Note 118 — PART I TERRITORIAL STUDIES

The late Mr Eyton did much to destroy the old belief held by Kemble and other well-known writers that the Domesday hide was an areal measure and to substitute the sounder view that it was used as a term of assessment, and Mr Chester Waters, in his Survey of Lindsey (1883), claimed that the 'key to the puzzle' had been thus finally discovered. Canon Taylor, on the other hand, at the Domesday Commemoration (1886), claimed that if his own most ingenious theory of the relation of the geld-carucate to area could be more generally extended, 'many volumes of Domesday exposition, including, among others, Mr Eyton's Key to Domesday, may be finally consigned al limbo dei bambini'.118 Mr Pell's theories—the inclusion of which at enormous length in Domesday Studies119 cannot be too deeply regretted—require a passing notice. According to him, the Domesday hide was virtually an areal term; but the interests of truth and of historical research require, as to his confident calculations, very plain speaking. Although I devoted to the investigation of Mr Pell's theories a deplorable amount of time and labour,120 I would rather state the inevitable conclusion in the words of that sound scholar, Mr W. H. Stevenson: