[18] In 1194 the tax for Richard's ransom seems, at least in Wiltshire, to have been distributed in the main according to the assessment that prevailed in 1084; Rolls of the King's Court (Pipe Roll Soc.) i. Introduction, p. xxiv.
[19] The statement in Æthelred, II. 7 (Schmid, p. 209) as to a payment of £22,000 is in a general way corroborative of the chronicler's large figures.
[20] The figures will be given more accurately on a later page.
[21] Cheshire pays no geld to the king. This loss is compensated by a sum which is sometimes exacted from Northumberland.
England was already mapped out into counties, hundreds or wapentakes and vills. Trithings or ridings appear in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, lathes in Kent, rapes in Sussex, while leets appear, at least sporadically, in Norfolk[22]. These provincial peculiarities we must pass by, nor will we pause to comment at any length on the changes in the boundaries of counties and of hundreds that have taken place since the date of the survey. Though these changes have been many and some few of them have been large[23], we may still say that as a general rule the political geography of England was already stereotyped. And we see that already there are many curious anomalies, 'detached portions' of counties, discrete hundreds, places that are extra-hundredal[24], places that for one purpose are in one county and for another purpose in another county[25]. We see also that proprietary rights have already been making sport of arrangements which in our eyes should be fixed by public law. Earls, sheriffs and others have enjoyed a marvellous power of taking a tract of land out of one district and placing it, or 'making it lie' in another district[26]. Land is constantly spoken of as though it were the most portable of things; it can easily be taken from one vill or hundred and be added to or placed in or caused to lie in another vill or hundred. This 'notional movability' of land, if we may use such a term, will become of importance to us when we are studying the formation of manors.
For the present, however, we are concerned with the general truth that England is divided into counties, hundreds or wapentakes and vills. This is the geographical basis of the survey. That basis, however, is hidden from us by the form of our record. The plan adopted by those who fashioned Domesday Book out of the returns provided for them by the king's commissioners is a curious, compromising plan. We may say that in part it is geographical, while in part it is feudal or proprietary. It takes each county separately and thus far it is geographical; but within the boundaries of each county it arranges the lands under the names of the tenants in chief who hold them. Thus all the lands in Cambridgeshire of which Count Alan is tenant in chief are brought together, no matter that they lie scattered about in various hundreds. Therefore it is necessary for us to understand that the original returns reported by the surveyors did not reach the royal treasury in this form. At least as regards the county of Cambridge, we can be certain of this. The hundreds were taken one by one; they were taken in a geographical order, and not until the justices had learned all that was to be known of Staplehow hundred did they call upon the jurors of Cheveley hundred for their verdict. That such was their procedure we might have guessed even had we not been fortunate enough to have a copy of the Cambridgeshire verdicts; for, though the commissioners seem to have held but one moot for each shire, still it is plain that each hundred was represented by a separate set of jurors[27]. But from these Cambridgeshire verdicts we learn what otherwise we could hardly have known. Within each hundred the survey was made by vills[28]. If we suppose the commissioners charging the jurors we must represent them as saying, not 'Tell us what tenants in chief have lands in your hundred and how much each of them holds,' but 'Tell us about each vill in your hundred, who holds land in it.' Thus, for example, the men of the Armingford hundred are called up. They make a separate report about each vill in it. They begin by stating that the vill is rated at a certain number of hides and then they proceed to distribute those hides among the tenants in chief. Thus, for example, they say that Abington was rated at 5 hides, and that those 5 hides are distributed thus[29]: