Here we have five Vills varying in area from eleven ploughlands to twenty, and in value T.R.E., from £11 10s to £20, all assessed alike at ten hides each. What is the meaning of it? Simply that ASSESSMENT BORE NO RATIO TO AREA OR TO VALUE in a Vill, and still less in a Manor.
Assessment was not objective, but subjective; it was not fixed relatively to area or to value, but to the five-hide unit. The aim of the assessors was clearly to arrange the assessment in sums of five hides, ten hides, etc.
Take now the next Hundred in the Inq. Com. Cant.:
| Hundred of Radfield | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Inq. Com. Cant., pp. 17-25) | |||||
| Hides | Ploughlands | Valets (T.R.E.) | |||
| Dullingham | 10 | 16 | £19 | 5 | 0 |
| Stetchworth | 10 | 13¼ | 12 | 15 | 0 |
| Borough Green and Westley | 10 | 17 | 17 | 1 | 4 |
| Carlton | 10 | 19½ | 18 | 10 | 0 |
| Weston | 10 | 19¼ | 13 | 15 | 0 |
| Wratting | 10 | 15¾ | 8 | 8 | 0 |
| Balsham | 10 | 20 | 12 | 13 | 4 |
| — | —— | —— | — | — | |
| 70 | 120¾ | £102 | 7 | 8 | |
Here again we have seven Vills varying in area from thirteen and a quarter ploughlands to twenty, and in value from £8 8s to £19 5s, all uniformly assessed at ten hides each. The thing speaks for itself. Had the hidation in these two Hundreds been dependent on area or value, the assessments would have varied infinitely. As it is, there is for each Vill but one and the same assessment.
Note further that the I.C.C. enables us to localize holdings the locality of which is unnamed in Domesday: also, that it shows us how certain Vills were combined for the purpose of assessment. Thus Borough Green and Westley are treated in Domesday as distinct, but here we find that they were assessed together as a ten-hide block. By this means we are enabled to see how the five-hide system could be traced further still if we had in other districts the same means of learning how two or three Vills were thus grouped together.
We may now take a step in advance, and pass to the Hundred of Whittlesford.
| Hundred of Whittlesford | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| (Inq. Com. Cant., pp. 38-43) | |||||||||||||
| Hides | Ploughlands | Valets | |||||||||||
| Whittlesford | 12 |  | 20 | 11 | | 20 | £15 | 2 | 0 | | £34 | 2 | 0 |
| Sawston | 8 | 9 | 19 | 0 | 0 | ||||||||
| Hinxton | 20 | 16 | 20 | 10 | 0 | ||||||||
| Icklington | 20 | 24½ | 24 | 5 | 0 | ||||||||
| Duxford | 20 | 20¼ | 27 | 5 | 0 | ||||||||
| — | —— | —— | — | — | |||||||||
| 80 | 80¾ | £106 | 2 | 0 | |||||||||
Here we are left to discover for ourselves that Whittlesford and Sawston were grouped together to form a twenty-hide block. And on turning from the above figures to the map we find the discovery verified, these two Vills jointly occupying the northern portion of the hundred. Thus, this hundred, instead of being divided like its two predecessors into ten-hide blocks, was assessed in four blocks of twenty hides each, each of them representing one of those quarters so dear to the Anglo-Saxon mind (virgata, etc.), and lying respectively in the north, south, east and west of the district. Proceeding on the lines of this discovery, we come to the Hundred of Wetherley, which carries us a step further.