A HISTORY OF BEDFORDSHIRE the second portion, which begins with Aspley (Guise) in Manshead Hundred, is devoted to those manors which were held of him by under- tenants, and in it the Hundreds recur in their regular order ; but in the first part, which deals with the manors he held in demesne, this order is not observed. In that part we begin with Stodden, ' Buchelai,' Wixam- tree and Clifton, but then proceed with Redbornstoke, Flitt and Barford. On comparing this arrangement with the regular sequence of the Hun- dreds, it will be seen that the fief is entered, as I said, in two portions, and, moreover, that the first portion can itself be divided into two halves. 1 Mr. Ragg has suggested, as the result of his careful analysis of the survey, that if we assumed the royal demesne to have formed a Hundred of its own, and reckoned Bedford as a half Hundred, Bedfordshire would have had at the time of the survey ten whole and four half Hundreds, representing, in all, the equivalent of twelve. Professor Maitland also reckons the Domesday Hundreds as twelve, 2 but he derived the figure from Dr. Stubbs, who must have obtained it differently, namely from the headings in the text. In any case it is noteworthy that the ' county hidage ' assigns 1,200 hides to Bedfordshire, 3 which is not far from the Domesday total. But we must not be tempted by these figures to hazard conjectures here as to an earlier state of things on which, in the present state of our knowledge, it is premature to speak. 1 Mr. Ragg has observed that the lands of St. Albans, in the adjoining county of Herts, present a similar exceptional grouping in two halves, of which the first deals with the manors in hand. 2 Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 459. 3 Ibid. p. 456. 218
