ii. 40; Birhtwulf of Mercia takes a lease for five lives from

the church of Worcester and assigns it to a thegn. The consideration for this lease is a promise that for the future he will not make gifts out of the goods of the church.

[1049] K. 1287 (vi. 124). The verb _praestare_ was the regular term for describing the action of one who was constituting a _precarium_ or _beneficium_. In K. 1071 (v. 138) Bp Werferth of Worcester obtains a lease for three lives having petitioned for it; 'terram ... humili prece deprecatus fui.'

[1050] For _commodare_ see K. v. pp. 166, 169, 171; for _lǽnan_, ibid. 162; for _lǽtan_, ibid. 164.

[1051] See Bp Oswald's leases.

[1052] K. 91 (i. 109).

[1053] K. 165 (i. 201).

[1054] K. 279 (ii. 61).

[1055] K. 339 (ii. 149).

[1056] See the charter of Cenwulf for Winchcombe, H. & S. iii. 572 and the editors' note at 575. See also K. 610 (iii. 157), 1058 (v. 115), 1090 (v. 169).

[1057] K. 262 (ii. 33) is a lease for five lives by the church of Worcester; but the lessee is a king.

[1058] Nov. 7, 3. See Brunner, Zur Rechtsgeschichte der röm. u. germ. Urkunde, 187. Theodore of Tarsus would perhaps have known this rule. It does not belong to the general western tradition of Roman law, but is distinctly Justinianic.

[1059] K. 165 (i. 201). The 'limitation' is not very plain; but we seem to have here a lease for two lives.

[1060] K. 182 (i. 220).

[1061] K. 262 (ii. 33); B. ii. 40: lease by church of Worcester to the king for five lives: 'et illi dabant terram illam ea tamen conditione ut ipse rex firmius amicus sit episcopo praefato et familia in omnibus bonis eorum.' K. 279 (ii. 61): lease by the same church to a dux and his wife with stipulation for _amicitia_.

[1062] These are preserved in Heming's Cartulary; see K. 494-673.

[1063] In K. 498 (ii. 386) the _aecclesiasticus census_ is two _modii_ of clean grain; in K. 511 (ii. 400) the lessee must mow once and reap once 'with all his craft'; in K. 508 (ii. 398) he must sow two acres with his own seed and reap it; in K. 661 (iii. 233) is a similar stipulation.

[1064] In many cases the clause of immunity has become very obscure owing to a copyist's blunder. It is made to run thus: 'Sit autem terra ista libera omni regi nisi aecclesiastici censi.' Some mistake between _rei_ and _regi_ may be suspected. What we want is what we get in some other cases, e.g. K. 651, 652, viz. 'libera ab omni saecularis rei negotio.' The following forms are somewhat exceptional; K. 530 and 612, 'butan ferdfare and walgeworc and brycgeworc _and circanlade'_; K. 623, 666, 'excepta sanctae dei basilicae suppeditatione et ministratione'; K. 625, 'exceptis sanctae dei aecclesiae necessitatibus et utilitatibus.'

[1065] Kemble gives it in Cod. Dipl. 1287 (vi. 124) and in an appendix to vol. i. of his history. Also he speaks of it in Cod. Dipl. i. xxxv., and there says that it is 'a laboured justification' by Bp Oswald of his proceedings. To my mind it is nothing of the kind. Oswald is proud of what he has done and wishes that a memorial of his acts may be carefully preserved for the benefit of the church. Of course, if regarded from our modern point of view, the form of the document is curious. The bishop seems engaged in an attempt to bind his lessees by his own unilateral account of the terms to which they have agreed. But his object is to have of the contract a record which has been laid before the king and the witan and which, if we are to use modern terms, will have all the force of an act of parliament, to say nothing of the anathema.

[1066] In places its language becomes turbid and well-nigh untranslatable.

[1067] It may be that the bishop has just obtained from the king a grant or confirmation of the hundredal jurisdiction over what is to be Oswaldslaw.

[1068] K. vi. 125: 'hoc est ut omnis equitandi lex ab eis impleatur quae ad equites pertinet.'

[1069] K. vi. 125: 'et ad totum piramiticum opus aecclesiae calcis atque ad pontis aedificium ultro inveniantur parati.' The translation here given is but guesswork; we suppose that _piramiticus_ means 'of or belonging to fire (πῦρ).'

[1070] Ibid.: 'insuper ad multas alias indigentiae causas quibus opus est domino antistiti frunisci, sive ad suum servitium sive ad regale explendum, semper illius archiductoris dominatui et voluntati qui episcopatui praesidet ... subditi fiant.' Is _archiductor_ but a fine name for the bishop? We think not. In the Confessor's day Eadric the Steersman was 'ductor exercitus episcopi ad servitium regis' (Heming, i. 81), and it would seem from this that the tenants were to be subject to a captain set over them by the bishop. But in the famous, if spurious, charter for Oswaldslaw (see above, p. 268) Edgar says that on a naval expedition the bishop's men are not to serve under the ordinary officers 'sed cum suo archiductore, videlicet episcopo, qui eos defendere et protegere debet ab omni perturbatione et inquietudine.' This would settle the question, could we be certain that the words 'videlicet episcopo' were not the gloss of a forger who was improving an ancient instrument. For our present purpose, however, it is no very important question whether the _archiductor_, the commander in chief of these tenants, is the bishop himself or an officer of his.

[1071] Ibid.: 'praevaricationis delictum secundum quod praesulis ius est emendet.'

[1072] D. B. 174. Compare the entry on f. 175 b relating to the church-scot of Pershore.

[1073] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 217. See also D. B. i. 165 b, Hinetune.

[1074] Heming, i. 81: 'Edricus qui fuit, tempore regis Edwardi, stermannus navis episcopi et ductor exercitus eiusdem episcopi ad servitium regis.' D. B. i. 173 b: 'Edricus stirman' held five hides of the bishop.

[1075] Heming, i. 77: 'Et [episcopus] deracionavit socam et sacam de Hamtona ad suum hundred de Oswaldes lawe, quod ibi debent placitare et geldum et expeditionem ... persolvere.'

[1076] Maitland, Northumbrian Tenures, Eng. Hist. Rev. v. 625.

[1077] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 288.

[1078] In this respect Oswald's leases seem to have closely resembled a form of lease, known as _manusfirma_, which became common in the France of the eleventh century: Lamprecht, Beiträge zur Geschichte des französischen Wirthschaftslebens, pp. 59, 60.

[1079] Heming, i. 259: 'Ac primo videndum quae terrae trium heredum temporibus accommodatae sint, post quorum decessum iuri monasterii redderentur, quaeve postea iuxta hanc conventionem redditae, quaeve iniuste sunt retentae, sive ipsorum, qui eas exigere deberent, negligentia, sive denegatae sint iniquorum hominum potentia.' See also the story told by Heming on p. 264.

[1080] Lamprecht, op. cit. p. 61, says that it was quite uncommon for the French landlord to get back his land if once he let it for three lives. One of the Worcester leases, but one stigmatized by Kemble (ii. 152), is a lease for three lives 'nisi haeredes illius tempus prolixius a pontifice sedis illius adipisci poterint.'

[1081] K. 637 (iii. 194): 'si in viduitate manere decreverit, vel magis nubere voluerit, ei tamen viro qui episcopali dignitati supradictae aecclesiae sit subiectus.'

[1082] D. B. i. 173: 'Hanc terram tenuit Sirof de episcopo T. R. E., quo mortuo dedit episcopus filiam eius cum hac terra cuidam suo militi, qui et matrem pasceret et episcopo inde serviret.'

[1083] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 214.

[1084] See above, p. 267.

[1085] D. B. i. 172 b: 'Hae praedictae ccc. hidae fuerunt de ipso dominio aecclesiae, et si quid de ipsis cuicunque homini quolibet modo attributum vel praestitum fuisset ad serviendum inde episcopo, ille qui eam terram praestitam sibi tenebat nullam omnino consuetudinem sibimet inde retinere poterat nisi per episcopum, neque terram retinere nisi usque ad impletum tempus quod ipsi inter se constituerant, et nusquam cum ea terra se vertere poterat ... Kenewardus tenuit et deserviebat sicut episcopus volebat ... Ricardus tenuit ad servitium quod episcopus voluit ... Godricus tenuit serviens inde episcopo ut poterat deprecari ... Godricus tenuit ad voluntatem episcopi.'

[1086] D. B. 173 b.

[1087] Oswald's tenants closely resemble the _ministeriales_ of foreign bishops; see Waitz, Verfassungsgeschichte, v. 283-350. Oswald's _lex equitandi_ may be compared with what is said (ibid. p. 293) of a bishop of Constance: 'quibus omnibus hoc ius constituit, ut cum abbate equitarent eique domi forisque ministrarent, equos suos tam abbati quam fratribus suis quocumque necesse esset praestarent, monasterium pro posse suo defensarent.'

[1088] Kemble, Saxons, i. 310 ff.; K. Maurer, Krit. Ueb. i. 104; Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, No. ii. (Lodge); Brunner, Geschichte d. röm. u. germ. Urkunde, 182.

[1089] K. 617 (iii. 164).

[1090] K. 651 (iii. 216).

[1091] K. 679 (iii. 258).

[1092] K. 1287 (vi. 125): 'propter beneficium quod eis praestitum est.' D. B. i. 173 b. It may cross the reader's mind that the leases of which Oswald speaks in his letter to Edgar are not the transactions recorded in the charters that have come down to us, but other and unwritten leases. But Domesday Book and the stories told by Heming make against this explanation.

[1093] Æthelr. I. 1, § 14.

[1094] Cnut, II. 13, 77.

[1095] K. 328 (ii. 133): A certain Helmstan is guilty of theft 'and mon gerehte ðæt yrfe cinge forðon he wes cinges mon and Ordlaf feng to his londe forðan hit wæs his læn ðæt he on sæt.'

[1096] K. 330 (ii. 136).

[1097] K. 414 (ii. 273): conveyance by Wulfric with the king's consent.--K. 491 (ii. 379): conveyance by Wulfstan with consent of king and witan, who execute the deed.--K. 690-1 (iii. 286-8): conveyances by Æscwig executed by king and witan.--K. 1124, 1130 (v. 246-54): conveyances confirmed by king and bishops.--K. 1201 (v. 378): exchange with king's consent.--K. 1226 (vi. 25): conveyance by a thegn reciting king's consent. A few documents we must leave unclassified; K. 499, 591, 693; we do not know how they were executed or what was their evidential value.

[1098] Brunner, Geschichte d. röm. u. germ. Urkunde, p. 175.

[1099] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 212.

[1100] K. 843 (iv. 201): 'swa full and swa forð swa Ðurstan min huskarll hit furmest of me heold.'--K. 846 (iv. 205): 'swa full and swa forð swa Sweyn mi may hit formest of me held.'--K. 826 (iv. 190): 'swa Ælfwin sy nunne it heold of ðan minstre.'--K. 827 (iv. 190): 'swa Sihtric eorll of ðan minstre þeowlic it heold.' If K. 1237 (vi. 44) be genuine (and Kemble has not condemned it) then already in the middle of the tenth century 'Goda princeps tenuit terram de rege,' nor only so, 'tenuit honorem de rege'; but this document is unacceptable. At best it may be a late Latin translation of an English original.

§ 5. _The Growth of Seignorial Power._

[Subjection of free men.]

We now return to our original theme, the subjection to seignorial power of free land-holders and their land, for we now have at our command the legal machinery, which, when set in motion by economic and social forces, is capable of effecting that subjection. Let us suppose a village full of free land-holders. The king makes over to a church all the rights that he has in that village, reserving only the _trinoda necessitas_ and perhaps some pleas of the crown. The church now has a superiority over the village, over the ceorls; it has a right to receive all that, but for the king's charter, would have gone to him.

[The royal grantee and his land.]

In the first place, it has a right to the _feorm_, the _pastus_ or _victus_ that the king has hitherto exacted. We should be wrong in thinking that in the ninth century (whatever may have been the case in earlier times) this exaction was a small matter. In 883 Æthelred ealdorman of the Mercians with the consent of King Alfred freed the lands of Berkeley minster from such parts of the king's _gafol_ or _feorm_ as had until then been unredeemed. In return for this he received twelve hides of land and thirty mancuses of gold, and then in consideration of another sixty mancuses of gold he proceeded to grant a lease of these twelve hides for three lives[1101]. The king had been deriving a revenue from this land 'in clear ale, in beer, in honey, in cattle, in swine and in sheep.' In Domesday Book a 'one night's farm' is no trifle; it is all that the king gets from large stretches of his demesne[1102]. Having become entitled to this royal right, the church would proceed to make some new settlement with the villagers. Perhaps it would stipulate for a one night's farm for the monks, that is to say, for a provender-rent capable of supporting the convent for a day. In the middle of the ninth century a day's farm of the monks of Canterbury comprised forty sesters of ale, sixty loaves, a wether, two cheeses and four fowls, besides other things[1103]. When once a village is charged in favour of a lord with a provender-rent of this kind, the lord's grip upon the land may easily be tightened. A settlement in terms of bread and beer is not likely to be stable. Some change in circumstances will make it inconvenient to all parties and the stronger bargainer will make the best of the new bargain. The church will be a strong bargainer for it has an inexhaustible treasure-house upon which to draw. We, however, concerned with legal ideas, have merely to notice that the law will give free play to social, economic and religious forces which are likely to work in the lord's favour.

[Provender rents and the manorial economy.]

But a village charged with a 'provender-rent' may seem far enough removed from the typical manor of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the one we see the villagers cultivating each for his own behoof and supplying the lord at stated seasons with a certain quantity of victuals; in the other the villagers spend a great portion of their time in tilling the lord's demesne land. In the latter case the lord himself appears as an agriculturist: in the former he is no agriculturist, but merely a receiver of rent. The gulf may seem wide; but it is not impassable. One part, the last part, of a process which surmounts it is visible. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the lords, though they have much land in demesne, still reckon the whole or part of what they are to receive from each manor in terms of 'farms'; the king gets a one night's farm from this manor, the convent of Ramsey gets a fortnight's farm from that manor[1104]. But we can conceive how the change begins. The monks are not going to travel, as a king may have travelled, from village to village feasting at the expense of the folk. They are going to live in their monastery; they want a regular supply of victuals brought to them. They must have an overseer in the village, one who will look to it that the bread and beer are sent off punctually and are good. In the village over which they already have a superiority they acquire a manse of their very own, a _mansus indominicatus_ as their foreign brethren would call it. When once they are thus established in the village, piety and other-worldliness will do much towards increasing their demesne and strengthening their position[1105].

[The church and the peasants.]

We have argued above that in the first instance it was not by means of the petty gifts of private persons that the churches amassed their wide territories. The starting point is the alienation of a royal superiority. Still there can be little doubt that the small folk were just as careful of their souls as were their rulers. They make gifts to the church. Moreover, the gift is likely to create a dependent tenure. They want to give, and yet they want to keep, for their land is their livelihood. They surrender the land to the church: but then they take it back again as a life-long loan. Thus the church has no great difficulty about getting demesne. But further, it gets dependent tenants and a dependent tenure is established. Like enough on the death of the donor his heirs will be suffered to hold what their ancestor held. Very possibly the church will be glad to make a compromise, for it may be doubtful whether these _donationes post obitum_[1106], or these gifts with reservation of an usufruct, can be defended against one, who, not having the fear of God before his eyes, will make a determined attack upon them. Gradually the church becomes more and more interested in the husbandry of the village. It receives gifts; it makes loans; it substitutes labour services to be done on its demesne lands for the old _feorm_ of provender. It is rash to draw inferences from the fragmentary and obscure laws of Ine; but one of them certainly suggests that, at least in some district of Wessex, this process was going on rapidly at the end of the seventh century, so rapidly and so oppressively that the king had to step in to protect the smaller folk. The man who has taken a yard of land at a rent is being compelled not only to pay but also to labour. This, says the king, he need not do unless he is provided with a house[1107].

[Growth of the manorial system.]

Now we are far from saying that the manorial system of rural economy is thus invented. From the time of the Teutonic conquest of England onwards there may have been servile villages, Roman villas with slaves and _coloni_ cultivating the owner's demesne, which had passed bodily to a new master. We have no evidence that is capable of disproving or of proving this. What we think more probable is that in those tracts where true villages (nucleated villages, as we have before now called them[1108]) were not formed, the conquerors fitted themselves into an agrarian scheme drawn for them by the Britons, and that in the small scattered hamlets which existed in these tracts there was all along a great deal of slavery[1109]. But, at any rate, the church was a cosmopolitan institution. Many a prelate of the ninth and tenth centuries, Bishop Oswald for one, must have known well enough how the foreign monasteries managed their lands, and, whatever controversies may rage round questions of remoter history, there can be no doubt that by this time the rural economy of the church estates in France was in substance that which we know as manorial. Foreign precedents in this as in other matters may have done a great work in England[1110]. All that we are here concerned to show is that there were forces at work which were capable of transmuting a village full of free landholders into a manor full of villeins.

[Church-scot and tithe.]

Besides the rights transferred to it by the king, the church would have other rights at its command which it could employ for the subjection--we use the word in no bad sense--of the peasantry. By the law of God it might claim first-fruits and tenths. The payment known as _ciric-sceat_, church-scot, is a very obscure matter[1111]. Certainly in laws of the tenth century it seems to be put before us as a general tax or rate, due from all lands, and not merely from those lands over which a church has the lordship. On the other hand, both in earlier and in later documents it seems to have a much less general character. In some of the earlier it looks like a due, we may even say a rent (_ecclesiasticus census_) paid to a church out of its own lands, while in the later documents, for example in Domesday Book, it appears sporadically and looks like a heavy burden on some lands, a light burden on others. The evidence suggests that the church had attempted and on the whole had failed, despite the help of kings and laws, to make this impost general. That in some districts it was a serious incumbrance we may be sure. On those estates of the church of Worcester to which we have often referred, every hide was bound to pay upon St. Martin's day one horse-load (_summa_) of the best corn that grew upon it. He who did not pay upon the appointed day incurred the outrageous penalty of paying twelve-fold, and in addition to this a fine was inflicted[1112]. If the bishop often insisted on the letter of this severe rule, he must have reduced many a free ceorl to beggary. It is by no means certain that the duty of paying tithe has not a somewhat similar history. Though in this case the impost became a general burden incumbent on all lands, it may have been a duty of perfect obligation for the subjects of the churches, while as yet for the mass of other landowners it was but a religious duty or even a counsel of perfection. At any rate, this subtraction of a tenth of the gross produce of the earth is no light thing: it is quite capable of debasing many men from landownership to dependent tenancy.

[Jurisdictional rights of the lord.]

Another potent instrument for the subjection of the free landowners would be the jurisdictional rights which passed from the king to the churches and the thegns. At first this transfer would appear as a small matter. The president of a court of free men is changed:--that is all. Where the king's reeve sat, the bishop or the bishop's reeve now sits; fines which went to the royal hoard now go to the minster; but a moot of free men still administers folk-right to the justiciables of the church. However, in course of time the change will have important effects. In the first place, it helps to bind up suit of court with the tenure of land. The suitor goes to the bishop's court because he holds land of which the bishop is the lord. If, as will often be the case, he wishes to escape from the burdensome duty, he will pay an annual sum in lieu thereof, and here is a new rent. Then again all the affairs of the territory are now periodically brought under the bishop's eye; he knows, or his reeves know, all about every one's business and they have countless opportunities of granting favours and therefore of driving bargains. Moreover it is by no means unlikely that the lord will now have something to say about the transfer of land, for it is by no means unlikely that conveyances will be made in court, and that the rod or _festuca_ which serves as a symbol of possession will be handed by the seller to the reeve and by the reeve to the purchaser. We need not regard the conveyance in court as a relic of a time when a village community would have had a word to say if any of its members proposed to assign his share to an outsider. There are many reasons for conveying land in court. We get witnesses there, and no mere mortal witnesses but the testimony of a court which does not die. Then, again, there may be the claims of expectant heirs to be precluded and perhaps they can be precluded by a decree of the court. The seller's kinsfolk can be ordered to assert their rights within some limited time or else to hold their peace for ever after, so that the purchaser will hold the land under the court's ban[1113]. And thus the rod passes through the hands of the president. But 'nothing for nothing' is a good medieval rule. The lord will take a small fine for this _land-cóp_, this sale of land, and soon it may seem that the purchaser acquires his title to the land rather from the lord than from the vendor[1114].

[The lord and his man's taxes.]

Yet another turn is given to the screw, if we may so speak, when the state and the church begin to hold the lord answerable for taxes which in the last resort should be paid by the tenant[1115]. This, when we call to mind the huge weight of the danegeld, will appear as a matter of the utmost importance. Before the end of the tenth century--this is the picture that we draw for ourselves--large masses of free peasants were in sore straits and were in many ways subject to their lords. Many of them were really holding their tenements by a more or less precarious tenure. They had taken 'loans' from their lord and become bound to pay rents and work continuously on his inland. Others of them may have had ancient ancestral titles which could have been traced back to free settlers and free conquerors; but for centuries past a lord had wielded rights over their land. The king's _feorm_ had become the lord's _gafol_, and this, supplemented by church-scot and by tithes, may have been turned into _gafol_ and week-work. The time came for a new and heavy tax. This was a crushing burden, and even had the geld been collected from the small folk it would have had the effect of converting many of them from landowners into landborrowers[1116]. But a worse fate befell them. They were so poor that the state could no longer deal with them; it dealt with their lord; he paid for their land. It follows that in the eye of the state their land is his land. Less and less will the national courts and the folk-law recognize their titles; the lord 'defends' this land against all the claims of the state; therefore the state regards it as his. Hence what seems the primary distinction drawn by Domesday Book--that between the soke-man and the _villanus_. The _villanus_ is not rated to the land-tax. Some men are not rated to the geld because they have but precarious titles; other men have precarious titles because they are not rated to the geld. A wide and a legally definable class is formed of men who hold land and who yet are fast losing the warranty of national law. When once the country is full of lords with sake and soke, a very small change, a very small exhibition of indifference on the part of the state, will deprive the peasants of this warranty and condemn them to hold, not by the law of the land, but by the custom of their lord's court.

[Depression of the free ceorl.]

To this depth of degradation the great mass of the English peasants in the southern and western counties--the _villani_, _bordarii_, _cotarii_ of Domesday Book--may perhaps have come before the Norman Conquest. There may have been no courts which would recognize their titles to their land, except the courts of their lords. We are by no means certain that even this was so; but they must fall deeper yet before they will be the 'serf-villeins' of the thirteenth century.

[The slaves.]

However, the conditions which would facilitate such a farther fall had long been prepared, for slavery had been losing some of its harshest features. Of this process we have said something elsewhere[1117]. What the church did for the slave may have been wisely and was humanely done; but what it did for the slave was done to the detriment of the poorer classes of free men. By insisting that the slave has a soul to be saved, that he can be sinned against and can sin, that his marriage is a sacrament, we obliterate the line between person and thing. On the other hand, in the submission of one person to the will of another, a submission which within wide limits is utter and abject, the church saw no harm. Villeinage and monasticism are not quite independent phenomena; even a lawyer could see the analogy between the two[1118]. And a touch of mysticism dignifies slavery:--the bishop of Rome is the serf of the serfs of God; an earl held land of Westminster Abbey 'like a _theow_[1119].' One of the surest facts that we know of the England of Cnut's time is that the great folk were confounding their free men with their theowmen and that the king forbad them to do this. We see that one of the main lines which has separated the rightless slave from the free ceorl is disappearing, for the lord, as suits his interest best, will treat the same man now as free and now as bond[1120].

[Growth of manors from below.]

We might here speak of the numerous causes for which in a lawful fashion a free man might be reduced into slavery, and were we to do so, should have to notice the criminal law with its extremely heavy tariff of _wer_ and _wite_ and _bót_. But of this enough for the time has been said elsewhere[1121], and there are many sides of English history at which we can not even glance. However, lest we should be charged with a grave omission, we must explain that the processes which have hitherto come under our notice are far from being in our eyes the only processes that tended towards the creation of manors. We have been thinking of the manors as descending from above (if we may so speak) rather than as growing up from below. The alienation of royal rights over villages and villagers has been our starting point, and it is to this quarter that we are inclined to look for the main source of seignorial power. But, no doubt, within those villages which had no lords--and plenty of such villages there were in 1065--forces were at work which made in the direction of manorialism. They are obscure, for they play among small men whose doings are not recorded. But we have every reason to suppose that in the first half of the eleventh century a fortunate ceorl had many opportunities of amassing land and of thriving at the expense of his thriftless or unlucky neighbours. Probably the ordinary villager was seldom far removed from insolvency: that is to say, one raid of freebooters, one murrain, two or three bad seasons, would rob him of his precious oxen and make him beggar or borrower. The great class of _bordarii_ who in the east of England are subjected to the sokemen has probably been recruited in this fashion[1122]. And so we may see in Cambridgeshire that a man will sometimes have half a hide in one village, a virgate in another, two-thirds of a virgate in a third. He is 'thriving to thegn-right.' Then, again, some prelate or some earl will perhaps obtain the commendation of all the villagers, and his hold over the village will be tightened by a grant of sake and soke, though, if we may draw inferences from Cambridgeshire, this seems to have happened rarely, for the sokemen of a village have often shown a marvellous disagreement among themselves in their selection of lords, and seem to have chosen light-heartedly between the house of Godwin and the house of Leofric as if they were but voting for the yellows or the blues. We fully admit that these forces were doing an important work; but they were doing it slowly and it was not nearly achieved when the Normans came. Nor was it neat work. It tended to produce not the true and compact manerio-villar arrangement, but those loose, dissipated manors which we see sprawling awkwardly over the common fields of the Cambridgeshire townships[1123].

[Sidenote: Theories which connect the English manor with the Roman villa.]

We have been endeavouring to show that the legal, social and economic structure revealed to us by Domesday Book can be accounted for, even though we believe that in the seventh century there was in England a large mass of free landowning ceorls and that many villages were peopled at that time and at later times chiefly by free landowning ceorls and their slaves. We have now to examine the evidence that is supposed to point to a contrary conclusion and to connect the English manor of the eleventh century with the Roman villa of the fifth. Two questions should be distinguished from each other--(1) Have we any proof that during those six centuries, especially during the first three of them, the type of rural economy which we know as 'manorial' was prevalent in England? (2) Have we any proof that the tillers of the soil were for the more part slaves or unfree men? We will move backwards from Domesday Book.

[The _Rectitudines_.]

In the first place reliance has been placed on the document known as _Rectitudines Singularum Personarum_[1124]. Of the origin of this we know nothing; we can not say for certain that it is many years older than the Norman Conquest. Apparently it is the statement of one who is concerned in the management of great estates and is desirous of imparting his knowledge to others. It first sets forth the right of the thegn. He is worthy of the right given to him by his book. He must do three things in respect of his land, namely, fyrdfare, burh-bote and bridge-work. From many lands however 'a more ample landright arises at the king's ban': that is to say, the thegn is subject to other burdens, such as making a deer-hedge at the king's hám, providing warships[1125] and sea-ward and head-ward and fyrd-ward, and almsfee and church-scot and many other things. Then we hear of the right of the _geneat_. It varies from place to place. In some places he must pay rent (_land-gafol_) and grass-swine yearly, and ride and carry and lead loads, work and support his lord[1126], and reap and mow and hew the deer-hedge and keep it up, build and hedge the _burh_ and make new roads for the _tún_, pay church-scot and almsfee, keep head-ward and horse-ward, go errands far and near wherever he is directed. Next we hear of the cottier's services. He works one day a week and three days in harvest-time. He ought not to pay rent. He ought to have five acres more or less. He pays hearth-penny on Holy Thursday as every free man should. He 'defends' or 'acquits' his lord's inland when there is a summons for sea-ward or for the king's deer-hedge or the like, as befits him, and pays church-scot at Martinmas. Then we have a long statement as to the services of the _gebúr_. In some places they are heavy, in others light. On some land he must work two days a week and three days at harvest by way of week-work. Besides this there is rent to be paid in money and kind. There is ploughing to be done and there are boon-works. He has to feed dogs and find bread for the swine-herd. His beasts must lie[1127] in his lord's fold from Martinmas to Easter. On the land where this custom prevails the _gebúr_ receives by way of outfit two oxen and one cow and six sheep and seven sown acres upon his yard-land. After the first year he is to do his services in full and he is to receive his working tools and the furniture for his house. We then hear of the special duties and rights of the bee-keeper, the swine-herd, the follower, the sower, ox-herd, shepherd, beadle, woodward, hayward and so forth.

[Discussion of the _Rectitudines_.]

Now, according to our reading of this document, there stand below the thegn, but above the serfs (of whom but few words are said[1128]) three classes of men--there is the _geneat_, there is the _gebúr_ and there is the _cotsetla_. The boor and the cottier are free men; the cottier pays his hearth-penny, that is his Romescot, his Peter's-penny, on Holy Thursday as every free man does; but both boor and cottier do week-work. On the other hand the _geneat_ does no week-work. He pays a rent, he pays a grass-swine (that is to say he gives a pig or pigs in return for his pasture rights), he rides, he carries, he goes errands, he discharges the forinsec service due from the manor, and he is under a general obligation to do whatever his lord commands. He bears a name which has originally been an honourable name; he is his lord's 'fellow[1129].' His services strikingly resemble those which St. Oswald exacted from his _ministri_, his _equites_, his _milites_[1130]. Almost every word that is said of the _geneat_ is true of those very substantial persons who took land-loans from the church of Worcester. The _geneat_ (who becomes a _villanus_ in the Latin version of our document that was made by a Norman clerk of Henry I.'s reign) is a riding-man, radman, radcniht, with a horse, a very different being from the _villanus_ of the thirteenth century[1131]. On the other hand, in the _gebúr_ of this document we may see the _burus_, who is also the _colibertus_ of Domesday Book[1132], and he certainly is in a very dependent position, for his lord provides him with cattle, with instruments of husbandry, even with the scanty furniture of his house. We dare not indeed argue from this text that the _villanus_ of Domesday Book does not owe week-work, for the writer who rendered _geneat_ by _villanus_ was quite unable to understand many parts of the document that he was translating[1133]; but when we place the _Rectitudines_ by the side of the survey we can hardly avoid the belief that the extremely dependent _gebúr_ of the former is represented, not by the _villanus_, but by the _burus_ or _colibertus_ of the latter. However, over and over again the author of the _Rectitudines_ has protested that customs vary. He will lay down no general rule; he does but know what goes on in certain places[1134].

[The Tidenham case.]

In 956 King Eadwig gave to Bath Abbey thirty manses at Tidenham in Gloucestershire[1135]. A cartulary compiled in the twelfth century contains a copy of his gift, and remote from this it contains a statement of the services due from the men of Tidenham. It is possible, but unlikely, that this statement represents the state of affairs that existed at the moment when the minster received the gift; to all appearance it belongs to a later date[1136]. It begins by stating that at Tidenham there are 30 hides, 9 of inland and 21 'gesettes landes,' that is 9 hides of demesne and 21 hides of land set to tenants. Then after an account of the fisheries, which were of importance, it tells us of the services due from the _geneat_ and from the _gebúr_. The _geneat_ shall work as well on the land as off the land, whichever he is bid, and ride and carry and lead loads and drive droves 'and do many other things.' The _gebúr_ must do week-work, of which some particulars are stated, and he also must pay rent in money and in kind. Here again a well marked line is drawn between the _geneat_ and the _gebúr_. Here again the _geneat_, like the _cniht_ or _minister_ of Oswaldslaw, is under a very general obligation of obedience to his lord; but he is a riding man and there is nothing whatever to show that he is habitually employed in agricultural labour upon his lord's demesne. As to the _gebúr_, he has to work hard enough day by day, and week by week, though of his legal status we are told no word.

[The Stoke case.]

In a Winchester cartulary, 'a cartulary of the lowest possible character,' there stands what purports to be a copy of the charter whereby in the year 900 Edward the Elder gave to the church of Winchester 10 _manentes_ of land 'æt Stoce be Hysseburnan' together with all the men who were thereon at the time of Alfred's death and all the men who were 'æt Hisseburna' at the same period. Edward, we are told, acquired the land 'æt Stoce' in exchange for land 'æt Ceolseldene' and 'æt Sweoresholte [Sparsholt].' At the end of the would-be charter stand the names of its witnesses. Then follows in English (but hardly the English of the year 900) a statement of the services which the ceorls shall do 'to Hysseburnan.' Then follow the boundaries. Then the eschatocol of the charter and the list of witnesses is repeated[1137]. On the face of the copy are three suspicious traits: (1) the modernized language, (2) the repeated eschatocol, (3) the description of the services, for the like is found in no other charter. This is not all. Two other documents in the same cartulary bear on the same transaction. By the first Edward gave to the church of Winchester 50 _manentes_ 'æt Hysseburnan' which he had obtained by an exchange for land 'æt Merchamme[1138].' By the second he gave to the church of Winchester 50 _manentes_ 'ad Hursbourne' and other 10 'ad Stoke[1139].' The more carefully these three documents are examined, the more difficult will the critic find it to acquit the Winchester monks of falsifying their 'books' and improving Edward's gift. Therefore this famous statement about the ceorls' services is not the least suspicious part of a highly suspicious document. It is to this effect:--'From each _hiwisc_ (family or hide), at the autumnal equinox, forty pence and six church _mittan_ of ale and three sesters of loaf-wheat. In their own time they shall plough three acres and sow them with their own seed, and in their own time bring it [the produce of the sown land] to barn. They shall pay three pounds of gafol barley and mow half an acre of gafol-mead in their own time and bring it to the rick; four fothers of split gafol-wood for a shingle-rick in their own time and sixteen yards of gafol-fencing in their own time. And at Easter two ewes with two lambs, but two young sheep may be counted for an old one; and they shall wash and shear sheep in their own time. And every week they shall do what work they are bid, except three weeks, one at Midwinter, one at Easter and the third at the Gang Days.' Here no doubt, as in the account of Tidenham, as in the _Rectitudines_, we see what may fairly be called the manorial economy. The lord has a village; he has demesne land (_inland_) which is cultivated for him by the labour of his tenants; these tenants pay _gafol_ in money or in kind; some of them (the _geneat_ of Tidenham, the _geneat_ of the _Rectitudines_) assist him when called upon to do so; others work steadily from day to day; in many particulars the extent of the work due from them is ascertained; whether they are free men, whether they are bound to the soil, whether the national courts will protect them in their tenure, whether they are slaves, we are not told.

[Inferences from these cases.]

That such an arrangement was common in the eleventh century we know; a solitary instance of it comes to us professedly from the first year of the tenth, and certainly from a cartulary that is full of lies. To draw general inferences from a few such instances would be rash. What should we believe of 'the English village of the eleventh century' if the one village of which we had any knowledge was Orwell in Cambridgeshire[1140]? What should we believe of 'the English village of the thirteenth century' if our only example was a village on the ancient demesne? The traces of a manorial economy that have been discovered in yet remoter times are few, slight and dubious. A passage in the laws of Ine[1141] seems to prove that there were men who had let out small quantities of land, 'a yard or more,' to cultivators at rents and who were wrongfully endeavouring to get from their lessees work as well as _gafol_. The same law may prove the highly probable proposition that some men had taken 'loans' of manses and were paying for them, not only by _gafol_, but by work done on the lord's land. That already in Ine's day there were many free men who were needy and had lords above them, that already the state was beginning to consecrate the relation between lord and man as a security for the peace and a protection against crime is undoubted[1142]. But this does not bring us very near to the Roman _villa_. Nor shall we see a _villa_ wherever the dooms or the land-books make mention of a _hám_ or a _tún_, for the meanest ceorl may have a _tún_ and will probably have a home of his own[1143].

[The _villa_ and the _vicus_.]

It is said that the England of Bede's day was full of _villae_ and that Bede calls the same place now _villa_ and now _vicus_[1144]. But before we enter on any argument about the use of such words, we ought first to remember that neither Bede nor the scribes of the land-books were trained philologists. London is a _villa_[1145], but it is also a _civitas_, _urbs_, _oppidum_, _vicus_, a _wíc_, a _tún_, a _burh_, and a _port_. When we see such words as these used promiscuously we must lay but little stress upon the occurrence of a particular term in a particular case. Suppose for a moment that in England there were many villages full of free landholders: what should they be called in Latin? They should, it is replied, be called _vici_ and they should not be called _villae_, for a _villa_ is an estate. But it is part of the case of those who have used this argument that at the time of the barbarian invasions the Roman world was full of _villae_, so full that every or almost every _vicus_ was situated on and formed part of a _villa_[1146]. We are therefore exacting a good deal from Bede, from a man who learnt his Latin in school, if we require him to be ever mindful of this nice distinction. We are saying to him: 'True it is that a knot of neighbouring houses with the appurtenant lands is habitually called a _villa_; but then this word introduces the notion of ownership; the _villa_ is an unit in a system of property law, and, if your village is not also an estate, a _praedium_, then you should call it _vicus_ and not _villa_.' To this we must add that, while the word _villa_ did not until after the Norman Conquest force its way into English speech, the word _vicus_ became an English word at a very early period[1147]. It became our word _wick_ and it became part of a very large number of place-names[1148]. The Domesday surveyors found _herdwicks_ and _berewicks_ in many parts of the country[1149]. Moreover we can see that in the Latin documents _villa_ is used in the loosest manner. London is a _villa_; but a single house, a single 'haw,' in the city of Canterbury or the city of Rochester is a _villa_[1150].

[Notices of manors in the charters.]

If we carefully attend to the wording of the land-books, we shall find the manorial economy far more visible in the later than in the earlier of them. The Confessor gives to Westminster 'ða cotlife Perscore and Dorhurste' with all their lands and all their berewicks[1151]. He gives the cotlif Eversley and all things of right belonging thereto, with church and mill, with wood and field, with meadow and heath, with water and with moor[1152]. From 998 we have a gift of a 'heafod-botl,' a capital mansion, we may say, and its appurtenances[1153]. In earlier times we may sometimes find that the subject matter of the royal gift is spoken of as forming a single unit; it is a _villa_, or it is a _vicus_. But rarely is the thing that is given called a _villa_ except when the thing that is given is just a single hide[1154]. If a charter freely disposes of several _villae_, meaning thereby villages, we shall probably find some other reasons for assigning that charter, whatever date it may bear, to the eleventh, the twelfth or a yet later century[1155]. Sometimes in old books the king will say that he is giving a _vicus_, a _vicus_ of five or eight or ten _tributarii_[1156]. Much more frequently he will not speak thus; he will not speak as though the subject matter of his gift had a physical unity and individuality. 'I give,' he will say, 'so many _manentes_, _tributarii_, or _casati_ in the place known as _X_,' or 'I give a certain part of my land, to wit, that of so many _manentes_, _tributarii_, or _casati_ at the spot which men call _Y_.' Such language does not suggest that the manses thus given are subservient to one dominant and dominical manse or manor; it is very unlike the language of the twelfth century[1157]. Such words as _fundus_ and _praedium_ are conspicuously absent, and _ager_ usually means but a small piece of land, an acre. Foreign precedents would have suggested that when an estate was to be conveyed it should be conveyed _cum servis et ancillis_, or _cum mancipiis et accolabus_; such clauses are rare in our English land-books[1158].

[The _mansa_ and the _manens_.]

But, it will be said, at all events the king is giving persons, men, as well as land; he is giving _manentes_, _casati_, _tributarii_. What is more these are foreign words and they describe the 'semi-servile' occupants of the soil. Now it is true that sometimes he gives _manentes_, _casati_, _tributarii_, though more often he gives either so many manses (_mansas_), or 'the land of so many _manentes_, _casati_, _tributarii_,' while in Kent he gives plough-lands or sullungs. But we think it plain that in England these Latin words were used simply to describe the extent, or rather the rateable extent, of land, without much reference to the number or the quality of its occupants. The _terra unius manentis_, even the _unus casatus_ when that is the subject of a conveyance, is like Bede's _terra unius familiae_, the unit known to Englishmen as the _hiwisc_, or _hide_[1159]. Hence it is that reference is so often made to repute and estimation. 'I give,' says Egbert, 'a certain portion of land to the amount, as I estimate, of five _casati_,' or (it may be) 'of twenty _manentes_[1160].' Nothing can be easier than to count whether there be four, five, or six 'semi-servile' households on a given piece of land. Far easier would it be to do this than to do what is habitually done, namely, to set forth the boundaries of the land with laborious precision. But there is already an element of estimation, of appreciation, in these units. Already they are units in a system of taxation. Hence also it is that so very frequently what the king gives is just exactly five, or some multiple of five, of these units[1161]. Rating is a rough process; five and ten are pleasant numbers.

[The hide.]

But against the argument which would see in every conveyance of 'five _manentes_' or of 'the land of five _casati_' a conveyance of five semi-servile households with their land we have another objection to urge. Here we will state it briefly; a fuller statement would take us far away from our present theme. If the land-books of the churches are to lead up to Domesday Book, the unit conveyed as _terra unius manentis_ (_casati_, _tributarii_) is a hide with some 120 acres of arable land, the land appropriate to a plough-team of eight oxen. Had the semi-servile _manens_ as a general rule 120 arable acres, a plough-team of eight oxen? We do not believe it, and those who have most strongly insisted on the servility or 'semi-servility' of the tillers of the soil, do not believe it. They would give the _gebúr_ but a quarter of a hide and but two beasts of the plough. That being so, it should be common ground that the _terra unius manentis_ (_casati_, _tributarii_) can not be construed as 'the land occupied by one semi-servile tenant.' An explanation of the fact that land is conveyed by reference to units so large as the hide of 120 acres and that these units are spoken of as though each household would normally have one of them must be sought elsewhere; we can not here pause to find it. But in any case these foreign terms should give us little trouble. When he hears such words as _manens_, _casatus_, _tributarius_, the man who has lived in Gaul may hear some undertone of servility or 'semi-servility.' We do not discuss this matter; it may be so. But look at the words themselves, what do they primarily mean? A _manens_ is one who dwells upon land, a _casatus_ is one to whom a _casa_ has been allotted, a _tributarius_ pays _tributum_; the free English landowner pays a _tributum_ to the king[1162]. We must make the best we can of a foreign, an inappropriate tongue, and the best that we make is often very bad, especially when we have a taste for fine writing. And so England is full of villas which are Roman and satraps who, no doubt, are Persian.

[The strip-holding and the villa.]

And whence, we must ask, comes that system of intermixed 'strip-holding' that we find in our English fields? Who laid out those fields? The obvious answer is that they were laid out by men who would sacrifice economy and efficiency at the shrine of equality. Each manse is to have the same number of strips; the strips of one manse must be neither better nor worse than those of its neighbour and therefore must be scattered abroad over the whole territory of the village. That this system was not invented by men who owned large continuous tracts is plain. No such owner would for one moment dream of cutting up his land in this ridiculous fashion, and of reserving for his own manse, not a ring-fenced demesne, but strips lying here and there, 'hide-meal and acre-meal' among the strips of his serfs. That is not the theory. No one supposes that a Roman landowner whose hands were free allowed the soil of his villa to be parcelled out in accordance with this wasteful, cumbrous, barbarous plan. So his hands must not be free; the soil of which he becomes the owner must already be plotted out in strips, and these strips must be so tightly bound up into manses, that he scruples to overturn an existing arrangement, and contents himself with appropriating a few of the manses for his own use and compelling the occupants of the others to labour for him and pay him rents. In this there is nothing impossible; but we have only deferred, not solved the problem. Who laid out our English fields and tied the strips into manses? That this work was done by the Britons before they were brought under the Roman yoke does not seem very probable. Celtic rural economy, whenever it has had a chance of unfettered development, has made for results far other than those that are recorded by the larger half of the map of England. If throughout England the Romans found so tough a system of intermixed manses that, despite all its absurdities, they could not but spare it, then the Britons who dwelt in the land that was to be English were many centuries in advance of the Britons who dwelt in the land that was to be Welsh. To eke out this hypothesis another must be introduced. The Teutonic invaders of Britain must be brought from some manorialized province. So, after all, the model of the English field may have been 'made in Germany.' Somehow or another it was made in South Germany by semi-servile people, whose semi-servility was such a half-and-half affair that they could not be prevented from sacrificing every interest of their lords at the shrine of equality[1163].

[The lords and the strips.]

We are far from saying that wherever there is strip-holding, there liberty and equality have once reigned[1164]. It is very possible that where a barbarian chieftain obtained a ring-fenced allotment of conquered soil, he sometimes divided it into scattered strips which he parcelled out among his unfree dependants. But if he did this, he did it because his only idea of agriculture was derived from a village formed by men who were free and equal. The maintenance of a system of intermixed strip-holding may be due to seignorial power, and a great deal of the rigidity of the agrarian arrangements that we see in the England of the thirteenth century may be due to the same cause. Seignorial power was not, at least in origin, absolute ownership. It had to make the best it could of an existing system. For the lord's purposes that system was at its best when it was rigid and no tenement was partible. But assuredly this plan was not originally invented by great proprietors who were seeking to get the most they could out of their land, their slaves and their capital.

[The ceorl and the slave.]

That we have not been denying the existence of slavery will be plain. Indeed we may strongly suspect that the men who parcelled out our fields were for the more part slave-owners, though slave-owners in a very small way. To say nothing of Welshmen, there was quite enough inter-tribal warfare to supply the ceorl with a captive. But it was not for the sake of slaves or serfs or 'semi-servile' folk that the system of intermixed strips was introduced.

[The condition of the Danelaw.]

Lastly, the theory which would derive the English manor from the Roman _villa_ must face the grave problem presented to it by the account which Domesday Book, when speaking of the Confessor's day, gives of the eastern and northern counties, of a large quarter of all England, and of just that part of England which was populous. We see swarms of men who are free men but who are subject, they and their land, to various modes and degrees of seignorial power. The modes are many, the degrees are gentle. Personal, tenurial, justiciary threads are woven into a web that bewilders us. Here we see the work of commendation, there the work of the land-loan, and there again what comes of grants of sake and soke. We see the formation of manors taking place under our eyes, and as yet the process is by no means perfect. In village after village there is nothing that our economic historians would consent to call a manor. Now, no doubt, the difference between the east and the west is, at least in part, due to Danish invasions and Danish settlements. But how shall we picture to ourselves the action of the Danes? Is it to be supposed that they found the Anglo-Roman manor-villa a prevalent and prosperous institution, that they destroyed it and put something else in its place, put in its place the village of free peasants who could 'go with their land' to what lord they pleased? If so, then we have to face the question why these heathen Danes acted in a manner so different from that in which their predecessors, the heathen Angles and Saxons, had acted. Surely one part of the explanation is that the inswarming barbarians checked the manorializing process that was steadily at work in Wessex and Mercia. We do not say that this is the whole explanation. We have seen how free were many of the Cambridgeshire villages and have little reason to believe that they had been settled by Danes[1165]. The west country is the country to which we shall naturally look for the most abundant traces of the _Wealh theow_. There it is that we find numerous _servi_, and there that we find rather _trevs_ than villages. But also we have hardly a single land-book of early date which deals with any part of the territory that became the Danelaw. Many a book the Danes may have burnt when they sacked the monasteries. They sacked the monasteries, burnt the books and freed the land. But still we may doubt whether the practice of booking lands to the churches had gone far in East Anglia and the adjacent shires when they were once more overwhelmed by barbarism. No doubt in course of time the churches of the east became rich: Ely and St Edmunds, Peterborough and Ramsey, Croyland and Thorney. But, even when supplemented by legend and forgery, their titles to wide territories can seldom be compared for antiquity to the titles that might have been pleaded by the churches of Kent and Wessex and the Severn Valley. Richly endowed churches mean a subjected peasantry. And thus we may say of the Danes that if in a certain sense they freed the districts which they conquered, they in the same sense enslaved the rest of England. Year by year Wessex and Mercia had to strain every nerve in order to repel the pagans, to fit out fleets, build burgs and keep armies always in the field. The peasant must in the end bear the cost of this exhausting struggle. Meanwhile in the north and the east the process that makes manors has been interrupted; it must be begun once more. It was accomplished by men some of whom had Scandinavian blood in their veins, but who were not heathens, not barbarians: it was accomplished by Normans steeped in Frankish feudalism.

FOOTNOTES:

[1101] K. 313 (ii. 110); T. 129; B. ii. 172.

[1102] In many cases the one night's farm is reckoned at £100 or thereabouts; Round, Feudal England, 112.

[1103] K. 477 (ii. 354); T. 509.

[1104] Vinogradoff, Villainage, 301.

[1105] Even T. R. W. and in a thoroughly manorial county such as Hampshire we may find a village in which the lord has no demesne. See e.g. D. B. i. 41 b, Alwarestoch.

[1106] Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 315

[1107] Ine, 67. See Schmid's note.

[1108] See above, p. 15.

[1109] See Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Germanen, ii. 97 ff.

[1110] Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 223.

[1111] The subject is treated at length by Kemble, Saxons, ii. 490 and App. D, and Schmid, p. 545.

[1112] D. B. i. 174. Compare Ine, 4; Æthelr. VIII. 11; Cnut, I. 10.

[1113] Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 95.

[1114] Æthelred, III. 3; Schmid, App. II. 67 and Schmid, Glossar, s. v. _land-ceáp_.

[1115] See above, pp. 55, 122, 125.

[1116] See above, p. 6. In a charter of Æthelred, K. 689 (iii. 284), Abp. Sigeric, the reputed inventor of the danegeld, is represented as pledging a village of thirty manses in order that he may pay the money demanded by the pirates. He thus raises 90 pounds of purest silver and 200 mancuses of purest gold. If the mancus was the eighth of a pound (Schmid, p. 595) we have 90 pounds of silver and 25 of gold, or in all perhaps £390. The whole danegeld of Kent under Henry II. was less than £106. For other transactions of a similar kind, see Crawford Charters, 76.

[1117] See above, p. 27.

[1118] Hist. Eng. Law, i. p. 416.

[1119] K. 1327 (iv. 190): 'swa full and swa forð swa Sihtric eorll of ðan ministre þeowlic it heold.'

[1120] Cnut, II. 20.

[1121] Hist. Eng. Law, ii. p. 458.

[1122] Chron. Petrob. 166: 'Sunt etiam in eadem scira 15 undersetes qui nullum servicium faciunt nisi husbondis in quorum terra sedent.'

[1123] See above, p. 136.

[1124] Schmid, App. III. p. 370; Seebohm, English Village Community, p. 129. See also Liebermann's article in Anglia, ix. 251, where the _Gerefa_, which seems to be a second part of this document, is printed.

[1125] We here adopt Schmid's conjecture: 'and scorp to friðscipe [_corr._ fyrdscipe].'

[1126] Ibid.: 'and hlaford feormian,' and supply a feorm (firma) for his lord.

[1127] The text says that he must lie at his lord's fold; but probably it refers to the _soca faldae_. See above, p. 76.

[1128] Of the serfs we hear (c. 8, 9) what they are to receive, but not what they ought to do; their services are unlimited.

[1129] Schmid, p. 596: Maurer, K. U. ii. 405.

[1130] See above, p. 305, also Maurer, K. U. ii. 406.

[1131] He is to 'work' for his lord; but then see how Oswald speaks of his knights and radmen: 'semper illius ... dominatui et voluntati ... cum omni humilitate et subiectione subditi fiant secundum ipsius voluntatem.' Cf. D. B. i. 172 b: 'deserviebat sicut episcopus volebat' ... 'tenuit ad servitium quod episcopus voluit.' The translator who turned him into a villanus was capable of turning the king's _geneat_ of Ine's law into a _colonus_, a _colonus_ with a wergild of 1200 shillings! See Schmid, p. 29.

[1132] See above, p. 36.

[1133] See e.g. cap. i., where it is pretty clear that he can not translate _scorp_. So in the Latin version of Edgar II. c. 1 he renders _geneatland_ by _terra villanorum_. But about such a matter as this the testimony of the Quadripartitus is of no value. See Liebermann, Gerefa, Anglia, ix. 258.

[1134] Mr Seebohm, p. 130, commits what seems to me the mistake of saying that the cottiers and boors are 'various classes of geneats.' To my thinking a great contrast is drawn between the _geneat_ and the _gebúr_ both in this document and in the account of Tidenham. So in Edgar II. c. 1 the contrast is between land which the great man has in hand and land which he has let to his 'fellows,' his _equites_ and _ministri_. See Konrad Maurer, K. U. ii. 405-6. Such words as _gebúr_ and _burus_ are obviously very loose words and it is likely that many a man who answered to the description of the _gebúr_ given by the Rectitudines appears in Domesday Book, which in general cares only about fiscal distinctions, as a _villanus_ or _bordarius_. But we have clear proof that the surveyors saw a class of _buri_ ( = _coliberti_) who were distinct from the ordinary _villani_. See above, p. 36.

[1135] K. 452 (ii. 327). See also Two Chartularies of Bath Abbey (Somerset Record Society), pp. 5, 18, 19.

[1136] K. iii. 449; E. 375: Seebohm, 148. Both documents come from MS. C.C.C. Camb. cxi. The conveyance is on f. 57, the statement of services on f. 73. The statement of services immediately precedes the lease of Tidenham to Stigand, K. 822 (iv. 171). Thus we have really better reason for referring that statement to the very eve of the Norman Conquest than to 956. See also Kemble, Saxons, i. 321, and Maurer, K. U. ii. 406.

[1137] K. 1077 (v. 146; iv. 306); T. 143; Kemble, Saxons, i. 319; Seebohm, 160. But the form of the instrument as given in the Codex Wintoniensis is best seen in B. ii. 240. We have quoted above the estimate of this Codex formed by Mr Haddan and Dr Stubbs (Councils, iii. 638).

[1138] B. ii. 238.

[1139] B. ii. 239.

[1140] See above, p. 129.

[1141] Ine, 67.

[1142] Ine, 39. The man who leaves his lord (not his lord's land, but his lord) without license, or steals himself away into another shire, is to pay 60 shillings (no trivial sum) to his lord.

[1143] Surely the law, Hloth. and Ead. c. 15, which begins 'If a man receive a guest three nights in his own home (an his agenum hame)' is not directed only against the lords of manors. See Meitzen, Siedelung und Agrarwesen, ii. 123.

[1144] Ashley, Translation of Fustel de Coulanges, Origin of Property, p. xvi.

[1145] K. 220 (i. 280): 'ad regalem villam Lundoniae perveniens.'

[1146] Fustel de Coulanges, L'Alleu, ch. vi. There is much to be said on the other side; see Flach, Les origines de l'ancienne France, ii. pp. 47-62. As to the _villa_ of the Lex Salica, see Blumenstok, Entstehung des deutschen Immobiliareigenthums, i. 219 ff.

[1147] The suggestion that _villa_ appears in some of our place-names as the termination _-well_ runs counter, so Mr Stevenson tells me, to rules of phonology.

[1148] See Bosworth's Dictionary; Kemble, Cod. Dipl. iii. p. xli. In the translation of St. Mark viii. 23, 26 both _wíc_ and _tun_ are used as equivalents for _vicus_:--'eduxit eum extra vicum ... et si in vicum introieris' = 'and lædde hine butan þa wic ... and ðeah þu on tun ga.' Even in France the word _vicus_ becomes part of numerous place-names: see Flach, op. cit. i. p. 53.

[1149] There is something curious about the use made of _wick_. It is often used to distinguish a hamlet or small cluster of houses separate from the main village. Thus in the parish of _X_ we shall find _X-wick_. The _berewicks_ and _herdwicks_ of D. B. (see above, p. 114) seem to be small clusters. On the other hand London is a _wíc_; Hloth. and Ead. 16.

[1150] K. 1041 (v. 88): 'in Dorobernia etiam civitate unam villam donabo ad quam pertinet quinque iugera terrae et duo prata.' K. 276 (ii. 57): 'dabo unam villam, quod nos Saxonice an haga dicimus.' K. 259 (ii. 26): 'villam unam ab orientale parte muri Doroverniae civitatis.'

[1151] K. 829 (iv. 191).

[1152] K. 845 (iv. 204). In a passage which has been interpolated into one copy of the A.-S. Chronicle (Thorpe, p. 220) we read 'And se biscop ... bohte þa feala cotlif æt se king.'

[1153] Crawford Charters, pp. 22, 125; K. 1293 (vi. 138).

[1154] Thus K. 109 (i. 133): 'villam unam ... quae iam ad Quenegatum urbis Dorovernensis in foro posita est.' It is not denied that in some quite early charters a king gives a _villa_ or _villula_, e.g. K. 209 (i. 264): 'Heallingan cum villulis suis'; see also K. 140 (i. 169), in which _villula_ and _viculus_ are used as synonyms.

[1155] A good example is that abominable forgery K. 984 (v. 2), Wulfhere's charter for Peterborough.

[1156] For example, K. 117-8-20 (i. 144-7).

[1157] One of the earliest instances of what looks like manorial organization will be found in K. 201 (i. 253); B. i. 485. In 814 Cenwulf gives to the Abp. of Canterbury a plough-land: 'et hoc aratrum cum omnibus utensilibus bonis ad mansionem in grafon æa [Graveney] æternaliter concessum est.'

[1158] A.D. 880, K. 311 (ii. 107): 'Insuper etiam huic donationi in augmentum sex homines, qui prius pertinebant ad villam regiam in Beonsinctune, cum omni prole stirpeque eorum ad eandem conscripsimus aecclesiam.' A.D. 889, K. 315 (ii. 117): 'cum hominibus ad illam pertinentibus.' A.D. 962, K. 1239 (vi. 49): 'vineam ... cum vinitoribus.' In late documents penned in English it is common to convey land 'with meat and with man.' Instances are collected in Crawford Charters, 127.

[1159] Therefore we sometimes meet with the form _cassata_, while _manens_ is treated as a feminine word; K. i. 301; B. i. 573: 'has x. manentes ... dividendas dimisit.' So Asser (ed. Camden, p. 4) says that Æthelwulf ordered that one poor man should be fed and clothed 'per omnem hereditariam terram suam semper in x. manentibus.'

[1160] K. 1033 (v. 73): 'aliquam portionem terrae ... in modum videlicet ut autumo v. cassatorum.' K. 1308 (v. 83): 'aliquam portionem terrae ... in modum videlicet ut autumo xx. manentium.' K. 565 (iii. 64): 'quoddam ruris clima sub aestimatione decem cassatorum.' K. 573 (iii. 87): 'ruris quandam particulam, denis ab accolis aestimatam mansiunculis.' K. 602 (iii. 146): 'quoddam rus x. videlicet mansarum quantitate taxatum.'

[1161] Let us open the Cod. Dipl. at the beginning of Edmund's reign (ii. 218). The number of manses given in twenty-five consecutive charters is as follows: 10, 20, 10, 10, 9, 10, 15, 7, 8, 20, 10, 3, 5, 20, 30, 3, 6, 5, 3, 7, 20, 20, 5, 8, 5.

[1162] It seems almost necessary to protest that to-day our landowners are not semi-servile occupants of the soil, though they pay land taxes, house taxes, income taxes and rates innumerable.

[1163] I can not but think that Fustel de Coulanges knew his business thoroughly well, and that if the German is to be taught his proper and insignificant place, the less that is said of intermixed 'strip-holding' the better, though to ignore it utterly was, even in France, a bold course.

[1164] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 431-41.

[1165] See above, p. 139.

§ 6. _The Village Community._

[The village community.]

We have argued for an England in which there were many free villages. It remains for us to say a word of the doctrines which would fill England with free landowning village communities. Here we enter a misty region where arguments suggested by what are thought to be 'survivals' and inferences drawn from other climes or other ages take the place of documents. We are among guesses and little has as yet been proved.

[The popular theory.]

A popular theory teaches us that land belonged to communities before it belonged to individuals. This theory has the great merit of being vague and elastic; but, as it seems to think itself precise, and probably owes some of its popularity to its pretence of precision, we feel it our duty to point out to it its real merit, its vague elasticity.

[Co-ownership and ownership by corporations.]

