is the lord's land:--the lord must answer for the geld that is due from
it. Not that the burden falls ultimately on the lord. On the contrary,
it is not unlikely that he makes his villeins pay the geld that is due
from his demesne land; it is one of their services that they must
'defend their lord's inland' against the geld. But over against the
state the lord represents as well the land of his villeins as his own
demesne land. From the great levy of 1084 the demesne lands of the
barons had been exempted[176], but no doubt they had been responsible
for the tax assessed on the lands held by their _villani_. We much doubt
whether the collectors of the geld went round to the cottages of the
villeins and demanded here six pence and there four pence; they
presented themselves at the lord's hall and asked for a large sum. Nay,
we believe that very often a perfectly free tenant paid his geld to his
lord, or through his lord[177]. Hence arrangements by which some hides
were made to acquit other hides; such, for example, was the arrangement
at Tewkesbury; there were fifty hides which had to acquit the whole
ninety-five hides from all geld and royal service[178]. And then it
might be that the lord, enjoying a special privilege, was entitled to
take the geld from his tenants and yet paid no geld to the king; thus
did the canons of St. Petroc in Cornwall[179] and the monks of St.
Edmund in Suffolk[180]. But as regards lands occupied by villeins, the
king, so it seems to us, looks for his geld to the lord and he does not
look behind the lord. This is no detail of a fiscal system. A potent
force has thus been set in motion. He who pays for land,--it is but fair
that he should be considered the owner of that land. We have a hint of
this principle in a law of Cnut:--'He who has "defended" land with the
witness of the shire, is to enjoy it without question during his life
and on his death may give or sell it to whom he pleases[181].' We have
another hint of this principle in a story told by Heming, the monk of
Worcester:--in Cnut's time but four days of grace were given to the
landowner for the payment of the geld; when these had elapsed, anyone
who paid the geld might have the land[182]. It is a principle which, if
it is applied to the case of lord and villein, will attribute the
ownership of the land to the lord and not to the villein.
[The villein's services.]
And then we would ask: What services do the villeins render? A deep
silence answers us, and as will hereafter be shown, there are many
reasons why we should not import the information given us by the
monastic cartularies, even such early cartularies as the Black Book of
Peterborough, into the days of the Confessor. No doubt the villeins
usually do some labour upon the lord's demesne lands. In particular they
help to plough it. A manor, we can see, is generally so arranged that
the ratio borne by the demesne oxen to the demesne land will be smaller
than that borne by the villeins' oxen to the villeins' land. Thus, to
give one example out of a hundred, in a Somersetshire manor the lord has
four hides and three teams, the villeins have two hides and three
teams[183]. But then the lord gets some help in his agriculture from
those who are undoubtedly free tenants. The teams of the free tenants
are often covered by the same phrase that covers the teams of the
villeins[184]. Radknights who are _liberi homines_ plough and harrow at
the lord's court[185]. The very few entries which tell us of the labour
of the villeins are quite insufficient to condemn the whole class to
unlimited, or even to very heavy work. On a manor in Herefordshire there
are twelve bordiers who work one day in the week[186]. On the enormous
manor of Leominster there are 238 _villani_ and 85 _bordarii_. The
_villani_ plough and sow with their own seed 140 acres of their lord's
land and they pay 11 pounds and 52 pence[187]. On the manor of Marcle,
which also is in Herefordshire, there are 36 _villani_ and 10 _bordarii_
with 40 teams. These _villani_ plough and sow with their own seed 80
acres of wheat and 71 of oats[188]. At Kingston, yet another manor in
the same county, 'the _villani_ who dwelt there in King Edward's day
carried venison to Hereford and did no other service, so says the
shire[189].' On one Worcestershire manor of Westminster Abbey 10
villeins and 10 bordiers with 6 teams plough 6 acres and sow them with
their own seed; on another 8 villeins and 6 bordiers with 6 teams do the
like by 4 acres[190]. This is light work. Casually we are told of
burgesses living at Tamworth who have to work like the other villeins of
the manor of Drayton to which they are attached[191], and we are told of
men on a royal manor who do such works for the king as the reeve may
command[192]; but, curiously enough, it is not of any villeins but of
the Bishop of Worcester's riding men (_radmanni_) that it is written
'they do whatever is commanded them[193].'
[Money rents paid by villeins.]
