DOMESDAY SURVEY 



Assessment of the county, p. 269 King's revenues, p. 270 Church lands, p. 273 Tenants- 

 in-chief, p. 276 Under tenants, p. 281 English predecessors, p. 282 Classes of men, 

 p. 284 Legal antiquities, p. 286 Warwick, p. 289 Rural economy, p. 291 The 

 Hundreds, p. 293 Identification of manors, p. 294 Duplicate entries, p. 296. 



I 



Warwickshire portion of the Great Survey is interesting 

 and fairly full. In proportion to area the county occupies 

 about as much space in Domesday as does Worcestershire to 

 its west, less than Northamptonshire and Leicestershire to its 

 east, but considerably more than Staffordshire. The chief features of 

 interest in its survey are found in the light it throws on local financial 

 administration, the names of the persons to whom it introduces us, and 

 the religious houses, English and foreign, holding land within its borders. 

 But as the Domesday Survey was before all a record of the assessment to 

 ' geld ' (land-tax), it is with that aspect of its contents that the student 

 has first to deal. 



Warwickshire was one of the hidated counties, that is, of those which 

 were assessed in ' hides ' ; but it actually adjoined on the north-east the 

 group of ' carucated ' counties of which Leicestershire is a striking 

 example. The assessment of these latter was based on units of six or 

 twelve ' carucates,' while that of the former was similarly based on units 

 of five or ten ' hides.' The duodecimal and the decimal systems were 

 brought into sharp contrast ; Leicester, when the king set forth to war, 

 sent him twelve of her burgesses ; Warwick sent him ten. It was, I have 

 urged, the Scandinavian region, the counties settled by the Danes, which 

 thus reckoned in twelves. 1 This conclusion, one may fairly say, is con- 

 firmed by the local place-names, such characteristic forms as Rugby, 

 Wibtoft and (Monks) Kirby being found close to the Leicestershire 

 border, as are Barby, Kilsby, and Yelvertoft in the adjoining and hidated 

 county of Northants. We may say, therefore, that Domesday bears 

 clear witness to the existence of a real dividing line between Warwick- 

 shire and Leicestershire, a line that marked the limit of racial conquest 

 and settlement. 



But although Warwickshire was assessed in ' hides ' the basing of 

 its assessment on arbitrary units of five or ten hides is less obvious to the 

 eye than in several other counties. The proportion^ however, of such 

 assessments is too high to be accounted for on any other hypothesis. For 

 instance, in the adjoining Domesday Hundreds of ' Tremelau ' and 



1 See feudal England, pp. 69 et seq. 

 269 



