Page:Wiltshire, Extracted from Domesday Book.djvu/13

[ vii ] reduced to the aement of two Hides at the time of the Conqueror's urvey.

Domeday, Fol. 137, N$o$ 19. ''Robertus de Olgi, et Radulfus Baet de eo tenet Theiecote. Pro quatuor hidis e defendebat T. R. E. Et modo pro duabus. Terra et 4 carucatæ.''

With this contruction the Sections in Domeday will be intelligible, but, without it, no ene could be extracted from them, and the whole would be contradiction and confuion.

I hall therefore make no cruple to define Hida to be an uncertain portion of land, that might annually be worth about twenty Norman hillings: and as the Value depended upon the quality of the land, it conited accordingly of a greater or les number of acres, in proportion to their poverty or fertility.

An objection may arie to this definition, that the value of the etate doth not always agree with the aements, neither in the time of Edward the Confeor, nor in that of William the Conqueror. But to this I anwer, that the aements were made prior to either of their times (for the origin of Danegeld is of a more antient date than even the Confeor's reign), and many of them might not have been altered, though the Lands had been either improved or depreciated Rh