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 DOMESDAY SURVEY of these ploughs which could find employment on its lands. This seems evident when we find as at Markeaton that there was land for nine ploughs, but that there were only two in demesne, the tenants having five between them. We must also keep in mind that when there was not land enough in a manor for the full eight-ox plough its amount was denoted by the number of oxen considered necessary for its tillage. Thus when an estate is described as containing land for four oxen, this phrase is used to represent half a ploughland, land for two oxen representing a quarter of the same unit. Similarly, ' land for twelve oxen ' was evidently considered by the compilers of Domesday to be a more compendious phrase than 'land for ij ploughs.' When the number of ' ploughlands ' was identical with the number of carucates a simple statement was often made to that effect which usually works out easily enough, a carucate representing a ' ploughland,' and each of the eight bovates into which the carucate was divided standing for the land assignable to one ox. Once however this principle leads us into a very curious calculation ; at Chad- desden, which was assessed at 2 carucates, 4*. bovates, we are told ' there is land for as many ploughs.' 1 Strictly construed this entry would intro- duce us to two-thirds of an ox, but it is doubtless due to inadvertence on the part of the Domesday scribe, who merely wished to say that the rateable value of the land corresponded well enough with its agricultural possibilities. But the whole matter is very seriously complicated by the fact that we frequently find a manor actually stocked with more ploughs than the number of ploughlands which it is reputed to contain. Taking half-a-dozen consecutive entries from the fief of Henry de Ferrers * we may express them in tabular form thus : Carucates. Ploughlands. Winster. Cowley Elton Brassington Brad bourne Tissington. Here the unusual correspondence between the rateable value of each manor and its agricultural strength as expressed in ploughlands accen- tuates the uniform excess of the actual ploughs over both these quantities. Taking Derbyshire as a whole we obtain a total of 88 1 ploughs as against 744! ploughlands. Striking as this divergence is, it is quite thrown into the shade by the figures for Nottinghamshire, where we find an excess of the actual teams over the ploughlands of more than 700. These figures make it difficult to believe that the ploughland was in any consistent sense a ' real ' quantity, and in the Victoria History of Northamptonshire * Mr. Round has proved that the ploughland in that county represented an obsolete assessment to the geld much heavier than its current rating in 1086. An analysis of the Derbyshire Survey does not reveal any such constant ratio between geldable carucates and teamlands as would lead 2 4 4 4 2 4 4 4 Ploughs. 4 I 5 9 6 7* 1 Fol. 275, 'terra totidem carucis.' Ibid. 8 Fol. 274. 317
 * Vol. i. p. 264.