[p368]CHAPTER X.THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM AND SERFDOM OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ROMAN PROVINCES OF GERMANY AND GAUL.I. THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM IN ENGLAND AND IN GERMANY COMPARED.We now return to the English manorial and open-field system, in order, taking it up where we left it, to trace its connexion with the similar Continental system, and to inquire in what districts the closest resemblances to it are to be found—whether in the un-Romanised north or in the southern districts so long included within thelimesof the Roman provinces.
[p368]
We now return to the English manorial and open-field system, in order, taking it up where we left it, to trace its connexion with the similar Continental system, and to inquire in what districts the closest resemblances to it are to be found—whether in the un-Romanised north or in the southern districts so long included within thelimesof the Roman provinces.
Under the manorial system, the open-field system the shell of serfdom.
The earliest documentary evidence available on English ground left us in full possession of the Saxon manor with its village community of serfs upon it, inhabiting as its shell the open-field system in its most organised form,i.e.with its (generally) three fields, its furlongs, its acre or half-acre strips, its headlands, its yard-lands or bundles of normally thirty acres, scattered all over the fields, the yard-land representing the year's ploughing of a pair of oxen in the team of[p369]eight, and the acre strip the measure of a day's plough-work of the team.
This was the system described in the 'Rectitudines' of the tenth century, and the allusions to the 'gebur,' the 'yard-land,' the 'setene,' the 'gafol,' and the 'week-work' in the laws of Ine carried back the evidence presumably to the seventh century.
Simpler form of open-field husbandry under the tribal system.
But it must not be forgotten that side by side with this manorial open-field system we found an earlier and simpler form of open-field husbandry carried on by the free tribesmen and taeogs of Wales. This simpler system described in the Welsh laws and the 'triads' seemed to be in its main features practically identical with that described also in theGermaniaof Tacitus. It was an annual ploughing up of fresh grass-land, leaving it to go back again into grass after the year's ploughing. It was, in fact, the agriculture of a pastoral people, with a large range of pasture land for their cattle, a small portion of which annually selected for tillage sufficed for their corn crops. This is clearly the meaning of Tacitus, 'Arva per annos mutant et superest ager.' It is clearly the meaning of the Welsh 'triads,' according to which the tribesman's right extended to his 'tyddyn,' with its corn and cattle yard, and toco-aration of the waste.
Three-field system produced by a three-course rotation of crops.
Nor can there be much mystery in the relation of these two forms of open-field husbandry to each other. In both, the arable land is divided in the ploughing into furlongs and strips. There is co-operation of ploughing in both, the contribution of oxen to the common team of eight in both, the allotment of the strips to the owners of the oxen in rotation,[p370]producing the same scattering of the strips in both. The methods are the same. The difference lies in the application of the methods to two different stages of economic growth. The simple form is adapted to the early nomadic stage of tribal life, and survives even after partial settlement, so long as grassland is sufficiently abundant to allow of fresh ground being broken by the plough each year. The more complex and organised form implies fixed settlement on the same territory, the necessity for a settled agriculture within a definite limit, and the consequent ploughing of the same land over and over again for generations. Thethree-fieldsystem seems to be simply the adaptation of the early open-field husbandry to a permanent three-course rotation of crops.
The yard-land the mark of serfdom.
But there is a further distinguishing feature of the English three-field system which implies the introduction of yet another factor in the complex result, viz. theyard-land. And this indivisible bundle of strips, to which there was always a single succession, was evidently the holding not of a free tribesman whose heirs would inherit and divide the inheritance, but of a serf, to whom an outfit of oxen had been allotted. In fact, the complex and more organised system would naturally grow out of the simpler form under the two conditions ofsettlementandserfdom.
Now, turning from England to the Continent, we have in the same way various forms of the open-field system to deal with, and in comparing them with the English system their geographical distribution becomes very important.
German authorities on the German system.
Happily, very close attention has recently been given to this subject by German students, and we are[p371]able to rely with confidence on the facts collected by Dr. Landau,554by Dr. Hanssen,555and lastly by Dr. August Meitzen in hisAusbreitung der Deutschen in Deutschland,556and in his still more recent and interesting review of the collected works of Dr. Hanssen.557
Whilst we learn from these writers that much remains to be done before the last word can be said upon so intricate a subject, some general points seem at least to be clearly made out.
In the first place there are some German systems of husbandry which may well be weeded out at once from the rest as not analogous to the Anglo-Saxon three-field system in England.
The Feldgraswirthschaft.
