A HISTORY OF ESSEX 



hundred was regarded as responsible for the payment of i ; and the share of each 

 village is given by stating the number of pence it would contribute to make up ji 

 for the whole hundred, etc., etc. 1 



The East Anglian system of assessment, which is here somewhat 

 inaccurately stated, has been explained by me in another place. 2 It is 

 radically distinct, as I have said, from that of Essex, although the 

 three counties are surveyed in the same volume. The great under- 

 lying principle of ' the five-hide unit,' on which was constructed the 

 system of assessment in all hidated counties, is peculiarly prominent in 

 Cambridgeshire and Beds ; is recognizable, though less distinct, in Hert- 

 fordshire ; but has been so obscured in Essex that it might even at first 

 sight be imagined to be non-existent. There are however sufficient 

 traces of its original existence in Essex to warrant the assertion that here 

 also it lay at the root of the system. And this, as might be expected, 

 is best seen in those old intact lordships which were held by the Crown 

 and by the Church. Of those manors which head the Survey, and which, 

 as I shall argue, had been Crown demesne for the most part, Hatfield 

 (Regis) was assessed at 20 hides, Havering, (Great) Chesterford, Lawford 

 and Brightlingsea at 10 hides each, while Waltham (Holy Cross), which 

 Harold had also held, was reckoned as 40. Of the Church's manors 

 Barking appears with an old assessment of 30 hides, as does the Bishop of 

 London's manor of Southminster. Littlebury stood at 25, Rettendon 

 and Clacton at 20, Belchamp St. Paul's, Wrabness, Strethall and Wood- 

 ford at 5 each. Of manors in the hands of lay barons, Clavering was 

 assessed at 15 hides, Mundon and Great Oakley at 10, Woodham 

 Mortimer, Shopland, Fobbing, Langdon, Amberden, Thunderley, Wix, 

 Ugley and Little Chesterford at 5 hides each. But the great system 

 of assessing vills in multiples of the five-hide unit is in Essex, as a rule, 

 unrecognizable, and even ' Fif hida ' itself (now corruptly Fyfield) is not 

 entered in Domesday as a vill of 5 hides. 



I have here dealt first of all with the local assessment for (Dane)- 

 geld, because, as Professor Maitland has rightly said of Domesday, ' one 

 great purpose seems to mould both its form and its substance ; it is a 

 geld-book,' 3 that is, a book recording the assessments on which the land 

 tax of the period was levied. But although this was the chief intention 

 with which the Survey was compiled, the modern student is more con- 

 cerned with the other information it contains, especially where, as in the 

 case of Essex, the ' hides,' ' virgates ' and ' acres ' in which the holdings 

 were assessed cannot apparently be combined, as in the neighbouring 

 county of Cambridgeshire, to illustrate the artificial system of assessing 

 the Hundred and its ' vills.' 4 



1 The Growth of English Industry and Commerce in the Early and Middle Ages (3rd ed. 1896), 

 pp. 162-3. 



2 See my section on 'The East Anglian Leet ' in Feudal England (1895), pp. 98-103. The 

 ' Hundred ' was of course responsible for much more than i, even when the ' geld ' was normal. 



3 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 3. 



* There is sufficient evidence that the unit of assessment known as the ' hide ' was divided, as 

 elsewhere, into 4 quarters termed 'virgates,' each of which was reckoned as containing 30 'geld' acres. 

 This evidence is found under Waltham (Holy Cross), where 7 hides and | virgate = 7 hides and 15 



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