Bovates and carucates

http://www.british-history.ac.uk:80/report.asp?compid=53623

My Google alert for ‘Hundelby’ [sic] throws up some interesting items occasionally.

The link above takes you to British History Online, in particular a list of disputes and/or agreements about land. Frankly, I find working my way through old documents rather dry and boring work, but there is the odd intriguing nugget.

This one is a list of ‘final concords’ (agreements, I assume) for Lincolnshire during the reign of Henry III. Henry was the son of King John and, although he reigned a long time, is probably the one king of England about whom no-one knows at least one fact.

But it was during his reign that one of the most important events in our history occurred, namely our first Parliament. It wasn’t his idea, of course. Simon de Montfort put a sword to his throat.

These particular cases are dated 34 Henry III, in other words the 34th year of Henry III’s reign, 1250. Acts of Parliament are still dated in this way. Having said that, I wouldn’t be surprised if Tony and his mates have decided unromantically that it’s out of date. Imagine abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor! But I digress.

One of the settlements involves a prior from ‘Kattele’ (Catley, near Digby) and a couple from Digby itself over land and a church. It’s a nice touch that when the dispute is settled, the prior gives them a ‘sore’ sparrowhawk. Sore?

The words used are rather strange. The people involved are often called ‘querents’, which I assume means ‘petitioner’ and ‘impedients’, the other side. And the agreements often involve ‘bovates’ of land. I’ve discovered that a bovate was the amount of land that could be ploughed with one ox in a year (bos is Latin for ox) and was one eigth of a ‘carucate’, eight being the normal number of oxen in a team or yoke. A carucate, from the Latin caracus meaning plough, was nominally 120 acres, an acre as we all know being one furlong (furrowlong) by one chain, still the length of a cricket pitch. Wake up at the back!

By this time, of course, the terms were rather loose and could apply to land that never saw a plough.

‘Tofts’ are often involved, meaning a farmhouse or homestead, sometimes including the surrounding land.

There were no surnames fixed at this time, apart from the aristocracy, and the description of Gilbert and Anthony as ‘de Hundleby’ simply refers to their home, not that they were brothers or are related to me.

Despite what I said earlier, these old records can be fascinating. They show an efficient legal system, functioning well despite political turmoil, with judgments accepted, compromises made and appropriate gifts given and received.

You get an impression of a very agricultural way of life, with hints of the feudal social structure, such as the mentions of ‘scutage, lordship and foreign service. Payment is in ‘marks of silver’ and sometimes shillings sterling. There are disputes over ‘dowers’ and women feature quite prominently. There is one case of a lady, widowed, in dispute with the Knights Templar - thanks to Dan Brown, we all know who they were -over lands which she claimed were her dowry. She agreed to renounce her claim in return for 20 shillings a year for life.

Even at this distance of time I don't think she got a very good deal.

Some Lincolnshire Place-names

I thought I would muse a little on places in Lincolnshire and their names.

I learnt a little about the various suffixes of towns and villages at school, but just a little research shows that it was all rather over-simplified. For example, I was always told that ‘wick’ was Anglo-Saxon for ‘market, and therefore Butterwick was obviously derived from a dairy or a place where butter was sold. Apparently not true, because ‘wick’ can also be of Scandinavian origin, especially when the place is found near the sea, because it means ‘inlet’ or ‘creek’. The Butterwick where my people come is just a mile or two from the Wash and it seems pretty likely that Butruic, as it was called in the Domesday Book, was a Viking settlement.

It stands to reason that the earliest Viking invaders or settlers would create colonies near the coast. Skegness was one of them. Admittedly ‘ness’ can be Old English as well, but ‘Skeg’ has the giveaway K, characteristic of Scandinavia. The suffix ‘ney’ was old Norse for ‘island’ – eg Orkney – but came to mean an enclosure or, especially in Lincolnshire, land reclaimed from the marsh. Bardney, Friskney and Stickney, where I lived briefly as a child.

