148 FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
of a farmer who was not the sheriff of Wiltshire, and at Dover
the royal reeve farmed both the king’s and the earl’s share.
It seems not unlikely that these are instances of the retention
of pre-Conquest arrangements, and the suggestion gains some
support from the fact that only for a brief period towards the
middle of the twelfth century is Dover known to have been
included in the county farm and from 1154 at least no sheriff
of Kent ever farmed the borough in our period. In the light of
such cases, it is quite possible that the king’s reeve at Here-
ford in 1066 was paying the royal share of the borough issues
to the king directly and not through the sheriff. Nor need
Hereford have been an entirely exceptional case.
In boroughs where no earl had a share, such as Gloucester,
Stamford, and Wallingford, and in smaller towns which
(unlike these) were wholly on royal land, the sheriff might be
expected to appear as the farmer of the whole, anticipating
the normal post-Conquest usage. But the statement in the
Domesday account of Wallingford that the reeve was forbidden
to provide food out of the king’s census for burgesses doing
carrying service to royal manors 1 suggests that he was farm-
ing the town and comparison with a similar but more onerous
service at Torksey in Lincolnshire, where the burgesses were
fed by the sheriff out of his farm,2 seems to exclude the possi-
bility that the Wallingford reeve was the sheriff’s farmer.
The position of the town on the eastern border of Berkshire
and its close relations with Oxfordshire may have dictated
direct relations with the king. Such a suggestion gathers
strength from its subsequent history. As soon as the extant
Pipe Rolls begin, it is found to be farmed separately from
the county and though, as we shall see, the farmers varied,
they were never (in our period) the sheriffs nor did the sheriffs
ever receive the allowance which was their due when an ancient
farm was withdrawn from them.
2. The Firma Burgi in 1086
Twenty years after, important changes had come about
in the administration of the English boroughs. For the sake
of clearness, these have to some extent been anticipated in
the preceding section and need not delay us long. In the
main, they were the result of the general disestablishment
of the earl as an administrative officer and the consequent
1 D.B. i. 56. 2 Ibid., p. 337.
FIRMA BURGI IN 1086
149
enhancement of the local authority of the sheriff. Official
earls remained only on the Scottish and Welsh borders where
the Conqueror retained or created semi-regal jurisdictions, an
incidental effect of which was the mediatization of Chester
and Shrewsbury.1 Everywhere else, except possibly at
Northampton, if the Countess Judith’s £7 from the issues of
the borough in 1086 had belonged to her late husband, Earl
Waltheof, the earl’s third penny of the borough, unless it had
been previously alienated, as at Fordwich, escheated to the
Crown, and though it was in several cases granted out again,2
the old dualism was effectually ended and the revenue and
power of the king were substantially increased.
The new Norman sheriffs, men of superior rank to their
English predecessors, were now the chief officials of the Crown
in the counties. At an early stage of the Conquest most of
the royal boroughs were placed under their control, which was
all the more effective because they were usually constables
of the castles erected in or just without their county towns.
Domesday Book, which has so little to say on the relation of
the pre-Conquest sheriff to the borough, affords abundant
evidence here. When an intermediate date for an estimate
of the value of a borough between 1066 and 1086 is chosen,
corresponding to that of the first acquisition of a rural manor
by a Norman holder, it is normally : “ when X the sheriff
received it ” or some equivalent phrase.3
The sheriff’s responsibility to the Crown for borough issues
is occasionally recorded. From Worcester, for instance, the
sheriff rendered £23 5s., and it is distinctly stated that this
included both the king’s part and the earl’s part.4 From
a local inquest slightly later in date than the great survey
we learn that Gloucester had rendered £38 45. de firma in the
time of Sheriff Roger (de Pistri), i.e., c. 1071-83.5 In this
case, the sheriff may have farmed it out as in 1086 Haimo was
1 William also gave Totnes to Judhel with 20s. which it had rendered
to the farm of the royal manor of Langford (ibid. pp. ɪoɪ, 108b).
2 To the sheriff at Exeter (ibid. 100), unless this was a pre-Conquest
arrangement, and at Stafford, where, however, the king gave half of his
own share instead, perhaps to preclude a claim to the earldom (ibid. 246).
At Leicester, Hugh de Grentmesnil had the third penny of the £20 received
yearly from the moneyers (ibid. f. 230). A third of the custom of the king's
burgesses at Barnstaple was given to Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances (D.B.
ɪ. 100).
3 E.g. quando Haimo uicecomes recepit (Canterbury), D.B. ɪ. 2.
4 See above, pp. 142-3.
6 Ellis, Introduction to Domesday Book, ii. 446. By the date of the in-
quest (c. 1096-1101) its render had been increased to £46.