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 A HISTORY OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE de Waltervilla ' holding 13^ hides of the Abbot in Northamptonshire, though he owed for this no more than the service of three knights, the same quota as De la Mare. Hugh ' Candidus ' enables us to learn that this holding included lands at Marholm, Clapton and Thorpe Water- ville, as well as at Achurch and Tichmarsh. This family contributed an abbot to Peterborough (1155-1175) and continued in the male line till 1287, when the 'Marholm' fief passed to Robert de Vere, maternal grandson of Reginald de Waterville. Dallington, again, is an interesting fief. In Domesday its four hides are held by ' Richard ' of the Abbot ; in A, thirty years later, it is held by Robert Fitz Richard, who owes for it two knights ; in B (1146) it is the fief of Robert Frehlle (?) ; in C it is that of ' Almaricus ' Despencer ; in D (12 12) it is that of Geoffrey de Lucy, but its service has now dropped to one knight, for (says Hugh ' Candidus') Geoffrey has kept back the other since the days of Abbot Benedict (i 177- 1 194). The Abbot and the then holder of the fief actually fought the question out in the ' Parliament ' of 1275, and the service was fixed at one knight.' One particularly noticeable point about the knights of Peter- borough is the small number of hides that went to the knight's fee. The information here at our disposal enables us to speak positively, and to produce figures strangely at variance with the widespread belief that a knight's fee normally consisted of five hides,^ or, as some say, of four." In Northamptonshire ^^ knights were due from the lOj^ hides of Anschetil de St. Medard, 3 from the 13^ hides of Ascelin de Water- ville, 3 from the 8 hides of Geoffrey ' the Abbot's nephew,' 3 from the yf hides of Richard Fitz Hugh, i| from the De la Mares' 2| hides, i from the 2 hides of Richard Engaine, i from the i^ hides of Walo de Pastone, 2 from the 5I hides of Roger Malfe, 2 from the 4 hides at Dallington, 2 from 3 hides at Sutton, 2 from 2^ hides at Castor, and so on. Not only are the majority of these fees extremely small in hidage ; they also, it will be seen, differ widely in hidage among themselves. This is a point of very great institutional importance in view of the belief frequently met with, and so recently upheld, that a knight's fee consisted of a certain number of hides, and that the system of military service under the Norman kings was thus connected with that which prevailed in the days before the Conquest.* ^ Oman's History of the Art of War, p. 360. ^ Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. clxi.-clxiv. ■* See further, on this point, Feudal England, pp. 232—4 ; Studies on the Red Book of the Exchequer, pp. I2— 16 ; The Commune of London and other Studies, pp. 57-8. 392
 * Chronkan Petroburgense, p. 22.