The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

I. THE METHOD OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS.

It may perhaps now be possible to sum up the evidence, without pretending to more certainty in the conclusion than the condition of the question warrants.

The tribal system in Wales and Germany.

At the two extreme limits of our subject we have found, on one side, the tribal system of Wales and Ireland, and, on the other side, the German tribal system.

In the earliest stage of these systems they were seemingly alike, both in the nomadic habits of the tribes, and the shifting about of the households in a tribe from one homestead to another. Sir John Davis describes this shifting as going on in Ireland in his day, and Cæsar describes it as going on in Germany 1,700 years earlier.

Co-aration of the waste on the early open-field system.

In both cases, such agriculture as was a necessity even to pastoral tribes was carried on under the open-field system in its simplest form—the ploughing up of new ground each season, which then went back into grass. The Welsh triads speak of it as a [p413] co-aration of portions of the waste. Tacitus describes it in the words, 'Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager.' In neither case, therefore, is there the three-field system, which implies fixed arable fields ploughed again and again in rotation.

The three-field system implies fixed settlements and rotation of crops, which came probably with Roman rule. The yard-land or hub implies servile tenants.

The three-field system evidently implies the surrender of the tribal shifting and the submission to fixed settlement. Further, as wherever we can examine the three-field system we find the mass of the holdings to have been fixed bundles, called yard-lands or huben—bundles retaining the same contents from generation to generation—it seems to follow either that the tribal division of holdings among heirs, which was the mark of free holdings, had ceased, or that the three-field system was from the first the shell of a community in serfdom.

The geographical distribution of the three-field system—mainly within the old Roman provinces and in the Suevic districts along their borders—makes it almost certain that, in Germany, Roman rule was the influence which enforced the settlement, and introduced, with other improvements in agriculture, such as the vine culture, a fixed rotation of crops.

In Wales the necessity for settlement did not generally produce the three-field system with holdings in yard-lands,[630] because, as the Welsh tribesmen, though they may have had household slaves, as a rule held no taeogs or prædial slaves, it produced no serfdom. But under the German tribal system, even in the time of Tacitus, the tribesmen in the [p414] semi-Romanised districts, at all events, already had prædial slaves.

The Roman villa another factor and grew into the manor.

The manorial system, however, was not simply a development from the tribal system of the Germans; it had evidently a complex origin. A Roman element also seems to have entered into its composition.

The Roman villa, to begin with, a slave-worked estate, during the later empire, whether from German influence or not, became still more like a manor by the addition of coloni and other mostly barbarian semi-servile tenants to the slaves.

There may have been once free village communities on the 'ager publicus,' but, as we have seen, the management of the public lands under the fiscal officers of the Emperor also tended during the later Empire to become more and more manorial in its character, so much so that the word 'villa' could apparently sometimes be applied to the fiscal district.

Roman and German elements combined.

Whichever of the two factors—Roman or German—contributed most to the mediæval manor, the manorial estate became the predominant form of land ownership in what had once been Roman provinces. And the German successors of Roman lords of villas became in their turn manorial lords of manors; whilst the 'coloni,' 'liti,' and 'tributarii' upon them, wherever they remained upon the same ground, apparently became, with scarcely a visible change, a community of serfs.

Both 'ager publicus' and 'terra regis' manorial.

On the other hand, the fact that the terra regis also was divided under Saxon and Frankish kings into manors probably was the natural result of the growing manorial management of the public lands under the fiscal officers of the Emperor during the later Empire, [p415] quickened or completed after the barbarian conquests. The fiscal districts seem to have become in fact royal manors, and the free 'coloni,' 'liti,' and 'servi' upon them appear as manorial tenants of different grades in the earliest grants to the monasteries.

The fact that as early as the time of Tacitus, the German chieftains and tribesmen were in their own country lords of serfs, in itself explains the ease with which they assumed the position of lords of manors on the conquest of the provinces.

The result of conquest seems thus to have been chiefly a change of lordship, both as regards the private villas and the public lands. The conquered districts seem to have become in a wholesale way practically terra regis. There is no evidence that the modes of agriculture on the one hand or the modes of management on the other hand were materially changed. The conquering king would probably at once put followers of his own into the place of the Roman fiscal officers. These would become quasi-lords of the royal manors on the terra regis. Then by degrees would naturally arise the process whereby under lavish royal grants manors were handed one after another into the private ownership of churches and monasteries and favourites of the king, thus honey-combing the terra regis with private manors.

This seems to have been what happened in the Frankish provinces, and in the Alamannic and Bavarian districts, where the process can be most clearly traced. And the result seems to have been the almost universal prevalence of the manorial system in these districts. Even the towns came to be regarded as in the demesne of the king. And [p416] gradually manorial lordship extended itself over the free tenants as well as over the various semi-servile classes who were afterwards confused together in the general class of serfs.

The community of serfs was fed from above and from below. Free 'coloni,' by their own voluntary surrender, and free tribesmen, perhaps upon conquest or gradually by the force of long usage, sank into serfs. Slaves, on the other hand, by their lord's favour, or to meet the needs of agriculture, were supplied with an outfit of oxen and rose out of slavery into serfdom.

