Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 6.djvu/369

 9* s. vi. OCT. 20, i9oo.] NOTES AND QUERIES. 303 temporary, this series of tributes to Scott is very beautiful and significant. THOMAS BAYNE. ENGLISH AND ROMAN LAND MEASURES. IF we remove the odd forty square yards from the 4,840 square yards which compose the English acre, we shall have brought that acre into numerical conformity with the Roman land measures. Since there are 43,200 square feet in 4,800 square yards, and since the actus quadratus contains 14,400 square feet, it follows that 4,800 square yards are equal to three actus mtadrati, or a jugerum and a half. The exact length of the old English foot being unknown, it is unneces- sary to consider the difference between the ancient Roman and the modern English foot.* I shall prove that the odd forty square yards in the acre represent the quantity of building-plot which was assigned in respect of an acre containing 4,800 square yards ; ih.-i! the building-plot assigned to each holding was not originally included in the measurement of such holding; and that the subsequent inclusion of the building-plot added forty square yards to the acre. In the oldest English surveys, such as 'Boldon Book,' building-plots do not seem to have been included in agrarian measure- ments. These surveys tell us that so many men hold so many hides, virgates, or bovates of arable land, but not a word is said about their dwelling-houses, homesteads, or gardens. Even in the thirteenth century it was not unusual to speak of the bovate, for instance, "and its appurtenances,"t as if, in the measurement of land, nothing but arable land was included. And there is evidence that, even as late as the sixteenth century, when the rent payable in respect of an entire holding was apportioned between the arable, the pasture, and the meadow land, no account was taken of the house or homestead if the holding exceeded twenty- five or thirty acres. Thus in Ligh's ' Survey- ing,' 1592, sig. m 3, we read :— "As for the house, garden, or orchard, where there ia aboue thirtie or fiue and twentie acres of the Roman foot at 296 mill., or a little less than the English foot (301 mill.)."—Smith's 'Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiq.,' ii. p. 160 b. t " Dicti fratres habent ibidem xii tenentes quorum quilibet illorum tenet dimidiam virgatam terre cum pertineneiis " ('Rot. Hundr.,' ii. 653 a): " xvij vireatas terre cum mesuagiis et ceteris perti- nentibus (ibid., ii. 719 b); " Habet v mesuagia et v virgatas terre que pertinent predictis mesuagiia " (ibid.,ii. 725 a). jande belonging to it, in this kind of appprtionating, 'it] is seldom or neuer rated or apportionated but upon the land, meadow, and pasture onely." It seems, then, that in measuring land only the arable portion was at first considered, and that a grant of such a holding as a vir- gate included a building-plot or messuage of appropriate size amongst its appurtenances, and not as an intrinsic portion of the thirty arable acres contained in the virgate. The acres or strips of smaller size which composed the virgate of a particular owner lay scat- tered about the open fields of the township, whilst the building-plot belonging to that virgate lay at some distance from them in the town street. But when these holdings began to lose their integrity, when virgates and bovates and the building-plots belonging to them began to be split up into small or irregular parcels, it was no longer possible to exclude the building-plot from the reckoning. The ' Hundred Rolls' give an interesting example of the way in which, in the year 1279, two virgates were apportioned amongst fifteen several persons in parcels varying from twenty acres to a rooa and a half.* In such a case it was necessary that the area of every parcel should be given, and conse- quently the area of the building-plot had to be included. At the present day the student of English agrarian laws and customs is well acquainted with the normal divisions of the hide. He knows that groups of virgates of thirty acres, and of bovates of fifteen acres, were the typical holdings of the English peasant, and even in those cases in which the virgate consisted of the long score of twenty-four acres, or the fifth part of a hide, he sees that regularity of measurement pervaded the land system. If, then, the arable land was arranged in groups of defined and regular quantities, it is probable that building-plots were also arranged in corresponding quantities. Now if we turn again to that vast magazine of economic facts, the 'Hundred Rolls,' we shall find that as virgates and bovates, t. e.. half - virgates, are the normal holdings of arable land, so roods and half-roods are the normal building-plots. A striking instance occurs in the return for St. Ives in Hunting- donshire. It appears that there were in the street of St. Ives ("in strata Sancti Yvonis") sixty-six tenants, each of whom held a mes- suage containing half a rood.t In this case t Ibid., ii. 603a. The word " messuage" was used to denote the building-plot, and afterwards the house which stood on the plot
 * " We cannot be far from the truth in setting
 * 'Rot. Hundr.,'ii. 65* b.