CHAPTER 5: POPULATION, FARMING AND ESTATES
INTRODUCTION

The population at the end of the Roman period in England has been estimated by some to be between 2.8 and 3.6 million (Salway, 1981, 544; Millett, 1990, 185). At the end of the eleventh century, the total population of England was around 1.75 to 2.25 million (Darby, 1977, 89; Hatcher, 1977, 68). What happened to the one million or so people between the fifth and eleventh centuries? We have little evidence for this period and the source for the eleventh century figures is the Domesday Book, a survey which was not a population census but rather a list of people responsible for payment of dues, especially royal dues. Because of this, it omits many groups, like slaves, who did not pay dues and only includes the tenants or heads of households who made these payments. To convert the number in the Domesday Book into population total requires some adjustments with estimates made of those that are omitted. Therefore, a household size must be established that includes the men, women and children. The inclusion of the population numbers from the eleventh century and the Domesday Book is because they may give some information on the population size and composition of the rural communities.

THE DOMESDAY BOOK

This is not easy since the Domesday Book underestimates the number of slaves. Five percent is added to the rural population to make up for this and this proportion is based on the total number of slaves in counties where they are recorded. It is even more difficult to estimate how many under-tenants or rent-paying tenants have been omitted since the question may be important, especially for the Derbyshire. Rent-payers who did not pay the royal dues directly may have appeared unimportant to the Domesday Book writers.

The calculation of the household size or number of men, women and children who are behind each tenant, is even more difficult since the eleventh century sources do not give much information. These figures must come from later records and have been estimated to be between three and five people to a family (Russell, 1948, 22-33; Krause, 1957, 420-432). These estimates of family size assume that the tenant mentioned in the Domesday Book is the head of the nuclear family (father, mother and children, plus perhaps an elderly parent). But if there is a wider extended family (parents, children, grandparents, aunts and uncles), then these calculations are wrong. The figures given here are for comparative purposes only and are totals of population.

THE DOMESDAY BOOK AND THE EAST MIDLANDS

The rural population of the East Midlands in 1086 was:

Taken from P. Stafford, 1985.

The total rural population includes unfree tenants, prosperous peasants, freemen and priests. These figures have been multiplied by 2 accepted family sizes to produce an estimate of total population. These are only the figures for rural population but they do allow us to make broad comparisons of the late eleventh century population and possibly back to the fifth to seventh centuries.

Figure 12 Population in 1086 from P. Stafford, 1985.

The high population in Lincolnshire is important and it may be because of the size of the county but Lincolnshire also has many concentrations of population (Richards, 1995). Lincolnshire also has some tenth and eleventh century Scandinavian place-names but these place-names are not all new settlements rather they are a sign of economic growth in this area. The high population figures may be linked to this in some way. But the large population for Lincolnshire may also be one of those problems with the Domesday Book figures. In Lincolnshire, a large class of rent-paying tenants have been included with over 50 percent of the recorded rural population recorded as sokemen or 10,882 total. Leicestershire has 1,903 as sokemen and Nottinghamshire has 1,704 listed as sokemen. Economic changes may have changed their position in areas like Lincolnshire and made them more important. Because they are listed in the Domesday Book here and in other areas, it may distort the population numbers in these counties. In Derbyshire, the low population may be a result of the rent-payers being left out of the list.

The figures of each county does not tell us as much as the distribution of the population and the village sizes. In Lincolnshire the population was concentrated at the southern end of the Wolds and in central Kesteven around Grantham and Sleaford. This is also an area of small parishes which may suggest that there was pressure on the land and the resources during the tenth and eleventh centuries (Owen, 1976, 66-71). In Nottinghamshire, the valleys of the Trent and the Soar supported the main part of the population and the sandstone forest areas of Sherwood Forest supported the least amount (Barley, 1966, 206). The Leicestershire valleys of Belvoir, the River Soar and the River Wreake were heavily settled by 1086 and only a few areas of west Leicestershire and Charnwood Forest were thinly populated (Hallam, 1981, 95). Charnwood Forest had very little population within but there is some scattered population which may have been included in the totals for villages on its edges. On the other hand, the clearance of forest in the Wreake valley was advanced because there is little or no woodland recorded here (Millward, 1972, 236).

