They were at the date of the Survey even more numerous than the cottier class below them. They embraced 38 per cent. of the whole population, and, except where partially displaced by the sochmanni of the Danish district, were pretty evenly dispersed all over England. Except in Norfolk and Suffolk, they were seldom less than one-third of the population. And if at the time of the Survey they were holders of virgates and half-virgates, as their successors were afterwards, then it follows that they held by far the largest proportion of the land of England [p091] in their holdings. But before we assume this, some proof may fairly be required that it was so. In the meantime it is clear that the classes of tenants in villenage _bore the same names_ at the time of the Survey as they did afterwards. The presumption evidently is that they held similar holdings. V. THE VILLANI WERE HOLDERS OF VIRGATES, ETC. The compilers of the Survey were not in the habit of describing in detail the character of the holdings of the villani. Whilst recording how many villani there were in a manor, the Domesday Survey does not, like the Hundred Rolls, usually go on to state how many of them held a virgate and how many a half-virgate each. «The holdings of the villani hides, virgates, and half-virgates.» Still, notwithstanding this general silence of the Survey on this point, treating the matter manor by manor, and taking for example the Peterborough manors, it might be inferred almost with certainty that as the villani of the _Liber Niger_ in 1125 were holders of virgates and half-virgates, so their fathers and grandfathers before them must also have held virgates and half-virgates at the time of the Domesday Survey and of Edward the Confessor. And such an inference would be strengthened by the occasional use in the Survey of the terms _integri villani_[116] and _villani dimidii_,[117] answering no doubt to the same terms, and to the _pleni virgarii_ and _semi-virgarii_ of the _Liber Niger_ and the Battle Abbey records. [p092] That the land was really held at the date of the Survey in hides and virgates may also be gathered from the well-known statement of the Saxon Chronicle that '_næs an ælpig hide ne an gyrde landes_' was omitted from the Survey--a statement which does not mean that not a hide nor a yard of land was omitted, but not a hide or a yard-land, _i.e._ a _virgate_.[118] So that it might fairly be inferred from this passage that the virgate was the normal or typical holding of the villanus, and this inference might well cover the whole area of the Survey. But there is more direct evidence than these general inferences. It so happens that there are a few local exceptions to the general silence of the Survey as regards the holdings of the villani. «Examples in survey of Middlesex.»