1. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , trans. and ed. G. N. Garmonsway, 2d ed. (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1955), 29. The Chronicle attributes the foundation to the time of Wulfhere. F. M. Stenton believed that the foundation must antedate Abbot Seaxulf's consecration as Bishop of the Mercians, which did not occur later than A.D. 675: F. M. Stenton, "'Medeshamstede' and Its Colonies," in Preparatory to Anglo-Saxon England , ed. D. M. Stenton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), 179-192. For Wulfhere's probable hegemony over southern England in the mid-seventh century consult Wendy Davies and Hayo Vierck, "The Contexts of Tribal Hidage: Social Aggregates and Settlement Patterns," Frühmittelalterliche Studien 8 (1974): 223-293; see also Cyril Hart, "The Kingdom of Mercia," in Mercian Studies , ed. Anne Dornier (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977), 47 and fig. 2.

2. Stenton, "Medeshamstede." For comparative discussion of pre-Conquest monastic federations see Wendy Davies, An Early Welsh Microcosm: Studies in the Llandaff Charters (London: Royal Historical Society, 1978), 139-146.

3. The Nene Valley had undergone radical economic change since the mid-fourth century. Only a few aspects of such change can be treated here. For a fuller discussion consult Biddick, "Animal Husbandry." In brief the region saw a shift toward industry at rural villae: Adrian Challands, "A Roman Industrial Site at Sacrewell, Thornhaugh," Durobrivae 2 (1974): 13-16; John Hadman and Stephen Upex, "The Roman Villa at North Lodge, Barnwell, 1973," ibid. 2 (1974):27-28; "The Roman Villa at Helpston,'' ibid. 3 (1975): 22-23; John Hadman and Stephen Upex, "The Roman Settlement at Ashton near Oundle," ibid. 3 (1975): 13-15. The pastoral orientation of the later villae and associated cemeteries are discussed in Richard Jones, "A Romano-British Cemetery and Farmstead at Lynch Farm," Durobrivae 1 (1973): 13, and John Peter Wild, "Roman Settlement in the Lower Nene Valley," Archaeological Journal 131 (1974): 140-170. These

shifts in the economy of the Nene Valley villae are not unlike those discussed by Shimon Applebaum over a decade ago in his contribution "Roman Britain" in The Agrarian History of England and Wales , vol. 1, pt. 2 (Cambridge, 1972): "A general trend is elicited in the evolution of the average Romano-British farm: it may be defined briefly as centralization, decentralization, and devolution" (p. 44). The regional centers of Peterborough and their economies shared the fate discussed by Richard Reece, ''Town and Countryside: The End of Roman Britain," World Archaeology 12 (1980): 77-92. At Castor, archaeologists have found evidence of a large building measuring approximately 122 meters by 76 meters, which they speculate might be the seat of the Count of the Saxon Shore. For an interim notice on the building consult the excavation notices in Britannia 14 (1983): 303-304. Michael Fulford discusses the demise of the Nene Valley pottery industry: "Pottery Production and Trade at the End of Roman Britain: The Case against Continuity," in The End of Roman Britain , ed. P. J. Casey, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, no. 71 (Oxford, 1979), 120-132. The fate of the Christian community offers more evidence for discontinuity in the Peterborough area: Charles Thomas analyzes Nene Valley liturgical hoards in Christianity in Roman Britain to A.D. 500 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1981), 114-119, 268, fig. 49. Details on the discovery of the hoards may be found in Catherine Jones and R. Carson, "The Water Newton Hoard," Durobrivae 3 (1975): 10-12, and Current Archaeology , no. 54 (1976), 199-204. Perhaps the only structures to provide some continuity were the estates or agri that began to group themselves along the Nene Valley as early as the second century A.D. (Reece, "Town and Countryside," 88): "What continues through the fourth century and well beyond is not the villa house or even the outbuilding, but the estate, the ager" (Davies, Welsh Microcosm , 42).

