5. Terms used in Land-measures
Rod.—Pole, Perch, Goad, Lug, L. pertica, Fr. perche, verge, G. ruthe, Du. roede.
The equivalent words, L. virga, Fr. verge, A.S. geard, Eng. ‘yard,’ originally any long straight twig or rod, came to mean: (1) a yard or ell-measure, (2) a rod measure of land, lineal or superficial. The French verge is still thus used in Normandy and the Channel Islands. Our ‘yard’ acquired this extended sense, and others still more extended. In Cornwall 2 staves (of 9 feet) make a yard of land. In Somerset the lineal rod is the ‘land-yard,’ and the yard of land is a square rod. Thus the rood is ‘forty yard o’ ground’ and the acre is ‘eight score yard o’ ground.’
Rood.—A differentiated form of ‘rod’ applied in a lineal sense to 40 rods, and also to the area of a quarter-acre 40 × 1 rods.
In Normandy and the Channel Islands our rod and rood are verge and vergée, and as the first sense of verge was ‘yard’ so vergée became in English a ‘yard of lande.’ So here we have a third sense of the triple-form word virga-verge-yard.
‘A rodde of land which some call a roode, some a yarde lande, and some a farthendale’ (Recorde, 1542).
The latter term, meaning a ‘fourth part,’ as in the farthing to the penny, may also have referred to the rood as being a farthing-land in rental. It appears as L. furendellus, farundel, ferling.
The rood was also divided into 4 day’s-work, each of 10 square rods.
Acre.—As the rood was sometimes lineal, though usually superficial, so also the ‘acre’ was sometimes a rough lineal measure, generally an acre-breadth, or 4 rods (a cricket-pitch). But it might also be an acre-length = a rood length. The verse in 1 Samuel xiv.: ‘And that first slaughter which Jonathan and his armour bearer made was about twenty men within as it were an half-acre of land which a yoke of oxen might plow,’ is in Coverdale’s version (1535) ‘within the length of halve an aker of londe,’ that is, in a length of 20 rods. In French ‘arpent’ was likewise used for a French acre-length, reckoned, not of the official square arpent, but of the furrow-long arpent, nearly a furlong. Thus in the Chanson de Roland
Einz qu ’hum alast un sul arpent de camp
(Before one (he) went a single acre of ground)
evidently means about a furlong, just as in Iliad x., ‘when he was as far off as the length of the furrow made by mules’ has the same meaning.
Similarly the sesteirado of Provence was used as an itinerary measure, probably of 100 cano = about 220 yards, the same as the centenié.
The sesteirado, the rood of Southern France, corresponding to the boisselée, the bushel-land of Mid-France, was, like the latter, originally a seed-unit, the extent sown with a sestié of seed-corn. Its extent is 0·4 acre, = our rood. Now if this were square, each side would measure 40 yards, a length too small for itinerary measure. Neither Northern nor Southern France had any official itinerary measure under the league, so field-units were necessarily used; in the north the arpent-length, in the south the sesteirado-length; both corresponding to our rood-length, furrow-length or furlong. There seems little doubt that the centenié, the popular itinerary measure of the south, 100 cano or fathoms, was the same as the sesteirado-length. And the sesteirado being 400 square cano, it seems that its dimensions were 100 × 4 cano. It was moreover the rood, or quarter of the greater land-unit, the saumado, the ‘seam’ of land, which would thus be 100 × 16 cano just as our rood was 40 × 1 rods, and our acre 40 × 4 rods. Ten sesteirado-lengths, 10 centenié, made the milo, a mile of 1000 local fathoms, one-third of the league of Southern France.
Yardland.—L. quatrona terræ, virgata. Fr. bouvée. Bovate, Oxgang. About 30 acres more or less, including pasture and perhaps some woodland. Before the Norman conquest the gebur-geriht (boor’s right) was 6 sheep and 7 acres arable on his yard-land. This corresponds roughly to the German hufe = about 20 acres, and to the Netherlands hoeve, the unit of small holding. Almost everywhere and always, 6 or 7 acres of arable have been all that the boor’s yoke of oxen can till. There was other work for the oxen besides ploughing, and at least five ploughings were usually necessary for proper tillage; then there was cartage and feudal duties in consideration of the small rent.
