Glossary

Acre

An acre is an area of land equal to 4,840 square yards or 4,047 square metres. So it is approximately 40% of a hectare which is 10,000 square metres.

Balk

An unplowed ridge to prevent soil erosion or mark a division on common land.

Carucates

In most of the Danelaw counties, the public obligations were assessed in carucates and bovates. The word carucate is derived from caruca, Latin for a plough; bovate from bos, Latin for an ox. Since the standard Domesday plough team was drawn by eight oxen, the carucate contained eight bovates. An eight-oxen plough team could plough one ploughland in the course of an agricultural year. Carucate, bovate, ploughland, and plough team were thus conceptually linked, and all derived from agricultural processes.

The Domesday Book, however, makes it clear that the real world bore only a rough and ready approximation to these Platonic ideals. There were many estates where teams exceeded ploughlands, or ploughlands exceeded teams; and carucates and ploughlands were often related in an artificial manner. Many of these anomalies were due to royal grants and exemptions which had distorted the original assessments. Domesday Book itself records sweeping reductions in the assessment of estates in many counties. But as J.H. Round demonstrated more than a century ago, the system was artificial from its inception. Assessments were arrived at by allocating a round number of units to a county, then dividing them among the constituent Wapentakes, then further subdividing these among the vills in each Wapentake. Assessments arrived at in this manner could never be more than approximately equivalent to each other, or to any given area. In no sense could they be considered to be exact measurements.

Copyhold

A tenure less than freehold of land in England evidences by a copy of the Court roll.

Coverture

The condition or status of a married woman considered as being under the protection and influence of her husband.

Driftway

A broad route along which cattle or sheep used to be driven.

Fee Simple

An absolute interest in land over which the holder has complete freedom of disposition during his life.

Fee Tail

A freehold interest in land restricted to a particular line of heirs.

Feoffment

This in English law was a transfer of property that gave the new owner the right to sell the land as well as the right to pass it on to his heirs. It was total relinquishment and transfer of all rights of ownership in land from one individual to another. It was the granting of a fee simple during the feudal period. The delivery of possession, known as livery of seisin was done on the site of the land and was made by the feoffor to the feoffee in the presence of witnesses. Written conveyances were customary and after 1677, mandatory.

Glebe

An area of land within a parish used to support the Rector (priest or vicar). For more see here.

Hereditament

Any kind of property that is capable of being inherited.

Leys

"Laes" meaning pasture is fairly common. "Leah" meaning wood, clearing, is also fairly common. Through confusion, laes may develop to leys. Both terms date from c.1300.

Meerway

Old English word for boundary or boundary marker.

Messuage

In law, the term messuage equates to a dwelling-house and includes outbuildings, orchard, curtilage or court-yard and garden. At one time messuage supposedly had a more extensive meaning than that conveyed by the words house or site, but such distinction no longer survives. A capital messuage is the main messuage of an estate, the house in which the owner of the estate normally lives. The word messuage derives from the Anglo-French mesuage (holding), probably a corruption of popular Latin mansio, whence modern French maison (house), from manere (to dwell).

Modus

Means a fixed composition or equivalent given instead of payment of tithes in kind.

Perch

An old imperial measure also known as a rod or pole. There are 160 perches to an acre. For more see here.

Quickset

A plant or cutting, especially of hawthorn, set so as to form a hedge.

Rack Rent

A high rent that annually equals or nearly equals the value of the property upon which it is charged.

Rood

An old imperial measure also known as a pole. A rood is equal to a quarter of an acre. For more see here.

Sheepwalk

A tract of land for grazing sheep.

Tithe

A contribution to the Church the word "tithe" being derived from the old English for "tenth". Historically tithes were paid in kind such as agricultural products. For more see here.

Yeoman

Yeoman refers chiefly to a free man owning his own farm, especially from the Elizabethan era to the 17th century. Work requiring a great deal of effort or labor, such as would be done by a yeoman farmer, came to be described as "yeoman's work". Thus yeoman became associated with hard toil.