64 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



shire as 100, 100, 90, 90, 80, 80, 70, 50, and 50 respectively. 

 Domesday Book tells that the bishop's hundred of Oswalds- 

 law in Worcestershire was composed of 300 hides, 1 while the 

 hundred of Fishborough contained 65 hides, and was per- 

 fected by the addition of 20 hides from the hundred of 

 Dodintree, and the 15 hides at which the city of Worcester 

 was assessed. 2 The hundred of Herstingstone in Huntingdon 

 contained 2OO hides, 3 but Earl Roger's hundred of Wittering 

 in Sussex contained only 6J hides. 4 The hundreds of Sussex 

 are most abnormal, and varied in assessment, from Steyning 

 with 240 gelding hides and 2Oj hides that were quit of geld, 

 to I field with I hide that gelded and ^ hide that was quit 

 of geld. 



From the neat assessments of the Cambridgeshire hundreds 

 and vills, Mr. Round has come to the conclusion that the 

 assessment was in the first place imposed on the hundred, 

 and then distributed among the vills by the hundred-moot ; 5 

 and he has found this Cambridgeshire evidence supported by 

 that of other counties. The geld inquests for the south- 

 western counties show that the geld was there accounted for, 

 not vill by vill, but hundred by hundred, and in Devonshire 

 the geld was collected by the hundred's men the men who 

 presided over the hundred-moot. 



In his paper on the " Tribal Hidage," Mr. Corbett has shown 

 that the division of England into hundreds dates from the 

 time of Bede and Edwin of Northumbria say, from 6^^ and 

 has further pointed out that the number of hundreds of hides 

 assigned by that document to what he calls Middle Anglia, 

 corresponds with the number of hundreds which, according 

 to his calculations, are assigned by Domesday Book to the 

 counties forming that district ; and that there is a similar 

 correspondence between the 7000 hides of the district of the 

 Hwiccas in the Tribal Hidage, and the 70 hundreds assigned 



1 D. B., 172 b i. 2 /</., 175 b i. 3 id., 203 a 2. 



4 Id., 24 a 2. * F } 92 



