judgment; and those who are not prepared to do this would find little or no interest in a mere statement of evidences and inferences which would have to be interrupted at every turn by doubts, exceptions, and qualifications, if it were to represent our existing knowledge with tolerable accuracy.1 I shall therefore give, on my own responsibility, a summary of those results which I believe to be now either accepted as certain, or at least rendered highly probable by the labours of the learned contributors to Domesday Studies.

The primary object of the Domesday inquest was to ascertain the contributions on which, according to existing law and custom, the king could count for maintaining the armed force of the country. Part of the king's revenue was in the nature of rent, derived from lands of which he was lord. But rent (gafol) due to the king as territorial lord must be carefully distinguished from the public tax (geld) due to him, in his political capacity.

The taxpaying capacity or liability of land was assessed in terms of units of superficial measure, which were the hide, generally speaking, in the southern or properly English counties, the carucate or ploughland in the northern counties, where Danish influence had been strong. These measures of surface had a real and definite value—that is to say, a hide or a carucate meant, in a given district, a certain number of acres. We need not here and now consider whether they had always been definite. Perhaps we might find that the native English hide began as a term of vague description, and only by degrees acquired a numerical meaning; whereas the carucate is more likely to have come in, so to speak, ready measured.2 It is certain that the number of acres in a hide or a carucate, and also the actual dimensions of the acre itself, might and did vary from district to district, and there might be different customary acres even in different fields within the same township. Further, the

number of hides or carucates for which a given manor is assessed is not necessarily equal to the actual acreage, any more than the modern rateable value of land or a house is necessarily or usually equal to the full rental. In many cases the assessment is plainly small in proportion, not only to the total extent of land, but to the

1 Mr. Pell's elaborate numerical theories have failed to command much assent. Cf. Mr. Round's papers in the Archæological Review, June 1888 and Sept. 1889, and Mr. Elton's in the Law Quarterly Review, iv. p. 276.

2 Cf. Mr. M. Kovalevsky in the Law Quarterly Review, iv. 266, 272.

extent of cultivated land. This may be well seen by turning to any of the royal manors in Devonshire; a test which the excellent parallel edition of the Exchequer and Exeter texts of the survey now in course of publication by the Devonshire Association enables us to apply with peculiar convenience. Local and personal considerations of policy or favour procured here and elsewhere an assessment which might be greatly below the real value. No fixed relation between the assessed or 66 'geldable" value and the actual area can be assigned. Further, it seems probable that even where the assessment was intended to correspond with the actual extent of cultivated land, only the land which was under cultivation at one time was counted-in other words, the fallow was not counted. Thus, under the two-field system of medieval tillage which held its own long after the Conquest, only half the ploughland would be reckoned; under the three-field system, only two-thirds. We owe this suggestion to Canon Taylor, who has worked it out in detail for certain parts of the northern counties, and has made it explain many apparent anomalies. Among other things, it accounts at once for the hide being sometimes called 120 acres (the taxable quantity) and sometimes 240 (the full acreage of both the tilled and the fallow fields in a two-field course). In a three-field course the 180 acres assigned to a ploughland by Fleta give for the taxable area the same number of 120 acres. At the same time neither this nor any other explanation will hold universally.

Although the hide, carucate, and so forth had various customary values in different parts of the country, there is a good deal of evidence that at the time of the Conquest there was a tendency to a mean or normal value, and that for the hide this was 120 acres (or a long hundred, according to the method of counting then so popular as to be called "anglicus numerus "), divided into four virgates or yardlands. The carucate was normally of the same acreage as the hide, but divided into eight bovates or ox-gangs, implying that the carucate was fixed with reference to the quantity of land which a full team of eight oxen (caruca) could till in the year. How far and where this eight-ox team was an existing fact, and how far and where an ideal common denominator used by the surveyors for the comparison of different areas and qualities of land, is one of the questions which seem still to demand further and more minute examination. The phrase "aratra fortissima in dominio," which occurs several times in the Burton Cartulary, should be noted in connection with it.

L

The hide was commonly divided into four yardlands, but we meet with a division into six, pointing perhaps to a change from two-field to three-field tillage, and also (as Mr. Stuart Moore has pointed out) with an odd and puzzling division into five. When the number of acres in the virgate is not the normal number of thirty, it is generally a multiple of twelve, such as forty-eight or thirty-six. These cases may be evidence of a two-field system; in the Worcester Register virgates of thirty-six acres are expressly said to consist of "xviij in utroque campo." It appears from the Ramsay Cartulary that sometimes Danish influence displaced the measurement by hides and virgates, without putting measurement by carucates in its place. As to the dimensions of the local acre, it may always be conceived as formed by a strip of a furlong (= 40 rods or 10 chains) in length and four rods in breadth. The result varied according to the length taken for the rod, which might be less or more than the statutory rod of 15 feet. Thus the "forest acre," constructed with the rod of 18 feet, was in use for measuring woodlands in relatively modern times. Many of us have wondered from our youth up why such a seemingly irrational number as 5 yards should make one rod, pole, or perch. Mr. Pell suggests that the standard measure was fixed at this value as a kind of compromise among the many customary measures.

Finally, Domesday was a survey of estates and their taxpaying capacity, not of population for its own sake. Inferences as to the actual numbers and personal condition of the dwellers on the land must therefore be made with caution.

VI

SIR HENRY MAINE AND HIS WORK1

SIR HENRY MAINE preceded me in the office which it has pleased the University to confer upon me; he was its first holder; its conditions were framed for the purpose of giving scope to his peculiar genius in the lines of inquiry which he had himself opened. This imposes on me, and those who may come after me in this Chair, the duty, no facile one, but therefore the more honourable, of working, so far as our powers extend, in the spirit of the illustrious leader whom we have this year lost. It is a task that will not be soon exhausted. Through many years to come there will be new discoveries and new conquests to be made in the regions to which Maine pointed the way. For this reason alone it would be natural and fitting that some words should be said in this place and as at this time (though the time is not yet ripe for full judgment) of what we owe to Sir Henry Maine. But I have to speak of more than a predecessor, of more than a teacher; of one in whom, seeking the guidance of a master, I found not only

1 A Public Lecture delivered in the University of Oxford, November 10, 1888.

a master but a friend. Now good advice is plentiful in the world; a young man who suffers for want of it must be singularly maladroit or unfortunate. But there is something much less common, the interest and sympathy which turn an older man's advice from a mere benevolent opinion, a more or less profitable direction, into a vital moving force. I know of no more sacred debts than these, and of nothing which goes so near to add to the relation of master and disciple, without abating anything of respect, a charm as of the friendship of equals.

Thus I am bound by many ties to the memory to which I devote this hour; and I do so, not for the sake of a remembrance and fame which are of themselves amply secure, but rather for the sake of the example left to us here, and that we may not be defaulters in a pious and honourable duty. For this purpose it is not needful, as it would hardly be possible, to speak at large of Sir Henry Maine's career and public services. Only those who knew his work intimately can measure its value, and it will be proper to limit our testimony to that which we know, and which directly concerns our studies here. Our studies, I say, not merely legal or historical study. For we have here an admirable example of the effective connection of the Universities with the general life of the nation, and the intimate connection of that efficiency with those branches of their studies which pass for unpractical. It is not too much to say that England and India, so far as human reason can assign causes in this kind, owed Sir Henry Maine to the