapter on ' The Unfree ' in The History of English Law by Professors Maitland and Sir F. Pollock ; but this applies mainly to the servitude of a later period. ^ Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 23 ; The Old English Manor, pp. 182-3. ^ See p. 239 above. 277
 * Macmillan & Co. (1892), pp. 181-201.
 * Introduction to Domesday, II. 454 (note 4), 500 (note i).