When one reads the careful notices in the cartularies as to the number

of days and the particular occasions when work has to be performed for

the lord, a simple question is suggested by the minuteness of detail.

What happened when this very definite arrangement came into collision

with some other equally exacting order? One of the three days of

week-work might, for instance, fall on a great feast; or else the

weather might be too bad for out-of-doors work. Who was to suffer or to

gain by such casualties? The question is not a useless one. The manorial

records raise it occasionally, and their ways of settling it are not

always the same. We find that in some cases the lord tried to get rid of

the inconveniences occasioned by such events, or at least to throw one

part of the burden back on the dependent population; in Barling, for

instance, a manor of St. Paul's, London[654], of two feasts occurring in

one week and even in two consecutive weeks, one profits to the villains

and the other to the lord; that is to say, the labourer escapes one

day's work altogether. But the general course seems to have been to

liberate the peasants from work both on occasion of a festival and if

the weather was exceptionally inclement[655]. Both facts are not without

importance: it must be remembered that the number of Church festivals

was a very considerable one in those days. Again, although the stewards

were not likely to be very sentimental as to bad weather, the usual test

of cold in case of ploughing seems to have been the hardness of the

soil--a certain percentage of free days must have occurred during the

winter at least. And what is even more to be considered--when the men

were very strictly kept to their week-work under unfavourable

circumstances, the landlord must have gained very little although the

working people suffered much. The reader may easily fancy the effects of

what must have been a very common occurrence, when the village

householders sent out their ploughs on heavy clay in torrents of rain.

The system of customary work on certain days was especially clumsy in

such respects, and it is worth notice that in harvest-time the

landlords rely chiefly on boon-days. These were not irrevocably fixed,

and could be shifted according to the state of the weather. Still the

week-work was so important an item in the general arrangement of

labour-services that the inconveniences described must have acted

powerfully in favour of commutation.

[Relation between the customary system and the arbitrary authority of

the lord.]

Of course, the passage from one system to the other, however desirable

for the parties concerned, was not to be effected easily and at once: a

considerable amount of capital in the hands of the peasantry was

required to make it possible, and another necessary requirement was a

sufficient circulation of money. While these were wanting the people had

to abide by the old labour system. The facts we have been discussing

give indirect proof that there was not much room for arbitrary changes

in this system. Everything seems ruled and settled for ever. It may

happen, of course, that notwithstanding the supposed equality between

the economic strength of the different holdings, some tenants are unable

to fulfil the duties which their companions perform[656]. As it was

noticed before, the shares could not be made to correspond absolutely to

each other, and the distribution of work and payments according to a

definite pattern was often only approximate[657]. Again, the lord had

some latitude in selecting one or the other kind of service to be

performed by his men[658]. But, speaking generally, the settlement of

duties was a very constant one, and manorial documents testify that

every attempt by the lord to dictate a change was met by emphatic

protests on the part of the peasantry[659]. The tenacity of custom may

be gathered from the fact that when we chance to possess two sets of

extents following each other after a very considerable lapse of time,

the renders in kind and the labour-services remain unmodified in the

main[660]. One has to guard especially against the assumption that such

expressions as 'to do whatever he is bid' or 'whatever the lord

commands' imply a complete servility of the tenant and unrestricted

power on the part of the lord to exploit his subordinate according to

his pleasure. Such expressions have been used as a test of the degree of

subjection of the villains at different epochs; it has been contended,

that the earlier our evidence is, the more complete the lord's sway

appears to be[661]. The expressions quoted above may seem at first

glance to countenance the idea, but an attentive and extended study of

the documents will easily show that, save in exceptional cases, the

earlier records are by no means harder in their treatment of the

peasantry than the later. The eleventh century is, if anything, more

favourable to the subjected class as regards the imposition of

labour-services than the thirteenth, and we shall see by-and-by that the

observation applies even more to Saxon times. In the light of such a

general comparison, we have to explain the above-mentioned phrases in a

different way. 'Whatever he is bid' applies to the quality and not to

the quantity of the work[662]. It does not mean that the steward has a

right to order the peasant about like a slave, to tear him at pleasure

from his own work, and to increase his burden whenever he likes. It

means simply that such and such a virgater or cotter has to appear in

person or by proxy to perform his week-work of three days, or two days,

or four days, according to the case, and that it is not settled

beforehand what kind of work he is to perform. He may have to plough, or

to carry, or to dig trenches, or to do anything else, according to the

bidding of the steward. A similar instance of uncertainty may be found

in the expression 'without measure[663]' which sometimes occurs in

extents. It would be preposterous to construe it as an indication of

work to be imposed at pleasure. It is merely a phrase used to suit the

case when the work had to be done by the day and not by a set quantity;

if, for instance, a man had to plough so many times and the number of

acres to be ploughed was not specified. It is true that such vague

descriptions are mostly found in older surveys, but the inference to be

drawn from the fact is simply that manorial customs were developing

gradually from rather indefinite rules to a minute settlement of

details. There is no difference in the main principle, that the

dependent householder was not to be treated as a slave and had a

customary right to devote part of his time to the management of his own

affairs.

[The holdings and the population.]

Another point is to be kept well in view. The whole arrangement of a

manorial survey is constructed with the holding as its basis. The names

of virgaters and cotters are certainly mentioned for the sake of

clearness, but it would be wrong to consider the duties ascribed to them

as aiming at the person. John Newman may be said to hold a virgate, to

join with his plough-oxen in the tillage of twenty acres, to attend at

three boon-days in harvest time, and so forth. It would be misleading to

take these statements very literally and to infer that John Newman was

alone to use the virgate and to work for it. He was most probably

married, and possibly had grown-up sons to help him; very likely a

brother was there also, and even servants, poor houseless men from the

same village or from abroad. Every householder has a more or less

considerable following (_sequela_)[664], and it was by no means

necessary for the head of the family to perform all manorial work in his

own person. He had to appear or to send one workman on most occasions

and to come with all his people on a few days--the boon-days namely. The

description of the _precariae_ is generally the only occasion when the

extents take this into account, namely, that there was a considerable

population in the village besides those tenants who were mentioned by

name[665]. I need not point out, that the fact has an important meaning.

The medieval system, in so far as it rested on the distribution of

holdings, was in many respects more advantageous to the tenantry than

to the lord. It was superficial in a sense, and from the point of view

of the lord did not lead to a satisfactory result; he did not get the

utmost that was possible from his subordinates. The factor of population

was almost disregarded by it, households very differently constituted in

this respect were assumed to be equal, and the tenacity of custom

prevented an increase of rents and labour-services in proportion to the

growth of resource and wealth among the peasants. Some attempts to get

round these difficulties are noticeable in the surveys: they are mostly

connected with the regulation of boon-works. But these exceptional

measures give indirect proof of the very insufficient manner in which

the question was generally settled.

[Stages in the arrangement of duties.]

The liabilities of the peasantry take the shape of produce, labour, and

money-rents. Almost in every manor all three kinds of impositions are to

be found split up into a confusing variety of customary obligations. It

is out of the question to trace at the present time, with the help of

fragmentary and later material, what the original ideas were which

underlie these complicated arrangements. But although a reduction to

simple guiding principles accounting for every detail cannot be

attempted, it is easy to perceive that chance and fancy were not

everything in these matters. The several duties are brought together so

as to form a certain whole, and some of the aims pursued in the grouping

may be perceived even now.

[Farm-system.]

The older surveys often show the operation of a system which is adapted

by its very essence to a very primitive state of society; it may be

called the farm-system, the word _farm_ being used in the original sense

of the Saxon _feorm_, food, and not in the later meaning of fixed rent,

although these two meanings appear intimately connected in history. The

_farm_ is a quantity of produce necessary for the maintenance of the

lord's household during a certain period: it may be one night's or

week's or one fortnight's farm accordingly. A very good instance of the

system may be found in an ancient cartulary of Ramsey, now at the

British Museum, which though compiled in the early thirteenth century,

constantly refers to the order of Henry II's time. The estates of the

abbey were taxed in such a way as to yield thirteen full farms of a

fortnight, and each of these was to be used for the maintenance of the

monks through a whole month. The extension of the period is odd enough,

and we do not see its reason clearly; it followed probably on great

losses in property and income at the time of Abbot Walter. However this

may be, the thirteen fortnights' farms were made to serve all the year

round, and to cover fifty-two weeks instead of twenty-six. A very minute

description of the single farm is given as it was paid by the manor of

Ayllington (i.e. Elton). Every kind of produce is mentioned: flour and

bread, beer and honey, bacon, cheese, lambs, geese, chicken, eggs,

butter, &c. The price of each article is mentioned in pence, and it is

added, that four pounds have to be paid in money. By the side of the

usual farm there appears a 'lent' farm with this distinction, that only

half as much bacon and cheese has to be given as usual, and the

deficiency is to be made up by a money payment. Some of the manors of

the abbey have to send a whole farm, some others only one half, that is

one week's farm, but all are assessed to pay sixteen pence for every

acre to be used as alms for the poor[666]. This description may be taken

as a standard one, and it would be easy to supplement it in many

particulars from the records of other monastic institutions. The records

of St. Paul's, London, supply information as to a distribution of the

farms at the close of the eleventh century, which covered fifty-two

weeks, six days, and five-sixths of a day[667]. The firmae of St.

Alban's were reckoned to provide for the fifty-two weeks of the year,

and one in advance[668]. The practice of arranging the produce-rents

according to farms was by no means restricted to ecclesiastical

management; it occurs also on the estates of the Crown, and was

probably in use on those of lay lords generally. Every person a little

conversant with Domesday knows the _firmae unius noctis_, at which some

of the royal manors were assessed[669]. In the period properly called

feudal, that is in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the

food-revenue had very often become only the starting-point for a

reckoning of money-rents. The St. Alban's farms, for example, are no

longer delivered in kind; their equivalent in money has taken their

place. But the previous state of things has left a clear trace in the

division by weeks. Altogether it seems impossible to doubt that the

original idea was to provide really the food necessary for consumption.

One cannot help thinking that such practice must have come from the very

earliest times when a Saxon or a Celtic chieftain got his income from

the territory under his sway by moving from one place to another with

his retinue and feeding on the people for a certain period. This very

primitive mode of raising income and consuming it at the same time may

occasionally strike our eye even in the middle of the thirteenth

century. The tenants of the Abbot of Osulveston in Donington and Byker

are bound to receive their lord during one night and one day when he

comes to hold his court in their place. They find the necessary food and

beverage for him and for his men, provender for his horses, and so

forth. If the abbot does not come in person, the homage may settle about

a commutation of the duties with the steward or the sergeant sent for

the purpose. If he refuses to take money, they must bring everything in

kind[670].

[Decay of the farm-system.]

This is an exceptional instance: generally the farm has to be sent to

the lord's residence, probably after a deduction for the requirements of

the manor in which it was gathered. When it had reached this stage the

system is already in decay. It is not only difficult to provide for the

carriage, but actually impossible to keep some of the articles from

being spoilt. Bread sent to Westminster from some Worcestershire

possession of the minster would not have been very good when it reached

its destination. The step towards money-payments is natural and

necessary.

Before leaving the food-rents we must take notice of one or two more

peculiarities of this system. It is obvious that it was arranged from

above, if one may use the expression. The assessment does not proceed in

this case by way of an estimate of the paying or producing strength of

each unit subjected to it, _i.e._ of each peasant household. The result

is not made up by multiplying the revenue from every holding by the

number of such holdings. The whole reckoning starts from the other end,

from the wants of the manorial administration. The requirements of a

night or of a week are used as the standard to which the taxation has to

conform. This being the case, the correspondence between the amount of

the taxes and the actual condition of the tax-payer was only a very

loose one. Manors of very different size were brought into the same

class in point of assessment, and the rough distinctions between a whole

farm and half-a-farm could not follow at all closely the variety of

facts in real life, even when they were supplemented by the addition of

round sums of money.

[Assessment under the farm-system.]

These observations lead at once to important questions; how was the

farm-assessment distributed in every single manor, and what was its

influence on the duties of the single householder? It seems hardly

doubtful, to begin with, that the food-rent changed very much in this

respect. Originally, when the condition of things was more or less like

the Osulvestone example, the farm must have been the result of

co-operation on the part of all the householders of a township, who had

to contribute according to their means to furnish the necessary

articles. But the farm of St. Paul's, London, even when it is paid in

produce, is a very different thing: it is the result of a convention

with the firmarius, or may be with the township itself in the place of a

firmarius[671]. It depends only indirectly on the services and payments

of the peasantry. Part of the flour, bread, beer, etc., may come from

the cultivation of the demesne lands; another portion will appear as the

proceed of week-work and boon-work performed by the villains, and only

one portion, perhaps a very insignificant one, will be levied directly

as produce. In this way there is no break between the food-rent system

and the labour-system. One may still exist for purposes of a general

assessment when the other has already taken hold of the internal

arrangement of the manor.

