A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



distinguished from the annual farm of a borough, for the several boroughs 

 of the Danelaw varied greatly in this respect. Stamford, to the east of 

 Leicester, paid geld on 150 carucates ; Nottingham, to the north, paid geld 

 only on six, which last sum probably represents the geldability of the arable 

 lands belonging to the borough. 66 In view of the heavy assessment of 

 Leicestershire, as a whole, we might expect its county-town to have a pro- 

 portionate fiscal burden, and the absence of any statement in Domesday to 

 this effect is another of the statistical anomalies presented by this portion 

 of the great survey. 



The geographical position of the town of Leicester deserves notice here 

 for its bearing on those ancient divisions of the shire, the wapentakes. In 

 1086 the county was divided into the four wapentakes of Guthlaxton, 

 Gosecote, Gartree, and Framland, and Leicester is situated at the very point 

 where the boundaries of the first three divisions coincide. It is clear, then, 

 that their outlines were originally drawn with reference to the borough 

 which lay in the centre of the county, and the fact illustrates the artificiality 

 of the local organization of the Danelaw. With the aid of the Leicestershire 

 Survey it can be proved that the boundaries of the Leicestershire wapentakes 

 have undergone no material change since 1086, except that in 1346 Gosecote 

 wapentake was split into the two divisions of East and West Gosecote, the 

 Soar being taken as the line of delimitation, and a new wapentake of Sparken- 

 hoe was created out of so much of Guthlaxton wapentake as lay between the 

 Foss Way and the southern border of Gosecote. In both these cases the new 

 boundaries, like the old ones, met, and still meet, in Leicester borough. In 

 this county the Domesday scribes, in describing each tenant's land, have 

 generally adhered to a consistent sequence in dealing with the several wapen- 

 takes in which it may have lain, following the order Guthlaxton, Gartree, 

 Gosecote, Framland. There is always a possibility that the sequence in 

 which these local divisions are entered in the survey may reproduce the order 

 followed by the Domesday commissioners in their progress across the county. 

 This suggestion would agree well enough in the case of Leicestershire, but 

 it would not be well to lay much stress upon it, for in the survey of 

 the adjoining county of Nottingham the disposition of the wapentakes is 

 absolutely prohibitive of any theory of the kind. 



In conclusion, in view of the statistical difficulties presented by the 

 section of Domesday Book with which we are dealing, it may be well to give 

 below in tabular form the result of an analysis of the county survey. A 

 double figure is given for the value of the shire, because in regard to much of 

 the king's land we are not given any vatuit, so that it may be well to leave 

 the terra regis entirely out of comparison. The ij\\ hides which appear in 

 the table represent merely an addition of all the instances of this unit which 

 occur in the county survey apart from any connexion of the term with the 

 carucates of rating. The total assessment of the shire will stand at 2,534, or 

 at 2,642 carucates, according as we assume the hide to have consisted of 12 or 

 of 1 8 carucates, the latter appearing to be the more probable. At the lowest 

 estimate the assessment of Leicestershire is in striking contrast with the 

 600 and 567 carucates laid upon the neighbouring counties of Derby and 

 Nottingham respectively. 



K r.C.H. Notts. \, 236. 



304 