There is the old 'Feldgraswirthschaft,' analogous perhaps to the Welsh co-ploughing of the waste and the shifting 'Arva' of the Germans of Tacitus, which still lingers in the mountain districts of Germany and Switzerland, where corn is a secondary crop to grass.558
The Einzelhöfe.
There are the 'Einzelhöfe' of Westphalia and other districts,i.e.single farms, each consisting mainly of land all in one block, like a modern English farm, but as different as possible from the old English open-field system, with its yard-lands and scattered strips.559
Forest and marsh system.
Further, there is a peculiar form of the open-field system, chiefly found in forest and marsh districts, in which each holding consists generally ofone single[p372]long strip of land, reaching from the homestead right across the village territory to its boundary.560This system, so different from the prevalent Anglo-Saxon system, is supposed to represent comparatively modern colonisation and reclamation of forest and marsh land; and though possibly bearing some analogy to the Englishfensystem, is not that for which we are seeking.
Passing all these by, we come to a peculiar method of husbandry which covers a large tract of country, and which is adopted under both the single farm system and also the open-field system with scattered ownership, but which nevertheless is opposed to the three-field system. It is especially important for our purpose because of its geographical position.
The one-field system
All over the sand and bog district of the north of Germany, crops, mostly of rye and buckwheat, have for centuries been grownyear after year on the same land, kept productive by marling and peat manure, on what Hanssen describes as the 'one-field system.'561This system is found in Westphalia, East Friesland, Oldenburg, North Hanover, Holland, Belgium. Denmark, Brunswick, Saxony, and East Prussia. Over parts of the district under this one-field system the single-farm system prevails, in others the fields are divided into 'Gewanne' and strips, and there is scattered ownership.
in North Germany.
Now, possibly this one-field system, with its marling and peat manure, may have been the system described by Pliny as prevalent in Belgic Britain and Gaul before the Roman conquest,[p373]but certainly it is not the system prevalent in England under Saxon rule. And yet this district where the one-field system is prevalent in Germany is precisely the district from which, according to the common theory, the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain came. It is precisely the district of Germany where the three-field system is conspicuously absent. So that although Nasse and Waitz somewhat hastily suggested that the Saxons had introduced the three-field system into England, Hanssen, assuming that the invaders of England came from the north, confidently denies that this was possible. 'The Anglo-Saxons and the Frisians and Low Germans and Jutes who came with them to England cannot [he writes] have brought the three-field system with them into England, because they did not themselves use it at home in North-west Germany and Jutland.' He adds that even in later times the three-field system has never been able to obtain a firm footing in these coast districts.562
The three-field system
There remains the question, where on the Continent was prevalent that two-or three-field system analogous to the one most generally prevalent on the manors of England?
in the old Suevic and Roman districts.
The result of the careful inquiries of Hanssen, Landau, and Meitzen seems to be, broadly speaking, this, viz., that setting aside the complication which arises in those districts where there has been a Slavic occupation of German ground and a German re-occupation of Slavic ground,563the ancient three-field system, with itshubenof scattered strips, was most[p374]generally prevalent south of the Lippe and the Teutoberger Wald,i.e.in those districts once occupied by the Suevic tribes located round the Romanlimes, and still more in those districts within the Romanlimeswhich were once Roman province—the 'Agri Decumates,' Rhætia, and Germania Prima—the present Baden, Wirtemberg, Swabia, and Bavaria, on the German side of the Rhine, and Elsass and the Moselle valley on its Gallic side.564
These once Roman or partly Romanised districts were undoubtedly its chief home. Sporadically and later, it existed further north but not generally.
This general geographical conclusion is very important. But before we can fairly assume either a Roman or South German origin, the similarity of the English and South German systems must be examined in their details and earliest historical traces. Further, the examination must not be confined to the shell. It must be extended also to the serfdom which in Germany as in England, so to speak, lived within it.
In previous chapters some of the resemblances between the English and German systems have incidentally been noticed, but the reader will pardon some repetition for the sake of clearness in the statement of this important comparison.[p375]
The boundaries, or marchæ.
Firstas to the whole territory or ager occupied by the village community or township. This, by the presentment of the homage of the Hitchin Manor, was described in the record by itsboundaries—from such a place to such a place, and so on fill the starting-point was reached again.
In the 'gemæru' of the Saxon charters the same form was used.
In the 'marchæ' of the manors surrendered to the abbey of Lorsch in the seventh and eighth centuries, the same form was used in the Rhine valley.
It is, in fact, as we have seen, a form in use before the Christian era, and described by the Roman 'Agrimensores' as often adopted in recording the 'limites' of irregular territories, to which their rectangular centuriation did not extend.
Now, when we consider this method, it implies permanent settlements close to one another, where even the marshes or forests lying between them have been permanently divided by a fixed line, or it implies that a necessity has arisen to mark off the occupied territory from theager publicus. It may have been derived from the rough and ready methods of marking divisions of tribe-land during the early and unsettled stages of tribal life. But the German settlements described by Tacitus seem to have been without defined boundaries. 'Agri' were taken possession of according to the number of the settlers,pro numero cultorum. Not till some outside influence compelled finalsettlementwould the necessity for[p376]well-marked boundaries of territories arise. And we have seen that the evidence of local names strongly points to the Roman rule as this settling influence.
In the Lorsch charters the districts included within the 'marchæ' are often, as we have seen, called 'marks.'
The three fields.
Next as to the division of the arable land into fields—generallythreefields565—representing the annual rotation of crops.
The homage of the Hitchin Manor presented that the common fields within the township had immemoriably been and ought to be kept and cultivated in three successiveseasonsof—
The three fields are elsewhere commonly known asthe—
Universally, the fallow ends at the autumn sowing of the wheat crop of the next season, which is hence called 'winter corn.'
The wordetch, oreddish, oredish, occurs in Tusser, and means the stubble of the previous crop[p377]of whatever kind. Thus, in the 'Directions for February,' hesays,—
Etch-grain sown on the stubble of a previous crop.
'Eatetch, ere ye plow,With hog, sheep, and cow.'566
'Eatetch, ere ye plow,With hog, sheep, and cow.'566
'Eatetch, ere ye plow,
With hog, sheep, and cow.'566
This is evidently to prepare the stubble of the last year's corn crop for the spring sown bean or other crop; for under the same month hesays,—
Go plow in the stubble, for now is the seasonFor sowing of vetches, of beans, and of peason.567
Go plow in the stubble, for now is the seasonFor sowing of vetches, of beans, and of peason.567
Go plow in the stubble, for now is the season
For sowing of vetches, of beans, and of peason.567
In the directions for the October sowing are the followinglines:—
Seed first go fetchForedish, oretch.White wheat if ye please,Sow now upon pease.568
Seed first go fetchForedish, oretch.White wheat if ye please,Sow now upon pease.568
Seed first go fetch
Foredish, oretch.
White wheat if ye please,
Sow now upon pease.568
Andagain,—
When wheat uponeddishye mind to bestowLet that be the first of the wheat ye do sow.· · · · · ·White wheat upon pease-etchdoth grow as he would,But fallow is best if we did as we should.· · · · · ·When peason ye had and a fallow thereon,Sow wheat ye may well without dung thereupon.569
When wheat uponeddishye mind to bestowLet that be the first of the wheat ye do sow.· · · · · ·White wheat upon pease-etchdoth grow as he would,But fallow is best if we did as we should.· · · · · ·When peason ye had and a fallow thereon,Sow wheat ye may well without dung thereupon.569
When wheat uponeddishye mind to bestow
Let that be the first of the wheat ye do sow.
· · · · · ·
White wheat upon pease-etchdoth grow as he would,
But fallow is best if we did as we should.
· · · · · ·
When peason ye had and a fallow thereon,
Sow wheat ye may well without dung thereupon.569
Tilth-grain sown on the fallow.
'Etch-grain' is therefore the crop, generally oats or beans, sown in spring after ploughing the stubble of the wheat crop, which itself was best sown if possible upon the fallow, and so was called the 'tilth-grain.'
Breach-corn.
The oats or beans grown on the wheat stubble were sometimes called 'Breach-corn,' andBreach-land was land prepared for a second crop.570[p378]
Where shall we find these words and things on the Continent?
Looking to the Latin words used for the three fields, it is obvious that these were sometimes regarded as three separate ploughings—araturæ, orculturæ,—or as so many sowings—sationes,571—just as in the north of England they are called 'falls,' or 'fallows,' which have to be ploughed.
Names for the three fields, 'Felder,' 'Sationes,' 'Zelgen.'
In North Germany, where they occur, they are generally simply called 'felder;'572in France around Paris they were called in the ninth century 'sationes;'573but in South Germany and Switzerland the usual word for each field isZelg, which Dr. Landau connects with the Anglo-Saxon 'tilgende' (tilling), and the later English 'tilth,' one of the Hitchin words. And he says thatZelgstrictly means only the ploughed field574(aratura), though used for all the three. The three fields were thus spoken of as threetilths. The word 'Zelg' we have already found in the St. Gall charters in the eighth century, and Dr. Landau points out other instances of the same date of its use in the districts of Swabia, the middle Rhine, and later in the Inn Valley.
