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Villainage in England

by Paul Vinogradoff

Second Essay: The Manor and the Village Community

Chapter 1

The Open Field System and the Holdings

My first essay has been devoted to the peasantry of feudal England in its social character. We have had to examine its classes or divisions in their relation to freedom, personal slavery, and praedial serfage. The land system was touched upon only so far as it influenced such classification, or was influenced by it.     But no correct estimate of the social standing of the peasantry can stop here, or content itself with legal or administrative definitions. In no degree of society do men stand isolated, and a description of individual status alone would be thoroughly incomplete. Men stand arranged in groups for economical and political cooperation, and these groups are composed according to the laws of the division and hierarchical organisation of labour, composed, that is, of heterogeneous elements, of members who have to fulfil different functions, and to occupy higher and lower positions. The normal group which forms as it were the constitutive cell of English mediaeval society is the manor, and we must try to make out in what way it was organised, and how it did its work in the thirteenth century, at the time of fully developed feudalism.     The structure of the ordinary manor is always the same. Under the headship of the lord we find two layers of population the villains and the freeholders; and the territory occupied divides itself accordingly into demesne land (1*) and 'tributary land' (if I may use that phrase) of two different classes. The cultivation of the demesne depends to a certain extent on the work supplied by the tenants of the tributary land. Rents are collected, labour supervised, and all kinds of administrative business transacted, by a set of manorial officers or servants. The entire population is grouped into a village community which centres round the manorial court or halimote, which is both council and tribunal. My investigation will necessarily conform to this typical arrangement. The holding of the peasant is the natural starting-point: it will give us the clue to the whole agrarian system. Next may come that part of the territory which is not occupied in severalty, but used in common. The agrarian obligations with regard to the lord and the cultivation of the demesne land may be taken up afterwards. The position of privileged people, either servants or freeholders, must be discussed by itself, as an exceptional case. And, lastly, the question will have to be put to what extent were all these elements welded together in the village community, and under the sway of the manorial court?     The chief features of the field-system which was in operation in England during the middle ages have been sufficiently cleared up by modern scholars, especially by Nasse, Thorold Rogers, and Seebohm, and there is no need for dwelling at length on the subject. Everybody knows that the arable of an English village was commonly cultivated under a three years' rotation of crops;(2*) a two field system is also found very often;(3*) there are some instances of more complex arrangements,(4*) but they are very rare, and appear late-not earlier than the fourteenth century. Walter of Henley's treatise on farming, which appears to belong to the first half of the thirteenth, mentions only the first two systems, and its estimate of the plough-land is based on them. In the case of a three field rotation a hundred and eighty acres are reckoned to the plough; a hundred and sixty in a system of two courses.(5*) We find the same estimate in the chapters on husbandry and management of an estate which are inserted in the law-book known as Fleta.(6*) The strips in the fields belonging to the several tenants were divided by narrow balks of turf, and when the field lay fallow, or after the harvest had been removed, the entire field was turned into a common pasture for the use of the village cattle. The whole area was protected by an inclosure while it was under crop.     A curious deviation is apparent in the following instance, taken from the cartulary of Malmesbury. The Abbey makes an exchange with a neighbour who has rights of common on some of the convent's land, and therefore does not allow of its being cultivated and inclosed (inhoc facere). In return for certain concessions on the part of the Abbey, this neighbouring owner agrees that fallow pasture should be turned into arable on the condition that after the harvest it should return to common use, as well as the land not actually under seed. Lastly comes a provision about the villains of the person entering into agreement with the Abbey: if they do not want to conform to the new arrangement of cultivation, they will be admitted to their strips for the purpose of ploughing up or using the fallow.(7*) The case is interesting in two respects: it shows the intimate connexion between the construction of the inclosure (inhoc) and the raising of the crop; the special paragraph about the villains gives us to understand that something more than the usual rotation of crops was meant: the 'inhokare' appears in opposition either to the ordinary ploughing up of the fallow, or in a general sense to its use for pasture; it seems to indicate extra-cultivation of such land as ought to have remained uncultivated. These considerations are borne out by other documents. In a trial of Edward I's time the 'inheche' is explained in as many words as the ploughing up of fallow for a crop of wheat, oats, or barley.(8*) The Gloucester Survey, in describing one of the manors belonging to the Abbey, arranges its land into four fields (campi), each consisting of several parts: the first field is said to contain 174 acres, the second 63, the third 109, the fourth 69 acres. Two-thirds of the whole are subjected to the usual modes of cultivation under a three-course system, and one-third remains for pasture. But out of this last third, 40 acres of the first field (of 174 acres) get inclosed and used for crop in one year, and 20 acres of the second in another.(9*) In this way the ordinary three-course alternation becomes somewhat more complicated, and it will be hardly too bold a guess to suppose that such extra-cultivation implied some manuring of such patches as were deprived of their usual rest once in three years. In contradiction to the customary arrangement which did not require any special manuring except that which was incident to the use of arable as pasture for the cattle after the harvest, we find plots set apart for more intense cultivation,(10*) and it is to be noticed that the reckoning in connexion with them does not start from the division according to three parts, but supposes a separate classification in two sections.     Another fact worth noticing in the Gloucester instance is the irregular distribution of acres in the 'fields,' and the division of the entire arable into four unequal parts. The husbandry is conducted on the three-course system, and still four fields are mentioned, and there is no simple relation between the number of acres which they respectively contain (174, 63, 109, 69). It seems obvious that the expression 'field' (campus) is used here not in the ordinary sense suggested by such records as spring-field, winter-field, and the like, but in reference to the topography of the district. The whole territory under cultivation was divided into a number of squares or furlongs which lay round the village in four large groups. The alternation of crops distributed the same area into three according to a mode not described by the Survey, and it looks proVable at first glance that each of the 'fields' (campi) contained elements of all three courses. The supposition becomes a certainty, if we reflect that it gives the only possible explanation of the way in which the twofold alternation of the 'inhoc' is made to fit with the threefold rotation of crops: every year some of the land in each campus had to remain in fallow, and could be inclosed or taken under 'inhoc.' Had the campus as a whole been reserved for one of the three courses, there would have been room for the 'inhoc' only every three years.     I have gone into some details in connexion with this instance because it presents a deviation from ordinary rules, and even a deviation from the usual phraseology, and it is probable that the exceptional use of words depended on the exceptional process of farming. A new species of arable -- the manured plot under 'inhoc' -- came into use, and naturally disturbed the plain arrangement of the old-fashioned three courses; the lands had to be grouped anew into four sections which went under the accustomed designation of 'fields,' although they did not fit in with the 'three fields' of the old system. In most cases, however, our records use the word 'field' (campus) in that very sense of land under one of the 'courses,' which is out of the question in the case taken from the Gloucester Cartulary. The common use is especially clear when the documents want to describe the holding of a person, and mention the number of acres in each 'field.' The Abbot of Malmesbury, e.g., enfeoffs one Robert with a virgate formerly held 'in the fields' by A., twenty-one acres in one field and twenty-one in another.(11*) The charter does not contain any description of campi in the territorial sense, and it is evident that the expression 'in the fields' is meant to indicate a customary and well-known husbandry arrangement. The same meaning must be put on sentences like the following: -- R.A. holds a virgate consisting of forty-two acres in both fields.(12*) The question may be raised whether we have to look for 'both fields' in the winter and springfield of the three courses rotation, or in the arable and fallow of the two courses. In the first of these eventualities, the third reserved for pasture and rest would be left out of the reckoning; it would be treated as an appurtenance of the land that was in cultivation. Cases in which the portions in the several fields are unequal seem to point to the second sense.(13*) It was impossible to divide the whole territory under cultivation like a piece of paper: conformation of the soil had, of course, much to do with the shape of the furlongs and their distribution, and the courses of the husbandry could not impress themselves on it without some inequalities and stray remnants. It may happen for this reason that a man holds sixteen acres in one field and fourteen in the other. There is almost always, however, a certain correspondence between the number of acres in each field; instances of very great disparity are rare, and suppose some local and special reasons which we cannot trace. Such disparities seem to point, however, to a rotation according to two courses, because the fallow of the three courses could have been left out of the reckoning only if all the parts in the fields were equal.(14*) I think that a careful inspection of the surveys from this point of view may lead to the conclusion that the two courses rotation was very extensively spread in England in the thirteenth century.     A most important feature of the mediaeval system of tillage was its compulsory character. The several tenants, even when freeholders, could not manage their plots at their own choice.(15*) The entire soil of the township formed one whole in this respect, and was subjected to the management of the entire village. The superior right of the community found expression in the fact that the fields were open to common use as pasture after the harvest, as well as in the regulation of the modes of farming and order of tillage by the township. Even the lord himself had to conform to the customs and rules set up by the community, and attempts to break through them, although they become frequent enough at the close of the thirteenth century, and especially in the fourteenth, are met by a resistance which sometimes actually leads to litigation.(16*) The freeholders alone have access to the courts, but in practice the entire body of the tenantry is equally concerned. The passage towards more efficient modes of cultivation was very much obstructed by these customary rules as to rotation of crops, which flow not from the will and interest of single owners, but from the decision of communities.     The several plots and holdings do not lie in compact I patches, but are formed of strips intermixed with each other. The so-called open-field system has been treated so exhaustively and with such admirable clearness by Seebohm, that I need not detain my readers in order to discuss it at length. I shall merely take from the Eynsham Cartulary the general description of the arable of Shifford, Oxon. It consists of several furlongs or areas, more or less rectangular in shape; each furlong divided into a certain number of strips (seliones), mostly half an acre or a rood (quarter acre) in width; some of these strips get shortened, however (seliones curtae), or sharpened (gorae), according to the shape of the country. At right angles with the strips in the fields lie the 'headlands' (capitales), which admit to other strips when there is no special road for the purpose.(17*) When the area under tillage abuts against some obstacles, as against a highway, a river, a neighbouring furlong, the strips are stunted (buttae). Every strip is separated from the next by balks on even ground, and linches on the steep slopes of a hill. The holding of a peasant, free or villain, has been appropriately likened to a bundle of these strips of different shapes, the component parts of which lie intermixed with the elements of other holdings in the different fields of the township. There is e.g. in the Alvingham Cartulary a deed by which John Aysterby grants to the Priory of Alvingham in Lincolnshire his villain Robert and half a bovate of land.(18*) The half-bovate is found to consist of twelve strips west of Alvingham and sixteen strips east of the village; the several plots lie among similar plots owned by the priory and by other peasants. The demesne land of the priory is also situated not in compact areas, but in strips intermixed with those of the tenantry, in the 'communal fields' according to the phraseology of our documents.     Such a distribution of the arable seems odd enough. It led undoubtedly to very great inconvenience in many ways: it was difficult for the owner to look after his property in the several fields, and to move constantly from one place to another for the purposes of cultivation. A thrifty husbandman was more or less dependent for the results of his work on his neighbours, who very likely were not thrifty. The strips were not always measured with exactness,(19*) and our surveys mention curious misunderstandings in this respect: it happens that as much as three acres belonging to a particular person get mislaid somehow and cannot be identified.(20*) It is needless to say that disputes among the neighbours were rendered especially frequent by the rough way of dividing the strips, and by the cutting up of the holdings into narrow strips involving a very long line of boundary. And still the open-field system, with the intermixed strips, is quite a prevalent feature of mediaeval husbandry all over Europe. It covers the whole area occupied by the village community; it is found in Russia as well as in England.     Before we try to find an explanation for it, I shall call the attention of the reader to the following tale preserved by an ancient survey of Dunstable Priory. I think that the record may suggest the explanation with the more authority as it will proceed from well-established facts and not from suppositions.(21*) The story goes back to the original division of the land belonging to the Wahull manor by the lords de Wahull and de la Lege. The former had to receive two-thirds of the manor and the latter one-third: a note explains this to mean, that one had to take twenty knight-fees and the other ten. The lord de Wahull took all the park in Segheho and the entire demesne farm in 'Bechebury'. As a compensation for the surrender of rights on the part of his fellow parcener, he ordered the wood and pasture called Northwood to be measured, as also the neighbouring wood called Churlwood. He removed all the peasants who lived in these places, and had also the arable of Segheho measured, and it was found that there were eight hides of villain land. Of these eight hides one-fourth was taken, and it was reckoned that this fourth was an equivalent to the one-third of the park and of the demesne farm, which ought by right to have gone to the lord de la Lege. On the basis of this estimation an exchange was effected. In the time of the war (perhaps the rebellion of 1173) the eight hides and other hides in Segheho were encroached upon and appropriated unrighteously by many, and for this reason a general revision of the holdings was undertaken before Walter de Wahull and Hugh de la Lege in full court by six old men; it was made out to which of the hides the several acres belonged. At that time, when all the tenants in Segheho (knights, freeholders, and others) did not know exactly about the land of the village and the tenements, and when each man was contending that his neighbours held unrighteously and more than they ought, all the people decided by common agreement and in the presence of the lords de Wahull and de la Lege, that everybody should surrender his land to be measured anew with the rood by the old men as if the ground had been occupied afresh: every one had to receive his due part on consideration of his rights. At that time R.F. admitted that he and his predecessors had held the area near the castle unrighteously. The men in charge of the distribution divided that area into sixteen strips (buttos), and these were divided as follows: there are eight hides of villain land in Segheho and to each two strips were apportioned.     The narrative is curious in many respects. it illustrates beautifully the extent to which the intermixture of plots was carried, and the inconveniences consequent upon it. Although the land had been measured and divided at the time when the lord de Wahull took the land, everything got into confusion at the time of the civil war, and the disputes originated not in violence from abroad but in encroachments of the village people among themselves: the owners of conterminous strips were constantly quarrelling. A new division became necessary, and it took place under circumstances of great solemnity, as a result of an agreement effected at a great meeting of the tenantry before both lords. The new distribution may stand for all purposes in lieu of the original parcelling of the land on fresh occupation. The mode of treating one of the areas shows that the intermixture of the strips was a direct consequence of the attempt to equalise the portions. instead of putting the whole of this area into one lot, the old men divide it into strips and assign to every great holding, to every hide, two strips of this area. Many inconveniences follow for some of the owners, e.g. for the church which, it is complained, cannot put its plot to any use on account of its lying far away, and in intermixture with other people's land. But the guiding principle of equal apportionment has found a suitable expression.     We may turn now from the analysis of this case to general considerations. The important point in the instance quoted was, that the assignment of scattered strips to every holding depended on the wish to equalise the shares of the tenants. I think it may be shown that the treatment adopted in Segheho was the most natural, and therefore the most widely-spread one. To begin with, what other form of allotment appears more natural in a crude state of society? To employ a simile which I have used already, the territory of the township is not like a homogeneous sheet of paper out of which you may cut lots of every desirable shape and size: the tilth will present all kinds of accidental features, according to the elevation of the ground, the direction of the watercourses and ways, the quality of the soil, the situation of dwellings, the disposition of wood and pasture-ground, etc. The whole must needs be dismembered into component parts, into smaller areas or furlongs, each stretching over land of one and the same condition, and separated from land of different quality and situation. Over the irregular squares of this rough chess-board a more or less entangled network of rights and interests must be extended. There seem to be only two ways of doing it: if you want the holding to lie in one compact patch you will have to make a very complicated reckoning of all the many circumstances which influence husbandry, will have to find some numerical expression for fertility, accessibility, and the like; or else you may simply give every householder a share in every one of the component areas, and subject him in this way to all the advantages and drawbacks which bear upon his neighbours. If the ground cannot be made to fit the system of allotment, the system must conform itself to the ground. There can be no question that the second way of escaping from the difficulty is much the easier one, and very suitable to the practice of communities in an early stage of development. This second way leads necessarily to a scattering and an intermixture of strips. The explanation is wide enough to meet the requirements of cases placed in entirely different local surroundings and historical connexions; the tendency towards an equalising of the shares of the tenantry is equally noticeable in England and in Russia, in the far west and in the far east of Europe. In Russia we need not even go into history to find it operating in the way described; the practice is alive even now.     This intermixture of strips in the open fields is also characteristic in another way: it manifests the working of a principle which became obliterated in the course of history, but had to play a very important part originally. It was a system primarily intended for the purpose of equalising shares, and it considered every man's rights and property as interwoven with other people's rights and property: it was therefore a system particularly adapted to bring home the superior right of the community as a whole, and the inferior, derivative character of individual rights. The most complete inference from such a general conception would be to treat individual occupation of the land as a shifting ownership, to redistribute the land among the members of the community from time to time, according to some system of lot or rotation. The western village community does not go so far, as a rule, in regard to the arable, at least in the time to which our records belong. But even in the west, and particularly in England, traces of shifting ownership, 'shifting severalty,' may be found as scattered survivals of a condition which, if not general, was certainly much more widely spread in earlier times.(22*) The arable is sometimes treated as meadows constantly are: every householder's lot is only an 'ideal' one, and may be assigned one year in one place, and next year in another. The stubborn existence of intermixed ownership, even as described by feudal and later records, is in itself a strong testimony to the communal character of early property. The strips of the several holders were not divided by hedges or inclosures, and a good part of the time, after harvest and before seed, individual rights retreated before common use; every individualising treatment of the soil was excluded by the compulsory rotation of crops and the fact that every share consisted of a number of narrow strips wedged in among other people's shares. The husbandry could not be very energetic and lucrative under such pressure, and a powerful consideration which kept the system working, against convenience and interest, was its equalising and as it were communal tendency. I lay stress on the fact: if the open-field system with its intermixture had been merely a reflection of the original allotment, it would have certainly lost its regularity very soon. People could not be blind to its drawbacks from the point of view of individual farming; and if the single strips had become private property as soon as they ceased to be shifting, exchanges, if not sales, would have greatly destroyed the inconvenient network. The lord had no interest to prevent such exchanges, which could manifestly lead to an improvement of husbandry,. and in regard to his own strips, he must have perceived soon enough that it would be better to have them in one compact mass than scattered about in all the fields. And still the open-field intermixture holds its ground all through the middle ages, and we find its survivals far into modern times. This can only mean, that even when the shifting, 'ideal,' share in the land of the community had given way to the permanent ownership by each member of certain particular scattered strips, this permanent ownership did by no means amount to private property in the Roman or in the modern sense. The communal principle with its equalising tendency remained still as the efficient force regulating the whole, and strong enough to subject even the lord and the freeholders to its customary influence. By saying this I do not mean to maintain, of course, that private property was not existent, that it was not breaking through the communal system, and acting as a dissolvent of it. I shall have to show by-and-by in what ways this process was effected. But the fact remains, that the system which prevailed upon the whole during the middle ages appears directly connected in its most important features with ideas of communal ownership and equalised individual rights.     These ideas are carried out in a very rough way in the mediaeval arrangement of the holding, which is more complicated in England than on the continent. According to a very common mode of reckoning, the hide contains four virgates, every virgate two bovates, and every bovate fifteen acres. The bovate (oxgang) shows by its very name that not only the land is taken into account, but the oxen employed in its tillage, and the records explain the hide or carucate (23*) to be the land of the eight-oxen plough, that is so much land as may be cultivated by a plough drawn by eight oxen. The virgate, or yard-land, being the fourth part of a hide, corresponds to one-fourth part of the plough, that is, to two oxen, contributed by the holder to the full plough-team; the bovate or oxgang appears as the land of one ox, and the eighth part of the hide.(24*) Such proportions are, as I said, very commonly found in the records, but they are by no means prevalent everywhere. On the possessions of Glastonbury Abbey, for instance, we find virgates of forty acres, and a hide of 160; and the same reckoning appears in manors of Wetherall Priory, Westmoreland,(25*) of the Abbey of Eynsham, Oxfordshire,(26*) and many other places.     The so-called Domesday of St. Paul's reports,(27*) that in Runwell eighty acres used to be reckoned to the hide, but in course of time new land was acquired (for tillage) and measured, and so the hide was raised to 120 acres. Altogether the supposition of an uniform acre-measurement of bovates, virgates, hides, and knights' fees all over England would be entirely misleading. The oxen were an important element in the arrangement, but, of course, not the only one. The formation of the holding had to conform also to the quality of the soil, the density of the population, etc. We find in any case the most varying figures. The knight's fee contained mostly four or five full ploughs or carucates, and still in Lincolnshire sixteen carucates went to the knight's fee.(28*) The carucate was not identical with the hide, but carucate and hide alike had originally meant a unit corresponding to a plough-team. Four virgates were mostly reckoned to the hide, but sometimes six, eight, seven are taken.(29*) The yardlands (virgates) or full lands, as they are sometimes called, because they were considered as the typical peasant holdings, consist of fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty-four, forty, forty-eight, fifty, sixty-two, eighty acres, although thirty is perhaps the figure which appears more often than any other.(30*) Bovates of ten, twelve, and sixteen acres are to be found in the same locality.(31*) We cannot even seize hold of the acre as the one constant unit among these many variables; the size of the acre itself varied from place to place. In this way any attempt to establish a normal reckoning of the holdings will not only seem hazardous, but will actually stand in contradiction with patent facts.     Another circumstance seems of yet greater import: even within the boundaries of one and the same community the equality was an agrarian one and did not amount to a strict correspondence in figures. It was obviously impossible to cut up the land among the holdings in such a way as to make every one contain quite the same number of acres as the rest. In the Cartulary of Ramsey it is stated, that in one of the manors the virgate contains sometimes forty-eight acres and sometimes less.(32*) The Huntingdon Hundred Rolls mentions a locality where some of the half-virgates have got houses on their plots and some have not.(33*) In the Dorsetshire manor of Newton, belonging to Glastonbury, we find a reduction of the duties of one of the virgates because it is a small one.(34*) A curious instance is supplied by the same Glastonbury survey as to the Wiltshire manor of Christian Malford: one of the virgates was formed out of two former virgates, which were found insufficient to support two separate households.(35*)     This last case makes it especially clear that the object was to make the shares on the same pattern in point of quality, and not of mere quantity. It is only to be regretted that manorial surveys, hundred rolls, and other documents of the same kind take too little heed of such variations, and consider the whole arrangement merely in regard to the interests of the landlord. For this purpose a rough quantitative statement was sufficient. They give very sparing indications as to the facts underlying the system of holdings; their aim is to reduce all relations to artificial uniformity in order to make them a fitter basis for the distribution of rents and labour services. But very little attention is required to notice a very great difference between such figures and reality. In most of the cases, when the virgate is described in its component parts, we come across irregularities. Again, each component part is more or less irregular, because instead of the acres and half-acres the real ground presents strips of a very capricious shape. And so we must come to the conclusion, that the hide, the virgate, the bovate, in short every holding mentioned in the surveys, appears primarily as an artificial, administrative, and fiscal unit which corresponds only in a very rough way to the agrarian reality.     This conclusion coincides with the most important fact, that the reckoning of acres in regard to the plough-team is entirely different in the treatises on husbandry from what it is in the manorial records drawn up for the purpose of an assessment of duties and payments. Walter of Henley and Fleta reckon 180 acres to the plough in a three-field system, and 160 in a two-field system. Now these figures are quite exceptional in surveys, whereas 120 acres is most usual without any distinction as to the course of rotation of crops. The relation between the three-field ploughland of 180 acres and the hide of 120 suggests the inference that the official assessment started from the prevalence of the three-field rotation, and disregarded the fallow. But the inference is hardly sufficient to explain the facts of the case. The way towards a solution of the problem is indicated by the terminology of the Ely surveys in the British Museum. These documents very often mention virgates and full yardlands of twelve acres de ware; on the other hand, the Court Rolls from Edward I's time till Elizabeth's, and a survey of the reign of Edward III, show the virgate to consist of twenty-four acres.(36*) The virgate de ware corresponds usually to one-half of the real virgate; I say usually, because in one case it is reckoned to contain eighteen acres in the place of twenty-four mentioned in the rolls and the later survey.(37*) Such 'acre ware' are to be found, though rarely, in other manors besides those of Ely minster.(38*) The contradiction between the documents may be taken at first glance to originate in a difference between the number of acres under actual tillage and the number of acres comprised in the holding: perhaps the first reckoning leaves out the fallow. This explanation has been tried by Mr O. Pell, the present owner of one of the Ely manors he started it in connexion with an etymology which brought together 'ware' and 'warectum': on this assumption twelve acres appeared instead of twenty-four, because the fallow of the two-field system was left out of the reckoning. But this reading of the evidence does not seem satisfactory. It is one-sided at the least. Why should the holding from which the 'warectum' has been left out get its name from the 'warectum'? How is one to explain either from the two-field or from the three-field system the case when eighteen 'acre ware' correspond to twenty-four common acres, or the even more perplexing case when eighteen acres of 'ware' go to the full land and twelve to half-a-full land?(39*) In fact, this last instance does not admit of any explanation from natural conditions, because in the natural course of things twelve will never come to be one-half of eighteen. Thus we are driven to assume that the 'ware' reckoning is an artificial one: as such it could, of course, treat the half-holdings in a different way from the full holdings. Now the only possible basis for an artificial distribution seems to be the assessment of rents and labour. Starting from this assumption we shall have to say that the virgate 'de wara' represents a unit of assessment in which twelve really existing acres have been left out of the reckoning. The assessment stretches only over half the area occupied by the real holding.     The conclusion we have come to is corroborated by the meaning of the word 'wara.' The etymological connexion with warectum is not sound; the meaning may be best brought out by a comparison with those instances where the word is used without a direct reference to the number of acres. We often find the expression 'ad inwaram' in Domesday, and it corresponds to the plain 'ad gildam Regis'. If a manor is said to contain seven hides ad inwaram, it is meant that it pays to the king for seven hides, although there may have been more than seven ploughteams and ploughlands. Another expression of like import is, 'pro sextem hidis se defendit erga Regem.' The Burton Cartulary, the earliest survey after Domesday, employed the word 'wara' in the same sense.(40*) It is not difficult to draw the inference from the above-mentioned facts: the etymological connexion for 'wara' is to be sought in the German word for defence -- 'wehre.' The manor defends itself or answers to the king for seven hides. The expression could get other special significations besides the one discussed: we find it for the poll-tax, by which a freeman defends himself in regard to the state,(41*) and for the weir, which prevents the fish from escaping into the river.(42*)     This origin and use of the term is of considerable. importance, because it shows the artificial character of the system and its close connexion with the taxation by the State. This is a disturbing element which ought to be taken into account by the side of the agrarian influence. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the assessment started from actual facts, from existing agrarian conditions and divisions. The hide, the yardland, the oxgang existed not only in the geld-rolls, but in fact and on the ground. But in geld-rolls they appeared with a regularity they did not possess in real fact; the rolls express all modifications in the modes of farming and all exemptions, not in the shape of any qualification or lighter assessment of single plots, but by way of striking off from the number of these plots, or from the number of acres in them; the object which in modern times would be effected by the registration of a 'rateable value' differing from the 'actual value' was effected in ancient times by the registration of a 'rateable size' differing from the 'actual size'; lastly, the surveys and rolls of assessment do not keep time with the actual facts, and often reflect, by their figures and statistics, the conditions of bygone periods. The hides of the geld or of the 'wara' tend to become constant and rigid: it is difficult for the king's officers to alter their estimates, and the people subjected to the tax try in every way to guard against novelties and encroachments. The real agrarian hide-area is changing at the same time because the population increases, new tenements are formed, and new land is reclaimed.     We find at every step in our records that the assessment and the agrarian conditions do not coincide. If a manor has been given to a convent in free almoign (in liberam et perpetuam eleemosynam), that is, free from all taxes and payments to the State, there is no reason to describe it in units of assessment, and in fact such property often appears in manorial records without any 'hidation' or reckoning of knight-fees.(43*) The Ramsey Cartulary tells us that the land in Hulme was not divided into hides and virgates.(44*) There are holdings, of course, and they are equal, but they are estimated in acres. When the hidation has been laid on the land and taxes are paid from it, the smaller subdivisions are sometimes omitted: the artificial system of taxation does not go very deep into details. Even if most part of the land has been brought under the operation of that system, some plots are left which do not participate in the common payments, and therefore are said to be 'out of the hide'.(45*) Such being the case, there can be no wonder that one of the Ramsey manors answers to the king for ten hides, and to the abbot for eleven and a-half.(46*)     It is to be noted especially, that although in a few cases a difference is made between the division for royal assessment and for the manorial impositions, in the great majority of cases no such difference exists, and the duties in regard to the king and to the lord are reckoned according to the same system of holdings. On the manors of Ely, for instance, the 12 acreware (47*) form the basis of all the reckoning of rents and work. And so if the royal assessment appear with the features of an artificial fiscal arrangement, the same observation has to be extended to the manorial assessment; and thus we reach by another way the same conclusion which we drew from an analysis of the single holding and of its component parts. No doubt the whole stands in close relation to the reality of cultivation and land-holding, but the rigidity, regularity, and correctness of the system present a necessary contrast to the facts of actual life. As the soil could not be made to fit into geometrical squares, even so the population could not remain without change from one age to the other within the same boundaries. Thus in course of time the plough-land of 160 and 180 acres, which is the plough-land of practical farming, appears by the side of the statutory hide of 120 acres; and so again inside every single holding there comes up the contrast between its real conformation and distribution, and the outward form it assumed in regard to the king, the lord, and the steward.     The inquiry as to the relation between the holding and the population on it is, of course, of the utmost importance for a general estimate of the arrangement. From a formal point of view the question is soon solved: on the one hand, the holding of the villain remains undivided and entire; it does not admit of partition by sale or descent; on the other, the will of the lord may alter, if necessary, the natural course of inheritance and possession; the socage tenure is often free from the first of these limitations, and always free from the second. The indivisibility of villain tenements is chiefly conspicuous in the law of inheritance: all the land went to one of the sons if there were several; very often the youngest inherited; and this custom, to which mere chance has given the name of Borough English, was considered as one of the proofs of villainage.(48*) It is certainly a custom of great importance, and probably it depended on the fact that the elder brothers left the land at the earliest opportunity, and during their father's life. Where did they go? It is easy to guess that they sought work out of the manor, as craftsmen or labourers; that they served the lord as servants, ploughmen, and the like; that they were provided with holdings, which for some reason did not descend to male heirs; that they were endowed with some demesne land, or fitted out to reclaim land from the waste. We may find for all these suppositions some supporting quotation in the records. And still it would be hard to believe that the entire increase of population found an exit by these by-paths. If no exit was found, the brothers had to remain on their father's plot, and the fact that they did so can be proved, if it needs proof, from documents.(49*) The unity of the holding was not disturbed in the case; there was no division, and only the right heir, the estiopamon as they said in Sparta, had to answer for the services; the lord looked to him and no further; but in point of fact the holding contained more than one family, and perhaps more than one household. However this may be, in regard to the lord the holding remained one and undivided. This circumstance draws a sharp line between the feudal arrangement of most counties and that which prevailed in Kent. The gavelkind or tributary tenure there was subjected to equal partition among the heirs.     Let us take a Kentish survey, the Black Book of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, for instance: it describes the peasant holdings in a way which differs entirely from other surveys. It begins by stating what duties lie on each sulung, that is, on the Kentish ploughland corresponding to the hide of feudal England. No regular sub-divisions corresponding to the virgates and bovates are mentioned, and the reckoning starts not from separate tenements, but from their combination into sulungs.(50*) Then follow descriptions of the single sulungs, and it turns out that every one of them consists of a very great number of component parts, because the progeny of the original holders has clustered on them, and parcelled them up in very complicated combinations.(51*) The portions are sometimes so small, that an independent cultivation of them would have been quite impossible. In order to understand the description it must be borne in mind that the fact of the tenement being owned by several different persons in definite but undivided shares did not preclude farming in common; while on the other hand, in judging of the usual feudal arrangement of holdings we must remember that the artificial unity and indivisibility of the tenement may be a mere screen behind which there exists a complex mass of rights sanctioned by morality and custom though not by law. The surveys of the Kentish possessions of Battle Abbey are drawn up on the same principle as those of St. Augustine's; the only difference is, that the individual portions are collected not in sulungs, but in yokes (juga).(52*)     And so we have in England two systems of dividing the land of the peasant, of regulating its descent and its duties. In one case the tenant-right is connected with rigid holdings descending to a single heir; in another the tenements get broken up, and the heirs club together in order to meet the demands of the manorial administration. The contrast is sharp and curious enough. How is one to explain, that in conditions which were more or less identical, the land was sometimes partitioned and sometimes kept together, the people were dispersed in some instances and kept together in others?     Closer inspection will show that however sharp the opposition in law may have been, in point of husbandry and actual management the contrast was not so uncompromising. Connecting links may be found between the two. The Domesday of St. Paul's, for instance, is compiled in the main in the usual way, but one section of it -- the description of the Essex manors of Kirby, Horlock, and Thorpe -- does not differ from the Kentish surveys in anything but the terminology.(53*) The services are laid on hides, and not on the actual tenements. Each hide includes a great number of plots which do not fall in with any constant subdivisions of the same kind as the virgates and bovates. Some of these plots are very small, all are irregular in their formation. It happens that one and the same person holds in several hides. In one word, the Kentish system has found a way for some unexplained reason into the possessions of St. Paul's, and we find subjected to it some Essex manors which do not differ much in their husbandry arrangements from other properties in Essex, and have no claim to the special privileges of Kentish soil.     Once apprised of the possible existence of such inter mediate forms, we shall find in most surveys facts tending to connect the two arrangements. The Gloucester Cartulary, for instance, mentions virgates held by four persons.(54*) The plots of these four owners are evidently brought together into a virgate for the purpose of assessing the services. Two peasants on the same virgate are found constantly. It happens that one gets the greater part of the land and is called the heir, while his fellow appears as a small cotter who has to co-operate in the work performed by the virgate.(55*) Indications are not wanting that sometimes virgates crumbled up into cotlands, bordlands, and crofts. The denomination of some peasants in Northumberland is characteristic enough -- they are 'selfoders,' obviously dwelling 'self-other' on their tenements.(56*) On the other hand, it is to be noticed that the gavelkind rule of succession, although enacting the partibility of the inheritance, still reserves the hearth to the youngest born, a trace of the same junior right which led to Borough English.     I think that upon the whole we must say that in practice the very marked contrast between the general arrangement of the holdings and the Kentish one is more a difference in the way of reckoning than in actual occupation, in legal forms than in economical substance. The general arrangement admitted a certain subdivision under the cover of an artificial unity which found its expression in the settlement of the services and of the relations with the lord.(57*) The English case has its parallel on the Continent in this respect. In Alsace, for instance, the holding was united under one 'Trager' or bearer of the manorial duties; but by the side of him other people are found who participate with this official holder in the ownership and in the cultivation.(58*) The second system also kept up the artificial existence of the higher units, and obvious interests prevented it from leading to a 'morcellement' of land into very small portions in practice. The economic management of land could not go as far as the legal partition. In practice the subdivision was certainly checked, as in the virgate system, by the necessity of keeping together the cattle necessary for the tillage. Virgates and bovates would arise of themselves: it was not advantageous to split the yoke of two oxen, the smallest possible plough; and co-heirs had to think even more when they inherited one ox with its ox-gang of land. The animal could not be divided, and this certainly must have stopped in many cases the division of land. When the documents speak of plots containing two or three acres, it must be remembered that such crofts and cotlands occur also in the usual system, and I do not see any reason to suppose that the existence of such subdivided rights always indicated a real dispersion of the economic unit: they may have stood as a landmark of the relative rights of joint occupiers. I do not mean to say, of course, that there was no real basis for the very great difference which is assumed by the two ways of describing the tenements. No doubt the hand of the lord lay heavier on the Essex people than on the Kentish men, their occupation and usage of the land was more under the control of the lord, and assumed therefore an aspect of greater regularity and order. Again, the legal privileges of the Kentish people opened the way towards a greater development of individual freedom and a certain looseness of social relations. Still it would be wrong to infer too much from this formal opposition. In both cases the centripetal and the centrifugal tendency are working against each other in the same way, although one case presents the stronger influence of disruptive forces, and the other gives predominance to the collective power. In the history of socage and military tenure the system of unity arose gradually, and without any sudden break, out of the system of division. The intimate connexion between both forms is even more natural in peasant ownership, which had to operate with small plots and small agricultural capital, and therefore inclined naturally towards the artificial combination of divided interests. In any case there is no room in practice for the rigid and consequent operation of either rule of ownership, and, if so, there is no actual basis for the inference that the unification of the holding is to be taken as a direct consequence of a servile origin of the tenement and a sure proof of it. Unification appears on closer inspection as a result of economic considerations as well as of legal disabilities, and for this reason the tendency operated in the sphere of free property as well as among the villains; among these last it could not preclude the working of the disruptive elements, but in many cases only hid them from sight by its artificial screen of rigid holdings.     We have seen that the size and distribution of the holdings are connected with the number of oxen necessary for the tillage, and its relation to the full plough. The hide appears as the ploughland with eight oxen, the virgate corresponds to one yoke of oxen, and the bovate to the single head. it need not be added that such figures are not absolutely settled, and are to be accepted as approximate terms, The great heavy plough drawn by eight or ten oxen is certainly often mentioned in the records, especially on demesne land.(59*) The dependent people, when they have to help in the cultivation of the demesne, club together in order to make up full plough teams.(60*) It is also obvious that the peasantry had to associate for the tilling of their own land, as it was very rare for the single shareholder to possess a sufficient number of beasts to work by himself. But it must be noticed that alongside of the unwieldy eight-oxen plough we find much lighter ones. Even on the demesne we may find them drawn by six oxen. And as for the peasantry, they seem to have very often contented themselves with forming a plough team of four heads.(61*) It is commonly supposed by the surveys that the holder of a yardland joins with one of his fellows to make up the team. This would mean on the scale of the hide of 120 acres that the team consists of four beasts.(62*) It happens even that a full plough is supposed to belong to two or three peasants, of which every one is possessed only of five acres; in such cases there can be no talk of a big plough; it is difficult to admit even a four-oxen team, and probably those people only worked with one yoke or pair of beasts.(63*) Altogether it would be very wrong to assume in practice a strict correspondence between the size of the holding and the parts of an eight-oxen plough. The observation that the usual reckoning of the hide and of its subdivisions, according to the pattern of the big team, cannot be made to fit exactly with the real arrangement of the teams owned by the peasantry -- this firmly established observation leads us once more to the conclusion that the system of equal holdings had become very artificial in process of time and was determined rather by the relation between the peasants and the manorial administration than by the actual conditions of peasant life. Unhappily the artificial features of the system have been made by modern inquirers the starting point of very far-reaching theories and suppositions. Seebohm has proposed an explanation of the intermixture of strips as originating in the practice of coaration. He argues that it was natural to divide the land tilled by a mixed plough-team among the owners of the several beasts and implements. Every man got a strip according to a certain settled and ever-recurring succession. I do not pretend to judge of the value of the interesting instances adduced by Seebohm from Celtic practices, but whatever the arrangement in Wales or Ireland may have been, the explanation does not suit the English case. A doubt is cast on it already by the fact that such a universal feature as the intermixture of strips appears connected with the occurrence of such a special instrument as the eight-oxen plough, The intermixture is quite the same in Central Russia, where they till with one horse, and in England where more or less big ploughs were used. the doubt increases when we reflect that if the strips followed each other as parts of the plough-team, the great owners would have been possessed of compact plots. Every holder of an entire hide would have been out of the intermixture, and every virgater would have stood in conjunction with a sequence of three other tenants. Neither the one nor the other inference is supported by the facts. The observation that the peasantry are commonly provided with small ploughs drawn by four beasts ruins Seebohm's hypothesis entirely. One would have to suppose that most fields were divided into two parts, as the majority of the tenements are yardlands with half a team. The only adequate explanation of the open-field intermixture has been given above; it has its roots in the wish to equalise the holdings as to the quantity and quality of the land assigned to them in spite of all differences in the shape, the position, and the value of the soil.     Before I leave the question as to the holdings of the feudal peasantry, I must mention some terms which occur in different parts of England, although more rarely than the usual hides and virgates.(64*) Of the sulung I have spoken already. It is a full ploughland, and 200 acres are commonly reckoned to belong to it. The name is sometimes found out of Kent, in Essex for instance. In Tillingham, a manor of St. Paul's of London, we come across six hides 'trium solandarum'.(65*) The most probable explanation seems to be that the hide or unit of assessment is contrasted with the solanda or sulland (sulung), that is with the actual ploughland, and two hides are reckoned as a single solanda.     The yokes (juga) of Battle Abbey (66*) are not virgates, but carucates, full ploughlands. This follows from the fact that a certain virgate mentioned in the record is equivalent only to one fourth of the yoke. In the Norfolk manors of Ely Minster we find tenmanlands (67*) of 120 acres in the possession of several copartitioners, participes. The survey does not go into a detailed description of tenements and rights, and the reckoning of services starts from the entire combination, as in the Kentish documents. A commonly recurrent term is wista;(68*) it corresponds to the virgate: a great wista is as much as half-a-hide, or two virgates.(69*)     The terms discussed hitherto are applied to the tenements in the fields of the village; but besides those there are other names for the plots occupied by a numerous population which did not find a place in the regular holdings. There were craftsmen and rural labourers working for the lord and for the tenants; there were people living by gardening and the raising of vegetables. This class is always contrasted with the tenants in the fields. The usual name for their plots is cote, cotland, or cotsetland. The so-called ferdel, or fourth part of a virgate, is usually mentioned among them because there are no ploughbeasts on it.(70*) Another name for the ferdel is nook.(71*) Next come the crofters, whose gardens sometimes extend to a very fair size -- as much as ten acres in one enclosed patch.(72*) The cotters proper have generally one, two, and sometimes as much as five acres with their dwellings; they cannot keep themselves on this, as a rule, and have to look out for more on other people's tenements. A very common name for their plots is 'lundinaria'(73*) 'Mondaylands,' because the holders are bound to work for the lord only one day in the week, usually on Monday. Although the absence of plough-beasts, of a part in coaration, and of shares in the common fields draws a sharp line between these men and the regular holders, our surveys try sometimes to fit their duties and plots into the arrangement of holdings; the cotland is assumed to represent one sixteenth or even one thirty-second part of the hide.(74*) The Glastonbury Survey of 1189 contains a curious hint that two cottages are more valuable than one half-virgate: two cotlands were ruined during the war, and they were thrown together into half a virgate, although it would have been more advantageous to keep two houses on them, that is two households.(75*) The bordae mentioned by the documents are simply cottages or booths without any land belonging to them.(76*) The manorial police keeps a lookout that such houses may not arise without licence and service.(77*)     A good many terms are not connected in any way with the general arrangement of the holdings, but depend upon the part played by the land in husbandry or the services imposed upon it. To mention a few among them. A plot which has to provide cheese is called Cheeseland.(78*) Those tenements which are singled out for the special duty of carrying the proceeds of the manorial cultivation get the name of averlands.(79*) The terms lodland,(80*) serland (81*) or sharland, are also connected with compulsory labour. The first is taken from the duty to carry loads or possibly to load waggons; the second may be employed in reference to work performed with the sithe or reap-hook. A plot reserved for the leader of the plough-team, the akerman, was naturally called akermanland.(82*) Sometimes, though rarely, the holding gets its name from the money rent it has to pay. We hear of denerates (83*) and nummates (84*) of land in this connexion.     All these variations in detail do not avail to modify to any considerable extent the chief lines on which the medieval system of holdings is constructed. I presume that the foregoing exposition has been sufficient to establish the following points: --     1. The principle upon which the original distribution depended was that of equalizing the shares of the members of the community. This led to the scattering and to the intermixture of strips. The principle did not preclude inequality according to certain degrees, but it aimed at putting all the people of one degree into approximately similar conditions.     2. The growth of population, of capital, of cultivation, of social inequalities led to a considerable difference between the artificial uniformity in which the arrangement of the holdings was kept and the actual practice of farming and ownership.     3. The system was designed and kept working by the influence of communal right, but it got its artificial shape and its legal rigidity from the manorial administration which used it for the purpose of distributing and collecting labour and rent.     4. The holdings were held together as units, not merely by the superior property of the lord, but by economic considerations. They were breaking up under the pressure of population, not merely in the case of free holdings, but also where the holdings were servile.