It apparently attributes the ownership of land to communities. It contrasts communities with individuals. In so doing it seems to hint, and yet to be afraid of saying, that land was owned by corporations before it was owned by men. The hesitation we can understand. No one who has paid any attention to the history of law is likely to maintain with a grave face that the ownership of land was attributed to fictitious persons before it was attributed to men. But if we abandon ownership by corporations and place in its stead co-ownership, then we seem to be making an unfortunate use of words if we say that land belonged to communities before it belonged to individuals. Co-ownership is ownership by individuals. When at the present day an English landowner dies and his land descends to his ten daughters, it is owned by individuals, by ten individuals. If each of these ten ladies died intestate leaving ten daughters, the land would still be owned by individuals, by a hundred individuals.

['Communities' as owners.]

The distinction that modern law draws between the landowning corporation and the group of co-owners is as sharp as any distinction can be. It will be daily brought home to any one who takes an active share in the management of the affairs of a corporation, for example, a small college which has a master, six fellows and eight scholars. A conveyance of land to the college and a conveyance of land to these fifteen men would have utterly different effects. A corporation may be deep in debt while none of its members owes a farthing. Now we may suspect, and not without warrant, that in a remote past these two very different notions, namely that of land owned by a corporation and that of land owned by a group of co-owners were intimately blent in some much vaguer notion that was neither exactly the one nor exactly the other. We may suspect that could we examine the conduct of certain men who lived long ago we should be sorely puzzled to say whether they were behaving as the co-owners of a tract of land or as the members of a corporation which was its owner. But to fashion for ourselves any clear and stable notion of a _tertium quid_ that is neither corporate ownership nor co-ownership, but partly the one and partly the other, seems impossible[1166]. Therefore if, in accordance with the popular theory, we attribute the ownership of lands to 'communities,' we ought to add that we do not attribute it to corporations and that we are fully aware that co-ownership can not be sharply contrasted with ownership by individuals.

[Possession and ownership.]

Also since we are apt to fall into the trick of talking about possession when we mean ownership or proprietary right, we need not perhaps ask pardon for the remark that land owned by a group of three joint tenants may be possessed in many different ways. The three may be jointly possessing the whole; each may be severally possessing a physically divided third; the whole may be possessed by one of them or by some fourth person; the possession may be rightful or wrongful.

But there is a graver question that must be raised. When we say that land belonged to communities before it belonged to individuals, are we really speaking of ownership or of something else?

[Ownership and governmental power.]

At the present day no two legal ideas seem more distinct from each other than that of governmental power and that of proprietary right. The 'sovereign' of Great Britain (be the sovereignty where it may) is not the owner of Great Britain, and if we still say that all land is 'held of' the king, we know that the abolition of this antique dogma, this _caput mortuum_, might be easily accomplished without any perceptible revolution in the practical rules of English law. A landowner in the United States does not 'hold of' the State or the people or the government of the State. The 'eminent domain' of the State is neither ownership nor any mode of ownership. Further, we conceive that the sovereign person or sovereign body can, without claiming any ownership in the soil, place many restrictions on the use that an owner may make of his land. A law may prohibit owners from building on certain lands: those lands are still their lands. Again, the supposed law may be not a negative but a positive rule; it may require that the owners of certain lands shall build upon them, or shall till them, or shall keep them as pasture[1167]: still neither state nor sovereign will be owner of those lands or have any proprietary interest in them. Our law may subject certain lands to a land-tax to be paid to the state in money, or to a tithe to be paid to the church in kind, but the state will not and the church will not be part-owner of those lands. Our state may habitually expropriate owners, may take their lands from them because they are felons or because their lands are wanted for the construction of railways. We may conceive it expropriating owners who have done no wrong and yet are to have no compensation; but until the expropriation takes place the state does not own the land. As with land, so with chattels. The owner of a cart may find that it is impressed for the purpose of military transport[1168] and yet the cart is his and not the state's.

[Ownership and the powers of subordinate governors.]

Similar powers may be exercised by persons or bodies that are not sovereign, for example, by the governor of a province, by a county council or a municipal corporation. Suppose that the owners of land situate within a certain borough are prohibited by a by-law from placing on their soil any buildings the plans of which have not been approved by the town council. Carry this supposition further:--suppose that the town council is a 'folk-moot' which every inhabitant of the borough may attend. Still, according to our thinking, there would here be no communal ownership and no division of ownership between individuals and a corporation. If we thought it well to say that in such a case the community would have some kind of 'eminent domain' over the land of individuals, we should have to add that this kind of eminent domain was not a proprietary right, but merely governmental power, a power of making general rules and issuing particular commands. Nor would the case be altered if the expressed object of such rules and commands was the interest, it may even be the pecuniary interest, of the men of the town. The erection of buildings may be controlled in order that the town may be wholesome and sightly, or we may conceive that landowners in the suburbs are compelled to keep their land as market-gardens or as dairy-forms in order that vegetables or milk may be cheap:--for all this the town council or community of townsfolk would have no property in the land.

[Evolution of sovereignty and ownership.]

But though this be so, we can not doubt that could we trace back these ideas to their origin, we should come to a time when they were hardly distinct from each other. The language of our medieval law tells us that this is so. The one word _dominium_ has to cover both proprietary rights and many kinds of political power; it stands for ownership, lordship, sovereignty, suzerainty. The power that Edward I. wields over all England, the power that he claims over all Scotland, all Gascony, the right that he has in his palace of Westminster, the right that he has in his war-horse, all these are but modes of _dominium_. Then we imagine a barbarous horde invading a country, putting its inhabitants to the sword and defending it against all comers. Doubtless in some sort the land is its land. But in what sort? In the sort in which Queen Victoria or the British nation has lands in every quarter of the globe, the sort in which all France belongs to the French Republic, or the sort in which Blackacre is the land of John Styles? Have the barbarians themselves answered this question? Have they asked it[1169]?

[Communal ownership as a stage.]

Now if we are going to confuse sovereignty with ownership, _imperium_ with _dominium_, political power with proprietary right, why then let our socialists and collectivists cease their striving and sing _Te Deum_. Already their ideal must be attained. Every inch of the soil of France, to name one instance, 'belongs' to the French Republic. But, if we would not be guilty of this confusion, then we must be very careful before we assent to the proposition that in the normal course of history (if indeed in such a context history can be said to have a normal course) the ownership of land by communities appears before the ownership of land by individuals. Even if we put aside all such criticisms as would be legal quibbles in the eyes of impatient theorists, and refuse to say whether the 'community' is a mass of men, an ideal person or _tertium quid_, we still are likely to find that the anthropologists will be against us. We are now told by one of the acutest of explorers that, if we leave out of account as no true case of ownership the sort of inchoate sovereignty which an independent tribe of hunters may exercise over a piece of the world's surface, 'ownership of land by individuals' is to be found at a much lower grade in the scale of civilization than that at which 'communal ownership' makes its first appearance[1170]. Communal ownership, it is said, is not seen until that stage is reached at which the power of the chieftain is already a considerable force and the work of centralization is progressing. With these inductions we do not meddle; but if the anthropologist will concede to the historian that he need not start from communalism as from a necessary and primitive _datum_, a large room will be open for our guesses when we speculate about the doings of a race of barbarians who have come into contact with Roman ideas. Even had our anthropologists at their command materials that would justify them in prescribing a normal programme for the human race and in decreeing that every independent portion of mankind must, if it is to move at all, move through one fated series of stages which may be designated as Stage _A_, Stage _B_, Stage _C_ and so forth, we still should have to face the fact that the rapidly progressive groups have been just those which have not been independent, which have not worked out their own salvation, but have appropriated alien ideas and have thus been enabled, for anything that we can tell, to leap from Stage _A_ to Stage _X_ without passing through any intermediate stages. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors did not arrive at the alphabet, or at the Nicene Creed, by traversing a long series of 'stages'; they leapt to the one and to the other.

[A normal sequence of stages.]

But in truth we are learning that the attempt to construct a normal programme for all portions of mankind is idle and unscientific. For one thing, the number of such portions that we can with any plausibility treat as independent is very small. For another, such is the complexity of human affairs and such their interdependence, that we can not hope for scientific laws which will formulate a sequence of stages in any one province of man's activity. We can not, for instance, find a law which deals only with political and neglects proprietary arrangements, or a law which deals only with property and neglects religion. So soon as we penetrate below the surface, each of the cases whence we would induce our law begins to look extremely unique, and we shall hesitate long before we fill up the blanks that occur in the history of one nation by institutions and processes that have been observed in some other quarter. If we are in haste to drive the men of every race past all the known 'stages,' if we force our reluctant forefathers through agnatic _gentes_ and house-communities and the rest of it, our normal programme for the human race is like to become a grotesque assortment of odds and ends.

[Was land owned by village communities?]

It is an interesting question whether in the history of our own people we ought to suppose any definite 'stage' intermediate between the introduction of steady agriculture and the ownership of land by individuals. To say the least, we have no proof that among the Germans the land was continuously tilled before it was owned by individuals or by those small groups that constituted the households. This seems to be so whether we have regard to the country in which the Germans had once lived as nomads or to those Celtic and Roman lands which they subdued. To Gaul and to Britain they seem to have brought with them the idea that the cultivable land should be allotted in severalty. In some cases they fitted themselves into the agrarian framework that they found; in other cases they formed villages closely resembling those that they had left behind them in their older home. But to all appearance, even in that older home, so soon as the village was formed and had ploughed lands around it, the strips into which those fields were divided were owned in severalty by the householders of the village. Great pains had been taken to make the division equitable; each householder was to have strips equal in number and in value, and to secure equivalence each was to have a strip in every part of the arable territory. But our evidence, though it may point to some co-operation in agriculture, does not point to a communistic division of the fruits[1171]. Nor does it point to a time when a village council or a majority of villagers conceived that it had power to re-allot the arable strips at regular or irregular intervals[1172]. On the contrary, the individual's hold upon his strips developed very rapidly into an inheritable and partible ownership. No doubt this ownership grew more intense as time went on. It is a common remark that during yet recent ages the ownership of land that is known to our law has been growing more intense. This is true and patent enough; the landowner has gained powers of alienation that his predecessors did not enjoy. Possibly the only ownership of land that was known to the Lex Salica was inalienable and could be inherited only by sons of the dead owner. Then again, in old days a trespass that did no harm would have been no trespass. 'Nominal damages' are no primitive institution, and for a long time a man may have had no action if strange cattle browsed over land on which no crop of corn was ripening[1173]. But this growing intensity of ownership may be seen also in the case of movable goods. Indeed there is a sense in which English law may be said to have known a full ownership of land long ages before it knew a full ownership of chattels[1174]. What, however, we are concerned to observe is that the German village community does not seem to have resisted this development of ownership or set up for itself any antagonistic proprietary claim. It sought no more as regards the arable fields than a certain power of regulating their culture, and in old times the _Flurzwang_, the customary rotation of crop and fallow, must have appeared less as the outcome of human ordinance than as an unalterable arrangement established by the nature of things in general and of acre strips in particular[1175].

[Sidenote: Meadows, pasture and wood.]

Thus, so far back as we can see, the German village had a solid core of individualism. There were, however, lands which in a certain sense belonged to it and which were not allotted for good and all among its various members. For one thing, the meadows were often subjected to a more communal scheme. In the later middle ages we may see them annually redistributed by rotation or by lot among the owners of the arable. The meadows, which must be sharply distinguished from the pasture, were few, and, as we may see from Domesday and other records, they were exceedingly valuable. Probably their great but varying value stood in the way of any permanent partition that would have seemed equitable. Still they were allotted annually and the right to an allotment 'ran with' the house and the arable strips. But again, there were woods and pastures. If we must at once find an owner for this _Almende_, we may be inclined to place the ownership in a village community, though not without remembering that if this community may develop into a land-owning corporation, it may develop into a group of co-owners. But in all likelihood the question as to the whereabouts of ownership might go unanswered and unasked for a long time. Rights of user exercisable over these woods and pastures were attached to the ownership of the houses and the arable strips, and such 'rights of common' may take that acutely individualistic form which they seem to have taken in the England of the thirteenth century. The freeholder of 'ancient arable,' whose tenement represents one of the original shares, has a right to turn out beasts on the waste, on the whole waste and every inch of it, and of this right nor lord, nor community can deprive him[1176]. Perhaps we may attribute to our law about this matter an unusual and, in a certain sense, an abnormal individualism. In the much governed England of the Angevin time, the strong central power encouraged every freeholder to look to it for relief against all kinds of pressure seignorial or communal. Elsewhere a village moot may assume and retain some control over these pasture rights. But still the untilled land, the waste, the _Almende_, exists mainly, if not solely, for the benefit of a small group of tenements that are owned and possessed in severalty. As to the ownership of the land that is subject to the rights of pasture, it is a nude, a very nude _dominium_, and for a long while no one gives it a thought.

[The bond between neighbours.]

In a favourable environment the German village community may and will become a landowning corporation. But many dangers lie before it: internal as well as external dangers. We must not think of it as a closely knit body of men. The agrarian is almost the only tie that keeps it together. Originally the men who settle down in a village are likely to be kinsmen. Some phrases in the continental folk-laws, and some perhaps of our English place-names, point in this direction. But (explain this how we will) the German system of kinship, which binds men together by the sacred tie of blood-feud, traces blood both through father and through mother, and therefore will not suffer a 'blood-feud-kin' to have either a local habitation or a name[1177]. Very soon, especially if daughters or the sons of daughters are allowed (and very ancient Frankish laws allow them) to inherit the dead man's land, a man who lives in one village will often be closer of kin to men who live in other villages than to his neighbours. The village community was not a _gens_. The bond of blood was sacred, but it did not tie the Germans into mutually exclusive clans. Nor did it hold them in large 'house-communities,' for the partible inheritance seems as a general rule to have been soon partitioned[1178]. Nor again may we ascribe to the German house-father much power over his full-grown sons[1179].

[Feebleness of the village community.]

Moreover, the village community was not a body that could declare the law of the tribe or nation. It had no court, no jurisdiction. If moots were held in it, these would be comparable rather to meetings of shareholders than to sessions of a tribunal. In short, the village landowners formed a group of men whose economic affairs were inextricably intermixed, but this was almost the only principle that made them an unit, unless and until the state began to use the township as its organ for the maintenance of the peace and the collection of taxes. That is the reason why we read little of the township in our Anglo-Saxon dooms[1180]. Only as the state's pressure increases, does the vill become one of the public institutions of the kingdom. We may even exaggerate the amount of agricultural co-operation that was to be found within it. Beyond the age in which the typical peasant is a virgater contributing two oxen to a team of eight, our English evidence seems to point to a time when the normal 'townsman' held a hide and had slaves and oxen enough for its cultivation. Nor in all probability was the village community a large body. We may doubt whether in the oldest days it usually comprised more than some ten shareholders[1181].

[Absence of organization.]

Whatever might come in course of time, we must not suppose that the village had much that could be called a constitution. In particular, we must be careful not to carry too far back the notion that votes will be counted and that the voice of a majority will be treated as the voice of all. When that marvellous title _De migrantibus_ raises a corner of the curtain and gives us our only glance into a village of newly settled Salian Franks, the one indisputable trait that we see among much that is disputable is that the new-comer must leave the village if one villager objects to his presence. His presence, we may suppose, might be objectionable because it might add to the number of those who enjoyed wood, waste and water in common; but any one villager can insist on his departure. Out of this state of things 'communal ownership' may grow; but all the communalism that we see at present is very like individualism[1182]. Above all, we must not picture these village lands as 'impressed with a trust' in favour of unborn generations or as devoted to 'public purposes.' If in course of time small folk, cottiers, 'under-settles' and the like, are found in the village, they will have to struggle for rights in the waste, and the rights, if any, that they get will be meagre when compared with those of the owners of 'whole lands' and 'half lands.' An oligarchy of peasant proprietors may rule the waste and the village.

[The German village on conquered soil.]

Thus even in favourable circumstances there were many difficulties to be overcome if the communalism, such as it was, of the village community was to be maintained and developed. But where the village was founded upon conquered soil the circumstances were not favourable. If the Germans invaded Gaul or Britain, the very fields themselves seemed to rebel against communalism and to demand a ring-fenced severalty. Throughout large tracts in Gaul the barbarians were content to adapt themselves to the shell that was provided for them. A certain aliquot share of every estate might be taken from its former owner and be allotted to a Burgundian or a Goth according to a uniform plan[1183]. Throughout other large tracts villages of the Germanic type were founded; a large part of northern Gaul was studded with such villages, and it may be well for us to remember that some of our Norman subjugators came to us from a land of villages, if others came from a land of isolated homesteads[1184]. There can be little doubt that in Britain numerous villages were formed which reproduced in all essentials the villages which Saxons and Angles had left behind them on the mainland, and as little doubt that very often, in the west and south-west of Britain, German kings and eorls took to themselves integral estates, the boundaries and agrarian arrangement whereof had been drawn by Romans, or rather by Celts[1185].

[Development of kingly power.]

Then the invasions and the long wars called for a rapid development of kingship. Very quickly the Frankish kingship became despotism. In England also the kings became powerful and the hereditary nobles disappeared. There was taxation. The country was plotted out according to some rude scheme to provide the king with meat and cheese and ale[1186]. Then came bishops and priests with the suggestion that he should devote his revenues to the service of God and with forms of conveyance which made him speak as if the whole land were his to give away. Here, so we have argued, was the beginning of a process which placed many a village under a lord. The words of this lord's 'book' told him that he was owner, or at least lord, of this village 'with its woods and its pastures.' The men of the village might or might not maintain all their accustomed rights, but at any rate no expansion of those rights beyond the ancient usage was possible. The potentialities of the waste (if we may so speak) had been handed over to a lord; the future was his.

[Free villages in England.]

We must not, however, repeat what has been lengthily said above touching the growth of the manorial system, though we are painfully aware that we have neglected many phases of the complicated process. Here let us remember that this process was not complete in the year 1066, and let us look once more at the free villages in the east; for example, at Orwell[1187]. Who owned the land that served as a pasture for the _pecunia villae_? Shall we place the ownership in the thirteen holders of the arable strips into which the four hides were divided, or in a corporation whereof they were the members, or in their various lords, those eight exalted persons to whom they were commended, or shall we say that here is _res nullius_? The supposition that the lords are owners of the waste we may briefly dismiss. The landholders are free to 'withdraw themselves' and seek other lords. That the land is _res nullius_ we may also positively deny, if thereby be meant that it lies open to occupation. Let a man of the next village turn out his beasts there and he will find out fast enough that he has done a wrong. But who will sue him? Will all the villagers join as co-plaintiffs or will the village corporation appear by its attorney? Far more in accordance with all that we see in later days is it to suppose that any one of the men of Orwell who has a right to turn out beasts can resent the invasion[1188]. This brings to our notice the core of individualism that lies in the centre of the village. The houses and the arable strips are owned in severalty, and annexed to these houses and arable strips are pasture rights which are the rights of individuals and which, it may be believed, seem to exhaust the utility of the waste. What remains to dispute about? A nude, a very nude _dominium_, which is often imperceptible.

[The village meeting.]

Not always imperceptible. From time to time these Orwell people in town meeting assembled may have taken some grave resolution as to the treatment of the waste. They may now and then have decided to add to the amount of arable and diminish the amount of pasture. But occasional measures of this sort, for which a theoretical, if not a real, unanimity is secured, will not generate a regulative organ, still less a proprietary corporation. In decade after decade a township-moot at Orwell would have little to do. The moot of the Wetherley hundred is the court that deems dooms for the men of Orwell. If the lands of Orwell had been steadily regarded as the lands of a corporation they would have passed in one lump to some one Norman lord. But such corporate feeling as there was was weak. The men of Orwell had been seeking lords, each man for himself, in the most opposite quarters. Many of the virgates that are physically in one village have, as we have seen[1189], been made 'to lie in' other villages; for the free man can carry his land where he pleases. When this is so, he is already beginning to feel that the tie which keeps him in a village community is a restraint that has, perhaps unfortunately, been imposed upon him and his property by ancient history.

[What might have become of the free village.]

The fate of these lordless communities and of their waste was still trembling in the balance when King Harold fell. To guess what would have happened had he held his own is not easy. It is possible that what was done by foreigners would have been done, though less rapidly, by lords of English race, and that by consolidating soke and commendation into a firm landlordship and then making among themselves treaties of partition, they would have acquired the ownership of the pasture land subject to the rights of common. It is perhaps more probable that in some cases the old indeterminate state of things might have been maintained until the idea of a fictitious personality had spread from the chapter-house to the borough and from the borough to the village. Then the ownership of the soil might have been attributed to a corporation of which the freeholders in the village were the members. One famous case which came to light in the seventeenth century may warn us that throughout the middle ages there were here and there groups of freeholders, and even of customary tenants, who were managing agrarian affairs in a manner which feudalism could not explain and our English law would not warrant, for they were behaving as though they were members of a landowning corporation[1190]. Often in the east of England the manors must have been so intermixed that village meetings, not however of a democratic kind, may have dealt with business which lay outside the competence of any seignorial court. We know little and, it is to be feared, must be content to know little of such meetings. They were not sessions of a tribunal; they kept no rolls; the law knew them not. But we dare not say that if all seignorial pressure had been removed, the village lands would have been preserved as communal lands for modern villagers. Where there was no seignorial pressure, no joint and several liability for dues, the tie was lax between the owners of the strips in the village fields; and if there was a corporate element in their union, there was also a strong element of co-ownership. Had they been left to themselves, we can not say with any confidence that they would not sooner or later have partitioned the waste. Was it not their land, and might they not do what they liked with their own?

[Mark communities.]

One other question may be touched. It was the fashion in England some years ago that those who spoke of village communities should say something of 'the Germanic mark.' What they said seemed often to imply that the German village community was a mark community. This was a mistake. It seems indeed that there were parts of Germany in which the word 'mark' was loosely used[1191]; but the true _Markgenossenschaft_ was utterly different from the _Dorfgenossenschaft_, and the lands with which it dealt were just those lands that belonged to no village[1192]. In the country which saw the Germans becoming an agricultural race, the lands belonging to the villages were but oases in a wild territory. In later days some large piece of this territory is found to be under the control of a 'mark-community,' whose members are dwelling here and there in many different villages and exercise rights over the land (for the more part it is forest land[1193]) that belongs to no village but constitutes the mark. Traces of what might have become 'the mark system' may perhaps be found in England; but not where they have been usually sought.

[Intercommoning between vills.]

We read of a tract in Suffolk which is common pasture for the whole hundred of Coleness[1194]. Instances in which a piece of land is common pasture for many vills were by no means uncommon in the thirteenth century. They grow rarer as time goes on. Our law provided but a precarious and uncomfortable niche for them under the rubric _common pur cause de vicinage_[1195]. These are the traces of what in different surroundings might have become, and perhaps were near to becoming, mark communities. In the thirteenth century the state seems to have been already enforcing the theory that every inch of land ought to lie within the territory of some vill[1196]. This was a police measure. The responsibility of one set of villagers was not to cease until the boundary was reached where the responsibility of another set began. But even in recent times there have been larger moors in the north of England which 'belonged' (we will use a vague word) to two or more townships in common. At any rate, we must not take back this theory that the vills exhaust the land into the days of the Germanic settlement[1197]. In some districts the vills must have been separated from each other by wide woods, and in all likelihood large portions of these woods were not proper to any one village, but were regarded as belonging, in some sense or another, to a group of villages. However, land of this kind was just the land which was most exposed to an assertion of royal ownership, and we imagine that a mark community had from the first little chance of organizing itself in England[1198]. But we have already made too many guesses.

[Last words.]

We must not be in a hurry to get to the beginning of the long history of law. Very slowly we are making our way towards it. The history of law must be a history of ideas. It must represent, not merely what men have done and said, but what men have thought in bygone ages. The task of reconstructing ancient ideas is hazardous, and can only be accomplished little by little. If we are in a hurry to get to the beginning we shall miss the path. Against many kinds of anachronism we now guard ourselves. We are careful of costume, of armour and architecture, of words and forms of speech. But it is far easier to be careful of these things than to prevent the intrusion of untimely ideas. In particular there lies a besetting danger for us in the barbarian's use of a language which is too good for his thought. Mistakes then are easy, and when committed they will be fatal and fundamental mistakes. If, for example, we introduce the _persona ficta_ too soon, we shall be doing worse than if we armed Hengest and Horsa with machine guns or pictured the Venerable Bede correcting proofs for the press; we shall have built upon a crumbling foundation. The most efficient method of protecting ourselves against such errors is that of reading our history backwards as well as forwards, of making sure of our middle ages before we talk about the 'archaic,' of accustoming our eyes to the twilight before we go out into the night.

FOOTNOTES:

[1166] This seems to me the net outcome of the long and interesting controversy which has divided the Germanists as to the nature of the German _Genossenschaft_.

[1167] This is no extravagant hypothesis. See e.g. Stat. 7 Hen. VIII. c. 1 Thacte advoidyng pullyng downe of townes.

[1168] See Army Act, 1881, 44 and 45 Vic. c. 58, sec. 115.

[1169] Flach, Les origines de l'ancienne France, ii. 45, referring to the classical passages in Cæsar and Tacitus, says: 'Ce serait un abus de mots de dire que la tribu ou que le clan sont propriétaires. La tribu (_civitas_) a la souveraineté du territoire, les clans de leurs subdivisions ont l'usage des parts qui leur sont assignées. La conception même de la propriété est exclue par la nature des terres: étendue de friches toujours renaissantes et en surabondance toujours: _superest ager_.' See also Dargun, Ursprung des Eigenthums, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, v. 55.

[1170] Dargun, Ursprung des Eigenthums, Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft, v. 1 (1884). See also Hildebrand, Recht und Sitte, Jena, 1896.

[1171] In the A.-S. laws about tithes there is really no hint of communalism. When a landowner has ploughed his tenth acre, he is to assign that acre, or rather the crop that it will bear next year, to the church. That is all; and though it may be a rude plan, it is compatible with the most absolute individualism. Mr Seebohm, Village Community, 114, however, seems to think otherwise. As to the Welsh laws, we beg an enormous question if we introduce them into this context. A distribution of acres when the ploughing is done is just what we do not see in England.

[1172] As to the famous words of Tacitus 'Agri pro numero cultorum ab uniuersis in uices [_al._ inuicem] occupantur' and the proposal to read _uniuersis vicis_, one of the best suggestions yet made (Meitzen, Siedelung, iii. 586) is that Tacitus wrote merely _ab uniuersis occupantur_, that a copyist repeated the word _uniuersis_, and that other copyists tried to make sense of nonsense.

[1173] As to the state of things represented by the Lex Salica see Blumenstok, Entstehung des deutschen Immobiliareigenthums, Innsbruck, 1894, pp. 196 ff.

[1174] Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 155. It may be convenient now-a-days to say that _ownership_ implies a power of alienation. See Pollock, Jurisprudence, 166. But to insist on this usage in such discussions as that in which we are engaged would lead to needless circumlocution. The question that is before us is whether as a complaint to which a court of law will give audience 'This acre is mine' is more modern than 'This acre is ours.'

[1175] As to the whole of this matter see Meitzen, op. cit., especially iii. 574-589. As regards arable land in this country the only 'survivals' which point to anything that should be called communal ownership are singularly inconclusive. They relate to small patches of arable land held by burgesses: that is to say, they relate to places in which a strong communal sentiment was developed during the later middle ages, and they do not relate to communities that ought to be called agricultural. The 'burgess plot' is not large enough to have been any man's livelihood when cultivated in medieval fashion, and it may well be modern. It is demonstrable that in one case a very 'archaic' arrangement was deliberately adopted in the nineteenth century by burgesses who preferred 'allotment grounds' to pasture rights. Maitland, Survival of Archaic Communities, Law Quarterly Review, ix. 36.

[1176] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 610-12.

[1177] Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 238. A hypothetical practice of endogamy will hardly give us the requisite explanation, for on the whole the church seems to have encountered little difficulty in imposing its extravagantly exogamous canons. To persuade the converts not to marry their _affines_ was a much harder task.

[1178] Heusler, Institutionen, 229.

[1179] As to the ownership of land by 'families,' see Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 242.

[1180] See above, p. 147.

[1181] Of this in the next essay.

[1182] A valuable and interesting discussion of the proprietary system of the Lex Salica will be found in Blumenstok, Entstehung des deutschen Immobiliareigenthums, Innsbruck, 1894. This will serve as a good introduction to the large literature which surrounds the _De migrantibus_. The least probable of all interpretations seems that given by Fustel de Coulanges.

[1183] See Meitzen, op. cit. i. 526-35.

[1184] Meitzen, i. 517 and the Maps 66 _a_, 66 _b_ in the Atlas.

[1185] Meitzen, ii. 97-122.

[1186] See above, p. 237.

[1187] See above, p. 129.

[1188] Throughout the historical time, so far as we know, the right of every commoner has been well protected against strangers. He might drive off the stranger's beasts, impound them, and, at all events if he had been incommoded, might sue for damages. See _Marys's case_, 9 Coke's Reports, 111 b; _Wells_ v. _Watling_, 2 W. Blackstone's Reports, 1233. He needed no help from his neighbours.

[1189] See above, pp. 13, 124.

[1190] I refer to the much discussed case of Aston and Cote. See Law Quarterly Review, ix. 214.

[1191] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 573.

[1192] Ibid. i. 122-60.

[1193] Therefore its assembly is a _Holtding_, and a _Holzgraf_ presides there: Meitzen, op. cit. i. 125.

[1194] D. B. ii. 339 b: 'In hundret de Coleness est quedam pastura communis omnibus hominibus de hundret.' At Rhuddlan (D. B. i. 269) Earl Hugh has given to Robert half the castle, half the burg, and 'half of the forests which do not pertain to any vill of the said manor.' This, however, is in Wales.

[1195] Hist. Eng. Law, i. 608.

[1196] Ibid. i. 547.

[1197] Blomefield, Hist. Norfolk, iv. 691 gives an account of an extremely fertile tract of pasture known as Tilney Smeeth upon which the cattle of seven 'towns' intercommoned.

[1198] If we are right in supposing that very generally a royal land-book disposes of a whole village, then if it proceeds to give rights in the _communis silva_, it is probably speaking of a wood that is not regarded as annexed to that village but of one which is common to various villages. The intercommoning of vills in a forest is illustrated by the famous Epping case, _Commissioners of Sewers_ v. _Glasse_, Law Reports, 19 Equity, 134. But for the king's rights in forest land, a 'mark community' might have grown up in Epping. On the other hand, but for the king's rights, the land might long ago have been partitioned among the mark-men.

ESSAY III.

THE HIDE.

[What was the hide?]

What was the hide? However unwilling we may be to face this dreary old question, we can not escape it. At first sight it may seem avoidable by those who are interested in the general drift of national life, but have no desire to solve petty problems or face unnecessary difficulties. The history of weights and measures, some may say, is probably very curious and no doubt is worth study; but we, who shall be amply satisfied if we understand the grand movements and the broad traits, must leave this little province, as we must leave much else, to antiquarian specialists. Unfortunately, however, that question about the hide is 'pre-judicial' to all the great questions of early English history.

[Importance of the question.]

If our choice lay between 30 and 40 acres, or again between a long and a short hundred, then indeed we might refuse to take part in the conflict. But between the advocates of big hides of 120 acres or thereabouts and the advocates of little hides of 30 acres or thereabouts there should be no peace. In the construction of early English history we shall adopt one style of architecture if we are supplied with small hides, while if our materials consist of big hides an entirely different 'plan and elevation' must be chosen. Let us take one example. We find the kings giving away manses or hides by fives and tens. What are they really doing? Are they or are they not giving away whole villages? Obviously this question is pre-judicial to many another. Our whole conception of the Anglo-Saxon kingship will be profoundly affected by our attribution or our denial to the king of an alienable superiority over villages that are full of free landowners. This question, therefore, we should have upon our hands even if we thought that we could rear the fabric of political and constitutional history without first laying an economic foundation. But the day for such castles in the air is passing.

Howbeit, we must not talk in this pompous way of castles or foundations. We are not going to lay foundations, nor even to choose a site. We hope to test a few materials and perhaps to show how a site may some day be acquired.

[Hide and manse in Bede.]

From the Norman Conquest so far back as we can go, a certain possessory unit or a certain typical tenement is being thrust upon our notice by the laws, the charters, the historians[1199]. We may begin with Bede. When he is going to speak of the area or the capacity of a tract of land, be it large or be it small, he refers to a certain unit or type, namely, the land of one family (_terra unius familiae_). The abbess Hild acquires the land of one family and erects a religious house upon it[1200]; king Oswy gives away twelve tracts of land, each of which consists of 'the _possessiones_ of ten families'[1201]; the kingdom of the South Saxons contains the land of 7,000 families[1202]. We see that already Bede is thinking rather of the size or capacity of a tract of soil than of the number of households that happen to be dwelling there. 'The measure (_mensura_) of the Isle of Wight is, according to the English mode of reckoning, 1200 families[1203].' 'The isle of Thanet is no small island: that is to say, according to the customary English computation, it is of 600 families[1204].' Some apology is due from a scholar who writes in Latin and who writes thus; so Bede tells us that he is using the English mode of reckoning; he is literally translating some English term.

[Hide and manse in the land-books.]

When his own book is rendered into English that term will reappear. Usually it reappears in the form _híd_, but occasionally we have _hiwisc_ or _hiwscipe_. There seems no room for doubt that _hiwisc_ and the more abstract _hiwscipe_ mean a household, and very little room for doubt that _híd_ springs from a root that is common to it and them and has the same primary meaning[1205]. Elsewhere we may find an equivalence between the hide and the _hiwisc_:--'If a Welsh man thrives so that he has a _hiwisc_ of land and can render the king's gafol, then his wergild is 120 shillings; but if he attains only to a _half-hide_ then his wergild is 80 shillings[1206].' In the charters also we may now and then find that the land to be conveyed is a _hiwisc_[1207], or is the land of one _familia_[1208]. However, the common English term is _hide_, while the scribes of the land-books, who as yet are above inventing a Latin _hida_, ring the changes on half-a-dozen phrases[1209]. We begin with _terra unius manentis_, _terra unius casati_, _terra unius tributarii_, which keep clearly before our eyes the fact or the theory that the normal householder, the normal taxpayer, will possess one of these units. At a little later time the more convenient _mansa_ (sometimes _mansio_[1210] or _mansiuncula_) becomes popular, and we may see also that men are beginning to speak of manents, casates, tributaries 'of land,' much as they would speak of acres or perches of land[1211]. So far as we can see, all these terms are being used as though they were absolutely equivalent. If a clerk has to describe several different tenements, he will write of _manentes_ in one clause and _casati_ in the next, merely because a repetition of the same term would be inelegant[1212]. In Kentish charters we read more of the _aratrum_ and the _sullung_ than of the manse and the hide; but apparently we have here other names for what is a similar and in some sort an equivalent unit[1213]; and it is by no means unknown that Kentish tenements will be called manses and hides[1214].

[The large hide and the manorial arrangement.]

Now if we ask whether the type to which reference is thus made is a tenement comprising about six-score acres of arable land, we are asking a question of the gravest importance. For let us look at some of the consequences which will flow from an affirmative answer. Let it be granted that, long before the Norman Conquest, the hide has become an unit in an unwieldy system of taxation, which has been governed by false assumptions and vitiated by caprice, until the fiscal hide in a given case may widely diverge from its original or indeed from any fixed type. None the less, this system has for its base the theory that the typical man of Anglo-Saxon law, the typical householder or taxpayer, has a hide, has land enough for a team of oxen, has 120 arable acres. The language of the charters supposes that this is so. No doubt the supposition is, as every supposition of this kind must be, untrue; but still it must have a core of truth, and in the remotest age this core will be at its largest. Men will not fall into a habit of speaking of 120 arable acres or thereabouts as the tenement of one family or of one householder, unless as a matter of fact the tenement of one family or of one householder has in a preponderant number of cases some such content as this. Suppose, for example, that the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the sixth century had been composed chiefly of lords, whose estates ranged from 600 acres to some much larger quantity, and of 'semi-servile' cultivators, the average size of whose tenements was 30 acres, such a usage of words as that which we are considering could never have struck root. Either the small tenement of the cultivator or the big tenement of his lord must have been taken as the typical 'manse,' the typical 'land of one householder.' Let us at once press home this argument, though at present it involves a hypothesis, for in the dull disquisitions that follow we may be cheered by the thought that great questions are at stake. If in the oldest time the typical 'land of one householder' had 120 arable acres, the manorial system was not prevalent, not dominant, in England. It will be admitted on all hands that this would be much too large a tenement for a serf or a semi-servile _colonus_. On the other hand, it is much too small a tenement for any one who is going to play the part of a manorial lord, unless we use the term _manorial_ in so wide a sense that it becomes useless. For how many tenants will this manorial lord, who is to be taken as the typical householder, have upon his 120 acres? If his arrangements are at all like those revealed to us by Domesday Book, he will keep at least one-third of his land in demesne, and there will remain but 80 acres for the _coloni_. Shall we give him three _coloni_, or four or five? We can hardly give him a larger number. Furthermore, it is quite clear that this 'manorial lord' will not own a village. The villages as we see them in the earliest charters and thence onward into Domesday Book contain five, ten, fifteen hides. Our manorial lord must be content to take his hide in little scraps scattered about among the scraps of some ten or twenty other 'manorial lords' whose hides are similarly dispersed in the open field of a village. All this seems to follow inevitably if once we are satisfied that the hide of the old days had 120 arable acres or thereabouts; for the hide is the land of one typical householder[1215].

[Our course.]

Now for a long time past there has been among historians and antiquaries a good deal of agreement in favour of this large hide, but against it appeal may be made to honoured names, such as those of Kemble and Eyton[1216]. Also it must be confessed that in favour of much smaller hides, or at least of much smaller hides for the earliest days, some weighty arguments may be advanced. In order that they may be understood, and perchance refuted, we must pursue a long and devious course and must raise by the way many questions, touching which we have no right to an opinion: questions about agriculture, questions about land measurement, perhaps even physiological questions. Also it is our misfortune that, as we stumble through the night, we must needs stumble against some of our fellow adventurers.

FOOTNOTES:

[1199] The word _tenement_ will be often employed hereafter. Has it become needful to protest that a _tenement_ need not be a house? If my body is my soul's 'frail tenement,' that is not because my body holds my soul (a reprobate error), but because (for this is better philosophy and sound law) my soul holds my body. But, to descend from these heights, it will be a thousand pities if a vulgar blunder compels us to abandon the excellent _tenement_ in favour of the feeble _holding_ or the over-worked _estate_.

[1200] Hist. Eccl. lib. 4, c. 21 (23), ed. Plummer, i. 253.

[1201] Ibid. lib. 3, c. 24, ed. cit. i. 178.

[1202] Ibid. lib. 4, c. 13, ed. cit. i. 230.

[1203] Ibid. lib. 4, c. 14 (16), ed. cit. i. 237.

[1204] Ibid. lib. 1, c. 25, ed. cit. i. 45.

[1205] If, as Mr Seebohm suggests (Village Community, p. 398), this word meant the skin of an ox, some one would assuredly have Latined it by _corium_, and not by _terra unius familiae_ (_manentis_ etc.)

[1206] Schmid, App. VII. (Wergilds), 2, § 7. By comparing this with Ine 32 we get an even more explicit equation: 'Gif Wylisc mon hæbbe hide londes' = 'Gif Wilisc mon geþeo þæt he hæbbe hiwisc landes.'

[1207] K. 271 (ii. 52), a forgery: 'æt Cemele tien hyda, æt Domeccesige þriddehalf hiwisce.'--K. 1077 (v. 146): 'æt hilcan hiwisce feowerti penega.'--K. iii. 431: 'ðæs anes hiwisces boc ... ðas oðres hiwisces.'--K. 1050 (v. 98). See also Crawford Charters, 127, for _hiwscipe_.

[1208] K. 1006 (v. 47): 'de terra iuris mei aliquantulam portionem, iuxta mensuram scilicet decem familiarum.' See also K. 1007.

[1209] The would-be Latin _hida_ occurs already in K. 230 (i. 297), but is rare before the Conquest. On the other hand, as an English word _híd_ is in constant use.

[1210] K. 131 (i. 159); K. 140 (i. 169).

[1211] Thus, to give one early example, K. 1008 (v. 49): 'duodecim tributarios terrae quae appellantur Ferrinig.' So in K. 124 (i. 151) we have the neuter form _manentia_.

[1212] A good instance in Egbert's Dialogue, H. & S. iii. 404. For how many hides may the clergy swear? A priest may swear 'secundum numerum 120 tributariorum'; a deacon 'iuxta numerum 60 manentium'; a monk 'secundum numerum 30 tributariorum.' Here _tributarii_ alternates with _manentes_ for the same reason that _secundum_ alternates with _iuxta_. So K. 143 (i. 173): '_manentes_ ... _casati_ ... _manentes_ ... _casati_.'

[1213] See Schmid, p. 611.

[1214] See, for instance, Werhard's testament (A.D. 832), K. 230 (i. 297): 'Otteford 100 hidas, Grauenea 32 hidas.' These are Kentish estates. Hereafter we shall give some reasons for thinking that the Kentish _sullung_ may have a history that is all its own.

[1215] Mr Seebohm, Village Community, p. 395, admits that the _familia_ of Bede and the _casatum_ of the charters is the hide, and that the hide has 120 acres. This does not prevent him from holding (p. 266) that when Bede speaks of king Oswy giving to a church twelve _possessiunculae_, each of ten families, we must see _decuriae_ of slaves, 'the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants.' He seems also to think that while the hide was 'the holding of the full free landholder,' the _hiwisc_ was the holding of a servile family. But the passage which he cites in a note (Wergilds, § 7) seems to disprove this, for there undoubtedly, as he remarks, _hiwisc_=_hide_. It is the passage quoted above on p. 359. The Welshman gets a wergild of 120 shillings (three-fifths of an English ceorl's wergild) by acquiring a _hiwisc_ or (Ine 32) _hide_ of land. Why the _hide_ should not here mean what it admittedly means elsewhere is not apparent.

[1216] Though Eyton has (for some reason that we can not find in his published works) allowed but 48 'gheld acres' to the 'gheld hide,' he can hardly be reckoned as an advocate of the Small Hide. His doctrine, if we have caught it, is that the hide has never been a measure of size. This raises the question--How comes it then that the fractions into which a hide breaks are indubitably called (gheld) 'acres'? Why not ounces, pints, pence?

§ 1. _Measures and Fields._

[Permanence and change in agrarian history.]

At the present moment there is no need for arguments which insist upon the immutable character of ancient agrarian arrangements. If we take up a map of a common field drawn in the eighteenth century, the lines that we see upon it are in the main very old. The scheme seems fashioned for the purpose of resisting change and compelling the men of one age to till the land as their fathers tilled it. Nothing but an unanimous agreement among those who are not likely to agree can break up that prison-house of cells in which agriculture has been cramped and confined. Rather, it may be, the student who is perusing the 'estate map' and who is fascinated by the possession of a new tool for picking historical locks, should warn himself that, though there has been permanence, there has also been change, and that in a far-off time changes of a certain sort came quickly. True that in the current of agricultural progress there is a rapid acceleration as it flows towards our own day. We may easily go back to an age when the introduction of a new process or new implement was rare. On the other hand, if we fix our attention on the map of any one village and contemplate its strips and balks and virgates, the hazard involved in an assumption of their antiquity will increase swiftly when we have left behind us the advent of Duke William and are urging our inferential career towards Hengest or, it may be, towards Cæsar.

[Rapidity of change in old times.]

Let us look, for example, at the changes that take place in some Essex villages during the twenty years that precede the Domesday Inquest. The following table shows them:

Villani Bordarii Servi Lord's Men's teams teams

Teidana[1217], T. R. E. 5 3 4 2 4 T. R. W. 1 17 0 3 3

Waldena[1218], T. R. E. 66 17 16 8 22 T. R. W. 46 40 20 10 22

Hame[1219], T. R. E. 32 16 3 5 8 T. R. W. 48 79 3 4 12

Benefelda[1220], T. R. E. 10 2 7 3 7 T. R. W. 9 11 4 3 4

Wimbeis[1221], T. R. E. 26 18 6 3 21 T. R. W. 26 55 0 3 15

These are but specimens of the obscure little revolutions that are being accomplished in the Essex villages. In general there has been a marked increase in the number of _bordarii_, at the expense of the villeins on the one part and the serfs on the other[1222], and this, whatever else it may represent, must tell us of a redistribution of tenements, perhaps of a process that substitutes the half-virgate for the virgate as the average holding of an Essex peasant. The jar of conquest has made such revolutions easy[1223].

[Devastation of villages.]

But, it will be said, though the 'bundles' of strips be cut in half, the main features of the field remain constant. Let us, however, look at Yorkshire, where for fifteen years an immense tract of land has been lying 'waste.' Have we any reason to believe that when agriculture slowly steals back into this desert there will be a mere restoration of the defaced map? Surely not. If for a few years an 'open field' lies waste, there will be no mere restoration. For one thing, many of the old outlines will have utterly vanished. Even if the acres were already divided by the so-called 'balks' (and we can not be sure that they always were[1224]), the balk was but a narrow strip of unploughed sward and would hardly be perceptible when the whole field was once more a sheet of grass and weeds. For another thing, new settlers would probably begin by ploughing only a small portion of the old field. It is likely enough that their measuring rod would not be even approximately equal to the rod employed in a previous century, and they would have ample opportunity for the introduction of novelties, for the substitution of three fields for two and for all that such a change implies. Now William's deliberate devastation of the north is but one final and grandiose exploit of an ancient kind of warfare. After his day agrarian history becomes more stable because invasions cease and the character of civil warfare changes. The strife between York and Lancaster, between King and Parliament, passes like a thunderstorm over the fields; it damages the crops; but that is all, and Bosworth 'Field' and Naseby 'Field' will next year be tilled in the same old way. A raid of the Danes, a feud between Angle and Saxon, was a different affair. The peasants fought. Men, women and children were sold as slaves. Also there was deliberate devastation. 'They make a wilderness and call it peace.' What else should they call it, when a foodless wilderness is the most scientific of all frontiers? Readers of the English Chronicle will doubt whether there is any village in England that has not been once, or more than once, a deserted village. And if we must reckon with war, there is famine also to be reckoned with. When in a few brief words the English Chronicler tells us that in 1043 there was mickle hunger in the land so that the sestar of corn sold for sixty pence and even more[1225], he is, like enough, telling us of a disaster which depopulated many a village and forced many a villager to bow his head for meat in those evil days[1226]. Agrarian history becomes more catastrophic as we trace it backwards.

[Village colonies.]

And, putting on one side the ravages of war and famine, we must call to mind the numerous hints that our map gives us of village colonization[1227]. Men did not make two contiguous villages at one time and call them both Hamton. Names are given to places in order that they may be distinguished from neighbouring places. So when we see two different villages, called Hamton and Other Hamton, lying next each other, we may be fairly certain that they are not of equal antiquity, and it is not unlikely that the one is the offshoot and daughter of the other[1228]. There are about one hundred and fifty Newtons and Newtowns in England. Every instance of colonization, every new settlement in the woods, gave scope for the introduction of novelties, such scope as was not to be found in after days when men stood thicker on the soil and all the best land was already tilled[1229].

[Antiquity of the three-field system.]

Therefore we must not trust a method of husbandry or a scheme of land-measures much further than we can see it. Nothing, for example, could be rasher than the assumption that the 'three-course system' of tillage was common in the England of the seventh century[1230]. We have a little evidence that it was practised in the eleventh[1231], perhaps some evidence, that it was not unknown in the ninth[1232]. But 'the two-course system' can be traced as far[1233], and seems to have been as common, if not commoner, in the thirteenth century[1234]. If on a modern map we see a village with 'trinity fields,' we must not at once decide that those who laid them out sowed two in every year, for it is well within the bounds of possibility that two were left idle[1235]. An agriculture of this kind was not unknown in the Yorkshire of the fourteenth century[1236], and indeed we read that in the eighteenth 'one crop and two fallows' was the traditional course in the open field of a Suffolk village[1237].

[Differences between the different shires.]

We have time enough on our hands. Between Domesday Book and the withdrawal of the legions lies as long an interval as that which separates the Conqueror from Mr Arthur Young. Also we have space enough on our hands. Any theory that would paint all England as plotted out for proprietary and agricultural purposes in accordance with a single pattern would be of all theories the least probable. We need not contrast Kent with Westmoreland, or Cornwall with Norfolk, for our maps seem to tell us that Somerset differed from Wiltshire and Dorset. The settlement of a heathen folk loosely banded together under a war-lord was one thing; the conquest of a new province by a Christian king who was advised by foreign bishops and had already been taught that he had land to 'book,' would be another thing. If, as seems possible, we read in Ine's laws of a 'plantation' of some parts of Somerset effected by means of large allotments made to the king's gesiths, who undertake to put tillers on the soil[1238], we must not at once infer that this is an old procedure, for it may be very new, and may have for its outcome an agrarian arrangement strikingly unlike that which existed in the heart of the older Wessex.

[New and old villages.]

Moreover there are upon the face of our map many cases which seem to tell us that in the oldest days the smallest district that bore a name was often large, and therefore that the territory which subserved a single group of homesteads was often spacious. One example we will take from Norfolk. We find a block of land that now-a-days consists of eleven parishes, namely, Wiggenhall St. Mary the Virgin, Wiggenhall St. German, Wiggenhall St. Peter, Wiggenhall St. Mary Magdalen, Tilney cum Islington, Tilney All Saints, Tilney St. Lawrence, Terrington St. Clement, Terrington St. John, Walpole St. Peter, Walpole St. Andrew[1239]. In such a case we can hardly suppose that all these villages belong to the same age, even if we are not entitled to infer that the later villages were not founded until the day for parish churches had arrived. This being so, it is highly probable that some villages were formed at all stages of the feudalizing process, and therefore that a historical account of 'the' English township, or even of 'the' English nucleated village, would of necessity be untrue. And, while this East Anglian specimen is still before us, we may notice another interesting trait. In the Marshland Fen there is a considerable tract of ground which consists of 'detached portions' of these and other villages. Each has been given a block there, a fairly rectangular block. At one point the partition is minute. A space of less than 36 acres has been cut up so that no less than six villages shall have a piece, a rectangular piece of it[1240]. It seems very possible that this fen has at some time been common ground for all these villages, and, as already said, it is in this quarter that we may perhaps find traces of something that resembled the 'marks' of Germany[1241]. The science of village morphology is still very young, and we must not be led away into any discussion of its elements; but there is the more reason why we should take to heart those warnings that it already gives us, because what we can read of hides is to be found for the more part in documents proceeding from a central power, which, for governmental and fiscal purposes, endeavours to preserve fictitious continuity and uniformity in the midst of change and variety. However, we must draw nearer to our task.

[History of measures.]

As regards land measurement, we may be fairly certain that in the days before the Norman Conquest there was little real, though much nominal uniformity. The only measures for the size of things with which nature has equipped the natural man are his limbs. For the things that he handles he uses his thumb, span, cubit, ell; for the ground upon which he walks, his foot and his pace. For large spaces and long distances he must have recourse to 'time-labour-units,' to the day's journey and the morning's ploughing. Then gradually, under the fostering care of government, steady equations are established between these units:--twelve thumbs, for instance, are to make a foot. Thus the measures for land are brought into connexion with the more delicate measures used for cloth and similar stuff. Then an attempt to obtain some standard less variable than the limb may forge a link between thumbs and grains of corn. Another device is the measuring rod. One rod will represent the arm of an average man; a longer rod may serve to mediate between the foot which is short and the acre or day's ploughing which is large. In laying out a field in such wise that it shall consist of equal pieces, each of which can be ploughed in a forenoon, we naturally use a rod. We say, for example, that to plough a strip that is 4 rods wide and 40 long is a fair day's work. For some while there is no reason why the rods employed in two neighbouring villages should be strictly or even approximately equal[1242]. Taxation is the great force that makes for standard land measures. Then a king declares how many thumbs there ought to be in the cloth-ell or cloth-yard. At a later time he actually makes cloth-ells or cloth-yards and distributes them, keeping an ultimate standard in his own palace. Thenceforward all other units tend to become mere fractions or multiples of this royal stick. The foot is a third, the thumb or inch a thirty-sixth part thereof. Five and a half cloth-measuring yards make a royal land-measuring rod. Plot out a space which is four rods by forty, you will have an acre.

[Slow growth of uniformity.]

The whole story, if ever it be told at length, will be intricate; but we believe that a general persuasion that land-measurements ought to be fixed by law and by reference to some one carefully preserved standard is much more modern than most people think. Real accuracy and the establishment of a measure that is to be common to the whole realm first emerge in connexion with the measurement of cloth and such like. There is a delightful passage in the old Scotch laws which tells us that the ell ought to contain 37 inches meted by the thumbs of three men, 'þat is to say, a mekill man and a man of messurabill statur and of a lytill man[1243].' We have somewhere read that in Germany, if a perch of fifteen feet was to be manufactured, the first fifteen people who chanced to come out of church contributed each a foot towards the construction of the standard. At an early time, however, men were trying to find some class of small things which were of a fairly invariable length and hit upon barley-corns. This seems to have happened in England before the Norman Conquest[1244]. Instead of taking the 'thoume' of 'a man of messurabill statur' for your inch, you are to take three barley-corns, 'iii bear cornys gud and chosyn but tayllis (i.e. without the tails)'[1245]. But the twelfth century was drawing to an end before any decisive step was taken to secure uniformity even in the measurement of cloth. In Richard I.'s day guardians of weights and measures are to be appointed in every county, city and borough; they are to keep iron _ulnae_[1246]. At this time or a little later these _ulnae_, ells or cloth-yards were being delivered out by a royal officer to all who might require them, and that officer had the custody of the ultimate standards[1247]. We may doubt whether the laws which require in general terms that there shall be one measure throughout the realm had measures of land in view[1248]. A common standard is not nearly as necessary in this case as it is in the case of cloth. Even in our own day men do not buy land by the acre or the perch in the same sense as that in which they buy cloth or cotton by the yard. Very rarely will anyone name a price for a rood and leave it to the other bargainer to decide which out of many roods shall be included in the sale. Nevertheless, the distribution of iron _ulnae_ was important. An equation was established between the cloth measure and the land measure: five-and-a-half _ulnae_ or cloth-yards make one royal perch. After this we soon find that land is occasionally measured by the iron _ulna_ of the king[1249].

[Superficial measure.]

The scheme of computation that we know as 'superficial measure' was long in making itself part of the mental furniture of the ordinary man. Such terms as 'square rod' and 'square mile' were not current, nor such equations as that which tells us how 144 square inches make a square foot. Whatever may have been the attainments of some cloistered mathematicians, the man of business did not suppose that he could talk of size without talking of shape, and indeed a set of terms which speak of shapeless size is not very useful until men have enough of geometry and trigonometry to measure spaces that are not rectangular parallelograms. The enlightened people of the thirteenth century can say that if an acre is _x_ perches long it is _y_ perches wide[1250]. They can compare the size of spaces if all the lines be straight and all the angles right; and for them an acre is no longer of necessity ten times as long as it is broad. But they will not tell us (and they do not think) that an acre contains _z_ 'square perches.' This is of some importance to students of Domesday Book. Very often the size of a tract of land is indicated by the length of two lines:--The wood or the pasture is _x_ leagues (furlongs, perches, feet) in length and _y_ in breadth. Now, to say the least, we are hasty if we treat this as a statement which gives us size without shape. It is not all one to say that a wood is a league long and a league wide and to say that it is two leagues long and half a league wide. The jurors are not speaking of superficial content, they are speaking of length and breadth, and they are either giving us the extreme diameters of the irregularly shaped woods and pastures, or (and this seems more probable) they are making rough estimates of mean diameters. If we go back to an earlier time, the less we think of 'superficial measure' the better[1251].

[The modern system.]

Let us recall the main features of our modern system, giving them the names that they bore in medieval Latin.

_Linear Measure._

12 inches (_pollices_)=1 foot (_pes_); 3 feet=1 yard (_ulna_); 5·5 yards=1 rod, pole, perch (_virga_, _pertica_, _perca_); 40 perches=1 furlong (_quarentina_); 8 furlongs=1 mile (_mille_); 12 furlongs=1 _leuua_, _leuca_, _leuga_ (league)[1252].

_Superficial Measure._

144 square inches=1 square foot; 9 square feet=1 square yard; 30·25 square yards=1 square perch; 40 square perches=1 rood; 4 roods=1 acre[1253].

In the thirteenth century these outlines are already drawn; but, as we have seen, if we are to breathe the spirit of the time, we ought to say (while admitting that acres may be variously shaped) that the normal acre is 4 perches in width and 40 perches (=1 furlong) in length. The only other space that we need consider is the quarter of an acre, our rood. That ought to be 1 perch in width and 1 furlong (=40 perches) in length. The breadth of the acre is still known to all Englishmen, for it is the distance between the wickets.

[The ancient elements of land measure.]

This system has been generated by the corelation of cloth-measures and land-measures. If we are going back to remote times, we must expel the cloth-measures as intruders. What then is left is very simple; it is this:--the human foot, a day's ploughing and a measuring stick which mediates between feet and acres. That stick has had many names. Our arithmetic books preserve three, 'rod, pole or perch'; it has also been known as a _gād_ or _goad_ and a _lug_: but probably its oldest name is _yard_ (_gyrd_). It is of some importance that we should perceive that our modern yard of three feet is not one of the very ancient land-measures. It is a 'cloth-yard' not a land-yard. In medieval documents the Latin name for it is _ulna_[1254], and probably the oldest English name for it is _eln_, _elle_, _ell_. There seems to have been a shifting of names. The measuring rod that was used for land had so many names, such as _perch_, _rod_, _pole_, _goad_, _lug_, that it could afford, if we may so speak, to dispense with the additional name of _yard_, which therefore might stand for the much shorter rod that was used by the clothiers. However, even in our own century men have been speaking of 'yards of land' in a manner which implies that at one time a yard, when mentioned in this context, was the same thing as the perch. When they have spoken of a 'yard of land' they have meant sometimes a quarter of an acre (our rood) and sometimes a much larger space. In 1820 a 'yard of land' means, we are told, a quarter of an acre in Wiltshire, while in Buckinghamshire it stands for a tract which varies from 28 to 40 acres[1255]. This last application of the term we shall consider by and by. A yard of land or rood of land (_rood_ and _rod_ are all one) is a quarter of an acre, because an acre is four rods or 'yards' or perches in width, and, when an acre is to be divided, it is always, and for a very good reason, divided by lines parallel to its long sides. So though the rood or yard of land may in course of time take other shapes and even become a shapeless size, it ought to be a rod or 'yard' in width and forty rods or one furlong in length.

[The German acre.]

So we start with the human foot, the day's ploughing and a rod. How much borrowing there has been in this matter by race from race is an obscure question. For example, the mediation of a rod between the foot and the day's work is common to the Roman and the Germanic systems. Here the similarity ends, and the vast differences which begin seem to have exceedingly deep roots. We can not be content with saying that the Roman puts two oxen in the plough and therefore draws short furrows, whereas the German puts eight oxen and draws long furrows. There seems to be a radical disagreement between them as to what a plough should be and what a plough should do[1256]. To these matters we can make but the slightest reference, nor dare we touch the problems of Celtic history. Somehow or another the Germans come to the rule that generally an acre or day's work should be four rods wide and, if possible, about forty rods long[1257].

[English acres.]

[Small acres.]

