Value of oaths in hides.
The fact of this connection between the value of the oaths and hides was first brought to our notice in the Dialogue of Archbishop Egbert apparently as a matter already well known and established. And it was his claim that the oaths of his priests should be reckoned as oaths of 120 hides which confirmed what, from the Laws of Ine, was hardly more than doubtful inference that this was the value of the oath of the gesithcund or twelve-hynde class.
The Archbishop’s mention of it confirmed it, but left its meaning and origin as obscure as ever. And yet the whole question of the structure of Saxon society is so mixed up with the right understanding of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde division of classes that unless further light can be let into it a good deal of what we should like to see clearly must remain unhappily enveloped in fog.
Hides were family holdings. The familia of Bede.
Archbishop Egbert’s substitution of the phrase so many tributarii or manentes for the ‘so many hides’ of the Laws of Ine obliges us to regard the hide of Ine’s Dooms in this connection as equivalent to the ‘familia’ of Bede. The Saxon translator of the Latin text of Bede translated the word familia sometimes by ‘hide’ and sometimes by hiwisc or family. In this connection it is also worth noting that, although writing a century later than Egbert and two centuries after the date of Ine’s Laws, the translator of Bede had not cast off all traces of tribal tradition, for he consistently used the word mægthe as the equivalent of Bede’s ‘provincia.’ He still thought of tribes and peoples rather than of districts and provinces. His ideas in these things ran on tribal rather than on territorial lines. So to him the hide was still the family unit, and the greater kindred or tribe, as in Beowulf, was the mægthe. In Beowulf we saw that some of them conquered others and made them pay tribute. So they did in Bede’s time.
Manentes and tributarii of Egbert.
While, then, we are obliged to connect the value of oaths reckoned as of so many hides with hides which were family holdings, or, as Egbert calls them, manentes and tributarii, the original meaning of the connection must be sought for in tribal conceptions.
It seems to be quite clear that in saying that the twelve-hyndeman’s oath was an oath of 120 hides, and the ceorl’s presumably of 20 hides, we have not yet necessarily struck the real train of thought underlying the connection between oaths and hides. For it is absurd to think that the twelve-hyndeman could pretend to the occupation or possession of 120 hides or family holdings, or the ceorl to 20 hides. They could do no such thing. The ceorl, in later times at all events, who had the twy-hynde wergeld was ‘the ceorl who sits on gafol land’—a gafol-gelda on some one else’s land. And to the great-grandson of the ceorl who had risen to five hides, the continued possession of five hides was sufficient to qualify him for a sithcund status worth a wergeld of 1200 shillings or 2000 thrymsas.
The question, therefore, needs closer examination if we would rightly understand the meaning underlying the distinction between the twy-hynde and twelve-hynde social status.