Both the figures and the pattern of population show that the fertile river valleys were densely populated and that the resources of the land were being fully used. Individual village sizes also warn us about underestimating the size of eleventh century communities. Orton-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire had 28 tenants and 1 slave which is a total of 113 to 142, while Twycross had between 69 and 86 people. These are lowland farming communities which were typical for much of the region. Derbyshire, with stretches of pastoral upland, shows a smaller population and one that is scattered in small settlements. Bakewell had a large population of 216 to 268 people but this included the eight hamlets of Nether and Over Haddon, Holme, Rowsley, Burton, Conkesbury, One Ash and Monyash which were attached to it. Where Derbyshire settlements are described by themselves, we can see that they were small. Gratton had 6 tenants and Ash had 7, which comes out as an average of 24-35 people.

POPULATION GROWTH

Some research has suggested that the pattern of English settlement is old and goes back to the Romano-British period at least and that the rate of population growth between the fifth and eleventh centuries was low (Sawyer, 1978, Ch. III). But to state that a settlement pattern is old does not prove that population within that pattern was static. The new view of settlement history requires us to rethink the assumptions on population growth.

The causes of population growth or decline are tied to birth and death rates and the changes within them. Some have argued that the population fluctuates in relation to resources ie. it will expand as long as there are food resources and will decline when these resources are overexploited. But this should be modified to include the social habits such as age at marriage, restrictions on marriage and so on which are important in determining fertility levels. For the Middle Ages, population change based less on resources and more on disease has been put forward (Hatcher, 1977, 58-61). It is necessary to look at this since throughout the Middle Ages the death rates of rich and poor are very similar if food supply and malnutrition were the only determinant. Drinking water and disease may have played an important part in determining the early Anglo-Saxon population levels (Jones, 1979, 231-251).

Translating this into eastern England is difficult. Western Europe was swept by the bubonic plague between the sixth and eighth centuries. Its local impact was not written down but population decline as a result of this disease occurred widely. The cemetery evidence suggests that during the Anglo-Saxon period, the age structure of the population and its mortality rates would have discouraged any growth.

Premature ageing and heavy over-work were factors that affected population growth. Osteoarthritis was very common in the bones of adults that have been examined. Osteoarthritis has been found throughout the limbs but also in the vertebrae where two or three vertebrae were often fused together which restricted movement and lead to immobility. This would argue that men and women had a life of constant, heavy manual labour. The work that has been done on the early cemeteries of the settlement period points in the same direction. An analysis of the cremated and crushed bones from Loveden Hill show a sixth century population that died young after a life of heavy labour (Wilkinson, 1980, 221-231). From Raunds, Northamptonshire, at the end of the period and Loveden Hill at the beginning we find that the Anglo-Saxons had inadequate medical knowledge. We see fractured bones which were not set but allowed to heal in a broken position and bone infection. This research is still too fragmentary to base a theory of population change on it since changes in marriage patterns and other social changes could have affected the population growth. But the mortality rates are unlikely to have lead to anything but a gradual population upswing. The pattern found in the Domesday Book at the end of the eleventh century may be older than is often agreed upon.

FARMING IN THE EAST MIDLANDS

The population of the East Midlands lived primarily on the land and agriculture was the most important activity. It was the basis of a lot of Anglo-Saxon literature and the wealth of religious houses and families and it was the way of life for a large part of the population. We have already seen how the Domesday Book recorded the wealth of an area in the late eleventh century. The wealth was agrarian and was set down in lists of villages and agricultural tenants, of plough teams, pasture land and grain mills.

The economy of eastern England was primarily mixed agriculture. This is a combination of arable and animal farming which supported the community with meat and grain products, provided dung to fertilize the fields and provided surpluses to the kings, the nobles, the churchmen and the towns. The inhabitants of the mid-Anglo-Saxon village of Maxey, Northamptonshire, grew grain which they milled on quernstones and kept a variety of animals like cattle, goats, sheep and pigs (Addyman, Fennell and Biek, 1964, 42, 59 and 65). When a lord diverted the surplus of the village agriculture, he was also interested in the basics of subsistence which the villagers attempted to provide for themselves.

Figure 13 Distribution of Ploughteams from P. Stafford, 1985.

The people raised animals but the most important food crops were grain and barley. The course, grain diet wore away the teeth of those buried at Loveden Hill in the sixth century (Wilkinson, 1980, 230). Barley was planted during the spring with oats or with wheat during the autumn.