4. The fifth-century Saxon occupations excavated at Walton and Orton Hall farm, both located within 5 km of Peterborough, did not continue past the early sixth century. See reports by Donald Mackreth in volumes of Durobrivae including: 2 (1974): 19; 4 (1976): 24-25 5 (1977): 20-21; Nene Valley Research Committee, Annual Report , 1981-82; 2; Richard Jones, "A Roman and Saxon Farm at Walton, North Bretton," Durobrivae 2 (1974): 29-31.

5. Carolyn G. Dallas, "The Nunnery of St. Kyneburgha at Castor," Durobrivae 1 (1973): 17; Nene Valley Research Committee, Annual Report , 1976-77, 10. Unfortunately archaeologists know little about the Mercian church at Peterborough, the foundations of which were deeply disturbed by later medieval building programs. Reports of the most recent excavations of the Nene Valley Research Committee carried out at Peterborough Cathedral may be found in "Medieval Britain and Ireland in 1982," entry

no. 21, Medieval Archaeology 27 (1983): 168-169; Donald Mackreth, "Recent Work on Monastic Peterborough," Durobrivae 9 (1984): 18-21; idem, "The Monastic Church before 1116," ibid. 8 (1980): 11-12. The recent findings suggest that the plan proposed by H. M. Taylor and Joan Taylor in Anglo-Saxon Architecture , vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 491-494 requires modification. The scale and magnificence of the early monastic church at Peterborough most likely rivaled the church at Brixworth, "the largest pre-Conquest church north of the Alps" (David Parsons, ''Brixworth and Its Monastery Church," in Mercian Studies , 108-114).

6. Peter Addyman, "A Dark Age Site at Maxey, Northants," Medieval Archaeology 8 (1964): 20-73. Excavators recovered twelve pounds of iron slag and twenty-five iron objects at Maxey; the report concluded, however, that there was no clear evidence for connecting the iron objects with smelting on the site. Some Saxon iron-smelting did go on in the Soke, but it is difficult to date precisely: David N. Hall, "The Countryside of the South-east Midlands and Cambridgeshire," in The Romano-British Countryside: Studies in Rural Settlement and Economy , ed. David Miles, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, no. 103, part 2 (Oxford, 1982), 337-350. Reevaluation of industrial activities, including tanning in pits such as those found at Maxey, is needed.

7. Richard Hodges, Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade, A.D. 600-1000 (London: Duckworth, 1982), 39-46.

8. The links between monasteries, such as Peterborough Abbey, with its territorial command of grazing, woodland, and arable resources, and provisioning of trading emporia with raw materials such as hides and horn, require further archaeological investigation. For reference to monasteries as reception centers see Hart, "Mercia," 58.

9. Rosemary Cramp, "Schools of Mercian Sculpture," in Mercian Studies , 191-231. The distribution of pottery in the Peterborough area also suggests some distinctive regional patterns. Excavation and field-survey so far have found little Ipswich ware, wheel-made domestic pottery of the Saxon period around Peterborough, although it has been found at neighboring monastic sites at Castor and Brixworth, and also at Thrapston and Northampton. At Maxey, archaeologists excavated only handmade wares, which have a distribution up and down the Peterborough fen-edge at Glinton, Peterborough, and Castor and in the silt fens of southern Lincolnshire. The distribution of the handmade ware might mark off some local pastoral activities, associated with lambing, calving, and milking on the fen-edges. Such a hypothesis requires further archaeological testing and excavation. Glenn Foard, "Systematic Fieldwalking and Investigation of Saxon Settlement in Northamptonshire," World Archaeology 9 (1978): 357-374; R. Hilary Healey

"Middle Saxon Pottery in the Fenland Area," Lincolnshire History and Archaeology 14 (1979):80-81.

10. For discussion of the Anglo-Saxon material that appears in garbled form in later charters see Stenton, "Medeshamstede," 141. Grants of precisely bounded estates centered on a settlement belong to political changes in lordship in later-eighth-century England. For an important discussion of the progress of fragmentation of estates in Wales consult Davies, Welsh Microcosm , passim.

