Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

Customary duties of the lord in regard to the peasantry.

I ought perhaps to treat here of the different and interesting forms assumed by services and rents as consequences of manorial organisation. But I think that this subject will be understood better in another connexion, namely as part of the agrarian system. One side only of it has to be discussed here. Everywhere customs arise which defend the villains from capricious extortions on the part of the lord and steward. These customs mostly get 'inbreviated360,' described in surveys and cartularies, and although they have no legally binding power, they certainly represent a great moral authority and are followed in most cases.

A very characteristic expression of their influence may be found in the fact that the manorial rolls very often describe in detail, not only what the peasants are bound to do for the lord, but what the lord must do for the peasants; especially when and how he is to feed them. Of course, the origin of such usage cannot be traced to anything like a right on the part of the villain; it comes from the landlord's concessions and good-will, but grace loses its exceptional aspect in this case and leads to a morally binding obligation361. When the villain brings his yearly rent to his lord, the latter often invites him to his table362. Very common is the practice of providing a meal for the labourers on the boon-days, the days on which the whole population of the village had to work for the lord in the most busy time of the summer and autumn. Such boon-work was considered as a kind of surplus demand; it exceeded the normal distribution of work. It is often mentioned accordingly that such service is performed out of affection for the lord, and sometimes it gets the eloquent name of 'love-bene.' In proportion as the manorial administration gets more work done in this exceptional manner, it becomes more and more gracious in regard to the people. 'Dry requests' (siccae precariae) are followed by 'requests with beer' (precariae cerevisiae). But it was not beer alone that could be got on such days. Here is a description of the customs of Borle, a manor belonging to Christ Church, Canterbury, in Essex. 'And let it be known that when he, the villain, with other customers shall have done cutting the hay on the meadow in Raneholm, they will receive by custom three quarters of wheat for baking bread, and one ram of the price of eighteen pence, and one pat of butter, and one piece of cheese of the second sort from the lord's dairy, and salt, and oatmeal for cooking a stew, and all the morning milk from all the cows in the dairy, and for every day a load of hay. He may also take as much grass as he is able to lift on the point of his scythe. And when the mown grass is carried away, he has a right to one cart. And he is bound to carry sheaves, and for each service of this kind he will receive one sheaf, called "mene-schef." And whenever he is sent to carry anything with his cart, he shall have oats, as usual, so much, namely, as he can thrice take with his hand363.'

All such customs seem very strange and capricious at first sight. But it is to be noticed that they occur in different forms everywhere, and that they were by no means mere oddities; they became a real and sometimes a heavy burden for the landlord. The authorities, the so-called 'Inquisitiones post mortem' especially, often strike a kind of balance between the expense incurred and the value of the work performed. By the end of the thirteenth century it is generally found that both ends are just made to meet in cases of extra work attended by extra feeding, and in some instances it is found that the lord has to lay out more than he gets back364. The rise in the prices of commodities had rendered the service unprofitable. No wonder that such 'boon-work' has to be given up or to be commuted for money.

Customs in the arrangement of agricultural work.

These regularly recurring liberationes or liberaturae as they are called, that is, meals and provender delivered to the labourers, have their counterpart in the customary arrangement of the amount and kind of services. I shall have to speak of their varieties and usual forms in another connexion, but it must be noticed now, that these peasants unprotected at law were under the rule of orderly custom. We have seen already that the payments and duties which followed from the subjection of the villains were for the most part fixed according to constant rules in each particular case. The same may be said of the economical pressure exercised in the shape of service and rent. It did not depend on the caprice of the lord, although it depended theoretically on his will. The villains of a manor in Leicestershire are not bound to work at weeding the demesne fields unless by their own consent, that is by agreement365. A baker belonging to Glastonbury Abbey is not bound to carry loads unless a cart is provided him366. A survey of Ely mentions that some peasants are made to keep a hedge in order as extra work and without being fed. But it is added that the jurors of the village protest against such an obligation, as heretofore unheard of367. All these customs and limitations may, of course, be broken and slighted by the lord, but such violent action on his part will be considered as gross injustice, and may lead to consequences unpleasant for him—to riots and desertion.

It is curious that the influence of custom makes itself felt slowly but surely among the most debased of the villains. The Oxfordshire Hundred Roll treats for instance of the servi of Swincombe. They pay merchet; if any of them dies without making his will the whole of his moveable property falls to the lord. They are indeed degraded. And still the lord does not tallage them at pleasure—they are secure in the possession of their waynage (salvo contenemento)368.

We may sum up the results already obtained by our analysis of manorial documents in the following propositions:—

1. The terminology of the feudal period and the treatment of tenure in actual life testify to the fact that the chief stress lay more on tenure than on status, more on economical condition than on legal distinctions.

