The 'hide,' 'familla,' 'casatum,' and 'hiwisc.'
From the yard-land, or hub, the holding of a serf, we may pass to the typical holding of the full free landholder, connected in England with the full team of eight oxen.
The Saxon hide, or the familia of Bede, was Latinised in Saxon charters into 'casatum.' We have found in the St. Gall charters the word 'casa' used for the homestead. The present Romanish word for house is 'casa,' and for the verb 'to dwell,' 'casar.' And there is the Italian word 'casata,' still meaning a family. Thus the connexion between the 'familia' of Bede and the 'casatum' of the charters is natural. Bede wrote more classical Latin than the ecclesiastical scribes in the charters. The hide was the holding of a family.[614] Hence it was sometimes, like the yard-land or holding of a servile family, called a 'hiwisc,' which was Anglo-Saxon, and also High German for family.[615] But the Saxon hide, also, was translated into ploughland or carucate, corresponding with the full team of eight oxen.
The 'carucate,' 'sulung,' or plough-land.
Generally in Kent, and sometimes in Sussex, Berks, and Essex, we found in addition to or instead of the hide or carucate, or 'terra unius aratri,' solins, sullungs, or swullungs—the land pertaining to a 'suhl,' the Anglo-Saxon word for plough. This word is [p396] surely of Roman rather than of German origin. The Piedmontese 'sloira,' and the Lombardic 'sciloira,' and the Old French 'silleoire,' are surely allied to the Romanish 'suilg,' and the Latin 'sulcus.'
The 'gioc,' or 'jugum.'
Again, in Kent the quarter of a 'sulung' (answering to the yard-land or virgate of other parts) is called in the early charters a 'gioc,' 'ioclet,' or 'iochlet,' [616] i.e. a yoke or small-yoke of land. We have seen in the St. Gall charters, also, mention of 'juchs' or 'jochs,' which, however, were apparently jugera. This word gioc is surely allied to the Italian 'giogo,' and the Latin jugum.
The 'hide' and 'centuria' the typical free holding.
Here, then, we have the hide the typical holding of a free family, as the centuria was under Roman law. A free Saxon thane might hold many hides, and so might and did the lord of a Roman villa hold more than one 'centuria' within its bounds. Still Columella took as his type of a Roman farm the 'centuria' of 200 acres,[617] and calculated how much seed, how many oxen, how many opera, or day-works of slaves, or 'coloni' were required to till it. The hide, double or single, was also a land measure, and contained eight or four yard-lands, and so also was the 'centuria' a land measure divisible into eight normal holdings allotted with single yokes. Both also became, as we have seen, units of assessment. But in England the hide was the unit. Under the Roman system of taxation the jugum was the unit. [p397]
This variation, however, confirms the connexion. The Roman jugum, or yoke of two oxen, made a complete plough. Nothing less than the hide was the complete holding in England, because a team of eight oxen was required for English ploughing. The yard-land was only a fractional holding, incomplete for purposes of ploughing without co-operation. Hence it would seem that the complete plough was really the unit in both cases.