Villainage in England Part 15

In manorial extents we come constantly across such exempted tenements conceded without any rural obligations or with the reservation of a very small rent. It is important to notice, that such exemptions, though temporary and casual at first, were ultimately consolidated by custom and even confirmed by charters. A whole species of free tenements, and a numerous one, goes back to such privileges and exemptions granted to servants[710]. And so this cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s which acted as a kind of nervous system, connecting the different parts with a common centre and establis.h.i.+ng 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 estates[711]. In Glas...o...b..ry five cooks shared in the kitchen-fee[712]. The head of the cellar, the gatekeeper, and the chief shepherd enter into agreements in regard to extensive plots of land[713]. They appear as entirely free to dispose of such property, and at every step we find in the cartularies of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey proofs of the existence of a numerous and powerful 'sergeant' cla.s.s. John of Norwood, Abbot of Bury St. Edmund's, had to resort to a regular _coup d'etat_ in order to displace the privileged families which had got hold of the offices and treated them as hereditary property[714]. In fact the great 'sergeants' ended by hampering their lords more than serving them.

And the same fact of the rise of a 'ministerial' cla.s.s 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 subst.i.tution of the 'cash nexus' for more ancient kinds of economic relations.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sume, 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 a.s.signed 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 doc.u.ments 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 cla.s.s will naturally fall into subdivisions[715].

[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 Glas...o...b..ry 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 inc.u.mbent 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 a.s.signment to him of the crop on certain acres of the home farm[716]. Such privileges are sometimes granted to villagers who do not seem to be personally employed in the manorial administration, but such cases are rare, and must be due to special reasons which escape our notice.

It is quite common, on the other hand, to find deficiencies in the normal holdings made up from the demesne, e.g. a group of peasants hold five acres apiece in the fields, and one of the set cannot receive his full share: the failing acres are supplied by the demesne. Even an entire virgate or half-virgate may be formed in this way[717]. Sometimes a plot of the lord's land is given to compensate the bad quality of the peasant's land[718]. Of course, such surrenders of the demesne soil were by no means prompted by disinterested philanthropy. They were made to enable the peasantry to bear its burdens, and may-be to get rid of patches of bad soil or ground that was inconveniently situated[719]. 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 holdings[720]. 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 Ess.e.x: 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 cla.s.s of free tenements, and created a tenure defensible at law[721]. All such facts increase in number and importance with the increase of population: under its pressure the area of direct cultivation for the lord is gradually lessened, and in many surveys we find a sort of belt formed around the home farm by the intrusion of the dependent people into the limits of the demesne[722].

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 'dominic.u.m antiquitus a.s.sisum' is followed by 'terrae de novo traditae[723].'

[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 quant.i.ty 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 doc.u.ments. An indirect proof of this is given by the fact, that legal practice was labouring to discover means of protection for possession based on temporary agreement. The writ 'Quare ejecit infra terminum'

invented by William Raleigh between 1236 and 1240 protected the possession of the 'tenant for term of years' who formerly had been regarded as having no more than a personal right enforceable by an action of covenant[724].

Manorial extents are sparing in their notices of leases because their object is to picture the distribution of owners.h.i.+p, 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s of tenants whom we may call 'life-leaseholders,' and we can see also a smaller cla.s.s of leaseholders who hold for terms of years[725]. They often seem to owe their existence to the action of the manorial bailiffs or the farmers to whom the demesne has been let. We are told that such and such a person has 'entered' the tenement by the leave of such and such a farmer or bailiff, or that the tenement does not belong to the occupier by hereditary right, but by the bailiff's precept[726]. Remarks of that kind seem to mean that these rent-paying plots, liberated from servile duties, were especially liable to the interference of manorial officers.

Limits of time are rarely mentioned, and leases for life seem to be the general rule[727]. 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.

[Forlands.]

We feel our way with much greater security in another direction. The fields of the village contain many a nook or odd bit which cannot be squeezed into the virgate arrangement and into the system of work and duties connected with it. These '_subsecivae_,' as the Romans would have said, were always distributed for small rents in kind or in money[728].