11. W. T. W. Potts, "The Pre-Danish Estate of Peterborough Abbey," Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 65 (1974): 13-27. For a comparative analysis of estates as resource units consult Della Hooke, "Pre-Conquest Estates in the West Midlands: Preliminary Thoughts," Journal of Historical Geography 8 (1982): 227-244. Another economic consideration bound the fen-edge Abbey with with its upland holdings, particularly Oundle, center of the double-hundred forming the western portion of the estate. Later sources show that Oundle served as the market of its hundred, a sign of its early importance as an exchange center: R. H. Britnell, "English Markets and Royal Administration before 1200," Economic History Review , 2d ser., 31 (1978): 183-196. A ritual center, Peterborough, paired with a trading center, Oundle, resembles the contemporary link of Winchester with Hamwih, the trading emporium of the Kingdom of Wessex: M. Biddle, "Towns,'' in The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England , ed. David M. Wilson (London: Methuen, 1976), 114.

12. Local conditions in the fen and the Abbey's use of the fen is by no means certain. The peat fens do seem to have undergone an improved drying phase at the time of the Abbey's foundation. The following references provide a basic introduction to flooding and silting episodes in the silt and peat fens of eastern England in the early first millennium A.D.: David Hall, The Fenland Project, Number 2: Fenland Landscapes and Settlement between Peterborough and March , East Anglian Archaeology Report no. 35 (Cambridge, 1987), 32, 35; idem, "The Changing Landscape of the Cambridgeshire Silt Fens," Landscape History 3 (1981): 37-49; C. W. Phillips, ed., The Fenland in Roman Times , Royal Geographic Society Research Series, no. 5 (London, 1970); B. B. Simmons, "The Lincolnshire Car Dyke: Navigation and Drainage," Britannia 10 (1979): 183-196; L. P. Louwe Kooijmans, The Rhine/Meuse Delta: Four Studies on Its Prehistoric Occupation and Holocene Geology , Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia, vol. 7 (Leiden, 1974); William TeBrake, Medieval Frontier: Culture and Ecology in Rijnland (Austin: Texas A & M University Press, 1985). For regional studies of the medieval fenland see H. C. Darby, The Medieval Fenland (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1940; reprint, 1975); H. E. Hallam, Settlement and Society: A Study of the Early Agrarian History of South Lincolnshire (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1965); J. R. Ravensdale, Liable to Floods: Village Landscape on the Edge of the Fens, A.D. 450-1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Joan Thirsk, Fenland Farming in the Sixteenth Century , University College of Leicester, Department of English Local History, Occasional Papers, no. 3 (Leicester, 1953).

13. The earliest evidence of feorms on the Peterborough estate contains a privilege of Pope Constantine (709-715) drawn up for Peterborough's daughter houses at Bermondsey and Woking. The privilege mentioned the monasterialis census , or the right of the bishop to food rents from monasteries of his diocese. Three-quarters of a century later, the king freed the church of Woking of the its obligation of royal tribute ( regalium tributum ), feorm owed to the king, before he made the church over as a gift to Peterborough. The monastery would then collect the renders of food and service once reserved for the king. Stenton discusses this privilege in "Medeshamstede," 189. Davies provides comparative background on early food rents collected by Welsh bishops in Welsh Microcosm , 18-50. For a discussion of consumption in a chiefdom society consult Timothy Earle, Economic and Social Organization of a Complex Chiefdom , University of Michigan, Museum of Anthropology, Anthropology Papers, no. 63 (Ann Arbor, 1978). For Celtic arrangements for chiefly consumption see Glanville R. J. Jones, "The Multiple Estate: A Model for Tracing the Interrelationships of Society and Economy and Habitat," in Archaeological Approaches to Medieval Europe , ed. K. Biddick, 9-41; William Rees, ''Survivals of Ancient Celtic Custom in Medieval England," in Angles and Britons , O'Donnell Lectures (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1963), 148-168. Edmund Leach discusses a connection between chiefly office and consumption in Political Systems of Highland Burma (Boston: Beacon, 1964), 121-122.

