DOMESDAY SURVEY 



IN proportion to its area Buckinghamshire receives a fairly liberal 

 allowance of space in Domesday Book. As against its twenty-one 

 pages Oxfordshire, which ' marches with ' its western border and 



has a slightly larger area, occupies but fifteen, while Berkshire, a 

 slightly smaller county, is only allotted sixteen. In Middlesex, although 

 the survey appears to be extremely full, the proportion to area is no 

 greater than in the case of Bucks. Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, how- 

 ever, although between them not quite half as large again as this county, 

 occupy twice the number of pages. At a time when arable land was 

 the chief source of wealth, its hills and its then extensive woodlands can 

 hardly have admitted of Buckinghamshire being reckoned a rich county, 

 in spite of its fertile valleys ; but it is not probable that the space allotted 

 to a county in Domesday had much, if anything, to do with its wealth 

 or its population. 



The determining factor in this matter was really the amount of 

 detail that the authorities decided to include. Domesday Book, we 

 must always remember, is only a compilation from original returns for 

 the Hundreds, which included, we have reason to believe, many details 

 in addition to those which appear in that compilation. 1 It is possible 

 that the Domesday Commissioners themselves varied, on their several 

 circuits, in the amount of detail they asked for, but it was clearly the 

 compiler who was chiefly responsible for cutting down the information 

 supplied on certain points in the inquiry. Apart from a certain 

 fulness of detail in this county, its survey, fortunately for us, contains a 

 few of those personal touches which make the men and women even of 

 that remote period something more than mere names. 



The first information found in an entry after the name of the 

 holder of the land is the number of ' hides ' at which it was assessed. 

 The ' hide ' was merely a unit of assessment, of which the ' virgate ' 

 was a quarter," and this assessment was of arbitrary character, being based 

 on a unit of 'five hides.' In Buckinghamshire this unit becomes 

 peculiarly prominent, as in the neighbouring counties of Bedford 

 and Cambridge, and even the casual reader can hardly fail to be 

 struck by the large number of manors assessed at such sums as 5, 10, 15, 



i We draw this conclusion from the transcripts of the Cambridgeshire original returns, and from 

 the Domesday Survey of the eastern counties, as well as from the ' Exon Domesday.' 



At Lathbury in this county an entry (probably unique) speaks of ' i hida, v pedes minus.' It 

 is difficult to follow this reckoning. 



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