THE DOMESDAY SURVEY read : ' Then 2 bordars ; afterwards I ; now 5 and i priest.' So too at Chickney, where there were no villeins, we are told that there were 'then 7 bordars ; now i priest and 14 bordars.' The other entries of priests record simply the presence of ' a priest and (so many) villeins.' Such are those on a Writtle manor, at Stanstead Montfichet, Wimbish, Dunmow (fo. 69), Lindsell (fo. 49), Thundersley (fo. 76^), Latton (78^), and Saling (fo. 84). But a singular entry on fo. 27 reads : 'Then 2 men dwelt there ; now i priest.' There is separate mention of a priest at Coggeshall, and at (East or West) Ham we read of three virgates which had been held by Edwine, ' a free priest,' in King Edward's time. This curious phrase may perhaps be compared with the ' priest (a) free man ' at Horndon-on-the-Hill. Among the matters which of late have attracted attention in Domesday are the entries of houses in towns belonging to rural manors. 1 Essex affords us several instances, and they illustrate a state of things which still distinguishes the county, namely that its great towns are not Chelmsford in its centre, but Colchester, which is nearly at one of its extremities, and London, which is beyond the other. These two towns monopolize the houses appendant to rural manors in Essex, though two or three of the latter had rights in Sudbury on the Suffolk border. Beginning with London, the Bishop of Durham had there, as appurtenant to his manor of Waltham (Abbey), 12 houses 'and a gate which the king gave to the bishop's predecessor ' ; to Barking (the abbey's manor) there belonged ' 28 houses and the moiety of a church,' and West Thur- rock had 7 houses. In Colchester, at the other end of the county, were several houses belonging to manors, which are partly entered under those manors and partly recorded in the survey of the borough itself. Putting together all these, and circling round the town from east to west, we find that Ardleigh had two houses, Elmstead one, West Mersea one, Great Wigborough one, Tolleshunt one, Birch two, Peering two, and Great Tey one. 2 Further away, Terling to the south-west had five, and Shalford to the west three. The distribution of these manors is worth noting. In Sudbury there belonged to Castle Hedingham 1 5 bur- gesses, and dues were payable thence to each of the manors in Henny (fos. 74, 84^). Colchester will form the subject of separate treatment below ; but Maldon, the only other town at that time in the county, requires some notice. It had some 180 houses in addition to the sites on which had stood 1 8 others, and its total render under the Confessor was not much lower than that of Colchester, of which, however, it seems to have been less than half the size. It is remarkable that although the burgesses had 'among them' a considerable amount of live stock, 165 out of the 180 held no land, which presents a striking contrast to the state of things at 1 See Prof. Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, on ' Heterogeneous Tenures in the Boroughs ' (pp. 179-8*).
- It is not improbable that other manors in the same district, such as Bromley and Peldon, had
houses appurtenant in Colchester (see pp. 412, 418 below). I 385 49
