Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

The pigeon-house is worth 4d.

Two mills, 7l. 1s. 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 peasantry684. As to this point the close connexion between demesne and tributary land is especially clear; but after all that has been said in the preceding chapter it is hardly necessary to add that it was not only the ploughing-work that was carried on by the lord with the help of his subjects.

The demesne and the village.

As a matter of fact, villages without a manorial demesne or without some dependence from it are found only exceptionally and in those parts of England where the free population had best kept its hold on the land, and where the power of the lord was more a political than an economical one (Norfolk and Suffolk, Lincoln, Northumberland, Westmoreland, etc.685). And there are hardly any cases at all of the contrary, that is of demesne land spreading over the whole of a manor. Tillingham, a manor of St. Paul's, London, comes very near it686: 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 community687. This fact would show by itself that the original system, according to which property and husbandry were arranged in manorial groups, was based on a close connexion between the domanial and the tributary land. We might even go further and point out that the mere facilities of intercourse and joint work are not sufficient to account for this intermixture of the strips of the lord and of the homage. The demesne land appears in fact as a share in the association of the village, a large share but still one commensurate with the other holdings. In two respects this subjection to a higher unit must necessarily follow from the intermixture of strips: inasmuch as the demesne consists of plots scattered in the furlongs of the township, it does not appropriate the best soil or the best situation, but has to gather its component parts in all the varied combinations in which the common holdings have to take theirs. And besides this, the demesne strips were evidently meant to follow the same course of husbandry as the land immediately adjoining them, and to lapse into undivided use with such land when the 'defence' season was over. Separate or private patches exempted from the general arrangement are to be found on many occasions, but the usual treatment of demesne land in the thirteenth century is certainly more in conformity with the notion that the lord's land is only one of the shares in the higher group of the village community.

'Ministeriality.'

The management of the estate, the collection of revenue, the supervision of work, the police duties incumbent on the manor, etc., required a considerable number of foremen and workmen of different kinds688. 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 firmarius689. By his side appears the reeve, or praepositus, nominated from among the peasants of a particular township, and mostly chosen by them690. Manorial instructions add sometimes that no villain has a right to hold aloof from such an appointment, if it is conferred on him691. 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 lord692. The akermanni or carucarii are the leaders of the unwieldy ploughs of the time693, and they are helped by a set of drivers and boys who have to attend to the oxen or horses694. Shepherds for every kind of cattle are also mentioned695, as well as keepers and warders of the woods and fences696. In the Suffolk manors of Bury St. Edmund's we find the curious term lurard to designate a person superintending the hay harvest697.

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 'turnbedellus698'. A 'vagiator' (vadiator?) serves writs and distrains goods for rents699. 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 horses700.

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 farm701. 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 precedence702.

Formation of the class.

The material for the formation of this vast and important class was supplied by the subject population of the estates. The Gloucester manorial instruction enjoins the stewards to collect on certain days the entire grown-up population and to select the necessary servants for the different callings. It is also enacted that the men should not be left without definite work, that in case of necessity they should be moved from one post to the other703, 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 harvest704. In documents styled 'Minister's Accounts' we may also find proof, that from the thirteenth century downwards the requirements of the lord's estate are sometimes met by hiring outsiders to perform some necessary kind of work. These phenomena have to be considered as exceptional, however, and in fact as a new departure.

Remuneration of the class.

The officers and servants were remunerated in various ways. Sometimes they were allowed to share in the profits connected with their charges. The swine-herd of Glastonbury Abbey, for instance, received one sucking-pig a year, the interior parts of the best pig, and the tails of all the others which were slaughtered in the abbey705. The chief scullion (scutellarius) had a right to all remnants of viands,—but not of game,—to the feathers and the bowels of geese706. Again, all the household and workmen constantly employed had certain quantities of food, drink, and clothing assigned to them707. 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 goldsmith708.

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 tenements709. The performance of the specific duties of administration took the place of the ordinary rural work or rent, and in this way the service of the lord was feudalised on the same principle as the king's service—it was indissolubly connected with land-holding.

