Another point in connection with the caruca on which the I.C.C. gives us the light we need is this:

I.C.C.D.B.
fo. 102 (a) 2: 'ii. carrucis ibi est terra. Non sunt carruce nisi sex boves.'I. 200 (b) 1: 'Terra est iii. carucis. Sed non sunt ibi nisi boves.

Here the Domesday text is utterly misleading as it stands. But the I.C.C., by supplying the omitted 'sex', gives us at once the right sense.

V. THE DOMESDAY HIDE

Similar to its evidence on the Domesday 'plough' is that which the I.C.C. affords as to the hide and virgate. In my criticism of Mr Pell's learned paper, I strenuously opposed his view that the hida of Domesday was composed of a variable number of virgates, and I insisted on the fact that the Domesday 'virgate' was essentially and always the quarter of the geldable 'hide'.[71] The following parallel passages will amply prove the fact:

I.C.C.D.B.
fo. 102 (a) 1: i. hidam et dimidiam et unam virgam.i. hidam et iii. virgatas terræ.—i. 194 (a) 2.
fo. 102 (a) 1: dimidiam hidam et dimidiam virg'.ii. virg' et dimidiam—i. 194 (a) 2.
fo. 103 (a) 1: dimidiam hidam et dimidiam virg'.ii.as virg' et dimidiam—i. 198 (a) 2.
fo. 103 (b) 1: i. hida et dimidia et dimidia virg'.i. hida et ii. virg' et dimidiam—i. 190 (a) 2.
fo. 103 (b) 2: i. hida et dimidia et i. virg'.i. hida et iii. virg'—i. 198 (b) 1.
fo. 106 (b) 2: iiii. hidæ et dimidia et una virg'.iv. hidæ et iii. virg'—i. 200 (b) 1.
fo. 112 (a) 2: xi. hidæ i. virg' minus.x. hidæ et iii. virg—i. 192 (b) 1.

These are only some of the passages of direct glossarial value.[72] Indirectly, that is to say by analysis of the township assessments, we obtain the same result throughout the survey passim.[73] Here, again, we are able to assert that two virgates must have been to the scribes as obviously equivalent to half a hide as ten shillings with us are equivalent to half a sovereign. For here, again, the point is that these scribes had no knowledge of the varying circumstances of each locality. They had nothing to guide them but the return itself, so that the rule, in Domesday, of 'four virgates to a hide' must have been of universal application.

But not only were there thus, in Domesday, four virgates to a hide; there were also in the Domesday virgate thirty Domesday acres. Mr Eyton, though perhaps unrivalled in the study he has bestowed on the subject, believed that there were only twelve such acres, of which, therefore, forty-eight composed the Domesday hide.[74] It is, perhaps, the most important information to be derived from the I.C.C. that a hundred and twenty Domesday acres composed the Domesday hide.[75]

We have the following direct statements: