avourite cow, and his
valet-de-chambre Abel!"

I do not know why his servant should have been called Abel.

The Norman Conquest also came peaceably to this beautiful and remote
place; the census of the population of Lynton and Countisbury given in
Domesday, which was compiled in 1086, twenty years after the Conquest,
gives the numbers for the two villages as 425. In 1801 the population
numbered no more than 601, these numbers being as many as the district
could support until the modern distribution of supplies; and the
comparatively small increase in seven hundred years shows that in William
the Conqueror's reign sobriety of government and security of the life of
the individual gave these localities freedom to develop to the limit of
their capacity. Countisbury had been held by Ailmar "on the day on which
King Edward was alive and dead," and it "rendered geld for half a hide."
A "hide" was the unit of assessment on which the Danegeld was paid in
Saxon times--

1 virgate = 1/4 of a hide.
1 ferling = 1/4 of a virgate (also identified with sixteen acres).
1 ploughland = as much land as 8 oxen could cultivate.
(In Devonshire 1 ploughland was equivalent to 4 ferlings.)

The "manor" consisted of the "demesne," which was the lord's home-farm,
attached to his dwelling, and the villagers' land, which was held by the
villeins for their own use, on the condition of the cultivation of their
lord's ground. Hence it will be seen that the condition of the peasantry
in the eleventh century, while actually serfdom, with enforced labour,
and no right of moving from the dominion of the lord under which they
were born, was virtually better than the conditions of the agricultural
population at the beginning of the nineteenth century (and some would
say, even, at the present day) in that they practically owned
smallholdings and were in a position where industry and enterprise could
be better rewarded than many a labourer of our own time could expect,
whose prospects--so long as he remained an agricultural labourer, and in
England--were inalterably bounded by eighteen shillings a week.

The manor of Countisbury rendered geld for half a hide, of which the lord
held one virgate and four ploughs, and the villeins held one virgate and
six ploughs. Here is a list of the possessions of the overlord in 1086:

"There William has 12 villeins, and 6 bordars, and 15 serfs, and 1
swineherd (who renders 10 swine by the year), a