A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 



should we expect it during the period when the county was assessed by 

 manors and not by vills — and, indeed, no system at all can at first be 

 discerned in the geld figures even when they have been tabulated. The 

 assessment of the hundreds T.R.E. varies from 265 hides (Steyning) to 

 i| ('Latille') and 1 1 ('Tifeld'),and practically the only point of resemblance 

 between the various totals lies in their almost unanimous avoidance of 

 any semblance of a round number. It is difficult to believe that such 

 can have been the original condition of the hundreds, and it is worth 

 noticing that it is possible to form the Domesday hundreds into groups 

 strictly in accordance with their positions on the map, each of which 

 groups is approximately a simple multiple of eighty hides — taking 

 the figures given T.R.E.' Moreover the only hundred of which we can 

 assert the antiquity with any degree of certainty is that of Mailing, held 

 entirely and for more than two centuries before the survey by the 

 archbishop ; and this was assessed at 80 hides. In view of the 

 hundred being supposed to have originally contained one hundred hides 

 this suggests a pre-Conquest reduction, or ' beneficial hidation,' of twenty 

 per cent. ; and this theory receives support from another important 

 source. The total number of 80-hide units in Sussex is found to be 

 forty-two and a half, which gives an original, unreduced assessment of 

 4,250 hides, which is in remarkably close agreement with the 4,350 

 hides attributed to Sussex in the early hidage roll known as the Burghal 

 Hidage.^ ^ ^ ^ 



Whether any such wholesale reduction did take place or not, it is 

 clear that beneficial hidation was in progress before the end of the 

 Confessor's reign, from a number of entries which state that there were 

 so many hides in the manor, but they paid geld for a smaller number. 

 Mr. Round has shown ^ that this refers to an earlier assessment and not 

 to the existence of areal hides. A good instance is to be found in the 

 first entry in the Sussex survey, where it is said of Godwin's manor of 

 Bosham ' then there were 56I hides but it paid geld for 38 ' (fo. 16). 



It is, however, in the Norman period that beneficial hidation 

 becomes so pronounced a feature of the Sussex Domesday. At first 

 sight the reduction of assessment appears most wild and arbitrary. 

 Nothing could have much less appearance of method than the assessment 

 of the archbishop's holdings, where Pagham is reduced from 50 hides 

 to 34, Lavant from 18 to 9I, Patching from 12 hides to 3 hides 

 3I virgates, and Tarring from 18 hides to 7 hides i virgate. It is not 

 until we add up the totals and find that an assessment of 214 hides has 

 been reduced to 160 hides i virgate that we realize that the archbishop 

 had obtained an abatement of twenty-five per cent, on his whole 



» This is not the place for the elaboration of what is after all only a theory, but I may mention that 

 I discovered this grouping by 8o-hide units accidentally, while vainly endeavouring to re-constitute the 

 Domesday hundreds into loo-hide groups ; and that the groups, wliich vary from 3 units to half a unit, 

 are usually less than two and never more than six per cent, at variance with the sum required on the 80- 

 hide hypothesis. Whether it would be possible tore-constitute each of the original 80-hide units from 

 its components I have not yet discovered. 



' Dom. Bk. and Beyond, p. 502. s V.C.H. Hants, i. 404. 



360 



