128 THE HALL OF OAKHAM.

families, together with their effects, belonged, like the rest of the property upon it, to the lord of the soil. There were nine- teen borderers, a class somewhat better circumstanced, corre- sponding in some degree with cottagers holding small allot- ments. These held thirty-seven carucates and eighty acres of meadow. There was a priest and a church, to which was assigned four bovatcs of this land. Feeding in a wood a league long and half a league wide. In the time of the Con- fessor these possessions were worth forty pounds a year. Let us compare this state of the population with what it was in the conuuencemcnt of the reign of Edw. II., when the county first sent members to Parliament. The original writs for that assembled at Northampton, 1 Edw. II., are lost. When William de Basiggc, knt., and Simon de Lyndon were returned in 1309, no manucaptors or sureties could be produced; and when in 1311 a Parliament was summoned to Westminster, the sheriff returned that there were no knights resident in the county, and that therefore he was compelled to substitute in their place two other persons, ' de discretiori- l)us et ad laboraudum potentioribus.' These facts shew an infant state of things, and indicate that two centuries after the Conquest the population of Rutlandshire was extremely small ; that there was such a paucity of the upper classes that a difficulty existed in finding proper persons to nominate as representatives. In the preceding entry from Domesday book mention is made of the hall of Oakham, which requires more than a mere passing notice. There is no doubt this was a royal hall which the Conqueror had then taken into his own hands, since Edward the Confessor had bequeathed the demesne in this county to his wife, conditionally that after her death it should descend to the monastery of St. Peter at Westminster, which donation was confirmed a short time afterwards by a charter dated in 10G4. This shews at once the early eccle- siastical dependence of several of the Rutlandshire parishes upon the church of Westminster. A hall was the usual ap- pendage to a manor, and different in its architectural charac- ter, "as well as its nature, from a castle. There are several mentioned in the Conqueror's Survey ; for example in Not- tinghamshire, V^lmcr, Eluui, Osbern, Grim, Edric, and Ste- inilf had each their liall. There was one at Pihteslea (Pytch- " Diiod. Monast., vol. i. pp. 2!)2. 2!) K