14. C. A. Gregory presents a fundamental discussion of consumption and resources in Gifts and Commodities . For further discussion of the organization of resources under complex chiefdoms see Kathleen Biddick, "Field Edge, Forest Edge: Early Medieval Social Change and Resource Allocation," in Archaeological Approaches to Medieval Europe , 105-118. See also W. J. Ford, "Some Settlement Patterns in the Central Region of the Warwickshire Avon," in Medieval Settlement: Continuity and Change , ed. P.H. Sawyer (London: Edward Arnold, 1976), 274-294. Farmers also paid currency in ninth-century leases: Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , 52. The use of such currency does not necessarily mean that mechanisms of price formation operated: Gregory, Gifts and Commodities . For Mercian currency consult D. M. Metcalf, "Monetary Affairs in Mercia in the Time of Aethelbald," in Mercian Studies , 87-102.

15. A. J. Robertson, ed. Anglo-Saxon Charters , 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1956), VII, 12-13.

16. This part of the feorm indicates that a woodland managed by cop-

picing, or the cyclical cutting of underwood, existed on the estate: Oliver Rackham, Ancient Woodland (London: Edward Arnold, 1980). Interestingly enough, the woodland of Wulfhere's lease was located in the county of Rutland and detached from his holdings in Lincolnshire.

17. The division of the food rent of the lease between the monastery and the lord of the church, the Abbot, shows that the monastic household had already differentiated into two consumption units, one for the Abbot and one for the monks. The question whether division of consumption units within elite households of the ninth century intensified use of resources requires further exploration. The Abbot certainly developed into a prodigious consumer over time. By the fourteenth century, as subsequent discussion will show, the Abbot consumed more wheat than, and as much barley as, his convent of monks. The horses of the Abbot alone consumed between one-quarter and one-third of the harvest of oats on the estate. For the division of units within monastic households in the ninth century consult Eric John, "The Division of the Mensa in Early English Monasteries," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 6 (1955): 143-155.

18. Disruption in the Dark Age world economy accounts for much of this chaos. The long-distance exchange network supporting the Mercian and Carolingian elites faltered in the early decades of the ninth century when Arab silver supplies to the West ceased flowing. The demise of English monasticism over the later ninth and early tenth century, traditionally attributed by historians to the Viking raids, occurred within this changing economic context: Richard Hodges and David Whitehouse, Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983); Eric John, "Kings and Monks in the Tenth-Century Reform," in his Orbis Britanniae (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966), 154-180; Robin Fleming, "Monastic Lands and England's Defence in the Viking Age," English Historical Review 100 (April 1985): 247-265.

19. Land tenure took on new importance over the ninth century as elites relied increasingly on the land and its fruits for much-needed revenue. Estates fragmented into smaller units: Patrick Wormald, "The Ninth Century," in The Anglo-Saxons ed. James Campbell (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 138-139; A. E. Brown, T. R. Key, and C. Orr, "Some Anglo-Saxon Estates in Northamptonshire," Northamptonshire Archaeology 12 (1977): 155-176; Graham Cadman and Glenn Foard, "Raunds: Manorial and Village Origins,'' in Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon Settlement , ed. Margaret L. Faull (Oxford: Oxford University Department for External Studies, 1984), 81-100. Around Peterborough, archaelogists have excavated fortified manorial complexes at Goltho, Lincolnshire; Sulgrave, Northamptonshire; and Water Newton and Little Paxton, Huntingdonshire. Goltho: Guy Beresford, "Goltho Manor, Lincolnshire: The Buildings and

Their Surrounding Defences," in Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies IV, 1981 , ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Totowa, N. J., 1982), 13-36; Sulgrave: K. B. Davison, "Excavations at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, 1960-67: An Interim Report," Archaeological Journal 134 (1977), fig. 3; Water Newton: C. Green, "Excavations on a Medieval Site at Water Newton in the County of Huntingdon in 1958,'' Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 56-57 (1962-1963): 68-87; Little Paxton: Peter Addyman, "Late Saxon Settlements in the St. Neots Area, II: The Little Paxton Settlement and Enclosures," ibid. 62 (1969): 59-93.