With our thirteenth century cartularies before us, we might easily
underrate the amount of money that was already being paid as the rent of
land at the date of the Conquest. In several counties we come across
small groups of _censarii_, _censores_, _gablatores_ who pay for their
land in money, of _cervisarii_ and _mellitarii_ who bring beer and
honey. Renders in kind, in herrings, eels, salmon are not uncommon, and
sometimes they are 'appreciated,' valued in terms of money. The pannage
pig or the grass swine, which the villeins give in return for mast and
herbage, is often mentioned. Throughout Sussex it seems to be the custom
that the lord should have 'for herbage' one pig from every villein who
has seven pigs[194]. But money will be taken instead of swine, oxen or
fish[195]. The _gersuma_, the _tailla_, the theoretically free gifts of
the tenants, are sums of money. But often enough the _villanus_ is
paying a substantial money rent. We have seen how at Leominster villeins
plough and sow 140 acres for their lord and pay a rent of more than
£11[196]. At Lewisham in Kent the Abbot of Gand has a manor valued at
£30; of this £2 is due to the profits of the port while two mills with
'the gafol of the rustics' bring in £8. 12_s._[197] Such entries as the
following are not uncommon--there is one villein rendering
30_d._[198]--there is one villein rendering 10_s._[199]--46 _cotarii_
with one hide render 30 shillings a year[200]--the villeins give 13_s._
4_d._ by way of _consuetudo_[201]. No doubt it would be somewhat rare to
find a villein discharging all his dues in money--this is suggested when
we are told how on the land of St. Augustin one Wadard holds a large
piece 'de terra villanorum' and yet renders no service to the abbot save
30_s._ a year[202]. At least in one instance the villeins seem to be
holding the manor in farm, that is to say, they are farming the demesne
land and paying a rent in money or in provender[203]. We dare not
represent the stream of economic history as flowing uninterruptedly from
a system of labour services to a system of rents. We must remember that
in the Conqueror's reign the lord very often had numerous serfs whose
whole time was given to the cultivation of his demesne. In the
south-western counties he will often have two, three or more serfs for
every team that he has on his demesne, and, while this is so, we can not
safely say that his husbandry requires that the villeins should be
labouring on his land for three or four days in every week.
[The English for _villanus_.]
As a last question we may ask: What was the English for _villanus_? It
is a foreign word, one of those words which came in with the Conqueror.
Surely, we may argue, there must have been some English equivalent for
it. Yet we have the greatest difficulty in finding the proper term. True
that in the Quadripartitus and the Leges _villanus_ generally represents
_ceorl_; _ceorl_ when it is not rendered by _villanus_ is left
untranslated in some such form as _cyrliscus homo_. But then _ceorl_
must be a wider word than the _villanus_ of Domesday Book, for it has
to cover all the non-noble free men; it must comprehend the numerous
_sochemanni_ and _liberi homines_ of northern and eastern England. This
in itself is not a little remarkable; it makes us suspect that some of
the lines drawn by Domesday Book are by no means very old; they can not
be drawn by any of those terms that have been current in the Anglo-Saxon
dooms or which still are current in the text-books that lawyers are
compiling. To suppose that _villanus_ is equivalent to _gebúr_ is
impossible; we have the best warrant for saying that the Latin for
_gebúr_ is not _villanus_ but _colibertus_[204]. Nor can we hold that
the _villanus_ is a _geneat_. In the last days of the old English
kingdom the _geneat_, the 'companion,' the 'fellow,' appears as a
horseman who rides on his lord's errands; we must seek him among the
_radmanni_ and _rachenistres_ and _drengi_ of Domesday Book[205]. We
shall venture the guess that when the Norman clerks wrote down
_villanus_, the English jurors had said _túnesman_. As a matter of
etymology the two words answer to each other well enough; the _villa_ is
the _tún_, and the men of the _villa_ are the men of the _tún_. In the
enlarged Latin version of the laws of Cnut, known as Instituta Cnuti,
there is an important remark:--tithes are to be paid both from the lands
of the thegn and from the lands of the villeins--'tam de dominio
liberalis hominis, id est þegenes, quam de terra villanorum, id est
tuumannes (_corr._ tunmannes)[206].' Then in a collection of dooms known
as the Northumbrian Priests' Law there is a clause which orders the
payment of Peter's pence. If a king's thegn or landlord (_landrica_)
withholds his penny, he must pay ten half-marks, half to Christ, half to
the king; but if a _túnesman_ withholds it, then let the landlord pay it
and take an ox from the man[207]. A very valuable passage this is. It
shows us how the lord is becoming responsible for the man's taxes: if
the tenant will not pay them, the lord must. It is then in connexion
with this responsibility of the lord that the term _townsman_ meets us,
and, if we mistake not, it is the lord's responsibility for geld that is
the chief agent in the definition of the class of _villani_. The
pressure of taxation, civil and ecclesiastical, has been forming new
social strata, and a new word, in itself a vague word, is making its way
into the vocabulary of the law[208].
