16G Gleanings from the Wiltshire Domesday, 



arics of manors remain undisturbed from century to century. To 

 this day you may trace out the boundaries of many a Wiltshire ' 

 manor by means of the land-limits preserved to us in an Anglo- 

 Saxon charter of the ninth or tenth century. When therefore in 

 the Hundreds which are themselves on the borders of our county, 

 we find those manors included, the boundaries of which we know 

 to be co-terminous with its limits, we are justified in concluding 

 that the boundaries of the county itself are the same now as at the 

 time of Domesday. The manors, — or, as for the most part we call 

 them now, the parishes which are alluded to are the following : — 

 Castle Eaton, — Long Newenton, — Sherston, — Bradford, — Horn- 

 ingsham, — Maiden Bradley, — Mere, — Zeals, — Tollard, — Damer- 

 ham, — Downton, — Landford, — Winterslow, — Biddesden,— Ludgar- 

 shall, — Tidworth, — Shalbourn, — and Ramsbury. In this list, it 

 will be observed, are included by far the greater number of what 

 are now the border-parishes of the county. 



But whilst on these general grounds we have ample reason for 

 the conclusion, that our county boundaries now are in the main 

 identical with the limits at the time of Domesday, we are able, by 

 a comparison of the Domesday Record for adjoining counties with 

 that for Wiltshire, to shew that there is a correspondence even in 

 minute particulars. Without doubt, before the time of Domesday, 

 and perhaps even till the period of its compilation, the boundaries 

 of counties seem hardly to have been quite defined. There are 

 instances in which entries which belong to one county, either for 

 convenience or the juxta-position of the estates of some particular 

 land-owner, or for some other reason not explained, have been 

 confessedly placed in another. In some cases, we have examples 

 of what looks like a capricious and arbitrary shifting from onej 

 county to another. Thus in the Domesday for Huntingdonshire, 

 at fol. 207 b., of a small holding at a place called Caissot it is said, 

 — "jacet in Bedefordscire sed dat geldum in Huntedunscire," i.e. 

 " it lies in Bedfordshire but pays geld (or tax) in Huntingdonshire/' 

 So too in the Domesday for Herefordshire, at fol. 181, of certain 

 smaller manors, registered under the name of Niware, we are told, 

 — "Rogerus de Pirtes divertit illas ad Glowecestre." A third 