NOTES:

1. It should be observed that the word demesne (dominicum) is constantly used in two different senses, (a) the narrower sense in which it stands for the land directly occupied and cultivated by the lord or for his use, and excludes the land held by his villain tenants, and (b) the wider sense ill which it includes these villain tenements. The first meaning is that which the word usually bears in manorial documents, in which the dominicum is contrasted with the villenagium or bondagium. But in legal pleadings and documents which state the doctrine of the common law and the king's courts the villain tenements are part of the lord's demesne, he is seised of them in his demesne (in dominico suo). This discrepancy between what I may call the manorial and the legal uses of the term deserves notice as an indication of the imperfect adjustment of law to fact. I shall use the term in its narrower sense.

2. Eynsham Cartulary, MSS. of Christ Church, Oxford, N. 27, f 1, a: 'Est una cultura nuncupata Shyppelond, et continet in toto septem acras dimidiam acram et dimidiam rodam, et valet acra 4d., et bis successive seminatur.' Inqu. p. mortem 20 Henry III, N. 14 (Record Office): 'Extensio manerii de Remdun (Lincoln). Sunt ibidem 360 acre terre et faciunt duas carucatas. Et seminata sunt per annum 240 acre... De waracto per annum 12 d.'

3. Glastonbury Survey of 1189 (Roxburghe Ser.), 99: 'Idem tenet de dominico tres acras a tempore Henrici episcopi quas colit in uno anno et altero noll.'

4. Eynsham Cart., I, a: 'Est ibidem prope alia cultura nuncupata Clayfurlong et continet cum capitali inferiore octo acras unam rodam tres perticas cum dimidia, et potest ter seminari successive, videlicet post warectum ordium, anno sequente cum grosso pulstro et anno tercio cum frumento, et valet acra 8 d.... (Alia cultura) et potest ter seminari ut supra mutato grosso pulstro in pisas.'

5. Two husbandry treatises were chiefly in use in mediaeval England. The fourteenth-century MS., Merton College 91, contains both, and both mention the two systems. (Modus qualiter balliui et prepositi debent onerari super compotum reddendum et qualiter manerium custodiri), f 152: 'E la vu les chaumps sunt semez e parti en deus, le iuernage e le trameys sunt tous semez en un champ.' -- (Maior husbonderia, otherwise Walter of Henley's treatise), f 155: 'Si les terres seent partiz en iii, la ulle partie en le yuernage, lautre partie en le quaremel, e la tierce partie a warect, donqes est la charrue de terre de xxx acres, (sic, corr. ixxx)., E si vos terres seent partez en ii, com sont en plusurs pays, la une partie a yuernage e a quaremel, e lautre partie a waret, donqes serra la charue de terre de viiixx acres.' Cf. Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries, 75.

6. Fleta, ii. 72.

7. Malmesbury Cart. (Rolls Ser.), ii. 186: 'De terris inbladandis et inhoc faclendis in campis de Brokeneberewe et de Burestone, a ponte de Julebrocke usque ad Halbrigge de Bremelham, ubi dictus Ricardus dicebat se habere communam, ita quod nec abbas et conventus, nec eorum tenentes possint inhoc facere sine consensu dicti Ricardi, nec pro voluntate sua terras suas ibidem inbladare... Abbas et conventus concesserunt praedicto Ricardo... ut cum terrae prenominatae inbladatae fuerint et blada a terris amota, liberam et plenam communam in praefatis terris una cum abbate et suis hominibus (habeat) sicut ipse vel praedecessores sui unquam melius et plenius habere consueverunt.... Ita quod si de campo predicto in quo factum est inhoc pars quaedam remaneat inculta sine blado, in eadem parte habebunt predictus Ricardus et heredes sui communam cum abbate et conventu et suis. Similiter si villani praedicti Ricardi nolint inhokare terras suas infra praedictum inhoc sitas, habebunt liberum ingressum et egressum ad warectandum eas.'

8. Coram Rege, Hill. 3 Edw. I, m. 17, d: 'Item quicumque facit inheche scilicet excolit warectum frumento, ordeo vel auena, dabit pro qualibet acra unum denarium, excepta una acra quam habere debet quietam.' See App. xii.

9. Gloucester Cart. iii. 35, 36: ' Omnes dictae particulae jacent pro uno campo, summa I74 acre arabiles, etc.... Et de predicto campo possunt inhokari quolibet secundo anno 40 acre et valet inde commodum eo anno 10 solidos.... De dictis 63 acris possunt quolibet secundo anno inhokari 20 acre, et valet inde commodum eo anno 11 sol. 8 d.... Et est summa totalis omnium acrarum arabilium 412. Et est summa dictarum acrarum in valore denariorum 9 librae 12 solidi. De quibus subtracta tertia parte pro campo jacente ad warectum, 64 sol. scilicet, remanent ad extentam annuam de puro 6 librae 8 sol. et de commodo terrae quae singulis annis potest inhokari 15 sol. 10d.' -- Cf Minor husbanderia, Merton Coll. MS. 91, f 152: 'E si li ad Inhom, i deit veer quele cuture i prent del Inhom, e de quel ble est seme checune cuture, e tel semail deit il cuiler tut per ly e respondre tut per ly, hors des autres blees.'

10. Cart. of Boxgrave, Cotton MSS., Claudius, A. vi. p. 2: 'Debet compostare unam helvam ad frumentum et aliam ad ordeum.' Essex Court Rolls (Bodleian), 4: 'Milencia Tegulatrix posuit fimos in communa ad nocumentum custumariorum.' Glastonbury Inquest of 1189 (Roxburghe Ser.), 141: 'A. de N. occupavit quendam mariscum per concessum Roberti abbatis et illum marliavit et coluit.' Cf Domesday of St. Paul's (Camden Ser.), 8: ' Dicunt eciam quod emendatum est manerium in 50 acris marlatis per Willelmum Thesaurarium ad summam 10 solidorum.' Ib. 21.

11. Malmesbury Cart. (Rolls Ser. ' ii. 27: 'Concessimus... Roberto filio Roberti... illam virgatam terre quam A. de C. tenuit in campis, scilicet in uno campo 21 acras et in alio campo 21 acras.'

12. Gloucester Cart., iii. 194: 'Robertus Abovetun tenet unam virgatam terre continentem 44 acras in utroque campo.'

13. Ramsey Register, Cotton MSS., Galba, E. x. 27, d: 'Radulfus tenet 11 seliones in uno campo et 5 in alio de vilenagio., Worcester Cart. (Camden Ser.), 62, a: 'Henricus clericus tenet unam virgatam, 16 acras in uno campo et 14 in alio. Item tenet aliam virgatam similiter. T. T. tenet unam virgatam, 15 acras excepto dimidio furtendello in uno campo et 11 in alio. O. le E. tenet unam virgatam 13 a. et 1/2 in uno campo et 12 et dimidiam in alio. T. le F. tenet unam virgatam, 16 acras in uno campo et 12 in alio.'

14. As in Gloucester Cart., i. 246: 'Ecclesiam Omnium Sanctorum... cum omnibus pertinenciis suis, videlicet unam virgatam terrae, undecim acras terrae in campo lucrabili.' Cf 247.

15. Dunstable Cart., Harleian MSS. 1885, f 7, d: 'Postquam buttum habuimus bis seminatio fuerit et non amplius, quia omnes ceteri non excolunt ibi terram, sed at pascua reservant.'

16. Eynsham Cart., Christ Church, Oxford, MSS., N. 27, f 74, b: 'Placitum de Haneberge in recordo de banco de termino Sti Trinitatis anni xliij (Edw. III)... Est quidam hamelettus vocatus Tilgerdesle infra bundos ville de Eynesham, infra quem hamelettum tam in vastis quam in terris, pratis et pasturis eiusdem hameletti iidem Johannes Smyth et omnes alii habent communam cum omnibus averiis suis tanquam pertinens ad tenementa sua que ipsi separati tenent in Hanberge, scilicet in vasto et pastura quolibet anno per totum annum et in terris arabilibus post blada messa et asportata quousque... resemenentur et quolibet tercio anno tempore warecti per totum annum eo quod omnes terrae arabiles infra dictum hamelettum per duos annos continuos debent seminari et tercio anno warectari, et in pratis post fenum levatum et asportatum usque ad festum purificacionis beate Marie.... Et dicunt quod diversis vicibus quibus predictus Abbas nunc queritur etc. diuerse parcelle terrarum arabilium in hameletto predicto que tunc temporis warectare debuissent per predictum abbatem et alios seminate fuerunt per quod ipsi tam in parcellis illis sic seminatis que tunc temporis warectare debuerunt quam in aliis vastis, pratis et pascuis hameletti predicti in communa sua cum aueriis suis prout eis bene licuerit usi fuerunt... Et predictus abbas non cognoscit quod terre arabiles infra hamelettum predictum quolibet tercio anno debent warectari, immo protestando quod eedem terre per tres annos continuos debent seminari et quarto anno warectari.' The case is a rather complicated one, because the persons claiming common are not tenants of the Abbot but of the King. Still, their pretensions are grounded on the customary order of farming in a hamlet belonging to the manor of Eynsham, and this is the point which concerns us. Cf Coram Rege, Pascha, 25 Henry III: 'Abbas... partitus fuit terras suas in tres partes quae antea partitae fuerunt in duas partes.' See also Placit. Abbrev. 153. The case is quoted by Scrutton, Common Fields, 57.

17. Some of these expressions are intcresting. Balk is the O. N. balkr; gora is the spear.head or its long triangular shape, O. E. gar, O. N. geirr. These linguistic affinities have been pointed out to me by Mr. F. York Powell.

18. Alvingham Priory Cart., Laud MSS. 642 (Bodleian), f 12. Cf Malmesbury Cart. ii. 294; Madox, History of the Exchequer, 258.

19. Eynsham Cart., 5, a: 'I. I. virgatarius... Idem tenet unam selionem terre apud Blakelond non mensuratam.'

20. Domesday of St. Paul's, 11: 'Laurencius de hospitale dimidiam virgatam pro 40 denariis; tres acre quas tenuit Laurencius sine servicio inveniri non possunt.'

21. Dunstable Priory Cart., Harleian MSS. 1885, f 7, d. See Appendix xiii.

22. Elton, English Historical Review, i, 435.

23. The expressions are not identical, but they ought both to correspond to the ploughteam.

24. As to all this, see Seebohm, Village Community.

25. Glastonbury Inqu. (Roxburghe Ser.), 144, v. Hide, virgate.

26. Eynsham Cart., 4, a.

27. Domesday of St. Paul's: 'Manerium istud secundum dictum juratorum continet octo hidas, et hida continet sexcies viginti acras, set antiqua inquisicio dixit, quod non consuevit continere nisi quater viginti, quia postmodum exquisite sunt terre et mensuratae.'

28. Inqu. post mort. 30 Henry III, N. 36: 'Extensio de terris Roberti de Sancto Georgio (in com. Lincoln.)... tenuit in capite de domino Rege 20 bovatas terre et dimidiam pro servicio sexte partis unius feodi militis.... Et Robertus de Drayton tenet 2 bovatas et quartam partem unius bovate terre de dicto Roberto per forinsecum servicium tantum, unde 16 carucate terre faciunt feodum militis.'

29. Rot. Hundred. ii. 631, b: '... et ad dictam villam pertinent sex hide quarum quelibet continet 6 virgatas terre et quelibet virgata continet 30 acras.' Ramsey Survey, Galba, E. x. 41: 'In una hydarum istarum... septem virgatae 4 acris minus.' Eynsham Cart., 21, a: 'Et abbas habet in eodem manerio 4 carucatas terre et continent 16 virgatas terre in dominico et in villenagio 16 virgatas terre.'

30. Ramsey Cart. (Rolls Ser.), i. 55, 284: 295, 309, 333, 373, 380; Ely Inqu., Claudius, xi. 82, 95, 97, 121, 129, 186; Gloucester Cart., iii. 128, 142, 145, 196; Coram Rege, Hill. 3 Edw. I, 17, b; Eynsham Cart., II, a; 88, a; Rot. Hundr., ii. 605, b.

31. Chapterhouse Boxes, A. 4/22, m. 31-33.

32. Ramsey Cart. (Rolls Ser.), i. 354: 'Aliquando 48 acre faciunt virgatam et aliquando pauciores.'

33. Rot. Hundr., ii. 628, b.

34. Glastonbury Inqu. (Roxburghe Ser.), 134: '... R. de W. unam virgatam pro 4 solidis pro omni servicio quia terra parva est.'

35. Ibid., 113: 'Super hanc virgatam terre fuerunt olim 2 domus et pro duabus virgatis computata fuit terra illa, sed quia non potuerant 2 homines ibi vivere, redacte ille 2 virgate ad unam, et sicut audierant dicere 7 solidi reddebantur, sed nunquam hoc viderunt et facit idem servitium quod alii faciunt virgarii.'

36. O C. Pell in the Transactions of the Cambridge Archaeological Society, vi. 17 sqq., 63 sqq.

37. Ely Inqu., Claudius, C xi. 30, a.

38. Duchy of Lancaster Court Rolls, Ble 62, N. 750; 3, b. Burton Cartulary, Transactions of the Staffordshire William Salt Society, pp. 22, 28.

39. Ely Inqu, 31, b.

40. Burton Cart. (William Salt Ser.), 22, 28. Compare Peoples, Ranks and Laws, cap. 3 (Schmid, p. 388).

41. Peterborough Cart., Cotton MSS., Faustina, B. iii. 97: 'Libera wara est unus redditus et est talis condicionis quod si non solvatur... dupplicatibur ill crastino et sic in dies.'

42. Beaulieu Cart., 103: 'Et inveniet hominem ad gurgitem faciendum et waram.'

43. Rot. Hundr., ii. 323: 'Tenementum quod non est hidatum nec feodatum.'

44. Ramsey Cart. (Rolls Ser.), i. 401: 'Terrae de Hulmo non sunt distinctae per hydas vel per virgatas.' 413: 'Nescitur quot virgatae faciunt hidam, nec quot acrae faciunt virgatam.' Cf 405. Glastonbury Inqu. (Roxburghe Ser.), 5: '... Nescit quantum amuntat in hida.'

45. Ramsey Cart. i. 441: 'Terrae quae sunt extra hydam et quae non dant hydagium.'. 355., Virgatam extra hydam firmarius appropriavit.' 324: 'Ponere extra hydam.'

46. Ibid. 473: 'Villata defendit, etc. versus Regem pro 10 hydis et versus abbatem pro 11 hydis et dimidia.'

47. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS., Claudius, C. xi. 38, b: 'Plena terra que facit 12 acras de ware.'

48. St. Alban's Formulary, Cambridge Univ., E, e, iv, 20; f 165, a: 'Item dicunt quod quando predictus Robertus fuerit mortuus quod dominus habebit melius animal suum pro herieto et carettam suam ferro ligatam, omnes pullos suos, omnes porculos suos, omnes pannos Suos laneos, omnia vaSa sua argentea, aenea et ferrea. Et quod filius suus postnatus habebit terram quam pater suus tenuit et dabit pro ingressu habendo tantum quantum unus alius extraneus et faciet eadem seruilia (sic) que et pater suus fecit,' Ramsey Cart., i, 372: 'Erit dicta terra post mortem patris vel matris gersummata filio juniori vel propinquiori de sanguine secundum consuetudinem ville.'

49. Duchy of Lancaster, B.e 62, N, 750, m, 2: 'Siwardus cepit unam hidam cum dimidia virgata terre et illam tenuit usque ad obitum uxoris sue; postea venit idem Siwardus et rogauit Hugonem fratrem suum ut auderet remanere in terra patris sui prenominati, quia fuit sine terra, Et idem Hugo sibi concessit, saluo iure suo, Item Siwardus cepit uxorem... de qua habuit Robertum, Radulfum et Gunnildam. Post obitum dicti Siwardi venit Rogerus qui fuit filius Hugonis et exigebat terram prenominatam et per consideracionem curie fuit seisitus in predicta terra, set quia uxor dicti Siwardi pauper fuit, consideratum sibi fuit ut haberet iv acras de predicta terra, quantum sibi custodiret. Postea maritata fuit et revcrtebant predicte acre terre dicto Rogero ut de jure suo pertinentes ad dictam virgatam terre,' Cf Q. R. Misc, 902/77,

50. Black Book of St. Augustine's, Cotton MSS., Faustina, A. i. 15, a: 'In Taneto sunt 45 sullung 150 acre reddentes gablum denariorum. In festo Sti Martini videlicet de unoquoque sullung reddunt de Gabulo 2 solidos 2 denarios, summa quorum facit 25 libras 105 solidos 10 denarios obolum. Ipsi qui tenent predictos sullung reddunt in equinoctio autumpnae de unoquoque sullung pro horsarer 16 den. et de 150 acris 12 den. Ipsi idem arant pro anererthe in purificacione de unoquoque sullung unam acram et 150 acris 3 virgatas. Ipsi idem reddunt in festo Sti Johannis de unoquoque sullung 2 agnos separabiles et de 150 acris 1 agnum et valenciam dimidii agni. lpsi idem reddunt in natali de unoquoque sullung unum ferendel ordei,' etc.

51. Ibid. 60; Suolinga de Ores: 'Heredes Salomonis de Ores tenent 8 acras... Heredes Willelmi de Ores tenent 12 acras... Jacobus tenet 3 acras et dimidiam perchatam... Thomas filius G. de Hores tenet 2 acras... Ricardus et Salomon filius Augustini... et Willelmus filius Ricardi tenent 2 acras et dimidiam,' etc.

52. Augment. Off. Misc. Books, N. 57, f 96, a: 'Johannes Bairot heredes Hamoni Daniel, heredes Johannis hugheleyn, heredes Roberti atte mede, heredes Walteri et Willelmi Ram et Gilbertus le Rome tenent unum jugum et dimidium de Cukulycumbe.'

53. Domesday of St Paul's, 38 sqq. Comp. Ramsey Cart., i. 413.

54. Gloucester Cart., iii. 213: 'Robertus Altegreue, Willelmus Godere, Johannes Abraham, Isabella relicta Lucae tenent Unam virgatam, scilicet quilibet eorum unum quarterium et faciunt conjunctim in omnibus sicut unus virgatarius.' Comp. 59, 201. Hereford Court Rolls (Bodleian), 3, b: 'T. Hake, Ricardus de Poluchulle et Muriel filius Galfridi pyoner tenent unam dimidiam virgatam terre consuetudinarie.'

55. Bury St. Edmund's Cart., Cambridge University, G. g. iv. 4. f 35, a: 'Johannes Knop tenet cotagium et contribuit heredi qui tenet maiorem partem tenementorum.'

56. Inqu. post mort. 55 Henry III, N. 33: 'Redditarii qui vocantur self-oders.'

57. Euch. Q. R. Anc. Misc. Court Rolls, xxi. 513/82: 'Dicunt quod aliquis habens virgatam terre et vendiderit omnes partes excepto capitati domo et loco focarii, tenentes locum focarii erunt sectatores curie et alteri non. Similiter de tenentibus dimidiam virgatam et codsetlestoftes: semper tenentes locum focarii colligent firmam et erunt liberi de pannagio et de aliis tallagiis et alteri tenentes partes erunt geldabiles.' (Curia de Brigstock tenta die veneris proxima ante festum Sancti Andree Apostoli anno [r. r. Edw. xxvi]).

58. See Hanauer, Les paysans de l'Alsace au Moyen Age.

59. Domesday of St. Paul's, xv. 7,. Gloucester Cartulary, iii. 55, 6I; Cartulary of Christ Church, Canterbury, Add. MSS. 6759, f. 21, b.