[Labour-service system.]

Most of our documents present the labour arrangement in full operation.

Each manor may be regarded as an organised group of households in which

the central body represented by the lord's farm has succeeded in

subordinating several smaller bodies to its directing influence. Every

satellite has a movement of its own, is revolving round its own centre,

and at the same time it is attracted to turn round the chief planet, and

is carried away in its path. The constellation is a very peculiar one

and most significant for the course of medieval history. Regarded from

the economic standpoint it is neither a system of great farming nor one

of small farming, but a compound of both. The estate of the lord is in

a sense managed on a great scale, but the management is bound up with a

supply and a distribution of labour which depend on the conditions of

the small tributary households. It would be impossible now-a-days to say

for certain how much of the customary order of week-work and boon-work

was derived from a calculation of the requirements of the manorial

administration, and how much of it is to be regarded as a percentage

taken from the profits of each individual tenant[672]. Both elements

probably co-operated to produce the result: the operations performed for

the benefit of the lord were ordered in a certain way partly because so

many acres had to be tilled, so much hay and corn had to be reaped on

the lord's estate; and partly because the peasant virgaters or cotters

were known to work for themselves in a certain manner and considered

capable of yielding so much as a percentage of their working power. But

although we have a compromise before us in this respect, it must be

noted that the relation between the parts and the whole is obviously

different under the system of labour services from what it was under the

farm-system. It has been pointed out that the food-rent arrangement was

imposed from above without much trouble being taken to ascertain the

exact value and character of the tributary units subjected to it. This

later element is certainly very prominent in the customary

labour-system, which on the whole appears to be constructed from below.

Is it necessary to add that this second form of subjection was by no

means the lighter one? The very differentiation of the burden means that

the aristocratical power of the landlord has penetrated deep enough to

attempt an exact evaluation of details.

[Money-rents system.]

I have had occasion so many times already to speak of the process of

commutation, that there is no call now to explain the reasons which

induced both landlords and peasants to exchange labour for money-rents.

I have only to say now that the same remark which applied to the

passage from produce 'farms' to labour holds good as to the passage from

labour to money payments. There is no break between the arrangements. In

a general way the money assessment follows, of course, as the third mode

of settling the relation between lord and tenant, and we may say that

_rentals_ are as much the rule from the fourteenth century downwards as

_custumals_ are the rule in the thirteenth and earlier centuries. But if

we take up the Domesday of St. Paul's of 1222, or the Glastonbury

Inquest of 1189, or even the Burton Cartulary of the early twelfth

century, in every one of these documents we shall find a great number of

rent-paying tenants[673], and even a greater number of people

fluctuating, as it were, between labour and rent. In some cases peasants

passed directly from the obligation of supplying produce to the payment

of corresponding rents in money. The gradual exemption from labour is

even more apparent in the records. It is characteristic that the first

move is generally a substitution of the money arrangement with the tacit

or even the expressed provision that the assessment is not to be

considered as permanent and binding[674]. It remains at the pleasure of

the lord to go back to the duties in kind. But although such a

retrogressive movement actually takes place in some few cases, the

general spread of money payments is hardly arrested by these exceptional

instances[675].

One more subject remains to be discussed. Is there in the surveys any

marked difference between different classes of the peasantry in point of

rural duties?

[Influence of social distinction on the distribution of duties.]

An examination of the surveys will show at once that the free and the

servile holdings differ very materially as to services, quite apart from

their contrast, in point of legal protection and of casual exactions

such as marriage fines, heriots, and the like. The difference may be

either in the kind of duties or in their quantity. Both may be traced in

the records. If we take first the diversities in point of quality we

shall notice that on many occasions the free tenants are subjected to an

imposition on the same occasion as the unfree, but their mode of

acquitting themselves of it is slightly different--they have, for

instance, to bring eggs when the villains bring hens. The object cannot

be to make the burden lighter; it amounts to much the same, and so the

aim must have been to keep up the distinctions between the two classes.

It is very common to require the free tenants to act as overseers of

work to be performed by the rest of the peasantry. They have to go about

or ride about with rods and to keep the villains in order. Such an

obligation is especially frequent on the boon-days (_precariae_), when

almost all the population of the village is driven to work on the field

of the lord. Sometimes free householders, who have dependent people

resident under them, are liberated from certain payments; and it may be

conjectured that the reason is to be found in the fact that they have to

superintend work performed by their labourers or inferior tenants[676].

All such points are of small importance, however, when compared with the

general opposition of which I have been speaking several times. The free

and the servile holdings are chiefly distinguished by the fact that the

first pay rent and the last perform labour.

[Free and servile duties as rent and labour.]

Whenever we come to examine closely the reason underlying the cases when

the classification into servile and free is adopted, we find that it

generally resolves itself into a contrast between those who have to

serve, in the original sense of the term, and those who are exempted

from actual labour-service. Being dependent nevertheless, these last

have to pay rent. I need not repeat that I am speaking of main

distinctions and not of the various details bound up with them. In order

to understand thoroughly the nature of such diversities, let us take up

a very elaborate description of duties to be performed by the peasants

in the manor of Wye, Kent, belonging to the Abbey of Battle[677]. Of the

sixty-one yokes it contains thirty are servile, twenty-nine are free,

and two occupy an intermediate position. The duties of the two chief

classes of tenants differ in many respects. The servile people have to

pay rent and so have the free, but while the first contribute to make up

a general payment of six pounds, each yoke being assessed at seven

shillings and five-pence, the free people have to pay as much as

twenty-three shillings and seven-pence per yoke. Both sets have to

perform ploughings, reapings, and carriage duties, but the burden of the

servile portion is so much greater in regard to the carriage-work, that

the corresponding yokes sometimes get their very name from it, they are

_juga averagiantia_, while the free households are merely bound to help

a few times during the summer. Every servile holding has a certain

number of acres of wood assigned to it, or else corresponding rights in

the common wood, while the free tenants have to settle separately with

the lord of the manor. And lastly, the relief for every unfree yoke is

fixed at forty pence, and for every free one is equal to the annual

rent. This comparison of duties shows that the peasants called free were

by no means subjected to very light burdens: in fact it looks almost as

if they were more heavily taxed than the rest. Still they were exempted

from the most unpopular and inconvenient labour-services.

Altogether, the study of rural work and rents leads to the same

conclusion as the analysis of the legal characteristics of villainage.

The period from the Conquest onwards may be divided into two stages. In

later times, that is from the close of the thirteenth century downwards,

the division between the two great classes of tenants and tenements, a

contrast strictly legal, is regulated by the material test of the

certainty or uncertainty of the service due, and the formal test of the

mode of conveyance. In earlier times the classification depends

primarily on the economic relation between the manorial centre and the

tributary household, labour is deemed servile, rent held to be free. It

is only by keeping these two periods clearly distinct, that one is

enabled to combine the seemingly conflicting facts in our surveys. If we

look at the most ancient of these documents, we shall have to admit that

a rent-paying holding is free, nevertheless it would be wrong to infer

that when commutation became more or less general, classification was

settled in the same way. A servile tenement no longer became free

because rent was taken instead of labour; it was still held 'at the will

of the lord,' and conveyed by surrender and admittance. When all

holdings were fast exchanging labour for rent, the old notions had been

surrendered and a new basis for classification found in those legal

incidents just mentioned. The development of copyhold belongs to the

later period, copyhold being mostly a rent-paying servile tenure. Again,

if we turn to the earlier epoch we shall have to remember that the

contrast between labour and rent is not to be taken merely as a result

of commutation. Local distinctions are fitted on to it in a way which

cannot be explained by the mere assumption that every settlement of a

rent appeared in the place of an original labour obligation. The

contrast is primordial, as one may say, and based on the fact that the

labour of a subject appears directly subservient to the wants and

arrangements of the superior household, while the payment of rent severs

the connexion for a time and leaves each body to move in its own

direction till the day when the tributary has to pay again.

[Difference in quantity between the impositions of free and unfree

population.]

There can be no doubt also that the more ancient surveys disclose a

difference in point of quantity between free and servile holdings, and

this again is a strong argument for the belief that free socage must not

be considered merely as an emancipated servile tenancy. Where there has

been commutation we must suppose that the labour services cannot have

been more valuable than the money rent into which they were changed. The

free rent into which labour becomes converted is nothing but the price

paid for the services surrendered by the lord. It must have stood

higher, if anything, than the real value of the labour exchanged,

because the exchange entailed a diminution of power besides the giving

up of an economic commodity. No matter that ultimately the quit-rents

turned out to the disadvantage of the lord, inasmuch as the buying

strength of money grew less and less. This was the result of a very long

process, and could not be foreseen at the time when the commutation

equivalents were settled. And so we may safely lay down the general

rule, that when there is a conspicuous difference between the burdens of

assessment of free and unfree tenants, such a difference excludes the

idea that one class is only an emancipated portion of the other, and

supposes that it was from the first a socially privileged one. The

Peterborough Black Book, which, along with the Burton Cartulary,

presents the most curious instance of an early survey, describes the

services of socmen on the manors of the abbey as those of a clearly

privileged tenantry[678]. The interesting point is, that these socmen

are even subjected to week-work and not distinguishable from villains so

far as concerns the quality of their services. Nevertheless the contrast

with the villains appears throughout the Cartulary and is substantiated

by a marked difference in point of assessment: a socman has to work one

or two days in the week when the villain is made to work three or four.

Three main points seem established by the survey of rural work and

rents.

1. Notwithstanding many vexatious details, the impositions to which the

peasantry had to submit left a considerable margin for their material

progress. This system of customary rules was effectively provided

against general oppression.

2. The development from food-farms to labour organisation, and lastly to

money-rents, was a result not of one-sided pressure on the part of the

landlords, but of a series of agreements between lord and tenants.

3. The settlement of the burdens to which peasants were subjected

depended to a great extent on distinctions as to the social standing of

tenants which had nothing to do with economic facts.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LORD, HIS SERVANTS AND FREE TENANTS.

[Medieval rural system.]

Descriptions of English rural arrangements in the age we are studying

always suppose the country to be divided into manors, and each of these

manors to consist of a central portion called the demesne, and of a

cluster of holdings in different tributary relations to this central

portion. Whether we take the Domesday Survey, or the Hundred Rolls, or

the Custumal of some monastic institution, or the extent of lands

belonging to some deceased lay lord, we shall again and again meet the

same typical arrangement. I do not say that there are no instances

swerving from this beaten track, and that other arrangements never

appear in our records. Still the general system is found to be such as I

have just mentioned, and a very peculiar system it is, equally different

from the ancient _latifundia_ or modern plantations cultivated by gangs

of labourers working on a large scale and for distant markets, from

peasant ownership scattered into small and self-dependent households,

and even from the conjunction between great property and farms taken on

lease and managed as separate units of cultivation.

The characteristic feature of the medieval system is the close connexion

between the central and dominant part and the dependent bodies arranged

around it. We have had occasion to speak in some detail of these

tributary bodies--it is time to see how the lord's demesne which acted

as their centre was constituted.

[The home-farm.]

Bracton mentions as the distinguishing trait of the demesne, that it is

set aside for the lord's own use, and ministers to the wants of his

household[679]. Therefore it is sometimes called in English 'Board

Lands.' The definition is not complete, however, because all land

occupied by the owner himself must be included under the name of

demesne, although its produce may be destined not for his personal use,

but for the market. 'Board lands' are only one species of domanial land,

so also are the 'Husfelds' mentioned in a charter quoted by Madox[680].

This last term only points to its relation to the house, that is the

manorial house. And both denominations are noteworthy for their very

incompleteness, which testifies indirectly to the restricted area and to

the modest aims of domanial cultivation. Usually it lies in immediate

connexion with the manorial house, and produces almost exclusively for

home consumption.

This is especially true as to the arable, which generally forms the most

important part of the whole demesne land. There is no exit for a corn

trade, and therefore everybody raises corn for his own use, and possibly

for a very restricted local market. Even great monastic houses hold only

300 or 400 acres in the home farm; very rarely the number rises to 600,

and a thousand acres of arable in one manor is a thing almost unheard

of[681]. Husbandry on a large scale appears only now and then in places

where sheep-farming prevails, in Wiltshire for instance. Exceptional

value is set on the demesne when fisheries are connected with it or salt

found on it[682].

