It is to be remarked that the eight and twelve acres of meadow are distinguished here from the feld-land or arable: and in strictness they ought not to be calculated into the hide; but perhaps it was intended to plough them up: or Oswald may even have begun to follow a system in which arable and meadow should both be included in the hide, which is equivalent, in other words, to the attempt to replace the wasteful method of unenclosed pastures by a more civilized arrangement of the land. He speaks indeed, on more than one occasion, of granting gedál-land, and land tó gedále, which can hardly mean anything but _new enclosures_. ----- Having thus stated my own view of the approximate value of the hide, I feel it right to cite one or two passages which seem adverse to it. By a grant of the year 977, Oswald conveyed to Æðelwald, two hides, all but sixty acres; these sixty acres the bishop had taken into his own demesne or inland at Kempsey, as wheat-land[185]. Now if this be an accurate reading, and not by chance an ill-copied lx for ix, it would seem to imply that sixty acres were less than a hide; for these acres were clearly arable. ----- Footnote 185: Cod. Dipl. No. 612. ----- Again, Æðelred granted land at Stoke to Léofríc in 982: the estate conveyed was of three hides and thirty acres, called in one charter _jugera_, in another part of the same grant, _æcera_[186]. It may be argued that here the acres were meadow or pasture, not included in the arable. But there are other calculations upon the jugerum[187], which render it probable that less than our statute-acre was intended by the term. For example, in 839, king Æðelwulf gave Dudda ten _jugera_ within the walls of Canterbury: now Canterbury at this day comprises only 3240 acres, and taking the area of almost any provincial town, it seems hardly probable that ten full acres within the walls should have been granted to any person, especially to one who, like Dudda, was of no very great consideration. A town-lot of two acres and a half, or ten roods, is conceivable. ----- Footnote 186: Ibid. No. 633. Footnote 187: According to Pliny, the jugerum was a day’s work for a yoke of oxen, i.e. nearly an acre; but the Saxon jugerum can hardly have been so large, for the reasons given in the text. -----