2. The subdivisions of the servile class and the varieties of service and custom show that villainage was a complex mould into which several heterogeneous elements had been fused.

3. The life of the villain is chiefly dependent on custom, which is the great characteristic of medieval relations, and which stands in sharp contrast with slavery on the one hand and with freedom on the other.

CHAPTER VI.

FREE PEASANTRY

I hope the heading of this chapter may not be misunderstood. It would be difficult to speak of free peasantry in the modern sense at the time with which we are now dealing. Some kind or form of dependence often clings even to those who occupy the best place among villagers as recognised free tenants, and in most cases we have a very strong infusion of subjection in the life of otherwise privileged peasants. But if we keep to the main distinctions, and to the contrast which the authorities themselves draw between the component elements of the peasant class, its great bulk will arrange itself into two groups: the larger one will consist of those ordinarily designated as villains; a smaller, but by no means an insignificant or scanty one, will present itself as free, more or less protected by law, and more or less independent of the bidding of the lord and his steward. There is no break between the two groups; one status runs continuously into the other, and it may be difficult to distinguish between the intermediate shades; but the fundamental difference of conception is clearly noticeable as soon as we come to look at the whole, and it is not only noticeable to us but was noticed by the contemporary documents.

General condition of England.

In very many cases we are actually enabled to see how freedom and legal security gradually emerge from subjection. One of the great movements in the social life of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the movement towards the commutation of services for money rents. In every survey we find a certain number of persons who now pay money, whereas they used to do work, and who have thus emancipated themselves from the most onerous form of subjection369. In the older documents it is commonly specified that the lord may revert to the old system, give up the rents, and enforce the services370. In later documents this provision disappears, having become obsolete, and there is only a mention of certain sums of money. The whole process, which has left such distinct traces in the authorities, is easily explained by England's economic condition at that time. Two important factors co-operated to give the country an exceptionally privileged position. England was the only country in Europe with a firmly constituted government. The Norman Conquest had powerfully worked in the sense of social feudalism, but it had arrested the disruptive tendencies of political feudalism. The opposition between the two races, the necessity for both to keep together, the complexity of political questions which arose from conquest and settlement on the one hand, from the intercourse with Normandy and France on the other,—all these agencies working together account for a remarkable intensity of action on the part of the centripetal forces of society, if I may use the expression: there was in England a constant tendency towards the concentration and organisation of political power in sharp contrast with the rest of Europe where the state had fallen a prey to local and private interests. One of the external results of such a condition was the growth of a royal power supported by the sympathy of the lower English-born classes, but arranging society by the help of Norman principles of fiscal administration. Not less momentous was the formation of an aristocracy which was compelled to act as a class instead of acting as a mere collection of individuals each striving for his own particular advantage; as a class it had to reckon with, and sometimes represent, the interests and requirements of other classes. In all these respects England was much ahead of Germany, where tribal divisions were more powerful than national unity, and the state had to form itself on feudal foundations in opposition to a cosmopolitan Imperial power; it was not less in advance of France, where the work of unification, egotistically undertaken by the king, had hardly begun to get the upper hand in its conflict with local dynasties; not less in advance of Italy, so well situated for economic progress, but politically wrecked by its unhappy connexion with Germany, the anti-national influence of the Papacy, and the one-sided development of municipal institutions. By reason of its political advantages England had the start of other European countries by a whole century and even by two centuries. The 'silver streak' acted already as a protection against foreign inroads, the existence of a central power insured civil order, intercourse between the different parts of the island opened outlets to trade, and reacted favourably on the exchange of commodities and the circulation of money.

Another set of causes operated in close alliance with these political influences. The position of England in relation to the European market was from the first an advantageous one. Besides the natural development of seafaring pursuits which lead to international trade, and always tend to quicken the economic progress, there were two special reasons to account for a speedy movement in the new direction: the woollen trade with Flanders begins to rise in the twelfth century, and this is the most important commercial feature in the life of North-Western Europe; then again, the possession of Normandy and the occupation of Aquitaine and other provinces of France by the English opened markets and roads for a very brisk commercial intercourse with the Continent. As an outcome of all these political and economical conditions we find the England of the thirteenth century undoubtedly moving from natural husbandry to the money-system.

Commutation.

The consequences are to be seen on every side in the arrangements of state and society. The means of government were modified by the economic change. Hired troops took the place of feudal levies; kings easily renounced the military service of their tenants and took scutages which give them the means of keeping submissive and well-drilled soldiers. The same process took place all through the country on the land of secular and ecclesiastical lords. They all preferred taking money which is so readily spent and so easy to keep, which may transform itself equally well into gorgeous pageants and into capital for carrying on work, instead of exacting old-fashioned unwieldly ploughings and reapings or equally clumsy rents in kind.

