Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

Individual occupation of arable and communal rights.

This intermixture of strips in the open fields is also characteristic in another way: it manifests the working of a principle which became obliterated in the course of history, but had to play a very important part originally. It was a system primarily intended for the purpose of equalising shares, and it considered every man's rights and property as interwoven with other people's rights and property: it was therefore a system particularly adapted to bring home the superior right of the community as a whole, and the inferior, derivative character of individual rights. The most complete inference from such a general conception would be to treat individual occupation of the land as a shifting ownership, to redistribute the land among the members of the community from time to time, according to some system of lot or rotation. The western village community does not go so far, as a rule, in regard to the arable, at least in the time to which our records belong. But even in the west, and particularly in England, traces of shifting ownership, 'shifting severalty,' may be found as scattered survivals of a condition which, if not general, was certainly much more widely spread in earlier times471. The arable is sometimes treated as meadows constantly are: every householder's lot is only an 'ideal' one, and may be assigned one year in one place, and next year in another. The stubborn existence of intermixed ownership, even as described by feudal and later records, is in itself a strong testimony to the communal character of early property. The strips of the several holders were not divided by hedges or inclosures, and a good part of the time, after harvest and before seed, individual rights retreated before common use; every individualising treatment of the soil was excluded by the compulsory rotation of crops and the fact that every share consisted of a number of narrow strips wedged in among other people's shares. The husbandry could not be very energetic and lucrative under such pressure, and a powerful consideration which kept the system working, against convenience and interest, was its equalising and as it were communal tendency. I lay stress on the fact: if the open-field system with its intermixture had been merely a reflection of the original allotment, it would have certainly lost its regularity very soon. People could not be blind to its drawbacks from the point of view of individual farming; and if the single strips had become private property as soon as they ceased to be shifting, exchanges, if not sales, would have greatly destroyed the inconvenient network. The lord had no interest to prevent such exchanges, which could manifestly lead to an improvement of husbandry; and in regard to his own strips, he must have perceived soon enough that it would be better to have them in one compact mass than scattered about in all the fields. And still the open-field intermixture holds its ground all through the middle ages, and we find its survivals far into modern times. This can only mean, that even when the shifting, 'ideal,' share in the land of the community had given way to the permanent ownership by each member of certain particular scattered strips, this permanent ownership did by no means amount to private property in the Roman or in the modern sense. The communal principle with its equalising tendency remained still as the efficient force regulating the whole, and strong enough to subject even the lord and the freeholders to its customary influence. By saying this I do not mean to maintain, of course, that private property was not existent, that it was not breaking through the communal system, and acting as a dissolvent of it. I shall have to show by-and-by in what ways this process was effected. But the fact remains, that the system which prevailed upon the whole during the middle ages appears directly connected in its most important features with ideas of communal ownership and equalised individual rights.

Arrangement of holdings.

These ideas are carried out in a very rough way in the mediaeval arrangement of the holding, which is more complicated in England than on the continent. According to a very common mode of reckoning, the hide contains four virgates, every virgate two bovates, and every bovate fifteen acres. The bovate (oxgang) shows by its very name that not only the land is taken into account, but the oxen employed in its tillage, and the records explain the hide or carucate472 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 hide473. 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, Westmoreland474, of the Abbey of Eynsham, Oxfordshire475, and many other places.

The so-called Domesday of St. Paul's reports476, 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 fee477. 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 taken478. 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 other479. Bovates of ten, twelve, and sixteen acres are to be found in the same locality480. We cannot even seize hold of the acre as the one constant unit among these many variables; the size of the acre itself varied from place to place. In this way any attempt to establish a normal reckoning of the holdings will not only seem hazardous, but will actually stand in contradiction with patent facts.

The holdings not strictly equal in acreage.

Another circumstance seems of yet greater import: even within the boundaries of one and the same community the equality was an agrarian one and did not amount to a strict correspondence in figures. It was obviously impossible to cut up the land among the holdings in such a way as to make every one contain quite the same number of acres as the rest. In the Cartulary of Ramsey it is stated, that in one of the manors the virgate contains sometimes forty-eight acres and sometimes less481. The Huntingdon Hundred Rolls mentions a locality where some of the half-virgates have got houses on their plots and some have not482. 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 one483. 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 households484.