It is very probable that in England this rule prevailed at a remote time. Throughout the middle ages and on to our own day there have been many 'acres' in England which swerved markedly from what had become the statutory type, and in some cases a pattern divergent from the statutory pattern became 'customary' in a district. But apparently these customary acres commonly agree with the royal standard in involving the equation: 1 acre = 4 perches x 40 perches[1258]. In Domesday Book and thence onwards the common Latin for _furlong_ is _quarentina_, and this tells us of furrows that are forty perches long. It is when we ask for the number of feet in a perch that we begin to get various answers, and very various they are. The statutory number, the ugly 16·5, looks like a compromise[1259] between 15 and 18, both of which numbers seem to have been common in England and elsewhere. This is the royal equation in the thirteenth century; it has been found near the middle of the twelfth[1260]; more at present we cannot say. Short perches and small acres have been very common in the south of England. In 1820 some information about the customary acre was collected[1261]:--In Bedfordshire it was 'sometimes 2 roods.' In Dorsetshire 'generally 134 [instead of 160] perches.' In Hampshire, 'from 107 to 120 perches, but sometimes 180,' In Herefordshire, 'two-thirds of a statute acre,' but 'of wood, an acre and three-fifths or 256 perches.' In Worcestershire, 'sometimes 132 or 141 perches.' In Sussex, '107, 110, 120, 130 or 212 perches'; '_short acre_, 100 or 120 perches'; '_forest acre_, 180 perches,' Then as to rods, the 'lug or goad' of Dorsetshire had 15 ft. 1 in.; in Hertfordshire, 20 feet; in Wiltshire, 15 or 16-1/2 or 18. The wide prevalence of rods of 15 feet can not be doubted, and it seems possible that rods with as few as 12 feet have been in use[1262]. An acre raised from a 12 foot rod would, if feet were invariable, be little more than half our modern statute acre. Nowhere do we see any sure trace of a rod so short as the Roman _pertica_ of ten _pedes_, though the scribes of the land-books will give the name _pertica_ to the English _gyrd_[1263].

[Large acres.]

In northern districts the 'customary' acre grows larger. In Lincolnshire it is said to be '5 roods, particularly for copyhold land'; but small acres were known there also[1264]. In Staffordshire, 'nearly 2-1/4 acres.' In Cheshire, 'formerly and still in some places 10,240 square yards' (pointing to a rod of 24 feet). In Westmoreland, '6760 square yards' (pointing to a rod of 19-1/2 feet), also the so-called 'Irish acre' of 7840 square yards (pointing to a rod of 21 feet). There is much evidence that rods of 20 and 21 feet were often used in Yorkshire and Derbyshire. Rods of 18, 19-1/2, 21, 22-1/2 and 24 feet were known in Lancashire. A writer of the thirteenth century speaks as if rods of 16, 18, 20, 22 and 24 feet were in common use, and mentions none shorter[1265]. As just said, the Irish plantation acre was founded on a rod of 21 feet. The Scotch acre also is larger than the English; it would contain about 6150·4 instead of 4840 of our square yards; it is formed from a rod of 6 Scotch ells. On the other hand, the acres which have prevailed in Wales seem to be small; one type had 4320 of our square yards, another 3240.

[Anglo-Saxon rods and acres.]

There has been variety enough. Even if the limits of variation are given by rods of 12 and 24 feet, this will enable one acre to be four times as large as another. Whether before the twelfth century there was anything that we ought to call a standard rod, a royal rod for all England, must be very doubtful. In royal and other land-books references are made to furlongs, to acre-breadths, to yards or rods or perches, and to feet as to known measures of length[1266], but whether a kingly gift is always measured by a kingly rod we do not know. The Carolingian emperors endeavoured to impose a rod upon their dominions; it seems to have been considerably shorter than our statute perch[1267]. In this province we need not expect many Norman novelties. We see from Domesday Book that the Frenchmen introduced the ancient Gallic _arpentum_[1268] as a measure for vineyards[1269]; but most of the vines were of their own planting, and the mere fact that they used this measure only for the vineyards seems to tell us that they were content with English rods and English acres[1270]. In Normandy the perches seem to have ranged upwards from 16 to 25 feet[1271]; so that 16·5 would not have hit the average. On the whole, our perch seems to speak of a king whose interests and estates lay in southern England and who struck a mean between 15 and 18. Whoever he was, we owe him no thanks for the 'undecimal' element that taints our system[1272].

[Customary acres and forest acres.]

But we must be cautious in drawing inferences from loose reports about 'customary' measures. Village maps and village fields have yet to be seriously studied. We may in the meanwhile doubt whether in some districts to which the largest acres are ascribed, such acres are normal or are drawn in the oldest villages. We may suspect them of being 'forest acres.' If once a good many of these abnormal units are distributed in a district, they will by their very peculiarity attract more than their fair share of attention and will be spoken of as characteristic of that district. In Germany, as well as in England, we find forest acres which are much larger than common acres and are meted by a rod which is longer than the common rod[1273]. Possibly men have found a long rod convenient when they have large spaces to measure, but we fancy that the true explanation would illustrate the influence exercised by taxation on systems of measurement. Some scheme of allotment or colonization is being framed; an equal tribute is to be reserved from the allotted acres. If, however, there is uncleared woodland to be distributed, rude equity, instead of changing the tribute on the acre, changes the acre's size and uses a long rod for land that can not at once be tilled[1274]. Also fields that were plotted out by Normans were likely to have large acres, and as the perches of Normandy seem to have been longer than most of the perches that were used in France, we may perhaps infer that the Scandinavian rods were long and find in them an explanation of the big acres of northern England. But at present such inferences would be precarious.

[The acre and the day's work.]

Whether in its origin the land-measuring rod is a mere representative of a certain number of feet or is some instrument useful for other purposes seems to be dubious. One of the names that it has borne in English is _goad_; but most of our rods would be extravagantly long goads[1275]. Possibly the width of four oxen yoked abreast has exercised some influence upon its length[1276]. When a rod had once found acceptance, it must speedily have begun to convert that 'time-labour-unit,' the acre, into a measured space. Already in the land-books we read of acres of meadow[1277]; this is no longer a contradiction in terms. Still there can be no doubt that our acre, like the _jurnale_, _Tagwerk_, _Morgen_ of the Continent, has at its root the tract that can be ploughed in a day, or in a forenoon:--in the afternoon the oxen must go to the pasture[1278]. Now, when compared with their foreign cousins, our statute perch is a long rod and our statute acre is a decidedly large 'day-work-unit[1279].' It seems to tell of plentiful land, sparse population and poor husbandry. This is of some importance. There is a good deal of evidence pointing to the conclusion that, whereas in the oldest days men really ploughed an acre in a forenoon, the current of agricultural progress made for a while towards the diminution of the space that was covered by a day's labour. In Ælfric's dialogue the ploughman complains that each day he must till 'a full acre or more[1280].' His successor, the poetic Piers, had only a half-acre to plough[1281]. In monastic cartularies which come from southern counties, where we have no reason to suspect exceptionally large acres, the villein seems often to plough less than an acre[1282]. Then that enlightened agriculturist, Walter of Henley, enters upon a long argument to prove to his readers that you really can plough seven-eighths of an acre in a forenoon, and even a whole acre if you are but engaged in that light kind of ploughing which does for a second fallowing[1283]. Five centuries later another enlightened agriculturist, Arthur Young, discovered that 'from North Leach, through Gloucestershire, Monmouthshire, and Glamorganshire, light and middling turnip-land etc.' was being ploughed at the rate of half an acre to one acre a day by teams of 'eight oxen; never less than six; or four and two horses.' This, he says, was being done 'merely in compliance with the obstinacy of the low people,' for 'the labourers will not touch a plough without the usual number of beasts in it[1284]'. Mr Young could not tell us of 'these vile remnants of barbarity without a great degree of disgust[1285]'. But we are grateful. We see that an acre of light land was the maximum that these 'low people' with their eight oxen would plough in a day, and we take it that at one time the voice of reforming science had urged men to diminish the area ploughed in a given time, to plough deeper and to draw their furrows closer. The old tradition was probably well content with a furrow for every foot. Walter of Henley proposed to put six additional furrows into the acre[1286]. Hereafter we shall see that some of the statistics given by Domesday Book fall in with the suggestion that we are here making. Also we may see on our maps that the strip which a man has in one place is very often not an acre but a half-acre. Now, in days when men really ploughed an acre at a stretch, such an arrangement would have involved a waste of time, since, when the morning's work was half done, the plough would be removed from one 'shot' to another[1287].

[The real acres in the fields.]

At length we reach the fields, and at once we learn that there is something unreal in all our talk of acre and half-acre strips. In passing we may observe that some of our English meadows which show by their 'beds' that they were not always meadows, seem to show also that the boundaries of the strips were not drawn by straight rods, but were drawn by the plough. The beds are not straight, but slightly sinuous, and such, it is said, is the natural course of the old plough; it swerves to the left, and this tendency is then corrected by those who guide it[1288]. But, apart from this, land refuses to be cut into parallelograms each of which is 40 rods long and 4 wide. In other words, the 'real acres' in an open field diverge widely from the ideal acre that was in the minds of those who made them.

[The 'shots.']

Let us recall a few features of the common field, though they will be familiar to all who have read Mr Seebohm's book[1289]. A natural limit to the length of the furrow is set by the endurance of oxen. From this it follows that even if the surface that lies open is perfectly level and practically limitless, it will none the less be broken up into what our Latin documents call _culturae_[1290]. The _cultura_ is a set of contiguous and parallel acre-strips; it tends to be a rude parallelogram; two of its sides will be each a furlong ('furrowlong') in length, while the length of the other sides will vary from case to case. We commonly find that every great field (_campus_) is divided into divers _culturae_, each of which has its own name. The commonest English equivalent for the word _cultura_ seems to have been _furlong_, and this use of _furlong_ was very natural; but, as we require that term for another purpose, we will call the _cultura_ a _shot_. So large were the fields, that the annual value of an acre in one shot would sometimes be eight times greater than that of an acre in another shot[1291]. To such differences our ancestors were keenly alive. Hence the dispersion of the strips which constitute a single tenement.

[Delimitation of shots.]

But to make 'shots' which should be rectangular and just 40 feet long was often impossible. Even if the surface of the field were flat, its boundaries were the irregular curves drawn by streams and mounds. In order to economize space, shots running at right angles to other shots were introduced, and of necessity some furlongs were longer than others. If, however, as was often the case, men were laying out their fields among the folds of the hills, their acres would be yet more irregular both in size and in shape. They would be compelled to make very small shots, and the various furrows if 'produced' (in the geometer's sense of that word) would cut each other at all imaginable angles. On the maps we may still see them struggling with these difficulties, drawing as many rectilinear shots as may be and then compelled to parcel out as best they can the irregularly shaped patches that remain. And then we see that even these patches have been allotted either as acres or as half-acres.

[The real and the ideal acre.]

Therefore, when we are dealing with medieval documents, we have always to remember that besides ideal acres there were real acres which were mapped out on the surface of the earth, and that a plot will be, and rightly may be, called an acre though its size is not that of any ideal acre. To tell a man that one of these acre-strips was not an acre because it was too small would at one time have been like telling him that his foot was no foot because it fell short of twelve inches. This point is made very plain by some of the beautiful estate maps edited by Mr Mowat[1292]. We have a map of 'the village of Whitehill in the parishe of Tackley in the countye Oxon., the moitye or one halfe whereof belongeth to the presidente and schollers of Corpus christi colledge in the universitye of Oxon., the other moitye unto Edwarde Standerd yeoman the particulars whereof soe far as knowne doe plainelye appeare in the platte and those which are unknowne, as wastes comons and lotte meadowes are equallye divided betweene them, drawne in November anno domini 1605, regni regis Iacobi iijº.' We see four great fields divided first into shots and then into strips. Each strip on the map bears an inscription assigning it either to the college or to Mr Standerd, and with great regularity the strips are assigned to the college and to Standerd alternately. Then on each strip is set its 'estimated' content, and on each strip of the college land is also set its true content. Thus looking at one particular shot in the South Field we read:

ij. ac. coll. 1. 1. 36 Edw. Stand. ij. ac. ij. ac. coll. 1. 2. 2 Edw. Stand. ij. ac. ij. ac. coll. 1. 2. 2 Edw. Stand. ij. ac. ij. ac. coll. 1. 0. 39.

This means that, going along this shot, we first come to a two-acre-strip of college land containing by admeasurement 1 A. 1 R. 36 P.; next to a two-acre strip of Standerd's land, which the surveyor, who was making the map for the college, was not at pains to measure; then to a two-acre strip of college land containing 1 A. 2 R. 2 P.:--and so forth. Then in the margin of the map has been set 'A note of the contentes of the landes in Whitehille belonginge to the colledge.' It tells us how 'theire groundes in the West Fielde by estimation 80 acres doe conteine by statute measure 48 A. 2 R. 24 P.' The other fields we may deal with in a table

A. A. R. P. East Field estimation 75 measure 51 1 25 Middle Field 58 39 3 36 South Field 103 59 2 13

It will be seen at once that the discrepancy between the two sets of figures is not to be fully explained by the supposition that at Whitehill men had measured land by measures differing from our statutory standards[1293]. The size of a 'two-acres' (and the land in this instance had been divided chiefly into 'two-acres') varied not only from field to field and shot to shot, but within one and the same shot. Each two-acre strip has an equal breadth, but the curving boundaries of the fields make some strips longer than others[1294].

[Varying size of the acres.]

We turn to the admirable maps of Heyford in Oxfordshire designed in 1606. Here the land is divided among many occupiers and cut up into a vast number of strips, to each of which is assigned its 'estimated' and its measured content. Thus we read:--

dim. ac. Jo. Sheres 1. 18 dim. ac. Ric. Elkins 1. 18 dim. ac. Jo. Merry 1. 18.

In this part of this shot a 'half-acre' contains 1 R. 18 P. Some of the shots in this village have fairly straight and rectangular boundaries, so that we may, for example, find that many successive 'half-acres' contain 1 R. 18 P. But then if we pass to the next shot we shall find 1 R. 28 P. in the 'half-acre,' while in a third shot we shall find but 1 R. 8 P. Yet every strip of land is a 'half-acre' or an 'acre' or a 'acre and a half' or a 'two acres' or a 'three acres.' We see further that when 'acres' occur among 'half-acres' the strips vary in breadth but not in length.

On a map of Roxton made in 1768 we have the same thing written out in English words. Thus:--

Eliz. Gardner a half 0. 1. 32 Carpenter a half 0. 1. 32 Harris an acre 0. 3. 24 Carpenter a half 0. 1. 32 Jam. Gardner an acre 0. 3. 24 Makepace a half 0. 1. 34

The result of all this is that anyone who lives in a village knows how many 'acres' its fields contain. He has not to measure anything; he has only to count strips, for he is not likely to confuse 'acres' with 'half-acres' and that is the only mistake that he could make.

[Irregular length of acres.]

If a shot had a curved boundary, little or no pains seem to have been taken to equalize the strips that lay within it by making additional width serve as a compensation for deficient length. The width of the so-called acre remained approximately constant while its length varied. Thus, to take an example from the map of Heyford, we see a shot which is bounded on the one side by a straight line and on the other by a curving road. At one end of it the acre contains 2 R. 8 P.; this increases to 2 R. 30 P.; then slowly decreases until it has fallen as low as 1 R. 36 P., and then again rises to 2 R. 2 P. When they were dividing the field, men attempted to map out shots in which approximately equal areas could be constructed; but, when a shot was once delimited, then all the acres in it were made equally broad, while their length could not but vary, except in the rare case in which the shot was a true rectangle[1295].

[The selions or beds.]

It is probable that the whole system was made yet more visible by the practice of ploughing the land into 'beds' or ridges, which has but recently fallen out of use. In our Latin documents these ridges appear as selions (_seliones_). In English they were called 'lands,' for the French _sillon_ struck no root in our language. Anyone who has walked through English grass fields will know what they looked like, for they triumph over time and change[1296]. Now it would seem that a fairly common usage made four selions in each acre[1297]; in other words, each acre-strip was divided longitudinally into four waves, so that the distance from crest to crest or trough to trough was a perch in length. Where this usage obtained, you could tell how many acres a shot or field contained by merely observing the undulations of the surface. Even if, as was often the case, the number of selions in the acre was not four, still the number that went to an acre of a given shot would be known, and a man might argue that a strip was an acre because in crossing it he traversed three or six terrestrial waves[1298].

[Acres divided lengthwise.]

If we look at old maps, we soon see that when an acre was divided, it was always divided by a line that was parallel, not to its short ends, but to its long sides. No one would think of dividing it in any other fashion. Suppose that you bisected it by bisecting its long sides, you would force each owner of a half-acre to turn his plough as often as if he had a whole acre. Besides, you would have uneconomical furrows; the oxen would be stopped before they had traversed what was regarded as the natural distance for beasts to go. Divide your acre into two long strips, then your folk and beasts can plough in the good old way. Hence it follows that when men think of dividing an acre they speak only of its breadth. Hence it follows that the quarter of an acre is a 'rood' or 'yard[1299]' or _virga_ or _virgata_ of land. Its width is a rod or land-yard, and its length--but there is no need to speak of its length[1300].

[The virgate.]

How then does it happen that these terms 'virgate' and 'yard of land,' though given to a quarter of an acre, are yet more commonly given to a much larger quantity containing 30 acres or thereabouts? The explanation is simple. The typical tenement is a hide. If you give a man a quarter of a hide (an equitable quarter, equal in value as well as extent to every remaining quarter) you do this by giving him a quarter of every acre in the hide. You give him a rood, a yard, a _virga_[1301], a _virgata_ in every acre, and therefore a rood, a yard, a _virga_, a _virgata_ of a typical tenement[1302].

[The double meaning of a yard.]

No doubt it is clumsy to have only one term for two quantities, one of which is perhaps a hundred-and-twenty times as great as the other; but the context will tell us which is meant, and the difference between the two is so large that blunders will be impossible. In course of time there will be a differentiation and specification of terms. To our ears, for example, _rōd_ (_rood_) will mean one thing, _rŏd_ another, _yard_ a third; but even in the nineteenth century royal commissioners will report that a 'yard of land' may mean a quarter of an acre or 'from 28 to 40 acres[1303].' When men have not apprehended 'superficial measure' (the measurement of shapeless size), when their only units are the human foot, a rod, an average day's work and the tenement of a typical householder, their language will be poor, because their thought is poor.

[The yard-land a fraction of a hide.]

We have now arrived at a not insignificant truth. The virgate or yard-land of 30 acres or thereabouts is not a primary unit like the hide, the rod, the acre. It is derivative; it is compound. In its origin it is a rod's breadth in every acre of a hide. In course of time in this case, as in other cases, size will triumph over shape. The acre need not be ten times as long as it is broad; the virgate need not be composed, perhaps is rarely composed, of scattered quarter-acres; quartering acres is an uneconomical process; it leads to waste of time. But still the term will carry on its face the traces of an ancient history and a protest against some modern theories. The virgate in its inception can not be a typical tenement; it is a fraction of a typical tenement.

[The yard-land in laws and charters.]

What we have here been saying seems to be borne out by the Anglo-Saxon laws and charters. They barely recognize the existence of such entities as yard-lands or virgates. The charters, it must be confessed, deal with large tracts and seldom have need to notice less than a hide. When, however, they descend below the hide, they at once come down to the acre, and this although the quantity that they have to specify is 90, or 60 or 30 acres[1304]. On the other hand, any reference to such an unit as the virgate or yard-land is exceedingly rare. To judge by the charters, this is a unit which was but beginning to force itself upon men's notice in the last century before the Conquest[1305]. From a remote time there may have been many tenements that were like the virgates or yard-lands of later days; but the old strain of language that is preserved in the charters ignores them, has no name for them, and, when they receive a name, it signifies that they are fractions of a householder's tenement.

[The hide not at first a measure.]

As an unit larger than the acre men have known nothing but the hide, the manse, the land of one family, the land of one householder. This is what we find in England: also it is found in Germany and Scandinavia[1306]. The state bases its structure, its taxation, its military system, upon the theory that such units exist and can be fairly treated as equal or equivalent. This theory must have facts behind it, though in course of time the state may thrust it upon lands that it will not fit, for example, upon a land of ring-fenced property where there is no approximate equality between the various tenements. In its origin a hide will not be a measure of land. A measure is an idea; a hide is a tenement. The 'foot' does not begin by being twelve inches; it begins by being a part of the human body. The 'acre' does not begin by being 4840 square yards; it begins by being a strip in the fields that is ploughed in a forenoon. But unless there were much equality between human feet, the foot would not become a measure; nor would the acre become a measure unless the method of ploughing land were fairly uniform. A great deal of similarity between the 'real' hides or 'householder's lands' we must needs suppose if the hide becomes a measure; not only must those in any one village be much alike, there must be similarity between the villages.

[The hide as a measure.]

After a certain sort the hide does become a measure. Bede does not believe that if the families in the Isle of Wight were counted, the sum would be just 1200. The Anglo-Saxon kings are giving away half-hides or half-manses as well as manses or hides. They can speak of three hides and thirty acres[1307] or of two hides less sixty acres[1308]. Men are beginning to work sums in hides and acres as they work sums in pounds and pence. Indubitably such sums are worked in Domesday Book. In the thirteenth century the hide can even be treated as a pure superficial measure. An instance is given by an 'extent' of the village of Sawston in Cambridgeshire. The content of about two hundred small parcels of land is given in terms of acres and roods. Then an addition sum is worked and a total is stated in hides, virgates and acres, the equation that is employed being 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. It is a remarkable case, because the area, not only of arable land, but of meadows, pasture, crofts, gardens and messuages is added up into hides. The hide is here a pure measure, a mere multiple of acres[1309]. The men who made this 'extent' could have spoken of a hide of cloth. But this seems a rare and it is a late instance. At an earlier time the hide is conceived as consisting only of arable acres with appurtenances.

[The hide as a measure of arable.]

A word to explain this conception. In very old times when men thought of land as the subject-matter of grants and taxes they spoke only of arable land[1310]. If we are to understand their sayings and doings, we must think ourselves into an economic arrangement very different from that in which we are now immersed. We must well-nigh abolish buying and selling. Every village, perhaps every hide, must be very nearly self-sufficient. Now when once population has grown so thick that nomadic practices are forsaken, the strain of supporting mankind falls almost wholly on the ploughed land. That strain is severe. Many acres feed few people. Thus the arable becomes prominent. But further, arable implies pasture. This is not a legal theory; it is a physical fact. A householder can not have arable land unless he has pasture rights. Arable land is land that is ploughed; ploughing implies oxen; oxen, pasture. Our householder can not use a steam-plough; what is more, he can not buy hay. If he keeps beasts, they must eat. If he does not keep beasts, he has no arable land. Lastly, as a general rule men do not possess pasture land in severalty; they turn out their beasts on 'the common of the vill.' Therefore, in very old schemes of taxation and the like, pasture land is neglected: not because it is unimportant, but because it is indispensably necessary. It may be taken for granted. If a man has 120 acres of arable land, he must have adequate pasture rights; there must be in Domesday's language _pastura sufficens carucis_. And in the common case there will be not much more than sufficient pasture. If there were, it would soon be broken up to provide more corn. Every village must be self-supporting, and therefore an equilibrium of arable and pasture will be established in every village. Thus if, for fiscal and governmental purposes, there is to be a typical tenement, it may be a tenement of _x_ arable acres, and nothing need be said of any other kind of ground.

[Sidenote: The hide of 120 acres.]

We are going to argue that the Anglo-Saxons give 120 acres, arable acres, to the hide. Our main argument will be that the equation 1 H. = 120 A. is implied in the fiscal system revealed by Domesday Book. But, by way of making this equation probable, we may notice that, if we had no evidence later than the Conquest, all that we should find on the face of the Anglo-Saxon land-books would be favourable to this equation. In the first place, on the only occasion on which we hear of the content of a hide, it is put at 120 acres[1311]. In the second place, when a number of acres is mentioned, it is commonly one of those numbers, such as 150, 90, 80, 60, 30, which will often occur if hides of 120 acres are being partitioned[1312]. The force of this last remark may seem to be diminished if we remember how excellent a dividend is 120. It is neatly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12. But then we must reflect that this very quality recommended it to organizers, more especially as there were 240 pence in the pound.

[Real and fiscal hides.]

Supposing for a moment that we bring home this equation to the Anglo-Saxon financiers, there would still remain the question how far it truthfully represented agrarian facts. To that question no precise answer can be given: the truth lies somewhere between two extremes. We must not for one instant believe that England was so neat a chess-board as a rude fiscal theory paints, where every pawn stands on its square, every 'family' in the centre of 120 acre-strips of 4 by 40 perches. The barbarian, for all his materialism, is an idealist. He is, like the child, a master in the art of make-believe. He sees things not as they are, but as they might conveniently be. Every householder has a hide; every hide has 120 acres of arable; every hide is worth one pound a year; every householder has a team; every team is of eight oxen; every team is worth one pound. If all this be not so, then it ought to be so and must be deemed to be so. Then by a Procrustean process he packs the complex and irregular facts into his scheme. What is worse, he will not count. He will assume that a large district has a round 1200 hides, and will then ordain that those hides must be found. We see this on a small scale if we study manorial 'extents' or village maps. The virgates are not equal; the acres are far from equal; but they are deemed to be equal[1313]. Nevertheless, we must stop short of the other extreme or we shall be over-estimating the power of such government and the originality of such statesmanship as existed. Theories like those of which we are speaking are born of facts and in their turn generate new facts. Our forefathers really lived in a simpler and a more chess-board-like England than that which we know. There must have been much equality among the hides and among the villages. When we see that a 'hundred' in Cambridgeshire has exactly 100 hides which are distributed between six vills of 10 hides apiece and eight vills of 5 hides apiece, this simple symmetry is in part the unreal outcome of a capricious method of taxation, but in part it is a real economic fact. There was an English conquest of England, and, to all seeming, the conquest of eastern England was singularly thorough. In all probability a great many villages were formed approximately at one time and on one plan. Conveniently simple figures could be drawn, for the slate was clean[1314].

[Causes of divergence of fiscal from real hides.]

However, at an early time the hide becomes an unit in a system of assessment. The language of the land-books tells us that this is so[1315]. Already in Ine's day we hear of the amount of victual that ten hides must find for the king's support[1316]. About the end of the tenth century the duty of maintaining burgs is bound up with the possession of hides[1317]. Before the end of that century heavy sums are being raised as a tribute for the Danes. For this purpose, as we shall try to show hereafter, 'hides' are cast upon shires and hundreds by those who, instead of counting, make pleasantly convenient assumptions about the capacity of provinces and districts, and in all probability the assumptions made in the oldest times were the furthest from the truth. Now and again the assessments of shires and hundreds were corrected in a manner which, so far as we are concerned, only made matters worse. It becomes apparent that hides are not of one value or nearly of one value. This becomes painfully apparent when Cornwall and other far western lands are brought under contribution. So large sums of hides are struck off the poorer counties. The fiscal 'hide' becomes a lame compromise between an unit of area and an unit of value. Then privilege confounds confusion; the estates of favoured churches and nobles are 'beneficially hidated.' But this is not all. Probably the real hides, the real old settlers' tenements, which you could count if you looked at a village and its fields, are rapidly going to pieces, and the fragments thereof are entering into new combinations. In the lordless villages economic forces of an easily imaginable kind will make for this end. Not only may we suppose some increase of population, especially where Danes swarm in, and some progress in the art of agriculture, but also the bond of blood becomes weaker and the _familia_ that lives in one house grows smaller. So the hides go to pieces. The birth of trade and the establishment of markets help this process. It is no longer necessary that every tenement should be self-sufficient; men can buy what they do not grow. The formation of manors may have tended in some sort to arrest this movement. A system of equal (theoretically equal) tenements was convenient to lords who were collecting 'provender rents' and extending their powers; but under seignorial pressure virgates, rather than hides, were likely to become the prominent units. We may well believe that if to make two ears of corn grow where one grew is to benefit mankind, the lords were public benefactors, and that the husbandry of the manors was more efficient than was that of the lordless townships. The clergy were in touch with their fellows on the Continent; also the church's reeve was a professional agriculturist and might even write a tract on the management of manors[1318]. There was more cooperation, more communalism, less waste. A family could live and thrive upon a virgate[1319].

[Effects of the divergence of fiscal from real hides.]

But, what concerns us at the present moment is the, for us disastrous, effect of this divergence of the fiscal from the real hide. Even if finance had not complicated the problem, we should, as we have already seen, have found many difficulties if we tried to construe medieval statements of acreage. Already we should have had three different 'acres' to think of. We will imagine that a village has 590 'acre strips' in its field. In one sense, therefore, it has 590 acres. But the ideal to which these strips tend and were meant to conform is that of acres measured by a rod of 15 feet. Measured by that rod there would, we will suppose, be 550 acres. Then, however, we may use the royal rod and say that there are 454 acres or thereabouts. But the field was divided into five tenements that were known as hides, and the general theory is that a hide (householder's land) contains, or must be supposed to contain, 120 acres. Therefore there are here 600 acres. And now a partitionary method of taxation stamps this as a vill of four hides. Consequently the 'hide' of this village may have as many as 150 or as few as 90 'acres.' It ought not to be so. It would not be so if men were always distinguishing between 'acre strips' and measured acres, between 'real' hides (which, to tell truth, are no longer real, since they are falling to pieces) and 'fiscal' or 'geld' hides. But it will be so. Here and there we may see an effort to keep up distinctions between the 'carucate for gelding' and the 'carucate for ploughing,' between the real acre and the acre 'for defence (_acra warae_)[1320]'; but men tire of these long phrases and argue backwards and forwards between the rateable and the real. Hence some of the worst puzzles of Domesday Book[1321].

[Acreage of the hide in later days.]

Such being the causes of perplexity, it is perhaps surprising that in the thirteenth century when we begin to obtain a large stock of manorial extents, 'the hide' should still exhibit some uniformity. But, unless we have been misled by a partial induction, a tendency to reckon 120 rather than any other number of acres to the hide is plainly perceptible. The following are the equations that prevailed on the manors of Ramsey Abbey, which were scattered in the eastern midlands[1322].

_Huntingdonshire_ Upwood with Raveley 1 H. = 4 V. = 80 A. Wistow 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. Broughton 1 H. = 6-1/2 V. = 208 A. Warboys 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. Holywell 1 H. = 5 V. = 90 A. Slepe (St Ives) 1 H. = 5 V. = 80 A. Houghton with Wyton 1 H. = 6 V. = 108 A. Hemingford 1 H. = 6 V. = 96 A. Dillington 1 H. = 6 V. = 201 A. Weston 1 H. = 4 V. = 112 A. Brington 1 H. = 4 V. = 136 A. Bythorn 1 H. = 4 V. = 176 A. Gidding 1 H. = 4 V. = 112 A. Elton 1 H. = 6 V. = 144 A. Stukeley 1 H. = 4 V. = 96 A. Ripton with Remington 1 H. = 4 V. = 62 A.

_Northamptonshire_

Barnwell 1 H. = 7 V. = 252 A. Hemington 1 H. = 7 V. = 252 A.

_Bedfordshire_

Cranfield 1 H. = 4 V. = 192 A. Barton 1 H. = 4 V. = 96 A. Shitlingdon 1 H. = 4 V. = 48 A.

_Hertfordshire_

Therfield 1 H. = 4 V. = 256 A.

_Suffolk_

Lawshall 1 H. = 3 V. = 156 A.

_Norfolk_

Brancaster 1 H. = 4 V. = 160 A. Ringstead 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A.

_Cambridgeshire_

Elsworth 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. Knapwell 1 H. = 4 V. = 160 A. Graveley Freehold 1 H. = 7 V. = unknown Villeinage 1 H. = 6-3/4 V. = 135 A. Over 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. Girton 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. Burwell 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A.

Here in thirty-one instances what we take to be the normal equation appears but seven times, but no other equation occurs more than twice. Moreover, so far as we have observed, the variations in the acreage that will be ascribed to a hide are not provincial, they are villar variations: that is to say, though we may see that the average hide of one county would have more acres than those that are contained in the average hide of another, we can not affirm that the hide of a certain county or hundred contains _a_ acres, while that of another has _b_ acres, and, on the other hand, we often see a startling difference between two contiguous villages. Lastly, where the computation of 120 acres to a hide is forsaken, we see little agreement in favour of any other equation. In particular, though now and again the hide of a village will perchance have 240 acres, we can find no trace of any 'double hide' in which ingenuity might see a link between the Roman and English systems of measurement and taxation[1323]. The only other general proposition which our evidence suggests is that a land which habitually displays unusually large virgates will often be a land in which a given area of arable soil has borne an unusually light weight of taxation, and this, as we shall hereafter see, will often, though not always, be a land where a given area of arable soil has been deemed to bear an unusually small value. But this connexion between many-acred hides and light taxation is not very strongly marked in our cartularies[1324].

[The carucate and bovate.]

In the land-books which deal with Kent the _aratrum_ or _sulung_[1325] is commoner than the hide or manse, and Domesday Book shows us that in Kent the _solin_ (_sulung_) is the fiscal unit that plays the part that is elsewhere played by the hide. That same part is played in Suffolk, Norfolk, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and the counties of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester by the _carucata_, which has for its eighth part the _bovata_. These terms seem to be French: that is to say, they apparently formed no part of the official Latin that had been current in England[1326]. We may infer, however, that they translated some English, or rather perhaps some Scandinavian terms, for only in Danish counties do we find them used to describe the geldable units. It is exceedingly doubtful whether we ought to treat this method of reckoning as older than the Danish invasions. Bede, himself a Northumbrian, uses the 'family-land' as his unit, no matter what be the part of England of which he is speaking, and his translator uses the _híd_ or _hiwisc_ in the same indiscriminate fashion. Unfortunately the 'carucated' shires are those which yield us hardly any land-books, and we do not know what the English jurors said when the Norman clerks wrote _carucata_ and _bovata_: perhaps _plough-gate_ and _ox-gate_, or _plough-gang_ and _ox-gang_, or, again, a _plough of land_, for these were the vernacular words of a later age. On the whole, the little evidence that we have seems to point to the greater antiquity in England of a reckoning which takes the 'house-land' rather than the 'plough-land' as its unit[1327].

[The ox-gang.]

As to the bovate or ox-gang, it seems to be an unit only in the same sense as that in which the virgate or yard-land is an unit; the one is the eighth, the other is the fourth of an unit. That, in days when eight oxen are yoked to a plough, the eighth of a plough-gang should be called an ox-gang will not surprise us, though, as a matter of fact, an ox never 'goes' or ploughs in solitude[1328]. In our Latin documents a third part of a knight's fee will be, not _tertia pars feodi unius militis_, but far more commonly, _feodum tertiae partis unius militis_. We do not infer from this that fractions of knights, or fractions of knight's fees are older than integral knights and integral fees. The bovate seems to have been much less widely known than the carucate, for apparently it had no place in the computation that was generally used in East Anglia, where men reckoned by carucates, half-carucates and acres and where the virgate was not absolutely unknown[1329].

[The fiscal carucate.] In the financial system, as we have said, the carucate plays for some counties the part that is played for others by the hide. Fiscally they seem to be equivalent: that is to say, when every hide of Wessex is to pay two shillings, every carucate of Lincolnshire will pay that sum. We think also and shall try to show that the Exchequer reckons 120 acres to the carucate, or, in other words, that if a tenement taxed as a carucate were divided into six equal shares, each share would at the Exchequer be called 20 acres. The same forces, however, which have made the fiscal hide diverge widely from the 'real' hide have played upon the plough-gangs of the Danelaw. In the Boldon Book we read of many bovates with 15 acres apiece, though the figures 20, 13-1/2, 12-1/2, 12 and 8 are also represented, and, when we come to the extents of the thirteenth century, we seem to see in the north but a feeble tendency to any uniformity among the equations that connect carucates with acres. The numbers of the acres in a bovate given by a series of Yorkshire inquests is 7, 7, 8, 15, 12, 6, 12, 15, 15, 6, 5, 9, 10, 10, 12, 24, 4, 16, 12, 18, 8, 6, 10, 24, 32[1330]. With a bovate of 4 acres, our carucate would have no more than 32. But then, in the north we may find very long rods and very large acres[1331], and, where Danes have settled, we have the best reason to expect those complications which would arise from the superimposition of a new set of measures upon a territory that had been arranged to suit another set[1332].

[Acreage tilled by a plough.]

Having been led into speaking of plough-gangs, we may end these discursive remarks by a gentle protest against the use that is sometimes made of the statements that are found in the book called Fleta. It is a second-rate legal treatise of Edward I.'s day. It seems to have fallen dead from its author's pen and it hardly deserved a better fate. For the more part it is a poor abstract of Bracton's work. When it ceases to pillage Bracton, it pillages other authors, and what it says of ploughing appears to be derived at second hand from Walter of Henley[1333]. Now Walter of Henley's successful and popular treatise on Husbandry is a good and important book; but we must be careful before we treat it as an exponent of the traditional mode of agriculture, for evidently Walter was an enlightened reformer. We might even call him the Arthur Young of his time. Now, it is sometimes said that according to Fleta 'the carucate' would have 160 acres in 'a two course manor' and 180 in 'a three course manor.' A reference to Walter of Henley will show him endeavouring to convince the men of his time that such amounts as these really can be ploughed, if they work hard. 'Some men will tell you that a plough can not till eight score or nine score acres by the year, but I will show you that it can.' His calculation is worth repeating. It is as follows:

The year has 52 weeks. Deduct 8 for holy-days and other hindrances. There remain 44 weeks or 264 days, Sundays excluded.

_Two course._ Plough 40 acres for winter seed, 40 for spring seed and 80 for fallow (total 160) at 7/8ths of an acre per day = 182-6/7 days

Also plough by way of second fallowing 80 acres at an acre per day = 80 days -------- Total 262-6/7 days[1334].

[Walter of Henley's scheme.]

It is a strenuous and sanguine, if not an impossible, programme. When harvest time and the holy weeks are omitted, the plough is to 'go' every week-day throughout the year, despite frost and tempest. Obviously it is a programme that can only enter the head of an enthusiastic lord who has supernumerary oxen, and will know how to fill the place of a ploughman who is ill. We have little warrant for believing that what Walter hopes to do is being commonly done in his day, less for importing his projects into an earlier age. In order that he may keep his beasts up to their arduous toil, he proposes to feed them with oats during half the year[1335]. If we inferred that the Saxon invaders of England treated their oxen thus, we might be guilty of an anachronism differing only in degree from that which would furnish them with steam-ploughs. But, to come to much later days, the Domesday of St. Paul's enables us to say with some certainty that the ordinary team of eight beasts accomplished no such feats as those of which Walter speaks. For example, at Thorpe in Essex the canons have about 180 acres of arable land in demesne. These, it is estimated, can be tilled by one team of ten heads together with the ploughing service that is due from the tenants, and these tenants have to plough at least 80 acres, to wit, 40 in winter and 40 in Lent[1336]. We must observe that to till even 120 acres according to Walter's two-course plan would mean that a plough must 'go' 180 acres in every year, and that, even if it does its acre every day, more than half the week-days in the year must be devoted to ploughing. We may, however, seriously doubt whether a scheme which would plough the land thrice between every two crops had been generally prevalent[1337]. Nay, we may even doubt whether the practice of fallowing had been universal[1338]. Not unfrequently in our cartularies the villein is required to plough between Michaelmas and Christmas and again between Christmas and Lady Day, while nothing is said of his ploughing in the summer[1339]. We are only beginning to learn a little about medieval agriculture.

However, we have now said all that we had to say by way of preface to what we fear will be a dreary and inconclusive discussion of some of those abundant figures that Domesday Book supplies. A few we have endeavoured to collect in the tables which will meet the reader's eye when he turns this page, and which will be explained on later pages.

FOOTNOTES:

[1217] D. B. ii. 47 b.

[1218] Ibid. 61.

[1219] Ibid. 64.

[1220] Ibid. 65.

[1221] Ibid. 69 b.

[1222] See above, p. 35.

[1223] For this reason I do not feel sure that Mr F. Baring (Eng. Hist. Rev. xi. 98) has conclusively proved his case when he accuses D. B. of omitting to notice the free tenants on the estates of the Abbey of Burton.

[1224] The antiquity and universality of the balk must not be taken for granted; see Meitzen, op. cit. i. 86; iii. 319. However, in recent times balks did occur within the shots (this Meitzen seems to doubt) as may be seen to-day at Upton St. Leonards, Co. Gloucester. Mr Seebohm, op. cit. 4, 382, claims the word _balk_ for the Welsh; but see New Eng. Dict. and Skeat, Etymol. Dict. In this, as in many another case, the Welsh claim to an English word has broken down.

[1225] A.-S. Chron. ad ann. 1043. Henry of Huntingdon, p. 192, took the sestar of this passage to be a horse-load. Even if we accept his version, the price would be high when compared with the prices recorded on the Pipe Rolls of Henry II.; for which see Hall, Court Life, 219, 220. But, though the point can not be argued here, we may strongly suspect that the chronicler meant something that is almost infinitely worse, and that his sestar was at the very least as small as our bushel. We know of no English document which suggests a _sextarius_ that would be comparable with a horse-load.

[1226] Geatfled's will, K. 925 (iv. 263).

[1227] See above, p. 14.

[1228] Observe the clumsy nomenclature illustrated by K. 816 (iv. 164), a deed forged for the Confessor:--'Middletun et oðer Middletun ... Horningdun et oðer Horningdun ... Fifehyda et oðer Fifehyda.'

[1229] See in this context the interesting letter of Bp. Denewulf to Edward the Elder, K. 1089 (v. 166). An estate of 72 hides, a very large estate, came to the bishop almost waste. He prides himself on having now tilled 90 acres!

[1230] A good programme of this system is given by Cunningham, Growth of English Industry, i. 71.

[1231] Rectitudines, 4, § 3; Seebohm, Village Community, 141. Mr Seebohm's inference is ingenious and plausible. See also Andrews, Old English Manor, 218.

[1232] K. 259 (ii. 26), A.D. 845: Gift of 19 acres near the city of Canterbury, 6 acres in one place, 6 in another, 7 in a third.

[1233] K. 241 (ii. 1), A.D. 839: Gift of 24 acres, 10 in one place, 14 in another.--K. 339 (ii. 149), A.D. 904: Gift of 60 acres of arable to the south and 60 to the north of a certain stream.--K. 586 (iii. 118): 'and 30 æcra on ðæm twæm feldan dallandes.'

[1234] See e.g. Glastonbury Rentalia (Somerset Record Soc.) pp. 14, 15, 55, 67, 89, 119, 128-9, 137-8, 155, 166, 192, 195, 208, 219. A system which leaves half the land idle in every year is of course quite compatible with the growth of both winter and spring corn. When, as is not uncommon, the villeins have to do between Michaelmas and Christmas twice as much ploughing as they will do between Christmas and Lady Day, this seems to point to a scheme which leaves one field idle and divides the other between winter and spring corn in the proportion of 2:1. Even in the fourteenth century a three-field system seems to have been regarded in some places as 'high farming.' Larking, Domesday of Kent, App. p. 23: Extent of Addington, A.D. 1361: 'Et sunt ibidem 60 acrae terrae arabilis, de quibus duae partes possunt seminari per annum, _si bene coluntur_.' For evidence of the three-field system, see Nasse, Agricultural Community, Engl. transl. 53.

[1235] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 592.

[1236] Turton, Forest of Pickering (North Riding Record Society), 148 ff. Twenty years ago A. E. enclosed an acre; sown eight times with spring corn; value of a sown acre 1_s._, of an unsown, 4_d._ Twenty-two years ago E. C. enclosed a rood; sown seven times with oats, value 6_d._ a year; value, when unsown, 1_d._ a year. In the same book are many instances of a husbandry which alternates oats with hay.

[1237] Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields, 118, citing a Report to the Board of Agriculture.

[1238] Ine, 63-68, 70. See above, p. 238.

[1239] A very fine instance is found on the north coast of Norfolk:--Burnham Deepdale, B. Norton, B. Westgate, B. Sutton, B. Thorpe, B. Overy. As to this see Stevenson, E. H. R. xi. 304.

[1240] Index Map of Ordnance Survey of Norfolk. Six inch Map of Norfolk, LVI. Another instance occurs near Yarmouth along the banks of the Waveney. Even if the allotment was the result of modern schemes of drainage, it still might be a satisfaction of very ancient claims.

[1241] See above, p. 355.

[1242] Fines (ed. Hunter) i. 242: 'sex acras terrae mensuratas per legalem perticam eiusdem villae [de Haveresham].'

[1243] Acts of Parliament of Scotland, i. 309.

[1244] Schmid, Gesetze, App. XII.: 'three feet and three hand breadths and three barley corns.'

[1245] Acts of Parliament of Scotland, i. 309. Compare Statutes of the Realm, i. 206: 'Tria grana ordei sicca et rotunda faciunt pollicem.' This so-called Statute of Admeasurement has not been traced to any authoritative source. Probably, like many of the documents with which it is associated, it is a mere note which lawyers copied into their statute books.

[1246] Hoveden, iv. 33: 'et ulna sit ferrea.'

[1247] Britton, ii. 189.

[1248] Magna Carta is careful of wine, beer, corn and cloth; not of land.

[1249] Gloucester Corporation Records, ed. Stevenson, p. 80. Near the year 1200 a grant is made of land in Gloucester measuring in breadth 30 feet 'iuxta ferratam virgam Regis.' Ducange, s. v. _ulna_, gives examples from the Monasticon. The iron rod was an iron ell. Were standard perches ever made and distributed? Apparently the only measure of length of which any standard was made was the _ulna_ or cloth-yard.

[1250] See the apocryphal Statute of Admeasurement, Stat., vol. i. p. 206.

[1251] If the jurors had superficial measure in their heads and were stating this by reference to two straight lines, they would make the length of one of these lines a constant (e.g. one league or one furlong). This is not done: the space is 6 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth, 14 furlongs in length by 4 in breadth, 9 furlongs and 1 perch in length by 5 furlongs and 2 perches in breadth (instances from Norfolk) or the like. They are endeavouring to indicate shape as well as size. See the method of measurement adopted in K. 594 (iii. 129): 'and ðær ðæt land unbradest is ðer hit sceol beon eahtatyne fota brad.'

[1252] The league of 12 furlongs has dropped out of modern usage; it is very prominent in D. B., where miles, though not unknown, are rare.

[1253] Our foot is ·30479 meters. Our perch is very close to 5 meters. Our acre 40·467 ares. A hide of 120 acres would be 48·56 hectares.

[1254] Statutes of the Realm, i. 206: 'Tres pedes faciunt ulnam.' Though this equation gets established, the _ulna_ or cloth-yard seems to start by being an arm's length. See the story that Henry I. made his own arm a standard: Will. Malmesb. Gesta Regum., ii. 487. Britton, i. 189, tells us that the _aune_ contains two cubits and two thumbs (inches). Our yard seems too long to be a step.

[1255] Second Report of Commissioners for Weights and Measures, Parliamentary Papers, 1820, Reports, vol. vii.

[1256] As to all this see Meitzen, op. cit. i. 272 fol.

[1257] The ratio 10:1 is not the only one that is well represented in Germany. The practice of making the acre four rods wide is more universal. As we shall see below, length must take its chance.

[1258] Morgan, England under the Normans, 19.

[1259] Pollock, E. H. R. xi. 218.

[1260] Morgan, op. cit. 19, citing Monasticon, iv. 421.

[1261] Second Report of the Commissioners for Weights and Measures, Parliamentary Papers, 1820, Reports, vol. vii. The information thus obtained might have been better sifted. When it is said that a certain customary perch contains 15 feet 1 inch, these feet and inches are statute feet and statute inches. Probably this perch had exactly 15 'customary' feet. So, again, it is likely that every 'customary' acre contained 160 'customary' perches.

[1262] See below, p. 382.

[1263] Compare Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 560.

[1264] Morgan, op. cit. 22.

[1265] Anonymous Husbandry, see Walter of Henley, ed. Lamond, p. 69.

[1266] K. 296 (ii. 87): 6 _virgae_ in length and 3 in breadth.--K. 339 (ii. 149): 28 roda lang and 24 roda brad.--K. 507 (ii. 397): 12 gerda lang and 9 gerda brad.--K. 558 (iii. 229): 'tres perticas' = 'þreo gyrda.'--K. 772 (iv. 84): 12 _perticae_.--K. 787 (iv. 115): a _pertica_ and a half.--K. 814 (iv. 160): dimidiam virgam et dimidiam quatrentem.--K. 1103 (v. 199): 75 gyrda.--K. 1141 (v. 275): 6 gyrda.--K. 1087 (v. 163): 3 furlongs and 3 mete-yards = an unknown quantity + 12 yards + 13 yards + 43 yards and 6 feet + 20 yards and 6 feet + 7 yards and 6 feet + 5 yards. This charter is commended to geometers. We see, however, that the 'yard' in question is longer than 6 feet; it is connected with our perch, not with our cloth yard. Schmid, App. XII.: 3 miles, 3 furlongs, 3 acre-breadths, 9 feet, 9 hand-breadths and 9 barley-corns.

[1267] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 554. This _virga regalis_ is set down at 4·70 meters; our statute perch stands very close to 5 meters.

[1268] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 278.

[1269] Ellis, Introduction, i. 116.

[1270] The use of _quarentina_ for furlong may be due to the Normans.

[1271] Delisle, Études sur la condition de la classe agricole en Normandie, 531-2.

[1272] We find from D. B. i. 166 that there was a royal _sextarius_; but (i. 162, 238) other _sextarii_ were in use.

[1273] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 564. Thus in Köln, the Morgen is 31·72 ares, the Waldmorgen 38·06 ares. In Brunswick the Feldmorgen is 25·02 ares, the Waldmorgen 33·35 ares. So in Sussex the common acres are small; the forest acre = 180 (instead of 160) perches. So in Herefordshire the common acre is put down at two-thirds of the statute acre, but an acre of wood is more than an acre and a half of statute measure.

[1274] Registr. Honor. Richemund., Ap., p. 11, Agard says: 'In the Arrentation of Assarts of Forests made in Henry III.'s and Edward I.'s times, for forest ground the commissioners let the land _per perticam xx. pedum_,' though by this time the 16·5 foot perch was the established royal measure for ordinary purposes. In a Buckinghamshire Fine levied in John's reign (Hunter, i. 242) we find acres of land which are measured 'by the lawful perch of the vill,' while acres of wood are measured 'by the perch of the king.' Ibid. 13, 178: a perch of 20 feet was being used in the counties of Bedford and Buckingham, though Bedfordshire is notorious for small acres. The obscure processes that go on in the history of measures might be illustrated from the report cited above, p. 374, note 1261; the length of the 'customary' perch varies inversely with the difficulty of the work to be done. In Herefordshire a perch of fencing was 21 feet, a perch of walling 16·5. And so forth.

[1275] Morgan, op. cit. 27, suggests a double goad. The _g[=a]d_ of modern Cambridgeshire has been a stick 9 feet long; but the surveyor put eight into the acre-breadth, reckoning two of these _g[=a]ds_ to the customary pole of 18 feet. See Pell, in Domesday Studies, i. 276, 296. A rod that is 18 feet long is a clumsy thing and perhaps for practical purposes it has been cut in half. Meitzen, op. cit., i. 90: Two hunting-spears would make a measuring rod. See also Hanssen, Abhandlungen, ii. 210.

[1276] Seebohm, op. cit. 119. Welsh evidence seems to point this way.

[1277] K. 529 (iii. 4): '12 æceras mædwa.'--K. 549 (iii. 33).--K. 683 (iii. 263).

[1278] When Walter of Henley, p. 8, is making his calculations as to the amount of land that can be ploughed in a day, he assumes that the work will be over a _noune_. The 'by three o'clock' of his translator is too precise and too late. At whatever hour nones should have been said, the word _noon_ became our name for twelve o'clock. See also Seebohm, op. cit. 124.

[1279] Meitzen, op. cit., ii. 565. The rods known in Germany range upwards from very short South German rods which descend from the Roman _pertica_ to much longer rods which lie between 4 meters and 5. Our statute perch just exceeds 5 meters. Then the ordinary (not forest) _Morgen_ rarely approaches 40 ares, while our statute acre is equivalent to 40·46 ares. However, the Scandinavian _Tonne_ is yet larger and recalls the big acres of northern England. In France perches of 18 feet were common, and in Normandy yet longer perches were used, but we do not know that the French _acre_ or _journal_ contained 160 square perches.

[1280] Seebohm, op. cit. 166.

[1281] Seebohm, op. cit. 19.

[1282] Thus e.g. Glastonbury Rentalia, 68: 'if he has eight oxen he shall plough every Thursday [during certain seasons] three roods [_perticatas_].'

[1283] Walter of Henley, 9.

[1284] Tour through the Southern Counties, ed. 3 (1772), pp. 298-301.

[1285] Tour through the Southern Counties, p. 127.

[1286] Walter of Henley, 9.

[1287] Young, View of Agriculture of Oxfordshire, p. 104. In Oxfordshire in the early years of this century many ploughs with four horses 'go out for 3 roods,' after all improvements in ploughs and in horses.

[1288] Meitzen, op. cit. 88. Dr Taylor in Domesday Studies, i. 61, gives a somewhat different explanation. The ploughman walked backwards in front of the beasts, and, when near the end of the furrow, used his right arm to pull them round.

[1289] Among the land-books those that most clearly indicate the intermixture of strips are K. 538 (iii. 19),--648 (iii. 210),--692 (iii. 290),--1158 (v. 310),--1169 (v. 326),--1234 (vi. 39),--1240 (vi. 51),--1276 (vi. 108),--1278 (vi. 111).

[1290] As to the names of _culturæ_ the Ramsey Cartulary may be profitably consulted. Such names as Horsepelfurlange, Wodefurlonge, Benefurlange, Stapelfurlange (i. 307), Mikellefurlange (321), Stanweyfurlange, Longefurlange (331) are common. We meet also with _-wong_: Redewonge (321), Langiwange, Stoniwonge, Schortewonge, Semareswonge (341-2). Also with _-leuge_ (apparently O. E. _léah_, gen. dat. _léage_): Wolnothesleuge, Edriches Leuge. Often the _cultura_ is known as the Five (Ten, Twenty) Acres. Sometimes in Latin this sense of _furlong_ is rendered by _quarentina_: 'unam rodam in quarentina de Newedich': Fines, ed. Hunter, i. 42.

[1291] Glastonbury Rentalia, 180, 195, 208.

[1292] Sixteen Old Maps: Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888.

[1293] The rod, however, must have been very short; perhaps it had as few as 12 feet.

[1294] For many reasons this must not be taken as a typical map. We refer to it merely as showing the relation of 'estimated' (that is of 'real') acres to an acre-measure.

[1295] Instructive evidence about this matter was given in a Chancery suit of James I.'s reign. The deponent speaking of the fen round Ely says 'it is the use and custom ... to measure the fen grounds by four poles in breadth for an acre, by a pole of 18 feet ... and in length for an acre of the said grounds as it happeneth, according to the length of the furlong of the same fens, which is sometimes shorter and sometimes longer.' Quoted by O. C. Pell in Domesday Studies, i. 296.

[1296] For an explanation of this mode of ploughing, see Meitzen, op. cit. 84.

[1297] Meitzen gives 6 feet as a usual width for the beds in Germany. I think that in cent. xiii. our selions were usually wider than this.

[1298] The Gloucester Corporation Records, ed. Stevenson (1893), should be consulted. When small pieces of land were being conveyed, the selions were often enumerated. Thus (p. 124): 'and 13 acres of arable land ... whereof one acre lies upon þistelege near Durand's land ... an acre and a half being three selions ... half an acre being two selions ... an acre of five selions ... an acre being one selion and a gore ... four selions and two little gores ... an acre being three selions and a head-land.' In Mr Seebohm's admirable account of the open fields there seems to me to be some confusion between the selions and the acre or half-acre strips.

[1299] On Mr Mowat's map of Roxton a quarter-acre strip is a _yeard_.

[1300] D. B. i. 364: 'In Staintone habuit Jalf 5 bovatas terrae et 14 acras terrae et 1 virgatam ad geldum.' This virgate is a quarter-acre. The continuous use of _virgata_ in this sense is attested by Glastonbury Rentalia, 27. So in Normandy: Delisle, Études sur la condition de la classe agricole, 535. So in France: Ducange, s. v. _virgata_ from a Register of the Chamber of Accounts: 'Quadraginta perticae faciunt virgatam: quatuor virgatae faciunt acram.' Meitzen, op. cit. i. 95: in Kalenberg a strip that is one rod in breadth is called a _Gert_ (our _yard_).

[1301] In the Exeter Domesday _virga_ not _virgata_ is the common word. In the Exchequer book an abbreviated form is used; but _virga_ appears in i. 216 b.

[1302] So again, if a _iugum_ is quartered, its quarter can be called a virgate. See Denman Ross, Hist. of Landholding, 140; Round, Feudal England, 108.

[1303] See above, p. 372.

[1304] K. 205 (i. 259): 'circiter 30 iugera.'--K. 217 (i. 274): '30 iugera.'--K. 225 (i. 290): 'hoc est 30 iugerum' ... 'hoc est 85 segetum.'--K. 234 (i. 308): '150 iugera.'--K. 241 (ii. 1): '24 iugeras.'--K. 259 (ii. 26): '19 iugera.'--K 264 (ii. 36): 'unum dimidium agrum ... healve aker.'--K. 276 (ii. 57): '10 iugera.'--K. 285 (ii. 70): '80 æcra.'--K. 339 (ii. 150): 'sextig æcera earðlondes ... oðer sextig.'--K. 586 (iii. 118): '30 æcra on ðæm twæm feldan.'--K. 612 (iii. 159): '2 hida buton 60 æcran.'--K. 633 (iii. 188): '3 mansas ac 30 iugerum dimensionem.'--K. 695 (iii. 295): '40 agros.'--K. 759 (iv. 59): '30 akera.'--K. 782 (iv. 106): 'fiftig æcera.'--K. 1154 (v. 303): '36 ækera yrðlandes.'--K. 1161 (v. 315): 'ter duodenas segetes' = '36 æcera yrðlandes.'--K. 1211 (v. 393): '25 segetes.'--K. 1218 (vi. 1): '14 hida and ... 40 æcera.'

[1305] Probably it occurs in Ine 67; certainly in Rectitudines 4, § 3, and in the late document about Tidenham (above, p. 330).--K. 369 (ii. 205): Boundary of a _gyrd_ at Ashurst which belongs to a hide at Topsham (A.D. 937).--K. 521 (ii. 418): Edgar grants 'tres virgas.'--K. 658 (iii. 229): Æthelred grants '3 mansas et 3 perticas.'--K. 1306 (vi. 163): Æthelred grants land 'trium sub aestimatione perticarum.'--K. 772 (iv. 84): Edward Conf. grants '5 perticas.'--K. 787 (iv. 115): He grants 'unam perticam et dimidiam.'--K. 814 (iv. 160): He grants 'dimidiam virgam et dimidiam quatrentem.'--Crawford Charters, 5, 9, mortgage in 1018 of a yard of land.--K. 949 (iv. 284); 979 (iv. 307): two other examples from the eve of the Conquest.--It is more likely that these 'yards' and 'perches' of land are quarter-hides than that they are quarter-acres; 'square' perches seem to be out of the question. There are of course many instances in the charters of a _pertica_, _virga_, _gyrd_ used as a measure of mere length. See above, p. 375, note 1266, where a few are cited.

[1306] Meitzen, op. cit. 74. In Germany the _Hufe_, _hoba_, _huoba_, _huba_, _etc._ is the unit. This word is said to be connected with the modern German _Behuf_, our _behoof_; it is the _sors_, the portion that behoves a man. In Sweden, the unit is the _Mantal_, a man's share. The last word about the _tenmannetale_ of Yorkshire has not been said.

[1307] K. 633 (iii. 188).

[1308] K. 612 (iii. 159): 'landes sumne dæl, ðæt synd 2 hida, buton 60 æcran ðæt hæft se arcebisceop genumen into Cymesige to his hame him to hwætelande.'

[1309] Rot. Hund. ii. 575. After going through the whole calculation, I have satisfied myself that the sum is worked in this way.

[1310] Hence in our law Latin the word _terra_ means arable land. To claim _unam acram terrae_ when you meant an acre of meadow (_prati_) would have been a fatal error.

[1311] K. 1222 (vi. 12); T. 508: 'And ic Æðelgar an an hide lond ðes ðe Æulf hauede be hundtuelti acren, ateo so he wille.' Kemble, Saxons, 117.

[1312] See above, p. 386, note 1304.

[1313] There can be little need of examples. Glastonbury Rentalia, 152: 'S. tenet unam virgatam terrae et dimidiam, quae computantur pro una virgata.' Ibid. p. 160: 'H. tenet unam virgatam et 5 acras, quae omnia computantur pro una virgata.' Worcester Register, 62: A virgate consists of 13 acres in one field and 12-1/2 in the other; the next virgate of 16 acres in one field and 12 in the other. In other cases the numbers are 16 and 14; 14-5/8 and 11; 13 and 12-1/2; 14 and 11; 14-3/4 and 11-1/4. Yet every virgate is a virgate.

[1314] At the date of Domesday we are a long way from the first danegeld and a very long way from any settlement of Cambridgeshire; still if we analyze a symmetrical hundred, such as Armingford, we shall find that the average ten-hide vill is just about twice as rich as the average five-hide vill in men, in teams and in annual _valet_, though there will be some wide aberrations from this norm.

[1315] See above, p. 336, note 1160.

[1316] See above, p. 237.

[1317] This is proved by 'The Burghal Hidage' of which we spoke above, p. 187, and shall speak again hereafter.

[1318] See the Gerefa published by Dr Liebermann in Anglia, ix. 251. Andrews, Old English Manor, 246.

[1319] The manner in which the old hides have really fallen to pieces but are preserving a notional existence is well illustrated by Domesday of St. Paul's, 41-47. In one case a hide forms nine tenements containing respectively 30, 30, 15, 15, 5, 5, 7-1/2, 5, 7-1/2 acres. See Vinogradoff, Villainage, 249.

[1320] Vinogradoff, Villainage, 242; Maitland, History of an English Manor, Eng. Hist. Rev. ix. 418.

[1321] See Pell, in Domesday Studies, i. 357. Almost at one and the same moment, but in two different 'extents,' the same tenements are being described as containing 15 and as containing 18 acres. Domesday of St. Paul's, 69: 'In this manor the hide contains 120 acres; the old inquest said that it used not to contain more than 80; but afterwards the lands were sought out and measured (_exquisitae sunt terrae et mensuratae_).'

[1322] Cart. Rams. iii. 208. See also the table given by Seebohm, op. cit. 37.

[1323] A 'double hide' of 240 acres plays a part in Mr Seebohm's speculations. His instances of it hardly bear examination. On p. 37 he produces from Rot. Hund. ii. 629 the equation 1 H.=6 V. of 40 A. apiece. This apparently refers to the Ramsey manor of Brington; but Cart. Rams. ii. 43 gives 1 H.=4 V. of 40 A., while Cart. Rams. iii. 209 gives 1 H.=4 V. of 34 A. Then Mr Seebohm, p. 51, cites from 'the documents of Battle Abbey given by Dugdale' the equation 1 H.=8 V.; but this seems to refer to the statement now printed in the Battle Cartulary (Camd. Soc.) p. xiii., where 1 H.=4 V. As to the supposed _solanda_ of two hides, see Round, Feudal England, 103.

[1324] The virgates on the Gloucestershire manors of Gloucester Abbey contain the following numbers of acres: 36, 40, 36, 38, 48, 48, 48, 48, 50, 48, 40, 64, 64, 64, 48, 50, 60, 48, 48, 64, 18 (?), 44, 80, 48, 48, 72. See Gloucester Cartulary, vol. iii. Of the taxation and wealth of the various counties we shall speak hereafter.

[1325] Napier and Stevenson, Crawford Charters, p. 47: The O. E. _sulh_ (plough) is 'cognate with Lat. _sulcus_.'

[1326] Both terms were in use in Normandy and some other parts of France: Delisle, Études, 538; also Ducange. In a would-be English charter of the days before the Conquest these words would be ground for suspicion. In K. 283 and 455 Kemble has printed (in documents which he stigmatizes) _caractorum_. But apparently (see B. ii. 104, iii. 94) what stands in the cartulary is _carattorum_, and this seems a mistake for the common _casatorum_. To mistake O. E. _s_ for _r_ is easy.

[1327] See Stevenson, E. H. R. v. 143.

[1328] In D. B. the _iugum_ appears as a portion of a _solin_; probably as a quarter of the solin. D. B. i. 13: 'pro uno solin se defendit. Tria iuga sunt infra divisionem Hugonis et quartum iugum est extra.' The _iugum_ has already appeared in a few Kentish land-books. In K. 199 (i. 249), B. i. 476, we find _an ioclet_ which seems to be half a manse (_mansiuncula_). In K. 407 (iii. 262), B. ii. 572, we find 'an iuclæte et insuper 10 segetes (_acres_).'

[1329] D. B. ii. 389: 'In Cratingas 24 liberi homines 1 carr. terrae et 1 virg.'

[1330] Yorkshire Inquisitions (Yorks. Archæeol. Soc.) passim. On p. 77 in an account of Catterick we read of 'a capital messuage worth 5_s._; 32 bovates of arable land in demesne (each bovate of 6 acres at 8_s._) £12. 16_s._; 31-1/2 bovates held by bondmen (each bovate of 10 acres at 13_s._ 4_d._) £21; ... 2 bovates which contain 24 acres and 32 acres called Inland worth 74_s._ 8_d._'

[1331] See above, p. 375.

[1332] A bovate of 13 acres seems to have prevailed in Scotland: Acts of Parliament of Scotland, i. 387.

[1332] The immediate source is the Seneschaucie. See Walter of Henley, ed. Lamond, p. 84. Fleta, p. 159.

[1334] Walter of Henley, pp. 6, 8, 44-5. With a three-course system the figures will be somewhat different. Plough 60 acres for winter seed, 60 for spring seed, 60 for fallow (total 180) at the rate of 7/8th of an acre per day:--Total, 205-6/7 days. In second fallowing plough 60 acres at an acre per day:--Grand total, 265-5/7 days. Whichever system is adopted, the plough 'goes' 240 acres.

[1335] Walter of Henley, p. 13.

[1336] Domesday of St. Paul's, 38.

[1337] Meitzen, op. cit. i. 277; Andrews, op. cit. 260.

[1338] Gerefa, 9 (Anglia, ix. 261): 'Me mæig in Maio and Junio and Julio on sumera fealgian.' Andrews, op. cit. 257.

[1339] Thus e.g. Domesday of St. Paul's, 59, Tillingham. Is it possible to fallow, when, as in this case, there is no pasture for the oxen except such as is afforded by the idle field? 'Non est ibi pastura nisi cum quiescit dominicum per wainagium.... (69) Non est ibi certa pastura nisi quando terrae dominici quiescunt alternatim incultae.'

§ 2. _Domesday Statistics._

[Domesday's three statements.]

As a general rule the account given by Domesday Book of any manor contains three different statements about it which seem to have some bearing upon the subject of our present inquiry. (_A_) It will tell us that the manor is rated to the geld at a certain number of units, which units will in Kent be solins or sulungs and yokes (_iuga_), in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire, Norfolk and Suffolk carucates and bovates (but bovates are, to say the least, rare in East Anglia), and in the rest of England hides and virgates; but acres also will from time to time appear in the statement. (_B_) It will tell us that the manor contains land for a certain number of teams, or for a certain number of oxen. (_C_) It will tell us that there are on the manor a certain number of teams, some whereof belong to the lord and some to the men.

TABLE I. STATISTICS

Recorded Danegeld Hides, Modern Population circ. ann. Carucates, Acreage (Ellis) 1150 Sulungs

I II III IV £ _s._ _d._

Kent 975,820 12,205 105 16 10 1,224 Sussex 932,733 10,410 217 0 6 3,474 Surrey 461,230 4,383 179 16 0 1,830 Hampshire 1,037,764 10,373 184 15 4 2,588 Berkshire 461,742 6,324 205 11 4 2,473 Wiltshire 880,248 10,150 389 13 0 4,050 Dorset 632,272 7,807 248 5 0 2,277 [7,512 E] [2,321 E] Somerset 1,042,488 13,764 277 10 4 2,936 [13,307 E] [2,951 E] Devon 1,667,097 17,434 103 19 8 1,119 Cornwall 868,208 5,438 22 15 0 155 Middlesex 180,480(?) 2,302 85 12 0 868 Hertford 406,932 4,927 110 1 4 1,050 Buckingham 475,094 5,420 204 14 7 2,074 Oxford 485,322 6,775 249 16 5 2,412 Gloucester 796,731 8,366 194 1 6 2,388 Worcester 480,342 4,625 101 6 0 1,189 Hereford 537,363 5,368 93 15 6 1,324 Cambridge 549,565 5,204 114 15 0 1,233 Huntingdon 233,928 2,914 71 5 0 747 Bedford 298,494 3,875 110 12 0 1,193 Northampton 639,541 8,441 119 10 9 1,356 Leicester 528,986 6,772 100 0 0 2,500(?) Warwick 578,595 6,574 128 12 6 1,338 Stafford 749,713 3,178 45 1 0 505 [499 E] Shropshire 859,516 5,080 117 18 6 1,245 Chester [655,036] 2,349 0 0 0 512 Derby 657,550 3,041 } 112 1 11 { 679 Nottingham 539,752 5,686 } { 567 Rutland [97,273] 862 11 12 0 37 York [3,888,351] 8,055 165 9 5 10,095 Lincoln 1,694,907 25,305 266 0 0 4,188 Essex 985,545 16,060 236 8 0 2,650 Norfolk 1,315,092 27,087 330 2 2 [2,422] Suffolk 947,742 20,491 235 0 8

Hides Gelding Valet T. R. W. Teamlands Teams (Pearson)

V VI VII VIII

£ _s._ _d._

3,102 5,140 9 10 Kent 2,241 3,091 3,255 7 4 Sussex 706 1,172 1,142 1,524 4 9 Surrey 1,572 2,847 2,614 Hampshire 1,338 2,087 1,796 2,383 16 1 Berkshire 3,457 2,997 Wiltshire 2,303 1,762 2,656 9 8 Dorset [2,332 E] [3,359 12 9E] 4,858 3,804 Somerset [4,812 E] [4,161 4 7E] 7,972 5,542 3,220 14 3 Devon 399 2,377 1,187 662 1 4 Cornwall 664 545 754 7 8 Middlesex 1,716 1,406 1,541 13 11 Hertford 2,244 1,952 1,813 7 9 Buckingham 2,639 2,467 3,242 2 11 Oxford 3,768 2,827 6 8 Gloucester 1,889 991 0 6 Worcester 2,479 Hereford 1,676 1,443 Cambridge 1,120 967 864 15 4 Huntingdon 1,557 1,367 1,096 12 2 Bedford 2,931 2,422 1,843 0 7 Northampton 1,817 736 3 0 Leicester 2,276 2,003 1,359 13 8 Warwick 1,398 951 [516 16 3E] Stafford

1,755 Shropshire Chester 762 862 461 4 0 Derby 1,255 1,991 Nottingham Rutland York 5,043 4,712 Lincoln 3,920 4,784 10 8 Essex 4,853 4,154 11 7 Norfolk Suffolk

TABLE II. AVERAGES.

Acreage Acreage Acreage Population div. by div. by div. by div. by population teamlands teams teamlands

IX X XI XII

Kent 79 314 Sussex 89 301 Surrey 105 393 403 3·7 Hampshire 100 364 397 3·6 Berkshire 73 221 257 3·0 Wiltshire 86 254 293 2·9 Dorset 80 274 358 3·3 Somerset 75 214 274 2·8 Devon 95 209 300 2·1 Cornwall 159 365 731 2·2 Middlesex 78 271 331 3·4 Hertford 82 237 289 2·8 Buckingham 87 211 243 2·4 Oxford 71 183 196 2·5 Gloucester 95 211 Worcester 103 254 Hereford 100 216 Cambridge 105 327 380 3·1 Huntingdon 80 208 241 2·6 Bedford 77 191 218 2·4 Northampton 75 218 264 2·8 Leicester 78 291 Warwick 88 254 288 2·8 Stafford 235 536 788 2·2 Shropshire 169 489 Chester [278] Derby 216 862 762 3·9 Nottingham 94 430 271 4·4 Rutland [112] York [482] Lincoln 66 336 359 5·0 Essex 61 251 Norfolk 48 270 Suffolk 46

Experimental valet Total valet of teamland Population Teamlands div. by [or of land div. by div. by teamlands tilled by teams teams [or by teams] team]

XIII XIV XV XVI

£ _s._ _d._ £ _s._ _d._

3·9 [1 13 1] 1 14 11 Kent 3·3 [1 1 0] 0 18 3 Sussex 3·8 1·02 1 6 0 1 0 8 Surrey 3·9 1·08 1 2 6 Hampshire 3·5 1·16 1 2 4 1 2 10 Berkshire 3·3 1·15 1 4 4 Wiltshire 4·4 1·30 1 3 0 1 6 8 Dorset 3·6 1·27 0 15 9 Somerset 3·1 1·43 0 8 0 0 5 3 Devon 4·5 2·00 0 5 6 0 3 8 Cornwall 4·2 1·21 1 2 8 1 1 1 Middlesex 3·5 1·22 0 17 11 0 13 11 Hertford 2·7 1·14 0 16 1 0 13 6 Buckingham 2·7 1·06 1 4 6 1 0 8 Oxford 2·2 [0 15 0] [0 16 1] Gloucester 2·4 [0 10 5] [0 10 7] Worcester 2·1 [0 9 11] Hereford 3·6 1·16 1 2 9 Cambridge 3·0 1·15 0 15 5 0 12 2 Huntingdon 2·8 1·13 0 14 1 0 15 4 Bedford 3·4 1·21 0 9 9 Northampton 3·7 0 9 8 Leicester 3·2 1·13 0 11 11 0 10 10 Warwick 3·3 1·47 0 7 4 0 8 8 Stafford 2·8 [0 7 2] Shropshire Chester 3·5 0·88 0 12 1 0 11 7 Derby 2·8 0·63 0 3 6 Nottingham Rutland York 5·3 1·07 0 17 6 Lincoln 4?0 [1 4 4] Essex 5?5 [0 17 1] Norfolk Suffolk

[Northern formulas.]

We may begin our investigation with a formula common in Derbyshire.

In M [place name] habuit K [man's name] _a_ car[ucatas] terrae ad geldum. Terra _b_ car[ucarum _or_ carucis]. Ibi nunc in dominio _d_ car[ucae] et ... villani et ... bordarii habent _e_ car[ucas].

The Lincolnshire formula is perhaps yet plainer. Instead of saying 'Terra _b_ car[ucarum],' it says, 'Terra ad _b_ car[ucas].' Still more instructive is a formula used in Yorkshire.

In M habuit K _a_ car[ucatas] terrae ad geldum ubi possunt esse _b_ car[ucae]. Nunc habet ibi K _d_ car[ucas] et ... villanos et ... bordarios cum _e_ car[ucis].

As a variant on the phrase 'ubi possunt esse _b_ car[ucae],' we have, 'quas potest arare 1 car[uca],' or 'has possunt arare _b_ car[ucae][1340].'

The teams on the demesne (_d_) and the teams of the tenants (_e_) are enumerated separately. The total number of the teams (_d_ + _e_) we will call _c_.

Now occasionally we may find an entry concerning which the following equation will hold good: _a_ = _b_ = _c_: in other words, the same number will stand for the carucates at which the manor is taxed, the 'teamlands' that there are in it (or to put it another way the number of teams that 'can be there,' or the number of teams that 'can plough it'[1341]) and also for the teams that are actually to be found there. Thus:--

Terra Roberti de Todeni.... In Ulestanestorp habuit Leuricus 4 car[ucatas] terrae ad geldum. Terra totidem car[ucis]. Ibi habet Robertus in dominio 1 car[ucam] et 6 villanos et 3 bordarios et 8 sochemannos habentes 3 car[ucas][1342].

Here _a_ = _b_ = _c_. But entries so neat as this are not very common. In the first place, the number (_c_) of teams often exceeds or falls short of the number (_b_) of 'teamlands,' or, which is the same thing, the number of teams that there 'can be.' An excess of 'teamlands' over teams is common. In some parts of Yorkshire and elsewhere instead of reading that there are so many teams, we read 'modo vasta est':--there are no oxen there at all. But the reverse of this case is not very uncommon. Thus we may be told that there are 3 carucates for geld, that 'there can be there 2 teams' and that there are 4 teams[1343]; we may find a manor that contains land for but 3 teams equipped with as many as 7[1344]. As to the relation between _a_ and _b_, this is not fixed. On one and the same page we may find that _a_ is equal to, greater and less than _b_. Thus in Lincolnshire[1345]:

In Colebi habuit Siuuard 7 car. terrae ad geldum. Terra ad totidem car.

In Cherchebi habuit Comes Morcar 5 car. terrae ad geldum. Terra ad 4 car.

In Bodebi habuit Comes Morcar 8 car. terrae ad geldum. Terra ad 9 car.

[Southern formulas.]

Leaving now for a while the carucated part of England and postponing our visit to Kent, we find similar formulas. They tell us (_A_) that the manor contains a certain number of units of assessment, (_B_) that there is land for a certain number of teams, (_C_) that there are so many teams upon it. But we have a new set of units of assessment; instead of carucates and bovates, we have hides and virgates. The Huntingdonshire formula is particularly clear. It runs thus:

In M habet K _a_ hidas ad geldum. Terra _b_ car[ucarum _or_ carucis]. Ibi nunc in dominio _d_ car[ucae] et ... villani et ... bordarii habentes _e_ car[ucas].

The number of hides that is put before us is the number of hides 'for geld.' So in Cheshire and Shropshire the number of hides that is put before us is the number of 'hidae geld[antes].' From this we easily pass to the formula that prevails in Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon:

K tenet M. T[empore] R[egis] E[dwardi] geldabat pro _a_ hidis. Terra est _b_ car[ucarum]. In dominio sunt _d_ car[ucae] et ... villani et ... bordarii cum _e_ car[ucis].

A formula common in Sussex, Surrey and several other counties instead of telling us that this manor has _a_ hides for geld, or has _a_ gelding hides, or gelds for _a_ hides, tells us--what seems exactly the same thing--that it 'defends itself' for _a_ hides. Then we pass to counties such as Middlesex, Hertford, Buckingham and Oxford where the entry does not commonly use any words which explicitly refer to geld:--we are told that K holds M for so many hides (pro _a_ hidis). Lastly, we may pass to counties, such as Warwickshire and Staffordshire where, at first sight, the entries may seem to us ambiguous. They run thus--'K holds M. There are there _a_ hides. There is land for _b_ teams.' Here for a moment it may seem to us that we have two different statements about the actual extent or capacity of the manor:--there are _a_ hides there, but land for _b_ teams. But comparing the formulas in use here with those in use in other counties, we can hardly doubt that they all come to one and the same thing:--a statement about _b_, the capacity of the manor, is preceded by a statement about its taxation, which statement may take the short form, 'There are _a_ hides there,' instead of one of the longer forms, 'It gelds, or defends itself, for _a_ hides,' or 'He holds _a_ gelding hides, or _a_ hides for geld.'

[Kentish formulas.]

In Kent again, we have the three statements, though here the units of assessment are sulungs and yokes:--the land 'defends itself' for _a_ sulungs; there is land there for _b_ teams; there are _d_ teams in demesne and the men have _e_ teams.

[Relation between the three statements.]

In the hidated south, as in the carucated north, the relation between the three amounts is not invariable. We may find that _a_ = _b_ = _c_. It is common to find that _c_ is less than _b_, but occasionally it is greater; on one and the same page we may find that _c_ is equal to, is greater, is less than _b_. Then _a_ is often equal to _b_, often it is less than _b_, but sometimes it is greater. We have therefore three statements about the manor, between which there is no necessary connexion of any very simple kind.

It may look pedantic, but will be convenient if, by means of the letters _A_, _B_ and _C_, we try to keep distinctly before our minds 'the _A_ statement' about the units of assessment, 'the _B_ statement' about the 'teamlands,' or teams for which 'there is land,' and 'the _C_ statement' about the existing teams. We shall find hereafter that there are certain counties in which we do not get all three statements, at least in any of their accustomed forms. In Gloucestershire, Worcestershire and Herefordshire we rarely get the _B_ statement. As to Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, we seem at first sight to obtain _A_ and not _B_, or _B_ and not _A_, while Leicestershire will require separate treatment.

[Introduction of statistics.]

Now if we are ever to understand these matters, it is necessary that we should look at the whole of England. Far be it from us to say that microscopic labour spent upon one county or one hundred is wasted; often it is of the highest value; but such work is apt to engender theories which break down the moment they are carried outside the district in which they had their origin. Well would it be if the broad features of Domesday Book could be set out before us in a series of statistical tables. The task would be gigantic and could hardly be performed except by a body of men who had plenteous leisure and who would work together harmoniously. However, rather to suggest what might and some day must be done, than to parade what has been done rapidly and badly, some figures have been set forth above in two tables[1346]. That they are extremely inaccurate can not be doubtful, for he who compiled them had other things to do and lacks many of the qualities which should be required of a good counter of hides. For unmethodical habits and faulty arithmetic no excuse is possible; but it will be remembered that, as matters now stand, two men not unskilled in Domesday might add up the number of hides in a county and arrive at very different results, because they would hold different opinions as to the meaning of certain formulas which are not uncommon. What is here set before the reader is intended to be no more than a distant approach towards the truth. It will serve its end if it states the sort of figures that would be obtained by careful and leisurely computers, and therefore the sort of problems that have to be solved[1347].

[Explanation of statistics.]

[Acreage.]

We must now explain our statistics. In Column I. we give the acreage of the modern counties[1348]. A warning bracket will remind the reader that in the cases of Yorkshire, Cheshire and Rutland the modern does not coincide even approximately with the ancient boundary. To Middlesex we give a figure larger than that given by our statisticians, for they know a county of London which has been formed at the expense of its neighbours[1349]. Many minor variations should be remembered by those who would use Domesday Book for delicate purposes; for example, they must call to mind the merger in circumambient shires of what were once detached pieces of other counties. But of such niceties we can here take no account[1350].

[Population.]

In Column II. we state the 'recorded population' as computed by Ellis. In the cases of Dorset and Somerset we also state, and we sign with the letter _E_, the result of Eyton's labours. We must not forget that these figures give us rather the number of tenants or occupiers than the number of human beings. Our readers must multiply them by four, five or six, according to knowledge or taste, before the population of England will be attained.

[Danegeld.]

In Column III., for a reason that will become evident hereafter, we place the amount of danegeld charged against the counties--charged against them, not actually paid by them[1351]--in the middle of the twelfth century. The sources of these figures are the Pipe Rolls of 31 Henry I. and 2 and 8 Henry II. In these accounts the amount charged against a county is approximately constant. Some of the variations are probably due to a contemptuous treatment of small sums[1352]; but there are cases in which a sheriff seems to have been allowed to deduct £10 or so, without any recorded explanation[1353]. We choose the highest figures when there is any discord between our three rolls. The danegeld was being levied at the rate of two shillings on the hide, and therefore, if we would find the number of geldant hides, we have to multiply by ten the number of pounds that are set against the county.

[Sidenote: Hides, carucates, sulungs.]

Column IV. contains our estimate of _A_: in other words, of the number of hides, carucates or sulungs. As we are arguing for a large hide, we have thought right in doubtful cases to lean in favour of inclusion rather than of exclusion. We count all hides, except those ascribed to the shire's boroughs[1354], even though we are told that they have 'never' gelded. Also, when a hide is mentioned, we count it, even though we have a strong suspicion that the same hide is mentioned again on some other page. Especially in Sussex, where the rapes have recently been rearranged, this may make our figures too high[1355]. Then, again, we have frankly begged important questions by assuming that in Domesday Book the following equations are correct.

1 Hide = 4 Virgates = 120 Acres 1 Carucate = 8 Bovates = 120 Acres 1 Sulung = 4 Yokes = 120 Acres.

In the counties with which we have dealt, except Norfolk and Essex (Suffolk we have left alone), acres are so rarely mentioned that the error, if any, introduced by our hypothesis as to their relation to hides and carucates will be almost infinitesimal, and, even if we are wrong in supposing that the virgate is the quarter of a hide and that the bovate is the eighth of a carucate, the vitiation of our results that will be due to this blunder will but rarely be considerable[1356].

[Reduced hidage.]

Almost everywhere we may find some hides (carucates, sulungs) that do not geld and many cases in which a tract now gelds for a smaller number of hides (carucates, sulungs) than that for which it formerly paid. In four counties, however, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire, we see that since William's advent there has, rightfully or wrongfully, been a large and generally distributed reduction in the tale of the gelding hides. In our Column V. we give a rough statement of the reduced number[1357]. In Cornwall we read of an assessment that prevailed in the Confessor's day and of a heavier assessment. The figures which speak of this heavier assessment we place in our Column V[1358].

[The teamlands.]

We now pass from _A_ to _B_. In Column VI. we set the number of teamlands, thus answering the question _Quot carucarum [carucis] ibi est terra_. We have assumed, but this rarely has an appreciable effect on our calculations, that the land of one ox is the eighth, the land of two oxen the fourth part of the land of one team. There are certain counties where we receive no statement about the teamlands, while in certain others the statement, though it seems to be expected, is often omitted[1359]. For this reason some blanks will be found in this column. In most of the other counties instances occur with more or less frequency in which nothing is said of the teamlands. In these cases we have thought it fair to assume that there were teamlands equal in number to the teams (_B_ = _C_). The effect of this assumption will be to bring the number of teamlands (_B_) somewhat closer to the number of teams (_C_) than it would otherwise have been, but no very great harm will have thus been done to our rude statistics[1360].

[The teams.]

Column VII. gives the number of teams. Here we assume (we shall endeavour to prove hereafter) that the _caruca_ of Domesday Book always means the same, namely, eight oxen[1361].

[The values.]

Lastly in Column VIII. we place the results attained by Pearson[1362] and Eyton in their endeavours to add together the various sums which the various estates in a shire are said to be worth (_valet_) or to render (_reddit_) in the Conqueror's day, and to thus obtain a total _valet_ for the shire. We need hardly say that these values are 'annual values.'

[The table of ratios.]

The relations between our divers sets of figures are more important than the figures themselves, therefore we have worked the division sums the results of which are printed in the second Table, the first seven columns whereof are filled by quotients[1363]. The last column calls for more remark. The _valets_ obtained for the various counties by Pearson and Eyton are somewhat precarious. They involve theories as to the relation between the values of gold and silver, as to the relation between the value of a pound reckoned by tale and a pound reckoned by weight, as to 'blanched' money and the cost of 'a night's farm.' Also a good deal is included that can hardly be called the value of land, since it comprehends, not only the value of mills and the like, but also in some cases the revenue derived from courts. In order therefore that we might compare the values given to land in the various counties, we have taken at hazard a number of small estates in order that we might by addition and division obtain the value of a typical teamland with typical appurtenances. In general we have chosen ten estates each of which has one teamland, ten estates each of which has two teamlands and ten estates each of which has five teamlands, and then we have divided the sum of their values by eighty, the number of teamlands that they comprise. On the whole, the figures that we thus obtain and place in Column XVI. are not widely removed from those in Column XV., which represent the quotients arising from a division of Pearson's 'county values' by the number of teamlands that are contained in the counties[1364].

[An apology.]

In order that not too much credence and yet just credence enough may be given to the figures that we have hastily put together, we will set beside those that we have stated for Gloucestershire the results of a minute analysis accomplished by Mr Charles Taylor[1365]. We have set down: _Population_, 8366 (from Ellis); _Hides_, 2388; _Teams_, 3768; _Total Valet_, £2827 6_s._ 8_d._ (from Pearson). Mr Taylor gives: _Population_, 8239[1366]; _Hides_, 2611 (or 2596); _Teams_, 3909; _Total Valet_, £3130 7_s._ 10_d._ Now these variations are wide and may in some sort be discreditable to those who differ from Mr Taylor[1367]. But they are not very substantial if we come to averages and ratios and a comparison of counties. For the purposes for which we shall use our figures, it is no great matter whether in this county there are 2·1 or 2·2 'recorded men' to the plough-team[1368]. The broad features of Gloucestershire are that its hides fall far short of its teams, that its recorded population is sparse, that the average value of the land tilled by a team falls well below twenty shillings, that this shire differs markedly and in certain assignable respects from Wiltshire, where the hides exceed the teams, from Lincoln, where, despite the fen, the population is thick, from Kent, where the average value of land tilled by a team rises above thirty shillings[1369].

[Constancy of ratios.]

Our figures tell of wide variations; but we may be allowed to call attention to the stability of certain ratios, a stability which is gratifying to the diffident arithmetician. In twenty-one counties we can divide 'the recorded population' by the number of teamlands. The quotient never falls as low as 2 and only twice exceeds 4[1370]. For the same twenty-one counties we can divide the number of teamlands by the number of teams. Only twice will the quotient fall below 1 and only once will it touch 2. We must not, however, be led away into a general discussion of these figures. That task would require a wary and learned economist. We must keep our minds bent on what may be called the _A B C_ of our subject[1371].

[The team.]

Now we may start with what seems to be the most objective of our three statements, that which gives us _C_, the number of teams. We know that in _A_ there is an element of estimation, of assessment; we may fear that this is true of _B_ also; but an ox or a team ought to be a fact and not a theory. At the outset, however, a troublesome question arises. We have assumed that whenever our record speaks of a _caruca_ it means eight oxen. On the other hand, there are who maintain that whereas the _carucae_ of the demesne consisted of eight, those ascribed to the villeins comprised but four oxen[1372], and others have thought that the strength of Domesday's _caruca_ varied from place to place with the varying practice of divers agriculturists.

[Variability of the _caruca_.]

But, in the first place, it is abundantly clear that the clerk who compiled the account of Cambridgeshire from the original verdicts held himself at liberty to substitute 'half a team' for 'four oxen' and 'four oxen' for 'half a team[1373].' In the second place, the theory of a variable _caruca_ would in our eyes reduce to an absurdity the practice of stating the capacity of land in terms of the teams and the oxen that can plough it. We are carefully told about each estate that 'there is land for _b_ teams, or for _b´_ oxen, or for _b_ teams and _b´_ oxen.' Now if a 'team' has always the same meaning, we have here a valuable truth. If, on the other hand, a 'team' may mean eight or may mean four oxen, we are being told next to nothing. The apparently precise 'there is land for 4 teams' becomes the useless 'there is land for 32 or 16 or for some number between 32 and 16 oxen.' What could the statesmen, who were hoping to correct the assessment of the danegeld, make of so vague a statement? They propose to work sums in teams and teamlands. They spend immense pains in ascertaining that here there is 'land for half a team' or 'land for half an ox.' We are accusing them of laborious folly unless we suppose that they can at a moment's notice convert teams into oxen.

[The _caruca_ a constant.]

If it be allowed that in the statement (_B_) about the number of teamlands the term caruca has always the same meaning, we cannot stop there, but must believe that in the statement (_C_) about the number of teams this same meaning is retained. Often enough when there is equality between teamlands and teams (_C = B_), the entry takes the following form:--There is land for _b_ teams and 'they' are there[1374]. What are there? The teams for which 'there is land': those teams which are serving as a measure for the capacity of land. Let us try the two modes of interpretation on the first lines that strike our eye. Here we have two successive entries, each of which tells us that 'there is land for 6 teams[1375].' If the _caruca_ is a constant, we have learnt that in one particular there is equality between these estates. If the _caruca_ is a variable, we have learnt nothing of the kind. Let us see what we can gain by reading further. In the one case there were 3 teams on the demesne and the villeins had 6-1/2; in the other there were 2 teams on the demesne, the villeins had 2 and the sokemen 2. We want to know whether the second of these estates is under-teamed or over-teamed. There is land for 6 teams and there are 6 teams on it; but 2 of these teams belong to villeins and 2 to sokemen. If we give the villeins but 4 oxen to the team, how many shall we give the sokemen? Shall we say 6? If so, there are 36 oxen here. Is that too many or too few or just enough for the arable land that there is? That is an unanswerable question, for the king's commissioners have been content with the statement that the number of oxen appropriate to this estate lies somewhere between 23 and 49.

[The villeins' teams.]

Surely when we are told that 8 sokemen have '2 teams and 6 oxen' or that 9 sokemen and 5 bordiers have '3 teams and 7 oxen[1376],' we are being told that the teams in question have no less than eight oxen apiece. Surely when we are told that there are 23 villeins and 5 bordiers with 2 teams and 5 oxen[1377], we are being told that the teams of these villeins are not teams of four. And what are we to say of cases in which a certain number of teams is ascribed to a number of persons who belong to various classes, as for example when 6 villeins and 7 bordiers and 2 sokemen are said to have 3 teams and 5 oxen[1378], or where 3 villeins, 2 bordiers, a priest and a huntsman are said to have one team and 6 oxen[1379], or where 19 radknights 'with their men' are said to have 48 teams[1380]? Even if we suppose that the officers of the exchequer have tables which tell them how many oxen a _caruca_ implies when it is attributed to a Northamptonshire sokeman or a Gloucestershire radknight, we are still setting before them insoluble problems. The radknights of Berkeley 'with their men' have 48 teams:--this may cover less than 200 or more than 300 oxen. And yet the record that is guilty of this laxity will tell us how in Bedfordshire _Terra est dimidio bovi, et ibi est semibos_[1381].

[The villeins' oxen.]

The main argument that has been urged in favour of a variable _caruca_ is that which, basing itself on later documents, protests that a villein ought not to have more than two oxen[1382]. Now true it seems to be that if by the number of the teams belonging to the _villani_ and _bordarii_ of Domesday Book we divide the number of _villani_ plus half the number of _bordarii_ (and this would be a fair procedure), we shall obtain as our quotient a figure that will be much nearer to 2 than to 4. But it must be common ground to all who read our record that some villeins are much better supplied with oxen than are their neighbours, and that some villeins have whole teams, whatever a 'team' may mean. There is so much difference in this respect between manor and manor that we are not justified in talking of any particular number of oxen as the normal outfit of the _villanus_, and outside of Domesday Book we have far too little evidence to sanction the dogma that the average number must stand close to 2[1383]. Even the villein virgater on the monastic manors of the thirteenth century is often expected to have four oxen, and his having eight is a possibility that must be contemplated[1384].

[Light and heavy ploughs.]

That light as well as heavy ploughs were in use we have not denied. At a little later time we see teams of six beasts and teams of ten engaged in ploughing. But the compilers of Domesday Book are not concerned with the methods of husbandry; they are registering the number of oxen. If a man has one ox which is employed as a beast of the plough, they say of him: _Arat cum uno bove_[1385]. If he and another man have such an ox between them, they say: _Ibi est semibos_. If he has four oxen, they set this down as _dimidia caruca_. Instead of telling us that there are thirty-eight oxen, they speak of five teams less two oxen[1386]. Twelve pence make a shilling; and, at all events at the Exchequer, eight oxen make a team.

[The team of Domesday and other documents.]

Very lately an argument has been advanced in favour of a _caruca_, the strength of which varies from place to place. In many instances the Black Book of Peterborough in its description of the abbatial estates will give to the demesne of a particular manor exactly the same number of teams that are ascribed to it by Domesday Book, and, while in some cases the later of these documents will tell us that there are eight oxen to the team, in others it will speak of teams of six[1387]. That there is force in this argument we must admit; but many changes will take place in forty years, and we can not think that the correspondence between the two documents is sufficiently close to warrant the inference that the _caruca_ of Domesday can have fewer beasts than eight. An exactly parallel argument would serve to prove that the hide of Domesday contains a variable number of fiscal 'acres.' Were it possible (but we shall see that it is not) for us to regard the teamland of Domesday as a fixed area, then we might afford to allow the strength of the team to vary; but if the teamland is no fixed area and the team has no fixed strength, then King William's inquest ends in a collection of unknown quantities.

[The teamland.]

We turn from the team (_C_) to the teamland (_B_), and must face some perplexing questions. Reluctantly we have come to the opinion that this term 'the land of (or for) one team' does not in the first instance denote a fixed areal quantity of arable land. We have adopted this opinion reluctantly because we are differing from some of the best expositors of our record, and because it compels us to say that many of the statistical data with which that record provides us are not so useful as we hoped that they would be.

[Fractional parts of the teamland.]

In the first place, we must notice that if this term stands for a fixed quantity, a very rude use is being made of it. We see indeed that fractional parts of a teamland can be conceived. We often meet the land of (or for) half a team; we may come upon the land of or for two oxen, one ox, half an ox. But, except in a few counties, any mention of fractions smaller than the half of a team is rare, and even halves seldom occur. Now certainly the teamland was a large unit for such treatment as this. If, for instance, we suppose that it contained 120 acres, then we must infer that in some shires the jurors who had to describe a mass of 420 acres would have called it land for 3 or else land for 4 teams, and that in most shires an odd 80 acres would have been neglected or would have done duty as half a teamland. The hides or the carucates (_A_) have often been split into small fractions where the jurors distribute integral teamlands. One example of this common phenomenon shall be given. In Grantchester lie six estates[1388]:

the first rated at 3 v. has land for 1 team, the second rated at 2 h. 3 v. has land for 6 teams, the third rated at 2 h. 3 v. has land for 4 teams, the fourth rated at 1-1/2 v. has land for 1 team, the fifth rated at 1 v. has land for 4 oxen, the sixth rated at 1/2 v. has land for 3 oxen.

The teamland does not break up easily. As a general rule, we only hear of fractional parts of it when the jurors are compelled to deal with a tenement so small that it can not be said to possess even one teamland[1389].

[Land for oxen and wood for swine.]

In passing we observe that this phrase, 'There is land for _x_ teams' finds exact parallels in two other phrases that are not very uncommon, namely, 'There is pasture for _y_ sheep' and 'There is wood for _z_ pigs': also that the values given to _y_ and _z_ are often large and round. It may be that the jurors have in their minds equations which connect the area of a wood or pasture with its power of feeding swine or sheep, but an extremely lax use must be made of these equations when the number of sheep is fixed at a neat hundred or the number of pigs at a neat thousand, nor dare we say that the quality of the grass and trees has no influence upon the computation.

[Teamland no areal unit.]

Secondly, we observe that the teamland when it does break into fractional parts does not break into virgates, bovates, acres, roods, or any other units which we can regard as units in a scheme of areal measurement[1390]. The eighth of a teamland is the land of (or for) an ox. If we wish to speak of the sixteenth of a teamland, we must introduce the half-ox. Now had the jurors been told to state the quantity of the arable land comprised in a tenement, they had at their command plenty of words which would have served this purpose. No sooner will they have told us that there is land for two teams, than they will add that there are five acres of meadow and a wood which is three furlongs in length by two in breadth. We infer that they have not been asked to state the area of the arable. They have been asked to say something about it, but not to state its area.

[The commissioners and the teamlands.]

What had they been asked to say? Here we naturally turn to that well-known introduction to the Inquisitio Eliensis which professes to describe the procedure of the commissioners and which at many points corresponds with the contents of Domesday Book[1391]. We read that the barons made inquiry about the number of the hides (_A_) and the number of the teams (_C_); we do not read any word about the teamlands (_B_). _Quot hidae_ they must ask; _Quot carucae[1392] in dominio et quot hominum_ they must ask; _Quot carucis ibi est terra_--there is no such question. On the other hand, the jurors are told to give all the particulars thrice over (_hoc totum tripliciter_), once with reference to King Edward's day, once with reference to the date when the Conqueror bestowed the manor, and once with reference to the present time.

[The teamlands of Great Domesday.]

Now, if these be the interrogatories that the justiciars administered to the jurors, then the answering verdicts as they are recorded in Great Domesday err both by defect and by excess. On the one hand, save when they are dealing with the geld or the value of a tenement, they rarely give any figures from King Edward's day, and still seldomer do they speak about the date of the Conqueror's feoffments. Our record does not systematically report that whereas there are now four teams on this manor, there were five in the Confessor's reign and three when its new lord received it. On the other hand, we obtain the apparently unasked for information that 'there is land for five teams.'

[The teams of Little Domesday.]

We turn to Little Domesday and all is altered. Here the words of the writ seem to be punctually obeyed. The particulars are stated three times over, the words _tunc_, _post_ and _modo_ pointing to the three periods. Thus we learn how many teams there were when Edward was living and when the Conqueror gave the land away. On the other hand, we are not told how many teams 'could till' that land, though if the existing teams are fewer than those that were ploughing in time past, it will sometimes be remarked that the old state of things could be 'restored[1393]'.

[The Leicestershire formulas.]

Next we visit Leicestershire. We may open our book at a page which will make us think that the account of this shire will be very similar to those reports that are typical of Great Domesday. We read that Ralph holds four carucates; that there is land for four teams; that there are two teams on the demesne while the villeins have two[1394]. But then, alternating with entries which run in this accustomed form, we find others which, instead of telling us that there is land for so many teams, will tell us that there were so many upon it in the time of King Edward[1395]. Perhaps, were this part of the survey explored by one having the requisite knowledge, he would teach us that the jurors of some wapentakes use the one formula while the other is peculiar to other wapentakes; but, as the record stands, the variation seems due to the compiling clerk. Be that as it may, we can hardly read through these Leicestershire entries without being driven to believe that substantially the same piece of information is being conveyed to us now in one and now in the other of two shapes that in our eyes are dissimilar. To say, 'There were four teams here in King Edward's day' is much the same as to say, 'There is land here for four teams.' Conversely, to say, 'There is land here for four teams' is much the same as to say,'There were four teams here in King Edward's day.' For an exact equivalence we must not contend; but if the commissioners get the one piece of information they do not want the other. On no single occasion, unless we are mistaken, are both put on record[1396].

[Origin of the inquiry about the teamlands.]

When we have thought over these things, we shall perhaps fashion for ourselves some such guess as that which follows. The original scheme of the Inquest was unnecessarily cumbrous. The design of collecting the statistics of the past broke down. Let us imagine a similar attempt made in our own day. Local juries are summoned to swear communal verdicts about the number of horses and oxen that the farmers were keeping twenty years ago. Roughly, very roughly true would such verdicts be, although no foreign invasion, no influx of alien men and words and manners divides us from the fortieth year of Queen Victoria. In Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk some sort of answer about these matters was extracted from the jurors; but frequently they report that the arrangements which exist now have always existed, and by this they mean that they cannot remember any change. Now, when we fail to find in Great Domesday any similar figures, we may ascribe this to one of two causes. Either the commissioners did not collect statistics, or the compilers did not think them worthy of preservation. In some cases the one supposition may be true, in other cases the other. We may be fairly certain that in many or all counties the horses and the pigs and the 'otiose animals' that were extant in 1086 were enumerated in the verdicts[1397]. Also we know that Domesday Book is no mere transcript, but is an abstract or digest, and we have cause for believing that those who made it held themselves free to vary the phrases used by the jurors, provided that no material change was thus introduced[1398]. Howbeit, to come to the question that is immediately before us, our evidence seems to tell us that the commissioners and their master discovered that the original programme of the inquest was unnecessarily cumbrous. Once and again in more recent days has a similar discovery been made by royal commissioners. So some interrogatories were dropped.

[Modification of the inquiry.]

Then we suspect that the inquiry about the number of oxen that were ploughing in Edward's day became a more practicable, if looser, inquiry about the number of oxen capable of tilling the land. The transition would not be difficult. What King William really wants to know is the agricultural capacity of the tenement. He learns that there are now upon it so many beasts of the plough. But this number may be accidentally large or accidentally small. With an eye to future taxation, he wishes for figures expressive of the normal condition of things. But, according to the dominant idea of his reign, the normal condition of things is their Edwardian condition, that in which they stood before the usurper deforced the rightful heir. And so these two formulas which we see alternating in the account of Leicestershire really do mean much the same thing: 'There is land for _x_ teams': 'There were _x_ teams in the time of King Edward.'

[Inquiry as to potential teams.]

But if we suppose the justices abandoning the question 'How many teams twenty years ago?' in favour of 'How many teams can there be?' we see that, though they are easing their task and enabling themselves to obtain answers in the place of silence, they are also substituting for a matter of pure fact what may easily become a matter of opinion. They have left the actual behind and are inquiring about potentialities. They will now get answers more speedily; but who eight centuries afterwards will be able to analyze the mental processes of which these answers are the upshot? It is possible that a jury sets to work with an equation which connects oxen with area, for example, one which tells that a team can plough 120 acres. It is but too possible that this equation varies from place to place and that the commissioners do not try to prevent variations. They are not asking about area; they are asking about the number of teams requisite for the tillage of the tenement. With this and its value as data, William's ministers hope to correct the antiquated assessments. Some of the commissioners may allow the jurors to take the custom of the district as a guide, while others would like to force one equation on the whole country. Our admiration for Domesday Book will be increased, not diminished, if we remember that it is the work not of machines but of men. Some of the justices seem to have thought that the inquiry about potential teams (_B_) was not of the first importance, not nearly so important as the inquiries about actual teams (_C_) and gelding units (_A_). In various counties we see many entries in which _Terra est_ is followed by a blank space. In Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford we find no systematic mention of teamlands, but only occasional reports which show that at certain places there might be more teams than there are. At the end of the account of the Bishop of Worcester's triple hundred of Oswaldslaw (an account so favourable to St. Mary that it might have been dictated by her representative) we find the remark that in none of these manors could there be any more teams than now are there[1399]. The bishop, who fully understands the object of the inquest, does not mean to have his assessment raised, and the justices are compelled to take the word of jurors every one of whom is the vassal of St. Mary.

[Normal relation between teams and teamlands.]

We know so little as to the commissioners' intentions, in particular so little as to any design on their part to force upon the whole country some one equation connecting oxen with area, that the task which is set before us if we would explain the relation between the number of the teams (_C_) and the number of the teamlands (_B_) that we find in a given county is sometimes an intricate and perhaps insoluble problem. If England be taken as a whole, the two numbers will stand very close to each other. In some counties, for example in Lincolnshire, if at the foot of each page we add up the particulars, we shall long remain in doubt whether _B_ or _C_ will be the greater when our final sum is made. In county after county we shall find a large number of entries in which _B = C_, and, though there will always be some cases in which, the tenement being waste, _C_ descends to zero, and others in which _C_ is less than _B_, still the deficiency will be partially redressed by instances in which _B_ falls short of _C_. On the whole, the relation between the two is that which we might expect. Often there is equality; often the variation is small; but an excess on the part of _B_ is commoner than an excess on the part of _C_, and when the waste teamlands have been brought into the account, then in most counties _B_ will usually exceed _C_ by 10 per cent, or little more. There are, however, some marked and perplexing exceptions to this rule[1400].

[Deficiency of teams in the south-west.]

As we pass through the southern counties from east to west, the ratio borne by the teamlands to the teams steadily increases, until ascending by leaps it reaches 1.43:1 (or thereabouts) in Devon and 2:1 in Cornwall. Now to all seeming we are not in a country which has recently been devastated; it is not like Yorkshire; we find no large number of 'waste' or unpopulated or unvalued estates. Here and there we may see a tenement which has as many teams as it has teamlands; but in the great majority of cases the preponderance of teamlands is steadily maintained. What does this mean? One conceivable explanation we may decidedly reject. It does not mean a relatively scientific agriculture which makes the most of the ox. Nor does it mean a fertile soil[1401]. Our figures seem to show that men are sparse and poor; also they are servile. We suspect their tillage to be of that backward kind which ploughs enormous tracts for a poor return. _Arva per annos mutant et superest ager._ Of the whole of the land that is sometimes ploughed, they sow less than two-thirds or a half in any one year: perhaps they sow one-third only, so that of the space which the royal commissioners reckon as three teamlands two-thirds are always idle. We must remember that in modern times the husbandry that prevailed in Cornwall was radically different from that which governed the English open fields. It was what the agrarian historians of Germany call a _Feldgrasswirtschaft_[1402]. That perhaps is the best explanation which we can give of this general and normal excess of teamlands over teams. But to this we may add that systems of mensuration and assessment which fitted the greater part of England very well, may have fitted Devon, Cornwall and some other western counties very badly[1403]. Those systems are the outcome of villages and spacious common fields where, without measurement, you count the 'acres' and the plough-lands or house-lands, and they refuse to register with any accuracy the arrangements of the Celtic hamlets, or rather _trevs_ of the west.

[Actual and potential teamlands.]

It is by no means impossible that when the commissioners came to a county which was very sparsely peopled (and in Cornwall each 'recorded man' might have had near 160 acres of some sort or another all to himself) their question about the number of teamlands or about the number of teams 'that could plough there' became a question about remote possibilities, rather than about existing or probable arrangements, and that the answer to it became mere guesswork. On one occasion in Cornwall they are content with the statement that there is land for 'fifteen or thirty teams[1404].' In the description of a wasted tract of Staffordshire we see six cases close together in which two different guesses as to the number of the potential teamlands are recorded[1405]:--'There is land for two teams', but 'or three' is interlined. Five times 'or two' is written above 'one,' Now this is of importance, for perhaps we may see in it the key to the treatment that wasted Yorkshire receives. How much arable land is there in this village? Well, if by 'arable land' you mean land that is ploughed, there is none. If you do not mean this, if you are speaking of a 'waste' vill where no land has been ploughed these fifteen years, then you must be content with a speculative answer[1406]. If the ruined cottages were rebuilt and inhabited, if oxen and men were imported, then employment might be found for four or five teams. Called to speculate about these matters, the Yorkshire jurors very naturally catch hold of any solid fact which may serve as a base for computations. This fact they seem to find in the geld assessment. This estate is rated to the geld at two carucates; the assessment seems tolerably fair; so they say that two teams would plough the land. Or again, this estate is rated to the geld at four carucates; but its assessment is certainly too high, so let it be set down for two teamlands[1407]. Even in other parts of the country the jurors may sometimes avail themselves of this device. In particular there are tracts in which they are fond of reporting that the number of teamlands is just equal to (_B=A_) or just twice as great (_B=2A_) as the number of gelding carucates. We very much fear, though the ground for this fear can not be explained at this stage of our inquiry, that the figure which the jurors state when questioned about potential teams is sometimes dictated by a traditional estimate which has been playing a part in the geld assessment, and that the number of teamlands is but remotely connected with the agrarian arrangements of 1086. All our other guesses therefore must be regarded as being subject to this horrible suspicion, of which we shall have more to say hereafter[1408].

[The land of excessive teams.]

This makes it difficult for us to construe the second great aberration from the general rule that the number of the teamlands in a county will slightly exceed the number of teams. In Derby and Nottingham apparent 'understocking' becomes the exception and 'overstocking' the rule. In Derby there is a good deal of 'waste' where we have to reckon teamlands but no teams, and yet on many pages the number of teams is the greater (_C>B_). In Nottingham there seem to be on the average near 200 teams where there are but 125 teamlands. In many columns of the Lincolnshire survey, and therefore perhaps in some districts of that large and variegated county, the teams have a majority, though, if we have not blundered, they are beaten by the teamlands when the whole shire has been surveyed. It is very possible that a similar phenomenon would have been recorded in Essex and East Anglia if the inquiry in those counties had taken the form that was usual elsewhere, for the teams seem to be thick on the land. Now to interpret the steady excess of teams that we see in Derby and Nottingham is not easy. We can hardly suppose that the jurors are confessing that they habitually employ a superfluity of oxen. Perhaps, however, we may infer that in this district a given area of land will be ploughed by an unusually large number of teams, whereas in Devon and Cornwall a given area will be ploughed, though intermittently, by an unusually small number. In every way the contrast between Devon and Cornwall on the one hand, Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby on the other, is strongly marked. Of the quality of soils something should, no doubt, be said which we are too ignorant to say. An acre would yield more corn in Nottingham and Derby, to say nothing of Lincoln, than in Devon and Cornwall, though the _valets_ that we find in the three Danish shires are by no means so high as those that are displayed by some of the southern counties. But if we ask how many households our average teamland is supporting, then among all the counties that we have examined Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby stand at the very top, while Devon and Cornwall stand with the depopulated Stafford at the very bottom of the list[1409]. Then, again, we see the contrasts between village and _trev_, between Dane and Celt, between sokeman and slave. Possibly Northampton, Derby and parts of Lincoln really are 'over-teamed': that is to say, were the land of these counties to come to the hands of lords who held large and compact estates, the number of plough-teams would be reduced. Where there is freedom there will be some waste. The tenements split into fractions, and the owner of a small piece must keep oxen enough to draw a plough or trust to the friendliness and reciprocal needs of his neighbours. Manorialism has this advantage: it can make the most of the ox. Another possible guess is that the real carucates and bovates of this district (by which we mean the units which locally bear these names and which are the units in the proprietary or tenurial scheme) have few acres, fewer than would be allowed by some equation which the royal commissioners for these counties carry in their minds. Being assured (for example) that the bovates in a certain village or hundred have few acres, they may be allowing the jurors to count as three team-lands ('of imperial measure') a space of arable that has been locally treated as four. So, after all, the rule that normally each teamland should have its team and that each team should till its teamland may be holding good in these counties, though the proprietary and agrarian units have differed from those that the commissioners treat as orthodox.

[Attempts to explain the excess of teams.]

One last guess is lawful after what we have seen in Leicestershire. These Nottinghamshire folk may be telling how many teams there were in King Edward's time and recording a large increase in the number of oxen and therefore perhaps in the cultivated area. In this case, however, we should expect to find the _valet_ greater than the _valuit_, while really we find that a fall in value is normal throughout the shire.

[Digression to East Anglia.]

We must here say one parenthetical word about the account of East Anglia. In one respect it differs from the account of any other district[1410]. We are told of the various landholders that they hold so many carucates or so many acres. Analogy would lead us to suppose that this is a statement touching the amount of geld with which they are charged. Though there is no statement parallel to the _Terra est b carucis_ which we find in most parts of England, still there are some other counties remote from East Anglia--Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford--where no such statement is given to us. In other words, a natural first guess would be that in Norfolk and Suffolk we are informed about _A_ and not about _B_. But then, it is apparent that some information about _A_ is being given to us by a quite different formula such as we shall not meet outside East Anglia. We are told about a vill that when the hundred pays 20_s._ for the geld this vill pays so many pence--seven pence halfpenny, it may be, or eight pence three farthings. This is the formula which prescribes how much geld the landholders of the vill must pay and it says nothing of carucates or of acres. Now this might make us think that the carucates and acres which are attributed to the landholders are 'real' and not 'rateable' areas, and are to be put on a level with the teamlands (_B_) rather than with the hides or gelding carucates (_A_) of other counties. Nevertheless, on second thoughts we may return to our first opinion. If these carucates are equivalent to the teamlands of other counties, Norfolk and Suffolk not only differ but differ very widely from the rest of England[1411]. In Norfolk we make about 2,422 carucates and about 4,853 teams, and, however wide of the mark these figures may be[1412], the fact that there are upon an average about two teams to every carucate is apparent on page after page of the record; often the ratio is yet higher. We have seen a phenomenon of the same kind, though less pronounced, in Nottingham; but then, if in Norfolk we proceed to divide the 'recorded population' by the number of carucates, we shall get 11 as our quotient. This is so very much higher than anything that we have seen elsewhere that we are daunted by it; for, even though we recall the possibility that a good many tenants in this free county are counted twice because they hold under two lords, still this reflection will hardly enable us to make the requisite allowance. To this it may be added that if we divide the acreage of Norfolk by its carucates and treat the carucates as teamlands, the quotient will place Norfolk among the counties in which the smallest part of the total area was under the plough. Further, it will be observed that the statement about the geldability of the vills does not enable us to bring home any particular sum to any given man. Be it granted that the sum due from a vill is fixed by the proposition that it contributes thirteen pence to every pound levied from the hundred, we have still to decide how much Ralph and how much Roger, two landholders of the vill, must contribute; and our decision will, we take it, be dictated by the statement that Ralph has one carucate and Roger 60 acres. We fear therefore that here again we can not penetrate through the rateable to the real[1413].

[The teamland no areal measure.]

About the 'land for one team' we can hardly get beyond vague guesswork, and may seriously doubt whether the inquiry as to the number of possible ploughs was interpreted in the same manner in all parts of the country. Here it may have been regarded as a reference to the good old time of King Edward, here to the local custom; there an attempt may have been made to enforce some royal 'standard measure,' and there again men were driven to speculate as to what might happen if a wilderness were once more inhabited. But unless we are mistaken, the first step towards a solution of the many problems that beset us is taken when we perceive that the jurors have not been asked to state the areal extent of the tilled or the tillable land.

[Eyton's theory.]

Far other, as is well known, was the doctrine of one whom all students of Domesday revere. For Mr Eyton the teamland was precisely 120 of our statute acres[1414]. The proof offered of this lies in a comparison of the figures given by Domesday with the superficial content of modern parishes. What seems to us to have been proved is that, if we start with the proposed equation, we shall rarely be brought into violent collision with ascertained facts, and that, when such a collision seems imminent, it can almost always be prevented by the intervention of some plausible hypothesis about shifted boundaries or neglected wastes. More than this has not been done. Always at the end of his toil the candid investigator admits that when he has added up all the figures that Domesday gives for arable, meadow, wood and pasture, the land of the county is by no means exhausted. Then the residue must be set down as 'unsurveyed' or 'unregistered' and guesses made as to its whereabouts[1415]. Then further, this method involves theories about lineal and superficial measurements which are, in our eyes, precarious.

[Domesday's lineal measure.]

One word about this point must be said, though we can not devote much room to it. The content of various spaces, such as woods and pastures, is often indicated by a reference to linear standards, leagues, furlongs, perches, feet, and there seems to be little doubt that the main equations which govern the system are these:

1 league = 12 furlongs or quarentines or acre-lengths = 480 perches.

Now we read numerous statements which take the following form:--'It is _x_ leagues (furlongs, perches) long and _y_ wide,' or, to take a concrete example, 'The wood is 1 league long and 4 furlongs wide.' The question arises whether we are justified in making this mean that here is a wood whose superficial content is equal to that of a rectangular parallelogram 480 statute perches long by 160 statute perches wide. We are rash in imposing our perch of 16·5 feet on the whole England of the eleventh century, even though we are to measure arable land. We are rasher in using that perch for the measurement of woodland. But perhaps we are rasher still in supposing that the Domesday jurors have true superficial measurement in their minds[1416]. We strongly suspect that they are thinking of shape as well as of size, and may be giving us the extreme diameters of the wood or some diameters that they guess to be near the mean. If a clergyman told us that his parish was 3 miles long by 2 wide, we should not accuse him of falsehood or blunder if we subsequently discovered that in shape it was approximately a right-angled triangle and contained only some 3 superficial miles. And now let us observe how rude these statements are. The Norfolk jurors are in the habit of recording the length and the breadth of the vills. Occasionally they profess to do this with extreme accuracy[1417]. However, we reckon that in about 100 out of 550 cases they say that the vill is one league long by a half-league wide. This delightfully symmetrical county therefore should have quite a hundred parishes, each of which contains close upon 720 acres. Among the 800 parishes of modern Norfolk there are not 70 whose size lies between 600 and 800 acres. We are not saying that time spent over these lineal measurements is wasted, but an argument which gets to the size of the teamland by postulating in the first place that our statute perch was commonly used for all purposes throughout England, and in the second that these lineal can be converted into superficial measurements by simple arithmetic, is not very cogent and is apt to become circular, for the teamland contains its 120 acres because that is the space left for it by parochial boundaries when we have measured off the woods and pastures, and our measurement of the woods and pastures is correct because it will leave 120 acres for every teamland.

[Measured teamlands.]

One more word about these lineal measurements. In Norfolk and Suffolk the total area of the vills is indicated by them, and so it is in Yorkshire also. Now, unless we err, it sometimes happens that if we arithmetically deduce the total area from its recorded length and breadth, and then subtract from that area the content of any measured woods and pastures that there may be, we shall be left with too little space to give each East Anglian carucate or each Yorkshire teamland 120 acres and with far too little to allow a similar area to each East Anglian team. Try one experiment. At Shereford in Norfolk we have to force at least one carucate on which there are two teams into a space that is 3 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth[1418]. That means, if our method be sound, that each team has at the utmost 45 acres to till. Try we Yorkshire. There also we shall find entries which to all appearance will not suffer us to give 120 acres to the teamland.

