In the Hundred Rolls for Oxfordshire there is frequent reference to the payment of the tax called _scutage_. The normal amount of this is assumed [p039] to be 40s. for each _knight's fee_, or _scutum_. And it appears that the knight's fee was assumed to contain four normal hides. There is an entry, 'One hide gives scutage for a fourth part of one scutum.' And as four virgates went usually to each hide, so each virgate should contribute 1/16 of a scutum. There are several entries which state that when the scutage is 40s. each virgate pays 2s. 6d., which is 1/16 of 40s.[32] «Connexion between acreage of holdings and the coinage.» And these figures seem to lead one step further, and to connect the normal acreage of the hide of 120A., and of the virgate of 30A., with the scutage of 40s. per knight's fee; for when these normal acreages were adhered to in practice the assessment would be one penny per acre, and the double hide of 240 acres would pay one pound. In other words, in choosing the acreage of the standard hide and virgate, a number of acres was probably assumed, corresponding with the monetary system, so that the number of pence in the 'scutum' should correspond with the number of acres assessed to its payment. We shall find this correspondence of acreage with the coinage by no means confined to this single instance. But there remains the question, why the acreage in the virgate and hide as actual holdings, and the [p040] number of virgates in the hide, were not constant. Their actual contents and relations were evidently ruled by some other reason than the number of pence in a pound. «_Carucate_, or land of a plough team, used instead of the hide for later taxation,» A trace at least of the original reason of the varying contents and relations of the hide and virgate is to be found in the Hundred Rolls, as, indeed, almost everywhere else, in the use of another word in the place of _hide_, when, instead of the anciently assessed hidage of a manor, its more modern actual taxable value is examined into and expressed. This new word is 'carucate'--_the land of a plough or plough team_,--'caruca' being the mediæval Latin term for both plough and plough team. «and varied according to the soil.» The Hundred Rolls for Bedfordshire afford several examples in point. In some cases the carucate seems to be identical with the normal hide of 120 acres, but other instances show that the carucate varied in area.[33] It is the land cultivated by a plough team; varying in acreage, therefore, according to the lightness or heaviness of the soil, and according to the strength of the team. V. THE HUNDRED ROLLS (_continued_)--THE SERVICES OF THE VILLEIN TENANTS. «Services often commuted into money payments.»