HIDARE

Definition

In old English law, to tax or assess land by hides. Hidare is the verbal form of the noun hida (hide), denoting the act of imposing a fiscal assessment upon land measured by that unit. Where land was hidared, it became hidatus — taxed or assessed — and subject to the obligations that attached to hide-rated land under the Anglo-Saxon and early Norman fiscal system. The term belongs to a family of related words centered on the hide as a unit of land measurement and tax assessment. To hidare was not merely to measure land but to render it formally liable to public burdens calculated according to hide-based rating.

Common Confusion

HIDARE and HIDE are closely related but distinct. Hide (hida) is the unit of land itself — a measure of land sufficient to support a household, of variable actual acreage depending on soil quality and local custom. Hidare is the act of assessing or taxing by that unit. A researcher encountering hidatus in a medieval source should understand it as an adjectival past participle meaning "assessed" or "taxed by hides," not simply as a description of land area. Burrill's entry for HIDE is a necessary companion to this term, as the two entries in historical sources are often run together or cross-defined in ways that blur the distinction between measurement and fiscal imposition.

Why It Matters in Research

Hidare appears almost exclusively in Latin or Latinate form in primary sources — hidatus is more common in documentary records than hidare itself, which surfaces mainly in legal dictionaries and glossaries drawing on Spelman. Researchers working in Domesday Book scholarship, Anglo-Saxon land charters, or early Norman administrative records will encounter the hide system as a recurring fiscal framework. The act of hidaring land — assigning it a hide rating — determined liability for the geld (the principal direct tax of pre-Conquest and early post-Conquest England), and later influenced knight service obligations under the feudal system. A critical research trap: the hide was never a fixed acreage. It was a unit of fiscal assessment, not a surveying measurement. This means hidatus land cannot be converted to modern acreage without independent evidence of local custom. Sources that treat the hide as equivalent to 120 acres are applying a later normalization that was not consistently applied in practice. The connection between hidare and the geld system means this term is relevant not only to land law but to the administrative and fiscal history of the English state. Researchers approaching this term through legal dictionaries alone — rather than through historical scholarship on Domesday administration — will miss the practical operation of hide assessment entirely. Burrill's entry is sparse. It provides the definition and cites Spelman but does not develop the fiscal significance. For deeper research, Spelman's Glossarium Archaiologicum remains the foundational glossary source. Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond provides the most thorough treatment of the hide in its fiscal context.

Historical Dictionary Support

Burrill (one source available) defines hidare simply as "to tax or assess land by hides," citing Spelman. Burrill also notes the adjectival form hidatus, meaning "taxed." The entry is brief and definitional, offering no development of the legal or administrative consequences of hide assessment. Spelman, whom Burrill cites, is the controlling authority on this term in the historical dictionary tradition. Legal dictionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that address Anglo-Saxon and early Norman land law generally rely on Spelman for hidare and related terms. There is no meaningful divergence among the dictionary sources on the core definition; the gap lies in what the dictionaries omit — namely, the operation and significance of the hide system in practice.

Jurisdictional Note

Hidare is a term of English law exclusively, rooted in the Anglo-Saxon hide system and its survival into early Norman administration. It has no application outside England and no modern legal operation anywhere. It is relevant only to historical legal research in the context of pre-Conquest and early post-Conquest English land and fiscal law.

Related Terms