[p252]CHAPTER VIII.CONNEXION BETWEEN THE ROMAN LAND SYSTEM AND THE LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM.I. IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE.The question a complex one.In now returning to the question of the origin of the English manorial system it is needful to widen the range of the inquiry, and to seek for further light in Continental evidence.
[p252]
The question a complex one.
In now returning to the question of the origin of the English manorial system it is needful to widen the range of the inquiry, and to seek for further light in Continental evidence.
The question itself has become a complex one. There may have been manors in the south-eastern districts of Britain before the Saxon conquest, while Britain was a Roman province, or the Saxons may have introduced the manorial system when they conquered the country. These remain the alternatives now that we have seen that the tribal system in Britain was evidently not its parent. But even if the Saxons introduced the manorial system, the further question arises whether it was a natural growth from their own tribal system, or whether they had themselves adopted it from the Romans? It is obvious, therefore, that no adequate result can be obtained without a sufficiently careful study (1) of the Roman provincial land system and (2) of the[p253]German tribal system. Not till both those have been examined can it be possible to judge which of the two factors contributed most to the manorial system, and to what extent it was their joint product.
The two factors, the Roman land system and the German tribal system.
The question must needs be complicated by the fact that during the whole period of the later empire a large portion of Germany was included within the lines of the Roman provinces; or, to state the point more exactly, that a large proportion of the inhabitants of these Roman provinces were Germans. It will be seen in the course of the inquiry how much depends upon the full recognition of this fact. Indeed, the very first step taken will bring it into prominence, and put us, so to speak, on right geographical lines, by showing that the nearest analogies to the English manor were to be found in those districts precisely which were both Roman and German under the later empire.
In studying, therefore, the land system in Roman provinces, we must not forget that we are studying what, though Roman, may have been subject to barbarian influences. In studying, on the other hand, the German tribal system, it is no less important to remember that some German customs may betray the results of centuries of contact with Roman rule.
It would be unwise to build too much upon a mere resemblance in terms, but we have seen that the Saxon words generally used for manor were 'ham' and 'tun.'[p254]
We have seen how King Alfred, in the remarkable passage quoted in an earlier chapter, put in contrast the temporary log hut on lænland with the permanent hereditary possession—the 'ham' or manor. This latter was, as we have seen, the estate of a manorial lord, with a community of dependants or serfs upon it, and not a village of coequal freemen. Hence the wordhamdid not properly describe the clusters of scattered homesteads in the Welsh district. In King Alfred's time Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and even parts of Wiltshire were still, as already mentioned, regarded as Welsh. They formed what was known as West Wales. The manorial system had encroached far into them, but it would seem that the phraseology of the earlier system had not yet wholly disappeared. King Alfred in his will carefully abstained from applying the wordhamto his numerous possessions in these districts.
He disposed in his will of more than thirty separately named estates in this West Welsh district, but he invariably used, in describing them, the word 'land'—thelandor thelandesat such and such a place;—and he concluded this part of his will with the statement, 'These are all that I have inWealcyne, except inTruconshirie' (in Cornwall). Then in the rest of his will King Alfred disposed of nearly as many estates in the south-east or manorial districts of England, and here he immediately changed his style. It was no more theland, at this place and that, but thehamat such and such a place.339In the old English translation of the will given in theLiber de Hyda[p255]'land' is rendered by 'lond' and 'ham' invariably by 'twune.'340Thus without saying that the wordshamandtunalways were used in this sense, and could be used in no other, they were generally at least synonymous withmanor.
As late as the time of Bede, the suffix 'ham' or 'tun' was not yet so fully embodied with the names of places as to form a part of them. In the Cambridge MS. of his works 'ham' is still written as a separate word.
The Germanheim.
It is a curious fact that the suffix 'ton' or 'tun' was practically used nowhere on the Continent in the names of places; but the other manorial suffix, 'ham,' in one or other of its forms—'hem,' 'heim,' or 'haim'—was widely spread. And as in those districts where it was found most abundantly, it translated itself, as in England, into the Latinvilla, its early geographical distribution may have an important significance.
