[1411] I have roughly added up the carucates and teams of Norfolk, a laborious task, and have seen reason to believe that the figures for Suffolk would be of the same kind.
[1412] In dealing with Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk an equation connecting the hide or (as the case may be) carucate with the acre becomes of vast importance. I have throughout assumed that 120 acres make the hide or carucate. If this assumption, about which something will be said hereafter, is unjustified, my whole computation breaks down. Then in Norfolk there are (especially I think in certain particular hundreds) a good many estates for which no extent (real or rateable) is given. I have made no allowance for this. On the other hand, I believe that I have carried to an extreme in Norfolk the principle of including everything. I doubt, for example, whether some of the acres held by the parish churches have not been reckoned twice over. Also both in Essex and Norfolk I reckoned in the lands that are mentioned among the Invasiones, and in so doing ran the danger of counting them for a second time.
[1413] Also we may remark that in many respects the survey of Essex is closely akin to the survey of East Anglia; but in Essex nothing is said about the geldability of vills and therefore, unless the Essex hides and acres belong to the order of geldable units (A), our record tells us nothing as to the geld of Essex: an unacceptable conclusion.
[1414] Dorset, 15, 23–24.
[1415] In Dorset 22,000 acres are ‘designedly omitted’; in Somerset nearly 178,000; in Staffordshire nearly 246,000. Mr C. S. Taylor puts the deficiency in Gloucestershire at 200,000 or thereabouts.
[1417] D. B. ii. 160 b: A certain vill is 1 league 10 perches long, and 1 league 41⁄2 feet wide. Surely such a statement would never come from men who could use and were intending to use a system of superficial measurement.
[1418] D. B. ii. 170. Or take Westbruge (ii. 206): Two carucates; two teams and a half; ‘this vill is 5 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth.’ If every inch of the vill is ploughed, the carucate can only have 75 acres, and each team tills but 60. I have noted many cases in which this method will not leave 120 acres for the team.
[1419] D. B. i. 310.
[1420] D. B. i. 307 b.