60. Battle Cart. Augm. Off. Books, N. 18, f 7, a: 'Aratra uertuntur in terram domini.' Ely Inqu., Claudius, C. xi. 38 b, 86 b, etc.

61. Ely Inqu, 72 b; comp. 24, b., Gloucester Cart., iii. 183.

62. Eynsham Reg., 6, b: 'Robertus Tony tenet de domino unam virgatam terre in bondagium... Idem semel arabit cum vicino adiuncto.' Ramsey Cart., i. 56. Comp. Q. R. Min. Acc., Ble 513, N. 97: 'Estimatur quod communiter tres custumarii possunt facere unam carucam (tenent 20 acras).'

63. Rot. Hundr., ii. 461, b: 'Robertus de Tony habet in villenagio scil. Reginaldum Toni qui tenet 5 acras... Item si ipse habeat cum uno vel cum duobus sociis unam carucam, arabit unam selionem terre domini.' Comp. 462, a. Add. MSS. 6159, f 22, b: 'W. J. tenet de domino in villenagio unum mesuagium et 10 acras terre.... Et arabit cum caruca sua sive jungat sive non 4 acras.'

64. Black Book of St. Augustine's, 53.

65. Domesday of St. Paul's, 58.

66. Augm. Off. Misc. Books, N. 57, f 65, b. See Cartulary of Battle Abbey (Camd. Soc.), p. 133.

67. Ely Inqu., 185, a: '... tenent dimidium tenmanland, scilicet 60 acras terre... Al. et M. et eorum participes tenent unum tenmanland, scilicet 120 acras terre.' The expression may be corrupted from tunmanland, or else it may be a mark of a beginning of cultivation in Danish times.

68. Chapter-house Books, A. 4/22, p. 21: 'Custumarii tenent 22 virgatas quas vocant wistas.'

69. Battle Abbey Cart., Augment. Off. Misc. Books, N. 57, f. 27, a; comp. 15, b.

70. Glastonbury Inqu. (Roxburghe Ser.), 66, 90

71. Worcester Cart., 41, b.

72. Glastonbury Inqu., 67, 70; Rot. Hundr., ii. 404, b.

73. Gloucester Cart., iii. 207.

74. Abingdon Cart., ii. 304: 'In dominio camerae sunt 4 hidae Uno cotsettel minus.'

75. Glastonbury Inqu., 41: 'Robertus blundus tenet dimidiam virgatam eodem servicio. Hec terra solet esse divisa in duo cotsetlanda, set in tempore werre deciderunt, eo ex his duabus terris facta fuit dimidia virgata. Si esset divisa utilius esset domino.'

76. Domesday of St. Paul's, 19; Ramsey Cart. ( Rolls Ser.), i. 309

77. Gloucester Cart., iii. 61.

78. Black Book of St. Augustine's, 57.

79. Ibid.

80. Domesday of St. Paul's, 49.

81. Gloucester Cart., ii. 109.

82. Exch. Q. R. Anc. Misc., xxi. 513/82 (Curia de Brigstock, Friday after Annunciation, 27 Edw. I): 'Ille due dimidie rode prati... pertinent ad Hakermannislond, et nemo potest habere seysinanm predictarum sine breui Domini Regis.'

83. Glastonbury Inqu., 2: 'In marisco 110 acras terrae et quoddam molendinum, et octo deneratas terrae secus molendinum.'

84. Madox, Exch., i. 155, n. 257: 'Duodecim tamen nummatas quas Ordurcus tenuit... usque ad 10 annos debemus tenere, singulis annis reddentes ei 12 denarios ad festum Sti Michaelis.'

Chapter 2

Rights of Common

The influence of the village community is especially. apparent in respect of that portion of the soil which is used for the support of cattle. The management of meadows is very interesting because it presents a close analogy to the treatment of the arable, and at the same time the communal features are much more clearly brought out by it. We may take as an instance a description in the Eynsham Survey. The meadow in Shifford is divided into twelve strips, and these are distributed among the lord and the tenantry, but they are not apportioned to any one for constant ownership. One year the lord takes all the strips marked by uneven numbers, and the next year he moves to those distinguished by even numbers.(1*) The tenants divide the rest according to some settled rotation. Very often lots are drawn to indicate the portions of the several households.(2*) It must be added that the private right of the single occupiers does not extend over the whole year: as in the case of the arable all inclosures fall after the harvest, so in regard to meadows the separate use, and the boundaries protecting it, are upheld only till the mowing of the grass: after the removal of the hay the soil relapses into the condition of undivided land. The time of the 'defence' extends commonly to 'Lammas-day'; hence the expression 'Lammas-meadow' to designate such land. It is hardly necessary to insist on the great resemblance between all these features and the corresponding facts in the arrangement of the arable. The principle of division is supplied by the tendency to assign an equal share to every holding, and the system of scattered strips follows as a necessary consequence of the principle. The existence of the community as a higher organising unit is shewn in the recurrence of common use after the 'defence,' and in the fact that the lord is subjected to the common rotation, although he is allowed a privileged position in regard to it. The connexion in which the whole of these rights arises is made especially clear by the shifting ownership of the strips: private right appears on communal ground, but it is reduced to a minimum as it were, has not settled down to constant occupation, and assumes its definite shape under the influence of the idea of equal apportionment. Of course, by the side of these communal meadows we frequently find others that were owned in severalty.     Land for pasture also occurs in private hands and in severalty, but such cases are much rarer.(3*) Sometimes the pasture gets separated and put under 'defence' for one part of the year, and merges into communal ownership afterwards.(4*) But in the vast majority of cases the pasture is used in common, and none of the tenants has a right to fence it in or to appropriate it for his own exclusive benefit. It ought to be noted, that the right to send one's cattle to the pasture on the waste, the moors, or in the woods of a manor appears regularly and intimately connected with the right to depasture one's cattle on the open fields of the village.(5*) Both form only different modes of using communal soil. As in the case of arable and meadow the undivided use cannot be maintained and gets replaced by a system of equalised shares or holdings, so in the case of pasture the faculty of sending out any number of beasts retires before the equalisation of shares according to certain modes of 'stinting' the common. We find as an important manorial arrangement the custom to 'apportion' the rights of common to the tenements, that is to decide in the manorial Court, mostly according to verdicts of juries, how many head of cattle, and of what particular kind, may be sent to the divers pasture-grounds of the village by the several holdings. From time to time these regulations are revised. One of the Glastonbury Surveys contains, for instance, the following description from the 45th year of Henry III. Each hide may send to the common eighteen oxen, sixteen cows, one bull, the offspring of the cows of two years, two hundred sheep with four rams, as well as their offspring of one year, four horses and their offspring of one year, twenty swine and their offspring of one year.(6*) According to a common rule the only cattle allowed to use the village pasture was that which was constantly kept in the village, levant e couchant en le maner. In order to guard against the fraudulent practice of bringing over strange cattle and thus making money at the expense of the township, it was required sometimes that the commonable cattle should have wintered in the manor.(7*)     These last rules seem at first sight difficult of explanation: one does not see in what way the bringing in of strange cattle could damage the peasantry of the village, as nobody could drive more than a certain number of beasts to the common, and as the overburdening of it depended entirely on the excess of this number, and not on the origin of the beasts. And so one has to look to something else besides the apprehension that the common would get overburdened, in order to find a suitable explanation of the rule. An explanation is readily supplied by the notion that the use of the common was closely connected with the holding. Strange cattle had nothing to do with the holding, and were to be kept off from the land of the community. it is as representatives of a community whose territory has been invaded that the individual commoners have cause to complain. In fact, the common pasture, as well as the meadows, were thought of merely as a portion of the holding. The arrangements did not admit of the same certainty or rather of the same kind of determination as the division of the arable, but the main idea which regulated the latter was by no means cut short in its operation, if one may say so: it was not bound up with the exact measurement of arable acres. The holding was the necessary agricultural outfit of a peasant family, and of this outfit the means of feeding the cattle were quite as important a part as the means of raising crops. It is only inaccurately that we have been speaking of a virgate of 30 acres, and of a ploughland of 180 or 160. The true expression would be to speak of a virgate of 30 acres of arable and the corresponding rights to pasture and other common uses. And the records, when they want to give something like a full description, do not omit to mention the 'pertinencia,' the necessary adjuncts of the arable. The term is rather a vague one, quite in keeping with the rights which, though tangible enough, cannot be cut to so certain a pattern as in the case of arable.(8*) And for this reason the laxer right had to conform to the stricter one, and came to be considered as appendant to it.     We have considered till now the different aspects assumed by common of pasture, when it arises within the manor, and as a consequence of the arrangement of its holdings. But this is not the only way in which common of pasture may arise. It may originate in an express and special grant by the lord either to a tenant or to a stranger.(9*) it may also proceed from continuous use from time beyond legal memory.(10*) it must have been difficult in many cases to prevent strangers from establishing such a claim by reason of long occupation in some part of a widely stretching moor or wood pasture.(11*) It was not less difficult in such cases to draw exact boundaries between adjoining communities, and we find that large tracts of country are used as a common pasture-ground by two villages, and even by more.(12*) Neighbours deem it often advantageous to establish a certain reciprocity in this respect.(13*) By special agreement or by tacit allowance lords and tenants intercommon on each other's lands: this practice extends mostly to the waste only, but in some cases the arable and meadow are included after the removal of the crop and of the hay. The procedure of the writ 'quo jure' was partly directed to regulate these rights and to prevent people from encroaching wantonly upon their neighbours.(14*) When land held in one fee or one manor was broken up for some reason into smaller units, the rights of pasture were commonly kept up according to the old arrangements.(15*)     These different modes of treating the pasture present rather an incongruous medley, and may be classified in several ways and deduced from divers sources.     The chief distinctions of modern law are well known: 'Common Appendant is the right which every freehold tenant of the manor possesses, to depasture his commonable cattle, levant and couchant on his freehold tenement anciently arable, on the wastes of the manor, and originally on all (common) pasture in the manor. Common appurtenant on the other hand is against common right, becoming appurtenant to land either by long user or by grant express or implied. Thus it covers a right to common with animals that are not commonable, such as pigs, donkeys, goats, and geese; or a right to common claimed for land not anciently arable, such as pasture, or land reclaimed from the waste within the time of legal memory, or for land that is not freehold, but copyhold.'(16*) Common in gross is a personal right to common pasture in opposition to the praedial rights. Mr Scrutton has shown from the Year Books that these terms and distinctions emerge gradually during the fourteenth century, and appear substantially settled only in Littleton's treatise. Bracton and his followers, Fleta and Britton, do not know them. These are important facts, but they hardly warrant the inferences which have been drawn from them. The subject has been in dispute in connexion with discussions as to the free village community. Joshua Williams, in his Rights of Common,(17*) had assumed common appendant to originate in ancient customary right bestowed by the village community and not by the lord's grant; Scrutton argues that such a right is not recognised by the documents. He lays stress on the fact, that Bracton speaks only of two modes of acquiring common, namely, express grant by the lord, and long usage understood as constant sufferance on the part of the lord amounting to an express grant. But this is only another way of saying that Bracton's exposition is based on feudal notions, that his land law is constructed on the principle 'nulle terre sans seigneur,' and that every tenement, as well as every right to common, is considered in theory as granted by the lord of the manor. It may be admitted that Bracton does not recognise just that kind of title which later lawyers knew as appendancy, does not recognise that a man can claim common by showing merely that he is a freeholder of the manor. Unless he relies on long continued user, he must rely upon grant or feoffment. But the distinction between saying 'I claim common because I am a freeholder of the manor' and saying 'I claim common because I or my ancestors have been enfeoffed of a freehold tenement of the manor and the right of common passed by the feoffment,' though it may be of juristic interest and even of some practical importance as regulating the burden of proof and giving rise to canons for the interpretation of deeds, is still a superficial distinction which does not penetrate deeply into the substance of the law. On the whole we find that the freeholder of Bracton's time and of earlier times does normally enjoy these rights which in after time were described as 'appendant' to his freehold; and it is well worth while to ask whether behind the general assumptions of feudal theory there do not lie certain data which, on the one hand, prepare and explain later terminology, and are connected, on the other, with the historical antecedents of the feudal system.     A little reflection will show that the divisions of later law did not spring into being merely as results of legal reasoning and casuistry. indeed, from a lawyer's point of view, nothing can be more imperfect than a classification which starts from three or four principles of division seemingly not connected with each other. Common appendant belongs to a place anciently arable, common appurtenant may belong to land of any kind; the first is designed for certain beasts, the second for certain others; one is bound up with freehold, the other may go with copyhold; in one case the right proceeds from common law, in the other from 'specialty.' One may reasonably ask why a person sending a cow to the open fields or to the waste from a freehold tenement can claim common appendant, and his neighbour sending a cow to the same fields from a copyhold has only common appurtenant. Or again, why does a plot of arable reclaimed from the waste confer common appurtenant, and ancient arable common appendant? Or again, why are the goats or the swine of a tenement sent to pasture by virtue of common appurtenant, and the cows and horses by virtue of common appendant? And, above all, what have the several restrictions and definitions to do with each other? Such a series of contrasted attributes defies any attempt to simplify the rules of the case according to any clearly defined principle: it seems a strange growth in which original and later elements, important and secondary features, are capriciously brought together.     In order to explain these phenomena we have to look to earlier and not to later law. What seems arbitrary and discordant in modern times, appears clear and consistent in the original structure of the manor.     The older divisions may not be so definitely drawn and so developed as the later, but they have the advantage of being based on fundamental differences of fact. Even when the names and terms do not appear well settled, the subject-matter arranges itself according to some natural contrasts, and it is perhaps by too exclusive study of names and terms that Mr. Scrutton has been prevented from duly appreciating the difference in substance. He says of the end of the thirteenth century: 'In the reports about this time it seems generally to be. assumed that if the commoner cannot show an especialte or special grant or title, he must show "fraunc tenement en la ville a ques commune est appendant." Thus we have the question: -- "Coment clamez vous commune? Com appendant, ou par especialte,' while Hengham, J. says: 'prescription de terre est assez bon especialte"' (p. 50). This is really the essence of all the rules regarding common of pasture, and, what is more, the contrast follows directly from arrangements which did not come into use in the fourteenth century, but were in full work at the time of Bracton and long before it. What is called in later law common appendant, appears as the normal adjunct to the holding, that is, to a share in the system of village husbandry. If a bovate is granted to a person, so much of the rights of pasture as belongs to every bovate in the village is presumed to be granted with the arable. ' So much as belongs to every bovate in the village; 'this means, that the common depends in this case on a general arrangement of the pasture in the village. Such an arrangement exists in every place; it is regulated by custom and by the decisions of the manorial court or halimote, it extends equally over the free and over the unfree land, over the waste, the moor and wood, and over the fallow. It admits a certain number and certain kinds of beasts, and excludes others. Only because such a general arrangement is supposed to exist, is the right to com mon treated in so vague a manner; the documents present, in truth, only a reference to relations which are substantiated in the husbandry system of the manor. But the right of common may exceed these lines in many ways: it may be joined to a tenement which lies outside the manorial system, or a plot freshly reclaimed from the waste, or to a holding belonging to some other manor. It may admit a greater number and other kinds of beasts than those which were held commonable in the usual course of manorial husbandry. In such cases the right to pasture had to proceed from some special agreement or grant, and, of course, had to be based on something different from the ordinary reference to the existing system of common husbandry. If there was no deed to go by, such a right could only be established by long use.     I think that all this must follow necessarily as soon as the main fact is admitted, that common is normally the right to pasture of a shareholder of the manor. The objection may be raised, that such a priori reasoning is not sufficient in the case, because the documents do not countenance it by their classification. Would the objection be fair? Hardly, if one does not insist on finding in Bracton the identical terms used in Coke upon Littleton. It is true that Bracton speaks of common in general, and not of common appendant, appurtenant, and in gross, but the right of common which he treats as normal appears to be very peculiar on a closer examination of his rules. It is praedial and not personal; to begin with, it is always thought of as belonging to a tenement.(18*) What is more, it cannot belong to a tenement reclaimed from the waste,(19*) and in this way the requirement of 'ancient arable' is established, that is, the pasture is considered as one of the rights conceded to the original shares of a manorial community. The use of the open field outside the time of reasonable defence (20*) is primarily meant, and the common pasture appears from this point of view as one of the stages in the process of common farming. To make up the whole, the right to common is defined by a 'quantum pertinet.'(21*) which has a sense only in connexion with the admeasurement of claims effected by the internal organisation of the manor. Such is evidently the normal arrangement presupposed by Bracton's description, and his only fault is, that he does not distinguish with clearness between the consequences of the normal arrangement, and of grants or usurpations which supplement and modify it. It must be remembered that he only gives the substantive law about common rights in the course of a discussion of the pleadings in actions 'quo jure' and assizes of pasture. If we compare with Bracton's text the rules and decisions laid down in the legal practice of the thirteenth century, we shall find that the same facts are implied by them. They all suppose a contrast between 'intrinsec' and 'forinsec' claims to common, that is between the rights of those who are members of the manorial group, and the rights, if any, of those who are outside it, and again a contrast between the normal rights of commoners and any more extensive rights acquired by special grant or agreement. Only the freeholders are protected in the enjoyment of their commons; only the freeholders are protected in the enjoyment of their tenements; but their claims are based on arrangements in which the unfree land participates in everything with the free. It may be added that litigation mostly arises from the adjustment of 'forinsec' claims under the writ 'Quo jure.' The intercommoning between neighbours gives rise to a good many disputes, and is much too frequent to be considered, as it was by later law, a mere 'excuse for trespassing.'(22*) This common 'pur cause de vicinage' may be a relic of a time when adjoining villages formed a part of a higher unit of some kind, of the Mark, of a hundred, for example. It may be explained also by the difficulty of setting definite boundaries in wide tracts of moor and forest. However this may be, its constant occurrence forms another germ of a necessary contrast between the two classes which afterwards developed into common appendant and common appurtenant. It could not be brought under the same rules as those which flowed from the internal arrangement of the manor. A special difficulty attended it as to admeasurement: the customary treatment of other holdings could not in this case serve as a standard. The very laxity of the principle naturally gave occasion to very different interpretations and deductions. And so we are justified in saying, that the chief distinctions of later law are to be found in their substance in the thirteenth century, and that although a good deal of confusion occurs in details, the earlier documents give even better clues than the later to the reasons which led to the well-known classification.     Common appendant, if we may use the modern term for the sake of brevity, is indissolubly connected with the system of husbandry followed by the village community. A very noticeable feature of it is, that, in one sense, it towers over the lord of the manor as well as over the tenants. Of course, legally the lord is considered as the owner of the waste,(23*) but even from the point of view of pure law his ownership is restricted by his own grants. in so much as he has conceded freehold tenements to certain persons, he is bound by his own deed not to withhold from these persons the necessary adjuncts of such tenements, and especially the rights of pasture bound up with them. The free tenants share with the lord, if he wants to turn his common pasture to some special and lucrative use; if, for instance, strangers are admitted to it for money, one part of the proceeds goes to the tenantry.(24*) Again, the lord may not overburden the common, and sometimes freeholders try their hand at litigation against the lord on the ground that he sends his cattle to some place where they ought not to go.(25*) The point cannot be overlooked, that the lord of the manor appears subjected to certain rules set up by custom and common decision in the meetings of his tenantry. The number and kind of beasts which may come to the common from his land is fixed, as well as the number that may come from the land of a cottager.(26*) The freeholders alone can enforce the rule against him, but it is set up not by the freeholders, but by the entire community of the manor, and practically by the serfs more than by the freeholders, because they are so much more numerous.     As the common of pasture appears as an outcome of a system of husbandry set up by the village community, so every change in the use of the pasture ought in the natural course to proceed from a decision of this community. Such a change may be effected in one of two manners: the customary rotation of crops may be altered, or else a part of the waste may be reclaimed for tillage. In the first case, a portion of the open arable and meadow, which ought to have been commonable at a certain time, ceases to be so; in the second, the right to send cattle to the waste is stinted in so much as the arable is put under defence, or the land is used for the construction of dwellings. By the common law the free tenants alone could obtain a remedy for any transgression in this respect. I have mentioned already that suits frequently arose when the old-fashioned rotation of crops was modified in accordance with the progress of cultivation. As to the right of approving from the waste, the relative position of lord and tenants was for a long time debateable, and, as everybody knows, the lord was empowered to approve by the Statute of Merton of 20 Henry III, with the condition that he should leave sufficient pasture to his free tenants according to the requirements of their tenements. The same power was guaranteed by the Statute of Westminster II against the claims of neighbours. It has been asked whether, before the Statute of Merton, the lord had power to enclose against commoners, if he left sufficient common to satisfy their rights. Bracton's text in the passage where he treats of the Statute is distinctly in favour of the view that this legislative enactment did actually alter the common law, and that previously it was held that a lord could not approve without the consent of his free-tenants.(27*) Turning to the practice of the thirteenth-century courts, we find that the lawyers were rather doubtful as to this point. In a case of 1221 the jurors declare, that although the defendant has approved about two acres of land from the waste where the plaintiff had common, this latter has still sufficient pasture left to him. And thereupon the plaintiff withdraws.(28*) In 1226 a lord who has granted pasture everywhere, 'ubique,' and has inclosed part of it, succumbs in a suit against his tenant, and we are led to suppose that if the qualification 'ubique' had been absent, his right of approvement would have been maintained. It must be noticed, however, that the marginal note in Bracton's Notebook does not lay stress on the 'ubique,' and regards the decision as contrary to the law subsequently laid down by the Constitution of Merton.(29*) In a case of 1292 one of the counsel for the defendant took it for granted that the Statute of Merton altered the previously existing common law.(30*) The language of the Statutes themselves is certainly in favour of such a construction: in the Merton Constitution it is stated as a fact that the English magnates were prevented from making use of their manors,(31*) and the Westminster Statute. Is as positive as to neighbours; 'multi domini hucusque... impediti extiterunt,' etc. It seems hardly possible to doubt that the enactments really represent a new departure, although the way towards it had been prepared by the collision of interests in open Court. The condition negatively indicated by the documents in regard to the time before these enactments cannot be dismissed by the consideration that the lord would derogate from his grant by approving. Although a single trial may bear directly on the relation between the lord and only one of the tenants or a few of them, every change in the occupation of the land touches all those who are members of the manorial community. The removal of difficulties as to approvement was, before the Statute of Merton, not a question of agreement between two persons, but a question as to the relative position of the lord and of the whole body of the tenantry. The lord might possibly settle with every tenant singly, but it seems much more probable that he brought the matter, when it arose, before the whole body with which the management of the village husbandry rested, that is, before the halimote, with its free and unfree tenants. In any case, the influence of the free tenants as recognised by the common law was decisive, and hardly to be reconciled with the usual feudal notions as to the place occupied by the lord in the community. It must be noted that even that order of things which came into being in consequence of the Statute contains an indirect testimony as to the power of the village community. The Act requires the pasture left to the free tenants to be sufficient, and it may be asked at once, what criterion was there of such a sufficiency, if the number of beasts was not mentioned in the instrument by which the common was held. Of course, in case of dispute, a jury had to give a verdict about it, but what had the jury to go by? It was not the actual number of heads of cattle on a tenement that could be made the starting-point of calculation. Evidently the size of the holding, and its relation to other holdings, had to be taken into account. But if so, then the legal admeasurement had to conform to the customary admeasurement defined by the community.(32*) And so again the openly recognised law of the kingdom had to be set in action according to local customs, which in themselves had no legally binding force.     Besides the land regularly used for pasture, the cattle of the village were sent grazing along the roads (33*) and in the woods.(34*) These last were mostly used for feeding swine. In other respects, also, the wood was subjected to a treatment analogous to that of the pasture land. The right of hunting was, of course, subjected to special regulations, which have to be discussed from the point of view of forest law. But, apart from that right, the wood was managed by the village community according to certain customary rules. Every tenant had a right to fell as many young trees as he wanted to keep his house and his hedges in order.(35*) It sometimes happens, that the lord and the homage enter into agreement as to the bigger trees, and for every trunk taken by the lord the tenantry are entitled to take its equivalent.(36*) Whenever the right had to be apportioned more or less strictly, the size of the holdings was always the main consideration.(37*)     It would be strange to my purpose to discuss the details of common of estovers, of turbary,(38*) or of fishery. The chief points which touch upon the problems of social origins are sufficiently apparent in the subject of pasture. The results of our investigation may, I think, be summed up under the following heads: --     1. Rights of common are either a consequence of the communal husbandry of the manor, or else they proceed from special agreement or long use.     2. The legal arrangement of commons depends on a customary arrangement, in which free and unfree tenants take equal part.(39*)     3. The feudal theory of the lord's grant is insufficient to explain the different aspects assumed by rights of common, and especially the opposition between lord and free commoners.

NOTES:

1. Eynsham Cart. 2, c: 'Est quoddam pratum nuncupatum Clayhurste et continet de prato et pastura 35 acras dimidiam rodam 13 perticas. Est ibidem ex parte australi una pecia prati et pasture et continet 10 acras et 7 perticas et nuncupatur twelueacres que annuatim diuiditur in 12 parcellas per le virgam equales, unde dominus habet uno anno i, iii, v, vii, ix et xi, heredes Freman et Walterus le Reue eodem anno habent parcellas ii, iv, vi, viii, x et xii. Alio anno habet dominus parcellas quas tenentes habuerunt et tenentes parcellas domini. Et sic annuatim habet dominus quinque acras, tres perticas et dimidiam perticam.' Cf. 23, c: 'Memorandum quod in prato de Landemede sunt sex parcelle bundate quarum prima parcella nuncupata Stubbefurlong continet 4 acras et dimidiam rodam et est domini anno incarnacionis Domini impari et tenencium anno incarnacionis Domini pari. Quandovero est tenencium, diuiditur per sortem.'

2. A very good instance is supplied by Williams, Rights of Common, 89, 9o. Cf Birkbeck, Sketch of the Distribution of Land in England, 19.

3. Gloucester Cart. iii. 67 (Extenta de Berthona Regis): 'De pastura separabili dicunt quod Rex habet quandam moram quae continet 4 1/2 acras et valet 4 solidos et potest sustinere 12 boves per nouem menses. Item de pastura inseparabili dicunt quod Abbas Gloucestriae debet invenire pasturam ad I8 boves domini Regis, et ad 2 vaccas, et 2 afros, a vigilia Pentecostes quousque prata sint falcata, levata et cariata.' Exch. Q. R. Treas. of Rec. 59/69: 'item dicunt quod sunt ibi de pastura separabili 50 acrae et valet acra 3 d.'

4. Eynsham Cart. 3, b: 'Dicunt eciam quod omnia prata pasture domini et omnes culture non seminate et [que] deberent seminari sunt separalia per tempus predictum.' 10, b: 'Et sunt dicte pasture separales quousque blada circumcrescentia asportentur.' A curious case is the following; ibid., 3, b: 'Dicunt eciam quod dominus tenetur pratum suum de Langenhurst custodire nec potest attachiare malefactores in eodem a solis ortu usque ad occasum, aliis temporibus... licet, et est separale a festo annunciacionis beate Marie usque gulam Augusti.'

5. Domesday of St. Paul's, 69: 'Non est ibi certa pastura nisi quando terre dominice quiescunt alternatim inculte.' Cf 59: 'Non est ibi pastura nisi cum quiescit dominicum per wainnagium... possunt ibi esse 4 sucs cum uno verre et suis fetibus et 4 vacce cum suis fetibus si quiescunt pasture dominice alternatim.' Rot. Hundr. ii. 768, b: 'Item porci eius et aliorum vicinorum suorum pascent in campis dominicis extra tassum dum bladum domini stat in campis, et post bladum domini cariatum ibunt in campis per totum et omnes alie bestie ejus et aliorum vicinorum suorum pascent per totum in stipulo domini sine imparcamento.'

6. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS. 1 (Bodleian), f 182, b. Cf f 239, 240: 'Memorandum anni 1243 de amensuratione pasture... dicunt precise quod ad quamlibet hidatam terre in eadem villa pertinent 16 boues ad terram excolendam, 4 vacce, 4 averia, 50 bidentes et 6 porci... ad unam virgatam terre pertinent 4 boues, et 2 vacce, et 1 auerium, et 3 porci et 12 bidentes ad tantam terram colendam et sustinendam.' Leigerbook of Kirkham Priory, Yorkshire, Fairfax MSS. 7, f 8 a: 'Amensuratio pasture de Sexendale facta anno regni regis Henrici filii regis Iohannis 36to... qui dicunt per sacramentum suum quod quelibet bouata terre in Sexendale potest sustinere duo grossa animalia, 30 oues cum sequela unius anni, duos porcos sine sequela et 3 aucas cum sequela dimidii anni, ct non amplius.'

7. In a case of 1233 (Note-book of Bracton, 749) it is complained, -- 'Cum idem Robertus non possit aliena aueria in pasturam illam recolligere, scil. hominum alterius religionis,' etc.

8. Note.book of Bracton, pl. 174: 'Dicunt eciam quod in manerio de Billingiheie, sicut inquirere possunt, sunt 12 carucate terre tam in certa terra quam in marisco predicto, scilicet sex carucate de certa terra et sex carucate in marisco, et in Northkime sunt sex carucate terre et quatuor bouate tam in certa terra quam in marisco predicto, set nesciunt aliquam distinctionem quantum sit in certa terra et quantum in marisco nec aliquid inquirere potuerunt de metis infra mariscos illos.'

9. Note-book of Bracton, pl. 749: 'Robertus de Spraxtona summonitus fuit ad warantizandum Abbati de Riuallibus 42 acras terre et pasturam ad 30 uaccas cum uno tauro et 48 boues et 40 oues cum pertinenciis in Sproxtona que tenet et de eo tenere clamat, et unde cartam Simonis de S. auunculi sui cuius heres ipse est habet,' etc.

10. Note-book of Bracton, pl. 818: 'Et Saherus et Matillis per attornatos suos ueniunt et dicunt quod semper, a conquestu Anglie usque nunc communicauerunt cum eodem Roberto et antecessoribus suis in Locke, et idem Robertus et antecessores semper communicauerunt in terris ipsorum S. et M. in Gaham... et unde dicunt quod si idem Robertus uelit se retrahere de communa quam habet in terris ipsorum, ipsi nolunt se retrahere et dicunt quod semper communicauerunt horn underhorn... Et Robertus uenit et dicit quod nec ipse nec antecessores unquam communam habuerunt in Locke nisi post gwerram et per vim etc. scil. post gwerram motam inter regem S. et homines suos.' Spelman renders the horn unherhorn by, horn with horn,' but the editor of Bracton's Note-book thinks, and I believe rightly, that the phrase means a common for all manner of horned beasts. Brunner has translated it by, gemeinschaftlich-durcheinander.'

11. Rot. Hundr. ii. 605, e: 'In dicto manerio 1 maguus boscus qui continet 300 acras in quo quidem bosco homines propinquarum villarum ut Wardeboys. Wodehirst, Woldhirst, Sti Ivonis, Niddingworth et Halliwell communicant omnes bestias suos pascendo cum sokna de Sumersham.' Note book of Bracton, 1194: 'Iuratores dicunt quod mora illa ampla est et magna et nesciunt aliquas divisas quantum pertinet ad unam uillam, quantum ad aliam.' In the case of forest land many villages enjoyed and still enjoy rights of intercommoning over a wide space. The case of Epping is the familiar example.

12. Eynsham Cart. 3, b: 'Dicunt eciam quod dominus et villata de Shyfford intercommunicant cum villatis de Stanlake, Brytlamptone et Herdewyk a gula Augusti usque festum Sti Martini, cum villatis vero de Astone Cote et Elcforde a festo Sti Michaelis usque dictum festum Sti Martini.'

