Welsh Journals

tended to be scattered widely in many counties, some of the land being demesne for his own use but much of it sub-infeudated to mesne lords who, in turn, might have sub-tenants. Moreover, a tenant in capite in one county might hold land as a sub-tenant in another. Between the initial royal grants made after the Conquest of 1066 and the survey carried out twenty years later, there had been changes of ownership; some were legal, but many were seizures by force from weaker neighbours. Thus the Survey demanded information as to values on three dates, i.e, on the date when King Edward the Confessor died (tempore regis Edwardi, con- veniently summarised as TRE), on the date when the new owner received it from King William, and on the date of the Domesday inquest. This method brought to light instances where land had been added to the original grant or where land had been taken away, and cases of doubtful ownership. It says much for the integrity of the commissioners that they did not hesitate to accuse the king or his barons of usurpation and the survey of Cornwall ends with a long list of complaints. In some instances the problem of ownership was solved by the sworn testimony of jurors chosen to represent the Hundreds into which each county was divided, in others the matter was referred to the king. These jurors were carefully selected so that for each Hundred there were four Englishmen and four Frenchmen' (Normans), so keeping a balance between the interests of the Saxon population and the conquerors. Questions which had to be answered by these men on sworn testimony included, beside ownership, the number and status of the population on each manor, that is, how many freemen, how many slaves, cottars, bordars, villeins, and so forth, how much land was suitable for cultivation and how many plough-teams were available, the nature of the estate itself, wood, meadow, or pasture, and the existence of mills or fisheries or anything that would affect its value. This is not the place in which the compilation of the Domesday Survey can be described in detail. Suffice to say that as the king's commissioners moved through the country the information was arranged in a prescribed order under the names of the king, the Church, and the tenants-in-chief. When the records for each county were complete, they were forwarded to the royal scribes at Winchester to be edited and copied for use by the king's ministers. This final product has survived in two volumes, often known as the Exchequer Domesday to distinguish them from the Exeter version. Volume I covered all England with the exception of Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk (which are to be found in Volume II) and the four northern counties of Northumberland, Durham,