'Esch,' and the Gothic 'Attisk.'
On the other hand, in Westphalia, in Baden, and especially in Upper Swabia and Upper Bavaria, as far as the river Isar, and also in Switzerland, the wordEschis the one in use,575the word being used in[p379]Westphalia, also for the whole arable area.576Eschalso was in use at the date of the earliest form of the Bavarian laws (in the seventh century). The hedge put up in defence of the sown field is there called an 'ezzisczun.'577Still earlier, in the fourth century, further East the open fields seem to have been called 'attisk;' for Ulphilas, in his translation of Mark ii. 23, speaks of the disciples walking over the 'attisk'—i.e.over the 'etch,' or 'eddish'—instead of as in the Anglo-Saxon translation over the 'æcera.' Here, therefore, we have another of the Hitchin words.
'Brachfrichte.'
These words point to connexion with South Germany.
In Hesse, according to Dr. Landau, the three fields are spoken ofas—
On the Main, in the fifteenth century, they were spoken ofas—
In Elsass, in the fourteenth century, and on the Danube—
were used, and Dr. Landau says thatEschis sometimes put in contrast with 'Brach.'578Whatever may be[p380]the exact meaning of the wordBrach—whether referring to the breaking of the rotation or the breaking of the stubble—there can be no doubt of the identity of the word with the EnglishBreachandBreach-corn.
It appears, therefore, that in South Germany, and especially in the districts once Roman province, the three fields representing the rotation of crops for many centuries have been known by names closely resembling those used in England.
Passing next to the divisions of the open fields, we take first the Furlongs or Shots (the LatinQuarentenæ).
'Shot.'
The word 'Shot' probably is simply the Anglo-Saxon 'sceot,' ordivision; but it is curious to find in a document of 1318 mention of 'unam peciam, quod vulgariter diciturSchoet' atPassau, near the junction of the Inn with the Danube.579
'Gewann.'
The usual word in Middle and South Germany is 'Gewende,' in Lower Germany 'Wande' or 'Wanne,' or 'Gewann'—words which no less than the Furlong580refer to the length of the furrow and the turning of the plough at the end of it.
Headland.
Theheadland, on which the plough was turned,[p381]is also found in the German three-field system as in England.
'Voracker.'
In a Frankish document quoted by Dr. Landau, it is called the 'Voracker,' elsewhere it is known as the 'Anwänder' (versura), or 'Vorwart.'581
The Lince called 'Rain.'
In the English system the furlongs were divided into strips or acres by turf balks left in the ploughing, and, as we have seen, on hill-sides, the strips became terraces, and the balks steep banks called 'linces.' It will be remembered that these were produced by the practice of always turning the sod downhill in the ploughing. There are manylincesas far north as in the district of the 'Teutoberger Wald,'582and they occur in great numbers as far south as the Inn Valley, all the way up to St. Mauritz and Pontresina. Although in many places the terraces in the Engadine are now grass-land, it is well known to the peasantry that they were made by ancient ploughing.
The German word for the turf slope of these terraces is 'Rain,' and, like the word balk, it means a strip of unploughed turf.583It is sometimes used for the terrace itself. Precisely the same word is used for the similar terraces in the Dales of Yorkshire, which are still called by the Dalesmen 'reeans' or 'reins.'584Terraces of the same kind are found in[p382]Scotland; and when Pennant in 1772 asked what they were called, he was told that they were 'baulks.'585
The CelticRhan.
Both words suggest a wider than merely German origin. 'Balk' is as thoroughly a Welsh word586as it is English and German. 'Rain' can hardly be other than the Welsh 'Rhan' (a division), or 'Rhyn' and 'grwn' (a ridge), with which the name of the open-field system in Ireland and Scotland—'run-rig'—is no doubt connected. The English wordlinceorlinch, with the Anglo-Saxon 'hlinc' and 'hlince,' is perhaps allied to the Anglo-Saxon 'Hlynian,' or 'Hlinian,' to lean, making its participle 'hlynigende;' and this, and the old High German 'hlinen,' are surely connected with the Latin and Italian 'inclinare' and the French 'enclin.' As we have seen, the Roman 'Agrimensores' called these slopes or terraces 'supercilia.'
Next let us ask, whence came the Englishacre stripitself?
