Page:VCH Leicestershire 1.djvu/415

 LEICESTERSHIRE SURVEY the sub-partitionment of the geld intermediate between the wapentake and the vill. Traces of a similar system have been found in the Domesday Surveys of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, 7 and may perhaps be recognized in Lincolnshire also, 8 but the Leicestershire Domesday gives no hint of their existence. Judging from the Leicestershire evidence alone, these hundreds appear to have been highly artificial groups, varying greatly in point of size and intermixed with each other to such an extent that it is impossible to represent their complicated boundaries on any intelligible map. In general, the size of the hundred decreases as we pass from west to east ; on an average a hundred in Gosecote wapentake will contain six or seven vills, in Framland wapentake it will contain three or four. The extreme limits of size are marked by the hundreds of Diseworth and Seal with ten and fifteen vills respectively, and those of Croxton Kerrial and Long Clawson containing two vills each. This difference is no doubt largely to be explained by the facts of geography the country round Charnwood Forest was a land of hamlets, whereas the east of the county was adapted for the growth of villages according to the normal English pattern. In the matter of assessment the differences are less striking ; the average assessment of a Framland hundred is close upon forty carucates, for a Gosecote hundred it would stand at forty- seven. In actual figures the hundredal assessments lie between the seventy carucates cast upon Loddington hundred and the thirty carucates assigned to that of Scalford. Taken individually, these hundredal assessments present a perplexing series of uneven and occasionally fractional figures. Out of thirty-two hundreds included in the survey there are only seven cases in which the hundred as a whole is rated at an even duodecimal number of carucates, not one of these cases, curiously enough, occurring among the fifteen hundreds of Gosecote wapentake. 9 As the duodecimal tendency is so strongly marked among the villar assessments recorded in this survey, we should naturally ex- pect it to be no less apparent in the hundredal totals also. That this is not the case may be due to one or other of two reasons. There exists a number of cases in which the hundredal total, though irregular itself, comes very near to an even duodecimal figure. This undoubtedly suggests that owing to such causes as local alterations in the incidence of the geld, reductions of assess- ment, or scribal errors in the compilation of the present survey, figures which once were duodecimal have become distorted from their original form. 10 On the other hand, the proportion of duodecimal totals still remaining is hardly sufficient to create a presumption that all the totals were formerly duodecimal, and also there are numerous cases in which the divergence from the nearest duodecimal figure is rather too large to square well with this hypothesis. Another theory which seems at least possible on the evidence before us is that the hundredal totals themselves in each wapentake may have been combined into larger groups according to a duodecimal basis. In fact, the figures for 7 Cf. 7.C.H. Derby, i, 295 ; and Notts,, 242. " The possible existence of territorial hundreds in Lincolnshire is a question distinct from the problem presented by the ' hundred ' of twelve carucates in that county. This last was merely a fiscal term, analogous to the ' hide ' of Leicestershire. 9 With the doubtful exception of the hundred of Tonge, the figures relating to which may be so read as to give a total of 48 carucates. 10 Compare Feudal England, 81. 341