CHAPTER VII.

THE PEASANTRY OF THE FEUDAL AGE. CONCLUSIONS.

[Legal and manorial records.]

I have divided my analysis of the condition of the feudal peasantry into

two parts according to a principle forcibly suggested, as I think, by

the material at hand. The records of trials in the King's Court, and the

doctrines of lawyers based on them, cannot be treated in the same way as

the surveys compiled for the use of manorial administration. There is a

marked difference between the two sets of documents as to method and

point of view. In the case of legal records a method of dialectic

examination could be followed. Legal rules are always more or less

connected between themselves, and the investigator has to find out,

first, from the application of what principles they flow, and to find

out, secondly, whether fundamental contradictions disclose a fusion of

heterogeneous elements. The study of manorial documents had to proceed

by way of classification, to establish in what broad classes the local

variations of terms and notions arrange themselves, and what variations

of daily life these groups or classes represent.

It is not strange, of course, that things should assume a somewhat

different aspect according to the point of view from which they are

described. Legal classification need not go into details which may be

very important for purposes of manorial administration; neither the size

of the holdings nor the complex variations of services have to be looked

to in cases where the law of status is concerned. Still it may be taken

for granted that the distinctions and rules followed by the courts had

to conform in a general way with matter-of-fact conditions. Lawyers

naturally disregarded minute subdivisions, but their broad classes were

not invented at fancy; they took them from life as they did the few

traits they chose from among many as tests for the purpose of laying

down clear and convenient rules. A general conformity is apparent in

every point. At the same time there is undoubtedly an opposition between

the _curial_ (if I may use that term) and the _manorial_ treatment of

status and tenure, which does not resolve itself into a difference

between broad principle and details. Just because the lawyer has to keep

to distinct rules, he will often be behind his age and sometimes in

advance of it. His doctrine, once established, is slow to follow the

fluctuations of husbandry and politics: while in both departments new

facts are ever cropping up and gathering strength, which have to fight

their way against the rigidity of jurisprudence before they are accepted

by it. On the other hand, notions of old standing and tenacious

tradition cannot be put away at once, so soon as some new departure has

been taken by jurists; and even when they die out at common law such

notions persist in local habits and practical life. For these reasons,

which hold good more or less everywhere, and are especially conspicuous

in mediaeval history, the general relation between legal and manorial

documents becomes especially important. It will widen and strengthen

conclusions drawn from the analysis of legal theory. We may be sure to

find in thirteenth-century documents of practical administration the

foundations of a system which prevailed at law in the fifteenth. And

what is much more interesting, we may be sure to find in local

customaries the traces of a system which had its day long before the

thirteenth century, but was still lingering in broken remains.

[The will of the lord and the custom of the manor.]

Bracton defines villainage as a condition of men who do not know in the

evening what work and how much they will have to perform next morning.

The corresponding tenure is entirely precarious and uncertain at law.

But these fundamental positions of legal doctrine we find opposed in

daily life to the all-controlling rule of custom. The peasant knows

exactly on what days he has to appear personally or by representative at

ploughings and reapings, how many loads he is bound to carry, and how

many eggs he is expected to bring at Easter[447]; in most cases he knows

also what will be required from him when he inherits from his father or

marries his daughter. This customary arrangement of duties does not find

any expression in common law, and _vice versa_ the rule of common law

dwindles down in daily life to a definition of power which may be

exercised in exceptional cases. The opposition between our two sets of

records is evidently connected in this case with their different way of

treating facts.

[Movement towards free contract and money rents.]

Manorial extents and inquests give in themselves only a one-sided

picture of mediaeval village life, because they describe it only from

the point of view of the holding: people who do not own land are very

seldom noticed, and among the population settled on the land only those

persons are named who 'defend' the tenement in regard to the lord. Only

the chief of the household appears; this is a matter of course. He may

have many or few children, many or few women engaged on his plot: the

extent will not make any difference in the description of the tenement

and of its services. But although very incomplete in this important

respect, manorial records allow us many a glimpse at the process which

was preparing a great change in the law. Hired labourers are frequently

mentioned in stewards' accounts, and the 'undersette' and 'levingmen'

and 'anelipemen[448]' of the extents correspond evidently to this

fluctuating population of rural workmen and squatters gathering behind

the screen of recognised peasant holders.

The very foundation of the mediaeval system, its organisation of work

according to equalised holdings and around a manorial centre, is in

course of time undermined by the process of commutation. Villains are

released from ploughings and reapings, from carriage-duties and boon

work by paying certain rents; they bargain with the lord for a surrender

of his right of arbitrary taxation and arbitrary amercement; they take

leases of houses, arable and meadows. This important movement is

directly noticed by the law in so far as it takes the shape of an

increase in the number of freeholders and of freehold tenements;

charters and instruments of conveyance may be concerned with it. But the

process is chiefly apparent in a standing contradiction with the law.

Legally an arrangement with a villain either ought not to bind the lord

or else ought to destroy his power. Even in law books, however, the

intermediate form of a binding covenant with the villain emerges, as we

have seen, in opposition to the consistent theory. In practice the

villains are constantly found possessed of 'soclands,' 'forlands,' and

freeholds. The passage from obligatory labour to proprietary rights is

effected in this way without any sudden emancipation, by the gradual

accumulation of facts which are not strictly legal and at the same time

tend to become legal.

[Emancipation.]

Again, the Royal courts do not know anything about 'molmen,' 'gavelmen,'

or 'censuarii,' They keep to the plain distinction between free and

bond. Nevertheless, all these groups exist in practice, and are

constantly growing in consequence of commutation. The whole law of

status gets transformed by their growth as the law of tenure gets

transformed by the growth of leases. Molmen, though treated as villains

by Royal courts, are already recognised as more 'free' than the villains

by manorial juries. The existence of such groups testifies to something

more than a precarious passage from service to rent, namely to a change

from servile subjection to a status closely resembling that of peasant

freeholders, and actually leading up to it. In one word, our manorial

records give ample notice of the growth of a system based on free

contract and not on customary labour. But the old forms of tenure and

service are still existent in law, and the contradiction involved in

this fact is not merely a technical one: it lies at the root of the

revolutionary movement at the close of the fourteenth century. In this

manner facts were slowly paving the way towards a modification of the

law. But now, turning from what is in the future, to what is in the

past, let us try to collect those indications which throw light on the

condition of things preceding feudal law and organisation.

[Contrast between labour and rent.]

The one-sided conception of feudal law builds up the entire structure of

social divisions on the principle of the lord's will. Custom, however

sacred, is not equivalent to actionable right, and a person who has

nothing but custom to lean upon is supposed to be at the will and mercy

of his lord and of base or servile condition. But we find even in the

domain of legal doctrine other notions less convenient for the purpose

of classification, and more adapted to the practice of daily life.

Servile persons and servile land are known from the nature of the

services to which they are subject. This test is applied in two

directions: (1) regular rural work, 'with pitch-fork and flail,' is

considered servile; and this would exclude the payment of rents and

occasional help in the performance of agricultural labour; (2) certain

duties are singled out as marking servitude because they imply the idea

of one person being owned by another, and this would exclude subjection

derived from the possession of land, however burdensome and arbitrary

such subjection might be.

Turning next to manorial records, we find these abortive features of

feudal law resting on a very broad basis. Only that land is considered

servile which owes labour, if it renders nothing but rent it is termed

free. We have here no mere commutation: the notion is an old one, and

rather driven back by later law than emerging from it. It is natural

enough that the holder of a plot is considered free if his relations

with the lord are restricted to occasional appearances at court,

occasional fines, and the payment of certain rents two or three times a

year. It is natural enough that the holder of another plot should be

treated as a serf because he is bound to perform work which is fitted as

a part into the arrangement of his lord's husbandry, and constantly

brought under the control and the coercive power of the steward. This

matter-of-fact contrast comes naturally to the fore in documents which

are drawn up as descriptions of daily transactions and not as evidence

for a lawsuit. But the terms 'free' and 'servile' are not used lightly

even in such documents. We may be sure that manorial juries and bailiffs

would not have been allowed to displace at their pleasure terminological

distinctions which might lead people to alter their legal position. The

double sense of these terms cannot be taken as arranging society under

the same two categories and yet in two entirely different ways: it must

be construed as implying the two sides of one and the same thing, the

substance in manorial records and the formal distinction in legal

records. That is to say, when the test of legal protection was applied,

the people who had to perform labour were deprived of it and designated

as holding in villainage, and to the people who paid rent protection was

granted and they were considered as holding freely. For this very reason

the process of commutation creating mol-land actually led to an increase

in the number of free tenancies[449].

[Personal subjection.]

The courts made some attempts to utilise personal subjection as a

distinctive feature of born villains. If it had been possible to follow

out the principle, we should have been able to distinguish between

villains proper and men of free blood holding in villainage. The attempt

miscarried in practice, although the King's courts were acting in this

case in conjunction with local custom and local juries. The reason of

the failure is disclosed by manorial documents. Merchet, the most

debasing incident of personal villainage, appears so widely spread in

the Hundred Rolls that there can be no question, at least at the close

of the thirteenth century, of treating it as a sure test of personal

subjection. We cannot admit even for one moment that the whole peasant

population of entire counties was descended from personal slaves, as the

diffusion of merchet would lead us to suppose. The appearance of the

distinction is quite as characteristic as its gradual collapse. The

original idea underlying it was to connect villain status with personal

slavery, and it failed because the incidents of personal slavery were

confused with other facts which were quite independent of it and which

were expanded over a very large area instead of a very restricted one.

[Three tests of serfdom.]

And now we have ready the several links of one chain. The three tests of

serfdom applied by our documents are connected with each other by the

very terms in which they are stated, and at the same time they present

three consecutive stages of development. The notion of serfdom is

originally confined to forms of personal subjection and to the

possession of land under the bane of personal subjection: in this sense

servitude is a narrow term, and the condition denoted by it is

exceptional. In its second meaning it connects itself with rural labour

and spreads over the whole class of peasants engaged in it. In its last

and broadest sense it includes all the people and all the land not

protected by the Common Law. We have no evidence as to the chronological

landmarks between these several epochs, and it is clear that the passage

from one to another was very gradual, and by no means implied the

absolute disappearance of ancient terms. But it seems hardly doubtful

that the movement was effected in the direction described; both the

intrinsic evidence of the notions under discussion and their appearance

in our documents point this way.

[History of free peasantry.]

This being so, we may expect to find some traces of the gradual spread

of serfdom in the subdivisions of that comprehensive class called

villainage. And, indeed, there are unmistakable signs of the fact that

the flood was rising slowly and swamping the several groups of the

peasantry which hitherto had been of very various conditions. The

Domesday classification will have to be discussed by itself, but it may

be noticed even now that its fundamental features are the distinction

between serfs and villains, and the very limited number of these first.

Judging by this, the bulk of the peasantry was not considered unfree.

The inference is corroborated for the epoch of the early Norman kings by

the laws of Henry I, in which the villain is still treated on the same

footing as the ceorl of Saxon times, is deemed 'worthy of his were and

of his wite,' and is called as a free man to the hundred court, although

not a landlord, 'terrarum dominus.' The hundredors of later times kept

up the tradition: degraded in many ways, they were still considered as

representatives of a free population. Ancient demesne tenure is another

proof of the same freedom in villainage; it is protected though base,

and supposes independent rights on the part of the peasantry. The

position of the group of socmen outside the ancient demesne points the

same way: their tenure is originally nothing more and nothing less than

a customary freehold or a free copyhold, if one may say so. The law of

Kent is constructed on this very basis: it is the law of free ceorls

subjected to a certain manorial authority which has not been able to

strike very deep roots in this soil.

But the general current went steadily against the peasantry. The

disruption of political unity at the time of the great civil war, and

the systematic resumption of royal rights by Henry II, must have led to

a settlement which impaired the social standing of the villain in the

sense of feudal law. The immediate connexion between the lower class and

the royal power could not be kept up during the troubled reign of

Stephen, when England all but lapsed into the political dismemberment of

the neighbouring continental states. Government and law were restored by

Henry II, but he had to set a limit to his sphere of action in order

that within that sphere he might act efficiently. The very growth of the

great system of royal writs necessitated the drawing a sharp line

between the people admitted to use them and those excluded from this

benefit. One part of the revolution effected by the development of royal

jurisdiction is very noticeable in our documents: the struggle between

king and magnates as to the right of judging freeholders has left many

traces, of which the history of the 'breve quod vocatur praecipe' is

perhaps the most remarkable. But the victorious progress of royal

jurisdiction in regard to freeholders was counterbalanced by an all but

complete surrender of it in regard to villains. The celebrated tit. 29

of William the Conqueror's laws providing that the cultivators of the

land are not to be subjected to new exactions, had lost its sense in the

reign of Henry II, and so soon as it was settled that one class of

tenants was to be protected, while another was to be unprotected in the

king's court, the lawyers set themselves thinking over the problem of a

definite and plain division of classes. Their work in this direction

bears all the marks of a fresh departure. They are wavering between the

formal and the material test: instead of setting up at once the

convenient doctrine that villainage is proved by stock, and that in

regard to service and tenure the question is decided by their certainty

or uncertainty, they try for a long time to shape conclusive rules as to

the kind of services and incidents which imply villainage, and for a

time distinction between rural labour and rent becomes especially

important.

