4

destructive wars between William and the English?, CHAP. and after his dreadful devastation of Yorkshire, which left one hundred miles of the country, north of the Humber, a mere desert 3; hence the number of that county is so small. Four counties are also' entirely omitted ; as Cumberland, Durham, Lancaster, and Northumberland. But London, a century afterwards, is stated to have furnished sixty thousand fighting men'; therefore its population cannot have then been less than three hundred thousand persons. In Domesday-book it is also obvious that all the burghers, or actual inhabitants of the cities and burghs, are not mentioned. When Canterbury was burnt by the Danes in 1006, it contained eight thousand men, of whom only eightyfour survived the ruin. Only one thousand six hundred are mentioned in Domesday-book eighty years afterwards, though a city so venerated and celebrated must have recovered its prosperity. But in other cities and towns it is manifest that almost all the residents are omitted; as in Bristol, where only ten are noticed, though this was at that time a great trading city ; only seventy at Yarmouth;

} fifty-two only at Buckingham ; nine only at Bed

l

2 The effects of these wars appear frequently in Domesday. Thus in the county of Dorset, it is said that in Dorchester were, in the time of the Confessor, 172 houses, but that 100 had been entirely destroyed; so in Wareham 143, of which 73 were “penitus destructæ ;" so in Shaftesbury 38 out of 104, p. 75. So in Oxford, though 243 houses paid gold, yet 478 had become so

“ vastæ" as to yield none.

In Ipswich 328 were vastate.” In York 540 are noticed as vacuæ." Many such occur in other counties.

3 See Turner's Hist. Eng. vol. i.

4 These were the border counties, the seat of almost continual warfare ; and part of them were then in the power of Malcolm, the king of Scotland, especially Cumberland and Durham. 5 See Stephanides's Life of Becket. VOL. III.

S

6

a

BOOK ford; five at Sudbury; seventy at Hereford; forty

two at Dover; and but forty-six at St. Alban's, though a place peculiarly frequented and respected. Winchester, though then a large town, is not mentioned.

All the monks, and nearly all the parochial clergy, are omitted. So in the different counties it will be found that, excepting in the Danish counties, and in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, which they also pervaded, very few of the actual freemen are enumerated. It would seem as if those persons were chiefly, if not only, recorded whose lands and tenements rendered some payments or services to the crown or state, or had been supposed to do so. Hence there is a careful enumeration of the extent of the lands, and of the cultivators that had to defend themselves; that is, to contribute to the military force of the country in the proportions alluded to, but little more than this is attended to; and though this contribution was a very general obligation on the landed property of the country, yet the charters show us that some parts were exempt from it. If we take all these things into consideration, we shall perceive that the Anglo-Saxon population, in the period just before the Norman conquest, must have exceeded two MILLIONS.

This enumeration intimates to us the political benefits which resulted from the invasions of the Northmen. They appear to have planted in the colonies they occupied a numerous race of free

6 We may infer the extent of the omission as to the parochial clergy from recollecting that the parish churches in England, in the middle ages, were stated to be 46,822.

men; and their counties seem to have been well peopled. Thus,

IX.

In Essex

343 sochmanni.

306 liberi homines.
Leicestershire 1716 sochmanni.
Lincolnshire 11,322 sochmanni.
Nottinghamshire 1565 sochmanni.
Norfolk

5521 sochmanni.

4981 lib. hom. Suffolk

8012 lib. hom.

1014 sochmanni. York

438 sochmanni.

This enumeration of the population shows how large a proportion of Englishmen were then in the servile state ; for that villani were in a state of bondage is manifest from the manner in which they are mentioned in our ancient Glanville?, Bracton, and Fleta®, who say that even holding a freehold does not give liberty to a villanus; a remark not observed by those who have deemed villani free peasants, because they were found to have lands. The bordarii, servi, cotarii, cosces, &c. were similarly circumstanced. In Domesday-book, burghers are mentioned as having bordarii under them. There can be no doubt that nearly three-fourths of the Anglo-Saxon population were in a state of slavery ; and nothing could have broken the pow. erful chains of law and force by which the landed aristocracy held their people in bondage, but such events as the Norman conquest, and the civil wars which it excited and fostered, and in which such numbers of the nobility perished; and also that wise and humane law which directed that if a slave was not claimed by his lord within a limited period,

VIII.

BOOK he should be presumed to be free. It was perhaps

as much by the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon great proprietors, as by Northman colonists near the Baltic, that the number of the free were so numerous in the districts where the Danes had predominated.'

9

9 Since I made the preceding enumeration, I have observed that Sir William Petty says “there were about two millions at the Norman Conquest, of which consult the Domesday-book.” – Essays on Polit. Arith. p. 15. ed. 1755. So that our computations, both made in. dependent of each other, remarkably coincide.

BOOK IX.

Their Poetry, LITERATURE, ARTS, and Sciences.

CHAP. I.

Their Native or Vernacular Poetry.

CHAP.

1.

men.

As poetry has been always classed among the chap. most interesting productions of the human mind, few topics of human research are more curious than the history of this elegant art, from its rude beginning to that degree of excellence to which it has long been raised by our ingenious country

In every nation it is the child of feeling; but different emotions of an intellectual sensibility prevail in different ages and states of society. Where the adoration of the Creator predominates, as in Judea, the poetical composition takes the form of the loftiest sentiments of religion. Where war and battle chiefly agitate, as among the Northmen and the ancient Britons, the Scald and Bard chiefly sing of conflict and slaughter, and the triumph of victory. Where the fair sex have become objects of love, competition, and respect, the tender affections impel and dictate the imploring, the praising, or the consolatory lay'; while

| How early this feeling begins, even among rude tribes, the following instance of a New Zealander's song will indicate.

The New Zealanders are at present (1827) in a state very like that of the Anglo-Saxons when they visited England, and display much of the same mixture of active mind, high spirit, fearless boldness, unfeeling cruelty, and barbaric ignorance which distinguished our ancestors. Some of them even appear to have been cannibals, and yet one of their milder spirits can thus express himself: