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. I may here give a fifteenth-century record of English linear measures.[17] Nota, for to mesure and mete lande. It is to mete that iij Early Cornys in the myddis of the Ere makyth one ynche, And xij enchis makyth a foote And sixteyne foote and a halfe makyth a perche; And in sum cuntre a perche ys xviij foote. Fourty perchys in lengyth makyth a Rode of Lande; put iiij therto in brede, and that makyth an Acre. And xiiij Acrys makyth a yerde of lande; And v yerdis makyth an hyde of lande, which ys lxx Acrys. And viij hydis makyth a knyghtis fee, which is vC.lx Acrys of lande. Footnote 17: I insert this note (sent to the _Academy_ in August 1896 by the late Mr. F. J. Furnivall, who found it in a Bodleian MS.) because it happened to direct my attention to our measures, and was thus the seed whence this book has sprung. The yardland and hide are here of less than half the usual extent. 5. TERMS USED IN LAND-MEASURES ROD.—Pole, Perch, Goad, Lug, L. _pertica_, Fr. _perche_, _verge_, G. _ruthe_, Du. _roede_. The equivalent words, L. _virga_, Fr. _verge_, A.S. _geard_, Eng. ‘yard,’ originally any long straight twig or rod, came to mean: (1) a yard or ell-measure, (2) a rod measure of land, lineal or superficial. The French verge is still thus used in Normandy and the Channel Islands. Our ‘yard’ acquired this extended sense, and others still more extended. In Cornwall 2 staves (of 9 feet) make a yard of land. In Somerset the lineal rod is the ‘land-yard,’ and the yard of land is a square rod. Thus the rood is ‘forty yard o’ ground’ and the acre is ‘eight score yard o’ ground.’ ROOD.—A differentiated form of ‘rod’ applied in a lineal sense to 40 rods, and also to the area of a quarter-acre 40 × 1 rods. In Normandy and the Channel Islands our rod and rood are verge and vergée, and as the first sense of verge was ‘yard’ so vergée became in English a ‘yard of lande.’ So here we have a third sense of the triple-form word virga-verge-yard.