On the other hand, the peasants were equally anxious to get out of the customary system: through its organisation of labour it involved necessarily many annoyances, petty exactions and coercion; it involved a great waste of time and energy. The landlord gained by the change, because he received an economic instrument of greater efficiency; the peasant gained because he got rid of personal subjection to control; both gained; for a whole system of administration, a whole class of administrators, stewards, bailiffs, reeves, a whole mass of cumbrous accounts and archaic procedure became unnecessary.

In reality the peasantry gained much more than the lord. Just because money rents displaced the ploughings and reapings very gradually, they assumed the most important characteristic of these latter—their customary uniformity; tradition kept them at a certain level which it was very difficult to disturb, even when the interests of the lord and the conditions of the time had altered a great deal. Prices fluctuate and rise gradually, the buying strength of money gets lowered little by little, but customary rents remain much the same as they were before. Thus in process of time the balance gets altered for the benefit of the rent payer. I do not mean to say that such views and such facts were in full operation from the very beginning: one of the chief reasons for holding the Glastonbury inquest of 1189 was the wish to ascertain whether the rents actually corresponded to the value of the plots, and to make the necessary modifications. But such fresh assessments were very rare, it was difficult to carry them into practice, and the general tendency was distinctly towards a stability of customary rents.

Social results of commutation.

The whole process has a social and not merely an economical meaning. Commutation, even when it was restricted to agricultural services, certainly tended to weaken the hold of the lord on his men. Personal interference was excluded by it, the manorial relation resolved itself into a practice of paying certain dues once or several times a year; the peasant ceased to be a tool in the husbandry arrangements of his master. The change made itself especially felt when the commutation took place in regard to entire villages371: the new arrangement developed into the custom of a locality, and gathered strength by the number of individuals concerned in it, and the cohesion of the group. In order not to lose all power in such a township, the lords usually reserved some cases for special interference and stipulated that some services should still be rendered in kind372.

Again, the conversion of services into rents did not always present itself merely in the form just described: it was not always effected by the mere will of the lord, without any legally binding acts. Commutation gave rise to actual agreements which came more or less under the notice of the law. We constantly find in the Hundred Rolls and in the Cartularies that villains are holding land by written covenant. In this case they always pay rent. Sometimes a villain, or a whole township, gets emancipated from certain duties by charter373, and the infringement of such an instrument would have given the villains a standing ground for pleading against the lord. It happened from time to time that bondmen took advantage of such deeds to claim their liberty, and to prove that the lord had entered into agreement with them as with free people374. To prevent such misconstruction the lord very often guards expressly against it, and inserts a provision to say that the agreement is not to be construed against his rights and in favour of personal freedom375.

Molmen.

The influence of commutation makes itself felt in the growth of a number of social groups which arrange themselves between the free and the servile tenantry without fitting exactly into either class. Our manorial authorities often mention mol-land and mol-men376. The description of their obligations always points one way: they are rent-paying tenants who may be bound to some extra work, but who are very definitely distinguished from the 'custumarii,' the great mass of peasants who render labour services377. Kentish documents use 'mala' or 'mal' for a particular species of rent, and explain the term as a payment in commutation of servile customs378. In this sense it is sometimes opposed to gafol or gable—the old Saxon rent in money or in kind, this last being considered as having been laid on the holding from all time, and not as the result of a commutation379. Etymologically there is reason to believe that the term mal is of Danish origin380, and the meaning has been kept in practice by the Scotch dialect381. What immediately concerns our present purpose is, that the word mal-men or mol-men is commonly used in the feudal period for villains who have been released from most of their services by the lord on condition of paying certain rents.Improvement of condition. Legally they ought to remain in their former condition, because no formal emancipation has taken place; but the economical change reacts on their status, and the manorial documents show clearly how the whole class gradually gathers importance and obtains a firmer footing than was strictly consistent with its servile origin382.

In the Bury St. Edmund's case just quoted in a foot-note the fundamental principle of servility is stated emphatically, but the statement was occasioned by gradual encroachments on the part of the molmen, who were evidently becoming hardly distinguishable from freeholders383. And in many Cartularies we find these molmen actually enumerated with the freeholders, a very striking fact, because the clear interest of the lord was to keep the two classes asunder, and the process of making a manorial 'extent' and classifying the tenants must have been under his control. As a matter of fact, the village juries were independent enough to make their presentments more in accordance with custom than in accordance with the lord's interests. In a transcript of a register of the priory of Eye in Suffolk, which seems to have been compiled at the time of Edward I, the molmen are distinguished from villains in a very remarkable manner as regards the rule of inheritance, Borough English being considered as the servile mode, while primogeniture is restricted to those holding mol-land384. Borough English was very widely held in medieval England to imply servile occupation of land385, and the privilege enjoyed by molmen in this case shows that they were actually rising above the general condition of villainage, the economical peculiarities of their position affording a stepping-stone, as it were, towards the improvement of their legal status. It is especially to be noticed, that in this instance we have to reckon with a material difference of custom, and not merely with a vacillating terminology or a general and indefinite improvement in position. An interesting attempt at an accurate classification of this and other kinds of tenantry is displayed by an inquisition of 19 Edward I preserved at the Record Office. The following subdivisions are enumerated therein:—

