A HISTORY OF HERTFORDSHIRE Bucks. 1 Two or more vills were sometimes combined by this system to make up some multiple of the 5-hide unit, so that it must not be sup- posed, when a vill is assessed at some uneven figure, that it cannot have been fitted into the scheme I have described above. The study of assessment has brought to our notice the division of Hertfordshire vills into holdings of various size. As will be gathered from the Domesday map, the county presents within its borders, on the one hand manors conterminous with vills, such as those of the old ecclesiastical bodies ; on the other, vills which were subdivided into several manors and small holdings. On the Essex border the Pelhams are an instance of the latter type. In Domesday they are all found as held by the bishop of London, but they are made the subject of seven separate entries. Under Edward the Confessor the lands had been held thus THE PELHAMS H. v. A. Two brothers, men of Ansgar the staller i i o Alfred, man of Ansgar the staller I o o * A thegn, man of Anschil of Ware i o A thegn, man of Godwine of Bendfield J , fa man of Ansgar the staller ~| Two brothers K ,-, , r . . i i o
a man of the abbot of Ely J
A thegn, man of Anschil of Ware 1 2 A thegn, man of jEthelmaer of BenningtonJ ' Five king's sokemen O 2 o ./Elfwine, a man of Godwine of Bendfield I O O Wulfwi, a man of Godwine of Bendfield . . . 2 O o a 12 Here we have some 1 2 hides divided between sixteen men in holdings varying from 2 hides to about a twentieth of that amount. Four of these holdings are styled manors for no obvious reason ; but all the holders alike 'had power to sell.' The importance of such instances as these of vills held in many portions is explained in the section on 'Manor and Vill' of Professor Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond (pp. 129-30). His own examples are mainly taken from the adjoining county of Cambridgeshire, but in Hertfordshire we may find, on the Essex border, at Wickham, close to Bishop Stortford, as striking a case as any. WICKHAM H. v. A. Four sokemen 2 o 20 (a man of bishop William a man of Ansgar the staller J- . o I O a man of Edith the Fair J One sokeman 008 Two sokemen, men of Ansgar the staller ...103 Three sokemen 35 4 i 21 1 For Bedfordshire the tables of hidation constructed by Mr. Airey are decisive, and for Cambridge- shire my Feudal England deals in great detail with the subject. In the same work (p. 66) I touch upon the 5-hide unit in Bucks. Mr. Ragg has worked out several examples in Herts,
- These holdings are styled ' M(aneria).'
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