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which the burgesses had acquired their own sake and soke, a service, that
is to say, of two ships for fifteen days with twenty-one men in each, ad
custodiendum mare, as the ‘Excerpts‘ add.92 A
similar bargain was made at Sandwich, and the ‘Domesday Monachorum’
suggests that Fordwich had once also made a like arrangement. The ship
service resembles Dover’s render in later years, as a member of the
Cinque Ports. There is no very clear evidence of organization or grouping
of ports like the Cinque Ports of later times, and Dr. Round has argued 93
against their existence at this time as a formulated group with a single
community, single assembly, joint charter, and particular courts. This ‘communal confederacy’ he ascribes to foreign
influence operating
in the period quickly succeeding the Conquest. Tendencies towards
formulation may, however, perhaps be allowed for. Following the
description of ship service in the Survey is an interesting statement of
the amount of charges made for crossing the Channel. The king’s
messengers pay 3d. in winter, 2d. in summer for a
horse, the burgesses supplying a man to steer together with his assistant.
The king’s forfeitures in the vill are given, and the burning of Dover
at the time of the Conquest is mentioned, and something also of its later
history when handed over to Odo bishop of Bayeux. No mention is made of
Odo as constable of the castle. The tamen reddit clause used of
rent paid in excess of the estimated value should be noticed here as in
the rural manors, and also the encroachments of Odo, who had become patron
(protector, liberator, and dator) of certain houses taken from the king.
The glidhall of the burgesses is mentioned.
The description of Canterbury follows, interrupted, as has been said, by a
statement regarding the lands of St. Martin of Dover. The information
given in the ’Excerpts’ is somewhat fuller than in the Survey, but
substantially the same.94 Both agree that the fifty-one
burgesses of King Edward paid gablum, and that of these some had
lost their homes in the making of the castle, others had become men of St.
Augustine and the archbishop. The king had and has in the time of the
Survey the soke of two hundred and twelve burgesses, and once had it over
all the land save that of Holy Trinity, St. Augustine, Queen Edith, Alnod
Cild, Osbern Biga and Siret de Cilleham.95 A long account in the
‘Excerpts,’ a briefer statement in Domesday, tells of the unjust
dealings of Bruman the reeve with foreign merchants, and his consequent
appearance before Archbishop Lanfranc, Odo bishop of Bayeux, Hugh de
Montfort, the Earl of Eu, and . Richard of Tonbridge.96 The ‘Excerpts’
add, too, a very interesting passage on mills, of importance for the study
of the riparian rights of the ‘seniores,’ who held the banks of
rivers. Both descriptions have statements of the king’s rights on the
streets and ways of Canterbury. The. king has the forfeitures for offences
committed on streets with two gates, and also on roads outside the town
for a distance of a league and one perch and three feet. The frequent
provisions regarding roads, like the heavy carting services, reflect the
importance of arrangements for travel and transport within the county. Of
contributory properties attached to rural manors in Canterbury there were
many. It is a good example of a borough characterized by ‘tenurial
heterogeneity.’
92 Ibid, 23 et seq.
93 Feudal England, 558 et seq. 570. Cf. also J. A. Williamson, in History
(n.s.) vol. xi, p. 97 Ct seq.
94 Ballard, op. cit. 5 et seq.
95 See p. 206b. 96 See p. 207a.
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