The teamland does not break up easily. As a general rule, we only hear of fractional parts of it when the jurors are compelled to deal with a tenement so small that it can not be said to possess even one teamland[1389].

Land for oxen and wood for swine.

In passing we observe that this phrase, ‘There is land for x teams’ finds exact parallels in two other phrases that are not very uncommon, namely, ‘There is pasture for y sheep’ and ‘There is wood for z pigs’: also that the values given to y and z are often large and round. It may be that the jurors have in their minds equations which connect the area of a wood or pasture with its power of feeding swine or sheep, but an extremely lax use must be made of these equations when the number of sheep is fixed at a neat hundred or the number of pigs at a neat thousand, nor dare we say that the quality of the grass and trees has no influence upon the computation.

Teamland no areal unit.

Secondly, we observe that the teamland when it does break into fractional parts does not break into virgates, bovates, acres, roods, or any other units which we can regard as units in a scheme of areal measurement[1390]. The eighth of a teamland is the land of (or for) an ox. If we wish to speak of the sixteenth of a teamland, we must introduce the half-ox. Now had the jurors been told to state the quantity of the arable land comprised in a tenement, they had at their command plenty of words which would have served this purpose. No sooner will they have told us that there is land for two teams, than they will add that there are five acres of meadow and a wood which is three furlongs in length by two in breadth. We infer that they have not been asked to state the area of the arable. They have been asked to say something about it, but not to state its area.

The commissioners and the teamlands.

What had they been asked to say? Here we naturally turn to that well-known introduction to the Inquisitio Eliensis which professes to describe the procedure of the commissioners and which at many points corresponds with the contents of Domesday Book[1391]. We read that the barons made inquiry about the number of the hides (A) and the number of the teams (C); we do not read any word about the teamlands (B). Quot hidae they must ask; Quot carucae[1392] in dominio et quot hominum they must ask; Quot carucis ibi est terra—there is no such question. On the other hand, the jurors are told to give all the particulars thrice over (hoc totum tripliciter), once with reference to King Edward’s day, once with reference to the date when the Conqueror bestowed the manor, and once with reference to the present time.

The teamlands of Great Domesday.

Now, if these be the interrogatories that the justiciars administered to the jurors, then the answering verdicts as they are recorded in Great Domesday err both by defect and by excess. On the one hand, save when they are dealing with the geld or the value of a tenement, they rarely give any figures from King Edward’s day, and still seldomer do they speak about the date of the Conqueror’s feoffments. Our record does not systematically report that whereas there are now four teams on this manor, there were five in the Confessor’s reign and three when its new lord received it. On the other hand, we obtain the apparently unasked for information that ‘there is land for five teams.’

The teams of Little Domesday.

We turn to Little Domesday and all is altered. Here the words of the writ seem to be punctually obeyed. The particulars are stated three times over, the words tunc, post and modo pointing to the three periods. Thus we learn how many teams there were when Edward was living and when the Conqueror gave the land away. On the other hand, we are not told how many teams ‘could till’ that land, though if the existing teams are fewer than those that were ploughing in time past, it will sometimes be remarked that the old state of things could be ‘restored[1393].’

The Leicestershire formulas.

Next we visit Leicestershire. We may open our book at a page which will make us think that the account of this shire will be very similar to those reports that are typical of Great Domesday. We read that Ralph holds four carucates; that there is land for four teams; that there are two teams on the demesne while the villeins have two[1394]. But then, alternating with entries which run in this accustomed form, we find others which, instead of telling us that there is land for so many teams, will tell us that there were so many upon it in the time of King Edward[1395]. Perhaps, were this part of the survey explored by one having the requisite knowledge, he would teach us that the jurors of some wapentakes use the one formula while the other is peculiar to other wapentakes; but, as the record stands, the variation seems due to the compiling clerk. Be that as it may, we can hardly read through these Leicestershire entries without being driven to believe that substantially the same piece of information is being conveyed to us now in one and now in the other of two shapes that in our eyes are dissimilar. To say, ‘There were four teams here in King Edward’s day’ is much the same as to say, ‘There is land here for four teams.’ Conversely, to say, ‘There is land here for four teams’ is much the same as to say,‘There were four teams here in King Edward’s day.’ For an exact equivalence we must not contend; but if the commissioners get the one piece of information they do not want the other. On no single occasion, unless we are mistaken, are both put on record[1396].

Origin of the inquiry about the teamlands.

When we have thought over these things, we shall perhaps fashion for ourselves some such guess as that which follows. The original scheme of the Inquest was unnecessarily cumbrous. The design of collecting the statistics of the past broke down. Let us imagine a similar attempt made in our own day. Local juries are summoned to swear communal verdicts about the number of horses and oxen that the farmers were keeping twenty years ago. Roughly, very roughly true would such verdicts be, although no foreign invasion, no influx of alien men and words and manners divides us from the fortieth year of Queen Victoria. In Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk some sort of answer about these matters was extracted from the jurors; but frequently they report that the arrangements which exist now have always existed, and by this they mean that they cannot remember any change. Now, when we fail to find in Great Domesday any similar figures, we may ascribe this to one of two causes. Either the commissioners did not collect statistics, or the compilers did not think them worthy of preservation. In some cases the one supposition may be true, in other cases the other. We may be fairly certain that in many or all counties the horses and the pigs and the ‘otiose animals’ that were extant in 1086 were enumerated in the verdicts[1397]. Also we know that Domesday Book is no mere transcript, but is an abstract or digest, and we have cause for believing that those who made it held themselves free to vary the phrases used by the jurors, provided that no material change was thus introduced[1398]. Howbeit, to come to the question that is immediately before us, our evidence seems to tell us that the commissioners and their master discovered that the original programme of the inquest was unnecessarily cumbrous. Once and again in more recent days has a similar discovery been made by royal commissioners. So some interrogatories were dropped.

