In the winter of 1085 William the Conqueror ordered a survey of his kingdom. His commissioners were instructed to go out to every village and record how much land was farmed, who owned it and what it was worth, both before and after the Conquest. The survey was intended to record ownership for all time and so became known as the Domesday Book.
The first Walter de Lacy died in the year that the survey began and his son, Roger, inherited his estates. It is reasonable to assume that most if not all of Roger’s holdings listed in the Domesday Book had been granted to his father, either by William FitzOsbern, Earl of Hereford, or by the King himself. Roger was extraordinarily wealthy having 163 manors in seven counties. Domesday records him holding some 47 properties in Herefordshire alone.
Within the castlery of Ewyas Harold, Roger had around 480 acres of land, worth 20 shillings a year. He also held from Henry de Ferrers three churches1, a priest and 32 acres of land, paying 2 sesters of honey2. It was common under Welsh law for rents to be paid in honey and/or livestock.
In addition, Domesday says “Roger also has land called Ewias within the boundary of Ewias. This land does not belong to the castlery nor to the Hundred. From this land Roger has 15 sesters of honey, 15 pigs when the men are there and hears their pleas.”
This short paragraph conveys a huge amount of information. Roger’s land was not part of either the castlery or the hundred (a division of the county of Herefordshire), so it was clearly in Wales. Later it became known as Ewyas Lacy to distinguish it from Ewyas Harold in Herefordshire.
The comment “when the men are there” has been interpreted as meaning that the population was nomadic, but nomads don’t keep beehives or pigs, and they don’t usually pay rent. Either the local Welsh population were practicing transhumance – occupying a hendre in the winter and a hafod in the hills during the summer – or perhaps Roger was understating the value of his holding by suggesting to the Domesday commissioners that it wasn’t worth an inspection visit as they might not find anyone there.
That Roger “hears their pleas” means that he held his own court and his tenants had no recourse to either the English or Welsh justice systems.
Although this entry gives no indication of the extent of Ewyas Lacy, it is possible to get an idea of its size by looking at other entries in Domesday. In areas governed by Welsh law, the unit of measure for cultivated land was the carucate, equivalent to the English hide, which was roughly 120 acres and notionally the area that can be tilled by a team of oxen in a season. If we look for other holdings paying rent in honey we find the following: –
Location Carucates Sesters of honey
Caerleon 3½ 4
Ewyas castlery 1 2
Ewyas castlery 6 7
Howle 11 18
Total 21½ 31
The ratio of carucates of land to sesters of honey is highly variable but the average is around 1 carucate to 1½ sesters. This suggests that Roger’s 15 sesters of honey could be the rent from about 10 carucates or 600 acres of cultivated land, about a square mile.
To feed the ten plough teams, made up of perhaps 80 oxen, would have required extensive pasture and meadowland. In addition there would have been other cattle and sheep to support. The rental of 15 pigs suggests a herd of perhaps ten times that number, requiring a substantial acreage of woodland for its pannage of acorns and beechmast.
It is clear that soon after the Conquest, the de Lacys were defending a very substantial and valuable landholding within Wales. Roger is also recorded as holding Cusop from the King, which would suggest that by the time of the Domesday Book the whole of the Monnow valley above Walterstone was under his control.
Notes: –
- The three churches were probably Llancillo, Rowlestone and Walterstone, donated to Llanthony priory by Hugh de Lacy in 1108. St Clydawg’s and St Peter’s and St Paul’s, serving the castles at Longtown and Weobley, were not donated to Llanthony until Gilbert de Lacy’s time when the de Lacy power base had moved to Ludlow.
- A sester was about 2lbs or just under a kilogram. Before sugar was known in Britain honey was extremely valuable. The Domesday Book tells us that according to custom if anyone conceals one sester of honey from the customary due and this is proved, he pays five.