Chapter XII: ARRINGTON. A vill of 4 hides (12)

[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.]