But what was this serfdom? It was not simply the old prædial slavery of the Germans of Tacitus. Nor was it merely a continuance of the slavery on the Roman villa.

Slavery mitigated by Christian humanity.

For finally, in the period of transition from Roman to German lordship, a new moral force entered as a fresh factor in the economic evolution. The silent humanising influence of Christianity seems to have been the power which mitigated the rigour of slavery, and raised the slave on the estates of the Church into the middle status of serfdom, by insisting upon the limitation of his labour to the three days' week-work of the mediæval serf.

Thus, from the point of view alike of the German and the Roman 'servi,' mediæval serfdom, except to the freemen who by their own surrender or by conquest were degraded into it, was a distinct step upward in the economic progress of the masses of the people towards freedom.

The pre-Roman one-field system in England.

Applying these results especially to England, we [p417] have once more to remember that there was settled agriculture in Belgic Britain before the Roman invasion: that the fact vouched for by Pliny, that marl and manure were ploughed into the fields, is proof that the simplest form of the open-field system—the Welsh co-aration of the waste, and the German shifting every year of the 'arva'—had already given place to a more settled and organised system, in which the same land remained under tillage year after year. Pliny's description of the marling of the land, however, points rather to the one-field system of Northern Germany than to the three-field system, as that under which the corn was grown which Cæsar found ripening on British fields when he first landed on the southern coast.[631]

Roman introduction of the three-course rotation of crops.

In the meantime Roman improvements in agriculture may well have included the introduction into the province of Britain of the three-course rotation of crops. The open fields round the villa of the Roman lord, cultivated by his slaves, 'coloni,' 'tributarii,' and 'liti,' may have been first arranged on the three-field system; and, once established, that system would spread and become general during those centuries of Roman occupation in which so much corn was produced and exported from the island.

The Roman annonæ—founded, perhaps, on the earlier tribal food-rents—were, in Britain, as we know from the 'Agricola' of Tacitus, taken mostly in corn; [p418] and the tributum was probably assessed during the later empire on that system of jugation which was found to be so like to the hidation which prevailed after the Saxon conquest.

Conquest the rule. The invaders become lords of hams manors.

Putting aside as exceptional the probably peaceful but at best obscure settlements in tribal households, and regarding conquest as the rule, the economic evidence seems to supply no solid reason for supposing that the German conquerors acted in Britain in a way widely different from that which they followed on the conquest of Continental Roman provinces. The conquered territory here as elsewhere probably became at first terra regis of the English, Saxon, or Jutish kings. And though there may have been more cases in England than elsewhere of extermination of the old inhabitants, the evidence of the English open-field system seems to show that, taking England as a whole, the continuity between the Roman and English system of land management was not really broken. The Roman provincial villa still seems to have remained the typical form of estate; and the management of the public lands, now terra regis, seems to have preserved its manorial character. For whenever estates are granted to the Church or monasteries, or to thanes of the king, they seem to be handed over as already existing manors, with their own customs and services fixed by immemorial usage.

It is most probable that whenever German conquerors descended upon an already peopled country where agriculture was carried on as it was in Britain, their comparatively small numbers, and still further their own dislike to agricultural pursuits and liking for lordship, and familiarity with servile tenants in [p419] the old country, would induce them to place the conquered people in the position of serfs, as the Germans of Tacitus seem to have done, making them do the agriculture by customary methods. If in any special cases the numbers in the invading hosts were larger than usual, they would probably include the semi-servile dependants of the chieftains and tribesmen. These, placed on the land allotted to their lords, would be serfs in England as they had been at home.

The yard-land shows this,

At this point, as we have seen, the internal evidence of the open-field system, at the earliest date at which it arises, comes to our aid, showing that as a general rule it was the shell, not of household communities of tribesmen doing their own ploughing like the Welsh tribesmen by co-aration, but of serfs doing the ploughing under an over-lordship.

Here the English evidence points in precisely the same direction as the Continental. For, as so often repeated, the prevalence, as far back as the earliest records, of yard-lands and huben, handed down so generally, and evidently by long immemorial custom, as indivisible bundles from one generation to another, implies the absence of division among heirs, and is accordingly a mark of the servile nature of the holding.

and also local names.

The earlier 'hams' and 'tuns' manors.

Further, whenever a place was called, as so many places were, by the name of a single person, it seems obvious that at the moment when its name was acquired it was under a land ownership, which, as regards the dependent population upon it, was a lordship. We have seen that in the laws of King Ethelbert the 'hams' and 'tuns' of England are spoken of as in a single ownership, whilst the [p420] mention of the three grades of 'læts' shows that there were semi-servile tenants upon them. And in the vast number of instances in which local names consist of a personal name with a suffix, the evidence of the local name itself is strong for the manorial character of the estate. When that suffix is tun, or ham, or villa, with the personal name prefixed, the evidence is doubly strong. Even when connected with an impersonal prefix, these suffixes in themselves distinctly point, as we have seen, to the manorial character of the estate, with at least direct, if not absolutely conclusive, force.

