A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



instance, in Oxfordshire, was an outlying portion of Buckingham- 

 shire, under which county it is surveyed. 1 More remarkable is the 

 case of Lillingstone, a lo-hide vill, which occupies a corner of Buck- 

 inghamshire, projecting into Northamptonshire. Five of its hides, now 

 represented by Lillingstone Dayrell, are duly surveyed in our county, but 

 the other five, which now constitute Lillingston Lovell, were surveyed 

 under Oxfordshire, to which county they continued to belong. About 

 half way between Lillingstone and the Oxfordshire border was another 

 ' island ' of that county, namely Boycot ; and yet a third, Ackham- 

 stead, lay in the south of the county. 



Apart from this, we have to remember that places on the border 

 of a county are sometimes surveyed in Domesday partly under one 

 county and partly under another. Ibstone, for instance, which is now 

 in Oxfordshire, but which lies just on the border, appears in Domesday 

 as a vill assessed at 4 hides, Hervey holding the whole of it. Of these 

 hides 2 are entered under Buckinghamshire as ' Hibestanes,' and the other 

 two under Oxfordshire, one as ' Ypestan ' and the other as ' Ebestan.' 

 On the Bedfordshire border Edlesborough, itself in Buckinghamshire, 

 has 20 of its 30 hides surveyed in that county, while the rest are entered 

 under Bedfordshire. What is true of counties is true also of Hundreds ; 

 Mr. Ragg observes, as the result of tabulating Domesday Hundreds, that 

 ' vills could be divided by the boundaries of Hundreds or counties as they 

 appear in Domesday, not always into sections which contained commen- 

 surable numbers of hides and as in the case of Senelai [7 + 5] with but 

 partial regard to separation into portions which take note of 5.' He 

 consequently holds that ' the hidation as it occurs in Domesday is a 

 reminiscence of a more ancient state of things than counties and Hun- 

 dreds, at least as therein given.' 



Mr. Morley Davies, in his study on the ancient Hundreds of the 

 county, has similarly pointed out that, in Domesday, Hundreds, like 

 counties, have their detached portions, and that their boundaries, like those 

 of counties, occasionally intersect a vill, or, as he prefers to describe it, 

 divide two townships of the same name. 3 These features, of course, are 

 in no way peculiar to Buckinghamshire, but they are of singular interest 

 to those who seek to explore our earlier history and to trace the building 

 up of all but the oldest counties from probably pre-existent Hundreds 

 and of Hundreds, possibly, from vills. Whether the Hundred or the 

 vill (or township) was the older unit, or whether they are equal in 

 antiquity, we can hardly say at present ; but the map of England 

 that great palimpsest, as Professor Maitland has well termed it still 

 bears the impress of our earliest national developments, and its patient 

 study may yet provide an answer to the riddles of the past. 



1 It was only transferred from Bucks to Oxon by 6 & 7 Victoria, cap. 61. 

 1 The Home Counties Magazine, vi. 1401. 



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