13. Note-book of Bracton, pl. 914: 'Et Thomas venit et dicit quod nullam communam clamat in Oure, set uerum uult dicere. Certe diuise et mete continentur inter terram Prioris de Oure et terram ipsius Thome de Merkwrthe et quamdiu placuit eidem Priori habere aesiam in terra ipsius Thome in Markwrthe habuit ipse Thomas aesiam in terra ipsius Prioris de Oure, et si Prior uult subtrahere se, ipse libenter subtrahet se.'

14. The relation between this writ and the action, quod reddat ei tantam pasturam, is well illustrated by a case of 1230 (Note-book of Bracton, pl. 392): 'Ricardus de Willeye et Iohanna de Willeye summoniti fuerunt ad respondendum Willelmo de Kamuilla quo iure communam pasture exigunt in terra ipsius W. in Arewe, desicut idem Willelmus nullam commUnam habet in terris ipsorum Ricardi et Iohanne, nec ipsi Ricardus et Johanna seruicium faciunt quare communam habere debeant,' etc...., Et quia Willelmus cognoscit quod habet communam quantamcumque licet paruam, consideratum est quod nichil capiat per breue istud et sit in misericordia pro falso clamore et perquirat sibi per aliud breue sicut per breue quod reddat ei tantam pasturam,' etc. One may say that the Quo Jure was an, actio negatoria.'

15. Note-book of Bracton, pl. 561: 'Et quia Simon non potest dedicere quin terra illa ubi communa est sit de 1 frodo et una uilla, consideratum est quod ipsa communicet cum eodem Simone in terra ipsius Simonis,' etc.

16. Scrutton, Commons and Common Fields. 42.

17. Page 37.

18. Bracton, f 223, a: 'Non debet dici communia quod quis habuerit in alieno... cum tenementum non habeat ad quod possit communia pertinere, sed potius herbagium dici debet quam communia, cum hoc posset esse personale quid.'

19. Bracton, f 226, b: 'Item dicere potest quod nulla communia pertinet ad tale tenementum, quia illud fuit aliquando foresta, boscus, et locus vastae solitudinis et communia, et iam inde efficitur assartum, vel redactum est in culturam, et non debet communia pertinere ad communiam, et ubi omnes de patria solebant communicare.'

20. Bracton, f 229, a: 'Hoc non erit intelligendum quod omni tempore, nisi tantum temporibus competentibus, scilicet post blada asportata et fena levata, vel quando tenementum iacet incultum et ad waractum.'

21. Bracton, f 228, b: 'Item eodem modo si ita feoffatus fuerit quis, sine expressione numeri vel generis, sed ita, cum pastura quantum pertinet ad tantum tenementum in eadem villa. talem ligat constitutio sicut prius cum expressione: quia cum constet de quantitate tenementi, de facili perpendi poterit de numero aueriorum, et etiam de genere, secundum consuetudinem locorum.'

22. Scrutton, 55.

23. Cartulary of Christ Church, Harl. MSS. 1006, p. 3: 'Prior et conventus est capitalis dominus commune pasture de B.'

24. Ely Cart.. Cotton MSS. Claudius, xi, f iii, a: 'In L. debet villata communicare cum suis averiis propriis cum domino Episcopo. Et si dominus voluerit, ibidem possunt habere extranei bestias pro denariis. Set inde habebunt liberi homines de W. quemlibet septimum denarium preter decimum.'

25. Registrum cellararii of Bury St. Edmunds, Cambr. Univ., Gg. iv. 4, f 31, b: 'Et notandum quod inquisitio super calumpnia Egidii de Neketona clamantis quod abbas non haberet communam infra precinctum villate de Bertone scribitur in forma (tali),' etc.

26. Cart. of Christ Church, Canterbury, Add. MSS. 6159. f 21, b: 'Sciendum quod dominus potest habere in communia pasture de bosco cum aisiamento friscorum et dominicorum domini tempore apto c bidentes per maius centum.'

27. Bracton, f 228, b: 'Inprimis videndum est qualiter constitutio illa sit intelligenda, ne male intellecta trahat utentes ad abusum... non omnes nec in omnibus per constitutionem restringuntur, et ideo videndum erit utrum feoffati fuerint large, scilicet per totum, et ubique, et in omnibus locis, et ad omnia averia et sine numero... tales non ligat constitutio memorata, quia feoffamentum non tollit licet tollat abusum.'

28. Note-book of Bracton, 1975.

29. Note-book of Bracton, 1881. The marginal note runs: 'Nota quod nichil includi poterit de forestis et moris licet minimum quid et quamuis quaerens extra clausum habere possit ad sufficientiam.' And a little higher the decision is marked as, contra constitutionem de Merton.'

30. See Scrutton, 63, 64.

31. Bracton, f 227, b: 'Quia multi sunt magnates qui feoffauerunt milites et libere tenentes suos in maneriis suis de paruis tenementis, et qui impedlti sunt per eosdem quod commodum suum facere non possunt de residuo maneriorum suorum.' Reference may also be made to a note on a Plea Roll of 1221 (printed in L. Q. R. iv. 230), which shows that some years before the statute the magnates complained that they were prevented from assarting their pasture land by the claims of virgaters.

32. This is directly stated by Bracton, f 228, b., vide supra.

33. Cartulary of Christ Church, Canterbury, Addit. MSS. 6159, f 52, b: 'Pastura... de herbagiis cuiusdam vie inter curiam et ecclesiam de Pritelwelle.' Domesday of St. Paul's, I: 'Nulla est ibi pastura nisi in boscis et viis.'

34. Rot. Hundr. 613, b: 'Et omnes libere tenentes... communicant in bosco de A. cum omnibus bestiis suis libere per totum annum.'

35. Eynsham Cart. 10, b: 'Est ibidem unus boscus... cuius valor non appreciatur pro eo quod minister regis non permittit includi si fiat copicium, sufficiens tamen est pro housebote et heybote.' Gloucester Cart. iii. 67: 'De boscis dicunt quod rex habet quandam costeram bosci de fago juvene quae continet ad aestimationem 30 acras, unde rex poterit approbare per annum dimidiam marcam, scilicet in subbosco et virgis ad clausturam, et meremium ad carucas et alia facienda sine destructione, et ille boscus est communis omnibus vicinis in herbagio.'

36. Cart. of Christ Church, Canterbury, Add. MSS. 6159, f 28, b: 'Boscus ibi est cuius medietas est ecclesie et medietatem clamant tenentes illius denne, ut si dominus arborem unam accipiat, ipsi aliam accipient.'

37. Worcester Cart. (Camden Ser.), 62, b: 'Quaelibet virgata tenet 3 feorthendels de Bruera, et dimidia virgata I feorthendel et dimidium.'

38. For instance, Madox, Exch. I, 27, n. 47: 'Habebunt turbas sufficientes in predicta mora ad focalium fratrum... secundum quantitatem terrarum suarum in eadem villa.'

39. A very remarkable instance of the way in which rights of common were divided and arranged between lords and villains is afforded by the Court Rolls of Brightwaltham. Maitland, Manorial Rolls, Selden Soc. ii. 172. I shall have to discuss the Case in the Fifth Chapter of this Essay.

Chapter 3

Rural Work and Rents

Our best means of judging of the daily work in an English village of the thirteenth century is to study the detailed accounts of operations and payments imposed on the tenants for the benefit of a manorial lord. Surveys, extents, or inquisitions were drawn up chiefly for the purpose of settling these duties, and the wealth of material they afford enables us to form a judgment as to several interesting questions. It tells directly of the burden which rural workmen had to bear in the aristocratical structure of society; it gives indirectly an insight into all the ramifications of labour and production since the dues received by the lord were a kind of natural percentage upon all the work of the tenants; the combination of its details into one whole affords many a clue to the social standing and history of the peasant classes of which we have been treating.     Let us begin by a survey of the different kinds of labour duties performed by the dependent holdings which. clustered round the manorial centre. Foremost stands ploughing and the operations connected with it. The cultivation of the demesne soil of a manor depended largely on the help of the peasantry. By the side of the ploughs and plough-teams owned by the lord himself, the plough-teams of his villains are made to till his land, and manorial extents commonly mention that the demesne portion has to be cultivated by the help of village customs, 'cum consuetudinibus villae.'(1*) The duties of every householder in this respect are reckoned up in different ways. Sometimes every dependent plough has its number of acres assigned to it, and the joint owners of its team are left to settle between themselves the proportions in which they will have to co-operate for the performance of the duty.(2*) In most cases the 'extent' fixes the amount due from each individual holder. For instance, every virgater is to plough one acre in every week. This can only mean that one acre of the lord's land is reckoned on every single virgate in one week, without any reference to the fact that only one part of the team is owned by the peasant. If, for example, there were four virgaters to share in the ownership of the plough, the expression under our notice would mean that every team has to plough four acres in the week.(3*) But the ploughs may be small, or the virgaters exceptionally wealthy, and their compound plough team may have to cultivate only three acres or even less. The lord in this case reckons with labour-weeks and acres, not with teams and days-work. A third possibility would be to base the reckoning on the number of days which a team or a holder has to give to the lord.(4*) A fourth, to lay on the imposition in one lump by requiring a certain number of acres to be tilled, or a certain number of days of ploughing.(5*) It must be added, that the peasants have often to supplement their ploughing work by harrowing, according to one of these various systems of apportionment.(6*)     The duties here described present only a variation of the common 'week-work' of the peasant, its application to a certain kind of labour. They could on occasion be replaced by some other work,(7*) or the lord might lose them if the time assigned for them was quite unsuitable for work.(8*) There is another form of ploughing called gafol-earth, which has no reference to any particular time-limits. A patch of the lord's land is assigned to the homage for cultivation, and every tenant gets his share in the work according to the size of his holding. Gafol-earth is not only ploughed but mostly sown by the peasantry.(9*)     A third species of ploughing-duty is the so-called averearth. or grass-earth. This obligation arises when the peasants want more pasture than they are entitled to use by their customary rights of common. The lord may grant the permission to use the pasture reserved for him, and exacts ploughings in return according to the number of heads of cattle sent to the pasturage.(10*) Sometimes the same imposition is levied when more cattle are sent to the commons than a holding has a right to drive on them.(11*) It is not impossible that in some cases the very use of rights of common Was made dependent on the performance of such duties.(12*) A kindred exaction was imposed for the use of the meadows.(13*) Local variations have, of course, to be taken largely into account in all such matters: the distinction between gafol-earth and grass-earth, for instance, though drawn very sharply in most cases, gets somewhat confused in others.     Manorial records mention a fourth variety of ploughing work under the name of ben-earth, precariae carucarum. This is extra work in opposition to the common ploughings described before.(14*) It is assumed that the subject population is ready to help the lord for the tillage of his land, even beyond the customary duties imposed on it. It sends its ploughs three or four times a year 'out of love,' and 'for the asking.' It may be conjectured how agreeable this duty must have been in reality, and indeed by the side of its common denominations, as boon-work and asked-work, we find much rougher terms in the speech of some districts -- it is deemed unlawenearth and godlesebene.(15*) It must be said, however, that the lord generally provided food on these occasions, and even went so far as to pay for such extra work.     Other expressions occur in certain localities, which are sometimes difficult of explanation. Lentenearth,(16*) in the manors of Ely Minster, means evidently an extra ploughing in Lent. The same Ely records exhibit a ploughing called Filstnerthe or Filsingerthe,(17*) which may be identical with the Lentenearth just mentioned: a fastnyngseed (18*) occurs at any rate which seem s connected with the ploughing under discussion. The same extra work in Lent is called Tywe (19*) in the Custumal of Bleadon, Somersetshire. When the ploughing-work is paid for it may receive the name of penyearth.(20*) The Gloucester survey speaks of the extra cultivation of an acre called Radacre, and the Ely surveys of an extra rood 'de Rytnesse.'(21*) I do not venture to suggest an explanation for these last terms; and I need not say that it would be easy to collect a much greater number of such terms in local use from the manorial records. It is sufficient for my purpose to mark the chief distinctions.     All the other labour-services are performed more or less on the same system as the ploughings, with the fundamental difference that the number of men engaged in them has to be reckoned with more than the number of beasts. The extents are especially full of details in their descriptions of reaping or mowing corn and grass; the process of thrashing is also mentioned, though more rarely. In the case of meadows (mederipe) sometimes their dimensions are made the basis of calculation, sometimes the number of work-days which have to be employed in order to cut the grass.(22*) As to the corn-harvest, every holding has its number of acres assigned to it,(23*) or else it is enacted that every house has to send so many workmen during a certain number of days.(24*) If it is said that such and such a tenant is bound to work on the lord's field at harvest-time with twenty-eight men, it does not mean that he has to send out such a number every time, but that he has to furnish an amount of work equivalent to that performed by twenty-eight grown-up labourers in one, day. It may be divided into fourteen days' work of two labourers, or into seven days' of four, and so forth.     Harvest-time is the most pressing time in the year for rural work; it is especially important not to lose the opportunity presented by fine weather to mow and garner in the crop before rain, and there may be only a few days of such weather at command. For this reason extra labour is chiefly required during this season, and the village people are frequently asked to give extra help in connexion with it. The system of precariae is even more developed on these occasions than in the case of ploughing.(25*) All the forces of the village are strained to go through the task; all the houses which open on the street send their labourers,(26*) and in most cases the entire population has to join in the work, with the exception of the housewives and perhaps of the marriageable daughters.(27*) The landlord treats the harvesters to food in order to make these exertions somewhat more palatable to them.(28*) These 'love-meals' are graduated according to a set system. If the men are called out only once, they get their food and no drink: these are 'dry requests.' If they are made to go a second time, ale is served to them (precariae cerevisiae). The mutual obligations of lords and tenantry are settled very minutely;(29*) the latter may have to mow a particular acre with the object of saying 'thanks' for some concession on the part of the lord.(30*) The same kind of 'requests' are in use for mowing the meadows. The duties of the peasants differ a great deal according to size of their holdings and their social position. The greater number have of course to work with scythe and sickle, but the more wealthy are called upon to supervise the rest, to ride about with rods in their hands.(31*) On the other hand, a poor woman holds a messuage, and need do no more than carry water to the mowers.(32*)     A very important item in the work necessary for medieval husbandry was the business of carrying produce from one part of the country to the other. The manors of a great lord were usually dispersed in several counties, and even in the case of small landowners it was not very easy to arrange a regular communication with the market. The obligation to provide horses and carts gains in importance accordingly.(33*) These averagia are laid out for short and long distances, and the peasants have to take their turn at them one after the other.(34*) They were bound to carry corn to London or Bristol according to the size of their holdings.(35*) Special importance was attached to the carriage of the 'farm,' that is of the products designed for the consumption of the lord.(36*) In some surveys we find the qualification that the peasants are not obliged to carry anything but such material as may be put on the fire, i.e. used in the kitchen.(37*) In the manor itself there are many carriage duties to be performed: carts are required for the grain, or for spreading the dung. The work of loading and of following the carts is imposed on those who are not able to provide the implements.(38*) And alongside of the duties of carriage by horses or oxen we find the corresponding manual duty. The 'averagium super dorsum suum' falls on the small tenant who does not own either horses or oxen.(39*) Such small people are also made to drive the swine or geese to the market.(40*) The lord and his chief stewards must look sharp after the distribution of these duties in order to prevent wealthy tenants from being put to light duties through the protection of the bailiffs, who may be bribed for the purpose.(41*)     It would be hard to imagine any kind of agricultural work which is not imposed on the peasantry in these manorial surveys. The tenants mind the lord's ploughs, construct houses and booths for him, repair hedges and dykes, work in vineyards, wash and shear the sheep,(42*) etc. In some cases the labour has to be undertaken by them, not in the regular run of their services, but by special agreement, as it were, in consideration of some particular right or permission granted to them.(43*) Also it happens from time to time that the people of one manor have to perform some services in another, for instance, because they use pasture in that other manor.(44*) Such 'forinsec' labour may be due even from tenants of a strange lord. By the side of purely agricultural duties we find such as are required by the political or judicial organisation of the manor. Peasants are bound to guard and hang thieves, to carry summonses and orders, to serve at the courts of the superior lord and of the king.(45*)     In consequence of the great variety of these labour-services they had to be reduced to some chief and plain subdivisions for purposes of a general oversight. Three main classes are very noticeable notwithstanding all variety the araturae, averagia, and ianuoperationes. These last are also called hand-dainae or daywerke,(46*). and the records give sometimes the exact valuation of the work to be performed during a day in every kind of labour. Sometimes all the different classes are added up under one head for a general reckoning, and without any distinction as to work performed by hand or with the help of horse or ox, Among the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury,(47*) for instance, we find at Borle '1480 work-days divided into 44 weeks of labour from the virgaters, 88 from the cotters, 320 from the tofters holding small tenements in the fields.' In Bockyng the work-days of 52 weeks are reckoned to be 3222. It must be added, that when such a general summing up appears, it is mostly to be taken as an indication that the old system based on labour in kind is more or less shaken. The aim of throwing together the different classes of work is to get a general valuation of its worth, and such a valuation in money is commonly placed by the side of the reckoning. The single day-work yields sometimes only one penny or a little more, and the landlord is glad to exchange this cumbrous and cheap commodity for money-rents, even for small ones.     We must now proceed to examine the different forms assumed by payments in kind and money: they present a close parallel to the many varieties of labour-service. Thirteenth-century documents are full of allusions to payments in kind- that most archaic form of arranging the relations between a lord and his subjects. The peasants give corn under different names, and for various reasons: as gavelseed, in addition to the money-rent paid for their land.(48*) as foddercorn, of oats for the feeding of horses (49*); as gathercorn, which a manorial servant has to collect or gather from the several homesteads.(50*) as corn-bole, a best sheaf levied at harvest-time.(51*) Of other provender supplied to the lord's household honey is the most common, both in combs and in a liquid form,(52*) Ale is sometimes brewed for the same purpose, and sometimes malt and braseum furnished as material to be used in the manorial farm,(53*) Animals are also given in rent, mostly sheep, lambs, and sucking-pigs, The mode of selection is peculiar in some cases. In the Christ Church (Canterbury) manor of Monckton each sulung has to render two lambs, and the lord's servant has the right to take those which he pleases, whereupon the owner gets a receipt, evidently in view of subsequent compensation from the other co-owners of the sulung.(54*) If no suitable lamb is to be found, eight pence are paid instead of it as mail (mala), on one of the estates of Gloucester Abbey a freeman has to come on St. Peter's and Paul's day with a lamb of the value of 12d., and besides, 12 pence in money are to be hung in a purse on the animal's neck.(55*) Poultry is brought almost everywhere, but these prestations are very different in their origin. The most common reason for giving capons is the necessity for getting the warranty of the lord:(56*) In this sense the receipt and payment of the rent constitute an acknowledgment on the part of the lord that he is bound to protect his men, and on the part of the peasant that he is the lord's villain.  Wood hens' are given for licence to take a load of wood in a forest; similar prestations occur in connexion with pasture and with the use of a moor for turbary.(57*) At Easter the peasantry greet their protectors by bringing eggs: in Walton, a manor of St. Paul's, London, the custom is said to exist in honour of the lord, and at the free discretion of the tenants.(58*) Besides all those things which may be 'put on the fire and eaten,' rents in kind sometimes take the shape of some object for permanent use, especially of some implement necessary for the construction of the plough.(59*) Trifling rents, consisting of flowers or roots of ginger, are sometimes imposed with the object of testifying to the lord's seignory; but the payers of such rents are generally freeholders.(60*) I need not dwell long on the enumeration of all the strange prestations which existed during the Middle Ages, and partly came down to our own time: any reader curious about them will find an enormous mass of interesting material in Hazlitt's 'Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors.'     In opposition to labour and rents in kind we find a great many payments in money. Some of these are said in as many words to have stept into the place of labour services; of mowing, carrying, making hedges,(61*) etc. The same may be the case in regard to produce: barlicksilver is paid instead of barley, fish-silver evidently instead of fish, malt-silver instead of malt; a certain payment instead of salt, and so on.(62*) But sometimes the origin of the money rent is more difficult to ascertain. We find, for instance, a duty on sheep, which is almost certainly an original imposition when it appears as fald-silver. Even so the scythe-penny from every scythe, the bosing-silver from every horse and cart, the wood-penny, probably for the use of wood as fuel, must be regarded as original taxes and not quit-rents or commutation-rents.(63*) Pannage is paid in the same way for the swine grazing in the woods.(64*) Ward-penny appears also in connexion with cattle, but with some special shade of meaning which it is difficult to bring out definitely; the name seems to point to protection, and also occurs in connexion with police arrangements.(65*)     I must acknowledge that in a good many cases I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation for various terms which occur in the records for the divers payments. An attentive study of local usages will probably lead to definite conclusions as to most of them.(66*) From a general point of view it is interesting to notice, that we find already in our records some attempts to bring all the perplexing variety of payments to a few main designations. Annual rents are, of course, reckoned out under the one head of 'census.' Very obvious reasons suggested the advisability of computing the entire money-proceed yielded by the estate.(67*) It sometimes happens that the general sum made up in this way, fixed as it is at a constant amount, is used almost as a name for a complex of land.(68*) A division of rents into old and new ones does not require any particular explanation.(69*) But several other subdivisions are worth notice. The rent paid from the land often appears separately as landgafol or landchere. It is naturally opposed to payments that fall on the person as poll taxes.(70*) These last are considered guaranteed by the as a return for the personal protection lord to his subjects. Of the contrast between gafol as a customary rent and mal as a payment in commutation I have spoken already, and I have only to add now, that gild is sometimes used in the same sense as mal.(71*) Another term in direct opposition to gafol is the Latin donum.(72*) It seems to indicate a special payment imposed as a kind of voluntary contribution on the entire village. To be sure, there was not much free will to be exercised in the matter; all the dependent people of the township had to pay according to their means.(73*) But the tax must have been considered as a supplementary one in the same sense as supplementary boon-work. It may have been originally intended in some cases as an equivalent for some rights surrendered by the lord, as a mal or gild, in fact.(74*) In close connexion with the donum we find the auxilium,(75*) also an extraordinary tax paid once a year, and distinguished from the ordinary rent. It appears as a direct consequence of the political subjection of the tenantry.(76*). It is, in fact, merely an expression of the right to tallage. Our records mention it sometimes as apportioned according to the number of cattle owned by the peasant, but this concerns only the mode of imposition of the duty and hardly its origin.(77*) As I have said already, the auxilium is in every respect like the donum. One very characteristic trait of both taxes is, that they are laid primarily on the whole village, which is made to pay a certain round sum as a body.(78*) The burden is divided afterwards between the several householders, and the number of cattle, and more particularly of the beasts of plough kept on the holding, has of course to be taken into account more than anything else. But the manorial administration does not much concern itself with these details: the township is answerable for the whole sum.     It is to be added that the payment is sometimes actually mentioned as a political one in direct connexion with 'forinsec' duties towards the king. The burdens which lay on the land in consequence of the requirements of State and Church appear not unfrequently in the documents. Among those the scutage and hidage are the most important. The first of these taxes is so well known that I need not stop to discuss it. It may be noticed however that in relation to the dependent people scutage is not commonly spoken of; the tax was levied under this name from the barons and the armed gentry, and was mostly transmitted by these to the lower strata of society under some other name, as an aid or a tallage. Hidage is historically connected with the old English Danegeld system, and in some cases its amount is set out separately from other payments, and the tenants of a manor have to pay it to the bailiff of the hundred and not to the steward. A smaller payment called ward-penny is bound up with it, probably as a substitute for the duty of keeping watch and ward.(79*) In the north the hidage is replaced by cornage,(80*) a tax which has given rise to learned controversy and doubt; it looks like an assessment according to the number of horns of cattle, pro numero averiorum, as our Latin extents would say. The Church has also an ancient claim on the help of the faithful; the churchscot of Saxon times often occurs in the feudal age under the name of churiset or cheriset.(81*) It is mostly paid in kind, but may be found occasionally as a money-rent.     A survey of the chief aspects assumed by the work and the payments of the dependent people was absolutely necessary, in order to enable us to understand the descriptions of rural arrangements which form the most instructive part of the so-called extents. But every survey of terms and distinctions (even if it were much more detailed than the one I am able to present), will give only a very imperfect idea of the obligations actually laid on the peasantry. It must needs take up the different species one by one and consider them separately, whereas in reality they were meant to fit together into a whole. On the other hand it may create a false impression by enumerating in systematic order facts which belonged to different localities and perhaps to different epochs. To keep clear of these dangers we have to consider the deviations of practical arrangements from the rules laid down in the books and the usual combinations of the elements described.     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,(82*) 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.(83*) 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.     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.(84*) 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.(85*) Again, the lord had some latitude in selecting one or the other kind of service to be performed by his men.(86*) 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.(87*) 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.(88*) 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.(89*) 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.(90*) 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 weekwork 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'(91*) 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.     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),(92*) 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.(93*) 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.     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.     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.(94*) 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.(95*) The firmae of St. Alban's were reckoned to provide for the fifty-two weeks of the year, and one in advance.(96*) 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.(97*) 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.(98*)     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.     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.(99*) 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.     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.(100*) 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.     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,(101*) 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.(102*) 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.(103*)     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?     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.(104*) 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.     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.(105*) Of the sixty-one yokes it contains thirty are servile, twenty-nine are free, and two occupy an inter mediate 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.     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.(106*) 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.

NOTES:

1. Domesday of St. Paul's, 93: 'Potest wainnagium fieri cum 12 bobus et quatuor stottis cum consuetudinibus ville.' 75: 'Item (juratores) dicunt quod potest fieri wainnagium totius dominici cum 2 carucis bonis habentibus 20 capita in jugo et 2 herciatoribus cum consuetudinibus operariorum.'

2. Add. MSS. 61 59, f 44, a: '(Leyesdon)... debet quelibet caruca coniuncta arrare unam acram et habebunt 3 denarios pro acra et quadrantem.'

3. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189 (Roxburghe Ser.), 64: '(Virgatarius) a festo Sti Michaelis qualibet ebdomada arat unam acram donec tota terra domini sit culta.'

4. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, c. xi. f 185: 'Unusquisque arabit per tres dies, si habeat sex boves; per duos, si habeat quatuor boves; per unum, si habeat duos boves; per dimidium, si habeat unum bovem.'

5. Add. MSS. 6159, f. 53, a: 'Item debent predicte 22 virgate terre arrare ad frumentum, ad auenam et ad warectum 113 acras et valent 56 solidos 6 denarios.'

6. Gloucester Cart. iii. 92: 'Et quicquid araverit debet herciare tempore seminis. Et faciet unam hersuram que vocatur landegginge et valet 1 den.' iii. 194: 'Et debet herciare quotidle si necesse fuerit quousque semen domini seminetur, et allocabitur ei pro operacione manuali, et valet ultra obolum. Et quia non est numerus certus de diebus herciandis, aestimant juratores 40 dies.'

7. Ramsey Cart. I. 345: 'Qualibet autem septimana, a festo Sti Michaelis usque ad tempus sarclationis tribus diebus operatur, quodcunque opus sibi fuerit injunctum; et quarto die arabit unum sellionem, sive jungatur cum alio, sive non.'

8. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 64: 'A die circumcisionis similiter, excepta ebdomada Pasche, si possit per gelu, et si gelu durat per 12 dies, quietus debet esse. Si amplius durat, restituet araturam.'

9. Add. MSS. 6159, f. 49, b: 'Idem tenentes de predictis 22 et dimidia (terris) debent arrare ad seysonam frumenti 45 acras de gable et de qualibet terra 2 acras.' 35, b: 'Gauilherth: Willelmus de Bergate debet arrare dimidiam acram; Nicholaus de Jonebrigge et socii ejus unam virgam; heredes Johannis 8 pedes; Ricardus Cutte 8 pedes... Summa acrarum 25 acre 1 pes. Hec debent arrare et seminare.'

10. Rot. Hundred. ii. 768, b: 'Item si habeat carucam integram vel cum sociis conjunctam, illa caruca arabit domino 2 acras terre ad yvernagium et herciabit quantum illa caruca araverit in die, et istud servicium appellatur Greserthe, pro quo servicio ipse W. et omnes alii consuetudinarii habebunt pasturas dominicas ad diem (sic. corr. a die) ad Vincula Sti Petri usque ad festum beate Marie in Marcio et prata dominica postquam fenum fuerit cariatum.'

11. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS. I, f 44, b: 'Tenens dimidiam hidam habet 4 animalia in pascius quieta, et si plus habuerit-arabit et herciabit pro unoquoque dimidiam acram.'

12. Add. MSS. 6159, f 26, b: 'De qualibet caruca arant unam acram de averherde., et si per negligenciam alicujus remanserit acra non arata, tunc mittet dominus semen quod sufficiat ad unam acram ad domum illius et oportebit illum reddere bladum ad mensuram propinque acre et habebit tum herbagium de acra assignata.' Cart. of Beaulieu, Cotton MSS. Nero, A. xii, f 102, b: 'Et si habeat bovem vel vaccam iunctam, arabit pro quolibet virgo dimidiam acram ad festum Sti Martini sine cibo.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, f. 116: 'De qualibet carruca debent arare ad seminandum 7 acras, et ad warectum 7 acras, ut boves possint ire cum bobus domini in pastura.'

13. Exch. Q. R. Min. Acc. Bk. 514; T. G. 41, 173: '(Extenta manerii de Burgo) medwelond... debent arare tantam terram quantum habent de prato.'

14. Exch. Q. R. Min. Acc. Bk. 513, 97: 'Beinerth: 12 custumarii arabunt 6 acras terre ad semen yemale. Grasherthe: 12 arabunt cum quanto iungunt per unum diem ad semen yemale.' Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, C. xi. f. 30, a: 'Arabit de beneerthe si habeat carucam integram 3 rodas, et si iungat cum aliis ipse et ille cum quo iungit assidue arabunt 3 rodas.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 26; 'Et ad precariam carucarum arabit unam rodam scil. quartam partem acre sine cibo.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 98: 'R. de Wttone tenet dimidiam hidam pro una marca et debet habere ad preces per annum 12 homines et bis arare ad preces.'

15. Gloucester Cart. iii. 115: 'Johannes Barefoth tenet dimidiam virgatam terre continentem 24 acras... et debet arare qualibet secunda septimana a festo Sti Michaelis usque ad festum Beati Petri ad Vincula uno die... Et praeterea debet quater arare in terra domini, et vocantur ille arurae Unlawenher�e.' Black Book of St Augustine's, Cotton MSS. Faustina, A. i. f 44: '... arare 18 acras ad frumentum de godlesebene.'

16. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, C. xi, f 45, a: 'Preterea idem arabit de Lentener�e dimidiam acram.'

17. Ibid., 30, b: 'Item iste cum quanto iungit arabit de filstnerthe eodem tempore (ante Natale) per unum diem... Item arabit in quadragesima tres acras et 3 rodas et araturam de filsingerhe (sic). Item arabit in estate 3 acras et de beneerthe 3 rodas ut in hyeme, set nihil arabit de filsinger�e.'

18. Ibid., 35, a: 'Item per idem tempus arabit (ante Natale) dimidiam acram pro fastningsede sine cibo et opere si habeat carucam integram. Et si iungat Cum aliis, tunc iste et socenarii sui cum quibus iunget arabunt tantum et non amplius.'

19. Custumal of Bleadon, 189.

20. Gloucester Cart. ii. 134: 'Et facit unam aruram que vocatur peniher�e et valet tres denarii, quia recipiet de bursa domini quartum denarium.' Cf ii. 162: 'Et praeterea faciet unam aruram que vocatur yove (yoke?), scil. arabit dimidiam acram, et recipiet de bursa domini unum denarium obolum, et valet ultra Unum denarium obolum.'

