174-590: The Kingdom of the South Saxons , today referred to as the Kingdom of Sussex ( / ˈ s ʌ s ɪ k s / ; from Middle English : Suth-sæxe , in turn from Old English : Suth-Seaxe or Sūþseaxna rīce , meaning "(land or people of/Kingdom of) the South Saxons"), was one of the seven traditional kingdoms of the Heptarchy of Anglo-Saxon England . On the south coast of the island of Great Britain , it
348-437: A Quoit Brooch Style buckle , which would indicate settlement here to the early 5th century. Subsequent excavations revealed a considerable area of Saxon buildings. Of the 22 buildings excavated, three were sunken huts, 17 are rectangular founded on individual post holes, one is represented by post holes between which are beam slots, and one by eight single large posts. Highdown is the only 5th-century Saxon cemetery found outside
522-401: A King Æðelstan . A little later, Æðelberht was King of Sussex, but he is known only from charters. The dates of Æðelberht's reign are unknown beyond the fact that he was a contemporary of Sigeferth , Bishop of Selsey from 733, as Sigeferth witnessed an undated charter of Æðelberht in which Æðelberht is styled Ethelbertus rex Sussaxonum. After this we hear nothing more until about 765, when
696-631: A Romano-British community was based there and that they controlled a group of Saxon mercenaries. Despite the difficulties presented by the large forest tract of the Weald that separated Sussex from Surrey, similarities in the archaeological record from this period between Sussex and Surrey help to substantiate the claim of Ælle of Sussex to be the first Bretwalda in the Thames Valley . Such unified regional commands were probably not long-lasting. J. N. L. Myres posits that archaeological evidence, in
870-486: A baron's possessions; and it also showed to what extent he had under-tenants and the identities of the under-tenants. This was of great importance to William, not only for military reasons but also because of his resolve to command the personal loyalty of the under-tenants (though the "men" of their lords) by making them swear allegiance to him. As Domesday Book normally records only the Christian name of an under-tenant, it
1044-415: A definitive reference point as to property holdings across the nation, in case such evidence was needed in disputes over Crown ownership. The Domesday survey, therefore, recorded the names of the new holders of lands and the assessments on which their tax was to be paid. But it did more than this; by the king's instructions, it endeavoured to make a national valuation list, estimating the annual value of all
1218-642: A definitive story. The preservation of Ælle's sons in Old English place names is unusual. The names of the founders, in other origin legends, seem to have British and/ or Latin roots not Old English. It is likely that the foundation stories were known before the 9th century, but the annalists manipulated them to provide a common origin for the new regime. These myths proport that the British were defeated and replaced by invading Anglo-Saxons arriving in small ships. These origin stories were largely believed right up to
1392-678: A demonstrative ( þis , þat ), after a possessive pronoun (e.g., hir , our ), or with a name or in a form of address. This derives from the Old English "weak" declension of adjectives. This inflexion continued to be used in writing even after final -e had ceased to be pronounced. In earlier texts, multisyllable adjectives also receive a final -e in these situations, but this occurs less regularly in later Middle English texts. Otherwise, adjectives have no ending and adjectives already ending in -e etymologically receive no ending as well. Earlier texts sometimes inflect adjectives for case as well. Layamon's Brut inflects adjectives for
1566-524: A grant of land is made by a king named Ealdwulf , with two other kings, Ælfwald and Oslac , as witnesses. In 765 and 770 grants are made by a King Osmund , the latter one was later confirmed by Offa of Mercia . The independent existence of the Kingdom of Sussex came to an end in the early 770s. In 771, King Offa of Mercia conquered the territory of the Haestingas ; he may have entered Sussex from
1740-523: A great political convulsion such as the Norman Conquest, and the following wholesale confiscation of landed estates, William needed to reassert that the rights of the Crown, which he claimed to have inherited, had not suffered in the process. His Norman followers tended to evade the liabilities of their English predecessors. Historians believe the survey was to aid William in establishing certainty and
1914-537: A large part of central Sussex between the Rivers Adur and Ouse until the founding of Lewes in the 9th century. By the 11th century the towns were mostly developments of the fortified towns ( burhs ) founded in the reign of Alfred the Great. The ancient droveways of Sussex linked coastal and downland communities in the south with summer pasture land in the interior of the Weald. The droveways were used throughout
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#17327660028002088-502: A largely Anglo-Saxon vocabulary (with many Norse borrowings in the northern parts of the country) but a greatly simplified inflectional system. The grammatical relations that were expressed in Old English by the dative and instrumental cases were replaced in Early Middle English with prepositional constructions. The Old English genitive - es survives in the -'s of the modern English possessive , but most of
2262-494: A lengthened – and later also modified – pronunciation of a preceding vowel. For example, in name , originally pronounced as two syllables, the /a/ in the first syllable (originally an open syllable) lengthened, the final weak vowel was later dropped, and the remaining long vowel was modified in the Great Vowel Shift (for these sound changes, see Phonology , above). The final ⟨e⟩ , now silent, thus became
2436-495: A lesser extent), and, therefore, it cannot be attributed simply to the influence of French-speaking sections of the population: English did, after all, remain the vernacular . It is also argued that Norse immigrants to England had a great impact on the loss of inflectional endings in Middle English. One argument is that, although Norse and English speakers were somewhat comprehensible to each other due to similar morphology,
2610-572: A mill for every forty-six peasant households and implies a great increase in the consumption of baked bread in place of boiled and unground porridge . The book also lists 28,000 slaves , a smaller number than had been enumerated in 1066. In the Domesday Book, scribes' orthography was heavily geared towards French, most lacking k and w, regulated forms for sounds / ð / and / θ / and ending many hard consonant words with e as they were accustomed to do with most dialects of French at
2784-509: A mint near Selsey where the finds of coins termed Series G sceattas are concentrated. That a cash economy had returned by the 10th century is suggested by the various mints which became increasingly plentiful after King Æthelstan reorganised England's coinage. There were mints at Chichester, Lewes and Steyning. A new mint also seems to have existed on a temporary basis in the Iron Age hillfort at Cissbury , which may have been refortified as
2958-513: A network of urban centres such that farmers were within 15 km to 30 km of market facilities. Agriculture seems to have flourished on the Sussex coastal plain and on the Sussex Downs. The fact that the Sussex coast appears to have been relatively densely settled for centuries implies that the land was being more competently farmed than was typical of the standard of the day. The Weald
3132-535: A new South Saxon hegemony extending from the Isle of Wight into Kent could conceivably have seen Sussex re-emerge as a regional power but the revival of Wessex ended this possibility. Eadric's rule in Kent lasted until Kent was invaded by Cædwalla who had managed to establish himself as ruler of Wessex. With his additional resources, Cædwalla once more invaded Sussex, killing Berhthun. Sussex now became for some years subject to
3306-492: A nominal 100 hides (a measure of taxable value linked to land area) but in Sussex they were generally much smaller. Sussex may also have had eight virgates for every hide; in most of England a hide was usually made up of four virgates. The population of Britain as a whole is likely to have declined sharply around the 4th century from around 2–4 million in AD ;200 to less than 1 million in AD 300. There would have been
3480-502: A period of harsh West Saxon domination. According to Bede , the subjection reduced the kingdom of Sussex to "a worse state of slavery"; it also included placing the South Saxon clergy under the authority of Wessex through the bishops of Winchester . Cædwalla also seized the Isle of Wight where he ruthlessly exterminated its population, including its royal line. According to David Dumville, Cædwalla's savage behaviour towards Sussex and
3654-528: A process called apophony ), as in Modern English. With the discontinuation of the Late West Saxon standard used for the writing of Old English in the period prior to the Norman Conquest, Middle English came to be written in a wide variety of scribal forms, reflecting different regional dialects and orthographic conventions. Later in the Middle English period, however, and particularly with
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#17327660028003828-602: A refuge during the Danish invasions in the reign of Æthelred the Unready . The Cissbury mint seems to have worked in close association with the mint at Chichester rather than replacing it. By the eve of the Norman conquest, there were further mints at Arundel, Pevensey and Hastings. Lewes seems to have prospered with overseas trade; coins from Lewes stamped "LAE URB" travelled as far as Rome. The substantial sea-faring trade of Lewes
4002-470: A regional power. Shortly afterwards, Cædwalla returned to Sussex, killing its king and putting its people into what Bede called "a worse state of slavery". The South Saxon clergy were put under the control of West Saxon Winchester . Only around 715 was Eadberht of Selsey made the first bishop of the South Saxons , after which further invasion attempts from Wessex ensued. Following a period of rule by King Offa of Mercia , Sussex regained its independence but
4176-550: A sense of identity. The boundaries of the Kingdom of Sussex probably crystallised around the 6th and 7th centuries. The Domesday Book lists four Mardens on the East Hampshire/ West Sussex border. The Old English for Marden would have been Maere-dun meaning "boundary down", reflecting their position. A tributary of the River Ems rises south of Stoughton and travels north to North Marden, completing
4350-502: A seventh circuit for the Little Domesday shires). Three sources discuss the goal of the survey : After this had the king a large meeting, and very deep consultation with his council, about this land; how it was occupied, and by what sort of men. Then sent he his men over all England into each shire; commissioning them to find out 'How many hundreds of hides were in the shire, what land the king himself had, and what stock upon
4524-462: A similarly sharp decline in the population of Sussex during this period. At the end of the 4th century there was a decline in the birth rate across Roman Britain; this population decrease would have been exacerbated by the transfer to Continental Europe of three large armies, recruited in Britain in the last 30 years of Roman rule, as well as plague and barbarian attack. Sussex's population around 450
4698-402: A subject of historical debate. Sir Michael Postan , for instance, contends that these may not represent all rural households, but only full peasant tenancies, thus excluding landless men and some subtenants (potentially a third of the country's population). H. C. Darby , when factoring in the excluded households and using various different criteria for those excluded (as well as varying sizes for
4872-548: A time after the Great Fire of London . From the 1740s onwards, they were held, with other Exchequer records, in the chapter house of Westminster Abbey . In 1859, they were transferred to the new Public Record Office , London. They are now held at the National Archives at Kew. The chest in which they were stowed in the 17th and 18th centuries is also at Kew. In modern times, the books have been removed from
5046-540: A town, where separately-recorded properties had been demolished to make way for a castle. Early British authors thought that the motivation behind the Survey was to put into William's power the lands, so that all private property in land came only from the grant of King William, by lawful forfeiture. The use of the word antecessor in the Domesday Book is used for the former holders of the lands under Edward , and who had been dispossessed by their new owners. Domesday Book
5220-524: A variant of the Northumbrian dialect (prevalent in northern England and spoken in southeast Scotland ). During the Middle English period, many Old English grammatical features either became simplified or disappeared altogether. Noun, adjective, and verb inflections were simplified by the reduction (and eventual elimination) of most grammatical case distinctions. Middle English also saw considerable adoption of Anglo-Norman vocabulary, especially in
5394-458: A witness. However, the charter is now believed to have been a 10th- or early-11th-century forgery. There is another charter, that is thought to be genuine, that records a series of transactions of a piece of land near modern-day Burpham in the Arun Valley . It starts off with a grant of land, at Peppering, by Nunna to Berhfrith probably for the foundation of a minster. Berhfrith transferred
Kingdom of Sussex - Misplaced Pages Continue
5568-725: Is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman Conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English period. Scholarly opinion varies, but the University of Valencia states the period when Middle English was spoken as being from 1150 to 1500. This stage of the development of the English language roughly coincided with
5742-590: Is a theory that Watt may have been a sub-king who ruled over a tribe of people centred around modern day Hastings, known as the Haestingas and Nunna is described, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , as the kinsman of Ine of Wessex who fought with him against Geraint , King of the Britons, in 710. According to Bede, Sussex was subject to Ine for a number of years and like Cædwalla, Ine also oppressed
5916-401: Is devoted to the somewhat arid details of the assessment and valuation of rural estates, which were as yet the only important source of national wealth. After stating the assessment of the manor , the record sets forth the amount of arable land , and the number of plough teams (each reckoned at eight oxen) available for working it, with the additional number (if any) that might be employed; then
6090-604: Is estimated to have been no more than about 25,000, rising gradually to around 35,000 by 1100. At the time of the Domesday Book in 1086, Sussex had some of the highest population densities in England. Approximate populations of Sussex towns shortly after the end of the Saxon period in 1086 at the time of the Domesday Book may have been as follows: The account of Ælle and his three sons landing at Cymenshore appears in
6264-462: Is examined more closely, perplexities and difficulties arise." One problem is that the clerks who compiled this document "were but human; they were frequently forgetful or confused." The use of Roman numerals also led to countless mistakes. Darby states, "Anyone who attempts an arithmetical exercise in Roman numerals soon sees something of the difficulties that faced the clerks." But more important are
6438-478: Is held at the National Archives at Kew , London. Domesday was first printed in full in 1783, and in 2011 the Open Domesday site made the manuscript available online. The book is an invaluable primary source for modern historians and historical economists . No survey approaching the scope and extent of Domesday Book was attempted again in Britain until the 1873 Return of Owners of Land (sometimes termed
6612-588: Is indicated by the payment of 20 shillings for munitions of war payable whenever Edward the Confessor 's fleet put to sea. This is the probable origin of the Cinque Ports organisation that flourished under the Normans. The River Ouse would have been navigable at least as far north as Lewes. Armstrong argues that while Sussex was separated from much else of mainstream English experience, this should not hide
6786-552: Is not possible to search for the surnames of families claiming a Norman origin. Scholars, however, have worked to identify the under-tenants, most of whom have foreign Christian names. The survey provided the King with information on potential sources of funds when he needed to raise money. It includes sources of income but not expenses, such as castles, unless they needed to be included to explain discrepancies between pre-and post-Conquest holdings of individuals. Typically, this happened in
6960-433: Is now rare and used only in oxen and as part of a double plural , in children and brethren . Some dialects still have forms such as eyen (for eyes ), shoon (for shoes ), hosen (for hose(s) ), kine (for cows ), and been (for bees ). Grammatical gender survived to a limited extent in early Middle English before being replaced by natural gender in the course of the Middle English period. Grammatical gender
7134-506: Is of great illustrative importance. The Inquisitio Eliensis is a record of the lands of Ely Abbey . The Exon Domesday (named because the volume was held at Exeter ) covers Cornwall , Devon, Dorset , Somerset, and one manor of Wiltshire . Parts of Devon, Dorset, and Somerset are also missing. Otherwise, this contains the full details supplied by the original returns. Through comparison of what details are recorded in which counties, six Great Domesday "circuits" can be determined (plus
Kingdom of Sussex - Misplaced Pages Continue
7308-470: Is the oldest 'public record' in England and probably the most remarkable statistical document in the history of Europe. The continent has no document to compare with this detailed description covering so great a stretch of territory. And the geographer, as he turns over the folios, with their details of population and of arable, woodland, meadow and other resources, cannot but be excited at the vast amount of information that passes before his eyes. The author of
7482-564: Is traditionally thought to have been located at what is now known as the Owers Rocks, south of Selsey , however there is no archaeological evidence to support the existence of Ælle and his three sons in the Selsey area. From 491 until the arrival of Christianity in the 7th century, there was a dearth of contemporary written material.Because of the lack of written history before the 7th century it has made it difficult for historians to produce
7656-486: Is typical of the towns which developed from the fortified burhs , which had intramural streets running around the town walls; this allowed garrison troops to defend the town and large peripheral blocks that were left as hedged areas ( hagae ) into which fugitives from the countryside could flee. Deposited around c. 470 as the kingdom of Sussex was being established, the Patching hoard of coins represents
