"It is remarkable that while 222 churches were returned from Lincolnshire, 243 from Norfolk, and 360 from Suffolk, I only can be found in the return for Cambridgeshire, and none in Lancashire or even Middlesex, the seat of the metropolis." If, as is generally believed, Ealing is returned with Fulham in the Domesday survey, it will interest some to read the part which relates to that manor. "In Fuleham the Bishop of London holds 40 hides.' The land is 40 carucates. To the demesne pertain 13 hides, and there are 4 ploughs. Between the free-born and the villani there are 26 ploughs, and there might be 10 more. There are 5 villani, each of whom [has] one hide; and 13 villani, each of whom [has] one virgate; and 34 villani, each of whom [has] half a virgate; and 22 cotarii, with half a hide; and 8 cotarii, with their own gardens. Between the freeborn and certain burgesses of London [there are] 23 hides of the land of the villani. Under these live 31 villani and bordarii. Meadow for 40 ploughs. Pasture for the cattle of the ville. From half the weir, 10s. Wood for 1,000 pigs, and 17 pence. With all its profits it is worth £40, and as much when he received it. In the time of King Edward £50.” 'According to Sir Henry Ellis, "a hide contained no certain number of acres, but varied in different places. It has been described to be as much as was sufficient to the cultivation of one 'plough', whence our term 'ploughland'. The carucate, which is also to be interpreted the ploughland, was as much arable as could be managed with one plough, and the beasts belonging thereto, in a year, having meadow, pastures, and houses for the households and cattle belonging to it. The hide would seem to be the measure of the land in the Confessor's time, the carucate that to which it was reduced by the Conqueror. The new standard generally supposes the hide to be equal to 120 acres. Four virgates formed the hide of the survey. The sochemanni or socmen were those inferior landowners who had land in the soc, or franchise of some great baron. Their services were fixed and determinate, and though their tenure was absolutely copyhold, they had an interest equal to a freehold. They could not be compelled to relinquish their holding at their lord's will nor against their own." "Villenage was a species of tenure neither strictly Feodal, Saxon nor Norman, but compounded of them all."-General Introduction to Domesday. Money is generally estimated at thirty times its present value. The penny was the only coin known in England till long after the Conquest. The shilling of the Domesday survey, like the pound, the mark, and the ora, was only money of account. The Saxon shilling consisted of five pence; that of Domesday is always twelve pence (Sir H. Ellis). The Fisheries formed an important source of rent of the Domesday returns, and a grant in the year 1313 shows that care was taken of Brentford weir in early times. King Cnut, in a Parliament holden at Winchester in 1016, drew up a code of forest laws, therein setting out the bounds of his forests, and limiting the power of the forest officers. The Saxon and Danish monarchs were content to hunt the sixty-eight old forests which formed the royal wood demesne. Not so the Norman kings; it is an oft-told tale, how that well-built towns and villages were depopulated to make new hunting-grounds. So grievous were the game laws of succeeding reigns, that a Charter of Liberties, and of the Forest, was obtained from Henry III in 1225, and in the fourth Parliament of the same King, Archbishop Boniface denounced a solemn curse against those who should break this charter. To give greater significance to the proceeding, all the bishops were apparalled in their pontificals, and each held a lighted taper. The inhabitants of a forest or its neighbourhood, on attaining the age of twelve, were required to take an oath in the following old rhyme: "You shall true liege-man be Unto the King's majesty: Unto the beasts of the forest you shall no hurt do, Nor to anything that doth belong thereunto; The offences of others you shall not conceal, But to the utmost of your power, you shall them reveal Unto the officers of the forest, Or to them who may see them redrest : All these things you shall see done, So help you God at His holy doom." All this bears upon old Ealing life, for until long after the Norman Conquest Ealing was part of the great weald stretching up north of London; and FitzStephen, one of the chroniclers of the times of Henry II, writing of London, says: "Close by lies an immense forest, in which are densely-wooded thickets, with coverts of game, stags, fallow deer, boars, and wild bulls." It is a pity that Bishop Richard de Gravesend, who "aspired to be a great preserver of game", and was an ardent lover of the chase,2 has not left on record some one or other of his exploits with regard to his manor of Ealing. Twyford Abbey, a near neighbour, within the present century retained a reputation for abundance of game. Ealing, with its open