Part 48

[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.