The number of mills recorded in the Domesday Book shows us how significant grain was in the agriculture and diet of the region. There were 52 mills in Derbyshire, 204 in Lincolnshire and 80 in Nottinghamshire (Darby, 1977, 361). But to make any comparisons from county to county is dangerous because of the problems associated with the Domesday Book. The distribution of mills may give us some clue as to the wealth and agricultural pattern within the counties.

Another source for evidence of grain-farming in the Domesday Book is the number of plough teams listed. The survey often recorded the number of plough teams in a community such as in Wymeswold, Leicestershire, the landlords Robert and Serlo had two ploughs and the villagers had another ten (Morgan, 1979, 13.63) and in Eyam Derbyshire, the villagers had five ploughs (Morgan, 1978, 1.33). The map of the distribution of plough teams shows Derbyshire has relatively poor soil and large parts of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire have rich soil. It is because of this evidence that the East Midlands appears as a prosperous agricultural area even without the large areas of concentrated arable wealth which were in East Anglia or the West Midlands.

The Domesday Book seems to concentrate on the dues of tenants and on arable wealth and distorts the overall agrarian economy and lifestyle. It does, however, show that late eleventh century society measured wealth in these terms. Animals were very important in the mixed economy of the region from the beginning with objects made from bone found in many pagan Anglo-Saxon cemeteries. Excavations at Maxey, Northamptonshire showed a balance between cattle, sheep, goat and pig and their uses and values in the peasant economy is clear. Two-thirds of the pigs were killed before they were 19 months old and were probably for food. Cattle were two years old or older upon their death, whilst nearly half of the horses were four or five years old since these animals were more valuable and used for draught rather than food (Addyman, Fennell, Biek, 1964, 65-71). A monastic estate may show the same proportions and relative values of animals. It should be remembered though, that this type of estate may have produced livestock for the market. When the abbey of Thorney was set up, the monks at Ely sent supplies to help with its establishment. Pigs were the most numerous and were cheaper to have since 80 pigs were worth £1 and a full grown one was worth 6d., whereas an unknown number of mill oxen had to be purchased for 30 mancuses of gold.

The Domesday Book states the importance of sheep and pigs in the economy as producers of wool, milk and meat. Pasture and woodland was recorded not by the total area but by the number of pigs or sheep it could support. Pasture seems to have been reserved for sheep and the pigs foraged in the woodland. The Anglo-Saxon pig is believed to have been a small dark-skinned, long-legged and hairy and was in large herds (Clutton-Brock, 1976, 378).

We encounter difficulty when we move from the examining the mixed agriculture and its importance to examining the importance of animal farming in the economy of the region. Within the domestic economy animals provided the meat and the wool and most excavated domestic sites have produced loom weights which support the idea of weaving of cloth from local wool. The size of some herds were probably large because they were produced for market rather than local consumption and the largest herds were found on royal or ecclesiastical estates. Lincolnshire may have supported large flocks of sheep and it has been suggested that the wealth of this area was because of that wool (Sawyer, 1965, 162-163; Owen, 1971, 67). There were also large flocks of castrated rams kept during the Anglo-Saxon period because they produced a heavy fleece and judging from their age of six years old or more, they were probably kept for their wool (Clutton-Brock, 1976, 382). Some commercial production probably occurred on the large estates but because the Domesday Book does not comment on the size of livestock herds, it is impossible to check their importance in the economy.

There is some regional variation within the East Midlands economy of mixed farming in Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. The Fens and its rivers had their own economies which were related to the fishing and salt. The abbeys within the Fens kept boats on Whittlesey Mere. The abbot of Ramsey had one and the abbot of Thorney had two. The abbot of Ramsey's fisheries were worth £10 a year during the eleventh century with eels being the most important catch. Every year the fishermen of Wisbech gave 33,260 eels to their lords (Darby, 1977, 285). Most of the fishing and fisheries were connected with the ecclesiastical estates of Thorney or Ely. Eels may have been caught in the mill ponds attached to grain mills but the lord may have controlled the fishing here as he controlled the mills themselves. On the River Trent, traps or weirs were set up which became an obstruction and led to the protection of Nottinghamshire Trent from anything which might hinder the passage of ships. This restriction may be behind the complaint in the Domesday Book by the people of Nottingham that they were forbidden to fish (Darby, 1977, 301).

Figure 14 Fisheries recorded in the Domesday Book from P. Stafford, 1985.

