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THE DOMESDAY SURVEY It may be expected that the exploration now being made among all our records for this history of the county will further diminish the number of the names still awaiting identification. THE BEDFORDSHIRE HUNDREDS The importance of the Hundreds in the Great Survey is far greater than any one could gather from the pages of Domesday Book. For the fortunate preservation of a transcript of the actual returns of the Inquest, in the case of the county of Cambridge, shows us that each Hundred was surveyed separately in turn, and that the return for each Hundred was made by its own sworn jurors. The contents of these returns were subsequently cut down and re-arranged under the fiefs of the several tenants-in-chief. But although the surveys of the Hundreds, and even of the vills within them, were broken up for the purpose of this re-arrangement, traces of the system on which the survey was actually made are still to be found in the order in which the Hundreds recur. This is a point of considerable importance, to which, till quite lately, little attention has been given. In Bedfordshire the order in which the returns from the Hundreds were arranged appears to have been as follows: (i) Manshead ; (2) ' Stanburge ; ' (3) Redbornstoke ; (4) Stodden ; (5) ' Buchelai ' ; (6) Flitt ; (7) Willey ; (8) Barford ; (9) Biggleswade; (10) ' Weneslai ' ; (11) Wixamtree ; (12) Clifton. 3 Three of these, which were 'half Hundreds, have subsequently disappeared, ' Stanburge ' becoming ab- sorbed in Manshead, ' Buchelai ' in Willey and ' Weneslai ' in Biggles- wade. 3 In addition to the Hundreds enumerated above there was the town of Bedford, which stood apart, and the royal demesne, which is not assigned to any Hundred by name. This belt of demesne, in the ex- treme south of the county, is now divided between the Hundreds of Manshead and of Flitt. As is sometimes the case in Domesday, there is incidental mention of yet another Hundred, the identity of which is obscure. We read of Sewell (under Houghton Regis), that it was formerly in ' Odecroft ' Hundred, but that Ralf Tallebosc took it thence and placed it in Houghton Regis, even as he took Biscot out of Flitt Hundred and placed it in Luton. This has yet to be explained. To the order in which the Hundredal headings occur in the text of the survey there is, as Mr. Ragg and I have observed, one conspicuous exception. The fief of Hugh de Beauchamp is entered in two portions ; 1 Standbridge, from which it derived its name, is a place between Leighton Buzzard and Houghton Regis. 8 Mr. Ragg, who has independently investigated this subject, is in entire agreement with this order. Only the relative position of ' Manshead' and ' Stanburge ' on his list as on mine seems doubtful. 3 'Weneslai ' had dropped out before Kirby's Quest (i 284.-6), in the returns to which, as in those of I 3 1 6, the ' half Hundreds ' of ' Stanbrigge ' (or ' Stanbrugge ') and of ' Boclowe ' (or ' Buckelowe ') are surveyed with Manshead and Willey respectively. After the returns of I 3 16, these half Hundreds also drop out of the list (see Feudal Aids, i. I— 21). I 217 28