A HISTORY OF NORFOLK BiRCHAM Carucates Acres Valet T.R.E. £ s- d. £ s- d. 222^. IF'iHiam de Scohies [Bern] R. d'Evreux I — 10
10 Tor . . . 4 — 4
200 3 freemen I freeman — 85 30 12
12 226. Ralfde Beaufou Fradre . 2 freemen 3 2 ■ I
2 10 8 117 620 5 12 o 222* & 226. Bircham is i league long and i league wide. Here, accordingly, we have three areas of equal assessment for geld in the same hundred, whose estimated size is in the proportion, 1:2:4, the carucage 3 : 7 : 9, or on the old assessment 3:9:9, and the valuation 4 : 6 : 81, or on the old valuation 3 : 5J : 6. . We may mend matters a little by throwing Barwick, which is not assessed to geld, into Fring, though Domesday gives us no warrant for doing so. Barwick^ consists of two freemen holding i carucate, and i freeman holding 60 acres. No measurement is given. The value is 20 shillings, formerly 15. This will make the carucage proportions 4J : 7 : 9 or 41 : 9 : 9, and the valuation 5:6: 8j, or 4 : 5J : 6. Such a result cannot be regarded as satisfactory, and yet it is on the whole a fair specimen. If highly assessed areas are taken, much more extraordinary results can be reached ; but this is probably because the assessment of a group of vills which pay together has been attached to the chief vill of the group. It is only our ignorance which prevents us from saying how large the group was. Docking with its 5^. id. and Barmer with 4J. 3^^. in the same hundred are clearly cases in point. Similar instances could be given from other parts of the county, and we find the same thing when we turn to Suffolk. There we know precisely how the leets of Thingoe hundred were arranged,^ but if we take Domesday Book and set down the carucates and acres of the several vills in the hundred leet by leet, we shall find glaring inequalities of assess- ment. Thus Sudbury, which gelds as three leets, is set down to contain 5 carucates. The other leets vary from 13J carucates (Nos. i and 5) to 4 J carucates (No. 9, Horningsheath), while the total valuation (T.R.E.) of the first leet amounts to ^18, or as much as Sudbury, which is a quarter of the hundred. It is true that Barrow, which is royal demesne, accounts for £^o of this sum, but other leets are valued as high as ^13 13J., and as low as /^6 4/. We seem then to be driven to the conclusion either that the East Anglian carucates are not geld carucates, or that beneficial carucation and the errors in the compilation of Little Domesday have destroyed all traces of the data which determined the assessment. We may, however, learn something about the assessment of Danegeld besides what has already been put forward. JVIr. Corbett has shown how the leet system worked in Walsham hundred.* It is true that this is an unusually symmetrical specimen, but a glance at the accompanying tables will show how ' Dom. Bk. f. l6l3. ' Round, Teud. Engl. 98-99. ' Roy. Hist. Soc. Trans, xiv, 215. 8
