THE DOMESDAY SURVEY was added to Sturmere, and on the other hand a portion of Sturmere has now been transferred to Kedington. 1 Over 600 acres of Haverhill and over 700 of Kedington are now reckoned as in Essex. On this complication however Domesday appears to be silent. Even the Thames to the south, like the Stour to the north of the county, does not always form an exact boundary. There belongs to Kent a portion of Woolwich which lies on the Essex bank of the river, and Domesday reckons as in Essex a Gravesend (' Gravesanda ') of small extent, which has not been identified. Before leaving the Hundreds and their boundaries, one may note that the latter, in the east of the county, coincide with the parish boun- daries, and that the small geographically compact Hundreds of Thur- stable and Winstree are suggestive of ancient origin. All the coast Hundreds are separated by estuaries or creeks, and the quasi-peninsular character of Tendring and Dengie has given them a certain individuality which makes their names still familiar. The ' Lexden and Winstree Board of Guardians and rural district council ' preserves the names of two others which figure in Domesday Book. Dengie and Rochford, for some reason, have been locally known as 'The Hundreds.' Broadly speaking, the Hundreds of Essex resemble those of Suffolk ' rather than the small ones of Sussex, to which, for racial reasons, one might have expected them to approximate. This would seem to confirm the view that they are mainly of a more recent date than the original settlement. In Domesday Book the Hundred assumes extreme importance, for the whole country was surveyed, as it was taxed, by Hundreds, that is to say, Domesday Book was compiled from original returns, each of which contained the entries, vill by vill, for a single Hundred on the authority of the ' Hundred ' itself, that is, of its sworn representatives. It is possible, in the Essex portion of the Survey, to detect the order in which the returns were arranged for the purpose of compilation. There is no question, in my opinion, that this arrangement began with the Hundred of Barstable and ended with that of Thurstable. The order of the intervening Hundreds is doubtful here and there, but after analysing the fourteen principal fiefs in the county, it may safely be given thus . Barstable, Witham, Harlow, Waltham, Becontree, Dunmow, Dengie (i), Winstree, Uttlesford (i), Clavering, Hinckford, Dengie (2), Lexden, Ongar, Chafford, Chelmsford, Maldon, Tendring, Uttlesford (2), Fresh- well, Rochford, Thurstable. The two points to observe here are that the Hundreds of Dengie 3 and of Uttlesford appear to come twice over,* Kelly. 8 Essex has 21, counting Colchester and Maldon (but not Havering) ; Suffolk, with its slightly smaller area, 23, counting Ipswich, or 24 counting Bosmere and Claydon as two (as in Domesday).
- Dengie follows both Dunmow and Hinckford on the Peverel and Boulogne fiefs, Dunmow and
Uttlesford (i) on the king's fief, Dunmow and Clavering on the Mandeville fief, Rochford and Clavering on Suain's fief, and Beventrce and Hinckford on the Montfort fief ; on the Baynard fief it precedes Dunmow and also follows Hinckford. Uttlesford follows both Dengie (i) and Tendring on the king's fief, and both Winstree and Tendring on the Boulogne and on the Gernon fief. 4 Uttlesford was sometimes reckoned as two Hundreds in later days (p. 407 above), but this may be only a coincidence. I 409 52
