III

We have seen that in Normandy, as in England, the farmer paid his landlord partly in money and partly in labour; but more in money and in labour than in kind. In the south of France the system was somewhat different; the tenant paid his proprietor chiefly in the produce of the land. Owing to the kindness of Madame Marcel Dieulafoy I have been able to look through several leases of farms near Toulouse at the present time; and I have been interested, and even surprised, to see how little the leases of the farms round Montauban, in 1350, published by M. Forestier in the Accounts of the Brothers Bonis, differ from the actual leases in use to-day for farms let en métayage in the south of France.

The mediæval farmer in Aquitaine and Gascony was simply a partner of the proprietor, for the exploitation of his lands and stock—a ‘bouman,’ as I believe they still say in Scotland. The one furnished the land, the cattle, and even the implements, as well as the seed for the first sowing. The other supplied his time, his labour, the keep of cattle, and the repair of instruments. The increase was generally divided equally between the two partners, save in the case of wheat and wine, of which the landlord usually reserved himself a larger share. This is the system of métayage still in use in the south of France to-day. Here is a lease for the year 1351, drawn up between the merchant Bonis, of Montauban, and two of his “gasaillers,” or farmers.

“Montauban.

2nd October, 1351.

“The Second October, 1351, we agreed for the lease with R. Picard and Rochelle, our Gasaillers. And we agreed that I shall sow or give the seed. We shall share the harvest in the field au tiers et à la moitie i.e. Picard and Rochelle are to pay me an annual rent of two livres [let us say, £8 sterling].”

In another lease, for the year 1353, the farmer takes the arable land and cedes half its produce; but for the house, the garden, and as much meadow-land as a man would take two days to mow, he pays a yearly rental in money of forty sols, and a quit-rent of ten brace of capons. The same leases give us particulars as to the wages of farm-servants in the south of France. In 1358 a cowherd received nine livres a year and a pair of shoes. Now, historians are pretty generally agreed that the fourteenth-century livre represents about a hundred francs of our money. At this valuation, our Gascon neatherd received the equivalent of nine hundred francs in modern currency: that is to say, £36. A swineherd was paid four livres a year and his shoes; a shepherd, six livres a year (£24) and his shoes; an old woman-servant, two livres a year (about £8), her shoes and a warm petticoat; for in those days, as in these, the servants on a Gascon farm were housed and fed at the expense of the farmer. Thus the rate of rustic wages was sensibly higher than it is to-day, when twenty pounds a year are considered excellent wages for a labourer on a farm. It is true that a modern shepherd or a head-cowboy has certain perquisites which raise his wage to very nearly the amount paid in the fourteenth century. But we cannot talk of progress.

There were several ways of hiring stock. On most farms the cattle were supplied by the landlord, the tenant being bound, at the expiry of his lease, to restore the flock and herds in the same condition as he found them. They were also let out on hire. Rochelle, the farmer of Bonis, hires from his landlord a pair of oxen worth twelve livres; for the use of them he pays every year a rent of three septiers of wheat (about 650 litres), but for every septier of wheat he is accounted to have acquired a right to one-twelfth part of the cattle, so that at the end of four years the team was to become the property of Rochelle. This system (not unlike the three years’ hire system, by which many people of the modern middle class acquire their more expensive furniture) was very widely spread throughout the southern provinces.

The ploughs, carts, reaping-hooks, rakes, flails, scythes, spades, shovels, winepresses, benches, taps, and barrels, etc., necessary on every estate, were let with the land upon a repairing lease.

The Hundred Years’ War, with its train of ruin and depopulation, introduced the disastrous fashion of mortgaging the cattle on a farm. The unhappy tenant, at his wits’ end for ready money to pay the taxes and to defray the expenses of his farm, sold his herds to some farmer a little less wretched than himself, with the proviso that, for a stipulated number of years, he was to keep on using the cattle with a right to half their produce. Thus one Colin Bois du Mesnil-Patri, near Caen, sells to Guillaume le Paumier, of St. Pierre, nine and twenty sheep, two red cows, two calves, a two-year-old steer, and a mare for the trifling sum of eight livres fifteen sols (say £35), reserving the use of them and half their produce during the three years next ensuing,[12] after which time the entire stock was to become the property of the buyer. In three years, therefore, such unwary farmers would find themselves deprived of the only manner in which they could work their land; it was certain ruin unless, in the breathing-space assured them by the mortgage, some unusual harvest or happy turn of their affairs should enable them to lay aside a sum sufficient to stock the farm afresh.

Sheep in those days cost, as a rule, ten sols per head (say £2), alive and unshorn,[13] though when dead and skinned a sheep could be had for a tenth the price.[14] (At the present time in Gascony the normal price for a live sheep is two and thirty francs.) A fourteenth-century ox cost from two to six livres, a cow about three livres (£12). Pigs were dear, valued each between two and three livres, a price apparently in excess of modern values. The horse was less esteemed than the ox for agricultural purposes; he cost as much, or more, to buy, and a great deal more to keep; you could not eat him, he has no horns, and his skin was far less valuable as hide. Still, the horse was indispensable to travel. We give a list of the prices that he fetched in the Comté d’Eu between 1382 and 1388:—

Livres.Sols.Deniers.
1 horse.2100
1 hackney.2100
1 tall grey horse1100
The horse called Rage-en-tête2100
The roan hackney.2100[15]

And in Picardy, in 1389—

Livres.Sols.Deniers
A bay hackney1100
A black horse700
A grey nag500
A pair of greys1000[16]

The inventories published in the Accounts of Bonis show us that, on a small farm, at any rate, a pair of oxen, one horse, one ass, two pigs and a sow, a good deal of poultry, and a swarm of bees were usually kept. (In my chapter on Touraine, you will see that this is about the stock of a similar holding to-day.) We cannot estimate the price of these animals at less than twenty livres; so that few small landowners could hope to stock their farm out of their savings. Therefore, in districts where the hire-and-purchase system did not obtain, it was customary for the large farmer to let out his beasts to the poorer one; the oxen at a rate of from five to six sols per year, the sheep at about one sol per annum and per head; the milk and the young belonging to the tenant.