In Andrebi ... 9 carucates for geld; there may be 6 teams.... The whole half a league long and half [a league] wide[1419].

In Hotone and Bileham ... a manor of 10 carucates for geld; there may be 10 teams.... The whole 10 quarantines long and 8 wide[1420].

In Warlavesbi 6 carucates for geld; there may be 4 teams.... The whole half a league long and half [a league] wide[1421].

It would seem then that in these cases the utmost limit for the teamland is 60, 80, 90 acres. Then again, there are a few precious instances in which lineal measures are used in order to indicate the size of a piece of land the whole of which is arable. This occurs so rarely that we may fairly expect something exceptional. The result is bewildering. At Thetford we hear of land that is half a league long and half a league wide: 'the whole of this land is arable and 4 teams can plough it[1422].' Here then, but 90 acres are assigned to the teamland. We journey to Yorkshire and first we will take an entry which suits the Eytonian doctrine well enough. 'There are 13 carucates of land less one bovate for geld; 8 teams can plough them.... Arable land 10 quarentines long and equally broad[1423].' In this case we have 1000 acres to divide among 8 teamlands, and this would make each teamland 125 acres:--we could hardly expect a pleasanter quotient. But on the same page we have an entry which tells of a manor with 60 carucates and 6 bovates for geld and 35 teamlands where the 'arable land' is described as being '2 leagues long and 2 [leagues] wide[1424].' This gives nearly 165 acres to the teamland. There are two Lincolnshire entries which, when treated in a similar way, give 160[1425] and 225[1426] acres to the teamland. Then there is a Staffordshire entry which gives no less than 360 acres to each teamland, though it gives only 160 to each existing team[1427]. The suspicion can not but cross our minds that as regards the amount of land that had 8 oxen for its culture there may have been as wide a difference between the various shires in the days of the Confessor as there was in the days of Arthur Young; only, whereas in the eighteenth century a little space ploughed by many oxen was a relic of barbarism, it was in the eleventh an index of prosperity, freedom, a thick population and a comparatively intense agriculture. But theories about the facts of husbandry will not dispel the whole of the fog which shrouds the Domesday teamland.

[Amount of ploughed land in England.]

That, if all England be taken as a whole, the average teamland of Domesday Book would contain about 120 acres seems possible, and since we ourselves are committed to the belief that the old traditional hide had arable acres to this number, it may be advisable that we should examine some districts of ancient England through the medium of the hypothesis that Domesday's teamland has a long-hundred of our statute acres. In Column 1. of the following table we place the result obtained if we multiply a county's teamlands (or in the case of Sussex and Gloucester the teams) by 120; and in the following columns we give the figures which show the state of the county in 1895. In order to make a rough comparison the easier, we give round figures and omit three noughts, so that, for example, 371 stands for 371,000 acres[1428].

A A P M W T M r r e o o o o a a r u L o t d b b m n a g d t a e l l a t n r s i l r e e n ( a d a o n e 1 i z a n A i ( n 8 n u i n c C n 1 t 9 s n d ( r o 8 5 a e g 1 e u 1 9 P ) n d P 8 a n 0 5 a d ( l 9 g t 8 ) s f 1 a 5 e y 6 t H o 8 n ) u e r 9 t o r a 5 a f e t ) h

Total Mountain Acreage and Heath of Permanent Land used Woods and Modern Arable in Arable pastures for grazing Plantation County 1086 (1895) (1895) (1895) (1895) (1895)

1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 1000 Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres Acres

Sussex 371 298 381 9 124 933 Surrey 141 133 152 12 54 461 Berkshire 251 204 163 1 36 462 Dorset 280 188 300 18 38 632 Somerset 577 207 653 48 46 1042 Devon 957 581 633 138 86 1667 Buckingham 269 165 236 2 32 476 Oxford 317 228 188 1 27 485 Gloucester 589 269 387 7 58 797 Bedford 187 155 100 1 13 298 Northampton 352 215 344 0 28 640 Lincoln 605 1017 501 2 43 1695

[Decrease of arable.]

These figures are startling enough. We are required to believe that in many counties, even in Sussex where the forest still filled a large space, there were more acres ploughed T. R. W. than are ploughed T. R. V., while in some cases the number has been reduced by one half during the intervening centuries. Were the old acres in Oxfordshire as large as our own, a good deal more than three-fifths of that county was ploughed. Much might be said of the extreme futility of ancient agriculture. Then we should have to remember the 'inclosures' of the sixteenth century; also the movement which in our own day threatens to carry us back to 'the pastoral state[1429].' We should have to scrutinize those abundant marks of the plough which occur in our meadows and on our hillsides, even where we least expect them, and to distinguish those which were being made in the days of the Norman conqueror from those which tell of a much later age when 'the Corsican tyrant' threatened our shores.

[The food problem.]

And then there is the great food problem. At this point we might desire the aid of a jury of scientific experts. We are, indeed, but ill prepared to deliver a charge or to define a clear issue, but the main question may be roughly stated thus:--South of Yorkshire and Cheshire we have some 275,000 'recorded men,' some 75,000 recorded teams and (if we allow 120 statute acres to every team) some 9,000,000 statute acres of arable land[1430]. Is this supply of arable adequate or excessive for the population? Unfortunately, however, the question involves more than one unknown quantity.

[What was the population?]

In the first place, by what figure are we to multiply the number of 'recorded men' before we shall obtain the total population? Here we have to remember that nothing is said by our record about some of the largest towns and that the figures which we obtain from Norwich[1431] suggest that the inhabitants of London, Winchester and the like should not be neglected, even by those who are aiming at the rudest computation. Then what we read of Bury St Edmunds[1432] suggests that around every great abbey were clustered many artificers, servants and bedesmen who as a general rule were not enumerated by the jurors. We must also remember the monks, nuns and canons and the large households of barons and prelates[1433]. Again, it is by no means unlikely that, despite a high rate of mortality among children, the household of the ordinary villein was upon an average larger than is the household of the modern cottager or artizan, for the blood-bond was stronger than it is now-a-days. Married brothers with their wives and children may not unfrequently have dwelt in one house and may be described in our record as a single _villanus_ because they hold an undivided inheritance. On the other hand, we have seen reason to think that in the eastern villages many men may be counted more than once[1434]. Shall we, for the sake of argument, multiply the recorded men by 5? This would give us a population of 1,375,000 souls[1435].

[What was the field-system?]

What portion of the arable land shall we suppose to be sown in any one year? Some grave doubts may occur to us before we put this portion higher than one half[1436]. Common opinion would perhaps strike a balance between two-field and three-field husbandry. So we will suppose that out of 9 million acres 5 million are sown.

[What was the acre's yield?]

Then comes the insoluble question about the acre's yield. Even could we state an average, this would not be very serviceable, for every district had to feed itself in every year, and the statistics of the later middle ages suggest that the difference between good and bad years was very large, while the valuations of the manors in Domesday Book seem to tell us that the difference between fertile and sterile, forward and backward counties was much wider in the eleventh century than it is in our own day. The scientific agriculturist of the thirteenth century proposed to sow an acre with two bushels of wheat and regarded ten bushels as the proper return[1437]. Walter of Henley proved by figures that a three-fold return would not be remunerative, unless prices were exceptionally good, but he evidently thought of this exiguous yield as a possibility[1438], and yet, as we have seen, he represents the 'high farming' of his time and in his two-course husbandry would plough the land thrice over between every two crops. In the first half of the next century we can not put the average as high as 8 bushels[1439]. To eyes that look for 29 or 30, a yield of from 6 to 10 may seem pitiful; and the 'miserable husbandry' that Arthur Young saw in the west of England was producing from 15 to 20[1440]. However, there are countries in which a crop of wheat which gave 10 of our bushels to one of our acres would not be very small[1441]. For our present purpose, the figure that we should wish to obtain would be, not that which expressed the yield of an average year, but that which was the outcome of a bad year, for we have to keep folk alive and they can not wait for the good times. Let us then take our hypothesis from Walter of Henley. We suppose a yield of 6 bushels, 2 of which must be retained for seed. This would give us 20 million bushels as food, or, we will say, 15 bushels for every person.

[Of beer.]

Now, had we to deal with modern wheat and modern mills, we might argue that the bushel of wheat would weigh 60 pounds, that the weight of flour would be 72 per cent. of the weight of grain[1442], and that every human mouth could thus be provided with a little more than 28 ounces of flour every day, or, to put it another way, with bread amounting to nine-sixteenths of a four pound loaf[1443]. Some large, but indefinable, deduction should be made from this amount on the score of poor grain and wasteful processes. As the sum stands, we are at present proposing to give to each person a great deal more wheat-flour than would be obtained if the total amount consumed now-a-days in the United Kingdom were divided by the number of its inhabitants[1444]. But it need hardly be said that the problem is far more complex than are our figures. In the first place, we have to withdraw from the men of 1086 a large quantity, perhaps more than a half, of the wheat-flour that we have given them in order to supply its place with other cereals[1445], in particular with barley and oats, much of which, together with some of the wheat[1446], will be consumed in the form of beer. And who shall fathom that ocean? _Multum biberunt de cerevisia Anglicana_, as the pope said. Their choice lay for the more part between beer and water. In the twelfth century the corn-rents paid to the bishop of Durham often comprised malt, wheat and oats in equal quantities[1447]. In the next century the economy of the canons of St. Paul's was so arranged that for every 30 quarters of wheat that went to make bread, 7 quarters of wheat, 7 of barley and 32 of oats went to make beer[1448]. The weekly allowance of every canon included 30 gallons[1449]. In one year their brewery seems to have produced 67,814 gallons from 175 quarters of wheat, a like quantity of barley and 708 quarters of oats[1450]. With such figures before us, it becomes a serious question whether we can devote less than a third of the sown land to the provision of drink. The monk, who would have growled if he got less than a gallon a day, would, we may suppose, consume in the course of a year 20 bushels of barley or an equivalent amount of other grain: in other words, the produce, when seed-corn is deducted, of from two to three acres of land; and perhaps to every mouth in England we must give half a gallon daily[1451].

[The Englishman's diet.]

But if we can not make teetotallers of our ancestors (and in very truth we can not) neither may we convert them to vegetarianism. What we can read of the provender-rents paid in the days before the Conquest suggests that those who were well-to-do, including the monks, consumed a great deal of mutton, pork, poultry, fish, eels, cheese and honey[1452]. This would relieve the arable of part of the pressure that it would otherwise have borne, for, though we already hear of two manors which between them supply 6000 dog-loaves for the king's hounds[1453], and also read of pigs that are fattened with corn[1454], it is not very probable that any beasts, save those that laboured, got much from the arable, except the straw, and the stubble which we may suspect of having been abundantly mixed with grass and weeds. It is likely, however, that the oxen which were engaged in ploughing were fed at times with oats. Walter of Henley would keep his plough-beasts at the manger for five-and-twenty weeks in the year and would during that time give 70 bushels of oats to every eight of them[1455]. At this rate our 75,000 teams would require 5,250,000 bushels of oats, and on this score we might have to deduct some 4 million bushels of wheat[1456] from our 20 millions and reduce by one-fifth each person's allowance of grain. But then, it is by no means certain that we ought to transplant Walter's practices into the eleventh century; we have seen that he expected much of his oxen[1457].

[Is the arable super-abundant?]

At first sight it may seem incredible that the average human being annually required the produce of nearly seven acres. But observe how rapidly the area will disappear. We deduct a half for the idle shift; a third of the remainder we set apart as beer-land. We have not much more than two acres remaining, and may yet have to feed oxen and horses. But suppose that we concede to every human mouth the wheat of two full acres; we can not say for certain that we are giving it a quarter of grain, even though we suppose each acre to yield more than was to be had always and everywhere in the fourteenth century[1458].

[Amount of pasturage.]

Our doubt about the food of the oxen makes it difficult for us to state even the outlines of another important problem. Are we leaving pasture enough for the beasts? Their number was by no means small. South of the southern frontier of Cheshire and Yorkshire we must accommodate in the first place some 600,000 beasts of the plough, and in the second place and for their maintenance a sufficiency of bulls, cows and calves. Now-a-days England keeps 4,723,000 head of cattle, but we have been excluding from view near a quarter of England. Then there are other animals to be provided for. Their number we can not guess, for apparently the statistics that we obtain from the south-western and eastern counties give us only the stock that is on the demesne of the manors[1459]. We have seen that the peasants in East Anglia had sheep enough to make their 'fold-soke' an important social institution[1460]. Also we have much evidence of large herds of pigs belonging to the villeins, though these we may send to the woods. But, attending only to the dominical stock, we will begin by looking at the manor which stands first in the Cambridgeshire Inquest. The lord has 5 teams, 8 head of not-ploughing cattle, 4 rounceys, 10 pigs and 480 sheep. Then, in the accompanying table we will give some figures from various counties which show the amount of stock that is kept where there are 200 teams or thereabouts.

Teams (Demesne Beasts not and of the Tenants') Plough Horses Goats Pigs Sheep

Essex 207 267 34 107 777 1657 Suffolk 200 196 30 295 676 1705 Norfolk 202 132 44 200 672 5673 Dorset 202 159 47 281 479 6160 Somerset 202 82 16 49 198 1506 Devon 205 282 16 135 173 1553 Cornwall 200 62 35 52 26 1445 Total 1418 1180 222 1119 3001 19699

Even if we look only at the flocks which belong to the holders of manors, we may have to feed a million sheep south of the Humber, and, though all England now maintains more than 15 millions, it does this by devoting a large portion of its arable to the growth of turnips and the like. No doubt, the medieval sheep were wretched little animals; also large numbers of them were slaughtered and salted at the approach of winter; but from the arable they got only the stubble, and every extension of the ploughed area deteriorated the quality besides diminishing the quantity of the pasture that was left for their hungry mouths. As already said, our forefathers did not live on bread and beer; bacon must have been plentiful among them[1461]. Also many fleeces were needed for their clothing. As to meadow land (_pratum_), that is, land that was mown, it was sparse and precious[1462]; the supply of it was often insufficient even for the lord's demesne oxen. At least in Cambridgeshire, we find traces of a theory which taught that every ox should have an acre of meadow; but commonly this was an unrealized ideal[1463]. In Dorset now-a-days there will be near 95,000 acres growing grass for hay, whereas there were not 7,000 acres of meadow in 1086[1464]. Therefore we are throwing a heavy strain on the pasture[1465].

[Area of the villages.]

Lastly, we must not neglect, as some modern calculators do, the sites of the villages, the straggling group of houses with their court-yards, gardens and crofts, for this deducts a sensible piece from the conceivably tillable area. An exceedingly minute account of Sawston in Cambridgeshire which comes from the year 1279 shows us a territory thus divided: Messuages, Gardens, Crofts, etc., 85 acres: Arable, 1243 acres: Meadow, 82 acres: Several Pasture, 30 acres. The neighbouring village of Whittlesford shows us: Messuages, Gardens, Crofts, etc., 35 acres: Arable, 1363 acres: Meadow, 44 acres: Several Pasture, 35 acres. In both cases we must add some unspecified quantity of Common Pasture[1466]. The core of the village was not large when compared with its fields; but it can not be ignored.

[Produce and value.]

Recurring for a moment to our food problem, we may observe that the values that are set on the manors in Domesday Book seem to point to a very feeble yield of corn. Without looking for extreme cases, we shall often find that the value of a teamland is no more than 10 shillings. Now let us make the hypothesis most favourable to fertility and suppose that this 'value' represents a pure, net rent[1467]. We will make another convenient but extravagant assumption; we will say that 24 bushels of wheat will make 365 four-pound loaves. If then a lord is to get one such loaf every day from each teamland that is valued at 10 shillings, the price of wheat will be a good deal less than 5 pence the bushel; if two daily loaves are to be had, the price of the bushel must be reduced below 2-1/2 pence, for the cost of grinding and baking is not negligible. Whether this last price could be assumed as normal must be very doubtful, for the little that Domesday tells us about the price of grain is told in obscure and disputable terms[1468]. However, the evidence that comes to us from the twelfth[1469] and thirteenth centuries[1470] suggests a rough equivalence between an ox and two quarters of wheat, and in the eleventh the traditional price of the ox was 30 pence. But at any rate, the lord who has a small village with five teamlands, and who lets it to a _firmarius_, will receive a rent which, when it is stated in loaves, is by no means splendid. He will not be much of a _hláford_, or have many 'loaf-eaters' if his whole revenue is £2. 10_s._ or, in other words, if he is lord of but one small village in the midlands.

[Varying size of acres.]

Here we must leave this question to those who are expert in the history of agriculture; but if some relief is required, it may be plausibly obtained by a reduction in the size of the ancient acre. A small piece off the village perches will mean a great piece off the 2,600 teamlands of Oxfordshire, and we seem to have the best warrant for a recourse to this device where it is most needed. The pressure upon our space appears to be at its utmost in Oxfordshire, and just for that county we have first-rate evidence of some very small acres[1471]. On the other hand, in Lincolnshire and generally in the north, where we read of abnormally large acres, we seem to have room enough for them. And here may be a partial explanation of the apparent fact that the teamland of Oxfordshire does not support three, while that of Lincolnshire supports five recorded men.

[The teamland in Cambridgeshire.]

In these last paragraphs we have been speaking of averages struck for large spaces; but if we come to some particular districts we shall have the greatest difficulty in allowing 120 acres to every teamland. This is the case in southern Cambridgeshire. In that county Domesday's list of vills is so nearly the same as the modern list of parishes that we run no great risk in comparing the ancient teamlands with the modern acreage vill by vill, if we also compare them hundred by hundred. The general result will be to make us unwilling to bestow on every teamland a long-hundred of acres. One example shall be given. The Whittlesford Hundred[1472] contains five vills and we can not easily concede to it more land than is now within its boundary. In the following table we give for each vill its modern acreage, then the number of its teamlands, then the result of multiplying that number by 120.

WHITTLESFORD HUNDRED.

Sawston 1884 10 1200 Whittlesford 1969 11 1320 Duxford 3232 21[1473] 2520 Hinxton 1557 16[1474] 1920 Ickleton 2695 24-1/2 2940 The Hundred 11337 82-1/2 9900

In two cases out of five we have already come upon sheer physical impossibility. But let us suppose some rearrangement of parish boundaries and look at the whole hundred. We are giving it 9900 acres of arable and leaving 1437 for other purposes. Then we are told of 'meadow for' 37 teams and this at the rate usual in Cambridgeshire[1475], means 296 acres, so that we have only 1141 left. On this we must place the sites of five villages, houses, farmyards, fourteen water-mills, cottages, gardens. Probably we want 250 acres at least to meet this demand. Not 900 acres remain for pasture. The dominical flocks and herds were not large, but the lords were receiving divers ploughshares in return for the pasture rights accorded to the tenants and in some of the vills there was not nearly enough meadow for the oxen of the villeins. It is difficult to believe that 87 per cent. of a Cambridgeshire hundred was under the plough, and that less than 8 per cent. was pasture. However, we know too little to say that even this was impossible. In the twelfth century we read of manors in which there is no pasture, except upon the arable field that is taking its turn of idleness[1476]. We must remember that this idle field was not fallowed until the summer[1477]; also we may suspect that much that was not corn grew on the medieval corn-land.

[The hides of Domesday.]

Saddened by our encounter with the teamlands (_B_)--and our last word about them is not yet said--we turn to the hides, carucates and sulungs (_A_). With a fair allowance for errors we feel safe in believing that the total number mentioned by Domesday Book falls short of 70,000--and yet time was when we spoke of 60,000 knight's fees of 5 hides apiece[1478]. Let us then recall once more those tales of taxation that are told by the chronicler[1479]. If Cnut raised a geld of £72,000, then, even if we allow him something from those remote northern lands which William's commissioners did not enter, the rate of the impost can hardly have been less than a pound on the hide. We are not told that he raised this sum in the course of a single year; but, even if we suppose it spread over four years, it is a monstrous exaction, and we can hardly fancy that in earlier days the pirates had waited long for the £24,000 or £30,000 that were the price of their forbearance. And yet, as already said, our choice seems to lie between believing these stories and charging the annalist with reckless mendacity. Hereafter we shall argue that some ancient statements about hidage, even some made by Bede himself, deserve no credit; but it is one thing for a Northumbrian scholar of the eighth century to make very bad guesses about the area of Sussex, and another for a chronicler of the eleventh to keep on telling us that a king levies £21,099 or £11,048 or the like, if these sums are wildly in excess of those that were demanded. As to the value of money, the economists must be heard; but it is probable that the sea-rovers insisted on good weight[1480], and when in the twelfth century we can begin to trace the movement of prices, in particular the price of oxen, they are not falling but rising. However, we have already said our say about the enormity of the danegeld.

[Relation between hide and teamland.]

We are now to investigate the 'law' of _A_ and its relation to _B_. We shall soon be convinced that we are not dealing with two perfectly independent variables. There will often be wide variations between the two; _A_ may descend to zero, while _B_ is high, and in some counties we shall see a steady tendency which makes _A_ decidedly higher or decidedly lower than _B_. And yet, if we look at England as a whole, we can not help feeling that in some sense or another _A_ ought to be equal to _B_, and that, when this equation holds good, things are in a condition that we may call normal. Perhaps, as we shall see hereafter, the current notion has been that the teamland should be taxed as a hide if it lies in a district where a teamland will usually be worth about a pound a year. But for the time we will leave value out of account, and, to save words, we will appropriate three terms and use them technically. When _A_ = _B_, there is 'equal rating'; when _A_ > _B_, there is 'over-rating'; when _A_ < _B_ there is 'under-rating.' We shall find, then, that in many counties there are numerous cases of equal rating. Thus in Buckinghamshire we count

cases of under-rating 136 cases of equal rating 102 cases of over-rating 115

In Lincolnshire we may find an unbroken series of fourteen entries each of which gives us an instance of equal rating[1481]. In both Lincolnshire and Yorkshire such cases are common, but, while in Lincolnshire over-rating is rare, in Yorkshire under-rating is very rare. Fewer are the over-rated than the under-rated counties; but there are some for which the figures can not be given, and, as immense Yorkshire is set before us as much over-rated, the balance must be nearly redressed. But further, we may see that the relation between _A_ and _B_ is apt to change somewhat suddenly at the border of a county. The best illustration is given by the twin shires of Leicester and Northampton, the one over-rated, the other grossly under-rated. Another good illustration is given by the south-western counties. Wiltshire is heavily over-rated; Dorset, as a whole, very equally rated; Somerset decidedly under-rated, while when we come to Devon and Cornwall we enter a land so much underrated that, had we only the account of these two counties, the assumption that is implied in our terms 'under-rated' and 'over-rated' would never have entered our heads.

[Unhidated estates.]

Now for one cause of the aberration of _A_ from _B_ we have not far to seek; it is a cause which will make _A_ less than _B_ and which may reduce _A_ to zero. It is privilege. Certain estates have been altogether exempt from geld. In particular many royal estates have been exempt. '_Nescitur quot hidae sint ibi quia non reddidit geldum_'--'_Nunquam geldavit nec scitur quot hidae sint ibi_'--'_Rex Edwardus tenuit; tunc 20 hidae sed nunquam geldaverunt_':--such and such like are the formulas that describe this immunity. The number of actually geldant hides is here reduced to zero, and sometimes the very term 'hides,' so usually does it imply taxation, is deemed inappropriate. But these royal estates do not stand alone. Often enough some estate of a church has been utterly freed from taxation. The bishop of Salisbury, for example, has a great estate at Sherborne which has gelded for 43 hides; but 'in this same Sherborne he has 16 carucates of land; this land was never divided into hides nor did it pay geld[1482].'

[Beneficial hidation.]

But then again, we have the phenomenon which has aptly been called 'beneficial hidation.' Without being entirely freed from the tax, a manor has been rated at a smaller number of hides than it really contains. 'There are 5 hides' says a Gloucestershire entry, '3 of them geld, but by grant of the Kings Edward and William 2 of them do not geld[1483].' 'There are 8 hides there' says another entry 'and the ninth hide belongs to the church of St. Edward; King Æthelred gave it quit [of geld][1484].' 'There are 20 hides; of these 4 were quit of geld in the time of King Cnut[1485].' 'The Bishop [of Winchester] holds Fernham [Fareham] in demesne; it always belonged to the bishopric; in King Edward's day it defended itself for 20 hides, and it does so still; there are by tale 30 hides, but King Edward gave them thus [i.e. granted that they should be 20 hides] by reason of the vikings, for it [Fareham] is by the sea[1486].' 'Harold held it of King Edward; before Harold had it, it defended itself for 27 hides, afterwards for 16 hides because Harold so pleased. The men of the hundred never heard or saw any writ from the king which put it at that figure[1487].' We have chosen these examples because they give us more information than we can often obtain; they take us back to the days of Cnut and of Æthelred; they tell us of the depredations of the vikings; they show us a magnate fixing the rateable value of his estate _ad libitum suum_. But our record is replete with other instances in which we are told that by special royal favour an estate has been lightly taxed[1488]. What is more, there are many other instances in which we can hardly doubt that this same cause has been at work, though we are not expressly told of it. When in a district which as a whole is over-rated, or but moderately under-rated, we come upon a few manors which are extravagantly under-rated, then we may fairly draw the inference that there has been 'beneficial hidation.'

[Effect of privilege.]

Certainly this will account for much, and we have reason to believe that this disturbing force had been in operation for a long time past and on a grand scale. There is an undated writ of Æthelred[1489], which ordains that an immense estate of the church of Winchester having Chilcombe for its centre and containing 100 hides shall defend itself for one hide. In Domesday Book Chilcombe does defend itself for one hide though it has land for 88 teams[1490]. But further, Æthelred is decreeing nothing new; his ancestors, his 'elders,' have 'set and freed' all this land as one hide 'be the same more or less.' Behind this writ stand older charters which are not of good repute. Still we can see nothing improbable in the supposition that Æthelred issued the writ ascribed to him and that what he said in it was substantially true. Before his day there may have been no impost that was known as a 'geld'; but there may have been, as we have endeavoured to show, other imposts to which land contributed at the rate of so much per hide. We suspect that 'beneficial hidation' had a long history before Domesday Book was made.

[Divergence of hide from teamland.]

But it will not account for all the facts that are before us; indeed it will serve for few of them. Privilege can account for exceptional cases; it will not account for steady and consistent under-rating; still less will it account for steady and consistent over-rating. We must look elsewhere, and for a moment we may find some relief in the reflection that by the operation of natural and obvious causes an old rate-book will become antiquated. There will be more 'teamlands' than there are gelding hides because new land has been brought under cultivation; on the other hand, land will sometimes go out of cultivation and then there will be more gelding hides than there are teamlands. Now that there is truth here we do not doubt. As we have already said[1491], the stability of agrarian affairs in these early times may easily be overestimated. But we can not in this direction find the explanation of changes that take place suddenly at the boundaries of counties.

[Partition of the geld.]

A master hand has lately turned our thoughts to the right quarter. There can we think be no doubt that, as Mr Round has argued, the geld was imposed according to a method which we have called the method of subpartitioned provincial quotas[1492]. A sum cast upon a hundred has been divided among that hundred's vills; a sum cast upon a vill has been divided among the lands that the vill contains. It is in substance the method which still governs our land-tax, and in this very year our attention has been pointedly called to its inequitable results. But, whereas in later centuries men distributed pounds, shillings and pence among the counties, our remoter ancestors distributed hides or carucates or acres. The effect was the same; and it is not unlikely that they could pass with rapidity from acres to pence, because the pound had 240 pence in it and the fiscal hide had 120 acres. So the complaint urged this year that Lancashire is under-taxed and Hertfordshire over-taxed[1493] would have been in their mouths the complaint that too many hides had been cast on the one county and too few on the other.

[Distribution of hides.]

We will not repeat Mr Round's convincing arguments. Just to recall their character, we will notice the beautiful hundred of Armingford in Cambridgeshire[1494]. In Edward's day it had 100 hides divided among fourteen vills, six of which had 10 hides apiece, while eight had 5 hides apiece. Before 1085 the number of hides in the hundred had been reduced from 100 to 80; the number of hides in each of the 'ten-hide vills' had been reduced to 8; and each 'five-hide vill' had got rid of one of its hides. Obviously such results as these are not obtained by a method which begins by investigating the content of each landholder's tenement. The hides in the vill are imposed from above, not built up from below[1495].

[The Worcestershire hidage.]

We have no wish to traverse ground which must by this time be familiar to all students of Domesday. But, having in our eye certain ancient statements about the hidage of England, we will endeavour to carry the argument one step further.

In Worcestershire we have strong evidence of a neat arrangement of a whole county. In the first place, we are told that 'in this county there are twelve hundreds, whereof seven, so the shire says, are so free that the sheriff has nothing in them, and therefore, so he says, he is a great loser by his farm[1496].' Then we are told that the church of Worcester has a hundred called Oswaldslaw in which lie 300 hides. Then we remember that notorious charter (_Altitonantis_) which tells how this triple hundred of Oswaldslaw was made up of three old hundreds, called Cuthbertslaw, Wulfhereslaw and Wimborntree[1497]. Then, turning to the particulars, we find that exactly 300 hides are ascribed to the various estates which St. Mary of Worcester holds in this triple hundred. Those particulars are the following:--

[The Worcester estate.]

Chemesege 24 } Norwiche 25 } Wiche 15 } Overberie 6 } } Fledebirie 40 } Segesbarue 4 } } Breodun 35 } 200 Scepwestun 2 } 25 } 100 Rippel 25 } Herferthun 3 } } Blochelei 38 } Grimanleh 3 } } Tredinctun 23 } Halhegan 7 } } Cropetorn 50 }

We have here preserved the order in which Domesday Book names the estates, but have added some brackets which may serve to emphasize the artificiality of the system. Then, looking back once more at our _Altitonantis_, we see Edgar adding lands to the 50 hides at Cropthorn, so that 'a perfect hundred' may be compiled, and the lands that he adds seem to be just those which in our table are bracketed with the Cropthorn estate.

[The Westminster estate.]

Thus we have disposed of three out of those twelve 'hundreds' of which Worcestershire is composed and also of 300 hides of land. Next we perceive that the church of Westminster is said to hold 200 hides. Reckoning up the particulars, we find, not indeed 200, but 199.

H. V. H. V. Persore 2 Pidelet 5 Wiche 6 Newentune 10 Pendesham 2 Garstune 1.3 Berlingeham 3.1 Pidelet 4 Bricstelmestune 10 Peritune 6 Depeforde 10 Garstune 7 Aichintune 16 Piplintune 4.2 Beford 10 Piplintune 6.2 Longedune 30 Cumbrintune 9 Poiwic 3 Cumbrintune 10 Snodesbyrie 11 Broctune 3 Husentre 6 Stoche 15 Wich 1 Cumbrintune 2 Dormestun 5 ----- 199.0

[The Pershore estate.]

Then the church of Pershore has just 100 hides; they are distributed thus:--

Persore 26 Beolege 21 Sture 20 Bradeweia 30 Lege 3 ---- 100

It is easy to divide these manors into two groups, each of which has 50 hides. The county also tells us that the church of Pershore ought to have the church-scot from 'the whole 300 hides,' that is, as well from the 200 allotted to Westminster as from the 100 which Pershore holds[1498].

[The Evesham estate.]

Then Evesham Abbey has, we are told, 65 hides in the hundred of Fissesberge. 'In that hundred,' it is added, 'lie 20 hides of Dodingtree and 15 hides in Worcester make up the hundred.' The 65 hides which Evesham holds are allotted thus:--

Evesham 3.0 } Lenchewic 1.0 } Nortune 7.0 } Offenham 1.0 } 25 Liteltune 6.0 } Bratfortune 6.0 } Aldintone 1.0 }

Wiqwene 3.0 } Bratfortune 6.0 } Badesei 6.2 } 25 Liteltune 7.0 } Huniburne 2.2 }

Ambreslege 15.0 ---- 65.0

[The residue of Worcestershire.]

We have dealt heretofore with 665 hides. Let us now reckon up all the hides in Worcestershire that we have not yet counted. The task is not perfectly straightforward, for we have to meet a few difficult questions. In order that our account may be checked by others, we will set forth its details. We will go through the survey noting all the hides which we have not already reckoned.

--------------------------------------------------------------- Worcester city 15.0 | More 1.0 | Glese 1.0 Bremesgrave 30.0 | Betune 3.2 | Merlie 0.1 [1499]Suchelei 5.0 | More 0.1 | Wich 1.0 Grastone 3.2 | Edboldelege 2.2 | Escelie 4.0 Cochesei 2.2 | Eslei 6.0 | Nordfeld 6.0 Willingewic 2.3 | Eslei 1.0 | Franchelie 1.0 Celdvic 3.0 | Ridmerlege 1.2 | Welingewiche 0.3 Chideminstre 20.0 | Celdeslai 1.0 | Escelie 1.0 Terdeberie 9.0 | Estham 3.0 | Werwelie 0.2 Clent 9.0 | Ælmeleia 11.0 | Cercehalle 2.0 Wich 0.2 | Wich 10.0 | Bellem 3.0 Clive 10.2 | Sudtune 1.0 | Hageleia 5.2 Fepsetanatum 6.0 | Mamele 0.2 | Dudelei 1.0 Crohlea 5.0 | Broc 0.2 | Suineforde 3.0 Hambyrie 14.0 | Colingvic 1.0 | Pevemore 3.0 Stoche 10.0 | Mortune 4.0 | Cradeleie 1.0 Huerteberie 20.0 | Stotune 3.0 | Belintones 5.0 Ulwardelei 5.0 | Stanford 2.2 | Witone 2.0 Alvievecherche 13.0 | Scelves 1.0 | Celvestune 1.0 Ardolvestone 15.0 | Chintune 5.0 | Cochehi 2.2 Boclintun 8.0 | Beretune 2.0 | Osmerlie 1.0 Cuer 2.0 | Tamedeberie 3.0 | Costone 3.0 Inteberga 15.2 | Wich 0.2 | Beneslei 1.0 Wich 1.0 | Clistune 3.0 | Udecote 1.2 Salewarpe 1.0 | Chure 3.0 | Russococ 5.0 Tametdeberie 0.2 | Stanford 1.2 | Stanes 6.0 Wich 0.2 | Caldeslei 1.0 | Lundredele 2.0 Matma 5.0 | Cuer 1.0 | Hatete 1.0 [1500]Mortune 5.0 | Hamme 1.0 | Hamtune 4.0 Achelenz 4.2 | Sapie 3.0 | Hortune 2.0 Buintun 1.0 | Carletune 1.1 | Cochesie 2.0 Circelenz 4.0 | Edevent 1.0 | Brotune 2.0 Actune 6.0 | Wicelbold 11.0 | Urso's hide 1.0 Lenche 4.0 | Elmerige 8.0 | Uptune 3.0 Wich 1.0 | Croelai 5.0 | Witune 0.2 Ludeleia 2.0 | Dodeham 1.0 | Hantune 4.0 Hala 10.0 | Redmerleie 1.2 | Tichenapletreu 3.0 Salewarpe 5.0 | Hanlege 1.2 | Cedeslai 25.0 Wermeslai 2.0 | Hanlege 3.0 | Hilhamatone 0.1 Linde 2.0 | Alretune 1.2 | Fecheham 10.0 Halac 1.0 | Hadesoro 2.0 | Holewei 3.0 Dunclent 3.0 | Holim 1.0 | [1501]Mertelai 13.0 Alvintune 2.0 | Stilledune 0.2 | ----- 539.0

We have here therefore 539 hides to be added to the 665 of which we rendered an account above. We thus bring out a grand total of 1204 hides. Perhaps the true total should be exactly 1200; but at any rate it stands close to that beautiful figure. And now we remember how we were told that there were 'twelve hundreds' in Worcestershire from seven of which the sheriff got nothing. Of these twelve the church of Worcester had three in its 'hundred' of Oswaldslaw, the church of Westminster two, the church of Pershore one, and the church of Evesham one. But the Evesham or Fissesberge hundred was not perfect; it required 'making up' by means of 15 hides in the city of Worcester and 20 in the hundred of Dodingtree. Thus five hundreds remain to be accounted for, and in its rubrics Domesday Book names just five, namely, Came, Clent, Cresselaw, Dodingtree and Esch. We can not allot to each of these its constituent hides, for we never can rely on Domesday Book giving all the 'hundredal rubrics' that it ought to give, and the Worcestershire hundreds were subjected to rearrangement before the day of maps had dawned[1502]. An intimate knowledge of the county might achieve the reconstruction of the old hundreds. But, as it is, we seem to see enough. We seem to see pretty plainly that Worcestershire has been divided into twelve districts known as hundreds each of which has contained 100 hides. It is an anomaly to be specially noted that one of the jurisdictional hundreds, one which has been granted to the church of Evesham, has only 65 hides and can only be made up into a 'hundred' for financial purposes by adding to it 20 hides lying in another jurisdictional hundred and the 15 hides at which the city of Worcester is rated.

[_The County Hidage._]

The moment has now come when we may tender in evidence an ancient document which professes to state the hidage of certain districts. There are three such documents which should not be confused. We propose to call them respectively (1) _The Tribal Hidage_, (2) _The Burghal Hidage_, and (3) _The County Hidage_; and this is their order of date. For the two oldest we are not yet ready. The youngest professes to give us a statement about the hidage of thirteen counties. We have it both in Latin and in Old English. It has come down to us in divers manuscripts, which do not agree very perfectly. We will here give its upshot, placing in a last column the figures at which we have arrived when counting the hides in Domesday.

THE COUNTY HIDAGE.

Cotton, Cotton, Gale, Claudius, Vespasian, Scriptore MS. Jes. B. vii. A. xviii. xv. Coll. Ox.; f. 204 b; f. 112 b; p. 748 Morris, Domesday Kemble, Kemble, from a Old English Book Saxons Saxons Croyland Miscellany, (boroughs i. 493 i. 494 MS. p. 145 omitted)

Wiltshire 4800 4800 4800 4800 4050 Bedfordshire 1200 1000 1200 1200 1193 Cambridgeshire 2500 2500 2005 2500 1233 Huntingdonshire 850[1503] 850[1503] 800-1/2 850 747 Northamptonshire 3200 4200 3200 3200 1356 Gloucestershire 2400 2000 2400 3400 2388 Worcestershire 1200 1500 1200 1200 1189 Herefordshire 1500 1500 1005 1200 1324 Warwickshire 1200 1200 1200 1200 1338 Oxfordshire 2400 2400 2400 2400 2412 Shropshire 2300 2400 2400 2400 1245 Cheshire 1300 1200 1200 1200 512 Staffordshire 500 500 ---- 500 505

[Date of the document.]

Dr Liebermann has said that the text whence these figures are derived was probably compiled in English and in the eleventh century[1504]. If we put faith in it, we shall be inclined to set its date at some distance before that of Domesday Book. But our first question should be whether it merits credence; whether it was written by some one who knew what he was about or whether it is wild guesswork. Now when we see that the scrupulous Eyton brought out the hides of Staffordshire at 499, or rather at 499 H 2-13/30 V, and that this document makes them 500, we shall begin to take it very seriously, without relying on our own 505, the result of hasty addition. We have also seen enough to say that 1200 for Worcestershire is very near the mark. As regards other counties, we set so little reliance upon our own computation, that we are not very willing to institute a comparison; but we have given Bedfordshire 1193 hides[1505] and this document gives it 1200; we have given Oxfordshire 2412 and this document gives it 2400; we have given Gloucestershire 2388[1506] and two versions of this document give it 2400. Having seen so much agreement, we must note some cases of violent discord. For Wiltshire 4800 seems decidedly too high, though we have brought the number of its hides above 4000. The figure given to Cambridgeshire is almost twice that which Domesday would justify, and the figures given to Cheshire, Shropshire and Northamptonshire are absurdly large when compared with the numbers recorded in 1086. These cases are enough to show that, though no doubt some or all of the transcribers of The County Hidage must be charged with blunders, the divergence of the copies from Domesday can not be safely laid to this account. About certain counties there is just that agreement which we might expect, when we remember how precarious our own figures are. About certain other counties there is utter disagreement. We infer therefore that the original document did not truly state the hidage as it stood in 1086; but may it not have represented an older state of things?

[The Northampton Geld Roll.]

Let us take one case of flagrant aberration. Three copies tell us that Northamptonshire has 3200 hides; one that it has 4200. The balance of authority inclines therefore to 3200. Domesday will not give us half that number. But let us turn to the Northamptonshire Geld Roll[1507], the date of which Mr Round places between the Conquest and 1075[1508]. It gives the county 2663-1/2 hides. So here we have a case in which between 1075 and 1086 a county was relieved of about half of its hides[1509]. Also at 2664 we are within a moderate distance of 3200. But the Geld Roll does more than this. It represents Northamptonshire as composed of 28 districts; 22 of these are called 'hundreds'; two are 'two-hundreds'; four are 'other-half hundreds,' or, as we might say, 'hundred-and-a-halfs.' We work a sum:--

(22+4+6) × 100 = 3200.

The result will increase our respect for The County Hidage. Now, when the Geld Roll was made, some of the 'hundreds' of Northamptonshire contained their 100 hides apiece, but others were charged with a smaller number, which generally was round, such as 80, 60, 40 hides; and this arrangement is set before us as that which existed 'in the days of Edward the king.' If therefore we put faith in The County Hidage and its 3200 hides, we must hold that it speaks to us from the earlier part of the Confessor's reign or from some yet older time.

[Value of _The County Hidage_.]

Is it too good, too neat to be true? Before we pass a condemnatory judgment we must recall the case of Worcestershire, its twelve 'hundreds' and 1200 hides. Also we must recall the case of the Armingford hundred in Cambridgeshire, where we have seen how in William's reign an abatement of 20 per cent, was equitably apportioned among the fourteen villages, and the 100 hides were reduced to 80[1510]. Moreover, if in Domesday Book we pass from Northamptonshire to the neighbouring county of Leicester, we see a startling contrast. The former is decidedly 'under-rated'; the latter is 'over-rated.' Leicestershire has about 2500 carucates, while Northamptonshire has hardly more than half that number of hides. The explanation is that Northamptonshire has obtained, while Leicestershire is going to obtain a reduction. The Pipe Rolls of the twelfth century show us that either under Rufus or under Henry I. this sadly over-taxed county was set down for exactly 1000 carucates.

[Reductions of hidage.]

As to the other cases in which there is a strident discord between Domesday and The County Hidage, the case of Chester, where the contrast is between some 500 hides and a round 1200 will not perhaps detain us long, for we may imagine, if we please, that the Chestershire of Cnut's day was much larger than the territory described under that name in 1086[1511]. The 2500 hides attributed to Cambridgeshire and the 2400 attributed to Shropshire may shock us, for, if they are correctly stated, they point to reductions of 50 per cent. or thereabouts. But we have seen some and are going to see some other large abatements.

[The county quotas.]

On the whole, we believe that this County Hidage, though it has come to us in transcripts some or all of which are careless, is an old and trustworthy document, that it is right in attributing to the counties neat sums of hides, such as 1200 and 2400, and that it is right in representing the current of change that was flowing in the eleventh century as setting towards a rapid reduction in the number of hides. Only in one case, that of Warwickshire, have we any cause to believe that it gives fewer hides to a county than are given by Domesday; here the defect is not very large, and, besides the possibility of mistranscription, we must also remember the possibility of changed boundaries[1512].

[The hundred and the hundred hides.]

There is one other feature of this document that we ought to notice. Let us compare the number of hides which it gives to a county with the number of 'hundreds' which that county contains according to Domesday Book. The latter number we will place in brackets[1513].

Bedfordshire 1200 hides [12 hundreds]: Northamptonshire 3200 [28 hundreds which, however, have been reckoned to be 32[1514]]: Worcestershire 1200 [12]: Warwickshire 1200 [12]: Cheshire 1200 [12]: Staffordshire 500 [5]: Wiltshire 4800 [40]: Cambridgeshire 2500 [17]: Huntingdonshire 850 [4]: Gloucestershire 2400 [39[1515]]: Herefordshire 1500 [19]: Oxfordshire 2400 [uncertain, but at least 19]: Shropshire 2400 [13].

In six out of thirteen cases we seem to see a connexion of the simplest kind between the hides and the hundreds. Now in the eyes of some this trait may be discreditable to The County Hidage, for they will infer that its author was possessed by a theory and deduced the hides from the hundreds. But, after all that we have seen[1516] of symmetrical districts and reductions of hidage, we ought not to take fright at this point. Other people besides the writer of this list may have been possessed by a theory which connected hides with hundreds, and they may have been people who were able to give effect to their theories by decreeing how many hides a district must be deemed to contain. Is it not even possible that we have here, albeit in faded characters, one of their decrees? But the history of the hundreds can not be discussed in a parenthesis. Some further corroboration this County Hidage will receive when hereafter we set it beside The Burghal Hidage, and we may then be able to carry Worcester's 1200 and Oxford's 2400 hides far back into the tenth century.

[Comparison of Domesday hidage with Pipe Rolls.]

Meanwhile, making use of our terms 'equally rated' (_A_ = _B_), 'over-rated' (_A > B_), and 'under-rated' (_A_ < _B_), let us briefly survey the counties as they stand in Domesday. Some help towards an estimation of their hidage is given to us by those few Pipe Rolls of the twelfth century which contain accounts of a danegeld. But we must not at once condemn as false the results of our own arithmetic merely because they do not square with the figures on these rolls. One instance will be enough to prove this. The Henries have to be content with £166 or thereabouts from Yorkshire, or, in other words, to treat it as having 1660 'carucates for geld.' We give it a little more than 10,000 and shall not admit that we have given it 8000 too many. This poor, wasted giant has been relieved and has been set below little Surrey. So again, though Leicestershire will account to Henry I. and his grandson for but £100, it most certainly had more than 1000 and more than 2000 carucates when William's commissioners visited it. On the other hand, there seem to be cases in a small group of counties in which his sons were able to recover a certain amount of geld which had been, rightfully or wrongfully, withheld or forborne during his own reign. But, taking the counties in mass, we hope that our figures are sufficiently consonant with those upon the Pipe Rolls. Absolutely consonant they ought not to be, for we have endeavoured to include the hides that are privileged from gelding, and in some shires (Hereford, for example) their number is by no means small. Also some leakage in an old tax may always be suspected, and the Pipe Rolls themselves show some unexplained variations in the amount for which a sheriff accounts, and some arithmetical errors[1517].

But now we will make our tour and write brief notes as we go.

[Under-rated and over-rated counties.]

Kent is scandalously under-rated. Of this there can be no doubt, though, since in many cases blanks are left where the number of the teamlands should stand, the figures can not be fully given. There has in a few instances been a reduction in the number of geldable sulungs since the Conquest, but this does not very greatly affect the result. The under-rating seems to be generally distributed throughout the county. It had not been redressed in Henry I.'s day. Indeed on the Pipe Rolls Kent appears as paying but £105, while Sussex pays twice as much. Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire appear to have all been over-rated. In the Conqueror's day, however, they shuffled off large numbers of their geldant hides and were paying for considerably fewer hides than they had teamlands. Some part of this reduction was perhaps unauthorized. At any rate the sums that appear on the Pipe Rolls seem to show that in Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire more hides were gelding under Henry I. than had been recently gelding when the survey was made; but the recovery was not sufficient to restore the state of things that existed under the Confessor. Wiltshire, so far as we can see, has always been a sorely over-rated county. It obtains no reduction under William. In the Pipe Rolls it stands at the very head of the counties. Dorset, taken as a whole, is exceedingly fairly rated. Eyton seems to have made 2321 hides and 2332 teamlands; but if the royal demesne (much of which is unhidated) be left out on both sides of the account, there will be slight over-rating. Somerset is very much under-rated, even if no notice be taken of the royal demesne. Devon is grossly under-rated. Cornwall is enormously under-rated. To all appearance considerably more than 1000 teamlands have stood as 400 hides, and even this light assessment seems to be the work of the Conqueror, for in the Confessor's day the whole county seems to have paid for hardly more than 150 hides[1518]. Middlesex is decidedly over-rated; but Hertford, Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford are under-rated. The ratio borne by hides to teamlands varies from county to county. We believe that it becomes small in Gloucester and Worcester and falls much below 1:2 in Hereford[1519]. This ratio is very small again in Warwick, Stafford, Shropshire and Cheshire. The two sister counties of Northampton and Leicester have, as already said, been very differently treated. Northampton is escaping easily, while Leicester, if we are not much mistaken, is over-rated[1520]. Then however the Pipe Rolls show that before the end of Henry I.'s reign Leicester has succeeded in largely reducing its geldability. We have seen reason to believe that a similar reduction had been made in Northamptonshire shortly before the compilation of Domesday Book. Derby is under-rated; Nottingham is much under-rated. Lincoln, though under-rated, is an instance of a county in which we long doubt whether the under-rating of some will not be compensated by the over-rating of other estates. So far as we can tell, Yorkshire had been heavily over-rated; but then, the teamland of Yorkshire is very often a merely potential teamland, and we can not be certain that the jurors will give to the waste vills as many teamlands as they had before the devastation. In the end a very small sum of geld is exacted.

[Hidage and value.]

We have seen enough in the case of Northampton to make us hesitate before we decide that the arrangement of hides set forth by Domesday Book is in all cases very ancient. That book shows us two different assessments of Cornwall; it shows us Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire relieving themselves or obtaining relief in the Conqueror's time; it shows us some Cambridgeshire hundreds disburdened of their hides. But of the great reduction in Northamptonshire we should have learnt nothing from its pages. Therefore in other cases we must be cautious, even in the scandalous case of Kent, for we can not tell that there has not been a large reduction of its sulungs in quite recent years. However, behind all the caprice and presumable jobbery, we can not help fancying that we see a certain equitable principle. We have talked of under-rating and over-rating as if we held that every teamland in the kingdom should pay a like amount. But such equality would certainly not be equity. The average teamland of Kent is worth full thirty shillings a year; the average teamland of Cornwall is barely worth five; to put an equal tax on the two would be an extreme of injustice. Now we have formed no very high estimate of the justice or the statesmanship of the English witan, and what we are going to say is wrung from us by figures which have dissipated some preconceived ideas; but they hardly allow us to doubt that the number of hides cast upon a county had been affected not only by the amount, but also by the value of its teamlands. If, starting at the east of Sussex, we journey through the southern counties, we see that over-rating prevails in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, and Dorset. We see also that the _valet_ of the average teamland stands rather above than below one pound. We pursue our journey. The ratio that _A_ bears to _B_ begins to decline rapidly and at the same time the _valets_ descend by leaps and bounds. When we have reached Devon we are in a land which could not with any show of justice be taxed at the same rate per acre as that which Wiltshire might bear without complaint. Every test that we can apply shows the extreme poverty of the country that once was 'West Wales.' That poverty continues through the middle ages. We look, for example, at the contributions to the tax of 1341 and compare them with the acreage of the contributing counties. Equal sums are paid by 1020 acres in Wiltshire, 1310 in Dorset, 1740 in Somerset, 3215 in Devon, 3550 in Cornwall[1521]. We look at the subsidy of 1294[1522], and, in order that Devon and Cornwall may not be put at a disadvantage by moor and sea-shore, we take as our dividend the number of acres in a county that are now-a-days under cultivation[1523], and for our divisor the number of pence that the county pays. The quotients are, for Wiltshire 2·7, for Dorset 2·8, for Somerset 2·5, for Devon 6·4, for Cornwall 5·2. Retaining the same dividend, we try as a divisor the 'polls' for which a county will answer in 1377[1524]. Cornwall here makes a better show; but Devonshire still displays its misery. The quotients are, for Wiltshire 16, for Dorset 14, for Somerset 15, for Devon 27, for Cornwall 17. These figures we have introduced because they support the inferences that we should draw from the _valets_ and _valuits_ of Domesday Book, a study of which has convinced us that the distribution of fiscal hides has not been altogether independent of the varying value of land.

[Connexion between hidage and value.]

But in order that we may not trust to vague impressions, let us set down in one column the number of hides (carucates or sulungs) that we have given to twenty counties and in another column the annual value of those counties in the time of King Edward as calculated by Mr Pearson[1525].

Hides, Value | Hides, Value Carucates, in | Carucates, in Sulungs Pounds | Sulungs Pounds Kent 1224 3954 | Oxford 2412 2789 Sussex 3474 3467 | Gloucester 2388 2855 Surrey 1830 1417 | Worcester 1189 1060 Berkshire 2473 2378 | Huntingdon 747 900 Dorset 2277 2564 | Bedford 1193 1475 Devon 1119 2912 | Northampton 1356 1407 Cornwall 399 729 | Leicester 2500 491 Middlesex 868 911 | Warwick 1338 954 Hertford 1050 1894 | Derby 679 631 Buckingham 2074 1785 | Essex 2650 4079 | ----- ----- | 33240 38652

[One pound one hide.]

No one can look along these lines of figures without fancying that some force, conscious or unconscious, has made for 'One pound, one hide.' But we will use another test, which is in some respects fairer, if in others it is rude. The total of the _valets_ or _valuits_ of a county sometimes includes and sometimes excludes the profit that the king derives from boroughs and from county courts; also the rents of his demesne manors are sometimes stated in disputable terms. Therefore from every county we will take eighty simple entries, some from the lands of the churches, some from the fiefs of the barons, and in a large county we will select our cases from many different pages. In each case we set down the number of gelding hides (carucates, sulungs) and the _valuit_ given for the T. R. E.[1526]. Our method will not be delicate enough to detect slight differences; it will only suffice to display any general tendency that is at work throughout England and to stamp as exceptional any shires which widely depart from the common rule, if common rule there be. Using this method we find the values of the hide (carucate, sulung) to have been as follows, our figures standing for pounds and decimal fractions of a pound. We begin with the lowest and end with the highest _valuit_.

Leicester 0·26, York 0·34, Surrey 0·68, Northampton 0·75, Wiltshire 0·77, Sussex 0·81, Chester 0·82, Warwick 0·84, Somerset 0·85, Buckingham 0·86, Oxford 0·87, Dorset 0·88, Berkshire 0·89, Hereford 0·91, Gloucester 0·99, Lincoln 0·99, Derby 1·00, Huntingdon 1·02, Shropshire 1·02, Bedford 1·09, Hampshire 1·10, Worcester 1·10, Middlesex 1·15, Essex 1·41, Devon 1·52, Hertford 1·69, Cambridge 1·73, Nottingham 1·76, Kent 3·25, Cornwall 3·92.

[Equivalence of pound and hide.]

Now 'One pound, one hide' seems to be the central point of this series, the point of rest through which the pendulum swings. Our experiment has been much too partial to tell us whether a shire is slightly over-taxed or slightly undertaxed; but, unless we have shamefully blundered, it tells us that in some twenty out of thirty counties the aberration from the equivalence of pound and hide will not exceed twenty five per cent.: in other words, the value of the normal hide will not be less than 15 nor more than 25 shillings. Also we have brought our counties into an admirable disorder. We have snapped all bonds of race and of neighbourhood. For example, we see the under-taxed Hampshire in the midst of over-taxed counties; we have divorced Nottingham from Derby and Leicester from Northampton. The one general remark that we can make about the geographical distribution of taxation is that, if East Anglia is under-taxed (and this is likely), then Kent, Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Hertford would form a continuous block of territory that is escaping easily.

[Cases of under-taxation.]

[Kent.]

The markedly exceptional cases are the most interesting. First let us look at the worst instances of immunity. In Kent we seem to see 'beneficial hidation' on a gigantic scale; but on the whole, though the evidence is not conclusive, we do not think that this is due to any modern privilege. We can not doubt that for a long time past the Kentish churches have been magnificently endowed, and yet the number of manses and sulungs that their land-books bestow upon them is not very large, and the number attributed to any one place is usually small, perceptibly smaller than the number of hides that will be comprised in a West Saxon charter. If a royal land-book condescends to mention acres (_iugera, segetes_)[1527] it will almost certainly be a Kentish charter, and we may guess that its acres are already fiscal acres of wide extent. To say more would be perilous. The title-deeds of Christ Church can not be readily harmonized with Domesday Book[1528]; perhaps we ought to add that this is much to their credit; but the documents which come to us from St. Augustin's and Rochester suggest that the arrangement of sulungs which exists in the eleventh century is ancient, or, at any rate, that the monks knew of no older computation which dealt out these units with a far more lavish hand[1529]. In Kent the churches were powerful and therefore may have been able to preserve a scheme of assessment which unduly favoured a rich and prosperous shire; but we can not be certain that the hide and the Kentish sulung have really had the same starting-point, nor even perhaps that Kent was settled village-wise by its Germanic invaders[1530].

[West Wales.]

Devon and Cornwall ought to be 'under-rated' (_A_ < _B_) for they are very poor. What we find is that they are so much under-rated that the hide is worth a good deal more than a pound. Here again we are inclined to think that this under-rating is old, perhaps as old as the subjection of West Wales. Such land-books as we obtain from this distressful country point in that direction, for they give but few hides and condescend to speak of virgates[1531]. Among them is a charter professing to come from Æthelstan which bestows 'one manse' upon the church of St. Buryan; but clearly this one manse is a wide tract. Also this would-be charter speaks to us of land that is measured by the arpent, and, whether or no it was forged by French clerks after the Norman Conquest, it may tell us that this old Celtic measure has been continuously used in the Celtic west[1532]. Be that as it may, when we are speculating about the under-taxation of Devon and Cornwall, we may remember that where the agrarian outlines were drawn by Welsh folk, the hide, though it might be imposed from above as a piece of fiscal machinery, would be an intruder among the Celtic trevs and out of harmony with its environment. The light taxation of Cambridgeshire is perhaps more wonderful, for our figures represent the hidage of the Confessor's time, and we have seen[1533] how some of the hundreds in this prosperous shire (our champion wheat-grower) obtained a large abatement from the Conqueror[1534]. If, in accordance with The County Hidage, we doubled the number of Cambridgeshire's hides, though it would be over-taxed, it would not be so heavily taxed as are some other counties.

[Cases of over-taxation.]

Extreme over-taxation is far more interesting to us at the present moment than extreme under-taxation. The latter may be the result of privilege, and in the middle ages privileges will be accorded for value received in this world or promised in another. But what are we to say of Leicester? On the face of our record it seems to have been in Edward's day the very poorest of all the counties and yet to have borne a crushing number of carucates. Under William it was beginning to prosper but still was miserably poor[1535]. We have bethought ourselves of various devices for explaining this difficult case--of saying, for instance, that the Leicestershire 'carucate of land' is not a carucate for geld[1536]. But this case does not stand quite alone. The Yorkshire carucates, and they are expressly called 'carucates for geld,' had been worth little. It is likely that the figure that we have given for Yorkshire is not very near the true average for that wide territory; but we examined an unusually large number of entries and avoided any which showed signs of devastation in the present or the past. Also we see that in Northamptonshire, if we take the Edwardian _valuit_ and the number of hides existing in 1086, we have an over-taxed county; and yet we have reason to believe that since 1075 it had been relieved of about half its hides. Had this not been done, it would have stood along with Yorkshire, and, if it once had those 3200 of which The County Hidage speaks, it would have stood along with its sister, the wretched Leicestershire. We might find relief in the supposition that the Leicestershire of Edward's time had been scourged by war or pestilence; but unfortunately the jurors often tell us how many teams were then upon the manors, and in so doing give a marvellously small value to the land that one team tilled. Such reports as the following are common[1537].

