THE DOMESDAY SURVEY 
It may be expected that the exploration now being made among all 
our records for this history of the county will further diminish the 
number of the names still awaiting identification. 
THE BEDFORDSHIRE HUNDREDS 
The importance of the Hundreds in the Great Survey is far greater 
than any one could gather from the pages of Domesday Book. For the 
fortunate preservation of a transcript of the actual returns of the Inquest, 
in the case of the county of Cambridge, shows us that each Hundred 
was surveyed separately in turn, and that the return for each Hundred 
was made by its own sworn jurors. The contents of these returns were 
subsequently cut down and re-arranged under the fiefs of the several 
tenants-in-chief. 
But although the surveys of the Hundreds, and even of the vills 
within them, were broken up for the purpose of this re-arrangement, 
traces of the system on which the survey was actually made are still to 
be found in the order in which the Hundreds recur. This is a point of 
considerable importance, to which, till quite lately, little attention has 
been given. In Bedfordshire the order in which the returns from the 
Hundreds were arranged appears to have been as follows: (1) Manshead ; 
(2) ‘Stanburge’ ;* (3) Redbornstoke ; (4) Stodden ; (5) ‘ Buchelai’ ; (6) 
Flitt ; (7) Willey ; (8) Barford; (9) Biggleswade; (10) ‘ Weneslai’ ; 
(11) Wixamtree ; (12) Clifton.” Three of these, which were ‘half’ 
Hundreds, have subsequently disappeared, ‘Stanburge’ becoming ab- 
sorbed in Manshead, ‘ Buchelai’ in Willey and ‘ Weneslai’ in Biggles- 
wade.” 
In addition to the Hundreds enumerated above there was the town 
of Bedford, which stood apart, and the royal demesne, which is not 
assigned to any Hundred by name. This belt of demesne, in the ex- 
treme south of the county, is now divided between the Hundreds of 
Manshead and of Flitt. As is sometimes the case in Domesday, there is 
incidental mention of yet another Hundred, the identity of which is 
obscure. We read of Sewell (under Houghton Regis), that it was 
formerly in ‘ Odecroft’ Hundred, but that Ralf Tallebosc took it thence 
and placed it in Houghton Regis, even as he took Biscot out of Flitt 
Hundred and placed it in Luton. This has yet to be explained. 
To the order in which the Hundredal headings occur in the text of 
the survey there is, as Mr. Ragg and I have observed, one conspicuous 
exception. The fief of Hugh de Beauchamp is entered in two portions ; 
 Standbridge, from which it derived its name, is a place between Leighton Buzzard and Houghton 
Regis. 
2 Mr. Ragg, who has independently investigated this subject, is in entire agreement with this 
order. Only the relative position of ‘ Manshead’ and ‘ Stanburge ’ on his list as on mine seems doubtful. 
3 “Weneslai’ had dropped out before Kirby’s Quest (1284-6), in the returns to which, as in those 
of 1316, the ‘ half Hundreds’ of ‘Stanbrigge’ (or ‘ Stanbrugge’) and of ‘ Boclowe’ (or ‘ Buckelowe ’) 
are surveyed with Manshead and Willey respectively. After the returns of 1316, these half Hundreds 
also drop out of the list (see Feudal Aids, i. 1-21). 
I 217 28 