The manorial administration may also exclude from the common arrangement entire areas of land which it is thought advantageous to give out for rent. Those who take it are mostly the same villagers who possess the regular holdings, but their t.i.tle is different; in one case it is based on agreement, in the other on custom[729]. Plots of this kind are called _forlands_[730]. In close connexion with them we find the _essarts_ or _a.s.sarts_--land newly reclaimed from the waste, and therefore not mapped out according to the original plan of possession and service. The Surveys often mark the different epochs of cultivation--the old and the new essarts[731]. The doc.u.ments show also that the spread of the area under cultivation was effected in different ways; sometimes by a single settler with help from the lord[732], and sometimes by the entire village, or at any rate by a large group of peasants who club together for the purpose[733]. In the first case there was no reason for bringing the reclaimed s.p.a.ce under the sway of the compulsory rotation of crops or the other regulations of communal agriculture. In the second, the distribution of the acres and strips among the various tenants was proportioned to their holdings in the ancient lands of the village. The rents on essart land seem very low, and no wonder: everywhere in the world the advance of cultivation has been made the starting-point of privileged occupation and light taxation. The Roman Empire introduced the _emphyteusis_ as a contract in favour of the pioneers of cultivation, the French feudal law endowed the _hotes_ (_hospites_) on newly reclaimed land with all kinds of advantages. English practice is not so explicit on this point, but it is not difficult to gather from the Surveys that it was not blind to the necessity of patronising agricultural progress and encouraging it by favourable terms.

Of _mol-land_ I have already spoken in another chapter. I will only point out now that this cla.s.s of tenements appears to have been a very common one. Thirteenth-century surveys often describe certain holdings in two different ways--on the supposition of their paying rent, and also on that of their rendering labour-services; when they pay rent they pay so much, when they supply labour they supply so much. By the side of such holdings, which are wavering, as it were, between the two systems, we find the _terra a.s.sisa_ or _ad censum_. This cla.s.s, to which molland evidently belongs, is distinguished from free tenure by the fact that its rent is regarded as a manorial arrangement; there is no formal agreement and no charter, and therefore no action before the king's courts to guard against disseisin or increase of services. In practice the difference is not felt very keenly, and these tenements gradually came to be regarded as 'free' in every sense. A characteristic feature of the movement may be noticed in the terms '_Socagium ad placitum_' and '_Socagium villani_[734].' These expressions occur in the doc.u.ments, although they are not very common. It would be hard to explain them otherwise than from the point of view indicated just now. The tenement is paying a fixed and certain rent and therefore _socage_, but it is not defended by feoffment and charter; it is not recognised by law, and therefore it remains _at the will_ of the lord and unfree[735]. The grant of a charter would raise it to the legal standing of free land.

[Ancient freeholds.]

Every student of manorial doc.u.ments will certainly be struck by one well-marked difference between villain tenements and free tenements as described in the extents and surveys. The tenants in villainage generally appear arranged into large groups, in which every man holds, works, and pays exactly as his fellows; so that when the tenement and services of some one tenant have been described we then read that the other tenants hold similar tenements and owe similar services. On the other hand, the freeholds seem scattered at random without any definite plan of arrangement, parcelled up into unequal portions, and subjected to entirely different duties. One man holds ten acres and pays three s.h.i.+llings for them; another has eight and a half acres and gives a pound of pepper to his lord; a third is possessed of twenty-three acres, pays 4_s._ 6_d._, and sends his dependants to three boonworks; a fourth brings one penny and some poultry in return for his one acre. The regularity of the villain system seems entirely opposed to the capricious and disorderly phenomena of free tenure.

And this fact seems naturally connected with some remarkable features of social organisation. No wonder that free land is cut up into irregular plots: we know that it may be divided and acc.u.mulated by inheritance and alienation, whereas villain land is held together in rigid unity by the fact that it is, properly speaking, the lord's and not the villain's land. Besides, all the variations of free tenure which we have discussed hitherto have one thing in common, they are produced by express agreement between lord and tenant as to the nature and amount of services required from the tenant. Whether we take the case of a villain receiving a few acres in addition to his holding, or that of a servant recompensed by the grant of a privileged plot, or that of a peasant confirmed in the possession of soil newly reclaimed from the waste, or that of a bondman who has succeeded in liberating his holding from the burdensome labour service of villainage, in all these instances we come across the same fundamental notion of a definite agreement between lord and tenant. And again, the capricious aspect of free tenements seems well in keeping with the fact that they are produced by separate and private agreements, by consecutive grants and feoffments, while the villain system of every manor is mapped out at one stroke, and managed as a whole by the lord and his steward. This contrast between the two arrangements may even seem to widen itself into a difference between a communal organisation which is servile, and a system of freeholding which is not communal. All these inferences are natural enough, and all have been actually drawn.

