Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/86

78 GONGHUBRANUS' LIFE OF ST. MONENNA January Dunpelder (Dunpeleder) in East Lothian, and the seventh at Lon- fortin or Longforgund in Gowrie.^ In the intervals between her peregrinations she founds several churches in Ireland, in Armagh and Meath, and at places called Gheneglas and Surde. Finally she dies at Lonfortin, and her corpse is translated to Andreseie near Burton-on-Trent. The intervention of the ' archiepiscopus Co- lumpciUe ' to decide the dispute about her remains (iii. 11) is probably an invention of Conchubran's, or some hopeless mis- understanding of his source, for chronologically it is impossible to explain it. It would appear then that (a) Conchubran has confused two distinct personages, first, a Darerca or Moninne of Killeevy, who died in 517 or 519, and whose activities were confined to Ireland, and secondly, a Monenna or Moduenna (or Modwenna), who flourished about 650 to 700, and founded the monastery near Burton-on-Trent and various churches in Scotland ; (6) his sources were primarily a Vita of the elder saint written between the years 600 and 624, with which he combined a Vita of the second Monenna compiled not earlier than c. 950, and a number of incidents extracted from lives of other Irish saints, notably St. Coemgen ; (c) he wrote in all probability about 1000-1050. M. Esposrro. The Firma Unius Noctis William the Conqueror and Edward the Confessor before him drew an annual render called a. firma or ferm from certain lands in their kingdom. The Domesday Survey is our chief source of information, and with this record I am concerned, especially as it bears upon the ferm of King Edward, which connects us with Saxon times. In general appearance the ferm is a rent-charge upon private estates of the king, his demesne, but there are occasional references to it which are not easily explicable on this basis, and which when considered may lead to a modification of the view that the * ferm ' was ' essentially of the nature of rent '.^ It appears to me that the so-caUed demesne-ferm had at one time been a public tax due not only -from royal estates but con- tributed to by every Saxon hundred. The argument as it follows depends in part upon the nature and incidence of the ' hundred pennies ', which I have explained as a Saxon tax on the hundred obscurely connected with some Saxon fiscal scheme.^ In the ' Skene remarks that her churches were founded at the princiiMil fortified posts in the country (Celtic Scotland, ii. 38). » Round, Feudal England, p. 114; Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century, p. 28 B. ; Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century, pp. 384-0. » Ante, xxxiii. 62 fF. (1918).