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A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE Houghton Regis and Luton. 1 The first and last of these were assessed at 30 hides apiece, the other at 10 hides. In the form of the revenue derived from these three manors we detect at once a note distinctive of Crown demesne in the half day's ferm (dimidiam diem ad Jirmam regis) that was due from each of them. The constituents of this antique render are specified as wheat, honey, and the other things recognized as part of it, the honey being probably required for mead. But in addition to this traditional due there was also a money payment, amounting to £2.2 from Leighton, £30 from Luton, and £10 from Houghton, payable in each case in weighed money. This is an unusual feature, but there is nothing in the text to show that it is a Norman addition. Of the an- tiquity of the miscellaneous dues there can be no question, for they are found occurring similarly in other counties ; for the queen's use Leighton and Houghton contributed each 2 ounces and Luton 4 ounces of gold ; for a sumpter-horse and for the king's hounds various amounts were paid, the payment for the former being here grouped with others. The pay- ment, however, for a sumpter-horse alone is found in Domesday as twenty shillings. In addition to all these payments Ivo (not Ralf) Tallebosc had enacted, it would seem, an additional payment (misit de cremento) of £j apiece in the case of Leighton and Luton and of £4 in that of Houghton, partly in weighed and partly in assayed silver, with an ounce of gold further from each of them to the sheriff himself. The closest parallel to the dues from these royal manors is found in the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire, where several royal manors, in the days of Edward the Confessor, paid their rent to the Crown partly in ' three days' ferm' (Jirmam trium dierum) and partly in money. Wheat and honey are specified, in their case also, as comprised in the ' ferm,' but malt [brasium) is mentioned in addition. In Cambridge this pay- ment in kind had been commuted for money ; in Bedfordshire, appar- ently, it had not. The additional payments for special purposes due from the Bedfordshire manors are not mentioned in Cambridgeshire, and only occur, it would seem, elsewhere in Domesday among the payments due from counties as a whole. The churches of the three royal manors were, as was usually the case, important and richly endowed ; but they must be reserved for treatment in another section below. The point which remains to be considered here is the arbitrary action of Ralf (not Ivo) Tallebosc in annexing manors and altering hundreds when in charge of the Crown demesne. In the manor of Leighton Buzzard he had, we read, incor- porated two considerable estates which had formerly belonged to private owners ; in that of Houghton Regis he had similarly incorporated Sewell ; and in that of Luton, Biscot. In these last two cases the added estates were actually taken out of their Hundreds by Ralf, though he seems to have compensated the Hundred of Flitt by robbing another Hundred for its benefit. 1 Dunstable is not mentioned, because it was subsequently created, on the royal demesne, by Henry I., the bulk of it being taken from Houghton Regis. 194