A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



The order in which the Domesday Hundreds is given above is that in 

 which they appear to have stood on the original returns 1 for the county. 

 These returns were made at the Survey, Hundred by Hundred and vill 

 by vill, and from them the compilers of Domesday Book extracted the 

 constituents of each fief and arranged them under the name of the 

 baron who held it. 



The ascertainment of the sequence of Hundreds is often of 

 importance for identifying doubtful manors where the scribe has omitted 

 the name of the Hundred to which they belong. It is therefore satis- 

 factory to find that Mr. Ragg and Mr. Morley Davies, 4 who examined 

 it independently, have arrived at the same conclusions. Mr. Davies, 

 whose map is here reproduced, suggests, in his valuable paper, that ' the 

 grouping in threes was already established at the time of Domesday Book,' 

 and considers that this view is supported by the relative position of the 

 groups. 3 So far back as 1887, at the Domesday Commemoration, the 

 late Canon Isaac Taylor drew attention to this grouping of the 

 Buckinghamshire Hundreds, and compared it with the similar grouping 

 in the East Riding of Yorkshire, where eighteen Domesday Hundreds 

 may be roughly said, according to him, to have been rearranged, by 

 Edwardian times, in six groups, each of which contained three of them, 

 five of which were styled Wapentakes, while the sixth consisted of 

 Liberties ; and he suggested that this grouping might be connected 

 with the navipletio or provision of one ship from three Hundreds. 4 

 The evidence, however, of such grouping of Hundreds for this pur- 

 pose is very slight. 6 



The Domesday Hundreds retained their names unchanged for a 

 long period, but the grouping system had been introduced even be- 

 fore their disuse. For in 1316 the ' Nomina Hundredorum ' shows us 

 the two co-existent, 6 though in 1 346 the Domesday names alone are 

 given. 7 



In studying the Domesday Survey we have to be always on the 

 watch for the appearance under one county of a place belonging to 

 another. The accounts of some manors seem to have gone astray, 

 but in other cases the apparent discrepancy is accounted for by the 

 fact of a manor which lay geographically in one county belonging 

 territorially to another. Such ' islands,' or detached portions of 

 counties, usually retained to our own time the same peculiar posi- 

 tion that they are found occupying in Domesday. Caversfield, for 



1 ' The ancient Hundreds of Buckinghamshire," by Morley Davies, in The Home Counties Magazine 



vi. 134-44- 



2 Mr. Ragg has elaborately tabulated the Hundreds for the purpose of the History, and has kindly 

 allowed me the use of his tables. He considers that it is possible to establish not only the sequence of 

 the Hundreds, but even that of the vills within each Hundred. The discovery of the latter has 

 enabled him to identify some doubtful manors. 



8 Home Counties Magazine, vi. p. 136. 



* See his paper on ' Wapentakes and Hundreds ' in Domesday Studies, pp. 72-6. 



* For the triple Hundred of Oswaldslow, Worcestershire, see Maitland's Domesday Book and 

 Beyond, p. 268. 



feudal Aids, i. 107-8, where each group is styled 'The three hundreds of . . .' 



* Ibid. pp. 1 1 6 et seq. 



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