(1) That the bundle of scattered strips called a virgate did not always contain the same number of acres. (2) That the _hide_ did not always contain the same number of virgates. But at the same time it is evident that the hide in [p037] Huntingdonshire most often contained 120 acres or thereabouts. It did so in twelve cases out of nineteen. In one case it contained the double of 120, _i.e._ 240 acres. In six cases only the contents varied irregularly from the normal amount. «The normal _hide_ four virgates or 120 acres; the double hide of 240 acres: but there are local variations.» Taking the normal hides of 120 acres, five of them were made up of four virgates of thirty acres each, which we may take to have been _normal_ virgates. In one case there were eight virgates of fifteen acres each in the hide. In other places these probably would have been called half-virgates, as at Winslow. There were occasionally five virgates and sometimes six virgates in the hide, and the fact of these variations will be found to have a meaning hereafter; but in the meantime we may gather from the instances given in the Hundred Rolls for Huntingdonshire, that the _normal_ hide consisted as a rule of four virgates of about thirty acres each. The really important [p038] consequence resulting from this is the recognition of the fact that as the _virgate_ was a bundle of so many scattered strips in the open fields, the _hide_, so far as it consisted of actual virgates in villenage, was also a bundle--a compound and fourfold bundle--of scattered strips in the open fields. «The ancient hidage or assessment of taxation.» Whilst, however, marking this relation of the virgate to the hide, regarded as actual holdings in villenage, it is necessary to observe also that throughout the Hundred Rolls the assessed value of the manors is generally stated in hides and virgates; and that, in the estimate thus given of the _hidage_ of a manor as a whole, the demesne land as well as the land in villenage is taken into account. In this case the hide and virgate are used as measures of assessment, and it does not follow that all land that was measured or estimated by the hide and virgate was actually divided up by balks into acres, although the demesne land itself was in fact, as we have seen, often in the open fields, and intermixed with the strips in villenage. Distinction must therefore be made between the hide and virgate as actual holdings and the hide and virgate as customary land measures, used for recording the assessed values or the extent of manors, just as in the case of the acre. The virgate and the hide were probably, like the acre, actual holdings before they were adopted as abstract land measures. It may be even possible to learn or to guess what fact made a particular number of acres the most convenient holding. «The scutage.»