heath districts, alternating with rich woodlands and meadows, would afford excellent field for sport. With stretches of fine timber everywhere clothing the country, wood was but little valued; in reality it was estimated by the number of hogs that could lie under it, and its acorns and beechmast were of most account (Nichols). Pannage, another item of profit in the survey, had a double acceptance. It meant first, the running and feeding of hogs in the woods; and in a secondary sense, the price or rate of their running.' Ealing, most probably, like its neighbour Acton, had to furnish. food for the Bishop's herds of swine. One of the earliest parish notices of Acton shows that the lord of the manor (the Bishop of London) regarded the district as pannage, or feeding for his pigs, which doubtless throve on its acorns.* Wide indeed were the privileges exercised by Ealing's overlords in those early days. A writ of Quo warranto in 1 This curious tract was written about 1174, and is intituled, Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis Londoniae. Of the citizens, it says: "They were themselves everywhere known and respected above all others for their civil demeanour, their goodly apparel, their table, and their discourse".-Ambulator, p. 23. 2 Memorials of London, Milman, p. 138. 3 Sir H. Ellis. 4 Greater London, p. 8. the 22 Edward I summons the then Bishop of London to show by what authority he claims certain rights, including even the gallows, in Fulham, Gillyng, Acton, etc. The Bishop pleads that from time immemorial he and his predecessors have been seized of the said liberties in those towns, and that King John had confirmed them to Bishop William years before, and judgment was given accordingly.' Curious, too, were the rights claimed by the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's over the lands in their jurisdiction, in the same king's (Edward I) reign. They are "summoned to answer to our lord the king, by what warrant they claim to have view of frankpledge, and the amending of the assize of bread, and ale broken, pillory, tumbre, infangthef, outfangthef, gallows, chattels of fugitives, and persons condemned, their tenants in . . . Gillyng, etc., all of which privileges were confirmed to them by the verdict of the jury, except that they had the right of the gallows only in the town of Fynnesbury".2 Until the Local Government Act of 1888, the county of Middlesex held a somewhat unique position. In 1101 King Henry I granted it in "feorm" to the citizens of London, who by a yearly payment of £300 had the appointment of Sheriff, and other regal rights, the county sharing equal privileges. This singular usage terminated by the Act of 1888, after an existence of seven centuries. Ealing lies within the Liberties of Finsbury and Wenlakesburn, and is in the Kensington division of the Hundred of Ossulston, the largest of the six hundreds of Middlesex; Edmonton, Elthorne, Gore, Isleworth, and Spelthorn complete the number. Many of these old civil divisions are fast becoming extinct, and the hundred, or wapentake, as it is called in the north, has no meaning for many. 1 Placita de Quo warranto, Com. Mid., Edward I. "In a very antient Legeir Book of Peterborough Abbey, preserved in the Library of the Society of Antiquaries, referring to the time of Edward the Confessor, every hundred is made to consist of a hundred hides: the hides paying geld being particularly distinguished from those in the royal occupation, and the waste or cultivated ground." Ossulston Hundred includes the metropolis, and it gives the title of baron to Lord Ossulston. The division of the county is mentioned in Ina's laws, king of the West Saxons 688-726, and the formation of parishes is of at least equal antiquity. Camden gives 2,984 parishes in the return of Honorius. The division of a diocese into rural districts could only be the work of time: but parishes and hamlets are directly mentioned as forming part of the diocese of Mellitus, who was consecrated Bishop of London by St. Augustine, anno 604. Isaac D'Israeli copies the following from the original in the Ashmolean Museum :—“ Society of Antiquaries. To Mr. Stowe. The place appointed for a conference upon the question followynge ys att Mr. Garter's house on Fridaye, the 11th of this November, 1598, being Al Soules daye, at 11 of the clocke in the afternoone, where oppinioun in wrytinge or otherwise is expected." The question " of the antiquitie and etymologie, and priviledges of parishes in Englande. Yt ys desyred that you give not notice hereof to any but such as haue the like somons." Stowe's memoranda is on the back"630. Honorius Romanus, Archbishop of Canterbury, divided his province into parishes; he ordeyned clerks and prechars, comaunding them that they should instruct the people as well by good lyfe as by doctrine."" Ealing is bounded on the north by the river Brent, Harrow, and Perivale; on the south by the Thames; on 1 Introduction to Domesday, Sir H. Ellis. 2 Curiosities of Literature. |