The Saxon 'hidation' and the Roman 'jugatio.'
How closely the English hidation followed the lines of the Roman 'jugatio' has already been seen. When to the many resemblances of the hide to the 'centuria,' and of the 'jugum' to the virgate, regarded as units of assessment, are now added the other connecting links found in this chapter, in things, in figures, and in words, between the Saxon open-field system, and that of the districts of Upper Germany, so long under Roman rule, the English hidation may well be suspected to go back to Roman times, and to be possibly a survival of the Roman jugation. When Henry of Huntingdon, in describing the Domesday Survey, instead of saying that inquiry was made how many hides and how many virgates there were, uses the words 'quot jugata et quot virgata terræ,' [618] he at any rate used the exact words which describe what in the Codex Theodosianus is spoken of as taxation 'per jugationem.' [619]
Not, as already said, that the Romans introduced into Britain the division of land according to plough teams, and the number of oxen contributed [p398] to the plough team. It would grow, as we have seen, naturally out of tribal arrangements whenever the tribes settled and became agricultural, instead of wandering about with their herds of cattle. It was found in Wales and Ireland and Scotland, in Bohemia, apparently in Slavonic districts also and further east.[620] It is much more likely that the Romans, according to their usual custom, adopted a barbarian usage and seized upon an existing and obvious unit as the basis of provincial taxation.
Roman tributum in Frisia paid in hides.
The Frisian tribute of hides was perhaps an example of this. The Frisians were a pastoral people, and a hide for every so many oxen was as ready a mode of assessing the tribute as counting the plough teams would be in an agricultural district. The word 'hide,' which still baffles all attempts to explain its origin, may possibly have had reference to a similar tribute. Even in England it does not follow that it was in its origin connected with the plough team. Its real equivalent was the familia, or casatum—the land of a family—and in pastoral districts of England and Wales the Roman tribute may possibly have been, if not a hide from each plough team, a hide from every family holding cattle; just as in A.D. 1175 Henry II. bound his Irish vassal, Roderic O'Connor, to pay annually 'de singulis animalibus decimum corium placabile mercatoribus'—perhaps a tenth of the hides he himself received as tribute from his own tribesmen.[621] The supposition of such an origin of the connexion of the word 'hide' with the 'land of a family' [p399] or of a plough team is mere conjecture; but the fact of the connexion is clear. All these three things, the hide, the hiwisce, and the sullung, and their subdivision the yard-land, were the units of British 'hidation,' just as the centuria and the jugum were the units of the Roman 'jugatio.'
VII. THE GAFOL AND GAFOL-YRTH.
Passing now to the serfdom and the services under which the 'yard-lands' and the 'huben' were held, it may at least be said that their practical identity suggests a common origin.
We learned from the Rectitudines and from the Laws of Ine, to make a distinction between the two component parts of the obligations of the 'gebur' in respect of his yard-land.
There was (1) the gafol, and (2) the week-work.
The gafol was found to be a semi-servile incident to the yard-land. The week-work was the most servile one.