Towns and Villages in the Time of Cnut the Dane
Now let us see what an ordinary village was like in the time of
King Cnut, when Saxon and Dane were living pretty comfortably
together, side by side, under good government.
We find that each vill or tun had a lord, an eorl, or thane, who
practically owned the place and everything in it, though he could
not do entirely as he liked. There was the land which belonged to
him, and which was in his own hands, or occupation, as we say;
that was called his demesne. The rest of the land was also his,
but it was let out to people who had lived on the land from time
out of mind--the cheorls or villeins. The lord's house was on his
demesne. The villeins' houses were all together in the tun, with
the grass yards for the cattle close to them, and the open fields
and pasture-lands outside the tun, just as they had been in the
olden days.
There seems to have been two classes of villeins--geburs and
cottiers.
The geburs were the higher class. They appear very frequently to
have held about one hundred and twenty acres of land; they had to
work on the lord's home farm two or three days a week, or pay him
certain produce of the land as a rent; and they had to provide one
or more oxen for the village plough, when there was ploughing to be
done on the lord's farm, or in the common field.
In the Danish part of the country there appears to have been a
class of freeholders, in some places, called socmen, but there
were not very many of them. They, no doubt, had had their rights
granted to them for distinguished service in the Danish wars.
The cottiers held only about five acres of land. They had to work
for the thane or lord on certain days of the week; but, as they had
no oxen, they had no ploughing to do for him.
Below the geburs and the cottiers were the theows, thralls, or
slaves, who could be bought and sold. They were captives taken in
war, or men who, for their crimes, had been doomed to slavery.
We must remember that the overlord might be the king or a bishop, a
monastery or a thane. Their rights over their vills and tuns were
much the same in each case, and their duties to those vills and
tuns were also similar.
A very large number of vills and tuns were under the lordship of
the various bishops and monasteries. It was so with towns like
Winchester, Reading, Bury St. Edmund's, and St. Alban's. The custom
had grown up quite naturally and in the course of many years.
It is pretty clear that the overlord did not always reside in his
vill or tun. The tuns or vills of the bishopric of Winchester,
for instance, were scattered about in the various parts of the
diocese. It was the same with other overlords. But we find in every
place a steward, and in each town the king's reeve or the lord's
reeve. These acted for the overlord, whoever he was, and saw that
the villeins and cottiers did their proper proportion of work at
the right time; they saw that the lord's tolls at the markets,
fairs, and ferries, were properly enforced. The steward was a most
important officer in every town and village, and a great deal of
power was in his hands.
Then in the ordinary country vill there was the faber, or smith;
the mason; the pundar, or man who looked after the fences and
hedges and drove stray cattle into the pound. Then there was the
carpenter, and even the bee-keeper, for honey was an important
ingredient used in the making of the drink of the community. The
simple ordinary trades were found in the country villages then,
as they are now; but the craftsmen, the most skilled workmen, had
become for the most part dwellers in the towns. Even in very early
times we find craftsmen in towns formed into trades' unions or
guilds, to protect their special trades.
[Illustration: _Agriculture. From an eleventh-century manuscript
in the British Museum_
_Below are shown the workers carrying their burdens home at the
end of the day._]
Now the land was shared amongst the villeins and cottiers in
strips, usually containing an acre or halfacre, in the common
fields of which we have heard before. The villein did not have all
the strips belonging to his holding set out side by side--they
lay in different parts of the great open field. Crops had to be
sown according to the custom of the vill or tun, and according to
a fixed order. Wheat and rye would be sown one year on a part of
the great field; barley, oats, and beans the next year; and the
third year the land must be left fallow. The lord's land had to be
treated in the same way.
On the pasture-land and in the meadows the villein and cottier had
the right to turn out a certain number of cattle, according to the
size of their holdings. The crops, whether of hay or corn, had to
be cleared from the fields by certain fixed days, so that cattle
might be turned out to graze. You will still find, in some towns,
that certain of the freeholders, or burgesses, have the right to
turn a certain number of cattle on certain lands for a part of the
year between fixed dates.
Then, on the rough commons or heaths there were also grazing rights
for the lord and his tenants. The tenants might "top and lop" the
trees growing there at certain times, but they might not cut the
trees down--that was the lord's right. There were also rights of
cutting turf and heather, and the turning of hogs into the forest;
all these rights were ruled by "custom", which bound both the lord
and the tenants.
These "customs", although they were very similar, were not the same
in every place--each community had its own special "customs" which
were clung to most rigidly from generation to generation. However
much inclined the lord or his reeve might be to try to get rid of
the old "customs" in order to get more power into his own hands,
or to make more out of the tenants, he was forced to respect the
"custom" of the place or there would be grievous trouble. And it
was a good thing that both lords and tenants had thus to respect
each the right of the other, for it has helped to foster from the
very early days that spirit which makes for liberty, which we
value so highly, so that a man may live his life in security and
freedom.
The lord, or steward, or reeve, held courts or meetings at regular
intervals. At first these took place in the open air, like the old
folk-moots; but in time they came to be held in a court-house. The
court was a meeting, presided over by the lord or his steward, to
see that the customs of the place were kept up; to call to account
those tenants who had failed to do their share of the work; to put
new tenants into the places of those who had removed or died; and
to punish offenders.
[Illustration: _Ploughing. From an eleventh-century manuscript in
the British Museum_]
This last right, of punishing offenders, was one thought to be of
vast importance. In the early days the men of the tun were bound
together to keep the peace, and to see that it was kept; and they
were strong enough to keep evil-doers in check. In the trading
tuns or towns especially the right was valued very highly; but, at
the time we are now treating of, the right to exercise punishment
was in the hands of the overlord, though the men of the place had
still some voice in the government of their town. The right to have
a gallows was one eagerly sought for, and held very firmly; not
because people particularly wanted to hang one another, but because
the gallows represented to them the highest power of government.
The towns had lost most of their rights in this respect, but they
had never forgotten those they had had, and were always on the
alert to get back any lost right, or to gain a new one which should
help them to obtain the privilege of self-government.