Relation between teamlands and fiscal carucates.
But at any rate, to extend the theory to the whole of Yorkshire, to say nothing of all England, is out of the question. No doubt as a whole Yorkshire was (in the terms that we have used) an ‘over-rated’ county: that is to say, as a general rule, a, if not equal to, was greater than b. But it can not be said that when a was not equal to b it normally was, or even tended to be equal to 2b. We take by chance a page describing the possessions of Count Alan[1608]; it contains 20 entries; in one of these a = b, in one a = 2b, in one b is greater than a; in ten cases the proportion which a bears to b is 3:2, in two it is 4:3, in two it is 5:3, in one 6:5, in one 7:5, in one it is 17:12. In the counties of Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby an application of this doctrine would be ludicrous, for very commonly b is greater than a. What is more, the method of taxation that it presupposes is so unjust that we are loath to attribute it to any one. To tax a man in proportion to the area of the land that he treats as arable, that is a plausibly equitable method; to tax him in proportion to the area that he has ploughed in a given year, that also is a plausibly equitable method; but the present proposal could only be explained as a deliberate effort to tax the three-field system out of existence[1609]. To take the figures that have been suggested to us by the author of this theory, we suppose that X is using a team of oxen in ‘a two-course manor’; he has 160 acres of arable land and ploughs 80 of them in every year. Then in another village Y is using a team of oxen according to the three-course system; he has, we are told, 180 acres of arable and ploughs 120 acres in every year. This unfortunate Y is to pay double the amount of geld that is paid by X. We could understand a demand that Y should pay nine shillings when X pays eight, for Y has in all 180 acres of arable and X has 160. We could understand a demand that Y should pay three shillings when X pays two, for Y sows 120 acres a year and X sows 80. But nothing short of a settled desire to extirpate the three-field system will prompt us to exact two shillings from Y for every one that is paid by X. Lastly, we must repeat in passing our protest[1610] against the introduction into this context of those figures which express the aspirations of that enthusiast of the plough, Walter of Henley. That the ‘land for one team’ of Domesday Book points normally or commonly to an area of arable land containing 160 or 180 acres we can not believe. If we give it on an average 120 acres we may perhaps find room for the recorded team lands, though probably we shall often have to make our acres small; but county after county will refuse to make room for teamlands with 160 or 180 acres[1611]. No doubt the regularity of the Yorkshire figures is remarkable. There are other districts in northern England where we may see some one relation between A and B steadily prevailing. We will call to mind, by way of example, the symmetrical arrangement that we have seen in one of the Rutland wapentakes, where A = 4B. This we can not explain, nor will it be explained until Domesday Book has been rearranged by hundreds and vills; we have, however, hazarded a guess as to the quarter in which the explanation may be found[1612]. As to the Yorkshire figures, we think that of all the figures in the record they are the least likely to be telling us the simple truth about the amount of cultivated land.
The fiscal hide of 120 acres.
We may now briefly recapitulate the evidence which leads us to the old-fashioned belief that King William’s Exchequer reckons 120 acres to the hide. There are at the least twenty sums set before us which involve the equation: 1H. = 120A. or 1V. = 30A. We doubt whether there are two sums which involve any one other equation. That there are sums which involve or seem to involve other equations we fully admit; but when a fair allowance has been made for mistranscription, miscalculation, the loss of acres due to partitionary arrangements[1613], and, above all, to a transition from the rateable to the real, from the hidage on the roll to the strips in the fields, we can not think that these cases are sufficiently numerous to shake our faith. We have further seen that in Essex and East Anglia the acres of the fiscal system lie in batches of just those sizes which would be produced if an unit of 120 acres was being broken into halfs, thirds, quarters and fifths. Lastly, ‘the rustics’ of the twelfth century ‘tell us that the hide according to its original constitution consists of a hundred acres[1614]’ and probably these rustics reckon by the long hundred.
Antiquity of the large hide.
If now we are satisfied about this matter, we seem to be entitled to some inferences about remoter history. The fiscal practice of reckoning 120 acres to the hide can hardly be new. Owing to many causes, among which we recall the partitionary system of taxation, the influence of an equity which would consider value as well as area, and the disturbing forces of privilege and favouritism, the fiscal hide of the Confessor’s day has strayed far away from the fields and is no measure of land[1615]. At its worst it is jobbery; at its best a lame compromise between an unit of area and an unit of value. And yet, for all this, it is composed of acres, of 120 acres. The theory that is involved in this mode of calculation is so little in harmony with the existing facts that we can not but believe that it is ancient. It seems to point to a time long gone by when the typical tenement which was to serve as an unit of taxation generally had six score arable acres, little more or less.
§ 3. Beyond Domesday.
The hide beyond Domesday.
We have now seen a good deal of evidence which tends to prove that the hide has had for its model a tenement comprising 120 acres of arable land or thereabouts. Some slight evidence of this we have seen on the face of the Anglo-Saxon land-books[1616]. A little more evidence pointing in the same direction we have seen in the manorial extents of a later day[1617]. And now we have argued that the fiscal hide of the Conqueror’s day is composed of 120 (fiscal) acres. From all this we are inclined to infer that the hide has, if we may so speak, started by being a tenement which, if it attained its ideal, would comprise a long-hundred of arable acre-strips, and thence to infer that in the very old days of conquest and settlement the free family or the free house-father commonly and normally possessed a tenement of this large size.