[Bockyng, Essex.]

The following description of Bockyng in Essex[683], a manor belonging to

the Chapter of Christ Church, Canterbury, may serve as an example of the

distribution and relative value of demesne soil. The cartulary from

which it is drawn was compiled in 1309.

The manorial house and close cover five acres. The grass within its

precincts which may serve as food for cattle is valued at 8_d._ a year.

Corn is also sold there to the value of 12_d._ a year, sometimes more

and sometimes less, according to the quantity sown. The orchard provides

fruit and vegetables worth 13_s._ 4_d._ a year; the duty levied from the

swine gives 6_d._

The pigeon-house is worth 4_d._

Two mills, 7_l._ 1_s._ 8_d._

A fishery, 12_d._

A wood called Brekyng Park, containing 480 acres, and the brushwood

there is worth 40_s._

Grass in the wood 12_d._, because it grows only in a few places.

Pannage duty from the swine, 10_s._

Another wood called Le Flox contains 10 acres, and the brushwood is

worth 6_d._

Pannage from the swine, 6_d._

Grass, 6_d._

Arable, in all fields, 510 acres, the acre being assessed at 6_d._ all

round.

Each plough may easily till one acre a day, if four horses and two oxen

are put to it.

Two meadows, one containing eight acres, of which every single acre

yields 4_s._ a year; the other meadow contains seven acres of similar

value.

Pasture in severalty--30 acres, at 12_d._ an acre.

Of these, 16 acres are set apart for oxen and horses, and 14 for cows.

Some small particles of pasture leased out to the tenants, 4_s._

The prior and the convent are lords of the common pasture in Bockyng,

and may send 100 sheep to these commons, and to the fields when not

under crop. Value 20_s._

As important an item in the cultivation of the home farm as the soil

itself is afforded by the plough-teams. The treatises on husbandry give

very minute observations on their composition and management. And almost

always we find the manorial teams supplemented by the _consuetudines

villae_, that is by the customary work performed on different days by

the peasantry[684]. As to this point the close connexion between demesne

and tributary land is especially clear; but after all that has been said

in the preceding chapter it is hardly necessary to add that it was not

only the ploughing-work that was carried on by the lord with the help of

his subjects.

[The demesne and the village.]

As a matter of fact, villages without a manorial demesne or without some

dependence from it are found only exceptionally and in those parts of

England where the free population had best kept its hold on the land,

and where the power of the lord was more a political than an economical

one (Norfolk and Suffolk, Lincoln, Northumberland, Westmoreland,

etc.[685]). And there are hardly any cases at all of the contrary, that

is of demesne land spreading over the whole of a manor. Tillingham, a

manor of St. Paul's, London, comes very near it[686]: it contains 300

acres as home farm, and only 30 acres of villain land. But as a set-off,

a considerable part of the demesne is distributed to small leaseholders.

It must be noted that, as a general rule, the demesne arable of the

manor did not lie in one patch apart from the rest, but consisted of

strips intermixed with those of the community[687]. This fact would show

by itself that the original system, according to which property and

husbandry were arranged in manorial groups, was based on a close

connexion between the domanial and the tributary land. We might even go

further and point out that the mere facilities of intercourse and joint

work are not sufficient to account for this intermixture of the strips

of the lord and of the homage. The demesne land appears in fact as a

share in the association of the village, a large share but still one

commensurate with the other holdings. In two respects this subjection to

a higher unit must necessarily follow from the intermixture of strips:

inasmuch as the demesne consists of plots scattered in the furlongs of

the township, it does not appropriate the best soil or the best

situation, but has to gather its component parts in all the varied

combinations in which the common holdings have to take theirs. And

besides this, the demesne strips were evidently meant to follow the same

course of husbandry as the land immediately adjoining them, and to lapse

into undivided use with such land when the 'defence' season was over.

Separate or private patches exempted from the general arrangement are to

be found on many occasions, but the usual treatment of demesne land in

the thirteenth century is certainly more in conformity with the notion

that the lord's land is only one of the shares in the higher group of

the village community.

['Ministeriality.']

The management of the estate, the collection of revenue, the supervision

of work, the police duties incumbent on the manor, etc., required a

considerable number of foremen and workmen of different kinds[688].

Great lords usually confided the general supervision of their estates

to a _seneschal_, steward or head manager, who had to represent the lord

for all purposes, to preside at the manorial courts, to audit accounts,

to conduct sworn inquests and extents, and to decide as to the general

husbandry arrangements. In every single manor we find two persons of

authority. The bailiff or beadle was an outsider appointed by the lord,

and had to look to the interests of his employer, to collect rents and

enforce duties, to manage the home farm, to take care of the domanial

cattle, of the buildings, agricultural implements, etc. These functions

were often conferred by agreement in consideration of a fixed rent, and

in this case the steward or beadle took the name of _firmarius_[689]. By

his side appears the reeve, or _praepositus_, nominated from among the

peasants of a particular township, and mostly chosen by them[690].

Manorial instructions add sometimes that no villain has a right to hold

aloof from such an appointment, if it is conferred on him[691]. The

reeve acts as the representative of the village community, as well in

regard to the lord as on public occasions. He must, of course, render

help to the steward in all the various duties of the latter. The reeve

has more especially to superintend the performance of labour imposed on

the peasantry. Manorial ploughings, reapings, and the other like

operations are conducted by him, sometimes with the help of the free

tenants in the place. Of the public duties of the reeve we have had

occasion to speak. Four men, acting as representatives of the village,

accompany him.

Next after the reeve comes, on large estates, the _messor_, who takes

charge of the harvest, and sometimes acts as collector of fines imposed

for the benefit of the lord[692]. The _akermanni_ or _carucarii_ are the

leaders of the unwieldy ploughs of the time[693], and they are helped by

a set of drivers and boys who have to attend to the oxen or horses[694].

Shepherds for every kind of cattle are also mentioned[695], as well as

keepers and warders of the woods and fences[696]. In the Suffolk manors

of Bury St. Edmund's we find the curious term _lurard_ to designate a

person superintending the hay harvest[697].

By the side of a numerous staff busy with the economic management of the

estate, several petty officers are found to be concerned with the

political machinery of the manor. The duty to collect the suitors of the

hundred and of the county court is sometimes fulfilled by a special

'turnbedellus[698]'. A 'vagiator' (vadiator?) serves writs and distrains

goods for rents[699]. The carrying of letters and orders is very often

treated as a service imposed on particular tenements. It must be noted

that sometimes all these duties are intimately connected with those of

the husbandry system and imposed on all the officers of the demesne who

own horses[700].

A third category is formed by the house-servants, who divide among

themselves the divers duties of keeping accounts, waiting on the lord

personally, taking charge of the wardrobe, of the kitchen, etc. The

military system and the lack of safety called forth a numerous retinue

of armed followers and guards. All-in-all a mighty staff of

_ministeriales_, as they were called in Germany, came into being. In

England they are termed sergeants and servants, _servientes_. In

Glastonbury Abbey there were sixty-six servants besides the workmen and

foremen employed on the farm[701]. Such a number was rendered necessary

by the grand hospitality of the monastery, which received and

entertained daily throngs of pilgrims. In Bury St. Edmund's the whole

staff was divided into five departments, and in each department the

employments were arranged according to a strict order of

precedence[702].

[Formation of the class.]

The material for the formation of this vast and important class was

supplied by the subject population of the estates. The Gloucester

manorial instruction enjoins the stewards to collect on certain days the

entire grown-up population and to select the necessary servants for the

different callings. It is also enacted that the men should not be left

without definite work, that in case of necessity they should be moved

from one post to the other[703], etc. The requirements of the manorial

administration and of the lord's household opened an important outlet

for the village people. Part of the growing population thus found

employment outside the narrow channel of rural arrangements. The elder

or younger brothers, as it might be, took service at the lord's court.

The husbandry treatises of the thirteenth century go further and mention

hired labourers as an element commonly found on the estate. We find, for

instance, an elaborate reckoning of the work performed by gangs of such

labourers hired for the harvest[704]. In documents styled 'Minister's

Accounts' we may also find proof, that from the thirteenth century

downwards the requirements of the lord's estate are sometimes met by

hiring outsiders to perform some necessary kind of work. These phenomena

have to be considered as exceptional, however, and in fact as a new

departure.

[Remuneration of the class.]

The officers and servants were remunerated in various ways. Sometimes

they were allowed to share in the profits connected with their charges.

The swine-herd of Glastonbury Abbey, for instance, received one

sucking-pig a year, the interior parts of the best pig, and the tails of

all the others which were slaughtered in the abbey[705]. The chief

scullion (_scutellarius_) had a right to all remnants of viands,--but

not of game,--to the feathers and the bowels of geese[706]. Again, all

the household and workmen constantly employed had certain quantities of

food, drink, and clothing assigned to them[707]. Of one of the

Glastonbury clerks we hear that he received one portion (_liberacio_) as

a monk and a second as a servant, and that by reason of this last he was

bound to provide the monastery with a goldsmith[708].

Those of the foremen and labourers of estates who did not belong to the

immediate following of the lord and did not live in his central court

received a gratification of another kind. They were liberated from the

labour and payments which they would have otherwise rendered from their

tenements[709]. The performance of the specific duties of

administration took the place of the ordinary rural work or rent, and in

this way the service of the lord was feudalised on the same principle as

the king's service--it was indissolubly connected with land-holding.

[Importance of the 'ministeriality.']

In manorial extents we come constantly across such exempted tenements

conceded without any rural obligations or with the reservation of a very

small rent. It is important to notice, that such exemptions, though

temporary and casual at first, were ultimately consolidated by custom

and even confirmed by charters. A whole species of free tenements, and a

numerous one, goes back to such privileges and exemptions granted to

servants[710]. And so this class of people, in the formation of which

unfree elements are so clearly apparent, became one of the sources in

the development of free society. Such importance and success are to be

explained, of course, by the influence of this class in the

administration and economic management of the estates belonging to the

secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. It is very difficult at the

present time to realise the responsibility and strength of this element.

We live in a time of free contract, credit, highly mobilised currency,

easy means of communication, and powerful political organisation. There

is no necessity for creating a standing class of society for the purpose

of mediating between lord and subject, between the military order and

the industrial order. Every feature of the medieval system which tended

to disconnect adjoining localities, to cut up the country into a series

of isolated units, contributed at the same time to raise a class which

acted as a kind of nervous system, connecting the different parts with a

common centre and establishing rational intercourse and hierarchical

relations. The _libertini_ had to fulfil kindred functions in the

ancient world, but their importance was hardly so great as that of

medieval sergeants or _ministeriales_. We may get some notion of what

that position was by looking at the personal influence and endowments of

the chief servants in a great household of the thirteenth century. The

first cook and the gatekeeper of a celebrated abbey were real magnates

who held their offices by hereditary succession, and were enfeoffed with

considerable estates[711]. In Glastonbury five cooks shared in the

kitchen-fee[712]. The head of the cellar, the gatekeeper, and the chief

shepherd enter into agreements in regard to extensive plots of

land[713]. They appear as entirely free to dispose of such property, and

at every step we find in the cartularies of Glastonbury Abbey proofs of

the existence of a numerous and powerful 'sergeant' class. John of

Norwood, Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, had to resort to a regular _coup

d'etat_ in order to displace the privileged families which had got hold

of the offices and treated them as hereditary property[714]. In fact the

great 'sergeants' ended by hampering their lords more than serving them.

And the same fact of the rise of a 'ministerial' class may be noticed on

every single estate, although it is not so prominent there as in the

great centres of feudal life. The whole arrangement was broken by the

substitution of the 'cash nexus' for more ancient kinds of economic

relationship, and by the spread of free agreements: it is not difficult

to see that both these facts acted strongly in favour of driving out

hereditary and customary obligations.

[Free tenants in the manor.]

We have considered the relative position of the unfree holdings, of the

domanial land around which they were grouped, and of the class which had

to put the whole machinery of the manor into action. But incidentally we

had several times to notice a set of men and tenements which stood in a

peculiar relation to the arrangement we have been describing: there were

in almost every manor some free tenants and some free tenements that

could not be considered as belonging to the regular fabric of the whole.

