A ‘carucate’ was the amount of land that a team of eight oxen could plough each year. It varied in size according to the nature of the soil, but may be roughly taken as being equal to 120 acres. An oxgang was one-eighth of this. It belonged to the Archbishop of York in the reign of King Edward the Confessor, and is still held by him. Attached to the lands of the manor-house there are eight serfs who have among them sixteen oxen, and sixty-three cottagers, who own 104 oxen. There are also six small farmers who have under them two serfs and twenty cottagers, and work forty-four oxen. Parts of the manor lands are held by two knights and two parsons. The former are tenants of 720 acres, the latter of 290 acres. On their lands there are four small farmers, three cottagers and five serfs, possessing among them forty oxen. [Illustration: HOLDERNESS IN THE DOMESDAY BOOK ] The land on which wheat, barley and oats are grown measures three miles by one and a half miles, and there are thirty-two acres of meadow land. In King Edward’s time the annual value of the manor was £600, but is now only £205.[24] Footnote 24: The value of money was in 1086 approximately twenty times its value at the present day. The Domesday ‘pound’ meant, not a coin, but a pound weight of silver. The value of the manor of Patrington was, in 1086, only just over one-third of its value twenty-five years earlier. This is one example of the results of the ‘Wasting of the North.’ Others are to be found in the records given of the manors of Burstwick and Kilnsea, each of which had been worth fifty-six pounds, but was then worth only ten pounds. The manors of Withernsea and Hornsea had similarly decreased in value from fifty-six pounds to six pounds. All these belonged in 1086 to Drogo de Bevrere, Lord of Holderness. The manor of Beeford had experienced a still greater decrease in value; for it had sunk from twenty pounds to ten shillings. Others again, such as estates at Barmston, Drypool, Routh, and Sigglesthorne are recorded by the ominous word ‘waste.’ Such entries tell a very sure tale of the effects of King William’s vengeance. On the map on page 93 are shown most of the manors and a few of the hamlets recorded in that part of the Domesday Book which deals with the Holderness division of Yorkshire. In many cases the spelling is very quaint; but most of the names are recognisable if we remember that U and V are different forms of the same letter, and that our letter W was then what, according to its name, it ought still to be. We must remember also that the men who took down the records were Frenchmen, who found it difficult in many cases to pronounce the names they heard the English witnesses use, and who had to spell these names as best they could according to their sound. * * * * *