Now surely the three sixteens are just as artificial as the three fours, and in what possible sense can we affirm that there is land for only 48 teams when we see that 530 tenants are actually ploughing it with 127 teams? Behind this there must be some theory or some tradition that we have not yet fathomed[1543].
Area and value as elements of geldability.
We strongly suspect that in the work of distributing and reducing the geld, ‘the land for one team’ has been playing a part for some time past. In order to decide, for example, whether a claim for abatement was just, the statesman had to consider two elements, the number of the teamlands and their value. He would be content with round figures, indeed no others would content him or be amenable to his rude manipulation. So it is decided that some province or district has, or must be deemed to have, y teamlands. Also it is decided at this or at some other time, or perhaps from time to time, that the land in this district (regard being had to its state of cultivation) is or must be deemed to be first-class, or, as the case may be, third-class land. Then a combination of these propositions induces the conclusion that the district has x hides or carucates for geld. Then inside the district, when the process of subpartitionment begins, a similar method is pursued. There are x hides or carucates for geld to be distributed. They ought to be distributed with reference to the number and value of real teamlands. The work is rudely done in the subpartitionary fashion. A certain sub-district has x/a hides thrown upon it; a sub-sub-district has x/ab; but this apportionment is obtained by combining a proposition about value with a partitionment of the y teamlands. The sub-sub-district has x/ab hides, because y/cd teamlands fall to its share and because its land is assigned to a certain class. Then, perhaps for the purpose of future rearrangements, the number of teamlands (y/cd) is remembered as well the number of hides or gelding carucates (x/ab). The result is that every manor in a certain district has four hides and sixteen teamlands. It is very pretty; it was never (except for technical purposes) very true, and every year makes it less true[1544].
The equitable teamland.
That exactly this was done, we do not say and do not think; but something like it may have been done. As already remarked, we gravely doubt whether that question which the commissioners put about potential teams was understood in the same way in different counties, but we are sadly afraid that some of the answers that they obtained were references, not to existing agrarian facts, but to a fiscal history which already lay in the past and is now hopelessly obscure. A mystery of iniquity is bad, but the mysteries of archaic equity are worse. In many Anglo-Saxon arrangements we find a curious mixture of clumsiness and elaboration.
Artificial valets.
We can not quit this part of our subject without adding that there are cases in which the valuits and valets look as artificial and systematic as the hides and the teamlands. On a single page we find a description of five handsome Yorkshire manors[1545]. We wish to know their value in the past and the present, and what we learn is this: Brostewic valuit £56, valet £10; Chilnesse valuit £56, valet £10; Witfornes valuit £56, valet £6; Mapletone valuit £56, valet £6; Hornesse valuit £56, valet £6; and yet between these manors there are large variations in the number of the carucates and the number of the teamlands. Then we look about and see that it has been common for the first-class manor of Yorkshire, if it is the centre of an extensive soke, to be worth precisely £56[1546]. We can not but fear that the value of these manors is a legal fiction, though a fiction that is founded upon fact. Their supposed worth seems fixed at a figure that will fit into some scheme, the clue to which we have not yet recovered. Everywhere we are baffled by the make-believe of ancient finance.
The new assessments of Henry II.
The obscure forces which conspired to determine the quotas of the various counties might be illustrated by an episode in the reign of Henry II. The old danegeld is still being occasionally levied, and in the main the old assessment prevails. But alongside of this we see a newer tax. From time to time the king takes a gift (donum, assisa, gersuma) from the counties. A certain round number of marks is demanded from every shire. For this purpose a new tariff is employed, and yet it is not wholly independent of the old, for we can hardly look at it without seeing that it is so constructed as to redress in a rude fashion the antiquated scheme of the danegeld. In the first column of the following table we give, omitting fractions, the pounds that the counties contribute when a danegeld is levied, in the second and third the half-marks (6s. 8d.) that they pay by way of gift on two different occasions early in the reign of Henry of Anjou[1547].
| Danegeld | Donum of 2 Hen. II. | Donum of 4 Hen. II. | |
| £ | half-marks | half-marks | |
| Kent | 106 | 320 | 240 |
| Sussex | 217 | 202 | 160 |
| Surrey | 180 | 160 | 160 |
| Hampshire | 185 | 200 | |
| Berkshire | 206 | 148 | 120 |
| Wiltshire | 390 | 200 | 160 |
| Dorset | 248 | ||
| Somerset | 278 | 200 | 300 |
| Devon | 104 | 368 | 300 |
| Cornwall | 23 | ||
| Middlesex | 86 | 175 | 80 |
| Hertford | 110 | 120 | |
| Buckingham Bedford | 205 111 | 200 | 240 |
| Oxford | 250 | 140 | 200 |
| Gloucester | 194 | 218 | 260 |
| Worcester | 101 | 100 | 120 |
| Hereford | 94 | 80 | 140 |
| Cambridge | 115 | 160 | |
| Huntingdon | 71 | 100 | |
| Northampton | 120 | 240 | 280 |
| Leicester | 100 | 100 | 160 |
| Warwick | 129 | 100 | 240 |
| Stafford | 45 | 80 | 100 |
| Shropshire | 118 | 80 | 140 |
| Derby Nottingham | 112 | 160 | 280 |
| York | 165 | 1000[1548] | 1000 |
| Lincoln | 266 | 540 | 600 |
| Essex | 236 | 400 | 400 |
| Norfolk Suffolk | 330 235 | 400 240 | 400 |