The Distinction of Tenure

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commendatus ita quod non poterat vendere terram suam sine licentia abbatis," and of "i. liber homo S. Ædel. commendatus ita quod non poterat vendere terram suam extra ecclesiam (sed sacam et socam habuit stigandus in hersham"). Thus both those who were free to sell and those who were not, might belong to the class of "liberi homines." The essential distinction was one, not of status, but of tenure.

IV. THE DOMESDAY CARUCA.

Yet more definite and striking, however, is the information on the Domesday caruca afforded by collating D.B. with the I.C.C. I referred at the Domesday Commemoration (1886) to the problem raised by the caruca,68 and recorded my belief that in Domesday the word must always mean a plough team of eight oxen. The eight oxen, as Mr Seebohm has shown, are the key to the whole system of the carcucate and the bovate. In Domesday, as I argued, the formula employed involves of necessity the conclusion that the caruca was a fixed quantity. Such entries, moreover, as “terra i. bovi," "terra ad iii. boves," etc., can only be explained on the hypothesis that the relation of the bos to the caruca was constant. But as the question is one of undoubted perplexity, and as some, like Mr. Pell, have strenuously denied that the number of oxen in the Domesday caruca was fixed, the evidence given below is as welcome as it is conclusive:

fo. 112 (6) 2:

ibi terra. Et ibi

"iiii. bobus est I. 202 (6) 1: "Terra est iiii.

sunt. Pratum

dimidiæ caruce."

bobus, et ibi

sunt, et pratun:

ipsis bobus."

It is absolutely certain from these entries that the scribes must have deemed it quite immaterial whether they wrote "dimidia caruca" or "iiii. boves"; as immaterial as it would be to us whether we wrote "half a sovereign" or "ten shillings." It is, consequently, as absolutely certain that the Domesday caruca was composed of eight oxen as that our own sovereign is composed of twenty shillings. And from this conclusion there is no escape.70

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

I.C.C.

fo. 102 (a) 2. "ii. carrucis ibi

est terra. sex boves."

Non sunt carruce nisi

D.B.

on which

I. 200 () 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.” ”1 The following parallel passages will amply prove the fact:

70 It is essential to bear in mind that the Domesday scribes had nothing to guide them but the bare words of the return, so that if they thus

equated these expressions, they can only have done so because the rule was of universal application.

Archæological Review, vol. i., p. 286.

Four Virgates in the Hide

..C.

fo. 102 (a) 1 i. hidam et dimidiam et unam virgam. fc. 102 (a) I : dimidiam hid. m et dimidiam virg'.

fo. 103 (a) 1: dimidiam hidam et dimidiam virg'.

fo. 103 (b) : i. hida et dimidia et dimidia virg'.

fo. 103 (6) 2: i. hida et dimidia et i. virg'.

fo. 106 (6) 2: iiii. hidæ et dimidia et una virg'.

fo. 112 (a) 2: xi. hidæ i. virg' minus.

D.B.

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These are only some of the passages of direct glossarial value." Indirectly, that is to say by analysis of the township assessments, we obtain the same result throughout the survey passim.78 Here, again, we are able to assert that two virgates must have been to the scribes as obviously cquivalent 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 circum stances 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." It is, perhaps, the most important information to be derived from the

Compare also the Exon. Domesday, where "Stoches," which is entered pro. ii. virgatis et dim." appears in D.B. as dim. hida et dim. virga." Key to Domesday, p. 14.

"See below, and ante, p. 17, note.

I.C.C. that a hundred and twenty Domesday acres composed the domesday hide.75

We have the following direct statements :

If 20 acres were identical with two-thirds of a virgate, there must, in a whole virgate, have been thirty acres; and if a virgate, plus 10 acres, was equivalent to half a hide minus 20 acres, we have again a virgate of thirty, and a hide of 120 acres. But the conclusion I uphold will be found to rest on no isolated facts. It is based on a careful analysis of the Inquisitio throughout. Here are some striking examples :

fo. 92 (b) i. "Belesham pro x. hidis se defendit."

fo. 99 (b) I: "tenet hardeuuinus de scal' vi. hidas et i. virgam et

76 It is to this evidence that I made allusion in Domesday Studies (p. 225). Similar evidence as to the Domesday carucate is found in the Ing. El. (Ed. Hamilton, pp. 156, 178) where "lx. acre" equate "dim. c[arucata]."

Thirty Acres in the Virgate

fo. 79 (4) 2: "Suafham pro x. hidis se defendit."

fo. 90 (a) "choeie et stoua pro x. hidis se defenderunt."

fo. 96 (a) 2: "Pampeswrda pro v. hidis et xxii. acris se defendit.

76 D.B. erroneously reads "xxx." (30) by the insertion of an "x" too many. The I.C.C. correctly reads "xx." (20), its accuracy here being proved by the above arithmetic. Thus the I.C.C. corrects a reading which (1) would, but for it, appear fatal to the belief that 30 acres=a virgate; (2) would upset the above arithmetic. This ought to be clearly grasped, because it well illustrates the element of clerical error, and shows how apparent discrepancies in our rule may be due to a faulty text alone. "Here, as in the preceding instance, Domesday is in error, reading "one virgate" ("I virgata") where the I.C.C. correctly gives us half a virgate ("dimidiam virgam"). The remarks in the preceding note apply equally here.

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