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_).