Note 310 — BOOK III.

Domesday Book bears ample testimony to this statement; and that which closely follows, viz. that the resources of this once-flourishing province were cut off by fire, slaughter, and devastation; and the ground, for more than sixty miles, totally uncultivated and unproductive, remains bare to the present day. The land, which had belonged to Edwin and Morcar in Yorkshire, almost everywhere in the Survey is stated to be wasta; and in Amunderness, after the enumeration of no fewer than sixty-two places, the possessions in which amounted to one hundred and seventy carucates, it is said, ‘Omnes hæ villæ jacent ad Prestune, et tres ecclesiæ. Ex his 16 a paucis incoluntur, sed quot sint habitantes ignoratur. Reliqua sunt wasta.’ Moreover, wasta is added to numerous places belonging to the archbishop of York, St. John of Beverley, the bishop of Durham, and to those lands which had belonged to Waltheof, Gospatric, Siward, and Merlesweyne!—Hardy.