On the whole, I think that an analysis of the legal and manorial

evidence belonging to the feudal age leads forcibly to the conclusion

that the general classification of society under the two heads of

freeholders and villains is an artificial and a late one. A number of

important groups appear between the two, and if we try to reduce them to

some unity, we may say that a third class is formed by customary

freeholders. Another way of stating the same thing would be to say, that

the feudal notion of a freehold from which the modern notion has

developed must be supplemented from the point of view of the historian

by a more ancient form which is hidden, as it were, inside the class

distinction of villainage. By the side of the freeholder recognised by

later law there stands the villain as a customary freeholder who has

lost legal protection. I do not think that the problems resulting from

the ambiguous position of the feudal villain can be solved better than

on the supposition of this 'third estate.'

SECOND ESSAY.

THE MANOR AND THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY.

CHAPTER I.

THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM AND THE HOLDINGS.

[Structure of the manor.]

My first essay has been devoted to the peasantry of feudal England in

its social character. We have had to examine its classes or divisions in

their relation to freedom, personal slavery, and praedial serfage. The

land system was touched upon only so far as it influenced such

classification, or was influenced by it.

But no correct estimate of the social standing of the peasantry can stop

here, or content itself with legal or administrative definitions. In no

degree of society do men stand isolated, and a description of individual

status alone would be thoroughly incomplete. Men stand arranged in

groups for economical and political co-operation, and these groups are

composed according to the laws of the division and hierarchical

organisation of labour, composed, that is, of heterogeneous elements, of

members who have to fulfil different functions, and to occupy higher and

lower positions. The normal group which forms as it were the

constitutive cell of English mediaeval society is the _manor_, and we

must try to make out in what way it was organised, and how it did its

work in the thirteenth century, at the time of fully developed

feudalism.

The structure of the ordinary manor is always the same. Under the

headship of the lord we find two layers of population--the villains and

the freeholders; and the territory occupied divides itself accordingly

into demesne land[450] and 'tributary land' (if I may use that phrase)

of two different classes. The cultivation of the demesne depends to a

certain extent on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary

land. Rents are collected, labour supervised, and all kinds of

administrative business transacted, by a set of manorial officers or

servants. The entire population is grouped into a village community

which centres round the manorial court or halimote, which is both

council and tribunal. My investigation will necessarily conform to this

typical arrangement. The _holding of the peasant_ is the natural

starting-point: it will give us the clue to the whole agrarian system.

Next may come that part of the territory which is not occupied _in

severalty_ but used _in common_. The _agrarian obligations_ with regard

to the lord and the _cultivation of the demesne land_ may be taken up

afterwards. The position of _privileged people_, either servants or

freeholders, must be discussed by itself, as an exceptional case. And,

lastly, the question will have to be put--to what extent were all these

elements welded together in the _village community_, and under the sway

of the _manorial court_?

[Field systems.]

The chief features of the field-system which was in operation in England

during the middle ages have been sufficiently cleared up by modern

scholars, especially by Nasse, Thorold Rogers, and Seebohm, and there is

no need for dwelling at length on the subject. Everybody knows that the

arable of an English village was commonly cultivated under a three years

rotation of crops[451]; a two-field system is also found very

often[452]; there are some instances of more complex arrangements[453],

but they are very rare, and appear late--not earlier than the fourteenth

century. Walter of Henley's treatise on farming, which appears to belong

to the first half of the thirteenth, mentions only the first two

systems, and its estimate of the plough-land is based on them. In the

case of a three-field rotation a hundred and eighty acres are reckoned

to the plough; a hundred and sixty in a system of two courses[454]. We

find the same estimate in the chapters on husbandry and management of an

estate which are inserted in the law-book known as Fleta[455]. The

strips in the fields belonging to the several tenants were divided by

narrow balks of turf, and when the field lay fallow, or after the

harvest had been removed, the entire field was turned into a common

pasture for the use of the village cattle. The whole area was protected

by an inclosure while it was under crop.

[Inhoke.]

A curious deviation is apparent in the following instance, taken from

the cartulary of Malmesbury. The Abbey makes an exchange with a

neighbour who has rights of common on some of the convent's land, and

therefore does not allow of its being cultivated and inclosed (_inhoc

facere_). In return for certain concessions on the part of the Abbey,

this neighbouring owner agrees that fallow pasture should be turned into

arable on the condition that after the harvest it should return to

common use, as well as the land not actually under seed. Lastly comes a

provision about the villains of the person entering into agreement with

the Abbey: if they do not want to conform to the new arrangement of

cultivation, they will be admitted to their strips for the purpose of

ploughing up or using the fallow[456]. The case is interesting in two

respects: it shows the intimate connexion between the construction of

the inclosure (_inhoc_) and the raising of the crop; the special

paragraph about the villains gives us to understand that something more

than the usual rotation of crops was meant: the 'inhokare' appears in

opposition either to the ordinary ploughing up of the fallow, or in a

general sense to its use for pasture; it seems to indicate

extra-cultivation of such land as ought to have remained uncultivated.

These considerations are borne out by other documents. In a trial of

Edward I's time the 'inheche' is explained in as many words as the

ploughing up of fallow for a crop of wheat, oats, or barley[457]. The

Gloucester Survey, in describing one of the manors belonging to the

Abbey, arranges its land into four fields (_campi_), each consisting of

several parts: the first field is said to contain 174 acres, the second

63, the third 109, the fourth 69 acres. Two-thirds of the whole are

subjected to the usual modes of cultivation under a three-course system,

and one-third remains for pasture. But out of this last third, 40 acres

of the first field (of 174 acres) get inclosed and used for crop in one

year, and 20 acres of the second in another[458]. In this way the

ordinary three-course alternation becomes somewhat more complicated, and

it will be hardly too bold a guess to suppose that such

extra-cultivation implied some manuring of such patches as were deprived

of their usual rest once in three years. In contradiction to the

customary arrangement which did not require any special manuring except

that which was incident to the use of arable as pasture for the cattle

after the harvest, we find plots set apart for more intense

cultivation[459], and it is to be noticed that the reckoning in

connexion with them does not start from the division according to three

parts, but supposes a separate classification in two sections.

[The 'Campus.']

Another fact worth noticing in the Gloucester instance is the irregular

distribution of acres in the 'fields,' and the division of the entire

arable into four unequal parts. The husbandry is conducted on the

three-course system, and still four fields are mentioned, and there is

no simple relation between the number of acres which they respectively

contain (174, 63, 109, 69). It seems obvious that the expression 'field'

(_campus_) is used here not in the ordinary sense suggested by such

records as spring-field, winter-field, and the like, but in reference to

the topography of the district. The whole territory under cultivation

was divided into a number of squares or furlongs which lay round the

village in four large groups. The alternation of crops distributed the

same area into three according to a mode not described by the Survey,

and it looks probable at first glance that each of the 'fields'

(_campi_) contained elements of all three courses. The supposition

becomes a certainty, if we reflect that it gives the only possible

explanation of the way in which the twofold alternation of the 'inhoc'

is made to fit with the threefold rotation of crops: every year some of

the land in each _campus_ had to remain in fallow, and could be inclosed

or taken under 'inhoc.' Had the _campus_ as a whole been reserved for

one of the three courses, there would have been room for the 'inhoc'

only every three years.

I have gone into some details in connexion with this instance because it

presents a deviation from ordinary rules, and even a deviation from the

usual phraseology, and it is probable that the exceptional use of words

depended on the exceptional process of farming. A new species of

arable--the manured plot under 'inhoc'--came into use, and naturally

disturbed the plain arrangement of the old-fashioned three courses; the

lands had to be grouped anew into four sections which went under the

accustomed designation of 'fields,' although they did not fit in with

the 'three fields' of the old system. In most cases, however, our

records use the word 'field' (_campus_) in that very sense of land under

one of the 'courses,' which is out of the question in the case taken

from the Gloucester Cartulary. The common use is especially clear when

the documents want to describe the holding of a person, and mention the

number of acres in each 'field,' The Abbot of Malmesbury, e.g., enfeoffs

one Robert with a virgate formerly held 'in the fields' by A.,

twenty-one acres in one field and twenty-one in another[460]. The

charter does not contain any description of _campi_ in the territorial

sense, and it is evident that the expression 'in the fields' is meant to

indicate a customary and well-known husbandry arrangement. The same

meaning must be put on sentences like the following--R.A. holds a

virgate consisting of forty-two acres in both fields[461]. The question

may be raised whether we have to look for 'both fields' in the winter

and spring-field of the three courses rotation, or in the arable and

fallow of the two courses. In the first of these eventualities, the

third reserved for pasture and rest would be left out of the reckoning;

it would be treated as an appurtenance of the land that was in

cultivation. Cases in which the portions in the several fields are

unequal seem to point to the second sense[462]. It was impossible to

divide the whole territory under cultivation like a piece of paper:

conformation of the soil had, of course, much to do with the shape of

the furlongs and their distribution, and the courses of the husbandry

could not impress themselves on it without some inequalities and stray

remnants. It may happen for this reason that a man holds sixteen acres

in one field and fourteen in the other. There is almost always, however,

a certain correspondence between the number of acres in each field;

instances of very great disparity are rare, and suppose some local and

special reasons which we cannot trace. Such disparities seem to point,

however, to a rotation according to two courses, because the fallow of

the three courses could have been left out of the reckoning only if all

the parts in the fields were equal[463]. I think that a careful

inspection of the surveys from this point of view may lead to the

conclusion that the two courses rotation was very extensively spread in

England in the thirteenth century.

[Compulsory rotation of crops.]

A most important feature of the mediaeval system of tillage was its

compulsory character. The several tenants, even when freeholders, could

not manage their plots at their own choice[464]. The entire soil of the

township formed one whole in this respect, and was subjected to the

management of the entire village. The superior right of the community

found expression in the fact that the fields were open to common use as

pasture after the harvest, as well as in the regulation of the modes of

farming and order of tillage by the township. Even the lord himself had

to conform to the customs and rules set up by the community, and

attempts to break through them, although they become frequent enough at

the close of the thirteenth century, and especially in the fourteenth,

are met by a resistance which sometimes actually leads to

litigation[465]. The freeholders alone have access to the courts, but

in practice the entire body of the tenantry is equally concerned. The

passage towards more efficient modes of cultivation was very much

obstructed by these customary rules as to rotation of crops, which flow

not from the will and interest of single owners, but from the decision

of communities.

[Intermixture of strips.]

The several plots and holdings do not lie in compact patches, but are

formed of strips intermixed with each other. The so-called open-field

system has been treated so exhaustively and with such admirable

clearness by Seebohm, that I need not detain my readers in order to

discuss it at length. I shall merely take from the Eynsham Cartulary the

general description of the arable of Shifford, Oxon. It consists of

several furlongs or areas, more or less rectangular in shape; each

furlong divided into a certain number of strips (_seliones_), mostly

half an acre or a rood (quarter acre) in width; some of these strips get

shortened, however (_seliones curtae_), or sharpened (_gorae_),

according to the shape of the country. At right angles with the strips

in the fields lie the 'headlands' (_capitales_), which admit to other

strips when there is no special road for the purpose[466]. When the area

under tillage abuts against some obstacles, as against a highway, a

river, a neighbouring furlong, the strips are stunted (_buttae_). Every

strip is separated from the next by _balks_ on even ground, and

_linches_ on the steep slopes of a hill. The holding of a peasant, free

or villain, has been appropriately likened to a bundle of these strips

of different shapes, the component parts of which lie intermixed with

the elements of other holdings in the different fields of the township.

There is e.g. in the Alvingham Cartulary a deed by which John Aysterby

grants to the Priory of Alvingham in Lincolnshire his villain Robert and

half a bovate of land[467]. The half-bovate is found to consist of

twelve strips west of Alvingham and sixteen strips east of the village;

the several plots lie among similar plots owned by the priory and by

other peasants. The demesne land of the priory is also situated not in

compact areas, but in strips intermixed with those of the tenantry, in

the 'communal fields' according to the phraseology of our documents.

Such a distribution of the arable seems odd enough. It led undoubtedly

to very great inconvenience in many ways: it was difficult for the owner

to look after his property in the several fields, and to move constantly

from one place to another for the purposes of cultivation. A thrifty

husbandman was more or less dependent for the results of his work on his

neighbours, who very likely were not thrifty. The strips were not always

measured with exactness[468], and our surveys mention curious

misunderstandings in this respect: it happens that as much as three

acres belonging to a particular person get mislaid somehow and cannot be

identified[469]. It is needless to say that disputes among the

neighbours were rendered especially frequent by the rough way of

dividing the strips, and by the cutting up of the holdings into narrow

strips involving a very long line of boundary. And still the open-field

system, with the intermixed strips, is quite a prevalent feature of

mediaeval husbandry all over Europe. It covers the whole area occupied

by the village community; it is found in Russia as well as in England.

[Division of the land in Segheho.]

Before we try to find an explanation for it, I shall call the attention

of the reader to the following tale preserved by an ancient survey of

Dunstable Priory. I think that the record may suggest the explanation

with the more authority as it will proceed from well-established facts

and not from suppositions[470]. The story goes back to the original

division of the land belonging to the Wahull manor by the lords de

Wahull and de la Lege. The former had to receive two-thirds of the manor

and the latter one-third: a note explains this to mean, that one had to

take twenty knight-fees and the other ten. The lord de Wahull took all

the park in Segheho and the entire demesne farm in 'Bechebury.' As a

compensation for the surrender of rights on the part of his fellow

parcener, he ordered the wood and pasture called Northwood to be

measured, as also the neighbouring wood called Churlwood. He removed all

the peasants who lived in these places, and had also the arable of

Segheho measured, and it was found that there were eight hides of

villain land. Of these eight hides one-fourth was taken, and it was

reckoned that this fourth was an equivalent to the one-third of the park

and of the demesne farm, which ought by right to have gone to the lord

de la Lege. On the basis of this estimation an exchange was effected.

In the time of the war (perhaps the rebellion of 1173) the eight hides

and other hides in Segheho were encroached upon and appropriated

unrighteously by many, and for this reason a general revision of the

holdings was undertaken before Walter de Wahull and Hugh de la Lege in

full court by six old men; it was made out to which of the hides the

several acres belonged. At that time, when all the tenants in Segheho

(knights, freeholders, and others) did not know exactly about the land

of the village and the tenements, and when each man was contending that

his neighbours held unrighteously and more than they ought, all the

people decided by common agreement and in the presence of the lords de

Wahull and de la Lege, that everybody should surrender his land to be

measured anew with the rood by the old men as if the ground had been

occupied afresh: every one had to receive his due part on consideration

of his rights. At that time R.F. admitted that he and his predecessors

had held the area near the castle unrighteously. The men in charge of

the distribution divided that area into sixteen strips (buttos), and

these were divided as follows: there are eight hides of villain land in

Segheho and to each two strips were apportioned.

[Intermixture produced by the wish to equalise the shares.]

The narrative is curious in many respects. It illustrates beautifully

the extent to which the intermixture of plots was carried, and the

inconveniences consequent upon it. Although the land had been measured

and divided at the time when the lord de Wahull took the land,

everything got into confusion at the time of the civil war, and the

disputes originated not in violence from abroad but in encroachments of

the village people among themselves: the owners of conterminous strips

were constantly quarrelling. A new division became necessary, and it

took place under circumstances of great solemnity, as a result of an

agreement effected at a great meeting of the tenantry before both lords.

The new distribution may stand for all purposes in lieu of the original

parcelling of the land on fresh occupation. The mode of treating one of

the areas shows that the intermixture of the strips was a direct

consequence of the attempt to equalise the portions. Instead of putting

the whole of this area into one lot, the old men divide it into strips

and assign to every great holding, to every hide, two strips of this

area. Many inconveniences follow for some of the owners, e.g. for the

church which, it is complained, cannot put its plot to any use on

account of its lying far away, and in intermixture with other people's

land. But the guiding principle of equal apportionment has found a

suitable expression.

[Possible modes of dividing the land.]

We may turn now from the analysis of this case to general

considerations. The important point in the instance quoted was, that the

assignment of scattered strips to every holding depended on the wish to

equalise the shares of the tenants. I think it may be shown that the

treatment adopted in Segheho was the most natural, and therefore the

most widely-spread one. To begin with, what other form of allotment

appears more natural in a crude state of society? To employ a simile

which I have used already, the territory of the township is not like a

homogeneous sheet of paper out of which you may cut lots of every

desirable shape and size: the tilth will present all kinds of accidental

features, according to the elevation of the ground, the direction of the

watercourses and ways, the quality of the soil, the situation of

dwellings, the disposition of wood and pasture-ground, etc. The whole

must needs be dismembered into component parts, into smaller areas or

furlongs, each stretching over land of one and the same condition, and

separated from land of different quality and situation. Over the

irregular squares of this rough chess-board a more or less entangled

network of rights and interests must be extended. There seem to be only

two ways of doing it: if you want the holding to lie in one compact

patch you will have to make a very complicated reckoning of all the many

circumstances which influence husbandry, will have to find some

numerical expression for fertility, accessibility, and the like; or else

you may simply give every householder a share in every one of the

component areas, and subject him in this way to all the advantages and

drawbacks which bear upon his neighbours. If the ground cannot be made

to fit the system of allotment, the system must conform itself to the

ground. There can be no question that the second way of escaping from

the difficulty is much the easier one, and very suitable to the practice

of communities in an early stage of development. This second way leads

necessarily to a scattering and an intermixture of strips. The

explanation is wide enough to meet the requirements of cases placed in

entirely different local surroundings and historical connexions; the

tendency towards an equalising of the shares of the tenantry is equally

noticeable in England and in Russia, in the far west and in the far east

of Europe. In Russia we need not even go into history to find it

operating in the way described; the practice is alive even now.

[Individual occupation of arable and communal rights.]

This intermixture of strips in the open fields is also characteristic in

another way: it manifests the working of a principle which became

obliterated in the course of history, but had to play a very important

part originally. It was a system primarily intended for the purpose of

equalising shares, and it considered every man's rights and property as

interwoven with other people's rights and property: it was therefore a

system particularly adapted to bring home the superior right of the

community as a whole, and the inferior, derivative character of

individual rights. The most complete inference from such a general

conception would be to treat individual occupation of the land as a

shifting ownership, to redistribute the land among the members of the

community from time to time, according to some system of lot or

rotation. The western village community does not go so far, as a rule,

in regard to the arable, at least in the time to which our records

belong. But even in the west, and particularly in England, traces of

shifting ownership, 'shifting severalty,' may be found as scattered

survivals of a condition which, if not general, was certainly much more

widely spread in earlier times[471]. The arable is sometimes treated as

meadows constantly are: every householder's lot is only an 'ideal' one,

and may be assigned one year in one place, and next year in another. The

stubborn existence of intermixed ownership, even as described by feudal

and later records, is in itself a strong testimony to the communal

character of early property. The strips of the several holders were not

divided by hedges or inclosures, and a good part of the time, after

harvest and before seed, individual rights retreated before common use;

every individualising treatment of the soil was excluded by the

compulsory rotation of crops and the fact that every share consisted of

a number of narrow strips wedged in among other people's shares. The

husbandry could not be very energetic and lucrative under such pressure,

and a powerful consideration which kept the system working, against

convenience and interest, was its equalising and as it were communal

tendency. I lay stress on the fact: if the open-field system with its

intermixture had been merely a reflection of the original allotment, it

would have certainly lost its regularity very soon. People could not be

blind to its drawbacks from the point of view of individual farming; and

if the single strips had become private property as soon as they ceased

to be shifting, exchanges, if not sales, would have greatly destroyed

the inconvenient network. The lord had no interest to prevent such

exchanges, which could manifestly lead to an improvement of husbandry;

and in regard to his own strips, he must have perceived soon enough that

it would be better to have them in one compact mass than scattered about

in all the fields. And still the open-field intermixture holds its

ground all through the middle ages, and we find its survivals far into

modern times. This can only mean, that even when the shifting, 'ideal,'

share in the land of the community had given way to the permanent

ownership by each member of certain particular scattered strips, this

permanent ownership did by no means amount to private property in the

Roman or in the modern sense. The communal principle with its equalising

tendency remained still as the efficient force regulating the whole,

and strong enough to subject even the lord and the freeholders to its

customary influence. By saying this I do not mean to maintain, of

course, that private property was not existent, that it was not breaking

through the communal system, and acting as a dissolvent of it. I shall

have to show by-and-by in what ways this process was effected. But the

fact remains, that the system which prevailed upon the whole during the

middle ages appears directly connected in its most important features

with ideas of communal ownership and equalised individual rights.

[Arrangement of holdings.]

These ideas are carried out in a very rough way in the mediaeval

arrangement of the holding, which is more complicated in England than on

the continent. According to a very common mode of reckoning, the hide

contains four virgates, every virgate two bovates, and every bovate

fifteen acres. The bovate (oxgang) shows by its very name that not only

the land is taken into account, but the oxen employed in its tillage,

and the records explain the hide or carucate[472] to be the land of the

eight-oxen plough, that is so much land as may be cultivated by a plough

drawn by eight oxen. The virgate, or yard-land, being the fourth part of

a hide, corresponds to one-fourth part of the plough, that is, to two

oxen, contributed by the holder to the full plough-team; the bovate or

oxgang appears as the land of one ox, and the eighth part of the

hide[473]. Such proportions are, as I said, very commonly found in the

records, but they are by no means prevalent everywhere. On the

possessions of Glastonbury Abbey, for instance, we find virgates of

forty acres, and a hide of 160; and the same reckoning appears in manors

of Wetherall Priory, Westmoreland[474], of the Abbey of Eynsham,

Oxfordshire[475], and many other places.

The so-called Domesday of St. Paul's reports[476], that in Runwell

eighty acres used to be reckoned to the hide, but in course of time new

land was acquired (for tillage) and measured, and so the hide was raised

to 120 acres. Altogether the supposition of an uniform acre-measurement

of bovates, virgates, hides, and knights' fees all over England would be

entirely misleading. The oxen were an important element in the

arrangement, but, of course, not the only one. The formation of the

holding had to conform also to the quality of the soil, the density of

the population, etc. We find in any case the most varying figures. The

knight's fee contained mostly four or five full ploughs or carucates,

and still in Lincolnshire sixteen carucates went to the knight's

fee[477]. The carucate was not identical with the hide, but carucate and

hide alike had originally meant a unit corresponding to a plough-team.

Four virgates were mostly reckoned to the hide, but sometimes six,

eight, seven are taken[478]. The yardlands (virgates) or full lands, as

they are sometimes called, because they were considered as the typical

peasant holdings, consist of fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty-four,

forty, forty-eight, fifty, sixty-two, eighty acres, although thirty is

perhaps the figure which appears more often than any other[479]. Bovates

of ten, twelve, and sixteen acres are to be found in the same

locality[480]. We cannot even seize hold of the acre as the one constant

unit among these many variables; the size of the acre itself varied from

place to place. In this way any attempt to establish a normal reckoning

of the holdings will not only seem hazardous, but will actually stand in

contradiction with patent facts.

[The holdings not strictly equal in acreage.]

Another circumstance seems of yet greater import: even within the

boundaries of one and the same community the equality was an agrarian

one and did not amount to a strict correspondence in figures. It was

obviously impossible to cut up the land among the holdings in such a way

as to make every one contain quite the same number of acres as the rest.

In the Cartulary of Ramsey it is stated, that in one of the manors the

virgate contains sometimes forty-eight acres and sometimes less[481].

The Huntingdon Hundred Rolls mentions a locality where some of the

half-virgates have got houses on their plots and some have not[482]. In

the Dorsetshire manor of Newton, belonging to Glastonbury, we find a

reduction of the duties of one of the virgates because it is a small

one[483]. A curious instance is supplied by the same Glastonbury survey

as to the Wiltshire manor of Christian Malford: one of the virgates was

formed out of two former virgates, which were found insufficient to

support two separate households[484].

This last case makes it especially clear that the object was to make

the shares on the same pattern in point of quality, and not of mere

quantity. It is only to be regretted that manorial surveys, hundred

rolls, and other documents of the same kind take too little heed of such

variations, and consider the whole arrangement merely in regard to the

interests of the landlord. For this purpose a rough quantitative

statement was sufficient. They give very sparing indications as to the

facts underlying the system of holdings; their aim is to reduce all

relations to artificial uniformity in order to make them a fitter basis

for the distribution of rents and labour services. But very little

attention is required to notice a very great difference between such

figures and reality. In most of the cases, when the virgate is described

in its component parts, we come across irregularities. Again, each

component part is more or less irregular, because instead of the acres

and half-acres the real ground presents strips of a very capricious

shape. And so we must come to the conclusion, that the hide, the

virgate, the bovate, in short every holding mentioned in the surveys,

appears primarily as an artificial, administrative, and fiscal unit

which corresponds only in a very rough way to the agrarian reality.

[Acre ware.]