A close inspection of the Surveys will, however, considerably modify our first impressions, and suggest conclusions widely different from those which I have just now stated. The importance of the subject requires a detailed discussion, even at the risk of tediousness. I shall take my instances from the Hundred Rolls, as from a survey which reflects the state of things in central counties and gives an insight into the organisation of secular as well as ecclesiastical estates.

We need not dwell much on the observation that the servile tenements sometimes display no perfect regularity. Sometimes the burdens inc.u.mbent on them are not quite equal. Sometimes again the holdings themselves are not quite equal. In Fulborne, Cambridges.h.i.+re, e.g., the villains of Alan de la Zuche are a.s.sessed very irregularly[736], although their tenements are described as virgates and half-virgates. Of course, the general character of the virgate system remains unaltered by these exceptional deviations, which may be easily explained by the consideration that the social order was undergoing a process of change. The disruption of some of the villain holdings and the modification of certain duties are perhaps less strange than the fact that such alterations should be so decidedly exceptional. Still, the occurrence of irregularities even within the range of villainage warns us not to be too hasty in our inferences about free tenements; it shows, at any rate, that irregularities may well arise even where there has once been a definite plan, and that it is worth while to enquire whether some traces of such an original plan may not still be discovered amidst the apparent disorder of free tenements.

[Free virgates.]

And a little attention will show us many cases in which free tenements are arranged on the virgate system. There is hardly any need for quotations on this point: the Hundred Rolls of all the six counties of which we possess surveys, supply an unlimited number of instances. True, fundamental divisions of land and service may often be obscured and confused by the existence of plots which do not fit into the system; but as in the case of servile tenements we occasionally find irregularities, so in the case of free tenements we often see that below the superficial irregularities there lie traces of an ancient plan. The manor of Ayllington (Elton), Huntingdons.h.i.+re, belonging to the Abbey of Ramsey, presents a good example in point[737]. It is reckoned to contain thirteen hides and a half, each hide comprising six virgates, and each virgate twenty-four acres. The actual distribution of the holdings squares to a fraction with this computation, if we take into the reckoning the demesne, the free and the villain tenements. Three hides are in the lord's hand, one is held by a large tenant, John of Ayllington, eleven virgates and a half by other freeholders, forty-two virgates and a half by the villains; the grand total being exactly thirteen hides. The numerous cotters are not taken into account, and evidently left 'outside the hides' (extra hidam); this is a very common thing in the Surveys. If we neglect them, and turn to the holdings in the 'hidated' portion of the manor, we shall notice that the greater part of the free tenements are arranged on the same system as the servile tenements. We find six free tenants with a virgate apiece, one with half a virgate, three with a virgate and a half, and three jointly possessed of two virgates. In contrast with this princ.i.p.al body of tenants stand several small freeholders endowed with irregular plots reckoned in acres and so much varying in size that it is quite impossible to arrange them according to any plan, not to speak of the virgate system. But these small tenants are all sub-tenants enfeoffed by the princ.i.p.al freeholders whose own tenements are distributed into regular agrarian unity. It is easy to see that even when the stock of free tenancies stood arranged according to a definite plan, deviations from this plan would easily arise owing to new feoffments made by the lord out of the demesne land or out of the waste[738]. What I am concerned to say is, not that the Hundred Rolls show a distribution of free holdings quite as regular as that of the servile tenements, but that amidst all the irregularities of the freehold plots we frequently come across unmistakable traces of a system similar to that which prevailed on villain soil. These traces are not always of the same kind, and present various gradations. In a comparatively small number of instances the duties imposed on the shareholders are equal, or nearly so; much more often the rent and labour rendered by them to the lord vary a great deal, although their tenements are equal. The Ayllington instance, quoted above, belongs to the former cla.s.s, but the proportionate distribution of duties is somewhat obscured by the fact that part of them is reckoned in labour. The normal rent is computed at six s.h.i.+llings per virgate[739], though there are a few noticeable exceptions, but the duty of ploughing is imposed according to two different standards, and it is not easy to reduce these to unity. The freeholders of one group have to plough eight acres per virgate for the lord, while for the members of the other group the ploughing work is reckoned in the same way as in the case of the villains, each placing his team at the disposal of the lord one day of every week from Michaelmas to the 1st of August, four weeks being excepted in honour of Christmas, Easter, and Trinity[740]. Ravenston, in Buckinghams.h.i.+re, is a much clearer example. Twelve villains hold of the Prior of Ravenston twelve acres each, and their service is worth eighteen s.h.i.+llings per holding; four villains hold six acres each, and their service is valued at nine s.h.i.+llings. One free tenant has twelve acres and pays sixteen s.h.i.+llings; six have six acres each, and pay seven s.h.i.+llings. There are three other tenants whose duties cannot be brought within the system[741]. The portion of Fulborne, in Cambridges.h.i.+re, belonging to Baldwin de Maneriis, may also serve as an ill.u.s.tration of an almost regular distribution of land and service among the freeholders[742].

