THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



We have there a ' five-hide ' manor divided before the Conquest into 

 two equal moieties of 2| hides each, with an equal share of the wood- 

 land and of the mill in each ; but one moiety had three ploughlands, 

 and the other five, though their ' values ' were the same. One of these 

 moieties, it is clear, had again been subdivided, although it was reunited 

 under the Norman rule. For the feudal system arrested sharply that 

 process of disintegration which had exposed to crushing defeat at the 

 hands of knights and nobles a host of small landowners, of almost anarchic 

 yeomen. 



29? 