Teams Teams Valuit Valet Carucates T. R. E. T. R. W. sol. sol. Werditone 4 5 3 1 20 Castone 9 10 7 40 140 Wortone 6 6 5 40 100 Tuicros 6 6 7 3 40 Gopeshille 3 3 3 1 30 Scepa 2 3 3 2 30

What can these figures mean? They can not mean that a tract of land was being habitually tilled by three teams and yet was producing in the form of profit or rent no more than the worth of one or two shillings a year. An organized attempt to deceive King William into an abatement seems out of the question, for he is being told of a rapid increase of prosperity. Our best, though an unwarranted, guess is that the Leicestershire _valuit_ speaks not of the Confessor's day, but of some time of disorder that followed the Conquest, for in truth it seems to give us but 'prairie values.' However, if we take, not the _valuit_, but the _valet_, we still have carucates that are worth much less than a pound, and it seems clear that the carucate had been worth much less than a pound in the as yet unravaged Yorkshire. On the whole, these cases, together with what we can learn of Lancashire, will dispose us to receive with more favour than we might otherwise have shown certain statements about the hidage of England that have yet to be adduced. In Yorkshire, Lancashire, Leicestershire and Northamptonshire we may perhaps see the unreformed relics of an age when the distribution of fiscal units among the various provinces of England was the sport of wild guesswork[1538].

[Equity and hidage.]

We have spoken of a tendency on the part of the hide to be worth a pound. Now we have no wish to represent this equitable element as all powerful or very powerful; the case of Kent is sufficient to show that it may be overruled by favouritism or privilege. There has been a 'beneficial hidation' of shires as there has been a 'beneficial hidation' of manors. Still that the kings and witan have considered the value as well as the number of teamlands seems fairly plain. Probably they have considered it in a rough, 'typical' fashion. Any one who peruses Domesday Book paying attention to the _valets_ will be struck in the first place by their roundness. If a teamland is not worth 20, it is worth 10 or 30, 5 or 40 shillings. The jurors seem to keep in their minds as types the 'one-pound-teamland,' the 'half-pound-teamland' and so forth. But then, whereas in one county 'twenty shillings' will stand for 'fair average' and in another for 'rather poor,' in a third it will indicate unusual excellence. Similarly we imagine that when fiscal hides have been distributed or redistributed, there has been talk of typical qualities of land, of first-rate and fourth-rate land. Any tradition of Roman taxation which had perdured in Britain or crossed the sea from Frankland would have taught men that this was the right method of procedure. But it is by no means certain that we can carry back this equitable principle very far[1539]. Long ago the prevailing idea may have been that teamland, house-land, pound-land and fiscal hide were, or ought normally to be, all one; and then the discovery that there are wide tracts in which the worth of an average teamland is much less or somewhat greater than a pound may have come in as a disturbing and differentiating force and awakened debates in the council of the nation. We may, if we like such excursions, fancy the conservatives arguing for the good old rule 'One teamland, one hide,' while a party of financial reformers has raised the cry 'One pound, one hide.' Then 'pressure was brought to bear in influential quarters,' and in favour of their own districts the witan in the moots jobbed and jerrymandered and rolled the friendly log, for all the world as if they had been mere modern politicians.

[Distribution of hides and of teamlands.]

But, to be serious, it is in some conjecture such as this that we may perchance find aid when we are endeavouring to loosen one of Domesday's worst knots. We have hinted before now[1540] that there are districts in which the teamland (_B_) seems to be as artificial and as remote from real agrarian life as is the hide or the gelding carucate (_A_). To any one who thinks that when we touch Domesday's teamland we have always freed ourselves from the geld system and penetrated through the rateable to the real, the following piece of the survey of Rutland may be commended. 'In Martinesleie Wapentake there is a hundred in which there are 12 carucates for geld and there can be 48 teams.' Now there is nothing curious in the fact that 48 'real' teamlands are rated at 12 carucates. But let us look closer. Beside one smaller estate there are in this wapentake three manors. Their arrangement is this[1541]:--

Carucates Villeins and Demesne Men's for geld Teamlands bordiers teams teams Ocheham 4 16 157 2 37 Hameldune 4 16 153 5 40 Redlinctune 4 16 196[1542] 4 30 Subtenancy 24 4 5 ---- ---- ---- ------ ------ \/ 12 48 530 127

Now surely the three sixteens are just as artificial as the three fours, and in what possible sense can we affirm that there is land for only 48 teams when we see that 530 tenants are actually ploughing it with 127 teams? Behind this there must be some theory or some tradition that we have not yet fathomed[1543].

[Area and value as elements of geldability.]

We strongly suspect that in the work of distributing and reducing the geld, 'the land for one team' has been playing a part for some time past. In order to decide, for example, whether a claim for abatement was just, the statesman had to consider two elements, the number of the teamlands and their value. He would be content with round figures, indeed no others would content him or be amenable to his rude manipulation. So it is decided that some province or district has, or must be deemed to have, _y_ teamlands. Also it is decided at this or at some other time, or perhaps from time to time, that the land in this district (regard being had to its state of cultivation) is or must be deemed to be first-class, or, as the case may be, third-class land. Then a combination of these propositions induces the conclusion that the district has _x_ hides or carucates for geld. Then inside the district, when the process of subpartitionment begins, a similar method is pursued. There are _x_ hides or carucates for geld to be distributed. They ought to be distributed with reference to the number and value of real teamlands. The work is rudely done in the subpartitionary fashion. A certain sub-district has _x/a_ hides thrown upon it; a sub-sub-district has _x/ab_; but this apportionment is obtained by combining a proposition about value with a partitionment of the _y_ teamlands. The sub-sub-district has _x/ab_ hides, because _y/cd_ teamlands fall to its share and because its land is assigned to a certain class. Then, perhaps for the purpose of future rearrangements, the number of teamlands (_y/cd_) is remembered as well the number of hides or gelding carucates (_x/ab_). The result is that every manor in a certain district has four hides and sixteen teamlands. It is very pretty; it was never (except for technical purposes) very true, and every year makes it less true[1544]. [Sidenote: The equitable teamland.]

That exactly this was done, we do not say and do not think; but something like it may have been done. As already remarked, we gravely doubt whether that question which the commissioners put about potential teams was understood in the same way in different counties, but we are sadly afraid that some of the answers that they obtained were references, not to existing agrarian facts, but to a fiscal history which already lay in the past and is now hopelessly obscure. A mystery of iniquity is bad, but the mysteries of archaic equity are worse. In many Anglo-Saxon arrangements we find a curious mixture of clumsiness and elaboration.

[Artificial valets.]

We can not quit this part of our subject without adding that there are cases in which the _valuits_ and _valets_ look as artificial and systematic as the hides and the teamlands. On a single page we find a description of five handsome Yorkshire manors[1545]. We wish to know their value in the past and the present, and what we learn is this: Brostewic valuit £56, valet £10; Chilnesse valuit £56, valet £10; Witfornes valuit £56, valet £6; Mapletone valuit £56, valet £6; Hornesse valuit £56, valet £6; and yet between these manors there are large variations in the number of the carucates and the number of the teamlands. Then we look about and see that it has been common for the first-class manor of Yorkshire, if it is the centre of an extensive soke, to be worth precisely £56[1546]. We can not but fear that the value of these manors is a legal fiction, though a fiction that is founded upon fact. Their supposed worth seems fixed at a figure that will fit into some scheme, the clue to which we have not yet recovered. Everywhere we are baffled by the make-believe of ancient finance.

[The new assessments of Henry II.]

The obscure forces which conspired to determine the quotas of the various counties might be illustrated by an episode in the reign of Henry II. The old danegeld is still being occasionally levied, and in the main the old assessment prevails. But alongside of this we see a newer tax. From time to time the king takes a gift (_donum_, _assisa_, _gersuma_) from the counties. A certain round number of marks is demanded from every shire. For this purpose a new tariff is employed, and yet it is not wholly independent of the old, for we can hardly look at it without seeing that it is so constructed as to redress in a rude fashion the antiquated scheme of the danegeld. In the first column of the following table we give, omitting fractions, the pounds that the counties contribute when a danegeld is levied, in the second and third the half-marks (6_s._ 8_d._) that they pay by way of gift on two different occasions early in the reign of Henry of Anjou[1547].

Danegeld Donum of Donum of 2 Hen. II. 4 Hen. II.

£ half-marks half-marks Kent 106 320 240 Sussex 217 202 160 Surrey 180 160 160 Hampshire 185 200 Berkshire 206 148 120 Wiltshire 390 200 160 Dorset 248 Somerset 278 200 300 Devon 104 368 300 Cornwall 23 Middlesex 86 175 80 Hertford 110 120 Buckingham 205} 200 240 Bedford 111} Oxford 250 140 200 Gloucester 194 218 260 Worcester 101 100 120 Hereford 94 80 140 Cambridge 115 160 Huntingdon 71 100 Northampton 120 240 280 Leicester 100 100 160 Warwick 129 100 240 Stafford 45 80 100 Shropshire 118 80 140 Derby } 112 160 280 Nottingham } York 165 1000[1548] 1000 Lincoln 266 540 600 Essex 236 400 400 Norfolk 330 400 } 400 Suffolk 235 240 }

The variable tariff of _dona_ hits most heavily just those counties which have been too favourably treated; Kent and Devon must make large 'gifts' because they pay little geld. Yorkshire, which once more is becoming prosperous, heads the new list, though it pays less geld than Surrey; and, on the other hand, Wiltshire, which makes the largest of all contributions to the ancient tax, is leniently treated. When men have acquired a vested right in an iniquitous assessment, the fertile politician neither reforms nor abolishes the old, but invents a new impost.

[Acreage of the fiscal hide.]

And now, after all these inconclusive meanderings, we will state our cheerful belief that the hide of Domesday (_A_) is always[1549] composed of 120 acres and that the carucate for geld of Domesday (_A_) is always composed of 120 acres. We are speaking only of a fiscal system. Let us forget for a time that the terms that we are using can be employed to describe masses of land. Let us treat them as red and white counters. In the game played at the Exchequer the red counter called a hide is the equivalent of 120 white counters called acres.

[Equation between hide and acres.]

If Domesday Book is to serve its primary purpose, if it is to tell the king's officers how much geld is due, it is absolutely necessary that by some ready process they should be able to work sums in hides and acres and in carucates and acres. They must understand such statements as the following:--'it defends itself for 2 hides and 5 acres[1550]': 'it gelded for 3 hides, 1 virgate and 1-1/2 acres[1551]': 'he has 5 bovates, 13 acres and 1 virgate for geld[1552].' Now it is conceivable that the treasury contains a book of tables which will teach the clerks that a hide has _a_ acres in Surrey and _b_ acres in Devon; but this seems highly improbable. As we have already said[1553], the variations between the numbers of 'real' acres that go to make 'real' hides are not provincial, they are villar variations. That the financiers at Winchester should consider villar variations is out of the question. Therefore if we can prove that in one district they employed a given equation, there is a strong presumption that they used it in other districts. And unfortunately our proof has to be of this kind, for in many counties acres are rarely mentioned and we get no sums that are worked in acres and hides. But further, if we see one equation holding good in a considerable number of cases, we shall still believe that this is the one true equation, though other cases occur in which it breaks down. We have to remember the possibility of mistranscription, the possibility of bad arithmetic, the possibility of a haughty treatment of small numbers: the actual existence of all these dangers can be amply proved. Therefore if once we have inductively obtained an equation which serves in many instances, we shall hold by it, unless the instances in which it fails point either to some one other equation or to the conclusion that the equation varies from parish to parish.

[Evidence from Cambridgeshire.]

Now the Cambridgeshire Inquest professes to give us the total hidage of a vill and then proceeds to allot the hides among the various tenants in chief. Sometimes when it does this it speaks of virgates and acres and thus gives us an opportunity of seeing how many acres are reckoned to the hide or to the virgate. The equation 1 H. = 4 V. is implied in many entries. But further, there are at least ten cases which assume one or both of the following equations: namely, 1 H. = 120 A. and 1 V. = 30 A. On the other hand, there are some cases in which the sum that is put before us is not rightly worked if these equations be correct; but in some of these cases the Inquisitio and Domesday Book contradict each other and in some a small quantity is neglected. The very few remaining cases point to no one rival equation, and are not too numerous to be ascribed to carelessness[1554].

[Evidence from the Isle of Ely.]

A similar test can be applied to a part of Cambridgeshire that is not included in the Cambridgeshire Inquest but is included in the Inquisitio Eliensis. We speak of the Isle of Ely. There are entries which, having told us how many hides a manor contained, proceed to allot these among their various occupants, and, as in some of these cases a calculation by acres is mixed up with a calculation by hides, they hold out a hope that we may be able to discover how many acres were reckoned to the hide. We will begin with Ely itself. 'Ely defends itself for 10 hides.... In demesne there are 5 hides ... and there are 40 villeins with 15 acres apiece ... and 18 cottiers and 20 serfs[1555].' Now if from the total of 10 hides we subtract the 5 that are in demesne, this leaves 5 others, and if we divide these 5 among the 40 villeins this gives to each villein 1/8th of a hide; but we are told that each villein has 15 acres; therefore it follows that 120 acres make a hide. We reckon that in eight other cases[1556] the same method of computation is followed, though in one of these a hide divided among 17 villeins is said to give them 7 acres apiece and this shows us how a single acre may be neglected in order to avoid a very ugly fraction[1557]. Against these cases must be set seven which give less pleasing results[1558]. In at least one of these no possible theory will justify the arithmetic of our record as it stands[1559], and there is no accord between the remaining five.

[Evidence from Middlesex.]

At first sight the survey of Middlesex seems to offer materials similar to those that come to us from Cambridgeshire. Very curious and instructive they are. A Middlesex entry will usually give us the number of hides (_A_), the number of teamlands (_B_), the number of teams (_C_), and also certain particulars which state the quantity of land that there is in demesne and the quantities held by divers classes of tenants. The sum of these particulars we may call _P_. Now we begin by hoping that _P_ will be equal to _A_, and, since the particulars often contain acres as well as hides and virgates, we hope also to discover the equation that is involved in the sum. As an example we will take a case in which all goes well. At Cowley a manor defends itself for two hides; in demesne are one and a half hides; two villeins have a half hide. Here _A_ = 2 H. and _P_ = 1-1/2 H. + 1/2 H.; so all is as it should be. But we soon come upon cases in which, though we make no assumption about the relation of the acre to the hide, our _P_ refuses to be equal to our _A_. Then perhaps we begin to hope that _P_ will be equal to _B_: in other words, that the sum of the quantities ascribed to lord and tenants will be equal to the number of teamlands. But this is more fallacious than the former hope. We will put a few specimens in a table[1560].

Hides Teamlands Sum of particulars Harrow (Abp. Canterbury) 100 70 46-1/2 H. + 13 V. + 13 A. Stepney (Bp. London) 32 25 18-1/2 H. + 48-1/2 V. Fulham (Bp. London) 40 40 41-1/2 H. + 30 V. Westminster (Abbot) 13-1/2 11 10 H. + 14-1/2 V. + 5 A. Sunbury (Abb. Westminster) 7 6 4 H. + 10-1/2 V. Shepperton (Abb. Westminster) 8 7 3-1/2 H. + 17 V. + 24 A. Feltham (C. Mortain) 12 10 6 H. + 16-1/2 V. Chelsea (Edw. of Salisbury) 2 5 1 H. + 4 V. + 5 A.

[Meaning of the Middlesex entries.]

We seem to have here three independent statements, and, though throughout the county _P_ shows a tendency to keep near to _A_, still we must not make calculations which suppose that the 'hide' of _A_ is the 'hide' of _P_. Take Chelsea for example. We must not say: 2 H. = 1 H. + 4 V. + 5 A., and therefore four virgates and five acres make a hide. No, it seems possible that in these Middlesex 'particulars' we do at last touch real agrarian arrangements. At Fulham the bishop has 13 hides in demesne; 5 villeins have 1 hide apiece; 13 villeins have 1 virgate apiece; 34 have a half-virgate apiece; 22 cottiers have in all a half-hide; Frenchmen and London burgesses have 23 hides; so there are 41-1/2 hides and 30 virgates. That we take to be the real arrangement of the manor, though we are far from saying that all its hides are equal. But it gelds for only 40 hides. A virgate can not be a negative quantity. Therefore we need say no more of these Middlesex entries, only in passing let us observe that the discrepancy between _P_ and _B_ is often considerable, and this seems to show that the teamland of these Middlesex jurors is not in very close touch with the agrarian and proprietary allotments.

[Evidence in the Geld Inquests.]

To yet one other quarter we have hopefully turned only to be disappointed, namely, to the so-called Geld Inquests, copies of which are placed at the beginning of the Exeter Domesday. They tell us of a geld that obviously is being levied at the rate of six shillings on the hide, and sometimes they seem to tell us expressly or implicitly the amount that an acre pays. For a moment we may think that we are obtaining valuable results. Thus at Domerham we find that 14 hides minus 4 acres pay £4. 3_s._ 8_d._ We conclude that each acre is taxed at one penny and that 72 A. = 1 H.[1561]. Then at Celeberge 20 H. minus 4 A. is taxed at £5. 19_s._ 6_d._ We conclude that each acre is taxed at three-half-pence and that 48 A. = 1 H.[1562]. But we soon come to sums which are absurd and discover that as regards small quantities these documents are for our present purpose quite useless. For the Wiltshire hundreds we have three different documents. They do not agree in their arithmetic. Probably they represent the efforts of three different computers. Indubitably one or more of them made blunders. To give one example:--one of our documents begins its account of Mere by saying that it contains 85 hides, 1/2 a hide and 1/2 a virgate; the other two documents say 86 hides, 1/2 a hide and 1 virgate[1563]. This is by no means the only instance of such discrepant results. But mere clerical or arithmetical errors are not the only obstacle to our use of these accounts. It soon becomes quite evident that small amounts are dealt with in an irregular fashion. Thrice over we are assured that 15 H. 1/2 V. paid the king £4. 11_s._ 0_d._[1564]; but they should have paid £4. 10_s._ 9_d._, if four virgates make a hide. Thrice over we are assured that 64-1/2 H. paid £19. 6_s._ 10_d._[1565]. All suppositions as to acres and virgates apart, 64-1/2 H. should have paid £19. 7_s._ 0_d_ In Somersetshire the calculations do not speak of acres, but they introduce us to the _fertinus_ or farthing, which is certainly meant to be the quarter of a virgate. Numerous entries show us that 4 _fertini_ = 1 virgate, and yet when a mass of land expressed in terms of hides, virgates and farthings is said to pay a certain sum for geld, we find that the odd farthings are reckoned as paying, sometimes 3_d._, sometimes 4_d._, sometimes 4-2/3_d._, sometimes 5_d._, sometimes 6_d._ per farthing[1566]. So again, when additions are made, odd acres are ignored. We are told that in a certain hundred the barons have 20 hides in demesne, and then that this amount is made up by the following particulars, 8 H. + 1 V. + 3 H. + 3 V + 4-1/2 H. - 4 A. + 3-1/2 H. It is obvious that these particulars when added together do not make 20 hides, though they may well make 20 hides and 4 acres[1567]. A study of these Geld Inquests has brought us reluctantly to the conclusion that, though they amply prove that 4 V. = 1 H., they afford no proof as to the number of acres that are reckoned to the virgate[1568].

[Treatment of small quantities.]

One word to explain that the apparent rudeness with which small figures are treated is not due to any persuasion that they may be safely disregarded, but is rather the natural outcome of a partitionary method of taxation. Little quantities are lost in the process. It is known that a certain hundred should have, for example, 80 hides and a certain vill 5 hides: but when you come to add up the particulars you can not bring out these round figures, perhaps because many years ago a small error was made by some one when an estate of 2-3/4 hides was being divided into 7 shares. If a mistake be made, it can never be corrected; the landowner who has once or twice paid for 47 acres will refuse to pay for 48 and will tell you that the deficient acre does not lie on his land.

[Result of the evidence.]

The ignes fatui which dance over the survey of Middlesex and the Geld Inquests of the south-western counties have for a while led us from our straight path. We have seen that in Cambridgeshire the equation 1 H. = 4 V. = 120 A. is employed on at least twenty occasions. Now as to the rest of England it must at once be confessed that we have no such convincing evidence. In many counties acres of arable land are but rarely mentioned; parcels of land which geld for less than a hide are generally expressed in terms of hides and virgates; we read, for example, not of so many acres, but of the ninth part of a hide or of two third parts of a virgate. Thus we are compelled for the more part to fall back upon the presumption that the treasury has but one mode of reckoning for the whole of England.

[Evidence from Essex.]

But we would not rest our case altogether upon probability. In Essex we find one fairly clear case in which our equation is used[1569]. Sometimes, again, we read that a tract of land is, or gelds for, or defends itself for _x_ hides and _z_ acres, or for _x_ hides, _y_ virgates and _z_ acres. Now in any entry which takes the first of these forms we have some evidence that _z_ acres are less than one hide, and from any entry which takes the second of these forms we may infer that _z_ acres are less than one virgate. Of course from such a statement as that '_A_ holds 90 or 115 or 240 acres' we draw no inference. It is common enough in our own day to speak of things costing thirty shillings or eighteen pence. But we never speak of things costing one pound and thirty shillings, or one shilling and eighteen pence, and we should require much proof before we thought so meanly of our ancestors as to suppose that they habitually spoke in this clumsy fashion.

Let us use this test. Happily in Essex we very frequently have a tract of land described as being _x_ hides and _z_ acres.

Now we read of

a half hide and 30 acres[1570], a hide and a half and 31 acres[1571], a half hide and 35 acres[1572], a half hide and 37 acres[1573], a hide and a half and 40 acres[1574], a hide and a half and 45 acres[1575], a half hide and 45 acres[1576], two hides and a half and 45 acres[1577], a half hide and 48 acres[1578], _x_ hides and 80 acres[1579], nine hides and 82 acres[1580].

We have here cited twenty instances in which, as we think, the hide exceeds 60 acres (we might have cited many others) and twelve in which it exceeds 80 acres. We might further adduce instances in which our record speaks of a virgate and 10 acres, a virgate and 15 acres, and even of a virgate and 20 acres[1581], and when we read of two hides less 30 acres and two hides less 40 acres[1582] we infer that a hide probably has not only more but considerably more than the 30, 40 or 48 acres that are allowed to it by Kemble and Eyton. Our argument is based on the belief that men do not habitually adopt extremely cumbrous forms of speech. From a single instance we should draw no inference, and therefore when we just once read of 'three hides and a half and 80 acres' we do not infer that 80 acres are less than half a hide[1583].

[Evidence from Essex continued.]

But more can be made of these returns from Essex. We will take a large number of tracts of land described in the formula '_x_ hides and _z_ acres'; we will observe the various numbers for which _z_ stands, and if we find some particular number frequently repeating itself we shall be entitled to argue that this number of acres is some very simple fraction of a hide. We will take at hazard 100 consecutive entries which contain this formula--'_x_ hides + _z_ acres,' where _x_ is either an integral number or 1/2. The result is that in 37 cases _z_ is 30, in 12 it is 15, in 8 it is 40; then 35 and 20 occur 5 times; 80, 50, 45, 37, 18, 10 occur thrice, and 38 and 15-1/2 twice; eleven other numbers occur once apiece. There can we think be but one explanation of this. The hide contains that number of acres of which 30 is the quarter, 40 the third, 15 the eighth[1584].

[Further evidence.]

But Essex, it must be confessed, lies next to Cambridgeshire, and for the rest of England we have less evidence. Still there are entries which make against any theory which would give to the hide but 30, 40 or 48 acres. In Hertfordshire we read of 'a hide and a half and 26 acres[1585].' In the same county we read of 'a half virgate and 10 acres,' and this seems to tell of a hide of at least 88 acres[1586]. In Gloucestershire we read of a manor of one hide and are told that 'in this hide, when it is ploughed, there are but (_non sunt nisi_) 64 acres of land,' whence we may draw the inference that such an acreage was unusually small[1587]. We pass from Mercia into Wessex. In Somersetshire we read of 'three virgates and a half and 5 acres[1588],' in Dorset of 'three virgates and a half and 7 acres[1589],' in Somerset of 'one and a half virgates and 8 acres[1590].'

[Acreage of the fiscal carucate.]

To prove that the fiscal carucate was composed of 120 (fiscal) acres is by no means easy. If, however, we have sojourned for a while in Essex and then cross the border, we can hardly doubt that in East Anglia the carucate bears to the acres the relation that is borne by those hides among which we have been living. Norfolk and Suffolk are carucated counties, but while in the other carucated counties it is usual to express the smaller quantities of land in terms of the bovate (8 bovates making one carucate) and to say nothing of acres, in East Anglia, on the other hand, it is uncommon to mention the bovate--in Suffolk we may even find the virgate[1591]--and men reckon by carucates, half-carucates and acres. We allow the description of Suffolk to fall open where it pleases and observe a hundred consecutive cases in which a plot of land (as distinguished from meadow) is spoken of as containing a certain number of acres. In 22 cases out of the hundred that number is 60, in 8 it, is 30, in 7 it is 20, in 5 it is 40, in 5 it is 15; no other number occurs more than 4 times, and yet the numbers that appear range from 100 to 2. We have tried the same experiment on two hundred cases in Norfolk; in 28 cases the number of acres was 30, in 16 cases it was 60, in 13 it was 40, in 13 it was 16, in 12 it was 20, in 10 it was 80, in 9 it was 15, though the numbers ranged from 1 to 405. Surely the explanation of this must be that 60 acres are half a carucate, that 30 acres are a quarter, that 40 acres are a third, 20 a sixth, 15 an eighth. We have made many similar experiments and always with a similar result; wherever we open the book we find plots of 60 acres and of 30 acres in rich abundance. We use another test. When land is described by the formula '_x_ carucatae et _z_ acrae,' what values are assigned to _z_? We find 40 very commonly, 42, 45, 50, 60 (but this is rare, for it is easier to say '_x_-1/2 carucates' than '_x_ carucates and 60 acres') 68, 69, 80 (at least four times), 81, and 100[1592]. On the one hand, then, we have a good deal of evidence that the carucate contains more than 80 acres, some evidence that it contains more than 100 acres, and some that it does not contain many more, for no case have we seen in which _z_ exceeds 100. Perhaps in Norfolk the figure 16 occurs rather more frequently than our theory would expect, but 16 is two-fifteenths of 120, and the figures 32 and 64 occur but rarely. Also it must be confessed that in Derbyshire we hear of 'eleven bovates and a half and eight acres,' also of 'twelve bovates and a half and eight acres[1593].' These entries, to use an argument which we have formerly used in our own favour, seem to imply that half a bovate is more than eight acres and would therefore give us a carucate of at least 144. We can only answer that, though men do not habitually use clumsy modes of reckoning, they do this occasionally[1594].

[Acreage of the fiscal sulung.]

Of the Kentish sulung very little can be discovered from Domesday. Apparently it was divided into 4 yokes (_iuga_)[1595] and the yoke was probably divided into 4 virgates. We have indeed one statement connecting acres with sulungs which some have thought of great importance. 'In the common land of St. Martin [i.e. the land which belongs to the _communitas_ of the canons of St. Martin] are 400 acres and a half which make two sulungs and a half[1596].' Thence, a small quantity being neglected, the inference has been drawn that the Kentish sulung was composed of 160 acres, while some would read '400 acres and a half' to mean 450 acres and would so get 180 acres for the sulung[1597]. But the entry deals with one particular case and it connects real acres with rateable units:--the canons have 400-1/2 or more probably 450 acres, which are rated at 2-1/2 sulungs. If we passed to another estate, we might find a different relation between the fiscal and the real units. Kent was egregiously undertaxed and as a general rule its fiscal sulung will have many real acres. Turning to the cases in which the geldability of land is expressed in terms of sulungs and acres, or yokes and acres, we can gather no more than that the sulung is greater than 60 acres, so much greater that '3 sulungs less 60 acres[1598]' is a natural phrase, and that the half-sulung is greater than 40[1599] and than 42 acres[1600]. We may suspect that the Exchequer was reckoning 120 (fiscal) acres to the sulung but can not say that this is proved.

[Kemble's theory.]

And now we must glance at certain theories opposed to that which has been here stated. Kemble contends that the hide contained 30 or 33 Saxon which were equal to 40 Norman acres, and that the hide of Domesday Book contains 40 Norman acres[1601]. Now in so far as this doctrine deals with the time before the Conquest, we will postpone our judgment upon it. So far as it deals with the Domesday hide, it is supported by two arguments. One of these is to the effect that England has not room for all the hides that are attributed to it if the hide had many more than 30 or 40 acres; this argument also we will for a while defer. The other[1602] is based on a single passage in the Exeter Domesday relating to the manor of Poleham. That entry seems to involve an equation which can only be solved if 1 virgate = 10 acres. William of Mohun has a manor which in the time of King Edward paid geld for 10 hides; he has in demesne 4 H., 1 V., 6 A. and the villeins have 5-1/2 H., 4 A.[1603] Now three or four such entries would certainly set the matter at rest; but a single entry can not. By way of answer it will be enough to say that the very next entry seems to imply an equation of precisely the same form, but one that is plainly absurd. This same William has a manor called Ham; it paid geld for 5 hides; there were 3 H., 8 A. in demesne and the villains had 2 H. less 12 A. Shall we draw the conclusion that 5 H. = 5 H. - 4 A.? The truth we suspect to be that here, as in Middlesex, geldable units and actual areal units have already begun to perplex each other. Both Poleham and Ham are what we call 'over-rated' manors. It is known that Poleham contains 10 hides and Ham 5 hides, but, when we come to look for the acres that will make up the due tale of hides, we can not find them; for let King William's officers have never so clear a terminology of their own, the country folk will not for ever be distinguishing between 'acres _ad geldum_' and 'acres _ad arandum_' But be the explanation what it may, we repeat that the one equation that Kemble could find to support his argument is found in the closest company with an equation which when similarly treated produces a nonsensical result. This is all the direct evidence that he has produced from Domesday Book in favour of the hide of 40 acres. Robertson, while holding that the hide of Mercia contained 120 acres, adopted Kemble's opinion that the hide of Wessex contained 40 without producing any witness from Domesday save only the passage about Poleham[1604]. Eyton reckons 48 'gheld acres' to the 'gheld hide,' but he leaves us utterly at a loss to tell how he came by this computation[1605].

[The ploughland and the plough.]

Another theory we must examine. It is ingenious and, were it true, would throw much light on a dark corner. It starts from the facts disclosed by the survey of the East Riding of Yorkshire[1606]. In that district, it is said, the number of carucates for geld that there are in any manor (this number we will call _a_) is usually either equal to, or just twice the number (which we call _b_) of the 'lands for one plough,' or, as we say, teamlands. Further, it can be shown from maps and other modern evidences that the manors in which _a = b_ were manors with two common fields, in other words, were 'two-course manors,' while those in which _a = 2b_ were manors with three common fields, in other words were 'three-course manors.' The suggested explanation is that while the teamland or 'land for one plough' means the amount of land that one plough will till in the course of a year, the 'carucate for geld' is the amount of land which one plough tills in one field in the course of a year. Manor _X_, let us suppose, is a two-course manor; the whole amount of land which a plough will till there in a year will lie in one field; therefore in this case _a = b_. Manor _Y_ is a three-course manor; in a given year a plough will there till a certain quantity of land, but half its work will have been done in one field, half in another; therefore in this case _a = 2b_.

[The Yorkshire carucates.]

Now we must own to doubting the possibility of deciding with any certainty from comparatively modern evidence which (if any) of the Yorkshire vills were under a system of three-course culture in the eleventh century. In the year 1086 many of them were lying and for long years had lain waste either in whole or in part. Thus the first group of examples that is put before us as the foundation for a theory consists of 15 manors the sum of whose carucates for geld is 91-1/4 while the sum of the teamlands is 91-3/4. What was the state of these manors in 1086? Three of them were absolutely waste. The recorded population on the others consisted of four priests, one sokemean, eighty-four villeins and twenty-six bordiers; the number of existing teams was 35-1/2; the total _valet_ of the whole fifteen estates was £7. 1_s._, though they had been worth £72 in King Edward's day[1607]. It is obvious enough that very little land is really being ploughed, and surely it is a most perilous inference that, when culture comes back to these deserted villages, the old state of things will be reproduced, so that we shall be able to decide which of them had three and which had two fields in the days before the devastation. Further, we can not think that, even for the East Riding of Yorkshire, the figures show as much regularity as has been attributed to them. In the first place, there are admittedly many cases in which neither of the two equations of which we have spoken (_a = b_ or _a = 2b_) is precisely true. We can only say that they are approximately true. Then there are other cases--too many, as we think, to be treated as exceptional--in which _a_ bears to _b_ some very simple ratio which is neither 1:1 nor yet 2:1; it is 3:2, or 4:3, or 5:3.

[Relation between teamlands and fiscal carucates.]

But at any rate, to extend the theory to the whole of Yorkshire, to say nothing of all England, is out of the question. No doubt as a whole Yorkshire was (in the terms that we have used) an 'over-rated' county: that is to say, as a general rule, _a_, if not equal to, was greater than _b_. But it can not be said that when _a_ was not equal to _b_ it normally was, or even tended to be equal to 2_b_. We take by chance a page describing the possessions of Count Alan[1608]; it contains 20 entries; in one of these _a = b_, in one _a = 2b_, in one _b_ is greater than _a_; in ten cases the proportion which _a_ bears to _b_ is 3:2, in two it is 4:3, in two it is 5:3, in one 6:5, in one 7:5, in one it is 17:12. In the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby an application of this doctrine would be ludicrous, for very commonly _b_ is greater than _a_. What is more, the method of taxation that it presupposes is so unjust that we are loath to attribute it to any one. To tax a man in proportion to the area of the land that he treats as arable, that is a plausibly equitable method; to tax him in proportion to the area that he has ploughed in a given year, that also is a plausibly equitable method; but the present proposal could only be explained as a deliberate effort to tax the three-field system out of existence[1609]. To take the figures that have been suggested to us by the author of this theory, we suppose that _X_ is using a team of oxen in 'a two-course manor'; he has 160 acres of arable land and ploughs 80 of them in every year. Then in another village _Y_ is using a team of oxen according to the three-course system; he has, we are told, 180 acres of arable and ploughs 120 acres in every year. This unfortunate _Y_ is to pay double the amount of geld that is paid by _X_. We could understand a demand that _Y_ should pay nine shillings when _X_ pays eight, for _Y_ has in all 180 acres of arable and _X_ has 160. We could understand a demand that _Y_ should pay three shillings when _X_ pays two, for _Y_ sows 120 acres a year and _X_ sows 80. But nothing short of a settled desire to extirpate the three-field system will prompt us to exact two shillings from _Y_ for every one that is paid by _X_. Lastly, we must repeat in passing our protest[1610] against the introduction into this context of those figures which express the aspirations of that enthusiast of the plough, Walter of Henley. That the 'land for one team' of Domesday Book points normally or commonly to an area of arable land containing 160 or 180 acres we can not believe. If we give it on an average 120 acres we may perhaps find room for the recorded team lands, though probably we shall often have to make our acres small; but county after county will refuse to make room for teamlands with 160 or 180 acres[1611]. No doubt the regularity of the Yorkshire figures is remarkable. There are other districts in northern England where we may see some one relation between _A_ and _B_ steadily prevailing. We will call to mind, by way of example, the symmetrical arrangement that we have seen in one of the Rutland wapentakes, where _A_ = 4_B_. This we can not explain, nor will it be explained until Domesday Book has been rearranged by hundreds and vills; we have, however, hazarded a guess as to the quarter in which the explanation may be found[1612]. As to the Yorkshire figures, we think that of all the figures in the record they are the least likely to be telling us the simple truth about the amount of cultivated land.

[Sidenote: The fiscal hide of 120 acres.]

We may now briefly recapitulate the evidence which leads us to the old-fashioned belief that King William's Exchequer reckons 120 acres to the hide. There are at the least twenty sums set before us which involve the equation: 1H. = 120A. or 1V. = 30A. We doubt whether there are two sums which involve any one other equation. That there are sums which involve or seem to involve other equations we fully admit; but when a fair allowance has been made for mistranscription, miscalculation, the loss of acres due to partitionary arrangements[1613], and, above all, to a transition from the rateable to the real, from the hidage on the roll to the strips in the fields, we can not think that these cases are sufficiently numerous to shake our faith. We have further seen that in Essex and East Anglia the acres of the fiscal system lie in batches of just those sizes which would be produced if an unit of 120 acres was being broken into halfs, thirds, quarters and fifths. Lastly, 'the rustics' of the twelfth century 'tell us that the hide according to its original constitution consists of a hundred acres[1614]' and probably these rustics reckon by the long hundred.

[Antiquity of the large hide.]

If now we are satisfied about this matter, we seem to be entitled to some inferences about remoter history. The fiscal practice of reckoning 120 acres to the hide can hardly be new. Owing to many causes, among which we recall the partitionary system of taxation, the influence of an equity which would consider value as well as area, and the disturbing forces of privilege and favouritism, the fiscal hide of the Confessor's day has strayed far away from the fields and is no measure of land[1615]. At its worst it is jobbery; at its best a lame compromise between an unit of area and an unit of value. And yet, for all this, it is composed of acres, of 120 acres. The theory that is involved in this mode of calculation is so little in harmony with the existing facts that we can not but believe that it is ancient. It seems to point to a time long gone by when the typical tenement which was to serve as an unit of taxation generally had six score arable acres, little more or less.

FOOTNOTES:

[1340] D. B. i. 307 b, 308.

[1341] It will be convenient for us to adopt this term a 'teamland' as an equivalent for the _Terra ad unam carucam_ of our record, so that '_b_ teamlands' shall translate _Terra ad b carucas_. The reader is asked to accept this note as an 'interpretation clause.'

[1342] D. B. i. 353.

[1343] D. B. i. 308, Trectone.

[1344] D. B. i. 275 b, Burnulfestune.

[1345] D. B. i 337 b.

[1346] See pp. 400-403.

[1347] We shall not complain of our tools; but Domesday Book is certainly not impeccable. As to its omissions see Eyton, Notes on Domesday (1880); also Round, Feudal England, 43.

[1348] Agricultural Returns, 1895 (Board of Agriculture) p. 34. Tidal water is excluded.

[1349] The received figures are: Middlesex, 149,046, London, 75,442. From older sources we give Middlesex, 180,480: Population Abstract, 1833, vol. i. p. 376.

[1350] For some good remarks on these matters see Eyton, Notes on Domesday. Lincoln, Nottingham and Northampton would require correction because of the treatment that Rutland has received. The boundary of Shropshire has undergone changes. The inclusion of stretches of Welsh ground increases the population without adding to the hidage of some western counties.

[1351] See above, p. 7.

[1352] Thus Leicester is charged with £100. 0_s._ 0_d._, with £99. 19_s._ 11_d._ and with £99. 19_s._ 4_d._

[1353] In 8 Hen. II. several of the counties answer for about £10 less than had formerly been demanded from them.

[1354] The inclusion of the boroughs would have led to many difficulties. London, for example, though no account is taken of it in D. B., seems to have gelded for 1200 hides. (Brit. Mus. MS. Add. 14,252, f. 126.)

[1355] We omit the 'ingeldable carucates' which occur in some hidated counties. This may introduce a little caprice. If the jurors in one of these counties ascribe twelve carucates to a manor, we do not count them. If they had spoken of hides which never gelded, we should have counted them; and yet we may agree with Eyton that the two phrases would mean much the same thing. But this source of error or caprice is not very important in our present context. Thus we take Dorset. Eyton gives it 2321 hides and then by adding 'quasi-hides' brings up the number to 2650. The difference between these two figures is not large when regarded from the point that we are occupying. I have thought that the difficulty would be better met by the warning that Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon contain considerable stretches of unhidated royal demesne, than by my reckoning as hides what Eyton called 'quasi-hides.' In the case of Dorset, Somerset and Stafford I have placed Eyton's figures below my own and signed them with the letter _E_. I know full well that his are much more accurate than mine. He probably gave to each county that he examined more months than I have given weeks to the whole of England. In comparing our results, it should be remembered that, at least in Staffordshire, he dealt with the county boundary in a manner which, in my ignorance, I dare not adopt.

[1356] My calculations about Leicestershire are more than usually rough, owing to the appearance of the curious 'hide' or 'hundred' or whatever it is. See on the one hand Stevenson, E. H. R. v. 95, and on the other Round, Feudal England, 82. Whether this unit contained 12 or 18 carucates is not of very great importance to us at the moment. But there are other difficulties in Leicestershire. In Cornwall I was compelled to make an assumption as to the peculiar _ager_ or _acra_ of that county; but no reasonable theory about this matter would seriously affect the number of Cornwall's hides.

[1357] The usual formula is: 'Tunc se defendit pro _a_ hidis, modo pro _a´_.' We place _a_ in Col. IV., _a´_ in Col. V.

[1358] The usual formula is: 'T. R. E. geldabat pro _a_ hidis; ibi tamen sunt _a´_ hidae.' We place _a_ in Col. IV. and _a´_ in Col. V.; and we shall argue hereafter, with some hesitation, that the taxation of this county has been increased under William.

[1359] The words _Terra est_ are written and are followed by a blank space. Many instances in Kent and Sussex.

[1360] On the other hand, when I find a statement about _B_ and none about _C_, I do not assume that _C_ = _B_; on the contrary, I read the entry to mean that _C_ = 0. In other words, it is very possible that there should be teamlands without teams; but I do not think that for Domesday's purposes there can be teams (i.e. teams at work) without land that is being ploughed, though it is true that often, and in some counties habitually, _C_ will be slightly greater than _B_.

[1361] One of the chief difficulties in the way of accurate computation is occasioned by what we may call the complex entries. We start with some such statement as this: 'The Bishop holds Norton. It defends itself for _a_ hides. There is land for _b_ teams. There are _d_ teams on the demesne and the villeins have _e_ teams.' But then we read: 'Of this land [_or_ of these _a_ hides] Roger holds _m_ hides; there are _n_ teams on the demesne and the villeins have _o_ teams.' Here the total number of hides is _a_, and not _a_ + _m_; and I think that the total number of teamlands is _b_, and not _b_ + some unstated number held by Roger; but the total number of teams is _d_ + _e_ + _n_ + _o_. Entries in this form are not very uncommon, and therefore this explanation seemed to be required.

[1362] Pearson, History of England, ii. 665.

[1363] Col. IX. gives I. divided by II. Col. X. gives I. divided by VI. Col. XI. gives I. divided by VII. Col. XII. gives II. divided by VI. Col. XIII. gives II. divided by VII. Col. XIV. gives VI. divided by VII. Col. XV. gives VIII. divided by VI. [or if there is no VI. for this county, then by VII.].

[1364] In Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford and Shropshire I was compelled to adopt as the divisor the number of teams instead of the number of teamlands. As it is fairly certain that these counties were 'underteamed' (_B_ > _C_), the resulting quotient (annual value of land actually tilled by a team) should be diminished before it is compared with the figures given for other counties.

[1365] C. S. Taylor, Analysis of Gloucestershire Domesday (Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeol. Soc. 1887-9).

[1366] But this is intended to include males only: the _ancillae_ are left out.

[1367] Mr Taylor says in his preface: 'The work has occupied a large part of my leisure time for five years.' There is therefore some audacity in my printing my figures beside his. It is clear that we have put different constructions upon some of the composite entries concerning large manors. See below, p. 457. Mr Taylor, like Eyton, computes only 48 'geld acres' to the hide; I reckon 120 acres to the hide; that, however, is in this context a trifling matter.

[1368] Mr Taylor has brought out 15_s._ 5_d._ as the average _valet_ of land tilled by a team. By taking Pearson's _valet_ and my teams I have brought out 15_s._ 0_d._

[1369] For Dorset and Somerset my figures can be checked by Eyton's. For Wiltshire, Devon, Cornwall, by the Geld Inquests. These give for Wiltshire (see W. H. Jones, Domesday for Wiltshire, 158 ff.) 3955 H. 3 V.; for Devon (see Devonshire Domesday, ed. Devonsh. Assoc. p. xlix.) 1029 H. 1 V. 3 F.; for Cornwall 401 H. 3 V. 1 F. I give for Wiltshire 4050 H., for Devon 1119 H., for Cornwall 399 H.

[1370] Lincoln, 5·0; Nottingham, 4·4; Derby, 3·9; Surrey, 3·7; Hampshire, 3·6; Middlesex, 3·4; Dorset, 3·3; Cambridge, 3·1; Berkshire, 3·0; Wiltshire, 2·9; Hertford, Northampton, Warwick, Somerset, 2·8; Huntingdon, 2·6; Oxford, 2·5; Bedford and Buckingham, 2·4; Cornwall and Stafford, 2·2; Devon, 2·1. For Kent the figure would be near 3·9, for Sussex near 3·3, for apparently in these counties there was approximate equality between the number of teams and the number of teamlands.

[1371] One word about the meaning of the _valets_. I think it very clear from thousands of examples that an estate is valued 'as a going concern.' The question that the jurors put to themselves is: 'What will this estate bring in, peopled as it is and stocked as it is?' In other words, they do not endeavour to make abstraction of the villeins, oxen, etc. and to assign to the land what would be its annual value if it were stocked or peopled according to some standard of average culture. Consequently in a few years the value of an estate may leap from one pound to three pounds or to five shillings or even to zero. Eyton, Dorset, 56, has good remarks on this matter.

[1372] Seebohm, Village Community, 85-6. To the contrary Round, in Domesday Studies, i. 209, and Feudal England, 35.

[1373] Round, Feudal England, 35.

[1374] See e.g. D. B. i. 222: 'Terra est 2 car. _Has_ habent ibi 3 sochemanni et 12 bordarii.' ... 'Terra est 3 car. Ibi sunt ipsae cum 9 sochemannis et 9 bordariis.' Ibid. i. 223: 'Terra est 1 car. _quam_ habent ibi 4 bordarii.' Ibid. i. 107 b: 'Terra est 7 car. et _tot_ ibi sunt.'

[1375] D. B. i. 222. Codestoche, Lidintone.

[1376] D. B. i. 289; 339 b, Bechelinge.

[1377] D. B. i. 342 b, Toresbi.

[1378] D. B. i. 339, Agetorne.

[1379] D. B. i. 174, Lappewrte.

[1380] D. B. i. 163, Berchelai.

[1381] D. B. i. 218 b, Stanford. Or let us take this case (D. B. i. 148): 'Terra est 3 car. In dominio est una et 4 villani habent aliam et tercia potest fieri.' Is this third team to be a team of four or a team of eight?

[1382] Seebohm, Village Community, 85.

[1383] As a specimen we take 10 consecutive entries from the royal demesne in Surrey in which it is said that _x_ villeins and _y_ bordiers have _z_ teams. We add half of _y_ to _x_ and divide the result by _z_. The quotients are 10·3, 4·0, 3·7, 3·5, 3·4, 2·7, 2·2, 1·9, 1·8, 1·4. If we massed the ten cases together, the quotient would be 2·8. We can easily find averages; but, even if we omit cases in which there is an exceptional dearth of oxen, the variations are so considerable that we must not speak of a type or norm.

[1384] Glastonbury Rentalia, 51-2: 'S. tenet 1 virgatam terre ... et si habet 8 boves debet warectare ... 7 acras. Si autem pauciores habet, warectabit pro unoquoque bove octavam partem 7 acrarum.' Ibid. 61: 'R. C. tenet unam virgatam ... et habebit 4 boves cum bobus domini.' Ibid. 68: 'G. tenet dimidiam hidam ... et si habuerit 8 boves...' Ibid. 78: 'L. tenet 5 acras ... et bis debet venire cum 1 bove et cum pluribus si habuerit...' Ibid. 98-9: 'M. tenet 1 virgatam ... si habuerit quatuor boves...' Ibid. 129: 'S. tenet 1 virgatam ... et debet invenire domino 1 carrum et 6 boves ad cariandum fenum.' Ibid. 130: 'M. tenet dimidiam virgatam ... et debet invenire 2 boves.' Ibid. 189: Three cases in which a virgater comes to the boon days with eight oxen. Larking, Domesday of Kent, App. 33: Customs of Hedenham: '...habebit unam virgatam terrae ... item habebit quatuor boves in pasturam domini.'

[1385] D. B. i. 211: 'Terra est dim. car. et unus bos ibi arat.'

[1386] D. B. i. 342 b, Toresbi.

[1387] Pollock, E. H. R. xi. 813. I venture to think that Sir F. Pollock has not answered his own argument (p. 220) for a constant _caruca_.

[1388] Inq. Com. Cant. 70.

[1389] Another example from a Northamptonshire column (D. B. i. 226) will show what we mean. Let H stand for hides and T for teamlands, and let the virgate be a quarter of a hide, then we have this series: 2 H (5 T), 2-1/2 H (4 T), 4 H (8 T), 1-1/4 H (3 T), 1-7/12 H (4 T), 3/8 H (1/2 T), 1/2 H (1 T), 2-1/2 H (6 T), 1-1/4 H (3 T), 2 H (4 T), 7/8 H (3 T). We see that T is integral where H is fractional.

[1390] Exceptionally we read in Kent (i. 9): 'Terra est dim. car. et ibidem sunt adhuc 30 acrae terrae.' And is not this a rule-proving exception? The jurors can not say simply 'land for half a team and thirty acres.' They say 'land for half a team and there are thirty acres in addition.'

[1391] D. B. iv. 497; Inq. Com. Cant. 97.

[1392] There can be little doubt that this is the right reading. See Round. Feudal England, 134.

[1393] Thus, D. B. ii. 39: 'Tunc 4 carucae in dominio, post et modo 2 ... et 2 carucae possunt restaurari.' To use our symbols, in Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk we obtain statements about _A_ and about _C_, but learn nothing about _B_, unless this is to be inferred from the increase or decrease that has taken place in _C_. We shall hereafter argue that, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, the carucates of East Anglia belong to the order _A_ and not to the order _B_.

[1394] Thus, D. B. i. 231: 'Rad. tenet de episcopo 4 car. terrae in Partenei. Terra est 4 car. In dominio sunt 2 et ... villani habent 2 car.' Just before this we have the other common formula: 'Rad. tenet ... 2 car. terrae in Toniscote. Duae car. possunt esse et ibi sunt.'

[1395] Thus, D. B. i. 231 b: 'Ipsa Comitissa tenuit Dunitone. Ibi 22 car. et dimid. T. R. E. erant ibi 12 car. Modo in dominio sunt 3 et ... villani ... habent 12 car.'

[1396] To me it looks as if the variations were due to a clerk's caprice. The Leicestershire survey fills 30 columns. Not until the top of col. 5 has the compiler, except as a rare exception, the requisite information. Then, after hesitating as to whether he shall adopt the '_x_ car. possunt esse' formula, he decides in favour of 'Terra est _x_ car.' This we will call Formula I. It reigns throughout cols. 5-13, though broken on three or four occasions by what we will call Formula II, namely 'T. R. E. erant ibi _x_ car.' At the top of col. 14 Formula II. takes possession and keeps it into col. 16. Then I. has a short turn. Then (col. 17) II. is back again. Then follow many alternations. At the top of col. 24, however, a simplified version of II. appears; the express reference to the T. R. E. vanishes, and we have merely 'ibi fuerunt _x_ car.' In the course of col. 26 this is changed to 'ibi _x_ car. fuerunt.' These two versions of II. prevail throughout the last six columns, though there is one short relapse to I. (col. 28).

[1397] The proof of this lies in the Inq. Com. Cant. and the Exon Domesday.

[1398] This appears on a collation of D. B. with the two records mentioned in our last note. See Round, Feudal England, 26.

[1399] D. B. i. 174: 'In omnibus his maneriis non possunt esse plus carucae quam dictum est.'

[1400] When _C_ varies from _B_, the statement about _C_ will sometimes be introduced by a _sed_ or a _tamen_ which tells us that things are not what they might be expected to be. D. B. i. 77 b: 'Terra est dimid. car. et tamen est ibi 1 car.' D. B. i. 222: 'Terra est dim. car. tamen 2 villani habent 1 car.'

[1401] As a wheat-grower Devon stands in our own day at the very bottom of the English counties. Its average yield per acre in 1885-95 was 21 bushels, while Cambridge's was 32. Next above Devon stands Monmouth and then comes Cornwall.

[1402] Marshall, Review of Reports to Board of Agriculture from Southern Departments, 524: 'The management of the land is uniform; here and there an exception will be found. The whole is convertible, sometimes into arable, and sometimes pasture. Arable is sown with wheat, barley, or oats, as long as it will bear any; and then grass for eight or ten years, until the land is recovered, and capable again of bearing corn.' See also p. 531: the lands go back to the waste 'in tenfold worse condition than [that wherein] they were in a state of nature.' It is just in the country which is not a country of village communities that we find this 'aration of the waste.'

[1403] Some parts of Worcestershire, for example, show a marked deficiency in oxen. On the lands of Osbern Fitz Richard (14 entries) there are about 102 teams, and there 'could be' 32 more. See D. B. i. 176 b. In some parts of Cheshire also there is a great deficiency.

[1404] D. B. i. 122 b: 'Luduham ... Terra 15 car. vel 30 car.' In the Exeter book (D. B. iv. 240) two conflicting estimates are recorded: 'Luduam ... In ea sunt 3 hidae terrae et reddidit gildum pro 1 hida. hanc possunt arare 15 carrucae. hanc tenet Ricardus de Comite. in ea sunt 3 hidae terrae et reddidit gildum pro 1 hida. hanc possunt arare 30 carrucae. hanc tenet Ricardus de Comite.'

[1405] D. B. i. 246 b.

[1406] Often a Yorkshire entry touching a waste vill gives no _B_. Therefore in my Tables I have omitted the number of the Yorkshire teamlands, lest hasty inferences should be drawn from it. I believe it falls between 5000 and 6000. It is much smaller than _A_, much greater than _C_.

[1407] Be it remembered that these waste vills can not send deputations to meet the justices, and that the representatives of the wapentakes may never have seen some of those deserts of which they have to speak. 'All of these vills,' they say on one occasion (i. 301), 'belong to Preston. In sixteen of them there are a few inhabitants; but how many we do not know. The rest are waste.'

[1408] See below, p. 471.

[1409] Devon, 2·1; Cornwall, 2·2; Derby, 3·9; Nottingham, 4·4; Lincoln, 5·0. The figure for Stafford is about as low as that for Cornwall; but Stafford has been devastated. See Eyton, Staffordshire, 30. Kent and Surrey would stand high. Kent would perhaps stand as high as Derby. But Lincoln has no peer, unless it be Norfolk, Suffolk, or Essex. Our reason for not speaking of these last three counties will appear by and by.

[1410] An essay by Mr W. J. Corbett which I had the advantage of seeing some time ago, and which will I hope soon be in print, will throw much new light on this matter.

[1411] I have roughly added up the carucates and teams of Norfolk, a laborious task, and have seen reason to believe that the figures for Suffolk would be of the same kind.

[1412] In dealing with Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk an equation connecting the hide or (as the case may be) carucate with the acre becomes of vast importance. I have throughout assumed that 120 acres make the hide or carucate. If this assumption, about which something will be said hereafter, is unjustified, my whole computation breaks down. Then in Norfolk there are (especially I think in certain particular hundreds) a good many estates for which no extent (real or rateable) is given. I have made no allowance for this. On the other hand, I believe that I have carried to an extreme in Norfolk the principle of including everything. I doubt, for example, whether some of the acres held by the parish churches have not been reckoned twice over. Also both in Essex and Norfolk I reckoned in the lands that are mentioned among the _Invasiones_, and in so doing ran the danger of counting them for a second time.

[1413] Also we may remark that in many respects the survey of Essex is closely akin to the survey of East Anglia; but in Essex nothing is said about the geldability of vills and therefore, unless the Essex hides and acres belong to the order of geldable units (_A_), our record tells us nothing as to the geld of Essex: an unacceptable conclusion.

[1414] Dorset, 15, 23-24.

[1415] In Dorset 22,000 acres are 'designedly omitted'; in Somerset nearly 178,000; in Staffordshire nearly 246,000. Mr C. S. Taylor puts the deficiency in Gloucestershire at 200,000 or thereabouts.

[1416] See above, p. 370.

[1417] D. B. ii. 160 b: A certain vill is 1 league 10 perches long, and 1 league 4-1/2 feet wide. Surely such a statement would never come from men who could use and were intending to use a system of superficial measurement.

[1418] D. B. ii. 170. Or take Westbruge (ii. 206): Two carucates; two teams and a half; 'this vill is 5 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth.' If every inch of the vill is ploughed, the carucate can only have 75 acres, and each team tills but 60. I have noted many cases in which this method will not leave 120 acres for the team.

[1419] D. B. i. 310.

[1420] D. B. i. 307 b.

[1421] D. B. i. 310. In these Yorkshire cases it is needless for us to raise the question whether the _totum_ that is being measured is the manor or the vill.

[1422] D. B. ii. 118 b.

[1423] D. B. i. 303 b (Yorkshire, Oleslec).

[1424] D. B. i. 303 b (Othelai).

[1425] D. B. i. 346 b (Bastune); 4 carucates for geld; land for 4 teams; arable land 8 quar. by 8.

[1426] D. B. i. 346 b (Langetof); 6 carucates for geld; land for 6 teams; arable land 15 quar. long and 9 wide.

[1427] D. B. i. 248 b (Rolvestune); 2-1/2 hides; land for 8 teams; 18 teams existing; arable land 2 leagues long and 1 [league] wide. Eyton (Staffordshire, 48) has a long note on this entry which makes against his doctrine that the teamland is 120 acres. He suggests that the statement by linear measure is a correction of the previous statement that there is land for 8 teams. Unfortunately, as we have seen, this entry does not stand alone. Morgan, op. cit. 34, speaks of some of these entries. Those which he mentions and which we have not noticed do not seem quite to the point. Thus (D. B. i. 263 b) of Edesberie we read 'land for 6 ploughs ... this land is a league long and equally wide.' We are not here expressly told that all the 'land' thus measured by lineal measure is arable. The cases of Dictune, Winetun, Grif and Bernodebi, which he then cites, are beside the mark, for what is here measured by lineal measure seems to be the whole area of the manor.

[1428] To make safer, I take the Dorset and Somerset teamlands from Eyton, the Gloucester teams from Mr Taylor. In the modern statistics the 'arable' covers 'bare fallow' and 'grasses under rotation'; the 'permanent pasture' includes 'grass for hay,' but excludes 'mountain and heath land used for grazing'; the total acreage includes everything but 'tidal water.' To bring up the particulars to the total, we should have to add (1) a little for orchards and market gardens, and having thus obtained the sum of all the land that is within the purview of the Board of Agriculture, we should still have to add (2) the sites of towns, houses, factories, etc., (3) tenements of less than an acre whereof no statistics are obtained, (4) roads, railways, etc., (5) waste not used for pasture, rocks, sea-shore, etc., (6) non-tidal water. The area not accounted for by our figures will be smallest in an inland county which has no large towns; it will be raised by sea-shore or by manufacturing industry.

[1429] Agricultural Returns, 1895, p. xiii: 'The actual loss of arable area in the interval covered by the last two decades ... is 2,137,000 acres.'

[1430] Mr Seebohm, Village Community, p. 103, seems to think that D. B. testifies to no more than 5 million acres of arable. But, even if we stop at the Humber, we shall have 9 million if a team tills 120.

[1431] D. B. ii. 116: T. R. E. there were 1320 _burgenses_.

[1432] D. B. ii 372.

[1433] It seems probable that in many cases the parish priest is reckoned among the townsmen, the _villani_.

[1434] See above, p. 20.

[1435] While historical economists can still dispute as to whether the population in 1346 was 5 millions, or only 2-1/2 (Cunningham, Eng. Industry, i. 301) guesses about 1085 are premature. M. Fabre has lately estimated the population of England under Henry II. at 2,880,000. But as to this calculation, see Liebermann, Eng. Hist. Rev. xi. 746.

[1436] See above, p. 366.

[1437] Walter of Henley, pp. 67, 71.

[1438] Walter of Henley, p. 19.

[1439] Rogers, Hist. Agric. i. 50-1.

[1440] Tour in the Southern Counties, ed. 3 (1767), p. 158. See also p. 242.

