To compare these figures with those given in Domesday Book and in The County Hidage is not a straightforward task, for the military districts of 900 may not have been coincident with the counties of 1086, and, for example, Bath may have been supported partly by Gloucestershire and partly by Somerset[1686]. The best comparison that we can make is the following:—
| Burghal Hidage | County Hidage | Domesday Book | |
| Sussex[1687] | 4350 | 3474 | |
| Surrey[1688] | 1800 (or 3600) | 1830 | |
| Hampshire[1689] | 3520 | 2588 | |
| Berkshire[1690] | 2400 | 2473 | |
| Wiltshire[1691] | 5600 | 4800 | 4050 |
| Dorset[1692] | 3360 | 2321 | |
| Somerset[1693] | 4813 | 2951 | |
| Devon[1694] | 1534 | 1119 | |
| Oxford | 2400 | 2400 | 2412 |
| Buckingham | 1500 | 2074 | |
| Essex(?) | 1200 | 2650 | |
| Worcester | 1200 | 1200 | 1189 |
| Warwick | 2404 | 1200 | 1338 |
There is discord here, but also there is concord. According to our reckoning, the Oxfordshire and Berkshire of Domesday Book have just about 2400 hides apiece; then The County Hidage gives Oxfordshire 2400; and The Burghal Hidage gives 2400 to Oxford and 2400 to Wallingford. Both documents give 1200 to Worcester, and this is very close to the number that Domesday Book assigns. Next we see that, with hardly an exception[1695], all the aberrations of our Burghal Hidage from Domesday Book lie in one direction. They all point to great reductions of hidage, which seem to have been distributed with a fairly even hand. Further, in the case of Wiltshire we see a progressive abatement. The hidage is lowered from 5600 to 4800 and then to a little over 4000, and the first reduction seems to have relieved the shire of just one-seventh of its hides.
Criticism of The Burghal Hidage.
Now it seems to us that, on the one hand, we must reckon with this document as with one which, however much it may have been distorted by copyists, is or once was a truthful, and possibly an official record, and that, on the other hand, we can reckon with it and yet retain that notion of the hide which we have been elaborating. In a general way it both gives support to and receives support from the evidence that has already come before us. We have seen reductions of hidage or carucatage made in Yorkshire and Leicestershire after the Domesday survey; we have seen reductions in Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Cambridge, Northamptonshire. Here we come upon earlier reductions. They are large; but still they are not of such a kind as to make us think that any great change has taken place in men’s idea of a normal and typical hide. For one thing, we might be rash if we denied that during that miserable tenth century both the population and the wealth of Wessex were declining, for, despite its Æthelstan and Edgar, a miserable time it was. A real extinction of many a ‘real hide’ there may have been. But our main explanation will be that, by a process which is gradual and yet catastrophic, the ancient exaggerated estimates of population and wealth are being brought into correspondence with the humbler facts.
The Tribal Hidage.
We must now turn to a more famous and yet older document, namely that which we call The Tribal Hidage[1696]. It assigns large round quantities of hides to various districts, or rather to various peoples, whose very names would otherwise have been unknown to us. We are not about to add to the commentaries that have been written upon it; but its general scheme seems to be fairly plain. It begins by allotting to Myrcna land 30,000 hides. On this follow eighteen more or less obscure names to each of which a sum of hides is assigned; 36,100 hides are distributed between them. Then a grand total of 66,100 is stated. Ten other more or less obscure names follow, and 19,000 hides are thus disposed of. Then we have more intelligible entries:—‘East Engle 30,000. East Sexena 7,000. Cantwarena 15,000. South Sexena 7,000. West Sexena 100,000.’ Then we are told that the complete sum is 242,700, a statement which is not true as the figures stand, for they amount to 244,100. The broad features, therefore, of this system seem to be these:—It ascribes to Wessex 100,000 hides, to Sussex 7,000, to Kent 15,000, to Essex 7,000, to East Anglia 30,000, to Mercia 30,000, to the rest of England 55,100. Apparently we must look for this rest of England outside Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Essex and East Anglia and outside the Mercians’ land, though this last term is probably used in an old and therefore narrow sense. The least obscure of the obscure names that are put before us, those of the dwellers in the Peak, the dwellers in Elmet and the men of Lindsey, seem to point to the same conclusion[1697].
Criticism of The Tribal Hidage.
Now our first remark about this document will perhaps be either that it is wild nonsense, or that its ‘hide’ has for its type something very different from the model that has served for those hides of which we have hitherto been reading. Domesday will not allow the whole of England 70,000 hides (carucates, sulungs) and now we are asked to accommodate more than 240,000. Kent is to have 15,000 hides instead of 1200 sulungs. Even the gulf between The Burghal Hidage and this Tribal Hidage is enormous. The one would attribute less than 4500 hides to the Sussex burgs, the other would burden the South Saxons with 7000. In the older document Wessex has 100,000 hides, while in the younger the burgs of Surrey, Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Devon have as their contributories less than a quarter of that number. The suspicion can not but cross our mind that the ‘hides’ of The Tribal Hidage are yard-lands, or, in other words have for their moulding idea rather a tenement of 30 than a tenement of 120 arable acres[1698].
Bede’s hidage.