THE DOMESDAY SURVEY BENGEO H. v. A. Snerri, 1 a man of Edith the Fair o I o Brand, a housecarl of king Edward 600 Turchil, a man of Ansgar the staller 3 i o Anand, a housecarl of king Edward 5 I o Elaf, a thegn of king Edward 6 o o Walchra and Lepsi, king's sokemen i o O ./Elfstan, king's sokeman o i O Four king's sokemen 05^0 Two king's sokemen 3i jDthelmaer of Bennington, thegn of king Edward . o O- o 25 o O It is not merely the exactness of the total, in spite of the fractional char- acter of the holdings, that here strikes the observer. The typical varie- ties of holding met with in Hertfordshire, and the remarkable subdivision of land, are also strikingly evident.' Brand and Elaf, it will be noticed, account between them for just half of the whole vill of Bengeo ; the other half is, in varying proportions, distributed between no fewer than thirteen different holders, of whom nine are sokemen of the king, that is apparently freeholders who owned no other lord. Yet, oddly enough, the greatest man who held land in Bengeo, namely the lord of Benning- ton, 2 is credited with the smallest holding, representing only about a fiftieth of the share of Brand or Elaf. Turning to Datchworth as an example of the single 5~hide unit we find its details to be these DATCHWORTH H. v. A. JElfric blac under Westminster Abbey i o o Westminster Abbey 310 Three king's sokemen 02^0 /Elfstan, a man of JEthelmxr of Bennington o o o 500 Here again we are struck not only by the neat exactness of the total, but by the typical variety of the holdings. Boxbury is another instance of a 5-hide vill. H. v. A. Samar, a man of Alnod o O O ./Elfward, a man of jElfstan 230 Appurtenant to Bennington 130 500 It must not be inferred that all or even most of the vills work out as neatly as this ; but though we may not now be able to reconstruct the original fiscal groups, or can only do so with much difficulty, there can be no question that in Hertfordshire the system of assessment was the same as it can be shown to have been in Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and 1 Mr. W. H. Stevenson informs me that the names Snerri (or rather Suerri), Brand, Turchil, Anand and E(i)laf are all of Norse derivation and point to the Norse origin of their bearers. The housecarls were often Danes or Norsemen.
- See p. 276 above.
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