Whatever doubt remains is not as to the generally manorial character of the hams and tuns of the earliest Saxon records, or as to the serfdom of their tenants; as to this, it is submitted that the evidence is clear and conclusive. Whatever doubt remains is as to which of two possible courses leading to this result was taken by the Saxon conquerors of Britain.

As regards the methods of their conquest, there happens to exist no satisfactory contemporary evidence. They may either have conquered and adopted the Roman villas, whether in private or imperial hands, with the slaves and 'coloni' or 'tributarii' upon them, calling them 'hams,' or they may have destroyed the Roman villas and their tenants, and have established in their place fresh 'hams' of their own, which in mediæval Latin records, whether in private or royal possession, were also afterwards called 'villas.' In some districts they may have followed the one course, in other districts the other course. Either of the two might as well as the other have produced manors and manorial serfdom. [p421]

Survivals from the Romano-German province prove continuity, and are inconsistent with extermination

But when the internal evidence of the Anglo-Saxon land system is examined, even this doubt as to which of the two methods was generally followed is in part removed. For it may at least be said with truth that the hundred years of historical darkness during which there is a simple absence of direct testimony, is at least bridged over by such planks of indirect economic evidence as the apparent connexion between the Roman 'jugation' and the Saxon 'hidage,' the resemblance between the Roman and Saxon allotment of a certain number of acres along with single or double yokes of oxen to the holdings, the prevalence of the rule of single succession, the apparent continuance of the Roman tributum and annonæ, and even some of the sordida munera in the Saxon gafol, gafol-yrth, averagium, and other manorial services; and, lastly, the fact that in Gaul and Upper Germany the actual continuity between the Roman villa and the German heim can be more or less clearly traced.

unless the invaders were themselves Romanised.

The force of this economic evidence, it is submitted, is at least enough to prove either that there was a sufficient amount of continuity between the Roman villa and the Saxon manor to preserve the general type, or that the German invaders who destroyed and re-introduced the manorial type of estate came from a district in which there had been such continuity, and where they themselves had lived long enough to permit the peculiar manorial instincts of the Romano-German province to become a kind of second nature to them.

It is as impossible to conceive that this complex manorial land system, which we have found to bristle with historical survivals of usages of the [p422] Romano-German province, should have been suddenly introduced into England by un-Romanised Northern piratical tribes of Germans, as it is to conceive of the sudden creation of a fossil.

The most reasonable hypothesis, in the absence of direct evidence, appears therefore to be that the manorial system grew up in Britain as it grew up in Gaul and Germany, as the compound product of barbarian and Roman institutions mixing together during the periods first of Roman provincial rule, and secondly of German conquest.

The large extent of folk-land evidence against extensive allodial allotments.

This hypothesis seems at least most fully to account for the facts. Perhaps, it is not too much to say that whilst the large tracts of England remaining folk-land or terra regis, in spite of the lavish grants to monasteries complained of by Bede, are in themselves suggestive of the comparatively limited extent of allodial allotments among the conquering tribesmen, the existence and multiplication upon the terra regis, not of free village communities, but of royal manors of the same type as that of the Frankish villas, with a serfdom upon them also of the same type, and connected with the same three-field system of husbandry in both cases, almost amounts to a positive verification when the historical survivals clinging to the system in both cases are taken into account.

The invaders either adopted the natives as serfs or brought serfs with them.

Even on the supposition that the Saxons really exterminated the old population and destroyed every vestige of the Roman system, it has already become obvious that it would not at all follow that they generally introduced free village communities; for in that case the evidence would go far to show that they most likely brought slaves with them and settled [p423] them in servile village communities round their own dwellings, as Tacitus saw the Germans of his time doing in Germany. But, again, it must be remembered that however naturally this might produce the manor and serfdom, still the survivals of minute provincial usages hanging about the Saxon land system would remain unaccounted for, unless the invaders of the fifth century had already been thoroughly Romanised before their conquest of Britain.

English history begins not with free communities but with serfdom.

We cannot, indeed, pretend to have discovered in the economic evidence a firm bridge for all purposes across the historic gulf of the fifth century, and to have settled the difficult questions who were the German invaders of England, whence they came, and what was the exact form of their settlements in one district or another. But the facts we have examined seem to have settled the practical economic question with which we started, viz. whether the hams and tuns of England, with their open fields and yard-lands, in the earliest historical times were inhabited and tilled in the main by free village communities, or by communities in villenage. However many exceptional instances there may have been of settlements in tribal households, or even free village communities, it seems to be almost certain that these 'hams' and 'tuns' were, generally speaking, and for the most part from the first, practically manors with communities in serfdom upon them.

The yard-land not the allodial allotment of a free tribesman.

It has become at least clear, speaking broadly, that the equal 'yard-lands' of the 'geburs' were not the 'alods' or free lots of 'alodial' freeholders in a common 'mark,' but the tenements of serfs paying 'gafol' and doing 'week-work' for their lords. And this is [p424] equally true whether the manors on which they lived were bocland of Saxon thanes, or folk-land under the 'villicus' of a Saxon king.