120
THE BOROUGH COMMUNITY
that the 33 acres which, according to Domesday Book, bur-
genses of Canterbury had “ de rege ” T.R.E. “ in gildam
suam ” and which RanuIf de Columbels held in 1086, with
other property once belonging to burgesses,1 were merely land
that was in geld with the borough, in its geldable, as it was
later expressed.2 But in this, as in another case in the next
century,3 he resorted to this strained interpretation where
“ gild ” in the sense of association was awkward for his argu-
ment. The Inquisition of St. Augustine’s,4 which was un-
known to him, has a variation from Domesday Book in this
passage which leaves no doubt that a gild is meant : “ adhuc
tenet idem Ranulfus xxxiii agros terre quos burgenses semper
habuerunt in gilda eorum de donis omnium regum.” Further
evidence has also been fatal to Gross’s like interpretation of
another Canterbury entry in which tenements are recorded
as held by clergy (clerici} of the town “ in gildam suam.” 5
The Holy Trinity (Christ Church) version of the Domesday
returns, corresponding to the Inquisition of St. Augustine’s,
identifies this gild with the convent of secular canons at
St. Gregory’s, founded by Lanfranc in 1084.6
The Dover gild shared the fate of most English associations
of the sort at the Conquest, but there is some reason to be-
lieve that the Canterbury burgess gild, may, like the Cnihten-
gild at London, have been more fortunate and survived, if
only for a time. Without questioning the general truth of
Gross’s contention that the merchant gild in our boroughs was
a Norman introduction, it seems impossible to see a gild of
purely Norman origin in the body which made an exchange of
houses with the convent of Christ Church, Canterbury, by
a document written in Old English not later than Ilθ8.7
The lay party to the deed is described as the cnihts, at
Canterbury, of the merchant gild ( Cepmannegilde). The agree-
ment is witnessed by Archbishop Anselm and the convent on
the one part and by Calveal,8 the portreeve, and the elders
1 D,B. i. 2a, i.
2 Gild Merchant, i. 189, n. 6. Similarly the land in Eastry hundred
'' quod jacuit in gilda de Douere ” ((D.B. i. rib, ι) gelded, he thought, with
the town.
3 Below, p. 223. i Ed. Ballard, p. 10.
6 D.B. i. 3a, i ; Gross, Ioc cit.
’ Inq. of St. August., p. 15 ; E.H.R. xviii. 713.
’ Gross, Gild Merchant, ii. 37-8.
8 He was very likely the Calvellus from whom, according to a charter
of Malling nunnery, Archbishop Ralph d’Escures bought two mills which
he granted to his sister Azeliz between 1114 and n22 (Cal Ch. R. v. 52).
TRADING
I2I
(yldesta men) of the society (heap) on the other. It is note-
worthy that the names of the tenants of the houses which
the gild took in exchange and possibly that of the portreeve
are English and that the reeve of the city is the head of the
gild.
The lack of any later mention of this gild and the consequent
probability that, like the London gild, it soon after ceased to
exist, strengthen the suggestion that it was the gild briefly
mentioned in Domesday. It differs from the other recorded
gilds of cnihts in being described as a merchant gild. The
name may be new and show Norman influence, but everything
else, not least the presidency of the portreeve, suggests the
identity of the “ heap ” with the gild of burgesses that
appears in Domesday. If so, the latter was also an associa-
tion of leading merchants, though perhaps under a different
title, most probably Cnihtengild, as at London. In both towns
then at the end of the eleventh century the leading burgesses
were known in English as cnihts. But in a remote past the
cnihts in a borough may not have been burgesses, at least not
king’s burgesses. The ninth century charter which is witnessed
by the “ cniahta geoIdan ” (sic) of Canterbury distinguishes
them from another body of witnesses, the burgesses within
the city (innan burgware).1 It is not clear how this is to be
reconciled with the mention of three geferscipas of inner and
outer (ulan') burgesses in a charter of c. 950.2 Were the cnihts
now reckoned as burgesses and their gild as one of the three
societies ? Or was the gild still distinct from them ? Professor
Stenton has recently suggested an explanation of the applica-
tion of the term cnihts to the independent merchants of the
eleventh century. As the essential meaning of cniht is
“ servant,” “ minister,” “ retainer,” he would trace these to
the ministers of rural landowners who managed their burghal
properties in early times and formed a link between their
1 Cart. Sax. ii. 128, no. 515.
2Ibid. iii. 213. I have assumed that "inner” and "outer” mean
within and without the walls, a distinction found in later times (e.g. D.B.
i∙ 179a, I (Hereford)); a possible suggestion that the outer burgesses of
this charter were those who " belonged ” to rural estates and represent
the cnihts of a century earlier encounters at once the objection that the
" innan burgware” of c. 860 implies " utan burgware” distinct from the
' cniahta geoIdan.” Gross absurdly adopted a post-Conquest identifica-
tion of the three geferscipas as the convents of Christ Church, St. Augustine’s
and St. Gregory’s, although the last was not founded until 1084 (Gild
Merch. i. 189) Fership was used as late as the fourteenth century of the
society which owned passenger ships at Dover (S. P. Statham, Dover
Charters, pp. 35, 53).