Geographical distribution ofhamsandheims.
In England.
On the annexed map is marked for each county the per-centage of the names of places mentioned in the Domesday Survey ending inham.341This will give a fair view of their distribution in Saxon England. It will be seen that the 'hams' of England were most numerous in the south-eastern counties, from Lincolnshire and Norfolk to Sussex, finding their densest centre in Essex.342
In Picardy.
Passing on to the Continent, very similar evidence, but of earlier date, is afforded for a small district surrounding St. Omer, in Picardy, by a survey of the[p256]estates of the Abbey of St. Bertin, taken about the year 850. The 'villas' there mentioned as 'ad fratrum usus pertinentes,' and which were distinctly manors, are twenty-five in number, and the names of fifteen of them ended in 'hem.'343
Similar evidence is given for various districts in Germany in the list of donations to the abbeys, the abbots of which possessed estates in different parts of Germany—sometimes whole manors or villages, sometimes only one or two holdings in this or that place.
In the various abbey cartularies.
Heimsmost numerous in the Roman province of Germania Prima.
On the accompanying map are marked the sites of places mentioned in the cartularies of the Abbeys of Fulda,344Corvey,345St. Gall,346Frising,347Wizenburg,348Lorsch,349and in other early records, ending inheimin the various districts of Germany. The result is remarkable. It shows that theseheimswere most numerous in what was once the Roman province ofGermania Prima, on the left bank of the upper Rhine, the present Elsass, and on both sides of the Rhine around Mayence—districts conquered by the Frankish and Alamannic tribes in the fifth century, but inhabited by Germans from the time of Tacitus, and perhaps of Cæsar, and so districts in which German populations had come very early and continued long under Roman rule. In this district theheimsrose in[p257]number to 80 per cent. of the places mentioned in the charters.
Distribution in Europe of Local Names Ending in 'ham', 'heim', 'ingen', 'ingahem', or without further suffix.German patronymic village names in France.See Larger:Ending in 'ham" or without further suffix.Ending in 'heim', 'ingen', or 'ingahem', with German names in France.Go to:List of Illustrations
Distribution in Europe of Local Names Ending in 'ham', 'heim', 'ingen', 'ingahem', or without further suffix.German patronymic village names in France.
See Larger:Ending in 'ham" or without further suffix.Ending in 'heim', 'ingen', or 'ingahem', with German names in France.Go to:List of Illustrations
There were many, but not so many,heimsin the valley of the Neckar; but everywhere (with small local exceptions) they faded away in districts outside the Roman boundary, except in Frisia, where the proportion was large.
Now, the question is, what do theseheimsrepresent?
Heimandvillainterchange.
We have already said that they interchange like the English 'ham' with the Latin 'villa.' The districts where they occur most thickly, where they formed 80 per cent. of the names of places in the time of the monastic grants, and which had formed for several centuries the Roman province of Upper Germany, shade off into districts which abounded with local names ending invilla.
Wilare,weiler, andwyl.
They did so a thousand years ago, and they do so now. It is only needful to examine the Ordnance Survey of any part of these districts to see how, even now, the places with names ending in 'heim' are mixed with others ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' or the Germanised form of the word, 'weiler,' or 'wyl;' and further, how the region abounding with 'heims' shades off into a district abounding with names ending in 'villa,' or 'wilare,' and we may add the equally manorial Latin or Romance terminationcurtis, or 'court,' and its German equivalent 'hof,' or 'hoven.' And such was the case also at the date of the earliest monastic charters.
This fact in itself at least suggests very strongly that here, as in England, 'ham' and 'villa' were synonyms for the same thing, sometimes called by its[p258]Latin and sometimes by its German name. Indeed, actual instances may be found in the charters of these districts in which the name of the same place has sometimes the suffixvillaorwilareand sometimesheim.350
Moreover, these places which are thus called 'villas' or 'heims' in the monastic charters were to all intents and purposesmanorsas far back as the records allow us to trace them.