7830-550: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , a collection of seven vernacular manuscripts, commissioned in the 9th century, some 400 years or more after the events at Cymenshore . The account describes how on landing Ælle slew the local defenders and drove the remainder into the Forest of Andred. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle goes on to describe Ælle's battle with the British in 485 near the bank of Mercredesburne , and his siege of
8004-524: The Augustinian canon Orrm wrote the Ormulum , one of the oldest surviving texts in Middle English. The influence of Old Norse aided the development of English from a synthetic language with relatively free word order to a more analytic language with a stricter word order. Both Old English and Old Norse were synthetic languages with complicated inflections. Communication between Vikings in
8178-650: The County Palatine of Durham – and parts of Wales bordering and included within English counties). Space was left in Great Domesday for a record of the City of London and Winchester , but they were never written up. Other areas of modern London were then in Middlesex , Surrey , Kent , and Essex and have their place in Domesday Book's treatment of those counties. Most of Cumberland, Westmorland, and
8352-597: The Danelaw and their Anglo-Saxon neighbours resulted in the erosion of inflection in both languages. Old Norse may have had a more profound impact on Middle and Modern English development than any other language. The effect of Old Norse on Old English was substantive, pervasive, and of a democratic character. Like close cousins, Old Norse and Old English resembled each other, and with some words and grammatical structures in common, speakers of each language roughly understood each other, but according to historian Simeon Potler
8526-616: The Early Modern English and Modern English eras. Middle English generally did not have silent letters . For example, knight was pronounced [ˈkniçt] (with both the ⟨k⟩ and the ⟨gh⟩ pronounced, the latter sounding as the ⟨ch⟩ in German Knecht ). The major exception was the silent ⟨e⟩ – originally pronounced but lost in normal speech by Chaucer's time. This letter, however, came to indicate
8700-476: The High and Late Middle Ages . Middle English saw significant changes to its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and orthography . Writing conventions during the Middle English period varied widely. Examples of writing from this period that have survived show extensive regional variation. The more standardized Old English literary variety broke down and writing in English became fragmented and localized and was, for
8874-655: The Isle of Wight and the territory of the Meonwara (the Meon valley of present-day Hampshire). Æðelwealh also married Eabe, a princess of the Hwicce , a Mercian satellite province. In 681, the exiled St Wilfrid of Northumbria arrived in the kingdom of the South Saxons and remained there for five years evangelising and baptising the people. There had been a famine in the land of the South Saxons when Wilfrid arrived. Wilfrid taught
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#17327660028009048-530: The Norman Conquest , had normally been written in French. Like Chaucer's work, this new standard was based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Clerks using this standard were usually familiar with French and Latin , influencing the forms they chose. The Chancery Standard, which was adopted slowly, was used in England by bureaucrats for most official purposes, excluding those of
9222-585: The Norman Conquest , when it was moved to Chichester by decree of the Council of London of 1075 . Shortly after the arrival of St Wilfrid, the kingdom was ravaged with "fierce slaughter and devastation" and Æðelwealh was slain by an exiled West Saxon prince Cædwalla . The latter was eventually expelled, by Æðelwealh's successors, two Ealdormen named Berhthun and Andhun . In 686 the South Saxons attacked Hlothhere , king of Kent , in support of his nephew Eadric , who afterwards became king of Kent. At this time,
9396-601: The Saxon Shore fort at Andredadsceaster (modern day Pevensey ) in 491 after which the inhabitants were massacred. The legendary foundation of Saxon Sussex, by Ælle, is likely to have originated in an oral tradition before being recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. According to legend, various places took their names from Ælle's sons. Cissa is supposed to have given his name to Chichester , Cymen to Cymenshore and Wlencing to Lancing . Cymenshore
9570-420: The hundred or wapentake in which they lay, hundreds (wapentakes in eastern England) being the second tier of local government within the counties. Each county's list opened with the king's demesne, which had possibly been the subject of separate inquiry. Under the feudal system, the king was the only true "owner" of land in England by virtue of his allodial title . He was thus the ultimate overlord, and even
9744-450: The military service due, markets, mints , and so forth. From the towns, from the counties as wholes, and from many of its ancient lordships, the crown was entitled to archaic dues in kind, such as honey . The Domesday Book lists 5,624 mills in the country, which is considered a low estimate since the book is incomplete. For comparison, fewer than 100 mills were recorded in the country a century earlier. Georges Duby indicates this means
9918-531: The "Modern Domesday") which presented the first complete, post-Domesday picture of the distribution of landed property in the United Kingdom . Domesday Book encompasses two independent works (originally in two physical volumes): "Little Domesday" (covering Norfolk , Suffolk , and Essex ), and "Great Domesday" (covering much of the remainder of England – except for lands in the north that later became Westmorland , Cumberland , Northumberland , and
10092-645: The 12th century, incorporating a unique phonetic spelling system; and the Ancrene Wisse and the Katherine Group , religious texts written for anchoresses , apparently in the West Midlands in the early 13th century. The language found in the last two works is sometimes called the AB language . Additional literary sources of the 12th and 13th centuries include Layamon's Brut and The Owl and
10266-422: The 13th century and was replaced by thorn. Thorn mostly fell out of use during the 14th century and was replaced by ⟨th⟩ . Anachronistic usage of the scribal abbreviation [REDACTED] ( þe , "the") has led to the modern mispronunciation of thorn as ⟨ y ⟩ in this context; see ye olde . Wynn, which represented the phoneme /w/ , was replaced by ⟨ w ⟩ during
10440-409: The 13th century. Due to its similarity to the letter ⟨p⟩ , it is mostly represented by ⟨w⟩ in modern editions of Old and Middle English texts even when the manuscript has wynn. Under Norman influence, the continental Carolingian minuscule replaced the insular script that had been used for Old English. However, because of the significant difference in appearance between
10614-473: The 14th century, even after the loss of the majority of the continental possessions of the English monarchy . In the aftermath of the Black Death of the 14th century, there was significant migration into London , of people to the counties of the southeast of England and from the east and central Midlands of England, and a new prestige London dialect began to develop as a result of this clash of
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#173276600280010788-604: The 1540s after the printing and wide distribution of the English Bible and Prayer Book , which made the new standard of English publicly recognizable and lasted until about 1650. The main changes between the Old English sound system and that of Middle English include: The combination of the last three processes listed above led to the spelling conventions associated with silent ⟨e⟩ and doubled consonants (see under Orthography , below). Middle English retains only two distinct noun-ending patterns from
10962-438: The 19th century. Archaeology gives a different settlement picture to that indicated by the South Saxon foundation story. Germanic tribes probably first arrived in Sussex earlier in the 5th century than AD 477. The archaeological evidence that we do have indicates the area of settlement by the location of cemeteries of the period. The origins of the settlers can be derived by comparing the design of grave goods and pottery with
11136-810: The 19th century. They were held originally in various offices of the Exchequer : the Chapel of the Pyx of Westminster Abbey ; the Treasury of Receipts; and the Tally Court. However, on several occasions they were taken around the country with the Chancellor of the Exchequer: to York and Lincoln in 1300, to York in 1303 and 1319, to Hertford in the 1580s or 1590s, and to Nonsuch Palace , Surrey, in 1666 for
11310-435: The 5th and 6th centuries this coastline must have resembled their original homeland between coastal Friesland , Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein . The landscape gave rise to some key regional differences within the kingdom. The rich coastal plain continued to be the base for the large estates, ruled by their thegns , some of whom had their boundaries confirmed by charters. The Downs were more deserted. South Saxon impact
