A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE 



The one definite statistical fact that emerges for Hertfordshire in 

 Domesday is that its assessment was low, being in proportion to its area 

 little more than half of that which is found in Bedfordshire and Bucks, 

 although the discrepancy is less marked when we compare the total 

 assessment with the total of recorded ploughlands. As has already been 

 explained above, the assessment in detail was purely arbitrary, that is 

 to say it bore no definite relation to area, ploughlands or value. The 

 two manors, for instance, which composed King's Walden contained 10 

 ploughlands each, and yet they were only assessed at i hide each. 

 Hitchin itself is credited with 38 ploughlands, though its assessment is 

 but 5 hides ; and it would even seem that, when we deduct what was 

 afterwards the rectory manor, the remainder, with its 34 ploughlands, 

 stood at only 3 hides. 1 These are very extreme cases, but any one who 

 reads the pages relating to Hertfordshire in Domesday must be struck by 

 the great variety of the ratio that the ' hides ' bore to the ploughlands. 

 At Hatfield we meet with the exceptional case of a manor with only 30 

 ploughlands being assessed at 40 hides, while the other two manors that 

 were held by the abbot of Ely escaped with assessments respectively of 

 5 and 4 hides, although they contained between them 24 ploughlands. 

 One may add, while on this subject, that in Hertfordshire Domesday 

 records a few reductions of assessment, but they are not of sufficient 

 consequence to require special treatment. Prominent instances occur in 

 the extreme west of the county, where Robert de Todeni's manor of 

 Miswell had its assessment of 14 hides reduced to 3! hides, 'although,' 

 Domesday adds, 'there are always 14 hides there' (fo. 138), while 

 Edward of Salisbury secured a reduction from 6 hides to 3 on his manor 

 of Great Gaddesden (fo. 139). Ralf de Todeni's demesne manor of Flam- 

 stead, which had been assessed at 4 hides, was let off at 2 hides. There 

 would seem to be nothing but special favour to account for these cases. 



There is one occurrence in Hertfordshire of the interesting word 

 wara. We read of ' Westone ' that ' it lay and lies in Hiz [Hitchin], 

 but the wara of this manor lay in Bedefordscire in the time of king 

 Edward, and the manor is there and always was ' (fo. 132^). The place 

 is Westoning in Bedfordshire, nearly ten miles distant, as the crow flies, 

 from Hitchin. This is an excellent instance of the Domesday use of 

 'jacet' as implying not that the manor ' lay ' geographically in Hitchin, 

 but that, for tenurial purposes, it was an appurtenance thereof. For 

 fiscal purposes the manor remained in its own Bedfordshire Hundred ; its 

 wara, or assessment, lay there, and it consequently paid its ' geld ' as a 

 portion of that Hundred. Wara is also sometimes used of the tax 

 levied on the assessment. Thus we read of a Bedfordshire estate (fo. 

 211^) that 'it always lay in Kimbolton (Hunts) but rightly paid its 

 ivarra in Bedfordshire.' * 



Here perhaps should be mentioned a phrase almost as rare. We 



1 See p. 272 above. 



8 For wara see further my feudal England, pp. 1 1 5-7, where examples are given of its use in 

 Cambridgeshire. 



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