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The hide appears as the ploughland with eight oxen, the virgate corresponds to one yoke of oxen, and the bovate to the single head.

If a bovate is granted to a person, so much of the rights of pasture as belongs to every bovate in the village is presumed to be granted with the arable.

Et Robertus de Drayton tenet 2 bovatas et quartam partem unius bovate terre de dicto Roberto per forinsecum servicium tantum, unde 16 carucate terre faciunt feodum militis.'

According to a very common mode of reckoning, the hide contains four virgates, every virgate two bovates, and every bovate fifteen acres.

And so we must come to the conclusion, that the hide, the virgate, the bovate, in short every holding mentioned in the surveys, appears primarily as an artificial, administrative, and fiscal unit which corresponds only in a very rough way to the agrarian reality.