The earliest surveys of the possessions of the abbeys leave no doubt as to their manorial character.351
And the earliest charters prove that they were often at least manorial estates before they were handed over to the monks.
Indeed, a careful examination of the Wizenburg and Lorsch charters and donations leads to the result that these 'heims' and 'villas' were often royal manors, 'villæ fiscales' on the royal domains, just as Tidenham and Hysseburne were in England. They seem to have often been held as benefices by adux[p259]or acomes, or other beneficiary of the king, just as Saxon royal manors were held by the king's thanes as 'læn-land.'352
Thus the royal domains of Frankish kings were apparently under manorial management, and practically divided up into manors. The boundaries or 'marchæ' of one manor often divided it from the next manor;353while one 'villa' or 'heim' often had sub-manors upon it, as in the case of Tidenham.354
Thus the 'villa,' 'heim,' or 'manor,' seems to have been the usual fiscal and judicial territorial unit under Frankish rule, as the manor once was and the parish now is in England. And this alone seems to afford a satisfactory explanation of the use of the word 'villa' in the early Frankish capitularies, and in the Salic laws. It is there used apparently for both private estates and the smallest usual territorial unit for judicial or fiscal purposes.355
When a law speaks of a person attacking or taking possession of the 'villa' of another, the 'villa' is clearly a private estate. But when it speaks of a[p260]crime committed 'between two villas,' the word seems to be used for a judicial jurisdiction, just as if we should say 'between two parishes.'
This double use of the word becomes intelligible if 'villa' may be used as 'manor,' and if the whole country—theterra regiswith the rest—were divided in the fifth century into 'villas' or 'manors,' but hardly otherwise.
The remarkable passage in the Salic laws 'De Migrantibus,' which provides that no one can move into and settle in another 'villa' without the license of those 'qui in villa consistunt,' but that after a twelvemonth's stay unmolested he shall remain secure, 'sicut et alii vicini,' seems at first sight to imply afree village.356But another clause which permits the emigrant to settle if he has the royal 'præceptum' to do so,357suggests that the 'villa' in question was one of the royal 'villas'—a 'villa fiscalis' in the demesne of the Crown.358
Hamandvillain the Salic laws,
The Salic law has come down to us in Latin versions, but the Malberg glosses contain some indications that the wordvillawas used as a translation of variations of the wordham, then applied by the Franks to both kinds ofvillasin the manorial sense.
The old tradition recorded in the prologue to the[p261]later versions of the Salic laws, whatever it be worth, attributes their first compilation to four chosen men, whose names and residences are as follows:—Uuisogastis, Bodogastis, Salegastis, Uuidogastis,in loca nominancium, Bodochamæ, Salchamæ, Uuidochamæ.
In another version of the prologue instead of the words 'in loca nominancium,' the reading is 'in villis,' and the termination of the names is 'chem,' 'hem,' and 'em.'359
and in the Malberg glosses.
Dr. Kern, in editing the Malberg glosses, points out that the gloss in Title xlii. shows that 'ham' might be used by the Franks in the sense of 'court'—'king's court,'—just as in some parts of the Netherlands, especially in the Betuwe, 'ham' is even now a common name for ancient mansions, such as in mediæval Latin were termed 'curtes.' Thus he shows that the Frankish words 'chami theuto' (the bull of the ham) were translated in Latin as 'taurum regis,'chambeing taken to mean king's court.360Possibly the lord of avillaprovided the 'village bull,' just as till recent times in the Hitchin manor, as we have seen, the village bull was under the manorial customs provided for the commoners by the rectorial sub-manor.
So in another place the word 'chamestalia' seems to be used in the Malberg gloss for 'in trustedominica,'361the 'cham' again being taken in a thoroughlymanorialsense.
