Acre No. 1 is divided, according to the ancient custom, into 4 roods, each 40 rods long and 1 rod broad.

Acre No. 10 is divided, according to Gunter’s decimal system, into 10 square chains, each 4 rods square.

4. Feudal Land-Measures

In ancient Egypt land was surveyed by a State department, but other Eastern Kingdoms, even of the present time, are less advanced. There is a simple system of taxing each plough. This was approximately the medieval system, as we see in the Domesday revenue-survey, the great record of the plough-lands and rental of England. Estates are thus described:

2-1/2 hides; land for 1-1/2 ploughs. There is 1 plough with 4 bordars and 4 serfs. Worth 30s.

2 hides, land for 2 ploughs, 30 acres meadow. Worth 60s.

4 hides, 1-1/2 virgates; land for 10 ploughs. Now worth 14 li., formerly at 17 li.

In some parts the ‘knight’s fee’ was reckoned at 480 acres (4 hides) worth 40 shillings a year. On this valuation—

Cent livrÉes de terre À l’esterlin (Froissart) a hundred pound-lands, reckoned of the annual value of 100 pounds sterling. This is sometimes taken as the amount of ‘relief,’ another feudal estimate, often taken at one year’s value.

In Edward I’s time a son and heir paid £18 for relief of his land which was worth £18 a year. In Henry II’s time £5 appears to be the usual relief paid for a knight’s fee on succession to it. By Magna Charta the relief of a whole barony (10 to 40 knight’s fees) was fixed at 100 marks; in Henry III’s time it was £100.

I may here give a fifteenth-century record of English linear measures.^[17]

It is to mete that iij Early Cornys in the myddis of the Ere makyth one ynche, And xij enchis makyth a foote

And sixteyne foote and a halfe makyth a perche; And in sum cuntre a perche ys xviij foote.

Fourty perchys in lengyth makyth a Rode of Lande; put iiij therto in brede, and that makyth an Acre.

And xiiij Acrys makyth a yerde of lande;

And v yerdis makyth an hyde of lande, which ys lxx Acrys.

And viij hydis makyth a knyghtis fee, which is vC.lx Acrys of lande.

5. Terms used in Land-measures

Rod.—Pole, Perch, Goad, Lug, L. pertica, Fr. perche, verge, G. ruthe, Du. roede.

The equivalent words, L. virga, Fr. verge, A.S. geard, Eng. ‘yard,’ originally any long straight twig or rod, came to mean: (1) a yard or ell-measure, (2) a rod measure of land, lineal or superficial. The French verge is still thus used in Normandy and the Channel Islands. Our ‘yard’ acquired this extended sense, and others still more extended. In Cornwall 2 staves (of 9 feet) make a yard of land. In Somerset the lineal rod is the ‘land-yard,’ and the yard of land is a square rod. Thus the rood is ‘forty yard o’ ground’ and the acre is ‘eight score yard o’ ground.’

Rood.—A differentiated form of ‘rod’ applied in a lineal sense to 40 rods, and also to the area of a quarter-acre 40 × 1 rods.

In Normandy and the Channel Islands our rod and rood are verge and vergÉe, and as the first sense of verge was ‘yard’ so vergÉe became in English a ‘yard of lande.’ So here we have a third sense of the triple-form word virga-verge-yard.

‘A rodde of land which some call a roode, some a yarde lande, and some a farthendale’ (Recorde, 1542).

The latter term, meaning a ‘fourth part,’ as in the farthing to the penny, may also have referred to the rood as being a farthing-land in rental. It appears as L. furendellus, farundel, ferling.

The rood was also divided into 4 day’s-work, each of 10 square rods.

Acre.—As the rood was sometimes lineal, though usually superficial, so also the ‘acre’ was sometimes a rough lineal measure, generally an acre-breadth, or 4 rods (a cricket-pitch). But it might also be an acre-length = a rood length. The verse in 1 Samuel xiv.: ‘And that first slaughter which Jonathan and his armour bearer made was about twenty men within as it were an half-acre of land which a yoke of oxen might plow,’ is in Coverdale’s version (1535) ‘within the length of halve an aker of londe,’ that is, in a length of 20 rods. In French ‘arpent’ was likewise used for a French acre-length, reckoned, not of the official square arpent, but of the furrow-long arpent, nearly a furlong. Thus in the Chanson de Roland

evidently means about a furlong, just as in Iliad x., ‘when he was as far off as the length of the furrow made by mules’ has the same meaning.

