A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



The organization of the system is seen very clearly if the hundreds are 

 arranged in groups, each with a separate unit of leet assessment, but all 

 ultimately based on the lod. ora. The first is the ' ora or lod. unit group.' 

 It includes the hundreds of Thingoe, Lackford, Claydon, Plomesgate, and 

 Wangford, and the half-hundred of Parham certainly, and, with less certainty, 

 Babergh double hundred, Cosford half-hundred, and the hundreds of Bosmere, 

 Hartismere, Loes, and Colneis. To the second, ' ora and a half, or 30^. unit 

 group,' belong the hundreds of Blything, Bishop's, Carlford, Stow, Risbridge, 

 and the hundred and a half of Samford. The units of assessment are 30^'., 6o</., 

 15^., and ']\d. In Blything Hundred no fewer than ten vills are assessed 

 at 7J^., a quarter of 30^/. The third group has I'j'kd. and 34^^. as units 

 of assessment — a survival, possibly, of a double ora or \od. unit. It contains 

 only the hundreds of Blackbourn and Bradmere. The fourth group is based 

 on a unit of \l\d. or 27^., which looks like a reduced ora and a half (30^'.); 

 it is composed of the hundred of Wilford, while "Thedwastre Hundred seems 

 to have two units of assessment, ^od. and 27^.*° Lastly, the half-hundred of 

 Lothingland is assessed as a whole at ioj., and in Lothing Hundred the unit 

 is apparently i6d'., possibly the ora of \bd. The reconstruction of this scheme 

 of assessment is extremely complicated and difficult, since the geld was often 

 distributed through the hundred in small fractions, and in combining these into 

 ' leet ' units it has to be remembered that, to judge from the Thingoe instance, 

 neighbouring villages, as a rule, gelded together, and the leet, when it was 

 made up of more than one vill, was a territorially compact district. Enough, 

 however, may be done to show that the East Anglian leet system must at 

 one time have been regularly and elaborately organized." 



In this system the vill appears as the gelding unit, but the tax falls on 

 the vill through the hundred. This is proved by the entry relating to Loth- 

 ingland,*^ where the lineal measurements and geld are given tor the whole 

 half-hundred, without distinction of vills. This may help to explain the fact 

 that only certain vills in each hundred were assessed to the geld. Thus in 

 the hundred of Claydon, out of twenty-five vills mentioned in the Survey, the 

 ' geld ' falls on eleven ; in Wilford Hundred, out of thirty-three vills, eleven 

 geld ; in Blything twenty-nine of the fifty-six vills are assessed ; in Risbridge 

 twenty-one out of thirty-seven. Probably the hundred or half-hundred was 

 assessed as a whole, and the geld was then partitioned among the smaller fiscal 

 areas or leets, and through them again it would fall on the selected vills, 

 which may have been tax-centres for a district.*' 



The problem of the relation between the geld assessment and the land 

 measurements which usually accompany it in the East Anglian Domesday 

 Inquest does not yet admit of a satisfactory solution. The normal entry 

 in the Norfolk and Suffolk Surveys gives the number of carucates or acres 

 held by the tenants, and the number of ploughs on the holding, but it omits 

 the formula terra est x carucis, the second term (b) of Professor Maitland's 

 ' A B C of Domesday,' ** That is to say, in the East Anglian Survey we 

 have information about the ' geld carucates ' (a) and about the ' plough teams' 

 (c), but not about the ' team-lands ' (b), the ' potential arable ' of the counties. 



" Round, Feud. Engl. 102. " See Table of Danegeld and Leet System. " Dom. Bk. 283^. 



*' Cf. Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 120-1 ; Round, Feud. Engl. 49 et seq. 

 " Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 399, 406, 413, 429. 



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