Several years have elapsed since I wrote the above explanation, but I have decided to publish it exactly as it originally stood. In the meanwhile, however, Mr Stevenson has dealt with the subject in an article on 'The Hundreds of Domesday: the Hundred of Land' (1890).[156] He has advanced the ingenious theory that the Leicestershire 'hida' was only a clerical error for H[undred], and that it was really that 'Hundred' of _twelve_ carucates which we meet with in the Lindsey Survey. To prove this, he reads an entry on 236_a_, 1, as 'Ogerus Brito tenet in Cilebe de rege ii. partes unius hidæ, id est xii. car[ucatæ] terræ', and claims that this gloss defines the 'hida' as a 'hundred' of twelve carucates. I confess that to me such a rendering is in the highest degree non-natural. If we speak of 'two-thirds of a yard, that is twenty-four inches', we should clearly imply that the yard itself was thirty-six inches, not twenty-four. Similarly, I claim to render the 'gloss' as implying that the 'hida' itself contained eighteen carucatæ, not twelve.[157] If I am right, Mr Stevenson's suggestion that this 'hida' was really a 'Hundred' also falls to the ground.
After careful study of the Domesday Survey of Leicestershire, I definitely hold that in that county 'carucata terræ' was the geld-carucate and 'terra _x_ car[ucis]' the actual ploughlands.[158] Now there are only three instances in which the Survey records the assessment both in terms of the 'hida' and in 'carucatæ terræ', and in all three the figures support my own theory. The Abbot of Coventry's Burbage estate (231_a_, 2), where a 'hide' and a quarter equates 22-1/2 'carucatæ terræ', is a test-case, and Mr Stevenson there takes refuge in a suggested 'beneficial hidation'. The exact formula, no doubt, is peculiar, but reference to the text shows that 's[un]t' has been interpolated between 'ibi' and 'xxii.' I suspect that the scribe had written 'ibi' (from the force of habit) when he ought to have written 'id est'.
I close this portion of my essay by applying my own theory to the case of 'Erendesbi' (Arnesby). The relative entries are:
'Episcopus Constantiensis tenet in Erendesber iii^{ as.} car[ucatas] terræ et dim. et unam bovatam (231).'