THE HUNJ3RED AND THE SHIRE 65 



by Domesday Book to the three counties of Gloucester, Wor- 

 cester, and Hereford. And he attributes the Tribal Hidage, 

 "and with it the whole plan of assessing England in hides, 

 . . . to the fiscal authority of the Bretwaldas." l In his 

 opinion, and in that of Mr. Round, the hide was a unit of 

 assessment a notional area from the very beginning. 



If all the Domesday hundreds were composed of 100 

 hides each, or if the number of hides in Domesday Book were 

 equal to the number of hundreds multiplied by 100, the 

 evidence that the hide was a family holding would be in 

 favour of those who hold that the original hundred was the 

 district settled by a band of 100 invading warriors ; but it is 

 construing the language of Tacitus too strictly to hold that 

 every German chieftain was followed by a band of warriors 

 who numbered neither more nor less than one hundred, and 

 it is certain that if the number had been exactly one hundred, 

 some would have been killed during the course of the in- 

 vasion. From the time of the Latin War (B.C. 340) the 

 Roman centitrio was composed of eighty men or less, and 

 the centurion was not ordinarily in command of one hundred 

 soldiers ; so that the application of the term " hundred " to 

 a band of soldiers of any number whatever, is not without 

 parallel, and we neeo!__riot_Jherefore be surprised at the 

 existence of a district called a " hundred," but containing less 

 than a hundred family holdings. 



Mr. Taylor has noticed that the hundreds in the river- 

 valleys of Gloucestershire are smaller in area than those in the 

 Cotswolds. Evidently the settlements were thicker in the 

 valleys, and so long as they contained unoccupied land, new- 

 comers would settle in them in preference to the unknown 

 hills. The hundreds in the south-west of England Somerset, 

 Devon, and Cornwall are of larger area than those in the 

 more eastern counties. A hide represents a larger number 

 of present-day acres in those counties than in Dorset. It is 



1 Tram. Royal Historical Society > vol. 14, p. 217, etc. 

 F 



