This origin and use of the term is of considerable importance, because it shows the artificial character of the system and its close connexion with the taxation by the State. This is a disturbing element which ought to be taken into account by the side of the agrarian influence. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the assessment started from actual facts, from existing agrarian conditions and divisions. The hide, the yardland, the oxgang existed not only in the geld-rolls, but in fact and on the ground. But in geld-rolls they appeared with a regularity they did not possess in real fact; the rolls express all modifications in the modes of farming and all exemptions, not in the shape of any qualification or lighter assessment of single plots, but by way of striking off from the number of these plots, or from the number of acres in them; the object which in modern times would be effected by the registration of a 'rateable value' differing from the 'actual value' was effected in ancient times by the registration of a 'rateable size' differing from the 'actual size'; lastly, the surveys and rolls of assessment do not keep time with the actual facts, and often reflect, by their figures and statistics, the conditions of bygone periods. The hides of the geld or of the 'wara' tend to become constant and rigid: it is difficult for the king's officers to alter their estimates, and the people subjected to the tax try in every way to guard against novelties and encroachments. The real agrarian hide-area is changing at the same time because the population increases, new tenements are formed, and new land is reclaimed. We find at every step in our records that the assessment and the agrarian conditions do not coincide. If a manor has been given to a convent in free almoign (in liberam et perpetuam eleemosynam), that is, free from all taxes and payments to the State, there is no reason to describe it in units of assessment, and in fact such property often appears in manorial records without any 'hidation' or reckoning of knight-fees[492]. The Ramsey Cartulary tells us that the land in Hulme was not divided into hides and virgates[493]. There are holdings, of course, and they are equal, but they are estimated in acres. When the hidation has been laid on the land and taxes are paid from it, the smaller subdivisions are sometimes omitted: the artificial system of taxation does not go very deep into details. Even if most part of the land has been brought under the operation of that system, some plots are left which do not participate in the common payments, and therefore are said to be 'out of the hide[494].' Such being the case, there can be no wonder that one of the Ramsey manors answers to the king for ten hides, and to the abbot for eleven and a-half[495].