What is the origin of the five-hide unit? Various conjectures have been hazarded, and the unit is undoubtedly older than the Danegeld. Rejecting the idea that it is of Roman or of British origin, and pointing to the serious difference in the rates at which the various counties were assessed, Mr Round thinks that it dates from the time when the various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms were independent. Possibly it was the unit of assessment for military service, possibly it was the recognized endowment of a Saxon thegn. In Anglo-Saxon times a man's standing in society was dependent to a great extent upon the number of hides which he possessed; this statement is fully proved from the laws. Moreover, in the laws of the Wessex king, Ine, the value of a man's oath is expressed in hides, the oath for a king's thegn being probably worth 60 hides and that of a ceorl 5 hides.
The usual division of the hide was into virgates, a virgate being, after the Conquest at least, the normal holding of the villein with two oxen. Mr Round holds that in Domesday at all events the hide always consisted of four virgates; Mr F. Seebohm in _The English Village Community_, although thinking that the normal hide "consisted as a rule of four virgates of 30 acres each," says that the Hundred Rolls for Huntingdonshire show that "the hide did not always contain the same number of virgates." The virgate, it may be noted, consisted of a strip of land in _each_ acre of the hide, and there is undoubtedly a strong case in favour of the equation 1 hide = 4 virgates.
Mr Seebohm, propounding his theory that English institutions are rooted in those of Rome, argues for some resemblance between the methods of taxation of land in Rome and in England; he sees some connexion between the Roman _centuria_ and the hide, and between the Roman system of taxation called _jugatio_ and the English hidage. Professor Vinogradoff (_Villainage in England_) summarizes the views of those who hold a contrary opinion thus: "The curious fact that the normal holding, the hide, was equal all over England can be explained only by its origin; it came full-formed from Germany and remained unchanged in spite of all diversities of geographical and economical conditions."