A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



matters, were interested in manorial rather than in villar arrangements. 

 In the following table a list of villar assessments is given, in which the 

 duodecimal grouping of the carucates, distorted in Domesday Book from 

 whatever cause, has been restored by the compilers of the Leicestershire 

 Survey : 



Vill Assessment Vill Assessment 



Beeby 12 carucates Tur Langton 12 carucates 



Lowesby 12 Belgrave 12 



Queniborough . ... 12 Syston 12 



Anstey 6 Brentingby 6 



Swepstone 6 Rotherby 6 



Quenby 6 Shoby 6 



All the above are examples of undivided vills, but in the following cases 

 each villar total represents a number of manorial assessments which are here 

 included within brackets (the figures referring to carucates) : 



Vill Assessment Vill Assessment 



Barkestone .... 24 (23 + 1) Old Dalby ... 12 (9 + 3) 



Newton Burdet . . . 12 (4 + 8) Frisby . . . . 12 (4 + 8) 



Hoby 12 (7J + 4i) Rearsby .... 12 (5 + 2^ + 4!) 



Branston 12 (7^+4^) Eastwell .... 12 (2 + 6+4) 



Sproxton 12 (8 + 2 + 2) Shangton .... 12 (10 + 2) 



East Norton . . . . 12 (1^ + 6 + 4!) Humberstone . . 12 (8 + 1+3) 



Scalford 12 (llJ+J) Welby .... 12 (9 + 3) 



Allexton 6 (sj+t) Saxelby .... 6 (1+5) 



Brooksby 6 (5 + 1) Wyfordby ... 6 (4^+1$) 



Ashby Folville . . . 6 (5 + 1) Keyham .... 6 (4 + 2) 



Thus far, thanks to the evidence of the Leicestershire Survey, it has 

 been possible to set down a sufficiently convincing list of duodecimal assess- 

 ments which might be considerably extended, but we must now consider 

 a very curious complication which does not occur in the same form in the 

 old Danelaw outside this county. This is the employment, in this intensely 

 ' Danish ' shire, of two fiscal terms which rightly belong to the ' hidated y 

 south of England, namely, the ' hide ' and the ' virgate.' The latter does not 

 present much difficulty, for in the hidated counties the virgate was 

 the quarter of the hide just as the bovate was the eighth of the caru- 

 cate, the substitute for the hide in the Danelaw, and in Leicestershire 

 the virgate merely appears as a compendious expression for the sum 

 of two bovates. But the use of the ' hide ' in Leicestershire is quite 

 unique. 8 It does not here denote a term of land-measurement, nor even 

 a simple fiscal unit. The Domesday scribe himself found it necessary to 

 define the word as used in this county, and in the entry relating to Kilby we 

 read ' Oger the Breton holds two parts of one hide, that is, 1 2 carucates of 

 land.' Unfortunately this explanation itself is somewhat ambiguous, for it 

 leaves it an open question whether the words ' that is twelve carucates of 

 land ' were intended as a definition of the term ' hide,' or whether they mean 

 that ' two-thirds of one hide ' amounted to the sum in question. As there 

 are sixteen entries in one portion of the survey in which the hide is involved, 

 it becomes important from the statistical point of view to ascertain whether 

 the term denoted a sum of 12 or of 1 8 carucates, and there is one passage 



6 For the Leicestershire ' hide ' see W. H. Stevenson, ' The Hundreds of Domesday,' Engl. Hist. Rev. v, 95, 

 and Round, feud. Engl. 82. 



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