This conclusion coincides with the most important fact, that the

reckoning of acres in regard to the plough-team is entirely different in

the treatises on husbandry from what it is in the manorial records drawn

up for the purpose of an assessment of duties and payments. Walter of

Henley and Fleta reckon 180 acres to the plough in a three-field system,

and 160 in a two-field system. Now these figures are quite exceptional

in surveys, whereas 120 acres is most usual without any distinction as

to the course of rotation of crops. The relation between the three-field

ploughland of 180 acres and the hide of 120 suggests the inference that

the official assessment started from the prevalence of the three-field

rotation, and disregarded the fallow. But the inference is hardly

sufficient to explain the facts of the case. The way towards a solution

of the problem is indicated by the terminology of the Ely surveys in the

British Museum. These documents very often mention virgates and full

yardlands of twelve acres _de ware_; on the other hand, the Court Rolls

from Edward I's time till Elizabeth's, and a survey of the reign of

Edward III, show the virgate to consist of twenty-four acres[485]. The

virgate _de ware_ corresponds usually to one-half of the real virgate; I

say usually, because in one case it is reckoned to contain eighteen

acres in the place of twenty-four mentioned in the rolls and the later

survey[486]. Such 'acre ware' are to be found, though rarely, in other

manors besides those of Ely minster[487]. The contradiction between the

documents may be taken at first glance to originate in a difference

between the number of acres under actual tillage and the number of acres

comprised in the holding: perhaps the first reckoning leaves out the

fallow. This explanation has been tried by Mr. O. Pell, the present

owner of one of the Ely manors: he started it in connexion with an

etymology which brought together 'ware' and 'warectum': on this

assumption twelve acres appeared instead of twenty-four, because the

fallow of the two-field system was left out of the reckoning. But this

reading of the evidence does not seem satisfactory; it is one-sided at

the least. Why should the holding from which the 'warectum' has been

left out get its name from the 'warectum'? How is one to explain either

from the two-field or from the three-field system the case when eighteen

'acre ware' correspond to twenty-four common acres, or the even more

perplexing case when eighteen acres of 'ware' go to the full land and

twelve to half-a-full land[488]? In fact, this last instance does not

admit of any explanation from natural conditions, because in the natural

course of things twelve will never come to be one-half of eighteen.

Thus we are driven to assume that the 'ware' reckoning is an artificial

one: as such it could, of course, treat the half-holdings in a different

way from the full holdings. Now the only possible basis for an

artificial distribution seems to be the assessment of rents and labour.

Starting from this assumption we shall have to say that the virgate 'de

wara' represents a unit of assessment in which twelve really existing

acres have been left out of the reckoning. The assessment stretches only

over half the area occupied by the real holding.

The conclusion we have come to is corroborated by the meaning of the

word 'wara.' The etymological connexion with _warectum_ is not sound;

the meaning may be best brought out by a comparison with those instances

where the word is used without a direct reference to the number of

acres. We often find the expression 'ad inwaram' in Domesday, and it

corresponds to the plain 'ad gildam Regis.' If a manor is said to

contain seven hides _ad inwaram_, it is meant that it pays to the king

for seven hides, although there may have been more than seven

ploughteams and ploughlands. Another expression of like import is, 'pro

sextem hidis se defendit erga Regem.' The Burton Cartulary, the earliest

survey after Domesday, employed the word 'wara' in the same sense[489].

It is not difficult to draw the inference from the above-mentioned

facts: the etymological connexion for 'wara' is to be sought in the

German word for defence--'wehre.' The manor defends itself or answers to

the king for seven hides. The expression could get other special

significations besides the one discussed: we find it for the poll-tax,

by which a freeman defends himself in regard to the state[490], and for

the weir, which prevents the fish from escaping into the river[491].

[Hides of assessment.]

This origin and use of the term is of considerable importance, because

it shows the artificial character of the system and its close connexion

with the taxation by the State. This is a disturbing element which ought

to be taken into account by the side of the agrarian influence. There

cannot be the slightest doubt that the assessment started from actual

facts, from existing agrarian conditions and divisions. The hide, the

yardland, the oxgang existed not only in the geld-rolls, but in fact and

on the ground. But in geld-rolls they appeared with a regularity they

did not possess in real fact; the rolls express all modifications in the

modes of farming and all exemptions, not in the shape of any

qualification or lighter assessment of single plots, but by way of

striking off from the number of these plots, or from the number of acres

in them; the object which in modern times would be effected by the

registration of a 'rateable value' differing from the 'actual value' was

effected in ancient times by the registration of a 'rateable size'

differing from the 'actual size'; lastly, the surveys and rolls of

assessment do not keep time with the actual facts, and often reflect, by

their figures and statistics, the conditions of bygone periods. The

hides of the geld or of the 'wara' tend to become constant and rigid: it

is difficult for the king's officers to alter their estimates, and the

people subjected to the tax try in every way to guard against novelties

and encroachments. The real agrarian hide-area is changing at the same

time because the population increases, new tenements are formed, and new

land is reclaimed.

We find at every step in our records that the assessment and the

agrarian conditions do not coincide. If a manor has been given to a

convent in free almoign (in liberam et perpetuam eleemosynam), that is,

free from all taxes and payments to the State, there is no reason to

describe it in units of assessment, and in fact such property often

appears in manorial records without any 'hidation' or reckoning of

knight-fees[492]. The Ramsey Cartulary tells us that the land in Hulme

was not divided into hides and virgates[493]. There are holdings, of

course, and they are equal, but they are estimated in acres. When the

hidation has been laid on the land and taxes are paid from it, the

smaller subdivisions are sometimes omitted: the artificial system of

taxation does not go very deep into details. Even if most part of the

land has been brought under the operation of that system, some plots are

left which do not participate in the common payments, and therefore are

said to be 'out of the hide[494].' Such being the case, there can be no

wonder that one of the Ramsey manors answers to the king for ten hides,

and to the abbot for eleven and a-half[495].

It is to be noted especially, that although in a few cases a difference

is made between the division for royal assessment and for the manorial

impositions, in the great majority of cases no such difference exists,

and the duties in regard to the king and to the lord are reckoned

according to the same system of holdings. On the manors of Ely, for

instance, the 12 _acreware_[496] form the basis of all the reckoning of

rents and work. And so if the royal assessment appear with the features

of an artificial fiscal arrangement, the same observation has to be

extended to the manorial assessment; and thus we reach by another way

the same conclusion which we drew from an analysis of the single holding

and of its component parts. No doubt the whole stands in close relation

to the reality of cultivation and land-holding, but the rigidity,

regularity, and correctness of the system present a necessary contrast

to the facts of actual life. As the soil could not be made to fit into

geometrical squares, even so the population could not remain without

change from one age to the other within the same boundaries. Thus in

course of time the plough-land of 160 and 180 acres, which is the

plough-land of practical farming, appears by the side of the statutory

hide of 120 acres; and so again inside every single holding there comes

up the contrast between its real conformation and distribution, and the

outward form it assumed in regard to the king, the lord, and the

steward.

[Rules of inheritance.]

The inquiry as to the relation between the holding and the population on

it is, of course, of the utmost importance for a general estimate of the

arrangement. From a formal point of view the question is soon solved: on

the one hand, the holding of the villain remains undivided and entire;

it does not admit of partition by sale or descent; on the other, the

will of the lord may alter, if necessary, the natural course of

inheritance and possession; the socage tenure is often free from the

first of these limitations, and always free from the second. The

indivisibility of villain tenements is chiefly conspicuous in the law of

inheritance: all the land went to one of the sons if there were several;

very often the youngest inherited; and this custom, to which mere chance

has given the name of Borough English, was considered as one of the

proofs of villainage[497]. It is certainly a custom of great importance,

and probably it depended on the fact that the elder brothers left the

land at the earliest opportunity, and during their father's life. Where

did they go? It is easy to guess that they sought work out of the manor,

as craftsmen or labourers; that they served the lord as servants,

ploughmen, and the like; that they were provided with holdings, which

for some reason did not descend to male heirs; that they were endowed

with some demesne land, or fitted out to reclaim land from the waste. We

may find for all these suppositions some supporting quotation in the

records. And still it would be hard to believe that the entire increase

of population found an exit by these by-paths. If no exit was found, the

brothers had to remain on their father's plot, and the fact that they

did so can be proved, if it needs proof, from documents[498]. The unity

of the holding was not disturbed in the case; there was no division, and

only the right heir, the {hestiopamon} as they said in Sparta, had to

answer for the services; the lord looked to him and no further; but in

point of fact the holding contained more than one family, and perhaps

more than one household. However this may be, in regard to the lord the

holding remained one and undivided. This circumstance draws a sharp line

between the feudal arrangement of most counties and that which prevailed

in Kent. The gavelkind or tributary tenure there was subjected to equal

partition among the heirs.

[Kentish system.]

Let us take a Kentish survey, the Black Book of St. Augustine's,

Canterbury, for instance: it describes the peasant holdings in a way

which differs entirely from other surveys. It begins by stating what

duties lie on each _sulung_, that is, on the Kentish ploughland

corresponding to the hide of feudal England. No regular sub-divisions

corresponding to the virgates and bovates are mentioned, and the

reckoning starts not from separate tenements, but from their combination

into sulungs[499]. Then follow descriptions of the single sulungs, and

it turns out that every one of them consists of a very great number of

component parts, because the progeny of the original holders has

clustered on them, and parcelled them up in very complicated

combinations[500]. The portions are sometimes so small, that an

independent cultivation of them would have been quite impossible. In

order to understand the description it must be borne in mind that the

fact of the tenement being owned by several different persons in

definite but undivided shares did not preclude farming in common; while

on the other hand, in judging of the usual feudal arrangement of

holdings we must remember that the artificial unity and indivisibility

of the tenement may be a mere screen behind which there exists a complex

mass of rights sanctioned by morality and custom though not by law. The

surveys of the Kentish possessions of Battle Abbey are drawn up on the

same principle as those of St. Augustine's; the only difference is, that

the individual portions are collected not in sulungs, but in yokes

(_juga_)[501].

And so we have in England two systems of dividing the land of the

peasant, of regulating its descent and its duties. In one case the

tenant-right is connected with rigid holdings descending to a single

heir; in another the tenements get broken up, and the heirs club

together in order to meet the demands of the manorial administration.

The contrast is sharp and curious enough. How is one to explain, that in

conditions which were more or less identical, the land was sometimes

partitioned and sometimes kept together, the people were dispersed in

some instances and kept together in others?

[Connecting links between the two systems.]

Closer inspection will show that however sharp the opposition in law may

have been, in point of husbandry and actual management the contrast was

not so uncompromising. Connecting links may be found between the two.

The Domesday of St. Paul's, for instance, is compiled in the main in the

usual way, but one section of it--the description of the Essex manors of

Kirby, Horlock, and Thorpe--does not differ from the Kentish surveys in

anything but the terminology[502]. The services are laid on hides, and

not on the actual tenements. Each hide includes a great number of plots

which do not fall in with any constant subdivisions of the same kind as

the virgates and bovates. Some of these plots are very small, all are

irregular in their formation. It happens that one and the same person

holds in several hides. In one word, the Kentish system has found a way

for some unexplained reason into the possessions of St. Paul's, and we

find subjected to it some Essex manors which do not differ much in their

husbandry arrangements from other properties in Essex, and have no claim

to the special privileges of Kentish soil.

Once apprised of the possible existence of such intermediate forms, we

shall find in most surveys facts tending to connect the two

arrangements. The Gloucester Cartulary, for instance, mentions virgates

held by four persons[503]. The plots of these four owners are evidently

brought together into a virgate for the purpose of assessing the

services. Two peasants on the same virgate are found constantly. It

happens that one gets the greater part of the land and is called the

heir, while his fellow appears as a small cotter who has to co-operate

in the work performed by the virgate[504]. Indications are not wanting

that sometimes virgates crumbled up into cotlands, bordlands, and

crofts. The denomination of some peasants in Northumberland is

characteristic enough--they are 'selfoders,' obviously dwelling

'self-other' on their tenements[505]. On the other hand, it is to be

noticed that the gavelkind rule of succession, although enacting the

partibility of the inheritance, still reserves the hearth to the

youngest born, a trace of the same junior right which led to Borough

English.

[United and partible holdings.]

I think that upon the whole we must say that in practice the very marked

contrast between the general arrangement of the holdings and the Kentish

one is more a difference in the way of reckoning than in actual

occupation, in legal forms than in economical substance. The general

arrangement admitted a certain subdivision under the cover of an

artificial unity which found its expression in the settlement of the

services and of the relations with the lord[506]. The English case has

its parallel on the Continent in this respect. In Alsace, for instance,

the holding was united under one 'Traeger' or bearer of the manorial

duties; but by the side of him other people are found who participate

with this official holder in the ownership and in the cultivation[507].

The second system also kept up the artificial existence of the higher

units, and obvious interests prevented it from leading to a

'morcellement' of land into very small portions in practice. The

economic management of land could not go as far as the legal partition.

