Honour

Latin honor.

The Latin word honor is translated as Honour in the Phillimore edition, though more commonly as honor.

By convention, the term Honour is used to describe all the manors held by a tenant-in-chief. It is, however, a conventional, not a technical term and is sometimes used interchangeably with fief, itself more commonly used to describe those manors held by a tenant-in-chief in a single county.

The usage in Domesday Book often approximates to its classical meaning, though honor is applied to Anglo-Saxon lordships in several entries in the Exeter Domesday and on occasion to single manors in Domesday Book.

Of the eight occurrences of honor in Great Domesday, perhaps the most interesting is the Wiltshire entry for Malmesbury (WIL B5), which records that 'when the King went on an expedition by land or sea, he had from this Borough either 20 shillings to feed his boatmen, or he took with him one man for [each] Honour of five hides'.

For more detail, see Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and vassals: the medieval evidence reinterpreted (1994); Judith A. Green, The aristocracy of Norman England (1997); and for the Exeter Domesday entries, see the notes to the printed Phillimore edition for Devon (15,31;47;49).

See also codes for landowners, feudal, subinfeudation, and tenure.