DOMESDAY SURVEY as we have it is disposed according to manors, not vills. 4 Hence in those cases where a manor consisted of land in two or more vills the Domesday scribes will often give the total assessment of the whole manorial group without specifying how the sum in question was distributed among the several vills over which it extended. At this point the Leicester Survey in Feudal England comes to our aid, for, like the original returns out of which Domesday Book was compiled, it is drawn up vill by vill, and accordingly demonstrates beyond question the way in which irregular manorial assess- ments were combined to form an even duodecimal total for each vill as a whole. It does even more than this, for it reveals the existence of a system by which the vills themselves were united to form certain larger groups, designated in this document by the name of ' hundreds,' so that even in those cases where a particular vill may be assessed at a figure which does not suggest any system at all it will commonly be connected with some other vill, also assessed at some irregular number of carucates, in such a way that the assessments of the whole ' hundred ' will be duly duodecimal in character. This is not the place in which to discuss the very difficult question of the origin of these hundreds, nor the possibility that a similar series of local divisions may have existed in the other counties of the Danelaw, 6 but we may illustrate the fiscal character of these anomalous bodies by an example in which the figures as recorded by Domesday Book and by this later survey are in complete accordance : 1086 Waltham Hugh de Grentemaisnil Guy de Craon .. HUNDRED OF WALTHAM-ON-THE-WOLDS 1124-1129 Car. Bov. 16 4 24 Car. EOT. 19 o Stonesby Guy de Craon ..... 80 Coston Henry de Ferrers .... 90 Total . 36 o Earl of Leicester Alan de Craon Alan de Craon . Robert dc Fcrrers 16 2 4 4 .. 8 9 Total . 36 o It is especially to be noted that as no mention is made of these small local hundreds in Domesday Book, we should, but for the preservation of the
- Leicestershire Survey,' be entirely ignorant of the fact that the irregular
assessments of Waltham, Stonesby, and Coston were regarded as forming one duodecimal group of 36 carucates. A similar system of grouping runs through the whole survey as we have it, only at times the regularity of the arrange- ment has been disturbed by unrecorded alterations in the local incidence of the geld, and by clerical errors on the part of the scribes in dealing with large masses of figures. Both these causes of exception apply with even greater force to the Domesday Survey itself, aggravated, as we have seen, by the fact that the compilers of the latter record, in regard to fiscal as well as economic 4 Further evidence is supplied in relation to this point by the Croxton Chartulary, ' Belvoir MSS.' Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv, 176. 6 Compare V.C.H. Derby, i, 295, and Notts, i, 219. 2 79