Modification of the inquiry.

Then we suspect that the inquiry about the number of oxen that were ploughing in Edward’s day became a more practicable, if looser, inquiry about the number of oxen capable of tilling the land. The transition would not be difficult. What King William really wants to know is the agricultural capacity of the tenement. He learns that there are now upon it so many beasts of the plough. But this number may be accidentally large or accidentally small. With an eye to future taxation, he wishes for figures expressive of the normal condition of things. But, according to the dominant idea of his reign, the normal condition of things is their Edwardian condition, that in which they stood before the usurper deforced the rightful heir. And so these two formulas which we see alternating in the account of Leicestershire really do mean much the same thing: ‘There is land for x teams’: ‘There were x teams in the time of King Edward.’

Inquiry as to potential teams.

But if we suppose the justices abandoning the question ‘How many teams twenty years ago?’ in favour of ‘How many teams can there be?’ we see that, though they are easing their task and enabling themselves to obtain answers in the place of silence, they are also substituting for a matter of pure fact what may easily become a matter of opinion. They have left the actual behind and are inquiring about potentialities. They will now get answers more speedily; but who eight centuries afterwards will be able to analyze the mental processes of which these answers are the upshot? It is possible that a jury sets to work with an equation which connects oxen with area, for example, one which tells that a team can plough 120 acres. It is but too possible that this equation varies from place to place and that the commissioners do not try to prevent variations. They are not asking about area; they are asking about the number of teams requisite for the tillage of the tenement. With this and its value as data, William’s ministers hope to correct the antiquated assessments. Some of the commissioners may allow the jurors to take the custom of the district as a guide, while others would like to force one equation on the whole country. Our admiration for Domesday Book will be increased, not diminished, if we remember that it is the work not of machines but of men. Some of the justices seem to have thought that the inquiry about potential teams (B) was not of the first importance, not nearly so important as the inquiries about actual teams (C) and gelding units (A). In various counties we see many entries in which Terra est is followed by a blank space. In Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford we find no systematic mention of teamlands, but only occasional reports which show that at certain places there might be more teams than there are. At the end of the account of the Bishop of Worcester’s triple hundred of Oswaldslaw (an account so favourable to S^t. Mary that it might have been dictated by her representative) we find the remark that in none of these manors could there be any more teams than now are there[1399]. The bishop, who fully understands the object of the inquest, does not mean to have his assessment raised, and the justices are compelled to take the word of jurors every one of whom is the vassal of S^t. Mary.

Normal relation between teams and teamlands.

We know so little as to the commissioners’ intentions, in particular so little as to any design on their part to force upon the whole country some one equation connecting oxen with area, that the task which is set before us if we would explain the relation between the number of the teams (C) and the number of the teamlands (B) that we find in a given county is sometimes an intricate and perhaps insoluble problem. If England be taken as a whole, the two numbers will stand very close to each other. In some counties, for example in Lincolnshire, if at the foot of each page we add up the particulars, we shall long remain in doubt whether B or C will be the greater when our final sum is made. In county after county we shall find a large number of entries in which B = C, and, though there will always be some cases in which, the tenement being waste, C descends to zero, and others in which C is less than B, still the deficiency will be partially redressed by instances in which B falls short of C. On the whole, the relation between the two is that which we might expect. Often there is equality; often the variation is small; but an excess on the part of B is commoner than an excess on the part of C, and when the waste teamlands have been brought into the account, then in most counties B will usually exceed C by 10 per cent, or little more. There are, however, some marked and perplexing exceptions to this rule[1400].

Deficiency of teams in the south-west.

As we pass through the southern counties from east to west, the ratio borne by the teamlands to the teams steadily increases, until ascending by leaps it reaches 1.43:1 (or thereabouts) in Devon and 2:1 in Cornwall. Now to all seeming we are not in a country which has recently been devastated; it is not like Yorkshire; we find no large number of ‘waste’ or unpopulated or unvalued estates. Here and there we may see a tenement which has as many teams as it has teamlands; but in the great majority of cases the preponderance of teamlands is steadily maintained. What does this mean? One conceivable explanation we may decidedly reject. It does not mean a relatively scientific agriculture which makes the most of the ox. Nor does it mean a fertile soil[1401]. Our figures seem to show that men are sparse and poor; also they are servile. We suspect their tillage to be of that backward kind which ploughs enormous tracts for a poor return. Arva per annos mutant et superest ager. Of the whole of the land that is sometimes ploughed, they sow less than two-thirds or a half in any one year: perhaps they sow one-third only, so that of the space which the royal commissioners reckon as three teamlands two-thirds are always idle. We must remember that in modern times the husbandry that prevailed in Cornwall was radically different from that which governed the English open fields. It was what the agrarian historians of Germany call a Feldgrasswirtschaft[1402]. That perhaps is the best explanation which we can give of this general and normal excess of teamlands over teams. But to this we may add that systems of mensuration and assessment which fitted the greater part of England very well, may have fitted Devon, Cornwall and some other western counties very badly[1403]. Those systems are the outcome of villages and spacious common fields where, without measurement, you count the ‘acres’ and the plough-lands or house-lands, and they refuse to register with any accuracy the arrangements of the Celtic hamlets, or rather trevs of the west.

