Burghal Hidage

The Burghal Hidage (/ˈbɜːrɡəl ˈhaɪdɪdʒ/) is an Anglo-Saxon document providing a list of over thirty fortified places (burhs), the majority being in the ancient Kingdom of Wessex, and the taxes (recorded as numbers of hides) assigned for their maintenance.

[1][2] Version A, Cotton Otho B.xi was badly damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 but the body of the text survives in a transcript made by the antiquary Laurence Nowell in 1562.

[1] The Burghal Hidage offers a detailed picture of the network of burhs that Alfred the Great designed to defend his kingdom from the predations of Viking invaders.

[6] In the first half of the 10th century, Alfred's son Edward the Elder and his successors made this type of construction a key element in their campaigns against the Vikings, who had been in control of much of Danelaw.

[6] In early Anglo-Saxon England the hide was used as the basis for assessing the amount of food rent due from an area (known as feorm).

Tenants had a threefold obligation related to their landholding; the so-called ‘common burdens' of military service, fortress work, and bridge repair.

[7][8] Later the hide was given a set acreage and in the Domesday book the most common size in use was 120 acres (48.56 ha; 0.19 sq mi).

[12] The hide also served as a unit of fiscal assessment for the collection of a tax, known as Danegeld, for which the original purpose was to raise money to buy off raiding Vikings; however after that threat had retreated it was retained as a permanent land-tax.

[18] It is possible that the Burghal Hideage was created as a blue-print for the way that burhs were connected with hidation, originally worked out in Wessex, and applied to the situation in Mercia at that time.

This received view has now been challenged from two directions – from the perspectives of the strategies involved,[19] and a new interpretation of the coinage of King Alfred.

[19] Alfred's standing enabled him to impose a level of conscription on the population of his kingdom to construct the burhs, to act as garrisons behind their defences, and to serve in his new army.

[22] The retreat of Guthrum and his band to East Anglia in late 879 and the similar retreat of the Viking army stationed at Fulham, west of London, back to the Continent at the same time (both events recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), can be seen as a tactical response to the effectiveness of the strategic offensive posed by the construction of the Burghal system.

[23] The fact that the Burghal Hidage does not include London, only taken in late 879; that many of the burhs recorded in the document were of a temporary nature and were only replaced by more permanent fortified sites later on; and that its organisation reflects a strategic offensive against the Viking presence in Mercia and London, are factors which argue strongly that the Burghal Hidage is a prescriptive list describing a system which was in process of being planned and implemented before late 879.

Its composition can therefore be most appropriately placed in a West Saxon context, rather than one which relates to the formation of burhs and shires in Mercia in the early 10th century – to which situation it has no relevance.

[25] This list shows the 33 burhs (with hidages) included in either or both of the 'A' and the 'B' groups of manuscripts as discussed by David Hill, in the order that they appear in all of the documents.

Version A, Cotton Otho B.xi was badly damaged in a fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 but the body of the text survives thanks to a transcript made by the Tudor historian Laurence Nowell in 1562.

The historian David Hill[27] shows how all of the recensions can be used to correct each other or at least help us understand how errors, especially in the hidage numbers, were mistranscribed in the copying process.

[27] After listing all the burghs Version A of the Burghal Hidage includes a note: "For the maintenance and defence of an acre’s breadth of wall sixteen hides are required.

He advances his argument to propose that the intention of the Burghal Hidage is to provide a method of doing so not for Wessex but for the newly created burh in the reconquered ‘shires’ of Mercia.

Hill then turns to the second part of the final sentence “and 30 to the West Saxons”, this too is glossed as ‘30,000’ by the copyist ‘6’ so that it seems to refer to hides; but Hill proposes that it refers to the 30 burh; there are in fact 31 of these in the combined lists, but he then proposes that Buckingham (at 1600 hides) is in fact Mercian, that is not of “the West Saxons”, so is not included in the grand total.