116 THE SAXONS IN ENGLAND. [book i.
to the land occupied, not by the millstall but by
the homestall1.
Having thus stated my own view of the approxi-
mate 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 Æüelwald,
two hides, all but sixty acres ; these sixty acres the
bishop had taken into his own demesne or inland
at Kempsey, as wheat-land 2. Now if this be an ac-
curate reading, and not by chance an ill-copied Ix
for ix, it would seem to imply that sixty acres were
less than a hide ; for these acres were clearly arable.
Again, 2E¾Selred granted land at Stoke to Léofrîc
in 982 : the estaté conveyed was of three hides and
thirty acres, called щ one charter jugera, in another
part of the same grant, æeera 3. It may be argued
that here the acres were meadow or pasture, not
included in the arable. But there are other calcula-
tions upon the j ugerum4, which render it probable
that less than our statute-acre was intended by the
term. For example, in 839, king 2E¾>elwulf gave
1 It is to be remarked that the eight and twelve acres of meadow
are distinguished here from the feld-land or arable : and in strictness
they ought not to be calculated into the hide ; but perhaps it was
intended to plough them up : or Oswald may even have begun to
follow a system in which arable and meadow should both be included
in the hide, which is equivalent, in other words, to the attempt to re-
place the wasteful method of unenclosed pastures by a more civilized
arrangement of the land. He speaks indeed, on more than one occa-
sion, of granting gedal-land, and land to gedale, which can hardly
mean anything but new enclosures.
2 Cod. Dipl. No. 612. 3 Ibid. No. 633.
4 According to Pliny, the jugerum was a day’s work for a yoke of
oxen, i.e. nearly an acre ; but the Saxon jugerum can hardly have been
so large, for the reasons given in the text.
сн. IV.]
THE EDEL, HI'D OR ALOD.
117
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
Ælfgar1, a king’s thane, about 958. In this, among
other legacies, he grants to Æ^elgâr a hide of
120 acres : “ and ic 2E⅞>elgar an an hide Iond iδes
⅛e Æ8ulf hauede be hundtuelti acren, ateo so 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 Ælfgar think it necessary to particu-
larize this one hide 1 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 æeras 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 An-
glesey contained 960, Iona or Icolmkill, only five,
1 Cod. Dipl. No. 1222.