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

VII. SERFDOM ON A MANOR OF KING ALFRED.

Manor of Hysseburne, which had belonged to Egbert, Ethelwulf, and Alfred.

The second example of a Saxon manor is that of 'Stoke-by-Hysseburne,' a royal estate in Hampshire.[188] It had belonged in succession to King Egbert, King Ethelwulf, and King Alfred, and was by his son Edward given over to the monks of the 'old minster' at Winchester under the following curious circumstances.

King Alfred, towards the close of his reign, in his anxiety for the better education of the children of his nobles, called to his aid the monk Grimbald, from the monastery of St. Bertin, near St. Omer in Picardy, in which he himself had spent some time in his childhood on his way to Rome. It was the plan of Grimbald and King Alfred to build a new monastery (the 'new minster') at Winchester where Grimbald should carry out the royal object. But King Alfred died before this wish was fully accomplished. He had bought the land for the chapel and dormitory in [p161] the city, but the building and endowment of the monastery was left for his son King Edward to complete. Grimbald, then eighty-two years old, was the first abbot, but within a year died and was canonised. The body of King Alfred lay enshrined in Winchester Cathedral, in the 'old minster' of the bishop; but the canons of the old foundation having, according to the Abbey Chronicle, conceived 'delirious fancies' that the royal ghost, roaming by night about their cloisters, could not rest in peace, the remains of Alfred and his queen were removed to the 'new minster.' [189]

Granted to the 'old minster' at Winchester.

Now, King Ethelwolf, when dying, having left to King Alfred his son certain lands at 'Cyseldene' and elsewhere, with instructions when he died to give them over to the refectory of the old minster, King Alfred in his will gave his land at that place to the proper official at Winchester accordingly. In other words, the body of King Alfred lay in the 'new minster,' and this land given for the good of his soul belonged to the 'old minster.' So it came to pass—whether this time the 'delirious fancies' of the superstitious canons had anything to do with it or not cannot be told—that this property at Cyseldene, like the royal donor's body, could not rest in the hands of the 'old minster,' but must be transferred to the 'new minster.' So King Edward in the year 900 made an arrangement with the monks, whereby the lands at Cyseldene were transferred to the 'new minster,' and by charter he gave instead of them to the 'old minster' ten holdings (manentes) at [p162] Stoke-be-Hisseburne, with all the men who were thereon, and those at 'Hisseburne,' when King Alfred, died.

The 'hiwisc,' or family holding, equal here to yard-land.

It is in the charter[190] effecting this object that the services are described. 'Here are written the gerihta 'that the ceorls shall do at Hysseburne.' From every 'hiwisc' such and such services. The hiwisce or family holding seems from the services to have been a yard-land of 30 acres. The services were as follows:—

Services.

Hér synd gewriten ða gerihta ðæ ða ceorlas sculan dón tó Hysseburnan.

Ærest æt hilcan hiwisce feorwerti penega tó herfestes emnihte: and vi. ciricmittan ealað; and iii. sesðlar hláfhwétes: and iii. æceras ge-erian on heora ægenre hwíle, and mid heora ágenan sæda gesáwan, and on hyra ágenre [h]wíle on bærene gebringan: and þréo pund gauolbæres and healfne æcer gauolmǽde on hiora ágienre hwíle, and ðæt on hreace gebringan: and iiii. fóðera áclofenas gauolwyda tó scidhræce on hiora ágenre hwíle: and xvi. gyrda gauoltininga eác on hiora ágenre hwíle: and tó Eástran twó ewe mid twam lamban, and we [talað] twó geong sceap tó eald sceapan: and hí sculan waxan sceap and scíran on hiora ágenre hwíle.

Here are written the services that the ceorls shall do at Hysseburne.

From each hiwisc (family) 40d. at harvest equinox, and 6 church-mittans of ale, and 3 sesters of bread-wheat: and plough 3 acres in their own time, and sow it with their own seed, and in their own time bring it to the barn: and 3 pounds of gafol-barley, and a half-acre of gafol-mowing in their own time, and to bring it to the rick: and split 4 fothers (loads) of gafol-wood and stack it in their own time, and 16 yards of gafol-fencing in their own time; and at Easter two ewes with two lambs, and two young sheep may be taken for one old one: and they shall wash sheep and shear them in their own time.

Gafol and gafol-yrthe.

Here we have clearly, as in the 'Rectitudines,' the gafol, including the three acres of gafol-yrth or ploughing, as well as other gafol-work and payments in [p163] kind. And if the services had stopped here, we might have concluded that the 'ceorls' of Hysseburne were gafolgelders, and not serfs. But there is another clause which forbids such a conclusion—which shows that, in the words of the laws of King Ine, they were 'set to work as well as to gafol.' It is this:—

Week-work.

And ǽlce wucan wircen ðæt hí man háte bútan þrim, án tó middan-wintra, oðeru tó Eástran, þridde to Gangdagan.

And every week do what work they are bid, except three weeks—one at midwinter, the second at Easter, and the third at 'Gang days.'

Unlimited.

Comparing these services with the other examples, they do not seem to be any more the services of freemen, or any less those of serfs. They seem to plainly bear the ordinary characteristics of what is meant by serfdom wherever it is found. There is the gafol and there is the week-work; and the latter is not limited to certain days each week, as in the 'Rectitudines,' but 'each week, except three in the year, they are TO WORK AS THEY ARE BID.'

And these are the services—this is the serfdom—on a manor which was part of the royal domain of King Alfred, which for three successive reigns at least, and probably for generations earlier, had been royal domain, and now by the last royal holder is handed over, with the men that were upon it, to the perpetual, never-dying lordship of a monastery, as an eternal inheritance.

The chain of evidence complete.

Finally, the evidence of these Saxon documents—the 'Rectitudines' and the charters of Tidenham and Hysseburne—read in the light of the later evidence and of the earlier laws of King Ine, is so clear that it seems needful to explain how it has happened that [p164] there has ever been any doubt as to the servile nature of the services of the holders of yard-lands in Saxon times. The explanation is simple. Mr. Kemble quotes from all these documents in his chapter on 'Lænland;' [191] but for want of the clear knowledge what a yard-land was, it never seems to have occurred to him that in these services of the geburs or holders of yard-lands we have the services of the later villani of the Domesday Survey—the services of the holdings embracing by far the greater part of the arable land of England. Dr. Leo, in his work on the 'Rectitudines,' confesses that he does not know what is meant by the yard-land of the gebur.[192] It is only when, proceeding from the known to the unknown, we get a firm grasp of the fact that the yard-land was the normal holding of the gebur or villanus, that it was a bundle of normally thirty scattered acres in the open fields, that it was held in villenage, and that these were the services under which it was held of the manorial lord of the ham or tun to which it belonged—it is only when these facts are known and their importance realised, that these documents become intelligible, and take their proper place as links in what really is an unbroken chain of evidence.