In practice the subdivision was certainly checked, as in the virgate

system, by the necessity of keeping together the cattle necessary for

the tillage. Virgates and bovates would arise of themselves: it was not

advantageous to split the yoke of two oxen, the smallest possible

plough; and co-heirs had to think even more when they inherited one ox

with its ox-gang of land. The animal could not be divided, and this

certainly must have stopped in many cases the division of land. When the

documents speak of plots containing two or three acres, it must be

remembered that such crofts and cotlands occur also in the usual system,

and I do not see any reason to suppose that the existence of such

subdivided rights always indicated a real dispersion of the economic

unit: they may have stood as a landmark of the relative rights of joint

occupiers. I do not mean to say, of course, that there was no real basis

for the very great difference which is assumed by the two ways of

describing the tenements. No doubt the hand of the lord lay heavier on

the Essex people than on the Kentish men, their occupation and usage of

the land was more under the control of the lord, and assumed therefore

an aspect of greater regularity and order. Again, the legal privileges

of the Kentish people opened the way towards a greater development of

individual freedom and a certain looseness of social relations. Still it

would be wrong to infer too much from this formal opposition. In both

cases the centripetal and the centrifugal tendency are working against

each other in the same way, although one case presents the stronger

influence of disruptive forces, and the other gives predominance to the

collective power. In the history of socage and military tenure the

system of unity arose gradually, and without any sudden break, out of

the system of division. The intimate connexion between both forms is

even more natural in peasant ownership, which had to operate with small

plots and small agricultural capital, and therefore inclined naturally

towards the artificial combination of divided interests. In any case

there is no room in practice for the rigid and consequent operation of

either rule of ownership, and, if so, there is no actual basis for the

inference that the unification of the holding is to be taken as a direct

consequence of a servile origin of the tenement and a sure proof of it.

Unification appears on closer inspection as a result of economic

considerations as well as of legal disabilities, and for this reason the

tendency operated in the sphere of free property as well as among the

villains; among these last it could not preclude the working of the

disruptive elements, but in many cases only hid them from sight by its

artificial screen of rigid holdings.

[The holding and the team.]

We have seen that the size and distribution of the holdings are

connected with the number of oxen necessary for the tillage, and its

relation to the full plough. The hide appears as the ploughland with

eight oxen, the virgate corresponds to one yoke of oxen, and the bovate

to the single head. It need not be added that such figures are not

absolutely settled, and are to be accepted as approximate terms. The

great heavy plough drawn by eight or ten oxen is certainly often

mentioned in the records, especially on demesne land[508]. The dependent

people, when they have to help in the cultivation of the demesne, club

together in order to make up full plough teams[509]. It is also obvious

that the peasantry had to associate for the tilling of their own land,

as it was very rare for the single shareholder to possess a sufficient

number of beasts to work by himself. But it must be noticed that

alongside of the unwieldy eight-oxen plough we find much lighter ones.

Even on the demesne we may find them drawn by six oxen. And as for the

peasantry, they seem to have very often contented themselves with

forming a plough team of four heads[510]. It is commonly supposed by the

surveys that the holder of a yardland joins with one of his fellows to

make up the team. This would mean on the scale of the hide of 120 acres

that the team consists of four beasts[511]. It happens even that a full

plough is supposed to belong to two or three peasants, of which every

one is possessed only of five acres; in such cases there can be no talk

of a big plough; it is difficult to admit even a four-oxen team, and

probably those people only worked with one yoke or pair of beasts[512].

Altogether it would be very wrong to assume in practice a strict

correspondence between the size of the holding and the parts of an

eight-oxen plough. The observation that the usual reckoning of the hide

and of its subdivisions, according to the pattern of the big team,

cannot be made to fit exactly with the real arrangement of the teams

owned by the peasantry--this firmly established observation leads us

once more to the conclusion that the system of equal holdings had become

very artificial in process of time and was determined rather by the

relation between the peasants and the manorial administration than by

the actual conditions of peasant life. Unhappily the artificial features

of the system have been made by modern inquirers the starting-point of

very far-reaching theories and suppositions. Seebohm has proposed an

explanation of the intermixture of strips as originating in the practice

of coaration. He argues that it was natural to divide the land tilled by

a mixed plough-team among the owners of the several beasts and

implements. Every man got a strip according to a certain settled and

ever-recurring succession. I do not pretend to judge of the value of the

interesting instances adduced by Seebohm from Celtic practices, but

whatever the arrangement in Wales or Ireland may have been, the

explanation does not suit the English case. A doubt is cast on it

already by the fact that such a universal feature as the intermixture of

strips appears connected with the occurrence of such a special

instrument as the eight-oxen plough. The intermixture is quite the same

in Central Russia, where they till with one horse, and in England where

more or less big ploughs were used. The doubt increases when we reflect

that if the strips followed each other as parts of the plough-team, the

great owners would have been possessed of compact plots. Every holder of

an entire hide would have been out of the intermixture, and every

virgater would have stood in conjunction with a sequence of three other

tenants. Neither the one nor the other inference is supported by the

facts. The observation that the peasantry are commonly provided with

small ploughs drawn by four beasts ruins Seebohm's hypothesis entirely.

One would have to suppose that most fields were divided into two parts,

as the majority of the tenements are yardlands with half a team. The

only adequate explanation of the open-field intermixture has been given

above; it has its roots in the wish to equalise the holdings as to the

quantity and quality of the land assigned to them in spite of all

differences in the shape, the position, and the value of the soil.

[Terms of exceptional occurrence.]

Before I leave the question as to the holdings of the feudal peasantry,

I must mention some terms which occur in different parts of England,

although more rarely than the usual hides and virgates[513]. Of the

_sulung_ I have spoken already. It is a full ploughland, and 200 acres

are commonly reckoned to belong to it. The name is sometimes found out

of Kent, in Essex for instance. In Tillingham, a manor of St. Paul's of

London, we come across six hides 'trium solandarum[514].' The most

probable explanation seems to be that the hide or unit of assessment is

contrasted with the _solanda_ or _sulland_ (sulung), that is with the

actual ploughland, and two hides are reckoned as a single solanda.

The yokes (juga) of Battle Abbey[515] are not virgates, but carucates,

full ploughlands. This follows from the fact that a certain virgate

mentioned in the record is equivalent only to one fourth of the yoke. In

the Norfolk manors of Ely Minster we find _tenmanlands_[516] of 120

acres in the possession of several copartitioners, _participes_. The

survey does not go into a detailed description of tenements and rights,

and the reckoning of services starts from the entire combination, as in

the Kentish documents. A commonly recurrent term is _wista_[517]; it

corresponds to the virgate: a great wista is as much as half-a-hide, or

two virgates[518].

The terms discussed hitherto are applied to the tenements in the fields

of the village; but besides those there are other names for the plots

occupied by a numerous population which did not find a place in the

regular holdings. There were craftsmen and rural labourers working for

the lord and for the tenants; there were people living by gardening and

the raising of vegetables. This class is always contrasted with the

tenants in the fields. The usual name for their plots is cote, cotland,

or cotsetland. The so-called _ferdel_, or fourth part of a virgate, is

usually mentioned among them because there are no plough-beasts on

it[519]. Another name for the _ferdel_ is _nook_[520]. Next come the

crofters, whose gardens sometimes extend to a very fair size--as much as

ten acres in one enclosed patch[521]. The cotters proper have generally

one, two, and sometimes as much as five acres with their dwellings; they

cannot keep themselves on this, as a rule, and have to look out for more

on other people's tenements. A very common name for their plots is

'lundinaria[522],' 'Mondaylands,' because the holders are bound to work

for the lord only one day in the week, usually on Monday. Although the

absence of plough-beasts, of a part in coaration, and of shares in the

common fields draws a sharp line between these men and the regular

holders, our surveys try sometimes to fit their duties and plots into

the arrangement of holdings; the cotland is assumed to represent one

sixteenth or even one thirty-second part of the hide[523]. The

Glastonbury Survey of 1189 contains a curious hint that two cottages are

more valuable than one half-virgate: two cotlands were ruined during the

war, and they were thrown together into half a virgate, although it

would have been more advantageous to keep two houses on them, that is

two households[524]. The _bordae_ mentioned by the documents are simply

cottages or booths without any land belonging to them[525]. The manorial

police keeps a look-out that such houses may not arise without licence

and service[526].

A good many terms are not connected in any way with the general

arrangement of the holdings, but depend upon the part played by the land

in husbandry or the services imposed upon it. To mention a few among

them. A plot which has to provide cheese is called Cheeseland[527].

Those tenements which are singled out for the special duty of carrying

the proceeds of the manorial cultivation get the name of

_averlands_[528]. The terms _lodland_[529], _serland_[530] or _sharland_,

are also connected with compulsory labour. The first is taken from the

duty to carry loads or possibly to load waggons; the second may be

employed in reference to work performed with the sithe or reap-hook. A

plot reserved for the leader of the plough-team, the akerman, was

naturally called _akermanland_[531]. Sometimes, though rarely, the

holding gets its name from the money rent it has to pay. We hear of

_denerates_[532] and _nummates_[533] of land in this connexion.

[Conclusions.]

All these variations in detail do not avail to modify to any

considerable extent the chief lines on which the medieval system of

holdings is constructed. I presume that the foregoing exposition has

been sufficient to establish the following points:--

1. The principle upon which the original distribution depended was that

of equalizing the shares of the members of the community. This led to

the scattering and to the intermixture of strips. The principle did not

preclude inequality according to certain degrees, but it aimed at

putting all the people of one degree into approximately similar

conditions.

2. The growth of population, of capital, of cultivation, of social

inequalities led to a considerable difference between the artificial

uniformity in which the arrangement of the holdings was kept and the

actual practice of farming and ownership.

3. The system was designed and kept working by the influence of communal

right, but it got its artificial shape and its legal rigidity from the

manorial administration which used it for the purpose of distributing

and collecting labour and rent.

4. The holdings were held together as units, not merely by the superior

property of the lord, but by economic considerations. They were breaking

up under the pressure of population, not merely in the case of free

holdings, but also where the holdings were servile.

CHAPTER II.

RIGHTS OF COMMON.

[Meadows.]

The influence of the village community is especially apparent in respect

of that portion of the soil which is used for the support of cattle. The

management of meadows is very interesting because it presents a close

analogy to the treatment of the arable, and at the same time the

communal features are much more clearly brought out by it. We may take

as an instance a description in the Eynsham Survey. The meadow in

Shifford is divided into twelve strips, and these are distributed among

the lord and the tenantry, but they are not apportioned to any one for

constant ownership. One year the lord takes all the strips marked by

uneven numbers, and the next year he moves to those distinguished by

even numbers[534]. The tenants divide the rest according to some settled

rotation. Very often lots are drawn to indicate the portions of the

several households[535]. It must be added that the private right of the

single occupiers does not extend over the whole year: as in the case of

the arable all inclosures fall after the harvest, so in regard to

meadows the separate use, and the boundaries protecting it, are upheld

only till the mowing of the grass: after the removal of the hay the soil

relapses into the condition of undivided land. The time of the 'defence'

extends commonly to 'Lammas day:' hence the expression 'Lammas-meadow'

to designate such land. It is hardly necessary to insist on the great

resemblance between all these features and the corresponding facts in

the arrangement of the arable. The principle of division is supplied by

the tendency to assign an equal share to every holding, and the system

of scattered strips follows as a necessary consequence of the principle.

The existence of the community as a higher organising unit is shewn in

the recurrence of common use after the 'defence,' and in the fact that

the lord is subjected to the common rotation, although he is allowed a

privileged position in regard to it. The connexion in which the whole of

these rights arises is made especially clear by the shifting ownership

of the strips: private right appears on communal ground, but it is

reduced to a _minimum_ as it were, has not settled down to constant

occupation, and assumes its definite shape under the influence of the

idea of equal apportionment. Of course, by the side of these communal

meadows we frequently find others that were owned in severalty.

[Allotment of pasture.]

Land for pasture also occurs in private hands and in severalty, but such

cases are much rarer[536]. Sometimes the pasture gets separated and put

under 'defence' for one part of the year, and merges into communal

ownership afterwards[537]. But in the vast majority of cases the pasture

is used in common, and none of the tenants has a right to fence it in or

to appropriate it for his own exclusive benefit. It ought to be noted,

that the right to send one's cattle to the pasture on the waste, the

moors, or in the woods of a manor appears regularly and intimately

connected with the right to depasture one's cattle on the open fields of

the village[538]. Both form only different modes of using communal soil.

As in the case of arable and meadow the undivided use cannot be

maintained and gets replaced by a system of equalised shares or

holdings, so in the case of pasture the faculty of sending out any

number of beasts retires before the equalisation of shares according to

certain modes of 'stinting' the common. We find as an important manorial

arrangement the custom to 'apportion' the rights of common to the

tenements, that is to decide in the manorial Court, mostly according to

verdicts of juries, how many head of cattle, and of what particular

kind, may be sent to the divers pasture-grounds of the village by the

several holdings. From time to time these regulations are revised. One

of the Glastonbury Surveys contains, for instance, the following

description from the 45th year of Henry III. Each hide may send to the

common eighteen oxen, sixteen cows, one bull, the offspring of the cows

of two years, two hundred sheep with four rams, as well as their

offspring of one year, four horses and their offspring of one year,

twenty swine and their offspring of one year[539]. According to a common

rule the only cattle allowed to use the village pasture was that which

was constantly kept in the village, _levant e couchant en le maner_. In

order to guard against the fraudulent practice of bringing over strange

cattle and thus making money at the expense of the township, it was

required sometimes that the commonable cattle should have wintered in

the manor[540].

