"And Three Mills."

Tres Molini.-The three manorial mills here set forth, prove that the mills of Godmanchester are no modern innovation on the stream-unlike those of Hemingford and Houghton-as will be more enlarged upon in our Chapter on Navigation and Drainage.

"A hundred Solidates (of Plough Land)"

The word Terræ is here distinctly understood. It evidently meant arable land, in contradistinction to meadow and wood land. Solidata-were shillings, but the Norman shilling weighed a little more than three of our modern shillings :8 so that the Norman pound, consisting of twenty of such shillings, was worth £3 2s. of our present money.

"70 Acres of Meadow."

Ač or Acres.-The same uncertainty of measure here again occurs; for in the Domesday Survey, some acres have sixteen, some eighteen, and others twenty feet to the perch.

"In the time of King Edward valued at forty pounds, now in like manner."

T. R. E. uat xl. lib.-This was the rent of the land paid annually by the several occupiers or tenants, to the King's Collector: the ad numeru expresses that it was not necessarily paid in coined money, but by number or tale, which was in uncoined pieces.

Rud. Gloucester, p. 80.

This short explanatory Chapter of the Domesday Record may appear somewhat prolix, but is essential to the integrity of our work, which proposes to illustrate all that is either interesting or useful to be known, as well regarding its antient as modern History.

Guthmuncester, Gurmuncester, Gormoncester, &c.; and it would be difficult to ascertain when that of Godmanchester was first applied to it. Changes in orthography and pronunciation are continually taking place, and the Norman Conquest was a great epoch for such changes; the c was then softened down into ch, as in bec, bech; ic, ich; cild, child; cester, chester; but all corporation records still continue to be headed Gumecester alias Godmanchester.

a Watson.

That Godmanchester was, at a very early era, not only a regularly organized but well populated town, may be stated on good authorities. Leland" describes it to have been a town of great note, "as appears from the foundations and coins that are found there ;" and adds, "that large bones have been here exhumed beyond the stature of men, in the times in which he lived: that "it was divided merely by the river Ouze from Huntingdon, from whence it is conjectured that Huntingdon was formerly a part of Godmanchester." Henry of Huntingdon calls it "a not unpleasant town, and formerly a noble city," which is an important admission by that learned Monk, for when (and long before) he wrote, Huntingdon was the capital of the province, and had its own honour, with manors dependent upon it. The survey of Domesday gives

b Gumicester, vulgo Godmanchester. Gumecester olim opp. magni nominis, ut apparet, ex fundamentis et numismatibus erutis. Eruuntur etiam et ossa, sed majora quam habeant hujus ætatis homines. Usa tantum dividit hoc opp. ab Huntingduno. Unde conjectura est Huntingdunum antiquitus partem fuisse Gumicestriæ."-Lelandi Coll.

c Emi ibidem à quodam sacrificulo numismata, inter quæ unum erat C. Antii prælonga cesarie qualem Romani habebant ante notos tonsores.-Lelandi Coll. pars. 3. page 13.

d Henry of Huntingdon was a monkish historian, (patronized by the Bishops of Lincoln,) and Archdeacon of Huntingdon. He flourished in the 12th century, and wrote a Chronicle of England down to the year 1154. His words are

"Nobilis quondam urbis, nunc verò villæ non inamabilis."

but little information as to the state of the town, compared with modern times; nor do we find much of interest on record, regarding its Municipal History, prior to the reign of King John.

As antient demesne it was part of the hereditary possessions of the crown, and consequently held in tenancy of it; but in the reign of that monarch, not only the Great Charter of Liberty called Magna Charta, but many important concessions, were obtained from the crown by the people, and amongst others that of fixing a permanent rent for the King's tenants, who were thus admitted to denizenship, and which, instead of being levied as formerly by the King's officers in products of husbandry, or by an arbitrary money tax, was to be collected amongst the tenants themselves, and paid at stated periods. In order to simplify this interesting subject, we must here consider the origin of fee-farm rents, and the tenure and customs of Antient Demesne.

"Antient Demesne consists of those lands or manors which, though now perhaps granted out to private subjects, were actually in the hands of the crown in the time of Edward the Confessor or William the Conqueror, and so appear to have been by the great survey of the Exchequer called Domesday Book. The tenants of these lands of the crown were not all of the same order or degree. Some

e Blackstone's Com. by Archbold, b. 2, c. 6.