That there were manorial lords withlidiand tributarii—semi-servile tenants—as well asservi, or slaves, under them, is clear from other passages of the Salic laws.362[p262]
But the 'ham' of the Malberg glosses seems to have had sometimes at least thekingfor its lord. And this brings us again to the double use in the Salic laws of the word 'villa.' It seems, as we have said, to have been used not only for a 'villa' in private hands, but also in a wider sense for the usual fiscal or judicial territorial unit, whether under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord, or of the 'villicus' or 'judex,' or beneficiary of the king.
Lastly, the early date of the Salic laws bringing the Frankish and Roman provincial rule into such close proximity, irresistibly raises the question363whether there may not have been an actual continuity, first between the Roman and Frankish villa, and secondly, between the Roman system of management of the imperial provincial domains during the later empire, and the Frankish system of manorial management of the 'terra regis' or 'villæ fiscales' after the Frankish conquest. If this should turn out to have been the case, then the further question will arise whether under the tribal system of the Germans the beginnings of manorial tendencies can be so far traced as to explain the ease with which Frankish and Saxon conquerors of the old Roman provinces fell into manorial ways, and adopted the manor as the normal type of estate.
This is the line of inquiry which it is now proposed to follow.[p263]
The Roman villa like a manor.
The Romanvillawas, in fact, exceedingly like a manor, and, moreover, becoming more and more so in the Gallic and German provinces, at least under the later empire as time went on.
An estate.
The villa, as described by Varro and Columella, before and shortly after the Christian era, was a farm—ajundus. It was not a mere residence, but, like the villa of the present day in Italy, a territory or estate in land.
Thecurtis.
The lord's homestead on the villa was surrounded by two enclosed 'cohortes,' or courts, from which was derived the word 'curtis,' so often applied to the later manor-house.364
Thevillicusand slaves.
At the entrance of the outer court was the abode of the 'villicus'—a strictly manorial officer, as we have seen—generally a slave chosen for his good qualities.365Near this was the common kitchen, where not only the food was cooked, but also the slaves performed their indoor work. Here also were cellars and granaries for the storing of produce, the cells in which were the night quarters of the slaves, and the underground 'ergastulum,' with its narrow windows, high and out of reach, where those slaves who were kept in chains lived, worked, and were tormented; for[p264]in theergastulumwas revealed the cruel side of the system of slave labour under Roman law. Columella says that the cleverest slaves must oftenest be kept in chains.366Cato, according to Plutarch, advised that slaves should be incited to quarrel amongst themselves, lest they should conspire against their master, and considered it to be cheaper to work them to death than to let them grow old and useless.367
In the inner 'cohort' were the stalls and stables for the oxen, horses, and other live stock; and all around was the land to be tilled.
Thus the Roman villa, if not at first a complete manor, was already an estate of a lord (dominus)worked by slavesunder avillicus.
Sometimes the whole work of the estate was done by slaves; and though the estimates of historians have varied very much, there is no reason to doubt that in the first and second centuries the proportion of slaves to the whole population of the empire was enormous.
Thedecuriæ, slaves.
But even the management of slaves required organisation. The anciently approved Roman method of managing the slaves on a villa was to form them into groups oftens, calleddecuriæ, each under an overseer ordecurio.368
Thevillicus, or general steward of the manor, was sometimes afreedman. And there was a strong reason why a freedman was often put in a position of trust, viz. that if he should be dishonest, or show[p265]ingratitude to his patron, he was liable to be degraded again into slavery. There is an interesting fragment of Roman law which suggests that the decurio of a gang of slaves was sometimes afreedman, and that it was a common practice to assign to the freedman a portion of land and adecuriaof slaves, and no doubt oxen also to work it, thus putting him very much in the position of a colonus with slaves under him. The result of his betrayal of trust, in the case mentioned in the fragment, was his degradation, and the resumption by his patron of thedecuriaof slaves.369Thus we learn that the lord of a villa might, in addition to his home farm worked by the slaves in his own homestead, have portions of the land of his estate let out, as it were, to farm tofreedmen, each with hisdecuriaof slaves, and paying rent in produce.