They had to pay rents or even to perform labour services, but their

obligations were subsidiary to the work of the customary tenants on

which the husbandry of the manorial demesne leaned for support. From the

economic point of view we can see no inherent necessity for the

connexion of these particular free tenements with that particular

manorial unit. The rent, large or small, could have been sent directly

to the lord's household, or paid in some other manor without any

perceptible alteration in favour of either party; the work, if there was

such to perform, was without exception of a rather trifling kind, and

could have been easily dispensed with and commuted for money. Several

reasons may be thought of to explain the fact that free tenements are

thus grouped along with the villain holdings and worked into that single

unit, the manor. It may be urged that the division into manors is not

merely and perhaps not chiefly an economic one, but that it reflects a

certain political organisation, which had to deal with and to class free

tenants as well as servile people. It may be conjectured that even from

the economic point of view, although the case of free tenants would

hardly have called the manorial unit into existence, it was convenient

to use that class when once created for the grouping of villain land and

work: why should the free tenants not join the divisions formed for

another purpose but locally within easy reach and therefore conveniently

situated for such intercourse with the lord as was rendered necessary by

the character of the tenement? Again, the grouping of free tenants may

have originated in a time when the connexion with the whole was felt

more strongly than in the feudal period; it may possibly go back to a

community which had nothing or little to do with subjection, and in

which the free landowners joined for mutual support and organisation. It

is not impossible to assume, on the other hand, that in many cases the

free tenant was left in the manorial group because he had begun by being

an unfree and therefore a necessary member of it. All such suppositions

seem _prima facie_ admissible and reasonable enough, and at the same

time it is clear, that by deciding in favour of one of them or by the

relative importance assigned to each we shall very materially influence

the solution of interesting historical problems.

In order to appreciate rightly the position of the free tenements in the

manor we have to examine whether these tenements are all of one and the

same kind or not, and this must be done not from the legal standpoint

whence it has already been reviewed, but in connexion with the

practical management of the estate. I think that a survey of the

different meanings which the term bears in our documents must lead us to

recognise three chief distinctions: first there is free land which once

formed part of the demesne but has been separated from it; then there is

the land held by villagers outside the regular arrangements of the rural

community, and lastly there are ancient free holdings of the same shape

as the servile tenements, though differing from the latter in legal

character. Each class will naturally fall into subdivisions[715].

[Free tenements carved out of the demesne.]

Under the first head it is to be observed that domanial land very often

lost its direct connexion with the lord's household, and was given away

to dependent people on certain conditions. One of the questions

addressed to the juries by the Glastonbury Inquest of 1189 was prompted

by this practice: it was asked what demesne land had been given out

under free agreement or servile conditions, and whether it was

advantageous to keep to the arrangement or not. One of the reasons which

lay at the root of the process has been already touched upon. Grants of

domanial land occur commonly in return for services rendered in the

administration of the manor: reeves, ploughmen, herdsmen, woodwards are

sometimes recompensed in this manner instead of being liberated from the

duties incumbent on their holding. A small rent was usually affixed to

the plot severed from the demesne, and the whole arrangement may be

regarded as very like an ordinary lease. An attenuated form of the same

thing may be noticed when some officer or servant was permitted to use

certain plots of domanial land during the tenure of his office. It

happened, for instance, that a cotter was entrusted to take care of a

team of oxen belonging to the lord or obliged to drive his plough. He

might be repaid either by leave to use the manorial plough on his own

land on specified occasions, or else by an assignment to him of the crop

on certain acres of the home farm[716]. Such privileges are sometimes

granted to villagers who do not seem to be personally employed in the

manorial administration, but such cases are rare, and must be due to

special reasons which escape our notice.

It is quite common, on the other hand, to find deficiencies in the

normal holdings made up from the demesne, e.g. a group of peasants hold

five acres apiece in the fields, and one of the set cannot receive his

full share: the failing acres are supplied by the demesne. Even an

entire virgate or half-virgate may be formed in this way[717]. Sometimes

a plot of the lord's land is given to compensate the bad quality of the

peasant's land[718]. Of course, such surrenders of the demesne soil were

by no means prompted by disinterested philanthropy. They were made to

enable the peasantry to bear its burdens, and may-be to get rid of

patches of bad soil or ground that was inconveniently situated[719]. In

a number of cases these grants of demesne are actual leases, and

probably the result of hard bargains.

[Inland.]

However this might be, we find alongside of the estate farmed for the

lord's own account a great portion of the demesne conceded to the

villagers. The term 'inland,' which ought properly to designate all the

land belonging directly to the lord, is sometimes applied to plots which

have been surrendered to the peasantry, and so distinguishes them from

the regular customary holdings[720]. Such concessions of demesne land

were not meant to create freehold tenements. Their tenure was

precarious, the right of resumption was more expressly recognised in the

case of such plots than in that of any other form of rural occupation,

but the rights thus acquired tended to become perpetual, like everything

else in this feudal world; and as they were founded on agreement and

paid for with money rents, their transformation into permanent tenures

led to an increase of free tenements and not of villainage. We catch a

glimpse of the process in the Domesday of St. Paul's. In 1240 a covenant

was made between the Chapter of the Cathedral and its villagers of the

manor of Beauchamp in Essex: in consequence of the agreement all the

concessions of demesne land which had been made by the farmers were

confirmed by the Chapter. The inquests show that those who farmed the

estates had extensive rights as to the use of domanial land, but their

dealings with the customary tenants were always open to a revision by

the landlords. A confirmation like this Beauchamp one transferred the

plot of demesne land into the class of free tenements, and created a

tenure defensible at law[721]. All such facts increase in number and

importance with the increase of population: under its pressure the area

of direct cultivation for the lord is gradually lessened, and in many

surveys we find a sort of belt formed around the home farm by the

intrusion of the dependent people into the limits of the demesne[722].

The Domesday of St. Paul's is especially instructive on this point.

Every estate shows one part of the lord's land in the possession of the

peasants; sometimes the 'dominicum antiquitus assisum' is followed by

'terrae de novo traditae[723].'

[Leases.]

A second group of free tenements consists of plots which did not belong

either to the demesne or to the regular holdings in the fields, but lay

by the side of these holdings and were parcelled out in varying quantity

and under various conditions. We may begin by noticing the growth of

leases. There is no doubt that the lease-system was growing in the

thirteenth century, and that it is not adequately reflected in our

documents. An indirect proof of this is given by the fact, that legal

practice was labouring to discover means of protection for possession

based on temporary agreement. The writ 'Quare ejecit infra terminum'

invented by William Raleigh between 1236 and 1240 protected the

possession of the 'tenant for term of years' who formerly had been

regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an

action of covenant[724].

Manorial extents are sparing in their notices of leases because their

object is to picture the distribution of ownership, and temporary

agreements are beyond their range. But it is not uncommon to find a man

holding a small piece of land for his life at a substantial rent. In

this case his tenure is reckoned freehold, but still he holds under what

we should now call a lease for life; the rent is a substantial return

for the land that he has hired. That English law should regard these

tenants under leases for life as freeholders, should, that is, throw

them into one great class with tenants who have heritable rights, who

do but military service or nominal service, who are in fact if not in

name the owners of the land, is very remarkable; hirers are mingled with

owners, because according to the great generalisation of English

feudalism every owner is after all but a hirer. Still we can mark off

for economic purposes a class of tenants whom we may call

'life-leaseholders,' and we can see also a smaller class of leaseholders

who hold for terms of years[725]. They often seem to owe their existence

to the action of the manorial bailiffs or the farmers to whom the

demesne has been let. We are told that such and such a person has

'entered' the tenement by the leave of such and such a farmer or

bailiff, or that the tenement does not belong to the occupier by

hereditary right, but by the bailiff's precept[726]. Remarks of that

kind seem to mean that these rent-paying plots, liberated from servile

duties, were especially liable to the interference of manorial officers.

Limits of time are rarely mentioned, and leases for life seem to be the

general rule[727]. The tenure is only in the course of formation, and

by no means clearly defined. One does not even see, for instance, how

the question of implements and stock was settled--whether they were

provided by the landlord or by the tenant.

[Forlands.]

We feel our way with much greater security in another direction. The

fields of the village contain many a nook or odd bit which cannot be

squeezed into the virgate arrangement and into the system of work and

duties connected with it. These '_subsecivae_,' as the Romans would have

said, were always distributed for small rents in kind or in money[728].

The manorial administration may also exclude from the common arrangement

entire areas of land which it is thought advantageous to give out for

rent. Those who take it are mostly the same villagers who possess the

regular holdings, but their title is different; in one case it is based

on agreement, in the other on custom[729]. Plots of this kind are called

_forlands_[730]. In close connexion with them we find the _essarts_ or

_assarts_--land newly reclaimed from the waste, and therefore not mapped

out according to the original plan of possession and service. The

Surveys often mark the different epochs of cultivation--the old and the

new essarts[731]. The documents show also that the spread of the area

under cultivation was effected in different ways; sometimes by a single

settler with help from the lord[732], and sometimes by the entire

village, or at any rate by a large group of peasants who club together

for the purpose[733]. In the first case there was no reason for bringing

the reclaimed space under the sway of the compulsory rotation of crops

or the other regulations of communal agriculture. In the second, the

distribution of the acres and strips among the various tenants was

proportioned to their holdings in the ancient lands of the village. The

rents on essart land seem very low, and no wonder: everywhere in the

world the advance of cultivation has been made the starting-point of

privileged occupation and light taxation. The Roman Empire introduced

the _emphyteusis_ as a contract in favour of the pioneers of

cultivation, the French feudal law endowed the _hotes_ (_hospites_) on

newly reclaimed land with all kinds of advantages. English practice is

not so explicit on this point, but it is not difficult to gather from

the Surveys that it was not blind to the necessity of patronising

agricultural progress and encouraging it by favourable terms.

Of _mol-land_ I have already spoken in another chapter. I will only

point out now that this class of tenements appears to have been a very

common one. Thirteenth-century surveys often describe certain holdings

in two different ways--on the supposition of their paying rent, and also

on that of their rendering labour-services; when they pay rent they pay

so much, when they supply labour they supply so much. By the side of

such holdings, which are wavering, as it were, between the two systems,

we find the _terra assisa_ or _ad censum_. This class, to which molland

evidently belongs, is distinguished from free tenure by the fact that

its rent is regarded as a manorial arrangement; there is no formal

agreement and no charter, and therefore no action before the king's

courts to guard against disseisin or increase of services. In practice

the difference is not felt very keenly, and these tenements gradually

came to be regarded as 'free' in every sense. A characteristic feature

of the movement may be noticed in the terms '_Socagium ad placitum_' and

'_Socagium villani_[734].' These expressions occur in the documents,

although they are not very common. It would be hard to explain them

otherwise than from the point of view indicated just now. The tenement

is paying a fixed and certain rent and therefore _socage_, but it is not

defended by feoffment and charter; it is not recognised by law, and

therefore it remains _at the will_ of the lord and unfree[735]. The

grant of a charter would raise it to the legal standing of free land.

[Ancient freeholds.]

Every student of manorial documents will certainly be struck by one

well-marked difference between villain tenements and free tenements as

described in the extents and surveys. The tenants in villainage

generally appear arranged into large groups, in which every man holds,

works, and pays exactly as his fellows; so that when the tenement and

services of some one tenant have been described we then read that the

other tenants hold similar tenements and owe similar services. On the

other hand, the freeholds seem scattered at random without any definite

plan of arrangement, parcelled up into unequal portions, and subjected

to entirely different duties. One man holds ten acres and pays three

shillings for them; another has eight and a half acres and gives a pound

of pepper to his lord; a third is possessed of twenty-three acres, pays

4_s._ 6_d._, and sends his dependants to three boonworks; a fourth

brings one penny and some poultry in return for his one acre. The

regularity of the villain system seems entirely opposed to the

capricious and disorderly phenomena of free tenure.

And this fact seems naturally connected with some remarkable features of

social organisation. No wonder that free land is cut up into irregular

plots: we know that it may be divided and accumulated by inheritance and

alienation, whereas villain land is held together in rigid unity by the

fact that it is, properly speaking, the lord's and not the villain's

land. Besides, all the variations of free tenure which we have discussed

hitherto have one thing in common, they are produced by express

agreement between lord and tenant as to the nature and amount of

services required from the tenant. Whether we take the case of a villain

receiving a few acres in addition to his holding, or that of a servant

recompensed by the grant of a privileged plot, or that of a peasant

confirmed in the possession of soil newly reclaimed from the waste, or

that of a bondman who has succeeded in liberating his holding from the

burdensome labour service of villainage, in all these instances we come

across the same fundamental notion of a definite agreement between lord

and tenant. And again, the capricious aspect of free tenements seems

well in keeping with the fact that they are produced by separate and

private agreements, by consecutive grants and feoffments, while the

villain system of every manor is mapped out at one stroke, and managed

as a whole by the lord and his steward. This contrast between the two

arrangements may even seem to widen itself into a difference between a

communal organisation which is servile, and a system of freeholding

which is not communal. All these inferences are natural enough, and all

have been actually drawn.

