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by drof-ways, and watched over by drof-men or forest
herdsmen, to whom portions were sometimes allotted for their services.
These drovers soon made the Weald their permanent abode, while more
enterprising men, anxious to till the soil, joined them, and paid rent
for permission to grub and plough portions of them, known as danger or
lefsilver. The boundaries at length became more clearly defined, and
gates were set up. This state of things must have existed long anterior
to the Norman Conquest, which we are now approaching.
Tenterden, from its position, must have been, at this time,
a place of some importance, yet, strange to say, we find no mention of
it even in the eleventh century, nor of Tunbridge or Cranbrook. Its
nomenclature affords conclusive evidence of its existence before the
Conquest. Philipot, who has been followed by other writers, says it was
originally written "Theinwarden," being the Thane's ward or
guard in the wood or valley. Edmunds is also of opinion that it is of
Anglo-Saxon origin, from "thegn" and "dene,"
"the nobleman's hollow." I find Tenterden first written as in
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day about the end of the sixteenth century,
sometimes with the addition "alias Tentwarden."
In the Survey of Domesday there is no mention of many of
the hundreds now in the centre of the Weald, and only eight places are
referred to, four of which are returned with churches. Now it should be
remembered that this Survey was compiled twenty years after the arrival
of the Conqueror, that he might know, amongst other things, the names of
his landowners, and the situation of their possessions. How then, it may
be asked, does it happen that we fail to find Tenterden and Cranbrook in
it? I will endeavour to give a reason. The Survey returns forty-five
entire denes (some of them containing perhaps 500 acres each according
to Spelman), also nine small ones and two halves, and no names are given
to any of them. In this Survey the Norman term "manor" is
substituted for prędium or possession; but in the Weald the
denes represented the manors. The ecclesiastics, religious houses, and
laity, who held no less than seventy manors under a newly created feudal
system, held the right |