21. Gloucester Cart. iii. 80: '(Dimidius virgatarius) debet unam aruram que vocatur radaker, scil. arare unam acram ad semen yemale, et triturare semen ad eamdem acram, scil. duos bussellos frumenti.' On iii. 79 we have another reading for the same thing: 'Et arabit unam acram quae vocatur Eadacre et [debet] triturare semen ad eamdem acram, et valet arura cum trituracione seminis 4 denarios.' What is the right term? -- Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, C. xi. f 133, a: 'Et arabit qualibet die a festo Sti Michaelis usque ad gulam Augusti dimidiam rodam, que faciunt per totum quinque acras... Et praeterea arabit Unam rodam de Rytuesse.'

22. Add. MSS. 6159, f 53, b: 'Item tota villata de Bocayng debet falcare 12 acras prati et dimidiam, et valet 4 solidos.'

23. Domesday of St. Paul's, 47: 'Et preter hec unaquaque domus hide debet metere 3 dimidias acras avene et colligere unum sellionem fabarum.'

24. Gloucester Cart. iii. 84, 85: 'Ricardus Bissop tenet unum messuagium et 10 acras terre... (operabitur) in messe domini cum 24 hominibus.'

25. Eynsham Cart. 88, b: 'Idem metet dimidiam acram bladi domini sine cibo domini et valet opus 4 denarios et vocatur la bene. Idem faciet cum uno homine beripam sine cibo domini et vocatur mederipe, et valet opus 4 den.... Idem veniet ad magnam bederipam domini ad cibum domini cum omnibus famulis suis et ipse supervidebit operari in propria persona sua. Quod si famulos non habuerit, tunc operabitur in propria (persona).'

26. Ramsey Cart. i. 488: 'Quaelibet domus habens ostium apertum versus vicum tam de malmannis quam de cotmannis et operariis inveniet unum hominem ad louebone.'

27. Ely lnqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, C. xi. f 38, b: 'Ad precariam ceruisie inveniet omnem familiam preter uxorem domus et filiam maritabilem... Quod si voluerint metere propria blada metent in suis croftis et non alibi.'

28. Domesday of St. Paul's, 75, 76: 'Et falcare dimidiam acram sumptibus suis et postmodum falcare cum tota villata pratum domini ita quod totum sit falcatum, et qualibet falx habebit Unum panem... et ad siccas precarias in autumpno inveniet unum hominem, et ad precarios ceruisie veniet cum quot hominibus habuerit ad cibum domini.' Cf 61.

29. Cart. of Battle, Augment Off. Misc. Books, N. 57, f. 36, a: 'Quilibet virgarius... debet invenire ad quemlibet precarium autumpnalem ad metendum 2 homines et habebunt singuli singulos panes ponderis 18 librarum cere et duo unum ferchulum carnis precii unius denarii, si sit dies carnis et potagium ad primum precarium. Ad secundum uero erit panis medietas de frumento et medietas ordei et cetera alia ut supra. Ad terciam precariam erit panis totus de frumento et cetera ut prenotatur. Ad quartam precariam quod vocatur hungerbedrip quilibet de tenentibus domini preter Henricum de Chaus inveniet unum hominem ad metendum et habebunt semel in die cibum, scil. panem et potum et unum ferculum secundum quod serviens illius loci providere placuerit, et caseum.'

30. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius, C. xi. 166, b... Metet dimidiam acram que vocatur �anc alfaker.' The name may possibly mean, that the peasant earned the gratitude of the lord by ploughing the half-acre. This construction would be supported by other instances of, sentimental, terminology. Cf Warwickshire Hundr. Roll, Q. R. Misc. Books, N. 18, f 94, b: 'Lovebene.' Cartul. of Okeburn, Al. Prior. 2/2, 17: 'Post precarias consuetudinarias debet de gratia, ut dicitur, quocienscumque precatus fuerit, (operare) per unum hominem.' Roch. Custum., ed. Thorp, 10, b: 'Et pro prato de Dodecote falcando, pro amore, non pro debito, habebunt unum multonem et unum caseum de 4 d.'

31. Gloucester Cart. i. 110: 'Idem Thomas cum virga sua debet interesse operationibus quo ad metebederipas.'

32. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 91: 'Editha tenet unam mesuagium et unam croftam pro 6 d. et fert aquam falcatoribus.'

33. Add. MSS. 6159, f 53, a: 'Item sunt in dicto manerio 22 virgate et debent invenire in proxima septimana post festum Sti Michaeli, per unum diem a mane usque ad horam meridianam 44 carecta, ad fima domini cariandum.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 62: 'Quod si boves non habuerit vel alia animalia ad arandum faciet aliud opus quod jussum fuerit et educet 10 plaustra de fimo post Pascha et habebit dignerium de domino et infra hundredum portabit unum plaustrum vel duas carectatas.'

34. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS. Claudius C. xi. 38, b: 'Averagium secundum turnum vicinorum suorum curtum et longum.'

35. Domesday of St. Paul's, 55: 'Rogerus dives... cum villata ad firmam portandam Londinium facit quantum requiritur de 20 acris.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, f 97: 'Quater faciet summagium apud Bristolliam.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 47: 'Preterea debet hida portare 4 summagia et dimidiam per totum ab horreo domini usque ad navem ter in anno divisim.'

36. Add. MSS. 6159, f 28, a: 'Item de predictis cotariis unusquisque habet unum horsacram et de ista acra debet unusquisque invenire unum equum ad ducendum cum aliis frumentum de firma ad Cantuariam, et pisas, et sal, et presencia portare.'

37. Black Book of St. Augustine's, Cotton MSS. Faustina, A. I, f 186: 'Nihil debent averare ad tunc, nisi res que sunt ad opus conventus et que poni debent super ignem.'

38. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, f 65: 'W. Sp. tenet unum fordil pro 15 den. et operatur quolibet die lune per totum annum et (debet) ladiare cum alio ferdilario sicut dimidii virgatarii.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 19: 'Omnes isti (cotarii) debent operari semel... Debent eciam portare et chariare.'

39. Rot. Hundr. ii. 605, b: 'Et faciet averagium super dorsum suum ad voluntatem domini.'

40. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, f 71: 'Portat et fugat aucas, et gallinas, et porcos Glastonie.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 27: '(Cotarii) isti debent singnlis diebus Lune unam operacionem et portare et fugare porcos Londoniam.'

41. Gloucester Cart. iii. 218: 'Item, quod nullus prepositus aliquid ab aliquo recipiat, ut ipsum ad firmam esse permittat vel ad levem ponat operationem mutando cariagia summagia debita in operibus manualibus.'

42. See, for instance, Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, pp. 22, 29; Gloucester Cart. iii. 17; Domesday of St. Paul's. 54.

43. Cart. of Bury St. Edmunds, Harl. MSS. 3977, f 82: '(Debet) metere pro porcis quilibet dimidiam acram siliginis.'

44. Black Book of St. Augustine's, Cotton MSS. Faustina, A. I, f. 44: 'Aratum hominum de N.' Cartul. of Battle, Augm. Off. Miscell. Books, N. 18, f 2, a: 'Forinseca servicia... arant... seminant.'

45. Domesday of St. Paul's, 38; '... et furem captum in curia custodiet et iudicatum suspendet et sparget fimum ad cibum domini. ' Ibid. 62: 'G. G. tenet 5 acras... (debet) qualibet septimana 2 opera et sequitur precarias in autumpno... R. H. 5 acras per idem servicium et preterea defendit eas versus regem.'

46. Gloucester Cart. iii. 54: 'Debet a festo Sti Michaelis usque ad festum Sti Petri ad Vincula qualibet septimana per 4 dies operari opus manuale cum uno homine, et valet quolibet dieta obolum.' Glastonbury Inqu. 28: 'Si est ad opus a festo Sti Petri ad Vincula usque ad festum Sti Michaelis nisi festum intercurrat qualibet die faciet unam dainam.'

47. Add. MSS. 6159, f 25, a; 53, b.

48. Domesday of St. Paul's, 33: 'Singule virgate debent per annum... de gavelsed 3 mensuras quarum 7 faciunt mensuram de Colcester.' Black Book of St. Augustine's, Cotton MSS., Faustina, A. i, 31, d: 'Sunt praeterea 5 sullungi et 50 acre in eadem hamietto qui debent bladum de gabulo.'

49. Domesday of St. Paul's, 6: 'Et unum quarterium de auena ad foddercorn.'

50. Add. MSS. 6159, 26, b: 'Et de gadercorn reddunt de quolibet swlinge 4 coppas de puro ordeo et de presenti gallum et gallinam de qualibet domo... quas serviens curie. debet circumeundo querere.'

51. Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS., Claudius, C. xi. 185. b; Bury St. Edmunds Cart., Harl. MSS. 3977, f 84, b.

52. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 67 cf 145): 'Henricus Wlde tenet 25 acras de prato pro stacha mellis. Utilius quod esset in manu domini.' Gloucester Cart. ii. 128: 'Honilond T. T. tenet 6 acras terre pro 8 lagenis nlellis vel pretio.'

53. Ramsey Cart. i. 300: 'Faciet etiam unam mutam (leg. mittam) et dimidiam braesii, quam recipiet in curia pro voluntate sua bene mundatam, et per se ipsum, et illam carriabit apud Rameseiam. Quae si refutetur, defectum ejus propriis sumptibus in omnibus supplebit, nisi mensura sibi tradita sit minor.'

54. Add. MSS. 6159, f 26, b: 'De quolibet Swlinge duos agnos reddunt in estate. Ita quidem quod serviens curie, si invenerit agnum in sulungis illis qui ei placuerit, accipiat eum cuiuscumque sit, et ille ad quem pertinebit adquietacionem. Quod si agnus inventus non fuerit 8 den. dabit quando mala persolvat.'

55. Gloucester Cart. iii. 77: 'Walterus Fremon tenet 6 acras terrae cum mesuagio et reddit inde per annum die Apostolorum Petri et Pauli unum multonem pretii 12 den. vel ultra, cum 12 den. circa collum suum ligatis.'

56. Exch. Q. R. Treas. of Rec. 59/69: 'Capones... pro warentia.'

57. Gloucester Cart. iii. 71: 'Propter illam gallinam conquererunt habere de bosco domini regis unam summam bosci, quae vocatur dayesen.' Exch. Q. R. Min. Acc. Bk. 513, N. 97:, Wodehennus... ad Natale.' Suffolk Rolls (Bodleian), 3: 'Dicet curia quod R. debet facere domino sicut alii custumarii, scil. oues et gallinas, quia fodit etsi non pascat.' Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS., Claudius, C. xi, f 52, a: 'Redditus caponum per annum pro aueriis termino pasche.'

58. Domesday of St. Paul's, 51: 'Et ad pascha ova ad libitum tenencium et ad honorem domini.'

59. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 35: 'Hoc est accrementum redditus tempore Roberti; Ordricus pro 4 retiis terre altero anno 1 soccum.' Gloucester Cart. iii. 79: 'Walterus de Hale tenet unam acram terre et reddit inde per annum unum vomerem ad festum Sti Michaelis pretii 8 den. pro omni servitio.'

60. Warwickshire Hundr. Roll, Exch. Q. R. Misc. Books, N. 18, f 2, a: 'Per servicium unius radicis gyngibrii... unius rose.'

61. Gloucester Cart. iii. 55: 'Omnes praedicti consuetudinarii... debent cariare molas, scil. petras molares ad molendinum domini, vel dabunt in communi 13 den. quadrantem.' Rot. Hundr. ii. 750, b.., Et modo eorum servicia convertuntur in denariis.'

62. Add. MSS. 6159, f 53, a:, Barlicksilver. Item debet Willelmus de B. per annum 6 quarteria ordei et 6 quarteria auene.' etc.

63. Roch. Custum. 4, a: 'Dabunt eciam denarlum pro falce quod anglice dicunt sithpeni.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 59: 'Et dabit 4 stacas et dimidiam frumenti ad consuetudinem et eadem die 1 denarium illi qui colligit fualia.' Ely Reg., Cotton MSS., Claudius. C. xi. f 82, b: 'De bosingsiluer 1 denarium ad festum Sti Martini si habeat equum et carectam.'

64. Add. Charters, 5, 629: '(Stephanus) retraxit et abduxit porcos suos tempore pannagii.'

65. Rot. Hundr. ii. 453, a: 'Memorandum quod omnes isti prenominati tam liberi quam villani qui habent bestias precii 30 den. dant domino predicto per annum 1 den. pro quadam consuetudine que vocatur Wartpenny.'

66. What may be, for instance, the explanation of the huntenegild, which not unfrequently appears in the records. E.g. Gloucester Cart. iii. 22: 'Johannes Carpentarius et relicta Kammock tenent dimidiam virgatam terrae et faciunt idem quod praescripti, exceptis huntenesilver et gallina.' Add. MSS. 6159, f 23, a: 'Ricardus atte mere tenet de domino in villenagio 20 acras terre; reddit inde per annum de unthield ad festum purificacionis 4 sol. 5 den. ob. et ad pascham 6 d. Et ad festum Sti Michaelis 17 denarios.' The payment is a very important one and hardly connected with hunting.

67. Domesday of St. Paul's, 140 (Inqu. of 1181): 'Keneswetha... summa denariorum 10 libre et 7 sol. et obolus.' Cf xx.

68. Battle Cart., Augment. Off. Misc. Books, N. 18, f 5, a: 'Juga que sunt in sex libris in Wy.'

69. Christ Church Reg., Harl. MSS. 1006, f 56: 'Newerentes.'

70. Domesday of St. Paul's, 83: 'Inferius notati tenentes terras dant landgablum. Et si habent uxores 2 denarios de havedsot quia capiunt super dominium boscum et aquam et habent exitum, et si non habent uxorem vel uxor virum, dabit unum denarium. Galfridus filius Ailwardi pro terra quondam Theodori cui non attinet 5 denarios landgabuli.' Ramsey Inqu., Cotton MSS., Galba E. x. f 46, b: 'S. de W. dat pro terra sua 16 denarios et 12 denarios pro se et uxore sua.' Exch. Q. R. Min. Acc. Bk. 587, T. P. R. 8109: 'Denarii... ad existendum in warentia.'

71. Archaeologia, xlvii. 127: '(Soke of Rothley) Gildi hoc est quietum de consuetudinibus servilibus quae quondam dare consueverint sicuti Hornchild et hiis similibus.'

72. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 4: '... unam virgatam et dimidiam et 5 acras pro 5 solidis de gabulo et 7 denariis de dono.'

73. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 39: 'Omnes simul dant de dono 40 solidos secundum terras quas tenent.' Ibid. 5: 'Debet dare de dono quantum pertinet de quinque libris.' Ramsey Cart. i. 46: 'De denariis qui vocantur 20 solidi dat dimidius virgatarius 6 denarios. '

74. Ramsey Cart. i. 440: 'Villa dat 20 solidos, qui dantur quod cum aliquis in misericordia domini, det ante judicium sex denarios, et post, si expectct judicium, duodecim denarios, nisi sit pro furto, vel aliqua maxima transgressione.

75. Gloucester Cart. iii. 78: 'Dicta terra consuevit dare de auxilio 14 denarios et obolum qui modo allocantur consuetudinario in solutione octo marcarum.'

76. Exch. Q. R. Treas. Rec. 20/68: 'Item debent domino ad festum Sti Michaelis auxilium ad placitum suum et ad forinsecum servitium.'

77. Gloucester Cart. iii. 180: 'Et dabit pro terra 6 denarios ad auxilium. Dabit etiam auxilium pro averiis suis secundum numerum eorundem.' iii. 50: 'Et dabit auxilium secundum numerum animalium.' iii. 208: 'Et si impositum fuerit eidem quod in taxatione auxilii aliquod animal concelaverit, potest cogi ad sacramentum praestandum et se super hoc purgandum. Et si per vicinos suos convictus fuerit super hoc, puniendus est pro voluntate domini.'

78. Gloucester Cart. iii. 203: '... omnes isti consuetudinarii de Colne dant in communi ad auxilium 46 solidos 8 denarios., Rochester Custumal, 4, a: 'De omnibus decem jugis debent scotare ad donum domini ville et ad servicium domini Regis.'

79. Domesday of St. Paul's, 64: 'Dicunt quod manerium de Berlinge defendit se versus regem pro duabus hidis et dimidia... Reddunt... pro hidagio baillivo hundredi de Reilee 31 denarios et 13 denarios de Wardpeni, de quibus dominicum reddit de 20 acris 2 den. et obolem pro hidagio et 2 denarios pro Wardpeni.'

80. Exch. Esch. Ultra Trentam, 1/49: 'Pro cornagio de feodis militum 17 sol. 8 den.'

81. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 65: 'In die Sti Martini debet dimidiam dainam frumenti de cheriset.'

82. Domesday of St. Paul's, 66: 'Beatrix relicta Osberti Casse tenet 15 acras et a festo Sti Michaelis usque ad Vincula qualibet septimana debet 3 operaciones nisi festum impedierit; quod si festum feriabile evenerit in septimana die lune et aliud die mercurii, unum festum erit ei utile, aliud domino. Quod si festum evenerit eadem septimana die veneris, addito alio festo in alia septimana veniente, dividentur illi duo dies inter dominum et operarium ut supradictum est.'

83. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 64: 'A festo Sti Petri ad Vincula debent qualibet ebdomada metere uel aliud opus facere usque ad festum Sti Michaelis nisi festum intercurrat, die lune, die martis et die mercurii.' Ibid. 62: 'Ab Hoccadei usque ad festum Sti Johannis qualibet ebdomada arabit dimidiam acram, si possit propter duritiem.'

84. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 59: 'Willelmus filius Osanore (tenet) unam virgatam eodem servitio, sed non potest perficere servitium.'

85. Domesday of St. Paul's, 51: 'Et omnes alii similiter operabuntur sive plus teneant sive minus, pro racione 5 acrarum.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 104: 'W. de H. tenet unam virgatam pro dimidia virgata... pro alia viigata facit sicut pro quarta parte dimidie hide.'

86. Gloucester Cart. iii. 199: 'Et sciendum quod dominus potest eligere utrum voluerit habere servitium predictum de Johanne Spere, uel quod duplicet servitium R. de A. inferius inter akermannos scripti.'

87. Rot. Hundr. ii. 757, a: 'Set isti tenentes memorati ut asserunt ad alias consuetudines et servitia antiquitus esse consueverunt.'

88. E.g. a comparison of the inquests contained in the Ramsey Cartulary published in the Rolls Series with the earlier extents contained in Cotton MS., Galba, E. x, and with the Hundred Rolls of Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire, will support the opinion expressed in the text.

89. Seebohm, Village Community.

90. The meaning of the expression may be gathered from the following extracts from the Ramsey Cartulary, i. 358: 'Die autem Jovis proxima ante Pascha et die Jovis contra festum Sti Benedicti quodcunque opus sibi fuerit injunctum operabitur.' Cf 357: 'Et si opus fuerit, faciet hayam in campis, habentem longitudinem duarum perticarum, et allocabitur ei pro opere unius diei. Et die quo carriare fenum debet, ducet unam carrectatam domi de alio feno Abbatis, uel aliud carriagium cum carrecta faciet, si sibi fuerit injunctum.' 361: 'A gula autem Augusti usque ad festum Sancti Michaelis qualibet septimana operabitur per unum diem integrum, qualecunque opus sibi praecipiatur.' 365: 'Et operatur quaelibet virgata a festo Sancti Michaelis usque ad festum Translationis Sancti Benedicti qualibet septimana tribus diebus... quodcumque opus praeceptum fuerit; videlicet, si flagellare oportet, flagellabit infra villam viginti quatuor garbas de frumento et siligini, de hordeo triginta garbas, de avena triginta garbas. Extra villam flagellabit de frumento viginti garbas, de avena viginti quatuor garbas. Nec exibit extra hundredum ad flagellandum nisi ex gratia. Quodcunque aliud genus operis. ballivus voluerit; praeterquam in bosco, facere debeat, operabitur tota die si ubi si secare debeat, operabitur usque ad nonam; et si pascere eum dominus voluerit, operabitur usque ad vesperam. Si debeat spinas vel virgas colligere, colliget unum fesciculum, et portabit usque ad curiam pro opere unius diei. In quadragesima autem nullum genus operis faciet ad cibum proprium usque nonam nisi quod herciabit tota die.' It seems quite clear that the lord has in some cases the choice between different kinds of work, but the amount to be required is settled once for all. When we find in the Glastonbury Inquisition of 1189 the sentence, 'operabitur quodcumque ei praeceptum fuerit sicut neth,' it means evident, that the peasant's work, whatever it is, is settled according to the standard of the neat's holding.

91. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 41: 'Et herciat semel sine mensura aliqua ei assignata cum hoc quod habet in carruca.'

92. Placitorum Abbreviatio, p. 212: 'Alia carta eiusdem eidem Elie facta et heredibus suis de dicta bovata terre una cum dicto Rogero villano suo et secta et sequela sua.' Ramsey Cart. i. 355: 'Prior de Sancto Ivone habet ingressum in una virgata terrae per Henricum de Kylevile, in qua tres sunt mansiones, et unus pro caeteris facit servitium debitum manerio.'

93. Ramsey Inqu., Cotton MSS., Galba, E. x. f 49: 'Quicumque acceperit.pro mercede sua 18 denarios debet operari cum domino suo tribus diebus vel dare unum denarium.' Cf Rot. Hundr. ii. 781, b: 'Servi: Dabit ad exenllium contra Natale 6 panes... et venit ad prandium domini pro predicto exennio sexta manu si voluerit.'

94. Cotton MSS., Galba, E. x. f 19. See Appendix xiv.

95. Domesday of St. Paul's, Hale's Introduction, pp. xxxviii, xxxix.

96. Gesta Abbatum (Rolls Ser.), 74. Cf Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 145.

97. See, for instance, the beginning of the description of Dorsetshire.

98. Exch. Q. R. Min. Acc. Bk. 587, T. P. R. 8109: 'Sciendum quod tenentes Abbatis de Osoluestone in Donington et Byker cum pertinentiis fuerunt semel in anno pro voluntate Abbatis ad curiam suam tenendum ibidem et invenient eidem Abbati et toti familie sue quam secum duxerit omnia necessaria sufficientia in adventu suo per unum diem integrum et noctem sequentem, vel noctem precedentem et diem sequentem in esculentis et poculentis tam vino quam cervisia, feno et prebenda pro equis eorum et equis carucariorum salem querencium, una cum candela et ceteris costis omnimodis inter necessaria computandis. Et si abbas non venerit facient finem cum celerario si voluerit vel cum alii quem Abbas nomine Suo miserit ad minus 20 solidis. Et si is qui nomine Abbatis missus ibidem fuit et finem recusault, procurabitur ut premittitur. Et si aliquid de necessariis in administrando defuerit, omnes tenentes qui comestum contribuere debent die crastino in plena curia super necessariorum defectu per senescallum calumpniabuntur et graviter amerciabuntur. Et talis fuit consuetudo ab antiquo et habetur quolibet anno pro certo redditu, et de quo Petrus de Thedingworth quondam Abbas de Osoluestone et predecessores sui a tempore quo non extat memoria sub forma predicta fuerunt seisiti.'

99. See about this point, Hale's Introduction. It is generally very good on the subject of the farm.

100. Domesday of St. Paul's, 21: 'Potest wainagium fieri cum tribus caruciis octo capitum cum consuetudinibus villate.'

101. The Templar's Book of 1185 at the Record Office (Q. R. Misc. Books, N. 16) is already a rental in substance.

102. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 117: 'Nigellus capellanus tenet unam vir. gatam, sed illa virgata non solet ad operacionem redigi. Cum dominus voluerit operabitur sicut alie.' Rot. Hundr. ii. 815, a: '... dabit 8 solidos per annum pro operibus suis qui solidi poterunt mutari in aliud servicium ad valorem pro voluntate domini.'

103. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 29: 'G. de P. (tenet) unum mesuagium et tres acras et dimidiam pro 2 solidis et facit sicut homines de Mera quando sunt ad gabulum. Hoc tenementum non solet esse ad opus.' 116: 'Leviva vidua tenet dimidiam hidam; Unam virgatam tenet eodem servitio; aliam tenet pro gabulo et non potest ad operationem poni sicut alia.'

104. Bury St. Edmund's Reg., Harl. MSS. 3977, f 82, d: 'Omnes liberi et non liberi dabunt festivales exceptis illis liberis qui habent residentes sub illos.' Glastonbury Cart, Wood MSS. i. f 176, b: 'Abbas et conventus remiserunt R. de W.... omnia carriagia... nec non et illas custodias quae predictus R. et antecessores sui personaliter facere consueverunt cum virga sua super bederipas ipsorum... et super arruras precarias que ei fieri debent in manerio de Pultone.'

105. Custumals of Battle Abbey (Camd. Soc.), p. 122

106. Black Book of Peterborough (Camden Ser.), 164: 'In Scotere et Scaletoys sunt undecim carrucatae ad geldum Regis et 24 plenarii villani... Plenarii villani operantur duobus diebus in ebdomada... Et ibi sunt 29 sochemanni et operantur uno die in ebdomada pertotum annum et in Augusto duobus diebus. Et isti villani et omnes sochemanni habent 21 carrucas et omnes arant una vice ad hyvernage et una ad tremeis.'

Chapter 4

The Lord, His Servants and Free Tenants

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.     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.(1*) 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.(2*) 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.(3*) 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.(4*)     The following description of Bockyng in Essex,(5*) 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 8d. a year. Corn is also sold there to the value of 12d. a year, sometimes more and sometimes less, according to the quantity sown. The orchard provides fruit and vegetables worth 13s. 4d. a year; the duty levied from the swine gives 6d.     The pigeon-house is worth 4d.     Two mills, 7l. Is. 8d     A fishery, 12d.     A wood called Brekyng Park, containing 480 acres, and the brushwood there is worth 40s.     Grass in the wood 12d., because it grows only in a few places.     Pannage duty from the swine, 10s.     Another wood called Le Flox contains 10 acres, and the brushwood is worth 6d.     Pannage from the swine, 6d.     Grass, 6d.     Arable, in all fields, 510 acres, the acre being assessed at 6d. 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 4s. a year; the other meadow contains seven acres of similar value.     Pasture in severalty -- 30 acres, at 12d. 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, 4s.     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 20s.     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.(6*) 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.     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.(7*)). 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:(8*) 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.(9*) 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.     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.(10*) 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.(11*) By his side appears the reeve, or praepositus, nominated from among the peasants of a particular township, and mostly chosen by them.(12*) Manorial instructions add sometimes that no villain has a right to hold aloof from such an appointment, if it is conferred on him.(13*) 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.(14*) The akermanni or carucarii are the leaders of the unwieldy ploughs of the time,(15*) and they are helped by a set of drivers and boys who have to attend to the oxen or horses.(16*) Shepherds for every kind of cattle are also mentioned,(17*) as well as keepers and warders of the woods and fences.(18*) In the Suffolk manors of Bury St. Edmund's we find the curious term kurard to designate a person superintending the hay harvest.(19*)     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 'turn-bedellus.'(20*) A 'vagiator' (vadiator?) serves writs and distrains goods for rents.(21*) 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.(22*)     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.(23*) 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.(24*)     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,(25*) 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.(26*) 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.     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.(27*) The chief scullion (scutellarius) had a right to all remnants of viands, -- but not of game, -- to the feathers and the bowels of geese.(28*) Again, all the household and workmen constantly employed had certain quantities of food, drink, and clothing assigned to them.(29*) 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.(30*)     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.(31*) 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.     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.(32*) 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 fu1fil 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.(33*) In Glastonbury five cooks shared in the kitchen-fee.(34*) The head of the cellar, the gatekeeper, and the chief shepherd enter into agreements in regard to extensive plots of land.(35*) 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'�tat in order to displace the privileged families which had got hold of the offices and treated them as hereditary property.(36*) 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.     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.(37*)     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.(38*) 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.(39*) Sometimes a plot of the lord's land is given to compensate the bad quality of the peasant's land.(40*) 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.(41*) In a number of cases these grants of demesne are actual leases, and probably the result of hard bargains.     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.(42*) 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 1249 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.(43*) 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.(44*) 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.'(45*)     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.(46*)     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.(47*) 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.(48*) 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.(49*) 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.     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.(50*) 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.(51*) Plots of this kind are called forlands.(52*) 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.(53*) 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,(54*) and sometimes by the entire village, or at any rate by a large group of peasants who club together for the purpose.(55*) 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'.(56*) 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.(57*) The grant of a charter would raise it to the legal standing of free land.     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 4s. 6d., 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 organization 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,(58*) although their tenements are described as virgates and halfvirgates. 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.     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.(59*) 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.(60*) 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,(61*) 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.(62*) 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.(63*) 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.(64*) 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.(65*) Bidenham, Bedfordshire, also presents an assessment of four shillings per free virgate.(66*) 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(67*) while in the fee of Maud Passelewe we find only four and five shillings as the rent for the half-virgate.(68*) Papworth Anneys exhibits a ferdel of seven and a half acres, for which ten to twelve shillings are paid.(69*) 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.     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.     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,(70*) 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.(71*) 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.(72*) 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 9s. 4d. 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 5s. 6d. per bovate.(73*) 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.(74*) 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.(75*) 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 5s. 3d., and sends one man to work twice a week from the 29th of June until the ist 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.(76*) In Bathekynton, Warwickshire, the difference in favour of the free is also noticeable, but not so great.(77*) 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.(78*)     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.(79*) They can only have one meaning -- that of 'recognitions'.(80*) 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.(81*) 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.(82*) It is royal, but let out in feefarm to the Prior of Barnwell, and its men make use of the parvum breve de rec to. 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.(83*) 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,(84*) 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 4s. 2d. per holding, and obliged to assist at reaping and to bring chicken, one socman of nine acres paying 10d., one of seven acres also assessed at 10d., two of eleven acres paying 15d., 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.(85*) 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 5s. 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.(86*)     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.

NOTES:

1. Bracton, iv. 9. 5, f. 263: 'Est autem dominicum quod quis habet ad mensam suam et proprie, sicut sunt Bordlands Anglice.'

2. Madox, History of the Exchequer, i. 407.., Concessisse unam virgatam terrae in Husfelds, scilicet 20 acras uno anno et 20 acras alio.'

3. In Beauchamp, a manor of St. Paul's, London, the home farm is one of the largest. Domesday of St. Paul's, 28: 'In dominico tam de wainagio veteri quam de novo essarto 676 acre terre arabilis et de prato 18 acre et de pastura 8 acras [sic] et in magno bosco bene vestito quinquies 20 acre et in duabus granis Dorile et Langele 16 acras.'

4. As to the economic aspects of the subject, see Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices; Ashley, Introduction to the Study of Economic History; and Cunningham, Growth of Industry and Commerce (2nd ed.).

5. Harl. MSS. 1006, f 2.

6. Ramsey Cart. (Rolls Series), i. 282: 'Quae culture coli possunt sufficienter cum tribus carucis propriis et consuetudine carrucarum ville et duabus precariis carucis (corr. carucarum?), quae consuetudo ad valentiam trium carucarum aestimatur.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 13, 14: 'Potest ibidem fieri wainagium cum 5 carucis quarum tres habent 4 boves et 4 equos et due singule 6 equos cum consuetudinibus villate propter (corr. praeter?) dominicum de Luffehale et alia quae remota sunt, que tamen sunt in dispositione firmarii.' Cf Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, pp. 28, 107.

7. As an instance, Bury St. Edmund's Register, Harl. MSS. 743, f 194: '(Bucham) abbas Sti Edmundi capitalis dominus... tenet in eadem villa preter homagium liberorum nihil.'

