Page:VCH Norfolk 2.djvu/53

DOMESDAY SURVEY claimed 4 acres which she held before and after Ralfs forfeiture. The king, however, had given her land to Isaac, and we do not know whether any compensation was made. As in Essex and Suffolk, so in Norfolk, the quantity of stock upon each manor is recorded. Besides the oxen for the ploughs, which we m^y fairly set down as eight for each plough,^ we find cows, horses, pigs, sheep, and goats. Beehives are also thought worth registering, and in some places we find brood mares. One donkey is recorded at Beechamwell,^ and one mule at Rudham,* but it is incredible that there should have been no others in the county. We may conclude that the others are to be found among the otiosa animalia which head the list of stock for each manor. We know, however, from the Liquisitio Eliensis that ' idle beasts ' is sometimes merely a paraphrase for cows ; since where Domesday records one cow in the Ely manor of Marham, the Inquisitio reports the existence of una animalia J' Domesday is usually reticent about cows as such ; they are not named more than three or four times in the Norfolk Survey.* Horses also seem but few. The necessary carting may have been partly done by the plough oxen, and a manor which employs as many as five to eight plough-teams will be content with two runcini or even one equus in aiila.^ It seems likely that horses used for riding are not reckoned as part of the farm stock. Horsebreeding seems to have been a decaying industry in Norfolk at the time of the survey. There were about two-fifths as many brood-mares running wild as there had been twenty years before, but this may be due to a local change in the south of the county. Thus Edric of Laxfi eld's 220 mares at Great Hockham had altogether disappeared, as had Lovell's eleven at Sturston, while at Tottington, close by, Alwi's herd of sixty-three had fallen to fifteen. Roger Bigod and Ralf Bainard may have found horse- breeding unprofitable, but Hermer de Ferrieres seems to have kept up Turchetel's stud at Stow Bardolph and at Great EUingham, and both in Clackclose hundred and in the little horsebreeding district in Happing' hundred the stock seems to have been fairly maintained. Low marshy ground was probably regarded as the most suitable, since we find sheep wherever we find horses, and it is not unlikely that the sheep replaced them in the south of the county, Mr. Round has pointed out ^° how important a position in the economy of Domesday is filled by the sheep, as producing milk and cheese, and with this consideration before us we wonder less at the apparent scarcity of cows. We know that the salt marshes were their favourite pasture,^^ and we are not therefore surprised to find the largest flock, numbering 1,300, attri- buted to Walton, one of the ' seven towns ' intercommoning on Tilney ' Round, Feud. Engl. 35, 36. ^ As many as eighty goats are found at Bradenham, Dom. Bk. f. 252. ' Dom. Bk. f. 190^. ' Ibid. f. 169^. ' Ibid. f. 2123; Itig. Com. Cantab, p. 130. ^ Mr. Round draws attention to a remarkable and possibly unique case at Hempnall, where the manor, in addition to its annual rent, rendered, in live stock, six cows, twenty swine, and twenty rams (f. 249). No cows are mentioned among its standing live stock, which indeed seems small for so large an annual render. ' e.g. Bacton, Dom. Bk. 1553. * Ibid. f. 246. ' Horsey in Happing hundred suggests ' Horse Island ' and is close to the Danish district of Flegg. We may not be entitled to regard ' wild horses ' as a Scandinavian characteristic ; still stallion-fighting was one of their most famous amusements. (See e.g. Burnt Njal, ch. Iviii.) '° F. CH. Essex, i, 371. " Hence the French term ' pr6 sal6' for mutton (J. H. R.). 23