Page:VCH Warwickshire 1.djvu/325

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DOMESDAY SURVEY Assessment of the county, p. 269 King's revenues, p. 270 Church lands, p. 273 Tenants- in-chief, p. 276 Under tenants, p. 281 English predecessors, p. 282 Classes of men, p. 284 Legal antiquities, p. 286 Warwick, p. 289 Rural economy, p. 291 The Hundreds, p. 293 Identification of manors, p. 294 Duplicate entries, p. 296. I Warwickshire portion of the Great Survey is interesting and fairly full. In proportion to area the county occupies about as much space in Domesday as does Worcestershire to its west, less than Northamptonshire and Leicestershire to its east, but considerably more than Staffordshire. The chief features of interest in its survey are found in the light it throws on local financial administration, the names of the persons to whom it introduces us, and the religious houses, English and foreign, holding land within its borders. But as the Domesday Survey was before all a record of the assessment to ' geld ' (land-tax), it is with that aspect of its contents that the student has first to deal. Warwickshire was one of the hidated counties, that is, of those which were assessed in ' hides ' ; but it actually adjoined on the north-east the group of ' carucated ' counties of which Leicestershire is a striking example. The assessment of these latter was based on units of six or twelve ' carucates,' while that of the former was similarly based on units of five or ten ' hides.' The duodecimal and the decimal systems were brought into sharp contrast ; Leicester, when the king set forth to war, sent him twelve of her burgesses ; Warwick sent him ten. It was, I have urged, the Scandinavian region, the counties settled by the Danes, which thus reckoned in twelves. 1 This conclusion, one may fairly say, is con- firmed by the local place-names, such characteristic forms as Rugby, Wibtoft and (Monks) Kirby being found close to the Leicestershire border, as are Barby, Kilsby, and Yelvertoft in the adjoining and hidated county of Northants. We may say, therefore, that Domesday bears clear witness to the existence of a real dividing line between Warwick- shire and Leicestershire, a line that marked the limit of racial conquest and settlement. But although Warwickshire was assessed in ' hides ' the basing of its assessment on arbitrary units of five or ten hides is less obvious to the eye than in several other counties. The proportion^ however, of such assessments is too high to be accounted for on any other hypothesis. For instance, in the adjoining Domesday Hundreds of ' Tremelau ' and 1 See feudal England, pp. 69 et seq. 269