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.]