DOMESDAY SURVEY 



This second entry reads like an ungrammatical precis of the first, omitting 

 the statements about the villeins and the woodland. As it is inconceivable 

 that Henry de Ferrers should have held two distinct manors in the same 

 place, both of which were rated at the same complicated sum of two- 

 thirds of two carucates, we may dismiss the supposition that we are 

 dealing with two different entries. We may note that ' carucata terrae ' 

 is used indifferently with ' carucata ' alone, and also that the names of the 

 place of its former owner are spelt differently in the two entries. 



This account of Morley may serve to introduce us to a rather 

 important point. We have seen that in Derbyshire generally the assess- 

 ment of a vill, or part of a vill, is unusually low * ; in many entries it 

 will be expressed in fractions of a bovate. We have therefore to consider 

 more minutely than is needful elsewhere the ratio which the assessment 

 bears to the actual amount which would have to be paid to the danegeld at 

 the normal rate of 2s. to the carucate, and this is specially necessary 

 because the fractions into which the assessment is cast have in many cases 

 a rather formidable appearance. We read of half acres, of thirds of 

 bovates, and of subdivisions of the carucate which will not work out into 

 even numbers of bovates or even of acres. These last, indeed, refuse to be 

 smoothed away altogether, but it is remarkable to notice the ease with 

 which the rest adapt themselves to the payment of a zs. geld on the 

 assumption that one carucate equals eight bovates composed of fifteen acres 

 each. We may in fact draw up a table of payments on this scale as 

 follows : 



i. d. 



i carucate = 8 bovates = 120 acres . . . pays 020 

 i = 4 = 6 ...,,oio 

 =fof2,, = 20 ...,,004 

 = * = i5 >, o o 3 



5 ...,,ooi 



At this rate we may remark that two-thirds of two carucates would pay 

 2s. %d. Here the neatness of the equation * 1 5 acres pay 3</.' helps to 

 account for the frequency with which in Derbyshire the bovate is found 

 split up into thirds. Such being the simplicity of the payments made 

 according to the basis which underlies the table, it may fairly be adduced 

 as an argument in favour of the accepted view that the carucate consisted 

 of 1 20 acres. If it contained any considerably smaller number of acres 

 than this, such for example as 46 or 30, the payment made by these 

 thirds of bovates would be reduced to some unintelligible fraction of a 

 penny. 8 On the above basis, however, the most complicated fractions 

 worked out neatly. We may take for example the case of Snelston, 

 which affords an unusually convincing instance of Domesday arithmetic, 

 and place beside the fractions into which its assessment is divided the 

 payment which would be made by each according to the above calculation. 



1 See above p. 294. 



3 If there were any doubt as to the contents of the Derbyshire carucate the tendency would probably 

 be to give it more than 1 20 acres. See Dom. Bk. and Beyond, p. 484, for the cases of Morton and 

 Norton. The explanation there given seems probable, especially as in the former case more than one 

 place is included in the same entry. 



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