We are enabled from the Inq. Com. Cant., to determine the assessments of eleven Hundreds.[99] Nine out of these eleven Hundreds prove to have been assessed as follows:

Hides
Erningford100
Long Stow100
Triplow90
Staplehow90[100]
Whittlesford80
Wetherley80
Radfield70
Cheveley50
Staines50

This list speaks for itself, but it may be as well to point out how convenient for the Treasury was this system. At the normal Danegeld rate of two shillings on the hide, an assessment of fifty hides would represent £5, one hundred hides £10, and so on.

Can we discover in other counties traces of this same system? Let us first take the adjacent county of Bedfordshire.

I am anxious to explain that for the means of utilizing the Bedfordshire evidence I am entirely indebted to the Digest of the Domesday of Bedfordshire by the late Rev. William Airy (edited by his son, the Rev. B. R. Airy[101]). It was, most happily, pointed out to the author by the Rev. Joseph Hunter 'that what we want is not translations but analyses of the surveys of the several counties' (p. viii). To this most true remark we owe it that Mr Airy resolved to give us a 'digest' instead of that usual 'extension and translation', which is perfectly useless to the Domesday student. It is easy to take from the record itself such an instance as these Beauchamp Manors entered in succession (213): Willington 10 hides, Stotford 15; 'Houstone' 5, Hawnes 5, 'Salchou' 5, Aspley 10, Salford 5; but it is only Mr Airy's work that enables us to reconstruct the townships, and to show how fractions—apparently meaningless—fit in, exactly as in Cambridgeshire, with one another. His work is all the more valuable from the fact that he had no theory to prove, and did not even add together the factors he had ascertained. His figures therefore are absolutely free from the suspicion that always attaches to those adduced to prove a case.

Risely Tempsford Wymington
H.V. H.V. H.V.
70 11¾ 03
10 11 30
½0 41 40
½0 20 ½0
10 1¼ 03
10
—————— —————— ——————
100 100 100
Cople Eversholt Clophill
H.V. H.V. H.V.
40 20 50
53 7½0 40
01 ½0 10
—————— —————— ——————
100 100 100
Northill Portsgrove Chicksand
H.V. H.V. H.V.
1½0 10 ½0
1½0 7½0 3½0
½0 10 30
6½0 ½0 10
—————— —————— ——————
100 100 100
Eyeworth Holwell Odell
H.V. H.V. H.V.
90 3½0 4½⅓
10 6½0 51⅔
—————— —————— ——————
100 100 100