A close inspection of the Surveys will, however, considerably modify our

first impressions, and suggest conclusions widely different from those

which I have just now stated. The importance of the subject requires a

detailed discussion, even at the risk of tediousness. I shall take my

instances from the Hundred Rolls, as from a survey which reflects the

state of things in central counties and gives an insight into the

organisation of secular as well as ecclesiastical estates.

We need not dwell much on the observation that the servile tenements

sometimes display no perfect regularity. Sometimes the burdens incumbent

on them are not quite equal. Sometimes again the holdings themselves are

not quite equal. In Fulborne, Cambridgeshire, e.g., the villains of Alan

de la Zuche are assessed very irregularly[736], although their tenements

are described as virgates and half-virgates. Of course, the general

character of the virgate system remains unaltered by these exceptional

deviations, which may be easily explained by the consideration that the

social order was undergoing a process of change. The disruption of some

of the villain holdings and the modification of certain duties are

perhaps less strange than the fact that such alterations should be so

decidedly exceptional. Still, the occurrence of irregularities even

within the range of villainage warns us not to be too hasty in our

inferences about free tenements; it shows, at any rate, that

irregularities may well arise even where there has once been a definite

plan, and that it is worth while to enquire whether some traces of such

an original plan may not still be discovered amidst the apparent

disorder of free tenements.

[Free virgates.]

And a little attention will show us many cases in which free tenements

are arranged on the virgate system. There is hardly any need for

quotations on this point: the Hundred Rolls of all the six counties of

which we possess surveys, supply an unlimited number of instances. True,

fundamental divisions of land and service may often be obscured and

confused by the existence of plots which do not fit into the system; but

as in the case of servile tenements we occasionally find irregularities,

so in the case of free tenements we often see that below the superficial

irregularities there lie traces of an ancient plan. The manor of

Ayllington (Elton), Huntingdonshire, belonging to the Abbey of Ramsey,

presents a good example in point[737]. It is reckoned to contain

thirteen hides and a half, each hide comprising six virgates, and each

virgate twenty-four acres. The actual distribution of the holdings

squares to a fraction with this computation, if we take into the

reckoning the demesne, the free and the villain tenements. Three hides

are in the lord's hand, one is held by a large tenant, John of

Ayllington, eleven virgates and a half by other freeholders, forty-two

virgates and a half by the villains; the grand total being exactly

thirteen hides. The numerous cotters are not taken into account, and

evidently left 'outside the hides' (extra hidam); this is a very common

thing in the Surveys. If we neglect them, and turn to the holdings in

the 'hidated' portion of the manor, we shall notice that the greater

part of the free tenements are arranged on the same system as the

servile tenements. We find six free tenants with a virgate apiece, one

with half a virgate, three with a virgate and a half, and three jointly

possessed of two virgates. In contrast with this principal body of

tenants stand several small freeholders endowed with irregular plots

reckoned in acres and so much varying in size that it is quite

impossible to arrange them according to any plan, not to speak of the

virgate system. But these small tenants are all sub-tenants enfeoffed by

the principal freeholders whose own tenements are distributed into

regular agrarian unity. It is easy to see that even when the stock of

free tenancies stood arranged according to a definite plan, deviations

from this plan would easily arise owing to new feoffments made by the

lord out of the demesne land or out of the waste[738]. What I am

concerned to say is, not that the Hundred Rolls show a distribution of

free holdings quite as regular as that of the servile tenements, but

that amidst all the irregularities of the freehold plots we frequently

come across unmistakable traces of a system similar to that which

prevailed on villain soil. These traces are not always of the same kind,

and present various gradations. In a comparatively small number of

instances the duties imposed on the shareholders are equal, or nearly

so; much more often the rent and labour rendered by them to the lord

vary a great deal, although their tenements are equal. The Ayllington

instance, quoted above, belongs to the former class, but the

proportionate distribution of duties is somewhat obscured by the fact

that part of them is reckoned in labour. The normal rent is computed at

six shillings per virgate[739], though there are a few noticeable

exceptions, but the duty of ploughing is imposed according to two

different standards, and it is not easy to reduce these to unity. The

freeholders of one group have to plough eight acres per virgate for the

lord, while for the members of the other group the ploughing work is

reckoned in the same way as in the case of the villains, each placing

his team at the disposal of the lord one day of every week from

Michaelmas to the 1st of August, four weeks being excepted in honour of

Christmas, Easter, and Trinity[740]. Ravenston, in Buckinghamshire, is a

much clearer example. Twelve villains hold of the Prior of Ravenston

twelve acres each, and their service is worth eighteen shillings per

holding; four villains hold six acres each, and their service is valued

at nine shillings. One free tenant has twelve acres and pays sixteen

shillings; six have six acres each, and pay seven shillings. There are

three other tenants whose duties cannot be brought within the

system[741]. The portion of Fulborne, in Cambridgeshire, belonging to

Baldwin de Maneriis, may also serve as an illustration of an almost

regular distribution of land and service among the freeholders[742].

Instances in which the duties, although not exactly, are still very

nearly equal, are very frequent. In Radewelle, Bedfordshire, the mean

rent of the six is two shillings per half-virgate, although the villains

perform service to the amount of eight shillings per virgate[743].

Bidenham, Bedfordshire, also presents an assessment of four shillings

per free virgate[744]. In that part of Fulborne which is owned by Alan

de la Zuche the virgates and half-virgates of the free holders are

variously rented; but twelve shillings per half-virgate is of common

occurrence[745], while in the fee of Maud Passelewe we find only four

and five shillings as the rent for the half-virgate[746]. Papworth

Anneys exhibits a ferdel of seven and a half acres, for which ten to

twelve shillings are paid[747]. As to the cases in which the service

varies a great deal, although the land is held in shares, I need not

give quotations because they are to be found on every page of the

printed Hundred Rolls. We may say, in conclusion, that the process of

disruption acts much more potently in the sphere of free holding than

it does in regard to villainage; but that it has by no means succeeded

in destroying all regularity even there.

[Free shareholders.]

Thus, even among the freeholders, landholding is often what I shall take

leave to call 'shareholding,' Now, whatever ultimate explanation we may

give of this fact, it has one obvious meaning. That part of the free

population which holds in regular shares is not governed entirely by the

rules of private ownership, but is somehow implicated in the village

community. Bovates and virgates exist only as parts of carucates or

hides, and the several carucates or hides themselves fit together,

inasmuch as they suppose a constant apportionment of some kind. Two sets

of important questions arise from this proposition, both intimately

connected with each other, although they suggest different lines of

enquiry. We may start from an examination of the single holding, and ask

whether its regular shape can be explained by the requirements of its

condition or by survivals of a former condition. Or again, we may start

from the whole and inquire whether the equality the elements of which we

detect is equality in ownership or equality in service. Let us take up

the first thread of the inquiry.

[Origins of free shareholding.]

How can we account for the occurrence of regular 'shareholding' among

the freeholders? Two possibilities have to be considered: the free

character of the tenements may be newly acquired and the 'shareholding'

may be a relic of a servile past; or, on the other hand, the freehold

character of the tenements may be coeval with the 'shareholding,' and in

this latter case we shall have to admit the existence of freeholds which

from of old have formed an element in the village community. In the

first of these cases again we shall have to distinguish between two

suppositions:--Servile tenements have become free; this may be due

either to some general measure of enfranchisement, a lord having

preferred to take money rents in lieu of the old labour services, and

these money rents being the modern equivalent for those old services, or

else to particular and occasional feoffments made in favour of those

who, for one reason or another, have earned some benefit at the lord's

hand. To put it shortly, we may explain the phenomenon either by a

process of commutation such as that which turned 'workland' into

'molland,' or by special privileges which have exempted certain shares

in the land from a general scheme of villainage; or, lastly, by the

existence of freeholds as normal factors in the ancient village

community.

Let us test these various suppositions by the facts recorded in our

surveys. At first sight it may seem possible to account for the freehold

virgates by reference to the process which converted 'workland' into

'molland.' We have seen above that if a lord began to demand money

instead of work, the result might, in some cases, be the evolution of

new tenures which gradually lost their villain character and became

recognised as genuine freeholds. And no doubt one considerable class of

cases can be explained by this process. But a great many instances seem

to call for some other explanation. To begin with, the mere acceptance

of rent in lieu of labour did not make the tenement a freehold; servile

tenements were frequently put _ad censum_[748], and it seems difficult

to believe that many lords allowed a commutation of labour for rent to

have the effect of turning villainage into freehold. Another difficulty

is found on the opposite side. What force kept the shares together when

they had become free? Why did they not accumulate and disperse according

to the chances of free development? It may be thought that custom, and

express conditions of feoffment, must have acted against disruption. I

do not deny the possibility, but I say that it is not easy to explain

the very widely diffused phenomenon of free shareholding by a

commutation which tended to break up the shares and to make them useless

for the purposes of assessment. Still I grant that these considerations,

though they should have some weight, are not decisive, and I insist

chiefly on the following argument.

The peculiar trait which distinguishes 'molland' is the transition from

labour service to money rent, and the rent is undoubtedly considered as

an equivalent for the right to labour services which the lord abandons.

It must be admitted that in some cases the lord may have taken less than

the real equivalent in order to get such a convenient commodity as

money, or because for some reason or another he was in need of current

coin. Still I am not afraid to say that, in a general way, commutation

supposes an exchange against an equivalent. Indeed the demand for money

rents was considered rather as increasing than as decreasing the burden

incumbent on the peasantry[749]. Now, although it would be preposterous

to try and make out in every single case whether the rent of the free

virgate is an adequate equivalent for villain services or not, there is

a very sufficient number of instances in which a rough reckoning may be

made without fear of going much astray[750]. And if we attempt such a

reckoning we shall be struck by the number of cases in which the rent of

the free virgate falls considerably short of what it yielded by the

virgate of the villain. We have seen that in Ravenston, Bedfordshire,

the villain service is valued at eight shillings per virgate, and that

the free assessment amounts only to four shillings. In Thriplow,

Cambridgeshire, the villains perform labour duties valued at 9_s._

4_d._ per bovate, the freeholders are assessed variously; but there is a

certain number among them which forms, as it were, the stock of that

class, and their average rent is 5_s._ 6_d._ per bovate[751]. In

Tyringham, Buckinghamshire, the villain holding is computed at six acres

and one rood, and its service at five shillings; the free virgates have

a like number of acres and pay various rents, but almost without

exception less than the villains[752]. In Croxton, Cambridgeshire, there

are customers with twenty acres, and others with ten acres; the first

have to pay ten shillings and to assist at four boonworks. The free

holders are possessed of plots of irregular size, and their rent is also

irregular; but on the average much lower than that of the

customers[753]. Let it be noted that the customary tenants have commuted

their labour services into money payments, and, in fact, they are to be

considered as molmen in the first stage of development. Still, their

payments are computed on a different scale from those of the free.

In Brandone, Warwickshire, the typical villain, William Bateman, pays

for his virgate 5_s._ 3_d._, and sends one man to work twice a week from

the 29th of June until the 1st of August, and thence onward his man has

to work two days one week and three days the next. The free half-virgate

merely pays five shillings, and does suit to the manorial court. This

last point makes no difference, because the villain had to attend the

manorial court quite as regularly as the freeholder, and indeed more

regularly, because he was obliged to serve on inquests[754]. In

Bathekynton, Warwickshire, the difference in favour of the free is also

noticeable, but not so great[755]. And these are by no means

exceptional cases. Nothing is more common than to find free tenements

held by trifling services, and whatever we may think of single cases, it

would be absurd to explain such arrangements in the aggregate as the

results of a bargain between lord and serfs. It is evident, therefore,

that a reference to 'molland,' to a commutation of labour into rent,

does not suit these cases[756].

Can we explain these cases of 'free shareholding' by feoffments made to

favoured persons? We have seen that the lord used to recompense his

servants by grants of land and that he favoured the spread of

cultivation by exacting but a light rent from newly reclaimed land. Such

transactions would undoubtedly produce free tenements held on very

advantageous terms, but still they seem incapable of solving our

problem. Tenements created by way of beneficial feoffment are in general

easily recognised. The holdings of servants and other people endowed by

favour are always few and interspersed among the plots of the regular

occupiers of the land, be they free or serfs. The 'essarted' fields are

sometimes numerous, but usually cut up into small strips and as it were

engrafted on the original stock of tenements. Altogether privileged land

mostly appears divided into irregular plots and reckoned by acres and

not by shares. And what we have to account for is a vast number of

instances in which what seem to be some of the principal and original

shares in the land are held freely and by comparatively light services.

