[11. A _hide_ varied in size, and was (after the Conquest) equal to a _carucate_, which might be anything from 80 to 120 or 180 acres. Perhaps 120 is a fair average, though some say 80.] Here we have a good example of a manor held by a sub-tenant, and containing all the three classes mentioned in § 4 of this chapter—villeins, cottars, and slaves (_i.e._ bondsmen). The whole manor must have been about 5000 acres, of which 1000 were probably arable land, which was of course parcelled out in strips among the villeins, the lord, and the priest. As there were only 18 ploughs among 30 villeins, it is evident some of them at least had to use a plough and oxen in common. The demesne land does not seem to have been well cultivated by Godmund the lord, for there were no ploughs on it, though it was large enough to employ six. Perhaps Godmund, being an Englishman, had been fighting the Normans in the days of Harold, and had let it go out of cultivation, or perhaps the former owner had died in the war, and Godmund had rented the land from the Norman noble to whom William gave it. § 10. CUXHAM MANOR IN THE ELEVENTH AND THIRTEENTH CENTURIES—Our second illustration can be described at two periods of its existence—at the time of Domesday and 200 years later. It was only a small manor of some 490 acres, and was held by a sub-tenant from a Norman tenant in chief, Milo Crispin. It is found in the Oxfordshire Domesday, in the list of lands belonging to Milo Crispin. The Survey says: “Alured [the sub-tenant] now holds 5 hides for a manor in Cuxham. Land to 4 ploughs; now in the demesne, 2 ploughs and 4 bondsmen. And 7 villeins with 4 bordars have 3 ploughs. There are 3 mills of 18 shillings; and 18 acres of meadow. It was worth £3, now £6.” Here, again, our three classes of villeins, cottars or bordars, and slaves are represented. The manor was evidently a good one, for though smaller than Estone it {18} was worth more, and has three mills and good meadow land as well. Now, by the end of the thirteenth century this manor had passed into the hands of Merton College, Oxford, which then represented the lord, but farmed it by means of a bailiff. Professor Thorold Rogers gives us a description of it,[12] drawn from the annual accounts of this bailiff, which he has examined along with a number of others from other manors. We find one or two changes have taken place, for the bondsmen have entirely disappeared, as indeed they did in less than a century after the Conquest all through the land. The number of villeins and bordars has increased. There are now 13 villeins and 8 cottars, and 1 free tenant. There is also a prior, who holds land (6 acres) in the manor but does not live in it; also two other tenants, who do not live in the manor, but hold “a quarter of a knight’s fee” (here some 40 or 50 acres)—a knight’s fee comprising an area of land varying from 2 hides to 4 or even 6 hides, but in any case worth some £20. As the Cuxham land was