Instances in which the duties, although not exactly, are still very nearly equal, are very frequent. In Radewelle, Bedfords.h.i.+re, the mean rent of the six is two s.h.i.+llings per half-virgate, although the villains perform service to the amount of eight s.h.i.+llings per virgate[743].

Bidenham, Bedfords.h.i.+re, also presents an a.s.sessment of four s.h.i.+llings per free virgate[744]. In that part of Fulborne which is owned by Alan de la Zuche the virgates and half-virgates of the free holders are variously rented; but twelve s.h.i.+llings per half-virgate is of common occurrence[745], while in the fee of Maud Pa.s.selewe we find only four and five s.h.i.+llings as the rent for the half-virgate[746]. Papworth Anneys exhibits a ferdel of seven and a half acres, for which ten to twelve s.h.i.+llings are paid[747]. As to the cases in which the service varies a great deal, although the land is held in shares, I need not give quotations because they are to be found on every page of the printed Hundred Rolls. We may say, in conclusion, that the process of disruption acts much more potently in the sphere of free holding than it does in regard to villainage; but that it has by no means succeeded in destroying all regularity even there.

[Free shareholders.]

Thus, even among the freeholders, landholding is often what I shall take leave to call 'shareholding,' Now, whatever ultimate explanation we may give of this fact, it has one obvious meaning. That part of the free population which holds in regular shares is not governed entirely by the rules of private owners.h.i.+p, but is somehow implicated in the village community. Bovates and virgates exist only as parts of carucates or hides, and the several carucates or hides themselves fit together, inasmuch as they suppose a constant apportionment of some kind. Two sets of important questions arise from this proposition, both intimately connected with each other, although they suggest different lines of enquiry. We may start from an examination of the single holding, and ask whether its regular shape can be explained by the requirements of its condition or by survivals of a former condition. Or again, we may start from the whole and inquire whether the equality the elements of which we detect is equality in owners.h.i.+p or equality in service. Let us take up the first thread of the inquiry.

[Origins of free shareholding.]

How can we account for the occurrence of regular 'shareholding' among the freeholders? Two possibilities have to be considered: the free character of the tenements may be newly acquired and the 'shareholding'

may be a relic of a servile past; or, on the other hand, the freehold character of the tenements may be coeval with the 'shareholding,' and in this latter case we shall have to admit the existence of freeholds which from of old have formed an element in the village community. In the first of these cases again we shall have to distinguish between two suppositions:--Servile tenements have become free; this may be due either to some general measure of enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, a lord having preferred to take money rents in lieu of the old labour services, and these money rents being the modern equivalent for those old services, or else to particular and occasional feoffments made in favour of those who, for one reason or another, have earned some benefit at the lord's hand. To put it shortly, we may explain the phenomenon either by a process of commutation such as that which turned 'workland' into 'molland,' or by special privileges which have exempted certain shares in the land from a general scheme of villainage; or, lastly, by the existence of freeholds as normal factors in the ancient village community.

