On riding through each village and town since leaving London they had felt the hostile eyes of the local population on them. The few workers out and about in the fields near Thorrington stopped their winter work of gathering wood or repairing fences and stared at the strangers as they rode past, although Alan presumed that in such an isolated area they would have done so with any passers-by.
It was Tuesday the 16th of January and a bitterly cold day. The frozen ground crunched at each step taken, and the breath of man and beast hung in the still air before them. The men sat slumped on their saddles, wrapped tightly in their thick woollen cloaks.
Despite the feeling of hostility all around them, Alan had insisted that they ride without armour. He was determined that if he was going to live in this land he was not going to live in fear of an arrow in the back. However, all five had kept their swords handy and loose in their scabbards.
Alan noted that the village of Thorrington was arranged around the usual village green, with a tavern and a small wooden church with the tithe-barn alongside. There were probably thirty cottages facing the dirt track that ran around the village green, nearly all with a small vegetable garden at the rear and many with a pig-pen or chicken coop, and often both. There was a large barn and a granary. Snow sat heavily on thatched roofs and here and there it had been blown by the wind into drifts several feet deep on the ground. Smoke rose from the stone chimney of the smithy and the regular banging of metal on metal could be heard. A stream, the beginnings of Alresford Creek, ran through the village, with a little wooden bridge over it. Just downstream of the village was the mill, its water wheel turning lazily. At the far side of the village was the manor house fortified in the usual Saxon style with a wooden palisade surrounding the Hall and its outbuildings at a distance of about twenty paces.
Beyond the village, about half a mile away near the tidal headwaters of Barfleet Creek, was the salt-house that serviced the salt pans on the flat tidal land next to Alresford Creek, Barfleet Creek and, further away, the Colne estuary near the mouth of Alresford Creek.
All the buildings in the village were of cob or half-wood construction with thatched roofs. The Hall was quite large, about forty paces long and twenty wide. Its walls were neatly lime-washed and pierced by four windows on each side, the shutters closed to keep out the winter cold. Smoke rose lazily from a small hole centrally located in the roof, and also escaped in a tendrils from the thatched roof. A stable-hand could be seen at work mucking out the stables and forking new straw into each stall. The kitchen was a separate building located about ten paces from the Hall, to minimise the risk of fire and also to keep the bustle, noise and smell of the cooking away from the nobles in the Hall.
They dismounted just inside the palisade without being challenged and having seen no guard. Alan called for the stable hand to come and take the five horses, instructing him in slow but understandable English to rub them down, water and feed them. He clapped his gloved hands together to restore circulation in the bitter cold- he had been hardly able to feel the leather straps of the reins during the ride. The noise of their arrival had attracted a small crowd and when he turned to face them Alan called out in Anglo-Saxon English, “Who’s the senior here?”
A small man with long brown hair and about thirty years of age, looking a little like a weasel and dressed traditionally in a woollen tunic with breeches and cross-leggings advanced to the front of the crowd and said, “That would be me, Sir. My name is Kendrick. What can I do for you?”
“You are aware that the former owner of this estate, Estan, died at Hastings with no heir. The king has given this estate to me and I’ve come to claim it,” said Alan. “These are my men Hugh, Baldwin, Roger and Warren. They speak little English, so some patience will be required on both sides until they learn. Now let’s get inside out of this damn cold!”
On walking inside Alan saw that most of the building was comprised of the usual single Hall, but that somewhat unusually one end of the building had been divided off into two rooms. The light in the Hall was dim, mainly cast by a roaring central fire and a few smoking rush torches set into brackets on the posts that ran in two rows down the Hall, supporting the roof. The smoke from the fire and rushes cast a haze in the air and caught at the throat. The Hall was sparsely furnished with a few benches and tables, mainly drawn near the central fireplace; a thick layer of reasonably fresh rushes were underfoot. A quick look through the door into each of the rooms showed one to be a bedchamber with a large bed and the other a solar or private sitting room.
“Firstly, show me the strong-box and give me the key,” Alan ordered Kendrick.
