DOMESDAY SURVEY 



of these ploughs which could find employment on its lands. This seems 

 evident when we find as at Markeaton that there was land for nine 

 ploughs, but that there were only two in demesne, the tenants having five 

 between them. We must also keep in mind that when there was not 

 land enough in a manor for the full eight-ox plough its amount was 

 denoted by the number of oxen considered necessary for its tillage. Thus 

 when an estate is described as containing land for four oxen, this phrase 

 is used to represent half a ploughland, land for two oxen representing a 

 quarter of the same unit. Similarly, ' land for twelve oxen ' was evidently 

 considered by the compilers of Domesday to be a more compendious 

 phrase than 'land for ij ploughs.' When the number of ' ploughlands ' 

 was identical with the number of carucates a simple statement was often 

 made to that effect which usually works out easily enough, a carucate 

 representing a ' ploughland,' and each of the eight bovates into which 

 the carucate was divided standing for the land assignable to one ox. Once 

 however this principle leads us into a very curious calculation ; at Chad- 

 desden, which was assessed at 2 carucates, 4*. bovates, we are told ' there 

 is land for as many ploughs.' 1 Strictly construed this entry would intro- 

 duce us to two-thirds of an ox, but it is doubtless due to inadvertence on 

 the part of the Domesday scribe, who merely wished to say that the 

 rateable value of the land corresponded well enough with its agricultural 

 possibilities. But the whole matter is very seriously complicated by the 

 fact that we frequently find a manor actually stocked with more ploughs 

 than the number of ploughlands which it is reputed to contain. Taking 

 half-a-dozen consecutive entries from the fief of Henry de Ferrers * we 

 may express them in tabular form thus : 



Carucates. Ploughlands. 

 Winster . 

 Cowley 

 Elton 



Brassington 

 Brad bourne 

 Tissington . 



Here the unusual correspondence between the rateable value of each 

 manor and its agricultural strength as expressed in ploughlands accen- 

 tuates the uniform excess of the actual ploughs over both these quantities. 

 Taking Derbyshire as a whole we obtain a total of 88 1 ploughs as against 

 744! ploughlands. Striking as this divergence is, it is quite thrown into 

 the shade by the figures for Nottinghamshire, where we find an excess of 

 the actual teams over the ploughlands of more than 700. These figures 

 make it difficult to believe that the ploughland was in any consistent 

 sense a ' real ' quantity, and in the Victoria History of Northamptonshire * 

 Mr. Round has proved that the ploughland in that county represented 

 an obsolete assessment to the geld much heavier than its current rating 

 in 1086. An analysis of the Derbyshire Survey does not reveal any such 

 constant ratio between geldable carucates and teamlands as would lead 



2 



4 



4 

 4 



2 



4 

 4 



4 



Ploughs. 



4 



I 



5 



9 

 6 



7* 



1 Fol. 275, 'terra totidem carucis.' 

 Ibid. 



8 Fol. 274. 



* Vol. i. p. 264. 



317 