Butterwick is not far from Benington, an Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, ending, which shows how the two nations lived in close proximity to each other. I expect the local derby football matches had a bit of needle in them. I read that there are places where the Vikings took over an English settlement and renamed it, but only partially. Grimston (there’s one in Leicestershire, another in Yorkshire) has an Anglo-Saxon ending, but a Scandinavian prefix. It looks like Grim gave his name to the place but didn’t bother to remove the suffix, perhaps not wanting people to get his village confused with Grimsby.

The ‘by’ ending is well-known as the great Viking indicator – Hundleby, Spilsby, Hemingby, etc (incidentally, I read that Rugby in Warwickshire is the most southerly town with a 'by' suffix) – but less well-known that it can be a prefix occasionally. The village of Bicker is the only example I can bring to mind, being a combination of ‘settlement’ and ‘marsh’. The ‘car’ in Redcar, Yorkshire, is another variation of the Norse word for marshland.

So ‘Bicker’ does not mean ‘Wrangle’, where an uncle once lived. That name means ‘crooked’ in Old Norse and refers to a winding stream long since gone.

Back near Butterwick, there’s Frieston, an English ending with a suspiciously Nordic beginning, and down the road there’s Fishtoft, definitely Scandinavian, but I doubt it’s got anything to do with fish. I may well be wrong about that. In any case, the ‘fish’ came later; the village was simply ‘Toft’ in Domesday.

Boston, of course, is St Botolph’s town, but now incorporates the old Danish settlement of Skirbeck. ‘Beck’ means stream in both language traditions, but we know that Skirbeck was called a ‘wapentake’, a small administrative unit, similar to the Saxon ‘hundred’, which theoretically contained a hundred households. The concept of the wapentake wasn’t finally abolished until 1888. It’s possible that the ‘Skir’ means ‘church’, for it’s not just Scotland where ‘kirk’ has that meaning.

Back to ‘wick’ and a variation is ‘wig’, as in Wigford, the area that became part of Lincoln as I know it today. This time it does mean market, market by the river crossing to be precise and lies at the bottom of the hill on which ancient Lincoln proper stands. There’s still a bit of snobbery in the city about whether you live ‘uphill’ or ‘downhill’.

The various names in Lincoln are reminders of the different peoples who became strands in the fabric of the city. The ‘Lin’ in Lincoln comes from ‘llyn’, a Celtic word meaning lake; and the ‘coln’ is a reminder of the Roman colony established on the hill for retired soldiers, who would have been of all nationalities throughout the Empire, not just Italian. The Romans also left us the Fossdyke, as well as the Fosse Way and Ermine Street, which meet at the bottom of Cross o’Cliffe Hill. (By the way, that’s where one of the Eleanor Crosses was erected). The Angles founded Wigford and the Scandinavians left us several ‘gates’ or streets, such as Hungate and Saltergate. The Normans are remembered in Beaumont Fee, as well as the Castle and Cathedral.

I’d better stop before I get on to Swineshead, which probably has nothing to do with pigs. I strongly doubt that that Threekingham has any royal connection at all.

'Never been twenty-one before'

David reached the age of 21 yesterday, and we had a little family get-together to celebrate the occasion.

We went to Zucchini’s for Sunday lunch. Zucchini’s has a fine array of Italian food, but we all went for the traditional roast beef dinner, made all the more attractive by being served as a buffet, with the words ‘Eat as much as you like’ on the menu.

Certain people, who had better remain nameless, had two huge platefuls and even had the cheek to ask for a clean plate.

It struck me that this was the first time in ages that all five of us were in one place at the same time.

Zucchini’s by the way gained a little notoriety when it was patronised by (Lord) Jeffrey Archer, minor politician and all-round dodgy character, when he was in the North Sea Camp open prison near Boston and allowed out to work at Lincoln’s Theatre Royal.

The age of majority has been eighteen for a long time, but the tradition of marking one’s twenty-first still seems pretty strong. I was amused, though, when David asked me why his grandmother had sent him a card with a large key on it. I thought it might be fun to embarrass him by singing ‘Twenty-one today . . . I’ve got the key of the door, etc.’ but thought better of it.

We rounded off the afternoon by adjourning to a nearby pub, where the beer is cheaper and we could watch the rugby, Ireland against France. Needless to say, we all became honorary Irishmen for the day.