The actual amount in France is difficult to ascertain, but of the 52,732,428 hectares of which its superficial extent consists, it is probable that about 30,000,000 are under some sort of profitable culture: giving a ratio of rather less than 15:11 between the cultivated and uncultivated: how much of this is arable and garden I cannot exactly determine; but it is probable that a great deal is reckoned to profitable cultivation, which could not have been counted in the hide. Osieries, meadows, orchards, cultivated or artificial grassland, and brushwood, are all sources of profit, and thus are properly included in a cadastre of property which may be tithed or taxed as productive: but they are not strictly what the hide was, and must be deducted in any calculation such as that which is the object of this chapter. We are unfortunately also furnished with inconsistent amounts by different authorities, where the difference rests upon what is reckoned to profitable cultivation, on which subject there may be a great variety of opinion. Still, for a time neglecting these considerations, and making no deduction whatever, it appears that the excess of culture upon the gross sum is only as 15:11 in France[[177]].

In the returns from Austria we can follow the same train of reasoning: as the ensuing table will show.

Product. surf. in jochs. (joch = 1·4 acre).
Provinces. Arable.Vines.Meadows.Commons.Forests.Total.
Lower Austria 1,399,91080,153447,758251,3471,122,2853,301,453
Upper Austria 834,55627530,601517,6831,141,8233,024,690
Styria 709,14754,875456,960596,3411,773,5643,590,887
Carinthia 477,49216,814556,973763,8461,528,9423,344,067
Illyria 245,73826,132171,252520,866317,2461,281,234
Tyrol 377,30055,300432,930648,8001,946,2003,460,530
Bohemia 3,889,9794,446948,468611,5012,316,2987,770,692
Moravia &}
Silesia}2,213,85551,793390,152463,0981,114,8494,233,747
Galicia 5,770,388302,068,0321,360,1664,250,93213,449,548
Dalmatia 161,228100,53028,728568,538300,8741,159,898
Total 16,079,593390,1006,031,8546,302,18615,813,01244,616,746

Thus of the whole productive surface of the Austrian empire, the arable bears only the proportion of 4:11. But to this must clearly be added an immense extent of land totally unfitted for the plough; by which the ratio of arable to the whole territorial surface will be materially diminished. Strange then as the conclusion may appear, we are compelled to admit that England at the close of the tenth century had advanced to a high pitch of cultivation: while the impossibility[impossibility] of reckoning the hide at much above thirty Saxon acres is demonstrated. It is clear, however the property of the land may have been distributed, that the elements of wealth existed in no common degree[[178]].

The number of forty acres has of course been taken solely for the purpose of getting a common measure with the present acre assumed in the parliamentary survey. Whether it corresponded exactly with thirty, thirty-two or thirty-three Saxon acres, it is impossible to say, but I have shown that the difference could not be very great. Something may be alleged in favour of each of these numbers; but on the whole the larger one of thirty-three acres seems to me the most probable. A valuable entry of the year 967 may help us to some clearer conclusion[[179]]. In this document Bishop Oswald states himself to have made a grant of seó þridde hind at Dydinccotan, ðæt is, se þridde æcer,—the third hind at Didcot, that is, the third acre. It is certain that at some very early period the word hund denoted ten, whence we explain its occurrence in such numerals as hundseofontig, hundeahtatig, etc. The word hind then, I derive from this hund, and render by tenth, and the grant seems to have conveyed the third tenth, which can only be said of a quantity containing three times ten units of some description or other. But this third tenth is further described as being every third acre, that is, a third of the whole land; and ten units make up this third: it seems therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the acre was the unit in question, that ten such acres constituted the hind, and that the hind itself was the third part of the hide. When we consider that thirty acres are exactly three times an area of 40 × 40 square rods, there appears a probability that the measure was calculated upon a threefold course of cultivation, similar to that in use upon the continent of Europe; this consisted of a rotation of winter corn, summer corn, and fallow, and to each a block or telga of ten large or forty small acres (roods) was allotted. Thirty acres were thus devoted to cultivation; but where was the homestall? Probably not upon the thirty acres themselves, which we cannot suppose to have been generally enclosed and sundered, but to have lain undivided, as far as external marks were concerned, in the general arable of the community. The village containing the homesteads of the markers, probably lay at a little distance from the fields[[180]], and I do not think we shall be giving too much when we allow three acres, over and above the thirty, for farm buildings, strawyard and dwelling. For we cannot doubt that stall-feeding was the rule with regard to horned cattle in general. In the same dialogue which has been already cited, the ploughman is made to say: “I must fill the oxen’s cribs with hay, and give them water, and bear out their dung[[181]].” Moreover there must be room found for stacks of hay and wood, for barns and outhouses, and sleeping-rooms both for the serfs and the members of the family; nor are houses of more than one story very likely to have been built[[182]]. With this introduction I proceed to another grant of Oswald[[183]]. In the year 996, he gave three hides of land to Eádríc: the property however lay in different places: “æt Eánulfestúne óðerhealf híd, ⁊ æt úferan Strætforda, on ðǽre gesyndredan híde, ðone óðerne æcer, ⁊ æt Fachanleáge ðone þriddan æcer feldlandes ... ⁊ on eásthealfe Afene eahta æceras mǽdwa, ⁊ forne gean Biccenclife. xii. æceras mǽdwa, ⁊ þreo æcras benorðan Afene tó myllnstealle;” i. e. “at Eanulfestun a hide and a half; at upper Stratford the second acre (i. e. half a hide); at Fachanleah the third acre (i. e. a third of a hide); on the east of the river Avon, eight acres of meadow, and onwards towards Biccancliff, twelve acres; and to the northward of the Avon, the three acres for a millstall.” Our data here are 1½ hide + ½ hide + ⅓ hide, or 2⅓ hides; but, if the calculations which precede are correct, 8 + 12 acres or 20 acres = ⅔ hide, and thus make up three hides of thirty acres each: three acres devoted to mill-buildings are not reckoned into the sum, and it is therefore possible that a similar course was pursued with regard to the land occupied, not by the millstall but by the homestall[[184]].