11484-512: The 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book. In August 2006, the contents of Domesday went online, with an English translation of the book's Latin. Visitors to the website are able to look up a place name and see the index entry made for the manor, town, city or village. They can also, for a fee, download the relevant page. In the Middle Ages, the Book's evidence was frequently invoked in
11658-574: The Anglo-Saxon ealdormanries were abolished by the Danish kings and replaced with a smaller number of larger earldoms. Wulfnoth Cild was the father of Godwin , who was made Earl of Wessex in 1020. His earldom included Sussex. When he died in 1053, Godwin was succeeded as Earl of Wessex (including Sussex) by his son Harold , who had previously been Earl of East Anglia. Edward the Confessor , who had spent much of his early life in exile in Normandy,
11832-572: The Church and legalities, which used Latin and Law French respectively. The Chancery Standard's influence on later forms of written English is disputed, but it did undoubtedly provide the core around which Early Modern English formed. Early Modern English emerged with the help of William Caxton 's printing press, developed during the 1470s. The press stabilized English through a push towards standardization, led by Chancery Standard enthusiast and writer Richard Pynson . Early Modern English began in
12006-497: The Conqueror, and Saxon power in Sussex was at an end. The earliest recorded Viking raid on Sussex took place in 895 and it was particularly difficult for a scattered farming community to meet these sudden attacks. In 895 the population of Chichester killed many hundreds of Danes who plundered the area. Eadulf, a Saxon noble, was appointed to organise the defence of Sussex but died from the plague before much could be done. Alfred
12180-440: The Great almost certainly inaugurated the building of a series of burhs or forts to be garrisoned at the threat of danger by men drawn from the surrounding population. The development of the burhs across the southern half of England suggests a considerable awareness of a repeated problem The Burghal Hidage documents five such fortifications in Sussex — at Chichester , Burpham , Lewes, Hastings and Eorpeburnan . In
12354-410: The Isle of Wight can be explained by Sussex's westward expansion with assistance from Mercia at the expense of Wessex and Cædwalla was determined that this should never happen again. Of the later South Saxon kings we have little knowledge except from occasional charters . In 692 a grant is made by a king called Noðhelm (or Nunna ) to his sister, which is witnessed by another king called Watt . There
12528-405: The Kingdom of Kent, where he was already dominant. By 772 he apparently controlled the whole of the Kingdom of Sussex. Offa also confirmed two charters of Æðelberht , and in 772 he grants land himself in Sussex, with Oswald , dux Suðsax , as a witness. It is probable that about this time Offa annexed the kingdom of Sussex, as several persons, Osmund , Ælfwald and Oslac , who had previously used
12702-535: The Kingdom of Sussex were sometimes different from other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and regions. By the Late Saxon period, the main administrative unit of Sussex was the district known as the rape . Their origins may be earlier, possibly originating in the Romano-British period. The rapes were sub-divided into hundreds , which served as taxation and administrative districts. In England generally these contained
12876-713: The London area only rarely. In 1861–1863, they were sent to Southampton for photozincographic reproduction . In 1918–19, prompted by the threat of German bombing during the First World War , they were evacuated (with other Public Record Office documents) to Bodmin Prison , Cornwall. Likewise, in 1939–1945, during the Second World War , they were evacuated to Shepton Mallet Prison , Somerset. The volumes have been rebound on several occasions. Little Domesday
13050-557: The Nightingale . Some scholars have defined "Early Middle English" as encompassing English texts up to 1350. This longer time frame would extend the corpus to include many Middle English Romances (especially those of the Auchinleck manuscript c. 1330 ). Gradually, the wealthy and the government Anglicised again, although Norman (and subsequently French ) remained the dominant language of literature and law until
13224-591: The Norse speakers' inability to reproduce the ending sounds of English words influenced Middle English's loss of inflectional endings. Important texts for the reconstruction of the evolution of Middle English out of Old English are the Peterborough Chronicle , which continued to be compiled up to 1154; the Ormulum , a biblical commentary probably composed in Lincolnshire in the second half of
13398-544: The Old English -eþ , Midland dialects showing -en from about 1200, and Northern forms using -es in the third person singular as well as the plural. The past tense of weak verbs was formed by adding an -ed(e) , -d(e) , or -t(e) ending. The past-tense forms, without their personal endings, also served as past participles with past-participle prefixes derived from Old English: i- , y- , and sometimes bi- . Strong verbs , by contrast, formed their past tense by changing their stem vowel (e.g., binden became bound ,
13572-713: The Old Norse influence was strongest in the dialects under Danish control that composed the southern part of the Northern England (corresponding to the Scandinavian Kingdom of Jórvík ), the East Midlands and the East of England , words in the spoken language emerged in the 10th and 11th centuries near the transition from Old to Middle English. Influence on the written languages only appeared from
13746-563: The Ouse and Cuckmere was believed to have been the location for the federate treaty settlement of Anglo-Saxon mercenaries. Whatever the original settlement pattern of the early Germanic settlers, their culture came to rapidly dominate the whole of Sussex. There is some evidence to support the treaty hypothesis, based on the grave finds of the period. For example, the excavation of one of the cemeteries, at Rookery Hill at Bishopstone, East Sussex , yielded late Roman or insular Roman metalwork including
13920-560: The Ouse/Cuckmere area, and is 2 km from a hoard of Roman gold and silver that was found in 1997. The Patching hoard , as it came to be known, contained a coin as recent as AD 470. Thus, Highdown cemetery would have been in use by Saxons when the hoard was buried at Patching. The settlement that used Highdown as a burial ground in the 5th century has never been identified, but White speculates that there may have been some link between Patching and Highdown, and Welch has suggested that
14094-436: The Saxon era by the South Saxons and probably originated before the Roman occupation of Britain. The droveways formed a road system that clearly suggests that the settlers in the oldest developed parts of Sussex were concerned not so much with east–west connections between neighbouring settlements as with north–south communication between each settlement and its outlying woodland pasture. The droving roads had an enduring effect on
14268-464: The Saxons as Andredsleah or Andredsweald , known today as the Weald. This forest, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , was 120 miles (190 km) wide and 30 miles (50 km) deep (although probably closer to 90 miles (140 km) wide). It was the largest remaining area of woodland and heath in the territories that became England and was inhabited by wolves, boars and possibly bears. It
14442-564: The Sheriff had one hundred and seventy-six manors in Devon and four nearby in Somerset and Dorset . Tenants-in-chief held variable proportions of their manors in demesne , and had subinfeudated to others, whether their own knights (often tenants from Normandy), other tenants-in-chief of their own rank, or members of local English families. Manors were generally listed within each chapter by
14616-618: The South Saxons sought to secure their independence by alliance with Mercia. To the South Saxons, the more distant influence and control of a king from Mercia is likely to have been preferable to that of the West Saxons. The alliance between Mercia and the South Saxons was further sealed by Æðelwealh , king of Sussex, receiving baptism into the Christian church through the Mercian court, with Wulfhere acting as his sponsor, making Æðelwealh Sussex's first Christian king. Wulfhere gave Æðelwealh
14790-486: The Unready as Eaduuine dux . His name was also added to a forged charter dated 956 (possibly an error for 976). In the next generation, Wulfnoth Cild , a Sussex thegn , played a prominent part in English politics. In 1009 his actions resulted in the destruction of the English fleet, and by 1011 Sussex, together with most of South East England, was in the hands of the Danes. In an early example of local government reform,
14964-412: The Weald of Sussex and Surrey and appears to have attempted to find support in Sussex. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records a further campaign against the South Saxons by the West Saxons in 725. According to a charter dated 775, the former abbot of Selsey , Bishop Eadberht of Selsey ( c. 705 x?709) – (716 x?), was given a grant of land by King Nunna ; the document included King Watt as
15138-584: The West Saxon dynasty. According to Heather Edwards in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , it is probable that Sussex was not annexed by Wessex until 827. The earldom of Sussex seems later to have been sometimes combined with that of Kent. Æthelberht of Wessex was ruling Sussex and the other south-eastern kingdoms by 855, and succeeded to the kingship of Wessex on the death of his brother, King Æthelbald , thus bringing Sussex fully under
