Dare we set any limit to the power of exaggeration? In much later days when England had long been strongly governed and accurate fiscal rolls were being carefully stored in the treasury, men believed in 60,000 knight’s fees; royal ministers believed in 32,000; and yet we now see good reason for doubting whether there were more than 5000[1703]. In the reign of Edward III. the collective wisdom of the nation supposed, and acted upon the supposition, that there were more than 40,000 parishes in England, and then made the humiliating discovery that there were less than 9000[1704]. We hear that the same error was current in the days of Wolsey. Men still believed in those 40,000 parishes[1705]. Such numbers as these stood written in ancient manuscripts, some of which seem to have taken our Tribal Hidage as a base for calculations[1706]. These traditional numbers will not be lightly abandoned, though their falsehood might be proved by a few days’ labour spent among the official archives. Counting hides is repulsive work. If then these things happen in an age which is much closer to our own than to Bede’s, ought we not to be surprised at the moderation of those current estimates of tribal strength that he reports.
Size of Bede’s hide.
Thirdly, when Bede speaks not of a large province, but of an estate acquired by a prelate, then his story seems to require that ‘the land of one family’ should be that big tenemental unit, the manse or hide of the land-books. Let us take by way of example the largest act of liberality that he records. King Oswy, going to battle, promises that if he be victorious he will devote to God his daughter with twelve estates for the endowment of monasteries. He is victorious; he fulfils his vow. He gives twelve estates, six in Deira, six in Bernicia; each consists of ‘the possessions of ten families.’ His daughter enters Hild’s monastery at Hartlepool. Two years afterwards she acquires an estate of ten families at Streanaeshalch and founds a monastery there. According to our reading of the story, Oswy bestows twelve ‘ten-hide vills’; he gives, that is, his rights, his superiority, over twelve villages of about the average size, some of which are in Deira, some in Bernicia. It is a handsome gift made on a grand occasion and in return for a magnificent victory; but it is on the scale of those gifts whereof we read in the West Saxon and Mercian land-books, where the hides are given away by fives and tens, fifteens and twenties. We feel no temptation to make thirty-acre yard-lands of the units that Oswy distributed. Were we to do this, we should see him bestowing not entire villages (for a village of two-and-a-half hides would, at all events in later days, be abnormally small) but a few of the tenements that lie in one village and a few of those that lie in another, and such a gift would not be like those gifts that the oldest land-books record. And so we think that the unit which Bede employs is our large hide. When he speaks of the estates given to those churches with whose affairs he is conversant, he will state the hidage correctly; but when it comes to the hidage of Sussex or Kent, he will report current beliefs which are far from the truth. This is what we see in later days. The officers at the Exchequer know perfectly well that this man has fifty knight’s fees and that man five, but opine that there are 32,000, or, may be, 60,000 fees in England[1707].
Evidence from Iona.
Observe how moderate Bede’s estimate of hidage is when he speaks of a small parcel of land of which he had heard much, when he speaks of the holy island of Hii or Iona. A Pictish king gave it to Columba, who received it as a site for a monastery. ‘Neque enim magna est, sed quasi familiarum quinque, iuxta aestimationem Anglorum[1708]’ ‘It is not a large island; we might compare its size with that of one of our English five-hide túns.’ The comparison would be apt. Iona has 1300 Scotch acres or thereabouts[1709]. Plough 600 acres; there will be ample pasture left[1710]. If, however, we interpreted his statement about the 7000 hides of Sussex in a similar fashion, the result would be ridiculous. The South Saxons had not 840,000 acres of arable; our Sussex has not 940,000 acres of any kind; their Sussex was thickly wooded. The contrast, however, is not between two measures; it is between knowledge and ignorance. Bede’s name is and ought to be venerated, and to accuse him of talking nonsense may seem to some an act of sacrilege. But about these matters he could only tell what was told him, and we may be sure that his informants, were, to say the least, no better provided with statistics than were the statesmen of the fourteenth century[1711].
Evidence from Selsey.
Also there is one case in which we have what may be called a very ancient, though not a contemporary, exposition of Bede’s words. He tells us that Æthelwealh king of the South Saxons gave to Wilfrid the land of 87 families called Selsey[1712]. Then there comes to us from Chichester the copy of a land-book which professes to tell us more touching the whereabouts of these 87 hides[1713]. Ceadwealla with the approval of Archbishop Wilfrid gives to a Bishop Wilfrid a little land for the construction of a monastery in the place called Selsey: ‘that is to say 55 tributarii in the places that are called Seolesige, Medeminige, Wihttringes, Iccannore, Bridham and Egesauude and also Bessenheie, Brimfastun and Sidelesham with the other villae thereto belonging and their appurtenances; also the land named Aldingburne and Lydesige 6 cassati, and in Geinstedisgate 6, and in Mundham 8, and in Amberla and Hohtun 8, and in Uualdham 4: that is 32 tributarii.’ This instrument bears date 683. Another purporting to come from 957 describes the land in much the same fashion[1714]. Where, let us ask, did the makers of these charters propose to locate the 87 hides? Some, though not all, of the places that they mentioned can be easily found on the map. We see Selsey itself; hard by are Medmeny or Medmerry, Wittering, Itchenor, Birdham and Siddlesham. At these and some other places that are not now to be found were 55 hides. Then we go further afield and discover Aldingbourn, Lidsey, Mundham, Amberley, Houghton and perhaps Upper Waltham. But we have travelled far. At Amberley and Houghton we are fifteen miles as the crow flies from Selsey[1715]. Apparently then, the 87 hides consist of a solid block of villages at and around Selsey itself and of more distant villages that are dotted about in the neighbourhood. Be it granted that these land-books are forgeries; still in all probability they are a good deal older than Domesday Book[1716]. Be it granted that the number of 87 hides was suggested to the forgers by the words of Bede[1717]. Still we must ask what meaning they gave to those words. They distributed the 87 hides over a territory which is at least eighteen miles in diameter[1718]. Now it is by no means unlikely that Æthelwealh’s gift really included some villages that were remote from Selsey. We have seen before now that lands in one village may ‘lie into’ another and a distant village which is the moot-stow of a ‘hundred.’ But at any rate the forgers were not going to attempt the impossible task of cramming ‘the land of 87 families’ into the Selsey peninsula.
Conclusion in favour of the large hide.
Therefore, in spite of Bede and The Tribal Hidage, we still remain faithful to the big hide. We have seen reason for believing that in the oldest days the real number of the ‘real’ hides was largely over-estimated. It would be an interesting, though perhaps an unanswerable, question whether any governmental or fiscal arrangements were ever based upon these inflated figures. A negative answer would seem the more probable. In Bede’s day there was no one to tax all England or to force upon all England a scheme of national defence. So soon as anything that we could dare to call a government of England came into being, the truth, the unpleasant truth, would become apparent bit by bit. All along bits of the truth were well enough known. The number of hides in a village was known to the villagers; the kingling knew the number of hides that contributed to his maintenance. As the folks were fused together, these dispersed bits of truth would be slowly pieced into a whole, though for a long while the work of coordination would be hampered by old mythical estimates. Perhaps The Burghal Hidage may represent one of the first attempts to arrange for political purposes the hides of a large province. There is still exaggeration, and, unfortunately for us, new causes of perplexity are introduced as the older disappear. On the one hand, statesmen are beginning to know something about the facts; on the other hand, they are beginning to perceive that tenements of equal size are often of very unequal value, and to give the name hide to whatever is taxed as such. Also there is privilege to be reckoned with, and there is jobbery. It is a tangled skein. And yet they are holding fast the equation 1H. = 120A
Continental analogies.