Similarly the sesteirado of Provence was used as an itinerary measure, probably of 100 cano = about 220 yards, the same as the centeniÉ.

The sesteirado, the rood of Southern France, corresponding to the boisselÉe, the bushel-land of Mid-France, was, like the latter, originally a seed-unit, the extent sown with a sestiÉ of seed-corn. Its extent is 0·4 acre, = our rood. Now if this were square, each side would measure 40 yards, a length too small for itinerary measure. Neither Northern nor Southern France had any official itinerary measure under the league, so field-units were necessarily used; in the north the arpent-length, in the south the sesteirado-length; both corresponding to our rood-length, furrow-length or furlong. There seems little doubt that the centeniÉ, the popular itinerary measure of the south, 100 cano or fathoms, was the same as the sesteirado-length. And the sesteirado being 400 square cano, it seems that its dimensions were 100 × 4 cano. It was moreover the rood, or quarter of the greater land-unit, the saumado, the ‘seam’ of land, which would thus be 100 × 16 cano just as our rood was 40 × 1 rods, and our acre 40 × 4 rods. Ten sesteirado-lengths, 10 centeniÉ, made the milo, a mile of 1000 local fathoms, one-third of the league of Southern France.

Yardland.—L. quatrona terrÆ, virgata. Fr. bouvÉe. Bovate, Oxgang. About 30 acres more or less, including pasture and perhaps some woodland. Before the Norman conquest the gebur-geriht (boor’s right) was 6 sheep and 7 acres arable on his yard-land. This corresponds roughly to the German hufe = about 20 acres, and to the Netherlands hoeve, the unit of small holding. Almost everywhere and always, 6 or 7 acres of arable have been all that the boor’s yoke of oxen can till. There was other work for the oxen besides ploughing, and at least five ploughings were usually necessary for proper tillage; then there was cartage and feudal duties in consideration of the small rent.

In the Roll of Battel Abbey (tenth and eleventh centuries) the perch is 16 feet; the acre is 40 perches long and 4 broad and pays a penny a year; 3 shillings for the virgate or wist, the price of which was about 20 shillings. In this case 8 virgates made a hide, but this ‘eighth’ is exceptional, for the term ‘virgate’ brought a fourth sense to the virga = yard series of words, giving rise to the term yard-land as a quarter of the plough-land or hide. As the vergÉe in France (sometimes ambiguously called verge, as it has been seen that Recorde spoke of ‘a rodde of lande which some call a roode’) and the rood in England were a quarter-acre, and as this quarter-acre was sometimes called a ‘yard of land,’ so virga-verge-yard acquired the general sense of ‘quarter’—either of an acre or of a ploughland or carucate. Thus in ‘Quant une homme est feffe dune verge de terre et dun autre de un carue du terre’ (Statute of Wards, 1300), the term ‘verge de terre’ means not a rod, a verge, but a yardland or virgate.

‘Farthing’ or ‘ferling’ as a quarter was used in the same double sense: a quarter-acre or a quarter-hide, indeed, as will presently be seen, a quarter-virgate.

Acreme.—This old law-term for 10 acres of land points to a tradition that our original unit of land-measurement was a rood or furlong square, that is 40 × 40 rods: it was called a Ferlingata or Ferdelh.

A document temp. Edw. II describes the virgate (of which 4 made a hide; 5 hides being a knight’s fee) as of 4 (square) furlongs, each of 10 acres.

X acrÆ terrÆ faciunt unam fardellam.

Decem acrÆ faciunt ferlingatam; quatuor ferlingatÆ faciunt virgatam, et quatuor virgatÆ faciunt hidam; quinque hidÆ faciunt feodum militis.

So it appears conclusive (1) that the hide was 16 square furlongs, a quarter of a square mile = the quarter section of America; (2) that the acre was originally a slice of land off the square furlong, a rood, or furlong in length, a tenth of this in breadth.

Furlong and Ferling.—The square furlong is the same as the Acreme = 10 acres. The square furlong or furrow-long tends to become confused with ferling, G. vierling, with fardel, G. viertel, with farthendale, Du. vierendeel, all meaning a fourth. This confusion arises from the square furlong, similar in sound to ferling, being approximately the fourth, or farthing, of the virgate or yardland, itself Ferlingus terrÆ, a fourth of the hide or ploughland. So a ferling may be a fourth of an acre, or of a virgate, or of a hide. Similarly it may be, as farthendale or farendel, a quarter-bushel.