[1441] Agricultural Returns, 1895, p. 239. The figures given under the year 1894 which express the average yield of a statute acre in imperial bushels are for Australasia, 8·18; India, 9·00; Russia in Europe, 10·76; United States, 12·79. Apparently in South Australia 1,577,000 acres can produce as little as 7,781,000 bushels. As I understand, Sir J. B. Lawes and Sir J. H. Gilbert reckon that for an unmanured acre in England 16 bushels would be an average return, but that if the same acre is continuously sown with wheat, the yield will decline at the rate of nearly a quarter of a bushel every year. See Journ. Agricult. Soc., 3rd Ser. vol. iv. p. 87.

[1442] This calculus was officially adopted in 1891; see a paper by Sir J. B. Lawes and Sir J. H. Gilbert in Journ. Agric. Soc., 3rd Ser., vol iv. p. 102. I desire to express my thanks to the Secretary of the Board of Agriculture for directing my attention to this paper.

[1443] I understand that the average number of loaves that can be made from 280 lbs. of flour may be put at about 90.

[1444] Agricultural Returns, 1895, pp. 166, 90, 198. The old rough estimate of a quarter of wheat per head is much too high; the average is about 5·65 bushels. See the paper cited in note 1442. Now-a-days we can further allot to each inhabitant of the United Kingdom an amount of cereal matter other than wheat, to wit, barley, oats, beans, peas, maize, etc. which would take for its production perhaps as much as 1·5 times the area of the land that is required for the growth of the wheat that we have allotted to him. But much of this only feeds him by feeding animals that he eats; much only feeds him very indirectly by feeding horses engaged in the production or transport of food; and some of it can not be said to feed him at all. Then, on the other hand, large quantities of potatoes, sugar and rice are being eaten.

[1445] Wheat, oats, barley and peas are mentioned in D. B.; also rye (i. 257 b).

[1446] Hale, Worcester Register, p. civ.

[1447] Boldon Book, D. B. iv. 580-5. So in D. B. i. 69 the sheriff of Wiltshire receives equal quantities of wheat and malt and a larger quantity of oats. See also D. B. i. 179 b.

[1448] Domesday of St. Paul's, 164*. See also Cart. Rams. iii. 231.

[1449] Ibid, cxxxiv. 173.

[1450] Ibid. 173.

[1451] Calculations are difficult and may be misleading, not only because of the variability of medieval measures, but also because of the varying strength of beer. Mr Steele, the Chief Inspector of Excise, has been good enough to inform me that a bushel of unmalted barley weighing 42 lbs. would yield about 19·5 gallons of beer at 58°. The figures from St. Paul's seem to point to a strong brew, since they apparently derive but 8 gallons from the bushel of mixed grain. The ordinances of cent. xiii. (Statutes, i. 200, 202) seem to suppose that, outside the cities, the brewer, after deducting expenses and profit, could sell 8 to 12 gallons of beer for the price of a bushel of barley. If we suppose that the bushel of barley gives 18 gallons, the man who drinks his gallon a day consumes 20 bushels a year, and when the acre yields but 6 bushels of wheat, it will hardly yield more than 7 of barley. There is valuable learning in J. Bickerdyke, The Curiosities of Ale, pp. 54, 106, 154.

[1452] As to both meat and drink see Ine 70, § 1; T. 460, 468, 471, 473, 474; E. 118; Æthelstan, II. 1. § 1; D. B. i. 169, rents of the shrievalty of Wiltshire. Attempts to measure the flood of beer break down before the uncertain content of the _amber_, _modius_, _sextarius_, etc. In particular I can not believe that the amber of ale contained (Schmid, p. 530; Robertson, Hist. Essays, 68) 4 of our bushels; but, do all we can to reduce it, the allowance of beer seems large.

[1453] D. B. ii. 162 b: Cheltenham and King's Barton.

[1454] D. B. i. 205. The abbot of Peterborough is bound to find pasture for 120 pigs for the abbot of Thorney. If he can not do this, he must feed and fatten 60 pigs with corn (_de annona pascit et impinguat 60 porcos_).

[1455] Walter of Henley, 13. Every week each ox is to have 3-1/2 garbs of oats, and 10 garbs would yield a bushel.

[1456] Now-a-days the average acre in England will produce about 29 bushels of wheat or 40 of oats. Agricultural Returns, 1895, pp. 66, 70.

[1457] See above, p. 398.

[1458] Rogers, op. cit. i. 51.

[1459] Clearly so in some cases. See e. g. the first entry in Inq. Com. Cant. The teams of lord and villeins having been mentioned, we then read that the 'pecunia _in dominio_' consists of so many pigs, sheep, etc. Moreover, if all the cattle not of the plough were enumerated under the title _animalia_, there would not be nearly enough to renew the number of beasts of the plough. Again, when the capacity of the wood is stated in terms of the pigs that it will maintain, the number thus given will in general vastly exceed the number of pigs whose existence is recorded. Lastly, we see that at Crediton (iv. 107) where the lord has but 57 pigs, he receives every year 150 pigs from certain _porcarii_, whose herds are not counted. Throughout Sussex the lord takes one pig from every villein who has seven (i. 16 b). See also Morgan, op. cit. 56.

[1460] See above, p. 76.

[1461] Before we have gone through a tenth of the account of Essex, we have read of 'wood for' near 10,000 pigs. If the woods were full and this rate were maintained throughout the country, the swine of England would be as numerous T. R. W. as they now are. No doubt Essex was exceptionally wooded and many woods were understocked; still this mode of reckoning the capacity of wood-land would only occur to men who were accustomed to see large herds.

[1462] In the thirteenth century it is common to find that the acre of meadow is deemed to be twice or three times as valuable as the best arable acre of the same village, and a much higher ratio is sometimes found.

[1463] This appears from the parallel account of Westley given in D. B. and Inq. Com. Cant. (p. 19) where 'pratum 2 bobus' = '2 ac. prati.' Entries such as the following are not uncommon (I. C. C. p. 13): 'Terra est 4 car.; in dominio est una et villani habent 3 car. Pratum 1 car.' See Morgan, op. cit. 53-5.

[1464] Eyton, Dorset, 146.

[1465] In the above table all _vaccae_, _animalia_ and _animalia ociosa_ are reckoned in the third column. I believe that the two last of these terms cover all beasts of the bovine race that are not beasts of the plough. The horses are mostly _runcini_ and are kept for agricultural purposes. It may be doubted whether destriers and palfreys are enumerated.

[1466] Rot. Hund. ii. 570, 575. The calculation which gave these results was laborious; but I believe that they are pretty correct.

[1467] On the whole, the _valet_ of D. B., so far as it is precise, seems to me an answer to the question, What rent would a _firmarius_ pay for this estate stocked as it is? But there are many difficulties.

[1468] See the important but difficult account of the mill at Arundel: D. B. i. 23.

[1469] Hall, Court Life, 221-3. The Glastonbury Inquests (Roxburgh Club) show that 36_d._ is the settled price for the ox.

[1470] Rogers, Hist. Agric. i. 226, 342.

[1471] See above, p. 382.

[1472] Inq. Com. Cant. 38.

[1473] Or a little less.

[1474] Perhaps too small. One estate was valued in Essex.

[1475] See above, p. 443.

[1476] Domesday of St. Paul's, 59, 64, 69. See above, p. 399 note 1339.

[1477] Hanssen, Abhandlungen, i. 163.

[1478] After making an allowance of 22,000 for Suffolk (which I have not counted) and adding 500 for the land between Ribble and Mersey (which owing to some difficult problems, I have omitted), the sum would fall a little short of 68,000. The hides of London and other boroughs would raise the total. Pearson, History, i. 658, guessed 90,000 to 100,000.

[1479] Above, p. 3.

[1480] As to the _magnum pondus Normannorum_, see Crawford Charters, 78.

[1481] D. B. i. 351.

[1482] D. B. i. 77.

[1483] D. B. i. 165, Alvestone.

[1484] D. B. i. 165 b, Malgeresberiae.

[1485] D. B. i. 252 b, Wenloch.

[1486] D. B. i. 40 b.

[1487] D. B. i. 32: 'postquam habuit pro 16 hidis ad libitum Heraldi.'

[1488] Round, in Domesday Studies, i. 98-110.

[1489] K. 642 (iii. 203).

[1490] D. B. i. 41.

[1491] See above, p. 362.

[1492] I have chosen 'subpartitioned,' because 'repartitioned' might have introduced the idea of periodical or occasional rearrangement, and this it is desirable to exclude in the present state of our knowledge.

[1493] See a speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer reported in The Times for 10 July, 1896.

[1494] Round, Feudal England, 50.

[1495] See also Pollock, E. H. R. xi. 222.

[1496] D. B. i. 172.

[1497] See above, p. 268.

[1498] The estate at Matma which is in the Dodingtree hundred will be accounted for below.

[1499] Possibly this and the four next entries should be omitted.

[1500] We here omit the estates at Hamton and Bengeworth, about which the churches of Worcester and Evesham were disputing, for we believe that they have already been included in the Worcester estate of Cropthorn. See Round in Domesday Studies, ii. 545.

[1501] Perhaps add 5 hides at Suchelei; but apparently these have been already included in the account of the King's Land.

[1502] A large hundred called Halfshire Hundred was formed. In Latin records it is _Hundredum Dimidii Comitatus_. For some light on the constitution of Dodingtree, see Round, Feudal England, 61.

[1503] 'In Huntedunescyre sunt dccc hide et dimid.' This means eight and a half hundreds.

[1504] Leges Anglorum, p. 7.

[1505] On a re-count I made 1185.

[1506] Mr Charles Taylor gives 2595. See above, p. 412. Therefore I have once more gone through the county with his book before me. The difference between us is not altogether due to my faulty arithmetic; but arises from the different constructions that we put upon a few composite entries. In particular I can not allow the bishop of Worcester anything like the 231 hides that Mr Taylor gives him. When I find an entry in this form: 'Sancta Maria tenet H. Ibi sunt _x_ hidae ... De hac terra huius manerii Turstinus tenet _y_ hidas in O,' I believe that _x_ includes _y_, and this no matter how far the place called O may be from the place called H. My 2388 is I think a trifle too low; but I believe the number lies very close to 2400 on one side or the other.

[1507] Ellis, Introduction, i. 184.

[1508] Feudal England, 148.

[1509] After a re-count I think that my 1356 is a little too large, and should not be surprised if the 2663-1/2 had been exactly halved.

[1510] See above, p. 451. This is but one instance. Several other hundreds had been similarly relieved. See Round, Feudal England, 51.

[1511] My 500 (or a trifle more) for Cheshire does not include the land between the Ribble and the Mersey. The figures given for that district are, as is well known, very difficult. If we take the final statement (D. B. i. 270) about the 79 'hides' as a grand total and hold that each of these contains 6 carucates (Feudal England, 86) and that each of these carucates pays geld equivalent to that of one ordinary hide, then we have here 474 units to be added to the Cestrian 500, and yet more northerly lands may have been gelding along with Chester in Cnut's day.

[1512] The various copies disagree as to whether Herefordshire shall have 1200 or 1500 hides. My figure stands about halfway between these two; but many hides were not gelding in 1086. I can not bring the Warwickshire hides down to 1200.

[1513] I take the numbers of the hundreds from Dr Stubbs, Const. Hist. 106. I take them thence in order that I may not be tempted to make them rounder than they are.

[1514] See above, p. 457.

[1515] Mr C. S. Taylor, op. cit. 31, finds 41.

[1516] Round, Feudal England, 44 ff.

[1517] Both statements might be illustrated from the Dorsetshire accounts. Between 2 and 8 Hen. II. the geld seems to rise from £228. 5_s._ to £248. 5_s._ but there is a blunder in the addition of the pardons in the latter roll. I believe that Mr Round has already mentioned this case somewhere. The correspondence between the Pipe Rolls and Domesday is sufficiently close to warrant our saying that the story told by Orderic of a new and severer valuation made by Rufus can have but little, if any, truth behind it. See Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 327.

[1518] The common formula is: 'T. R. E. geldabat pro _a_ hidis; ibi tamen sunt _a´_ hidae' and _a´_ is largely greater than _a_. I infer that _a´_ represents a new and increased assessment, for the Geld Inquest seems to show Cornwall paying for 401 hides and a fraction while I make _a´_=399.

[1519] For these three counties we can not give any _B_, but must draw inferences from _C_. Clearly in Hereford _C_ was often thought to be much less than _B_.

[1520] As already said (above, p. 420) what we take to be Leicester's equivalent for _B_ is sometimes given by an unusual formula.

[1521] Rogers, Hist. Agricult. i. 110.

[1522] Yorkshire Lay Subsidy (Yorksh. Archæol. Soc.) p. xxxii.

[1523] Total acreage under all kinds of crops, bare fallow and grass, excluding (1) nursery gardens, (2) woods and plantations, (3) mountain and heath land.

[1524] Powell, East Anglia Rising, 121-3.

[1525] As we are giving or trying to give the fullest number of hides whose existence is attested by D. B., and not the number gelding in 1086, we compare with it the values given by Pearson (Hist. Engl. i. 665) for the T. R. E. His values for the T. R. W. are given above, p. 401.

[1526] Suffolk and Norfolk are omitted because the relation between their carucates and the villar geld pence is as yet uncertain. Stafford does not provide _valuits_ enough to give a stable average; but in general the _valets_ and _valuits_ for its hides are high. I have excluded (1) royal demesne, (2) cases in which there is any talk of 'waste,' (3) cases in which a particular manor is obviously privileged. In Lincolnshire it is difficult to obtain good figures, because of the way in which the sokes are valued.

[1527] See above, p. 386, note 1304.

[1528] Werhard's testament, K. 230 (i. 297), tells us of a great estate of 100 hides at Otford, of 30 hides at Graveney and so forth. The figures are so little in harmony with D. B. and with the other Canterbury charters that we may suspect the 100 manses at Otford of covering many smaller estates, each of which appears elsewhere with a name of its own.

[1529] In D. B. i. 12 b St. Augustin holds 30 solins at Norborne. In 618 Eadbald of Kent, K. 6 (i. 9), gave 30 _aratra_ at Nortburne; but the deed is spurious. In D. B. 5 b, Rochester has 3 solins at Totesclive, 6 at Hallinges, 2-1/2 at Coclestane, 3 at Mellingetes, 6 at Bronlei. In 788 Offa, K. 152 (i. 183), gave 6 _aratra_ at Trottesclib. Egbert, K. 160 (i. 193), gave 10 at Hallingas. In 880 Æthelstan, K. 312 (ii. 109), B. ii. 168, gave 3 at Cucolanstan. Edmund, K. 409 (ii. 265), gave 3 at Meallingas. In 998 Æthelred, K. 700 (iii. 305), gave 6 at Brunleage. The Rochester deeds therefore may point to some reduction; but they do not tell of any startling change.

[1530] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 101, holds that the Euti who invaded Kent fitted themselves into an agrarian framework prepared by Celts. They came not, like the great mass of Saxons and Angles, from a country in which villages of the Germanic type had grown up, but from an originally Celtic land, which they while still in the pastoral state had seized and subjugated. It is an interesting though hazardous speculation. Certainly some cause or another keeps Kent apart from the rest of England.

[1531] Thus, K. 371 (ii. 207): Æthelstan gives to the church of Exeter 6 _perticae_ (yard-lands?). B. ii. 433: he gives one cassate to St Petroc. K. 787 (iv. 115): the Confessor gives a _pertica_ and a half in Cornwall. Crawford Charters, pp. 1-43: Æthelheard gives 20 cassates at Crediton; that is, a dozen of our parishes. Ibid. p. 9: a single yard of land is gaged for 30 mancuses of gold. K. 1306 (vi. 163): in 739 Æthelred gives 3 _perticae_ to Athelney. K. 1324 (vi. 188): Cnut gives to Athelney _duas mansas siue (= et) unam perticam_.

[1532] K. 1143 (v. 278); B. ii. 527. For the _arepennis_ see Meitzen, op. cit. i. 278, where an explanation derived from the Irish laws is given of its name.

[1533] See above, p. 451.

[1534] The lords of Cambridgeshire may have done good service during the campaign in the Isle of Ely.

[1535] Pearson's _valuit_ is £491; his _valet_ £736.

[1536] The appearance of the curious _hida_ may lead to the guess that if the geld be at two shillings, it is the Leicestershire _hida_, not the Leicestershire _carucata_ which pays this sum. But (1) if the _hida_ contains 18, or even 12, carucates we shall then have on our hands a case of extreme under-taxation; and (2) this will not account for the fact that an exceedingly small value is given to the land that a team ploughs.

[1537] D. B. i. 233.

[1538] At the end of the account of the land between Ribble and Mersey (i. 240) we are told that there were altogether 79 _hidae_ which T. R. E. were worth £145. 2_s._ 2_d._ This would give a very small value for the carucate, if the _hida_ of this district had six carucates; and in many cases 2_s._ 8_d._ is the value assigned to the carucate. If to a two-shilling geld the _hida_ paid but two shillings, this is a bad, though not unprecedented, case of under-taxation. On the other hand, if the carucate paid two shillings, its value has been stated in some abnormal fashion. I do not think it out of the question that the _hidae_ of Leicestershire and Lancashire are modern arrangements designed to give relief in some manner or another to districts which have been too heavily burdened with carucates.

[1539] It may, however, have been applied to the conquered West Wales from an early time. See above, p. 467.

[1540] See above, p. 427.

[1541] D. B. i. 293 b.

[1542] And two sokemen with two teams.

[1543] The artificiality or traditionality of the teamland is even more obvious in D. B. than it is in our statement. At Okeham are 4 hides; land for 16 teams. The men have 37. The king has 2 in his demesne 'et tamen aliae quatuor possunt esse.' So what is land for 16 teams is not only stocked but insufficiently stocked with 39. The manor of one carucate held by Leuenot seems to be another infringement of the traditional scheme, unless that carucate has been already reckoned among the four at Okeham.

[1544] Many other instances suggesting the artificiality of _B_ might be given from northern counties; e.g. in Northampton (i. 227) we have five consecutive entries in which _A_ = 2, 2, 2, 0·5, 4; _B_ = 5, 5, 5, 1·25, 10; _C_ = 3, 2, 5, 1, 8. See also Round, Feudal England, 90.

[1545] D. B. i. 323 b.

[1546] D. B. i. 299 Walesgrif £56; 299 b Poclinton £56; 309 Ghellinghes £56; 305 Witebi £112. It will be remembered that, as our hundred-weight (112 lbs) shows, 112 can be called a hundred.

[1547] Pipe Rolls, 2. 3. 4. 5. Hen. II. In a few cases the earlier _donum_ includes a composition 'for murders and pleas.' That from Yorkshire is partly paid by York, that from Gloucestershire by Gloucester.

[1548] Nearly.

[1549] Except the 'hides,' if hides they be, of Leicestershire and Lancashire.

[1550] D. B. i. 35 (Surrey).

[1551] D. B. i. 49 b (Hants).

[1552] D. B. i. 364 (Lincoln).

[1553] See above, p. 394.

[1554] This part of the evidence is set out in Mr Round's Feudal England, 37-44. I have gone through all the calculations. His results are hardly different from those which I have obtained and therefore I dwell no longer on this part of the case, for it has been well stated.

[1555] D. B. i. 192; iv. 107. The Inquisitio Eliensis puts the number of cottiers at 18, while Domesday gives 28. See Hamilton's edition, p. 119.

[1556] Downham, Witchford, Sutton, 'Helle,' Wilburton, Stretham, Stuntney, Doddington.

[1557] Wichford, D. B. i. 192; iv. 507; Hamilton, 119.

[1558] Witcham, Whittlesey, Lindon, Wentworth, Chatteris, Wisbeach, Littleport.

[1559] Wisbeach, 3-1/2 H. + 1 V. + 150 A. + 2-1/2 H. = 10 H.

[1560] In giving the sum of the particulars I add hides to hides, virgates to virgates, acres to acres, but I make no assumption as to the number of acres or virgates in the hide.

[1561] D. B. iv. 4, 9, 16.

[1562] D. B. iv. 22.

[1563] D. B. iv. 1, 6, 13.

[1564] D. B. iv. 3, 8, 15 (Melchesham).

[1565] D. B. iv. 3-4, 9, 15 (Chinbrige).

[1566] D. B. iv. 61-2-3.

[1567] D. B. iv. 23 (Hunesberge); see also Langeberge on the same page.

[1568] Round in Domesday Studies, i. 212: 'I have worked through the _Inquisitio Geldi_ with this special object, but found to my disappointment that the odd acres which paid geld on this occasion did not pay at a uniform rate, some paying twice as much as others.'

[1569] D. B. ii. 19: 'Ratendunam tenuit S. Adelred T. R. E. ... pro 20 hidis. Modo pro 16 hidis et dimidia.... Et 30 acras tenet Siward de S. Adelred. Modo tenet Ranulfus Piperellus de rege, set hundret testatur de abbatia. Et 3 hidas et 30 acras quas tenuit ecclesia et Leuesunus de ea T. R. E. modo tenet Eudo de abbate.' I think that this involves the statement:

16-1/2 H. + 30 A. + 3 H. + 30 A. = 20 H.

[1570] D. B. ii. 3, 11, 33, 63 b, 78 b, and in many other places.

[1571] Ibid. 31.

[1572] Ibid. 6 b, 42 b.

[1573] Ibid. 46.

[1574] Ibid. 48.

[1575] Ibid. 6 b, 49, 60.

[1576] Ibid. 43.

[1577] Ibid. 74.

[1578] Ibid. 1 b.

[1579] Ibid. 11 b, 30 b, 31, 47 b.

[1580] Ibid. 72.

[1581] Ibid. 21 b.

[1582] Ibid. 16, 15.

[1583] D. B. ii. 79.

[1584] Some other fractions into which a hide would easily break by inheritance and partition can be expressed in various ways. Thus two-thirds of a hide can be expressed as 80 A. or as 'half a hide and 20 acres.' Three-quarters of a hide appears sometimes as 'half a hide and 30 A.,' sometimes as 'a hide less 30 A.' We might add to our other arguments derived from Essex that used by Morgan (op. cit., p. 31). It seems fairly clear that the holding of Roger 'God Bless the Dames', which is called 3 V. in one place is called 1/2 H. + 30 A. in another place (D. B. iv. 21 b, 96 b).

[1585] D. B. i. 141 b, Wallingtone.

[1586] D. B. i. 141, Stuterehele.

[1587] D. B. i. 165. There is here a transition from geldable area to real area. This land is rated at a hide, but when you come to plough it, you will find only 64 acres.

[1588] D. B. i. 93 b, Dudesham; iv. 396.

[1589] D. B. i. 79 b. Eyton, Dorset, 16, says that this is a clumsy way of describing 1 H. + 1 A. Round, Domesday Studies, i. 213, makes some just remarks on Eyton's treatment of this passage.

[1590] D. B. i. 95 b, Ecewiche; iv. 333.

[1591] D. B. ii. 389 (Cratingas). In Northamptonshire also there is talk of virgates; e.g. D. B. 225 b, 226 b: 3V. - 1 B.; 2 V. + 1 B.

[1592] D. B. ii. 377 b.

[1593] D. B. i. 276 b, 278.

[1594] If I hold two and a half acres in one place and three roods in a neighbouring place and you ask me how much land I have, I may tell you that I have two and a half acres and three roods. If you ask me how much money I have in my purse, I may tell you that I have half-a-crown and three shillings. But returns to governmental inquiries would not be habitually made in this way.

[1595] D. B. i. 13: 'pro uno solin se defendit; tria iuga sunt infra divisionem Hugonis et quartum iugum est extra.'

[1596] D. B. i. 2.

[1597] Elton, Tenures of Kent, 133-4.

[1598] D. B. i. 12 b.

[1599] D. B. i. 9 b.

[1600] D. B. i. 12.

[1601] Kemble, Saxons, ch. iv. and App. B.

[1602] Saxons, i. 490.

[1603] D. B. iv. 42. Cf. D. B. i. 81 b.

[1604] Robertson, Hist. Essays, 95, 96. He has entirely misunderstood the entry touching the hundred of Ailestebba. The equation involved in it is merely the following: 16 H. (i.e. 10 + 4-1/2 + 1-1/2) + 37 H. + 20 H. = 73 H.

[1605] Eyton, Dorset, 15; Bound in Domesday Studies, i. 213.

[1606] Dr Isaac Taylor, The Ploughland and the Plough, in Domesday Studies, i. 143. Of this paper there is an excellent review by W. H. Stevenson in Engl. Hist. Rev. v. 142.

[1607] Domesday Studies, 150; D. B. i. 324.

[1608] D. B. i. 311 b.

[1609] Round, Feudal England, 60.

[1610] See above, p. 397.

[1611] See above, pp. 402, 435.

[1612] See above, p. 471.

[1613] See above, p. 480.

[1614] Dial. de Scac. i. 17.

[1615] The appearance in D. B. of a few 'hides' which apparently consist altogether of wood-land (e.g. ii. 55 b) is one of the many signs that the fiscal hide has diverged from its original pattern. A block of wood-land would not be 'the land of one family.'

§ 3. _Beyond Domesday._

[The hide beyond Domesday.]

We have now seen a good deal of evidence which tends to prove that the hide has had for its model a tenement comprising 120 acres of arable land or thereabouts. Some slight evidence of this we have seen on the face of the Anglo-Saxon land-books[1616]. A little more evidence pointing in the same direction we have seen in the manorial extents of a later day[1617]. And now we have argued that the fiscal hide of the Conqueror's day is composed of 120 (fiscal) acres. From all this we are inclined to infer that the hide has, if we may so speak, started by being a tenement which, if it attained its ideal, would comprise a long-hundred of arable acre-strips, and thence to infer that in the very old days of conquest and settlement the free family or the free house-father commonly and normally possessed a tenement of this large size.

We have now to confess that this theory is open to attack, and must endeavour to defend it, or rather to explain why we think that, when all objections have been weighed, the balance of probability still inclines in its favour.

[Arguments in favour of the small hide.]

That all along from Bede's day downwards Englishmen have had in their minds a typical tenement and have been making this idea the framework of their scheme of government can not be doubted. Nor can we doubt that this idea has had some foundation in fact. It could not occur to any one except in a country where a large and preponderant number of tenements really, if roughly, conformed to a single type. Therefore the contest must be, and indeed has been, between the champions of different typical tenements, and in the main there are but two theories in the field. The one would give the Anglo-Saxon hide its long-hundred of acres, the other would concede to it but some thirty or forty, and would in effect equate it with the virgate rather than with the hide of later days[1618]. Perhaps we may briefly state the arguments which have been urged in favour of this small hide by saying that small hides are requisite (1) if we are to find room enough within the appropriate areal boundaries for the hides that are distributed by Domesday Book and the Anglo-Saxon charters, (2) if we are to explain the large quantities of hides or family-lands which are assigned to divers districts by Bede and by that ancient document which we call The Tribal Hidage, (3) if we are to bring our own typical tenement into line with the typical tenement of Germany, (4) if we are not to overdo our family or house-father with arable acres and bushels of corn.

[Continuity in the hide of the land-books.]

A 'name-shifting' must be postulated. Somehow or another, what was the hide becomes the virgate, while the name 'hide' is transferred to a much larger unit. Now in such a name-shifting there is nothing that is very improbable, if we approach the matter _a priori_. Thought has been poor and language has been poor. The term 'yard of land' may, as we have seen[1619], stand for a quarter-acre or for a much larger space. But this particular name-shifting seems to us improbable in a high degree. For when did it happen? Surely it did not happen after the Norman Conquest. We have from Edward the Confessor quite enough documents to warrant our saying with certainty that the hides and manses of his charters are the hides of Domesday Book. Suppose for a moment that all these parchments were forged after the Conquest, this would only strengthen our case, for stupid indeed must the forger have been who did not remember that if he was to make a title-deed for the abbey's lands he must multiply the hides by four or thereabouts. This argument will carry us far. We trace the stream of land-books back from Edward to Cnut, to Æthelred, to Edgar, to Offa, nay, to the very days of Bede; nowhere can we see any such breach of continuity as that which would appear had the hypothetical name-shifting taken place. The forgers know nothing of it. Boldly they make the first Christian kings bestow upon the church just about the number of manses that the church has in the eleventh century if the manse be Domesday's hide.

[Examples from charters of Chertsey.]

Both points might be illustrated by the Chertsey charters. In Domesday Book St. Peter of Chertsey is credited with many hides in divers parts of Surrey[1620]. A charter is forthcoming whereby Edward the Confessor confirms the abbey's possession of these estates[1621], and in the main the number of 'manses' that this charter locates in any village is the number of 'hides' that the abbey will have there in the year 1086. The two lists are not and ought not to be identical, for there have been rearrangements; but obviously the manse of the one is the hide of the other. Then the monks have books which profess to come from the seventh century[1622] and to show how Frithwald the kingling of Surrey endowed their monastery. These books may be forgeries; but the scale on which they are forged is the scale of the Confessor's charter and of Domesday Book. It has been thought that they are as old as Edgar's day[1623]; but at any rate their makers did not suppose that in order to tell a profitable story they must portray Frithwald bestowing four manses for every hide that the abbey possessed.

[Examples from charters of Malmesbury.]

Or look we at the estates of St. Aldhelm. The monks of Malmesbury have a book from the Confessor[1624] which agrees very accurately, perhaps too accurately, with the Domesday record[1625]. The latter ascribes to their house (among other lands) 10 hides at Dauntsey, 5 at Somerford, 5 at Norton, 30 at Kemble 35 at Purton. The Confessor has confirmed to them (among other lands) 10 'hides' at Dauntsey given by Æthelwulf, 5 at Somerford and 5 at Norton given by Æthelstan, 30 at Kemble and 35 at Purton given by Ceadwealla. Then behind this book are older books. Here is one dated in 931 by which Æthelstan gives _quinque mansas_ at Somerford and _quinque mansas_ at Norton[1626]. Here is another dated in 850 by which Æthelwulf gives _decem mansiones_ at Dauntsey[1627]. Here is a third by which in 796 Egfrith restores that _terram xxxv manentium_ at Purton[1628]. Here from 682, from the days of Aldhelm himself, is a deed of Ceadwealla bestowing _xxxii cassatos_ at Kemble[1629]. It is pretty; it is much too pretty; but it is good proof that the Malmesbury monks know nothing of any change in the conveyancer's unit[1630].

[Permanence of the hidation.]

If we examine any reputable set of land-books, those of Worcester, for example, or those of Abingdon and try to trace the history of those very hides the existence of which is chronicled by Domesday Book, we shall often fail. This was to be expected. Any one who has 'read with a conveyancer' will know that many difficulties are apt to arise when an attempt is made to identify the piece of land described in one with that described in another and much older document. In the days before the Conquest many causes were perplexing our task. We have spoken of them before, but will recall them to memory. New assessments were sometimes made, and thenceforth an estate which had formerly contained five hides might be spoken of as having only four. New villages were formed, and the hides which had been attributed to one place would thenceforth be attributed to another. Great landlords enjoyed a large power of rearranging their lands, not only for the purposes of their own economy, but also for the purposes of public finance. In some cases they had collected their estates into a few gigantic _maneria_ each of which would pay a single round sum to the king[1631]. Lastly, the kings gave and the kings took away. The disendowment of churches and simple spoliation were not unknown; exchanges were frequent; no series of land-books is complete. But when some allowance has been made for the effects of these causes, we shall see plainly that, if the charters are to account for the facts displayed by Domesday Book, then the manses of the charters, even of the earliest charters, can not have been of much less extent than the hides of the Norman record. We know of no case in which a church, whatever its wealth of genuine and spurious parchments, could make a title to many more manses than the hides that it had in 1086[1632].

[Gifts of villages.]

Another test of continuity may be applied. In the Conqueror's day a village in the south of England will very commonly be rated at five or some low multiple of five hides, ten, fifteen or twenty[1633]. Now we have argued above that the land-book of an Anglo-Saxon king generally, though not always, disposes of an integral village or several integral villages, and if we look at the land-books we shall commonly see that the manses or hides which they describe as being at a single place are in number five or some low multiple of five. We open the second volume of the Codex Diplomaticus and analyze the first hundred instances of royal gifts which do not bear a condemnatory asterisk and which are not gifts of small plots in or about the towns of Canterbury and Rochester. In date these land-books range from A.D. 840 to A.D. 956. In sixty out of a hundred cases the number of manses is 5 or a multiple of 5. In eighteen it is 5; in sixteen 10; in six 15; in thirteen 20; in three 25; in one 30; in one 80; in two 100. There are a few small gifts; one of a yokelet; six of 1 manse; four of 2 manses; five of 3. The great bulk of the gifts range from 5 to 25 manses. Only four out of 100 exceed 25; of these four, one is of 30, another of 80, while two are of 100. At this rate of progress and if the manse had no more than some 30 acres, we shall have extreme difficulty in accounting for the large territories which on the eve of the Conquest were held by the churches of Wessex, and by those very churches which have left us cartularies that are only too ample. This is not all. If these manses were but yard-lands, then, unless we suppose that the average village was a tiny cluster, it is plain enough that the kings did not usually give away integral villages, and yet a church's lordship of integral villages and even of divers contiguous villages is one of the surest and most impressive traits that the Conqueror's record reveals.

[Gifts of manses in villages.]

Parenthetically we may admit that the king is not always giving away a whole village. Nasse has contended that when a land-book professes to dispose of a certain number (_x_) of manses at the place called _X_, and then sets forth the boundaries of _X_, we must not infer that the whole of the land that lies within those boundaries is comprised in the grant[1634]. The proof of this consists of a few instances in which, to all appearance, two different tracts of land are conveyed by two different books and yet the boundaries stated in those two books are the same. We will allege one instance additional to those that have been mentioned by others. In 969 Bishop Oswald of Worcester gave to his man Æthelweard seven manses, whereof five lay in the place called Tedington. The book which effected this conveyance states the bounds of Tedington[1635]. In 977 the same bishop gave to his man Eadric three manses at Tedington by a book which describes the boundaries of that place in just the same manner as that in which they were set forth by the earlier charter[1636]. Some care, however, should be taken before we assume that the two deeds which deal with land at _X_ dispose of different tracts; for book-land had a way of returning to the king who gave it; also the gift of one king was sometimes confirmed by another; and even if the one book purports to convey _x_ and the other _y_ manses, we must call to mind the possibility that there has been a reassessment or a clerical error. Still it seems to be fairly well proved that there are cases in which the _x_ manses which the donor gives are but some of the manses that lie within the meres drawn by his deed of gift. This certainly deserves remark. At first sight nothing could look more foolish than that we should painfully define the limits of the village territory and yet leave undefined the limits of that part of the village territory which we are giving away. But this practice is explicable if we remember the nature of a manse in a village. It consists of many scattered strips of arable land and of rights over uncultivated waste. To define the limits of the whole territory is important, for the donee should know how far his cattle can wander without trespass. To specify each acre-strip would, on the other hand, be a tedious task and would serve no profitable end. However, there can be little doubt that very generally what a charter bestows is the whole of the land of which the boundaries are described, and therefore the whole territory of a village or of several neighbouring villages.

[The largest gifts.]

But at the moment the charters which will be the most instructive will be those which attribute to a single place some large number of hides. In these the champions of a small hide have found their stronghold. They see perhaps 100 hides ascribed to the place called _X_; they look for that place in modern maps and gazetteers and then tell us that in order to pack our 100 hides within the parochial boundary we must reduce the size of the hide to 30 acres at the most.

[The Winchester estate at at Chilcombe.]

The dangers that beset this process may be well illustrated by the documents relating to one of the most interesting estates in all England, the great Chilcombe estate of the church of Winchester, which stretched for many a mile from the gates of the royal city of the West Saxon kings. Let us follow the story as the monks told it in a series of charters, few of which have escaped Kemble's asterisk. In the first days of English Christianity, Cynegils, king of the West Saxons, gave the Chilcombe valley to St. Birinus. King after king confirmed the gift, but it was never put into writing until the days of Æthelwulf. He declared by charter that this land should defend itself for one hide. This was part of that great tithing operation which puzzles the modern historian[1637]. In 908 Edward the Elder confirmed this act by a charter in which he declared that the land at Chilcombe (including that at Nursling and Chilbolton) contained 100 manses, but that the whole was to be reckoned as a single manse. He also remarked that the land included many _villae_[1638]. The next book comes from Æthelstan; the whole valley (_vallis illuster Ciltecumb appellata_) with all its appendages was to owe the service of a single manse[1639]. Two charters were obtained from Edgar. However much land there might be at Chilcombe, it was to defend itself for one hide[1640]. A writ of similar import, which Kemble has accepted, was issued by Æthelred the Unready[1641]. It said that there were a hundred hides at Chilcombe and proceeded to allot them thus:--

Æstun 4 Easton Afintun and Ufintun 5 Avington and Ovington Ticceburn 25 Titchbourne Cymestun 5 Kilmiston Stoke 5 Bishopstoke Brombrygce and Oterburn 5 Brambridge and Otterbourne Twyfyrde 20 Twyford Ceolbandingtun 20 Chilbolton Hnutscilling 5 Nursling

This territory extends along the left-hand bank of the Itchen from Kilmiston to Titchbourne, thence past Ovington, Avington, Easton, Chilcombe, and Winchester itself, Twyford, Brambridge, Otterbourne to Bishopstoke. If we journeyed by straight lines from village to village we should find that our course was a long twenty miles. Then, to complete the 100 hides, Nursling which is near Southampton and Chilbolton which is near Andover are thrown in. But all these lands lie 'into Ciltecumbe.'

[The many hides at Chilcombe.]

It is to be feared that these charters tell lies invented by those who wished to evade their share of national burdens. And they seem to have failed in their object, for in the Confessor's day, though a very large estate at 'Chilcombe' with nine churches upon it was rated at but one hide, several of the other villages that we have mentioned were separately assessed[1642]. But to lie themselves into an immunity from taxes, this the monks might hope to do; to lie themselves into the possession of square leagues of land, this would have been an impossible feat, and the solid fact remains that their church was the lord of a spacious and continuous block of territory in the very heart of the old West Saxon realm, just outside the gates of the royal burg, along the Itchen river, the land that would be seized and settled at the earliest moment. The best explanation that they could give of this fact was that the first Christian kings had bestowed mile after mile of land upon the minster. What better theory have we[1643]?

[The Winchester estates at Downton and Taunton.]

The truth seems to be that some of the very earliest gifts of land that were made to the churches might, if we have regard to the size of the existing kingdoms, be fairly called the cession of provinces, the cession of large governmental and jurisdictional districts. The bishops want a revenue, and in the earliest days a large district must be ceded if even a modest revenue is to be produced, for all that the king has to give away is the chieftain's right to live at the expense of the folk and to receive the proceeds of justice. Therefore not only whole villages but whole hundreds were given. Chilcombe was by no means the only vast estate that the bishop of the West Saxons acquired in very early days. Domesday Book shows us how at Downton in Wiltshire the church of Winchester has had a round 100 hides[1644]. For these 100 hides we have a series of charters which professes to begin in the days when the men of Wessex were accepting the new faith. They bear the names of Cenwealla[1645], Egbert[1646], Edward[1647], Æthelstan[1648], Edred[1649], Edgar[1650], and Æthelred[1651]. Kemble has accepted the last four of them. They tell a consistent story. There were 100 manses at Downton, or, to speak more accurately, 55 at Downton itself and 45 at Ebbesborne (the modern Bishopston) on the other side of the Avon[1652]. We might speak of other extensive tracts, of Farnham where there have been 60 hides[1653], of Alresford where there have been 51[1654], of Mitcheldever where there have been 106[1655], of Taunton where there have been 54 and more[1656]. Whenever the West Saxons conquer new lands they cede a wide province to their bishop. But perhaps we have already said more than enough of these cessions, though in our eyes they are very important; they are among the first manifestations of incipient feudalism and feudalism brings manorialism in its train. We have recurred to them here because the Winchester charters which describe them testify strongly to the continuity of the hide and also indicate the weak point in the arguments that are urged by the advocates of little hides[1657].

[Kemble and the Taunton estate.]

Kemble has argued that it is impossible for us to allow the hide of Domesday Book or the hide or manse of the charters as many as 120 acres. Take a village, discover how many hides are ascribed to it, discover how many acres it has at the present day, you will often find that the whole territory of the village will not suffice to supply the requisite number of hides if the hide is to have 120 or even 60 acres. Kemble illustrates this method by taking nine vills in Somerset and Devon. One of them is Taunton. Modern Taunton, he says, has 2730 acres, the Tantone of 1086 had 65 hides[1658]; multiply 65 even by so low a figure as 40 and you will nearly exhaust all Taunton's soil[1658]. This argument involves the assumption that the limits of modern Taunton include the whole land that is ascribed to 'Tantone' in the Conqueror's geld-book. Strangely different was the result to which Eyton came after a minute examination of the whole survey of Somersetshire. The 'Tantone' of Domesday covers some thirteen or fourteen villages and is now represented not by 2730 but by 24,000 acres[1659]. The editor of the Anglo-Saxon charters should have guessed that many hides 'lay in' Taunton which as a matter of physical geography were far off from the walls of the bishop's burg[1660]. There are counties in which the list of the places that are mentioned in Domesday is so nearly identical with the list of our modern parishes, that no very great risk would be run if we circumspectly pursued Kemble's method; but just in those counties to which he applied it the risk is immeasurably great, for it is the land where many villages are often collected into one great _manerium_ and all their hides are spoken of as lying in one place. Not until we have compared the whole survey of the county with the whole of its modern map, are we entitled to make even a guess as to the amount of land that a place-name covers. Often enough in those shires where there are large and ancient ecclesiastical estates, those shires in which the feudal and manorial development began earliest and has gone furthest, hides 'are' in law where they are not in fact. They 'lie into' the hall at which they geld or the moot-stow to which they render soke, and this may be far distant from their natural bed[1661].

[Difficulty of identifying parcels.]

As we go backwards this danger is complicated by another, namely, by the growth of new villages. The village of Hamton has been a large village with 20 hides. Some of its arable land has lain two or three miles from the clustered steads. A partition of its fields is made and a new cluster of steads is formed; for housebuilding is not a lengthy or costly process. And so Little Hamton or 'Other' Hamton with 5 hides splits off from the old Hamton which has 15. We must not now try to force 20 hides into the territory of either village[1662]. And as this danger increases, the other hardly diminishes, for we come to the time when a king will sometimes give a large jurisdictional district and call it all by one name. If the once heathen Osric of the Hwiccas gave to a church '100 _manentes_ adjoining the city that is called the Hot Baths,' he in all probability gave away the 'hundred' of Bath; he gave Bath itself and a territory which in the eleventh century was the site of a dozen villages[1663]. We have the best reason for believing that when a king of the eighth century says that he is giving 20 manses in the place called Cridie he is giving his rights over a tract which comprises ten or twelve of our modern parishes and more than the whole of the modern hundred of Crediton[1664].

[The numerous hides in ancient documents.]

We have given above some figures which will enable our readers to compare the hides and the teamlands of a county with its modern acreage. Also we have confessed to thinking that we can hardly concede to every teamland that Domesday mentions 120 statute acres of arable land[1665]. On the other hand, we do not think that there would in general be much difficulty in finding 120 arable acres for every fiscal hide, though perhaps in the south the average size of the acre would be small[1666]. However, we have admitted, or rather contended, that before the middle of the eleventh century the hides of the fiscal system had strayed far away from the original type, and the sight of an over-hided vill would not disconcert us. But unfortunately we can not be content with such results as we have as yet attained. We have already seen that the hides attributed to a district show a tendency to increase their number as we trace them backwards[1667], and there are certain old documents which deal out hides so lavishly that we must seriously face the question whether, notwithstanding the continuity of the land-books, we must not suppose that some large change has taken place in the character of the typical tenement.

[_The Burghal Hidage._]

We have said above that we have inherited three ancient documents which distribute hides among districts. We call them in order of date (1) The Tribal Hidage, (2) The Burghal Hidage, (3) The County Hidage. Of the youngest we have spoken. We must now attend to that which holds the middle place. It states that large round numbers of hides belong to certain places, which seem to be strongholds. The sense in which a large number of hides might belong to a _burh_ will be clear to those who have read the foregoing pages[1668]. This document has only come down to us in a corrupt form, but it has come from a remote time and seems to represent a scheme of West-Saxon defence which was antiquated long years before the coming of the Normans. We will give its effect, preserving the most important variants and adding within brackets some guesses of our own.

THE BURGHAL HIDAGE[1669] Hides. to Heorepeburan, Heorewburan[1670] 324 to Hastingecestre [Hastings] 15 or 500 to Lathe, Lawe [Lewes][1671] 1300 to Burhham [Burpham near Arundel] 726 to Cisseceastre [Chichester] 1500 to Portecheastre [Porchester] 650 to Hamtona and to Wincestre [Southampton and Winchester] 2400 to Piltone, Pistone[1672], Wiltone [Wilton] 1400 to Tysanbyring [Tisbury][1673] 700 to Soraflesbyring, Soraflesburieg, Sceaftesbyrig [Shaftesbury] 700 to Thoriham, Tweonham, Twenham [Twyneham][1674] 470 to Weareham [Wareham] 1600 to Brydian [Bridport or more probably Bredy][1675] 1760 to Excencestre [Exeter] 734 to Halganwille, Hallgan Wylla [Halwell][1676] 300 to Hlidan, Hlida [Lidford] 140 to Wiltone Wisbearstaple, Piltone wið Bearstaple [Pilton[1677] with Barnstaple] 360 to Weted, Weced [Watchet][1678] 513 to Orenbrege, Oxenebrege, Axanbrige [Axbridge] 400 to Lenge, Lengen [Lyng][1679] 100 to Langiord, Langport [Langport] 600 to Bathan, Badecan, Baderan [Bath] 3200(?) to Malmesberinge [Malmesbury] 1500 to Croccegelate, Croccagelada [Cricklade] 1003 or 1300 to Oxeforde and to Wallingeforde [Oxford and Wallingford] 2400 to Buckingham and to Sceaftelege, Sceafteslege, Steaftesege [Buckingham and ?][1680] 600 or 1500 to Eschingum and to Suthringa geweorc [Southwark and Eashing][1681] 1800

These figures having been stated, we are told that they make a total of 27,070 hides[1682]. And then we read 'et triginta[1683] to Astsexum [_al._ Westsexum], and to Wygraceastrum mcc, hydas. to Wæringewice [_al._ Parlingewice] feower and xxiiii. hund hyda.'

[Meaning of _The Burghal Hidage._]

Apparently we start at some burg in the extreme east of Sussex, go through Hastings, Lewes, Burpham, Chichester, Porchester, and then pass through Hampshire, through the south of Wiltshire, through Dorset to Devon, keeping always well to the south. Then in Devon we turn to the north and retrace our steps by moving to the east along a more northerly route than that which we followed in the first instance. In short, we make a round of Wessex and end at Southwark. This done, we cast up the number of hides and find them to be somewhat more than 27,000. Then in what may be a postscript the remark is made that to Essex and Worcester belong 1200 hides (probably 1200 apiece) and to Warwick 2404. The writer seems to know Wessex pretty thoroughly; of the rest of England he (if he added the postscript) has little to tell us. We might perhaps imagine him drawing up this statement under Edward the Elder[1684]. He hears reports of what has been done to make Essex defensible and of two famous burgs built in Mercia; but the military system of Wessex he knows[1685]. Of a military system it is that he is telling us. He does not take the counties of Wessex one by one; he visits the burgs, and his tour through them takes him twice through Wiltshire: westwards along a southerly and eastwards along a northerly line.

It is an artificial system that he discloses to us. The 324 hides allotted to 'Heorepeburan' (a place that eludes us) may seem insufficiently round until we add it to the 726 given to 'Burhham.' The Wiltshire burgs seem to be grouped thus:--

Wilton 1400} Tisbury 700} 2800} Shaftesbury 700} } 5600 Malmesbury 1500} 2800} Cricklade 1300}

[_The Burghal Hidage_ and later documents.]

To compare these figures with those given in Domesday Book and in The County Hidage is not a straightforward task, for the military districts of 900 may not have been coincident with the counties of 1086, and, for example, Bath may have been supported partly by Gloucestershire and partly by Somerset[1686]. The best comparison that we can make is the following:--

Burghal Hidage County Hidage Domesday Book Sussex[1687] 4350 3474 Surrey[1688] 1800 (or 3600) 1830 Hampshire[1689] 3520 2588 Berkshire[1690] 2400 2473 Wiltshire[1691] 5600 4800 4050 Dorset[1692] 3360 2321 Somerset[1693] 4813 2951 Devon[1694] 1534 1119 Oxford 2400 2400 2412 Buckingham 1500 2074 Essex(?) 1200 2650 Worcester 1200 1200 1189 Warwick 2404 1200 1338

There is discord here, but also there is concord. According to our reckoning, the Oxfordshire and Berkshire of Domesday Book have just about 2400 hides apiece; then The County Hidage gives Oxfordshire 2400; and The Burghal Hidage gives 2400 to Oxford and 2400 to Wallingford. Both documents give 1200 to Worcester, and this is very close to the number that Domesday Book assigns. Next we see that, with hardly an exception[1695], all the aberrations of our Burghal Hidage from Domesday Book lie in one direction. They all point to great reductions of hidage, which seem to have been distributed with a fairly even hand. Further, in the case of Wiltshire we see a progressive abatement. The hidage is lowered from 5600 to 4800 and then to a little over 4000, and the first reduction seems to have relieved the shire of just one-seventh of its hides.

[Criticism of _The Burghal Hidage._]

Now it seems to us that, on the one hand, we must reckon with this document as with one which, however much it may have been distorted by copyists, is or once was a truthful, and possibly an official record, and that, on the other hand, we can reckon with it and yet retain that notion of the hide which we have been elaborating. In a general way it both gives support to and receives support from the evidence that has already come before us. We have seen reductions of hidage or carucatage made in Yorkshire and Leicestershire after the Domesday survey; we have seen reductions in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Cambridge, Northamptonshire. Here we come upon earlier reductions. They are large; but still they are not of such a kind as to make us think that any great change has taken place in men's idea of a normal and typical hide. For one thing, we might be rash if we denied that during that miserable tenth century both the population and the wealth of Wessex were declining, for, despite its Æthelstan and Edgar, a miserable time it was. A real extinction of many a 'real hide' there may have been. But our main explanation will be that, by a process which is gradual and yet catastrophic, the ancient exaggerated estimates of population and wealth are being brought into correspondence with the humbler facts.

[_The Tribal Hidage._]

We must now turn to a more famous and yet older document, namely that which we call The Tribal Hidage[1696]. It assigns large round quantities of hides to various districts, or rather to various peoples, whose very names would otherwise have been unknown to us. We are not about to add to the commentaries that have been written upon it; but its general scheme seems to be fairly plain. It begins by allotting to Myrcna land 30,000 hides. On this follow eighteen more or less obscure names to each of which a sum of hides is assigned; 36,100 hides are distributed between them. Then a grand total of 66,100 is stated. Ten other more or less obscure names follow, and 19,000 hides are thus disposed of. Then we have more intelligible entries:--'East Engle 30,000. East Sexena 7,000. Cantwarena 15,000. South Sexena 7,000. West Sexena 100,000.' Then we are told that the complete sum is 242,700, a statement which is not true as the figures stand, for they amount to 244,100. The broad features, therefore, of this system seem to be these:--It ascribes to Wessex 100,000 hides, to Sussex 7,000, to Kent 15,000, to Essex 7,000, to East Anglia 30,000, to Mercia 30,000, to the rest of England 55,100. Apparently we must look for this rest of England outside Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex and East Anglia and outside the Mercians' land, though this last term is probably used in an old and therefore narrow sense. The least obscure of the obscure names that are put before us, those of the dwellers in the Peak, the dwellers in Elmet and the men of Lindsey, seem to point to the same conclusion[1697].

[Criticism of _The Tribal Hidage_.]

Now our first remark about this document will perhaps be either that it is wild nonsense, or that its 'hide' has for its type something very different from the model that has served for those hides of which we have hitherto been reading. Domesday will not allow the whole of England 70,000 hides (carucates, sulungs) and now we are asked to accommodate more than 240,000. Kent is to have 15,000 hides instead of 1200 sulungs. Even the gulf between The Burghal Hidage and this Tribal Hidage is enormous. The one would attribute less than 4500 hides to the Sussex burgs, the other would burden the South Saxons with 7000. In the older document Wessex has 100,000 hides, while in the younger the burgs of Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon have as their contributories less than a quarter of that number. The suspicion can not but cross our mind that the 'hides' of The Tribal Hidage are yard-lands, or, in other words have for their moulding idea rather a tenement of 30 than a tenement of 120 arable acres[1698].

[Bede's hidage.]

Before we decide this important question we must give audience to Bede, whose testimony seems to point in the same direction. As already said, he uses one and the same unit, namely, the land of a family, whenever he speaks of a tract of soil, whether that tract be the territory of a large tribe or an estate that is granted to a monastery. He gives 7000 of these units to the South Saxons, 5000 to the South Mercians, 7000 to the North Mercians, 960 to Anglesey, 300 and more to Man, 600 to Thanet, 1200 to Wight, 600 to the Isle of Ely, 87 to the promontory of Selsey, 5 to Iona. Then he tells how Alchfrid bestowed on Wilfrid the land of 10 families at Stanford and a monastery of 30 families at Ripon, and in various other cases we hear of a prelate acquiring the land of 20, 12, 10, 8 families or of one family[1699].

[Criticism of Bede's hidage.]

Now we must notice that in their estimates of one large province there is a certain agreement between the Ecclesiastical History and The Tribal Hidage. Both give the South Saxons 7000 hides or families[1700]. What are we then to say? If we suppose that Bede is speaking to us of tenements which tend to conform to the hide of 120 arable acres his statements must fly far beyond their mark. For example, the Isle of Wight is to have 1200 hides, and yet, according to Domesday Book, the whole of Hampshire including that island will not have 3000 hides, nor 3000 'teamlands,' nor 3000 teams. Bede's Wight contains as many hides as the Worcestershire or the Herefordshire of Domesday. He allots 600 of his units to the Isle of Ely, which in 1086 had about 80 hides and 126 teamlands. He allots another 600 of his units to the Isle of Thanet, which in 1086 had about 66 sulungs and 93 teamlands[1701].

[Bede and the large hide.]

We have now reached the critical point in our essay. Before us lie two paths and it is hardly too much to say that our whole conception of early English history depends on the choice that we make. Either as we pursue our retrogressive course through the centuries there comes a time when the hide of 120 acres gives place to some other and much smaller typical tenement, or the men of Bede's day grossly exaggerated the number of the hides that there were in England and the various parts thereof.

[Continuity of the hide in the land-books.]

We make our choice. We refuse to abandon the large hide. In the first place, we call to mind the continuity of the charters. They have begun to flow in Bede's day; they never cease to flow until they debouch in Domesday Book. They know but one tenemental unit. To describe it they use Bede's phrase, and his translator's phrases. It is the _hiwisc_, the _terra unius familiae_, the _terra unius manentis_, the manse, the hide[1702]. Between this and the acre they know nothing except the yard of land. Of it they speak but seldom, and it can only be explained as being a yard in every acre of a hide. No moment can we fix when an old mode of reckoning by reference to small tenements is superseded by references to a fourfold larger model.

[Gradual reduction of hidage.]

In the second place, we have been prepared for exaggeration. We have seen the hides steadily increasing in number as we passed from Domesday Book to The County Hidage and thence to The Burghal Hidage, and what may we not expect in the remote age that we have now reached? Even in the days of The Burghal Hidage there was a kingdom of England. There was a king of the English who was trying to coordinate his various dominions in one common scheme of national defence. But now we have penetrated to an age when there is no English nation. The _gens Anglorum_ whose ecclesiastical history is being written is but a loose congeries of kindred folks. Rude indeed will be the guesses made at such a time about the strength of tribes and the wealth of countries. The South Mercians are a folk of 5000 families, 'so they say':--that is all that Bede can tell us about them. It is not likely that they have underestimated their numbers. When there is a kingdom of England, when there is a crushing tax called 'danegeld,' then the day will have come when a county will, if it can, 'conceal' its hides. At an earlier time the various folks will brag of their strength and there will be none to mitigate their boasts.

Moreover we can not put our finger on the spot where the breach of continuity occurs. In 1086 Sussex has about 3100 teamlands; it has about 3500 hides. The Burghal Hidage would burden it with nearly 4500, and now we are required to give it 7000. There is no place where we can see its hides suddenly multiplied or divided by four.

[Over-estimates of hidage.]

Dare we set any limit to the power of exaggeration? In much later days when England had long been strongly governed and accurate fiscal rolls were being carefully stored in the treasury, men believed in 60,000 knight's fees; royal ministers believed in 32,000; and yet we now see good reason for doubting whether there were more than 5000[1703]. In the reign of Edward III. the collective wisdom of the nation supposed, and acted upon the supposition, that there were more than 40,000 parishes in England, and then made the humiliating discovery that there were less than 9000[1704]. We hear that the same error was current in the days of Wolsey. Men still believed in those 40,000 parishes[1705]. Such numbers as these stood written in ancient manuscripts, some of which seem to have taken our Tribal Hidage as a base for calculations[1706]. These traditional numbers will not be lightly abandoned, though their falsehood might be proved by a few days' labour spent among the official archives. Counting hides is repulsive work. If then these things happen in an age which is much closer to our own than to Bede's, ought we not to be surprised at the moderation of those current estimates of tribal strength that he reports?

[Size of Bede's hide.]

Thirdly, when Bede speaks not of a large province, but of an estate acquired by a prelate, then his story seems to require that 'the land of one family' should be that big tenemental unit, the manse or hide of the land-books. Let us take by way of example the largest act of liberality that he records. King Oswy, going to battle, promises that if he be victorious he will devote to God his daughter with twelve estates for the endowment of monasteries. He is victorious; he fulfils his vow. He gives twelve estates, six in Deira, six in Bernicia; each consists of 'the possessions of ten families.' His daughter enters Hild's monastery at Hartlepool. Two years afterwards she acquires an estate of ten families at Streanaeshalch and founds a monastery there. According to our reading of the story, Oswy bestows twelve 'ten-hide vills'; he gives, that is, his rights, his superiority, over twelve villages of about the average size, some of which are in Deira, some in Bernicia. It is a handsome gift made on a grand occasion and in return for a magnificent victory; but it is on the scale of those gifts whereof we read in the West Saxon and Mercian land-books, where the hides are given away by fives and tens, fifteens and twenties. We feel no temptation to make thirty-acre yard-lands of the units that Oswy distributed. Were we to do this, we should see him bestowing not entire villages (for a village of two-and-a-half hides would, at all events in later days, be abnormally small) but a few of the tenements that lie in one village and a few of those that lie in another, and such a gift would not be like those gifts that the oldest land-books record. And so we think that the unit which Bede employs is our large hide. When he speaks of the estates given to those churches with whose affairs he is conversant, he will state the hidage correctly; but when it comes to the hidage of Sussex or Kent, he will report current beliefs which are far from the truth. This is what we see in later days. The officers at the Exchequer know perfectly well that this man has fifty knight's fees and that man five, but opine that there are 32,000, or, may be, 60,000 fees in England[1707].

[Evidence from Iona.]

Observe how moderate Bede's estimate of hidage is when he speaks of a small parcel of land of which he had heard much, when he speaks of the holy island of Hii or Iona. A Pictish king gave it to Columba, who received it as a site for a monastery. 'Neque enim magna est, sed quasi familiarum quinque, iuxta aestimationem Anglorum[1708] 'It is not a large island; we might compare its size with that of one of our English five-hide túns.' The comparison would be apt. Iona has 1300 Scotch acres or thereabouts[1708]. Plough 600 acres; there will be ample pasture left[1710]. If, however, we interpreted his statement about the 7000 hides of Sussex in a similar fashion, the result would be ridiculous. The South Saxons had not 840,000 acres of arable; our Sussex has not 940,000 acres of any kind; their Sussex was thickly wooded. The contrast, however, is not between two measures; it is between knowledge and ignorance. Bede's name is and ought to be venerated, and to accuse him of talking nonsense may seem to some an act of sacrilege. But about these matters he could only tell what was told him, and we may be sure that his informants, were, to say the least, no better provided with statistics than were the statesmen of the fourteenth century[1711].

