[1511] My 500 (or a trifle more) for Cheshire does not include the land between the Ribble and the Mersey. The figures given for that district are, as is well known, very difficult. If we take the final statement (D. B. i. 270) about the 79 ‘hides’ as a grand total and hold that each of these contains 6 carucates (Feudal England, 86) and that each of these carucates pays geld equivalent to that of one ordinary hide, then we have here 474 units to be added to the Cestrian 500, and yet more northerly lands may have been gelding along with Chester in Cnut’s day.
[1512] The various copies disagree as to whether Herefordshire shall have 1200 or 1500 hides. My figure stands about halfway between these two; but many hides were not gelding in 1086. I can not bring the Warwickshire hides down to 1200.
[1513] I take the numbers of the hundreds from Dr Stubbs, Const. Hist. 106. I take them thence in order that I may not be tempted to make them rounder than they are.
[1515] Mr C. S. Taylor, op. cit. 31, finds 41.
[1516] Round, Feudal England, 44 ff.
[1517] Both statements might be illustrated from the Dorsetshire accounts. Between 2 and 8 Hen. II. the geld seems to rise from £228. 5s. to £248. 5s. but there is a blunder in the addition of the pardons in the latter roll. I believe that Mr Round has already mentioned this case somewhere. The correspondence between the Pipe Rolls and Domesday is sufficiently close to warrant our saying that the story told by Orderic of a new and severer valuation made by Rufus can have but little, if any, truth behind it. See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 327.
[1518] The common formula is: ‘T. R. E. geldabat pro a hidis; ibi tamen sunt a´ hidae’ and a´ is largely greater than a. I infer that a´ represents a new and increased assessment, for the Geld Inquest seems to show Cornwall paying for 401 hides and a fraction while I make a´=399.
[1519] For these three counties we can not give any B, but must draw inferences from C. Clearly in Hereford C was often thought to be much less than B.
[1520] As already said (above, p. 420) what we take to be Leicester’s equivalent for B is sometimes given by an unusual formula.