DOMESDAY SURVEY The terms used in this record have been fully explained in the Victoria History of Northamptonshire, and we need only note here that the figures in the ' gewered ' column represent the hides which had actually paid the tax ; that the word ' inland ' as employed here means land exempt from payment of the geld ; and that the entries of ' waste,' referring as they do to more than 37 per cent, of the two hundreds, form the record of a wholesale devastation of this district which was most probably the work of the Northumbrian in- surgents of 1065 on their march from York to Oxford in the latter year. But the point which immediately concerns us is that while the assessment of the two hundreds is greatly in advance of the assessment of the district as it can be pieced together from the scattered entries in Domesday, it falls far short of the number of plough-lands assigned to the several vills of this region in 1086. In Domesday the total assessment of Wiceslei Hundred amounts to 751 hides, and the hundred is reputed to contain 184 plough-lands. It will be evident that if the Domesday plough-land in this quarter is really, as we have argued, the record of an old assessment, the assessment in question must be older than that recorded in the above survey, and as we are expressly told that the figures in the latter document relate to ' King Edward's day,' we are dealing in the plough-lands of South Rutland with a fiscal arrange- ment prior, at any rate, to 1066. In connexion with this it has been sugges- ted that ' Hwicceslea ' originally formed a double hundred, and as such was once assessed at 200 hides,* the Domesday plough-lands representing the portions of this assessment which had formerly lain upon the individual vills of the hundred. If we accept this theory we shall at once be provided with an important clue to the system which underlay the mass of discrepant figures which lies on the surface of our records. Originally the assessment of South Rutland will have stood at 200 hides, and a reduction of 20 per cent, made before 1066 will have brought that figure down to the 160 hides of the Northamptonshire Geld Roll. The uneven figure 75I hides which Domesday in its scattered entries assigns to this district becomes significant when compared with the latter total; for in 11 30 the Northamptonshire portion of the modern Rutland paid geld amounting to ^8,' a sum represent- ing 80 hides, or exactly half the assessment cast upon the district between 1067 and 1075. If we take into account the difficulty of compiling the total assess- ment of a district from the scattered entries relating to it in Domesday, and also bear in mind the frequent scribal errors which are known to exist in the descriptions of other counties, a discrepancy of 4J hides will not seriously affect the probability that 'Wiceslei' Hundred in 1086 as in I 130 was assessed at 80 hides, and had thus already secured a reduction of 50 per cent, upon the assessment which it bore in the early years of the Conqueror's reign. ^^ ' P'.C.H. Northants, i, 262. ' Baring, * The Hidation of Northamptonshire,' Engl. Hist. Rev. xvii, 470. ' Pipe R. 1 130, rot. xiv. '° It is a curious fact that ' Wiceslei ' Hundred can be divided into two parts, each of which contained roughly an equal number of hides in 1086, and that this division coincides more or less with the modern boundary between the hundreds of East and Wrangdike. As, however, the two divisions contain an unequal number of team-lands, we cannot assume that they represent the ' Hwicceslea east ' and ' Hwicceslea west ' of the Northamptonshire Geld Roll. 125