Actual and potential teamlands.

It is by no means impossible that when the commissioners came to a county which was very sparsely peopled (and in Cornwall each ‘recorded man’ might have had near 160 acres of some sort or another all to himself) their question about the number of teamlands or about the number of teams ‘that could plough there’ became a question about remote possibilities, rather than about existing or probable arrangements, and that the answer to it became mere guesswork. On one occasion in Cornwall they are content with the statement that there is land for ‘fifteen or thirty teams[1404].’ In the description of a wasted tract of Staffordshire we see six cases close together in which two different guesses as to the number of the potential teamlands are recorded[1405]:—‘There is land for two teams’, but ‘or three’ is interlined. Five times ‘or two’ is written above ‘one,’ Now this is of importance, for perhaps we may see in it the key to the treatment that wasted Yorkshire receives. How much arable land is there in this village? Well, if by ‘arable land’ you mean land that is ploughed, there is none. If you do not mean this, if you are speaking of a ‘waste’ vill where no land has been ploughed these fifteen years, then you must be content with a speculative answer[1406]. If the ruined cottages were rebuilt and inhabited, if oxen and men were imported, then employment might be found for four or five teams. Called to speculate about these matters, the Yorkshire jurors very naturally catch hold of any solid fact which may serve as a base for computations. This fact they seem to find in the geld assessment. This estate is rated to the geld at two carucates; the assessment seems tolerably fair; so they say that two teams would plough the land. Or again, this estate is rated to the geld at four carucates; but its assessment is certainly too high, so let it be set down for two teamlands[1407]. Even in other parts of the country the jurors may sometimes avail themselves of this device. In particular there are tracts in which they are fond of reporting that the number of teamlands is just equal to (B=A) or just twice as great (B=2A) as the number of gelding carucates. We very much fear, though the ground for this fear can not be explained at this stage of our inquiry, that the figure which the jurors state when questioned about potential teams is sometimes dictated by a traditional estimate which has been playing a part in the geld assessment, and that the number of teamlands is but remotely connected with the agrarian arrangements of 1086. All our other guesses therefore must be regarded as being subject to this horrible suspicion, of which we shall have more to say hereafter[1408].

The land of excessive teams.

This makes it difficult for us to construe the second great aberration from the general rule that the number of the teamlands in a county will slightly exceed the number of teams. In Derby and Nottingham apparent ‘understocking’ becomes the exception and ‘overstocking’ the rule. In Derby there is a good deal of ‘waste’ where we have to reckon teamlands but no teams, and yet on many pages the number of teams is the greater (C>B). In Nottingham there seem to be on the average near 200 teams where there are but 125 teamlands. In many columns of the Lincolnshire survey, and therefore perhaps in some districts of that large and variegated county, the teams have a majority, though, if we have not blundered, they are beaten by the teamlands when the whole shire has been surveyed. It is very possible that a similar phenomenon would have been recorded in Essex and East Anglia if the inquiry in those counties had taken the form that was usual elsewhere, for the teams seem to be thick on the land. Now to interpret the steady excess of teams that we see in Derby and Nottingham is not easy. We can hardly suppose that the jurors are confessing that they habitually employ a superfluity of oxen. Perhaps, however, we may infer that in this district a given area of land will be ploughed by an unusually large number of teams, whereas in Devon and Cornwall a given area will be ploughed, though intermittently, by an unusually small number. In every way the contrast between Devon and Cornwall on the one hand, Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby on the other, is strongly marked. Of the quality of soils something should, no doubt, be said which we are too ignorant to say. An acre would yield more corn in Nottingham and Derby, to say nothing of Lincoln, than in Devon and Cornwall, though the valets that we find in the three Danish shires are by no means so high as those that are displayed by some of the southern counties. But if we ask how many households our average teamland is supporting, then among all the counties that we have examined Lincoln, Nottingham and Derby stand at the very top, while Devon and Cornwall stand with the depopulated Stafford at the very bottom of the list[1409]. Then, again, we see the contrasts between village and trev, between Dane and Celt, between sokeman and slave. Possibly Northampton, Derby and parts of Lincoln really are ‘over-teamed’: that is to say, were the land of these counties to come to the hands of lords who held large and compact estates, the number of plough-teams would be reduced. Where there is freedom there will be some waste. The tenements split into fractions, and the owner of a small piece must keep oxen enough to draw a plough or trust to the friendliness and reciprocal needs of his neighbours. Manorialism has this advantage: it can make the most of the ox. Another possible guess is that the real carucates and bovates of this district (by which we mean the units which locally bear these names and which are the units in the proprietary or tenurial scheme) have few acres, fewer than would be allowed by some equation which the royal commissioners for these counties carry in their minds. Being assured (for example) that the bovates in a certain village or hundred have few acres, they may be allowing the jurors to count as three team-lands (‘of imperial measure’) a space of arable that has been locally treated as four. So, after all, the rule that normally each teamland should have its team and that each team should till its teamland may be holding good in these counties, though the proprietary and agrarian units have differed from those that the commissioners treat as orthodox.

Attempts to explain the excess of teams.

