The name is absent

length of a furrow : now 220 ( = 200 Saxon) yards is
not at all too long a side for a field in our modern
husbandry¹, and is still more readily conceivable in
a less artificial system, where there was altogether’
less enclosure, and the rotations of crops were
fewer. Five yards, or five and a half, is not too
much space to allow for the turn of the plough ;
and it therefore seems not improbable that such an
oblong block (200 × 5) should have been assumed
as a settled measure or furlong for the ploughman,
two being taken alternately, as is done at this day,
in working, and forming a good half-day’s work for
man and beast: the length of the furrow, by which
the labour of the ploughman is greatly reduced,
being taken to compensate for the improved cha-
racter of our implements.

I think it extremely probable that the Saxons
had a large and a small acre, as well as a large and
small hundred, and a large and small yard: and
also that the quarantena or rood was this small
acre. Taking forty quarantenae we have a sum of
ten large acres, and taking three times that num-
ber we have 120 quarantenae, or a large hundred of
small acres = 30 large acres, giving ten to each
course of a threefold system of husbandry. This
on the whole seems a near approximation to the
value of the Hide of land ; and the calculation of
small acres would then help to account for the

¹ A square of 220 yards would form a field of ten acres, which is not
at all oversized. Since the happy downfall of the com-laws, which were
a bonus upon bad husbandry, hedges are being rooted up in every quar-
ter, and forty or fifty acres may now be seen in single fields, where they
were not thought of a few years ago.

number of 120 which is assigned to the Hide by
some authorities ɪ.

Tn the appendix to this chapter I have given
various calculations to prove that in Domesday
the value of a Hide is forty Norman acres. It has
been asserted that 100 Saxon = 120 Norman acres,
and if so 40 Norman=33⅜ Saxon: which does not
differ very widely from the calculation given above.

It must be borne in mind that the Hide com-
prised only arable land: the meadow and pasture
was in the common lands and forests, and was
attached to the Hide as of common right: under
these circumstances if the calculation of thirty,
thirty-two or thirty-three acres be correct, we shall
see that ample provision was made for the family².

Let us now apply these data to places of which
we know the hidage, and compare this with the
modern contents in statute-acres.

According to Beda³ the Isle of Wight contained
1200 hides or families : now the island contains
86,810 acres, which would give 72⅜ acres per hide.
But only 75,000 acres are under cultivation now,
and this would reduce our quotient to 62’5 acres.
On the hypothesis that in such a spot as the Isle

¹ See Ellis, Introd. to Domesday.

² 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 resιdt cannot vary much, and the
principal object is to show that the Saxon Hide was not very different
from the ordinary German land-divisions.

³ Hist. Eccl. iv. 16.

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