DOMESDAY SURVEY which Leicestershire is closely connected by geography, such as Nottingham- shire and Northamptonshire, the commissioners have taken as an answer to the inquiry about team-lands such a seemingly irrelevant reply as a statement of the assessment of several of the vills at some previous unspecified date. Now two facts stand out prominently upon a consideration of the Leicestershire plough-lands as a whole. The first is that with rare exceptions they are less in number than the carucates imposed upon the same manor ; the second is that the team-lands recorded in an entry will generally bear some very simple ratio to the fiscal units comprised in the same. 19 The first of these facts makes it very improbable that the Leicestershire plough-land was a fiscal unit in the sense in which this may be said of the plough-lands of Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire. 20 If the Leicestershire plough-land were the record of an old assessment, the amount of geld laid upon the county must have been greatly increased at some time in the period before the survey, but the completeness of the duodecimal system of rating in the county would imply that it was a matter of considerable antiquity, even if its oppressiveness, when considered with reference to the value and economic condition of land in the county, did not rather suggest that it represents a fiscal burden which had gradually come to lose all relation to the facts of agricultural life. So far as we can see, Leicestershire was a county whose assessment emphatically called for a reduction, and there is something in the distribution of the plough-lands in the county to suggest that both commis- sioners and jurors may have been aware of this fact. The Leicestershire Domesday contains 1 6 1 entries relating to plough-lands, seventy-four of which are arranged in the accompanying table according to the relation which they bear to the gelding carucates : sl Ratio 1
- 2
Ratio 2 : 3 jRtfiz'a i : i Team- Team- Team- Vill lands Car. Vill lands Car. Vill lands Car. Knighton . . . 6 12 Wigston Magna 1 6 24 Sharnford . I I Knaptoft . 6 12 Peckleton . . 4 6 ' Toniscote ' . 2 2 Birstall . . . i 2 Burton Overy . 8 12 Peatling 4 4 Frolesworth 2 I Noseley . . 8 12 Holwell . . . I i Sharnford . 2 2 Humberstone . 6 9 Huncote 6 6 Twyford I 2 Bruntingthorpe 4 6 'Torp' . . . 2 2 Kirkby Mallory I 2 Thurlaston . 4 6 Wanlip 4 4 Kirby Muxloe I 2 4 6 Shoby II 1 1 Shearsby i I Glenfield . . 4 j g 6 Hl2 Appleby . . . 3 3 Willoughby ii 3 Braunstone . . 4} sir 2 Stapleton . i i
i i Cotesbach . . 6 9 Sheepy . . . i i Sutton Cheney . . i i I 2 Withcote . . . i
Stockerston . 2 4 Evington . . 7 roj Hose .... 4 4 Staunton Harold I 2 Ingarsby . . 8 12 Broughton Astley. 3 3 Market Bosworth I 2 StontonWyville 4 6 Newbold Verdon . 2 2 Long Clawson . 2 4 Syston . . 6 9 Bottesford . . . 12 12 19 Problems of a similar character are raised in connexion with the Yorkshire plough-lands. They have been discussed by Canon Taylor in Domesday Studies (i, 143-86), by Mr. Round in Feud. Engl. (87-90), and by Professor Maitland in (486-9) Dora. Bk. and Beyond. K See V. C.H. Notts, i, 212, and Northants, i, 264. fl The table could be considerably extended if it were taken to include those cases where an approximation has been made to one or other of these ratios. It will be evident that, since replies expressed in team lands had to be made in teams of the great plough of eight oxen, in many instances where the assessment itself was some irregular number of carucates and bovates, it would be impossible for the jurors to give exactly the ratio between carucates and ploughs which they wished to convey to the commissioners. 285