As was usual the strongbox was in the bedchamber, and once he had secured the key Alan was not sufficiently ill-mannered to check what it contained before he spoke to the Hall staff. Alan had Kendrick call the staff together, asked each their names and addressed them together, letting them know that, provided they performed their duties properly, their positions were secure. Alan then asked Kendrick to call a meeting of all the freemen of the village the following day, to be held at the tithe-barn at noon with the church bell to be rung before the meeting, and before that for Alan to meet with both the village head-man Tolland, a wealthy cheorl, and also the village priest.
Next Alan went into the bedchamber and used the key to open the strongbox. There was very little money in the box, less than?1, and no books of account. Most importantly it contained the ownership records for the manor, the landboc, confirming the grant of land to Estan by King Edward. Alan went back out into the Hall and sat on a bench at a scrubbed wooden table near the fire, still with his thick green woollen cloak wrapped around him as he ate a bowl of thick vegetable pottage and warmed his hands on a cup of mulled ale.
When he had finished eating he collected the bottle of ink that he had set by the fire to thaw, and a quill and parchment from his bag, before returning to the table and queried Kendrick about the accounts. He was told that there were no books of account, Kendrick using the ‘poor illiterate and ignorant servant’ routine. On being pressed Kendrick agreed that perhaps there were some books that Estan had kept and promised to look for them amongst his former master’s possessions.
Alan then had Kendrick sit and specify the obligations of each cheorl, sokeman, gebur and cottar and the names and details of each slave, while he made notes with quill and ink on parchment for future reference.
That night Alan slept in the bedchamber. His men slept in the solar and took turns to stand guard outside the adjacent doors of the two rooms, while the remainder slept.
At Terce the following morning Tolland arrived. Life in the country was more difficult than life in the city for several reasons; one being the difficulty in arranging and attending meetings. In the absence of abbey bells ringing every three hours, time was largely a matter of mutual consent.
Tolland was a large and strongly built man of middle years with dark hair. He was a wealthy freeman, as was shown by the well-made but not ostentatious brown woollen tunic and trews that he wore. He brought with him his deputy, Erian the Taverner, a portly man of medium height.
Alan grasped forearms with both and invited them to sit at the high table and eat and drink as they talked. Alan had Tolland give a general description of the village and its inhabitants and the way that cultivation of the land occurred. “This looks like a prosperous and well-run community. I have two ploughs and teams, and the men of the village have three,” said Alan. “There are four hides of land- that is 480 acres, of which about one third is in my demesne. The king has decreed that geld will again be payable, and the village assessment is 8 shillings a year. One third of that is payable by me. That’s two shillings and seven pence. The rest is payable by the freemen of the village, payable in instalments each Quarter Day. For the freemen of the village to pay the geld each Quarter Day, the first on Lady Day in just under three months, is likely to take food from the mouths and clothes from the backs of your villagers. That is not in the interests of either myself or the villagers, who I see as being my people.”
Toland frowned and nodded his acknowledgement of what Alan had said. “Why the imposition of the geld, after fifteen years? I would have thought with the coming of the Normans we would be safer from attack by the Danes, rather than more vulnerable. Does the king intend to reintroduce the fleet that Edward paid off fifteen years ago, and hire more huscarles?” asked Tolland astutely.
“I doubt it,” replied Alan honestly. “It’s a revenue-raising exercise that we all must pay, Norman and English alike. In addition, I have to provide six mounted and armoured men-at-arms for forty days a year- not just from this village but from all the manors I have been given in this Hundred. At least myself, and the villagers in my honour, do not have to pay the Heriot that many of the thegns and even the Church will have to pay. In the end it is the freemen who suffer, as all the wealth of the land comes from their efforts. What is my problem is also the problem of the village, down to the lowest slave. And vice versa- what is the village’s problem is my problem, as I’m responsible for all that happens here. So we have a problem that affects us all.
“As you know, I’ve called a village meeting for later today. I would suggest that you seek the counsel of the other senior cheorls in the village. My suggestion is that what we should do is to increase production so that we