15312-710: The abundance of Modern English words for the mechanisms of government that are derived from Anglo-Norman, such as court , judge , jury , appeal , and parliament . There are also many Norman-derived terms relating to the chivalric cultures that arose in the 12th century, an era of feudalism , seigneurialism , and crusading . Words were often taken from Latin, usually through French transmission. This gave rise to various synonyms, including kingly (inherited from Old English), royal (from French, inherited from Vulgar Latin), and regal (from French, which borrowed it from Classical Latin). Later French appropriations were derived from standard, rather than Norman, French. Examples of
15486-421: The alternative spelling "Domesdei" became popular for a while. The usual modern scholarly convention is to refer to the work as "Domesday Book" (or simply as "Domesday"), without a definite article. However, the form "the Domesday Book" is also found in both academic and non-academic contexts. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that planning for the survey was conducted in 1085, and the book's colophon states
15660-494: The areas of politics, law, the arts, and religion, as well as poetic and emotive diction. Conventional English vocabulary remained primarily Germanic in its sources, with Old Norse influences becoming more apparent. Significant changes in pronunciation took place, particularly involving long vowels and diphthongs, which in the later Middle English period began to undergo the Great Vowel Shift . Little survives of early Middle English literature , due in part to Norman domination and
15834-476: The article on the book in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica noted, "To the topographer, as to the genealogist, its evidence is of primary importance, as it not only contains the earliest survey of each township or manor, but affords, in the majority of cases, a clue to its subsequent descent." Darby also notes the inconsistencies, saying that "when this great wealth of data
16008-489: The average household), concludes that the 268,984 households listed most likely indicate a total English population between 1.2 and 1.6 million. Domesday names a total of 13,418 places. Apart from the wholly rural portions, which constitute its bulk, Domesday contains entries of interest concerning most towns, which were probably made because of their bearing on the fiscal rights of the crown therein. These include fragments of custumals (older customary agreements), records of
16182-583: The beginning of the 13th century, this delay in Scandinavian lexical influence in English has been attributed to the lack of written evidence from the areas of Danish control, as the majority of written sources from Old English were produced in the West Saxon dialect spoken in Wessex , the heart of Anglo-Saxon political power at the time. The Norman Conquest of England in 1066 saw the replacement of
16356-633: The behest of King William the Conqueror . The manuscript was originally known by the Latin name Liber de Wintonia , meaning "Book of Winchester ", where it was originally kept in the royal treasury. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle states that in 1085 the king sent his agents to survey every shire in England, to list his holdings and dues owed to him. Written in Medieval Latin , it was highly abbreviated and included some vernacular native terms without Latin equivalents. The survey's main purpose
16530-487: The centre they were referred to as "styes" ( stig ) and in the west, folds . These places grew from being sheds for animals and temporary huts for swineherders, to permanent farms, water-mills, churches and market towns. Churches in the High Weald are mostly on isolated ridge-top sites, away from the pioneer farms being established on the valley sides, as at Worth and Itchingfield to this day. Land divisions in
16704-414: The clergy for written communication and record-keeping. A significant number of Norman words were borrowed into English and used alongside native Germanic words with similar meanings. Examples of Norman/Germanic pairs in Modern English include pig and pork , calf and veal , wood and forest , and freedom and liberty . The role of Anglo-Norman as the language of government and law can be seen in
16878-507: The comparative and superlative (e.g., greet , great; gretter , greater). Adjectives ending in -ly or -lich formed comparatives either with -lier , -liest or -loker , -lokest . A few adjectives also displayed Germanic umlaut in their comparatives and superlatives, such as long , lenger . Other irregular forms were mostly the same as in modern English. Middle English personal pronouns were mostly developed from those of Old English , with
17052-491: The court of Baldwin V, Count of Flanders , a relative of Tostig's wife, Judith of Flanders . When they returned in 1052 to an enthusiastic welcome in the Sussex ports, Edward had to reinstate the Godwine family. In 1064 Harold sailed from Bosham, from where a storm cast him up in Normandy. Here he was apparently tricked into pledging his support for William of Normandy as the next king of England. On 14 October 1066, Harold II,
17226-534: The crown of Wessex. From 895 Sussex suffered from constant raids by the Danes , till the accession of Canute , after which arose the two great forces of the house of Godwine and of the Normans . Godwine was probably a native of Sussex, and by the end of Edward the Confessor 's reign a third part of the county was in the hands of his family. The death of Eadwine , Ealdorman of Sussex, is recorded in 982, because he
17400-577: The designs of similar items in the German homelands. The principal area of settlement in the 5th century has been identified as between the lower Ouse and Cuckmere rivers in East Sussex, based on the number of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries there. However, there are two cemeteries in West Sussex at Highdown , near Worthing and Apple Down, 11 km (7 mi.) northwest of Chichester. The area between
17574-486: The development of the Chancery Standard in the 15th century, orthography became relatively standardised in a form based on the East Midlands-influenced speech of London. Spelling at the time was mostly quite regular . (There was a fairly consistent correspondence between letters and sounds.) The irregularity of present-day English orthography is largely due to pronunciation changes that have taken place over
17748-495: The different dialects, that was based chiefly on the speech of the East Midlands but also influenced by that of other regions. The writing of this period, however, continues to reflect a variety of regional forms of English. The Ayenbite of Inwyt , a translation of a French confessional prose work, completed in 1340, is written in a Kentish dialect . The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer , wrote in
17922-531: The double consonant represented a sound that was (or had previously been) geminated (i.e., had genuinely been "doubled" and would thus have regularly blocked the lengthening of the preceding vowel). In other cases, by analogy, the consonant was written double merely to indicate the lack of lengthening. The basic Old English Latin alphabet consisted of 20 standard letters plus four additional letters: ash ⟨æ⟩ , eth ⟨ð⟩ , thorn ⟨þ⟩ , and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ . There
18096-401: The earliest early mediaeval coins found in Britain. The hoard includes five imported siliquae that had not been clipped, so coin-clipping had probably ceased by then, although the coinage had probably collapsed decades earlier than this, after Roman rule in Britain collapsed. In the first quarter of the 8th century the Kingdom of Sussex was among the kingdoms producing coinage, possibly from
18270-468: The end of the Middle English period only the strong -'s ending (variously spelled) was in use. Some formerly feminine nouns, as well as some weak nouns, continued to make their genitive forms with -e or no ending (e.g., fole hoves , horses' hooves), and nouns of relationship ending in -er frequently have no genitive ending (e.g., fader bone , "father's bane"). The strong -(e)s plural form has survived into Modern English. The weak -(e)n form
18444-562: The entirety of the County Palatine of Durham and Northumberland were omitted. They did not pay the national land tax called the geld , and the framework for Domesday Book was geld assessment lists. "Little Domesday", so named because its format is physically smaller than its companion's, is more detailed than Great Domesday. In particular, it includes the numbers of livestock on the home farms ( demesnes ) of lords, but not peasant livestock. It represents an earlier stage in processing
18618-418: The exception of the third person plural, a borrowing from Old Norse (the original Old English form clashed with the third person singular and was eventually dropped). Also, the nominative form of the feminine third person singular was replaced by a form of the demonstrative that developed into sche (modern she ), but the alternative heyr remained in some areas for a long time. As with nouns, there
18792-489: The form of distinctive Saxon saucer brooches, suggests that Ælle's forces penetrated north as far as modern day Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire to the west. H. R. Loyn suggests that this initial regional hegemony may have ended after the Battle of Mount Badon . After 491 the written history of Sussex goes blank until 607, when the annals report that Ceolwulf of Wessex fought against the South Saxons. Threatened by Wessex,