Let us test these various suppositions by the facts recorded in our surveys. At first sight it may seem possible to account for the freehold virgates by reference to the process which converted 'workland' into 'molland.' We have seen above that if a lord began to demand money instead of work, the result might, in some cases, be the evolution of new tenures which gradually lost their villain character and became recognised as genuine freeholds. And no doubt one considerable cla.s.s of cases can be explained by this process. But a great many instances seem to call for some other explanation. To begin with, the mere acceptance of rent in lieu of labour did not make the tenement a freehold; servile tenements were frequently put _ad censum_[748], and it seems difficult to believe that many lords allowed a commutation of labour for rent to have the effect of turning villainage into freehold. Another difficulty is found on the opposite side. What force kept the shares together when they had become free? Why did they not acc.u.mulate and disperse according to the chances of free development? It may be thought that custom, and express conditions of feoffment, must have acted against disruption. I do not deny the possibility, but I say that it is not easy to explain the very widely diffused phenomenon of free shareholding by a commutation which tended to break up the shares and to make them useless for the purposes of a.s.sessment. Still I grant that these considerations, though they should have some weight, are not decisive, and I insist chiefly on the following argument.

The peculiar trait which distinguishes 'molland' is the transition from labour service to money rent, and the rent is undoubtedly considered as an equivalent for the right to labour services which the lord abandons.

It must be admitted that in some cases the lord may have taken less than the real equivalent in order to get such a convenient commodity as money, or because for some reason or another he was in need of current coin. Still I am not afraid to say that, in a general way, commutation supposes an exchange against an equivalent. Indeed the demand for money rents was considered rather as increasing than as decreasing the burden inc.u.mbent on the peasantry[749]. Now, although it would be preposterous to try and make out in every single case whether the rent of the free virgate is an adequate equivalent for villain services or not, there is a very sufficient number of instances in which a rough reckoning may be made without fear of going much astray[750]. And if we attempt such a reckoning we shall be struck by the number of cases in which the rent of the free virgate falls considerably short of what it yielded by the virgate of the villain. We have seen that in Ravenston, Bedfords.h.i.+re, the villain service is valued at eight s.h.i.+llings per virgate, and that the free a.s.sessment amounts only to four s.h.i.+llings. In Thriplow, Cambridges.h.i.+re, the villains perform labour duties valued at 9_s._ 4_d._ per bovate, the freeholders are a.s.sessed variously; but there is a certain number among them which forms, as it were, the stock of that cla.s.s, and their average rent is 5_s._ 6_d._ per bovate[751]. In Tyringham, Buckinghams.h.i.+re, the villain holding is computed at six acres and one rood, and its service at five s.h.i.+llings; the free virgates have a like number of acres and pay various rents, but almost without exception less than the villains[752]. In Croxton, Cambridges.h.i.+re, there are customers with twenty acres, and others with ten acres; the first have to pay ten s.h.i.+llings and to a.s.sist at four boonworks. The free holders are possessed of plots of irregular size, and their rent is also irregular; but on the average much lower than that of the customers[753]. Let it be noted that the customary tenants have commuted their labour services into money payments, and, in fact, they are to be considered as molmen in the first stage of development. Still, their payments are computed on a different scale from those of the free.

In Brandone, Warwicks.h.i.+re, the typical villain, William Bateman, pays for his virgate 5_s._ 3_d._, and sends one man to work twice a week from the 29th of June until the 1st of August, and thence onward his man has to work two days one week and three days the next. The free half-virgate merely pays five s.h.i.+llings, and does suit to the manorial court. This last point makes no difference, because the villain had to attend the manorial court quite as regularly as the freeholder, and indeed more regularly, because he was obliged to serve on inquests[754]. In Bathekynton, Warwicks.h.i.+re, the difference in favour of the free is also noticeable, but not so great[755]. And these are by no means exceptional cases. Nothing is more common than to find free tenements held by trifling services, and whatever we may think of single cases, it would be absurd to explain such arrangements in the aggregate as the results of a bargain between lord and serfs. It is evident, therefore, that a reference to 'molland,' to a commutation of labour into rent, does not suit these cases[756].