[Pasture an adjunct to holding.]

These last rules seem at first sight difficult of explanation: one does

not see in what way the bringing in of strange cattle could damage the

peasantry of the village, as nobody could drive more than a certain

number of beasts to the common, and as the overburdening of it depended

entirely on the excess of this number, and not on the origin of the

beasts. And so one has to look to something else besides the

apprehension that the common would get overburdened, in order to find a

suitable explanation of the rule. An explanation is readily supplied by

the notion that the use of the common was closely connected with the

holding. Strange cattle had nothing to do with the holding, and were to

be kept off from the land of the community; it is as representatives of

a community whose territory has been invaded that the individual

commoners have cause to complain. In fact, the common pasture, as well

as the meadows, were thought of merely as a portion of the holding. The

arrangements did not admit of the same certainty or rather of the same

kind of determination as the division of the arable, but the main idea

which regulated the latter was by no means cut short in its operation,

if one may say so: it was not bound up with the exact measurement of

arable acres. The holding was the necessary agricultural outfit of a

peasant family, and of this outfit the means of feeding the cattle were

quite as important a part as the means of raising crops. It is only

inaccurately that we have been speaking of a virgate of 30 acres, and of

a ploughland of 180 or 160. The true expression would be to speak of a

virgate of 30 acres of arable and the corresponding rights to pasture

and other common uses. And the records, when they want to give something

like a full description, do not omit to mention the 'pertinencia,' the

necessary adjuncts of the arable. The term is rather a vague one, quite

in keeping with the rights which, though tangible enough, cannot be cut

to so certain a pattern as in the case of arable[541]. And for this

reason the laxer right had to conform to the stricter one, and came to

be considered as appendant to it.

[Common in special cases.]

We have considered till now the different aspects assumed by common of

pasture, when it arises within the manor, and as a consequence of the

arrangement of its holdings. But this is not the only way in which

common of pasture may arise. It may originate in an express and special

grant by the lord either to a tenant or to a stranger[542]; it may also

proceed from continuous use from time beyond legal memory[543]: it must

have been difficult in many cases to prevent strangers from establishing

such a claim by reason of long occupation in some part of a widely

stretching moor or wood pasture[544]. It was not less difficult in such

cases to draw exact boundaries between adjoining communities, and we

find that large tracts of country are used as a common pasture-ground by

two villages, and even by more[545]. Neighbours deem it often

advantageous to establish a certain reciprocity in this respect[546]. By

special agreement or by tacit allowance lords and tenants intercommon

on each other's lands: this practice extends mostly to the waste only,

but in some cases the arable and meadow are included after the removal

of the crop and of the hay. The procedure of the writ 'quo jure' was

partly directed to regulate these rights and to prevent people from

encroaching wantonly upon their neighbours[547]. When land held in one

fee or one manor was broken up for some reason into smaller units, the

rights of pasture were commonly kept up according to the old

arrangements[548].

These different modes of treating the pasture present rather an

incongruous medley, and may be classified in several ways and deduced

from divers sources.

[Modern classification of commons.]

The chief distinctions of modern law are well known: 'Common Appendant

is the right which every freehold tenant of the manor possesses, to

depasture his commonable cattle, levant and couchant on his freehold

tenement anciently arable, on the wastes of the manor, and originally on

all (common) pasture in the manor. Common appurtenant on the other hand

is against common right, becoming appurtenant to land either by long

user or by grant express or implied. Thus it covers a right to common

with animals that are not commonable, such as pigs, donkeys, goats, and

geese; or a right to common claimed for land not anciently arable, such

as pasture, or land reclaimed from the waste within the time of legal

memory, or for land that is not freehold, but copyhold[549].' Common in

gross is a personal right to common pasture in opposition to the

praedial rights. Mr. Scrutton has shown from the Year Books that these

terms and distinctions emerge gradually during the fourteenth century,

and appear substantially settled only in Littleton's treatise. Bracton

and his followers, Fleta and Britton, do not know them. These are

important facts, but they hardly warrant the inferences which have been

drawn from them. The subject has been in dispute in connexion with

discussions as to the free village community. Joshua Williams, in his

Rights of Common[550], had assumed common appendant to originate in

ancient customary right bestowed by the village community and not by the

lord's grant; Scrutton argues that such a right is not recognised by the

documents. He lays stress on the fact, that Bracton speaks only of two

modes of acquiring common, namely, express grant by the lord, and long

usage understood as constant sufferance on the part of the lord

amounting to an express grant. But this is only another way of saying

that Bracton's exposition is based on feudal notions, that his land law

is constructed on the principle 'nulle terre sans seigneur,' and that

every tenement, as well as every right to common, is considered in

theory as granted by the lord of the manor. It may be admitted that

Bracton does not recognise just that kind of title which later lawyers

knew as appendancy, does not recognise that a man can claim common by

showing merely that he is a freeholder of the manor. Unless he relies on

long continued user, he must rely upon grant or feoffment. But the

distinction between saying 'I claim common because I am a freeholder of

the manor' and saying 'I claim common because I or my ancestors have

been enfeoffed of a freehold tenement of the manor and the right of

common passed by the feoffment,' though it may be of juristic interest

and even of some practical importance as regulating the burden of proof

and giving rise to canons for the interpretation of deeds, is still a

superficial distinction which does not penetrate deeply into the

substance of the law. On the whole we find that the freeholder of

Bracton's time and of earlier times does normally enjoy these rights

which in after time were described as 'appendant' to his freehold; and

it is well worth while to ask whether behind the general assumptions of

feudal theory there do not lie certain data which, on the one hand,

prepare and explain later terminology, and are connected, on the other,

with the historical antecedents of the feudal system.

A little reflection will show that the divisions of later law did not

spring into being merely as results of legal reasoning and casuistry.

Indeed, from a lawyer's point of view, nothing can be more imperfect

than a classification which starts from three or four principles of

division seemingly not connected with each other. Common appendant

belongs to a place anciently arable, common appurtenant may belong to

land of any kind; the first is designed for certain beasts, the second

for certain others; one is bound up with freehold, the other may go with

copyhold; in one case the right proceeds from common law, in the other

from 'specialty.' One may reasonably ask why a person sending a cow to

the open fields or to the waste from a freehold tenement can claim

common appendant, and his neighbour sending a cow to the same fields

from a copyhold has only common appurtenant. Or again, why does a plot

of arable reclaimed from the waste confer common appurtenant, and

ancient arable common appendant? Or again, why are the goats or the

swine of a tenement sent to pasture by virtue of common appurtenant, and

the cows and horses by virtue of common appendant? And, above all, what

have the several restrictions and definitions to do with each other?

Such a series of contrasted attributes defies any attempt to simplify

the rules of the case according to any clearly defined principle: it

seems a strange growth in which original and later elements, important

and secondary features, are capriciously brought together.

In order to explain these phenomena we have to look to earlier and not

to later law. What seems arbitrary and discordant in modern times,

appears clear and consistent in the original structure of the manor.

[Foundations of later classification in early law.]

The older divisions may not be so definitely drawn and so developed as

the later, but they have the advantage of being based on fundamental

differences of fact. Even when the names and terms do not appear well

settled, the subject-matter arranges itself according to some natural

contrasts, and it is perhaps by too exclusive study of names and terms

that Mr. Scrutton has been prevented from duly appreciating the

difference in substance. He says of the end of the thirteenth century:

'In the reports about this time it seems generally to be assumed that if

the commoner cannot show an _especialte_ or special grant or title, he

must show "fraunc tenement en la ville a ques commune est appendant."

Thus we have the question:--"Coment clamez vous commune? Com appendant,

ou par especialte,' while Hengham, J. says: 'prescription de terre est

assez bon especialte"' (p. 50). This is really the essence of all the

rules regarding common of pasture, and, what is more, the contrast

follows directly from arrangements which did not come into use in the

fourteenth century, but were in full work at the time of Bracton and

long before it. What is called in later law common appendant, appears as

the normal adjunct to the holding, that is, to a share in the system of

village husbandry. If a bovate is granted to a person, so much of the

rights of pasture as belongs to every bovate in the village is presumed

to be granted with the arable. 'So much as belongs to every bovate in

the village;' this means, that the common depends in this case on a

general arrangement of the pasture in the village. Such an arrangement

exists in every place; it is regulated by custom and by the decisions of

the manorial court or halimote, it extends equally over the free and

over the unfree land, over the waste, the moor and wood, and over the

fallow; it admits a certain number and certain kinds of beasts, and

excludes others. Only because such a general arrangement is supposed to

exist, is the right to common treated in so vague a manner; the

documents present, in truth, only a reference to relations which are

substantiated in the husbandry system of the manor. But the right of

common may exceed these lines in many ways: it may be joined to a

tenement which lies outside the manorial system, or a plot freshly

reclaimed from the waste, or to a holding belonging to some other manor.

It may admit a greater number and other kinds of beasts than those which

were held commonable in the usual course of manorial husbandry. In such

cases the right to pasture had to proceed from some special agreement or

grant, and, of course, had to be based on something different from the

ordinary reference to the existing system of common husbandry. If there

was no deed to go by, such a right could only be established by long

use.

[Bracton's doctrine.]

I think that all this must follow necessarily as soon as the main fact

is admitted, that common is normally the right to pasture of a

shareholder of the manor. The objection may be raised, that such _a

priori_ reasoning is not sufficient in the case, because the documents

do not countenance it by their classification. Would the objection be

fair? Hardly, if one does not insist on finding in Bracton the identical

terms used in Coke upon Littleton. It is true that Bracton speaks of

common in general, and not of common appendant, appurtenant, and in

gross, but the right of common which he treats as normal appears to be

very peculiar on a closer examination of his rules. It is praedial and

not personal; to begin with, it is always thought of as belonging to a

tenement[551]. What is more, it cannot belong to a tenement reclaimed

from the waste[552], and in this way the requirement of 'ancient

arable' is established, that is, the pasture is considered as one of the

rights conceded to the original shares of a manorial community. The use

of the open field outside the time of reasonable defence[553] is

primarily meant, and the common pasture appears from this point of view

as one of the stages in the process of common farming. To make up the

whole, the right to common is defined by a 'quantum pertinet[554],'

which has a sense only in connexion with the admeasurement of claims

effected by the internal organisation of the manor. Such is evidently

the normal arrangement presupposed by Bracton's description, and his

only fault is, that he does not distinguish with clearness between the

consequences of the normal arrangement, and of grants or usurpations

which supplement and modify it. It must be remembered that he only gives

the substantive law about common rights in the course of a discussion of

the pleadings in actions 'quo jure' and assizes of pasture. If we

compare with Bracton's text the rules and decisions laid down in the

legal practice of the thirteenth century, we shall find that the same

facts are implied by them. They all suppose a contrast between

'intrinsec' and 'forinsec' claims to common, that is between the rights

of those who are members of the manorial group, and the rights, if any,

of those who are outside it, and again a contrast between the normal

rights of commoners and any more extensive rights acquired by special

grant or agreement. Only the freeholders are protected in the enjoyment

of their commons; only the freeholders are protected in the enjoyment of

their tenements; but their claims are based on arrangements in which the

unfree land participates in everything with the free. It may be added

that litigation mostly arises from the adjustment of 'forinsec' claims

under the writ 'Quo jure.' The intercommoning between neighbours gives

rise to a good many disputes, and is much too frequent to be considered,

as it was by later law, a mere 'excuse for trespassing[555].' This

common 'pur cause de vicinage' may be a relic of a time when adjoining

villages formed a part of a higher unit of some kind, of the Mark, of a

hundred, for example. It may be explained also by the difficulty of

setting definite boundaries in wide tracts of moor and forest. However

this may be, its constant occurrence forms another germ of a necessary

contrast between the two classes which afterwards developed into common

appendant and common appurtenant. It could not be brought under the same

rules as those which flowed from the internal arrangement of the manor.

A special difficulty attended it as to admeasurement: the customary

treatment of other holdings could not in this case serve as a standard.

The very laxity of the principle naturally gave occasion to very

different interpretations and deductions. And so we are justified in

saying, that the chief distinctions of later law are to be found in

their substance in the thirteenth century, and that although a good deal

of confusion occurs in details, the earlier documents give even better

clues than the later to the reasons which led to the well-known

classification.

[Restrictions on the lord as to common pasture.]

