Another resemblance between the Roman jugation and the Saxon hidage was to be found in the method adopted when it became needful to reduce the taxation of a district.
Thus, the land of the Ædui had been ravaged and depopulated. It had paid the tributum on 32,000 juga; 7,000 juga were released from taxation. In future it was assessed at 25,000 juga only; and so relief was granted.[427]
The tributum paid by the lord, who claimed tribute from his tenants, or 'tributarii.'
Further, as the English manorial lord paid the hidage for the whole manor, so the lord of the villa, under Roman law, paid the tributum not only for his own demesne land, but also for the land of his coloni and tenants. Just as the servile tenants of a Saxon thane were called his 'gafol gelders,' so the [p294] semi-servile tenants of a Roman lord were called his tributarii. In both cases they paid their tribute to their lord, whilst the lord paid the imperial tributum for himself and for them.[428]
Coloni and tributarii in Britain.
In a decree of the year 319, issued by Constantine to the 'Vicar of Britain,' words are used which prove that there were coloni and tributarii[429] on British estates.[430]
Putting all these things together, the analogy between the Roman 'jugation' and the later English hidage can hardly be regarded as accidental.
But to return, at present, to the tribute and the service due from each jugum or caput.
The Roman 'tributum' and the Saxon 'gafol.'
The tribute was generally paid part in money and part in produce, and was, in fact, a tax. It was a separate thing from the tithe of produce, rendered as rent to the State on the tithe-lands of the Agri decumates and of Sicily, though all these various annual payments in produce may have been confused together under the term annonæ. The tribute proper survived probably, as we shall see, in the later manorial 'gafol.' The tithe, or other proportion taken as rent—for the proportion was not always a tenth[431]—more nearly resembled the manorial 'gafol-yrth.' [p295] But we are not quite ready yet to trace the actual connexion between these Roman and later manorial payments.