Читать книгу The English Village Community - Frederic Seebohm - Страница 34

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Manors everywhere.

Land in demesne and in villenage.

Open field system.

To sum up the evidence already examined, and reaching to within forty years of the date of the Domesday Survey, it is clear that England was covered with manors. And these manors were in fact, in their simplest form, estates of manorial lords, each with its village community in villenage upon it. The land of the lord's demesne—the home farm belonging to the manor-house—was cultivated chiefly by the services of the villata, i.e. of the village community, or tenants in villenage. The land of this village community, i.e. the land in villenage, lay round the village in open fields. In the village were the messuages or homesteads of the tenants in villenage, and their holdings were composed of bundles of scattered strips in the open fields, with rights of pasture over the latter for their cattle after the crops were gathered, as well as on the green commons of the manor or township.

The tenants in villenage were divided into two distinct classes.

Villani with yard-lands, &c.

First, there were the villani proper, whose now familiar holdings, the hides, half-hides, virgates, and bovates, were connected with the number of oxen allotted to them or contributed by them to the manorial plough team of 8 oxen, the normal holding, the virgate or yard-land, including about 30 acres in scattered acre or half-acre strips.

And further, these holdings of the villani were indivisible bundles passing with the homestead which [p077] formed a part of them by re-grant from the lord from one generation of serfs to another in unbroken regularity, always to a single successor, whether the eldest or the youngest son, according to the custom of each individual manor. They possessed all the unity and indivisibility of an entailed estate, and were sometimes known apparently for generations by the family name of the holders.104 But the reason underlying all this regular devolution was not the preservation of the family of the tenant, but of the services due from the yard-land to the lord of the manor.

Bordarii, or cottiers.

Below the villani proper were the numerous smaller tenants of what may be termed the cottier class—sometimes called in the 'Liber Niger,' as it is important to notice, bordarii105 (probably from the Saxon 'bord,' a cottage). And these cottagers, possessing generally no oxen, and therefore taking no part in the common ploughing, still in some manors seem to have ranked as a lower grade of villani, having small allotments in the open fields—in some manors 5 acre strips apiece, in other manors more or less.

Slaves.

Lastly, below the villeins and cottiers were, in some districts, remains, hardly to be noticed in the later cartularies, of a class of servi, or slaves, fast becoming [p078] merged in the cottier class above them, or losing themselves among the household servants or labourers upon the lord's demesne.

Open field the shell of serfdom.

Thus the community in villenage fitted into the open field as into its shell—a shell which was long to survive the breaking up of the system of serfdom which lived within it. The débris of this shell, as we have seen, still remains upon the open fields of some English villages and townships to-day; but for the full meaning of some of its features, especially of the scattering of the strips in the yard-lands, we have to look still farther back into the past even than the twelfth century.

Analysis of the services.

Passing from the shell to the serfdom which lived within it, we have found it practically alike in the north and south and east and west of England, and from the time of the Black Death back to the threshold of the Domesday Survey. Complicated as are the numerous little details of the services and payments, they fall with great regularity under three distinct heads:—

Week-work.

Boon-work.

Gafol.

 1. Week-work—i.e. work for the lord for so many days a week, mostly three days.

 2. Precariæ, or boon-work—i.e. special work at request ('ad precem' or 'at bene'), sometimes counting as part of the week-work, sometimes extra to it.

 3. Payments in money or kind or work, rendered by way of rent or 'Gafol'; and various dues, such as Kirkshot, Hearth-penny, Easter dues, &c.

The first two of these may be said to be practically quite distinct from the third class, and intimately connected inter se. The boon-work would seem to be a necessary corollary of the limitation of the week-work. If the lord had had unlimited right to the whole work [p079] of his villein tenant all days a week, and had an unrestricted choice as to what kind of work it should be, week-work at the lord's bidding might have covered it all. But custom not only limited the number of days' work per week, but also limited the number of days on which the work should consist of ploughing, reaping, and other work of more than usual value, involving oxen or piece-work, beyond the usual work of ordinary days.

The week-work, limited or otherwise, was evidently the most servile incident of villenage.

The payments in money or kind, or in work of the third class, to which the word gafol, or tribute, was applied, were more like modern rent, rates, and taxes than incidents of serfdom.

Comparing the services of the villani with those of the cottiers or bordarii, the difference evidently turns upon the size of the holdings, and the possession or non-possession of oxen.

Cottiers' services.

Naturally ploughing was a prominent item in the services of the villanus holding a virgate, with his 'stuht,' or outfit of two oxen. As naturally the services of the bordarius or cottager did not include ploughing, but were limited to smaller services.

But apparently the services of each class were equally servile. Both were in villenage, and week-work was the chief mark of the serfdom of both.

Besides the servile week-work and 'gafol,' &c., there were also other incidents of villenage felt to be restrictions upon freedom, and so of a servile nature. Of these the most general were—

Other servile incidents.

 The requirement of the lord's licence for the marriage of a daughter, and fine on incontinence. [p080]

 The prohibition of sale of oxen, &c., without the lord's licence.

 The obligation to use the lord's mill, and do service at his court.

 The obligation not to leave the land without the lord's licence.

It was the week-work of the villanus, and these restrictions on his personal liberty, which were felt to be serfdom.106

All limited by custom.

But these servile incidents were limited by custom, and this limitation by custom of the lord's demands, as well as the more and more prevalent commutation of services into money payments in later times, were, as has been said, notes and marks of a relaxation of the serfdom. The absence of these limitations would be the note and mark of a more complete serfdom.

Thus, in pursuing this economic inquiry further back into Saxon times, the main question will be whether the older serfdom of the holder of yard-lands was more or less unlimited, and therefore complete, than in the times following upon the Norman conquest.

The evidence has led up to the Domesday Survey.

In the meantime the Domesday Survey is the next evidence which lies before us, and judging from the tenacity of custom, and the extreme slowness of economic changes in the later period, it may be approached with the almost certain expectation that no great alteration can well have taken place in the English open-field and manorial system in the forty [p081] years between its date and that of the Liber Niger of Peterborough Abbey.

If this expectation should be realised, the Domesday Survey, approached as it has been by the ladder of the later evidence leading step by step up to it, ought easily to yield up its secrets.

and must give the key to it.

If such should prove to be the case, though losing some of its mystery and novelty, the Domesday Survey will gain immensely in general interest and importance by becoming intelligible. The picture it gives of the condition of rural England will become vivid and clear in its outlines, and trustworthy to a unique degree in its details. For extending as it does, roughly speaking, to the whole of England south of the Tees and east of the Severn, and spanning as it does by its double record the interval between its date and the time of Edward the Confessor, it will prove more than ever an invaluable vantage-ground from which to work back economic inquiries into the periods before the Norman conquest of England. It may be trusted to do for the earlier Saxon records what a previous understanding of later records will have done for it.

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