[Summary.]
The class of villeins may well be heterogeneous. It may well contain (so
we think) men who, or whose ancestors, have owned the land under a
political supremacy, not easily to be distinguished from landlordship,
that belongs to the king; and, on the other hand, it may well contain
those who have never in themselves or their predecessors been other than
the tenants of another man's soil. In some counties on the Welsh march
there are groups of _hospites_ who in fact or theory are colonists whom
the lord has invited onto his land[209]; but this word, very common in
France, is not common in England. Our record is not concerned to
describe the nature or the origin of the villein's tenure; it is in
quest of geld and of the persons who ought to be charged with geld, and
so it matters not whether the lord has let land to the villein or has
acquired rights over land of which the villein was once the owner.
Therefore we lay down no broad principle about the rights of the
villein, but we have suggested that taken in the mass the _villani_ of
the Confessor's reign were far more 'law-worthy' than were the _villani_
of the thirteenth century. We can not treat either the legal or the
economic history of our peasantry as a continuous whole; it is divided
into two parts by the red thread of the Norman Conquest. That is a
catastrophe. William might do his best to make it as little of a
catastrophe as was possible, to insist that each French lord should have
precisely the same rights that had been enjoyed by his English
_antecessor_; it may even be that he endeavoured to assure to those who
were becoming _villani_ the rights that they had enjoyed under King
Edward[210]. Such a task, if attempted, was impossible. We hear indeed
that the English 'redeemed their lands,' but probably this refers only
to those English lords, those thegns or the like, who were fortunate
enough to find that a ransom would be accepted[211]. We have no warrant
for thinking that the peasants, the common 'townsmen,' obtained from
the king any covenanted mercies. They were handed over to new lords, who
were very free in fact, if not in theory, to get out of them all that
could be got without gross cruelty.
[Depression of the villeins.]
We are not left to speculate about this matter. In after days those who
were likely to hold a true tradition, the great financier of the
twelfth, the great lawyer of the thirteenth century, believed that there
had been a catastrophe. As a result of the Conquest, the peasants, at
all events some of the peasants, had fallen from their free estate; free
men, holding freely, they had been compelled to do unfree services[212].
But if we need not rely upon speculation, neither need we rely upon
tradition. Domesday Book is full of evidence that the tillers of the
soil are being depressed.
[The Normans and the peasants.]
Here we may read of a free man with half a hide who has now been made
one of the villeins[213], there of the holder of a small manor who now
cultivates it as the farmer of a French lord _graviter et
miserabiliter_[214], and there of a sokeman who has lost his land for
not paying geld, though none was due[215]; while the great Richard of
Tonbridge has condescended to abstract a virgate from a villein or a
villein from a virgate[216]. But, again, it is not on a few cases in
which our record states that some man has suffered an injustice that we
would rely. Rather we notice what it treats as a quite common event.
Free men are being 'added to' manors to which they did not belong. Thus
in Suffolk a number of free men have been added to the manor of
Montfort; they pay no 'custom' to it before the Conquest, but now they
pay £15; Ælfric who was reeve under Roger Bigot set them this
custom[217]. Hard by them were men who used to pay 20 shillings, but
this same Ælfric raised their rent to 100 shillings[218]. 'A free man
held this land and could sell it, but Waleran father of John has added
him to this manor[219]':--Entries of this kind are common. The utmost
rents are being exacted from the farmers:--this manor was let for three
years at a rent of £12 and a yearly gift of an ounce of gold, but all
the farmers who took it were ruined[220]--that manor was let for £3.
15_s_. but the men were thereby ruined and now it is valued at only
45_s._[221] About these matters French and English can not agree:--this
manor renders £70 by weight, but the English value it at only £60 by
tale[222]--the English fix the value at £80, but the French at
£100[223]--Frenchmen and Englishmen agree that it is worth £50, but
Richard let it to an Englishman for £60, who thereby lost £10 a year, at
the very least[224]. 'It can not pay,' 'it can hardly pay,' 'it could
not stand' the rent, such are the phrases that we hear. If the lord gets
the most out of the farmer to whom he has leased the manor, we may be
sure that the farmer is making the most out of the villeins.
[Depression of the sokemen.]
