Chief proprietors Villani Molini Silvæ YORKSHIRE (Euruicscire). 65 5061 正 1842 438 Piscarii 103 122 Presbyteri 130 Other burghers 61 36 16 68 200 1716 110 9968 These may be considered as so many families, and if we take five as the general average of a family for all the counties, it would make the Anglo-Saxon population actually alluded to, at the time of the Conquest, 1,504,925, or a million and a half; but this enumeration was made after the destructive wars between William and the English, and after his dreadful devastation of a I have taken the numbers for Hampshire and Sussex from Mr. Rickman's enumeration; and have, in all the rest, assumed, as he has done in these, a man for every silva, molinum, pastura, domus, &c. that is mentioned. The effect of these wars appear frequently in Domesday. Thus in the county Yorkshire, which left one hundred miles of the country, north of the Humber, a mere desert, 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 eighty-four 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 Bedford; 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 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 "vastatæ." In York 540 are noticed as "vacua." Many such occur in other counties. See Turner's Hist. Eng. vol. i. a 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 Cum berland and Durham. * See Stephanides's Life of Becket. f 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. 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 freemen; and their counties seem to have been well peopled. Thus, 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,h 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 powerful 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, he should be presumed to be free. It was perhaps as much by the destruction of the Anglo-Saxon great proprietors as by their own colonists near the Baltic, that the number of the free were so numerous in the districts where the Danes had predominated. & P. 74. VOL. II. 29 h P. 1 and 3. BOOK IX. THEIR POETRY, LITERATURE, ARTS, AND SCIENCES. CHAPTER I. Their Native or Vernacular Poetry. As poetry has been always classed among the 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 countrymen. In no country can the progress of the poetical genius and taste be more satisfactorily traced than in our own. During that period which this work attempts to commemorate, we find it in its earliest state. It could, indeed, have been scarcely more rude, to have been at all discernible. But though its dress was homely, and its features coarse, yet it was preparing to assume the style, the measures, and the subjects, which in subsequent ages were so happily displayed as to deserve the notice of the latest posterity. The poetry of the Anglo-Saxons was of two sorts; the poems which they composed in their own tongue, and the poems which they wrote in Latin. These two kinds of poetry were completely distinct from each other;-distinct in origin; distinct in style. The Anglo-Saxon native poetry may be distinguished into its mind and its style. In the mind of poetry we look for its imagination, its feeling, and its force of thought; but these in all ages obey and display the tastes, sentiment, and habits of the passing day. In the Anglo-Saxon times, though women were highly respected and valued, yet that cultivated feeling which we call love, in its intellectual tenderness and finer sympathies, was neither predominant nor probably known. The stern and active passions were the rulers of society, and all the amusements were gross or severe. Women were reverenced, but not loved; and hence, except in the little effusions which have been noticed of our self-cultivated Alfred, there is no affectionate allusion to the fair sex in any Anglo-Saxon poem. War and religion were the absorbing subjects of this period, and all the imagination, and feeling, and thought which exist in the Anglo-Saxon poetry are connected with one or both of these topics. There can be no poetry without imagination and feeling; but these endeared qualities appear in different nations, and in different states of society, in very dissimilar forms. In the Anglo-Saxon poetry they took the peculiar shape of the metaphor and the periphrasis. The imagination exerted itself in framing those abrupt and imperfect hints or fragments of similes which we call metaphors, and the feeling expressed its emotions by that redundant repetition of phrases, which, though it added little to the meaning of the poet's lay, was yet the emphatic effusion of his heart, and excited consenting sympathies in those to whom it was addressed. This habit of paraphrasing the sentiment is the great peculiarity of the mind of the Anglo-Saxon poetry; the metaphor may be frequently observed, but the periphrasis is never long absent. The style of their poetry was as peculiar. It has been much disputed by what rules or laws the Saxons arranged their poetical phrases. I have observed a passage in the general works of Bede which may end the controversy, by showing that they used no rules at all, but adopted the simpler principle of consulting only the natural love of melody, of which the human organs of hearing have been made susceptible; and of using that easy allocation of syllables which pleased the musical ear. In defining rhythmus, Bede says, "It is a modulated composition of words, not according to the laws of metre, but adapted in the number of its syllables to the judgment of the ear, as are the verses of our vulgar (or native) poets. “Metre is an artificial rule with modulation; rhythmus is the modulation, without the rule. For the most part, you find, by a sort of chance, some rule in rhythm; yet this is not from an artificial government of the syllables, but because the sound and modulation lead to it. The vulgar poets effect this rustically; the skilful attain it by their skill; as, Rex eterne! Domine! From this passage it is obvious that Bede's poetical countrymen wrote their vernacular verses without any other rule than that of pleasing the ear. To such a selection and arrangement of words as produced this effect, they added the habit of frequently omitting the usual particles, and of conveying their |