ONGAR HUNDRED 



lection to the next; nor are the villages with the greatest tax assessments always those with the greatest 

 number of heads recorded on their poll-tax receipts in 1377. 



Until comparable figures have been published for other parts of the county and for other counties 

 it is not possible to deduce very much from what is, statistically, a very small batch of figures. Theydon 

 Bois and Little Laver seem to move down the ladder as the years pass while Loughton and Stondon 

 Massey rise. Consideration of the individual parish histories may offer an explanation in terms other 

 than the effects of the Black Death. Remembering that only two vills received reliefs in 1352, and 

 that the ranking of neither of these changes very much, we may hazard that the long-term effect of 

 the Black Death was not serious in this particular hundred. A different story may emerge from those 

 hundreds of Essex where substantial reliefs were granted in 1352. 



In the small sample afforded by the 25 sets of data in Ongar hundred only the most striking changes 

 in 'ladder' position are likely to be significant. It will be noticed that in terms of absolute size, whether 

 in 1 334 or 1 377, the first three places are held by the same three villages, Stanford Rivers, Navestock, 

 and Chigwell with Woolston. Shelley and Kelvedon Hatch occupy consistently low positions, while 

 Stondon Massey and Loughton seem to improve their status over the years. Only Little Laver shows 

 a headlong decline from a middle to a bottom rung. 



It is significant that the villages high on the absolute-size 'ladder' are not at the top of the density 

 'ladder'. The top place is firmly held by Chipping Ongar whose 500 acres were not the sole means of 

 its inhabitants' support. Little Laver, whose fall has been noted above, also shows a fall in terms of 

 density. The improved position of Stondon Massey is also repeated. 



The allotment of reliefs in 1433—6 was so uniform that the order in which the assessments stand in 

 1334 is very little disturbed, only Norton Mandeville falling a place. 



In the final column of the Table an attempt is made to indicate the degree of inequality existing in 

 the 1320 assessments, where the average tax paid per taxpayer varies considerably from village to 

 village — from bs. lod. at Stapleford Tawney to is. bd. at Theydon Bois. The great differences in 

 ranking between this and the other 'ladders' indicates that there is no simple connexion between the 

 absolute size of a village assessment in 1320 and the number of villagers among whom the assessment 

 was shared. 



These preliminary comparisons are intended more as a suggestion for further investigation locally 

 than as a final verdict. In the same way inter-village comparisons of density and size become really 

 significant only when an area wider than a single hundred is available for study.^' Comparisons with 

 some other areas of England have been made in Table 6. 



Densities 



The Tables of densities printed below (Tables 5 and 6) have been contrived on the assumption that 

 the fiscal units, which were vills, were equal in area to the parishes of 1801. For this there is no 

 warrant, but it is the nearest approximation that can be reached. No important changes in parish 

 boundaries within the hundred can be traced between about 1300 and 1841. 



The consideration of densities may be related to the settlement history of the hundred. Anyone 

 accustomed to the much more clear-cut settlement history of the Midlands and the northern plains 

 must find, Essex, and this part of Essex in particular, a hard county to study. In the Midland areas the 

 work of colonization and clearing was almost complete by the time that Edward Ill's fifteenths and 

 tenths were being collected. Apart from the villages with some non-agricultural occupations, the 

 population as shown in the poll-tax receipts was maintained by the area of field-land roughly cor- 

 responding to the modern parish area. A density figure, obtained by calculating taxpayers per thousand 

 acres, is a useful concept and serves to draw attention to the different agricultural experiences and 

 potentialities of different villages. In the same way, the tax paid per thousand acres in the 1 334 village 

 quotas can be calculated, and this will be referred to as a 'tax density'. 



In Essex the same calculations can be made, and the results are set out in Table 5, but the implica- 

 tions of the results are less certain than in the Midlands. In the Essex parishes there was a much 

 greater area of surviving woodland; the nucleated village at the heart of continuous open-field land' 

 could only have been found in a very limited area of the county. Of the four largest villages in the 

 medieval tax-lists of Ongar hundred, only Chigwell has any substantial village nucleus; while Stanford _ 

 Rivers, Theydon Garnon, and Navestock have isolated or semi-isolated churches and very scattered 

 settlement. 



The density figures in 1377 show that half the vills in Ongar hundred had densities of between 32 

 and 44 taxpayers per thousand acres, indicating very similar environmental opportunities. Apart from 

 this group stand Theydon Bois and High Ongar with markedly low densities, and at the other extreme 

 is Chipping Ongar, a market-town with 108 taxpayers in its 500 acres. 



If the density for Essex as a whole is calculated, it works out at 47 per thousand acres, about the 



21 Tables giving sizes and densities for Midland £»^. 251-3, 407-9. 

 counties appear in M. W. Beresford, Lost Villages of 



299 



