The Tribal Hidage is a list of thirty-five tribes that was compiled in Anglo-Saxon England some time between the 7th and 9th centuries. It includes a number of independent kingdoms and other smaller territories, and assigns a number of hides to each one. The list is headed by Mercia and consists almost exclusively of peoples who lived south of the Humber estuary and territories that surrounded the Mercian kingdom, some of which have never been satisfactorily identified by scholars. The value of 100,000 hides for Wessex is by far the largest: it has been suggested that this was a deliberate exaggeration.
The original purpose of the Tribal Hidage remains unknown: it could be a tribute list created by a king, but other purposes have been suggested. The hidage figures may be symbolic, reflecting the prestige of each territory, or they may represent an early example of book-keeping. Many historians are convinced that the Tribal Hidage originated from Mercia, which dominated southern Anglo-Saxon England until the start of the 9th century, but others have argued that the text was Northumbrian in origin.
The Tribal Hidage has been of importance to historians since the middle of the 19th century, partly because it mentions territories unrecorded in other documents. Attempts to link all the names in the list with modern places are highly speculative and resulting maps are treated with caution. Three different versions (or recensions) have survived, two of which resemble each other: one dates from the 11th century and is part of a miscellany of works; another is contained in a 17th-century Latin treatise; the third, which has survived in six mediaeval manuscripts, has omissions and spelling variations. All three versions appear to be based on the same lost manuscript: historians have been unable to establish a date for the original compilation. The Tribal Hidage has been used to construct theories about the political organisation of the Anglo-Saxons, and to give an insight into the Mercian state and its neighbours when Mercia held hegemony over them. It has been used to support theories of the origin of the listed tribes and the way in which they were systematically assessed and ruled by others. Some historians have proposed that the Tribal Hidage is not a list of peoples, but of administrative areas.
Hide assessments
The Tribal Hidage is, according to historian D. P. Kirby, "a list of total assessments in terms of hides for a number of territories south of the Humber, which has been variously dated from the mid-7th to the second half of the 8th century".Kirby, Kings, p. 9. Most of the kingdoms of the Heptarchy are included. Mercia, which is assigned 30,000 hides, is at the top at the list,Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 24. followed by a number of small tribes to the west and north of Mercia, all of which have no more than 7000 hides listed. Other named tribes have even smaller hidages, of between 300 and 1200 hides: of these the Herefinna, Noxgaga, Hendrica and Unecungaga cannot be identified,Brooks, Anglo-Saxon Myths, p. 65. whilst the others have been tentatively located around the south of England and in the border region between Mercia and East Anglia.Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 296. Ohtgaga can be heard as Jutegaga and understood as the area settled by Jutes in and near the Meon Valley of Hampshire. The term'-gaga' is a late copyist mistranscription of the Old English '-wara' (people/ men of) the letter forms of 'w' wynn and the long-tailed 'r' being read as 'g'. A number of territories, such as the Hicca, have only been located by means of place-names evidence.Kirby, Kings, p. 10.Yorke, Political and Ethnic Identity, p. 83. The list concludes with several other kingdoms from the Heptarchy: the East Angles (who are assessed at 30,000 hides), the East Saxons (7,000 hides), Kent (15,000 hides), the South Saxons (7,000 hides) and Wessex, which is assessed at 100,000 hides.Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 296-297.
The round figures of the hidage assessments make it unlikely they were the result of an accurate survey. The methods of assessment used probably differed according to the size of the region.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 25. The figures may be of purely symbolic significance, reflecting the status of each tribe at the time it was assessed.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 28. The totals given within the text for the figures suggest that the Tribal Hidage was perhaps used as a form of book-keeping.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 29. Frank Stenton describes the hidage figures given for the Heptarchy kingdoms as exaggerated and in the instances of Mercia and Wessex, "entirely at variance with other information".Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 295.
Surviving manuscripts
A manuscript, now lost,Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 23. was originally used to produce the three recensions of the Tribal Hidage, named A, B and C.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 27.
Recension A, which is the earliest and most complete, dates from the 11th century. It is included in a miscellany of works, written in Old English and Latin, with Aelfric's Latin Grammar and his homily De initio creaturæ, written in 1034,British Library, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. and now in the British Library. It was written by different scribes,Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, pp. 24-25. at a date no later than 1032.Neal, Defining power in the Mercian Supremacy, p. 19.
Recension B, which resembles Recension A, is contained in a 17th-century Latin treatise, Archaeologus in Modum Glossarii ad rem antiquam posteriorem, written by Henry Spelman in 1626. The tribal names are given in Old English. There are significant differences in spelling between A and B (for instance Spelman's use of the word hidas), indicating that the text he copied was not Recension A, but a different Latin text. According to Peter Featherstone, the highly edited form of the text suggests that Spelman embellished it himself.
