The Principle of Assessment

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This is specially the case

or some multiple of five hides. with towns, and some years ago, in one of my earliest essays, I called attention to the fact, and explained its bearing in connexion with the unit of military service.87 Yet no one,

it would seem, has been struck by the fact, or has seen that there must be some significance in this singular preponderance of five-hide Manors. Now what the Inquisitio here does for us is to show us that this preponderance is infinitely greater than we should gather from the pages of Domesday, and that when the scattered manors are pieced together in their Vills, the agregate of their assessments generally amounts either to five hides or to a multiple of the five-hide unit. Thus the rural townships are brought into line with towns, and we learn that in both the assessment was based on the five-hide unit.

Let us now take a typical hundred and test this theory in practice :

Here we have five Vills varying in area from 11 ploughlands to 20, 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

"Antiquary, June, 1882, p. 242. See also Domesday Studies, vol. i., p. 119.

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 Ing. Com. Cant. :

Here again we have seven Vills varying in area from 131 ploughlands to 20, 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 localise 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.

Here we are left to discover for ourselves that Whittlesford and Sawston were grouped together to form a twentyhide 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.

88 The I.C.C. omits the king's Manor (7 hides, 8 ploughlands).

It is important to observe that, though the grouping is my own, the order of the Vills is exactly that which is given in the Inq. Com. Cant., and by that order the grouping is confirmed. Note also how, without such grouping, we should have but a chaos of Vills, whereas, by its aid, from this chaos is evolved perfect symmetry. Lastly, glance at the four "quarters" and see how variously they are subdivided.

Advancing still on the same lines, we approach the very remarkable case of the adjoining Hundred of Long Stow.

Now it is necessary to explain at the outset that, the Inq. Com. Cant. being here imperfect, it only gives us the first two of the above "quarters," its evidence ending with Bourne. But, by good fortune, it is possible to reconstruct from Domesday alone the remaining half of the Hundred, and thus to obtain the most valuable example of the system we are engaged in tracing that we have yet met with. The grouping I have adopted is based on the figures, but in some

Quartering of a Hundred.

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cases it is obvious from the map: Eltisley and Croxton, for instance, which form a ten-hide block, occupy a projecting portion of the county all to themselves, while Caxton adjoins them.

Several points are here noticeable. Observe, in the first place, how the twenty-five hide "quarter" which heads the list is divided into three equal blocks of 8% hides each, just as we found in Wetherley Hundred that one of the twentyhide "quarters" was divided into five equal blocks of four hides each. In these cases the same principle of simple equal division was applied to the quarter hundred as we saw applied to the whole hundred in the first two cases we studied-the Hundreds of Staines and of Radfield. Notice next how the two Vills of Toft and Hardwick, which are separately surveyed in Domesday under their respective names, are found from the Ing. Com. Cant. to have combined (under the name of "Toft ") in a block of 8 hides. Lastly, it should not be overlooked that the hide not localised in Domesday fits in exactly with Hatley to complete its five hides.

The chase now becomes exciting: it can no longer be doubted that we are well on the track of a vast system of artificial hidation, of which the very existence has been hitherto unsuspected. Let us see what further light can be thrown by research on its nature.

On looking back at the evidence I have collected, one is struck, surely, by the thought that the system of assessment seems to work, not as is supposed, up from, but down to the Manor. Can it be possible that what was really assessed was not the Manor, nor even the Vill, but the Hundred as a whole? This view is so revolutionary, so subversive of all that has ever been written on the subject, that it cannot be answered off-hand. We will therefore begin by examining the case of the Hundred of Erningford, which introduces us to a further phenomenon, the reduction of

assessment.

B. H.

E