One last guess is lawful after what we have seen in Leicestershire. These Nottinghamshire folk may be telling how many teams there were in King Edward’s time and recording a large increase in the number of oxen and therefore perhaps in the cultivated area. In this case, however, we should expect to find the valet greater than the valuit, while really we find that a fall in value is normal throughout the shire.

Digression to East Anglia.

We must here say one parenthetical word about the account of East Anglia. In one respect it differs from the account of any other district[1410]. We are told of the various landholders that they hold so many carucates or so many acres. Analogy would lead us to suppose that this is a statement touching the amount of geld with which they are charged. Though there is no statement parallel to the Terra est b carucis which we find in most parts of England, still there are some other counties remote from East Anglia—Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford—where no such statement is given to us. In other words, a natural first guess would be that in Norfolk and Suffolk we are informed about A and not about B. But then, it is apparent that some information about A is being given to us by a quite different formula such as we shall not meet outside East Anglia. We are told about a vill that when the hundred pays 20s. for the geld this vill pays so many pence—seven pence halfpenny, it may be, or eight pence three farthings. This is the formula which prescribes how much geld the landholders of the vill must pay and it says nothing of carucates or of acres. Now this might make us think that the carucates and acres which are attributed to the landholders are ‘real’ and not ‘rateable’ areas, and are to be put on a level with the teamlands (B) rather than with the hides or gelding carucates (A) of other counties. Nevertheless, on second thoughts we may return to our first opinion. If these carucates are equivalent to the teamlands of other counties, Norfolk and Suffolk not only differ but differ very widely from the rest of England[1411]. In Norfolk we make about 2,422 carucates and about 4,853 teams, and, however wide of the mark these figures may be[1412], the fact that there are upon an average about two teams to every carucate is apparent on page after page of the record; often the ratio is yet higher. We have seen a phenomenon of the same kind, though less pronounced, in Nottingham; but then, if in Norfolk we proceed to divide the ‘recorded population’ by the number of carucates, we shall get 11 as our quotient. This is so very much higher than anything that we have seen elsewhere that we are daunted by it; for, even though we recall the possibility that a good many tenants in this free county are counted twice because they hold under two lords, still this reflection will hardly enable us to make the requisite allowance. To this it may be added that if we divide the acreage of Norfolk by its carucates and treat the carucates as teamlands, the quotient will place Norfolk among the counties in which the smallest part of the total area was under the plough. Further, it will be observed that the statement about the geldability of the vills does not enable us to bring home any particular sum to any given man. Be it granted that the sum due from a vill is fixed by the proposition that it contributes thirteen pence to every pound levied from the hundred, we have still to decide how much Ralph and how much Roger, two landholders of the vill, must contribute; and our decision will, we take it, be dictated by the statement that Ralph has one carucate and Roger 60 acres. We fear therefore that here again we can not penetrate through the rateable to the real[1413].

The teamland no areal measure.

About the ‘land for one team’ we can hardly get beyond vague guesswork, and may seriously doubt whether the inquiry as to the number of possible ploughs was interpreted in the same manner in all parts of the country. Here it may have been regarded as a reference to the good old time of King Edward, here to the local custom; there an attempt may have been made to enforce some royal ‘standard measure,’ and there again men were driven to speculate as to what might happen if a wilderness were once more inhabited. But unless we are mistaken, the first step towards a solution of the many problems that beset us is taken when we perceive that the jurors have not been asked to state the areal extent of the tilled or the tillable land.

Eyton’s theory.

Far other, as is well known, was the doctrine of one whom all students of Domesday revere. For Mr Eyton the teamland was precisely 120 of our statute acres[1414]. The proof offered of this lies in a comparison of the figures given by Domesday with the superficial content of modern parishes. What seems to us to have been proved is that, if we start with the proposed equation, we shall rarely be brought into violent collision with ascertained facts, and that, when such a collision seems imminent, it can almost always be prevented by the intervention of some plausible hypothesis about shifted boundaries or neglected wastes. More than this has not been done. Always at the end of his toil the candid investigator admits that when he has added up all the figures that Domesday gives for arable, meadow, wood and pasture, the land of the county is by no means exhausted. Then the residue must be set down as ‘unsurveyed’ or ‘unregistered’ and guesses made as to its whereabouts[1415]. Then further, this method involves theories about lineal and superficial measurements which are, in our eyes, precarious.

Domesday’s lineal measure.

One word about this point must be said, though we can not devote much room to it. The content of various spaces, such as woods and pastures, is often indicated by a reference to linear standards, leagues, furlongs, perches, feet, and there seems to be little doubt that the main equations which govern the system are these:

Now we read numerous statements which take the following form:—‘It is x leagues (furlongs, perches) long and y wide,’ or, to take a concrete example, ‘The wood is 1 league long and 4 furlongs wide.’ The question arises whether we are justified in making this mean that here is a wood whose superficial content is equal to that of a rectangular parallelogram 480 statute perches long by 160 statute perches wide. We are rash in imposing our perch of 16·5 feet on the whole England of the eleventh century, even though we are to measure arable land. We are rasher in using that perch for the measurement of woodland. But perhaps we are rasher still in supposing that the Domesday jurors have true superficial measurement in their minds[1416]. We strongly suspect that they are thinking of shape as well as of size, and may be giving us the extreme diameters of the wood or some diameters that they guess to be near the mean. If a clergyman told us that his parish was 3 miles long by 2 wide, we should not accuse him of falsehood or blunder if we subsequently discovered that in shape it was approximately a right-angled triangle and contained only some 3 superficial miles. And now let us observe how rude these statements are. The Norfolk jurors are in the habit of recording the length and the breadth of the vills. Occasionally they profess to do this with extreme accuracy[1417]. However, we reckon that in about 100 out of 550 cases they say that the vill is one league long by a half-league wide. This delightfully symmetrical county therefore should have quite a hundred parishes, each of which contains close upon 720 acres. Among the 800 parishes of modern Norfolk there are not 70 whose size lies between 600 and 800 acres. We are not saying that time spent over these lineal measurements is wasted, but an argument which gets to the size of the teamland by postulating in the first place that our statute perch was commonly used for all purposes throughout England, and in the second that these lineal can be converted into superficial measurements by simple arithmetic, is not very cogent and is apt to become circular, for the teamland contains its 120 acres because that is the space left for it by parochial boundaries when we have measured off the woods and pastures, and our measurement of the woods and pastures is correct because it will leave 120 acres for every teamland.

Measured teamlands.

One more word about these lineal measurements. In Norfolk and Suffolk the total area of the vills is indicated by them, and so it is in Yorkshire also. Now, unless we err, it sometimes happens that if we arithmetically deduce the total area from its recorded length and breadth, and then subtract from that area the content of any measured woods and pastures that there may be, we shall be left with too little space to give each East Anglian carucate or each Yorkshire teamland 120 acres and with far too little to allow a similar area to each East Anglian team. Try one experiment. At Shereford in Norfolk we have to force at least one carucate on which there are two teams into a space that is 3 furlongs in length by 3 in breadth[1418]. That means, if our method be sound, that each team has at the utmost 45 acres to till. Try we Yorkshire. There also we shall find entries which to all appearance will not suffer us to give 120 acres to the teamland.

It would seem then that in these cases the utmost limit for the teamland is 60, 80, 90 acres. Then again, there are a few precious instances in which lineal measures are used in order to indicate the size of a piece of land the whole of which is arable. This occurs so rarely that we may fairly expect something exceptional. The result is bewildering. At Thetford we hear of land that is half a league long and half a league wide: ‘the whole of this land is arable and 4 teams can plough it[1422].’ Here then, but 90 acres are assigned to the teamland. We journey to Yorkshire and first we will take an entry which suits the Eytonian doctrine well enough. ‘There are 13 carucates of land less one bovate for geld; 8 teams can plough them.... Arable land 10 quarentines long and equally broad[1423].’ In this case we have 1000 acres to divide among 8 teamlands, and this would make each teamland 125 acres:—we could hardly expect a pleasanter quotient. But on the same page we have an entry which tells of a manor with 60 carucates and 6 bovates for geld and 35 teamlands where the ‘arable land’ is described as being ‘2 leagues long and 2 [leagues] wide[1424].’ This gives nearly 165 acres to the teamland. There are two Lincolnshire entries which, when treated in a similar way, give 160[1425] and 225[1426] acres to the teamland. Then there is a Staffordshire entry which gives no less than 360 acres to each teamland, though it gives only 160 to each existing team[1427]. The suspicion can not but cross our minds that as regards the amount of land that had 8 oxen for its culture there may have been as wide a difference between the various shires in the days of the Confessor as there was in the days of Arthur Young; only, whereas in the eighteenth century a little space ploughed by many oxen was a relic of barbarism, it was in the eleventh an index of prosperity, freedom, a thick population and a comparatively intense agriculture. But theories about the facts of husbandry will not dispel the whole of the fog which shrouds the Domesday teamland.

Amount of ploughed land in England.

That, if all England be taken as a whole, the average teamland of Domesday Book would contain about 120 acres seems possible, and since we ourselves are committed to the belief that the old traditional hide had arable acres to this number, it may be advisable that we should examine some districts of ancient England through the medium of the hypothesis that Domesday’s teamland has a long-hundred of our statute acres. In Column 1. of the following table we place the result obtained if we multiply a county’s teamlands (or in the case of Sussex and Gloucester the teams) by 120; and in the following columns we give the figures which show the state of the county in 1895. In order to make a rough comparison the easier, we give round figures and omit three noughts, so that, for example, 371 stands for 371,000 acres[1428].

Decrease of arable.

These figures are startling enough. We are required to believe that in many counties, even in Sussex where the forest still filled a large space, there were more acres ploughed T. R. W. than are ploughed T. R. V., while in some cases the number has been reduced by one half during the intervening centuries. Were the old acres in Oxfordshire as large as our own, a good deal more than three-fifths of that county was ploughed. Much might be said of the extreme futility of ancient agriculture. Then we should have to remember the ‘inclosures’ of the sixteenth century; also the movement which in our own day threatens to carry us back to ‘the pastoral state[1429].’ We should have to scrutinize those abundant marks of the plough which occur in our meadows and on our hillsides, even where we least expect them, and to distinguish those which were being made in the days of the Norman conqueror from those which tell of a much later age when ‘the Corsican tyrant’ threatened our shores.

The food problem.

And then there is the great food problem. At this point we might desire the aid of a jury of scientific experts. We are, indeed, but ill prepared to deliver a charge or to define a clear issue, but the main question may be roughly stated thus:—South of Yorkshire and Cheshire we have some 275,000 ‘recorded men,’ some 75,000 recorded teams and (if we allow 120 statute acres to every team) some 9,000,000 statute acres of arable land[1430]. Is this supply of arable adequate or excessive for the population? Unfortunately, however, the question involves more than one unknown quantity.