The acre strip a day's work.
It represented, as we have seen, a day's work at ploughing. Hence the GermanMorgenandTagwerk, in the AlpsTagwanandTagwen; and hence also, as early as the eighth century, the Latin 'jurnalis' and[p383]'diurnalis.'587In early Roman times Varro describes thejugerum[orjugum]—the Roman acre—as 'quod juncti boves uno die exarare possint.'588
The division of arable open fields into day-works was therefore ancient. It was also widely spread, and by no means confined to the three-field system. It was common to the co-aration of both free tribesmen and 'taeogs' in Wales; and the Fellahin of Palestine to this moment divide their open fields into day-works for the purpose of easy division among them, according to their ploughs or shares in a plough.589
In the Irish open-field system, as we have seen, the land was very early divided into equal 'ridges,' for in the passage quoted, referring to the pressure of population in the seventh century, the complaint was, not that the people receivedsmallerridges than in former times, butfewer of them. These ridges, however, may or may not have been 'day-works.'
But perhaps, outside of the three-field system, a still more widely spread practice was that of dividing the furlongs or larger divisions intoas many strips as there were sharers, without reference to the size of the strips. This practice seems to be the one adopted in many parts of Germany, in Russia, and in the East, and it is in common use in the western districts of Scotland to this day whenever a piece of land is held by a number of crofters as joint holders.590[p384]
It is doubtful whether the division into acre strips representing day-works, and divided from their neighbours by 'raine' or balks, was one of the features of the original German system of ploughing. It is chiefly, if not entirely, in the districts within or near to the Roman 'limes,' or colonised after the conquest of the Roman provinces, that it appears to have been prevalent.591
With regard to the word 'acre,' it is probably of very ancient origin.
The German 'acker' has the wider sense of ploughed land in general, but sometimes in East Friesland,592and also in South Germany and German Switzerland it has still the restricted meaning of the acre strip laid out for ploughing.593
We now pass to the form of the acre strip or day's work in ploughing.
Roman jugerum.
The Romanactusor furrow length was 120 feet, or twelve 10-feet rods. Theactus quadratuswas 120 feet square. The jugerum was composed of two of theseactus quadrati. It was therefore in length still an actus or furrow of 120 feet, and it was twice as broad as it was long; whilst the length of the English acre is ten times its breadth.
Strips of the same form as the English acre in France and in Bavaria in the seventh century.
Thus the English acre varied much in its shape[p385]from the Roman jugerum. Its exact measurements are found in themappa, or measure of the day-work of the tenants of the abbot of St. Remy at Rheims, which is described in the Polyptique of the ninth century as forty perches in length and four in width.594It occurs again in the 'napatica' of the Polyptique of the abbey of St. Maur, near Nantes, which was of precisely the same dimensions.595And we have seen that the 'andecena,' or measure of the day's work of ploughing for the coloni and servi of the Church, was described by the Bavarian laws in the seventh century as of precisely the same form as the English acre, forty rods in length and four rods in width, only that the rods were Roman rods of 10 feet.
We have to go, therefore, to Bavaria in the seventh century for the earliest instance of the form of the English acre. And in this earliest instance it had a distinctlyservileconnexion, as it had also in the French cases quoted. In all it fixed the day's task-work of semi-servile tenants.
Further, the Bavarian 'andecena,' if the spelling of the word may be trusted, may have another curious and interesting connexion with the Saxon acre, to which attention must be once more turned.
The form in which the 'agrarium' or tithe-rent was taken.
We have seen that the tithes were to be paid in Saxon times in the produce of 'every tenth acre as it[p386]is traversed by the plough.' The Roman land-tribute in Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates' also consisted of tithes. If these latter tithes were paid as the Saxon ecclesiastical tithes were, by every tenth strip being set aside for them in the ploughing, the words of the Bavarian law have an important significance. Thejudexorvillicusis required by the laws to see that thecolonusorservusshall render by way ofagrariumor land tribute according to what he has, from every thirty modii three modii (i.e.the tenth)—'lawfulandecenæ(andecenas legitimas), that is (the rod having ten feet) four rods in width and forty in length, to plough, to sow, to hedge, to gather, to lead, and to store.'596
Now why is the peculiar phraseology used 'from 30 modii 3 modii'? Surely either because three modii, according to the 'Agrimensores,' went to the juger, or because the actual acre of the locality was sown with three modii of seed,597so that in either case it was a way of saying 'from every ten acres one acre.' Further, the form and measure of the acre is described, and it is called the 'lawful andecena.' The word itself in its peculiar etymology possibly contains a reference to theone strip set apart in ten for the tithe. Be this as it may, here again, in another point connected with the 'acre,' we find the nearest and earliest analogies in South Germany within the old Roman province.[p387]
Lastly, we have still to explain the reason of the difference between the form of the Roman 'actus' and 'jugerum' and that of the early Bavarian and English acre.