Importance of the 'ministeriality.'

In manorial extents we come constantly across such exempted tenements conceded without any rural obligations or with the reservation of a very small rent. It is important to notice, that such exemptions, though temporary and casual at first, were ultimately consolidated by custom and even confirmed by charters. A whole species of free tenements, and a numerous one, goes back to such privileges and exemptions granted to servants710. And so this class of people, in the formation of which unfree elements are so clearly apparent, became one of the sources in the development of free society. Such importance and success are to be explained, of course, by the influence of this class in the administration and economic management of the estates belonging to the secular and ecclesiastical aristocracy. It is very difficult at the present time to realise the responsibility and strength of this element. We live in a time of free contract, credit, highly mobilised currency, easy means of communication, and powerful political organisation. There is no necessity for creating a standing class of society for the purpose of mediating between lord and subject, between the military order and the industrial order. Every feature of the medieval system which tended to disconnect adjoining localities, to cut up the country into a series of isolated units, contributed at the same time to raise a class which acted as a kind of nervous system, connecting the different parts with a common centre and establishing rational intercourse and hierarchical relations. The libertini had to fulfil kindred functions in the ancient world, but their importance was hardly so great as that of medieval sergeants or ministeriales. We may get some notion of what that position was by looking at the personal influence and endowments of the chief servants in a great household of the thirteenth century. The first cook and the gatekeeper of a celebrated abbey were real magnates who held their offices by hereditary succession, and were enfeoffed with considerable estates711. In Glastonbury five cooks shared in the kitchen-fee712. The head of the cellar, the gatekeeper, and the chief shepherd enter into agreements in regard to extensive plots of land713. 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'état in order to displace the privileged families which had got hold of the offices and treated them as hereditary property714. In fact the great 'sergeants' ended by hampering their lords more than serving them. And the same fact of the rise of a 'ministerial' class may be noticed on every single estate, although it is not so prominent there as in the great centres of feudal life. The whole arrangement was broken by the substitution of the 'cash nexus' for more ancient kinds of economic relationship, and by the spread of free agreements: it is not difficult to see that both these facts acted strongly in favour of driving out hereditary and customary obligations.

Free tenants in the manor.

We have considered the relative position of the unfree holdings, of the domanial land around which they were grouped, and of the class which had to put the whole machinery of the manor into action. But incidentally we had several times to notice a set of men and tenements which stood in a peculiar relation to the arrangement we have been describing: there were in almost every manor some free tenants and some free tenements that could not be considered as belonging to the regular fabric of the whole. They had to pay rents or even to perform labour services, but their obligations were subsidiary to the work of the customary tenants on which the husbandry of the manorial demesne leaned for support. From the economic point of view we can see no inherent necessity for the connexion of these particular free tenements with that particular manorial unit. The rent, large or small, could have been sent directly to the lord's household, or paid in some other manor without any perceptible alteration in favour of either party; the work, if there was such to perform, was without exception of a rather trifling kind, and could have been easily dispensed with and commuted for money. Several reasons may be thought of to explain the fact that free tenements are thus grouped along with the villain holdings and worked into that single unit, the manor. It may be urged that the division into manors is not merely and perhaps not chiefly an economic one, but that it reflects a certain political organisation, which had to deal with and to class free tenants as well as servile people. It may be conjectured that even from the economic point of view, although the case of free tenants would hardly have called the manorial unit into existence, it was convenient to use that class when once created for the grouping of villain land and work: why should the free tenants not join the divisions formed for another purpose but locally within easy reach and therefore conveniently situated for such intercourse with the lord as was rendered necessary by the character of the tenement? Again, the grouping of free tenants may have originated in a time when the connexion with the whole was felt more strongly than in the feudal period; it may possibly go back to a community which had nothing or little to do with subjection, and in which the free landowners joined for mutual support and organisation. It is not impossible to assume, on the other hand, that in many cases the free tenant was left in the manorial group because he had begun by being an unfree and therefore a necessary member of it. All such suppositions seem prima facie admissible and reasonable enough, and at the same time it is clear, that by deciding in favour of one of them or by the relative importance assigned to each we shall very materially influence the solution of interesting historical problems.

