THE CORr-rWALL DOMESDAY AND GELD INQUEST. 551 



ard. The lands held free of Geld. Firstly those by the 

 King and his barons in demesne, and secondly lands free of 

 geld by custom. 



4th. The lands for which the tax had not been received, 

 and the reason for such arrear. 



The exemptions from the payment of this tax were more- 

 over numerous. The King's land in demesne was exempt, so 

 also was that of his barons, who however had the heavier dues 

 of service laid on them. Exemption from geld was also freely 

 granted by successive Kings to religious houses, and in Cornwall 

 out of a total of 400 fiscal hides, 93 were returned as thus held 

 by the Church, whilst other lands were claimed to be held free 

 of geld by custom. When these deductions from the total hidage 

 were made, it will be seen that the burden fell on the 

 poorer classes of tenants with crushing severity, which gave rise 

 to serious discontent. That this must have been so is evident 

 if this levy be compared with those of A.D. 1130 and 1156 

 when the King's geld was assessed at two shillings a hide. 

 The hide was the unit of assessment ; — was it an actual measure, 

 and if so of how many acres did it consist ? I do not intend to 

 deal with this question at length, for my doing so would expand 

 this paper beyond due limits, but I shall assume that the 

 Domesday-measures in Cornwall are fairly expressed by the 

 following ; — representing the general consensus of opinion of 

 modern Domesday students ; and with which, after a careful 

 enquiry, I am in full agreement. 



First, the hide : — this represented the holding of one taxpayer, 

 a man of one ploughteam, land enough to be cultivated in a 

 year, with pasture and meadow sufficient ; (for arable land only 

 was taken into account) ; this I take to be 120 acres — a long 

 hundred. 



A great deal of confusion has arisen in dealing with this 

 question, through taking the hides, in Domesday, as the 

 actual area of the arable land in the Manor or Vill. This 

 was not so, they were hides of assessment, and there may have 

 been twenty hides of arable land in a Manor in Cornwall and 

 yet it would only pay on perhaps five or six. Sir Henry James's 

 translation, prefixed to his edition of the Domesday Book of 



