Eastry lest included the following
hundreds :—Bevsberge (Bewsborough); Cornelist (Cornilo); Estrei
(Eastry); Prestetune (Preston); and Wingeham (Wingham). The ‘Domesday
Monachorum’ suggests also a hundred of Edesham (Adisham?) (habet hundred’
in se ipso).
Limowarlest, the derivation of whose name may be from the
river Limen rather than the royal vill, included, besides its more settled
portion, a large district in the south-eastern part of the county,
covering Romney Marsh and much of the weald where hundredal organization
had probably not yet emerged, but where the countryside was still regarded
as capable of forming denns or swine pastures for manors in the more
settled regions. The hundreds included in Limowarlest were as follows :—Adilovtesbrige
(Aloesbridge) ; Blackeborne, or Blaketone in the ‘Domesday Monachorum’
(Blackburn); Belicolt (Bircholt franchise) ; Estraites (Street) ;
Fulchestan (Folkestone) ; Lamport (Langport) ; Moniberghe or Honiberge (Loningboroügh)
; Nevcerce (Newchurch) ; Oxenai (Oxney) ; Rovinden (Rolvenden) ; Selebrist
(Selbrittenden) ; Stotinges (Stowting) ; Werde (Worth) ; and probably also
Ham (Ham), and Hen (Hayne). The ‘Domesday Monachorum’ puts Saltwood in
the hundred of Hede (Hythe), probably another form for the Domesday Hen.
It will be noticed from these lists that the total number of
hundreds in Kent in Domesday times was great; that some of the later
hundreds, notably in the region of the weald, had not yet appeared, while
other Domesday hundreds coalesced in later times to form larger units, and
that therefore the general size was necessarily small, the hundred seeming
sometimes to be merely a district drawn around some important place. Thus
the later Bleangate was made up of the three hundreds of Reculver, Sturry,
and Chislet, each including little more than one important place of the
same name as the hundred.18 In like manner Folkestone,
Sandwich, Dover, Rochester, and Canterbury were each a hundred, and, if
the nomenclature of the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ be correct, Hythe also.
Seasalter in the ‘Domesday Monachorum’ is said to be in no hundred.
The large number of cases in which the name of the hundred corresponds
with the name of the chief vill, which had usually once been a royal vill
granted, as the Charters show, by an early king to the church, is probably
indicative of the method of the early formation of a hundred round the
vill. The ‘regions ‘ referred to in the Charters like those of Chart
(Cert) and Eastry will be remembered.19 Both
Chart and Eastry were later reckoned as hundreds.
A glance at the Domesday map of Kent will show very clearly
the third geographical characteristic of the county, namely, the strong
contrast between thickly settled regions and the stretches of land almost
unsettled. A similar contrast may be noticed in Sussex 20 where the weald
lay almost untouched except by occasional outlying portions of southern
manors.
That marked peculiarity of the woodland of the county, which
appears so clearly both in Saxon charters and also in the later
13th-century surveys, namely, its use as denes or swine pastures which
were attached to manors situated sometimes at remote distances receives
disappointingly little attention
18 The archbishop’s manor
of Norton is put in Reculver hundred (see p. 211). It probably lay near
Northwood in Westgate hundred. For the identification of doubtful place
names see note on ‘Domesday Monachorum.’
19 Birch, op. cit. Nos. 191, 214, 254.
20 See the map in the second volume of Domesday
Studies.
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