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Rh 20, or 30 hides. But the prevalence of this system can only be pro- perly realized when the vills which had been divided among several holders are laboriously reconstructed. Mr. Ragg, the translator of the Domesday text, has compiled elaborate tables for each Hundred, showing how the vills were held, and to these I am indebted for two examples taken from neighbouring and important vills.

There are several other instances to be found in Mr. Ragg's tables.

Domesday students cannot speak so confidently about the plough- lands in the record as they can about its ' hides.' These, it will be found, often approximate or even coincide with the hides in number. Yet they are at times far fewer or far more numerous, while at Wing, assessed at only five hides, there was land for no fewer than forty ploughs. A good illustration of these variations is afforded by the Earl of Chester's lands. On two of his manors the number of the ploughlands was exactly equal to that of the hides, but the two others, Mentmore and Shenley, though each of them possessing ten ploughlands, were respec- tively assessed at eighteen and at two hides. Although the frequent coincidence of hides and ploughlands in number might suggest a rough or a conventional estimate, the record of the ploughs that actually were or ' could be ' employed on the manor proves that we are dealing with real areas of arable land. Great obscurity, however, still surrounds the subject.

Immediately after the schedule of holders of lands in the county, Domesday deals with the king's manors, here only seven in number. Three at least of these had been King Edward's own, Aylesbury, Wend- over, and Brill, while three others are entered as having been held by Harold. Buckingham itself, though entered separately as being the county town, was also (with Bourton) a royal manor with ploughlands, mill, and meadow. The chief feature of interest about these royal manors is the revenue the king derived from them. Domesday usually records so great an increase in that revenue since King Edward's days as to suggest that either the Normans had proved grossly extortionate, or the old rents before the Conquest had remained unduly low. The latter is by no means an improbable view, for there is evidence in other counties of old conventional rents being received from royal manors irrespective of their value.

In any case the rise was sharp. Aylesbury and Wendover had formerly ' rendered ' 25 each ' by tale ' yearly ; from Aylesbury was now