THE HIDE AND THE TEAMLAND 33 



terms as "terrain duarum manentium," "terram duarum 

 aratrum," " mansse, cassati, mansiunculae," etc. Mr. Taylor has 

 compared the Domesday record of the possessions of Bath and 

 Worcester Abbeys with the charters conferring these estates 

 on the abbeys, and finds that in the case of nineteen out of ) 

 twenty-six estates granted by charters dating from 676 to 

 970, the number of Domesday hides agrees with the number 

 of family holdings granted by the charters. 



The Chartulary of Abingdon Abbey l contains a charter 

 of 947, by which Edward the Elder granted to the abbey " bis 

 denas mansas, quod Anglice dicitur 20 hida " at Washington, 

 showing that " hide " was the recognized equivalent of these 

 Latin terms. 



This identity being shown, the number of geld hides in 

 Domesday will represent the number of family holdings (each 

 employing one plough-team) on a given estate at some period 

 before the Conquest, and, as custom is the essence of early 

 jurisprudence, when once the area of the estate had been 

 estimated at a certain number of family holdings, that estima- 

 tion would be stereotyped for all time until some strong power 

 from outside should upset it But other scholars, as we shall 

 see later, think that the hide was an assessable unit a notional 

 area from the very beginning. 



Passing on to the third term in the formula, a little con- 

 sideration will show that in stating the number of teams 

 actually .employed on the estate, the jurors are giving a rough 

 estimate of the land actually cultivated. This deduction is 

 only reasonable. No farmer will keep on his farm more teams 

 than he can profitably use. If he can do all his ploughing 

 with three teams, he will not keep four ; the horses or oxen 

 that are not constantly employed will be eating their heads 

 off; and if this is true in the twentieth century, much more 

 would it be true in the eleventh century, when the entire 

 absence of winter keep other than the hay grown on a very 



1 Vol. i. p. 141. 

 D 



