The carucate or carrucate ( or ) was a medieval unit of land area approximating the land a plough team of eight

oxen An ox (: oxen), also known as a bullock (in BrE, British, AusE, Australian, and IndE, Indian English), is a large bovine, trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castration, castrated adult male cattle, because castration i ...

could

till image:Geschiebemergel.JPG, Closeup of glacial till. Note that the larger grains (pebbles and gravel) in the till are completely surrounded by the matrix of finer material (silt and sand), and this characteristic, known as ''matrix support'', is d ...

in a single annual season. It was known by different regional names and fell under different forms of tax assessment.

England

The carucate was named for the carruca heavy plough that began to appear in England in the late 9th century, which may have been introduced during the

Viking invasions of England The Viking Age (about ) was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. The Viking Age applies not only to their ...

.White Jr., Lynn, The Life of the Silent Majority, pg. 88 of Life and Thought in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Robert S. Hoyt, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 1967 It was also known as a ploughland or plough (, "plough's land") in the

Danelaw The Danelaw (, ; ; ) was the part of History of Anglo-Saxon England, England between the late ninth century and the Norman Conquest under Anglo-Saxon rule in which Danes (tribe), Danish laws applied. The Danelaw originated in the conquest and oc ...

and usually, but not always, excluded the land's suitability for winter vegetables and desirability to remain fallow in crop rotation. The tax levied on each carucate came to be known as " carucage". Though a carucate might nominally be regarded as an area of 120

acre The acre ( ) is a Unit of measurement, unit of land area used in the Imperial units, British imperial and the United States customary units#Area, United States customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one Chain (unit), ch ...

s (49 hectares), and can usefully be equated to certain definitions of the hide, its variation over time and depending on soil and fertility makes its actual figure wildly variable. The Danelaw carucates were subdivided into eighths:

oxgang An oxgang or bovate (; ; ; ) is an old land measurement formerly used in Scotland and England as early as the 16th century sometimes referred to as an oxgait. It averaged around 20 English acres, but was based on land fertility and cultivation, a ...

s or bovates based on the area a yoked pair of oxen could till in a year. In the rest of England, the land was reckoned in hides which were divided into four yardlands, later known as

virgate The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( was an English unit of land. Primarily a measure of tax assessment rather than area, the virgate was usually (but not always) reckoned as hide and notionally (but seldom exactly) equal to 30 acr ...

Scotland

A ploughgate was the Scottish equivalent in the south and east of the country. Even more so than in England, the variable land quality in Scotland led to ploughgates of varying sizes, although the area was notionally understood as 100

Scots acres A Scottish or Scots acre () was a land measurement used in Scotland. It was standardised in 1661. When the Weights and Measures Act 1824 was implemented the English System was standardised into the Imperial System and Imperial acres were imposed ...

. Many sources say that four ploughgates made up a

daugh The davoch, davach or daugh is an ancient Scottish land measurement. All of these terms are cognate with modern Scottish Gaelic '' dabhach''. The word ''dabh'' or '' damh'' means an " ox" (cf. oxgang, ''damh-imir''), but ''dabhach'' can also ref ...

, but in other places it would have appeared to have been the equivalent of one daugh exactly. As in the Danelaw, ploughgates were subdivided into

s, again usually by eighths.

Wales

Cattle and oxen were a central part of the Laws of the ancient Celts, by the Welsh Middle Ages, oxen were an integral part of Welsh Law, and an important part of the legal valuations used in assessing land value, the wealth of personal holdings and determining compensations (such as the ''

Galanas ''Galanas'' in Welsh law was a payment made by a Kin punishment, killer and his family to the family of his or her victim. It is similar to éraic in Ireland and the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Saxon weregild. Definition The details of galanas were lai ...

''). Carucates are found throughout the

Cyfraith Hywel ''Cyfraith Hywel'' (; ''Laws of Hywel''), also known as ''Welsh law'' (), was the system of law practised in medieval Wales before its final conquest by England. Subsequently, the Welsh law's criminal codes were superseded by the Statute o ...

(Law's of

Hywel Dda Hywel ap Cadell, commonly known as Hywel Dda, which translates to Howel the Good in English, was a Welsh king who ruled the southern Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth and eventually came to rule most of Wales. He became the sole king of Seisyllw ...

). In 1086, the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

records a number of entries for

commotes A commote (, sometimes spelt in older documents as , plural , less frequently )'' Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru'' (University of Wales Dictionary), p. 643 was a secular division of land in Medieval Wales. The word derives from the prefix ("together" ...

in Wales. These commotes, (that had come under Anglo-Norman possession, but were still part of Welsh law and customs) were assessed for military service and taxation. Whereas the English possessions obligations were given in hides, the Welsh obligations were rated in carucates. This was also true for

Archenfield Archenfield (Old English: ''Ircingafeld'', Middle English: "Irchenfield") is the historic English name for an area of southern and western Herefordshire in England. Since the Anglo-Saxons took over the region in the 8th century, it has stretched ...

Herefordshire Herefordshire ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England, bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh ...

which may indicate the area maintained the Welsh systems.

References

{{Reflist Obsolete units of measurement Obsolete Scottish units of measurement Units of area

England

Scotland

Wales

See also

References