THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 



of Ombersley, Domesday tells us that, under the Confessor, it was reckoned 

 as i^fuit numerata pro) 1 5 hides, but only taxed on 12, as 3 were exempt 

 (fo. 17511^) ; in another, that of a Warwickshire manor held by the bishop 

 of Worcester (fo. 238*^), Domesday says that ' there are there 15 hides,' 

 and bishop Wulfstan spoke of it as ' terram xv. hidarum ' ; but Henry I., 

 on a visit to Worcester, quitclaimed to the prior and monks all his dues 

 on ' 5 hides ' out of these,' which had the effect of reducing its assess- 

 ment to I o hides. On the same occasion he freed the 4 hides at Fepston 

 from all his dues similarly.^ 



But although this system of assessment can be widely traced in 

 Domesday, it is hardly ever that we can trace its application to the Hun- 

 dreds, and indeed to the county as a whole, so clearly as we can in 

 Worcestershire. Its case, therefore, has been specially selected, as an 

 illustration, by Professor Maitland, who observes that ' In Worcestershire 

 we have strong evidence of a neat arrangement of a whole county.' ^ This 

 arrangement, he suggests, can be carried back as far as the days of 

 Edward the Elder (Alfred's son), when the document he styles ' the 

 Burghal Hidage ' assigns 1,200 hides, in his opinion, to ' Worcester.' * 

 In the ' County Hidage,' a document which, he holds, ' speaks to us 

 from the earlier part of (Edward) the Confessor's reign or from some 

 yet older time,' Worcestershire is assigned exactly 1,200 hides.^ That 

 the Domesday assessments, when added up, produce, for the whole 

 county, a total almost identical, is less noteworthy than the fact, on which 

 the Professor insists, that the county seems to have contained twelve 

 territorial Hundreds, which brings this local division into closer connection 

 than usual with the sum of a hundred hides. Analyzing from this stand- 

 point the assessments recorded in Domesday, Professor Maitland shows 

 that the ' triple Hundred of Oswaldslaw ' contained exactly 300 hides ; 

 that the church of Westminster is assigned 199, and credited with 200 ; 

 that the manors of the church of Pershore contained just 100, and that 

 those of the church of Evesham had been made up, by special additions, 

 to the same figure. As Domesday explicitly states that there were twelve 

 Hundreds in the county,® the Professor, at the close of his calculations, 

 arrives at the striking conclusion which must be given in his own words. 



We thus bring out a grand total of 1204 hides. Perhaps the true total should 

 be exactly 1200 ; but at any rate it stands close to that beautiful figure. And now we 

 remember how we were told that there were ' twelve hundreds ' in Worcestershire 

 from seven of which the sheriff got nothing. Of these twelve the church of Worcester 

 had three in its Hundred of Oswaldslaw, the church of Westminster two, the church 

 of Pershore one, and the church of Evesham one. But the Evesham or Fissesberge 

 Hundred was not perfect; it required making up by means of 15 hides in the city of 

 Worcester and 20 in the hundred of Dodingtree. Thus five hundreds remain to be 

 accounted for, and in its rubrics Domesday Book names just five, namely, Came, 

 Clent, Cresselaw, Dodingtree, and Esch. We cannot allot to each of these its consti- 



* Hale's Reghtrum Prioratus Beatce Maria JVigorniensis, pp. 84^7-8 5^. 

 » Ibid. p. 5 Si. 



* Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 451. * Ibid. p. 504. * Ibid. pp. 456, 458. 

 ® *In ipso comitatu sunt xii hund[reta]' (fo. 172). 



237 