Can we explain these cases of 'free shareholding' by feoffments made to favoured persons? We have seen that the lord used to recompense his servants by grants of land and that he favoured the spread of cultivation by exacting but a light rent from newly reclaimed land. Such transactions would undoubtedly produce free tenements held on very advantageous terms, but still they seem incapable of solving our problem. Tenements created by way of beneficial feoffment are in general easily recognised. The holdings of servants and other people endowed by favour are always few and interspersed among the plots of the regular occupiers of the land, be they free or serfs. The 'essarted' fields are sometimes numerous, but usually cut up into small strips and as it were engrafted on the original stock of tenements. Altogether privileged land mostly appears divided into irregular plots and reckoned by acres and not by shares. And what we have to account for is a vast number of instances in which what seem to be some of the princ.i.p.al and original shares in the land are held freely and by comparatively light services.

I do not think that we can get rid of a very considerable residue of cases without resorting to the last of the suppositions mentioned above.

We must admit that some of the freeholders in the Hundred Rolls are possessed of shares in the fields not because they have emerged from serfdom, but because they were from the first members of a village community over which the lord's power spread. It would be very hard to draw absolute distinctions in special cases, because the terminology of our records does not take into account the history of tenure and only indicates net results. But a comparison of facts _en bloc_ points to at least three distinct sources of the freehold virgates. Some may be due to commutation, others to beneficial feoffments, but there are yet others which seem to be ancient and primitive. The traits which mark these last are 'shareholding' and light rents. The light rents do not look like the result of commutation, the 'shareholding' points to some other cause than favours bestowed by the lord.

We shall come to the same conclusion if we follow the other line of our inquiry. It may be asked, whether the community into which the share is made to fit should be thought of primarily as a community in owners.h.i.+p or a community in a.s.sessment, whether the shares are constructed for the purpose of satisfying equal claims or for the purpose of imposing equal duties? The question is a wide one, much wider than the subject immediately in hand, but it is connected with that subject and some of the material for its solution must be taken up in the course of our present inquiry.

I have been constantly mentioning the a.s.sessment of free tenements, their rents and their labour services. The question of their weight as compared with villain services has been discussed, but I have not hitherto taken heed of the varying and irregular character of these rents and services. But the variety and irregularity are worthy of special notice. One of the most fundamental differences between the free and servile systems is to be found in this quarter. The villains are equalised not only as regards their shares in the fields, but also as regards their duties towards the lord; indeed, both facts appear as the two sides of one thing. The virgate of the villain is quite as much, if not more, a unit of a.s.sessment as it is a share of the soil. Matters look more complex in the case of free land. As I have said before, there are instances in which the free people are not only possessed of equal shares but also are rented in proportion to those shares. In much the greater number of instances, however, there is no such proportion. All may hold virgates, but one will pay more and the other less; one will perform labour duties, and the other not; one will pay in money, and the other bring a chicken, or a pound of pepper, or a flower. Whatever we may think of the gradual changes which have distorted conditions that were originally meant to be equal, it is impossible to get rid of the fact that, in regard to free tenements, equal shares do not imply equal duties or even duties of one and the same kind.

One of two things, either the shares exist only as a survival of the servile arrangement out of which the free tenements may have grown, or else they exist primarily for the purpose not of a.s.sessing duties but of apportioning claims. In stating these possibilities I must repeat what I said before, that it would be quite wrong to bring all the observed phenomena under one head. I do not intend in the least to deny that the freer play of economic and legal forces within the range of free owners.h.i.+p must have produced combinations infinitely more varying, irregular and complicated than those which are to be found in villainage. A large margin must be allowed for such modifications which dispersed and altered the duties that were originally proportioned to shares. But a few simple questions will serve to show that other elements must be brought into the reckoning. Why should the disruptive tendency operate so much more against proportionate a.s.sessment than against the distribution into shares itself; in other words, why are equal tenements so much commoner than equal rents? If shareholding and equal rents were indissolubly connected as the two sides of one thing, or even as cause and effect, why should one hold its ground when the other had disappeared, and how could the dependent element remain widely active when the princ.i.p.al one had lost its meaning? If the discrepancies between rent and shares had been casual, we might try to explain them entirely by later modifications. But these discrepancies are a standing feature of the surveys, and it seems to me that we can hardly escape the inference that shareholding has its _raison d'etre_ quite apart from the duties owed to the lord, and in this case we have to look to the communal arrangement of proprietary rights for its explanation; it was a means of giving to every man his due. If this principle is granted, all the observable facts fall into their right places. One can easily imagine how free holdings came to exist within the village community in spite of their loose connexion with the manor.