Another cause of confusion in feudal land-measures is the money-estimation of land. Bishop Fleetwood (‘Chronicon,’ 1707) thought the acre was a marc-land of 160 pence and the rod a penny-land, denariatus terrÆ, so that the quarter-rod was a farthing-land. He was deceived by the coincidence of the 160 rods of the acre with the 160 pence, 13s. 4d., 8 ounces of silver, of the monetary marc, and he mistook the Farthingdale or Farendel, a quarter-acre or rood, for a quarter-rod. The acre was distinctly a penny-land, and the hide of 160 acres was a marc-land, paying 160 pence.

Hide.—Ploughland, carucate, L. carucata, Fr. caruÉe. Normally 16 square furlongs = 160 acres, but sometimes 120 acres or less, varying according to the arable on it; and usually divided into 4 oxgangs, bovates or yardlands. In some parts the hide seems to have comprised several ploughlands and to have coincided with the knight’s fee (see Customs of Lancaster).

Hundred.—This division of a shire is supposed to have been originally one hundred hides; more probably it was a hundred knight’s fees.

6. The Yard and the Verge

These cognate terms have many developments of meaning, running almost parallel both in English and French. ‘Yard,’ the equivalent of A.S. gyrd, geard, and perhaps gÆd (gad), is cognate to ‘Rod’ and to Fr. Verge. It may mean:

1. A rod from a tree; L. virga, Fr. verge.

2. A short measure of 4 to 6 spans; Fr. verge.

3. A pole of indefinite length, in various senses, naval, &c. Fr. verge, vergue.

4. A long measure of 9 to 24 feet = rod, pole, perch. In France the perche may be from 9-1/2 feet (Burgundy) to 22 feet (French).

5. A measure of surface 9 to 24 feet square. Yard, Fr. verge.

6. A larger measure of surface 40 × 1 rod = a quarter-acre. Yard-land, rood, Fr. vergÉe.

7. A quarter of a still larger unit. Virgata, yard-land.

8. A holding of a rood when enclosed became a yard or garth, then a cultivated enclosure of any size: tree-yard (Du. boom-gaard), apple-garth, win-gaard (vineyard).^[18]

Here the Fr. verge parts company with ‘yard’; its place is taken by cour (L. curtiferum) and G. hof.

9. Any enclosed land attached to a house: Palace-yard, Fr. cour. Farm-yard, Fr. basse-cour. Court-yard, G. hof. Court = farmyard in Somerset.

Fr. verge reappears in the English form of ‘verge’ in the sense of a circle or ring, AS. gyrd, now ‘girth.’ The gyrd was a geard or yard bent into a hoop. Fr. verge = ring was a verge or rod bent into a hoop or ring. Cf. Fr. bague, ring made by bending a rod or baguette into a hoop. The English sense of ‘verge’ = circle is seen in:

The ‘verge’ of the King’s palace or court, sometimes stated as twelve leagues (of 1-1/2 miles), a circuit equal to about 3 miles in radius.

7. How the Rod came to be 5-1/2 Yards

The Roman pertica was 10 feet; though it seems probable that there was also a customary rod of 12 feet.

The French perche was 6 ells of 4 Roman feet, double the presumed customary perch of Rome.

The Scots rod was 6 ells of 3 Rhineland feet.

The German and Norse ruthen are nearly always either of 12 or of 16 feet.

How came it that the English rod was fixed, about the time of Edward I, at 5-1/2 yards = 16-1/2 feet?

There is reason to believe that it was originally 5 yards, at first in Roman feet, then in Rhineland feet.

A length of 5 yards and 1 or 2 inches (= 1/(8 × 40) of the Roman mile) survives in the Dorsetshire ‘goad’ or ‘lug.’^[19]

The Cornish rod or yard is 2 staves of 3 yards = 6 yards. There was, as late as 1540, a rod of 6 yards, ‘every pole containing eighten footes of the kinges standard.’

The rod of Guernsey, of Lancashire and of Ireland is 7 yards; it is the French perche of 20 pieds = 21·36 feet taken roughly at 21 English feet; this, and the Cheshire rod of 8 yards = 4 fathoms, are probably of Norman origin.

The English rod of pre-Norman and early Norman times was probably the Teutonic rod of 16 feet, as seen in the Roll of Battel Abbey. How did it become 16-1/2 feet?

