HKB
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. 0s. 0d., with £99. 19s. 11d. and with £99. 19s. 4d.