Common appendant, if we may use the modern term for the sake of brevity,

is indissolubly connected with the system of husbandry followed by the

village community. A very noticeable feature of it is, that, in one

sense, it towers over the lord of the manor as well as over the tenants.

Of course, legally the lord is considered as the owner of the

waste[556], but even from the point of view of pure law his ownership is

restricted by his own grants. In so much as he has conceded freehold

tenements to certain persons, he is bound by his own deed not to

withhold from these persons the necessary adjuncts of such tenements,

and especially the rights of pasture bound up with them. The free

tenants share with the lord, if he wants to turn his common pasture to

some special and lucrative use; if, for instance, strangers are admitted

to it for money, one part of the proceeds goes to the tenantry[557].

Again, the lord may not overburden the common, and sometimes freeholders

try their hand at litigation against the lord on the ground that he

sends his cattle to some place where they ought not to go[558]. The

point cannot be overlooked, that the lord of the manor appears subjected

to certain rules set up by custom and common decision in the meetings of

his tenantry. The number and kind of beasts which may come to the common

from his land is fixed, as well as the number that may come from the

land of a cottager[559]. The freeholders alone can enforce the rule

against him, but it is set up not by the freeholders, but by the entire

community of the manor, and practically by the serfs more than by the

freeholders, because they are so much more numerous.

[Approvement.]

As the common of pasture appears as an outcome of a system of husbandry

set up by the village community, so every change in the use of the

pasture ought in the natural course to proceed from a decision of this

community. Such a change may be effected in one of two manners: the

customary rotation of crops may be altered, or else a part of the waste

may be reclaimed for tillage. In the first case, a portion of the open

arable and meadow, which ought to have been commonable at a certain

time, ceases to be so; in the second, the right to send cattle to the

waste is stinted in so much as the arable is put under defence, or the

land is used for the construction of dwellings. By the common law the

free tenants alone could obtain a remedy for any transgression in this

respect. I have mentioned already that suits frequently arose when the

old-fashioned rotation of crops was modified in accordance with the

progress of cultivation. As to the right of approving from the waste,

the relative position of lord and tenants was for a long time

debateable, and, as everybody knows, the lord was empowered to approve

by the Statute of Merton of 20 Henry III, with the condition that he

should leave sufficient pasture to his free tenants according to the

requirements of their tenements. The same power was guaranteed by the

Statute of Westminster II against the claims of neighbours. It has been

asked whether, before the Statute of Merton, the lord had power to

enclose against commoners, if he left sufficient common to satisfy their

rights. Bracton's text in the passage where he treats of the Statute is

distinctly in favour of the view that this legislative enactment did

actually alter the common law, and that previously it was held that a

lord could not approve without the consent of his free-tenants[560].

Turning to the practice of the thirteenth-century courts, we find that

the lawyers were rather doubtful as to this point. In a case of 1221 the

jurors declare, that although the defendant has approved about two acres

of land from the waste where the plaintiff had common, this latter has

still sufficient pasture left to him. And thereupon the plaintiff

withdraws[561]. In 1226 a lord who has granted pasture everywhere,

'ubique,' and has inclosed part of it, succumbs in a suit against his

tenant, and we are led to suppose that if the qualification 'ubique' had

been absent, his right of approvement would have been maintained. It

must be noticed, however, that the marginal note in Bracton's Note-book

does not lay stress on the 'ubique,' and regards the decision as

contrary to the law subsequently laid down by the Constitution of

Merton[562]. In a case of 1292 one of the counsel for the defendant took

it for granted that the Statute of Merton altered the previously

existing common law[563]. The language of the Statutes themselves is

certainly in favour of such a construction: in the Merton Constitution

it is stated as a fact that the English magnates were prevented from

making use of their manors[564], and the Westminster Statute is as

positive as to neighbours; 'multi domini hucusque ... impediti

extiterunt,' etc. It seems hardly possible to doubt that the enactments

really represent a new departure, although the way towards it had been

prepared by the collision of interests in open Court. The condition

negatively indicated by the documents in regard to the time before these

enactments cannot be dismissed by the consideration that the lord would

derogate from his grant by approving. Although a single trial may bear

directly on the relation between the lord and only one of the tenants

or a few of them, every change in the occupation of the land touches all

those who are members of the manorial community. The removal of

difficulties as to approvement was, before the Statute of Merton, not a

question of agreement between two persons, but a question as to the

relative position of the lord and of the whole body of the tenantry. The

lord might possibly settle with every tenant singly, but it seems much

more probable that he brought the matter, when it arose, before the

whole body with which the management of the village husbandry rested,

that is, before the halimote, with its free and unfree tenants. In any

case, the influence of the free tenants as recognised by the common law

was decisive, and hardly to be reconciled with the usual feudal notions

as to the place occupied by the lord in the community. It must be noted

that even that order of things which came into being in consequence of

the Statute contains an indirect testimony as to the power of the

village community. The Act requires the pasture left to the free tenants

to be sufficient, and it may be asked at once, what criterion was there

of such a sufficiency, if the number of beasts was not mentioned in the

instrument by which the common was held. Of course, in case of dispute,

a jury had to give a verdict about it, but what had the jury to go by?

It was not the actual number of heads of cattle on a tenement that could

be made the starting-point of calculation. Evidently the size of the

holding, and its relation to other holdings, had to be taken into

account. But if so, then the legal admeasurement had to conform to the

customary admeasurement defined by the community[565]. And so again the

openly recognised law of the kingdom had to be set in action according

to local customs, which in themselves had no legally binding force.

[Rights of common in woods, etc.]

Besides the land regularly used for pasture, the cattle of the village

were sent grazing along the roads[566] and in the woods[567]. These

last were mostly used for feeding swine. In other respects, also, the

wood was subjected to a treatment analogous to that of the pasture land.

The right of hunting was, of course, subjected to special regulations,

which have to be discussed from the point of view of forest law. But,

apart from that right, the wood was managed by the village community

according to certain customary rules. Every tenant had a right to fell

as many young trees as he wanted to keep his house and his hedges in

order[568]. It sometimes happens, that the lord and the homage enter

into agreement as to the bigger trees, and for every trunk taken by the

lord the tenantry are entitled to take its equivalent[569]. Whenever the

right had to be apportioned more or less strictly, the size of the

holdings was always the main consideration[570].

It would be strange to my purpose to discuss the details of common of

estovers, of turbary[571], or of fishery. The chief points which touch

upon the problems of social origins are sufficiently apparent in the

subject of pasture. The results of our investigation may, I think, be

summed up under the following heads:--

1. Rights of common are either a consequence of the communal husbandry

of the manor, or else they proceed from special agreement or long use.

2. The legal arrangement of commons depends on a customary arrangement,

in which free and unfree tenants take equal part[572].

3. The feudal theory of the lord's grant is insufficient to explain the

different aspects assumed by rights of common, and especially the

opposition between lord and free commoners.

CHAPTER III.

RURAL WORK AND RENTS.

[Arrangement of work and rent.]

Our best means of judging of the daily work in an English village of the

thirteenth century is to study the detailed accounts of operations and

payments imposed on the tenants for the benefit of a manorial lord.

Surveys, extents, or inquisitions were drawn up chiefly for the purpose

of settling these duties, and the wealth of material they afford enables

us to form a judgment as to several interesting questions. It tells

directly of the burden which rural workmen had to bear in the

aristocratical structure of society; it gives indirectly an insight into

all the ramifications of labour and production since the dues received

by the lord were a kind of natural percentage upon all the work of the

tenants; the combination of its details into one whole affords many a

clue to the social standing and history of the peasant classes of which

we have been treating.

[Operations:]

[Ploughing.]

Let us begin by a survey of the different kinds of labour duties

performed by the dependent holdings which clustered round the manorial

centre. Foremost stands ploughing and the operations connected with it.

The cultivation of the demesne soil of a manor depended largely on the

help of the peasantry. By the side of the ploughs and plough-teams owned

by the lord himself, the plough-teams of his villains are made to till

his land, and manorial extents commonly mention that the demesne portion

has to be cultivated by the help of village customs, 'cum

consuetudinibus villae[573].' The duties of every householder in this

respect are reckoned up in different ways. Sometimes every dependent

plough has its number of acres assigned to it, and the joint owners of

its team are left to settle between themselves the proportions in which

they will have to co-operate for the performance of the duty[574]. In

most cases the 'extent' fixes the amount due from each individual

holder. For instance, every virgater is to plough one acre in every

week. This can only mean that one acre of the lord's land is reckoned on

every single virgate in one week, without any reference to the fact that

only one part of the team is owned by the peasant. If, for example,

there were four virgaters to share in the ownership of the plough, the

expression under our notice would mean that every team has to plough

four acres in the week[575]. But the ploughs may be small, or the

virgaters exceptionally wealthy, and their compound plough team may have

to cultivate only three acres or even less. The lord in this case

reckons with labour-weeks and acres, not with teams and days-work. A

third possibility would be to base the reckoning on the number of days

which a team or a holder has to give to the lord[576]. A fourth, to lay

on the imposition in one lump by requiring a certain number of acres to

be tilled, or a certain number of days of ploughing[577]. It must be

added, that the peasants have often to supplement their ploughing work

by harrowing, according to one of these various systems of

apportionment[578].

The duties here described present only a variation of the common

'week-work' of the peasant, its application to a certain kind of labour.

They could on occasion be replaced by some other work[579], or the lord

might lose them if the time assigned for them was quite unsuitable for

work[580]. There is another form of ploughing called _gafol-earth_,

which has no reference to any particular time-limits. A patch of the

lord's land is assigned to the homage for cultivation, and every tenant

gets his share in the work according to the size of his holding.

Gafol-earth is not only ploughed but mostly sown by the peasantry[581].

A third species of ploughing-duty is the so-called _aver-earth_ or

_grass-earth_. This obligation arises when the peasants want more

pasture than they are entitled to use by their customary rights of

common. The lord may grant the permission to use the pasture reserved

for him, and exacts ploughings in return according to the number of

heads of cattle sent to the pasturage[582]. Sometimes the same

imposition is levied when more cattle are sent to the commons than a

holding has a right to drive on them[583]. It is not impossible that in

some cases the very use of rights of common was made dependent on the

performance of such duties[584]. A kindred exaction was imposed for the

use of the meadows[585]. Local variations have, of course, to be taken

largely into account in all such matters: the distinction between

gafol-earth and grass-earth, for instance, though drawn very sharply in

most cases, gets somewhat confused in others.

Manorial records mention a fourth variety of ploughing-work under the

name of _ben-earth_, _precariae carucarum_. This is extra work in

opposition to the common ploughings described before[586]. It is assumed

that the subject population is ready to help the lord for the tillage of

his land, even beyond the customary duties imposed on it. It sends its

ploughs three or four times a year 'out of love,' and 'for the asking.'

It may be conjectured how agreeable this duty must have been in reality,

and indeed by the side of its common denominations, as boon-work and

asked-work, we find much rougher terms in the speech of some

districts--it is deemed _unlawenearth_ and _godlesebene_[587]. It must

be said, however, that the lord generally provided food on these

occasions, and even went so far as to pay for such extra work.

Other expressions occur in certain localities, which are sometimes

difficult of explanation. _Lentenearth_[588], in the manors of Ely

Minster, means evidently an extra ploughing in Lent. The same Ely

records exhibit a ploughing called _Filstnerthe_ or _Filsingerthe_[589],

which may be identical with the Lentenearth just mentioned: a

_fastnyngseed_[590] occurs at any rate which seems connected with the

ploughing under discussion. The same extra work in Lent is called

_Tywe_[591] in the Custumal of Bleadon, Somersetshire. When the

ploughing-work is paid for it may receive the name of _penyearth_[592].

The Gloucester survey speaks of the extra cultivation of an acre called

Radacre, and the Ely surveys of an extra rood 'de Rytnesse[593].' I do

not venture to suggest an explanation for these last terms; and I need

not say that it would be easy to collect a much greater number of such

terms in local use from the manorial records. It is sufficient for my

purpose to mark the chief distinctions.

[Reaping.]

All the other labour-services are performed more or less on the same

system as the ploughings, with the fundamental difference that the

number of men engaged in them has to be reckoned with more than the

number of beasts. The extents are especially full of details in their

descriptions of reaping or mowing corn and grass; the process of

thrashing is also mentioned, though more rarely. In the case of meadows

(_mederipe_) sometimes their dimensions are made the basis of

calculation, sometimes the number of work-days which have to be employed

in order to cut the grass[594]. As to the corn-harvest, every holding

has its number of acres assigned to it[595], or else it is enacted that

every house has to send so many workmen during a certain number of

days[596]. If it is said that such and such a tenant is bound to work on

the lord's field at harvest-time with twenty-eight men, it does not mean

that he has to send out such a number every time, but that he has to

furnish an amount of work equivalent to that performed by twenty-eight

grown-up labourers in one day; it may be divided into fourteen days'

work of two labourers, or into seven days' of four, and so forth.