I cannot absolutely solve the question; I can only offer the possible hypotheses:

1. That 5-1/2 yards was a compromise between a Southern rod of 5 yards and a Northern of 6 yards. But the former length only survived in the Dorsetshire lug, probably from Roman times, and 16 feet is the probable length of the Southern rod. And such a compromise is most improbable. I know of no measure established as a mean of two different measures.

2. That the length of the 5-1/2-yard rod was taken from that of the medieval lance. Certainly in France there is some evidence of the spear-length being used as a rough land-measure, ‘un hanst’ or ‘une hanstÉe’ de terre. ‘Hanste,’ in modern French hampe, a shaft, is from L. hasta. Doubtless very long lances have been used by infantry. The Macedonian phalanx had lances of 8 yards, so that five rows of spear points projected from its front. The Scots lance was 6 ells, the Scots rod, ‘That in all, Spears be six Elns in length, under the pain of etc.’ (James III); but this length, = 18-1/2 feet, was ordered two centuries later than Edward I, at a time when infantry were brought to resist the onslaught of cavalry. Two centuries later still, it was ordered by 13 Chas. II that a pikeman was to be armed with a pike not under 16 feet in length. It is improbable that in Edward I’s time foot soldiers were armed with pikes anything like that length, while the knights’ spears could not have been longer than 10 feet. Those shown in the Bayeux embroidery are about 7 feet.

It is possible that the length of the ox-goad may have been used as a rough land-measure, but English ox-goads appear to have usually been only about the length of the Cornish goad, not more than 3 yards long.

Inclined myself to this second hypothesis—for was not Hector’s spear of 11 cubits = 22 spans, and are not 22 spans = 16-1/2 feet?—I yet acknowledge that it is scarcely tenable.

3. The most probable hypothesis is that the Rod was originally a North German Ruthe of 16 Norse or Rhineland feet brought over by Saxons or Danes, and that, established as is seen by the Roll of Battel Abbey ‘pertica vero xvi pedes,’ it was afterwards adjusted to the standard of the King’s foot. Thus 16 Rhineland feet = 16 feet 5·7 inches; which would make the statute rod practically 16 feet 6 inches. In North Germany the Ruthe is usually of 16 local feet, originally, it may be presumed, Rhineland feet, displaced by the local foot = 11·23 to 11·5 inches. Sometimes this fall in the length of the foot is compensated by an increase in the number of ruthen to the ‘morgen’ or acre, sometimes, as in Holland, by making the roede 13 Amsterdam short feet (of 11 inches) instead of 12 Rhineland feet.

It seems likely that the North German acker of 160 square ruthen came to Northern France with the Franks and the Normans, that it became the Acre de Normandie of 160 square rods, the length of the rod becoming changed by the influence of the French standard of 6 aunes = 24 Roman feet. This length of 24 feet passed, under Norman influence, to Cheshire, becoming the local rod of 8 yards or 24 English feet.

The rod of 6 aunes, French ells, passed to Scotland as 6 ells, but 6 Scots ells = 18 Rhineland feet.

8. How the Acre came to be 160 Rods

The North German acker or morgen is 160 ruthen. Why? It may be presumed that, on the sexdecimal system dear to the bucolic mind throughout the world, it was 16 times an original unit of 10 square ruthen, of 16 feet square, analogous to the Greek plethron of 10 square kalamoi and to the ProvenÇal cosso of 10 square fathom-rods. There is still extant, in North Holland, the snees, snick, or score, of land, = 20 square roede.

The Austrian joch is 1600 square ‘klafter’ of 6 feet = 1·42 acre.

There are 1600 square rods in our square furlong, the original square unit of which the acre is a one-tenth slice.

In Provence, the people, long under Roman influence, are yet much more Greek than Roman, and there is not a trace of any Roman standard among their weights and measures. There the greater land-unit is the saumado of 1600 square cano of 6 feet. It is divided in two ways: (1) on the sexdecimal system,^[20] (2) into 160 cosso, each of 10 square cano.

It seems as if the 1600 small units in our square furlong, in the Austrian joch, in the ProvenÇal saumado, come from an extension of the sexdecimal multiple 16 to 160 and 1600.

