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A HISTORY OF LEICESTERSHIRE matters, were interested in manorial rather than in villar arrangements. In the following table a list of villar assessments is given, in which the duodecimal grouping of the carucates, distorted in Domesday Book from whatever cause, has been restored by the compilers of the Leicestershire Survey : Vill Assessment Vill Assessment Beeby 12 carucates Tur Langton 12 carucates Lowesby 12 Belgrave 12 Queniborough . ... 12 Syston 12 Anstey 6 Brentingby 6 Swepstone 6 Rotherby 6 Quenby 6 Shoby 6 All the above are examples of undivided vills, but in the following cases each villar total represents a number of manorial assessments which are here included within brackets (the figures referring to carucates) : Vill Assessment Vill Assessment Barkestone .... 24 (23 + 1) Old Dalby ... 12 (9 + 3) Newton Burdet . . . 12 (4 + 8) Frisby . . . . 12 (4 + 8) Hoby 12 (7J + 4i) Rearsby .... 12 (5 + 2^ + 4!) Branston 12 (7^+4^) Eastwell .... 12 (2 + 6+4) Sproxton 12 (8 + 2 + 2) Shangton .... 12 (10 + 2) East Norton . . . . 12 (1^ + 6 + 4!) Humberstone . . 12 (8 + 1+3) Scalford 12 (llJ+J) Welby .... 12 (9 + 3) Allexton 6 (sj+t) Saxelby .... 6 (1+5) Brooksby 6 (5 + 1) Wyfordby ... 6 (4^+1$) Ashby Folville . . . 6 (5 + 1) Keyham .... 6 (4 + 2) Thus far, thanks to the evidence of the Leicestershire Survey, it has been possible to set down a sufficiently convincing list of duodecimal assess- ments which might be considerably extended, but we must now consider a very curious complication which does not occur in the same form in the old Danelaw outside this county. This is the employment, in this intensely ' Danish ' shire, of two fiscal terms which rightly belong to the ' hidated y south of England, namely, the ' hide ' and the ' virgate.' The latter does not present much difficulty, for in the hidated counties the virgate was the quarter of the hide just as the bovate was the eighth of the caru- cate, the substitute for the hide in the Danelaw, and in Leicestershire the virgate merely appears as a compendious expression for the sum of two bovates. But the use of the ' hide ' in Leicestershire is quite unique. 8 It does not here denote a term of land-measurement, nor even a simple fiscal unit. The Domesday scribe himself found it necessary to define the word as used in this county, and in the entry relating to Kilby we read ' Oger the Breton holds two parts of one hide, that is, 1 2 carucates of land.' Unfortunately this explanation itself is somewhat ambiguous, for it leaves it an open question whether the words ' that is twelve carucates of land ' were intended as a definition of the term ' hide,' or whether they mean that ' two-thirds of one hide ' amounted to the sum in question. As there are sixteen entries in one portion of the survey in which the hide is involved, it becomes important from the statistical point of view to ascertain whether the term denoted a sum of 12 or of 1 8 carucates, and there is one passage 6 For the Leicestershire ' hide ' see W. H. Stevenson, ' The Hundreds of Domesday,' Engl. Hist. Rev. v, 95, and Round, feud. Engl. 82. 280