Recension C has survived in six Latin documents, all with common omissions and spellings. Four versions, of 13th-century origin, formed part of a collection of legal texts that, according to Featherstone, "may have been intended to act as part of a record of native English custom". The other two are a century older: one is flawed and may have been a scribe's exercise, and the other was part of a set of legal texts.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 26.
Origin Historians disagree on the date for the original compilation of the list. According to Campbell, who notes the plausibility of it being produced during the rise of Mercia, it can probably be dated to the 7th or 8th century.Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons, p. 59. Other historians, such as J. Brownbill, Barbara Yorke, Frank Stenton and Cyril Roy Hart, have written that it originated from Mercia at around this time, but differ on the identity of the Mercian ruler under whom the list was compiled.Neal, Defining Power in the Mercian Supremacy, pp. 20-22. Wendy Davies and Hayo Vierck have placed the document's origin more precisely at 670-690.Davies and Vierck, The Contexts of Tribal Hidage, p. 227.
There is near universal agreement that the text originates from Mercia, partly because its kings held extensive power over other territories from the late 7th to the early 9th centuries, but also because the list, headed by Mercia, is almost exclusively of peoples who lived south of the river Humber.Higham, An English Empire, pp. 74-75. Featherstone concludes that the original material, dating from the late 7th century, was used to be included in a late 9th century document and asserts that the Mercian kingdom "was at the centre of the world mapped out by the Tribal Hidage". Frank Stenton wrote that "the Tribal Hidage was almost certainly compiled in Mercia", whilst acknowledging a lack of conclusive evidence.
In contrast to most historians, Nicholas Brooks has suggested that the list is of Northumbrian origin, which would account for the inclusion of Elmet and the absence of the Northumbrian kingdoms of Deira and Bernicia. Mercia would not have been listed, as "an early mediaeval king did not impose tribute upon his own kingdom": it must have been a list produced by another kingdom, perhaps with an altogether different purpose.Brooks, Anglo-Saxon Myths, p. 62.Featherstone, Tribal Hidage, p. 30.
N. J. Higham has argued that because the original information cannot be dated and the largest Northumbrian kingdoms are not included, it cannot be proved to be a Mercian tribute list. He notes that Elmet, never a province of Mercia, is on the list,Higham, An English Empire, pp. 75, 76. and suggests that it was drawn up by Edwin of Northumbria in the 620s,Higham, An English Empire, p. 50. probably originating when a Northumbrian king last exercised imperium over the Southumbrian kingdoms.Higham, An English Empire, p. 76. According to Higham, the values assigned to each people are likely to be specific to the events of 625-626, representing contracts made between Edwin and those who recognised his overlordship, so explaining the rounded nature of the figures: 100,000 hides for the West Saxons was probably the largest number Edwin knew.Higham, An English Empire, pp. 94-95. According to D. P. Kirby, this theory has not been generally accepted as convincing.Kirby, Kings, p. 191, note 45.
Purpose
The purpose of the Tribal Hidage is unknown. Over the years different theories have been suggested for its purpose, linked with a range of dates for its creation.
The Tribal Hidage could have been a tribute list created upon the instructions of an Anglo-Saxon king such as Offa of Mercia, Wulfhere of Mercia or Edwin of Northumbria — but it may have been used for different purposes at various times during its history. Cyril Hart has described it as a tribute list created for Offa, but acknowledges that no proof exists that it was compiled during his rule.Hart, The Tribal Hidage, p.133. Higham notes that the syntax of the text requires that a word implying 'tribute' was omitted from each line, and argues that it was "almost certainly a tribute list".Higham, An English Empire, p. 75. To Higham, the large size of the West Saxon hidation indicates that there was a link between the scale of tribute and any political considerations.Higham, An English Empire, p. 94. James Campbell has argued that if the list served any practical purpose, it implies that tributes were assessed and obtained in an organised way, and notes that, "whatever it is, and whatever it means, it indicates a degree of orderliness, or coherence in the exercise of power...".Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons, p. 61.
Yorke acknowledges that the purpose of the Tribal Hidage is unknown and that it may well not be, as has been commonly argued, an overlord's tribute list. She warns against assuming that the minor peoples (of 7000 hides or less) possessed any "means of defining themselves as a distinct gentes". Among these, the Isle of Wight and the South Gyrwe tribes, tiny in terms of their hidages and geographically isolated from other peoples, were among the few who possessed their own royal dynasties.