8. Domesday of St. Paul's, 58.

9. Eynsham Inqu., Chapter of Christ Church, Oxford, N. 27, f 5, a: 'Robertus Clement... tenet de dominicis superius mensuratis dum domino placet unam selionem apud Weylond atte Wyche, unam selionem apud Blechemanfurlong, tres seliones in Wellefurlong, et unam selionem apud Groueacres pro 11 solidis per annum.'

10. It is well known that the second book of Fleta contains a sketch of the functions of manorial officers. In thirteenth-century MSS. we find also a special tract on the matter entitled de Senescalcia. See Cunningham, Growth of Industry and Commerce (2nd ed.), p. 222. Let it be understood that I do not attempt an exhaustive survey of the subject, but only a general indication of its bearings.

11. Domesday of St. Paul's, 122; forms of agreement by which the manors were let to farm in the twelfth century: 'Haec est conventio inter capitulum Lundoniensis ecclesiae beati Pauli et Robertum filium Alwini sacerdotis. Capitulum concedit ei Wicham manerium suum ad firmam quamdiu vixerit et inde bene servierit. Primo quidem anno pro 58 solidis et 4d. et pro una parva firma panis et cervisiae cum denariis elemosine. Deinceps vero singulis annis pro duabus firmis brevibus panis et cervisiae.'

12. Exch. Q. R. Miscell.: 'Consuetudines de Aysle: memorandum quod homagium debet eligere prepositum et dominus manerii potest eum retinere.... Et memorandum quod homines debent habere pastorem ovilis per electionem curie.'

13. The duty of serving as reeve is therefore often treated as one of the characteristic marks of serfdom; e.g. Cambr. Univ., Gg. iv. 4, f. 26.

14. Harl. MSS. 1006, f. 18: 'Debet esse messor ad frumentum et amerciamenta domini colligendum.'

15. Shaftesbury Inqu., Harl. MSS. 61, f 60: 'Arator... debet invenire omnia instrumenta aratri ante rotas.'

16. Ibid., f 54: 'Bubulci et gadince.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189: 'Petras bovarius... custodit boves domini et vadit ad aratrum.'

17. 'Hereward,' Glastonbury Inqu., 24, 105, etc.; Domesday of St. Paul's, 53.

18. Cartul. of Battle (Camden Ser.), f 39, b: 'wodeward.'

19. Bury St. Edmund's Reg., Cambr. Univ., Gg. Iv. 4, f. 322, a: 'Ad istud pertinet tenementum falcacio claustri sed cum falce lurardi.'

20. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 36: 'Reginaldus thernebedellus tenet dimidiam virgatam terre et summonet homines ad comitatum et hundredum.'

21. Ibid., 7; cf. 156.

22. Ely Cart., Cotton MSS., Claudius, C. xi, f 15, d., Debet namiare cum bedello et ceteris avermannis, (men provided with horses). Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 31: 'Robertus de Eadwic sequitur hundredum et comitatum ad suum costum... Custodit preces arature et messis et debet adjuvare ad namia capienda infra hundredum et est quietus de pannagio.'

23. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS., i. f 92, 93; Compoti of Nicholas de Wedergrave, who had charge of the monastery from the 21st of November, 16 Edward II, till the 12th of March, 16 Edw. II, as to the liberaciones et couredia servientium: 'Et quod retinuit et necessarie oportuit retinere in eadem abbathia 60 ministros et servientes pro hospitalitate et aliis obsequiis faciendis in eadem abbathia.'

24. Bury St. Edmund's Register, Harl. MSS., 743, f. 260: 'Scriptum Johannis Northwold abbatis de quinque servanciis, (A. D. 1294); f 260, d: '... de minutis officiis.'

25. Gloucester Cart. (Rolls Ser.), iii. 213, 214: 'Hoc intellecto quod quandocumque placuerit loci ballivo amoveantur ab uno loco usque ad alium ad commodum domini infra terminum, salvis eisdem liberationibus et stipendiis prius provisis. Nec aliquis admittatur ad servitium domini sine saluis plegiis de fideliter serviendo et de omittenda satisfaciendo. Et moraturi tunc plaemuniantur quod sibi provideant ad morandum... Item quod nullus famulus sit in curia cui plenum non deputetur officium. Ita quod si unum officium suo statui sit insufficiens in alio suppleatur defectus.'

26. Merton College MSS., 91, f 153: 'Coment hom deyt alower oueraygnes en feyneson e en aust. Vous purrez bien auer sarcler 3 acres pur un dener e aUer fauche lacre de pre pur 4 deners.... E vous devez Sauer qe 5 hommes poent bien lyer et syer 2 acres le iour checune manere de ble qe luns plus e lautre mens... E la ou les 4 prenent 7 d. ob. le iour e le quint pur ceo qil est lyour le iour 2 d., donqe devez donner pur lacre 4 den. E pur ceo qen mouz de pays i ne sevent nient sier par lacre si poet hom sauer par siours e par les jurnees ceo qil fount. Mesqe vous reteignez les siours par les eez ceo est a sauer qe 5 hommes ou 5 femmes le quel qe vous voudrez que home apele 5 home font un eez, e 25 hommes font 5 eez, e poent 25 hommes shyer e lier 10 acres le iour entiers ouerables.... E si il accunte plus de jurnees qe ne fiert solon ceste acounte, si ne lor deuez pas alower.'

27. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, 16, 17.

28. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, 14, 15. Cf 13: 'Ernaldus C. tempore episcopi Henrici habuit de quolibet preposito et quolibet firmario unum denarium ad natale pro taliis quas inveniet eis et morsuras candelarum.'

29. Bury St. Edmund's Registrum Album, Canmbr. Univ., Ee. iii. 60, f 169, a: 'Isti habent biscum panem... grangiator, bedellus, lurard.' Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS., I, f 126: 'Et quod habeat... quolibet anno de tota vita sua unam robam de secta armigerorum nostrorum et unam robam competentem vel duas marcas pro uxore sua.' f 142: 'Concessisse Thome de Panis redditum unius robe annuatim recipiendi apud Glastoniam de secta armigerorum nostrorum videlicet quartam partem panni cum furrura agnina precii 2 solidorum uel duos solidos et si aliquo anno armigeris nostris robas non dederimus, volumus et concedimus... capiat illo anno... 20 solidos.' f. 146, d: '... tres panes, videlicet unum panem uocatum priestlof et alterum panem uocatum bastardlof et tercium panem uocatum seriauntlof de panetria predicti abbatis.... Et redditum unius robe... videlicet quartam partem unius panni de lecta officiariorum cum furrura agnina. Et pro predicta Aluecia uxore sua unam robam videlicet et octo virgas panni de secta secundorum clericorum cum furrura de scurellis.'

30. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 3. Cf 16: 'Vinitor habet talem liberacionem sicut prepositus grangie.'

31. Cellaler's Register of Bury St. Edmund's, Cambr. Univ., Gg. iv. 4, f 49, b: 'Inquisitio generalis dicit quod omnes gersumarii debent esse prepositi vel heywardi ad voluntatem domini nec se excusare possint racione alicuius tenementi ut patet in curia ibidem tenta anno regis Henrici 54to. Et notandum quod quicumque est prepositus aule de Bertone magna habebit infra manerium unum equum sumptibus domini cum una stotte et dimidiam acram ordei de meliore post terram compostatam et habebit stipulam pisei vel fabarum sine diminucione. Et si tenet duas terras custumarias plenas erit quietus pro opcribus suis pro una terra et habebit ad natale domini 1 den. ad oblacionem, die purificacionis unam candelam precii quarterii et ad carnipriuium debet participari Una perna baconis inter omnes famulos curie et ad pascham habebit 1 d. pro oblacione sua.' Eynsham Inqu. 6: 'Et quis eorum fuerit prepositus manerii, liber erit et quietus de omnibus servitiis et consuetudinibus quas facit Johannes Mareys predictus, auxiliis, pannagiis et denario Sti Petri exceptis.'

32. Suffolk Court Rolls (Bodleian), 3: 'Terra debuit custodiam clauium conuentus.' Ely Inqu., Cotton MSS., Claudius, C. xi. f 26, a: 'Ad idem tenementum pertinet esse coronarium et replegiare homines episcopi... et facere capciones et disseisinas infra insulam et extra.' Shaftesbury Cart., Harl, MSS., 61, f 60: 'Iacobus tenet 5 acras et servabit boves excepta pestilencia et violencia.'

33. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS., I, f 126: 'Carta abbatis Galfridi facta Willelmo Pasturel (pistori) de terris et tenementis in Glastonia:... reddendo inde per annum nobis et successoribus nostris unam rosam ad festum nativitatis beati Johannis baptiste pro omni seruicio saluo seruicio regali quantum pertinet ad tantam terram et salvo nobis et successoriblls nostris sectis curiarum nostrarum Glastonie sicut alii liberi eiusdem uille nobis faciunt.' Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 10: 'Galterus portarius tenet tenementum suum scilicet portam hereditarie cum his pertinentiis.' Shaftesbury Cart., Harl. MSS., 61, f 90: 'Maria Dei gratia Abbatissa ecclesie Sti Eadwardi... Cum dilectus noster Thurstanus portarius portam nostram cum omnibus ad eam pertinentibus toto tempore vite sue libere et quiete et iure hereditario possedisset et Robertus filius et heres eius, dum post eum contigit Thomam heredem eiusdem Roberti post decessum patris eius eo quod minoris esset etatis in custodiam nostram deuenire... cumque ipsum diucius tenuissemus in custodia pensatis predecessorum suorum obsequiis qui nobis fideliter et laudabiliter ministrauerunt... Iura ad ipsum et ad heredes eius racione custodie dicte porte pertinencia... presenti pagina duximus exprimenda.'

34. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 13.

35. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS., I, f. 125: 'Carta Muriclle Pasturel facta Galfrido Abbati Glastoniensi de tenementis et redditibus pertinentibus (ad) servanciam de la lauandrie.'

36. Bury St. Edmund's Reg., Harl. MSS., 743, f 270 sqq.: '.... Ita tamen quod nullus obedienciariorum predictorum potestatem habeat seu auctoritatem conferendi aliquod officium seu servanciam alicui ad terminum vite nec statum liberi tenementi alicui in premissis de cetero concedendi, set huiusmodi seruientes officia predicta necessaria ex collacione predictorum obedienciariorum habentes ad voluntatem obedienciariorum predictorum removeantur quociens necesse fuerit (A.D. 1294).'

37. A fourth class would be composed of tenements belonging to people personally strange to the manor. Such 'forinsec' tenants were often high and mighty persons who had nothing to do with the agrarian arrangements of the place. I do not speak of this class, because its position is evidently an artificial one and of no importance for the internal organisation of the manor, though interesting from the legal point of view.

38. Shaftesbury Inqu , Harl. MSS., 61, f. 45, d: 'Bubulci et Gadinci habent sabbatum per ordinem carucarum donec eorum aretur terra.' Glastonbury Inqu of 1189, p. 14: 'Habebit etiam Unam acram in autumpno Uno anno apud Strete et alio anno aliam acram apud Waltonam.'

39. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1180, p. 46: 'Stephanus fil. B.... de dominico 2 acras ad implementum terre sue.' Cf 39: '3 acras ad perficiendum suas 5 acras.' Ibid. 81: 'Norman de Pola dimidiam virgatam. Totum tenementum suum est de dominico.'

40. Ibid. 39: 'unam acram pro 4d. ad emendacionem terre sue.'

41. Ibid. 27: 'Robertus prepositus unam acram pro quodam soc quam magister Alured tenuit, et dicunt juratores sic esse utilius quam esset in cultura, quia longe est a dominico.'

42. Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 118: 'Anno domini 1240 Hugone de Sto Eadmundo existente custode manerii de bello campo homines infrascripti tenentes terras de dominico quas vocant inlandes sine auctoritate capituli augmentaverunt redditum assizum, ut auctoritas capituli interveniret.'

43. Ibid, p. 121: 'Ricardus A. non feffatus nisi per firmarium consuevit dare annuatim 4 solidos; de cetero dabit 4 sol. 7 den. et ob.' Cf 52: 'Subscripti sunt feffati de pasturis et frutectis usque ad titulum in proximum.' Add. MSS. 6159, f 70: 'Robertus Cob tenet 5 acras pro 25 d. per capitulum ut sit perpetuum.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 60: 'Ricardus Wor 13 acras de terra arabili et unum mariscum 10 acrarum pro 4 sol. et 10 d. et per cartam capituli.'

44. Ramsay Inqu., Cotton MSS., Galba E. x. fol. 49: 'De nova purprestura 50 acras.... quas 4 homines de dominico tenent.' Cf Domesday of St. Paul's, 7. 20.

45. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, 111: 'Homines tenent septem virgatas terre de dominico de terra superius nominata, in parte erat liberata in tempore Henrici episcopi et in parte postea cum 7 acris quas Johannes clericus tenet.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 51: 'Tenentes de dominieo antiquitus assiso.' 53: 'Dieunt ecram quod terre de dominico de novo tradite satis utiliter tradite sunt.'

46. Bracton, f 220. See F.W. Maitland in the Harvard Law Review, iii. 173.

47. Rot. Hundr. ii. 336, a: 'In firmariis Johannes clericus tenet unam dimidiam virgatam terre ad terminum vitae suae pro 6 solidis per annum pro omni servicio.' Cf 344, 346. Add. MSS. 6159, p. 70: 'Hanc terram tenuit postmodum Thomas de Retendon et cum esset conventus a capitulo super ingressu in illa eo quod aliquando dixisset quod tenuit eam in feodo et non posset illud monstrare et recognovit se non habere ius in illa et reddidit eam quietam decano et capitulo qui postmodum concesserunt eandem terram cum manso ipsi Thomae tenendum de ipsis ad vitam suam tantum pro 2 sol. et 6 d. per annum.' Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS., I, 240, a: 'Magister Nicholaus de Malmesburi rector ecclesie de Cristemalforde... quod cum ego recepissem terram Ricardi de Leyweye in manerio de Cristemalforde... ad terminum 15 annorum et uiri religiosi Glastonie se opposuissent dicentes (dicenti?) me esse infeodatum de terra predicta, presenti scriptura confiteor me post predictos 18 annos in dicta terra non posse vendicare feodum nec liberum tenementum.'

48. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 79: 'Johannes clericus... idem tenet unum cotsetle pro 16 d. pro omni servitio ex presto firmariorum Reginaldi scilicet de Waltona.' Domesday of St. Paul's, 94: 'Gilbertus filius N. tenet tres virgatas in quas Gilbertus avus Suus habuit ingressum per Theodoricum firmarium et modo reddit pro illis 36 solidos,' etc. Ibid. 40: 'Thomas filius Godrici 22 acras pro 22 d. cuius medietas quondam Stephani, set habet cam per Ricardum firmarium.' Ibid. 25: 'Walterus de mora 14 acras pro 4 solidis et 8 d. quondam Elvine, cui non attinet, cuius ingressus ignoratur.'

49. Warwickshire Hundred Roll, Q. R. Misc. Books, 429, f 13, b: 'Unde Willelmus de Wexton tenet unum cotagium libere ad terminum vite sue pro 4 solidis metens in autumpno per 1 diem.' A peculiar case is found in Glastonbury Inqu. of 1 189, p. 69 : 'Godwin palmer... dimidiam virgatam... ex tempore Roberti Abbatis per Thomam Cameriarum in cujus custodia fuit tunc manerium.' (Later hand): 'Iste Godwin dedit Henrico abbati dimidiam marcam et acrevit gabulum de 12 d. Hec convencio durabit dum dominus Abbas erit.'

50. Domesday of St. Paul's, 25: 'Robertus filius Roger filii mercatoris unam acram et dimidiam pro 6 d. Item paruum augmentum pro 1 d.'

51. Rot. Hundr. i. 451: 'Item Andreas prepositus tenet tantum terre sicut dictus Goscelinus villanus in omnibus. Et preter hoc tenet 3 acras pro libra cimini. Item Rogerus Doning facit sicut dictus Goscelinus in omnibus et debet domino suo pro uno seillione terre 6 d. per annum. Willelmus Mathew tenet eodem modo et preter hoc dat domino suo pro una acra 4 capones precii 6 den.'

52. Worcester Cart., 27, a: 'de forlandis. De Thoma de G. pro 5 acris... De acra quam Symon Carpenter tenuit. De Alicia vidua pro dimidia acra. De J ohanne Roberti pro 4 buttis in crofta,' etc.

53. Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 7 sqq.: '(Kenesworthe) isti tenent de dominico et de essarto.' 21 sqq.: '(Erdelege) isti tenent de essarto veteri.' 75: '(Nastox) nova essarta.'

54. Worc. Cart., 13: 'Idem tenet assartum pro medietate fructus et Prior invenit medietatem seminis.'

55. The essarts of St. Paul, London, are divided into small portions among the peasantry, and the same men own them who are possessed of the regular holdings all indications that the clearing was made according to a general plan and by the whole village.

56. Worcester Cart., 47, 48: 'de soccagiis et forlandis villanorum.' Cf 49.

57. A curious species of land tenure is the so-called rofliesland (rough lease?). Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, 29: 'W. de W. tenet unum Rofliesland eodem servicio; tota terra est in voluntate domini.' 65: 'W. tenet 5 acras et filius suus 5 acras; unus eorum tenet carucam domini, alter fugat boves. Terra quam filius eius tenet est Rofles.' 66: 'R. fil. A. tenet unum ferdel de Rofliesland pro 2 solidis pro omni servicio per camerarium.' 90: 'Idem tenet dimidiam virgatam de rofliesland pro duobus solidis, quod utilius esset edificari.' Cf 164, sub voce Roflesland. The name is found often in old leases in Wilts and Somerset as a 'Rough lease' or 'Rowlease.' I think the term must indicate one of those informal agreements of which I speak in the text. See also Reg. Malmesbur. ii. 9, 10.

58. Rot. Hundr. ii. 437: 'Symon et Petrus... tenent de eodem Alano unam virgatam terre et solvunt per annum 8 s. et debent arare tres dimidias acras terre... Adam Swetcoc tantum tenet de predicto Alano et solvit 9 sol. 3 d. et facit per omnia sicut predicti Simon et Petrus et tantum plus quod debet metere... Thomas Alwyne tantum tenet de predicto Alano et solvit 8 s. et debet arare 3 acras avene et metere duas acras,' etc. Cf. 446, 473.

59. Rot. Hundr. ii. 656.

60. In Sawtrey le Moyne and Sawtrey Beaumeys (659, 660) the free tenants are partly virgaters and half virgaters, partly holders of small plots. I need not say that all my quotations are of cases which might be multiplied to any extent.

61. The undated Survey of the Ramsey Cartulary (ii. 487) has a different reckoning: 'Item omnes positi ad censum qui tenent virgatam, vel dimidiam virgatam, dabunt per annum pro virgata octo solidos, vel pro dimidia virgata quatuor solidos.' There are several other small discrepancies with the Hundred Roll description. The document endorsed in the Cartulary seems the earlier one, and the differences have to be explained in all probability by some attempt on the part of the Monastery to set up a higher rent at the time of its compilation. One does not see the slightest ground for any reduction of the rent in process of time. Generally speaking, the conditions described in the Hundred Roll are more irregular than those mentioned in the Cartulary.

62. The Ramsey Cartulary has simply: 'Et virgatarius arabit et herciabit qualibet septimana per unum diem sicut operarius.'

63. Rot. Hundr. ii. 348.

64. Ib. 443, 444. Isabel, the daughter of William le Frend, is taken as a typical half-virgater.

65. Rot. Hundr. ii. 326.

66. Ib. ii. 327.

67. lb. ii. 436.

68. Ib. ii. 438.

69. Ib. ii. 473.

70. Rot. Hundr. 470: '(villani) quilibet istorum tenet dimidiam virgatam terre de predicta Elena de quibus xxx et 1 operantur in uno anno et alii xxxij operantur in alio anno et in eodem anno quo operantur dant domine per annum 8d. et alii qui non operantur dant per annu quilibet dimidius virgatarius 2s. 10d. et auxilium Vicecomitis 1d. obolum et quilibet dat obolum, quadrantem ad festum St. Michaelis.'

71. Maitland, Select Pleas in Manorial Courts, vol. i. 95: A reeve complains that Richer Jocelin's Son and Richard Reeve and his wife have insulted him, by saying among other things'... quod cepisse debuit munera de divitibus ne essent censuarii et pauperes ad censum posuisse debuit.'

72. It might perhaps be objected that the difference in favour of the free people ought to be explained by a depreciation of money which in process of time lowered the value of quit rents. But the explanation would hardly suit the age in which the Hundred Rolls were compiled. The phenomenon mentioned in the text may be observed in all the Cartularies, and there is no reason to think that the free rents which occur in them are already antquated survivals of agreements which had lost their economic sense.

73. Rot. Hundr. ii. 542.

74. Ib. 348.

75. Ib. 508.

76. Exch. Q. R. Misc. Books, N 29, f 11 a.

77. Exch. Q. R. Misc. Books, N 29, f. 12: 'Idem Thomas habet ibidem 12 villanos tenentes 4 virgatas terre et dimidiam in villenagio, unde Johannes Aylind tenet dimidiam virgatam terre pro 5s. 8d. faciens fenum domini per Unum diem cum uno homine, metens blada eiusdem domini per 1 diem eum Uno homine, etc. Idem Thomas habet ibidem 11 liberos tenentes 11 virgatas terre et dimidiam. Unde Willelmus en la Nurne tenet dimidiam virgatam et 4 acras terre pro 4 solidis faciens sectam ad curiam de Bathekynton bis per annum pro omni demanda.'

78. Bodekesham, Cambs. (R. H. ii. 487), is probably a case of molland. The often-quoted instance of Ayllington is doubtful, although the Ramsey Cartulary speaks of the liber tenentes as malmanni. The expression was probably in use for all rent-paying people, although properly a designation of those who had commuted their services. See Appendix XV.

79. R. H. ii. 349, 350: 'In Weston, Bucks, the service of the villain virgater is estimated at 5s. 2d.... Elyas Clericus tenet dim. virgatam et reddit Johanni de Patishull 1d. Willelmus fil. Willelmi de Ravenestone tenet dim. virgatam de eodem feodo et reddit per annum 1 d. Thomas Acpelard tenet dimidiam virgatam terre et reddit dicto Willelmo de Nodaris 3 d. Stephanus Elys tenet dimidiam virgatam et solvit eodem Willelmo 2d. Thomas Thebaud tenet dimidiam virgatam et reddit eidem Willelmo 1d.... Item Robertus le Cobeler tenet dimidiam virgatam terre et solvit eodem 1 libram cimini. Omnes isti prescripti dant per annum forinsecum et scutagium domino Willelmo de Nodaris quando currit.' Cf Torrington, Bucks, R. H. ii. 352.

80. R. H. ii. 713 (Stanton, Oxon.): 'ad alternacionem cujuslibet domini de Stanton debet recognoscere eundem dominum de uno spervario et dabit dimidiam marcam eidem domino.'

