In that part of Britain called the Danelaw, a unit of land area, the amount of land that could be kept in cultivation by a single plow, = 8 bovates. Also called a carucata. Usually translated as plough-land, but often used as a synonym for the hide.
Like the hide, the carucate was not a unit of land area, but a unit of obligation for military service and taxes. Hollister hypothesizes on good evidence that, "the select-fyrd duty was assessed in the Danelaw at the standard rate of one man from a particular number of carucates, a number which was generally known at the time but is unknown to us.1" Round2 proposes that the number is 6.
In 1194, set at 100 acres.
1. C. Warren Hollister.
Anglo-Saxon Military Institutions.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.
Page 50.
2.
John Horace Round.
Feudal England.
London, 1895.
Page 69.
Tractatus de legibus et consuetudinibus regni Anglie
by Ranulf de Glanville (1130-1190), Book 12, chapter 3.
Rex Comiti W. salutem. Praecipio tibi quod sine dilatione teneas plenum rectum N. de decem carucatis terrae in Middleton...
The King to Earl W. greeting. I command thee that without delay thou shouldest do full right to N. concerning ten plough-lands in Middleton..."
as quoted and translated in
Kenelm Edward Digby and William Montagu Harrison.
An Introduction to the History of the Law of Real Property. (5th edition)
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1897.
Pages 74 and 75.
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