Manors in 1086 were of all sizes, from one virgate to enormous organizations like Taunton or Leominster, containing villages by the score and hundreds of dependent holdings.
Professor Gay thinks his conclusions untenable, and that a proper interpretation of the Commissioners' returns corroborates the view of contemporary writers that pasture was substituted for tillage on a large scale.
Mickleholme meadow (also demesne land) is held by five tenants, each having 1 acre.
In our period the Government, for reasons to be discussed later, sets its face against most kinds of enclosing, and such enclosures as are made are made in defiance of the law.
Again, the custom of the manor is not at all a vague or indefinite thing.
That it reposed partly on the Court Rolls, partly on the memory of ancient inhabitants, we can see from the frequent appeals which are made to both of them.
On the contrary, it is often most rigorous in its precision.
What manner of men these were in that personal life of which economics is but the squalid scaffolding; what stars threw for them their beams on that tremendous whirlpool of religion and politics into which Europe was plunging, we cannot say.
Some light may be thrown on the kind of trouble of which our period was full by two accounts which have come down to us of disputes concerning rights of common pasture.
Margery Palmer comes and surrenders into the hands of the lord a virgate of land with a house in Crondal, and Galfrid her son comes and gives to the lord 6s.
He will probably have a standard holding of a virgate or half-virgate; he will have rights in the common meadow land and in the common waste; he will do work on the lord's demesne.
At Ibstone[129] in the same year there are two tenants at will holding one virgate each, one tenant holding five tofts and three crofts, while the rest hold little except cottages and gardens.
But the manorial economy is not at all disturbed by the fact of one tenant holding not half a virgate, but a virgate and a half; for he has to do, or pay some one else to do, six boonworks and pay 2s.
They were bound to the soil and occupied holdings of scattered strips (amounting usually to a virgate or 30 acres) in return for a payment partly in labour and partly in kind.
The heriot of a virgatewas generally an ox, or money payment of its value.
On this manor, Sutton, the total services of one virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty shillings.
But the amount as often reduced "propter paupertatem," and sometimes when a succeeding tenant could not pay, a half acre was deducted from the virgate and held by the lord instead of the heriot.
That entry seems to involve an equation which can only be solved if 1 virgate = 10 acres.
Incidentally we may notice that the system of virgate holdings seems quite compatible with an absence of seignorial control.
Perhaps in general we may endow the villanus of Domesday Book with a virgate or quarter of a hide, while we ascribe to the bordarius a less quantity and doubt whether the cotarius usually had arable land.
Ninthly, the villein of the thirteenth century will often possess a full virgate of 30 acres, and yet will spend quite half his time in cultivating his lord's demesne.
And so we may see in Cambridgeshire that a man will sometimes have half a hide in one village, a virgate in another, two-thirds of a virgate in a third.
There is one instance of a duplicate entry of another character, relating to half a virgate (D.
A virgateheld in Trumpington by a burgess of Cambridge (p.
Another class of exceptions is accounted for by the tendency of both texts, as we have seen, to enter a virgate too much or too little, and to confuse virgates with their fractions.
Guy de Rembercurt held a hide and a virgate in Haslingefield (p.
In Devon and Cornwall, where the scope of the gheld-hide was enormous, it was necessary to introduce another quantity, intermediate between the virgate and the acre.
Lastly, at 'Wicheham', the aggregate of the figures is a quarter of a virgate short of the amount.
Moulton is not entered under his fief in Domesday, but under that of Robert de Buci we find a 'William' holding of him a hide and a virgate and a half in Moulton.
There are nine villanes of one virgate each; one villane of one hide; and nine villanes of half a virgate each; and one cottager of five acres; and forty-one cottagers who pay forty shillings a year for their gardens.
Nine hides and one virgate belong to the demesne, and there are four ploughs therein.
On the estate of one who died in December, 1350, it is certified that there used to be nine villains, each farming half a virgate of land, for which they paid eight shillings a year.
And Hugh held of John de Bello Campo a hide and a virgate of land, rendering to John de Bello Campo 4d.
William Snelling holds a third part of a fourth part of a virgate and renders 20d.
Reckoned as a virgate for the works of the paling.
And thus the sum of the works of each virgate is 7s.
William the Smith holds two parts of half a virgate with its homages appurtenant and renders 6s.
Names of the tenants holding virgate lands, and rents of the same virgates and customs which pertain to them.
William Emeline holds a third part of a fourth part of a virgate and renders 20d.
And be it known that each virgate ought to do all the works underwritten, and the works of each virgate are worth by themselves 7s.
John Dasel holds a third part of a fourth part of a virgate and renders 20d.
The justices in eyre in the county of Essex were ordered to take a grand assize between Thomas of Woodford, claimant, and John de la Hille, tenant, of a virgate and a half of land with the appurtenances in Woodford.
Richard de Dovere holds one virgate with its homage appurtenant and renders 30s.
King, and another virgate of land with the appurtenances in Walesworth and renders 20s.
Brother John is dead, and the holy subprior is dead, and the Devil is loose in the five-virgate field!
On three sides the five-virgate field was bounded by a high wall, broken only at one spot by a heavy four-foot wooden gate.
Stem leafy, mostly simple, continued into an elongated virgate spike-like raceme; leaves lanceolate to obovate, barely denticulate or repand.
Achenes tapering upward; heads 15--30-flowered in a narrow or virgate panicle.
Heads small, in a narrow virgate or thyrsoid panicle; scales thin, acute; leaves nearly entire.
The virgate was again divided into quarters, called ferlings, of 7-1/2 acres each.
The manor of Countisbury rendered geld for half a hide, of which the lord held one virgateand four ploughs, and the villeins held one virgate and six ploughs.
The virgate and the hide were probably, like the acre, actual holdings before they were adopted as abstract land measures.
We have thus in these extents evidence both of the prevalence and of the varying acreage of the virgate in the extreme west of England, to add to the evidence already obtained in respect of the midland counties.
Thus the details of which a virgate was made up are accidentally exposed to view.
And as four virgates went usually to each hide, so each virgate should contribute 1/16 of a scutum.
Fortunately in one single case a virgate or yard-land--that of John Moldeson--loses its indivisible unity and is let out again by the lord to several persons in portions.
Whilst recording how many villani there were in a manor, the Domesday Survey does not, like the Hundred Rolls, usually go on to state how many of them held a virgate and how many a half-virgate each.
Usually one finds on a given manor that ten or fifteen of the villagers have each a virgate of a given number of acres, several more have each a half virgate or a quarter.
Agnes Mabeley is given possession of a quarter virgate of land which her mother held, and gives the lord 33s.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "virgate" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