18966-453: The greatest magnate could do no more than "hold" land from him as a tenant (from the Latin verb tenere , "to hold") under one of the various contracts of feudal land tenure . Holdings of bishops followed, then of abbeys and religious houses , then of lay tenants-in-chief , and lastly the king's serjeants ( servientes ) and thegns. In some counties, one or more principal boroughs formed
19140-412: The indicator of the longer and changed pronunciation of ⟨a⟩ . In fact, vowels could have this lengthened and modified pronunciation in various positions, particularly before a single consonant letter and another vowel or before certain pairs of consonants. A related convention involved the doubling of consonant letters to show that the preceding vowel was not to be lengthened. In some cases,
19314-452: The king and the incoming Normans. Godwine and his second son Harold kept the peace off the Sussex coast by using Bosham and Pevensey to drive away pirates. In 1049 the murder by Sweyn Godwinson of his cousin Beorn after Beorn has been tricked in going to Bosham resulted in the entire Godwine family being banished. It was from Bosham in 1051 that Godwin, Sweyn and Tostig fled to Bruges and
19488-548: The king's brevia ((short) writings). From about 1100, references appear to the liber (book) or carta (charter) of Winchester, its usual place of custody; and from the mid-12th to early 13th centuries to the Winchester or king's rotulus ( roll ). To the English, who held the book in awe, it became known as "Domesday Book", in allusion to the Last Judgment and in specific reference to the definitive character of
19662-597: The kingdom concerning the matters contained in the book, and recourse is made to the book, its word cannot be denied or set aside without penalty. For this reason we call this book the "book of judgements", not because it contains decisions made in controversial cases, but because from it, as from the Last Judgement, there is no further appeal. The name "Domesday" was subsequently adopted by the book's custodians, being first found in an official document in 1221. Either through false etymology or deliberate word play ,
19836-510: The land in the country, (1) at the time of Edward the Confessor 's death, (2) when the new owners received it, (3) at the time of the survey, and further, it reckoned, by command, the potential value as well. It is evident that William desired to know the financial resources of his kingdom, and it is probable that he wished to compare them with the existing assessment, which was one of considerable antiquity, though there are traces that it had been occasionally modified. The great bulk of Domesday Book
20010-435: The land to Eolla, who in turn sold it to Wulfhere. The land then went to Beoba who passed it on to Beorra and Ecca. Finally King Osmund bought the land from his comes Erra and granted it to a religious woman known as Tidburgh. The charter is undated but it has been possible to date the various transactions approximately, by cross referencing people who appear both on this charter and on other charters that do provide dates. On
20184-464: The land; or, what dues he ought to have by the year from the shire.' Also he commissioned them to record in writing, 'How much land his archbishops had, and his diocesan bishops, and his abbots, and his earls;' and though I may be prolix and tedious, 'What, or how much, each man had, who was an occupier of land in England, either in land or in stock, and how much money it was worth.' So very narrowly, indeed, did he commission them to trace it out, that there
20358-472: The last Saxon king of England was killed at the Battle of Hastings and the English army defeated, by William the Conqueror and his army. It is likely that all the fighting men of Sussex were at the battle, as the county's thegns were decimated and any that survived had their lands confiscated. At least 353 of the 387 manors, in the county, were taken from their Saxon owners and given to the victorious Normans by
20532-407: The last major Anglo-Saxon kingdom to become Christian. South Saxon and Mercian forces took control of what are now east Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. Cædwalla of Wessex killed Æðelwealh and "ravaged Sussex by fierce slaughter and devastation". The South Saxons forced Cædwalla from Sussex and were able to lead a campaign into Kent , replacing its king. At that time Sussex could have re-emerged into
20706-448: The latter was completed, if not started, by William II following his accession to the English throne; William II quashed a rebellion that followed and was based on, though not consequence of, the findings of the inquest. Most shires were visited by a group of royal officers ( legati ) who held a public inquiry, probably in the great assembly known as the shire court. These were attended by representatives of every township as well as of
20880-439: The law courts. In 1960, it was among citations for a real manor which helps to evidence legal use rights on and anchorage into the Crown's foreshore; in 2010, as to proving a manor, adding weight of years to sporting rights (deer and foxhunting); and a market in 2019. Domesday Book is critical to understanding the period in which it was written. As H. C. Darby noted, anyone who uses it can have nothing but admiration for what
21054-613: The local lords. The unit of inquiry was the Hundred (a subdivision of the county, which then was an administrative entity). The return for each Hundred was sworn to by 12 local jurors, half of them English and half of them Norman. What is believed to be a full transcript of these original returns is preserved for several of the Cambridgeshire Hundreds ;– the Cambridge Inquisition – and
21228-464: The locals to fish, and they were impressed with Wilfrid's teachings and agreed to be baptised en masse . On the day of the baptisms the rain fell on the "thirsty earth", so ending the famine. Æðelwealh gave 87 hides (an area of land) and a royal vill to Wilfrid to enable him to found Selsey Abbey . The abbey eventually became the seat of the South Saxon bishopric , where it remained until after
21402-561: The main difference lied on their inflectional endings, which led to much confusion within the mixed population that existed in the Danelaw, this endings tended gradually to become obscured and finally lost, "simplifying English grammar" in the process. In time, the inflections melted away and the analytic pattern emerged. Viking influence on Old English is most apparent in pronouns , modals, comparatives, pronominal adverbs (like hence and together ), conjunctions, and prepositions show
21576-417: The masculine accusative, genitive, and dative, the feminine dative, and the plural genitive. The Owl and the Nightingale adds a final -e to all adjectives not in the nominative, here only inflecting adjectives in the weak declension (as described above). Comparatives and superlatives were usually formed by adding -er and -est . Adjectives with long vowels sometimes shortened these vowels in
21750-427: The more complex system of inflection in Old English : Nouns of the weak declension are primarily inherited from Old English n -stem nouns but also from ō -stem, wō -stem, and u -stem nouns, which did not inflect in the same way as n -stem nouns in Old English, but joined the weak declension in Middle English. Nouns of the strong declension are inherited from the other Old English noun stem classes. Some nouns of
21924-490: The most marked Danish influence. The best evidence of Scandinavian influence appears in extensive word borrowings; however, texts from the period in Scandinavia and Northern England do not provide certain evidence of an influence on syntax. However, at least one scholarly study of this influence shows that Old English may have been replaced entirely by Norse, by virtue of the change from Old English to Norse syntax. While
22098-498: The most part, being improvised. By the end of the period (about 1470), and aided by the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1439, a standard based on the London dialects (Chancery Standard) had become established. This largely formed the basis for Modern English spelling, although pronunciation has changed considerably since that time. Middle English was succeeded in England by Early Modern English , which lasted until about 1650. Scots developed concurrently from
22272-403: The name also came to be associated with the Latin phrase Domus Dei ("House of God"). Such a reference is found as early as the late 13th century, in the writings of Adam of Damerham ; and in the 16th and 17th centuries, antiquaries such as John Stow and Sir Richard Baker believed this was the name's origin, alluding to the church in Winchester in which the book had been kept. As a result,
22446-483: The numerous obvious omissions, and ambiguities in presentation. Darby first cites F. W. Maitland 's comment following his compilation of a table of statistics from material taken from the Domesday Book survey, "it will be remembered that, as matters now stand, two men not unskilled in Domesday might add up the number of hides in a county and arrive at very different results because they would hold different opinions as to
22620-693: The old insular g and the Carolingian g (modern g ), the former continued in use as a separate letter, known as yogh , written ⟨ȝ⟩ . This was adopted for use to represent a variety of sounds: [ɣ], [j], [dʒ], [x], [ç] , while the Carolingian g was normally used for [g]. Instances of yogh were eventually replaced by ⟨j⟩ or ⟨y⟩ and by ⟨gh⟩ in words like night and laugh . In Middle Scots , yogh became indistinguishable from cursive z , and printers tended to use ⟨z⟩ when yogh
