Definition
A form of extraordinary tax levied in medieval England on landholders, assessed according to the number of hides of land they held. The hidage was not ordinarily paid in money but was rendered in kind — typically provisions, armor, or military equipment — making it a fiscal instrument tied directly to the crown's military needs rather than its monetary revenue. The obligation arose from the hide as the foundational unit of Anglo-Saxon and early Norman land assessment, so that a landholder's hidage liability was a function of how much land was attributed to him under the traditional reckoning.
Bouvier adds a secondary sense: hidage also referred to exemption from the hidage tax, a usage that reflects the common medieval practice of defining a privilege by naming the burden it relieved. A grant of hidage in this sense was a grant of immunity, not an imposition.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A tax formerly paid to the kings of England for every hide of land; also, the total area of land measured in hides.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A tax formerly paid to the kings of England for every hide of land.
Editorial note: The ordinary-language definitions capture the tax meaning adequately but miss the legal complexity Bouvier preserves — that hidage could denote exemption from the tax as well as the tax itself. Researchers encountering the word in a charter or grant of privilege should not assume imposition; context determines whether the term signals a burden or a release from one.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Hidage operated as part of a family of similarly structured Anglo-Saxon and Norman assessments. Related impositions included carucage (assessed on the carucate, the northern and Midlands equivalent of the hide), tallage (a broader discretionary levy on towns and royal demesne), and scutage (a later commutation of military service into money payment). Hidage itself appears in sources under variant spellings, including hydage.
Why It Matters in Research
Hidage is a term of art belonging almost entirely to the pre-modern English legal corpus. Researchers will encounter it primarily in:
— Anglo-Saxon and Domesday-era records, where the hide is the dominant unit of land assessment and hidage liability defines the landholding's fiscal and military profile.
— Medieval charters, where grants of exemption from hidage appear as privileges conferring significant practical value on religious houses, favored tenants, or boroughs.
— Historical legal treatises citing Bracton and Cowell, which preserve the classical definitions without fully resolving the ambiguity between imposition and exemption.
The critical navigational point is the Bouvier dual-sense problem. Black's (both editions) treats hidage exclusively as a tax. Bouvier alone records the exemption meaning, citing Bracton. A researcher working from Black's alone will systematically misread charter language granting hidage as an imposition when it may be a release. Cross-checking Bouvier and the primary source (Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae) is essential for charter work.
Hidage does not survive as a living legal concept. It has no modern statutory or common-law application. Its importance in the Law Mind corpus is historical and interpretive: understanding hidage unlocks the logic of Anglo-Saxon land tenure, the connection between land measurement and military obligation, and the fiscal architecture that Domesday Book was designed to map.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary (1st and 2nd editions) are in near-verbatim agreement, both citing Cowell's The Interpreter (1607) as authority. Their definition is compact and accurate as far as it goes: an extraordinary tax, paid in kind rather than money, assessed per hide. Neither edition engages with the exemption sense.
Bouvier's entry is shorter but broader, citing Bracton directly and explicitly flagging that hidage could mean exemption from the tax. This is the more legally nuanced treatment and the more useful one for charter research. The divergence between Black's and Bouvier here is not a contradiction so much as a difference in scope — Black's defines the fiscal instrument; Bouvier captures the full legal valence of the term as it appeared in grants and privileges.
All three sources agree on the foundational point: hidage is anchored to the hide as a unit of assessment and to the crown's extraordinary (non-routine) revenue needs. None of the historical dictionaries addresses the regional variation in land units or the relationship between hidage and Domesday assessment methodology, which requires going beyond the dictionary shelf entirely.
Jurisdictional Note
Hidage is specific to the English legal tradition and has no counterpart in Scots, Welsh, or Irish law, which operated under distinct systems of land tenure and assessment. Within England, its practical scope was greatest in the southern and Midland counties where the hide was the standard unit; northern and East Anglian areas used the carucate and the acre-based long hundred, producing different assessment instruments.