IV. THE GENEATS AND THEIR SERVICES.

Geneat land was land in villenage.

It has been shown that the Saxon thane's estate or manor was divided into thane's inland or demesne land, and geneat land or gesettes land, answering to the land in villenage of the Domesday Survey. Let us now examine into the nature of the villenage on the geneat land under Saxon rule.

'Gesettes land' etymologically seems to mean simply land set or let out to tenants. In the parable of the vineyard, the Saxon translation makes the 'wíngeardes hlaford[164] gesette' it out to husbandmen (gesette þone myd eorð-tylion) before he takes his journey into a far country, and the husbandmen are to pay him as tribute a portion of the annual fruits. [p138]

Need of husbandmen.

In early times, when population was scanty, there was a lack of husbandmen.

King Alfred, in his Saxon translation of Boethius, into which he often puts observations of his own, expresses in one of the most often quoted of these interpolations what doubtless his own experience had shown him, viz., that 'a king must have his tools to reign with—his realm must be well peopled—full manned.' Unless there are priests, soldiers, and workmen—'gebedmen, fyrdmen, and weorcmen'—no king, he says, can show his craft.[165]

We are to take it, then, that population was still scanty, that a thane's manor was not always as well stocked with husbandmen as the necessities of agriculture required. The nation must be fed as well as defended, and both these economic needs were imperative. How, then, was a thane to plant new settlers on his 'gesettes-land'?

Settene stuht, or outfit of geburs.

We have seen the Kelso monks furnishing their tenants with their outfit or 'stuht'—the two oxen needful to till the husbandland of two bovates; also a horse, and enough of oats, barley, and wheat for seed. The 'Rectitudines' shows that in the tenth century this custom had long been followed by Saxon landlords. It further shows that the new tenants so created were settled on yard-lands, and called geburs.

Two oxen to yard-land.

It states that in some places it is the custom that in settling the gebur on the land, there shall be given to him 'to land setene' (i.e. as 'stuht' or outfit) two oxen, one cow, six sheep, and seven acres sown on his yard-land or virgate. Then after the first year [p139] he performs the usual services. Having been supplied by his lord, not only with his stuht, but also even with tools for his work and utensils for his house, it is not surprising that on his death everything reverted to his lord.

The gebur here answers exactly to the villanus of post-Domesday times.[166] His normal holding is the yard-land or virgate. His stuht, which goes with the yard-land 'to setene,' or for outfit, is two oxen, one cow, &c.; i.e. one ox for each of the two bovates which made up the yard-land.

That this was the usual outfit of the yard-land, and that the yard-land at the same time was the one-fourth part of the sulung or full plough-land, in still earlier times than the date of the 'Rectitudines,' receives clear confirmation from an Anglo-Saxon will dated A.D. 835, in which there is a gift of 'an half swulung,' and 'to ðem londe iiii oxan & ii cy & 1 scepa,' &c.[167] The half-sulung being the double of the yard-land, it is natural that the allowance for outfit in [p140] the bequest of oxen and cows should be just double the outfit assigned by custom to the yard-land. It is obvious that the allotment to the whole sulung would be a full team of eight oxen.

Services.

The gebur, then, having been 'set' upon his yard land by his lord, and supplied with his setene or 'stuht,' had to perform his services.

What were these services?

An examination of them as stated in the 'Rectitudines' will show at once their close resemblance to those of the holders of virgates in villenage in post-Domesday times.

They may be classified in the same way as these were classified.

Gafol.

Some of them are called gafol; i.e. they were tributes in money and in kind, and in work at ploughing, &c., in the nature rather of rent, rates, and taxes than anything else. They were as follows:

Gafol-yrth.

Bene-work.

Next there were the precariæ or bene-work, extra special services:

Week-work.

Lastly, the chief services were the regular week-work (wic-weorc), generally limited to certain days a week according to the season.

Thirty acres in yard-land; ten in each field.

These were the services of the gebur or villanus, and we may gather that his yard-land embraced the usual thirty acres or strips, i.e. ten strips in each of the three common fields of his village. This seems to follow from the fact that his outfit included 'seven acres sown.' These seven acres were no doubt on the wheat-field which had to be sown before winter. It was seven acres, and not ten, because the crop on the other three counted as 'gafolyrð' to his lord, and this was not due the first season. The oats or beans on the second or spring-sown field he could sow for himself. The third field was in fallow. The only start he required was therefore the seven acres of wheat which must be sown before winter.

So much for the gebur; now as to the cottier.

Cottier's holding of five acres, and his services.

The cottier tenant, in respect of his five acres (more or less), rendered similar services on an humbler scale. His week-work was on Mondays each week throughout the year, three days a week at harvest. He was free from land-gafol, but paid hearth-penny and church-scot at Martinmas. The nature of his work was the ordinary service of the geneat as [p142] required by his lord from time to time; only, having no oxen, he was exempt from ploughing, as he was also after the Norman Conquest.