amount of population in the Saxon kingdoms of the seventh, eighth, ninth, or even eleventh centuries. We know that in the eighth century, 150 hides were enough for the support and comfort of 600 monks in Yarrow and Wearmouth'; there is no reason, from their history, to suppose that they were at all sparingly provided for. But allowance must be made also for serfs and dependants, the exercise of hospitality and charity, the occasional purchase of books, vestments and decorations, the collection of reliques, and the maintenance of the fabric both of the church and monastery. Grants and presents, offerings and foundations would do much, but still some portion of these necessary expenses must be carried to the account of the general fund. At this rate however, one hide was capable of maintaining four full-grown men. Now even at the present day an industrious man can very well support his family upon, not thirty or forty, but ten acres of average land. If we look at the produce of such a threefold course as has been mentioned, there can hardly be any doubt upon the subject; the cultivator would have every year twenty Saxon (=263 Norman) acres under some kind of corn, principally barley in all probability, though much wheat was grown. Assuming the yield at only two quarters per acre, which is an Anon. Abb. Gyrw. § 33. This at forty actual acres, is ten acres per man. * We need not enter upon the question whether such a plot of land can be well cultivated (except as a garden), or whether it is desirable that there should be such a class of cultivators. All I assert is, that a man can support his family upon it. almost ludicrous understatement of the probable amount', we give each householder forty quarters of cereales, at the very lowest, and deducting his seed-corn and the public taxes, we still leave him a very large amount. The average annual consumption of wheat per head in England is now computed at one quarter: let us add one half to compensate for the less nutritious qualities of barley, and we shall yet be under the mark if we allow our householder at the close of the year, a net receipt of thirty quarters, or food for at least twenty persons. Add to this the cattle, and especially swine fed in the forests, which paid well for their own keep, and gave a net surplus-and the ceorl or owner of one hide of land, independently of his political rights, becomes a person of some consideration from his property2 in short he is fully able to maintain himself, his wife and child, the ox that ploughs, and the slave that tends his land,-owning much more indeed, than in Hesiod's eyes, would have sufficed for these purposes. It may be admitted The fertility of England was always celebrated, and under the Romans it exported cereales largely. See Gibbon's calculation of an export under Julian. Dec. F. cap. xix. Our present average yield of wheat exceeds 30 bushels or 3.75 qrs. If he had a market for his surplus, he might accumulate wealth. Even if he had not this, he insured a comfortable, though rude subsistence, for his household. The spur to exertion, urging him to acquire luxuries, might be wanting, and the national advancement in refinement thus retarded: but he had a sufficiency of the necessaries of life, and an independent existence in the body of the family and the Mark. Such a state necessarily precedes the more cultivated stages of society. οἶκον μὲν πρώτιστα, γυναῖκά τε, βοῦν τ' ἀροτῆρα. 3 Cited in Arist. Pol. bk. 1. The land of a fullborn Spartan may have been somewhat less than the that the skies of Greece and Italy showered kindlier rays upon the Ionian or the Latin than visited the rough denizen of our Thule; that less food of any kind, and especially less meat, was required for their support', and that they felt no necessity to withdraw large amounts of barley from the annual yield, for the purpose of producing fermented liquors; still, as far as the amount of land is concerned, the advantage is incontestably on the side of the Anglosaxon; and in this one element of wealth, our ceorl was comparatively richer than the comrade of Romulus or the worshiper of Athene. Saxon hide but let those who think these amounts too small, remember the two jugera (under two acres) which formed the haeredium of a Roman patrician. 1 Hecataeus says the Arcadians fed upon barley-bread and pork, ̓Αρκαδικὸν δὲ δεῖπνον.... Ἑκαταῖος....μᾶζας φησιν εἶναι καὶ ὕεια κρέα. Athen. iv. 148. But the Arcadians, both in blood and manners, probably resembled the Saxons more than any other Greeks did; and what Hecataeus says of them would not apply to the inhabitants of Attica. 2 After the Persian wars at least, when the Greeks prided themselves on drinking wine, not beer: ἀλλ ̓ ἄρσενάς τοι τῆσδε γῆς οἰκήτορας Esch. Supp. 929. 122 CHAPTER V. PERSONAL RANK. THE FREEMAN. THE NOBLE. THE second principle laid down in the first chapter of this book, is that of personal rank, which in the Teutonic scheme appears inseparably connected with the possession of land. The earliest records we can refer to, place before us a system founded upon distinctions of birth, as clearly as any that we can derive from the Parliamentary writs or rolls of later ages: in our history there is not even a fabulous Arcadia, wherein we may settle a free democracy: for even where the records of fact no longer supply a clue through the labyrinths of our early story, the epic continues the tradition, and still celebrates the deeds of nobles and of kings. Tacitus, from whom we derive our earliest information, supplies us with many details, which not only show the existence of a system, but tend also to prove its long prevalence. He tells us not only of nobles, but also of kings, princes and inherited authority', more or less fully developed and the 1 The Cherusci feeling the want of a king sent to Rome for a descendant of Arminius. Tac. An. xi. 17. The Heruli in Illyria having slain their king, sent to their brethren in Thule (Scandinavia) for a descendant of the blood royal. During his journey however they accepted another king from the hands of Justinian. This person and their alliance with the emperor they renounced upon the arrival of the unbiassed judgment of the statesman who witnessed the operation of institutions strange to himself, warns us against theoretical appeals to the fancied customs of ages not contemporaneous with our own. The history of Europe knows nothing of a period in which there were not freemen, nobles and serfs; and the institutions of Europe, in proportion as we pursue them to their earliest principles, furnish only the stronger confirmation of history. We may, no doubt, theorize upon this subject, and suggest elementary forms, as the necessary conditions of a later system: but this process is and must be merely hypothetical, nor can such forms be shown to have had at any time a true historical existence. That every German was, in the beginning, Kaiser and Pope in his own house1 may be perfectly true in one sense; just as true is it that every Englishman's house is his castle: nevertheless, the German lived under some government, civil or religious, or both: and-to the great advantage of society-the process of law surmounts without the slightest difficulty the imaginary battlements of the imaginary fortress. The whole subject must be considered in one of two ways: with reference, namely, to a man living prince from the North. Procop. Bell. Got. ii. 15. " Reges ex nobilitate, duces ex virtute sumunt." Tac. Germ. vii. "Magna patrum merita principis dignationem etiam adolescentulis assignant." Ibid. xiii. Although mere boys might be kings, they could hardly be duces, in the old Teutonic sense. 1 Möser, Osnabrückische Geschichte (1780), 1er Abschn. § 8. "Solche einzelne wohner waren Priester und Könige in ihren Häusern und Hofmarken," etc. See his references to Tac. Germ. x. etc. |