But, before passing to further questions of terminology, it will be well to give some instances of the application of the “five-hide unit,” and, as Bedfordshire has been specially referred to above, we may take our examples from that county. Accordingly, if with the aid of a map we follow the course of the Ouse through Bedfordshire, we shall pass near to Odell, Risely, and Radwell, assessed at ten hides each; Thurghley and Oakley at five; Pavenham, Stagsden, Cardington, Willington, Cople, and Northill at ten; Blunham at fifteen; Tempsford at ten; Roxton at twenty; Chawston at ten; Wyboston at twenty, and Eaton Socon at forty. Thus, within a narrow strip of one county we have found seventeen instances of this method of assessment, and there is no need to multiply cases in point. On almost every page of the survey in which we read of hides, we may find them combined in conventional groups of five, ten, or the like.

Not all England, however, was assessed in hides; three other systems of rating are to be found in the country. In Kent, the first county entered in Domesday Book, a peculiar system prevailed in which the place of the hide was taken by the “sulung,” consisting of four “yokes” (iugera), and most probably containing two hundred and forty acres, thus equalling a double hide.[[327]] The existence of the sulung in Kent as a term of land measurement can be traced back to the time when that county was an independent kingdom; the process by which the word came to denote a merely fiscal unit was doubtless analogous to the similar development which we have noticed in the case of the “hide.” Taken in conjunction with the singular local divisions of Kent, and with the well-known peculiarities of land tenure found there, this plan of reckoning by “sulungs” instead of hides falls into place as a proper survival of the independent organisation of the county.

Another ancient kingdom also preserves an unusual form of assessment in Domesday. In East Anglia we get for once a statement in arithmetical terms as to the amount which each vill must contribute to the Danegeld. Instead of being told that there are, say, five hides in a vill, and being left to draw the conclusion that that vill must pay ten shillings or more according to the rate at which the Danegeld is being levied on the hide, we are given the amount which each vill must pay when the hundred in which it is situated pays twenty shillings. This form of sliding scale is unknown outside Norfolk and Suffolk, and is even more obviously artificial than the assessment of other counties. Each hundred in East Anglia seems to have been divided into a varying number of “leets,”—and it has been suggested that each leet had to pay an equal amount towards the Danegeld due from the hundred,[[328]] but the assessment of East Anglia in other respects presents some special difficulties of its own, although they cannot be discussed here.

Of much greater importance is the remaining fiscal unit to be found in Domesday. In Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Rutland all assessments are expressed in “carucates,” instead of hides, each carucate being composed of eight bovates, and each bovate containing, as is probable, fifteen (fiscal) acres. This distinction was remarked on in the twelfth century by Hugh “Candidus,” the historian of Peterborough, who says, “In Lincolnshire there are no hides, as in other counties, but instead of hides there are carucates of land, and they are worth the same as the hides.” It is evident that by derivation at least the Domesday carucata terræ must originally have meant a ploughland, that is, the amount of land capable of being tilled in one year by the great plough-team of eight oxen, according to whatever system of agriculture may have then been current, and it is equally certain that the word “bovate” takes its derivation from the ox. But, just like the hide, the carucate, from denoting a measure of land, had come to mean an abstract fiscal quantity, subject to the same conditions of distribution as affected the former unit. This is proved by the fact that the carucates are found combined in the above counties into artificial groups according to exactly the same principle as that which determined the distribution of hides in the south, with one highly curious variation in detail. Whereas we have seen that in the south and west vills are nominally assessed at some multiple of five hides, in the north-eastern counties, with which we are now concerned, the prevailing tendency is for the vills to be rated at some multiple or fraction of six carucates. Put in another way: the assessment of the south and west was decimal in character, that of the north and east was duodecimal; while we should expect a Berkshire vill to be rated at five, ten, or fifteen hides, we must expect to find a Lincolnshire vill standing at six, twelve, or eighteen carucates.[[329]] We have in this way a “six-carucate unit,” to set beside and in distinction to the “five-hide unit,” which we have already considered.

Now, these details become very significant when we consider the geographical area within which these carucates are found combined after this fashion. The district between the Welland and the Tees has a historical unity of its own. As was the case with East Anglia and Kent, fiscal peculiarities are accompanied in this quarter also by a distinctive local organisation. The co-existence in this part of England of “Danish” place-names with local divisions such as the wapentake, which can be referred to northern influence, has always been considered as proving an extensive Scandinavian settlement to have taken place there; and we can now reinforce this argument by pointing to the above fiscal peculiarities, which we know to be confined to this quarter and which are invaluable as enabling us to define with certainty the exact limits of the territory which was actually settled by the Danes in the tenth century. In Denmark itself we find instances of the employment of a duodecimal system of reckoning similar to that on which we have seen the Domesday assessment of the above north-eastern counties to be based; and we may recognise in the latter the equivalent of the territory of the “Five Boroughs” of Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, and Stamford, together with the Danish kingdom of Deira (Yorkshire), across the Humber.

Tedious as these details may well seem, the conclusions to which they lead us are by no means unimportant. In the first place, we see how such ancient kingdoms as Kent, East Anglia and Deira, to which we may add the territory of the Five Boroughs, preserved in their financial arrangements many relics of their former independent organisation long after they had lost all trace of political autonomy. And then in the second place we obtain a glimpse into the principles which governed the policy of the Norman rulers of England towards native institutions. These were not swept away wholesale; centralisation was only introduced where it was absolutely necessary, and so long as local arrangements sufficed to meet the financial needs of the crown, they were not interfered with. Here, as elsewhere, it was not the policy of William or of his successors to disturb the ancient organisation of the country, for it could well be adapted to the purposes of a king who was strong enough to make his government a reality over the whole land, and in this respect the Conqueror and his sons need have no fear.

In the above account we have considered the Domesday system of assessment in its simplest possible form, but certain complications must now receive notice. In the first place the plan on which the survey itself is drawn up places difficulties in our way, for it represents a kind of compromise between geographical and tenurial principles. Thus, each county is entered separately in Domesday, but within the shire all estates are classified according to the tenant-in-chief to whom they belonged, and not according to the hundred or other local division in which they are situated. This is a fact to which we shall have again to refer, but it will be evident that more than one tenant-in-chief might very well hold land in the same vill, and this being the case, we can never be sure, without reading through the entire survey of a county, that we have obtained full particulars of any single vill contained in it. In other words, vill and manor were never of necessity identical, and in some parts of England, especially the north and east, such an equivalent was highly exceptional. In this way, therefore, in the all-important sphere of finance, the lowest point to which we can trace the application of any consistent principle in the apportionment of the “geld” was not the manor, but the vill; and accordingly before we can discover the presence of those five-hide and six-carucate units, which have just been described, we have often to combine a number of particulars which, taken individually, do not suggest any system at all. Two instances, one from Cambridgeshire and one from Derbyshire, will be in point here:

HASLINGFIELD (CAMBS.)[[330]]

Hides.Virgates.Acres.
The King71
Picot the Sheriff43
Count Alan1½
” ”½
Geoffrey de Mandeville50
Guy de Reinbudcurt113
Count Alan 12
2000

BREASTON (DERBY)[[331]]