20. For instance, at Great Paxton, Hunts, just across the river from its berewick Little Paxton, stands the elaborate pre-Conquest church erected by Earl Waltheof (d. A.D. 1076) or his widow Countess Judith: C. A. R. Radford, "Pre-Conquest Minster Churches," Archaeological Journal 130 (1973): 133.

21. Peter Addyman, "Late Saxon Settlements in the St. Neots Area, III: The Village or Township of St. Neots," Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society 64 (1972): 45-100.

22. Beresford, "Goltho," 13-36.

23. John N. Williams, "From Palace to 'Town': Northampton and Urban Origins," Anglo-Saxon England 13 (1984): 113-136; Kathy Kilmurry, The Pottery Industry of Stamford, Lincolnshire, c. A.D. 850-1250 , British Archaeological Reports, British Series, no. 84 (Oxford, 1980); John H. Williams, "Northampton," Current Archaeology 79 (1981): 250-259; Christine Mahany, Alan Burchard, and Gavin Simpson, Excavations in Stamford, Lincolnshire, 1963-69 , Society for Medieval Archaeology, Monograph Series, no. 9 (London, 1982).

24. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , 71.

25. It is difficult not to view the alliance of King Edgar and Bishop Aethelwold in the monastic reform movement as a challenge to local lordship and a reassertion of much-damaged royal power in the East Midlands: John, "Kings and Monks"; D. J. V. Fisher, "The Anti-monastic Reaction in the Reign of Edward the Martyr," Cambridge Historical Journal 10 (1952): 254-270.

26. Through the legal process of exchange, and endowment from the king's own landed reserves, and through less savory extralegal means, Aethelwold, "the eagle of Christ," succeeded in creating a land bank which he apportioned to the five monasteries: Eric John, "Some Latin Charters from the Tenth Century," in Orbis Britanniae , 181-209; Dorothy Whitelock, foreword to Liber Eliensis , ed. E. O. Blake, Camden Third Series, vol. 92 (London, 1962), ix-xviii.

27. "Cuius loci basilicam congruis domorum structuris ornatam et terris adiacentibus copiose ditatam in honore beati Petri principis apostolorum consecravit": Wulfstan's Life of St. Aethelwold, from Michael Winterbottom, Three Lives of English Saints (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1972), 48. As already observed (n. 5 above), later medieval building programs destroyed or rendered very difficult to interpret much of the pre-Conquest remains of the monastic complex at Peterborough. The excavations at Winchester offer some insight into the liturgical and claustral intentions of the building programs of Aethelwold: Martin Biddle, "Excavations at Winchester, 1970: Ninth Interim Report," Antiquaries Journal 52 (1972): 116-123, figs. 6-8; idem, '''Felix Urbs Winthonia': Winchester in the Age of Monastic Reform," in Tenth-Century Studies , ed. David Parsons (London: Phillimore, 1975), 123-140.

28. David Hill, " Trends in the Development of Towns during the Reign of Ethelred II," in Ethelred the Unready , ed. D. Hill, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, no. 59 (Oxford, 1978), 213-253; William C. Wells, "The Stamford and Peterborough Mints," British Numismatic Journal 22 (1934-1937): 35-77; 23 (1938-1940): 7-28.

29. King, Peterborough Abbey , 9.

30. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , 199.

