DOMESDAY SURVEY 



which would settle the question if we could be sure that it was intended as 

 an explanation of a rule and not as a note of an exception. The description 

 of the estates of the church of Coventry begins, ' The abbey of Coventry holds 

 Burbage. There is one hide and a quarter. There are 22j carucates of land/ 

 The equation here can only mean that the hide represented a group unit of 

 1 8 carucates, and it is probable that this was the normal rule throughout the 

 county, an exception being duly noted in Domesday under Melton Mowbray, 

 where the hide only amounted to 144 carucates. 



Of the origin of this curious unit we know nothing. Outside Leicester- 

 shire it may be compared with the ' hides ' of the hundred of West Derby in 

 Lancashire, which were groups of six carucates, and with the ' hundreds ' of 

 the Lindsey Survey, which were groups of twelve. In view of the fact that 

 Leicestershire was a poor county, heavily assessed in carucates, it has been 

 suggested as a possibility that the hide may have been introduced here as an 

 attempt to lighten the pressure of taxation, that, for instance, when Lincoln- 

 shire paid two shillings on each of its carucates Leicestershire may have paid 

 the same on each of its hides. 7 But, apart from the absence of any proof 

 that Leicestershire was thus leniently treated, the existence of similar group 

 units in the Lancashire hide and the Lincolnshire hundred is against such a 

 supposition, and it is perhaps premature to make further guesses on the 

 subject. But it should be noted that hides were known in Leicestershire at 

 the beginning of the eleventh century, for a document of 1002 speaks of 

 'the hide at Sharnford belonging to Wigston (Parva).' 8 Here, however, the 

 word is apparently used as a term of land measurement, equivalent to the 

 more usual carucate, and cannot well be connected with the fiscal group-units 

 with which Domesday and the Leicestershire Survey make us acquainted. 



In addition to obtaining a definite statement of the assessment of each 

 manor at the time when the survey was taken, the Domesday commissioners 

 were also under instructions to discover how far the existing fiscal arrange- 

 ments were equitable. In fulfilling this part of their task it was the practice 

 of the commissioners to estimate the geldable capacity of an estate in terms 

 of its agricultural condition. Hence, as a general rule, the statement of the 

 assessment of a vill will be followed immediately by a statement of the number 

 of plough-teams that could find employment there. About half the entries 

 in Leicestershire run in this accustomed form, and the Leicestershire 

 ' plough-lands ' will have to be considered shortly. But it is one of the 

 perplexing features of the Leicestershire Domesday that in it we are frequently 

 given, not an estimate of the agricultural possibilities of an estate, but a 

 statement of the number of ploughs that had been at work on it in the time 

 of Edward the Confessor. Such a statement is commonly given in the 

 surveys of Essex, Norfolk, and Suffolk ; it is also given in regard to the 

 manors in North Northamptonshire ; it occurs here and there in the descrip- 

 tion of Oxfordshire, 9 otherwise its appearance is confined to the Leicester- 

 shire examples which we have now to consider. 10 



The question that first arises is how are we to account for the curious 

 distribution of this formula in Domesday Book ? We may, of course, suppose 



' Maitland, Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 468. 8 Kemble, Codex Diflomaticus, 1280. 



9 ' Rex tenet Besintone. Ibi sunt xii hidae una virgata terrae minus T.R.E. erant ibi 1 carucae.' 

 10 For the general question of these pre-Conquest teams see Dom. Bk. and Beyond, 420. 

 I 281 36 



