Services reckoned by the hide.
The services also were reckoned by the hide, and an abstract of them is here given, from which it will be seen that for some purposes the tenants of the now divided hide still clubbed as it were together to [p053] perform the services required for the hide; whilst for others 'each homestead (domus) of the hide' had its separate duties to perform.
The following were the services on the manor of Thorp:[49]—
- Each of the hidarii ought to plough 8 acres,
4 in winter and 4 in Lent.
- Also to harrow and sow with the lord's seed.
- After Pentecost each house (domus) of the hide has to hoe thrice.
- And to reap 4 acres, 2 of rye (siligine), and 2 of barley and oats.
- And find a waggon (carrum) with 2 men to carry the hard grain, and another to carry the soft grain; and each waggon (plaustrum) shall have 1 sheaf.
- Each house of the hide has to mow 3 half-acres.
- Each house of the hide has to provide a man to reap until the third [day], if aught remains.
- Each house of the hide and of the demesne allotted to tenants has to provide the strongest man whom it has for the lord's 'precariæ' in autumn, the lord providing him meals twice a day.
- All men, both of the hide and of the demesne, have to provide their own ploughs for the lord's 'precariæ,' the lord providing their meals.
- And each hide ought to thresh out seed for the sowing of 4 acres after Michaelmas Day.
- Each hide must thresh out so much seed as will suffice for the land ploughed by one team in winter and in Lent.
- Each house of the whole village owes a hen at Christmas and eggs at Easter.
- These 10 hides ought to repair and keep in repair these houses in the demesne, viz. the Grange, cowhouse, and threshing house.
- Each of these hidarii owes 2 doddæ of oats in the middle of March.
- And 14 loaves for 'mescinga' (?).
- And a 'companagium' (flesh, fish, or cheese).
- Each hide owes 5s. by the year, and ought to make of the lord's wood 4 hurdles of rods for the fold.
Solanda, or double hide.
The instance of another manor of St. Paul's (Tillingham), in Essex,[50] may be cited as further evidence that sometimes, even where the holdings (as at Winslow) were virgates and half-virgates, their original relation to the hide was not yet forgotten. For after giving the list of tenants in demesne, and of 19 [p054] tenants holding 30 acres each, who 'faciunt magnas operationes,' i.e. do full service, there is a statement that in this manor 30 acres make a virgate, and 120 acres a hide;[51] so that here also there are 4 virgates to the hide. But there was further in this manor a double hide, called a 'solanda,' [52] presumably of 240 acres. A double hide called a solanda is also mentioned in Sutton in Middlesex,[53] and another in Drayton;[54] and the term solanda is probably the same as the well-known 'sullung' or 'solin' of Kent, meaning a 'plough land.'
It will be remembered that in the Huntingdonshire Hundred Rolls a double hide of 240 acres was noticed.
The Kentish sullungs and yokes.
It may also be mentioned that in Kent[55] the division of the sullung, or hide, was called a yoke, instead of a yard-land or virgate; suggesting that the divisions of the plough land in some way corresponded with the yokes of oxen in the team.
On the whole little substantial difference appears between the grades of holdings in the south-east of England and those of the midland counties. We may add also that here, as elsewhere, the humbler class of cottier tenants are found beneath the regular holders of hides and virgates, and that on the demesne lands there appears the constantly increasing class of libere tenentes. Also passing from the holdings in villenage to the serfdom under which they were held, [p055] and speaking generally, the description obtained from the Hundred Rolls of the services might with little variation be applied to the different area embraced in this section.