A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE 



In the case of Barrow on Soar, it has been suggested above that this vill may 

 have been temporarily attached to Guthlaxton wapentake, 3 with which the 

 record before us does not deal ; but of the other vills, Wymeswold certainly 

 belonged to Gosecote wapentake in 1086, and the omission of the group in 

 question is probably accidental. It cannot be due to a mutilation of the 

 manuscript, for the description of Gosecote wapentake comes in the 

 middle of it. 



With all its imperfection, however, the Leicestershire Survey supplies a 

 most valuable commentary upon the corresponding portion of Domesday. 

 The manner in which it reinforces the evidence for the duodecimal assessment 

 of the county has already been discussed in the Domesday Introduction.* On 

 the other hand, it must be confessed that the discrepancies between the assess- 

 ments of individual vills as recorded in Domesday and in the present document 

 present a very serious difficulty. In part, no doubt, this is due to the 

 combination of villar assessments after the manner described in the Domesday 

 Introduction, but it is also clear that the Leicestershire Survey is no mere 

 re-arrangement of the Domesday figures, but represents the result of a fresh 

 inquiry into these matters. We know in regard to other counties that the 

 assessments recorded in Domesday were in no sense regarded as final, but 

 were subject to constant revision, 5 and a drastic revision must have been 

 needed to produce the figures recorded here. For the real difficulty 

 presented by the assessments entered in the present record lies in the fact 

 that they normally represent an advance, in many cases a large advance, upon 

 the fiscal burden recorded in Domesday. Had Leicestershire, in 1086, been 

 a lightly rated county, an increase in its assessment would have been natural 

 enough, but no shire in England presents such a striking combination of 

 great poverty with heavy taxation as that afforded by Leicestershire. The 

 difficulty is complicated by the fact that in the Pipe Roll of 1 130, which is 

 almost exactly contemporary with the Leicestershire Survey, the county 

 appears as paying a sum absurdly below that which would be represented by 

 even the Domesday assessment of the shire. The sheriff of Leicestershire in 

 that year accounts for just 100 as the Danegeld of a county rated, according 

 to the lowest estimate, at more than 2,500 carucates. The neatness of the 

 sum certainly suggests that the sheriff of Leicestershire, in contrast to the 

 practice which obtained in relation to all other counties, had compounded 

 for the shire's Danegeld, and we may at least suggest as a reason for this 

 exceptional treatment of Leicestershire, that it had been found impossible in 

 practice to raise anything like the amount of geld which would be represented 

 by the assessments either of 1086 or 1125." This, however, is only a 

 hypothesis. 



But valuable as is the subject-matter of the present survey, its peculiar 

 interest lies in the manner in which it is arranged. Its discovery for the first 

 time revealed the fact that the several wapentakes of Leicestershire were 

 divided into a number of small territorial hundreds, representing a stage in 



* See Domesday Introduction, p. 297. 4 See ante, p. 279. 



6 Compare the frequent discrepancies between the assessment of Northamptonshire vills as given by Domes- 

 day and by the twelfth-century Northamptonshire Survey. See also V.C.H. Berks, i, 287. 



6 For the sums paid as Danegeld by various counties in 1 130 see feudal England, 94-5. See the same 

 work, pp. 499-500, for the general correspondence between the money accounted for by the sheriff and the 

 assessment of the county in hides or carucates. 



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