This last case makes it especially clear that the object was to make the shares on the same pattern in point of quality, and not of mere quantity. It is only to be regretted that manorial surveys, hundred rolls, and other documents of the same kind take too little heed of such variations, and consider the whole arrangement merely in regard to the interests of the landlord. For this purpose a rough quantitative statement was sufficient. They give very sparing indications as to the facts underlying the system of holdings; their aim is to reduce all relations to artificial uniformity in order to make them a fitter basis for the distribution of rents and labour services. But very little attention is required to notice a very great difference between such figures and reality. In most of the cases, when the virgate is described in its component parts, we come across irregularities. Again, each component part is more or less irregular, because instead of the acres and half-acres the real ground presents strips of a very capricious shape. And so we must come to the conclusion, that the hide, the virgate, the bovate, in short every holding mentioned in the surveys, appears primarily as an artificial, administrative, and fiscal unit which corresponds only in a very rough way to the agrarian reality.

Acre ware.

This conclusion coincides with the most important fact, that the reckoning of acres in regard to the plough-team is entirely different in the treatises on husbandry from what it is in the manorial records drawn up for the purpose of an assessment of duties and payments. Walter of Henley and Fleta reckon 180 acres to the plough in a three-field system, and 160 in a two-field system. Now these figures are quite exceptional in surveys, whereas 120 acres is most usual without any distinction as to the course of rotation of crops. The relation between the three-field ploughland of 180 acres and the hide of 120 suggests the inference that the official assessment started from the prevalence of the three-field rotation, and disregarded the fallow. But the inference is hardly sufficient to explain the facts of the case. The way towards a solution of the problem is indicated by the terminology of the Ely surveys in the British Museum. These documents very often mention virgates and full yardlands of twelve acres de ware; on the other hand, the Court Rolls from Edward I's time till Elizabeth's, and a survey of the reign of Edward III, show the virgate to consist of twenty-four acres485. 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 survey486. Such 'acre ware' are to be found, though rarely, in other manors besides those of Ely minster487. 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 land488? 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 sense489. 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 state490, and for the weir, which prevents the fish from escaping into the river491.

Hides of assessment.

This origin and use of the term is of considerable importance, because it shows the artificial character of the system and its close connexion with the taxation by the State. This is a disturbing element which ought to be taken into account by the side of the agrarian influence. There cannot be the slightest doubt that the assessment started from actual facts, from existing agrarian conditions and divisions. The hide, the yardland, the oxgang existed not only in the geld-rolls, but in fact and on the ground. But in geld-rolls they appeared with a regularity they did not possess in real fact; the rolls express all modifications in the modes of farming and all exemptions, not in the shape of any qualification or lighter assessment of single plots, but by way of striking off from the number of these plots, or from the number of acres in them; the object which in modern times would be effected by the registration of a 'rateable value' differing from the 'actual value' was effected in ancient times by the registration of a 'rateable size' differing from the 'actual size'; lastly, the surveys and rolls of assessment do not keep time with the actual facts, and often reflect, by their figures and statistics, the conditions of bygone periods. The hides of the geld or of the 'wara' tend to become constant and rigid: it is difficult for the king's officers to alter their estimates, and the people subjected to the tax try in every way to guard against novelties and encroachments. The real agrarian hide-area is changing at the same time because the population increases, new tenements are formed, and new land is reclaimed.

We find at every step in our records that the assessment and the agrarian conditions do not coincide. If a manor has been given to a convent in free almoign (in liberam et perpetuam eleemosynam), that is, free from all taxes and payments to the State, there is no reason to describe it in units of assessment, and in fact such property often appears in manorial records without any 'hidation' or reckoning of knight-fees492. The Ramsey Cartulary tells us that the land in Hulme was not divided into hides and virgates493. 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 hide494.' 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-half495.