31. For rankings according to gross Domesday valuations see David Hill, An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), fig. 248. The following authors have dealt with the problem of interpreting values in the Domesday Book: Reginald Lennard, Rural England, 1086-1135: A Study of Social and Agrarian Conditions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), 156-157; R. Welldon Finn, The Norman Conquest and Its Effects on the Economy, 1066-1086 (Hampton, Conn.: Archon Books, 1971). In the East Midlands there were large increases in valuation between 1066 and 1086. The worth of Peterborough Abbey increased from 1269 s . to 2,863 s . 4 d .: Welldon Finn, Norman Conquest , 238. The worth of Ramsey Abbey, a neighbor of Peterborough, doubled. The increase in valuations must be set, however, in a context of depredation during the Conquest.

32. King, Peterborough , 13-34.

33. For a discussion of subinfeudation of properties between 1086 and 1125 see King, Peterborough , 13-34. Texts of the Domesday printed in The Victoria History of the Counties of England (VCH) were used in this study unless otherwise indicated: VCH Northampton 1:301-356; VCH Huntingdon 1:337-355; VCH Leicester 1:306-338; VCH Nottingham 1:247-288; VCH Rutland , 138-142; Lincolnshire: C. W. Foster and T. Longley, eds., The Lincolnshire Domesday and Lindsey Survey , Lincoln Record Society, vol. 19 (Lincoln, 1924; reprint, 1976). The text of the 1125 survey contained in the Society of Antiquaries MS. 60 is printed in Chronicon Petroburgense , ed. T. Stapleton, Publications of the Camden Society, vol. 47 (London, 1849), 157-168. For

a description of the manuscript consult Janet D. Martin, Cartularies and Registers of Peterborough Abbey , Northamptonshire Record Society, Publications, vol. 28 (Peterborough, 1978), 1-7. The survey of 1125 followed upon the death of Abbot John of Peterborough on 14 October 1125. Henry I then seized the revenues of the Abbey during the vacancy (1125-1128) and commissioned his justiciars to carry out an inventory of the "the treasures of the church and all the abbacy, and all that was there, within and without, and this they carried to the King," as the Peterborough Chronicle reported. The chronicle of Hugh Candidus may be found in Peterborough Dean and Chapter MS. 1, ff. 1-19r. It is printed in Joseph Sparke, Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Varii (London, 1723), pt. 2, 1-94; for a translation see The Peterborough Chronicle of Hugh Candidus , trans. Charles Mellows and William Thomas Mellows, 2d ed. (Peterborough: Museum Society, 1966).

34. Battles over the fen were to be fought out fiercely among fen lords and local communities in the courts a century later: Darby, Medieval Fenland , 77; H. C. Darby, The Changing Fenland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 24-31; King, Peterborough , 84-87; Nellie Neilson, ed., A Terrier of Fleet, Lincolnshire (London, 1920); Sandra Raban, The Estates of Thorney and Crowland: A Study of Medieval Monastic Land Tenure , University of Cambridge, Department of Land Economy, Occasional Paper, no. 7 (Cambridge, 1977), 54-55; Raftis, Ramsey Abbey , 153-155.

35. Both historians and archaeologists have uncritically treated the peat fen as a reedy, sedgy grazing area. For a critique of such treatment see Evans, "Nomads in 'Waterland'?" Sir Harry Godwin first drew attention to the scope for human intervention in the plant communities of the English peat fens: H. Godwin and F. R. Bharucha, "Studies in the Ecology of Wicken Fen, II: The Fen Water Table and Its Control of Plant Communities," Journal of Ecology 20 (1932): 157-191; H. Godwin, "Studies in the Ecology of Wicken Fen, III: The Establishment of Fen Scrub (Carr)," ibid. 24 (1936): 82-116; idem, "Studies in the Ecology of Wicken Fen, IV: Crop-taking Experiments,'' ibid. 29 (1941): 83-106; H. Godwin, D. R. Clowes, and B. Huntley, "Studies in the Ecology of Wicken Fen, V: Development of Fen Carr," ibid. 62 (1974): 197-214. J. R. Ravensdale also provides an excellent discussion of management of fen crops in Liable to Floods , 41-69.