[Evidence from Selsey.]

Also there is one case in which we have what may be called a very ancient, though not a contemporary, exposition of Bede's words. He tells us that Æthelwealh king of the South Saxons gave to Wilfrid the land of 87 families called Selsey[1712]. Then there comes to us from Chichester the copy of a land-book which professes to tell us more touching the whereabouts of these 87 hides[1713]. Ceadwealla with the approval of Archbishop Wilfrid gives to a Bishop Wilfrid a little land for the construction of a monastery in the place called Selsey: 'that is to say 55 _tributarii_ in the places that are called Seolesige, Medeminige, Wihttringes, Iccannore, Bridham and Egesauude and also Bessenheie, Brimfastun and Sidelesham with the other _villae_ thereto belonging and their appurtenances; also the land named Aldingburne and Lydesige 6 _cassati_, and in Geinstedisgate 6, and in Mundham 8, and in Amberla and Hohtun 8, and in Uualdham 4: that is 32 _tributarii_.' This instrument bears date 683. Another purporting to come from 957 describes the land in much the same fashion[1714]. Where, let us ask, did the makers of these charters propose to locate the 87 hides? Some, though not all, of the places that they mentioned can be easily found on the map. We see Selsey itself; hard by are Medmeny or Medmerry, Wittering, Itchenor, Birdham and Siddlesham. At these and some other places that are not now to be found were 55 hides. Then we go further afield and discover Aldingbourn, Lidsey, Mundham, Amberley, Houghton and perhaps Upper Waltham. But we have travelled far. At Amberley and Houghton we are fifteen miles as the crow flies from Selsey[1715]. Apparently then, the 87 hides consist of a solid block of villages at and around Selsey itself and of more distant villages that are dotted about in the neighbourhood. Be it granted that these land-books are forgeries; still in all probability they are a good deal older than Domesday Book[1716]. Be it granted that the number of 87 hides was suggested to the forgers by the words of Bede[1717]. Still we must ask what meaning they gave to those words. They distributed the 87 hides over a territory which is at least eighteen miles in diameter[1718]. Now it is by no means unlikely that Æthelwealh's gift really included some villages that were remote from Selsey. We have seen before now that lands in one village may 'lie into' another and a distant village which is the moot-stow of a 'hundred.' But at any rate the forgers were not going to attempt the impossible task of cramming 'the land of 87 families' into the Selsey peninsula.

[Conclusion in favour of the large hide.]

Therefore, in spite of Bede and The Tribal Hidage, we still remain faithful to the big hide. We have seen reason for believing that in the oldest days the real number of the 'real' hides was largely over-estimated. It would be an interesting, though perhaps an unanswerable, question whether any governmental or fiscal arrangements were ever based upon these inflated figures. A negative answer would seem the more probable. In Bede's day there was no one to tax all England or to force upon all England a scheme of national defence. So soon as anything that we could dare to call a government of England came into being, the truth, the unpleasant truth, would become apparent bit by bit. All along bits of the truth were well enough known. The number of hides in a village was known to the villagers; the kingling knew the number of hides that contributed to his maintenance. As the folks were fused together, these dispersed bits of truth would be slowly pieced into a whole, though for a long while the work of coordination would be hampered by old mythical estimates. Perhaps The Burghal Hidage may represent one of the first attempts to arrange for political purposes the hides of a large province. There is still exaggeration, and, unfortunately for us, new causes of perplexity are introduced as the older disappear. On the one hand, statesmen are beginning to know something about the facts; on the other hand, they are beginning to perceive that tenements of equal size are often of very unequal value, and to give the name _hide_ to whatever is taxed as such. Also there is privilege to be reckoned with, and there is jobbery. It is a tangled skein. And yet they are holding fast the equation 1H. = 120A.

[Continental analogies.]

There is, however, another point of view from which the evidence should be examined, though a point to which we can not climb. How will our big hide assort with the evidence that comes to us from abroad? Only a few words about this question can we hazard.

[The German _Hufe_.]

If we look to the villages of Germany, or at any rate of some parts of Germany, we see that the typical fully endowed peasant holds a mass of dispersed acre-strips, a _Hufe, hoba mansus_ which, while it falls far short of our hide, closely resembles our virgate. The resemblance is close. As our virgate is compounded of acres, so this _Hufe_ is compounded of acres, or day's-works, or mornings (_Morgen_). When the time for accurate measurement comes, these day-work-units differ somewhat widely in extent as we pass from one district to another. The English statute acre is, as we have already said[1719], an unusually large day-work-unit. It contains 40.46 _ares_, while in Germany, if there is nothing exceptional in the case, the _Morgen_ will have no more than from 25 to 30 _ares_[1720]. This notwithstanding, the _Hufe_, is generally supposed to contain either 30 or else 60 _Morgen_, the former reckoning being the commoner. In the one case it would resemble our virgate, in the other our half-hide.

[Sidenote: The _Königshufe_.]

Then, however, we see--and it has occurred to us that some solution of our difficulty might lie in this quarter--that in Germany there appears sporadically a unit much larger than the ordinary _Hufe_, which is known as a _Königshufe_ or _mansus regalis_. This is sometimes reckoned to contain 160, but sometimes 120 _Morgen_. It seems to be an unit accurately measured by a _virga regalis_ of 4·70 meters and to contain 21,600 square _virgae_. In size it would closely resemble an English hide of 120 statute acres; the one would contain 47·736, the other 48·56 hectares. To explain the appearance of these large units by the side of the ordinary _Hufen_, it has been said that as the Emperor or German king reigned over wide territories and had much land to give away, he felt the need of some accurate standard for the measurement of his own gifts, so that he might be able to dispose of 'five manses' or 'ten manses' in some distant province and yet know exactly what he was doing. This theory, however, does not tell us why the unit that was thus chosen and called a king's _Hufe_ or 'royal manse' was much larger than an ordinary manse or _Hufe_, and we seem invited to suppose that at some time or another a notion had prevailed that when an allotment of land in a village was made to a king, he should have for his tenement twice or thrice or four times as many strips as would fall to the lot of the common man[1721].

[Sidenote: The English hide and the _Königshufe_.]

The suggestion then might be made that the manse, _terra unius familiae, terra unius manentis_, of our English documents is not the typical manse of the common man, but the typical king's-manse. We might construct the following story:--When England was being settled, the practice was to give the common man about 30 acres to his manse, but to give the king 120. Thus in the administration of the royal lands a 'manse' would stand for this large unit. Then this same unit was employed in the computation of the _feorm_, _victus_ or _pastus_ that was due to the king from other lands, and finally the royal reckoning got so much the upper hand that when men spoke of a 'manse' or a 'family land' they meant thereby, not the typical estate of the common man, but a four times larger unit which was thrust upon their notice by fiscal arrangements.

[The large hide on the Continent.]

Some such suggestion as this may deserve consideration if all simpler theories break down. But it is not easily acceptable. It supposes that in a very early and rude age a natural use of words was utterly and tracelessly expelled by a highly technical and artificial use. This might happen in a much governed country which was full of royal officials; we can hardly conceive it happening in the England of the seventh and eighth centuries. Moreover, the continental evidence does not lie all on one side. There was, for instance, one district in Northern Germany where the term _Hufe_ was given to an area that was but a trifle smaller than 120 acres of our statute measure[1722]. Also there are the large Scandinavian allotments to be considered. Even in Gaul on the estates of St. Germain the _mansus ingenuilis_ sometimes contained, if Guérard's calculations are correct, fully as much arable land as we are giving to the hide[1723]. Nor, though we may dispute about the degree of difference, can it be doubted that the Germanic conquest of a Britain that the legions had deserted was catastrophic when compared with the slow process by which the Franks and other tribes gained the mastery in Gaul. Just in the matter of agrarian allotment this difference might show itself in a striking form. The more barbarous a man is, the more land he must have to feed himself withal, if corn is to be his staple food. There were no ecclesiastics in England to maintain the continuity of agricultural tradition. Also the heathen Germans in England had a far better chance of providing themselves with slaves than had their cousins on the mainland. Also it seems very possible that throughout the wide and always growing realm of the Frankish king, the fiscal nomenclature would be fixed by the usages which obtained in the richest and most civilized of those lands over which he reigned, and that the 'manse' that was taken as the unit for taxation was really a much smaller tenement than supported a family in the wilder and ruder east. Besides, when in Frankland a tax is imposed which closely resembles and may have been the model for our danegeld, the _mansus ingenuilis_ pays twice as much as the _mansus servilis_[1724]. This suggests that the Frankish statesmen have two different typical tenements in their minds, whereas in England all the hides pay equally.

[The large hide not too large.]

No doubt at first sight 120 arable acres seem a huge tenement for the maintenance of one family. But, though the last word on this matter can not be spoken by those ignorant alike of agriculture and physiology, still they may be able to forward the formation of a sound judgment by calling attention to some points which might otherwise be neglected. In the first place, our 'acre' is a variable whose history is not yet written. Perhaps when written it will tell us that the oldest English acres fell decidedly short of the measure that now bears that name and even that a rod of 12 feet was not very uncommon. Secondly, when our fancy is catering for thriftless barbarians, we must remember that the good years will not compensate for the bad. Every harvest, however poor, must support the race for a twelvemonth. Thirdly, we must think away that atmosphere of secure expectation in which we live. When wars and blood-feuds and marauding forays are common, men must try to raise much food if they would eat a little. Fourthly, we must not light-heartedly transport the three-course or even the two-course programme of agriculture into the days of conquest and settlement. It is not impossible that no more than one-third of the arable was sown in any year[1725]. Fifthly, we may doubt whether Arthur Young was further in advance of Walter of Henley than Walter was of the wild heathen among whom the hides were allotted; and yet Walter, with all his learned talk of marl and manure, of second-fallowing and additional furrows, faced the possibility of garnering but six bushels from an acre[1726]. Sixthly, we have to provide for men who love to drink themselves drunk with beer[1727]. Their fields of barley will be wide, for their thirst is unquenchable. Seventhly, without speaking of 'house-communities,' we may reasonably guess that the household was much larger in the seventh than it was in the eleventh century. We might expect to find married brothers or even married cousins under one roof. Eighthly, there seems no reason why we should not allow the free family some slaves: perhaps a couple of huts inhabited by slaves; there had been war enough. Ninthly, the villein of the thirteenth century will often possess a full virgate of 30 acres, and yet will spend quite half his time in cultivating his lord's demesne. Tenthly, in Domesday Book the case of the _villanus_ who holds an integral hide is by no means unknown[1728], nor the case of the _villanus_ who has a full team of oxen. When all this has been thought over, let judgment be given. Meanwhile we can not abandon that belief to which the evidence has brought us, namely, that the normal tenement of the German settler was a hide, the type of which had 120 acres of arable, little more or less.

[The large hide and the manor.]

If we are right about this matter, then, as already said[1729], some important consequences follow. We may once and for all dismiss as a dream any theory which would teach us that from the first the main and normal constitutive cell in the social structure of the English people has been the manor. To call the ceorl's tenement of 120 acres a manor, though it may have a few slaves to till it, would be a grotesque misuse of words, nor, if there is to be clear thinking, shall we call it an embryo manor, for by no gradual process can a manor be developed from it. There must be a coagulation of some three or four such tenements into a single proprietary unit before that name can be fairly earned. That from the first there were units which by some stretch of language might be called manors is possible. The noble man, the eorl, may have usually had at least those five hides which in later days were regarded as the proper endowment for a thegn, and these large estates may have been cultivated somewhat after the manorial fashion by the slaves and freed-men of their owners. But the language of Bede and of the charters assures us that the arrangement which has been prevalent enough to be typical has been that which gave to each free family, to each house-father, to each tax-payer (_tributarius_) one hide and no more; but no less. Such a use of words is not engendered by rarities and anomalies.

[Last words.]

However, we would not end this essay upon a discord. Therefore a last and peaceful word. There is every reason why the explorers of ancient English history should be hopeful. We are beginning to learn that there are intricate problems to be solved and yet that they are not insoluble. A century hence the student's materials will not be in the shape in which he finds them now. In the first place, the substance of Domesday Book will have been rearranged. Those villages and hundreds which the Norman clerks tore into shreds will have been reconstituted and pictured in maps, for many men from over all England will have come within King William's spell, will have bowed themselves to him and become that man's men. Then there will be a critical edition of the Anglo-Saxon charters in which the philologist and the palæographer, the annalist and the formulist will have winnowed the grain of truth from the chaff of imposture. Instead of a few photographed village maps, there will be many; the history of land-measures and of field-systems will have been elaborated. Above all, by slow degrees the thoughts of our forefathers, their common thoughts about common things, will have become thinkable once more. There are discoveries to be made; but also there are habits to be formed.

FOOTNOTES:

[1616] See above, p. 389.

[1617] See above, p. 393.

[1618] Dr Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 79, has endeavoured to find a _via media_. To me it seems that his suggestion is open to almost all the objections that can be urged against our Big Hide, for he seems prepared to give the normal household of the oldest day its 120 acres. Mr Seebohm's adhesion to the party of the Big Hide is of importance, for I can not but think that a small hide (which afterwards was called a virgate) would have assorted better with his general theory. Conversely, it is curious that Kemble, the champion of the free ceorls, was also the champion, if not the inventor, of the Little Hide.

[1619] See above, p. 385.

[1620] D. B. i. 32 b.

[1621] K. 812 (iv. 151).

[1622] K. 986-988 (v. 14-21); B. i. 55-9, 64.

[1623] Plummer, Bede, ii. 217.

[1624] K. 917 (iv. 165).

[1625] D. B. i. 66 b, 67.

[1626] K. 355 (ii. 179).

[1627] K. 263 (ii. 35). Accepted by Kemble.

[1628] K. 174 (i. 209).

[1629] K. 24 (i. 28).

[1630] It is fair to say that the instances here given are picked instances and that the Malmesbury title to some other lands is not so exceedingly neat.

[1631] See above, p. 112.

[1632] This is so even in the case of the Kentish churches, see above, p. 466. The Chronicle of Abingdon affords good materials for comparison with D. B. As a general rule the charters will account for just about the right number of manses, if the manses are to be the hides. There are exceptions; but not more than might be fairly explained by changes such as those recorded in the following words (Chron. Abingd. i. 270):--'Fuerunt autem Witham, Seouecurt, Henstesie, Eatun membra de Cumenora temporibus Eadgari regis Angliae, habentes cassatos xxv; nunc vero Hensteseie membrum est de Bertona; Witheham et Seouecurt militibus datae; Eatun omnìmodo ablata.' See also an excellent paper by Mr C. S. Taylor, The Pre-Domesday Hide of Gloucestershire, Trans. Brist, and Glouc. Archæol. Soc. vol. xvíii.

[1633] Round, Feudal England, 44 ff.

[1634] Nasse, Agricultural Community, Engl. transl., 23-5. Seebohm, Village Community. 111.

[1635] K. 552 (iii. 35).

[1636] K. 617 (iii. 164).

[1637] Charter of Æthelwulf, K. 1057 (v. 113); T. p. 115; H. & S. 646. We should not be surprised if at least one part of the mysterious 'decimation' turned out to be an early act of 'beneficial hidation.'

[1638] Charter of Edward, K. 342 (ii. 153).

[1639] Charter of Æthelstan, K. 1113 (v. 224).

[1640] Charters of Edgar, K. 512 (ii. 401); K. 583 (iii. 111).

[1641] Writ of Æthelred, K. 642 (iii. 203).

[1642] D. B. i. 40-41.

[1643] Kitchin, Winchester, 7: 'Cenwalh built the church, the parent of Winchester cathedral ... The monks at once set themselves to ennoble toil, to wed tillage with culture; and it is interesting to note that the first endowment of the Church in Wessex fell to them in the form of a great grant of all the land for some leagues around the city, given for the building of the church.' Did the monks till the land for some leagues around the city? I think not. Was it all occupied by their serfs? I think not. What was given was a superiority. One last question:--Did the monks really ennoble toil by appropriating its proceeds?

[1644] D. B. i. 65 b: 'Episcopus Wintoniensis tenet Duntone. T. R. E. geldavit pro 100 hidis tribus minus. Duae ex his non sunt episcopi, quia ablatae fuerunt cum aliis tribus de aecclesia et de manu episcopi tempore Cnut Regis.'

[1645] K. 985 (v. 12).

[1646] K. 1036 (v. 80).

[1647] K. 342 (ii. 153).

[1648] K. 1108 (v. 211).

[1649] K. 421 (ii. 287).

[1650] K. 599 (iii. 139).

[1651] K. 698 (iii. 299).

[1652] As to the limits of Downton, see W. H. Jones, Domesday for Wiltshire, 213.

[1653] D. B. i. 31; K. 1058 (v. 114); 1093 (v. 176); 605 (iii. 149).

[1654] D. B. i. 40. Forty hides said to have been given by Cenwealla. K. 997 (v. 39); 1039 (v. 85); 1086 (v. 162); 1090 (v. 162); 601 (iii. 144).

[1655] D. B. i. 42 b. This belongs to the New Minster. In K. 336 (ii. 144) Edward the Elder is made to give 'quendam fundum quem indigenae Myceldefer appellant cum suo hundredo et appendicibus, habens centum cassatos et aecclesiam.' The territory has 100 hides and is a 'hundred.'

[1656] D. B. i. 87 b. K. 1002 (v. 44); 1051-2 (v. 99, 101); 1084 (v. 157); 374 (ii. 209); 598 (iii. 136).

[1657] They are hardly the worse witnesses about this matter for having been much 'improved.' They do not look like late forgeries. Those which bear the earliest dates seem to be treated as genuine in charters of the tenth century which are not (if anything that comes from Winchester is not) suspected.

[1658] Kemble, Saxons, i. 487; D. B. i. 87 b.

[1659] Eyton, Somerset, ii. 34.

[1660] See above, p. 499, note 1656.

[1661] Compare, for instance, the account of the estates of the Bishop of Wells, D. B. i. 89, with the charter ascribed to the Confessor, K. 816 (iv. 163). In the former we read of 50 hides at Wells; in the latter we see that these hides cover 24 villages or hamlets, each of which has its name. According to Eyton (Somerset, 24) this estate extends over nearly 22,000 acres. The Malmesbury charter, K. 817 (iv. 165) is another good illustration. Kemble's identifications were hasty and have fared ill at the hands of those who have made local researches. A few examples follow:--Keynsham, 50 H. = 3330 A. (Kemble), 11,138 A. and more (Eyton). Dowlish, 9 H. = 680 A. (Kemble), 1282 (Eyton). Road, 9 H. = 1010 A. (Kemble), 1664 (Eyton). Portishead, 11 H. = 1610 (Kemble), 2093 (Eyton). The instances that Kemble gives (vol. i. p. 106) from the A.-S. land-books are equally unfortunate. Thus he reads of 50 H. at Brokenborough, Wilts, and seeks for them all in a modern parish which has 2950 A.; but the Domesday manor of this name covered 'at least 6000 or perhaps 7000 acres' (W. H. Jones, Domesday for Wilts, p. xxvii.). In several instances Kemble tries to force into a single parish all the hides of a hundred which takes its name from that parish.

[1662] Hanssen, Abhandlungen, i. 499.

[1663] See above, p. 229, and Mr Taylor's paper there mentioned.

[1664] Napier and Stevenson, Crawford Charters, 43. Compare D. B. i. 101 b. In the Confessor's time 'Crediton' gelded for 15 hides. There was land for 185 teams, and teams to that number existed. There were 264 villeins, 73 bordiers and 40 serfs. Æthelheard's charter suggests either that in his day this part of Devon was very sparsely peopled, or that already, under a system of partitionary taxation, a small number of fiscal units had been cast upon a poor district. When at a later time Eadnoth bishop of Crediton mortgages a yardland for 30 mancuses of gold (Ibid. p. 5), this yardland will be a fiscal virgate of wide extent. See above, p. 467, note 1531.

[1665] See above, p. 445.

[1666] See above, p. 400.

[1667] See above, p. 458.

[1668] See above, p. 188.

[1669] Birch, Cart. Sax. iii. 671; Munimenta Gildhallae, ii. 627; Gale, Scriptores xv., i. 748; Liebermann, Leges Anglorum, 9. 10.

[1670] This we can not find. If Kent were included in the scheme, we should read of Canterbury, Rochester etc. Therefore we probably start in Sussex, but at some point east of Hastings. In any case, unless a name has dropped out, we can not make the five Sussex burgs correspond to the six rapes of a later day, which, going from east to west, are Hastings, Pevensey, Lewes, Bramber, Arundel, Chichester.

[1671] See the Læwe, Læwes of K. 499, 1237.

[1672] A confusion of P and W is common.

[1673] Tisbury lies between Wilton and Shaftesbury. See K. 104, 641. Mr Stevenson suggests that the word may be _Cysanbyrig_, thereby being meant Chiselbury Camp. This also lies in the right quarter.

[1674] _Tweoxneam_, A.-S. Chron. ann. 901.

[1675] See _Bridian_ in K. 656. Bredy lies about eight miles west of Dorchester. It seems to contain a 'Kingston.'

[1676] There is a Halwell a little to the south of Totness. Already in 1018 (Crawford Charters, pp. 9, 79) the Devonshire burgs are Exeter, Lidford, Totness and Barnstaple.

[1677] Pilton lies close to Barnstaple.

[1678] A.-S. Chron. ann. 915: 'be eastan Weced.'

[1679] A little to the west of Langport; close to Athelney. A.-S. Chron. ann. 878: 'And þæs on Eastron worhte Ælfred cyning lytle werede geweorc æt Æþelinga eigge.' Green, Conquest of England, 110. Observe that a very small district is assigned to Lyng.

[1680] After seeing Oxford and Wallingford together, we should naturally expect Bedford with Buckingham. See A.-S. Chron. ann. 918-9. Or we might look for Hertford. Ibid. ann. 913.

[1681] Eashing is a tithing in the parish of Godalming. See King Alfred's will (K. 314): 'æt Æscengum.' Eashing may have been supplanted by Guildford.

[1682] Taking in the particulars the figures which seem the more probable, we make a larger total.

[1683] If Essex is meant this figure seems impossibly small. Gale gives 'Ast Saxhum et Wygeaceastrum 1200 hidas.' This may give Essex and Worcester 1200 hides _apiece_.

[1684] Mr Stevenson tells me that, though the document is very corrupt, some of the verbal forms seem to speak of this date.

[1685] Such a document is apt to be tampered with. Some bits of it may be older than other bits, but the reign of Edward the Elder seems the latest to which we could ascribe its core. If we compare it with the list of Domesday boroughs we shall be struck by the absence of Dorchester, Bridport, Ilchester, Totness, Hertford, Bedford and Guildford, as well as by the appearance of Burpham, Tisbury, Bredy, Halwell, Watchet, Lyng and Eashing.

[1686] See above, p. 189, note 747.

[1687] 'Heorepeburan,' Hastings, Lewes, Burpham, Chichester.

[1688] Eashing, Southwark.

[1689] Porchester, Southampton, Winchester, Twyneham.

[1690] Wallingford.

[1691] Wilton, Tisbury, Shaftesbury, Malmesbury, Cricklade.

[1692] Wareham, Bredy.

[1693] Watchet, Axbridge, Lyng, Langport, Bath.

[1694] Exeter, Halwell, Lidford, Barnstaple.

[1695] A good deal of doubt hangs over the entries touching Buckingham, Essex and Warwick.

[1696] Birch, Cartularium, i. 414; Birch, Journal Brit. Archæol. Assoc. xl. 29 (1884); Earle, Land Charters, 458; Liebermann, Leges Anglorum, 8; Stevenson, Engl. Hist. Rev., 1889, 354.

[1697] Unless the mention of Wessex is interpolated (and if it be interpolated then the grand total has been tampered with) it is difficult to suppose that 'Wiht gara 600' points to the Isle of Wight, 'Gifla 300' to the district round Ilchester, or the like. I owe this observation to Mr W. J. Corbett.

[1698] It is a little curious that if we multiply the 244,100 hides by 120 we obtain 29,292,000, a figure which is not very far off from the 32,543,890 which gives the total acreage (tidal water excepted) of modern England. However, it is in the highest degree improbable that the computer of hides was aiming at pure areal measurement. Nor could his credit be saved in that way, for the area of Kent is to that of Sussex as 975:932, not as 15:7. The total of 'cultivated land' in England is less than 25 million acres, that of arable is less than 12 million.

[1699] Bede, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9 (ed. Plummer, i. 97): '... Meuanias insulas ... quarum prior ... nongentarum lx. familiarum mensuram iuxta aestimationem Anglorum, secunda trecentarum et ultra spatium tenet.' Ibid. iii. 24 (p. 180): '... regnum Australium Merciorum, qui sunt, ut dicunt, familiarum quinque millium ... Aquilonaribus Merciis quorum terra est familiarum vii. milium.' Ibid. i. 25 (p. 45): 'Est autem ad orientalem Cantiae plagam Tanatos insula non modica, id est, magnitudinis iuxta consuetudinem aestimationis Anglorum familiarum sexcentarum (þæt is syx hund hida micel æfter Angel cynnes æhta).' Ibid. iv. 13 (p. 230): 'ad provinciam Australium Saxonum, quae post Cantuarios ad austrum et ad occidentem usque ad Occidentales Saxones pertingit, habens terram familiarum septem millium (is þæs landes seofen þusendo [hida]).' Ibid. iv. 14 (p. 237): 'Est autem mensura eiusdem insulae [Vectae] iuxta aestimationem Anglorum mille ducentarum familiarum: unde data est episcopo possessio terrae trecentarum familiarum (æfter Angel cynnes æhta twelf hund hida, and he þa þam biscop gesealde on æht þreo hund hida).' Ibid. iv. 17 (p. 246): 'Est autem Elge in provincia Orientalium Anglorum regio familiarum circiter sexcentarum (six hund hida) in similitudinem insulae.' Ibid. iii. 25 (pp. 182-3): 'donaverat monasterium quadraginta familiarum in loco qui dicitur Inrhypum.' Ibid. v. 19: 'mox donavit terram decem familiarum in loco qui dicitur Stanford, et non multo post monasterium triginta familiarum in loco qui vocatur Inrhypum (tyn hiwisca landes on þære stowe þe is cweðon Stanford ... minster xxx. hiwisca).' Ibid. iv. 13 (p. 232): 'donavit ... Uilfrido terram lxxxvii. familiarum (seofan and hund eahtig hida landes) ... vocabulo Selæseu.' Historia Abbatum (p. 380): 'terram octo familiarum iuxta fluvium Fresca ab Aldfrido rege ... comparavit ... terram xx. familiarum in loco qui incolarum lingua Ad villam Sambuce vocatur ... accepit ... Terram decem familiarum quam ab Aldfrido rege in possessionem aceeperat in loco villae quae Daltun nuncupatur ...' Hist. Eccl. iv. 21 (p. 253): 'accepit locum unius familiae ad septentrionalem plagam Uiuri fluminis (onfeng heo anes hiwscipes stowe to norð dæle Wire ðære ea).' Ibid. iii. 4 (p. 133): 'Neque enim magna est [Iona] sed quasi familiarum quinque, iuxta aestimationem Anglorum.' Ibid. iii. 24 (p. 178): 'Singulae vero possessiones x. erant familiarum, id est simul omnes cxx.'

[1700] If the 'Wiht gara 600' of The Tribal Hidage refers to Wight, we have here a discord, for Bede gives the Island 1200. The North and South Mercians have together but 1200 according to Bede; the Mercians have 30,000 according to The Tribal Hidage: but the territory of 'the Mercians' is a variable.

[1701] B. i. 4 b, 12; Elton, Tenures of Kent, 135.

[1702] See above, p. 359.

[1703] Round, Feudal England, 289.

[1704] Stubbs, Const. Hist. ii. 422--3; Rot. Parl. ii. 302.

[1705] Bright, Hist. Engl. ii. 386; Hall's Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 656.

[1706] Some of them seem to start from The Tribal Hidage and take the number of hides to be 303,201 (Liebermann, Leges Anglorum, 10). Divide this by 5 to find the knight's fees. You have 60,640. In MS. Camb. Univ. Ii. vi. 25, f. 108 we find 60,215 knight's fees, 45,011 parish churches, 52,080 vills. Another note, printed by Hearne, Rob. of Avesbury, 264, gives 53,215 knight's fees, 46,822 parish churches, 52,285 vills.

[1707] Bede, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24 (p. 178): 'donatis insuper xii. possessiunculis terrarum, in quibus ablato studio militiae terrestris, ad exercendam militiam caelestem, supplicandumque pro pace gentis eius aeterna, devotioni sedulae monachorum locus facultasque suppeteret ... Singulae vero possessiones x. erant familiarum, id est simul omnes cxx.' In these villages there have been men who owed military service; they are not being ousted from their homes; they are being turned over as tenants to the church; henceforth they will no longer be bound to fight, and in consideration of this precious immunity, they will have to supply the monks with provender. That is how I read this passage. Others can and will read it to mean something very different. But if Bede were speaking of _decuriae_ of slaves, how could there be talk of military service? The slaves would not fight, and if the slaves belonged to eorls who fought, then how comes it that Oswy can expropriate his nobles?

[1708] Hist. Eccl. iii. 4 (p. 133).

[1709] Keith Johnston, Gazetteer.

[1709] I do not suggest, nor does Bede suggest, that Hii was laid out in hides. He is speaking only of size.

[1711] Bede gives to Anglesey the size of 960 families, to Man that of 300 'or more.' Anglesey has 175,836 acres; Man 145,011. Anglesey in 1895 had 'under all kinds of crops, bare fallow and grass (mountain and heath land excluded)' 152,004 acres. Man 96,098. Anglesey had 24,798 acres growing corn crops and 9,305 growing green crops, while the corresponding figures for Man were 22,666 and 11,580. Rationalistic explanation of Bede's statements would be useless. He is reporting vague guesses.

[1712] Hist. Eccl. iv. 13 (p. 232): 'Quo tempore Rex Ædilualch donavit reverentissimo antistiti Vilfrido terram lxxxvii familiarum, ubi suos homines, qui exules vagabantur, recipere posset, vocabulo Selæsu, quod dicitur Latine Insula Vituli Marini.' Bede goes on to describe the Selsey peninsula and Wilfrid's foundation of a monastery. Wilfrid proceeded to convert the men who were given him. They included two hundred and fifty male and female slaves whom he set at liberty.

[1713] K. 992 (v. 32); B. i. 98.

[1714] K. 464 (ii. 341). The 55 hides are reduced to 42, no mention is made of Medemenige, Egesauude or Bessanheie, and the 32 hides are somewhat differently distributed.

[1715] D. B. i. 17. The Bp of Chichester has 24 hides at Amberley.

[1716] I infer this from the thorough discrepancy that there is between these charters and D. B. A forger at work after or soon before the Conquest would have arranged the church's estates in a manner similar to that which we see in King William's record.

[1717] As a matter of fact, however, it is not very easy to reconcile the earlier charter with Bede's story. The charter makes the land proceed from the West-Saxon Ceadwealla and says nothing of Æthelwealh, who, according to Bede, was the donor. Mr Plummer, Bedae Opera, ii. 226, says that the forger betrays his hand by calling Wilfrid _arch_bishop. Really he seems to cut Wilfrid into two, making of him (1) an archbishop, and (2) a bishop of the South Saxons. See the attestations.

[1718] In D. B. i. 17 the bishop's manor at Selsey has but 10 hides and but 7 teamlands.

[1719] See above, p. 378.

[1720] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 563.

[1721] Meitzen, op. cit., ii. 553-69; iii. 557-61; Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben, i. 348.

[1722] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 566. The Kalenberger _Hufe_ was a measure prevalent in the district of Braunschweig-Lüneberg. It contained 180 Morgen or 47.147 hectares. A hide made of 120 statute acres would contain about 48.56 hectares. Apparently Dr Meitzen (ii. 113) has found no difficulty in accepting a hide of 120 acres as the normal share of the English settler. See also Lamprecht, Deutsches Wirtschaftsleben, i. 348.

[1723] Polyptyque de l'abbaye de S. Germain des Prés, ed. Longnon, i. 102.

[1724] Pertz, Leges, i. 536; Ann. Bertin. (ed. Waitz) 81, 135; Richter, Annalen, ii. 400, 443; Dümmler, Gesch. d. Ostfränk. Reichs, i. 585.

[1725] Meitzen, op. cit. ii. 592-3.

[1726] See above, p. 438.

[1727] Tacitus, Germania, c. 15, 23. The very lenient treatment by Abp Theodore of the monk who gets drunk upon a festival tells a curious tale: Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 177; Robertson, Hist. Essays, 68.

[1728] Thus, e.g., D. B. i. 127, Fuleham: 'ibi 5 villani, quisque 1 hidam.'

[1729] See above, p. 360.

INDEX.

Abbots, Secular, 242

Abingdon, Church of, 254, 295, 494

Abington, Vill of, 11

Acre, 369, 373-386, 518

Acre, Fiscal, 475-490

Acreage, Medieval statements of, 392

Acreage of counties, 407

Adultery, 281

_Advocatus_ of church, 303

Agrarian morphology, 15, 16, 222, 362

Aids of boroughs, 174-176

Aids of counties, 473

Alfred's army, 189

Alfred, Will of Ealdorman, 245

Alfred, Will of King, 254

Alienable superiority, The King's, 241, 357

Alienation, Lord's consent to, 296

_Alleu, Franc_, 171

_Almende_, 348

Alodial ownership, 154

_Alodium_, 153, 256

_Altitonantis_, 268, 452

Amber (measure), 440

_Amerciamenta hominum_, 277

Anathema in land books, 230, 251

Ancient demesne, 65, 167, 255

_Ancillae_, 34

Angild, 274, 282, 290

Anglesey, 513

Anglo-Saxon history, Fundamental questions of, 221

Arable and appurtenances, 388

Arable, Extent of, 435-441

Arable, Reallotment of, 346-8

_Archiductor_, 306

_Arenga_ of A.-S. book, 243

_Arepennis_, 375, 467

Armingford Hundred, 11, 12, 451

Army, Constitution of the, 156-7, 308

_Arpentum_, 375, 467

_Ascripticii_, 51, 53

Aston and Cote, 354

Athelney, Fort at, 188, 503

Attestation and consent, 247-252

Augustin's, St, Canterbury, 466

Automatic adjustment of taxes, 207

_Avera_, 130, 138, 169, 240

Aylesbury, 180

Balk, 364

Barley, 439

Barley-corns, 369

Bath, 229, 501

Battle Abbey, 97, 281

Beasts, Number of, 441

Bede, 228, 233, 242, 251, 358, 509-515

Beds or selions, 379, 383

Beer, Consumption of, 439, 519

Benefice, Ecclesiastical, 152

Beneficial hidation, 264, 448

_Beneficium_, 152, 300-1

_Beneficium oblatum_, 75

Berewicks, 114, 333

Bergholt, 90

Berkeley, 113

Berkshire, 79, 156, 505

Bishop, Soldiers of a, 306

Bishop's cross, 251

Bishops-land, 286

Blythburg, 96

Blything, Hundred of, 96

_Bodenregal_, 240

Book-land, 154, 242, 244-258, 293

Boon-days, 77

_Bordarii_, 23-25, 38-41, 107, 363

Borough, 172-219

Boundaries in charters, 495

Bourg, The French, 214

Bovate, 395

Bracton on villeinage, 61

Brewing, 440

Bridge-work, 187

Broughton, Court at, 99

Brungar's case, 104

Buckingham, 176, 180, 196

_Burbium_, 214

Burgage tenure, 198

Burgesses, 179, 190

Burghal Hidage, The, 187, 455, 502-6, 515

Burh, 183-6

Burh-bót, 186-8

Burh-bryce, 183-4

Burh-geat, 184, 190

Burh-gemót, 185

Burh-grið, 88, 184

Burh-riht, 214

Burhwaras, 190

_Buri_, 36, 329

Bury and barrow, 183

Cambridge, 181, 187, 191, 211

Cambridgeshire, 10, 12, 13, 62, 129-139, 445, 468, 476

Cambridgeshire Inquest, 1, 10

_Campus_, 380

Canterbury, 89, 184, 191, 201

Canterbury, Church of, 87, 97, 228, 466

Carucage of 1198, 127

Carucate, 395, 404, 483

_Casati_, 335, 359

Castle guard, 151

_Causa_ of gifts, 293

Celtic rural economy, 338

Celtic villages, 15, 222, 467

_Censarii_, 57

Ceorl, The, 30, 44, 58

_Cervisarii_, 57

Charter and writ, 262-4

Chattels of the boor, 38

Chertsey, Church of, 492

Cheshire, 458

Chester, 188, 211

Chief, Tenants in, 170

Chilcombe, 449, 496

Church-right, 229, 242

Churches, Lands of the, 227-9, 253

Churches, Ownership of, 144

Church-scot, 290, 305, 321

_Civitas_, 183

Classification of mankind, 23, 30, 122, 140

Cniht, 8, 191, 303, 309

Cnihts, Gilds of, 191

Cnut, Laws of, 55, 87, 239, 261, 282

Cnut's geld, 3, 55, 446

Cnut's writs, 260

Co-aration, 142, 149

Cognizance, Claims of, 93, 97, 282-293

Colchester, 198, 201

Coleness, Hundred of, 355

_Coliberti_, 28, 33, 36, 329

Collective liability, 208

_Coloni_, 51

Colonization of villages, 365, 501

Colonization under Ine, 238, 367

_Comes_, 8

Comital manors, 167

Commendation, 67-75, 102, 104, 326

Common fields, 15, 379

Common property of burgesses, 200

Common, Rights of, 143, 202, 348, 352

Communalism, 149, 203, 341

Community, The borough, 198, 200

Community, The village, 142-150, 340-356

Compound householders, 125

Confessor, _see_ Edward

Conqueror, Writs of the, 266

Conquest, Norman, Effects of, 60, 135, 172

Consent of Witan, 247-252

_Consuetudines_, 67-8, 76-9

Continuity of hidation, 491, 509

Contract, Free, 171

Convertible husbandry, 366, 425

Conveyance in court, 323

Co-ownership, 143-4, 341

Cornage, 147

Cornwall, 410, 425, 428, 463, 467

Corporation, 204-209, 253, 341, 349, 351

Corroboration of land-books, 251

_Cotarii_, 23-25, 38-41

Cotlif, 334

_Cotseti_, 39

Cotsetla, 328

Counties, Detached pieces of, 9

Counties, Farms of, 169

Counties, Geld of, in cent. xi. 448-475

Counties, Geld of, in cent. xii. 7, 474

Counties, Populousness of, 19, 20

County Hidage, The, 455

County towns, 176

Court, Borough, 185, 210

Court, Seignorial, 91, 94, 275-8

Court, Suit of, 85, 95, 140, 322

Crediton, 113, 228, 501

Criminal and civil, 83

Criminal law and revenue, 79

Criminal law and serfage, 29, 32

Crosses on charters, 251, 262-5

Crown, Pleas of the, 82, 261, 282

_Cultura_, 380

_Curia_, 94, 110, 125

Cursing clause, 230, 262

Customary acres, 373-6

Customary land, 78

Dairy farming, 115

Danegeld, _see_ Geld

Danelaw, The, 139

Danish influence, 139, 339, 395, 397

Day's labour, 377

Dearer birth, 163

_Decuriae_ of slaves, 361, 512

Deer-hays, 169, 240, 307

Default of justice, 284

Default of service, 159

Defence, 123

Delegation of franchises, 84, 289

Demesne, Ancient, 65, 167

Demesne and geld, 55

Demesne, Boroughs on royal, 218

Demesne land of manor, 119

Denmark, King's feorm in, 238

Derby, 200

Derbyshire, 90, 108, 166, 427

Devastation of villages, 363

Devonshire, 116, 215, 425, 428, 463, 467

_Dialogus de Scaccario_, on villeinage, 53, 61

Diet of Englishmen, 440

Diplomatics, 247-252, 262-5

Dispositive and evidentiary, 263

Divine service, Tenure by, 151

Division of acres, 384

Dog-bread, 146, 440

_Dominium_, 224

_Dominium_ and _dominicum_, 53-4

_Dominium_ and _imperium_, 342

_Dona_ of boroughs, 174-176

_Dona_ of counties, 473

Doomsmen, 95, 97, 102, 211

Dorset, 175, 461

Double hide, 393

Dover, 193, 209

Downton, 498

Drengage, 308

Dunwich, 96

Duxford, 136

Earl, 8, 168-170

Earl, Third penny of, 95

Eashing, 503

East and West, 22, 199, 339

Ecclesiastical jurisdiction, 279-282

Economic grades, 41

Edmund, Abbey of St., 55, 88, 240

Edward the Confessor and the geld, 3

Edward the Confessor's charters, 259, 491

Edward the Elder builds burgs, 186, 504

_Edwardi Lex_, 52

Ell (measure), 372

Ely, Church of, 77, 89, 92, 162, 269

Ely, Isle of, 476, 509

Embryo manors, 139, 519

Emendable crimes, 89

Eminent domain, 342

Enfranchisement, 31

English and French, 62

Epping Forest, 356

Escheat _propter defectum_, 295

Escheat _propter delictum_, 103, 295

Essex, 35, 64, 116, 363, 430, 480

Estrays, 148

Ethel, 256

Euti, 467

Evesham, Church of, 235, 453

Exaggeration, Medieval, 510

Exchequer Domesday, 2

Exeter, 156, 201

Exon Domesday, 2

Extra-hundredal places, 9

Fallowing, 399

_Familiae, Terra unius_, 358

Family, Size of, 437, 519

Famine, 364, 518

Fareham, 449

Farm of manors, 62, 146

Farthingland, 479

Fealty, 59, 293

Fee farm, 152

Feet as measures, 369

_Feldgrasswirtschaft_, 425

Feorm, The king's, 234, 318, 324

_Fertinus_, 479

_Festuca_, 323

Feudalism, 223, 240, 307

Feudalism and clerical claims, 280

Feudalism and vassalism, 171

_Feudum_, 152-5, 301, 318

Field systems, 365, 425, 437, 486, 51

Fiht-wite, 88

_Firma burgi_, 204

Fission of vills, 14, 365, 367

Five hide unit, 121, 156-164

Fleta, 397

_Flurzwang_, 347

Fold-soke, 76, 91, 442

Foldworthiness, 77, 91

Folk-land, 244-258

Food of beasts, 441

Food of the nation, 436, 518

Foreign precedents, 230, 249, 321

Forensic service, 50

Forest measures, 372, 376

Forfeiture of land, 103, 295

Forfeitures, The six, 88

Franchise, 1, 43, 50, 82

_Francigena_, 46

_Francus_, 46

Frankalmoin, 151

Frankish danegeld, 518

Frankish gifts of land, 297

Frankish manors, 321

Frankish military service, 161

_Freda_, 278

Freedom, see Liberty

Free-holding, 46-50

Free men, _see Liberi homines_

Free villages, 129, 339, 352

_Freizügigkeit_, 42, 51

French diplomatics, 265

French law of seignorial justice, 82, 94, 284

Freóls-bóc, 270

_Frigesoca_, 93

Furlong, 372, 379

Fyrdwite, 159, 161

Fyrdworthiness, 160

_Gablaltores_, 57

Gafol-land, 44

Gebúr, 28, 36, 59, 328

Geld, 3-8, 24, 54, 120-129, 206-8, 324, 391, 408, 446-490

Geld in cent. xii. 6, 460, 474

Geld Inquests, 478

Geneat, 59, 327

_Genossenschaft_, 342

Geography of D. B., 9, 407

Gerefa, The, 327, 392

German burgs, 189

_Gersuma_, 57, 147

Gift and loan, 299, 317

Gifts of land, 293

Gilds, 191, 201

Gloucester, 182, 205

Gloucestershire, 205, 395, 412

Goad (measure), 372, 377

Goats, 442

Godwin, House of, 168

Grantham, 213

Grass-swine, 57

Halimot, 82, 86, 91

Hall, The, 109-110, 125

Hám, 332

Hamlets, 15-16

Hamton, The suit about, 85, 124, 158

Hampshire, 153, 155

Harold, Rapacity of, 168

Harrow (Middlesex), 112

Hawgavel, 204

Hawks, Prices of, 169

Haws in boroughs, 114, 182, 196

Head-penny, 33

Hearth-penny, 38

Heir-land, 257

Heming's Cartulary, 227

Henley, Walter of, 378, 397, 438, 441, 488, 519

Henry the Fowler, 189

Herdwicks, 333

Hereford, 199, 209

Heriot, 73, 155, 199, 298

Hertfordshire, 137-8

Heyford, Map of, 382

Hide, The, 336, 357-520

Hide, The, of Leicestershire, 468-470

Highways, Royal, 87

Hiwisc, 358

Hiwscipe, 358

_Holtding_, 355

Homage, 69

_Homines dei_, 275

Honour and manor, 81

Horses, 442

_Hospites_, 60

House communities, 349

House-peace and soke, 99

_Hufe_, German, 387, 515

Hundred, Elder of the, 147

Hundredal soke, 90, 94

Hundred-moot, 93, 97

Hundreds, 90, 148, 259, 267, 287, 451-5, 459

Huntingdon, 204

Husting, 211

Hyldáð, 69

Idealism, Archaic, 389

Ideas, Legal, 9, 224

Identification of parcels, 493

Immunists, 277

Immunity, The English, 270, 292

Immunity, The Frankish, 278

Inclosure of common fields, 16, 436

Ine's foster, 237

Ine's laws, 237, 320, 332

Infangennethef, 82, 276

Ingeldable carucates, 409

Inheritance, 145

Inheritance, Precarious, 309

Inland, 55, 121, 331

_Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiae_, 1

_Inquisitio Eliensis_, 1

Intercommoning of vills, 355

Intermixed manors, 136

Intermixed strips, 337

Inward, 130, 169, 240

Iona, 512

Ipswich, 211

Iron, Dues paid in, 45

_Judices_, 211

Jurisdiction, 101, 277

Justice, Feudal and Franchisal, 80

Justice, Seignorial, 52, 80-107, 258-292, 310

Kalenberg _Hufe_, 517

Kent, 360, 466, 484

Kind, Payments in, 57

King and crown, 167, 253, 300

King as immunist, 276

King as landlord, 65, 166-7

King's land, 231-258, 351

King's thegns, 162

Kingship, Elective, 254

Kinship, 349

Knight, _see_ Cniht

Knight's fees, Number of, 511

Knight's service, 151

_Königshufe_, 516

Læn-land, 75, 160, 301-318

Læt, The Kentish, 27

_Laeti_, 27, 37

Land, Kinds of, 257

Land-books, 226-258, 261, 286-8, 520

Land-cóp, 323

Land-loans, 75

Landríca, 59, 125

Language, Legal, 225, 267

Law Latin, 267

Lawmen, 88, 211

Leases, 301-318

_Leges Edwardi_ on township, 148

_Leges Henrici_ on serfage, 30

" " on soke, 80

_Lehn_, The German, 301

_Lehnrecht_, 171, 311

Leicester, 156, 197, 218

Leicestershire, 409, 421, 468

_Leis Williame_ on serfage, 51

Leominster, 56, 58

Letters patent, 263

Lewisham, 58

_Lex equitandi_, 305

_Liberalis homo_, 43, 59

_Liber burgus_, 217

_Liberi homines_, 23, 66-7, 90, 104

Liberties within boroughs, 210

Liberty, 42-47

Lincoln, 211

Lincoln, Church of, 92, 103

Lincolnshire, 90, 106, 139, 147, 428, 445

Linear measurement, 432

Little Domesday, 1

Loaf-eaters, 29

Loan and gift, 299, 317

_Locus standi_ of villeins in court, 52

London, 174, 178, 180, 184, 191, 409

Lord and man, 67, 285-9

Lord, Duty of finding a, 70

Lord's responsibility for crime, 38

Lord's responsibility for taxes, 24, 54, 59, 122-128, 323

Lordless villages, 141, 149

Lordship and landlordship, 104, 172

Lug (measure), 372

Lyng (Somerset), 188, 503

Lysing, The Danish, 44

Mainpast, 29

Maintenance of quarrels, 71

Malmesbury, Church of, 72, 492

Man, Isle of, 513

Man-bót, 31, 54, 70

_Manentes_, 335, 359

_Manerium_, 64, 107, 500

Manor, 107-128, 326-340, 519

Manor and vill, 129-150, 334

Manorial organization, 319, 360, 391, 519

_Mansa_, 108, 359

_Mansio_, 109

_Mansus indominicatus_, 320

_Mansus ingenuilis_, 517

_Mantal_, Swedish, 387

Manumission, 31

Manure, 76, 442

_Manusfirma_, 309

Maps, 15, 16, 362, 381-3

Mark, The German, 354, 368

Market, 192-6

Marriage and wardship, 310

Marshland Fen, 367

Meadows, 348, 443

Measures, 368

Mediatization of boroughs, 212-218

_Mellitarii_, 57

Merchant gilds, 191

Merchet, 199

Mercia, Hides of, 507, 510

Merovingian Gaul, 224

Middlesex, 477

_Migrantibus, Lex Salica de_, 350

_Miles_, 8, 163

Military service, 156-164, 235, 273, 294

Mills, 144

Mill-soke, 77

Mixed tribunals, 275

Modern conveyances, 232

Monasticism, 325

Money rents in D. B., 57

Moneyers, 195

Moot-worthiness, 260

_Morgen_, 377, 516

Movability of land, 10, 13

_Mufflae_, 31

Mund and soke, 100

Mural houses, 188

Nation, Lands of the, 252

_Nativi_, 51

New vills, 14, 365, 367

Night's farm, 146, 169, 236-8, 319

Nottinghamshire, 90, 108, 127, 166, 427

Norfolk, 106, 146, 429, 483

Norman perches, 376

Norman tenures, 154

Northampton, 204, 208

Northamptonshire, 204, 457, 468

Northamptonshire Geld Roll, 2, 457

Northumberland, 7

Norwich, 192, 199, 200

Nucleated villages, 15

Oaths of thegns, 163

Oaths of villeins, 53

Oats, 439, 441

Office and property, 168

Ordeal, 281

Orwell, 63, 95, 129, 133, 136, 352

Oswald, St., 268, 289, 304-313

Oswald's law, 85, 227, 267-9, 308-310, 424

Oswy's gift, 511

Overrating and underrating, 447, 461

Ownership, Ancient and modern, 397

Ownership and superiority, 231, 342

Ownership, Limited, 299

Ox, Price of, 44, 444

Oxford, 156, 179, 188, 198, 202

Oxfordshire, 92, 169, 445, 505

Oxgang, 395

Pannage, 57, 307

Parage, 143

Pardons of geld, 8

Parishes, Modern, 12, 499

Parishes, Number of, 511

Parliamentary boroughs, 173

Partible inheritance, 145

Partitionary taxation, 120, 206, 391, 450, 480

Pasture, 143, 170, 203, 348, 442, 446

_Pastus_, The King's, 234, 272

_Patria potestas_, 349

Patronage of church, 303

Peace of borough, 184, 193

_Peculium_, 28

Penal stipulation, 230

Penenden, The suit at, 87

Perch (measure), 372-9, 518

Pershore, Church of, 290, 452

_Persona ficta_, 353, 356

_Pertica_, 274

Peter pence, 59, 125, 288

Petroc, Church of St., 55

Pipe Rolls, Geld in, 400, 460

_Placita et forisfacturae_, 84, 94

Plan of D. B., 9

Plough, 142, 373

Ploughgang, 395

Ploughing, A day's, 378

Ploughing, A year's, 398, 435

Poleham, 485

Police of vills, 147

Population, 17-22, 408, 437

Port and burh, 195

Portmen, 195, 212

Portreeve, 202

Pound and hide, 465

_Precarium_, 300

Prediality of serfage, 28

Prices, 44, 169, 365, 444

Priest of village, 148, 437

Protection and commendation, 70

Provender rents, 146, 236, 316, 440

Pursuit of fugitive serfs, 42, 51

Purveyance, 239

Quasi hides, 409

_Radchenistres_, 44, 56, 66, 305

_Radmanni_, 57, 305

Ramsey, Church of, 260, 319, 393

Rapes of Sussex, 409

_Recedere_, 47, 68, 152, 162

_Rectitudines_, 37, 327

Reductions of hidage, 410, 506, 510

Redemption of land, 60

Reeve of borough, 209

_Regio_, 167

Relief, 153, 155, 310

Rents, Money, in D. B., 57

Restraint on alienation, 296

Reveland, 169

Ribble and Mersey, Land between, 458

Ridingmen, 305, 307

Rochester, Church of, 466

Rod or perch, 372-9

_Rogatio testium_, 250

Roman law, 224, 303

Roman taxation, 470

Roman villa, 327, 337

Romney, 89

Rood (measure), 372, 382

Rothley, 114

Rounceys, 442

Royal boroughs, 182

Rutland, 471

Sake, 84

Sale of chattels, 147, 194

Sale of land, 47, 100, 105, 144

Sale of slaves, 33

_Salica_, Ownership in _Lex_, 347, 350

Salisbury, The oath at, 172

Sanford, Hundred of, 90

Sawston, 136, 387, 443

Scattered steads (_Einzelhöfe_), 15, 16, 140

Seal, 265

Secularizations, 301

Sedgebarrow, 227

Seignory over commended men, 74

Selions, 383

Selsey, 228, 234, 513

_Semibos_, 142

_Senior_ and _Vassus_, 283, 300

Serfage, _see Servi_

Serfage, Transmission of, 31

Serjeanty, 151, 162

_Servi_, 23-25, 26-36, 325, 519

_Servi_, Price of, 44

Services due from book-land, 294

Services of geneat, 328-332

Services of Oswald's tenants, 306

Services of sokemen, 76

Services of villeins, 56

_Sextarius_, 365

Sheep, 442

Sheriff, 8, 205, 255

Sheriff, Revenues of, 169

Shots in fields, 380

Shrewsbury, 199, 207

_Singulare pretium_, 274

Sinuous furrows, 379

Slavery, _see Servi_

Socage, Tenure in, 66

_Sochemanni_, 23-25, 62, 66-79, 95, 104, 125-6, 134-5, 213

Soke, 67-69, 80-107, 115, 258-292

_Solta et persolta_, 290

Somerset, 116, 166, 177, 215, 367, 479

Southwark, 98

Square measure, 370, 432

Staffordshire, 426

Stages, Theory of normal, 345

Stamford, 199, 200, 211

Staines, 111, 181

Staninghaw, 181

Statistical Tables, 400-3

Statistics, Domesday, 399

Stipulation, 250

Stock on manors, 116, 422

Stoke by Hisseburn, 330

Strip-holding, 337, 346

Sub-commendation, 74

Subinfeudation, 155

Subsidiary liability, 126

_Suburbium_, 214

Suffolk, 62, 77, 106, 117, 125-6, 147, 429, 483

Suit of court, 85, 95, 140, 322

Suitors borrowed, 95, 102

Sulung, 360, 395, 466, 484

Sunbury, 111

Superficial measurement, 370, 432

Surnames of vills, 14, 365, 367

Sussex, 510, 513

Swine, 419, 442

Tacitus on land-tenure, 347

Tackley, Map of, 381

_Tagwerk_, 377

Tailla, 57, 147

Taunton, 87, 102, 113, 158, 214, 272, 276, 499

Team, Plough, 142, 372, 416

Teamland, 404, 418-446

Tenure, Dependent, 46, 73, 151, 154, 171, 317

Tenure in boroughs, 178

Tenure, Kinds of, 151

Terminology of D. B., 8

_Terra ad unam carucam_, 404, 418-446

Testamentary power, 242, 297

_Teste meipso_, 264

Testimony of villeins, 53

Tewkesbury, 55

Thanet, Isle of, 509

Thegn, 64-5, 160-6

Thegnage, 308

Theow, 26-36

Thing and person, 27

Third penny, 95, 170

Three field system, 365, 486

Three life leases, 303

Thumbs as measures, 369

Tidenham, 330

Tithe, 322

Torksey, 177

Township, _see_ Vill

Township moot, 21, 350

Townsmen, 59, 140, 288

Trevs, Celtic, 15, 340

Tribal Hidage, The, 455, 506-8

_Tributarii_, 335, 359

_Tributum_, 234, 239, 272

_Trinoda necessitas_, 240, 270-4

Tún, 59, 110

_Twelfhindi_, 44

Twelve-fold bót, 290, 322

Two field system, 365, 486

_Ulna_, The king's, 370

Undersettles, 41

Unhidated estates, 448

Uniformity of villages, 390

Usufruct, 299

Utware, 158

Values, Domesday, 411, 444, 463-473

_Vassallus_, 293

_Vavassores_, 81

Vendible soke, 100

Verge of the palace, 184

_Vicecomes_, 8

_Victus_, The king's, 234

_Vicus_, 333

Vill and borough, 173, 185, 216

Vill and village, 11-21, 129-150, 346-356

_Villa_ and _vicus_, 333

_Villa_, The Roman, 221, 327, 337

Villages, Detached portions of, 367

_Villani_, 23, 36-66, 125-6, 172, 324

_Villani_, Teams of, 416

_Villani_ and _Servi_, 26, 30, 172

Vineyards, 375

_Virga regalis_, 375, 516

Virgate, 384-7, 391

Wallingford, 98, 176, 179, 193

Wall-work, 188

_Wara_, 123

Wardship and marriage, 310

_Warnode_, 123

Warranty of man by lord, 71

Warwick, 98, 156, 209, 218

Warwickshire, 169, 459

Washingwell, The grant of, 245, 255

Week-work, 77

Well, Wapentake of, 103

Wergild of ceorl, 44

Wergild of serf, 31

Wergild of thegn, 16

Wessex, Hides of, 507

Westminster, Church of, 111, 290, 452

Westminster Hall, 192

Wetherley, Hundred of, 95, 131

Wheat, Yield of, 437

Whittlesford, 444-5

Wicks, 115, 333

Wight, Isle of, 233, 509

Wiggenhall, 367

Wihtræd, Privilege of, 271

_Wikarii_, 115

Wiltshire, 175, 215, 475, 479

Winchcombe, 174, 180

Winchester, 178, 180, 182, 190-1

Winchester, Church of, 272, 331, 496-9

_Wintoniensis, Codex_, 331, 499

Witan, 247-252

Wites, Ecclesiastical, 281

Wites, The right to, 87, 259, 274-9

Withdrawal from lord, 47, 48, 68, 100, 142, 153, 162

Witnesses of charters, 247-252, 262-4

Wong, 380

Woods, 348, 419

Worcester, 190, 194

Worcester, Church of, 88, 158-160, 194, 227, 424, 452

Worcestershire, 88, 159, 169, 267-8, 451, 506

Words of inheritance, 297

Works and rents, 57-8, 77

Writ and charter, 262-4

Wye, Hundred of, 97

Yard, 372, 385

Yardland, 385

Yield of corn, 437, 441, 444, 519

Yoke, 360

York, 211

York, Church of, 87

Yorkshire, 139, 397, 426, 468, 486

Young, Arthur, 378, 438

=Cambridge:=

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The 3rd note on p. 79 is referenced twice on the page. Only the second reference seems pertinent. The first instance has been removed. This occurs, presumably purposefully, in several other places, particularly in tabular data.

Punctuation which was obviously missing has been supplied. The following table lists any corrections made or possible printer errors that should be noted. The bracketed text indicates what has been removed, added or noted.

p. viii. deme[ns]e/deme[sn]e Corrected.

p. 96 ad tercium denarium.['] Added.

p. 121 such [as] we are familiar with _sic_

p. 128 [']in Berningham a free man Added.

p. 200 we read ["/']Lagemanni et burgenses Corrected.

p. 391 in the thirteenth century when[,] we begin Deleted.

p. 396 terrae et 1 virg.['] Added.

p. 440 Domesday of St. Paul's, 164[*] Purpose of Note 1448 asterisk?

p. 448 royal estates do not stand alone[.] Added.

p. 552 Deme[ns]e/Deme[sn]e Corrected.