The hide (also known as mansa in Latin sources) is an archaic English unit of land measurement originally intended to represent the amount of land sufficient to support a household. It functioned primarily as a measure of value and tax assessment rather than a fixed geometric area, incorporating obligations for food-rent (feorm), maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications, manpower for the army (fyrd), and eventually the geld land tax.
Etymology and Original Meaning
The Anglo-Saxon word for a hide was hid (or its synonym hiwisc). Both words are believed to derive from the same root hiwan, meaning "family." The Venerable Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History (c. 731), described the extent of a territory by the number of families it supported, using the Latin phrase terra x familiarum ("a territory of ten families"). In the Anglo-Saxon version of the same work, hid or hiwan was used in place of this Latin expression. This indicates that the hide originally signified land sufficient for the support of a peasant and his household, though it is uncertain whether "family" referred to the immediate family or a more extended group.
Historian T. M. Charles-Edwards has suggested that in its early usage, the hide referred to the land of one family worked by one plough, and that ownership of a hide conferred the status of a freeman.
Nature of the Unit
The hide was not a fixed area of land. Its method of calculation is now obscure, and different properties with the same hidage could vary greatly in extent, even within the same county. It is generally described as a measure of value and tax assessment rather than a measurement of area. By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period, it had become a measure of the taxable worth of an area of land, with no fixed relationship to its area, the number of plough-teams working on it, or its population.
Although the hide was traditionally taken to be 120 acres (approximately 49 hectares) of arable land, this figure was not consistently applied. Hides of 40, 48, and 60 acres have been identified in various locations. Historian Keith Bailey noted, "It is a commonplace that the hide in 1086 had a very variable extent on the ground; the old concept of 120 acres cannot be sustained." Historian Frank Stenton similarly observed, "Despite the work of many great scholars the hide of early English texts remains a term of elusive meaning."
Use in Anglo-Saxon England
In early Anglo-Saxon England, the hide was used as the basis for assessing the amount of food rent (feorm) due from a village or estate. It became the unit on which all public obligations were assessed, including the maintenance and repair of bridges and fortifications and the provision of troops for the fyrd (defence force). At one period, five hides were expected to provide one fully armed soldier in the king's service, and one man from every hide was liable for garrison duty in the burhs (fortified towns).
A land tax known as gafol was first levied in 991 during the reign of Æthelred the Unready following the Battle of Maldon. This became known as the Danegeld, as its purpose was to buy off Danish raiders. The existing system of assessment in hides was used to raise the geld, which was levied at a stated rate per hide (for example, two shillings per hide).
The hide assessments tended to be made in multiples of five hides, which further indicates that the hide was not measured in terms of area. Several historical documents record hide assessments, including:
- The Tribal Hidage (possibly 7th century): a list of tribes and small kingdoms owing tribute to an overlord, with their proportionate liability expressed in hides.
- The Burghal Hidage (early 10th century): a list of boroughs giving the hide assessments of neighbouring districts liable to contribute to the defence of each borough.
- The County Hidage (early 11th century): a list of the number of hides assessed on each county, with each county assigned a round number of hides (for example, Northamptonshire was assigned 3,200 hides while Staffordshire was assigned 500).
Use in Norman England
Following the Norman Conquest, the Normans continued to use the existing hidage system. In 1084, William I laid an exceptionally heavy geld of six shillings upon every hide. At the time, the value of a hide was approximating 20 shillings per year, and the price of an ox was two shillings. Thus, the holder of a hide faced a tax burden equivalent to three of his oxen and roughly one-third of the annual value of his land. A more normal rate was two shillings on each hide.
The Domesday Book of 1086 recorded the assessed values of estates throughout the surveyed area in hides (or carucates or sulungs, depending on the region). By that time, the assessments showed many anomalies, and many hide assessments on lands held by tenants-in-chief were reduced between 1066 and 1086 to effect exemption from or reduction in tax. This again demonstrates that the hide was a tax assessment rather than an area of land.
The last recorded levy of the geld was for 1162–63 during the reign of Henry II, though the tax was not formally abolished. The old assessments were used for a land tax in 1193–94 to raise money for King Richard I's ransom.
Relationship to Other Units
A hide was usually made up of four virgates (also called yardlands), although exceptionally Sussex had eight virgates to the hide. A similar measure used in the northern Danelaw was the carucate, consisting of eight bovates (oxgangs). Kent used a system based on the sulung, consisting of four yokes, which was larger than the hide and on occasion treated as equivalent to two hides. These measures had a different origin, signifying the amount of land that could be cultivated by one plough team rather than a family holding, but all later became artificial fiscal assessments.
In some counties in Domesday Book (for example, Cambridgeshire), the hide is sometimes shown as consisting of 120 acres (30 acres to the virgate). However, as historian H. C. Darby explained, "The acres are, of course, not units of area, but geld acres, i.e. units of assessment." This was a way of dividing the tax assessment on the hide among several owners of parts of the land assessed.
Use in the Holy Roman Empire
Hides of land also formed the basis for tax levies used to equip free warriors (milites) of the Holy Roman Empire. In 807, it was specified that in the region west of the Seine, a vassal who held four or five hides was responsible for appearing at a muster in person, fully equipped for war. Three men who each possessed one hide were grouped so that two of them were responsible for equipping the third, who would go to war in their name. Those holding half-hides were responsible for readying one man for every group of six.
Historical Significance
The hide was the basis of the earliest taxation system in England and the basis for mustering the primitive English militia, the fyrd. It remained in use as a fiscal unit from the Anglo-Saxon period through the Norman period until the late 12th century. Its legacy is preserved in the Domesday Book and in various hidage documents, which remain important primary sources for historians studying early medieval English administration, taxation, and landholding.