22794-466: The only area of Sussex that was forested in Saxon times—for example, at the western end of Sussex is the Manhood Peninsula , which in the modern era is largely deforested, but the name is probably derived from the Old English maene-wudu meaning "men's wood" or "common wood" indicating that it was once woodland. The coastline would have looked different from today. Much of the alluvium in
22968-423: The other case endings disappeared in the Early Middle English period, including most of the roughly one dozen forms of the definite article ("the"). The dual personal pronouns (denoting exactly two) also disappeared from English during this period. The loss of case endings was part of a general trend from inflections to fixed word order that also occurred in other Germanic languages (though more slowly and to
23142-505: The pattern of Sussex settlement. When churches came to be built, an ideal site was where a drove crossed a river. Eventually traders gravitated to churches, founding villages, and in some cases market towns such as Ditchling, Shermanbury , Thakeham , Ashurst and Shipley . Different names existed for the swine pastures in different parts of Sussex. In the territory of the Haestingas in the east, swine pastures were named denns , in
23316-426: The people of Sussex in the same harsh way for many years. In 710 Sussex was still under West Saxon domination when King Nothhelm of Sussex is recorded as having campaigned with Ine in the west against Dumnonia. Sussex evidently broke away from West Saxon domination some time before 722 when Ine is recorded as invading Sussex, which he repeated three years later, killing a West Saxon exile named Ealdberht who had fled to
23490-403: The prestige that came with writing in French rather than English. During the 14th century, a new style of literature emerged with the works of writers including John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer , whose Canterbury Tales remains the most studied and read work of the period. The transition from Late Old English to Early Middle English had taken place by the 1150s to 1180s, the period when
23664-582: The record. The word "doom" was the usual Old English term for a law or judgment; it did not carry the modern overtones of fatality or disaster . Richard FitzNeal , treasurer of England under Henry II , explained the name's connotations in detail in the Dialogus de Scaccario ( c. 1179): The natives call this book "Domesday", that is, the day of judgement. This is a metaphor: for just as no judgement of that final severe and terrible trial can be evaded by any subterfuge, so when any controversy arises in
23838-502: The reign of Æthelred the Unready , the threat of the Danes continued — in 994 and 1000 the Anglo Saxon Chronicle records burning, plundering and manslaughter on the coast of Sussex and neighbouring counties. The most serious attacks took place in 1009, when a Viking army took up position over the winter period on the Isle of Wight and ravaged Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The rectilinear street plan of Chichester
24012-569: The resulting doublet pairs include warden (from Norman) and guardian (from later French; both share a common ancestor loaned from Germanic). The end of Anglo-Saxon rule did not result in immediate changes to the language. The general population would have spoken the same dialects as they had before the Conquest. Once the writing of Old English came to an end, Middle English had no standard language, only dialects that evolved individually from Old English. Early Middle English (1150–1350) has
24186-707: The results of the Domesday Survey before the drastic abbreviation and rearrangement undertaken by the scribe of Great Domesday Book. Both volumes are organised into a series of chapters (literally "headings", from Latin caput , "a head") listing the manors held by each named tenant-in-chief directly from the king. Tenants-in-chief included bishops, abbots and abbesses , barons from Normandy , Brittany , and Flanders , minor French serjeants , and English thegns . The richest magnates held several hundred manors typically spread across England, though some large estates were highly concentrated. For example, Baldwin
24360-540: The rich trade that Sussex had with other parts of Europe. By the 1060s Lewes also supported a cattle market. By the end of the Anglo Saxon period and the Domesday Survey by the Normans in 1086, Sussex contained some of the richest and most heavily populated pockets of England on the coastal plain, albeit alongside some of England's most economically underdeveloped areas in the Weald. By this time, Sussex had
24534-417: The river plains had not yet been deposited and the tidal river estuaries extended much further inland. It is estimated that the coastal plain may have been at least one mile broader than it is today. Before people reclaimed the tidal marshes in the 13th century the coastal plain contained extensive areas of sea water in the form of lagoons, salt marsh, wide inlets, islands and peninsulas. To the South Saxons of
24708-406: The river-meadows, woodland, pasture, fisheries (i.e. fishing weirs ), water-mills , salt-pans (if by the sea), and other subsidiary sources of revenue; the peasants are enumerated in their several classes; and finally the annual value of the whole, past and present, is roughly estimated. The organisation of the returns on a feudal basis, enabled the Conqueror and his officers to see the extent of
24882-447: The royal title, now sign with that of dux . Offa may not have been able to maintain control in the period 776–785 but he appears to have re-established control afterwards. Mercian power collapsed in the years following Offa's death in 796, and the South Saxons re-emerged as an independent political entity. After the Battle of Ellandun in 825 the South Saxons submitted to Ecgberht of Wessex , and from this time they remained subject to
25056-807: The second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in " The Reeve's Tale ". In the English-speaking areas of lowland Scotland , an independent standard was developing, based on the Northumbrian dialect . This would develop into what came to be known as the Scots language . A large number of terms for abstract concepts were adopted directly from scholastic philosophical Latin (rather than via French). Examples are "absolute", "act", "demonstration", and "probable". The Chancery Standard of written English emerged c. 1430 in official documents that, since
25230-458: The second person singular in -(e)st (e.g., þou spekest , "thou speakest"), and the third person singular in -eþ (e.g., he comeþ , "he cometh/he comes"). ( þ (the letter "thorn") is pronounced like the unvoiced th in "think", but under certain circumstances, it may be like the voiced th in "that"). The following table illustrates a typical conjugation pattern: Plural forms vary strongly by dialect, with Southern dialects preserving
25404-558: The south of Sussex lay the English Channel, beyond which lay Francia, or the Kingdom of the Franks . By the 680s, when Christianity was being introduced, there is no doubt that the district around Selsey and Chichester had become the political centre of the kingdom, though there is little archaeological evidence for a reoccupation of Chichester itself before the 9th century. Ditchling may have been an important regional centre for
25578-409: The strong type have an -e in the nominative/accusative singular, like the weak declension, but otherwise strong endings. Often, these are the same nouns that had an -e in the nominative/accusative singular of Old English (they, in turn, were inherited from Proto-Germanic ja -stem and i -stem nouns). The distinct dative case was lost in early Middle English, and although the genitive survived, by
25752-403: The subject of a separate section. A few have separate lists of disputed titles to land called clamores (claims). The equivalent sections in Little Domesday are called Inuasiones (annexations). In total, 268,984 people are tallied in the Domesday Book, each of whom was the head of a household. Some households, such as urban dwellers, were excluded from the count, but the exact parameters remain
25926-412: The survey was completed in 1086. It is not known when exactly Domesday Book was compiled, but the entire copy of Great Domesday appears to have been copied out by one person on parchment (prepared sheepskin), although six scribes seem to have been used for Little Domesday. Writing in 2000, David Roffe argued that the inquest (survey) and the construction of the book were two distinct exercises. He believes
26100-432: The survey's ninth centenary. On this last occasion Great Domesday was divided into two physical volumes, and Little Domesday into three volumes. The project to publish Domesday was begun by the government in 1773, and the book appeared in two volumes in 1783, set in " record type " to produce a partial- facsimile of the manuscript. In 1811, a volume of indexes was added. In 1816, a supplementary volume, separately indexed,
26274-591: The territory of the Meonwara in the Meon Valley in east Hampshire. From the late 8th century, Sussex seems to have absorbed the Kingdom of the Haestingas , after the region was conquered by the Mercian king Offa . A large part of its territory was covered by the forest that took its name from the fort of Anderitum at modern Pevensey, and known to the Romano-British as the Forest of Andred and to
