Its Co7iiiection zuith Church and State. 



121 



Total 243,600 „ 



Th.e total area shows the available forces of the kingdom 

 to have been 48,720 men. But by far the most interesting- 

 feature of this early record is its accuracy'-, for although the 

 hide as a unit of measurement was an unknown and varjdng 

 factor, about which we shall have much to say later on, we 

 may take it at this early period as implying from one hundred 

 to one hundred and fifty acres. ^ 



Assuming then its area to be one hundred and forty acres, 

 and bearing in mind that even the acre varied in different 

 parts of the country up to Angevin times, we obtain a total 

 area wdiich, if added to what is now known to be the extent of 

 country north of the Humber, comes very close (almost too 

 close) to the 37,000,000 acres, which is our modern computation 

 of the country's contents.^ 



^ An acre of land in Anglo-Saxon times cost abont one shilling, and a 

 hide 100 shillings ; but this does not imply that a hide was 100 acres, but 

 that the area of land plougliable in a day was worth one shilling, and 

 that ploughable in a year 100 shillings. — Chron. Preciosum, p. 64. 



^ The so-called discovery (alluded to on page 91 in the Eev. W. Clarke's 

 History of Tithes) by Mr. Walter de Gray Birch, of the MSS. Department, 

 British Museum, in 1888, of a MS. in Anglo-Saxon of the late 10th or 

 early 11th century, containing the same area and divisions as those 

 used in Camden's History and believed to be a copy of some older MS., 

 accentuates the importance of this old Surve3\ Hume uses the same 

 figures as Camden, but Brady gives the area of England as 274,950 hides. 

 Compare Hume's History of England, app. 1, and Brady, History of 

 England, i., p. 270. 