What was the population?

In the first place, by what figure are we to multiply the number of ‘recorded men’ before we shall obtain the total population? Here we have to remember that nothing is said by our record about some of the largest towns and that the figures which we obtain from Norwich[1431] suggest that the inhabitants of London, Winchester and the like should not be neglected, even by those who are aiming at the rudest computation. Then what we read of Bury St Edmunds[1432] suggests that around every great abbey were clustered many artificers, servants and bedesmen who as a general rule were not enumerated by the jurors. We must also remember the monks, nuns and canons and the large households of barons and prelates[1433]. Again, it is by no means unlikely that, despite a high rate of mortality among children, the household of the ordinary villein was upon an average larger than is the household of the modern cottager or artizan, for the blood-bond was stronger than it is now-a-days. Married brothers with their wives and children may not unfrequently have dwelt in one house and may be described in our record as a single villanus because they hold an undivided inheritance. On the other hand, we have seen reason to think that in the eastern villages many men may be counted more than once[1434]. Shall we, for the sake of argument, multiply the recorded men by 5? This would give us a population of 1,375,000 souls[1435].

What was the field-system?

What portion of the arable land shall we suppose to be sown in any one year? Some grave doubts may occur to us before we put this portion higher than one half[1436]. Common opinion would perhaps strike a balance between two-field and three-field husbandry. So we will suppose that out of 9 million acres 5 million are sown.

What was the acre’s yield?

Then comes the insoluble question about the acre’s yield. Even could we state an average, this would not be very serviceable, for every district had to feed itself in every year, and the statistics of the later middle ages suggest that the difference between good and bad years was very large, while the valuations of the manors in Domesday Book seem to tell us that the difference between fertile and sterile, forward and backward counties was much wider in the eleventh century than it is in our own day. The scientific agriculturist of the thirteenth century proposed to sow an acre with two bushels of wheat and regarded ten bushels as the proper return[1437]. Walter of Henley proved by figures that a three-fold return would not be remunerative, unless prices were exceptionally good, but he evidently thought of this exiguous yield as a possibility[1438], and yet, as we have seen, he represents the ‘high farming’ of his time and in his two-course husbandry would plough the land thrice over between every two crops. In the first half of the next century we can not put the average as high as 8 bushels[1439]. To eyes that look for 29 or 30, a yield of from 6 to 10 may seem pitiful; and the ‘miserable husbandry’ that Arthur Young saw in the west of England was producing from 15 to 20[1440]. However, there are countries in which a crop of wheat which gave 10 of our bushels to one of our acres would not be very small[1441]. For our present purpose, the figure that we should wish to obtain would be, not that which expressed the yield of an average year, but that which was the outcome of a bad year, for we have to keep folk alive and they can not wait for the good times. Let us then take our hypothesis from Walter of Henley. We suppose a yield of 6 bushels, 2 of which must be retained for seed. This would give us 20 million bushels as food, or, we will say, 15 bushels for every person.

Of beer.

Now, had we to deal with modern wheat and modern mills, we might argue that the bushel of wheat would weigh 60 pounds, that the weight of flour would be 72 per cent. of the weight of grain[1442], and that every human mouth could thus be provided with a little more than 28 ounces of flour every day, or, to put it another way, with bread amounting to nine-sixteenths of a four pound loaf[1443]. Some large, but indefinable, deduction should be made from this amount on the score of poor grain and wasteful processes. As the sum stands, we are at present proposing to give to each person a great deal more wheat-flour than would be obtained if the total amount consumed now-a-days in the United Kingdom were divided by the number of its inhabitants[1444]. But it need hardly be said that the problem is far more complex than are our figures. In the first place, we have to withdraw from the men of 1086 a large quantity, perhaps more than a half, of the wheat-flour that we have given them in order to supply its place with other cereals[1445], in particular with barley and oats, much of which, together with some of the wheat[1446], will be consumed in the form of beer. And who shall fathom that ocean? Multum biberunt de cerevisia Anglicana, as the pope said. Their choice lay for the more part between beer and water. In the twelfth century the corn-rents paid to the bishop of Durham often comprised malt, wheat and oats in equal quantities[1447]. In the next century the economy of the canons of S^t. Paul’s was so arranged that for every 30 quarters of wheat that went to make bread, 7 quarters of wheat, 7 of barley and 32 of oats went to make beer[1448]. The weekly allowance of every canon included 30 gallons[1449]. In one year their brewery seems to have produced 67,814 gallons from 175 quarters of wheat, a like quantity of barley and 708 quarters of oats[1450]. With such figures before us, it becomes a serious question whether we can devote less than a third of the sown land to the provision of drink. The monk, who would have growled if he got less than a gallon a day, would, we may suppose, consume in the course of a year 20 bushels of barley or an equivalent amount of other grain: in other words, the produce, when seed-corn is deducted, of from two to three acres of land; and perhaps to every mouth in England we must give half a gallon daily[1451].

The Englishman’s diet.

