[1211] Thus, to give one early example, K. 1008 (v. 49): ‘duodecim tributarios terrae quae appellantur Ferrinig.’ So in K. 124 (i. 151) we have the neuter form manentia.
[1212] A good instance in Egbert’s Dialogue, H. & S. iii. 404. For how many hides may the clergy swear? A priest may swear ‘secundum numerum 120 tributariorum’; a deacon ‘iuxta numerum 60 manentium’; a monk ‘secundum numerum 30 tributariorum.’ Here tributarii alternates with manentes for the same reason that secundum alternates with iuxta. So K. 143 (i. 173): ‘manentes ... casati ... manentes ... casati.’
[1213] See Schmid, p. 611.
[1214] See, for instance, Werhard’s testament (A.D. 832), K. 230 (i. 297): ‘Otteford 100 hidas, Grauenea 32 hidas.’ These are Kentish estates. Hereafter we shall give some reasons for thinking that the Kentish sullung may have a history that is all its own.
[1215] Mr Seebohm, Village Community, p. 395, admits that the familia of Bede and the casatum of the charters is the hide, and that the hide has 120 acres. This does not prevent him from holding (p. 266) that when Bede speaks of king Oswy giving to a church twelve possessiunculae, each of ten families, we must see decuriae of slaves, ‘the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants.’ He seems also to think that while the hide was ‘the holding of the full free landholder,’ the hiwisc was the holding of a servile family. But the passage which he cites in a note (Wergilds, § 7) seems to disprove this, for there undoubtedly, as he remarks, hiwisc=hide. It is the passage quoted above on p. 359. The Welshman gets a wergild of 120 shillings (three-fifths of an English ceorl’s wergild) by acquiring a hiwisc or (Ine 32) hide of land. Why the hide should not here mean what it admittedly means elsewhere is not apparent.
[1216] Though Eyton has (for some reason that we can not find in his published works) allowed but 48 ‘gheld acres’ to the ‘gheld hide,’ he can hardly be reckoned as an advocate of the Small Hide. His doctrine, if we have caught it, is that the hide has never been a measure of size. This raises the question—How comes it then that the fractions into which a hide breaks are indubitably called (gheld) ‘acres’? Why not ounces, pints, pence?
[1217] D. B. ii. 47 b.
[1218] Ibid. 61.
[1219] Ibid. 64.
[1220] Ibid. 65.