Sentiments and Activities by George Caspar Homans

Author:George Caspar Homans [Homans, George Caspar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781135034948
Google: 90tyANHlZmgC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013-04-15T05:47:02+00:00

III

Although many of the facts are familiar, I have had to review the social institutions of East Anglia in order to establish a basis for comparison with medieval Friesland. By Friesland I shall mean the seven seelande of medieval Frisia, forming a coastal strip from the Scheldt to the Weser, and disregard the extension of Frisian culture east of the Weser, which seems to have occurred at some time after the invasions. Although the Lex Frisionum is an eighth-century document, anything like adequate evidence for Frisian institutions, as for East Anglian ones, dates only from the later Middle Ages. For my chief authority on these institutions I shall use B. E. Siebs’ summary and synthesis of earlier work: Grundlagen und Aufbau der altfriesischen Verfassung.39 The significance of the picture Siebs presents seems to have escaped English scholars.

Like the other Germanic lands, Friesland knows a basic tenement and assessment unit, which German scholars call the hufe. It is of the same order of magnitude as the East Anglian carucate, though it varies somewhat in size from one part of Friesland to another. Its name also varies. In South Friesland it is, among other things, a ploeg or ploeggang (aratrum in Latin), a teen or teenland; elsewhere it is egge, rott, or simply land.40 For convenience I shall usually call it a ploeg, but what I shall say of the ploeg applies also to the basic tenement unit under other names.

Let us look first at these names, especially the South Frisian ones. Note, first, that whatever else the basic tenement is called, it is not called a hide. But it is called a “plow,” which means that in looking for an ethnic origin for the East Anglian carucate we are not limited to the Danes. Note next the terms teen or teenland. The word may refer to the hedging-in of land, in which case it is related to zaun and town, but it may also be a form of the word ten, which should make us think at once of the Walpole tenmanlots and of the 12-acre holdings, one-tenth of a carucate, which are so common in East Anglia. For whatever the origin of the word, Siebs believes that the teen or ploeg was in early times the unit bound to furnish ten men for the heer, the army. There might be more than ten men living from the land, kinsmen or tenants of the holder, but of these at least ten were liable for military service. In this case the hundred would be the unit providing 100 men, or 120 by the long hundred.41

Second, the teen or ploeg was a unit whose members were held collectively responsible for carrying out the legal duties of any one of their number. In this, of course, it resembles the English tithing, which is also in theory a group of ten.42

Third, and this is much more important for my argument, the ploeg is a compact area of land (geschlossene Lage); so is the East Frisian

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