DOMESDAY SURVEY The other two passages in which legal terms occur relate to Wal- lingford and to Kintbury. At Wallingford we have a group of ten householders who had no rent to pay and who enjoyed, as Professor Maitland renders the passage, ' blood, if blood was shed there, and the man was received inside before he was challenged by the King's reeve, except on Saturday, for then the King had the forfeiture on account of the market ; and for adultery and larceny they had the forfeiture in their houses, but the other forfeitures were the King's.' On this difficult but important passage he comments thus : We cannot hope to recover the intricate rules which governed these affairs, rules which must have been as intricate as those of our ' private international law.' But the description of Wallingford tells us of householders who enjoy the ' forfeitures ' which arise from crimes committed in their own houses, and a suspicion may cross our minds that the right to these forfeitures is not in its origin a purely jurisdictional or justiciary right. However, these householders are great people (the Bishop of Salisbury, the Abbot of St. Albans are among them), their town houses are considered as appurtenant to their rural manors, and the soke over the manor comprehends the town house. 1 With this explanation I cannot agree, for only the ten householders at the end of the list, of whom nine were natives and, therefore, of small account, enjoyed, as I read the passage myself, these privileges. More to the point is the Southwark entry appositely cited by the same writer : ' If any one in the act of committing an offence was there challenged, he paid the amends to the King, but if, without being challenged, he escaped under a man who had sake and soke, that man had the amends.' The Wallingford entry is important for its bearing on the question of soke and ' house-peace. " It must not be overlooked that in the above entry we incidentally learn of the existence of a Saturday market at Wallingford. Professor Maitland comments on the market-day exception : In the Wallingford of the Confessor's day there were many persons who had sake and soke within their houses. If any one spilt blood and escaped into one of these houses before he was attached, the owner received the blood-wite. But it was not so on Saturdays, for then the money went to the King ' because of the market.' Thus the King's borough-peace seems to be intensified on market-days ; on those days it will even penetrate the houses of the immunists. 3 The Kintbury entry records, as the same writer expresses it, the grant by King Edward to one of his foresters of ' half a hide of land free from all custom except the King's forfeiture, such as larceny, homi- cide, ham-fare, and peace-breach,' 4 that is to say, the grant conveyed 1 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 98.
- For Professor Maitland writes : ' A much more difficult case comes before us at Warwick. We
first hear of the town houses that are held by great men as parts of their manors, and then we hear that besides these houses are in the borough nineteen burgesses who have nineteen houses with sake and soke and all customs " [and so had them T.R.E.] ' (pp. cit. pp. 98-9). For this phenomenon he pro- pounds the doctrine of ' house-peace ' as against that of ' soke ' at Wallingford ; but, by my reading, the two cases fall into line as precisely alike. 3 Op. cit. p. 193. Op. cit. p. 79. 3'7
