Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/180

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. i. FEB. 20, MM.

by taking the base or width of the acre as 60 feet, and its length as 720 feet, in which -case the length would be 12 times the breadth. This would give us a bovate or half-rood of 600 square yards, a virgate or rood of 1,200 .square yards, a carucate or half-acre of 2,400 square yards, and a casate of 4,800 square yards. An acre of 4,800 square yards would conform to Roman land measures, and to the areas of mediaeval buildings which I have described.* And, as I have shown,t an acre of 4,840 square yards can be obtained by adding the area of the mes- suage to that of the arable land held therewith. A virgate of 30 acres, for instance, consisting of 4,800 square yards to the acre, would contain 144,000 square yards, and its messuage would be a rood of 1,200 square yards. But if we add the 1,200 yards to the 144,000 yards, and divide the sum by 30, we get an acre of 4,840 square yards. In doing so we have merely added the area of the lesser virgate to that of the greater. In other words, we have added the area of the messuage to that of its appurtenant arable holding. When the messuage was at last added to the arable land of which it was the measure, it was no longer possible to raise the acre from a rod of 15 feet. But when the acre was increased by that addition from 4,800 to 4,840 square yards, it could be raised from a rod of 16 feet. The present statute acre is raised from such a rod, and is 40 rods in length and 4 in breadth.

I am not asking the reader to conclude that a messuage at any time took the shape of a strip of land 720 feet in length and 7^ feet in breadth (600 square yards). Such a strip would have been of no use as a homesteaoi. But a plot of land of 600 square yards can take other shapes, as 60 feet by .90 feet. And so the lesser bovate, &c., could be thrown, when intended for homesteads, into other shapes than long strips. These units of the acre would then cease to be known as bovates, virgates, carucates, and casates in the original senses of those words. They would simply be messuages or "measures," each with its due proportion of arable lands in the open fields.

I have lately met with a piece of evidence which finally establishes my theory that the messuage was a measure of the arable land held therewith. It seems that in 1297 a certain Adam de Neuton had two bovates (=a virgate). He sold one of them to William Attebarre, and the other to Robert Daneys. Daneys complained that he had

not got his proper share, and the dispute was referred to the arbitration of neighbours, who ordered the messuage originally belong- ing to the virgate to be divided between the two purchasers " according to the quantity of their land." The words of the award are as follows :

" Robert Daneys complains of William Attebarre, and says that when he bought a bovate of land from Adam de Neuton, William Attebarre, who had previously bought another bovate, gave him the worse part of the said two bovates and took the best part. The defendant says that when he bought his land Adam certified him where the said bovate lay in the fields, and he took no other land. They refer to an inquisition of the neighbours, viz., Henry del Bothem, Adam Gerbot, Philip Thorald, and others, who find for the plaintiff. The said mes- suage [sic] is to be divided between them according to the quantity of their land, and the land likewise according to what belongs to their bovates."*

The two men got equal messuages and equal bovates, and therefore the lesser was a measure of the greater quantity.

This rule of proportion was extended to other territorial interests. The quantity of wood which the servile tenant needed for building his house, and for maintaining the fire on his hearth, t and also the extent of his right to use the common pastures,! depended on the size of the messuage whicn

measured his holding. 3, Westbourne Road, Sheffield.

S. O. ADDY.

WILLIAM STEPHENS, PRESIDENT OP GEORGIA. In the account given in the 'D.N.B.,' liv. 182, of William Stephens, M.P. for Newport, Isle of Wight, 1702-22, who, after suffering vicissitudes of fortune, became President of the colony of Georgia in America, 1743-50, it is stated that he graduated B.A. at Cam- bridge in 1684, and M.A. in 1688. If this statement were correct, he would have obtained university degrees at a remarkably early age, seeing that he was born on 27 January, 1671, O.S. It is, however, in-


 * 9 th S. xi. 121.

t 9 th S. vi. 304.

" ' Wakefield Court Rolls,' i. 261. One could wish that the original Latin, instead of a trans- lation, had been given. In the ' Coucher Book of Whalley,' p. 325, we have, "Duas partes unius messuagii et unius bovate terre." Taking the Dovate as 15 acres, this means 400 square yards of messuage and 10 acres of arable land, the proportion of messuage to arable land being as 1 to 120. Such apportionments are frequent.

f By an undated charter William, constable of Flamborough, confirmed to Richard Fitz-Main "necessaria sua ad sedificandum et comburendum quantum pertinet ad unam bovatam terrae quam tenet de me in Holme." ' Coucher Book of Selby,' ii. 36. In one place pasturage for 12 sheep is said to belong to half a bovate. Ibid., i. 188.

J Ibid., i. 230.