A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE 



to be said on both subjects which is not to be found in the exist- 

 ing histories, valuable though they are, of Bridges and Baker. And 

 more especially is this the case with the study of the county assess- 

 ments. 



It is only very recently that we have begun to realise how ancient 

 and how important is the history which underlies the local assessments 

 entered in Domesday Book. In the southern half of England the 

 Domesday unit of assessment was that mysterious ' hide ' of which the 

 meaning has been long disputed, and of which the derivation is even now 

 obscure. Northamptonshire, like other counties to its south, and like, 

 also, Warwickshire on its western, and Huntingdonshire on its eastern 

 border, was assessed in ' hides ' and ' virgates,' the ' virgate ' being merely 

 the quarter of a ' hide.' But Leicestershire to its north, like Lincoln- 

 shire, belonged to that Danish district of England which was assessed, 

 not in hides, but in carucates and bovates, the bovate representing the 

 eighth part of a carucate. This position of Northamptonshire on the 

 border of the two districts has to be borne in mind. 



Until explained and reduced to order, the number of the hides and 

 of the ploughlands assigned to each manor in Domesday are, at first 

 sight, meaningless enough. But they represent the disjecta membra, the 

 surviving fragments of a system. To reconstruct that system is the func- 

 tion of the Domesday student. In his Domesday Book and Beyond 

 Professor Maitland has shown that in what he terms ' The county 

 hidage ' — a document which he deems older than the Conquest — North- 

 amptonshire is assigned 3,200 hides. The next document in order of 

 date is what I have styled ' the Northamptonshire geld-roll,' and which 

 I assign to the reign of the Conqueror, although it cannot, I hold, be 

 later than 1075, for it mentions Edward's widow (who died in that year) 

 as ' the lady, the king's wife.' ' Professor Maitland, who accepts my 

 view of this document and its nature, points out that it implies the 

 existence of thirty-two ' hundreds ' of hides, although it only actually 

 accounts for 2,663!^. But it is when we come to Domesday Book 

 (1086) and to the Pipe Roll of 11 30 that we find an extraordinary re- 

 duction on either of the above totals. The latter record debits North- 

 amptonshire with no more than 1,1 92f hides. It is the view of 

 Professor Maitland that this great change is accounted for by a sweeping, 

 though unrecorded, reduction of assessment under William I.'' 



At this point it may be desirable to give an analysis of the ' geld- 

 roll,' the only document of this character known to exist in England, 

 and one for which I have claimed the status of ' our earliest financial 

 record." The successive columns represent : (i) the land which had 

 paid the tax ; (2) the ' inland ' which was exempt ; (3) the king's land ; 

 (4) the land on which the tax had not yet been paid ; (5) the land which 



1 Feudal Englandy p. 154. 

 * Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 457, 469. 

 " Feudal England, p. 156. 

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