5б
BOROUGH AND COURT
be no instance in the south-west in which the principal church
of a borough was only a chapel of a rural church, as was common
enough in the new boroughs founded after the Norman Conquest,
but at Dorchester the parish of Frome Whitfield to the north
of the town, and (in the 13th century) in the hundred of
St. George, extended within the walls at one point and ex-
emption from the borough jurisdiction was claimed for this
enclave as late as 1670.1 In 1086, on the other hand, the
glebe of the town church was outside the borough, in the
hundred of Dorchester.2 At Wareham, also, the parishes of
several of the town churches stretched beyond the ramparts
into rural hundreds of which they formed part. It is possible
that these in- and out-parishes, as they were called, repre-
sented the single parish of one original church of Wareham,
a parish which was too extensive to be included as a whole
within the fortifications or even within the “ liberties ” of
the borough.3 The case may be somewhat parallel to that
of Maldon.4
The borough which was the caput of a rural hundred is
found elsewhere than in the south-west. Sussex, as we have
seen, contained two, Pevensey and Steyning. Unfortunately
they were both mediatized boroughs at the date of Domesday
Book and so throw no light upon the problem of the urban
court. Pevensey receives special treatment and had a mint,
while the rural part of the hundred, the Iowey of Pevensey, as
it was afterwards called, is surveyed as a whole elsewhere,
but no judicial profits are included in the unusually full
enumeration of revenues derived from the burgesses. The
Pevensey court was doubtless then as later a feudal court,
which had absorbed the original hundred court.5
The court held by the abbot of Fecamp at Steyning would
also be feudal, but he was not lord of the whole hundred, as
the count of Mortain was of Pevensey hundred, and the
hundred court of Steyning seems to have belonged to the lord
of the rape.®
1 C. H. Mayo, Records of Dorchester (1908), pp. 470 fi. For aggression
on the borough by Fordington, east of the town, see pp. 469 f.
2Eyton, Dorset Domesday, pp. 73, 124.
3Ibid. p. 73. * Above, p. 49.
5 In the fourteenth century it was a three-weeks court presided over
by the lord’s steward and entertained pleas of the crown as well as of lands
and tenements {Sussex Archcsological Collections, iv. 212). The Villsupplied
only three of the twelve jurats of the vill and Iowey as a member of the
Cinque Ports confederation {ibid. p. 211).
β In 1168 it is called the hundred of Bramber, which was the caput
of his honour {Pipe R. 14 Hen. II, p. 196).
THE DOMESDAY EVIDENCE
57
There still remain to be discussed those boroughs which
lay within rural hundreds but were not the meeting-places of
their courts, which were sometimes five or more miles away.
In this class fall the three smaller boroughs of Devon. They
have a very independent appearance in a casual mention of
them 1 some seventy years before the Domesday survey in
which, however, one, Totnes appears as a mediatized town
and the others are entered on the Terra Regis. The subsequent
mediatization of Barnstaple and the decay of Lydford obscure
their earlier relation, if any, to the hundred courts.
In Wiltshire all the pre-Conquest boroughs were extra-
hundredal, for geld at any rate, except Salisbury which was
an ancient possession of the bishops and as a mesne manor
paid geld in the hundred of Underditch.2 But we may be sure
that there was an episcopal court there, though perhaps not
for the town alone. Indeed no burgesses are actually recorded
in the town, either in 1066 or twenty years later, though the
earl’s “ third penny ” attests its burghal status.3
In Berkshire, Wallingford was locally in Hesletesford
hundred, but is described at great length at the head of the
county survey and the distinction which is there carefully
drawn between the jurisdiction of certain immunists in their
houses and that of the king, represented by his reeve,4 leaves
no doubt that the borough had a royal court. In Hampshire
there can be almost as little doubt that Southampton, which is
also independently described, had its own court, though the
town was surrounded by the hundred of Mansbridge. The
borough of Twyneham (now Christchurch), mentioned in 1086
as having then thirty-one masures, if of pre-Conquest date,®
was still doubtless judicially dependent upon the hundred of
Egheiete under which the manor and borough are surveyed.
Three of the Sussex boroughs, Hastings, Arundel, and Lewes,
were locally situate in hundreds with other names, but Arundel
and Lewes are each described, without hundred rubric, at
the head of their rapes, and their possession of urban courts,
even before their mediatization by the Conqueror, is hardly
doubtful. It seems to be implied at Lewes in the fines for
various offences quoted as customary in the time of King
Edward.® Hastings unfortunately is not surveyed at all.
ɪ See above, p, 42.
2 W. H. Jones, Domesday for Wiltshire, pp. 23, 188.
’ This is also true of Marlborough. ‘ D.B. i. 56b, I.
δ It is included in the Burghal Hidage (above, p. 15).
,D.B. iι 26a, 1. Hastings was locally in the hundred of Baldslow
(above, p. 49).