Items related to Report and transactions Volume 11
Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... one remaining Devonshire borough of that day, appears to have sustained no loss whatever. Domesday does not cite the population of Exeter; but as the King had 285 houses there rendering custom, and there were other holders of property in the city, there must have been considerably over 300 households altogether. Of the boroughs, Totnes was the most important, with 95 burgesses within the walls, and 15 without engaged in agriculture, " terra laborantes," and returning eight pounds by tale. Next comes Lydford with its 69 burgesses, and its payment of 60 shillings by weight. Lastly, we have Barnstaple, making the same return, but with 49 burgesses only. What is very noticeable here, however, is that nearly two-thirds of the burgesses of Lydford are extra-mural; and this seems to point to the conclusion that even in these early times Lydford must have possessed something of that wide jurisdiction which clung to it in later days, as the head of the Forest of Dartmoor, then as the prison of the Stannaries, and in virtue of which it still claims to be the moorland "church town," though its ecclesiastical rights have been somewhat curtailed. Be this as it may, ere the forty houses were laid waste Lydford must have been the most populous town in Devon, Exeter alone accepted; for there appears very good reason for concluding, from the increased geld of Totnes, that, unlike its companions, it had become more prosperous since " the day that King Edward was alive and dead." History is silent as to the causes of the devastation of Lydford, but there seems every reason to believe that it was connected in some way with the Conquest, and probably arose from the resistance which the sturdy little burgh offered to the Norman arms. Exeter resisted, but gave...
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