Fluent Essays

To read the scholarly articles and then write a paragraph for each reading (around 100-150 words) about the arguments and the sources that used by the author. ._abels_military_failure_of_late_as_state.pdf ._hollister_five_hide_unit.pdf ._chibnall_military_service_in_normandy_before_1066.pdf ._brown_military_service_and_monetary_reward.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview DOCUMENT ID: 149508170 LENDER: WCM :: Williams College BORROWER: NHM BORROWER ADDRESS: ill.dept@unh.edu CROSS REF ID: 153448 Processed by RapidX: 6/9/2015 12:09:28 PM This material may be protected by copyright law (Title 17 U.S. Code) Medieval Academy of America The Five-Hide Unit and the Old English Military Obligation Author(s): C. Warren Hollister Source: Speculum, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Jan., 1961), pp. 61-74 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2849844 . Accessed: 10/08/2011 14:38 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum. http://www.jstor.org THiE FIVE-HIDE UNIT AND THE OLD ENGLISH MTTITARY OBLIGATION BY C. WARREN HOLLISTER ENGLISHmediaevalists of the nineteenth century were in general agreement on the matter of the five-hide unit. By and large they concurred in the belief that throughout those regions of pre-Conquest England which were assessed in hides every five-hide group owed one warrior to the fyrd.1 This was the view of such scholars as Gneist,2 Stubbs,3 Maitland,4 and Round.5 Indeed it was one of the basic presuppositions of Rounds revolutionary theory on the introduction of knight service, for Round took great pains to show that the post-Conquest knights fee was not necessarily composed of five hides and that in precisely this respect it differed fundamentally from the pre-Conquest military recruitment unit.6 More recently, however, historians have approached the five-hide rule with greater skepticism, perhaps as a result of the modern tendency toward emphasizing local variations as against general institutional or social laws. Professor David Douglas writes, Since the pioneer work of Round, Maitland, and Vinogradoff, it has become increasingly apparent that the social history of this epoch must no longer concern itself with English society in the eleventh century, but rather with a number of diverse social structures varying greatly from district to district.7 From this viewpoint the few local sources which attest to a five-hide recruitment system fail to assume any wider significance. They are no longer regarded as illustrations of a general social law but merely as indications of local custom. Thus, Professor Frank Barlow approaches the subject cautiously: Many varieties of bargain were struck by the king with different localities and with different lords for military service; and among these was the finding of a That is, roughly speaking, the non-Danish regions. Long before the Norman Conquest the hide had ceased to represent any exact area or land value. It varied from about forty to 120 acres, and was nothing more than a unit of assessment. In the Danish regions its place was taken by another unit of assessment-the geld carucate (as distinct from the actual carucate or ploughland). See J. H. Round, Feudal England (London, 1895), pp. 36-44 and passim; James Tait, Large Hides and Small Hides, English Historical Review, xvii (1902), 280-282; A. Ballard, The Domesday Inquest, 2nd ed. (London, 1923), pp. 80-43. 2 The History of the English Constitution, 2 vols. (London, 1886), I, 13, 90, 94. 3 Constitutional History of England, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1874), I, 155-156, 190-192. 4 Domesday Book and Beyond (Cambridge, England, 1897), pp. 159 ff. 5 Feudal England, pp. 68-09; Danegeld and the Finance of Domesday, in Domesday Studies, ed. P. Edward Dove, 2 vols. (London, 1888-91), I, 119-121. 6 Feudal England, pp. 293 ff. Miss Marjory Hollings questions Rounds thesis on the grounds that at least in parts of England the post-conquest knights fee was calculated systematically at five hides, thus concurring in the assumption that five hides constituted the standard unit of military assessment in late Anglo-Saxon times (The Survival of the Five Hide Unit in the Western Midlands, English Historical Review, LxIII [1948], 453-487). 7 Feudal Documentsfrom the Abbey of Bury St. Edmunds, British Academy Records, vmii (London, 1932), pp. xvii-xviii. 61 62 The Five-Hide Unit and Military Obligation soldier for each five hides of land in the estate.8 R. R. Darlington is equally circumspect: . . the responsibilities of the peasantry in a time of war were governed by the customs of the shires in which they lived,9 and Sir Frank Stenton, in his definitive work, Anglo-Saxon England, applies the five-hide custom to Berkshire alone, observing that it is doubtful whether this rule was allowed to prevail in parts of England where the hide was larger than in Berkshire ... 