In order to appreciate rightly the position of the free tenements in the manor we have to examine whether these tenements are all of one and the same kind or not, and this must be done not from the legal standpoint whence it has already been reviewed, but in connexion with the practical management of the estate. I think that a survey of the different meanings which the term bears in our documents must lead us to recognise three chief distinctions: first there is free land which once formed part of the demesne but has been separated from it; then there is the land held by villagers outside the regular arrangements of the rural community, and lastly there are ancient free holdings of the same shape as the servile tenements, though differing from the latter in legal character. Each class will naturally fall into subdivisions715.

Free tenements carved out of the demesne.

Under the first head it is to be observed that domanial land very often lost its direct connexion with the lord's household, and was given away to dependent people on certain conditions. One of the questions addressed to the juries by the Glastonbury Inquest of 1189 was prompted by this practice: it was asked what demesne land had been given out under free agreement or servile conditions, and whether it was advantageous to keep to the arrangement or not. One of the reasons which lay at the root of the process has been already touched upon. Grants of domanial land occur commonly in return for services rendered in the administration of the manor: reeves, ploughmen, herdsmen, woodwards are sometimes recompensed in this manner instead of being liberated from the duties incumbent on their holding. A small rent was usually affixed to the plot severed from the demesne, and the whole arrangement may be regarded as very like an ordinary lease. An attenuated form of the same thing may be noticed when some officer or servant was permitted to use certain plots of domanial land during the tenure of his office. It happened, for instance, that a cotter was entrusted to take care of a team of oxen belonging to the lord or obliged to drive his plough. He might be repaid either by leave to use the manorial plough on his own land on specified occasions, or else by an assignment to him of the crop on certain acres of the home farm716. 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 way717. Sometimes a plot of the lord's land is given to compensate the bad quality of the peasant's land718. 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 situated719. In a number of cases these grants of demesne are actual leases, and probably the result of hard bargains.

Inland.

However this might be, we find alongside of the estate farmed for the lord's own account a great portion of the demesne conceded to the villagers. The term 'inland,' which ought properly to designate all the land belonging directly to the lord, is sometimes applied to plots which have been surrendered to the peasantry, and so distinguishes them from the regular customary holdings720. Such concessions of demesne land were not meant to create freehold tenements. Their tenure was precarious, the right of resumption was more expressly recognised in the case of such plots than in that of any other form of rural occupation, but the rights thus acquired tended to become perpetual, like everything else in this feudal world; and as they were founded on agreement and paid for with money rents, their transformation into permanent tenures led to an increase of free tenements and not of villainage. We catch a glimpse of the process in the Domesday of St. Paul's. In 1240 a covenant was made between the Chapter of the Cathedral and its villagers of the manor of Beauchamp in Essex: in consequence of the agreement all the concessions of demesne land which had been made by the farmers were confirmed by the Chapter. The inquests show that those who farmed the estates had extensive rights as to the use of domanial land, but their dealings with the customary tenants were always open to a revision by the landlords. A confirmation like this Beauchamp one transferred the plot of demesne land into the class of free tenements, and created a tenure defensible at law721. 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 demesne722. 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 traditae723.'

Leases.

A second group of free tenements consists of plots which did not belong either to the demesne or to the regular holdings in the fields, but lay by the side of these holdings and were parcelled out in varying quantity and under various conditions. We may begin by noticing the growth of leases. There is no doubt that the lease-system was growing in the thirteenth century, and that it is not adequately reflected in our documents. An indirect proof of this is given by the fact, that legal practice was labouring to discover means of protection for possession based on temporary agreement. The writ 'Quare ejecit infra terminum' invented by William Raleigh between 1236 and 1240 protected the possession of the 'tenant for term of years' who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant724.

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 years725. 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 precept726. 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 rule727. 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.