237 (_a_), 2: 'II. partes unius hidæ, id est xii. car' terræ.' Just as the 'Hundred' of Lincolnshire was a sum of twelve carucates, so the 'Hide' of Leicestershire was a sum of _eighteen carucates_.[154] Working in the light of this discovery (for as such I claim it), we find that the other 'hides', thus interpreted, give us an aggregate of 'carucates' obviously suitable to the recorded ploughlands.[155] It may, however, be fairly asked why Domesday should speak in one place of half a 'hide', and in another of nine 'carucates'; in one place of a hide and a third, and in another of twenty-four carucates. The answer is that the singular love of variety which distinguishes Domesday in Cambridgeshire (as we saw) is at work here also. For instance, two equal estates are thus described: 'Willelmus iiii. car' terræ et dimidiam et iii. bovatas, et Rogerus iiii. car' terræ et vii. bovatas' (fo. 234_a_). The same instinct which led the scribe to enter these seven bovates as half a carucate _plus_ three bovates, led him also to enter ten and a half carucates as half a hide _plus_ a carucate and a half (fo. 237_a_). But to the rule I have established there is a single exception. We read of 'Medeltone' in this shire: 'Ibi sunt vii. hidæ et una carucata terræ et una bovata. In unaquaque hida sunt xiiii. carucatæ terræ et dimidia' (fo. 235_b_). The actual formula employed is unique for the shire, and the figures are specially given as an exception. But, with singular perversity, Domesday students have always been inclined to pitch upon the exceptions as representing the rule, forgetting that it was precisely in exceptional cases that figures had to be given. In normal cases they would have been superfluous. Several years have elapsed since I wrote the above explanation, but I have decided to publish it exactly as it originally stood. In the meanwhile, however, Mr Stevenson has dealt with the subject in an article on 'The Hundreds of Domesday: the Hundred of Land' (1890).[156] He has advanced the ingenious theory that the Leicestershire 'hida' was only a clerical error for H[undred], and that it was really that 'Hundred' of _twelve_ carucates which we meet with in the Lindsey Survey. To prove this, he reads an entry on 236_a_, 1, as 'Ogerus Brito tenet in Cilebe de rege ii. partes unius hidæ, id est xii. car[ucatæ] terræ', and claims that this gloss defines the 'hida' as a 'hundred' of twelve carucates. I confess that to me such a rendering is in the highest degree non-natural. If we speak of 'two-thirds of a yard, that is twenty-four inches', we should clearly imply that the yard itself was thirty-six inches, not twenty-four. Similarly, I claim to render the 'gloss' as implying that the 'hida' itself contained eighteen carucatæ, not twelve.[157] If I am right, Mr Stevenson's suggestion that this 'hida' was really a 'Hundred' also falls to the ground.