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 acreware496 form the basis of all the reckoning of rents and work. And so if the royal assessment appear with the features of an artificial fiscal arrangement, the same observation has to be extended to the manorial assessment; and thus we reach by another way the same conclusion which we drew from an analysis of the single holding and of its component parts. No doubt the whole stands in close relation to the reality of cultivation and land-holding, but the rigidity, regularity, and correctness of the system present a necessary contrast to the facts of actual life. As the soil could not be made to fit into geometrical squares, even so the population could not remain without change from one age to the other within the same boundaries. Thus in course of time the plough-land of 160 and 180 acres, which is the plough-land of practical farming, appears by the side of the statutory hide of 120 acres; and so again inside every single holding there comes up the contrast between its real conformation and distribution, and the outward form it assumed in regard to the king, the lord, and the steward.

Rules of inheritance.

The inquiry as to the relation between the holding and the population on it is, of course, of the utmost importance for a general estimate of the arrangement. From a formal point of view the question is soon solved: on the one hand, the holding of the villain remains undivided and entire; it does not admit of partition by sale or descent; on the other, the will of the lord may alter, if necessary, the natural course of inheritance and possession; the socage tenure is often free from the first of these limitations, and always free from the second. The indivisibility of villain tenements is chiefly conspicuous in the law of inheritance: all the land went to one of the sons if there were several; very often the youngest inherited; and this custom, to which mere chance has given the name of Borough English, was considered as one of the proofs of villainage497. 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 documents498. The unity of the holding was not disturbed in the case; there was no division, and only the right heir, the ἑστιοπάμων as they said in Sparta, had to answer for the services; the lord looked to him and no further; but in point of fact the holding contained more than one family, and perhaps more than one household. However this may be, in regard to the lord the holding remained one and undivided. This circumstance draws a sharp line between the feudal arrangement of most counties and that which prevailed in Kent. The gavelkind or tributary tenure there was subjected to equal partition among the heirs.

Kentish system.

Let us take a Kentish survey, the Black Book of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, for instance: it describes the peasant holdings in a way which differs entirely from other surveys. It begins by stating what duties lie on each sulung, that is, on the Kentish ploughland corresponding to the hide of feudal England. No regular sub-divisions corresponding to the virgates and bovates are mentioned, and the reckoning starts not from separate tenements, but from their combination into sulungs499. 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 combinations500. The portions are sometimes so small, that an independent cultivation of them would have been quite impossible. In order to understand the description it must be borne in mind that the fact of the tenement being owned by several different persons in definite but undivided shares did not preclude farming in common; while on the other hand, in judging of the usual feudal arrangement of holdings we must remember that the artificial unity and indivisibility of the tenement may be a mere screen behind which there exists a complex mass of rights sanctioned by morality and custom though not by law. The surveys of the Kentish possessions of Battle Abbey are drawn up on the same principle as those of St. Augustine's; the only difference is, that the individual portions are collected not in sulungs, but in yokes (juga)501.

And so we have in England two systems of dividing the land of the peasant, of regulating its descent and its duties. In one case the tenant-right is connected with rigid holdings descending to a single heir; in another the tenements get broken up, and the heirs club together in order to meet the demands of the manorial administration. The contrast is sharp and curious enough. How is one to explain, that in conditions which were more or less identical, the land was sometimes partitioned and sometimes kept together, the people were dispersed in some instances and kept together in others?

Connecting links between the two systems.

Closer inspection will show that however sharp the opposition in law may have been, in point of husbandry and actual management the contrast was not so uncompromising. Connecting links may be found between the two. The Domesday of St. Paul's, for instance, is compiled in the main in the usual way, but one section of it—the description of the Essex manors of Kirby, Horlock, and Thorpe—does not differ from the Kentish surveys in anything but the terminology502. The services are laid on hides, and not on the actual tenements. Each hide includes a great number of plots which do not fall in with any constant subdivisions of the same kind as the virgates and bovates. Some of these plots are very small, all are irregular in their formation. It happens that one and the same person holds in several hides. In one word, the Kentish system has found a way for some unexplained reason into the possessions of St. Paul's, and we find subjected to it some Essex manors which do not differ much in their husbandry arrangements from other properties in Essex, and have no claim to the special privileges of Kentish soil.

Once apprised of the possible existence of such intermediate forms, we shall find in most surveys facts tending to connect the two arrangements. The Gloucester Cartulary, for instance, mentions virgates held by four persons503. 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 virgate504. 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 tenements505. 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.