Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/129

 i. FEB. 6, 1904.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

LONDON, SATU1WAY, FEBRUARYS, 190f>.

CONTENTS.-No. 6.

NOTES : The Ploughgang and other Measures, 101 The First Edition of Horace, 103 Carpenter's 'Geography Delineated,' 101 Pig and Kill-pig Bosham's Inn, Ald- wych, 105 C. Bernard Gibson Relics of St. Gregory the Great, 108,

QUERIES: J. Turin, French Clockmaker " Twenty thousand ruffians "John Gordon and Zoffany Hudders- field History Court Posts under Stuart Kings Composer and Origin of Air Dolores, Musical Composer Son of Napoleon I "Gimerro," 107 Nicholas Ferrar's 'Har- monies' "The eternal feminine" Wolfe Children on the Stage Buckingham Hall, Cambridge, 108 Mortimer Christabella Tyrrell Kipples Psalter and Latin MS. Torch and Taper, 109.
 * Recommended to Mercy 'Carved Stone Col. T. Cooper

REPLIES : Lamb, Coleridge, and Mr. May. 109-" Chape- roned by her father" Shakespeare's "Virtue of neces- sity," 110 Emmet and De Fontenay Letters Ipswich Apprantice Books ' Memoirs of a Stomach ' Werden Abbey" Clyse" " Papers "The " Ship " Hotel, Green- wich, 111 John Denmaa Glowworm or Firefly " All roads lead to Rome," 112 Venison in Summer Herbert Spencer on Billiards Downing Family Ash : Place- name, 113 Earliest Playbill Nightcaps Glass Manu- facture " Prior to "=Before, 114 Frost and its Forms- Capsicum Euchre, 116.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Works of Thomas Nashe ' Ditchfield's ' Memorials of Old Oxfordshire ' ' Kings' Letters ' ' The British Journal of Psychology ' The ' Burlington ' and other Magazines Booksellers' Cata- logues.

Notices to Correspondents.

THE PLOUGHGANG AND OTHER

MEASURES.

THE typical holding of English land in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was the yard- land or virgate. It contained thirty acres, and was the fourth part of a hide. Now the words " yardland " and " virgate " mean pri- marily a rood or quarter of an acre.* But why should a holding of thirty acres have been called a rood 1 The answer is that a rood of land was the area of the " messuage " which belonged to a holding of thirty acres, and was the measure thereof. When men said that X was the holder of a " yard " or " rood " of land they usually meant that he was the possessor of an arable holding which

day Book and Beyond,' pp. 384-5. See also 'Cus- tomals of Battle Abbey' (Camden Soc.), p. 124, where we have " viij acras et diraidiam et una virgata," and similar entries. MB. NICHOLSON, in an excellent article on ' Verge and Yard ' (9 th S. vii. 281), says it is "probable that vergde [=virgate] as a quarter-acre haying acquired the sense of a quar- ter, this term latinized would also be applied to the quarter of the hide." Mr. Round (' Feudal England,' 1895, p. 108) has also suggested that virgata may have acquired the sense of " quarter." But if that were so the latinized oxgang must also have acquired the sense of an eighth, and the latinized ploughgang must have acquired the sense of a half.
 * This was proved by Prof. Maitland in ' Domes-

was measured by a rood of " messuage," the area of the messuage being to the arable holding as 1 to 120. Of course a man might hold an actual rood and no more, but the context of surveys usually enables us to dis- tinguish between the rood which was the measure of a larger holding and the rood which was an actual quarter of an acre. I have taken the virgate first because it was the typical holding, and because the equiva- lent word " rood " can be more easily under- stood than " bovate" or "oxgang."

I have already, in the form of a table,* summarized my theory that every bovate of fifteen acres was measured by half a rood of messuage ; that every virgate of thirty acres was measured by a rood of messuage ; that every half -hide, or carucate,t was measured by two roods or half an acre of messuage : and that every hide or casatej of a hundred and twenty acres was measured by an acre of messuage. If, then, virgate means pri- marily a rood of land, bovate should mean half a rood, carucate should mean two roods, and casate should mean an acre. Let us take these words in numerical order, and inquire whether this supposition is well founded.

1. Seeing that the holder of a virgate was called a yardling, and the holder of a bovate a half-yardling, it is probable that if virgate originally - meant rood, bovate meant half- rood. There are indications that it did so. The English term for the late Latin bovata or bovaga was oxgang,|| oxegan(g)dale, or oskin. and this quantity of land was loosely regarded in the seventeenth century as a holding not of fifteen acres, but as a piece of


 * 9 th S. vi. 304.

t Relying on well-known authorities, I have hitherto regarded the hide and the carucate as equivalent terms. The fact that the carucate was really only half a hide in no way affects my tables. It is often described as containing sixty acres.

J "Men are beginning to speak of manents, casates, tributaries ' of land ' much as they would speak of acres or perches of land" (Maitland, ut supra, p. 359).

"Isti subscript! dicuntur half-erdlinges" (' Customals of Battle Abbey,' p. 77), " Yherd-

linges customarii" (ibid., p. 42). The yardling

is sometimes called virgariu-t or virgatarius. Half- tofts, as well as tofts, are often mentioned in old surveys: "in uno tofto et dimidio" (' Coucher Book of Selby,' i. 322). We have also " medietatem capitalis mansi," half a capital measure (ibid., ii. 274). When a messuage, or a toft, had not been partitioned, but remained in its original condition, it was described as a whole messuage or toft, and it is from this source that we get the word "all" which usually begins the "parcels" of modern deeds. The Latin word was totum.

noxgang" (Wright-Wiilcker ' Vocab.').
 * i " Bovata, a hoxgangyn lond " ; " bovaga, a