10 The issue before us is one of considerable importance. It is crucial to our understanding of the Old English social structure and the exact nature of the militarytenurial changes effected in England by the Normans. Indeed, a proper understanding of the five-hide recruitment system and the extent to which it applied in eleventh-century England provides us with an important clue to the mystery, as yet unsolved, of Anglo-Saxon military organization on the eve of the Norman Conquest. When the problem is examined in the light of all available evidence the five-hide rule emerges as something much more than an isolated local phenomenon, suggesting that recent scholars have gone too far in their aversion to general rules and that the fin de sihclehistorians may have been right after all. Moreover, in solving the five-hide problem we are led to a radically new interpretation of the late-Saxon military system - an interpretation which presents the fyrd as a more select, more cohesive, and more systematic organization than historians have previously thought it to be. The most telling arguments against the generality of the five-hide rule are to be found in F. M. Stentons First Century of English Feudalism. Stenton cites the well-known passage from Domesday which states that in pre-Conquest Berkshire one miles served in the kings army from five hides and that each hide paid him four shillings toward his food and wages for two months.l2 Stenton writes, The miles of this entry is clearly not a thegn, but one of a group of peasant landholders whose responsibilities in regard to military service were determined by the amount of land which they held.3 He continues, Important as this passage is, it is dangerous material for the reconstruction of the Old English fyrd.14He objects to generalizing from this passage on three grounds: (1) that the Berkshire hide was unusually small, (2) that Berkshire was one of the regions of England least exposed to attack, and (3) that regardless of circumstances it is hazardous to construct a general rule out of evidence applying only to one shire. Let us examine these points one by one. 8 The Feudal Kingdom of England, 1042-1216 (London, New York, Toronto, 1955), p. 48. 9 The Last Phase of Anglo-Saxon History, History, New Series, xxii (1937), 2. 10 Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1947), p. 575. Oxford, 1932, pp. 116-118, hereafter cited as Stenton, English Feudalism. 12 Ibid., p. 116; Domesday Book, I, 56b: Si rex mittebat alicubi exercitum de quinque hidis tantum unus miles ibat, et ad eius victum vel stipendium de unaquaque hida dabantur et iiii solidi ad duos menses. Hos vero denarios regi non mittebantur, sed militibus dabantur. 13 English Feudalism, pp. 116-117. As will appear later, I would disagree (1) that this passage does not apply to thegns and (2) that peasant landholders owed military service as a function of the amount of land which they held. They served for five hides of land but they seldom held these five hides personally. 14Ibid., p. 117. The Five-Hide Unit and Military Obligation 63 The first objection is based upon James Taits conclusion that the hides in certain of the southern counties contained only forty acres and therefore stood in sharp contrast with the 120 acre hides of the more northerly shires.15But Stenton admits that The evidence for a small hide is not so conclusive for Berkshire as for Wiltshire.6Indeed, Taits evidence applies only to Wiltshire and, indirectly, to Dorsetshire. Berkshire may well have had forty-acre hides, but we cannot be certain of it.17 Stentons objection applies more directly to another Domesday entry which records that in Malmesbury [Wilts.] when the king went on a military expedition the borough gave him either twenty shillings or one man pro honore quinquehidarum.l8 This passage enables us to extend our five-hide rule into Wiltshire, although as Stenton quickly points out it comes from the classical land of small hides.9 But this matter of small and large hides should not be overstressed, for the hide is, after all, not an areal unit but an assessment unit.20The fact that hides may be small in one region and large in another is quite irrelevant to their integrity as standard units for the assessment of gelds or military service. Danegeld was traditionally collected at two shillings on the hide irrespective of the number of acres which it contained. The hide also served as the assessment unit for ship service,21and even for the collection of aids in Anglo-Norman times.22 Nowhere do we encounter large hides being assessed more heavily than small hides, nor do we find that the hide was ever replaced by the acre as the unit of assessment. To use Stentons own words, the service owed by peasants to the fyrd before the Conquest went by hides and by hundreds. 23 Much the same system was in operation somewhat earlier in the Carolingian Empire.24There, four mansi owed one foot soldier to the Frankish host and supported him in exactly the manner in which the Berkshire hides contributed to the wages and provisions of their warrior-representatives.25The number of acres in a 16 Large Hides and Small Hides, pp. 280-282. 