In the Roll of Battel Abbey (tenth and eleventh centuries) the perch is 16 feet; the acre is 40 perches long and 4 broad and pays a penny a year; 3 shillings for the virgate or wist, the price of which was about 20 shillings. In this case 8 virgates made a hide, but this ‘eighth’ is exceptional, for the term ‘virgate’ brought a fourth sense to the virga = yard series of words, giving rise to the term yard-land as a quarter of the plough-land or hide. As the vergée in France (sometimes ambiguously called verge, as it has been seen that Recorde spoke of ‘a rodde of lande which some call a roode’) and the rood in England were a quarter-acre, and as this quarter-acre was sometimes called a ‘yard of land,’ so virga-verge-yard acquired the general sense of ‘quarter’—either of an acre or of a ploughland or carucate. Thus in ‘Quant une homme est feffe dune verge de terre et dun autre de un carue du terre’ (Statute of Wards, 1300), the term ‘verge de terre’ means not a rod, a verge, but a yardland or virgate.
‘Farthing’ or ‘ferling’ as a quarter was used in the same double sense: a quarter-acre or a quarter-hide, indeed, as will presently be seen, a quarter-virgate.
Acreme.—This old law-term for 10 acres of land points to a tradition that our original unit of land-measurement was a rood or furlong square, that is 40 × 40 rods: it was called a Ferlingata or Ferdelh.
A document temp. Edw. II describes the virgate (of which 4 made a hide; 5 hides being a knight’s fee) as of 4 (square) furlongs, each of 10 acres.
X acræ terræ faciunt unam fardellam.
Decem acræ faciunt ferlingatam; quatuor ferlingatæ faciunt virgatam, et quatuor virgatæ faciunt hidam; quinque hidæ faciunt feodum militis.
So it appears conclusive (1) that the hide was 16 square furlongs, a quarter of a square mile = the quarter section of America; (2) that the acre was originally a slice of land off the square furlong, a rood, or furlong in length, a tenth of this in breadth.
Furlong and Ferling.—The square furlong is the same as the Acreme = 10 acres. The square furlong or furrow-long tends to become confused with ferling, G. vierling, with fardel, G. viertel, with farthendale, Du. vierendeel, all meaning a fourth. This confusion arises from the square furlong, similar in sound to ferling, being approximately the fourth, or farthing, of the virgate or yardland, itself Ferlingus terræ, a fourth of the hide or ploughland. So a ferling may be a fourth of an acre, or of a virgate, or of a hide. Similarly it may be, as farthendale or farendel, a quarter-bushel.
Another cause of confusion in feudal land-measures is the money-estimation of land. Bishop Fleetwood (‘Chronicon,’ 1707) thought the acre was a marc-land of 160 pence and the rod a penny-land, denariatus terræ, so that the quarter-rod was a farthing-land. He was deceived by the coincidence of the 160 rods of the acre with the 160 pence, 13s. 4d., 8 ounces of silver, of the monetary marc, and he mistook the Farthingdale or Farendel, a quarter-acre or rood, for a quarter-rod. The acre was distinctly a penny-land, and the hide of 160 acres was a marc-land, paying 160 pence.
Hide.—Ploughland, carucate, L. carucata, Fr. caruée. Normally 16 square furlongs = 160 acres, but sometimes 120 acres or less, varying according to the arable on it; and usually divided into 4 oxgangs, bovates or yardlands. In some parts the hide seems to have comprised several ploughlands and to have coincided with the knight’s fee (see Customs of Lancaster).
Hundred.—This division of a shire is supposed to have been originally one hundred hides; more probably it was a hundred knight’s fees.