But the most convincing proof of the depression of the peasantry comes
to us from Cambridgeshire. The rural population of that county as it
existed in 1086 has been classified thus[225]:--
sochemanni 213
villani 1902
bordarii 1428
cotarii 736
servi 548
But we also learn that the Cambridgeshire of the Confessor's day had
contained at the very least 900 instead of 200 sokemen[226]. This is an
enormous and a significant change. Let us look at a single village. In
Meldreth there is a manor; it is now a manor of the most ordinary kind;
it is rated at 3 hides and 1 virgate, but contains 5 team-lands; in
demesne are half a hide and one team, and 15 _bordarii_ and 3 _cotarii_
have 4 teams, and there is one _servus_. But before the Conquest this
land was held by 15 sokemen; 10 of them were under the soke of the Abbey
of Ely and held 2 hides and half a virgate; the other 5 held 1 hide and
half a virgate and were the men of Earl Ælfgar[227]. What has become of
these fifteen sokemen? They are now represented by fifteen bordiers and
five cottiers; and the demesne land of the manor is a new thing. The
sokemen have fallen, and their fall has brought with it the
consolidation of manorial husbandry and seignorial power. At Orwell Earl
Roger has now a small estate; a third of it is in demesne, while the
residue is held by 2 villeins and 3 bordiers, and there is a serf there.
This land had belonged to six sokemen, and those six had been under no
less than five different lords; two belonged to Edith the Fair, one to
Archbishop Stigand, one to Robert Wimarc's son, one to the king, and one
to Earl Ælfgar[228]. Displacements such as this we may see in village
after village. No one can read the survey of Cambridgeshire without
seeing that the freer sorts of the peasantry have been thrust out, or
rather thrust down.
[Further illustrations of depression.]
Evidence so cogent as this we shall hardly find in any part of the
record save that which relates to Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire. But
great movements of the kind that we are examining will hardly confine
themselves within the boundaries of a county. A little variation in the
formula which tells us who held the land in 1066 may hide from us the
true state of the case. We can not expect that men will be very accurate
in stating the legal relationships that existed twenty years ago. Since
the day when King Edward was alive and dead many things have happened,
many new words and new forms of thought have become familiar. But taking
the verdicts as we find them, there is still no lack of evidence. In
Essex we may see the _liberi homines_ disappearing[229]. But we need not
look only to the eastern counties. At Bromley, in Surrey, Bishop Odo has
a manor of 32 hides, 4 of which had belonged to 'free men' who could go
where they pleased, but now there are only villeins, cottiers, and
serfs[230]. We turn the page and find Odo holding 10 hides which had
belonged to 'the alodiaries of the vill[231].' In Kent Hugh de Port is
holding land that was held by 6 free men who could go whither they
would; there are now 6 villeins and 14 bordiers there, with one team
between them[232]. Students of Domesday were too apt to treat the
_antecessores_ of the Norman lords as being in all cases lords of
manors. Lords of manors, or rather holders of manors, they often were,
but as we shall see more fully hereafter, when we are examining the term
_manerium_, such phrases are likely to deceive us. Often enough they
were very small people with very little land. For example these six free
men whom Hugh de Port represents had only two and a half team-lands. We
pass by a few pages and find Hugh de Montfort with a holding which
comprises but one team-land and a half; he has 4 villeins and 2 bordiers
there. His _antecessores_ were three free men, who could go whither they
would[233]. They had need for but 12 oxen; they had no more land than
they could easily till, at all events with the help of two or three
cottagers or slaves. To all appearance they were no better than
peasants. They or their sons may still be tilling the land as Hugh's
villeins. When we look for such instances we very easily find them. The
case is not altered by the fact that the term 'manor' is given to the
holdings of these _antecessores_. In Sussex an under-tenant of Earl
Roger has an estate with four villeins upon it. His _antecessores_ were
two free men who held the land as two manors. And how much land was
there to be divided between the two? There was one team-land. Such
holders of _maneria_ were tillers of the soil, peasants, at best
yeomen[234]. If they were of thegnly rank, this again does not alter the
case. When in the survey of Dorset we read how four thegns held two
team-lands, how six thegns held two team-lands, eight thegns two
team-lands, nine thegns four team-lands, eleven thegns four
team-lands[235], we can not of course be certain that each of these
groups of co-tenants had but one holding; but thegnly rank is inherited,
and if a thegn will have nine or ten sons there will soon be tillers of
the soil with the wergild of twelve hundred shillings. Now if these
things are being done in the middling strata of society, if the sokemen
are being suppressed or depressed in Cambridgeshire, the alodiaries in
Sussex, what is likely to be the fate of the poor? They will have to
till their lord's demesne _graviter et miserabiliter_. He can afford to
dispense with serfs, for he has villeins.
[The peasants on the royal demesne.]
