DOMESDAY SURVEY 



I ferling each. But the military tenants of Tavistock, who really had 

 I J hides and J f erHng, ^ are said to have only i J hides (fol. 176). Wool- 

 fardisworthy Spenser (fol. 416^) is said to pay geld for i virgate 3 J ferlings, 

 but the contributions of the lord and villagers together come to 2 virgates. 

 Farworthy (fol. 388) is said to pay geld for i virgate, whereas the combined 

 assessment of its parts is only 3I ferlings. The military tenants of Bampton 

 (fol. 231(5) are stated to hold i hide, but the particulars given show that they 

 held only 3I virgates. The same contempt for small fractions shows itself in 

 the hundred totals. It tells both ways. The i hide allowed to the fee- 

 gatherers must have been intended to provide against loss. 



The above data seem to indicate that the position of the hundreds in 

 Devon was somewhat different from what it was in other counties. Devon- 

 shire was won by the Saxons after they had become Christians by a series of 

 peaceful acts of penetration varied by occasional outbreaks of hostilities, each 

 link in the series being the acquisition of some new but undefined territory 

 as an additional lordship of the crown. To each tract of territory thus won 

 a fixed quota of hides seems to have been allotted as its assessment value, and 

 the amount to have been afterwards distributed by subpartitionment ^ as 

 booklands were granted out to individual owners. To the booklands 

 thus granted out, or rather to the owners of such booklands when 

 grouped together for military, judicial, and administrative purposes, the term 

 'hundred ' was applied, whilst the portions still cultivated as folkland under 

 the king were known as the king's demesne or lordship {dominicatus)^ 

 The hundred was therefore an aggregate of disconnected booklands often 

 separated from one another by uncultivated areas called the forest, or 

 by booklands reclaimed from other centres. This circumstance will explain 

 how Delworthy and Yarnscombe, although locally situated in the midst of 

 Fremington hundred, belong as outliers to Hartland hundred ; how Butter- 

 leigh in the midst of Hairidge hundred belongs to Cliston hundred ; how , 

 Bratton Fleming in the midst of Shirwell hundred belongs to Braunton, and 

 conversely how Pickwell in the midst of Braunton hundred belongs to 

 Shirwell hundred ; how East and West Buckland lying between Shirwell 

 and South Molton hundreds belong to Braunton ; how the Teignhide district 

 containing Combe and Stokeinteignhead, although lying on the south side 

 of Exminster and Teignbridge hundreds with outliers of its own, is neverthe- 

 less part of Wonford hundred, as are also its outliers, the two Ogwells and 

 Hobbin, and also Sigford, Bagtor, and Horridge in Ilsington, situated in the 

 very middle of Teignbridge hundred ; how Worth and Washfield which lie 

 between Tiverton and Witheridge hundreds belong to West Budleigh ; how 

 Emlet in Woolfardisworthy Spenser in the midst of Witheridge hundred 

 belongs to North Tawton hundred ; and how Thorncombe and Holditch 

 lying in the county of Dorset belong to the hundred of Axminster in Devon.* 



Passing from the hundreds as units of settlement to the sub-units, the 

 land booked or bestowed by charter' upon individual owners, it is of supreme 



' Trans. Devon Assoc, xxvii, 193, ». 48. ' Round, Feudal England, 97. 



' Trans. Devon Assoc, xxxiii, 571. ' Ibid. 575. 



' In fol. 135 'bookland' is written as the equivalent or substitute for 'mansio.' In Maitland, Domesday 

 and Beyond, 154, «.l, 'bocland'= 'terra hereditaria,' ' terra testimentalis,' 'terra libera,' and even 'feudum.' 

 Round in V. C. H. Essex, i, 410, shows that 'terra' is often used as a substitute for ' maaerium.' 



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