Similar to its evidence on the Domesday 'plough' is that which the I.C.C. affords as to the hide and virgate. In my criticism of Mr Pell's learned paper, I strenuously opposed his view that the _hida_ of Domesday was composed of a variable number of virgates, and I insisted on the fact that the Domesday 'virgate' was essentially and always the _quarter_ of the geldable 'hide'.[71] The following parallel passages will amply prove the fact: _I.C.C._ _D.B._ fo. 102 (_a_) 1: i. hidam et i. hidam et iii. virgatas terræ.-- dimidiam et unam virgam. i. 194 (_a_) 2. fo. 102 (_a_) 1: dimidiam ii. virg' et dimidiam--i. 194 hidam et dimidiam virg'. (_a_) 2. fo. 103 (_a_) 1: dimidiam ii.^{as} virg' et dimidiam--i. 198 hidam et dimidiam virg'. (_a_) 2. fo. 103 (_b_) 1: i. hida et i. hida et ii. virg' et dimidiam-- dimidia et dimidia virg'. i. 190 (_a_) 2. fo. 103 (_b_) 2: i. hida et i. hida et iii. virg'--i. 198 dimidia et i. virg'. (_b_) 1. fo. 106 (_b_) 2: iiii. hidæ iv. hidæ et iii. virg'--i. 200 et dimidia et una virg'. (_b_) 1. fo. 112 (_a_) 2: xi. hidæ i. x. hidæ et iii. virg--i. 192 virg' minus. (_b_) 1. These are only some of the passages of _direct_ glossarial value.[72] Indirectly, that is to say by analysis of the township assessments, we obtain the same result throughout the survey _passim_.[73] Here, again, we are able to assert that two virgates must have been to the scribes as obviously equivalent to half a hide as ten shillings with us are equivalent to half a sovereign. For here, again, the point is that these scribes had no knowledge of the varying circumstances of each locality. They had nothing to guide them but the return itself, so that the rule, in Domesday, of 'four virgates to a hide' must have been of universal application. But not only were there thus, in Domesday, four virgates to a hide; there were also in the Domesday virgate thirty Domesday acres. Mr Eyton, though perhaps unrivalled in the study he has bestowed on the subject, believed that there were only twelve such acres, of which, therefore, forty-eight composed the Domesday hide.[74] It is, perhaps, the most important information to be derived from the I.C.C. that _a hundred and twenty_ Domesday acres composed the Domesday hide.[75] We have the following direct statements: _I.C.C._ _D.B._ fo. 105 (_b_) 2: 'una virg' i. 202 (_b_) 1: 'In dominio et x. acre in dominio'. dimidia hida xx. acras minus.' fo. iii. (_a_) 1: 'tenet i. 193 (_b_) 1: 'tenet comes Rogerus comes xx. acras.' ii. partes unius virg'.'