I do not think that we can get rid of a very considerable residue of

cases without resorting to the last of the suppositions mentioned above.

We must admit that some of the freeholders in the Hundred Rolls are

possessed of shares in the fields not because they have emerged from

serfdom, but because they were from the first members of a village

community over which the lord's power spread. It would be very hard to

draw absolute distinctions in special cases, because the terminology of

our records does not take into account the history of tenure and only

indicates net results. But a comparison of facts _en bloc_ points to at

least three distinct sources of the freehold virgates. Some may be due

to commutation, others to beneficial feoffments, but there are yet

others which seem to be ancient and primitive. The traits which mark

these last are 'shareholding' and light rents. The light rents do not

look like the result of commutation, the 'shareholding' points to some

other cause than favours bestowed by the lord.

We shall come to the same conclusion if we follow the other line of our

inquiry. It may be asked, whether the community into which the share is

made to fit should be thought of primarily as a community in ownership

or a community in assessment, whether the shares are constructed for the

purpose of satisfying equal claims or for the purpose of imposing equal

duties? The question is a wide one, much wider than the subject

immediately in hand, but it is connected with that subject and some of

the material for its solution must be taken up in the course of our

present inquiry.

I have been constantly mentioning the assessment of free tenements,

their rents and their labour services. The question of their weight as

compared with villain services has been discussed, but I have not

hitherto taken heed of the varying and irregular character of these

rents and services. But the variety and irregularity are worthy of

special notice. One of the most fundamental differences between the free

and servile systems is to be found in this quarter. The villains are

equalised not only as regards their shares in the fields, but also as

regards their duties towards the lord; indeed, both facts appear as the

two sides of one thing. The virgate of the villain is quite as much, if

not more, a unit of assessment as it is a share of the soil. Matters

look more complex in the case of free land. As I have said before, there

are instances in which the free people are not only possessed of equal

shares but also are rented in proportion to those shares. In much the

greater number of instances, however, there is no such proportion. All

may hold virgates, but one will pay more and the other less; one will

perform labour duties, and the other not; one will pay in money, and the

other bring a chicken, or a pound of pepper, or a flower. Whatever we

may think of the gradual changes which have distorted conditions that

were originally meant to be equal, it is impossible to get rid of the

fact that, in regard to free tenements, equal shares do not imply equal

duties or even duties of one and the same kind.

One of two things, either the shares exist only as a survival of the

servile arrangement out of which the free tenements may have grown, or

else they exist primarily for the purpose not of assessing duties but of

apportioning claims. In stating these possibilities I must repeat what I

said before, that it would be quite wrong to bring all the observed

phenomena under one head. I do not intend in the least to deny that the

freer play of economic and legal forces within the range of free

ownership must have produced combinations infinitely more varying,

irregular and complicated than those which are to be found in

villainage. A large margin must be allowed for such modifications which

dispersed and altered the duties that were originally proportioned to

shares. But a few simple questions will serve to show that other

elements must be brought into the reckoning. Why should the disruptive

tendency operate so much more against proportionate assessment than

against the distribution into shares itself; in other words, why are

equal tenements so much commoner than equal rents? If shareholding and

equal rents were indissolubly connected as the two sides of one thing,

or even as cause and effect, why should one hold its ground when the

other had disappeared, and how could the dependent element remain widely

active when the principal one had lost its meaning? If the

discrepancies between rent and shares had been casual, we might try to

explain them entirely by later modifications. But these discrepancies

are a standing feature of the surveys, and it seems to me that we can

hardly escape the inference that shareholding has its _raison d'etre_

quite apart from the duties owed to the lord, and in this case we have

to look to the communal arrangement of proprietary rights for its

explanation; it was a means of giving to every man his due. If this

principle is granted, all the observable facts fall into their right

places. One can easily imagine how free holdings came to exist within

the village community in spite of their loose connexion with the manor.

In regard to duties, they were practically outside the community; not so

as to proprietary rights and the agricultural arrangements proceeding

from them, for example such arrangements as affected the rotation of

crops, the use of commons and fallow pasture, the setting up of hedges,

the repair of dykes, etc. There is no real contradiction between the

facts, that in relation to the lord every free shareholder was, as it

were, bound by a separate and private agreement, while in relation to

the village he had to conform to communal rule.

This last remark may require some further development. The striking

differences between the duties of the several freeholders of one manor

seem to show that these people were not enfeoffed by the lord at the

same time and under the same conditions. If A is in every respect a

fellow of B, and still has to pay twice as much as B, it is clear that

his relation to the lord has been settled under different circumstances

from those which governed the settlement of B's position. Now, from the

point of view of later law this meant that the two freeholds were

created each by a special feoffment. But this would be a very formal and

inadequate way of considering the case. Very often the differences might

be produced by subsequent arrangements which, though not giving rise to

new title, destroyed the original uniformity of condition. Often again

we may suspect that the relation between lord and tenant had its origin

not really in a gift of land made by the former to the latter but in a

submission made by the latter to the former. I make bold to prefer this

view, chiefly on account of those trifling and indeed fictitious duties

which are constantly found in the Surveys[757]. They can only have one

meaning--that of 'recognitions[758].' Trifling in themselves, they

establish the subordinate relation of one owner to the other; and

although their imposition must be considered from the formal standpoint

of feudal law as the result of a feoffment, it is clear that their real

foundation must often have been a submission to patronage. The subject

is a wide one and includes all kinds of free tenure, communal as well as

other. When a knight was enfeoffed by a monastery in consideration of

some infinitesimal payment, there might be several reasons for such a

transaction. The abbot may have thought it good policy to acquire the

support of a considerable person, he may have been forced to give the

land and only glad to obtain some recognition, however trifling, of the

gift; or again, he may have made a beneficial feoffment in return for a

sum of ready money paid by way of gersuma or fine, but he may also have

extended his supremacy over a piece of land which did not belong to him

originally at all. Even in feudal times this could be done by means of a

fictitious lawsuit ending in 'a final concord'; or even simply by an

instrument of quit claim and feoffment without any suit[759]. At the

time when feudalism was only settling itself, in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries, this must have been a common thing, even if we do

not take into account the Saxon practice of 'commendation.'

However this may be, the trifling duties imposed on freeholds lead to

the inference that the agreement between lord and tenant had been made

on the basis of the latter's independent right, and not on that of the

lord's will and power. They testify to a subjection of free people and

not to the liberation of serfs. And as they are found constantly allied

with shareholding, we have to say that they imply manorial relations

superimposed on a community which, if not entirely free, contained free

elements within it. The manorial duties are more varied and capricious

than are the shares just because they are a later growth.

I should not like to leave this intricate inquiry without testing its

results by yet another standard. I have been trying to prove two things:

that some of the feudal freeholds are ancient freeholds, not liberated

from servitude but originally based on the recognised right of the

holders; that such ancient freeholds were included in the communal

arrangement of ownership, although the assessment of their duties was

not communal. To what extent are these propositions supported by an

analysis of that admittedly ancient tenure, the tenure of the socmen? We

must look chiefly to the 'free' socmen; but I may be allowed, on the

strength of the chapter on Ancient Demesne, to take the bond socmen also

into account.

Let us take the manor of Chesterton, in Cambridgeshire[760]. It is

royal, but let out in feefarm to the Prior of Barnwell, and its men make

use of the _parvum breve de recto_. There is one free tenant of

eighty-eight acres holding _de antiquitate_ and the Scholars of Merton

hold forty-four acres freely. They have clearly taken the place of some

freeman, whether by purchase or by gift I do not know; they are bound to

perform ploughings and to carry corn. Both tenements are worthy of

notice because charters are not mentioned and still the holdings are set

apart from the rest. In the one case the tenure is expressly stated to

be an ancient one, and presumably the title of the other tenement is of

the same kind. The number of acres is peculiar and points to some

agrarian division of which eighty-eight and forty-four were fractions or

multiples. The bulk of the population are described as customers. They

used to hold half-virgates, it is said, but some of them have sold part

of their land according to the custom of the manor. And so their

tenements have lost their original regularity of construction, although

it seems possible to fix the average holdings at twelve or fifteen

acres. Anyhow, it is impossible to reduce them to fractions of

eighty-eight; for some reason or another, the reckoning is made on a

different basis. The duties vary a good deal, and it would be even more

difficult to conjecture what the original services may have been than to

make out the size of the virgate.

The example is instructive in many ways. It is a stepping-stone from

villainage to socage, or rather to socman's tenure. There can be no

question of differences of feoffment. The manorial power is fully

recognised, and on the other hand the character of ancient demesne is

also conspicuous with its protection of the peasantry. And still the

whole fabric is giving way--the holdings get dispersed and the service

loses its uniformity. All these traits are a fair warning to those who

argue from the irregularity of free tenements and the inequality of

their rents against the possibility of their development out of communal

ownership. Here is a well-attested village community; its members hold

by custom and have not changed their condition either for the better or

for the worse in point of title. Later agencies are at work to distort

the original arrangement--a few steps more in that direction and it

would be impossible to make out even the chief lines of the system.

Stanton, in Cambridgeshire, is a similar case[761]. I would especially

direct the attention of the reader to the capricious way in which the

services are assessed. And still the titles of the tenants are the

result not of various grants but of manorial custom applied to the whole

community. I repeat, that irregularity in the size of holdings and in

the services that they owe is no proof that these holdings have not

formed part of a communal arrangement or that their free character (if

they have a free character) must be the result of emancipation; these

irregularities are found on the ancient demesne where there has been no

enfranchisement or emancipation, and where on the other hand the tenants

have all along been sufficiently 'free' to enjoy legal protection in

their holdings.

If we have to say so much with regard to ancient demesne and bond

socmen, we must not wonder that free socmen are very often placed in

conditions which it would be impossible to reduce to a definite plan. On

the fee of Robert le Noreys, in Fordham[762], we find some scattered

free tenants burdened with entirely irregular rents, four villains

holding eighteen acres each and subjected to heavy ploughing work, three

socmen of twenty acres each paying a rent of 4_s._ 2_d._ per holding,

and obliged to assist at reaping and to bring chicken, one socman of

nine acres paying 10_d._, one of seven acres also assessed at 10_d._,

two of eleven acres paying 15_d._, etc.

It is no cause for wonder that such instances occur at the end of the

thirteenth century. It is much more wonderful that, in a good many

cases, we are still well able to perceive a great deal of the original

regularity. Swaffham Prior, in Cambridgeshire, is a grand example of an

absolutely regular arrangement in a community of free socmen[763]. The

Prior of Ely holds it for three hides and has 220 acres on his

home-farm. The rest is divided among sixteen free socmen paying 5_s._

each and performing various labour services. These services have been

considerably increased by the Prior. Mixed cases are much more usual--I

mean cases in which the original regularity has suffered some

modifications, though a little attention will discover traces of the

ancient communal arrangement[764].

On the whole, I think that the notices of socmen's tenure in the Hundred

Rolls are especially precious, because they prove that the observations

that we have made as regards freehold generally are not merely ingenious

suggestions about what may conceivably have happened. There is

undoubtedly one weak point in those observations, which is due to the

method which we are compelled to adopt. It is difficult, if not

impossible, to classify the actual cases which come before us, to

say--in this case freehold is the result of commutation, in that case

the lord has enfeoffed a retainer or a kinsman, while in this third

case, the freehold virgate has always been freehold. The edge of the

inquiry is blunted, if I may so say, by the vagueness of terminological

distinctions, and we must rely upon general impressions. The socman's

tenure, on the contrary, stands out as a clear case, and a careful

analysis of it abundantly verifies the conclusions to which we have

previously come by a more circuitous route.

It seems to me that the general questions with which we started in our

inquiry may now be approached with some confidence. The relation of free

tenancies to the manorial system turns out to be a complex one. The

great majority of such tenements appears as a later growth engrafted on

the system when it was already in decay. Commutation of services, the

spread of cultivation over the waste, and the surrender of portions of

the demesne to the increasing dependent population, must largely account

for the contrast between Domesday and the Hundred Rolls. But an

important residue remains, which must be explained on the assumption

that in many cases the shares of the community were originally

distributed among free people who had nothing or little to do with

manorial work.

Three conclusions have been arrived at in this chapter.