16English Feudalism, p. 117, n. 1. 17See Tait, op. cit., p. 282: The bearing of the new fact upon the content of the geld hide in other counties cannot be stated dogmatically at present.... I would point out, however, that the infrequent mention of acres in the Domesday of the southern counties and their small numbers when mentioned is much more easily explicable on the assumption of a 10-acre virgate .. [i.e., a fortyacre hide]. 19English Feudalism, p. 117, n. 1. 18 i, 64b. 20 On this see Feudal Round, England, p. 63 and passim. 21 See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1008, reporting a royal order that ships should be built throughout the whole of England. Every three hundred hides should provide one large warship; every ten hides should produce a cutter; every eight hides should produce a helmet and a breastplate. 22ChroniconMonasterii de Abingdon, ed. Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series, 2 vols. (1858), ii, 38, 113; Florence of Worcester, Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. B. Thorpe, 2 vols. (London, 1848-1849), II, 40; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. T. Arnold, Rolls Series (1879), p. 237; F. Liebermann, Die Gesetzeder Angelsachsen, 3 vols. (Halle, 1903-16), I, 636; S. K. Mitchell, Taxation in Medieval England (New Haven, 1951), pp. 164-165. 23English Feudalism, p. 116, n. 2. 24 On this subject, see Ferdinand Lot, LArt militaire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946), I, 91-92. 26 Capitularies of A.D. 808, 829, and 864 (Alfred Boretius and Victor Krause, edd., Capitularia Regum Francorum, M.G.H., 2 vols. [Hanover, 1883-1897], I, 137; II, 7, 321). Cf. Domesday Book, I, 56b. 64 The Five-Hide Unit and Military Obligation Frankish mansus could vary considerably, but the military obligation applied irrespective of acreage.26 Indeed, Domesday reports the existence of the five-hide fyrd rule in a county whose hides were unusually large. In Devonshire, as Eyton puts it, the scope of the geld-hide was enormous,27yet Domesday discloses that Exeter served as five hides of land in military expeditions by land or sea, and that Barnstaple, Lidford, and Totnes together served as Exeter did.28Thus, five hides was a standard unit of military assessment in Devonshire as well as in Wiltshire and Berkshire. We are not told explicitly that the Devonshire five-hide unit owed one man to the fyrd but we are certainly left to infer it. Wherever Domesday reports the military obligation of a town, that obligation is always expressed in whole numbers of warriors, never in fractions.29The men of Barnstaple, Lidford, and Totnes had evidently worked out an arrangement among themselves to produce the military service due from the five-hide unit, but Exeter served alone. The only whole numbers which five-hide units could possibly owe would be one man (from five hides) or five men (each from one hide).80 But if each hide owed a man to the Devonshire fyrd, why should it be necessary for Barnstaple, Lidford, and Totnes to join together to produce their quota? Malmesbury served as five hides of land and we are told expressly that it owed one warrior. There can be no question but that the Devonshire towns followed this identical custom, and that the five-hide rule obtained in a region of unusually large hides as well as in shires where the hide was small. Let us now turn to Stentons second objection: that Berkshire was exceptionally isolated from danger of attack. It is evident to begin with that even if this is true of Berkshire, it is less true of Wiltshire and quite inapplicable to a coastal county such as Devonshire. But the entire argument breaks down in the light of Sir Paul Vinogradoffs brilliant essay on the fyrd (which preceded Stentons work by a good many years).38Vinogradoff arrays an impressive body of evidence to support his view that there were actually two separate fyrd obligations: first, the duty of a given number of hides to produce a warrior for the army, and second, the obligation of all able-bodied freemen to turn out for local defense in an emergency.32This second custom would preclude the necessity of a heavier hide obliga26 On the sizes of Frankish mansi, see Ferdinand Lot, Le Jugum, le manse et les exploitations agricoles, in MWlangesdhistoire offertsa Henri Pirenne (Brussels, Vromant, etc., 1926). See also Lot, LArt militaire, I, 91, 94. 27 R. W. Eyton, A Key to Domesday, Dorset (London, 1878), p. 14. Cf. Round, Feudal England, pp. 62-68. 28 Domesday Book, i, 100. 29 Domesday Book, I, 64b, 154, 230, 238. This should not surprise us, for it would be extremely awkward for the integrated organization of a borough to combine with that of the surrounding countryside to produce a whole warrior. In the rare instances when arrangements of this sort are necessary, the boroughs combine with one another to produce their quota, as in the case of Barnstaple, Lidford, and Totnes. 