Footnote 153: Mr Pell tried to explain it by assuming that the Leicestershire carucates were really small virgates of the hida in question!
Its 'waræ' have quite another meaning and are spoken of as virgates would elsewhere be.
We have shown that it denoted a measure of assessment composed of four (geld) virgates or a hundred and twenty (geld) acres.
Three virgates the sokemen were not free to sell; the other three they might sell, but if they did, 'predictus abbas semper socham habuit'.
To do this, virgates may mean hides, carucates may mean virgates, and, in short, anything may mean anything else.
Here, again, we are able to assert that two virgates must have been to the scribes as obviously equivalent to half a hide as ten shillings with us are equivalent to half a sovereign.
But not only were there thus, in Domesday, four virgates to a hide; there were also in the Domesday virgate thirty Domesday acres.
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.
They had nothing to guide them but the return itself, so that the rule, in Domesday, of 'four virgates to a hide' must have been of universal application.
But in spite of all these petty misdemeanours, Walter Cromwell appears to have been a man of property and influence in Wimbledon, and the Court Rolls in 1480 show that he then possessed twovirgates of land in Putney parish.
The number of strips so held was usually about thirty; but virgates of fifteen acres or even eighty are not unknown.
The economic position of the customary tenants was becoming worse by the operation of natural laws, for not only was the subdivision of the virgates reaching its limits, but common rights were being continuously diminished by enclosure.
King, and for the aforesaid two virgates of land he owes suit to the court of the lord the King at the Barton aforesaid, and it is worth 2s.
Names of the tenants holding virgate lands, and rents of the same virgates and customs which pertain to them.
Further, from works of the aforesaid 40 virgates 14l.
Footnote 96: Thirty-one virgates follow in like detail.
And thus there are in all in the aforesaid manor 40 virgates of land which render yearly in rent of assize: Sum, 47l.
Virgates and bovates would arise of themselves: it was not advantageous to split the yoke of two oxen, the smallest possible plough; and co-heirs had to think even more when they inherited one ox with its ox-gang of land.
No regular sub-divisions corresponding to the virgates and bovates are mentioned, and the reckoning starts not from separate tenements, but from their combination into sulungs[499].
The remaining five hides and three virgates are in pure villainage[344].
In the Dorsetshire manor of Newton, belonging to Glastonbury, we find a reduction of the duties of one of the virgates because it is a small one[483].
Bovates and virgates exist only as parts of carucates or hides, and the several carucates or hides themselves fit together, inasmuch as they suppose a constant apportionment of some kind.
In a Ramsey Cartulary we find the following entry in regard to a Huntingdonshire manor: 'Of seven hides one is free; of the remaining six two virgatespay rent.
The land in villenage, as in the Winslow manor, is held mostly in virgates and half-virgates, and below these cottiers hold smaller holdings, also in villenage.
It is not possible to ascertain from a mere record of the changes in the holdings precisely how many of thesevirgates and half-virgates there were in the manor of Winslow.
In the rolls for Huntingdonshire a series of entries occurs, describing, contrary to the usual practice of the compilers, the number of acres in a virgate, and the number of virgates in a hide, in several manors.
The services were as follows: The holders of virgates for the lord's work plough in spring 4 acres for each virgate.
They held their virgates free of service, and perhaps their strips were ploughed by the common ploughs in return for their services without their contributing oxen to the manorial plough team.
It may be inferred, therefore, that about the same proportion of the whole area of the open fields must have been included in the virgates and half-virgates whose holders died or survived.
In giving the sum of the particulars I add hides to hides, virgates to virgates, acres to acres, but I make no assumption as to the number of acres or virgates in the hide.
Nor is a law which gives the dead man's land to all his sons as co-heirs a sufficient force to destroy the system of hides and virgates when once it is established by some original allotment.
Virgates which in grandfather's time," he would say, "used to belong to A.
Indeed there is not much sense in talking about virgates or half-virgates at all.
These large holdings have plainly been formed by the aggregation of half virgates in fewer hands and into parcels of two, three, four, and five half virgates apiece.
The case of the man at Sutton, who took up three virgatesand a cotland, has already been mentioned.
At Overton four virgates were excused their ploughing quia reprisa excedit valorem.
At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.
The uniformity of size characteristic of the early virgates disappeared.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "virgates" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