The Egyptian arura was 100 cubits square.598
The Greek πλέθρον was 10 rods or 100 feet square.599
The Roman actus was 12 rods or 120 feet square.
The Roman 'jugerum' was made up of two 'actus' placed side by side, and was the area to be ploughed in a day.
Form of the acre or day's-work connected with the number of oxen in the team.
In all these cases the yoke of two oxen is assumed, and the length of the acre, or 'day-work,' is the length of the furrow whichtwooxen could properly plough at a stretch.600
The reason of the increased length of the Bavarian and the English acre was, no doubt, connected with the fact of the larger team.601
If the Bavarian team was of eight oxen, like that of the English and Welsh and Scotch common plough, it would seem perfectly natural that with four times the strength of team the furrow might also be assumed to be four times the usual length. In this way the Greek and Roman furrow of 10 or 12 rods may naturally have been extended north of the Alps into the 'furlong' of forty rods.[p388]. Now, there is a remarkable proof that long furrows, and therefore probably large teams, were used in Bavaria, then within the Roman province of Rhætia, as early as the second century. The remains of the Bavarian 'Hochäcker' are described as running uninterruptedly for sometimes a kilomètre and more,i.e.five times the length of the English furlong. And a Roman road with milestones, dating as early asA.D.201, in one place runs across these long furrows in a way which seems to prove that they were older than the road.602
The Bavarian 'Hochäcker' and their long furrows.
Professor Meitzen argues from this fact that these 'Hochäcker' with long furrows are pre-German in these districts, and in the absence of evidence of their Celtic origin he inclines to attribute them to the husbandry of officials or contractors on the imperial waste lands, who had at their command hundreds of slaves and heavy plough teams.
This may be the solution of the puzzling question of the origin of the Bavarian 'Hochäcker,' but the presence of the team of eight oxen in Wales and Scotland as well as in England, and the mention of teams of six and eight oxen in the Vedas603as used by Aryan husbandmen in the East, centuries earlier, makes it possible, if not probable, that the Romans, in this instance as in so many others, adopted and adapted to their purpose a practice which they found already at work, connected perhaps with a heavier soil and a clumsier plough than they were used to south of the Alps.604[p389]
We now pass from the strips to the holdings.
The typical English holding of a serf in the open fields was the yard-land of normally thirty acres (ten[p390]scattered acres in each of the three fields), to which an outfit of two oxen was assigned as 'setene' or 'stuht,' and which descended from one generation to another as a complete indivisible whole.
The hub or yard-land.
The German word for the yard-land ishoforhub; in its oldest formhuoba, huba, hova.605And Aventinus, writing early in the sixteenth century of the holdings in Bavaria in the thirteenth century, distinguishes thehofas the holding belonging to aquadriga, or yoke of four oxen, taxed at sixty 'asses,' from thehubor holding of thebigaor yoke of two oxen, and taxed[p391]at thirty 'asses.'606If the tax in this case were one 'as' per acre, then thehofcontained sixty acres, and thehubthirty acres. So that, as in the yard-land, ten acres in each field would go under the three-field system to the pair of oxen.
Wide prevalence of the hub of thirty morgen in Middle and South Germany.
Thehubof thirtymorgenseems to have been the typical holding of the serf over a very wide area, according to the earliest records. Whilst as a rule absent from North Germany, Dr. Landau traces it in Lower Saxony, in Engern, in Thuringia, in Grapfeld, in Hesse, on the Middle Rhine and the Moselle, in the old Niederlahngau, Rheingau, Wormsgau, Lobdengau and Spiergau, in Elsass, in Swabia, and in Bavaria.607
The doublehufof sixtymorgenalso occurs on the Weser and the Rhine in Lower Saxony and in Bavaria.608The word 'huf' first occurs in a document ofA.D.474.609
The passage in the Bavarian laws of the seventh century, already referred to, declaring the tithe to be 'three modii from every thirty' modii—or one 'lawful andecena' from each ten that, in the typical case taken, 'a man has'—would seem to suggest that tenandecenæor acre strips in each field (or thirty in all) was a typical holding, whilst the use of the Roman rod of ten feet points to a Roman influence.