[161]. This seems clear from a comparison of two passages already quoted in a note, but which must here be given more at length. The law of Æðelstán defines the king’s peace as extending from his door to the distance on every side of three miles, three furlongs, three acres’ breadth, nine feet, nine palms, and nine barleycorns. The law of Henry gives the measurements thus: “tria miliaria, et tres quarantenae, et ix (? iii) acrae latitudine, et ix pedes et ix palmae, et ix grana ordei.” Thus the furlang and quarantena are identified. But it is also clear that the series is a descending one, and consequently that the furlang or quarantena is longer than the breadth of an acre. If, as is probable, it is derived from quarante, I should suppose three lengths and three breadths of an acre to have been intended; in fact that some multiple of forty was the longer side of the acre.
[162]. In one case we hear of ða beán-furlang, the furlong under bean-cultivation. Cod. Dipl. No. 1246.
[163]. A square of 220 yards would form a field of ten acres, which is not at all oversized. Since the happy downfall of the corn-laws, which were a bonus upon bad husbandry, hedges are being rooted up in every quarter, and forty or fifty acres may now be seen in single fields, where they were not thought of a few years ago.
[164]. See Ellis, Introd. to Domesday.
[165]. The numbers given are assumed, upon the supposition that 3 × 40 were taken: or that 4 × 8, that is four virgates of eight acres; or lastly that thirty-three Saxon = nearly forty Norman were taken. As I am about to test the actual acreage of England by these numbers, it is as well to try them all. The practical result cannot vary much, and the principal object is to show that the Saxon Hide was not very different from the ordinary German land-divisions.
[166]. Hist. Eccl. iv. 16.
[167]. Hist. Eccl. i. 25.
[168]. The river Wantsum alone was three stadia wide, about a third of a mile, and was passable at two points only. Bed. Hist. Eccl. i. 25.
[169]. The great fertility of Thanet is noticed by the ancients. Solinus (cap. xxii.) calls it “frumentariis campis felix et gleba uberi.” But corn is of no value without a market; and unless London or the adjacent parts of the continent supplied one, I must still imagine that the islanders did not keep so great an amount in arable. It is true that at very early periods a good deal of corn was habitually exported from Britain: “annona a Britannis sueta transferri.” Ammian. Hist. xviii. 2.
[170]. Beda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13.