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Hide (unit)
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The hide was a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax, in Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th to the 11th centuries. It continued in use for some time after the Norman Conquest. A hide was made up of 4 virgates. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide. A similar measure was used in the northern Danelaw, known as a carucate, consisting of 8 bovates, and Kent used a system based on a "sulung", consisting of 4 "yokes", which was larger than the hide and on occasion treated as equivalent to two hides.
Originally the hide seems to have represented an amount of land sufficient to support a peasant and his household, but it became the basis of an artificial system of assessment of land for purposes of taxation.
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Encyclopedia
The hide was a unit used in assessing land for liability to "geld", or land tax, in Anglo-Saxon England from the 7th to the 11th centuries. It continued in use for some time after the Norman Conquest. A hide was made up of 4 virgates. The geld would be collected at a stated rate per hide. A similar measure was used in the northern Danelaw, known as a carucate, consisting of 8 bovates, and Kent used a system based on a "sulung", consisting of 4 "yokes", which was larger than the hide and on occasion treated as equivalent to two hides.
Originally the hide seems to have represented an amount of land sufficient to support a peasant and his household, but it became the basis of an artificial system of assessment of land for purposes of taxation. Many details of the development of the system remain obscure. According to Sir Frank Stenton, "Despite the work of many great scholars the hide of early English texts remains a term of elusive meaning." By the end of the Anglo-Saxon period it was a measure of the taxable worth of an area of land, but it had no fixed relationship to its acreage, the number of ploughteams working on it, or its population; nor was it limited to the arable land on an estate. According to Bailey, "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."
The total number of hides in a given area was imposed from above. In later Anglo-Saxon England, each county was assigned a round number of hides, for which it would be required to answer. For instance, at an early date in the 11th century, Northamptonshire was assigned 3,200 hides, while Staffordshire was assigned only 500. This number was then divided up beween the hundreds in the county. Theoretically there were 100 hides in each hundred, but this proportion was often not maintained, for example because of changes in the hundreds or in the estates comprising them or because assessments were altered when the actual cash liability was perceived as being too high or too low or for other reasons now unknown.
The hides within each hundred were then divided between villages, estates or manors, usually in blocks or multiples of 5 hides, though this was not always maintained. Differences from the norm could result from estates being moved from one hundred to another, or from adjustments to the size of an estate or alterations in the number of hides for which an estate should answer.
The principle of an assessment imposed on a community from above, leaving the members of the community to decide how the liability should be divided between themselves, goes back to a very early date, as is shown by the document known as the Tribal Hidage. This is a very early list thought to date possibly from the 7th century, but known only from a later and unreliable manuscript. It is a list of tribes and small kingdoms owing tribute to an overlord and of the proportionate liability or quota imposed on each of them. This is expressed in terms of hides, though we have no details as to how these were arrived at nor how they were converted into a cash liability.
Hide assessments could also be used for the apportionment of other obligations to which a community was liable, not only a pecuniary liability. The Burghal Hidage (early 10th century) is a list of boroughs giving the hide assessments of neighbouring districts which were liable to contribute to the defence of the borough, each contributing to the maintenance and manning of the fortifications in proportion to the number of hides for which they answered.
The County Hidage (early 11th century) lists the total number of hides to be assessed on each county, an earlier view of the system existing at the time of the Norman Conquest.
Finally, Domesday Book, recording the results of the survey made on the orders of King William I in 1086, states in hides (or carucates or sulungs as the case might be) the then current assessments on estates throughout the area covered by the survey. By that date the assessments showed many anomalies.
As each local community had the task of deciding how its quota of hides should be divided amongst the lands held by that community, different communities used different criteria, depending on the type of land held and on the way in which an individual's wealth was reckoned within that community. It is self-evident that no single comprehensive definition is possible.
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