30 Assuming of course that a single warrior was due from a whole number of hides. 81 Paul Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century (Oxford, 1908), pp. 22-88. 32In addition to the preceding reference, see ibid., pp. 110-111; J. H. Clapham, The Horsing of The Five-Hide Unit and Military Obligation 65 tion in regions which were more exposed to attack than Berkshire. It explains, in fact, why we fail to find a heavier obligation in Wiltshire and Devonshire. If modern historians have doubts as to the validity of Vinogradoffs evidence, they do not express them, and it would seem dangerous to disregard Vinogradoffs hypothesis without first attempting to refute his arguments. As for the absence of wider evidence for the five-hide custom, we have already seen that it was by no means limited to Berkshire. Let us now examine some of the remaining evidence bearing on the/ subject. We turn first to a group of references which explain the processes by which peasants might acquire the rights and privileges of thegns. The first of these sources, sometimes known as the Promotion Law, dates probably from the first quarter of the eleventh century.33 It lists among the criteria which entitle a ceorl to the rights of thegnhood the possession of five hides of land.34A law of wergelds dating from the same period reports that if a ceorl prospers to such a degree that he performs the royal service on five hides of land, he is to be entitled to a thegns wergeld.35The royal service referred to here is primarily military, for the document continues that if the ceorl does not possess the five hides he cannot attain the thegns wergeld even if he owns a helmet, a coat of mail, and a gold-plated sword.36These sources come from the north of England, and they illustrate that there also five hides normally supported one warrior; they suggest, in effect, that the holder of five hides who by virtue of his holding must serve in the fyrd without outside support is entitled to the rights of a thegn, or, conversely, that the military role of the thegn is based upon his holding of five hides.37We find a similar provision much earlier in the Laws of the Danes, English Historical Review, xxv (1910), 292-298. Richard Glover emphasizes the mobility and excellent equipment of the fyrd in a way that contrasts sharply with our usual notions of the levees en masse (English Warfare in 1066, English Historical Review, LXVII[1952], 1-18). Vinogradoffs theory accounts admirably for the rude warriors with clubs which the Bayeux Tapestry depicts at Hastings. These would be fyrdworthy freemen turning out for home defense and fighting alongside the normal fyrd. Disregarding Vinogradoffs theory, F. M. Stenton is forced to offer the unlucky suggestion that these men were merely peasants trying to avenge a fortnights harrying (Anglo-Saxon England, p. 575). This general obligation for home defense is confirmed in Willelmi Articuli Retractati, art. 2 (A. J. Robertson, ed., The Laws of the Kings of England [Cambridge, England, 1925], p. 244), which obliges all free men to defend the land against enemies and aliens, and is paralleled by continental custom. At Tournai, for example, the town normally sent 800 armed infantrymen on expeditions, but if Artois should be invaded the whole commune went with the army (A. Ballard, ed., British Borough Charters,1042-1216 [Cambridge, England, 1913], p. cxi). 33Liebermann, Gesetze,I, 456 if.: Gethynctho,sec. 2; cf. sec. 8. 34This passage has been much discussed. See F. W. Maitland, Northumbrian Tenures, English Historical Review, v (1890), 625-632; H. M. Chadwick, Studies on Anglo-Saxon Institutions (Cambridge, England, 1905), pp. 80 ff.; L. M. Larson, The Kings Household in England (Madison, Wisconsin, 1904), p. 101; A. G. Little, Gesiths and Thegns, English Historical Review,iv (1889), 723-729; Maitland, Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 164; W. H. Stevenson, Burh-geat-setl, English Historical Review, xII (1897), 489-492. 86 Liebermann, Gesetze,i, 456 ff.: Northleoda Laga, sec. 9. A thegn might, of course, hold an estate of less than five hides without forfeiting his inherited social and legal status. 6 Ibid., sec. 10. 37 According to the Promotion Law, however, he must meet certain other qualifications as well. There has been considerable dispute as to whether the ceorl who enjoys the rights of a thegn thereby 66 The Five-Hide Unit and Military Obligation Ine, King of Wessex, which report that a Welshman has a wergeld of 600 shillings if he possesses five hides.38The thegns wergeld is 1200 shillings, but it should be observed that a Welshman normally had about half the wergeld of an Englishman of the same class.39Hence, this passage from Ines Laws suggests that a custom similar to that of the Promotion Law and the Law of Wergelds ex ... Purchase answer to see full attachment