A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



Bucks. 1 Two or more vills were sometimes combined by this system to 

 make up some multiple of the 5-hide unit, so that it must not be sup- 

 posed, when a vill is assessed at some uneven figure, that it cannot have 

 been fitted into the scheme I have described above. 



The study of assessment has brought to our notice the division of 

 Hertfordshire vills into holdings of various size. As will be gathered 

 from the Domesday map, the county presents within its borders, on the 

 one hand manors conterminous with vills, such as those of the old 

 ecclesiastical bodies ; on the other, vills which were subdivided into 

 several manors and small holdings. On the Essex border the Pelhams are 

 an instance of the latter type. In Domesday they are all found as held 

 by the bishop of London, but they are made the subject of seven separate 

 entries. Under Edward the Confessor the lands had been held thus 



THE PELHAMS 



H. v. A. 



Two brothers, men of Ansgar the staller i i o 



Alfred, man of Ansgar the staller I o o * 



A thegn, man of Anschil of Ware \ i o 



A thegn, man of Godwine of Bendfield J 



, fa man of Ansgar the staller ~| 



Two brothers K ,-, , r . \ . i i o 



\ a man of the abbot of Ely J 



A thegn, man of Anschil of Ware 1 2 



A thegn, man of jEthelmaer of BenningtonJ ' 



Five king's sokemen O 2 o 



./Elfwine, a man of Godwine of Bendfield I O O 



Wulfwi, a man of Godwine of Bendfield . . . 2 O o a 



12 



Here we have some 1 2 hides divided between sixteen men in holdings 

 varying from 2 hides to about a twentieth of that amount. Four of 

 these holdings are styled manors for no obvious reason ; but all the 

 holders alike 'had power to sell.' The importance of such instances 

 as these of vills held in many portions is explained in the section on 

 'Manor and Vill' of Professor Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond 

 (pp. 129-30). His own examples are mainly taken from the adjoining 

 county of Cambridgeshire, but in Hertfordshire we may find, on the 

 Essex border, at Wickham, close to Bishop Stortford, as striking a case as 



any. 



WICKHAM 



H. v. A. 

 Four sokemen 2 o 20 



(a man of bishop William \ 

 a man of Ansgar the staller J- . o I O 

 a man of Edith the Fair J 



One sokeman 008 



Two sokemen, men of Ansgar the staller ...103 

 Three sokemen 35 



4 i 21 



1 For Bedfordshire the tables of hidation constructed by Mr. Airey are decisive, and for Cambridge- 

 shire my Feudal England deals in great detail with the subject. In the same work (p. 66) I touch upon 

 the 5-hide unit in Bucks. Mr. Ragg has worked out several examples in Herts, 



* These holdings are styled ' M(aneria).' 



288 



