The first point that we notice is this. The _five-hide unit_ is brought into startling prominence. No careful student, one would suppose, of Domesday, can have failed to be struck by the singular number of Manors in the hidated portion of the realm, which are assessed in terms of the five-hide unit, that is to say, which are entered as of five hides or some multiple of five hides. This is specially the case with towns, and some years ago, in one of my earliest essays, I called attention to the fact, and explained its bearing in connection with the unit of military service.[87] Yet no one, it would seem, has been struck by the fact, or has seen that there must be some significance in this singular preponderance of five-hide Manors. Now what the _Inquisitio_ here does for us is to show us that this preponderance is infinitely greater than we should gather from the pages of Domesday, and that when the scattered Manors are pieced together in their Vills, the aggregate of their assessments generally amounts either to five hides or to a multiple of the five-hide unit. Thus the rural townships are brought into line with towns, and we learn that in both the assessment was based on the _five-hide unit_. Let us now take a typical Hundred and test this theory in practice: HUNDRED OF STAINES (_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 11-17) _Vill._ _Hides_ _Ploughlands_ _Valets_ (T.R.E.) Bottisham 10 20 £16 0 0 Swaffham (1) 10 16 11 10 0 Swaffham (2) 10 13-1/4 12 10 0 Wilbraham 10 17 20 0 0 Stow-cum-Quy 10 11 14 10 0 -- ------ ------------ 50 77-1/4 £74 10 0 Here we have five Vills varying in area from eleven ploughlands to twenty, and in value T.R.E., from £11 10s to £20, all assessed alike at ten hides each. What is the meaning of it? Simply that ASSESSMENT BORE NO RATIO TO AREA OR TO VALUE in a Vill, and still less in a Manor. Assessment was not objective, but subjective; it was not fixed relatively to area or to value, but to the five-hide unit. The aim of the assessors was clearly to arrange the assessment in sums of five hides, ten hides, etc. Take now the next Hundred in the _Inq. Com. Cant._: HUNDRED OF RADFIELD (_Inq. Com. Cant._, pp. 17-25) _Hides_ _Ploughlands_ _Valets_ (T.R.E.)