Villainage in England Part 13

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[605]. These _averagia_ are laid out for short and long distances, and the peasants have to take their turn at them one after the other[606]. They were bound to carry corn to London or Bristol according to the size of their holdings[607]. Special importance was attached to the carriage of the 'farm,' that is of the products designed for the consumption of the lord[608]. 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[609]. 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[610]. 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[611]. Such small people are also made to drive the swine or geese to the market[612]. 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[613].

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 d.y.k.es, work in vineyards, wash and shear the sheep[614], 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[615]. 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[616]. 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[617].

[Cla.s.sification of labour-services.]

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 cla.s.ses are very noticeable notwithstanding all variety: the _araturae_, _averagia_, and _manuoperationes_. These last are also called _hand-dainae_ or _daywerke_[618]; 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 cla.s.ses 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[619], 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 cla.s.ses 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 c.u.mbrous and cheap commodity for money-rents, even for small ones.

[Payments in kind.]

We must now proceed to examine the different forms a.s.sumed by payments in kind and money: they present a close parallel to the many varieties of labour-service. Thirteenth-century doc.u.ments 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[620]; as _foddercorn_, of oats for the feeding of horses[621]; as _gathercorn_, which a manorial servant has to collect or gather from the several homesteads[622]; as _corn-bole_, a best sheaf levied at harvest-time[623]. Of other provender supplied to the lord's household honey is the most common, both in combs and in a liquid form[624]. Ale is sometimes brewed for the same purpose, and sometimes malt and _braseum_ furnished as material to be used in the manorial farm[625]. 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[626].

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 12_d._, and besides, 12 pence in money are to be hung in a purse on the animal's neck[627]. 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[628]: in this sense the receipt and payment of the rent const.i.tute 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[629]. 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[630]. 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[631]. 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[632]. 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 ma.s.s of interesting material in Hazlitt's 'Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors.'

[Money-payments.]

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[633], etc.

The same may be the case in regard to produce: _barlick-silver_ 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[634]. 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[635]. _Pannage_ is paid in the same way for the swine grazing in the woods[636]. _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[637].

[Cla.s.sification of money payments.]

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[638]. 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[639]. 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[640]. A division of rents into old and new ones does not require any particular explanation[641]. 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[642]. These last are considered as a return for the personal protection guaranteed by the 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_[643]. Another term in direct opposition to _gafol_ is the Latin _donum_[644]. 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 towns.h.i.+p had to pay according to their means[645]. 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[646]. In close connexion with the _donum_ we find the _auxilium_[647], 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[648]: 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[649]. 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[650]. 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 towns.h.i.+p is answerable for the whole sum.

[Payments to State and Church.]

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 doc.u.ments. 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 subst.i.tute for the duty of keeping watch and ward[651]. In the north the hidage is replaced by _cornage_[652], a tax which has given rise to learned controversy and doubt; it looks like an a.s.sessment 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_[653]. It is mostly paid in kind, but may be found occasionally as a money-rent.

[Questions suggested by a survey of work and rents.]

A survey of the chief aspects a.s.sumed 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.

[Cases where the usual order was not adhered to.]

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[654], 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[655]. 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 s.h.i.+fted 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.

[Relation between the customary system and the arbitrary authority of the lord.]

Of course, the pa.s.sage 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[656]. 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[657]. Again, the lord had some lat.i.tude in selecting one or the other kind of service to be performed by his men[658]. But, speaking generally, the settlement of duties was a very constant one, and manorial doc.u.ments testify that every attempt by the lord to dictate a change was met by emphatic protests on the part of the peasantry[659]. 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[660]. One has to guard especially against the a.s.sumption 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[661]. The expressions quoted above may seem at first glance to countenance the idea, but an attentive and extended study of the doc.u.ments 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 cla.s.s 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 quant.i.ty of the work[662]. 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 week-work 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[663]' 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 quant.i.ty; 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.

[The holdings and the population.]

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_)[664], 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[665]. 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 const.i.tuted in this respect were a.s.sumed 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.

[Stages in the arrangement of duties.]

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.

[Farm-system.]

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 quant.i.ty 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, b.u.t.ter, &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 a.s.sessed to pay sixteen pence for every acre to be used as alms for the poor[666]. 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 inst.i.tutions. 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[667]. The firmae of St.

Alban's were reckoned to provide for the fifty-two weeks of the year, and one in advance[668]. 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 a.s.sessed[669]. 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[670].

[Decay of the farm-system.]

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 Worcesters.h.i.+re 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 a.s.sessment 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 cla.s.s in point of a.s.sessment, 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.

[a.s.sessment under the farm-system.]

These observations lead at once to important questions; how was the farm-a.s.sessment 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 towns.h.i.+p, 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 towns.h.i.+p itself in the place of a firmarius[671]. 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 a.s.sessment when the other has already taken hold of the internal arrangement of the manor.

[Labour-service system.]

Most of our doc.u.ments 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[672]. 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.

[Money-rents system.]

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 pa.s.sage from produce 'farms' to labour holds good as to the pa.s.sage from labour to money payments. There is no break between the arrangements. In a general way the money a.s.sessment 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 Glas...o...b..ry Inquest of 1189, or even the Burton Cartulary of the early twelfth century, in every one of these doc.u.ments we shall find a great number of rent-paying tenants[673], and even a greater number of people fluctuating, as it were, between labour and rent. In some cases peasants pa.s.sed 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 subst.i.tution of the money arrangement with the tacit or even the expressed provision that the a.s.sessment is not to be considered as permanent and binding[674]. 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[675].

One more subject remains to be discussed. Is there in the surveys any marked difference between different cla.s.ses of the peasantry in point of rural duties?

[Influence of social distinction on the distribution of 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 quant.i.ty. 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 cla.s.ses.

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[676].

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.

[Free and servile duties as rent and labour.]

Whenever we come to examine closely the reason underlying the cases when the cla.s.sification 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[677]. Of the sixty-one yokes it contains thirty are servile, twenty-nine are free, and two occupy an intermediate position. The duties of the two chief cla.s.ses 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 a.s.sessed at seven s.h.i.+llings and five-pence, the free people have to pay as much as twenty-three s.h.i.+llings 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 a.s.signed 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.sification 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 doc.u.ments, 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, cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.sification 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 a.s.sumption 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.

[Difference in quant.i.ty between the impositions of free and unfree population.]

There can be no doubt also that the more ancient surveys disclose a difference in point of quant.i.ty 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 a.s.sessment of free and unfree tenants, such a difference excludes the idea that one cla.s.s is only an emanc.i.p.ated 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[678]. 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 a.s.sessment: 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.