Groups of tens.
There was nothing very peculiarly Roman in this system of classification intens. The fact that men everywhere have ten fingers makes such a classification all but universal. But the Romans certainly did use it for a variety of purposes—for taxation and military organisation as well as in the management of the slaves of a villa. AndM. Guerard, probably with reason, connects thesedecuriæof the Roman villa with thedecaniæ, or groups of originally ten servile holdings, under a villicus ordecanus, which are described on the estates of the Abbey of St. Germain in the Survey of the Abbot Irminon aboutA.D.850.370So possibly a survival of a similar system may be traced also in the much earlier instances mentioned by Bede under dateA.D.655, in one of which[p266]King Oswy grants to the monastery at Hartlepool twelvepossessiunculæ, each of 'ten families;' and in the other of which the abbess Hilda, having obtained a 'possession of ten families,' proceeds to build Whitby Abbey.371In all these cases of the Roman freedman and hisdecuria, the Gallic decanus and hisdecania, and the Saxonpossessiunculaof ten families, there is the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants with their holdings, treated as the smallest usual territorial division.372
But to return to the Roman villa. The organisation ofdecuriæof slaves was not the only resource of the lord in the management of his estate.
The coloni, on a villa.
Varro speaks of its being an open point, to be decided according to the circumstances of each farm, whether it were better to till the land by slaves or by freemen, or byboth.373And Columella, speaking of the families or 'hands' upon a farm, says 'they are either slaves orcoloni;'374and he goes on to say, 'It is pleasanter to deal with coloni, and easier to get out of themworkthanpayments. . . . They will sooner ask to be let off the one than the other. The bestcoloni,' he says, 'are those which areindigeni, born on the estate and bound by hereditary ties to it.' Especially distant corn farms, he considers, are cultivated with less trouble by free coloni than by slaves under a villicus, because slaves are dishonest and lazy, neglect the cattle, and waste the produce;[p267]whilstcoloni, sharing in the produce, have a joint interest with their lord.
Adscripti glebæ.
That thecolonisometimes wereindigeniupon the estate, and were sometimes calledoriginarii, shows the beginning at least of a tendency to treat them asadscripti glebæ, like the mediæval 'nativi.' Indeed, we find it laid down in the later laws of the empire thatcolonileaving their lord's estate could be reclaimed at any time within thirty years.375And nothing could more clearly indicate the growth of the semi-servile condition of the colonus, as time went on, than the declaration (A.D.531) that the son of a colonus who had done no service to the 'dominus terræ' during his father's lifetime, and had been absent more than thirty or forty years, could be recalled upon his father's death and obliged to continue the services due from the holding.376
We know from Tacitus that the typical colonus had his own homestead and land allotted to his use, and paid tribute to his lord in corn or cattle, or other produce. And there is a clause in the Justinian Code prohibiting the arbitrary increase of these tributes, another point in which thecoloniresembled the latervillani.377
Likeness to a manor.
Village round a villa.
A villa under a villicus, with servi under him living within the 'curtis' of the villa, and with a little group of coloni in theirvicusalso upon the estate, but outside the court, would thus be very much like a later manor indeed. And Frontinus,378describing[p268]the great extent of thelatifundia, especially of provincial landowners, expressly says that on some of these private estates there was quite a population of rustics, and that often there werevillagessurrounding thevillalike fortifications. It would seem then that the villas in the provinces were still more like manors than those in Italy.
The villa becoming the prevalent type of estate.
It is now generally admitted that indirectly, at least, the Roman conquest of German territory—the extension of the Roman province beyond the Rhine and along the Danube—added greatly to the number of semi-servile tenants upon the Roman provincial estates, and so tended more and more to increase during the later empire the manorial character of the 'villa;' whilst at the same time the pressure of Roman taxation within the old province of Gaul, and beyond it, was so great as steadily to force more and more of the free tenants on theAger Publicusto surrender their freedom and swell the numbers of the semi-servile class on the greater estates; so that not only was the villa becoming more and more manorial itself, but also it was becoming more and more the prevalent type of estate.
