THE INCIDENCE OF THE GELD 245 



table, has also shown reason to believe that the assessment 

 of certain hundreds of Northamptonshire was reduced by 

 60 per cent., and of other hundreds by 50 per cent., and 

 finds the reason for such reduction in the ravages of the 

 Northumbrians in the neighbourhood of Northampton in the 

 summer of 1065 ; he further shows that such reduction must 

 have been made between 1075 and IO86. 1 



Mr. Saltzmann has pointed out that in Sussex the assess- 

 ment appears to be imposed on the manors, and not on the 

 vills. It is certain that when parts of a pre-Conquest manor 

 lay in two or more vills, after the Conquest the two parts 

 were separately assessed at figures which together totalled 

 the pre-Conquest assessment. Very frequently that part 

 which lay outside the rape containing the " caput manerii " 

 escaped payment of geld, and " foris rapum " is equivalent in 

 many cases to " nunquam geldavit." 2 



But if there had been reductions, there had also been 

 increases in the assessments. Mr. Corbett has reckoned the 

 particulars of the district to which he applies the term 

 " Middle Anglia " the counties of Oxford, Northampton, 

 Rutland (part), Huntingdon, Bedford, Buckingham, Hertford, 

 and Middlesex and finds that in Domesday Book they are 

 credited with 120 hundreds, but 13,200 hides; but in the 

 Tribal Hidage (c. 675) a total of 12,000 hides, or 120 hundreds, 

 is assigned to this district, and he therefore argues that in the 

 four centuries that elapsed between Edwin of Northumbria 

 and Edward the Confessor, the assessment of this district had 

 been increased by 10 per cent., thus increasing the hidage 

 from 12,000 to 13,200 hides. 3 



Certain lands were exempt from geld altogether. Waste 

 i.e. uninhabited or uncultivated land paid no geld, as is 

 shown by the Northamptonshire Geld Roll and the borough 

 entries. The royal manors in Hants., Dorset, Wilts., and 



1 E. H. R., 1900, 78-86. * V. C. ff., Sussex, i. 361. 



3 Trans. Royal Hist. Soc., 1900, 218, 219. 



