The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

V. THE HOLDINGS—THE YARD-LAND OR HUB.

We now pass from the strips to the holdings.

The typical English holding of a serf in the open fields was the yard-land of normally thirty acres (ten [p390] scattered acres in each of the three fields), to which an outfit of two oxen was assigned as 'setene' or 'stuht,' and which descended from one generation to another as a complete indivisible whole.

The hub or yard-land.

The German word for the yard-land is hof or hub; in its oldest form huoba, huba, hova.[605] And Aventinus, writing early in the sixteenth century of the holdings in Bavaria in the thirteenth century, distinguishes the hof as the holding belonging to a quadriga, or yoke of four oxen, taxed at sixty 'asses,' from the hub or holding of the biga or yoke of two oxen, and taxed [p391] at thirty 'asses.' [606] If the tax in this case were one 'as' per acre, then the hof contained sixty acres, and the hub thirty acres. So that, as in the yard-land, ten acres in each field would go under the three-field system to the pair of oxen.

Wide prevalence of the hub of thirty morgen in Middle and South Germany.

The hub of thirty morgen seems to have been the typical holding of the serf over a very wide area, according to the earliest records. Whilst as a rule absent from North Germany, Dr. Landau traces it in Lower Saxony, in Engern, in Thuringia, in Grapfeld, in Hesse, on the Middle Rhine and the Moselle, in the old Niederlahngau, Rheingau, Wormsgau, Lobdengau and Spiergau, in Elsass, in Swabia, and in Bavaria.[607]

The double huf of sixty morgen also occurs on the Weser and the Rhine in Lower Saxony and in Bavaria.[608] The word 'huf' first occurs in a document of A.D. 474.[609]

The passage in the Bavarian laws of the seventh century, already referred to, declaring the tithe to be 'three modii from every thirty' modii—or one 'lawful andecena' from each ten that, in the typical case taken, 'a man has'—would seem to suggest that ten andecenæ or acre strips in each field (or thirty in all) was a typical holding, whilst the use of the Roman rod of ten feet points to a Roman influence.

The double 'hub' of sixty morgen. The outfit of oxen.

Further, the fact of the prevalence of the double and single huf or hub of sixty and thirty acres over so large an area once Roman province, irresistibly suggests a connexion with the double and single yoke [p392] of oxen given as outfit to the Roman veteran, with such an allowance of seed as to make it probable, as we have seen, that the double yoke received normally fifty or sixty jugera, and the single yoke twenty-five or thirty jugera.

It is worth remembering, further, that in the Bavarian law before quoted, limiting the week-work of the servi on the ecclesiastical estates to three days a week, an exception is made allowing unlimited week-work to be demanded from servi who had been supplied with their outfit of oxen de novo by their lord. So that there is a chain of evidence as to the system of supplying the holders of 'yard-lands,' 'huben,' and 'yokes,' with an outfit of oxen, of which the Kelso 'stuht,' the Saxon 'setene,' the outfit of the servus under this Bavarian law, and that of the Roman veteran, are links.[610]

It is hardly needful to repeat that it does not follow from this that the system of allotting about thirty acres (varying in size with the locality) to the pair of oxen was a Roman invention. The clear fact is that it was a system followed in Roman provinces under the later empire, as well as in Germany and England afterwards; and, as the holding of thirty acres was found to be the allotment to each 'tate' or household under the Irish tribal system, it may possibly have had an earlier origin and a wider prevalence than the period or extent of Roman rule.

Scattering of the strips composing them.

The scattering of the strips composing a yard-land or hub, over the open fields should also be once more mentioned in comparing the two. It was not [p393] confined to the 'yard-land' or 'hub.' It arose, as we have seen, in Wales, from the practice of joint ploughing, and was the result of the method of dividing the joint produce, probably elsewhere also, under the tribal system. It is the method of securing a fair division of common land in Scotland and Ireland and Palestine to this day, no less than under the English and German three-field system. And the remarkable passage from Siculus Flaccus has been quoted, which so clearly describes a similar scattered ownership, resulting probably from joint agriculture carried on by 'vicini,' as often to be met with in his time on Roman ground. This passage proves that the Roman holding (like the Saxon yard-land and the German hub) might be composed of a bundle of scattered pieces; but this scattering was too widely spread from India to Ireland for it to be, in any sense, distinctively Roman. It perhaps resulted, as we have seen, from the heaviness of the soil or the clumsiness of the plough, and the necessity of co-operation between free or semi-servile tenants, in order to produce a plough team of the requisite strength according to the custom of the country; and this necessity probably arose most often in the provinces north of the Alps.

The single succession to the 'hub' and 'yard-land.'

Another point distinctive of the 'yard-land' and the 'hub' was the absence of division among heirs, the single succession, the indivisibility of the bundle of scattered strips in the holding. And this finds its nearest likeness perhaps, as we have seen, in the probably single succession of the semi-servile holder, or mere 'usufructuarius' under Roman law, and especially under the semi-military rule of the border provinces. [p394]

The Saxon 'Gebur' and the High German 'Gipur.'

Lastly, before leaving the comparison between the yard-land and hub it may be asked why the serf who held it in England was called a Gebur.

The word villanus of the Domesday Survey is associated with other words, such as villicus, villata, villenage, all connected with serfdom, and all traceable through Romance dialects to the Roman 'villa.'

But the Anglo-Saxon word was 'Gebur.' It was the Geburs who were holders of yard-lands.

We trace this word Gebur in High German dialects. We find it in use in the High German translation of the laws of the Alamanni, called the 'Speculi Suevici,' where free men are divided into three classes:—

(1) The 'semperfrien' = lords with vassals under them.

(2) The 'mittlerfrien' = the men or vassals of the lords.

(3) The 'geburen' = liberi incolæ, or 'fri-lant-sæzzen' [i.e. not slaves].[611]

The word 'gebur' or 'gipur' occurs also in the High German of Otfried's 'Paraphrase of the Gospels,' [612] of the ninth century, and in the Alamannic dialect of Notger's Psalms for vicinus.[613]

Here, again, the South German connexion seems to be the nearest to the Anglo-Saxon. [p395]