As regards the first point, during the later empire there was direct encouragement given to landowners to introduce barbarians taken from recently conquered districts, and to settle them on their estates ascoloni, and not as slaves. These foreign coloni became very numerous under the name oftributariiand perhaps 'læti;' so that the proportion of coloni to[p269]slaves was probably, during the later period of Roman rule, always increasing, and the Roman villa under itsvillicuswas becoming more and more like a later manor, with a semi-servile village community ofcoloniortributariiupon it in addition to the slaves.379
As regards the second point, the evidence will be given at a later stage of the inquiry.
Confining our attention at present to the Roman villa, and the slaves and semi-servile tenants upon it, we have finally to add to the fact of close resemblance to the later manor and manorial tenants proof of actual historical connexion and continuity in districts where the evidence is most complete.
A clear and continuous connexion can be traced in many cases, at all events in Gaul, between the Roman villa and the later manor.
German lords of villas.
In the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris the Visigothic and Burgundian invaders are described as adapting themselves roughly and coarsely to Roman habits in many respects. He speaks of their being put into the 'villas' as 'hospites.' Indeed, it is well known that these Teutonic invaders settled as invited guests, being calledhospitesorgasti;380that they shared the villas and lands of the Romans on the same system as that which was adopted when Roman legions—often of German soldiers—were quartered on a district, according to a well-known[p270]passage of the 'Codex Theodosianus.'381They took theirsortes, or fixed proportions of houses and lands and slaves, and, sharing the lordship of these with their Roman 'consortes,' they must have sanctioned and adapted themselves to the manorial character of the villas whose occupation they shared, ultimately becoming themselves lords of villas probably as manorial as any Roman villas could be.382
Dr. P. Roth has shown that in Frankish districts many of the wealthy provincials remained, under Frankish rule, in unbroken possession of their former estates—their numerous 'villæ.' Amongst these the bishops and abbots were conspicuous examples. He shows that thousands of 'villæ' thus remained unchanged upon the widely extended ecclesiastical estates.383
Gregory of Tours speaks of the restitution by King Hildebert of the 'villas' unjustly seized under the lawless regime of Hilperic.384He also relates how bishops and monasteries were endowed by the transfer to them of villas with the slaves and coloni upon them.
Villas given to the Church.
Under the year 582, he mentions the death of a certainChrodinus, also the subject of a poem by Fortunatus, a great benefactor of the clergy, and describes him as 'founding villas, setting vineyards, building houses [domos], making fields [culturas],' and then, having invited bishops of slender means to[p271]his table, after dinner 'kindly distributing thesehouses, with the cultivators and the fields, with the furniture, and male and female servants and household slaves[ministris et famulis], saying, "These are given to the Church, and whilst with these the poor will be fed, they will secure to me favour with God."'385
Here, then, after the Frankish conquest, we have the wordvillastill used for the typical estate; and the estate consists of thedomus, with the vineyards and the fields, and their cultivators.
Turning to the earliest monastic records we have seen that the 'villas' or 'heims' of the abbeys of Wizenburg and Lorsch were in fact manors.
Villas become villages,
The donations to the Abbot of St. Germain-des-Prés,386in the neighbourhood of Paris, commenced in the year 558, and in the survey of the estates of the Abbey made in the year 820, there are describedvillasstill cultivated bycoloni,leti, &c.—villas which grew into villages which now bear the names of the villas out of which theysprang:—
Levaci Villa, nowLevaville(p. 90).Landulfi Villa, nowLandonville(p. 94).Aneis Villa, nowAnville.Gaudeni Villa, nowGrinville(p. 99).Sonani Villa, nowSenainville(p. 100).Villa Alleni, nowAllainville(p. 102).Ledi Villa, nowLaideville(p. 102).Disboth Villa, nowBouville(p. 104).Mornane Villare, nowMainvilliers(p. 112).And so on in numbers of instances.
and 'hems' which are manor.