In regard to duties, they were practically outside the community; not so as to proprietary rights and the agricultural arrangements proceeding from them, for example such arrangements as affected the rotation of crops, the use of commons and fallow pasture, the setting up of hedges, the repair of d.y.k.es, etc. There is no real contradiction between the facts, that in relation to the lord every free shareholder was, as it were, bound by a separate and private agreement, while in relation to the village he had to conform to communal rule.

This last remark may require some further development. The striking differences between the duties of the several freeholders of one manor seem to show that these people were not enfeoffed by the lord at the same time and under the same conditions. If A is in every respect a fellow of B, and still has to pay twice as much as B, it is clear that his relation to the lord has been settled under different circ.u.mstances from those which governed the settlement of B's position. Now, from the point of view of later law this meant that the two freeholds were created each by a special feoffment. But this would be a very formal and inadequate way of considering the case. Very often the differences might be produced by subsequent arrangements which, though not giving rise to new t.i.tle, destroyed the original uniformity of condition. Often again we may suspect that the relation between lord and tenant had its origin not really in a gift of land made by the former to the latter but in a submission made by the latter to the former. I make bold to prefer this view, chiefly on account of those trifling and indeed fict.i.tious duties which are constantly found in the Surveys[757]. They can only have one meaning--that of 'recognitions[758].' Trifling in themselves, they establish the subordinate relation of one owner to the other; and although their imposition must be considered from the formal standpoint of feudal law as the result of a feoffment, it is clear that their real foundation must often have been a submission to patronage. The subject is a wide one and includes all kinds of free tenure, communal as well as other. When a knight was enfeoffed by a monastery in consideration of some infinitesimal payment, there might be several reasons for such a transaction. The abbot may have thought it good policy to acquire the support of a considerable person, he may have been forced to give the land and only glad to obtain some recognition, however trifling, of the gift; or again, he may have made a beneficial feoffment in return for a sum of ready money paid by way of gersuma or fine, but he may also have extended his supremacy over a piece of land which did not belong to him originally at all. Even in feudal times this could be done by means of a fict.i.tious lawsuit ending in 'a final concord'; or even simply by an instrument of quit claim and feoffment without any suit[759]. At the time when feudalism was only settling itself, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this must have been a common thing, even if we do not take into account the Saxon practice of 'commendation.'

However this may be, the trifling duties imposed on freeholds lead to the inference that the agreement between lord and tenant had been made on the basis of the latter's independent right, and not on that of the lord's will and power. They testify to a subjection of free people and not to the liberation of serfs. And as they are found constantly allied with shareholding, we have to say that they imply manorial relations superimposed on a community which, if not entirely free, contained free elements within it. The manorial duties are more varied and capricious than are the shares just because they are a later growth.

I should not like to leave this intricate inquiry without testing its results by yet another standard. I have been trying to prove two things: that some of the feudal freeholds are ancient freeholds, not liberated from servitude but originally based on the recognised right of the holders; that such ancient freeholds were included in the communal arrangement of owners.h.i.+p, although the a.s.sessment of their duties was not communal. To what extent are these propositions supported by an a.n.a.lysis of that admittedly ancient tenure, the tenure of the socmen? We must look chiefly to the 'free' socmen; but I may be allowed, on the strength of the chapter on Ancient Demesne, to take the bond socmen also into account.

Let us take the manor of Chesterton, in Cambridges.h.i.+re[760]. It is royal, but let out in feefarm to the Prior of Barnwell, and its men make use of the _parvum breve de recto_. There is one free tenant of eighty-eight acres holding _de antiquitate_ and the Scholars of Merton hold forty-four acres freely. They have clearly taken the place of some freeman, whether by purchase or by gift I do not know; they are bound to perform ploughings and to carry corn. Both tenements are worthy of notice because charters are not mentioned and still the holdings are set apart from the rest. In the one case the tenure is expressly stated to be an ancient one, and presumably the t.i.tle of the other tenement is of the same kind. The number of acres is peculiar and points to some agrarian division of which eighty-eight and forty-four were fractions or multiples. The bulk of the population are described as customers. They used to hold half-virgates, it is said, but some of them have sold part of their land according to the custom of the manor. And so their tenements have lost their original regularity of construction, although it seems possible to fix the average holdings at twelve or fifteen acres. Anyhow, it is impossible to reduce them to fractions of eighty-eight; for some reason or another, the reckoning is made on a different basis. The duties vary a good deal, and it would be even more difficult to conjecture what the original services may have been than to make out the size of the virgate.

