Tribal Hidage - Purpose

Purpose

The purpose of the Tribal Hidage remains unknown. Over the years different theories have been suggested for its purpose, linked with a range of dates for its creation.

According to many experts, the Tribal Hidage was 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 that involved all of Anglo-Saxon England south of the Humber and that was created for Offa, but acknowledges that no proof exists that it was compiled during his rule. 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". According to Higham, the large size of the West Saxon hidation indicates that there were close links between the scale of tribute and any political considerations. 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...".

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". She notes that 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.

P. H. Sawyer argues that the values may have had a symbolic purpose and that they were intended to be an expression of the status of each kingdom and province. To Sawyer, the obscurity of some of the tribal names and the absence from the list of others points to an early date for the original text, which he describes as a "monument to Mercian power". The 100,000 hides assigned to Wessex may have reflected its superior status at a later date and would imply that the Tribal Hidage in its present form was written in Wessex. The very large hidage assessment for Wessex was considered to be an error by the historian J. Brownbill, but Cyril Hart maintains that the value for Wessex is correct and that it was one of several assessments designed to exact the largest possible tribute from Mercia's main rivals.