The carucate or carrucate ( lat-med, carrūcāta 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, AusE, and IndE), is a male bovine trained and used as a draft animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration inhibits testosterone and aggression, which makes the m ...

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 The carruca or caruca was a kind of heavy plow important to medieval agriculture in Northern Europe. The carruca used a heavy iron plowshare to turn heavy soil and may have required a team of eight oxen. The carruca also bore a coulter and mold ...

heavy plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

that began to appear in England in the late 9th century, it may have been introduced during the

Viking invasions of England The Viking Age () was the period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raiding, colonizing, conquest, and trading throughout Europe and reached North America. It followed the Migration Period and the ...

.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 ( ang, plōgesland, "plough's land") in the

Danelaw The Danelaw (, also known as the Danelagh; ang, Dena lagu; da, Danelagen) was the part of England in which the laws of the Danes held sway and dominated those of the Anglo-Saxons. The Danelaw contrasts with the West Saxon law and the Mercia ...

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 acres (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 ( ang, oxangang; da, oxgang; gd, damh-imir; lat-med, bovāta) 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 ...

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

yardland The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( la, virgāta 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) equ ...

s, later known as

virgate The virgate, yardland, or yard of land ( la, virgāta 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 ...

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 of 1824 was implemented the English System was standardised into the Imperial System and Imperial acres were impos ...

. 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 Welsh law ( cy, Cyfraith Cymru) is an autonomous part of the English law system composed of legislation made by the Senedd.Law Society of England and Wales (2019)England and Wales: A World Jurisdiction of Choice eport(Link accessed: 16 March 2022 ...

, 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 killer and his family to the family of his or her victim. It is similar to éraic in Ireland and the Anglo-Saxon weregild. The compensation depended on the status of the victim, but could also be af ...

''). Carucates are found throughout the

Cyfraith Hywel ''Cyfraith Hywel'' (; ''Laws of Hywel''), also known as Welsh law ( la, Leges Walliæ), 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 ...

(Law's of

Hywel Dda Hywel Dda, sometimes anglicised as Howel the Good, or Hywel ap Cadell (died 949/950) was a king of Deheubarth who eventually came to rule most of Wales. He became the sole king of Seisyllwg in 920 and shortly thereafter established Deheubarth ...

). 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 by order of King William I, known as William the Conqueror. The manusc ...

records a number of entries for commotes 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'') 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 between the River Monnow and R ...

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthsh ...

which may indicate the area maintained the Welsh systems.

References

{{short description, Medieval land unit from England and Scotland Obsolete units of measurement Obsolete Scottish units of measurement Units of area

England

Scotland

Wales

See also

References