Harvest-time is the most pressing time in the year for rural work; it is

especially important not to lose the opportunity presented by fine

weather to mow and garner in the crop before rain, and there may be only

a few days of such weather at command. For this reason extra labour is

chiefly required during this season, and the village people are

frequently asked to give extra help in connexion with it. The system of

_precariae_ is even more developed on these occasions than in the case

of ploughing[597]. All the forces of the village are strained to go

through the task; all the houses which open on the street send their

labourers[598], and in most cases the entire population has to join in

the work, with the exception of the housewives and perhaps of the

marriageable daughters[599]. The landlord treats the harvesters to food

in order to make these exertions somewhat more palatable to them[600].

These 'love-meals' are graduated according to a set system. If the men

are called out only once, they get their food and no drink: these are

'dry requests.' If they are made to go a second time, ale is served to

them (_precariae cerevisiae_). The mutual obligations of lords and

tenantry are settled very minutely[601]; the latter may have to mow a

particular acre with the object of saying 'thanks' for some concession

on the part of the lord[602]. The same kind of 'requests' are in use for

mowing the meadows. The duties of the peasants differ a great deal

according to size of their holdings and their social position. The

greater number have of course to work with scythe and sickle, but the

more wealthy are called upon to supervise the rest, to ride about with

rods in their hands[603]. On the other hand, a poor woman holds a

messuage, and need do no more than carry water to the mowers[604].

[Carriage duties.]

A very important item in the work necessary for medieval husbandry was

the business of carrying produce from one part of the country to the

other. The manors of a great lord were usually dispersed in several

counties, and even in the case of small landowners it was not very easy

to arrange a regular communication with the market. The obligation to

provide horses and carts gains in importance accordingly[605]. These

_averagia_ are laid out for short and long distances, and the peasants

have to take their turn at them one after the other[606]. They were

bound to carry corn to London or Bristol according to the size of their

holdings[607]. Special importance was attached to the carriage of the

'farm,' that is of the products designed for the consumption of the

lord[608]. In some surveys we find the qualification that the peasants

are not obliged to carry anything but such material as may be put on the

fire, i.e. used in the kitchen[609]. In the manor itself there are many

carriage duties to be performed: carts are required for the grain, or

for spreading the dung. The work of loading and of following the carts

is imposed on those who are not able to provide the implements[610]. And

alongside of the duties of carriage by horses or oxen we find the

corresponding manual duty. The 'averagium super dorsum suum' falls on

the small tenant who does not own either horses or oxen[611]. Such small

people are also made to drive the swine or geese to the market[612]. The

lord and his chief stewards must look sharp after the distribution of

these duties in order to prevent wealthy tenants from being put to light

duties through the protection of the bailiffs, who may be bribed for the

purpose[613].

It would be hard to imagine any kind of agricultural work which is not

imposed on the peasantry in these manorial surveys. The tenants mind the

lord's ploughs, construct houses and booths for him, repair hedges and

dykes, work in vineyards, wash and shear the sheep[614], etc. In some

cases the labour has to be undertaken by them, not in the regular run of

their services, but by special agreement, as it were, in consideration

of some particular right or permission granted to them[615]. Also it

happens from time to time that the people of one manor have to perform

some services in another, for instance, because they use pasture in that

other manor[616]. Such 'forinsec' labour may be due even from tenants of

a strange lord. By the side of purely agricultural duties we find such

as are required by the political or judicial organisation of the manor.

Peasants are bound to guard and hang thieves, to carry summonses and

orders, to serve at the courts of the superior lord and of the

king[617].

[Classification of labour-services.]

In consequence of the great variety of these labour-services they had to

be reduced to some chief and plain subdivisions for purposes of a

general oversight. Three main classes are very noticeable

notwithstanding all variety: the _araturae_, _averagia_, and

_manuoperationes_. These last are also called _hand-dainae_ or

_daywerke_[618]; and the records give sometimes the exact valuation of

the work to be performed during a day in every kind of labour. Sometimes

all the different classes are added up under one head for a general

reckoning, and without any distinction as to work performed by hand or

with the help of horse or ox. Among the manors of Christ Church,

Canterbury[619], for instance, we find at Borle '1480 work-days divided

into 44 weeks of labour from the virgaters, 88 from the cotters, 320

from the tofters holding small tenements in the fields.' In Bockyng the

work-days of 52 weeks are reckoned to be 3222. It must be added, that

when such a general summing up appears, it is mostly to be taken as an

indication that the old system based on labour in kind is more or less

shaken. The aim of throwing together the different classes of work is to

get a general valuation of its worth, and such a valuation in money is

commonly placed by the side of the reckoning. The single day-work yields

sometimes only one penny or a little more, and the landlord is glad to

exchange this cumbrous and cheap commodity for money-rents, even for

small ones.

[Payments in kind.]

We must now proceed to examine the different forms assumed by payments

in kind and money: they present a close parallel to the many varieties

of labour-service. Thirteenth-century documents are full of allusions to

payments in kind--that most archaic form of arranging the relations

between a lord and his subjects. The peasants give corn under different

names, and for various reasons: as _gavelseed_, in addition to the

money-rent paid for their land[620]; as _foddercorn_, of oats for the

feeding of horses[621]; as _gathercorn_, which a manorial servant has

to collect or gather from the several homesteads[622]; as _corn-bole_, a

best sheaf levied at harvest-time[623]. Of other provender supplied to

the lord's household honey is the most common, both in combs and in a

liquid form[624]. Ale is sometimes brewed for the same purpose, and

sometimes malt and _braseum_ furnished as material to be used in the

manorial farm[625]. Animals are also given in rent, mostly sheep, lambs,

and sucking-pigs. The mode of selection is peculiar in some cases. In

the Christ Church (Canterbury) manor of Monckton each sulung has to

render two lambs, and the lord's servant has the right to take those

which he pleases, whereupon the owner gets a receipt, evidently in view

of subsequent compensation from the other co-owners of the sulung[626].

If no suitable lamb is to be found, eight pence are paid instead of it

as mail (_mala_). On one of the estates of Gloucester Abbey a freeman

has to come on St. Peter's and Paul's day with a lamb of the value of

12_d._, and besides, 12 pence in money are to be hung in a purse on the

animal's neck[627]. Poultry is brought almost everywhere, but these

prestations are very different in their origin. The most common reason

for giving capons is the necessity for getting the warranty of the

lord[628]: in this sense the receipt and payment of the rent constitute

an acknowledgment on the part of the lord that he is bound to protect

his men, and on the part of the peasant that he is the lord's villain.

'Wood hens' are given for licence to take a load of wood in a forest;

similar prestations occur in connexion with pasture and with the use of

a moor for turbary[629]. At Easter the peasantry greet their protectors

by bringing eggs: in Walton, a manor of St. Paul's, London, the custom

is said to exist in honour of the lord, and at the free discretion of

the tenants[630]. Besides all those things which may be 'put on the fire

and eaten,' rents in kind sometimes take the shape of some object for

permanent use, especially of some implement necessary for the

construction of the plough[631]. Trifling rents, consisting of flowers

or roots of ginger, are sometimes imposed with the object of testifying

to the lord's seignory; but the payers of such rents are generally

freeholders[632]. I need not dwell long on the enumeration of all the

strange prestations which existed during the Middle Ages, and partly

came down to our own time: any reader curious about them will find an

enormous mass of interesting material in Hazlitt's 'Tenures of Land and

Customs of Manors.'

[Money-payments.]

In opposition to labour and rents in kind we find a great many payments

in money. Some of these are said in as many words to have stept into the

place of labour services; of mowing, carrying, making hedges[633], etc.

The same may be the case in regard to produce: _barlick-silver_ is paid

instead of barley, _fish-silver_ evidently instead of fish,

_malt-silver_ instead of malt; a certain payment instead of salt, and so

on[634]. But sometimes the origin of the money rent is more difficult to

ascertain. We find, for instance, a duty on sheep, which is almost

certainly an original imposition when it appears as _fald-silver_. Even

so the _scythe-penny_ from every scythe, the _bosing-silver_ from every

horse and cart, the _wood-penny_, probably for the use of wood as fuel,

must be regarded as original taxes and not quit-rents or

commutation-rents[635]. _Pannage_ is paid in the same way for the swine

grazing in the woods[636]. _Ward-penny_ appears also in connexion with

cattle, but with some special shade of meaning which it is difficult to

bring out definitely; the name seems to point to protection, and also

occurs in connexion with police arrangements[637].

[Classification of money payments.]

I must acknowledge that in a good many cases I have been unable to find

a satisfactory explanation for various terms which occur in the records

for the divers payments. An attentive study of local usages will

probably lead to definite conclusions as to most of them[638]. From a

general point of view it is interesting to notice, that we find already

in our records some attempts to bring all the perplexing variety of

payments to a few main designations. Annual rents are, of course,

reckoned out under the one head of 'census.' Very obvious reasons

suggested the advisability of computing the entire money-proceed yielded

by the estate[639]. It sometimes happens that the general sum made up in

this way, fixed as it is at a constant amount, is used almost as a name

for a complex of land[640]. A division of rents into old and new ones

does not require any particular explanation[641]. But several other

subdivisions are worth notice. The rent paid from the land often appears

separately as _landgafol_ or _landchere_. It is naturally opposed to

payments that fall on the person as poll taxes[642]. These last are

considered as a return for the personal protection guaranteed by the

lord to his subjects. Of the contrast between _gafol_ as a customary

rent and _mal_ as a payment in commutation I have spoken already, and I

have only to add now, that _gild_ is sometimes used in the same sense

as _mal_[643]. Another term in direct opposition to _gafol_ is the Latin

_donum_[644]. It seems to indicate a special payment imposed as a kind

of voluntary contribution on the entire village. To be sure, there was

not much free will to be exercised in the matter; all the dependent

people of the township had to pay according to their means[645]. But the

tax must have been considered as a supplementary one in the same sense

as supplementary boon-work. It may have been originally intended in some

cases as an equivalent for some rights surrendered by the lord, as a

_mal_ or _gild_, in fact[646]. In close connexion with the _donum_ we

find the _auxilium_[647], also an extraordinary tax paid once a year,

and distinguished from the ordinary rent. It appears as a direct

consequence of the political subjection of the tenantry[648]: it is, in

fact, merely an expression of the right to tallage. Our records mention

it sometimes as apportioned according to the number of cattle owned by

the peasant, but this concerns only the mode of imposition of the duty

and hardly its origin[649]. As I have said already, the _auxilium_ is

in every respect like the _donum_. One very characteristic trait of both

taxes is, that they are laid primarily on the whole village, which is

made to pay a certain round sum as a body[650]. The burden is divided

afterwards between the several householders, and the number of cattle,

and more particularly of the beasts of plough kept on the holding, has

of course to be taken into account more than anything else. But the

manorial administration does not much concern itself with these details:

the township is answerable for the whole sum.

[Payments to State and Church.]

It is to be added that the payment is sometimes actually mentioned as a

political one in direct connexion with 'forinsec' duties towards the

king. The burdens which lay on the land in consequence of the

requirements of State and Church appear not unfrequently in the

documents. Among those the _scutage_ and _hidage_ are the most

important. The first of these taxes is so well known that I need not

stop to discuss it. It may be noticed however that in relation to the

dependent people scutage is not commonly spoken of; the tax was levied

under this name from the barons and the armed gentry, and was mostly

transmitted by these to the lower strata of society under some other

name, as an aid or a tallage. Hidage is historically connected with the

old English Danegeld system, and in some cases its amount is set out

separately from other payments, and the tenants of a manor have to pay

it to the bailiff of the hundred and not to the steward. A smaller

payment called _ward-penny_ is bound up with it, probably as a

substitute for the duty of keeping watch and ward[651]. In the north the

hidage is replaced by _cornage_[652], a tax which has given rise to

learned controversy and doubt; it looks like an assessment according to

the number of horns of cattle, _pro numero averiorum_, as our Latin

extents would say. The Church has also an ancient claim on the help of

the faithful; the _churchscot_ of Saxon times often occurs in the feudal

age under the name of _churiset_ or _cheriset_[653]. It is mostly paid

in kind, but may be found occasionally as a money-rent.

[Questions suggested by a survey of work and rents.]

A survey of the chief aspects assumed by the work and the payments of

the dependent people was absolutely necessary, in order to enable us to

understand the descriptions of rural arrangements which form the most

instructive part of the so-called extents. But every survey of terms and

distinctions (even if it were much more detailed than the one I am able

to present), will give only a very imperfect idea of the obligations

actually laid on the peasantry. It must needs take up the different

species one by one and consider them separately, whereas in reality they

were meant to fit together into a whole. On the other hand it may create

a false impression by enumerating in systematic order facts which

belonged to different localities and perhaps to different epochs. To

keep clear of these dangers we have to consider the deviations of

practical arrangements from the rules laid down in the books and the

usual combinations of the elements described.

[Cases where the usual order was not adhered to.]