But if we can not make teetotallers of our ancestors (and in very truth we can not) neither may we convert them to vegetarianism. What we can read of the provender-rents paid in the days before the Conquest suggests that those who were well-to-do, including the monks, consumed a great deal of mutton, pork, poultry, fish, eels, cheese and honey[1452]. This would relieve the arable of part of the pressure that it would otherwise have borne, for, though we already hear of two manors which between them supply 6000 dog-loaves for the king’s hounds[1453], and also read of pigs that are fattened with corn[1454], it is not very probable that any beasts, save those that laboured, got much from the arable, except the straw, and the stubble which we may suspect of having been abundantly mixed with grass and weeds. It is likely, however, that the oxen which were engaged in ploughing were fed at times with oats. Walter of Henley would keep his plough-beasts at the manger for five-and-twenty weeks in the year and would during that time give 70 bushels of oats to every eight of them[1455]. At this rate our 75,000 teams would require 5,250,000 bushels of oats, and on this score we might have to deduct some 4 million bushels of wheat[1456] from our 20 millions and reduce by one-fifth each person’s allowance of grain. But then, it is by no means certain that we ought to transplant Walter’s practices into the eleventh century; we have seen that he expected much of his oxen[1457].

Is the arable super-abundant?

At first sight it may seem incredible that the average human being annually required the produce of nearly seven acres. But observe how rapidly the area will disappear. We deduct a half for the idle shift; a third of the remainder we set apart as beer-land. We have not much more than two acres remaining, and may yet have to feed oxen and horses. But suppose that we concede to every human mouth the wheat of two full acres; we can not say for certain that we are giving it a quarter of grain, even though we suppose each acre to yield more than was to be had always and everywhere in the fourteenth century[1458].

Amount of pasturage.

Our doubt about the food of the oxen makes it difficult for us to state even the outlines of another important problem. Are we leaving pasture enough for the beasts? Their number was by no means small. South of the southern frontier of Cheshire and Yorkshire we must accommodate in the first place some 600,000 beasts of the plough, and in the second place and for their maintenance a sufficiency of bulls, cows and calves. Now-a-days England keeps 4,723,000 head of cattle, but we have been excluding from view near a quarter of England. Then there are other animals to be provided for. Their number we can not guess, for apparently the statistics that we obtain from the south-western and eastern counties give us only the stock that is on the demesne of the manors[1459]. We have seen that the peasants in East Anglia had sheep enough to make their ‘fold-soke’ an important social institution[1460]. Also we have much evidence of large herds of pigs belonging to the villeins, though these we may send to the woods. But, attending only to the dominical stock, we will begin by looking at the manor which stands first in the Cambridgeshire Inquest. The lord has 5 teams, 8 head of not-ploughing cattle, 4 rounceys, 10 pigs and 480 sheep. Then, in the accompanying table we will give some figures from various counties which show the amount of stock that is kept where there are 200 teams or thereabouts.

Even if we look only at the flocks which belong to the holders of manors, we may have to feed a million sheep south of the Humber, and, though all England now maintains more than 15 millions, it does this by devoting a large portion of its arable to the growth of turnips and the like. No doubt, the medieval sheep were wretched little animals; also large numbers of them were slaughtered and salted at the approach of winter; but from the arable they got only the stubble, and every extension of the ploughed area deteriorated the quality besides diminishing the quantity of the pasture that was left for their hungry mouths. As already said, our forefathers did not live on bread and beer; bacon must have been plentiful among them[1461]. Also many fleeces were needed for their clothing. As to meadow land (pratum), that is, land that was mown, it was sparse and precious[1462]; the supply of it was often insufficient even for the lord’s demesne oxen. At least in Cambridgeshire, we find traces of a theory which taught that every ox should have an acre of meadow; but commonly this was an unrealized ideal[1463]. In Dorset now-a-days there will be near 95,000 acres growing grass for hay, whereas there were not 7,000 acres of meadow in 1086[1464]. Therefore we are throwing a heavy strain on the pasture[1465].

Area of the villages.

Lastly, we must not neglect, as some modern calculators do, the sites of the villages, the straggling group of houses with their court-yards, gardens and crofts, for this deducts a sensible piece from the conceivably tillable area. An exceedingly minute account of Sawston in Cambridgeshire which comes from the year 1279 shows us a territory thus divided: Messuages, Gardens, Crofts, etc., 85 acres: Arable, 1243 acres: Meadow, 82 acres: Several Pasture, 30 acres. The neighbouring village of Whittlesford shows us: Messuages, Gardens, Crofts, etc., 35 acres: Arable, 1363 acres: Meadow, 44 acres: Several Pasture, 35 acres. In both cases we must add some unspecified quantity of Common Pasture[1466]. The core of the village was not large when compared with its fields; but it can not be ignored.

Produce and value.

Recurring for a moment to our food problem, we may observe that the values that are set on the manors in Domesday Book seem to point to a very feeble yield of corn. Without looking for extreme cases, we shall often find that the value of a teamland is no more than 10 shillings. Now let us make the hypothesis most favourable to fertility and suppose that this ‘value’ represents a pure, net rent[1467]. We will make another convenient but extravagant assumption; we will say that 24 bushels of wheat will make 365 four-pound loaves. If then a lord is to get one such loaf every day from each teamland that is valued at 10 shillings, the price of wheat will be a good deal less than 5 pence the bushel; if two daily loaves are to be had, the price of the bushel must be reduced below 2¹⁄₂ pence, for the cost of grinding and baking is not negligible. Whether this last price could be assumed as normal must be very doubtful, for the little that Domesday tells us about the price of grain is told in obscure and disputable terms[1468]. However, the evidence that comes to us from the twelfth[1469] and thirteenth centuries[1470] suggests a rough equivalence between an ox and two quarters of wheat, and in the eleventh the traditional price of the ox was 30 pence. But at any rate, the lord who has a small village with five teamlands, and who lets it to a firmarius, will receive a rent which, when it is stated in loaves, is by no means splendid. He will not be much of a hláford, or have many ‘loaf-eaters’ if his whole revenue is £2. 10s. or, in other words, if he is lord of but one small village in the midlands.