36. Grazing and mowing most enhance the pastoral potential of fen vegetation. Botanists have studied the forage potential of managed fen grassland at Woodwalton Fen, a relict fen now preserved by the National Trust. Galloway steers grazed the coarse fen grasses dominated by small woodreed ( Calamagrostis epigejos ) and couch grass ( Agropyron repens ). The grazing of the herd had a marked effect on grassland structure by moving it away from coarse grass toward greater and more palatable botanical diversity. Grazing thus improved the fen fodder. The steers sustained themselves

satisfactorily with the coarse fodder under the environmental conditions of fen grazing: O. B. Williams and T. C. E. Wells, "Grazing Management of Woodwalton Fen: Seasonal Changes in the Diet of Cattle and Rabbits," Journal of Applied Ecology 11 (1974): 499-516.

37. For later medieval wet phases and the problem of silting in the fenland river systems consult Hallam, Settlement and Society , 155; Darby, Medieval Fenland , 156-163; Ravensdale, Liable to Floods , 7-8, 114-115; Robert Evans, "The Early Courses of the River Nene," Durobrivae 7 (1979): 8-10.

38. H. C. Darby observed that the Domesday Book gives a "very incomplete picture of marshland in England in the eleventh century": Domesday England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 160. Recent research on the Domesday returns for Essex suggests that meadow was a "tax-deductible": J. M. McDonald and G. D. Snooks, "Were the Tax Assessments of Domesday England Artificial? The Case of Essex," Economic History Review , 2d ser., 38 (1985): 367; idem, Domesday Economy: A New Approach to Anglo-Norman History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).

39. John Bridges, The History and Antiquities of Northamptonshire (London, 1791), 2; VCH Northampton 2:472.

40. Darby, Changing Fenland , 178-179.

41. For a text of the charter see Cyril Hart, The Early Charters of Eastern England (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1966), 182-183.

42. Kilmurry, Stamford , 148-149.

43. The meadow acreage was computed from furlong measurements recorded in Domesday and converted into acres according to the form factor used by Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 114. For the twenty-one locations with meadow acreage the descriptive statistics worked out as follows: mean = 72 acres; standard deviation = 90.6 acres; variance = 7,827.5 acres. The minimum holding was 8 acres at the manor of Stanwick and the maximum holding was 380 acres of meadow at Walcot, the manor most distant from the Abbey of Peterborough.

44. Many Lincolnshire manors, such as the Abbey's manors at Fiskerton, Scotter, and Walcot, had unusually high meadow assessments; see Darby, Domesday England , 148.

45. Mown meadows and grazed meadows produce distinctive flora which archaeobotanists can distinguish in the archaeological record. In the future it may be possible to reconstruct medieval meadow management in the East Midlands through the study of archaeological seed and plant remains. On grazed and mown meadow flora see H. Baker, "Alluvial Meadows: A Comparative Study of Grazed and Mown Meadows," Journal of Ecology 25 (1937): 408-425. For an example of current archaeobotanical methodology used in investigating the economic use of floodplain terraces see Mark

Robinson, "Plants and Invertebrates: Methods and Results; Interpretation," in Iron Age and Roman Riverside Settlements at Farmoor, Oxfordshire , ed. George Lambrick and Mark Robinson, Council for British Archaeology Research Report, no. 32 (Oxford and London, 1979), 77-128.

46. E. Duffey, M. G. Morriss, J. Sheail, L. K. Ward, D. A. Wells, T. C. E. Wells, Grassland Ecology and Wildlife Management (London: Chapman and Hall, 1974), 34. For early evidence of sophisticated management of water meadows on the river Itchen at Winchester see Martin Biddle, "Excavations at Winchester, 1971 Tenth and Final Interim Report: Part II," Antiquaries Journal 55 (1975): 326-328.

