Virgata

A quarter of an acre of land. It might also be used to express a quarter of a hide of land. Acres did not always contain the same quantity of land. The acre was usually, but not always, estimated by a day’s work, as a man might in a day plow a strip that is four rods wide and forty long. But the rods employed in two neighboring villages were not strictly, or even approximately, equal. When an acre was divided, it was always by a line that was parallel, not to its short ends, but to its long sides, for convenience in plowli/g, and so when land. Its width is a rod or land-yard. The typical tenement is a hide. If a man is given a quarter of a hide (an equitable quarter, equal in value as well as in extent to every remaining quarter), he is given a quarter of every acre in the hide. The vlrgate is not a primary unit like the hide, the rod or the acre. It is derivative; it is compound. In its origin it is a rod’s breadth in every acre of a hide. Maitl. Domesday Book 384. The hide was divided into virgates and acres. Bach acre generally consisted of four rods or furrows lying side by side. Hence the virga or rod meant the quarter of an acre. But by reckoning in hides and not in acres, “virgate,” which means onefourth of an acre, is used to signify one-fourth of a hide, i. e., a holding of about thirty acres in the common fields. 2 Holdsw. Hist. E. L. 66.