81. See e. g. Ramsey Cartul. i. 138, 142.

82. R. H. ii. 402, 403.

83. R. H. ii. 466. Cf 609.

84. R. H. ii. 502.

85. R. H. ii. 484, 485.

86. R. H. 469, 470, 475.

Chapter 5

The Manorial Court

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.(1*) 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.     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 he 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.(2*)     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.(3*) 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.(4*) 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.(5*) The economic tracts of the thirteenth century state the same principle in even a more explicit manner.     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.(6*) 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.(7*) 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.(8*) 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.(9*)     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.     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.(10*) The documents tell us of craftsmen who have to work for the village as well as for the lord.(11*) On a parallel with services due to the landowner, we find sometimes kindred services reserved for the village community.(12*) 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.(13*) 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.     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.(14*) 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,(15*) 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 quasi-legal 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.     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.(16*) 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.(17*) 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 farmership 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.     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.(18*) 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.(19*) 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.     Let us repeat again, that the management of the manor is by no means dependent on capricious and one-sided 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.     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.     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.(20*) 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',(21*) 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,'(22*) 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.(23*) 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.(24*)     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.(25*) 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.(26*) 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.     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.(27*) 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.(28*)     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.(29*) 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,(30*) 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.     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.(31*) 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.(32*) 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.(33*) These foreign suitors appear once every six weeks, twice a year, for special trials upon a royal writ, for the hanging of thieves,(34*) 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.(35*) 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.(36*) When a holding was divided into several parts, the most common thing was that one suit remained due from the whole.(37*) 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.     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.(38*) Another ceremonial peculiarity of some interest concerns the place where manorial courts are held. It is certain that the ancient gem�ts 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.(39*) 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.(40*) Indeed, the very name of 'halimot' can hardly be explained otherwise than as the moot held in the hall.(41*) 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.     We hear very little of husbandry arrangements made by the courts,(42*) and even of the repartition of duties and taxes.(43*) Entries relating to the election of officers are more frequent,(44*) but the largest part of the rolls is taken up by legal business of all sorts.     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 one-sided 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 12d.), John Shepherd (fined 12s.)... Therefore they are in mercy.'(45*) 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 penal ties 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.(46*) 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.(47*) 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 one-sided right of the lord or of his representative to impose the penalty.     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,(48*) 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.(49*) I have to endorse one more point of Mr Maitland'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.     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.     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.     I am even inclined to go further: it seems to me that the manorial ceremony of surrender and admittance, as considered from the point of view of legal archaeology, may have gone back to a practice which has nothing to do with the lord's ownership, although it was ultimately construed to imply this notion. The tenant enfeoffed of his holding on the conditions of base tenure was technically termed tenant by copy of court roll or tenant by the rod -- par la verge. This second denomination is connected with the fact that, in cases of succession as well as in those of alienation, the holding passed by the ceremonial action of the steward handing a rod to the person who was to have the land. Now, this formality looks characteristic enough; it is exactly the same as the action of the 'salman' in Frankish law where the transmission of property is effected by the handing of a rod called 'festuca.' The important point is, that the 'salman' was by no means a representative of lordship or ownership', but the necessary middleman prescribed by customary law, in order to give the transaction its consecration against all claims of third persons. The Salic law, in its title 'de affatomire,' presents the ceremony in a still earlier stage: when a man wants to give his property to another, he has to call in a middleman and witnesses; into the hands of this middleman he throws a rod to show that he relinquishes all claim to the property in question. The middleman then behaves as owner and host, and treats the witnesses to a meal in the house and on the land which has been entrusted to him. The third and last act is, that this intermediate person passes on the property to the donee designated by the original owner, and this by the same formal act of throwing the rod.(50*) The English practice has swerved from the original, because the office of the middleman has lapsed into the hands of the steward. But the Characteristic handing of the rod has well preserved the features of the ancient 'laisuwerpitio' ('the throwing on to the bosom'), and, indeed, it can hardly be explained on any other supposition but that of a survival of the practice. I beg the reader to notice two points which look decisive to me: the steward when admitting a tenant does not use the rod as a symbol of his authority, because he does not keep it -- he gives it to the person admitted. Still more, in the surrender the rod goes from the peasant-holder to the steward. Can there be a doubt that it symbolises the plot of land, or rather the right over the plot, and that in its passage from hand to hand there is nothing to show that the steward as middleman represents absolute ownership, while the peasants at both ends are restricted to mere occupation on sufferance?(51*) Is it necessary to explain that these ceremonial details are not trifles from a historical point of view? Their arrangement is not a matter of chance but of tradition, and if later generations use their symbols mechanically, they do not invent them at haphazard. Symbols and ceremonies are but outward expressions of ideas, and therefore their combinations are ruled by a certain logic and are instinct with meaning. In a sense their meaning is deeper and more to be studied than that supplied by theories expressed in so many words: they give an insight into a more ancient order of things. It may be asked, in conclusion, why a Frankish form should be found prevalent in the customary arrangement of the English manorial system? The fact will hardly appear strange when we consider, firstly, that the symbolical acts of investiture and conveyancing were very similar in Old English and Old Frankish law,(52*) and that many practices of procedure were imported into England from France, through the medium of Normandy. It is impossible at the present date to trace conclusively the ceremonies of surrender and admittance in all their varieties and stages of development, but the most probable course of progress seems to have been a passage from symbolical investiture in the folk-law of free English ceorls through the Frankish practice of 'affatomire,' to the feudal ceremony of surrender and admittance by the steward.     And now let us take up the second thread of our inquiry into the manorial forms of conveyancing. A tenant by the verge is also a tenant by copy of court roll. The steward who presided at the court had to keep a record of its proceedings, and this record had a primary importance for the servile portion of the community. While the free people could enter into agreements and perform legal acts in their own name and by charter, the villains had to content themselves with ceremonial actions before the court. They were faithful in this respect to old German tradition, while the privileged people followed precedents which may be ultimately traced to a Roman origin. The court roll or record of manorial courts enabled the base tenant to show, for instance, that some piece of land was his although he had no charter to produce in proof of his contention. And we find the rolls appealed to constantly in the course of manorial litigation.(53*) But the rolls were nothing else than records of actions in the court and before the court. They could actually guide the decision, but their authority was not independent; it was merely derived from the authority of the court. For this reason the evidence of the rolls, although very valuable, was by no means indispensable. A claimant could go past them to the original fount, that is, to the testimony of the court. And here we must keep clear of a misconception suggested by a first-sight analysis of the facts at hand. It would seem that the verdict of neighbours, to which debateable claims are referred to in the manorial courts, stands exactly on a par with the verdicts of jury men taken by the judges of the Royal Courts. This is not so, however. It is true that the striving of manorial officers to make the procedure of halimotes as much like the common law procedure as possible, went far to produce similarity between forms of actions, presentments, verdicts and juries, in both sets of tribunals. But nevertheless, characteristic distinctions remained to show that the import of some institutions brought near each other in this way was widely different. I have said already that the peasant suitors of the halimote are appealed to on questions of law as well as on questions of fact. But the most important point for our present purpose is this: the jurors called to substantiate the claim of a party in a trial are mere representatives of the whole court. The testimony of the court is taken indirectly through their means, and very often resort is had to that testimony without the intermediate stage of a jury. Now this is by no means a trifle from the point of view of legal analysis. The grand and petty juries of the common law are means of information, and nothing more. They form no part of the tribunal, strictly speaking; the court is constituted by the judges, the lawyers commissioned by the king, who adopt this method in investigating the facts before them, because a knowledge of the facts at issue, and an understanding of local conditions surrounding them, is supposed to reside naturally in the country where the facts have taken place.(54*) Historically the institution is evolved from examinations of witnesses and experts, and has branched off in France into the close formalism of inquisitorial process. The manorial jury, on the other hand, represents the court, and interchanges with it.(55*) For this reason, we may speak directly of the court instead of treating of its delegates. And if the verdict of the court is taken, it is not on account of the chance knowledge, the presumable acquaintance of the suitors with facts and conditions, but as a living remembrance of what took place before this same court, or as a re-assertion of its power of regulating the legal standing of the community. The verdict of the suitors is only another form of the entry on the rolls, and both are means of securing the continuity of an institution and not merely of providing information to outsiders. Of course, claims may not be always reduced to such elementary forms that they can be decided by a mere reference to memory, the memory of the constituted body of the court. A certain amount of reasoning and inference may be involved in their settlement, a set of juridical doctrines is necessary to provide the general principles of such reasoning. And in both respects the manorial court is called upon to act. It is considered as the repositary of legal lore, and the exponent of its applications. This means that the court is, what its name implies, a tribunal and not a set of private persons called upon to assist a judge by their knowledge of legal details or material facts.(56*)     The whole exposition brings us back to a point of primary importance. The title by which land is held according to manorial custom is derived from communal authority quite as much as from the lord's grant. Without stepping out of the feudal evidence into historical inquiry, we find that civil arrangements of the peasantry are based on acts performed through the agency of the steward, and before the manorial court, which has a voice in the matter and vouches for its validity and remembrance. The 'full court' is noticed in the records as quite as necessary an element in the conveyancing business as the lord and his steward, although the legal. theory of modern times has affected to take into account only these latter.(57*) Indeed, it is the part assumed by the court which appears as the distinctive, if not the more important factor. A feoffment of land made on the basis of free tenure proceeds from the grantor in the same way as a grant on the conditions of base tenure; freehold comes from the lord, as well as copyhold. But copyhold is necessarily transferred in court, while freehold is not. And if we speak of the presentment of offences through the representatives of townships, as of the practice of communal accusation, even so we have to call the title by which copyhold tenure is created a claim based on communal testimony.     All the points noticed in the rolls of manors held at common law are to be found on the soil of ancient demesne, but they are stated more definitely there, and the rights of the peasant population are asserted with greater energy. Our previous analysis of the condition of ancient demesne has led us to the conclusion, that it presents a crystallisation of the manorial community in an earlier stage of development than in the ordinary manor, but that the constitutive elements in both cases are exactly the same. For this reason, every question arising in regard to the usual arrangements ought to be examined in the light of the evidence that comes from the ancient demesne.     We have seen that it would be impossible to maintain that originally the steward was the only judge of the manorial tribunal; the whole court with its free and unfree suitors participates materially in the administration of justice, and its office is extended to questions of law as well as to issues of fact. On the other hand, it was clear that the steward and the lord were already preparing the position which they ultimately assumed in legal theory, that in the exercise of their functions they were beginning to monopolise the power of ultimate decision and to restrict the court to the duty of preliminary presentment. The same parties are in presence in the court of ancient demesne, but the right of the suitors has been summed up by legal theory in quite the opposite direction. The suitors are said to be the judges there; legal dogmatism has set up its hard and fast definitions, and drawn its uncompromising conclusions as if all the historical facts had always been arrayed against each other without the possibility of common origins and gradual development. Is it necessary to say that the historical reality was very far from presenting that neat opposition? The ancient demesne suitors are villains in the main, though privileged in many respects, and the lord and steward are not always playing such a subordinate part that one may not notice the transition to the state of things that exists in common law manors. It is curious, anyhow, that later jurisprudence was driven to set up as to the ancient demesne court a rule which runs exactly parallel to the celebrated theory that there must be a plurality of free tenants to constitute a manor. Coke expresses it in the following way: 'There cannot be ancient demesne unless there is a court and suitors. So if there be but one suitor, for that the suitors are the judges, and therefore the demandant must sue at common law, there being a failure of justice within the manor.'(58*) We shall have to speak of this rule again when treating of classes in regard to manorial organisation. But let us notice, even now, that in this view of the ancient demesne court the suitors are considered as the cardinal element of its constitution. The same notion may be found already in trials of the fourteenth and even of the thirteenth century. A curious case is reported in the Year Books of 11/12 Edw. III.(59*) Herbert of St. Quentyn brought a writ of false judgment against John of Batteley and his wife, the judgment having been given in the court of Cookham, an ancient demesne manor. The suitors, or suit-holders as they were called there, sent up their record to the King's Bench, and many things were brought forward against the conduct of the case by the counsel for the plaintiff, the defendant trying to shield himself by pleading the custom of the manor to account for all unusual practices. The judges find, however, that one point at least cannot be defended on that ground. The suitors awarded default against the plaintiff because he had not appeared in person before them, and had sent an attorney, who had been admitted by the steward alone and not in full court. Stonor, C. J., remarks, 'that it is against law that the person who holds the court is not suffered to record an attorney for a plea which will be discussed before him.' The counsel for the plaintiff offer to prove that the custom of the manor did not exclude an attorney appointed before the steward, on condition that the steward should tell it to the suitors in the next court after receiving him. The case is interesting, not merely because it exhibits the suit-holders in the undisputed position of judges, but also because it shows the difficulties created by the presence of the second element of the manorial system, the seignorial element, which would neither fit exactly into an entirely communal organisation nor be ousted from it.(60*) The difficulty stands quite on the same line with that which meets us in the common law manor, where the element of the communal assessors has been ultimately suppressed and conjured away, as it were, by legal theory. The results are contradictory, but on the same line, as I say. And the more we go back in time, the more we find that both elements, the lord and the community, are equally necessary to the constitution of the court. In the thirteenth century we find already that the manorial bailiffs are made responsible for the judgment along with the suitors and even before them.(61*)     The rolls of ancient demesne manors present a considerable variety of types, shading off from an almost complete independence of the suitors to forms which are not very different from those of common law manors. Stoneleigh may be taken as a good specimen of the first class.     The manor was divided into six hamlets, and every one of these consisted of eight virgates of land which were originally held by single socmen; although the regularity of the arrangement seems to have been broken up very soon in consequence of increase of population, extension of the cultivated area, and the sale of small parcels of the holdings. The socmen met anciently to hold courts in a place called Motstowehill, and afterwards in a house which was built for the purpose by the Abbot. The way in which the Register speaks of the ad mission of a socman to his holding is very characteristic: 'Every heir succeeding to his father ought to be admitted to the succession in his fifteenth year, and let him pay relief to the lord, that is, pay twice his rent. And he will give judgments with his peers the socmen; and become reeve for the collection of the lord's revenue, and answer to writs and do everything else as if he was of full age at common law.' The duty and right to give judgment in the Court of Stoneleigh is emphatically stated on several occasions, and altogether the jurisdictional independence of the court and of its suitors is set before us in the smallest but always significant details. If somebody is bringing a royal close writ of right directed to the bailiffs of the manor it cannot be opened unless in full court. When the bailiff has to summon anybody by order of the court he takes two socmen to witness the summons. Whenever a trial is terminated either by some one's default in making his law or by non-defence the costs are to be taxed by the court. The alienation of land and admittance of strangers are allowed only upon the express consent of the court.(62*) In one word, every page of the Stoneleigh Register shows a closely and powerfully organised community, of which the lord is merely a president.     The rolls of King's Ripton are not less explicit in this respect. People are fined for selling land without the licence of the court, for selling it 'outside the court.'(63*) The judgment depends entirely on the verdict given by the community of suitors or its representatives the jurors. When the parties rely on some former decision, arrangement, or statement of law, they appeal to the rolls of the court, which, as has been said already, present nothing else but the recorded jurisprudence of the body of suitors.(64*) The extent of the legal self-government of this little community may be well seen in the record of a trial in which the Abbot of Ramsey, the lord of the manor, is impleaded upon a little writ of right by one of his tenants.(65*) But it is hardly necessary to dwell on so normal an event. I should like to take up for once the opposite standpoint, and to show that in these very communities on the ancient demesne elements are apparent which have thrived and developed in ordinary manors to such an extent as to obscure their self-government. In the Rolls of King's Ripton we might easily notice a number of instances in which the influence of the lord makes itself felt directly or indirectly through the means of his steward. We come, for instance, on the following forms of pleading: An action of dower is brought, and the defendants ask that the laws and customs hitherto used in the court should be observed in regard to them -- they have a right to three summonses, three distraints, and three essoins, and if they make default after that, the land ought to be taken into the lord's hand, when, but only if it is not replevied in the course of fifteen days, it will be lost for good and all. All these demands are granted by the steward, with whom the decision, at least formally, rests.(66*) Again, when we hear that the whole court craves leave to defer its judgment till the next meeting, it is clear that it rests with the steward to grant this request.(67*) We may find now and then a consideration for the interests of the lord which transcends the limits of mere formal right, as in a case where a certain Margery asks the court, without any writ of right or formal action, that an inquest may be held as to a part of her messuage which is detained in the hands of the Abbot, although she performs the service due for it. The inquest is held, and apparently ends in her favour, but she is directed at the same time to go and speak with the lord about the matter. Ultimately she gets what she wants after this private interview.(68*) The proceedings are irregular and interesting: the usual forms of action are disregarded; a verdict is given, but the material decision is left with the lord, and is to be sought for by private intercession. Quite close to this entry we find an instance which is in flagrant contradiction with such a considerate treatment of all parties. The jurors of the court are called upon to decide a question of testament and succession. They say that none of them was present when the testament was made, and that they know nothing about it, and will say nothing about it. 'And so leaving their business undone, and in great contempt of the lord and of his bailiffs, they leave the court. And therefore it is ordered that the bailiffs do cause to be levied a sum of 40s to the use of the lord from the property of the said jurors by distress continued from day to. day.'(69*) This case may stand as a good example both of the sturdy self-will which the peasantry occasionally asserted in their dealings with the lord, and of the opportunities that the lord had of asserting his superiority in a very high-handed manner.     But we need not even turn to any egregious instances in which the lord's power is thus displayed. The usual forms of surrender are there to show that, as regards origins, we have the same thing here as in ordinary manors, although the peculiarities of the ancient demesne have brought forward the features of communal organisation in a very marked way, and have held the element of lordship in check.     We have seen that there was only one halimot in the thirteenth and the preceding centuries, and that the division into customary court and court baron developed at a later time. We have seen, secondly, that this halimot was a meeting of the community under the presidency of the steward, and that the relative functions of community and steward became very distinct only in later days. It remains to be seen how far the fundamental class division between free tenants and villains affected the management of the court. As there was but one halimot and not two, both classes had to meet and to act concurrently in it. The free people now and then assert separate claims: a chaplain wages his law on the manor of Brightwaltham that he did not defame the lord's butler, but when he gets convicted by a good inquest of jurors of having broken the lord's hedges and carried away the lord's fowls, he will not justify himself of these trespasses and departs in contempt, doubtless because he will not submit to the judgment of people who are not on a par with him.(70*) Freeholders object to being placed on ordinary juries of the manor,(71*) although they will serve as jurors on special occasions, and as a sort of controlling body over the common presenters.(72*) Amercements are sometimes taxed by free suitors.(73*) But although some division is apparent in this way, and the elements for a separation into two distinct courts are gathering, the normal condition is one which does not admit of any distinction between the two classes. We come here across the same peculiarity that we have seen in police and criminal law, namely, that the fundamental line of civil condition seems disregarded. Even when a court is mainly composed of villains, and in fact called curia villanorum, some of its suitors may be freeholders.(74*) Even in a court composed of free people, like that of Broughton, there may be villains among them.(75*) The parson, undoubtedly a free man, may appear as a villain in some rolls.(76*) Altogether, the fact has to be noticed as a very important one, that whatever business the freeholders may have had in connexion with the manorial system, this business was transacted by courts which consisted chiefly of servile tenants.(77*) In fact the presenting inquests, on which the free tenants refused to serve, would not be prevented by their composition from attainting these free tenants.     This seems strange and indeed anomalous. One point remains to be observed which completes the picture: although the great majority of the thirteenth century peasantry are mere villains, although on some manors we hardly distinguish freeholders, there is a legal requirement that there should be at least a few freeholders on every manor. Later theory does not recognise as a manor an estate composed only of demesne land and copyhold. Freeholds are declared to be a necessary element, and should they all escheat, the manor would be only a reputed one.(78*) We have no right to treat this notion as a mere invention of later times. it comes forward again and again in the shape of a rule, that there can be no court unless there are some free tenants to form it. The number required varies. In Henry VIII's reign royal judges were contented with two. In John's time as many as twelve were demanded, if a free outsider was to be judged. The normal number seems to have been four, and when the record of the proceedings was sent up to the King's tribunal four suitors had to carry it. The difference between the statement of Coke and the earlier doctrine lies in the substitution of the manor for the court. Coke and his authorities, the judges of Henry VIII's reign, speak of the manor where the older jurisprudence spoke of the court. Their rule involves the more ancient one and something in addition, namely, the inference that if there be no court baron there is no manor. Now this part of the doctrine, though interesting by itself, must stand over for the present. Let us simply take the assertion that free suitors are necessary to constitute a court, and apply it to a state of things when there was but one strictly manorial court, the halimot. In 1294 it is noted in the report of a trial that, 'in order that one may have a court he must have at least four free tenants, without borrowing the fourth tenant.'(79*) Now a number of easy explanations seem at hand: four free tenants at least were necessary, because four such tenants were required to take the record up to the king's court and to answer for any false judgment; a free tenant could protest against being impleaded before unfree people; some of the franchises could not be exercised unless there were free suitors to form a tribunal. But all these explanations do not go deep enough: they would do very well for the later court baron, but not for the halimot. It is not asserted that free suitors are necessary only in those cases where free tenants are concerned -- it is the court as such which depends on the existence of such free suitors, the court which has largely, if not mostly, to deal with customary business, and consists to a great extent of customary tenants. And, curiously enough, when the court baron disengages itself from the halimot, the rule as to suitors, instead of applying in a special way to this court baron, for which it seems particularly fitted, extends to the notion of the manor itself, so that we are driven to ask why the manor is assumed to contain a certain number of free tenants and a court for them. Why is its existence denied where these elements are wanting? Reverting to the thirteenth century, we have to state similar puzzling questions: thus if one turns to the manorial surveys of the time, the freehold element seems to be relatively insignificant and more or less severed from the community; if one takes up the manorial rolls, the halimot is there with the emphatically expressed features and even the name of a court of villains; but when the common law is concerned, this same tribunal appears as a court of freeholders. The manors of the Abbey of Bec on English soil contained hardly any freeholders at all. Had the Abbey no courts? Had it no manors from the standpoint of Coke's theory? What were the halimots whose proceedings are recorded in the usual way on its manorial rolls? In presence of these flagrant contradictions I cannot help thinking that we here come across one of those interesting points where the two lines of feudal doctrine do not meet, and where different layers of theory may be distinguished.     Without denying in the least the practical importance of such notions as that which required that one's judges should be one's peers, or of such institutions as the bringing up of the manorial record to the King's Court, I submit that they must have exercised their influence chiefly by calling forth occasions when the main principle had to be asserted. Of course they could not create this principle: the idea that the halimot was a communal court constituted by free suitors meeting under the presidency of the steward, must have existed to support them. That idea is fully embodied in the constitution of the ancient demesne tribunal, where the suitors were admitted to be the judges, although they were villains, privileged villains and nothing else. Might we not start from the original similarity between ancient demesne and ordinary manors, and thus explain how the rule as to the necessary constitution of the manorial court was formed? It seems to me a mere application of the higher rule that a court over free people must contain free people, to a state of things where the distinction between free and unfree was not drawn at the same level as in the feudal epoch, but was drawn at a lower point. We have seen that a villain was in many respects a free man; that he was accepted as such in criminal and police business; that he was free against everybody but his lord in civil dealings; that the frank-pledge system to which he belonged was actually taken to imply personal freedom, although the freeholders ultimately escaped from it. I cannot help thinking that a like transformation of meaning as in the case of frank-pledge did take place in regard to the free suitors of the manorial court. The original requirement cannot have concerned freeholders in the usual legal sense, but free and lawful men, 'worthy of were and wite' -- a description which would cover the great bulk of the villains and exclude slaves and their progeny. When the definitions of free holding and villainage got to be very stringent and marked, the libere tenentes assumed a more and more overbearing attitude and got a separate tribunal, while the common people fell into the same condition as the progeny of slaves. In a word, I think that the general movement of social development which obliterated the middle class of Saxon ceorls or customary free tenants (leaving only a few scattered indications of its existence) made itself felt in the history of the manorial court by the substitution of exceptional freeholders for the free suitors of the halimot. Such a substitution had several results: the diverging history of the ancient demesne from that of the ordinary manorial courts, the elevation of the court baron, the growth of the notion that in the customary court the only judge was the steward. One significant little trait remains to be observed in this context. it has been noticed (80*) that care seems to be taken that there should be certain Freemen or Franklains in every manor. The feature has been mentioned in connexion with the doctrine of free suitors necessary to a court. But these people are by no means free tenants; in the usual legal sense they are mostly holding in villainage, and their freedom must be traced not to the dual division of feudal times, but to survivals of the threefold division which preceded feudalism, and contrasted slave, free ceorl, and military landowner.     Before concluding this chapter I have to say a few words upon those forms of the manorial court which appear as a modification of the normal institution. Of the ancient demesne tribunal I have already spoken, but there are several other peculiar formations which help to bring out the main ideas of manorial organisation, just because they swerve from it in one sense or another. Mr Maitland has spoken so well of one of these variations, that I need not do anything more than refer the reader to his pages about the Honour and its Court.(81*) He has proved that it is no mere aggregate of manors, but a higher court, constructed on the feudal principle, that every lord who had free tenants under him could summon them to form a court for their common dealings. It ought to be observed, however, that the instance of Broughton, though its main basis is undoubtedly this feudal doctrine, still appears complicated by manorial business, which is brought in by way of appeal and evocation, as well as by a mixture between the court of the great fief and the halimot of Broughton.     A second phenomenon well worth consideration is the existence in some parts of the country of a unit of jurisdiction and management which does not fall in with the manor, -- it is called the soke, and comprises free tenantry dispersed sometimes over a very wide area. A good example of this institution is given by Mr Clark's publication on the Soke of Rothley in Lincolnshire.(82*) We need not go into the details of the personal status of the tenants, they clearly come under the description of free sokemen. Our present concern is that they are not simply arranged into the manor of Rothley as usual, but are distinguished as forming the. soke of this manor. They are rather numerous -- twenty-three -- and come to the lord's court, but their services are trifling as compared with those of the customers, and their possessions are so scattered, that there could be no talk of their joining the agrarian unit of the central estate. What unites them to the manor is evidently merely jurisdiction, although in feudal theory they are assumed to hold of the lord of Rothley. But they are set apart as forming the soke, and this shows them clearly to be subjected to jurisdiction rather than anything else. It is interesting to note such survivals in the thirteenth century, and within the realm of feudal law the case of Rothley is of course by no means the only one.(83*) If we contrast this exceptional appearance of the soke outside the manor with the normal arrangement by which all the free tenants are fitted into the manor, we shall come to the conclusion that originally the element of jurisdiction over freeholders might exist separately from the management of the estate, but that in the general course of events it was merged into the estate and formed one of the component elements of the manorial court. The case of Rothley is especially interesting because the men of the soke or under the soke do not go to a court of their own, but simply join the manorial meetings. If they are still kept apart, it is evident that their relation to the court, and indeed to the manor, was what made them distinct from everybody else. In short, to state the difference in a pointed form, the other people were tenants and they were subjects.     One more point remains to be noticed. In order to make it clear we must by way of exception start from the arrangements of a later epoch than that which we have been discussing. The manor of Aston and Cote, which may have been carved out with several others from the manor of Bampton, presents a very good instance of a village meeting which does not coincide with the manorial divisions, and appears constructed on the lines of a village community which has preserved its unity, although several manors have grown out of it. It was stated by the lord of the manor of Aston and Cote in 1657, that 'there hath been a custom time out of mind that a certain number of persons called the Sixteen, or the greater part of them, have used to make orders, set penalties, choose officers, and lot meadows, and do all such things as are usually performed or done in the courts baron of other manors.' All the details of this case are interesting, but we need not go into them, because they have been set out with sufficient care in the existing literature, and summed up by Mr Gomme in his book on the Village Community.(84*) It is the main point which we must consider. Here is an assembly meeting to transact legal and economic business, which acts on the pattern of manorial courts. And if not a manorial court, what is it? I think it is difficult to escape the conclusion that it is a meeting of the village community outside the lines of manorial division. The supposition that it represents the old manor of Bampton, to which Aston, Cote, Bampton Pogeys, Bampton Priory are subordinated, is entirely insufficient to explain the case, because then we should not have had to recognise new manors in the fractions which were detached from Bampton, and there would have been no call to speak of a peculiar assembly assuming the competence of a court baron -- we should have had the manorial court and the lord of Bampton, and not the Sixteen to speak of. The fact is patent and significant. It shows by itself that there may have been cases where the village community and the manor did not coincide, and the village community had the best of it.     The first proposition does not admit of doubt. It was of quite common occurrence that the land of one village should be broken up between several manors, although its open field system and all its husbandry arrangements remained undivided. The question arises, how was that system to work? There could be express agreement between the owners;(85*) ancient custom and the interference of manorial officers chosen from the different parts could help on many occasions. But it is impossible to suppose, in the light of the Bampton instance, that meetings might not sometimes exist in such divided villages which took into their hands the management of the many economic questions arising out of common husbandry: questions about hedges, rotation of crops, commonable animals, usage as to wood, moor, pasture, and so forth. A diligent search in the customs of manors at a later period, say in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, must certainly disclose a number of similar instances. Our own material does not help us, because it passes over questions of husbandry, and touches merely jurisdiction, ownership, and tenant-right. And so we must restrict ourself to notice the opening for an inquiry in that direction.     Such an inquiry must also deal with the converse possibility, namely, the cases in which the manor is so large that several village units fit into it. We may find very frequently in some parts of the country large manors which are composed of several independent villages and hamlets.(86*) On large tracts of land these villages would form separate open field groups. Although the economic evidence is not within our reach in early times, we have indications of separate village meetings under the manorial court even from the legal point of view taken by the court-rolls. In several instances the entries printed in the second volume of the Selden Society publications point to the action of townships as distinct from the manorial court, and placed under it. In Broughton a man distrained for default puts himself on the verdict of the whole court and of the township of Hurst, both villains and freemen, that he owes no suit to the court of Broughton, save twice a year and to afforce the court. Be it noted that the court of Hurst is distinguished from the township, which appears subordinated to it, probably because there were other townships in the manor of Hurst. At the same time the township is called upon to act as an independent unit in the matter. Even so in the rolls of Hemingford, the township which forms the centre of the manor and gives its name to it, is sometimes singled out from the rest of the court as an organised corporation.(87*) When township and tithing coincided, as in the case of Brightwaltham, the tithing gets opposed to the general court in the same way.(88*) Altogether the corporate unity of townships is well perceivable behind the feudal covering of the manor. Mr Maitland says with perfect right, 'the manor was not a unit in the governmental system; the county was such a unit, so was the hundred. So again was the vill, for the township had many police duties to perform; it was an amerciable, punishable unit; not so the manor, unless it coincided with the vill.'(89*) And then he proceeds to suggest that the true explanation of the manor is that it represents an estate which could be and was administered as a single economic and agrarian whole. I am unable to follow him entirely as to this last point, because it seems pretty clear that the open field arrangements followed the division into townships, and not those into manors. From the point of view of the services, of the concentration of duties of the tenantry in regard to the lord, the manor was a whole, and for this very reason it was a whole as regards geldability, but this is only one side of the economic structure of society, the upper side, if one may be allowed to say so. The arrangement of actual cultivation is the other side, and it is represented by the township with its communal open fields. Now in a great many cases the estate and the community fitted into each other; and of these instances there is no need to speak any further. But if both did not fit, the agrarian unity is the township and not the manor. The open field system appears in this connexion as outside the manor, and proceeding from the rural community by itself.     Let us sum up the results obtained in this chapter.     1. The village communities contained in the manorial system are organised on a system of self-government which affords great help to the lord in many ways, but certainly limits his power materially, and reduces him to the position of a constitutional ruler.     2. The original court of the manor was one and the body of its suitors was one. The distinction between courts for free tenants and customary courts grows up very gradually in the fourteenth century, and later.     3. The steward was not the only judge of the halimot. The judgment came from the whole court, and its suitors, without distinction of class, were necessary judicial assessors.     4. The court of ancient demesne presents the same elements as the ordinary halimot, although it lays greater stress on the communal side of the organisation.     5. The conveyancing entries on the rolls do not prove the want of right on the part of the peasant holders. On the contrary, they go back to very early communal practice.     6. The rule which makes the existence of the manor dependent on the existence of free suitors is derived from the conception of the court as a court of free and lawful men, taking in villains and excluding slaves.     7. The manor by itself is the estate; the rural community and the jurisdiction of the soke are generally fused with it into one whole; but in some cases the two latter elements are seen emerging as independent growths from behind the manorial organisation.

NOTES:

1. A good specimen of the accusations which might be made against a manorial agent is afforded by the Court-rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey. Seld. Soc. ii. p. 95.

2. Seld. Soc. ii. 22: 'Et dicit curia quod tenementum et una acra servilis condicionis sunt et una acra libere.'

3. Coram Rege, Pascha 9 Edw. I, 34, 6: 'Messarius abbatis et messarius villate.'

4. Okeburn Inqu. 56 (Add. MSS. 24316): 'Eligere debent unum messarium de se ipsis et domini de ipso electo poterunt facere prepositum.'

5. G1oucester Cart. iii. 221: 'Prepositus eligetur per communitatem halimoti qui talrin eligant qui ad suam terram propriam excolendum et cetera bona sua discrete et circumspecte tractanda idoneus merite notatur et habeatur, pro cuius drfectibus et abmittendis totum halimotum respondeat, nisi ubi urgens necessitas aut causa probabilis illud halimotum coram loci ballivo rationabilem praetendere poterit excusationem.' Cf Walter of Henley, ed. Lamond, pp. 10, 64, 66.

6. Seld. Soc. ii. 12: 'Nicholaus filius sacerdotis... et Robertus de Magedone... in misericordia quia contradixerunt tallagium quod positum fuit super eos per vicinos suos.' Glastonb. Inqu. of 1189, p. 33: 'Totum manerium reddit de dono 73 solidos et 4 den. sicut homines ville illud statuunt.'

7. Ramsey Cart. i. 401: 'Sunt in scot et in lot et in omnibus cum villata.' Spalding Priory Reg., Cole MSS. xliii. p. 283: 'Libere tenens tacit fossa tum maris et omnes communas ville secundum quantitatem bouatae.'

8. Ramsey Cart. i. 398: 'Henricus le Freman solebat esse in communa villatae, ut in tallagio et similibus. Nulla inde facit.' p. 394 (a villager does not pay his part of the tallage), 'quod quidem tallagium tota villata et ad magnum ipsorum gravamen hucusque persolvit.'

9. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS. i. f III: 'Si nul soit enfraunchi de ses ouvrages dont la ville est le plus charge.'

10. Add. MSS. 6159, f 25, b: 'Dominus debet invenire duos homines sumptibus suis coram eisdem justiciariis et villata de Rode sumptibus suis tres homines invenient. Et hoc per consuetudinem a tempore quo non extat memoria ut dicitur.' Cf Domesday of St. Paul's, 15: 'Alanus filius Alexandri de Cassingburne tres virgatas pro 20 solidis et preter haec 10 acras de villata et 10 de dominico propter sectam sire et hundredi quam modo non facit.'

11. Custumal of Bleadon, 257: 'Invenit fabrum pro ferdello domino et toti villae.'

12. Shaftesbury Cart., Harl. MSS. 61, f. 63: 'Ibit ad scotaliam domine sicut ad scotaliam vicinorum.'

13. Ramsey Cart. i. 425: 'Ponitur in respectu quousque videatur quomodo se gerat versus dominum abbatem et suos vicinos.'

14. Seld. Soc. ii. 172: 'Ad istam curiam venit tota communitas villanorum de Bristwalton et de sua mera et spontaneavoluntate sursum reddidit domino totum jus et clamium quod idem villani habere clamabant racione commune in bosco domini qui vocatur Hemele et landis circumadjacentibus, ita quod nec aliquid juris vel clamii racione commune in bosco predicto et landis circumadjacentibus exigere, vendicare vel habere poterint in perpetuum. Et pro hac sursum reddicione remisit eis dominus de sua gracia speciali communam quam habuit in campo qui vocatur Estfeld,' etc.

15. Annals of Dunstable (Annales Monast.) iii. 379, 380: 'Et prior dicit, quod praedicta tenementa aliquo tempore fuerunt in seisina hominum villate de Thodingdone, qui quidem homines, unanimi voluntate et assensu, feofaverunt praedictum Simonem, praedecessorem praedicti prioris, de praedictis tenementis, tenendum eidem Simoni et successoribus suis in perpetuum. Jurati dicunt... quod praedicta tenementa aliquo tempore fuerunt in seisina praedictorum hominum villatae de Thodingdone et quod omnes illi, qui aliquid habuerunt in praedictis duabus placiis terrae, congregati in uno loco ad quandam curiam apud Thodingdone tentam, unanimi assensu concesserunt praedicto Symoni, quondam priori de Dunstaple, praedecessori prioris nunc, praedictas placeas terrae, cum pertinentiis, tenendum eidem et successoribus suis in perpetuum, reddendo inde eisdem hominibus et eorum haeredibus per annum sex denarios temporibus falcacionis prati.'

16. Madox, Firma Burgi, 54, f.: '... statim visis litteris capiat in manum Regis maneria de Cochame et Bray, quae sunt in manibus hominum prae dictorum maneriorum, et salvo custodiat, ita quod deinceps Regi possit respondere de firma praedictorum maneriorum ad scaccarium.' 54, g: 'Miramur quamplurimum quod 30s. quos monachi de Lyra de elemosyna nostra constituta singulis annis per manus ballivorum villae vestrae, antequam predietam villam caperitis ad firmam recipere.' Cf Exch. i. 407, a, 412, b; Rot. Hundr. ii. 134: 'Benmore juxta Langport fuit de dominico domini Regis pertinens ad Sumerton ubi omnes homines domini Regis de Sumerton, Sutton, Puttem et Merne solebant communicare cum omnimodis averiis suis, set per negligenciam villanorum de Sumertone qui manerium tunc temporis ad firmam tenuerunt et Henricus de Urtiaco vetus eandem moram sibi appropriavit.'

17. Gloucester Cart. iii. 181: 'Omnes isti villani tenent de dominio quoddam pratum quod vocatur Hay continens 23 acras et reddunt inde per annum 23 solidos 3 denarios.'

18. Cf. Prof Maitland's Introduction to the rolls of the Abbey of Ramsey. Seld. Soc. ii. 87.

19. See the record of proceedings in the Court of the manor of Hitchin, printed by Mr Seebohm at the end of. his volume on the 'Village Community.'

20. Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. p. xvi.

21. Add. MSS. 6159, f 54, a: 'Visus de borchtruning.'

22. Gloucester Cart. iii. 221; Malmesbury Cart. ii. 17. Cf. Kovalevsky, 'History of police administration in England' (Russian), 137.

23. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 101: 'De tidinga Estone 5 solidos vel placita que orientur.' Cf Maitland, Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. pp. xxx, xxxiii.

24. Rot. Hundr. ii. 461, b: 'Et predicti Radulfus et Robertus habent suas duodenas.'

25. Y.B. 21-22 Edw. I, 399: 'Presence a vewe de franc pledge demande par la reson de la persone, non de la tenure.'

26. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS. i. f 100, b: 'Predictus Abbas consensit quod omnes homines eorum de predictis villis qui fuerint duodecim annorum et amplius faciant sectam ad predictum hundredum bis in annis perpetuum... exceptis omnibus bercariis, carrucariis predictarum villarum et carrectariis cuiuscumque hominis fuerint et omnibus aliis hominibus tam de predictis villis quam aliunde qui sunt de manupastis ipsius abbatis qui nullam sectam facient ad predictum hundredum nisi ibidem fuerint implacitati vel alios implacitent.'

27. Glastonbury Cart., Wood MSS. i. f. 112: '... ne soit a Iapeis le roi come tere tenaunt en diseine ou en fraunche pleivine.' f III: 'Serment de ceux qui entrent en diseine... ne celeras chose qe apent a la pei le roi de engleterre.'

28. Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. p. xviii.

29. Seld. Soc. ii. p. lxx.

30. Rot. Hundr. ii. 143: 'Ermoldus de Boys dominus de AsYnton solebat facere sectam ad Boxford ad Sockomanemot pro terra Ricardi Serle in Cornerche, nunc illa secta subtracta per 4 annos.' The expression 'frankhalimote' occurs often, but it is evidently an equivalent to 'libera curia,' and interchanges with 'liberum manerium.' See Rot. Hundr. ii. 69, 74, 127.

