THE EAST ANGLIAN SYSTEM 347 



folk unit as they were not by the resident Norfolk population. 

 Accustomed as men of the midlands were to calling the full vil- 

 lein holding a virgate, they not unnaturally persisted in the 

 usage when they came to speak of East Anglia. There are 

 several instances in the Ely cartulary.^ Usually it is made clear 

 that the term is merely a substitute for the " plena terra," which 

 turns into a virgate under our eyes. At Derham, as at several 

 other places, the customary tenants who hold plenae terrae (" de 

 operariis plenas terras tenentibus ") are forthwith called virgate- 

 holders.- 



That this use of " virgate " was, however, imported rather 

 than native seems conclusive from the usage of two large groups 

 of early documents, records which, drawn up within the county, 

 furnish most of our information regarding early units of land- 

 holding. These are the feet of fines and the Domesday returns. 

 In the fines of midland counties the virgate constantly recurs. 

 In Norfolk and Suffolk, however, an examination of several 

 hundred of the earhest fines reveals the term only in connection 

 with one village, Walsoken, which, situated on the Cambridge- 

 shire border in the fen country, was organized by virgates, like 

 its midland neighbors.^ The Domesday usage is the same: in 

 connection with no East Anglian manor except Walsoken is the 

 term virgate used to designate a villein holding.* 



1 The Ramsey cartulary also once uses the term virgate in connection with 

 the two Norfolk manors, but this happens in a brief summary of all the manors 

 of the abbey in which the attribution of hides and virgates brooks no interruption. 

 Since this summary is contemporary with the detailed thirteenth-century extents 

 which explicitly declare that virgates are unknown in Brancaster and Ringstead, 

 it is obvious that the virgates crept in through hasty cataloguing. " At Brancaster 

 40 acres make a virgate, 4 virgates make a hide; at Ringstead 30 acres make a 

 virgate, 4 virgates make a hide " {Cartulary of Ramsey Abbey, iii. 213). 



2 Cott. MS., Claud. C XI, fif. 221 (Derham), 2336 (Shipham), 209 (Pelham), 

 248 (Bridgham). 



' " De dimidia virgata terre et de tertia parte dimidie virgate terre " (Pedes 

 Finium, Case 154, no. 180, 4 John). 



* As printed by the Pipe Roll Society, two other fines mention virgates: one 

 from Riston is concerned " de duabus virgatis terrae et dimidia et tribus bovatis 

 terrae {Feet of Fines, xvii. 22); the other, from Upton, relates to a dispute between 

 Stephanus de Ludington and Robert le Wile " de i virgata terrae " (ibid., 35). 

 These fines are in all probability wrongly assigned by the Public Record Office 

 cataloguer to Norfolk. They date from the first year of Richard's reign, when 



