By C. B. Straton. 



299 



that, each carucate paid the tax of one hide to the King. The 

 average hide, however, was one hundred and twenty acres, and this 

 was usually divided into four yardlands or virgates of thirty acres 

 each, and each yardland found two of the eight oxen required for 

 the plough team. A yardland paid a penny tax, and a quarter of 

 a virgate is a farthing land, ferundel, or a ferling, while a virgate 

 and a quarter was a penny farthing land, a name that has often 

 had curious explanations. When eight oxen could not manage a 

 hide it was divided into five yardlands instead of four, and then 

 the plough team had ten oxen, and each of the five virgates had 

 twenty-four instead of thirty acres ; this was the case at Chalke 

 and many other places. Half a virgate was what one ox could do, 

 and it was called a bovate : the holder of a ferling or half-bovate 

 kept no animal in the plough team, but he supplied manual labour 

 under the direction of the bailiff. In very early times the owners 

 of the four yardlands supplied one quarter of the plough each : one 

 found the plough, another the ploughshare, another the goad, another 

 the yoke, and each brought a pair of oxen, but the acres were 

 ploughed one after the other, and then the headlands, just as the 

 bailiff of the manor directed and according to the custom of the 

 manor. These customs might vary in different manors, but what 

 the homagers declared to be the custom was law for that manor 

 and court. When Justices in Eyre were appointed to travel in 

 circuit over England it was the commonsense of what they found 

 to be the custom in all the manors that guided their decisions, and 

 on their decisions has been founded the Common Law of England. 



Perhaps I can best illustrate these manorial customs by taking 

 an example here and there from the many manors included in this 

 survey. First take a tenant for military service. Henry Compton, 

 Esq., holds after the death of his mother, Anne, now Countess of 

 Pembroke, certain lands in Newton, viz., in Southfield four acres, 

 in Middlefield one and a half acres, and in Northfield two acres, 

 and one virgate enclosed, and he has commonage with the farmer in 

 Newton for nine cows, one bull, two horses, and sixty two-tooth 

 sheep, and has in Stoford one virgate and one farthingland con- 

 taining thirty-five acres, one rood, viz., in Eastfield, eleven acres ; in 