31. Eynsham Inqu., Christ Church MSS. 15, a: 'Curia debet ibi tencri si dominus voluerit.'

32. Seld. Soc. ii. 49, etc.

33. Beaulieu Cart., Harl. MSS. 748, f 113: 'De sectatoribus intrinsecis... et qui habent terram in campis ... et ad forciamentum curie omnes predicti tam liberi quam alii cum 12 burgensibus vel pluribus venient ad curiam per racionabilem summonicionem.' Glastonb. Cart., Wood MSS. i. 101, d: 'Ipse et heredes et homines sui de Acforde facient bis in anno sectam ad hundredum abbatis de Nywentone et ad afforciamentum curie.'

34. Rot. Hundr. ii. 710, a; Ramsey Cart. i. 491.

35. Warwick Hundred Roll, Exch. Q. R. Misc. Books, 29, p. 10: 'Quidam de tenentibus dicunt quod nunquam fecerunt sectam.'

36. Gloucester Cart. iii. 208.

37. Chapterhouse Box 152, No. 14: 'Hereditas de qua una secta debetur.'

38. Ramsey Cart. i. 412: 'Prohibitum est in plena curia, ne quis ducat placitatores in curiam abbatis ad impediendum vel prorogandum judicium domini Abbatis.' Gesta Abbatum (St. Alban's), 455: 'Non permittatur quod in halimotis adventicii placitatores partes cum sollemnitate sustineant sed communiter per bundos (i.e. bondos) de curia veritas inquiratur, sine callumnia verborum.'

39. Stoneleigh Reg. f 75: 'Curia de Stonle ad quam sokemanni faciebant sectam solebat ab antiquo teneri super montem iuxta villam de Stonle vocatam Motstowehull, ideo sic dictum quia ibi placitabant sed postquam abbates de Stonle habuerunt dictam curiam et libertatem pro aysiamento tenencium et sectatorum fecerunt domum curie in medio ville de Stonle.'

40. Selden Soc. ii. p. 67.

41. Introduction to Seld. Soc. vol. ii. p. 76.

42. The Durham halimot books (Surtees Society) supply some instances.

43. Glastonbury Inqu. of 1189, p. 33: 'De dono 73 solidos sicut homines ville illud statuunt.'

44. Selden Soc. ii. 36, 168.

45. Selden Society, vol. ii. 6, 7, 8.

46. Ibid. 31: 'Johannes Smert... Henricus Coterel maritavit se sine licencia domini, ideo distringantur ad faciendum voluntatem domini.'

47. Ibid. p. 44: 'Postea taxata fuit dicta misericordia per Rogerum de Suhtcote, Willelmum de Scaccario, Hugonem de Cumbe liberos sectatores curie usque ad duas marcas.'

48. Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. p. lxv.

49. Ibid. pp. 163, 166.

50. Comp. Heussler, Institutionen des deutschen Privatrechts, i. 215; ii. 622; but I cannot agree with him as the ceremony being employed only where there was to be a 'donatio mortis causa.' In connexion with this the part played by the Salman is misunderstood, as it seems to me.

51. The court rolls of Common Law manors do not think it necessary to give the particulars about the transmission of the rod. But the description of the practice at Stoneleigh, which, though ancient demesne, presents manorial customs of the same character as those followed on ordinary estates, leaves no doubt as to the course of the proceedings. See above the passage quoted on pp. 113-6. Comp. a parallel ceremony as to freehold, Madox. Formulare, p. 54. The instance has been pointed out to me by Prof Maitland.

52. See Pollock, Land-laws, 199, 2O8 (2nd ed.).

53. Seld. Soc. ii. 33; insertion of a lease in the roll. , p. 35: 'Lis conquievit inter ipsos ita quod concordati fuerunt in hac forma de voluntate domini et in plena curia ita videlicet quod predictus Willelmus de Baggemere concessit, remisit et quietum clamavit pro se et heredibus suis... et hoc paratus est verificare per recordum rotulorum seu 12 juratores ejusdem curie per voluntatem domini et senescalli.' p. 166: 'Et sciatis quod si haberem ad manus rotulos curie tempore Willelmi de Lewes ego vobis certificarem et vobis monstrarem multa mirabilia non opportune facta.'

54. These points have been conclusively settled by the masterly investigations of Brunner, Zeugen- und Inquisitions beweis (Abhandlungen der Wiener Akademie) and Entstehung der Schwurgerichte.

55. Seld. Soc. ii. 41: 'Quod talis sit consuetudo manerii et quod dicta Augnes sic venit in plena curia cum marito suo et totum jus et clamium quod haberet vel aliquo modo habere poterit in toto vel in parte hujus burgagii in manus domini ad opus ejusdem R. reddidit ponit super curiam... Et 12 juratores curie,' etc.

56. I do not mean to say that the analytical distinctions which we make between fact and law, between presenters to a tribunal and assessors of a tribunal, were clearly perceived or consequently carried out in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. On the contrary there was a good deal of confusion in details, and the instinctive logic of facts had more to do in dividing and settling institutions than conscious reasoning. Juries and assizes of the Royal Courts might be called upon incidentally to decide legal questions, but, in the aggregate, there can be hardly a doubt that the sworn inquests before the Royal judges were working to provide the Courts with a knowledge of local facts and perhaps conditions, while the manorial court gave legal decisions.

57. Seld. Soc. ii. 41: 'Et 12 juratores curie... dicunt super sacramentum suum quod predicta Agnes venit in plena curia et totum jus et clamium quod aliquo modo habere potuit in dicto burgagio in manus domini reddidit.' 42: 'Et juratores... dicunt super sacramentum suum quod Juliana per quam dicta Matildis petit hujusmodi messuagium nunquam fuit seisita de ipso mesuagio, set Willelmus Ponfrayt maritus ipsius Juliane, unde secundum Consuetudinem manerii Juliana post mortem W. mariti sui nichil poterit clamare nisi dotem in huiusmodi mesuagium nisi fuerit in plena curia una cum marito suo de huiusmodi perquisito conjunctim seisita.' Cf p. 40: 'Unde Willelmus pro premissis in plena curia recordatis et inrotulatis dat domino 10 solidos.'

58. 4 Inst. 270, cap. 58.

59. Y.B. 11/12 Edw. III (Rolls Ser.), p. 325, sqq.: '... les suters de Cokam firent venir plein record... les suiters agarderent seisine de terre... il firent faux judgement... Stonore: Cest usage est molt encontre la ley, qe cesti qe doit tenir les plees ne poet pas recorder un attourne en ple qe serra plede devant lui mesme. Trew: Nous voloms averer qe les usages sont tiels, qe le seneschal de la court poet resceivir un attourne, issint qil dei entre les suiters coment il ad resceu un tiel attourne en tiel ple a la proschein court apres la resceite, et vous dions qe cesti Adam qe respondi par attourne fut resceu attourne en la manere.' Cf Lysons, Magna Brit. i. 266. Y.B. 3 Edw. III. 29: 'Rob. le W. porta Son brief de faux judgement devers un home et Sa feme, et apres le record avowe par les suters de la court de Bloxham... les suters agarderent qe Robert et ses plegis fuerent in le mercie, et quod narratio sua fuit iniqua, et recordarent un nonsuit la ou la partie fust en court, per qe nous prioms qe cel record soit revers.' Viner, Abr. ii. A. 5, O. 6.

60. Y.B. 11/12 Edw. III (Rolls Ser.), p. 517: 'Trew. Le brief suppose qe le defendant tint le ple et qil fut baillif, ou seuters tenent le ple qe ont record; jugement de bref. Et non allocetur, quia ipse tenet curiam et ei dirigitur breve.'

61. Note Book of Bracton, pl. 1122: 'Preceptum fuit ballivis de Kingestona quod in plena curia sua de Kingestona recordari facerent loquelam... et recordum venire facerent per quatuor qui recordo illi interfuerunt, etc.... Ideo balliui inde sine die et Radulfus in misericordia.' 834: 'Preceptum fuit vicecomiti quod preciperet balliuis manerii Domini Regis de Haueringes quod recordari facerent in curia domini Regis de Haueringes loquelam que fuit in eadem curia per breve domini Regis... unde predicte Agnes et Dyonisia queste fuerunt falsum sibi factum fuisse iudicium in eadem curia et quod diligenter inquirerent qui fuerunt illi de maneriis Domini Regis de Writele, Neuport et Hatfeuld qui interfuerunt predicto iudicio faciendo simul cum hominibus Dolnini Regis de Haueringes et illos venire facerent aput Aueringe ad diem quem predicti homines et balliui Haueringe predicti loquelam recordari facerent, ita quod tam predicti ballivi et homines de Haueringe quam predicti homines de predictis maneriis recordum illud haberent coram justiciariis aput Westmonasterium per 4 legales homines de manerio de Aueringes et 6 de maneriis de Writele, de Neuport et de Hatfeuldia ex illis qui recordo illi interfuerunt.... Consideratum est quod illi de predictis maneriis falsum fecerunt iudicium et ideo omnes de manerio in misericordia preter Willelmum Dun... qui noluerunt consentire judicio.'

62. Stoneleigh Reg., f 75: 'Item si aliquis deforciatur de tenemento suo et tulerit breve Regis clausum ballivis manerii versus deforciantes, dictum breve non debet frangi nisi in curia... Item quando ballivus aliquem summoneat ex precepto curie, tunc assumet secum duos sokemannos quos voluerit pro testanda summonicione predicta... Item qualitercumque placitum terminetur in curia sive in deficiendo in lege vadiata sive per non defensionem dampna sunt semper taxanda per curiam... Item debent sokemanni respondere per 12 coram justiciariis et coronatore domini Regis. Et ipsi dabunt iudicia eurie de Stonle... Item nullus adiudicabitur tenens terre nisi qui a curia tenens acceptatur per fidelitatem et alias consuetudines licet tenens extra curiam aliquem feoffaverit per cartam vel sine carta.'

63. Selden Soc. ii. 122: 'Capiatur in manum domini quarta pars unius rode prati jacens in Smalemade quam Rogerus Greylong vendidit Nicholao le Neuman sine licencia curie.' Cf 112: 'Praesentatum est quod Hugo Graeleng solvit sursum extra curiam ad opus Thome Aspelon de Broucton liberi unam portionem cuiusdam mesuagii... Ideo preceptum quod capiatur in manum domini.'

64. We hear constantly such phrases as the following: 'Quod iuncta est secum vocat rotulos ad warrantum ; ponit se super rotulos.' But we have also: 'Et partes pecierunt quod inquiratur per villatam que dixit quod sufficientem duxit sectam. Postea testificatum fuit per totam villatam quod dictus Nicolaus tenebatur dicto Bartholomeo in predictis 5d.' (Seld. Soc. ii. 118). In one case the party relies on the evidence of the Register of Ramsey (p. 111), which was compiled, of course, on the basis of sworn inquests held in the different manors.

65. Seld. Soc. ii. 112.

66. Augment. Court Rolls, Portf xxiii. No. 94, m. 3: 'Quod quidem per senescallum concessum est eisdem' (the entry is omitted in Mr Maitland's publication).

67. Seld. Soc. ii. III.

68. Augment. Court Rolls, Portf xxiii. No. 94, m. 25 v. (the entry is not in the Selden volume): 'Margeria que fuit uxor Nicholai de Aula de Kingesripton venit et petit unum parvum mesuagium existens in manu domini quod quondam fuit de mesuagio Suo proprio et quod ipsa Margeria singulis annis defendit versus dominum Abbatem, unde petit quod ius suum super hoc inquiratur per bonam inquisicionem. Que venit et dicit... Et ideo preceptum eidem quod inde habeat colloquium cum domino. Et postea colloquio habito cum domino concessum est ei quod pacifice habeat faciendo seruicia inde debita et consueta.'

69. Selden Soc. ii. 127.

70. Selden Soc. ii. 173.

71. Ibid. 94: 'Reginaldus fil. Benedicti injuste dedicit esse unus de 12 jurator ibus allegando libertatem... Dicunt eciam quod Willelmus de Bernewell injuste allegat libertatem propter quam contradicit esse unus de juratis.' Cf Cor. Rege incerti anni Johann. 5: Predecessores sui et ipse tenuerunt liberum tcnementum et quod quidam ex juratis sunt consuetudinarii monialium.' Cor. Rege Pascha, 9 Edw. I, 34, b: '(Amerciamentum sochemanni) per pares vel per liberos de curia et vicinos ad curiam venientes.'

72. Hereford Rolls (Bodleian), 12: 'Compertum per libere tenentes quod custumarii falso presentant... ideo custumarii in misericordia.' Rot. Hundr. ii. 469: 'Quatuor homines et prepositus presentabant defaltas predictis liberis hominibus et ipsi liberi presentabant ballivis.'

73. Seld. Soc. ii. 44.

74. Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. p. lxx.

75. Seld. Soc. ii. 67.

76. Ibid. 164.

77. See as to all this Mr Maitland's Introduction to the Selden volume (ii), pp lxix, lxx.

78. Introd. to Selden Soc. ii. p. lxi, and following. Comp. Coram Rege, 27 Henry III, 2: 'Dicunt quod non est aliquis liber homo in eodem manerio nisi Willelmus filius Radulfi qui respondet infra corpus comnitatus.'

79. Y.B. 21-22 Edw. I, 526 (Rolls Series).

80. Comp. Mr Maitland in his often-quoted Introduction, p. lxxi.

81. Introduction to Seld. Soc. ii. p. lxvi.

82. Archaeologia, vol. 47, p. 27, and following.

83. Rot. Hundr., Cartulary of Ramsey, i.

84. Gomme, Village Community, 162, etc.

85. Cart. of Malmesbury (Rolls Ser.), ii, 221.

86. A very good case in point is presented by Hitchin, because the boundaries and the jurisdiction of the manor comprise a great number of villages and hamlets which managed their open fields quite independently of the central township of Hitchin, and could not but do so, as they lay quite apart and a good way from it, as may be seen on the Ordnance Map. And still the manor comprises, the township of Hitchin and the hamlet of Walsworth, the lesser manors of the Rectory of Hitchin, of Moremead, otherwise Charlton, and of the Priory of the Biggin, being comprehended within the boundaries of the said manor of Hitchin, which also extends into the hamlets of Langley and Preston in the said parish of Hitchin, and into the parishes of Ickleford, Ipolitts, Kimpton, Kingswalden, and Offley.' (Seebohm, Village Community, 443, 444:) As Mr Seebohm tells me, the con. trast between the central portion, that of the township, managed in one open field system, and the outlying parts, is probably reflected in the curious denominations of the manor as Portman and Foreign. It is well known how frequently our surveys mention hamlets; in many cases these annexes of townships arc so widely scattered, that it would be impossible to suppose one open field system for them.

87. Seld. Soc. ii. 68, 90.

88. lbid. 162, I66.

89. Introd. to Seld. Soc. ii. p. xxxix.

Chapter 6

The Manor and the Village Community

Conclusions

If we look at the village life of mediaeval England, not for the purpose of dissecting it into its constitutive elements, but in order that we may detect the principles that hold it together and organise it as a whole, we shall be struck by several features which make it quite unlike the present arrangement of rural society. Even a casual observer will not fail to perceive the contrast which it presents to that free play of individual interests and that undisputed supremacy of the state in political matters, which are so characteristic of the present time. And on the other hand there is just as sharp a contrast between the manorial system and a system of tribal relationships based on blood relationship and its artificial outgrowths; and yet again it may be contrasted with a village community built upon the basis of equal partnership among free members. It is evident, at the same time, that such differences, deep though they are, cannot be treated as primordial and absolute divisions. All these systems are but stages of development, after all, and the most important problem concerning them is the problem of their origins and mutual relations. The main road towards its solution lies undoubtedly through the demesne of strictly historical investigation. Should we succeed in tracing with clearness the consecutive stages of the process and the intermediate links between them, the most important part of the work will have been done. This is simple enough, and seems hardly worth mentioning. But things are not so plain as they look.     To begin with, even a complete knowledge of the sequence of events would not be sufficient since it would merely present a series of arrangements following upon each other in time and not a chain of causes and effects. We cannot exempt ourselves from the duty of following up the investigation by speculations as to the agencies and motives which produced the changes. But even apart from the necessity of taking up ultimately what one may call the dynamic thread of the inquiry, there is considerable difficulty. In obtaining a tolerably settled sequence of general facts to start with. Any one who has had to do with such studies knows how scanty the information about the earlier phenomena is apt to be, how difficult it is to distinguish between the main forms and the variations which mediate and lead from one to another. The task of settling a definite theory of development would not have been so arduous, and the conflicting views of scholars would not have suggested such directly opposite results, if the early data had not been so scattered and so ambiguous. The state of the existing material requires a method of treatment which may to some extent supplement the defects in the evidence. The later and well-recorded period ought to be made to supply additional information as to the earlier and imperfectly described ones. It is from this point of view that we must once more survey the ground that we have been exploring in the foregoing pages.     The first general feature that meets our eye is the cultivation of arable on the open-field system: the land tilled is not parcelled up by enclosures, but lies open through the whole or the greater part of the year; the plot held and tilled by a single cultivator is not a compact piece, but is composed of strips strewn about in all parts of the village fields and intermixed with patches or strips possessed by fellow villagers. Now, both facts are remarkable. They do not square at all with the rules and tendencies of private ownership and individualistic husbandry. The individual proprietor will naturally try to fence in his plot against strangers, to set up hedges and walls that would render trespassing over his ground difficult, if not impossible. And he could not but consider intermixture as a downright nuisance, and strive by all means in his power to get rid of it. Why should he put up with the inconvenience of holding a bundle of strips lying far apart from each other, more or less dependent because of their narrowness on the dealings of neighbours, who may be untidy and unthrifty? Instead of having one block of soil to look to and a comparatively short boundary to maintain, every occupier has a number of scattered pieces to care for, and neighbours, who not only surround, but actually cut up, dismember, invade his tenement. The open-field system stands in glaring contradiction with the present state of private rights in Western Europe, and no wonder that it has been abolished everywhere, except on some few tracts of land kept back by geographical conditions from joining the movement of modern civilisation. And even in mediaeval history we perceive that the arrangement does not keep its hold on those occasions when the rights of individuals. are strongly felt: it gives way on the demesne farm and on newly reclaimed land.     At the same time, the absence of perpetual enclosures and the intermixture of strips are in a general way quite prevalent at the present time in the East of Europe. What conditions do they correspond to? Why have nations living in very different climates and on very different soils adopted the open-field system again and again in spite of all inconveniences and without having borrowed it from each other?     There is absolutely nothing in the manorial arrangement to occasion this curious system. It is not the fact that peasant holdings are made subservient to the wants of the lord's estate, that can explain why early agriculture is in the main a culture of open fields and involves a marvellous intermixture of rights. The absence of any logical connexion between these two things settles the question as to historical influence. The open-field arrangement is, I repeat it, no lax or indifferent system, but stringent and highly peculiar. And so it cannot but proceed from some pressing necessity.     It is evidently communal in its very essence. Every trait that makes it strange and inconvenient from the point of view of individualistic interests, renders it highly appropriate to a state of things ruled by communal conceptions. It is difficult to prevent trespasses upon an open plot, but the plot must be open, if many people besides the tiller have rights over it, pasture rights, for instance. It involves great loss of time and difficulty of supervision to work a property that lies in thirty separate pieces all over the territory of a village, but such a disposition is remarkably well adapted for the purpose of assigning to fellow villagers equal shares in the arable. It is grievous to depend on your neighbours for the proceeds and results of your own work, but the tangled web of rights and boundaries becomes simple if one considers it as the management of land by an agricultural community which has allotted the places where its members have to work. Rights of common usage, communal apportionment of shares in the arable, communal arrangement of ways and times of cultivation -- these are the chief features of open-field husbandry, and all point to one source -- the village community. It is not a manorial arrangement, though it may be adapted to the manor. If more proof were needed we have only to notice the fact, that open-field cultivation is in full work in countries where the manor has not been established, and in times when it has not as yet been formed. We may take India or tribal italy as instances.     The system as exhibited in England is linked to a division into holdings which gives it additional significance. The holding of the English peasant is distinguished by two characteristic features: it is a unit which as a rule does not admit of division; it is equal to other units in the same village. There is no need to point out at length to what extent these features are repugnant to an individualistic order of things. They belong to a rural community. But even in a community the arrangement adopted seems peculiar. We must not disregard some important contradictions. The holdings are not all equal, but are grouped on a scale of three, four, five divisions -- virgates, bovates, and cotlands for instance. And the question may be put: why should an artificial arrangement contrived for the sake of equality start from a flagrant inequality which looks the more unjust, because instead of those intermediate quantities which shade off into each other in our modern society we meet with abrupt transitions? A second difficulty may be found in the unchangeable nature of the holding. The equal virgates are in fact an obstacle to a proportionate repartition of the land among the population, because there is nothing to insure that the differences of growth and requirements arising between different families will keep square with the relations of the holdings. In one case the family plot may become too large, in another too scanty an allowance for the peasant household working and feeding on that plot. And ultimately, as we have seen, the indivisible nature of the holding looks to some extent like an artificial one, and one that is more apparent than real. Not to speak of that provincial variation, the Kentish system of gavelkind, we notice that even in the rest of England large units are breaking into fractions, and that very often the supposed unity is only a thin covering for material division. Why should it be kept up then?     Such serious contradictions and incongruities lead us forcibly to the conclusion that we have a state of transition before us, an institution that is in some degree distorted and warped from its original shape. In this respect the manorial element comes strongly to the fore. The rough scale of holdings would be grossly against justice for purely communal purposes, but it is not only the occupation of land, but also the incidence of services that is regulated by it. People would not so much complain of holding five acres instead of thirty, if they had to work and to pay six times less in the first case. Again, a division of tenements fixed once and for all in spite of changes in the numbers and wants of the population, looks anything but convenient. At the same time the fixed scheme of the division offers a ready basis for computing rents and assessing labour services. And for the sake of the lord it was advisable to preserve outward unity even when the system was actually breaking up: for dealings with the manorial administration virgates remained undivided, even when they were no longer occupied as integral units.     Although the holdings are undoubtedly made subservient to the wants of the manor, it would be going a great deal too far to suppose that they were formed with the primary object of meeting those wants. If we look closer into the structure we find that it is based on the relation between the plough-team and the arable, a relation which is more or less constant and explains the gradations and the mode of apportionment. The division of the land is no indefinite or capricious one, because the land has to be used in certain quantities, and smaller quantities or fractions would disarrange the natural connexion between the soil and the forces that make it productive. The society of those days appears as an agricultural mass consisting not of individual persons or natural families, but of groups possessed of the implements for tilling the land. Its unit of reckoning is not the man, but the plough-beast. As the model plough-team happens to be a very large one, the large unit of the hide is adopted. Lesser quantities may be formed also, but still they correspond to aliquot parts of the full team of eight oxen. Thus the possible gradations are not so many or so gentle as in our own time, but are in the main the half plough-land, the virgate, and the oxgang. What else there is can be only regarded as subsidiary to the main arrangement: the cotters and crofters are not tenants in the fields, but gardeners, labourers, craftsmen, herdsmen, and the like. If the country had not been mainly cultivated as ploughland, but had borne vines or olives or crops that required no cumbersome implements, but intense and individualistic labour, one may readily believe that the holdings would have been more compact, and also more irregular.     The principles of coaration give an insight into the nature of these English village communities. They did not aim at absolute equality; they subordinated the personal element to the agricultural one, if we may use that expression. Not so much an apportionment of individual claims was effected as an apportionment of the land to the forces at work upon it. This observation helps us to get rid of the anomalies with which we started: the holding was united because an ox could not be divided; the plots might be smaller or larger, but everywhere they were connected with a scheme of which the plough-team was the unit. An increasing population had to take care of itself, and to try to fit itself into the existing divisions by family arrangements, marriage, adoption, reclaiming of new land, employment for hire, by-professions, and emigration. The manorial factor comes in to make everYthing artificially regular and rigid.     If we examine the open-field system and its relation to the holdings of individual peasants, we see, as it were, the framework of a peasant community that has swerved from the path of its original development. The gathering of scattered and intermixed strips into holdings points to practices of division or allotment: these practices are the very essence of the whole, and they alone can explain the glaring inconveniencies of scattered ownership coupled with artificial concentration. But redivision of the arable is not seen in the documents of our period. There is no shifting of strips, no changes in the quantities allotted to each family. Everything goes by heredity and settled rules of family property, as if the husbandry was not arranged for communal ownership and re-allotment. I should like to compare the whole to the icebound surface of a northern sea: it is not smooth, although hard and immoveable, and the hills and hollows of the uneven plain remind one of the billows that rolled when it was yet unfrozen.     The treatment of the arable gives the clue to all other sides of the subject. The rights of common usage of meadow and pasture carry us back to practices which must have been originally applied to arable also. When one reads of a meadow being cut up into strips and partitioned for a year among the members of the community by regular rotation or by lot, one does not see why only the grass land should be thus treated while there is no reallotment of the arable plots. As for the waste, it does not even admit of set boundaries, and the only possible means of apportioning its use is to prescribe what and how many heads of cattle each holding may send out upon it. The close affinity between the different parts of the village soil is especially illustrated by the fact, that the open-field arable is treated as common through the greater part of the year. Such facts are more than survivals, more than stray relics of a bygone time. The communal element of English mediaeval husbandry becomes conspicuous in the individualistic elements that grow out of it.     The question has been asked whether we ought not to regard these communal arrangements as derived from the exclusive right of ownership, and the power of coercion vested in the lord of the soil. I think that many features in the constitution of the thirteenth century manor show its gradual growth and comparatively recent origin. The so-called manorial system consists, in truth, in the peculiar connexion between two agrarian bodies, the settlement of villagers cultivating their own fields, and the home-estate of the lord tacked on to this settlement and dependent on the work supplied by it. I take only the agrarian side, of course, and do not mention the political protection which stands more or less as an equivalent for the profits received by the lord from the peasantry. And as for the agrarian arrangement, we ought to keep it quite distinct from forms which are sometimes confused with it through loose terminology. A community paying taxes, farmers leasing land for rent, labourers without independent husbandry of their own, may be all subjected to some lord, but their subjection is not manorial. Two elements are necessary to constitute the manorial arrangement, the peasant village and the home farm worked by its help.     If we turn now to the evidence of the feudal period, we shall see that the labour-service relation, although very marked and prevalent in most cases, is by no means the only one that should be taken into account. In a large number of cases the relation between lord and peasants resolves itself into money payments, and this is only another way of saying that the manorial group disaggregates itself. The peasant holding gets free from the obligation of labouring under the supervision of the bailiff, and the home estate may be either thrown over or managed by the help of hired servants and labourers.     But alongside of these facts, testifying to a progress towards modern times, we find survivals of a more ancient order of things, quite as incompatible with manorial husbandry. Instead of performing work on the demesne, the peasantry are sometimes made to collect and furnish produce for the lord's table and his other wants. They send bread, ale, sheep, chicken, cheese, etc., sometimes to a neighbouring castle and sometimes a good way off. When we hear of the firma unius noctis, paid to the king's household by a borough or a village, we have to imagine a community standing entirely by itself and taxed to a certain tribute, without any superior land estate necessarily engrafted, upon it; a home farm may or may not be close by, but its management is not dependent on the customary work of the vill (consuetudines villae), and the connexion between the two is casual. The facts of which I am speaking are certainly of rare occurrence and dying out, but they are very interesting from a historical point of view, they throw light on a condition of things preceding the manorial system, and characterised by a large over-lordship exacting tribute, and not cultivating land by help of the peasantry.     We come precisely to the same conclusion by another way. The feudal landlord is represented in the village by his demesene land, and by the servants acting as his helpers in administration. Now, the demesne land is often found intermixed with the strips of the peasantry. This seems particularly fitted for a time when the peasantry did not collect to work on a separate home farm, but simply devoted one part of the labour on their own ground to the use of the lord. What I mean is, that if a demesne consisted of, say, every fifth acre in the village fields, the teams of four virgaters composing the plough would traverse this additional acre after going over four of their own instead of being called up under the supervision of the bailiff, to do work on an independent estate. The work performed by the peasants when the demesne is still in intermixture with the village land, appears as an intermediate stage between the tribute paid by a practically self-dependent community, and the double husbandry of a manorial estate linked to a village.     Another feature of transition is perceivable in the history of the class of servants or ministers who collect and supervise the dues and services of the peasants. The feudal arrangement is quite as much characterised by the existence of these middlemen as modern life by the agreements and money dealings which have rendered it useless. In the period preceding the manorial age we see fewer officers, and their interference in the life of the community is but occasional. The gathering of tribute, the supervision of a few labour duties in addition, did not require a large staff of ministers. It was in the interest of the lord to dispense as much as possible with their costly help, and to throw what obligations there were to be performed on the community itself. It seems to me that the feudal age has preserved several traces of institutions belonging to that period of transition. The older surveys, especially the Kentish ones, show a very remarkable development of carriage duties which must have been called forth by the necessity of sending produce to the lord's central halls or courts, while the home farms were still few and small. The riding bailiffs appear in ancient documents in a position which is gradually modified as time goes on. They begin by forming a very conspicuous class among the tenants, in fact the foremost rank of the peasantry. These radmen, radulfs, rodknights, riders, are privileged people, and mostly rank with the free tenants, but they are selected from among the villagers, and very closely resemble the hundredors, whose special duties have kept up their status among the general decay. In later times, in the second half of the thirteenth century and in the fourteenth, it would be impossible to distinguish such a class of riding tenants. They exist here and there, but in most cases their place has been taken by direct dependents of the lord. Besides, as the home-farm has developed on every manor, their office has lost some of the importance it had at a time when there was a good deal of business to transact in the way of communicating between the villages and the few central courts to which rents had to be carried. And, lastly, I may remind the reader of the importance attached in some surveys to the supervision of the best tenants over the rest at the boon works. The socmen, or free tenants, or holders of full lands, as the case may be, have to ride out with rods in their hands to inspect the people cutting the corn or making hay. These customs are mostly to be found in manors with a particularly archaic constitution. They occur very often on ancient demesne. And I need hardly say that they point to a still imperfect development of the ministerial class. The village is already set to work for the lord, but it manages this work as much as possible by itself, with hardly any interference from foreign overseers.     One part of the village population is altogether outside the manorial labour intercourse between village and demesne. The freeholders may perform some labour-services, but the home-farm could never depend on them, and when such services are mentioned, they are merely considered as a supplement to the regular duties of the servile holders. At the same time, the free tenants are members of the village community, engrained in it by their participation in all the eventualities of open field life, by their holdings in the arable, by their use of the commons. This shows, again, that the manorial element is superimposed on the communal, and not the foundation of it. I shall not revert to my positive arguments in favour of the existence of ancient freehold by the side of tenements that have become freehold by exemption from servile duties. But I may be allowed to point out in this place, that negatively the appearance of free elements among the peasantry presents a most powerful check to the theory of a servile origin of the community: it throws the burden of proof on those who contend for such an origin as against the theory of a free village feudalized in process of time.     In a sense the partizans of the servile community are in the same awkward position in respect to the manorial court. Its body of suitors may have consisted to a great extent of serfs, but surely it must have contained a powerful free admixture also, because out of serfdom could hardly have arisen all the privileges and rights which make it a constitutional establishment by the side of the lord. The suitors are the judges in litigation, the conveyancing practice proceeds from the principle of communal testimony, and in matters of husbandry, custom and self-government prevail against any capricious change or unprecedented exaction. And it has to be noticed that the will and influence of the lord is much more distinct and overbearing in the documents of the later thirteenth and of the fourteenth century, than in the earlier records; one more hint, that the feudal conception of society took some time to push back older notions, which implied a greater liberty of the folk in regard to their rulers.     Whichever way we may look, one and the same observation is forced upon us: the communal organisation of the peasantry is more ancient and more deeply laid than the manorial order. Even the feudal period that has formed the immediate subject of our study shows everywhere traces of a peasant class living and working in economically self-dependent communities under the loose authority of a lord, whose claims may proceed from political sources and affect the semblance of ownership, but do not give rise to the manorial connexion between estate and village.