47. The statistics for correlating meadow acreage with demesne oxen for sixteen manors where such correlation was possible were as follows: r = 0.1441 (P < 0.59420); for meadow acreage with estimated peasant oxen (oxen derived from number of ploughs) for thirteen manors: r = 0.4409 (P < 0.1316); for meadow acreage and total demesne and peasant oxen for thirteen manors: r = 0.4152 (P < 0.1583). For an excellent discussion of the multiple associations between values on Domesday manors consult McDonald and Snooks, Domesday Economy .

48. The acreage for woodland on the Abbey's manors ranged from 1.2 acres to 6,048 acres. There was obviously a great deal of variation in the acreage of woodland on the manors. Calculations of descriptive statistics are as follows: mean = 734 acres; standard deviation = 1,413; variance = 189,999. The acreages were calculated according to Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 114.

49. Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 114; G. F. Peterken, "Long-Term Changes in the Woodlands of Rockingham Forest and Other Areas," Journal of Ecology 64 (1976): 123-146.

50. Edmund King offers an excellent discussion of forest colonization by the Abbey in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in chapter 4 of his Peterborough Abbey , 70-87.

51. Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 137-160.

52. Kathleen Biddick, "Pig Husbandry on the Peterborough Abbey Estate from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Ceutury," in Animals and Archaeology , ed. Juliet Clutton-Brock and Caroline Grigson, vol. 4, British Archaeological Reports, International Series, no. 227 (Oxford, 1985), 161-177.

53. Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 140.

54. Experimental firings under conditions replicating the Stamford kilns required about sixty to one hundred faggots to reach firing temperature. Archaeologists estimate that at Stamford one kiln-firing produced about two hundred jugs. One carriage of faggots would contain twenty dozen bundles, according to later-thirteenth-century sources: Kilmurry, Stamford , 68.

55. Discussion of the soils and arable potential of the Abbey's manors is

based on the volumes in the series The Land of Britain: The Report of the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain , ed. L. Dudley Stamp (London, 1937-), pt. 58 (1943), Northamptonshire ; pt. 59 (1943), Soke of Peterborough ; pt. 53 (1937), Rutland ; pt. 60 (1937), Nottinghamshire ; pt. 76-77 (1942), Lincolnshire ; pt. 69 (1937), Holland ( Lincolnshire ); pt. 75 (1941), Huntingdonshire .

56. Land Utilisation Survey , Soke , 384; Northamptonshire , 377.

57. King, Peterborough Abbey , 143.

58. Brown, Key, and Orr, "Some Anglo-Saxon Estates in Northamptonshire," 155-176.

59. The estimates for ploughing pace are taken from the late-thirteenth-century agricultural treatise of Walter of Henley: D. Oschinsky, ed., Walter of Henley and Other Treatises of Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), 157.

60. For an excellent discussion of the growing tendency to define work owed by peasants as work units that might be further specified by piecework quotas see Raftis, Ramsey Abbey , 193-195.

61. We know very little about the physical plant of manors in the early twelfth century. Little excavation of the ancillary buildings of twelfth-century manor houses has taken place. Archaeologists date the large barn associated with the manor house at Wharram Percy to the thirteenth century: Maurice Beresford and John G. Hurst, Deserted Medieval Villages (London: Lutterworth Press, 1971), 132. The wooden barn at Coggeshall Abbey, Essex, measuring 37 ft. (121 m) x 13 ft. (43 m) is the oldest standing wooden construction in Europe and is dated to the twelfth century (Rackham, Ancient Woodland , 144-147). Its dimensions easily match those of the great masonry-and-timber tithe barns of the thirteenth century, such as Great Coxwell (Berkshire) and Beaulieu-St. Leonard's (Hampshire). For a magnificent presentation of these barns see Walter Horn and Ernest Born, The Barns of the Abbey of Beaulieu at Its Granges of Great Coxwell and Beaulieu-St. Leonard's (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965); transcripts of the St. Paul leases may be found in William Hale, The Domesday of St. Paul's of the Year M.CC.XII , Publications of the Camden Society, vol. 69 (London, 1858), 122-139.