The most important tool from the Anglo-Saxon period was the plough but other equipment was used. The heavy plough which was drawn by a team of eight oxen was the key to arable farming by the time of the Domesday Book. It determined the pattern of the fields since ploughing was done in long strips of ridge and furrow. It is clear that the heavy plough and its associated field patterns were widely in use in eastern England during the Anglo-Saxon period. Charters sometimes described the edges of open fields and charted the headlands and furrows which were a feature of this type of cultivation. The same officials who were concerned with the obstruction of the River Trent also feared that the Nottingham to York road was in danger of being undermined by over ploughing so they stated that no one was to plough within two perches of it (Darby, 1977, 301). The Domesday Book has many references to plough teams and a plough drawn by eight oxen was a very important tool and when the Domesday Book records that the villagers had so many ploughs between them, it means just that since few peasant farmers could afford such an investment. The advance of the plough and increase in the amount of yield of arable farming went together.

The earlier history of this technology and its part in economic growth is difficult to find. The Romans used heavy ploughs, so the technology itself was old but the extent of its early use is unknown (Applebaum, 1972, 83-87). Certain types of ploughs are not known from the archaeological record before the tenth century. Because of this, some scholars tend to keep an open mind on early techniques of farming (Fowler, 1976, 27). If it was shown that the tenth and eleventh centuries showed advance in the use of the heavy plough, it might explain other signs of economic growth in eastern England at this date.

The villages which used these fields have not been studied very much. Many recent excavations have shown that villages tended to move over the centuries. This is probably wrong because where this movement has occurred the sites can now be excavated. At Salmonby, Lincolnshire, the early village is 750 meters west of the present one and at Little Paxton, the Anglo-Saxon site does not coincide with the modern village (Addyman, 1965, 76; Everson, 1973, 71). This movement occurred during the Anglo-Saxon period as well as after it and the early place-name Wicham is from a Romano-British settlement site. It is rarely found as an Anglo-Saxon village name but it usually survives as on outlying field name (Gelling, 1987, 8-26). This movement may indicate that a new feature such as a church or a road may have attracted the village to it. At Salmonby, Lincolnshire, we may be seeing a period of total desertion but it is possible that we are seeing the archaeological traces of an Anglo-Saxon pattern of more dispersed settlement (Foard, 1978, 358-374). Church foundation is one factor for this movement but another is the use of heavy plough agriculture and the growth of large common fields.

DOMESDAY BOOK AND ESTATES

The peasant farmer was the basis of agricultural life but his farming activity as opposed to his position within society is rarely written about. It is the estates which are written about the most in the documentary sources. It was these accumulations of land by the kings, the nobles and the churchmen which diverted and distributed the peasants. Because of this, estates are one of the keys of economic change and are a factor in the life of peasant families. They are important to the social structure as well as the religious and cultural history of the region. They are not the only factor in these areas but their growth and consolidation is very important to the history of the region.

These estates were still there when the Domesday Book was written and the survey gives us some clues about their earlier nature. On the royal estates, the Domesday Book records dues which go back to the earliest renders. An example is the inhabitants of Leighton Buzzard gave the king cash and half a day's provisions of wheat, honey and other things plus dues for the maintenance of the king's hunting dogs (Darby, 1977, 358).

Eleventh century Lincolnshire and some areas of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire contained large estates known as sokes. There are 13 of them in Nottinghamshire alone (Bishop, 1982, 37-47). These were made up of a central township with outlying settlements attached to it as either "sokeland" or "berewicks". Berewicks were home farms where the lord's special needs for food were met and sokelands were hamlets or villages occupied by men and women who owed services and tributes to the lord's court (Stenton, 1910, 3-96). This pattern is very similar to that of the old estates and the term "soke" comes from the word "seeking" which may underline the attachment of these villages to the estate centre. In the eleventh century, places like Ashford and Bakewell in Derbyshire, Bolingbroke, Grantham and Kirton-in-Lindsey in Lincolnshire and Mansfield in Nottinghamshire were centres for this type of estate. By the eleventh century, many things may have happened to alter them. They were adapting to the changing needs and demands of the lords and the changes in land ownership. Their nature and shape in the Domesday Book is probably not a continuation of the sixth and seventh century estates. But they do preserve the structure of these earliest estates in their enormous geographical spread and in their pattern of dues. Most demands from a lord were for material provision for himself and his followers, forced hospitality, provision for his hunting and the maintenance of his halls and court. From the earliest stages, these estates were organized to meet these requirements.