The example is instructive in many ways. It is a stepping-stone from villainage to socage, or rather to socman's tenure. There can be no question of differences of feoffment. The manorial power is fully recognised, and on the other hand the character of ancient demesne is also conspicuous with its protection of the peasantry. And still the whole fabric is giving way--the holdings get dispersed and the service loses its uniformity. All these traits are a fair warning to those who argue from the irregularity of free tenements and the inequality of their rents against the possibility of their development out of communal owners.h.i.+p. Here is a well-attested village community; its members hold by custom and have not changed their condition either for the better or for the worse in point of t.i.tle. Later agencies are at work to distort the original arrangement--a few steps more in that direction and it would be impossible to make out even the chief lines of the system.

Stanton, in Cambridges.h.i.+re, is a similar case[761]. I would especially direct the attention of the reader to the capricious way in which the services are a.s.sessed. And still the t.i.tles of the tenants are the result not of various grants but of manorial custom applied to the whole community. I repeat, that irregularity in the size of holdings and in the services that they owe is no proof that these holdings have not formed part of a communal arrangement or that their free character (if they have a free character) must be the result of emanc.i.p.ation; these irregularities are found on the ancient demesne where there has been no enfranchis.e.m.e.nt or emanc.i.p.ation, and where on the other hand the tenants have all along been sufficiently 'free' to enjoy legal protection in their holdings.

If we have to say so much with regard to ancient demesne and bond socmen, we must not wonder that free socmen are very often placed in conditions which it would be impossible to reduce to a definite plan. On the fee of Robert le Noreys, in Fordham[762], we find some scattered free tenants burdened with entirely irregular rents, four villains holding eighteen acres each and subjected to heavy ploughing work, three socmen of twenty acres each paying a rent of 4_s._ 2_d._ per holding, and obliged to a.s.sist at reaping and to bring chicken, one socman of nine acres paying 10_d._, one of seven acres also a.s.sessed at 10_d._, two of eleven acres paying 15_d._, etc.

It is no cause for wonder that such instances occur at the end of the thirteenth century. It is much more wonderful that, in a good many cases, we are still well able to perceive a great deal of the original regularity. Swaffham Prior, in Cambridges.h.i.+re, is a grand example of an absolutely regular arrangement in a community of free socmen[763]. The Prior of Ely holds it for three hides and has 220 acres on his home-farm. The rest is divided among sixteen free socmen paying 5_s._ each and performing various labour services. These services have been considerably increased by the Prior. Mixed cases are much more usual--I mean cases in which the original regularity has suffered some modifications, though a little attention will discover traces of the ancient communal arrangement[764].

On the whole, I think that the notices of socmen's tenure in the Hundred Rolls are especially precious, because they prove that the observations that we have made as regards freehold generally are not merely ingenious suggestions about what may conceivably have happened. There is undoubtedly one weak point in those observations, which is due to the method which we are compelled to adopt. It is difficult, if not impossible, to cla.s.sify the actual cases which come before us, to say--in this case freehold is the result of commutation, in that case the lord has enfeoffed a retainer or a kinsman, while in this third case, the freehold virgate has always been freehold. The edge of the inquiry is blunted, if I may so say, by the vagueness of terminological distinctions, and we must rely upon general impressions. The socman's tenure, on the contrary, stands out as a clear case, and a careful a.n.a.lysis of it abundantly verifies the conclusions to which we have previously come by a more circuitous route.

It seems to me that the general questions with which we started in our inquiry may now be approached with some confidence. The relation of free tenancies to the manorial system turns out to be a complex one. The great majority of such tenements appears as a later growth engrafted on the system when it was already in decay. Commutation of services, the spread of cultivation over the waste, and the surrender of portions of the demesne to the increasing dependent population, must largely account for the contrast between Domesday and the Hundred Rolls. But an important residue remains, which must be explained on the a.s.sumption that in many cases the shares of the community were originally distributed among free people who had nothing or little to do with manorial work.