1. The home-farm, though the necessary central unit of the manorial

group, did not, as a rule, occupy a large area, and the break-up of

feudalism tended to lessen its extension in favour of the dependent

population.

2. The peculiar feature of medieval husbandry--the grouping of small

households round an aristocratic centre--entailed the existence of a

large class engaged in collecting revenue, superintending work, and

generally conducting the machinery by which the tributary parts were

joined with their centre.

3. The position of free tenements within the manor may be ascribed to

one of three causes: (_a_) they have been the tenements of serfs, but,

in consequence either of some general commutation or of special

feoffments, they have become free; or (_b_) their connexion with the

manor has all along been rather a matter of jurisdiction than a matter

of proprietary right, that is to say, they form part of the manor

chiefly because they are within the scope of the manorial court; or

(_c_) they represent free shares in a village community upon which the

manorial structure has been superimposed.

CHAPTER V.

THE MANORIAL COURTS.

[The village community.]

The communal organisation of the village is made to subserve the needs

of manorial administration. We feel naturally inclined to think and to

speak of the village community in opposition to the lord and to notice

all points which show its self-dependent character. But in practice the

institution would hardly have lived such a long life and played such a

prominent part if it had acted only or even chiefly as a bulwark against

the feudal owner. Its development has to be accounted for to a great

extent by the fact that lord and village had many interests in common.

They were natural allies in regard to the higher manorial officers. The

lord had to manage his estates by the help of a powerful ministerial

class, but there was not much love lost between employers and

administrators, and often the latent antagonism between them broke out

into open feuds. If it is always difficult to organise a serviceable

administration, the task becomes especially arduous in a time of

undeveloped means of communication and of weak state control. It was

exceedingly difficult to audit accounts and to remove bad stewards. The

strength and self-government of the village group appeared, from this

point of view, as a most welcome help on the side of the owner[765]. He

had practically to surrender his arbitrary power over the peasant

population and their land, he had to conform to fixed rules as to civil

usage, manorial claims and distribution of territory; but the common

standards established by custom did not only hamper his freedom of

disposition, they created a basis on which he could take his stand above

and against his stewards. He had precise arrangements to go by in his

supervision of his ministers, and there was something more than his own

interest and energy to keep guard over the maintenance of these forms:

the village communities were sure to fight for them from beneath. The

facilities for joint action and accumulation of strength derived from

communal self-government vouched indirectly for the preservation of the

chief capital invested by the lord in the land: it was difficult for the

steward to destroy the economic stays of the villainage.

[The village and the manorial officers.]

There are many occasions when the help rendered by the village

communities to the lord may be perceived directly. I need hardly mention

the fact that the surveys, which form the chief material of our study,

were compiled in substance by sworn inquests, the members of which were

considered as the chief representatives of the community, and had to

give witness to its lore. The great monastic and exchequer surveys do

not give any insight into the mode of selection of the jurors: it may be

guessed with some probability that they were appointed for the special

purpose, and chosen by the whole court of the manor. In some cases the

ordinary jurors of the court, or chief pledges, may have been called

upon to serve on the inquest. There is another point which it is

impossible to decide quite conclusively, namely, whether questions about

which there was some doubt or the jurors disagreed were referred to the

whole body of the court. But, although we do not hear of such instances

in our great surveys, it is surely an important indication that the

extant court-rolls constantly speak of the whole court deciding

questions when the verdict of ordinary jurors seemed insufficient. And

such reserved cases were by no means restricted to points of law; very

often they concerned facts of the same nature as those enrolled in the

surveys[766].

[Village officers.]

On a parallel with the stewards and servants appointed by the lord,

although in subordination to them, appear officers elected by the

village. As we have seen, the manorial beadle was matched by the

communal reeve, and a like contrast is sometimes found on the lower

degrees[767]. In exceptional cases the lord nominates the reeve,

although he still remains the chief representative of village interests

and the chief collector of services. But in the normal course the office

was elective, and curious intermediate forms may be found. For instance,

the village selects the messarius (hayward), and the lord may appoint

him reeve[768]. This is a point, again, which shows most clearly the

intimate connexion between the interests of the lord and those of the

village. The peasants become guarantors for the reeve whom they chose. A

formula which comes from Gloucester Abbey requires, that only such

persons be chosen as have proved their capacity to serve by a good

conduct of their own affairs: all shortcomings and defects are to be

made good ultimately by the rural community that elected the officer,

and no excuses are to be accepted unless in cases of exceptional

hardship[769]. The economic tracts of the thirteenth century state the

same principle in even a more explicit manner.

[Communal liability.]

From the manorial point of view the whole village is responsible for the

collection of duties. There are payments expressly imposed on the

whole. Such is the case with the yearly auxilium or donum. The partition

of these between the householders is naturally effected in a meeting of

the villagers[770]. Most services are laid on the virgaters separately.

But they are all held answerable for the regularity and completeness

with which every single member of the community performs his duties. As

to free holdings, it is sometimes noticed especially to what extent they

are subjected to the general arrangement: whether they participate with

the rest in payments, and whether the tenants have to work in the same

way as the villains[771]. Very often the documents point out that such

and such a person ought to take part in certain obligations but has been

exempted or fraudulently exempts himself, and that the village community

has to bear a relative increase of its burdens[772]. A Glastonbury

formula orders the steward to make inquiries about people who have been

freed from the performance of their services in such a way that their

responsibility has been thrown on the village[773].

But it would be very wrong to assume that the rural community could act

only in the interest of the lord. Its solidarity is recognised in

matters which do not concern him, or even which call forth an opposition

between him and the peasantry.

[Village and manor.]

I have already spoken of the curious fact that the village is legally

recognised as a unit, separated from the manor although existing within

it. When the reeve and the four men attend the sheriff's tourn or the

eyre, they do not represent the lord only, but also the village

community. Part of their expenses are borne by the lord and part by

their fellow villagers[774]. The documents tell us of craftsmen who have

to work for the village as well as for the lord[775]. On a parallel with

services due to the landowner, we find sometimes kindred services

reserved for the village community[776]. If a person has been guilty of

misdemeanours and is subjected to a special supervision, this

supervision applies to his conduct in regard both to the lord and to the

fellow villagers[777]. No doubt the relations of the village to its lord

are much more fully described in the documents than the internal

arrangement of the community, but this could not be otherwise in surveys

compiled for the use of lords and stewards. Even the chance indications

we gather as to these internal arrangements are sufficient to give an

insight into the powerful ties of the village community.

[The village as a juristic person.]

Indeed, the rural settlement appears in our records as a 'juridical

person.' The Court Rolls of Brightwaltham, edited for the Selden Society

by Mr. Maitland, give a most beautiful example of this. The village of

Brightwaltham enters into a formal agreement with the lord of the manor

as to some commons. It surrenders its rights to the lord in regard to

the wood of Hemele, and gets rid in return of the rights claimed by the

lord in Estfield and in a wood called Trendale[778]. Nothing can be

more explicit: the village acts as an organised community; it evidently

has free disposition as to rights connected with the soil; it disposes

of these rights not only independently of the lord, but in an exchange

to which he appears as a party. We see no traces of the rightless

condition of villains which is supposed to be their legal lot, and a

powerful community is recognised by the lord in a form which bears all

the traits of legal definition. In the same way the annals of Dunstable

speak of the seisin of the township of Toddington[779], and of a

feoffment made by them on behalf of the lord.

I have only to say in addition to this summing up of the subject, that

the quasilegal standing of the villains in regard to the lord appears

with special clearness when they stand arrayed against him as a group

and not as single individuals. We could guess as much on general

grounds, but the self-dependent position assumed by the 'communitas

villanorum' of Brightwaltham is the more interesting, that it finds

expression in a formal and recorded agreement.

[The village as a farmer.]

We catch a glimpse of the same phenomenon from yet another point of

view. It is quite common to find entire estates let to farm to the rural

community settled upon them[780]. In such cases the mediation of the

bailiff might be dispensed with; the village entered into a direct

agreement with the lord or his chief steward and undertook a certain set

of services and payments, or promised to give a round sum. Such an

arrangement was profitable to both parties. The villains were willing to

pay dearly in order to free themselves from the bailiff's interference

with their affairs; the landowner got rid of a numerous and inconvenient

staff of stewards and servants; the rural life was organised on the

basis of self-government with a very slight control on the part of the

lord. Such agreements concern the general management of manors as well

as the letting of domain land or of particular plots and rights[781]. Of

course there was this great disadvantage for the lord, that the tie

between him and his subjects was very much loosened by such

arrangements, and sometimes he had to complain that the conditions under

which the land was held were materially disturbed under the farmer-ship

of the village. It is certain, that in a general way this mode of

administration led to a gradual improvement in the social status of the

peasantry.

[The village and agricultural arrangements.]

One great drawback of investigations into the history of medieval

institutions consists in the very incomplete manner in which the subject

is usually reflected in the documents. We have to pick up bits of

evidence as to very important questions in the midst of a vast mass of

uninteresting material, and sometimes whole sides of the subject are

left in the shade, not by the fault of the inquirer, but in consequence

of disappointing gaps in the contemporary records. Even conveyancing

entries, surrenders, admittances, are of rare occurrence on some of the

more ancient rolls, and the probable reason is, that they were not

thought worthy of enrolment[782]. As for particulars of husbandry they

are almost entirely absent from the medieval documents, and it is only

on the records of the sixteenth and yet later centuries that we have to

rely when we look for some direct evidence of the fact that the manorial

communities had to deal with such questions[783]. And so our knowledge

of these institutions must be based largely on inference. But even

granting all these imperfections of the material, it must be allowed

that the one side of manorial life which is well reflected in the

documents--the juridical organisation of the manor--affords very

interesting clues towards an understanding of the system and of its

origins.

[Collegiate decisions and seignorial power.]

Let us repeat again, that the management of the manor is by no means

dependent on capricious and onesided expressions of the lord's will. On

the contrary, every known act of its life is connected with collegiate

decisions. Notwithstanding the absolute character of the lord with

regard to his villains taken separately, he is in truth but the centre

of a community represented by meetings or courts. Not only the free, but

also the servile tenantry are ruled in accordance with the views and

customs of a congregation of the tenants in their divers classes. There

can be no doubt that the discretion of the lord was often stretched in

exceptional cases, that relations based on moral sense and a true

comprehension of interests often suffered from violence and

encroachment. But as a general rule, and with unimportant exceptions,

the feudal system is quite as much characterised by the collegiate

organisation of its parts as by their monarchical exterior. The manorial

courts were really meetings of the village community under the

presidency of the lord or of his steward.

[Village Courts.]

It is well known that later law recognises three kinds of seignorial

courts: the Leet, the Court Baron, and the Customary Court. The first

has to keep the peace of the King, the others are concerned with purely

manorial affairs. The Leet appears in possession of a police and

criminal jurisdiction in so far as that has not been appropriated by the

King's own tribunals--its parallel being the sheriff's tourn in the

hundred. The Court Baron is a court of free tenants entrusted with some

of the conveyancing and the petty litigation between them, and also with

the exercise of minor franchises. The Customary Court has in its charge

the unfree population of the manor. In keeping with this division the

Court Baron consists according to later theory of a body of free suitors

which is merely placed under the presidency of the steward, while in the

Customary Court the steward is the true and only judge, and the

copyholders, customary tenants or villains, around him are merely called

up as presenters.

[Court Leet.]

The masterly investigations of Mr. Maitland, from which any review of

the subject must start, have shown conclusively, that this latter

doctrine, as embodied in Coke, for instance, draws distinctions and

establishes definitions which were unknown to earlier practice. The Leet

became a separate institution early enough, although its name is

restricted to one province--Norfolk--even at the time of the Hundred

Rolls[784]. The foundation of the court was laid by the frank-pledge

system and the necessity of keeping it in working order. We find the

Leet Court sometimes under the names 'Curia Visus franci plegii,' or

'Visus de borchtruning[785],' and it appears then as a more solemn form

of the general meeting. It is held usually twice a year to register all

the male population from twelve years upwards, to present those who have

not joined the tithings, and sometimes to elect the heads or

representatives of these divisions--the 'Capitales plegii[786].'

Sometimes the tithing coincides with the township, is formed on a

territorial basis, as it were, so that we may find a village called a

tithing[787]. This leads to the inference, that the grouping into tens

was but an approximate one, and this view is further supported by the

fact that we hear of bodies of twelve along with those of ten[788].

[View of Frank-pledge.]

