THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



they marched south on Northampton they would next pass by Little 

 Oxendon, where we have a rise in value from is. to ioj-., and would 

 also traverse Kelmarsh, of which the value had recovered from 5J. to 40J. 



Meanwhile Eadwine was coming to his brother's help, and must, 

 with his Mercian and Welsh host, have marched down the Watling 

 Street. He would enter the county, therefore, at Lilbourne, where we 

 find a recovery in value from is. to ioj., and have passed on through 

 Crick (jTi lox. to ^^4 ioj.) and Watford (ioj. to £2), striking off 

 through Whilton (ioj. to ^^3), Brington (5J. to ^^i), Althorpe (5J. to 

 £1), and Harleston (5J. to ^i ioj.), and passing between Dallington 

 {£2 to £^), and Duston {£2 to £^) to join his brother at Northampton. 



Bearing in mind how small, comparatively, was the average rise 

 throughout the county — an average itself largely due to these excep- 

 tional manors — we cannot really doubt that their striking figures have a 

 meaning, and that the explanation must be sought in the devastating 

 march of the earls' hosts in 1065, the results of which must have 

 specially impressed a Peterborough Abbey chronicler. I have elsewhere 

 shown that Sussex presents a similar phenomenon in its record of manors 

 which, although 'wasted' by the presence of the warring hosts in 1066, 

 had recovered, in the main, their value by 1086.* 



It is one of the advantages presented by this series of county histories 

 that they are enabling the study of Domesday to be carried out in 

 greater detail and on a more uniform system than has ever yet been 

 possible. Writing, for instance, on Domesday as a whole. Professor 

 Maitland could only suggest that Northamptonshire had its assessment 

 reduced by about fifty per cent. But when we examine more closely 

 the survey of this particular county, we are led to an interesting 

 discovery. For, we shall find, it is practically certain that the reduction 

 of assessment was not uniform, but varied, as I have shown it did in 

 Cambridgeshire,^ in different portions of the county. 



A very peculiar and distinct phenomenon is presented by the 

 Domesday assessment of south-west Northamptonshire. In the modern 

 Hundreds of Fawsley, Warden, Sutton, Norton, Towcester, and Cleyley, 

 in short throughout that portion of the shire which lies south of the 

 Nen — except the Hundred of Wimersley, on the east — we find that the 

 ratio of ' hides ' to ploughlands is constant, and that this ratio is 2 to 5. 

 To use less technical language, if a manor, in 1086, was assessed at two 

 ' hides,' it was normally entered as containing land for five ploughs ; if 

 it was assessed at four hides, its land was said to be for ten ploughs, and 

 so on in proportion. The extreme artificiality of this whole arrange- 

 ment is accentuated by the fact that we sometimes find more ploughs 

 employed on a manor than it is said to have land for. Moreover, 

 though the Domesday assessment in ' hides ' is, in normal counties, 

 conventional, the number of ploughlands usually is not. The figures, 



• Feudal England, pp. 150-152. 

 » Ibid., pp. 50-53. 

 263 



