144
FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
Hereford. He might have his own officials in the borough
taking an active part in arranging the farm and collecting
the various items of revenue. From these entries, too, we learn
that the firm burgi at this date could have an unexpectedly
limited connotation. The total render of the borough of
Huntingdon from landgable, mills, moneyers, tolls, and judicial
profits was in 1066 £45, of which the king’s share was £30.1
It was only the two last-mentioned items of revenue which
were let to farm, and this was done, it is implied, by the king
and earl jointly, through their officers (ministri) no doubt,
who are said later in the passage to have joined in letting
land outside the borough to burgesses. The firm burgi is
here the farm of the fluctuating revenue only, the rest being
more or less fixed returns. Its amount in 1066 was £30,2
but it is noted, if we rightly interpret a somewhat difficult
sentence, that the king and earl might sometimes get more or
have to take less from the farmer.3 Nothing is said as to
the collection and distribution of the fixed issues, but light
may perhaps be gained from Chester where the earl’s reeve
(prepositus) joined with the king’s in the collection of tolls
and forfeitures,4 and probably also, in letting the farm of
which these issues were the chief, though here apparently
not the only, subject.
Although the king’s and the carl’s shares of the borough
revenues were separate estates which could be alienated, e.g.,
to a religious house, in the earl’s case perhaps not without royal
licence, and though it is clearly proved that in some instances
at any rate the earl’s officials took part in the raising of the
revenues which were to be divided, it would be dangerous to
generalize freely from these facts. Domesday Book is not
only reticent, but its concise language is often difficult to inter-
pret and sometimes apparently inconsistent, partly, perhaps,
from lack of editing but more, probably, from reflection of
differences of usage and want of clearness in contemporary
ɪ D.B., i. 203.
2 Not to be confused, of course, with the king’s share of the whole
revenue from the town including the farm, which happens to be the same
amount.
3 Preter haec habebat rex xx libras et comes x libras de firma burgi,
aut plus aut minus sicut poterat Collocare partem suam. The last words
cannot really mean that king and earl farmed their shares separately.
It is merely an awkward way of saying that the sums realized from their
shares might be proportionately greater or less than the figures given for
1066, according to the terms of their common bargain with the farmer.
4 Ibid. i. 262b.
FIRMA BURGI IN юбб
145
thought. In the nature of the case, it cannot be construed so
strictly as the report of a modern royal commission. Thus,
for example, it is provokingly unsystematic in its statement
of the renders of boroughs and their division between king and
earl. Normally, indeed, the total amount is given and the
earl said to take a third or the amount of both shares is stated,
but at Huntingdon the king’s share alone is given and save for
the details supplied in an earlier part of the entry it would
probably have been mistaken for the total render.
A real indefiniteness in the English conception of the
relation of king and earl in the borough may be responsible
for some of our difficulties. It was no doubt essentially a
money relation. Tolls and forfeitures in towns where others
than king and earl held land could only be divided in cash.
Nor is there any proof that the demesne houses were ever
actually apportioned between king and earl. The comital
houses which are mentioned at Stafford 1 and Oxford 2 may
at first sight suggest such an apportionment, but as at Stafford
they were not far short of double the number of the demesne
houses, the supposition is on this account alone obviously
inadmissible. The actual division of large stretches of arable
land outside the inhabited area at Thetford 3 between king
and earl does not invalidate these conclusions nor was it the
universal practice. At Huntingdon, as we have seen, such land
was under their joint control.
When the king has granted out his share, the gift or its
result may be referred to in terms which would now imply
an actual splitting up of the borough. King Edward gave
two-thirds of the borough (of Fordwich) to St. Augustine.
Queen Edith had T.R.E. two-thirds of the half-hundred of
Ipswich and of the borough, and Earl Gurth had the third
part. But this was only the concreteness of an age which
identified profitable rights with the local group in which they
were exercised.
Although the earl’s share must have been originally derived
from the king, it was inevitable that they should often be
regarded as joint holders of the borough profits and even in
some sort of the soil where they accrued. Borough land, as
distinguished from land belonging to manors without the city,
was defined at Chester in 1086 as “ that which had always
paid custom to king and earl.” 4 At Norwich, except for the
lΩ.B. i. 246. 2Ibid. ɪ. 154.
s Ibid. ɪɪ. ιι8b. 4 Ibid, ɪ, 262b. See above, p. 88.
IO