The chartulary of the Abbey of St. Bertin also[p272]contains instructive examples. By the earliest charter ofA.D.648 the founder of the abbey granted to the monks his villa called 'Sitdiu,' and it included within it twelve sub-estates, one of them, theTattinga Villa, which later is called in the cartularyTattingaheim.387
The chief villa with these sub-estates was granted to the abbey 'cum domibus, ædificiis, terris cultis et incultis, mansiones cum silvis pratis pascuis, aquis aquarumve decursibus, seu farinariis, mancipiis, accolabus, greges cum pastoribus,' &c. &c., and therefore was a manor with both slaves (mancipia) andcoloni, or other semi-servile tenants (accolæ) upon it, as indeed were the generality of villas handed over to the monasteries.
There seems, therefore, to be conclusive evidence not only of a remarkable resemblance, but also in many cases of a real historical continuity between the Roman 'villa' and the later Frankish manor.
Tenants on theAger Publicus.
Passing from that part of the land in Roman provinces included in the villas, orlatifundia, of the richer Romans, and so placed under private lordship, we must now turn our attention to the wide tracts of 'Ager Publicus,' and try to discover the position and social economy of the tenants, so to speak, on the great provincial manor of the Roman Emperor.
Care must be taken to discriminate between the[p273]different classes of these tenants, some of them being of a free and some of them of a semi-servile kind.
The veterans.
First, there were the veterans of the legions, who, according to Roman custom, were settled on the public lands at the close of a war, by way of pay for their services.
Regular centuriæ.
For the settlement of these, sometimes regularly constituted militarycoloniæwere founded; and in this case, where everything had to be startedde novo, a large tract of land was divided for the purpose by straight roads and lanes—pointing north, and south, and east, and west—intocenturiæof mostly 200 or 240jugera, which were then sub-divided into equal rectangular divisions, according to the elaborate rules of theAgrimensores,388the odds and ends of land, chiefly woods and marshes, being alone left to be used in common by the 'vicini,' or body of settlers.
But in other cases the settlement was much more irregular and haphazard in its character.
Irregular holdings.
Sometimes the veteran received his pay and his outfit, and was left to settle wherever he could find unoccupied land—'vacantes terræ'—to his mind. Under the later empire, owing to the constant ravages of German tribes, there was no lack of land ready for cultivators, without the appliance of the red-tape rules of theAgrimensores. The veterans settled upon this and occupied it pretty much as they liked, taking what they wanted according to their present or prospective means of cultivating it. Lands thus taken were called 'agri occupatorii,' and were irregular[p274]in their boundaries and divisions, instead of being divided into the rectangularcenturiæ.389
It is to these more irregular occupations of territory that the chief interest attaches.
Outfit of oxen and seed of two kinds.
When, under the later empire, veterans were allowed to settle upon 'vacantes terræ,' they had assigned to them an outfit of oxen and seed closely resembling the Saxon 'setene' and the Northumbrian 'stuht.'
Single or doublefuga.
Thejugum.
Those of the upper grade, whether so considered from military rank or special service rendered by them to the State, were provided, according to the edicts ofA.D.320 and 364, with an outfit oftwo pairs of oxenand 100 modii of each of two kinds of seed. Those of lower rank received as outfit one pair of oxen and fifty modii of each of the two kinds of seed.390And the land they cultivated with these single or double yokes of oxen was perhaps called their single or doublejugum. Cicero, in his oration[p275]against Verres, speaks of the Sicilian peasants as mostly cultivating 'in singulis jugis.'391During the later empire the typical holding of land—the hypothetical unit for purposes of taxation—as we shall see, came to be thejugum, but the assessment no longer always corresponded with the actual holdings.
But to return to the holding of the Roman veteran. It is not impossible to ascertain roughly its normal acreage from the amount of seed allotted in the outfit, as well as from the number of oxen.