Liberi tenentes per cartam.Liberi tenentes qui vocantur fresokemen.Sokemanni qui vocantur molmen.Custumarii qui vocantur werkmen.Consuetudinarii tenentes 4 acras terre.Consuetudinarii tenentes 2 acras terre386.

The difference between molmen and workmen lies, of course, in the fact that the first pay rent and the second perform week-work. But what is more, the molmen are ranged among the sokemen, and this supposes a certainty of tenure and service not enjoyed by the villains. In this way the intermediate class, though of servile origin, connects itself with the free tenantry.

Censuarii and gavelmen.

The same group appears in manorial documents under the name of censuarii387. Both terms interchange, and we find the same fluctuation between free and servile condition in regard to the censuarii as in regard to molmen. The thirteenth-century extent of the manor of Broughton, belonging to the Abbey of Ramsey in Huntingdonshire, when compared with Domesday, shows clearly the origin of the group and the progress which the peasantry had made in two hundred years. The Domesday description mentions ten sokemen and twenty villains; the thirteenth-century Cartulary speaks in one place of liberi and villani, sets out the services due from the latter, but says that the Abbot can 'ponere omnia opera ad censum;' while in another place it speaks as though the whole were held by liberi et censuarii388.

A similar condition is indicated by the term gavelmanni, which occurs sometimes, although not so often as either of the designations just mentioned389. It comes evidently from gafol or gafel, and applies to rent-paying people. It ought to be noticed, however, that if we follow the distinction suggested by the Kentish documents, there would be an important difference in the meaning. Rent need not always appear as a result of commutation; it may be an original incident of the tenure, and there are facts enough to show that lands were held by rent in opposition to service even in early Saxon time. Should mal be taken as a commutation rent, and gafol strictly in the sense of original rent, the gavelmen would present an interesting variation of social grouping as the progeny of ancient rent-holding peasantry. I do not think, however, that we are entitled to press terminological distinctions so closely in the feudal period, and I should never enter a protest against the assumption that most gavelmen were distinguished from molmen only by name, and in fact originated in the same process of commutation. But, granting this, we have to grant something else. Vice versa, it is very probable indeed that the groups of censuarii and molmen are not to be taken exclusively as the outcome of commutation. If gafol gets to be rather indistinct in its meaning, so does mal, and as to census, there is nothing to show whether it arises in consequence of commutation or of original agreement. And so the Kentish distinction, even if not carried out systematically, opens a prospect which may modify considerably the characteristic of the status on which I have been insisting till now. Commutation was undoubtedly a most powerful agency in the process of emancipation; our authorities are very ready to supply us with material in regard to its working, and I do not think that anybody will dispute the intimate connexion between the social divisions under discussion and the transition from labour services to rent. Yet a money rent need not be in every case the result of a commutation of labour services, although such may be its origin in most cases. We have at least to admit the possibility and probability of another pedigree of rent-paying peasants. They may come from an old stock of people whose immemorial custom has been to pay rent in money or in kind, and who have always remained more or less free from base labour. This we should have to consider as at all events a theoretic possibility, even if we restricted our study to the terminology connected with rent; though it would hardly give sufficient footing for definite conclusions. But there are groups among the peasantry whose history is less doubtful.

Hundredarii.

There are at the British Museum two most curious Surveys of the possessions of Ely Minster, one drawn up in 1222 and the other in 1277390. In some of the manors described we find tenants called 'hundredarii.' Their duties vary a good deal, but the peculiarity which groups them into a special division and gives them their name is the suit of court they owe to the hundred391. And although the name does not occur often even in the Ely Surveys, and is very rare indeed elsewhere392, the thing is quite common. The village has to be represented in the hundred court either by the lord of the manor, or by the steward, or by the reeve, the priest, and four men393. The same people have to attend the County Court and to meet the King's justices when they are holding an eyre394. It is not a necessary consequence, of course, that certain particular holdings should be burdened with the special duty of sending representatives to these meetings, but it is quite in keeping with the general tendency of the time that it should be so; and indeed one finds everywhere that some of the tenants, even if not called 'hundredarii,' are singled out from the rest to 'defend' the township at hundred and shire moots395. They are exempted from other services in regard to this 'external,' this 'forinsec' duty, which was considered as by no means a light one396.