26448-413: The time. In a parallel development, around 1100, the Normans in southern Italy completed their Catalogus Baronum based on Domesday Book. The original manuscript was destroyed in the Second World War , but the text survives in printed editions. The manuscripts do not carry a formal title. The work is referred to internally as a descriptio (enrolling), and in other early administrative contexts as
26622-440: The top levels of the English-speaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchies by Norman rulers who spoke a dialect of Old French , now known as Old Norman , which developed in England into Anglo-Norman . The use of Norman as the preferred language of literature and polite discourse fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration, even though many Normans of this period were illiterate and depended on
26796-461: The transaction, where Eolla has acquired the land from Berhfrith and sells it to Wulfhere [ c. AD 705 x (716x?)], Nunna's subscription is followed by a certain Osric who was possibly Nunna's co-ruler. The other witnesses who followed Osric were Eadberht and Eolla, both who can be identified as ecclesiastics. Nunna's last surviving charter, which is dated 714 in error for 717, is witnessed by
26970-458: The view that a short-lived expansion of South Saxon authority as far as the Midlands may have taken place in the 5th century. For much of the 7th and 8th centuries, Sussex suffered invasion attempts by the kingdom of Wessex to its west. King Æðelwealh formed an alliance with Christian Mercia against Wessex, becoming Sussex's first Christian king. With support from St Wilfrid , Sussex became
27144-707: The western boundary of the South Saxons. Bede described the western boundary with the Kingdom of Wessex as being opposite the Isle of Wight. To the east at Romney Marsh and the River Limen (now called the River Rother or Kent Ditch), Sussex shared a border with the Kingdom of Kent . North of the Forest Ridge in the Wealden forest lay the sub-kingdom of Surrey, which became a frontier area disputed by various kingdoms until it later became part of Wessex. To
27318-457: Was annexed by Wessex around 827 and was fully absorbed into the kingdom of Wessex in 860. The Kingdom of Sussex had its initial focus in a territory based on the former kingdom and Romano-British civitas of the Regni and its boundaries coincided in general with those of the later county of Sussex . For a brief period in the 7th century, the Kingdom of Sussex controlled the Isle of Wight and
27492-526: Was buried at Abingdon Abbey in Berkshire, where one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was compiled. According to the abbey's records, in which he was called princeps Australium Saxonum, Eadwinus nomine (Eadwine leader of the South Saxons), he bequeathed estates to them in his will, although the document itself has not survived. Earlier in the same year he witnessed a charter of King Ethelred
27666-495: Was greatest in the Weald. Along the north scarp of the Downs runs a series of parishes with land evenly distributed across the different soils to their northern boundaries; the parishes were more or less equal in area, around 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares). In the early mediaeval period, the rivers of Sussex may have acted locally as a major unifier, linking coastal, estuary and riverside communities and providing people in these areas with
27840-425: Was indicated by agreement of articles and pronouns (e.g., þo ule "the feminine owl") or using the pronoun he to refer to masculine nouns such as helm ("helmet"), or phrases such as scaft stærcne (strong shaft), with the masculine accusative adjective ending -ne . Single-syllable adjectives added -e when modifying a noun in the plural and when used after the definite article ( þe ), after
28014-627: Was not available in their fonts; this led to new spellings (often giving rise to new pronunciations), as in McKenzie , where the ⟨z⟩ replaced a yogh, which had the pronunciation /j/ . Domesday Book Domesday Book ( / ˈ d uː m z d eɪ / DOOMZ -day ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at
28188-400: Was not one single hide, nor a yard of land, nay, moreover (it is shameful to tell, though he thought it no shame to do it), not even an ox, nor a cow, nor a swine was there left, that was not set down in his writ. And all the recorded particulars were afterwards brought to him. The primary purpose of the survey was to ascertain and record the fiscal rights of the king. These were mainly: After
28362-520: Was not yet a distinct j , v , or w , and Old English scribes did not generally use k , q , or z . Ash was no longer required in Middle English, as the Old English vowel /æ/ that it represented had merged into /a/ . The symbol nonetheless came to be used as a ligature for the digraph ⟨ae⟩ in many words of Greek or Latin origin, as did ⟨œ⟩ for ⟨oe⟩ . Eth and thorn both represented /θ/ or its allophone / ð / in Old English. Eth fell out of use during
28536-434: Was originally a sixth-century Saxon colony and later an independent kingdom . The kingdom remains one of the least known of the Anglo-Saxon polities, with no surviving king-list, several local rulers and less centralisation than other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The South Saxons were ruled by the kings of Sussex until the country was annexed by Wessex , probably in 827, in the aftermath of the Battle of Ellendun . In 860 Sussex
28710-417: Was ousted by it in most dialects by the 15th. The following table shows some of the various Middle English pronouns. Many other variations are noted in Middle English sources because of differences in spellings and pronunciations at different times and in different dialects. As a general rule, the indicative first person singular of verbs in the present tense ended in -e (e.g., ich here , "I hear"),
28884-524: Was pig-fattening and cattle-grazing country. Drovers would divide their year between their "winter house" in their parent village outside the Weald and their "summer house" in the outlying woodland pasture up to 20 miles (30 km) away. Surviving features include a close network of former droveways and surviving fragments of wood pasture, such as the Mens and Ebernoe Common near Petworth . Middle English language Middle English (abbreviated to ME )
29058-537: Was preserved from the late 11th to the beginning of the 13th centuries in the royal Treasury at Winchester (the Norman kings' capital). It was often referred to as the "Book" or "Roll" of Winchester. When the Treasury moved to the Palace of Westminster , probably under King John , the book went with it. The two volumes (Great Domesday and Little Domesday) remained in Westminster, save for temporary releases, until
29232-401: Was pro-Norman and in Sussex gave to the abbot of Fécamp Abbey the minster church at Steyning, as well as confirming land existing land grants at Hastings, Rye and Winchelsea. To his chaplain, Osborn , later William's Bishop of Exeter, Edward gave the harbour and other land at Bosham . Many of the Saxon nobles grew jealous and from 1049 there was conflict between the disgruntled Saxon nobility,
29406-517: Was published containing Photographic facsimiles of Domesday Book, for each county separately, were published in 1861–1863, also by the government. Today, Domesday Book is available in numerous editions, usually separated by county and available with other local history resources. In 1986, the BBC released the BBC Domesday Project , the results of a project to create a survey to mark
29580-475: Was rebound in 1320, its older oak boards being re-used. At a later date (probably in the Tudor period ) both volumes were given new covers. They were rebound twice in the 19th century, in 1819 and 1869 – on the second occasion, by the binder Robert Riviere and his assistant, James Kew. In the 20th century, they were rebound in 1952, when their physical makeup was examined in greater detail; and yet again in 1986, for
29754-543: Was ruled by the kings of Wessex , and by 927 all remaining Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were ruled by them as part of the new kingdom of England . The foundation legend of the kingdom of Sussex is that in 477 Ælle and his three sons arrived in three ships, conquering what is now Sussex. Ælle became overlord, or Bretwalda , over the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms south of the Humber. Historians are divided over whether or not Ælle really existed; however archaeological evidence supports
29928-399: Was so dense that Domesday Book did not record some of its settlements. The heavily forested Weald made expansion difficult but also provided some protection from invasion by neighbouring kingdoms. Whilst Sussex's isolation from the rest of Anglo-Saxon England has been emphasised, Roman roads must have remained important communication arteries across the forest of the Weald. The Weald was not
30102-475: Was some inflectional simplification (the distinct Old English dual forms were lost), but pronouns, unlike nouns, retained distinct nominative and accusative forms. Third person pronouns also retained a distinction between accusative and dative forms, but that was gradually lost: The masculine hine was replaced by him south of the River Thames by the early 14th century, and the neuter dative him
30276-522: Was to record the annual value of every piece of landed property to its lord, and the resources in land, labour force, and livestock from which the value derived. The name "Domesday Book" came into use in the 12th century. Richard FitzNeal wrote in the Dialogus de Scaccario ( c. 1179) that the book was so called because its decisions were unalterable, like those of the Last Judgment , and its sentence could not be quashed. The manuscript
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