A last argument must be added. What we see in the thirteenth century of
the ancient demesne of the crown[236] might lead us to expect that in
Domesday Book 'the manors of St. Edward' would stand out in bold
relief. Instead of a population mainly consisting of villeins shall we
not find upon them large numbers of sokemen, the ancestors of the men
who in after days will be protected by the little writ of right and the
_Monstraverunt_? Nothing of the kind. The royal manor differs in no such
mode as this from any other manor. If it lies in a county in which other
manors have sokemen, then it may or may not have sokemen. If it lies in
a county in which other manors have no sokemen, it will have none.
Cambridgeshire is a county in which there are some, and have been many,
sokemen; there is hardly a sokeman upon the ancient demesne. In after
days the men of Chesterton, for example, will have all the peculiar
rights attributed by lawyers to the sokemen of St. Edward. But St.
Edward, if we trust Domesday Book, had never a sokeman there; he had two
villeins and a number of bordiers and cottiers[237]. It seems fairly
clear that from an early time, if not from the first days of the
Conquest onwards, the king was the best of landlords. The tenants of
those manors that were conceived as annexed to the crown, those tenants
one and all, save the class of slaves which was disappearing, got a
better, a more regular justice than that which the villeins of other
lords could hope for. It was the king's justice, and therefore--for
the king's public and private capacities were hardly to be distinguished
--it was public justice, and so became formal justice, defined by writs,
administered in the last resort by the highest court, the ablest
lawyers. And so sokemen disappear from private manors. Some of them as
tenants in free socage may maintain their position; many fall down into
the class of tenants in villeinage. On the ancient demesne the sokemen
multiply; they appear where Domesday knew them not; for those who are
protected by royal justice can hardly (now that villeinage implies a
precarious tenure) be called villeins, they must be 'villein sokemen' at
the least. Whether or no we trust the tradition which ascribes to the
Conqueror a law in favour of the tillers of the soil, we can hardly
doubt that the _villani_ and _bordarii_ whom Domesday Book shows us on
the royal manors are treated as having legal rights in their holdings.
And if this be true of them, it should be true of their peers upon other
manors. Yes, it should be true; the manorial courts that are arising
should do impartial justice even between lord and villeins; but who is
to make it true?
FOOTNOTES:
[101] D. B. i. 38, Coseham: '8 burs i. coliberti.' Ib. 38 b Dene:
'et coliberti [vel bures _interlined_].'
[102] D. B. i. 65, Wintreburne.
[103] D. B. i. 75, Bridetone et Bere.
[104] D. B. i. 239 b, Etone.
[105] Guérard, Cartulaire de L'Abbaye de S. Père de Chartres, vol.
i. p. xlii.
[106] The position of the _coliberti_ is discussed by Guérard, _loc.
cit._., and by Lamprecht, Geschichte des Französischen
Wirthschaftslebens (in Schmoller's Forschungen, Bd i.), p. 81.
Guérard says, 'Les coliberts peuvent se placer à peu près
indifferemment ou au dernier des hommes libres, ou à la tête
des hommes engagés dans les liens de la servitude.'
[107] Schmid, App. III. C. 4.
[108] Rectitudines, c. 3.
[109] Occasionally the _coliberti_ of D. B. are put before us as
paying rents in money or in kind. Thus D. B. i. 38, Hants: 'In
Coseham sunt 4 hidae quae pertinent huic manerio ubi T. R. E.
erant 8 burs i. coliberti cum 4 carucis reddentes 50 sol. 8
den. minus.' D. B. i. 179 b, Heref.: 'Villani dant de
consuetudine 13 sol. et 4 den. et [sex] coliberti reddunt 3
sextarios frumenti et ordei et 2 oves et dimidiam cum agnis et
2 den. et unum obolum.' D. B. i. 165: 'et in Glouucestre 1
burgensis reddens 5 den. et 2 coliberti reddentes 34 den.' In
a charter coming from Bishop Denewulf (K. 1079) we read of
three wite-theówmen who were boor-born and three who were
theów-born.
[110] Ellis, Introduction, ii. 511-14.
[111] For examples see D. B. iv. 211 and the following pages.
[112] Leg. Hen. 81, § 3: 'Quidam villani qui sunt eiusmodi
leierwitam et blodwitam et huiusmodi minora forisfacta emerunt
a dominis suis, vel quomodo meruerunt de suis et in suos,
quorum fletgefoth vel overseunessa est 30 den.; cothseti 15
den.; servi 6 den.'
[113] D. B. i. 71, Haseberie: '5 villani et 13 coscez et 2 cotarii.'
Ibid. 80 b: Chinestanestone: '18 villani et 14 coscez et 4
cotarii.'