Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 5.djvu/357

 9*s. V.MAY 5, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

349

LONDON, SATURDAY, MAY 5, 1900.

CONTENTS.-No. 123.

NOTES : House as a Measure of Land, 349 "The Blood of Hailes," 351 Will proved in the Archdeaconry of London, 352 Dryden 'Box and Cox,' 353 " Pavilion "Vanish- ing London Dickens aad Yorkshire Schools, 354.

QUERIES :-Elizabetb Alkin-Rylands Family-Clifford : Braose Empty Titles Sergeant-at- Arms Armorial, 355 "Bernardus nonvidit omnia "-"Pop goes the weasel " Lights of Baglake Lady Sandwich and Lord Rochester " Cerebos" "Bed waggons " Crabs' Eyes as Medicine Elverton Manor "S wound" Ladies and Leap Year "Heit" = Father "Choys," 356 French Stanza- Hamilton Family " Scoinson Arch" Bryce's Riming 'Register, '357.

REPLIES : Cowper Centenary, 357 Welsh Manuscript Pedigrees, 358 "In Gordano " Goat in Folk-lore, 359 Twenty-four-Hour Dials Grammatical Usage A Shield of Brawn Horse Equipment, 360 'The Law List': A. Steinmetz F. E. Accum "Byre," 361 Curiosities of Collaboration Flodden Lists "Wimmet "Town Gates outside London, 362 -Prince of Wales as Duke of Corn- wall, 363 Macky's 'Court Characters 'Coronation of Henry II., 364 The Discoverer of Photography Eliza- bethan Terms, 365 ' The Three Sister Arts ' Roman Numerals " Rackstrow's old man," 366 Pictures com- posed of Handwriting, 367.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Whibley's Urquhart's 'Rabelais' Skeat's 'Chaucer Canon' ' Edinburgh Review '' Anti- quary ' ' Genealogical Magazine.'

Notices to Correspondents.

THE HOUSE AS A MEASURE OF ARABLE LAND.

IN an essay on ' The Origin of the English Coinage '* I considered the peasant's house as a measure of value, and incidentally as a measure of quantity. But value depends on quantity, and I now propose to treat value as a sequel or corollary to the main thesis, and to exhibit the peasant's house as the measure of the agrarian units. It is true that the English imperial acre is not a multiple of the bay of 240 square feet ; but two acres, and all even numbers of acres, are multiples, and originally all the English, as well as all the Roman, land measures were multiples of the bay of 240 square feet. I do not, however, in the present article, propose to show how English land measures became differentiated from Roman.

When we find a house described in an old document as a mensura or mansura we may be sure that it was the measure of something. It was the measure of the acres held there- with because its area was exactly pro- portioned in size to them. This equality or similarity of ratios may be seen even more


 * ' N. & Q.,' 9* S. iv. 431 ; v. 29, 149.

clearly in the French masure, or exact area or spot on which the bays stood, and with which their foundations coincided. Again and again we read in English documents of the to/turn oedijicatum and the to/turn vastum.* In the former case the toft or area had received its superstructure of timber- work, of moss, and clay. In the latter the structure had perished, and only the toft remained as evidence of the amount of arable land, with other appurtenances, assigned to its late tenant.

The owners of ancient messuages or dwell- ing-houses in the village of Royston, near Barnsley, were lately known as ' metestead owners," and such owners were alone entitled to common rights in the wastes and unenclosed lands of their township. Mr. S. J. Chad wick, F.S. A., has kindly sent me some extracts from the Court Rolls of the manor of Dewsbury, of which Queen Elizabeth was once lady. At a court held 22 September, 32 Eliz., Elizabeth Speight surrendered "a messuage or tenement called a meestead or the Newe Walles." At another court, held a few months later, the same house is described as " a messuage called meastead or the new wales." The place-name Medstead, near Alton, in Hampshire, may be identical with this word. One can hardly doubt that " metestead " means " measuring- place," and, in a derived sense, " taxing- place." The form "meestead" seems to be owing to assimilation with the Anglo-French "messuage," and "mes- place," or "mese- place."t It is probable that " messuage " also means "measuring-place," and is not connected with the verb manere. Jamieson, in his 'Scottish Dictionary,' which I quote from the small edition, defines " mete hamys " as manors, and "methowss" as "a house for measuring." The same meaning must be given to the Yorkshire place-name and sur- name Metham or Mettam. These words are connected with the Icelandic meta, to tax, value, and with met-or$, a valuation. If "messuage" means "measuring-place" or " taxing-place," the term " capital messuage " must originally have meant " principal measuring-place." That is to say, it must have meant a house of twenty bays contain- ing 240 square feet each, corresponding to a hide, or, as the case might have been, of twelve bays containing 400 square feet each. The house-space attached to the hide might have been covered by one large building, or it

records, and the mediaeval Latin metatus or metatum, meaning "house."
 * Compare the vacua mensura, i.e., toft, of French

f The word sometimes occurs as simply " mese" or " meese."