9. Customs of Lancaster

‘Customs of places doe differ; for in the Dutchy of Lancaster a knightes fee containeth foure hides of land, every hide foure ploughlands called in latine carucata terrÆ, and that is quantum aratrum arare potest in Æstivo tempore, and that is (as I take it) which is in the North parts called an Oxegange. And every ploughland or carue is foure yard land which in latine is called quatrona terrÆ; every yardland thirty acres, halfe a yard land in some places in the West is called a Cosset, half a Cosset is a Mese which containeth about 7-1/2 acres. But commonly a carue or plow-land containeth a hundreth and twenty acres; a hide of land 480 acres and every knightes fee 1920 acres. But after some computations, a knights fee containeth five hydes of land, every hyde foure yard land, and every yard land twenty foure acres.’ (‘The Surveior’s Dialogue,’ by J. Norden, ‘at my poore house at Hendon, 27 Martis 1610.’)

So in Domesday Book it will be found that ‘inter Ripe et Mersham,’ between the Ribble and the Mersey, the hide was not synonymous with the carucate. The series of feudal measures appears to have been there:

Acre, of Lancashire standard = 1·62 statute acres.

Bovate or Virgate of about 15 acres, paying about 4 pence ‘relief’ to the king.

Carucate or Ploughland, of 8 bovates, paying about 32 pence.

Hide of 6 carucates, paying about one pound.

These feudal measures were evidently vague and variable. The King’s assessment was very much the same as it was in Upper Burma fifty years ago. There no survey was required; the land-tax (very light, as the king’s revenue was derived, as in medieval England, from forest and other monopolies and from fines) was one rupee a plough, that is for a plough and a yoke of cattle. The Norman kings’ assessment was for the common plough of the whole carucate, 4 oxgangs.

When men, emerging from the pastoral stage, took to agriculture, land was plentiful and would roughly but conveniently be estimated by the quantity of seed-corn required for it. Thus seed-units of land were the earliest, and many survive to this day.

It was ordered in Israel (Lev. xxvij.) that land should be ‘estimated according to the seed thereof, an homer of barley-seed shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.’ Taking the homer at 8 bushels, a homer of land = 3 or 4 acres, was worth 50 shekels, or half-crowns, of silver.

The Romans had the modius of land, sown with a modius, about 1/4 bushel, of corn.

In Northern France there is still the bonnier of land, about 4 acres, sown with a boune or bounie of seed, about 8 bushels.

Throughout the greater part of France the land is reckoned in seterÉes or sesteirado, units now fixed but originally named after the variable setier of seed-corn.

Smaller units are the mine or eiminado, and boisselÉe, all seed-units.

In North Germany the Scheffel, or Schepel (Du.), corn-measure is also a land-measure of about half an acre. The Schepel passed from Holland to New England as the Skipple, a bushel-skip. In North Germany and Norway there is the Tunn or Tonde, a barrel of about 4 bushels, corresponding to the Tondeland of about 1-1/3 acre (roughly equal to the French estrÉe).

To the Salma of Italy, to the Saumado (she-ass load) of Provence, corresponds the old English Seam, the Quarter of corn. The word seam hence got the general meaning of a quarter. So although the Seam of Corn would sow 4 acres, a seam of an acre meant a quarter-acre.

‘A Sester or Sextarius was what we call a Quarter or a seam containing 8 bushels (Sauma, quod unius equi fit sauma, i.e. sarcina)’ (Bishop Fleetwood, 1707).

There are still traces of seed-measures to be found in some parts of England. But in ‘A pek of londe’—‘Half a pek and a nayle of londe’ (Rolls of Parliament, 1442),^[21] it is doubtful whether the peck of land was really a seed-measure or a quarter-acre, as the peck is a quarter-bushel. A nail of land would be 1/16 acre.

There were seed-measures of land in Scotland. Thus: ‘15th Cy. Chart Aberd. Als mekill land as a celdr of aits will schawe,’ i.e. a Chalder of land, as much as a chalder = 64 firlots = 55 bushels, will sow, about 25 acres. There was also the Lippy of land, that which took a lippy, 1/16 firlot of seed. It was usually about 100 square yards.

In many parts of Southern Europe there are no other kinds of land-measure than those derived from the corn-measures of seed required.

Thus in Provence, the earliest civilised country in medieval times, the whole series of corn-measures and land-measures have names in common.

These land-measures would correspond to Coomb-land, Bushel-land, Peck-land, &c. The Cosso of land is 1/160 of the Saumado, as our square rod is 1/160 acre.

In Italy and Spain there are similar series of land-measures named after corn-measures.