72 THE DOMESDAY INQUEST 



assigned for the repair of any borough became the shire 

 taking its name from that borough. The Cheshire Domesday 

 gives evidence of this connection between county and borough : 

 "to repair the wall of the city and the bridge, the reeve 

 ordered one man to come from every hide." l Sometimes the 

 lords of properties in the shire kept houses in the city, and 

 burgesses in those houses to repair the wall. Such houses 

 were called " mural mansions " at Oxford, and houses per- 

 taining to rural properties are to be found in the Domesday 

 accounts of very many boroughs. The account of the city 

 of Leicester gives a list of twenty-four vills in the county 

 having houses in the city. I have argued in another essay 

 that these houses were mural mansions, similar to those of 

 Oxford. 2 Of these twenty-four vills, one was situate in the 

 wapentake of Franland, six in the wapentake of Geretreu, 

 nine in the wapentake of Guthlacistan, and eight in the 

 wapentake of Gosecote ; and thus all four wapentakes of 

 Leicestershire contributed to the defence of the city of 

 Leicester. 



This theory will account for the irregular outline of many 

 of the shires. Buckinghamshire has two hundreds north of 

 the Ouse, but they are separated from one another by the 

 Northamptonshire hundred of Clayley. The Hertfordshire 

 hundred of Tring shoots right up into the heart of Bucks, 

 and the Bucks hundred of Earley is almost surrounded by 

 Herts and Beds. " Given that so many hides were required 

 for Buckingham, so many for Northampton, and so many 

 for Hertford, some anomalies in the distribution would be 

 inevitable, as what the distributors would have in mind 

 would not be the hundredal areas, but the sites of the hundred- 

 moots." 3 



But this theory is applicable only to the counties north 

 of the Thames. Professor Freeman thinks that the counties 



1 D. B., I. 262 b 2. 2 D. Bor., 34. 



3 " Ancient Hundreds of Bucks," Home Counties Magazine, April, 1904. 