Having thus stated my own view of the approximate value of the hide, I feel it right to cite one or two passages which seem adverse to it. By a grant of the year 977, Oswald conveyed to Æðelwald, two hides, all but sixty acres; these sixty acres the bishop had taken into his own demesne or inland at Kempsey, as wheat-land[[185]]. Now if this be an accurate reading, and not by chance an ill-copied lx for ix, it would seem to imply that sixty acres were less than a hide; for these acres were clearly arable.

Again, Æðelred granted land at Stoke to Léofríc in 982: the estate conveyed was of three hides and thirty acres, called in one charter jugera, in another part of the same grant, æcera[[186]]. It may be argued that here the acres were meadow or pasture, not included in the arable. But there are other calculations upon the jugerum[[187]], which render it probable that less than our statute-acre was intended by the term. For example, in 839, king Æðelwulf gave Dudda ten jugera within the walls of Canterbury: now Canterbury at this day comprises only 3240 acres, and taking the area of almost any provincial town, it seems hardly probable that ten full acres within the walls should have been granted to any person, especially to one who, like Dudda, was of no very great consideration. A town-lot of two acres and a half, or ten roods, is conceivable.

The last example to be quoted is from a will of Ælfgár[[188]], a king’s thane, about 958. In this, among other legacies, he grants to Æðelgár a hide of 120 acres: “and ic Æðelgár an án híde lond ðes ðe Æðulf hauede be hundtuelti acren, áteo só he wille.” In this instance I am inclined to think that the special description implies a difference from the usual computation: if a hide were always 120 acres, why should Ælfgár think it necessary to particularize this one hide? was there a large hide of 120, as well as a small one of thirty? In the other cases—looking at the impossibility of assigning more than forty statute-acres to the Saxon hide, so plainly demonstrated by the tables—I suppose the æcras to be small acres or roods.

It is scarcely necessary to say that where the number of hides mentioned in any place falls very far short of the actual acreage, no argument can be derived any way. The utmost it proves is that only a certain amount, however inconsiderable, was under the plough. Thus Beda tells us that Anglesey contained 960, Iona or Icolmkill, only five, hides[[189]]. The acreage of Anglesey gives 150,000 acres under cultivation: this would be 156·33 per hide; but in this island a very great reduction is necessary: taking it even as it stands, and calculating the hide at thirty acres, we should have a ratio of 24:101; at forty acres, a ratio of 32:93 or little more than 1:3.

Iona numbers about 1300 acres (nearly two square miles): this at five hides would give 260 acres per hide: at thirty acres, a ratio of 3:23 or nearly 1:8 between cultivated and uncultivated land: or at forty acres, a ratio of 2:11. But the monks and their dependants were the only inhabitants; and in the time of Beda, up to which there is no proof of the land’s having been inhabited at all (in fact it was selected expressly because a desert), sand, if not forest, must have occupied a large proportion of the surface.