Everything about The Tribal Hidage totally explained
The
Tribal Hidage is a list of territorial assessments in
Anglo-Saxon England which lists regions and the number of
hides those regions contained. The earliest copy of the document is British Library, MS Harley 3271 which dates from the
11th century. A slightly different recension survives in a number of later medieval manuscripts containing legal tracts on the history of
London. Though we don't know the date for or context surrounding the list's creation, it's generally understood to have been created in
Mercia sometime between the
mid-7th and
mid-9th centuries.
The Regions
The Tribal Hidage lists a complicated array of regions and their
hidage assessments. Sizes range from small
Mercian regions such as
suth gyrwa and
east wixna (300 hides) to an estimate of 100,000 hides for
Wessex. The assessment is much more detailed in what is now the midlands, strongly suggesting that this was a Mercian document. Other kingdoms, which have been referred to as part of the '
Heptarchy', are counted as much larger units.
It isn't clear why these larger regions were juxtaposed alongside numerous smaller regions. Other regions, such as Hwinca (
Hwicce, 7000 hides) and Ciltern (4000 hides) were also of considerable size. Many of the groups listed are highly obscure: some can only be identified and localised with the aid of
place-names, and a few can't be confidently localised at all.
The complexity of the document may mirror the complexity of political structures in early
Anglo-Saxon England, an important criticism of the concept of
Heptarchy.
Administration
It isn't clear for what purpose the Tribal Hidage was created, though it may have been a
tribute list. Most importantly, it demonstrates that assessments in hides were made in this period, and most probably earlier.
Bede makes passing references to hide assessments in his
Ecclesiastic History, written in
731.
Anglo-Saxon kings must have utilised assessments to extract labour and resources for the creation of projects such as
Offa's Dyke.
Military service,
tax and payments in kind were assessed on the hide level in later
Anglo-Saxon England and Tribal Hidage shows this may have been happening earlier.
Alfred of Wessex used a similar hide assessment system in
Wessex to manage his new system of
burhs, resulting in the document known as the
Burghal Hidage. The number of men required to man the wall of a town or fort was given in land units.
Further Information
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