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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.
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 30_s._
2 hides, land for 2 ploughs, 30 acres meadow. Worth 60_s._
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—
The pound-land, librata terræ, was 240 acres. The shilling-land, solidata terræ, was 12 acres. The penny-land, denariata terræ, was 1 acre. The farthing-land, 1/2 obolata terræ, was 1 rood.
_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.