LEICESTERSHIRE SURVEY 



the sub-partitionment of the geld intermediate between the wapentake and 

 the vill. Traces of a similar system have been found in the Domesday 

 Surveys of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, 7 and may perhaps be recognized 

 in Lincolnshire also, 8 but the Leicestershire Domesday gives no hint of their 

 existence. Judging from the Leicestershire evidence alone, these hundreds 

 appear to have been highly artificial groups, varying greatly in point of size 

 and intermixed with each other to such an extent that it is impossible to 

 represent their complicated boundaries on any intelligible map. In general, 

 the size of the hundred decreases as we pass from west to east ; on an average 

 a hundred in Gosecote wapentake will contain six or seven vills, in Framland 

 wapentake it will contain three or four. The extreme limits of size are 

 marked by the hundreds of Diseworth and Seal with ten and fifteen vills 

 respectively, and those of Croxton Kerrial and Long Clawson containing 

 two vills each. This difference is no doubt largely to be explained by the 

 facts of geography the country round Charnwood Forest was a land of 

 hamlets, whereas the east of the county was adapted for the growth of villages 

 according to the normal English pattern. In the matter of assessment the 

 differences are less striking ; the average assessment of a Framland hundred is 

 close upon forty carucates, for a Gosecote hundred it would stand at forty- 

 seven. In actual figures the hundredal assessments lie between the seventy 

 carucates cast upon Loddington hundred and the thirty carucates assigned to 

 that of Scalford. 



Taken individually, these hundredal assessments present a perplexing 

 series of uneven and occasionally fractional figures. Out of thirty-two 

 hundreds included in the survey there are only seven cases in which the 

 hundred as a whole is rated at an even duodecimal number of carucates, not 

 one of these cases, curiously enough, occurring among the fifteen hundreds of 

 Gosecote wapentake. 9 As the duodecimal tendency is so strongly marked 

 among the villar assessments recorded in this survey, we should naturally ex- 

 pect it to be no less apparent in the hundredal totals also. That this is not the 

 case may be due to one or other of two reasons. There exists a number of 

 cases in which the hundredal total, though irregular itself, comes very near to 

 an even duodecimal figure. This undoubtedly suggests that owing to such 

 causes as local alterations in the incidence of the geld, reductions of assess- 

 ment, or scribal errors in the compilation of the present survey, figures which 

 once were duodecimal have become distorted from their original form. 10 On 

 the other hand, the proportion of duodecimal totals still remaining is hardly 

 sufficient to create a presumption that all the totals were formerly duodecimal, 

 and also there are numerous cases in which the divergence from the nearest 

 duodecimal figure is rather too large to square well with this hypothesis. 

 Another theory which seems at least possible on the evidence before us is that 

 the hundredal totals themselves in each wapentake may have been combined 

 into larger groups according to a duodecimal basis. In fact, the figures for 



7 Cf. 7.C.H. Derby, i, 295 ; and Notts, \, 242. 



" The possible existence of territorial hundreds in Lincolnshire is a question distinct from the problem 

 presented by the ' hundred ' of twelve carucates in that county. This last was merely a fiscal term, analogous 

 to the ' hide ' of Leicestershire. 



9 With the doubtful exception of the hundred of Tonge, the figures relating to which may be so read as 

 to give a total of 48 carucates. 



10 Compare Feudal England, 81. 



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