As to attending the meeting, a general rule was enforced to that effect,

that the peasantry must attend in person and not by reason of their

tenure[789]. But as it was out of the question to drive all the men of a

district to the manorial centres on such days, exceptions of different

kinds are frequent[790]. Besides the women and children, the personal

attendants of the lord get exempted, and also shepherds, ploughboys, and

men engaged in driving waggons laden with corn. Servants and aliens were

considered as under the pledge of the person with whom they were

staying.

[Communal accusation.]

The aim of its whole arrangement was to ensure the maintenance of peace,

and therefore everybody was bound on entering the tithing to swear, not

only that he would keep the peace, but that he would conceal nothing

which might concern the peace[791]. It is natural that such a meeting as

that held for the view of frank-pledge should begin to assume police

duties and a certain criminal jurisdiction. Mr. Maitland has shown how,

by its intimate connexion with the sheriff's tourn, the institution of

frank-pledge was made to serve the purpose of communal accusation in the

time of Henry II. The Assize of Clarendon (1166) gave the impulse in

regard to the Sheriff's Court, and private lords followed speedily on

the same line, although they could not copy the pattern in all its

details, and the system of double presentment described by Britton and

Fleta proved too cumbersome for their small courts with only a few

freeholders on them. In any case the jurisdiction of the Court Leet is

practically formed in the twelfth century, and the Quo Warranto

inquiries of the thirteenth only bring out its distinctions more

clearly[792].

[Court baron and customary court.]

The questions as to the opposition between Court Baron and Customary

Court are more intricate and more important. Mr. Maitland has collected

a good deal of evidence to prove that the division did not exist

originally, and that we have before us in the thirteenth century only

one strictly manorial court, the 'halimotum.' I may say, that I came to

the same conclusion myself in the Russian edition of the present work

quite independently of his argument. Indeed a somewhat intimate

acquaintance with the early Court Rolls must necessarily lead to this

doctrine. If some distinctions are made, they touch upon a difference

between ordinary meetings and those which were held under exceptional

circumstances and attended by a greater number of suitors than usual.

The expression 'libera curia' which meets us sometimes in the documents

is an exact parallel with that of 'free gallows,' and means a court held

freely by the lord and not a court of free men. Mr. Maitland adds, that

he has found mention of a court of villains and one of knights, but that

he never came across a court of barons in the sense given in later

jurisprudence to the term 'Court Baron.' Here I must put in a trifling

qualification which does not affect his main position in the least. The

Introduction to the Selden Society's second volume, which is our

greatest authority on this subject, mentions a case when the halimot was

actually divided on the principle laid down by Coke and later lawyers

generally. I mean the case of Steyning, where the Abbot holds a separate

court for free tenants and another for his villains. The instance

belongs to the time of the Edwards, but it is marked as an innovation

and a bad one[793]. It shows, however, that the separation of the courts

was beginning to set in. The Steyning case is not quite an isolated one.

I have found in the Hundred Rolls the expression _Sockemanemot_ to

designate a court attended by free sokemen[794], and it may be suggested

that the formation of the so-called Court Baron may have been

facilitated by the peculiar constitution and customs of those courts

where the unfree element was almost entirely absent. The Danish shires

and Kent could not but exercise a certain influence on the adjoining

counties. However this might be, the general rule is, undoubtedly, that

no division is admitted, and that all the suitors and affairs are

concentrated in the one manorial court--the _halimot_.

[The halimot.]

It met generally once every three weeks, but it happens sometimes that

it is called together without a definite limit of time at the pleasure

of the lord[795]. Cases like that of the manors of the Abbey of Ramsey,

in which the courts are summoned only twice a year, are quite

exceptional, and in the instance cited the fact has to be explained by

the existence of an upper court for these estates, the court of the

honour of Broughton[796]. The common suitors are the peasants living

within the manor--the owners of holdings in the fields of the manor. In

important trials, when free men are concerned, or when a thief has to be

hanged, suitors are called in from abroad--mostly small free tenants who

have entered into an agreement about a certain number of suits to the

court[797]. These foreign suitors appear once every six weeks, twice a

year, for special trials upon a royal writ, for the hanging of

thieves[798], etc. The duty of attending the court is constantly

mentioned in the documents. It involved undoubtedly great hardships,

expense, and loss of time: no wonder that people tried to exempt

themselves from it as much as possible[799]. Charters relating to land

provide for all manner of cases relating to suit of court. We find it

said, for instance, that a tenant must make his appearance on the next

day after getting his summons, even if it was brought to him at

midnight[800]. When a holding was divided into several parts, the most

common thing was that one suit remained due from the whole[801]. All

these details are by no means without importance, because they show that

fiscal reasons had as much to do with the arrangement of these meetings

as real interests: every court gave rise to a number of fines from

suitors who had made default.

[Procedure of the halimot.]

The procedure of the halimot was ruled by ancient custom. All foreign

elements in the shape of advocates or professional pleaders were

excluded. Such people, we are told by the manorial instructions, breed

litigation and dead-letter formalism, whereas trials ought to be

conducted and judged according to their substance[802]. Another

ceremonial peculiarity of some interest concerns the place where

manorial courts are held. It is certain that the ancient gemots were

held in the open air, as Mr. Gomme shows in his book on early folk-mots.

And we see a survival of the custom in the meeting which used to be held

by the socmen of Stoneleigh on Motstowehill[803]. But in the feudal

period the right place to hold the court was the manorial hall. We find

indeed that the four walls of this room are considered as the formal

limit of the court, so that a man who has stept within them and has then

gone off without sufficient reason is charged with contempt of

court[804]. Indeed, the very name of 'halimot' can hardly be explained

otherwise than as the moot held in the hall[805]. The point is of some

interest, because the hall is not regarded as a purely material

contrivance for keeping people protected against the cold and the rain,

but appears in close connexion with the manor, and as its centre and

symbol.

[The halimot and agriculture.]

We hear very little of husbandry arrangements made by the courts[806],

and even of the repartition of duties and taxes[807]. Entries relating

to the election of officers are more frequent[808], but the largest part

of the rolls is taken up by legal business of all sorts.

[Presentments.]

The entire court, and sometimes a body of twelve jurors, present those

who are guilty of any offence or misdemeanour. Ploughmen who have

performed their ploughing on the lord's land badly, villains who have

fled from the fee and live on strange soil, a man who has not fulfilled

some injunction of the lord, a woman who has picked a lock appended to

the door of her cottage by a manorial bailiff, an inveterate adulterer

who loses the lord's chattels by being fined in the ecclesiastical

courts--all these delinquents of very different kinds are presented to

be punished, and get amerced or put into the stocks, according to the

nature of their offences. It ought to be noticed that an action

committed against the interests of the lord is not punished by any

onesided act of his will, or by the command of his steward, but treated

as a matter of legal presentment. The negligent ploughman is not taken

to task directly by the bailiff or any other overseer, but is presented

as an offender by his fellow-peasants, and according to strict legal

formality. On the other hand, the entries are worded in such a way that

the part played by the court is quite clear only as to the presenting of

misdeeds, while the amercement or punishment is decreed in some manner

which is not specified exactly. We read, for instance, in a roll of the

Abbey of Bec how 'the court has presented that Simon Combe has set up a

fence on the lord's land. Therefore let it be abated.... The court

presented that the following had encroached on the lord's land, to wit,

William Cobbler, Maud Robins, widow (fined 12_d._), John Shepherd (fined

12_d._).... Therefore they are in mercy[809].' Who has ordered the fence

to be thrown down, and who has imposed the fines on the delinquents? The

most natural inference seems to be that the penalties were imposed by

the lord or the presiding officer who represented him in the court. But

it is by no means impossible that the court itself had to decide on the

penalty or the amount of the amercement after first making the

presentment as to the fact. Its action would merely divide itself into

two independent decisions. Such a procedure would be a necessity in the

case of a free tenant who could not be fined at will; and there is

nothing to show that it was entirely different in regard to the servile

tenantry. When the lord interferes at pleasure this is noted as an

exceptional feature[810]. It is quite possible, again, that the

amercement was imposed on the advice or by a decision of certain suitors

singled out from the rest as persons of special credit, as in a case

from the same manorial rolls of Bec[811]. It is hardly necessary to draw

very precise conclusions, as the functions of the suitors do not appear

to have been sharply defined. But for this very reason it would be wrong

to speak of the onesided right of the lord or of his representative to

impose the penalty.

[Civil jurisdiction.]

The characteristic mixture of different elements which we notice in the

criminal jurisdiction of the manorial court may be seen also if we

examine its civil jurisdiction. We find the halimot treating in its

humble region all the questions of law which may be debated in the

courts of common law. Seisin, inheritance, dower, leases, and the like

are discussed, and the pleading, though subject to the custom of the

manor, takes very much the shape of the contentions before the royal

judges. Now this civil litigation is interesting from two points of

view: it involves statements of law and decisions as to the relative

value of claims. In both respects the parties have to refer to the body

of the court, to its assessors or suitors. The influence of the

'country' on the judgment goes further here than in the Common Law

Courts, because there is no independent common law to go by, and the

custom of the manor has generally to be made out by the manorial tenants

themselves. And so a party 'puts himself on his country,' not only in

order to decide some issue of fact, but also in regard to points of

customary law. Inquisitions are made and juries formed quite as much to

establish the jurisprudence of the court as to decide who has the better

claim under the said jurisprudence. Theoretically it is the full court

which is appealed to, but in ordinary cases the decision rests with a

jury of twelve, or even of six. The authority of such a verdict goes

back however to the supposed juridical sense or juridical knowledge of

the court as a body. Now it cannot be contested that such an

organisation of justice places all the weight of the decision with the

body of the suitors as assessors. The presiding officer and the lord

whom he represents have not much to do in the course of the

deliberation. If we may take up the comparison which Mr. Maitland has

drawn with German procedure[812], we shall say that the 'Urtheilfinder'

have all the best of it in the trial as against the 'Richter.' This

'Richter' is seemingly left with the duties of a chairman, and the

formal right to draw up and pronounce a decision which is materially

dependent on the ruling of the court. But a special reserve of equity is

left with the lord, and in consequence of its operation we find some

decisions and sentences altered, or their execution postponed[813]. I

have to endorse one more point of Mr. Mainland's exposition, namely,

his view of the presentment system as of a gradual modification of the

original standing of the manorial suitors as true assessors of the

court. Through the influence of the procedure of royal courts, on the

one hand, of the stringent classifications of the tenantry in regard to

status on the other, the presenters were gradually debased, and legal

learning came to maintain that the only judge of a customary court was

its steward. But a presentment of the kind described in the manorial

rolls vouches for a very independent position of the suitors, and indeed

for their prevalent authority in the constitution of the tribunal.

[Surrender and admittance.]

The conveyancing entries, although barren and monotonous at first sight,

are very important, in so far as they show, better perhaps than anything

else, the part played by the community and by its testimony in the

transmission of rights. It has become a common-place to argue that the

practice of surrender and admittance characterises the absolute

ownership that the lord has in the land held in villainage, and proceeds

from the fact that every holder of servile land is in truth merely an

occupier of the plot by precarious tenure. Every change of occupation

has to be performed through the medium of the lord who 're-enters' the

tenement, and concedes it again as if there had been no previous

occupation at all and the new tenant entered on a holding freshly

created for his use. None the less, a theory which lays all the stress

in the case on the surrender into the hand of the lord, and explains

this act from the point of view of absolute ownership, is wrong in many

respects.

[Meaning of surrender.]

To begin with the legal transmission of a free holding, although the

element of surrender has as it were evaporated from it, it is quite as

much bound up with the fiction of the absolute ownership of the lord as

is the surrender and admittance of villains and copyholders. The

ceremony of investiture had no other meaning but that of showing that

the true owner re-entered into the exercise of his right, and every act

of homage for land was connected with an act of feoffment which, though

obligatory, first by custom and then by law, was nevertheless no mere

pageant, because it gave rise to very serious claims of service and

casual rights in the shape of wardship, marriage, and the like. The king

who wanted to be everybody's heir was much too consequent an exponent of

the feudal doctrine, and his successors were forced into a gentler

practice. But the fiction of higher ownership was lurking behind all

these contentions of the upper class quite as much as behind the

conveyancing ceremonies of the manorial court. And in both cases the

fiction stretched its standard of uniformity over very different

elements: allodial ownership was modified by a subjection to the

'dominium directum,' on the one hand; leases and precarious occupation

were crystalised into tenure, on the other. It is not my object to trace

the parallel of free and peasant holding in its details, but I lay

stress on the principle that the privileged tenure involved the notion

of a personal concession quite as much as did the base tenure, and that

this fundamental notion made itself felt both in conveyancing

formalities and in practical claims.

[The rod and the festuca.]