Varying size of acres.

Here we must leave this question to those who are expert in the history of agriculture; but if some relief is required, it may be plausibly obtained by a reduction in the size of the ancient acre. A small piece off the village perches will mean a great piece off the 2,600 teamlands of Oxfordshire, and we seem to have the best warrant for a recourse to this device where it is most needed. The pressure upon our space appears to be at its utmost in Oxfordshire, and just for that county we have first-rate evidence of some very small acres[1471]. On the other hand, in Lincolnshire and generally in the north, where we read of abnormally large acres, we seem to have room enough for them. And here may be a partial explanation of the apparent fact that the teamland of Oxfordshire does not support three, while that of Lincolnshire supports five recorded men.

The teamland in Cambridgeshire.

In these last paragraphs we have been speaking of averages struck for large spaces; but if we come to some particular districts we shall have the greatest difficulty in allowing 120 acres to every teamland. This is the case in southern Cambridgeshire. In that county Domesday’s list of vills is so nearly the same as the modern list of parishes that we run no great risk in comparing the ancient teamlands with the modern acreage vill by vill, if we also compare them hundred by hundred. The general result will be to make us unwilling to bestow on every teamland a long-hundred of acres. One example shall be given. The Whittlesford Hundred[1472] contains five vills and we can not easily concede to it more land than is now within its boundary. In the following table we give for each vill its modern acreage, then the number of its teamlands, then the result of multiplying that number by 120.

Whittlesford Hundred.

In two cases out of five we have already come upon sheer physical impossibility. But let us suppose some rearrangement of parish boundaries and look at the whole hundred. We are giving it 9900 acres of arable and leaving 1437 for other purposes. Then we are told of ‘meadow for’ 37 teams and this at the rate usual in Cambridgeshire[1475], means 296 acres, so that we have only 1141 left. On this we must place the sites of five villages, houses, farmyards, fourteen water-mills, cottages, gardens. Probably we want 250 acres at least to meet this demand. Not 900 acres remain for pasture. The dominical flocks and herds were not large, but the lords were receiving divers ploughshares in return for the pasture rights accorded to the tenants and in some of the vills there was not nearly enough meadow for the oxen of the villeins. It is difficult to believe that 87 per cent. of a Cambridgeshire hundred was under the plough, and that less than 8 per cent. was pasture. However, we know too little to say that even this was impossible. In the twelfth century we read of manors in which there is no pasture, except upon the arable field that is taking its turn of idleness[1476]. We must remember that this idle field was not fallowed until the summer[1477]; also we may suspect that much that was not corn grew on the medieval corn-land.

The hides of Domesday.

Saddened by our encounter with the teamlands (B)—and our last word about them is not yet said—we turn to the hides, carucates and sulungs (A). With a fair allowance for errors we feel safe in believing that the total number mentioned by Domesday Book falls short of 70,000—and yet time was when we spoke of 60,000 knight’s fees of 5 hides apiece[1478]. Let us then recall once more those tales of taxation that are told by the chronicler[1479]. If Cnut raised a geld of £72,000, then, even if we allow him something from those remote northern lands which William’s commissioners did not enter, the rate of the impost can hardly have been less than a pound on the hide. We are not told that he raised this sum in the course of a single year; but, even if we suppose it spread over four years, it is a monstrous exaction, and we can hardly fancy that in earlier days the pirates had waited long for the £24,000 or £30,000 that were the price of their forbearance. And yet, as already said, our choice seems to lie between believing these stories and charging the annalist with reckless mendacity. Hereafter we shall argue that some ancient statements about hidage, even some made by Bede himself, deserve no credit; but it is one thing for a Northumbrian scholar of the eighth century to make very bad guesses about the area of Sussex, and another for a chronicler of the eleventh to keep on telling us that a king levies £21,099 or £11,048 or the like, if these sums are wildly in excess of those that were demanded. As to the value of money, the economists must be heard; but it is probable that the sea-rovers insisted on good weight[1480], and when in the twelfth century we can begin to trace the movement of prices, in particular the price of oxen, they are not falling but rising. However, we have already said our say about the enormity of the danegeld.

Relation between hide and teamland.

We are now to investigate the ‘law’ of A and its relation to B. We shall soon be convinced that we are not dealing with two perfectly independent variables. There will often be wide variations between the two; A may descend to zero, while B is high, and in some counties we shall see a steady tendency which makes A decidedly higher or decidedly lower than B. And yet, if we look at England as a whole, we can not help feeling that in some sense or another A ought to be equal to B, and that, when this equation holds good, things are in a condition that we may call normal. Perhaps, as we shall see hereafter, the current notion has been that the teamland should be taxed as a hide if it lies in a district where a teamland will usually be worth about a pound a year. But for the time we will leave value out of account, and, to save words, we will appropriate three terms and use them technically. When A = B, there is ‘equal rating’; when A > B, there is ‘over-rating’; when A < B there is ‘under-rating.’ We shall find, then, that in many counties there are numerous cases of equal rating. Thus in Buckinghamshire we count