DOMESDAY SURVEY 



as we have it is disposed according to manors, not vills. 4 Hence in those 

 cases where a manor consisted of land in two or more vills the Domesday 

 scribes will often give the total assessment of the whole manorial group 

 without specifying how the sum in question was distributed among the 

 several vills over which it extended. At this point the Leicester Survey in 

 Feudal England comes to our aid, for, like the original returns out of which 

 Domesday Book was compiled, it is drawn up vill by vill, and accordingly 

 demonstrates beyond question the way in which irregular manorial assess- 

 ments were combined to form an even duodecimal total for each vill as a 

 whole. It does even more than this, for it reveals the existence of a system 

 by which the vills themselves were united to form certain larger groups, 

 designated in this document by the name of ' hundreds,' so that even in 

 those cases where a particular vill may be assessed at a figure which does 

 not suggest any system at all it will commonly be connected with some 

 other vill, also assessed at some irregular number of carucates, in such 

 a way that the assessments of the whole ' hundred ' will be duly duodecimal 

 in character. This is not the place in which to discuss the very difficult 

 question of the origin of these hundreds, nor the possibility that a similar 

 series of local divisions may have existed in the other counties of the 

 Danelaw, 6 but we may illustrate the fiscal character of these anomalous bodies 

 by an example in which the figures as recorded by Domesday Book and by 

 this later survey are in complete accordance : 



1086 



Waltham 



Hugh de Grentemaisnil 

 Guy de Craon .. 



HUNDRED OF WALTHAM-ON-THE-WOLDS 



1124-1129 



Car. Bov. 



16 4 



24 



Car. EOT. 



19 o 

 Stonesby 



Guy de Craon ..... 80 

 Coston 



Henry de Ferrers .... 90 



Total . 36 o 



Earl of Leicester 

 Alan de Craon 



Alan de Craon . 

 Robert dc Fcrrers 



16 



2 



4 



4 



.. 8 



9 



Total . 36 o 



It is especially to be noted that as no mention is made of these small 

 local hundreds in Domesday Book, we should, but for the preservation of the 

 * Leicestershire Survey,' be entirely ignorant of the fact that the irregular 

 assessments of Waltham, Stonesby, and Coston were regarded as forming one 

 duodecimal group of 36 carucates. A similar system of grouping runs through 

 the whole survey as we have it, only at times the regularity of the arrange- 

 ment has been disturbed by unrecorded alterations in the local incidence of the 

 geld, and by clerical errors on the part of the scribes in dealing with large 

 masses of figures. Both these causes of exception apply with even greater 

 force to the Domesday Survey itself, aggravated, as we have seen, by the fact 

 that the compilers of the latter record, in regard to fiscal as well as economic 



4 Further evidence is supplied in relation to this point by the Croxton Chartulary, ' Belvoir MSS.' 

 Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv, 176. 



6 Compare V.C.H. Derby, i, 295, and Notts, i, 219. 



2 79 



