150 FIRMA BURGI AND COMMUNE
doing at Canterbury,1 Roger Bigot at Ipswich,2 the sheriff of
Berkshire at Reading,3 and the sheriff of Northamptonshire
at his county town.4 It was natural that the sheriff, who had
so much to do, should set the borough for which he was
responsible to farm and probably this happened oftener than
Domesday records. A single farmer was perhaps the rule at
present, as at Canterbury and Rochester, but the line of
future progress was indicated by the arrangements at
Northampton where the burgesses charged themselves with
the payment to the sheriff of a fixed sum for the issues of
their borough, which, it is added, formed part of his (county)
farm.5
The sheriff had power to increase or reduce the sum
raised from a borough. In the first days after the Conquest
the render of Winchcombe with its hundred had been fixed at
£20 per annum. Sheriff Durand (c. 1083-96) put on £5 and
Roger dTvri a further £3.6 Roger Bigot, sheriff of Suffolk
and keeper of the borough, gave the issues of Ipswich at
farm for £40 at Michaelmas. “ Afterwards (continues the
record) he could not have the rent (censum) and pardoned
6os. of it. Now (1086) it renders £37.” 7 Some boroughs
now give substantial money gifts 8 to the sheriff, a practice of
which there is no earlier mention.
In the short period of fifteen years which had elapsed since
the completion of the Conquest, the reorganization of local
administration had not been completed in every detail.
Domesday clearly reflects a stage of transition. The earl’s
third part was now indeed in the hands of the Crown and
accounted for by the sheriff, but it was by no means always
consolidated with the king’s part, as it was at Worcester.
1 D.B. i. 2α. 2 Ibid. ii. 290b. 3 Ibid. i. 58.
4 Ibid. i. 219. Besides the farm, £7 were, as we have seen, paid to
the Countess Judith, widow of Earl Waltheof. This was perhaps the third
penny of the borough.
δ Perhaps, with Mr. Eÿton (Somerset Domesday, p. 50), we should place
Bath by the side of Northampton as a borough farmed by its burgesses.
Domesday Book, it is true, merely states that the borough rendered the
farm, and the mint /5 in addition, but the Exon Domesday (D.B. iv. ιo6)
says ,' Besides this /60 and mark of gold, the burgesses render ιoos. from
the mint.”
8 D.B. i. 162b. Cf. Ellis, Introd. to Domesday, ii. 446-7.
, D.B. ii. 290b. For an explanation of Roger’s keepership, see below,
P- ɪʒɪ-
8 De gersuma in D.B., de rogatu in Ellis, loc. cιt. Ranging from 12s.
(Winchcombe) to £5 10s. (Canterbury). The burgesses of Yarmouth re-
corded that their gersuma was given freely and out of friendship. It is
doubtful whether these payments were ever premiums for the farm.
FIRMA BURGI IN 1086
ɪʒɪ
In a considerable number of cases, it was still attached to
forfeited comital manors. The third penny of Bath was not
even accounted for by the sheriff of Somerset, but by Edward
of Salisbury, the sheriff of Wiltshire,1 perhaps, as already
conjectured, because included in the farm of some manor in
that county. In many boroughs the division between king
and earl still appears as the existing arrangement, though
there was no earl, whether from the traditionalism which
recorded Queen Edith as lady of Exeter twelve years after
her death or in view of a possible revival of the earldom with
the third penny, but without administrative powers.
There were exceptions to the rule that the royal boroughs
passed into the undivided control of the sheriff, for absolute
uniformity in this respect never became the policy of the
Norman kings. The farming of Gloucester by William fitz
Osbern, earl of Hereford (d. 1071) was doubtless a temporary
expedient of the Conqueror’s early years, but more permanent
reasons of national defence dictated the committal of Dover
to Bishop Odo of Bayeux, quasi-palatine earl of Kent and
constable of its all-important castle. As earl the third penny
of the borough went to him. It was probably because he was
in prison in 1086 that the town was then farmed by the
(king’s) reeve.2 Odo’s predecessor, Earl Godwine, may have
farmed the town, for the same reasons. It is less obvious,
though here again a pre-Conquest arrangement may have
been continued, why two of the Wiltshire boroughs, Wilton
and Malmesbury (king’s share), should have been withheld
from the sheriff, who accounted for the third penny of the
latter. Wilton was received ad Custodiendum by Hervey
de Wilton, a king’s serjeant and small tenant-in-chief,3
Malmesbury was farmed by Walter Hosed (Hosatus), a tenant
of religious houses in Somerset.4 In the next century a borough
(or manor) was said to be in custody when it was not at farm,
the custos being responsible for all receipts and usually receiving
a salary. There is no difficulty in assuming that this was the
arrangement at Wilton, but the statement that Roger Bigot
(the sheriff of Suffolk) had Ipswich in custody seems to be
contradicted by the subsequent record that he had let the
town at farm. The explanation will perhaps be found in
the Domesday division of the Suffolk Terra Regis, to which the
description of Ipswich is attached, between Roger and others,
' -DB. i. 64b, 87. 2 Ibid. i. ι. 3 Ibid. 64b, 74b.
Ibid. ɪ. 64b ; Eyton, Som. Domesday, ɪ. 119 ; ɪi. 13, 17, 25.