The Tribal Hidage

Abstract

The Tribal Hidage is a list of about thirty tribes of Anglo-Saxon England together with the number of lands of one family (hides) belonging to each tribe. Historians agree that it is a seventh or eighth century Mercian document so difficult to understand that it is a ‘puzzle’ and ‘a mysterious catalogue—barely intelligible’. Part of the mystery is caused by failure to identify even large tribes in the list, and perhaps more mystery is produced by the inability to fit the data into its alleged historical setting. As a piece of literature it belongs to the intellectual movement sometimes known as the Mercian Renaissance which has received little attention. The great epic, Beowulf, has recently been assigned to it, and another, Widsith, falls in the same period. Alfred drew a majority of his scholars from Mercia. This Mercian Renaissance is thus worth further study for its general significance, but it has a peculiar interest for students of the Tribal Hidage as the environment for this singular document. It is the thesis of this study that the Tribal Hidage, although a Mercian survival, is actually a revision of data of the time of Aethelbert of Kent of about 590 A.D. and that it gives a valuable picture of the political divisions of England of that important time.