Estates were originally in the hands of the kings and the great lords. The South Gyrwe was in the hands of a princeps called Tondbert during the seventh century (Giles, H.E., 4, 19). The princeps Frithuric founded the monastery at Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire and endowed it with such an estate, the Hrepingas. Frithuric's gift shows how the Christian church was granted estates of this type during the seventh century. The original land grant to Peterborough abbey was an entire tribute group named in the Tribal Hidage, the North Gyrwe, which was part of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire (Potts, 1974, 13-27). Because of some kings and sometimes churches, these old units survived into the eleventh century. Rutland may be this type of unit because of its use as the dower for Mercian and later queens (Phythian-Adams, 1977, 64).

These estates were behind the existence and lifestyle of the lords and some churchmen. They diverted surplus from the peasant farmer and produced a need for trade and exchange to fulfil the lord's demands.

The transfer of these estates by royal grants to the church in the seventh and eighth centuries is a reminder that the conversion to Christianity had an economic as well as a cultural impact on the East Midlands. The church accumulated resources in land, in a share of the loot from warfare and through the redirection of burial gifts from the bodies of the pagan dead to the Christian church (Campbell, 1971, 13-14). The Church had new expensive needs such as buildings, ritual objects and for the resources to stock its libraries. A book like the Lichfield Gospels would have required the slaughter of 120 animals to provide the vellum alone (Powell, 1965, 26). The libraries of monasteries like Peterborough and Breedon-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire required massive local resources.

Between the eighth and the eleventh centuries these large estates broke up into smaller estates. The end result can be see in the Domesday Book. Estates were now made up of large number of individual villages and settlements which the Domesday Book listed separately and described as "manors". The largest of these estates might spread through several shires. Ulf Fensic held lands scattered through Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire and the house of Earl Leofirc held villages throughout the Midlands. The abbot of Peterborough had lands concentrated in Northamptonshire and along the Nene valley but also manors scattered in south Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Rutland and Yorkshire. The size of some of these holdings is a result of political and religious changes during the tenth century. Their nature, consisting of many individual villages or parts of villages, is a result of changes in the older estate patterns.

These changes were linked to shifts in attitudes towards wealth and landholding. Originally, land belonged originally not to the individual but to the family. This idea was fundamental before the ninth century and was still in use at the end of the tenth century (Charles-Edwards, 1976, 180-187). The estates of the seventh and eighth centuries provided the royal families with their needs and even though land might have been used to reward a follower, it did not emphasize this lack of a concept of individual ownership. There are group names as we have seen which describe the land in terms of its location or function in an estate rather than in terms of ownership. Movable wealth such as gold, silver, ornaments, horses, arms, were what normally passed between men but land by contrast was loaned. The intrusion of the church with its demands for land may have been disruptive but the early ecclesiastical structures developed to fit the society.

Gradually during the ninth and tenth centuries these views on ownership were broken down by the kings. They now made permanent grants of land to their followers during times of political stress and change like the ninth century Viking invasion and the tenth century expansion of the English Kingdom. The Viking invasion was very significant for the East Midlands and played its own part in this breakdown. They disrupted existing landholding by becoming the new landlords and by stimulating a new market in land (Fellows-Jensen, 1978, 89 and 372). The monastic revival of the tenth century was most significant around the Fens. Like the Viking invasions, the revival produced a massive transfer of property into the Church hands. Earlier monasticism was assimilated in to the social and landholding patterns of eastern England but the tenth century revival with its emphasis on celibacy and on freedom from lay control was aimed at breaking the hold of families over property granted to the church. As new landlords, the abbots contributed to the growth of a market in land. This change in landholding is fully recorded and is not understood. It was also affected by fundamental economic questions. The fragmentation occurred faster in lowland, arable areas where the surplus from an individual village was relatively large and the demands of the lord for labour or dues could be met on a local scale. In the pastoral, upland areas small units of landholding were less viable and labour was more dispersed and difficult to organize.

This process has been argued for the Mansfield area of Nottinghamshire on geographical and topographical grounds (Bishop, 1982, 42-45). Mansfield was still a huge estate in 1086 with many sokelands attached to it. But it is possible that Sutton and Southwell which were both granted to the church in the mid-tenth century and Bothamsall, which was in Earl Tostig's hands by the eleventh, and other lands were once part of a much larger and geographically compact royal estate of Mansfield. The disintegration of the Mansfield estate demonstrates the impact of royal grants and illustrates how rapidly this disintegration occurred once the process was begun.

