122 History of the English Laiided Interest. 



It seems almost incredible tliat the Anglo-Saxon surveyors 

 could liave possessed the technical skill sufficient for accu- 

 rately estimating huge forests and vast swamps, a task which 

 would puzzle even our Royal Engineers of the Victorian age. 

 It seems (we cannot say more likely, but) less improbable, that 

 the Roman agrimensores had left some records behind to which 

 the Anglo-Saxon surveyors had access. How even Roman 

 ingenuity could compass so difficult a task is a mystery. Nor 

 would the undertaking e£fect any practical results, for neither 

 Roman nor Anglo-Saxon fiscal systems were based upon founda- 

 tions which required the areas of uninhabited wastes.^ 



Shadowy though the inference of Roman handiwork is in 

 this matter, it is interesting to imagine that this survey, which 

 probably formed the framework for all future records, thus 

 connects the Roman land surveyor with that great national 

 terrier, the Domesday Book of a later era. 



^ It is absurd to suppose that there were 243,600 hides of cultivated land 

 at this period, and we can hardly believe that every five hides of unculti- 

 vated laud would have to furnish its armed unit to the national defence. 

 On the other hand 48,720 men is a total qtiite reconcilable with the 

 numbers often engaged in warfare in various parts of the country at the 

 same time. The problem is one more suitable for a Constitutional His- 

 tory than ours, and w^e shall therefore leave its solution to other brains. 

 Theorists have evaded, not solved, the difficulty bj' identifying the term 

 " hide " with " family," and estimating the population of England at this 

 time at 1,218,000 souls, or 243,000 families, each averaging five persons. 



