Royal Revenue and Domesday Terminology

O NE of the greatest obstacles to the understanding of Domesday Book is the varying terms and phrases in which it presents information. It is not clear whether the differences merely reflect the various personnel concerned in the inquiry, or whether they signify different conditions. Just such a confusion surrounds the renders of estates and boroughs. D.B. uses four methods of describing money renders. Three present little difficulty. These are payments by tale (ad numerum), by weight (ad pensum, adpondus), and in assayed or blanched coin (ad arsuram et pensum, blancas, candidas, albas, or other variants of these). Payment by weight was obviously designed to compensate for light or worn coins. The difference between payment by weight and by tale would, of course, depend on the weight of the coins handed over. If we assume the extant coins in the British Museum catalogue to be representative, 240 of the coins of any one type of the second decade of William I's reign would require the addition of between I4 and 28 pence to make up the pound weight. Those of the Pax type of io86, the year of the Survey, would need I 4 pence.1 A ratio of this scale is supported by the Domesday entry for Corsham, Wiltshire

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  Open Access•James Campbell•Transactions of the Royal…•1975

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