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ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS. 379 Dipl., vol. V. p. 163), which notices the four main streets of the city ; the Inquest of Hen. I., describing the revenues, <fec. of the crown in the city in the time of Edward the Confessor, and incidentally containing information applicable to the date of the Inquest itself; the Inquest taken under the precept of Bishop Henry of Blois, in 1148; the Inquest now laid before the reader ; and the well known petition of the citizens to the crown at the close of the reign of Hen. VI. "^ The enumeration of streets and tenements in these surveys lends but little support to the statement of Dr. Milner, that in the reign of Henry 1. the suburb extended " a mile in every direction further than they do at present" {i.e. in 1798. See vol. i. p. 157, 3 ed.) I presume that the author meant a populous suburb of houses and buildings, such as we see at Bristol, London, and in other cities which have outgrown their walls. If this be true, then Winchester must have been, at least, twenty times as large and populous as it was in 1841, when there were about 1800 houses and 10,700 inhabitants.' This is improbable in itself, and is not easily reconcileable with the evidence. The surveys of Henry I. and of Edward I. do not supply trustworthy materials for calculation, because they purport to be only partial surveys for limited purposes ; but that of Bishop de Blois in 1148 is more comprehensive, and evidently embraces all tenements yield- ing rent to any landlord either within or without the four gates. This, of course, excludes the sites of ecclesiastical and eleemosynary buildings, and of royal and episcopal castles or mansions. The date of the survey is only thirteen years after the close of the reign of Henry I. Now, allowing to every tenant paying rent a separate house (an improbable state of things), the survey of De Blois indicates, on a rough estimate, about 1200 tenements, occupied by a mixed population, — a number quite inade- quate to form a town of the magnitude attributed to Winchester in the 12th century, even after making due allowance for the sieges and conflagrations which marked the reign of Stephen."^ If any populous suburb of the extent supposed had really existed, we should have found it divided into streets and lanes, as in the older and central parts ; yet it is remarkable that we find no trace of any other streets in the early surveys than those which are known to exist at this day, and which are chiefly confined within the old walls. The great number of parochial and other churches has been relied upon as proof of the vast extent of the city in the 11th and 12th cen- turies (Ellis's Introd. to Domesday, vol. i. p. 190); and this evidence would be of some value if a church had then meant what it now means, viz., a place provided only when and where necessary for public worship. It is, however, certain that many of these were small and crowded within 8 Printed in Archseologia, vol i., p. 91. burnt down in a.d. 1102. Yet in the 7 The old enceinte of the city is a same reij^n, a few yeai's afterwards, "Win- parallelogram about half a mile in length, Chester attained the zenith of its pros- and three furlongs and a half in breadth. perity," and was replete with "magnificent The suburban streets adjacent (exclusive jjuildings," castles, palaces, guildhalls, and of those built since the completion of the an " incredible number of parisli churches railway) were, it is believed, taken as part and chapels " (vide Mihier, vol. i., p. 1.V2, of the city in the census of 1841. They 156, 1,57, ed. ."5). Instances of cxaggera- at that time formed no i-ery important tion of this sort are very frequent in the addition to the number either of houses old annalists. " Ecclesia," or " civitas or population. incendio penitus destructa," nnist often ^ The effect of conflagrations apjicar to be taken to mean only that a bad tire be much magnified by our early chroniclers. Iiappencd in it. The authorities state that Winchester was