If we follow the clue thus given us, and turn to the manors which Queen Edith and Harold’s mother and Harold himself had held, but which, in 1086, had passed to the king,[151] we find these remarkable figures: £15, £30, £45, £18, £48, £1½, £48 (formerly £23), £2, £6, £23 (formerly £18), £24, £3, £18, £3, £18, £12, £18, £24, £4 (?), £24, £1 (?), £7, £6, £6, £12, £8, £2, £3, £18, £20 (formerly £24). It is evident enough that these “renders” are based on some common unit, like the ‘renders’ of the comital manors in Somerset.[152] Moreover, we can trace, in Cornwall, something of the same kind. The manor of royal demesne which heads its survey “reddit xii lib. ad pondus et arsuram,”[153] and this is followed by renders of £8, £5, £6, £3 (‘olim’), £18, £6, £3, £7, £6, £6, £4, £5. Even a ‘render’ of £8 was duodecimal in a way; for on fo. 121 _b_ it occurs four times as £8 and thrice as “xii markæ.” Not only is the rent of these manors distinguished from that of those in private hands by the form ‘reddit,’ instead of ‘valet,’ but the render is stereotyped, being normally unchanged, while the ‘valet’ ever fluctuates. The explanation I suggest for these archaic “renders” is that they represent the commutation of some formerly existing payment in kind similar to the “firma unius noctis.” If the unit of that payment was commuted at a fixed rate, it would obviously produce that artificial uniformity of which we have seen the traces in Devon and Cornwall. We may thus penetrate behind these “renders” to an earlier system then extinct. This conclusion is confirmed, I think, by some striking instances in Hampshire.[154] Of ‘Neteham’ we read, “T.R.E. et post valuit lxxvi lib. et xvi sol. et viii den.” (i. 38); and of ‘Brestone,’ similarly, “T.R.E. et post valuit lxxvi lib. et xvi sol. et viii den.” (i. 38 _b_). The explanation is found in these two entries on the latter fo.: Bertune. De firma regis E. Edlinges. Hoc manerium reddidit fuit, et dimidiam diem firmæ dimidiam diem firmæ reddidit in omnibus rebus ... T.R.E ... T.R.E. valebat T.R.E. valebat xxxviii lib. et xxxviii lib. et viii sol. et iiii viii sol. et iiii den. den. That is, I take it that the half-day’s ferm “rendered” T.R.E. was worth £38 8_s._ 4_d._, so that the two other manors, for each of which the sum was £76 16_s._ 8_d._, must originally have rendered a whole ‘firma.’ This gives us the value of the ‘firma’ for the other Hampshire manors which “rendered.”[155] We will now return to the ‘Dialogus’ and its statements on the “firma comitatus.”