In seeking a clue to the origin of that artificial assessment, of which the traces, whether more or less apparent, linger on the pages of Domesday, I propose to exclude the carucated district, because we require, as I have said, more complete evidence as to the system pursued within it, and because, being associated with the settlement of the Danes it represents a later introduction, while the very name 'carucate', as I observed in _Domesday Studies_, has, unlike the mysterious 'hide', an obvious connection with the ploughland. Confining ourselves to the district assessed in terms of the 'hide', we seek to learn the origin of the system by which, as I contend, it was divided for the purpose of taxation into blocks, each of which was expressed in terms of the five-hide unit.
Now if we follow the clue afforded by the Cambridgeshire evidence, and hold that the assessment was originally laid not on the Manor, nor even on the Vill, but on the Hundred as a whole,[170] it might be suggested that the Hundred itself subdivided the amount among its constituent elements. In practice, indeed, from the nature of the case, this principle must have prevailed in every _town_ assessed at a Hundred or Half-Hundred, for where an urban community was assessed in 'hides' the burgesses must, as in later days, have settled among themselves the proportion to be borne by individuals or individual properties. If, then, they were able to do this, and if, as I hold, town and country were assessed on the same principle, as part of the same system, what was to prevent their neighbours, in the court of the rural Hundred, similarly distributing among its constituents their respective shares of the common burden?
We might even be tempted to go far further than this, and to carry our discoveries to a logical conclusion. If, as is asserted, direct taxation ('geld') began in England with the need for raising money to buy off the Danes, let us ask ourselves how the Witan would proceed when confronted with a demand, let us say, for £10,000. As there had been hitherto, _ex hypothesi_, no direct taxation, there would be no statistical information at their disposal, enabling them to raise by a direct levy the sum required. Their only possible resource, we might hold, would be to apportionate it in round sums among the contributory shires. Proceeding on precisely the same lines, the county court, in its turn, would distribute the _quota_ of the shire among its constituent Hundreds, and the Hundred court would then assign to each Vill its share. As the Vills were represented in the Hundred court, and the Hundreds in the Shire court, the just apportionment of the Shire's _quota_ would be thus practically secured. The arrangement would, moreover, be as satisfactory to the Witan as it was fair to the contributors _inter se_; for, by this gradation of responsibility, the payment of the whole was absolutely secured. This explanation is very tempting, and, indeed, such a system of apportioning liability is to be traced from time immemorial in the Indian village community.[171] Moreover, if the ratio of 'hides' to ploughlands were found to vary to any marked extent, according to county, the hypothesis that the quota, in the first instance, was laid upon each county would duly explain the ratio assessment being higher or lower in one county than in another.