The estate patterns of the East Midlands by the eleventh century are the result of this. The older units survived in the upland areas of Derbyshire and West Nottinghamshire and where royal control had preserved them as in Rutland. They also survived in areas which were affected little by the ecclesiastical landholders of the tenth century. Overall they rapidly disappeared, especially in the fertile lowland areas, especially where they were dominated by the new ecclesiastical estates and in parts of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire which had been taken over by Vikings. The place-names are proof of this changeover. Most of the names date to 900 or later and indicate individual landownership. The East Midlands are covered by villages whose names record their tenth century owners, names like Grimsby or Grimston, both of which mean the village (-by or -ton) of Grim. They are proof of the important shift in ownership which took place at this date.

MONASTIC ESTATES

These changes produced and were affected by the growth of new estates in the hands of new landlords. The best documented are the new estates of the monastic houses reformed in the tenth century such as Ramsey, Peterborough and Thorney. By the time of the Domesday Book, Ramsey abbey was ranked tenth among the monastic estates in England with an annual income of £358 5s. Peterborough had an annul income of £323, while Thorney and Crowland had annual incomes of £53 15s. and £52 6s (Knowles, 1966, 702-703). These estates had been built up since the late tenth century by purchases, gifts and persuasion. Ramsey received a nucleus of land in Huntingdonshire from ealdorman AEthelwine and Archbishop Oswald. The village of Burwell, for example, was acquired in four separate transactions. It had been acquired by Oda as a reward, it was then claimed by Oda's brother, who had to be bought off and by Wynsige, a relative of the original owner, who claimed hereditary rights to it, and then Wynsige had to be placated by an exchange of lands.

Thorney was set up with an original grant of Yaxley, Stanground, Woodston, Water Newton, Farcet and Barrow while its sister house at Ely provided stock, harrows, ships and nets, mill oxen and iron, swineherds and a dairymaid, as well as money to purchase clothes for the monks and 2,000 herrings. The Thorney monks then purchased additional estate workers, including a smith. The setting up of a monastery involved an accumulation in equipment and land and our first evidence for careful estate management comes from the Ely monks who kept a detailed, written record of their loan. At Thorney, the estate was exploited under a system of long leases with the lessee called to provide extra land when the lease reverted (Raban, 1977, 19-20).

It is at Peterborough that the concentration of resources can be seen best. By the 980s, Peterborough had acquired a lot of land within the Soke of Peterborough and along the Nene valley. Bishop AEthelwold granted the abbey Peterborough, Oundle, Anlafeston, Kettering, 24 men at Farcet, half of Whittlesey Mere, the fens at Well, 350 acres of seed and 23 of wheat and the tithes of many villages. To this grant the abbots soon added places like Castor and Maxey, which was put together in five separate transactions and Wittering. Between 985 and 1066, purchases and gifts combined to create an estate which extended into south Lincolnshire, to the Northamptonshire/Leicestershire border and into Rutland and Yorkshire (King, 1973, 6-11).

The growth of these monastic estates disrupted local landholding, challenged hereditary rights and contributed to the growth of the local land market. As large scale and efficient landholders who kept records and extracted dues, the abbey's presence was felt by the peasantry. Estates had always taken renders from the peasantry, as Peterborough did from Sempringham in the ninth century but now with the increasing needs for labour to till their lands, they built on older dues to create the pattern of manorialization which was part of the later Middle Ages. The efficiency of the new landlords can be seen in a document like the Black Book of Peterborough. This book dates to within a generation of the Norman Conquest and records the heavy labour services performed by the abbey's peasantry (Lennard, 1959, 357-358, 361-362 and 378-379). This efficiency created a surplus of goods for sale and the needs of the new monasteries for clothing and equipment and their building programmes stimulated local demand. The crowds they gathered to pay dues or to visit the relics attracted trade and towns developed at places like Peterborough. The monastic revival was one of a number of stimuli to economic growth, trade and town development in the East Midlands at the end of the Anglo-Saxon period. The Black Book of Peterborough also emphasises the cash payments by the peasantry which is an indication of how money was important to all levels of the local economy.

