h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You will be pleased to hear Domesday material is now available online at

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/domesday/

As I have already found playing around with it for a hour, it is, as you would expect, an excellent resource for finding out 11th century versions of place names without having to trawl through hundreds of websites.

I checked out a few things that I ‘remembered’ seeing but could not find again. One interesting example being that Sowton in Exeter used to go by the Celtic name of Clis which proved to be true. A new discovery was that, in 1086, Combe Raleigh went by the odd name of Otri—this may be Celtic too. Going over the border into Cornwall, Padstow was recorded as Lanwenehoc, without doubt Cornish.

The history pages are interesting too. In the section describing the social order of the 11th century I saw the following;

“At the bottom were slaves, perhaps 10 per cent of the population, although numbers varied regionally, with a higher proportion in the west and south west. Slaves had no property rights and could be bought and sold by the lord.”

Why would the number of slaves be higher in the south west? It could have been because they were native Britons who did not speak English, and as a result, had been excluded economically from Anglo-Saxon and then Norman society. I remember we discussed a 1238 document called Crown Pleas of the Devon Eyre which made frequent, and as yet, unexplained references to ‘Welshmen’, which it was speculated, could also have been Celtic language speakers.

ExeValleyBoy

Michael Wood's fascinating book, "Domesday, A Search for the Roots of England", gives a breakdown of slavery in England in 1086. In the North and East it was less than 5%. The highest concentrations are in the South and West. In Devon no area had less than 15% held in slavery, a similar percentage in Cornwall, Somerset, Dorset, and the counties along the border with Wales.

If I remember rightly you are from Crediton, (I think my pseudonym gives my origin away), well in our area of Mid Devon the figure, if I read the map correctly, was 25% and over. Matched by the map only in Gloucestershire, Hereforeshire and Tavistock.

Now I have personal theories about the Exe Valley, but why would over a quarter of the inhabitants in EX16 and EX17 be slaves? I'd be interested in your opinions.

tb

Does anyone know exactly what constituted a slave in the Domesday book?

I'm wondering whether it includes "unfree" labourers, rather than only individuals who were owned by a master as a household servant, and not paid for their work; from what I know, it seems a significant proportion of ancient and Mediaeval populations (say, at least half) were unfree.

Einion

A slave at the time was the traditional view of a slave, the property of his/her owner as much as a hunting dog or falcon. A tool that talked. The Normans disliked slavery not out of any religions feeling, although the church was against it, but because you were responsible 100% for the slave. For feeding it, clothing it, housing it. They prefered the European feudal system which gave the base level that one piece of freedom a slave did not have. The freedom to starve. Servus/servi does not include the bonded men (villeins), who had this freedom although they had to provide labour service to their lord. Slaves in the Domesday Book are simply that, slaves.

In a way, the villein was "owned" by the manor, a slave owned by it's master.

Does that help?

As a further to the above, the average number of villeins, the lowest of the "free" in Norman society was 40.6% across England. Devon was above that number. This would, if spread scross the whole county on an equal footing place the lowest in society's pecking order in Devon with a range of 55 - 70%.

Personally, this, to me, does not show a free settler population during the period of West Saxon rule as has been claimed. Whether the peasant classes were of Brythonic or Saxon origin I don't know, but given the % of slaves in parts of Devon, combined with the % of tied villeins I would lean towards the former. With over two thirds of the community in the lowest two orders this indicates a planter society. One which had been in place before 14th October 1066.