Domesday Slavery

Summary

Introduction

If it is tedious to begin by defining one’s terms, then it must inevitably be even more tedious to begin by defining one’s translation of terms. More tedious, doubtless, but undoubtedly necessary. Certainly by the thirteenth century servus may be regarded for many purposes as synonymous with villanus and nativus and the first two are commonly translated as ‘serf’ and ‘villein’. But most historians would hesitate to translate villanus as ‘villein’ in an eleventhcentury context, and Sir Frank Stenton approved the more neutral term ‘villager’, quite rightly emphasising that ‘The servi and ancillae of Domesday Book are undoubtedly male and female slaves’. Other historians were inconsistently both Maitland and Vinogradoff in one of their works referred consistently to ‘slaves’ and ‘slavery’, in another, still dealing with the Anglo-Norman period, to ‘serfs’ and ‘serfage’. More recently, H. C. Darby moved in the opposite direction: having rendered servus as ‘serfs’ throughout the regional volumes of his Domesday Geography, ‘following the practice of the VCH’ he changed to ‘slave’ in his concluding summary. The major objection to translating servus as ‘serf’ before the reign of Henry II is that it confuses two distinct historical processes: the decline of slavery, effectively complete in Henry I’s reign, and the linked rise of serfdom and common-law villeinage from Glanvill’s time.

In settling this dreary question of translation it has already been necessary to refer to authorities other than Domesday Book. As Maitland had himself remarked,

Of the legal position of the servus Domesday Book tells us little or nothing; but earlier and later documents oblige us to think of him as a slave (my italics).

We do need to consider the Domesday evidence in the light of other sources and in the context of known or suspected economic, social, political and religious trends, not only because Domesday Book is not comprehensive but also beeause Domesday Book is otherwise not fully comprehensible. It is my belief that some at least of the questions about the Domesday (Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman) slaves are capable of fuller answers than have usually been given if non-Domesday sources are laid under contribution.