It has been estimated that during the monastic revival of the late tenth century, 50 percent of the villages mentioned in the Domesday Book changed hands (Raftis, 1957, 7). The impact of the monasteries was greatest in those areas bordering the Fens. Most of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire were less affected. Only ten manors in Derbyshire were in the hands of churchmen by 1086 and in Nottinghamshire, the church land was mainly in the hands of bishops. Lay estates were more important but are not recorded well and are difficult to study. Many of them were new and were products of a combination of hereditary right and the new political opportunities of the tenth century created by the kingdom of England.

Figure 15 Lands of the Leofric Family from D. Hill, 1981.

LAY ESTATES

One large lay estate which was partly transferred into ecclesiastical hands around 1000 belonged to Wulfric Spott, the founder of the Burton-on-Trent abbey. The estate stretched north into Yorkshire and Lancashire and included lands in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire. Some of it was hereditary land and was passed on within Wulfric's own family. A significant proportion of the estate was acquired during the tenth century by direct royal grant (Sawyer, 1979, xxxviii-xlvii). The house of Leofric was the greatest lay landowner in the Midlands by the eleventh century. Their rise to power occurred during the eleventh century and their estate was probably not much older. Some land may have come from Wulfric Spott's family through kinship ties between the two (Sawyer, 1979, xliii). Much of the land of Leofric's family came from their holding of royal office and this was the main factor in the growth of the landed wealth of ealdorman AEthelwine and his family who founded Ramsey abbey. They were new to the East Midlands in the 930s so their extensive properties in East Anglia, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and elsewhere by 990 had been built up during the tenth century (Hart, 1973, 115-144). The landholdings of Viking lords was new and is seen in the tenth century place-names of Viking origin throughout the region and in the new Danish settlers around the Fens after 1017. In these lay estates, the tenth and eleventh centuries appear as a period of massive change in landholding throughout the East Midlands.

ROYAL ESTATES

The lay estates which we are best informed about are not a new creation of the tenth and eleventh centuries but rather they are royal lands which comprised many old centres. There are not many royal lands in the East Midlands with virtually none in Lincolnshire by 1066. Those which do exist show no sign of ancient origin but their functioning in the eleventh century was a result of active estate management by royal officials (Stafford, 1980, 491-502). The survival this organization, such as attaching the services and dues of remote sokeland to an estate centre does not argue that they were old. The tenth and eleventh century disintegration of Mansfield has already been highlighted and by the time the Domesday Book was written, the details of an estate may not be a survival from the seventh and eighth centuries but the end product of reorganization by recent estate managers. Nonetheless, in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, estates like Dunham, Arnold, Orston or Mansfield show the concentration of resources on a single centre and the combination of valley and upland which had characterized older estates. In Derbyshire, a string of these centres at Newbold, Wirksworth, Matlock, Ashbourne, Parwich, Bakewell, Ashford, Hope and Longdendale made up the vast royal "Demesne of the Peak". It was an area ideal for hunting and was wealthy in minerals (Darby, 1977, 268-269). There are lead mines at Ashford and Bakewell, and Hope provided the king every year with five wagon loads of 50 lead sheets or blocks. This wealth in minerals and hunting and its strategic importance kept this area firmly in royal hands and there is little sign here of estate division.

The royal estates showed how active management by sheriffs and other officials contributed to the efficiency of eleventh century estates. The royal lands consisted largely of old estate patterns and were a reminder of the potential of these older structures for economic growth. Large estates of the tenth century created a surplus supply, demand and a need for cash to pay the dues which all stimulated exchange. These new estates and the rapid division of older lands are one sign of the increasing importance of a cash economy. A group of small scale landowners, whose only record is left in the place-names, concentrated on their new lands by building churches and memorials, all of which again stimulated demand.

CONCLUSION

If the estimates of the population of Roman Britain and Domesday England are correct, then there was a decline in the population. But the Domesday Book estimates omit many people because they did not pay dues to the nobles. The Domesday Book is one of the most important documents from the Anglo-Saxon period. It is a late Saxon document but it is also important to the period under discussion in this thesis because it gives us some information on the economy at the time of its writing. We can then make the assumption that the economy of the early Anglo-Saxon period was very similar; rural and primarily based on farming and fishing. The Domesday Book also mentions the estates which were around at that time. These estates may be based on earlier boundaries and we may be seeing a continuation of these estates from the early Anglo-Saxon period. These assumptions are very general and since the Domesday Book is 300 to 400 years older than the period under study in this thesis, we can not make any direct statements about the lifestyle and economy in the early Anglo-Saxon period.

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