The fact of this connection between the value of the oaths and hides was first brought to our notice in the Dialogue of Archbishop Egbert apparently as a matter already well known and established. And it was his claim that the oaths of his priests should be reckoned as oaths of 120 hides which confirmed what, from the Laws of Ine, was hardly more than doubtful inference that this was the value of the oath of the gesithcund or twelve-hynde class. The Archbishop’s mention of it confirmed it, but left its meaning and origin as obscure as ever. And yet the whole question of the structure of Saxon society is so mixed up with the right understanding of the twelve-hynde and twy-hynde division of classes that unless further light can be let into it a good deal of what we should like to see clearly must remain unhappily enveloped in fog. [Sidenote: Hides were family holdings. The _familia_ of Bede.] Archbishop Egbert’s substitution of the phrase so many _tributarii_ or _manentes_ for the ‘so many hides’ of the Laws of Ine obliges us to regard the _hide_ of Ine’s Dooms in this connection as equivalent to the ‘familia’ of Bede. The Saxon translator of the Latin text of Bede translated the word _familia_ sometimes by ‘hide’ and sometimes by _hiwisc_ or family. In this connection it is also worth noting that, although writing a century later than Egbert and two centuries after the date of Ine’s Laws, the translator of Bede had not cast off all traces of tribal tradition, for he consistently used the word _mægthe_ as the equivalent of Bede’s ‘provincia.’ He still thought of tribes and peoples rather than of districts and provinces. His ideas in these things ran on tribal rather than on territorial lines. So to him the hide was still the _family_ unit, and the greater kindred or tribe, as in Beowulf, was the _mægthe_. In Beowulf we saw that some of them conquered others and made them pay tribute. So they did in Bede’s time. [Sidenote: _Manentes_ and _tributarii_ of Egbert.] While, then, we are obliged to connect the value of oaths reckoned as of so many hides with hides which were family holdings, or, as Egbert calls them, _manentes_ and _tributarii_, the original meaning of the connection must be sought for in tribal conceptions.