142 FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
apart from the profits of royal estates, there was little revenue
that went undivided to the king, the earl’s third was actually
a share and a share the amount of which, in so far as it pro-
ceeded from unfixed sources let to farm, he was not without
means of influencing. Such expressions as “ the borough of
Y renders z pounds between king and earl ” are common, but
it was not apparently because it was a borough in which
no earl had a share that Stamford is exceptionally described
as bur gum régis.1
The reality of the earl’s third is reflected in a system of
accounting which differs from that with which we are familiar
in the Pipe Rolls. The king's share alone appears in the
account of the sheriff or other responsible officer. The earl’s
share is kept distinct and generally attached to some comital
manor, which in more than one case was adjacent to the
borough. It was not affected by the mediatization of a
town. The king could not grant away more than his own
two-thirds.
The Old English method of accounting is best illustrated in
the case of Warwickshire. Although the sheriff’s render in
Iθ66 included all the items of the later county farm, the
borough revenue, which forms one of them, was not the whole
issues of Warwick but the king’s two-third only.2 For, as
Dr. Round has pointed out, the profits from the borough
which, with the third penny of the pleas of the shire, were
included in the render of Earl Edwin’s adjoining manor
of Cotes were evidently the third penny of the burghal issues
to which the earl was entitled.3 Ipswich provides a close
parallel to this arrangement. Earl Gurth, like Eadwine at
Warwick, had a manor (grange) near by which with the third
penny of the borough was worth £$ a∏d with two hundreds
was farmed (Hberatum) at £201 In other cases, Domesday
Book only tells us that the king had so many pounds from the
borough and the earl5 so many, but the description of the
change effected at Worcester by the Conqueror reflects light
upon the earlier system. “ Now king William has in demesne
l D.B. i. 336. Dover is similarly described in An Eleventh Century
Inquisition of St. Augustine's, Canterbury (Brit. Acad. Records of Social
and Economic Hist. IV), p. 23, and the earl had his third penny there.
3 D.B. i. 238. 3 V.C.H. Warwickshire, i. 290. 4 D.B. ii. 294.
6 At Shrewsbury, however, the third penny went to the sheriff (ibid.
i. 252), and at Worcester there was an even more irregular arrangement.
See next note. At Lewes king and earl each took half the revenue (ibid.
26).
FIRMA BURGI IN юбб 143
both the king’s part and the earl’s part. Thence the sheriff
renders £23 ʒʃ- by weight from the city.” ɪ
Charter evidence from Kent brings an interesting con-
firmation of this dualism. Domesday Book records that
King Edward had given his two-thirds of the little borough
of Fordwich to St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, and that many
years later, after the Conquest, Earl Godwine’s third part was
obtained by the abbey from Bishop Odo of Bayeux (his
successor as earl of Kent) with the consent of King William?
The text of both charters has survived and it is noteworthy
that neither mentions the other portion. Edward grants so
much land as he has in Fordwich,3 and Odo all his houses in
the borough and the customs he has by right.4 Of course,
the earl’s rights must have been saved by the king’s qualifica-
tion, but the charters nevertheless illustrate very strikingly
the conception of the earl’s third penny as a separate estate.
If the pre-Norman sheriff (or other officer of the king) was
only responsible to the Crown for a proportion of the revenue
of a borough, how was the collection and division between
king and earl managed ? It is known from Domesday that
the farming system was applied before the Conquest to borough
revenue as well as to others, and the termfirma burgi is used in
the description of Huntingdon. How far did the early eleventh
century firma burgi correspond with that of the twelfth and
by whom were borough issues let to farm ? There is one case
on record which in some respects anticipates twelfth-century
practice. At Hereford the royal officer apparently farmed
the whole of the issues (though census not firma is the term
used) and from his farm paid to king and earl their respective
shares.5 This officer, however, was not the sheriff, but the
king’s town reeve and even if he paid the king’s share to the
sheriff, which is by no means certain, the case is not on all
fours with later usage since a twelfth-century sheriff would
have received the whole firma from the reeve and paid the
earl (if any) himself. It is unfortunate that information of
the Hereford kind is rarely vouchsafed in Domesday. The
Huntingdon and Chester entries, however, show that the earl
was not always the passive recipient that he seems to be at
γU.B. i. 172. In 1066 the king had £10 besides the landgable, the earl
£8 and the bishop a third penny of £6 (ibid. 173b). In 1086 the bishop had
£0. For the origin of the episcopal share, see above, p. 20.
2 Ibid. i. 12. 3 Mon. Angl. i. 142.
4 Davis, Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, nos. 99, 100.
6 D.B. i. 179.