Interesting facts about our european history

Recently I was fumbling through a mess of scattered information I had archived while researching the lowly unit of area we know now as an acre. Fumbling through all this proved to be an interesting journey.

As surveyors most of us realize that a lot of our "common law" approach to property seisen and tenure was borrowed from the Old World English. I was particularly fascinated by how closely our local civil structure itself also mirrored the Old English, but with a bit of a twist.

Now if the King was going to protect the villages from the marauding bands of Nordic looters that seemed to pop up every spring when the North Sea thawed, he needed to finance an army. No better place to look for income than the peasants themselves that would benefit the most from the protection.

Back then land was not measured in area. It was measured by productivity. The main goal of any sort of land tally was to provide for the taxation thereof. What we now know as ad valorem tax was once known as feorm (possible the root word for farm), or food rent. The basic unit of land at the time was measured as a "hide"; the amount of land required to sustain a family. Some scholars estimate a hide might have been as large as 120 acres, some think possibly as small as 40. Whichever, the unit was not determined by size, but by productivity. Each "hide" had a specific amount of tax placed on it for the betterment of the common good. At least one document hinted at the origin of the phrase "I'll have your hide!" as a threat against taking one's land holdings, and not relieving one of his skin.

Now to keep the bean counters happy local groups of hides were accounted in groups of ten, known as "tithings". Each tithing owed a certain amount of feorm annually. Uniquely, this allowed for some "give and take" among the 10 to actually come up with their fair share, something the Lords would rather probably avoid. It probably worked well due to our compassion for our friends and neighbors.

Ten tithings were then grouped into hundreds, consisting of 100 hides. Then, according to the natural lay of the land with such boundaries as rivers, groups of hundreds were then collectively given an accounting term of a shire.

The Lords and the Kings were a good distance from some of their income feorms. They needed a local fellow, of honorable stature, to act as a middleman between the ruling lords and the peasants to make sure everybody was minding their Ps and Qs. Someone to remind the people of the King's wishes and to keep a certain amount of peace among the rank and file.

Out of necessity there arose such a social position of a gerefa. A peasant himself, but of an honorable age with understanding and fairness. Someone who held the respect of both the lords and the people. A gerefa soon became simply known as what we would pronounce today as a reeve. But not just any reeve. A reeve for the entire shire, a shirereeve, if you will.

And we still today depend on such a position within our shires. Of course nowadays we call our shires counties. And our county shirereeves are known as our county sheriffs.

Now you know the rest of the story...;-)