place of individual rents and services,
but sometimes also from lands held by knights and monks. Evidently many
Canterbury estates were exploited thus indirectly. In like manner the
lands of Rochester show both a very considerable increase in values, and
give several instances of the occurrence of a still larger rent. The
increase on St. Augustine’s rich lands was even greater. The 50s. value
of Sturry increasing to £50 is probably a mistake, but, even so, many
other cases of increases from £10 to £23 occur. In ‘Platenovt’ the
interesting clause ‘tamen appreciatur quando ad firmam’ is used,40
and in the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ it is constantly made clear that the
‘reddit’ clause denotes land held at farm The lands of Odo bishop of
Bayeux were too various and too recently acquired to be perhaps of much
significance as illustrating Norman methods of exploitation: they, too,
however, show in general the increase in values and an occasional very
large rent in excess of the value at the time of the Survey. They do not,
however, in spite of his reputation for unjust encroachments, throw on Odo
any heavier onus of blame in this respect than that borne by other tenants
in chief. In the case of the canons of St. Martin of Dover the reverse
process with regard to values is observable.. Alone in Kent their lands
show a decrease in value in the time of King William. They were situated
in the main in Bewsborough and Cornilo hundreds, and there seems no
particular reason evident, on the face of the Survey, for the decline,
unless it be in the fact that the prebends of the canons which had
heretofore, it is stated, been held in common, were distributed among
individual canons by Odo, a change that was taking place about this time
in other churches also.41 The total decrease in value was
about £16 on some 21 sulungs. The exact computation of the 21 sulungs
held by the canons, in addition to the 3 sulungs in ‘Limowarlest’ held
in communitate between wood and plain, is difficult, in part
because of the 3 virge which appear, and the transference of acres
once belonging to the prebends.42 The sum seems to be a
little under 21. Larking 43 has devoted some attention in
his notes to the peculiar place held by the canons in the Survey, and
thinks it possible that the commissioners stayed in their buildings, and
received attentions which made them favourable towards their claims. This,
however, is mere supposition. Of the first curious mention of the canons
at the very beginning of the Survey, Larking says: ‘This statement is
not strictly correct, because it appears that a moiety of one of the
issues of the town (i.e. the toll) belonged to the canons of St. Martin,’
and throughout the description of their possessions there is little more,
Larking continues, than ‘a confused collection of miscellaneous
memoranda’ jotted down at intervals and never reduced into systematic
form.
The holders of land in Kent in Norman times were very few in
number, especially when compared with the multitudinous small holders of
non-ecclesiastical lands in the days preceding the Conquest. The
explanation of the difference lies in part at least in the great grants
made to the bishop of Bayeux as earl of Kent, comprising much of the land
not already in the hands of English churches. Alien churches were
represented by St. Peter of Ghent,
40 See p. 245b.
41 See p. 204b. Compare Stubbs, Introd.
to Chron. of Rich. I, Epistola Cantuar. (Rolls Ser.), p. xvii et seq.
It is curious that Domesday should give the names of the Saxon tenants, if
before Odo’s day the lands were held in common.
42 See p. 207a. 43
Larking, op. cit. 161, 187.
|