VII. THE GAFOL AND GAFOL-YRTH.

Passing now to the serfdom and the services under which the 'yard-lands' and the 'huben' were held, it may at least be said that their practical identity suggests a common origin.

We learned from the Rectitudines and from the Laws of Ine, to make a distinction between the two component parts of the obligations of the 'gebur' in respect of his yard-land.

There was (1) the gafol, and (2) the week-work.

The gafol was found to be a semi-servile incident to the yard-land. The week-work was the most servile one.

A man otherwise free and possessing a homestead already, could, under the laws of Ine, hire a yard-land of demesne land and pay gafol for it, without incurring liability to week-work. But if the lord found for him both the yard-land and the homestead, then he was a complete 'gebur' or 'villanus,' and must do week-work also.

The Saxon 'gafol' and 'gafol-yrth.'

Taking the gafol first, and descending to details, it was found to be complex—i.e. it included gafol and gafol-yrth. [p400]

The gafol of the 'gebur,' as stated in the Rectitudines, was this:—

Comparing the gafol proper with the census of the St. Gall charters, and the tribute of the 'servi' of the Church under the Alamannic laws of A.D. 622, the resemblance was found to be remarkably close.

The tribute of the 'servi' of the Church was thus stated in the latter:—

As regards this tribute in kind the likeness is obvious, and it further so closely resembles the food-rent of the Welsh free tribesmen as to suggest that it may have been a survival of ancient tribal dues—a suggestion which the word 'gafol' itself confirms. It seems to be connected with the Abgabe, or food gifts of the German tribesmen.[622]

Possible connexion with Roman tributum.

We saw that the word gafol was the equivalent of tributum in the Saxon translation of the Gospels. 'Does your master pay tribute?' 'Gylt he gafol?'

Further, the French evidence seems to show [p401] that the later manorial payments in kind and services upon Frankish manors were, to some extent, a survival of the old Roman exactions in Gaul.[623] And the tribute of the Alamannic and Bavarian laws, and of the St. Gall and other charters, was found to be equally clearly a survival of the Roman tributum in the German province of Rhætia and the 'Agri Decumates.'

The Saxon 'gafol-yrth' and the Roman 'agrarium' or tithe-rent.

But in addition to the 'gafol' in kind, there was the gafol-yrth; and of this also we found in the St. Gall charters numerous examples. In the many cases where the owner of homesteads and land surrendered them to the Abbey, and henceforth paid tribute to the Abbey, there was not only the tribute in kind, but also the ploughing of so many acres, sometimes of one, sometimes of two, and sometimes of one in each zelga or field—to be ploughed, and reaped, and carried by the tenant. The combination of the dues in kind and in ploughing, with sometimes other services, made up the tributum in servitium—i.e. the gafol of the tributarius, or 'gafol-gelder,' which he paid under the Alamannic laws to his lord, the latter thenceforth paying the public tributum for the land to the State.

Perhaps we may go one step further.

Not always a tenth.

From the remarkable resemblance of the English gafol-yrth and its South German equivalent the inference was drawn that this peculiar rent taken in the form of the ploughing of a definite number of acres, was probably a survival of the Roman tenths, [p402] or other proportion of produce claimed as rent from settlers on the ager publicus of the 'Agri Decumates,' and of Rhætia. Indications were found that the agrarium, or tenth of the arable produce, may have been taken in actual acres like the Saxon tithes—i.e. in the produce of so many 'andecenæ,' the ploughing, sowing, reaping, and garnering of which were done by the tenant.

But under Roman usage the proportion taken was not always a tenth. The State rent was nominally a tithe. But it was in fact so extortionately gathered as sometimes in Sicily to treble the tithe.[624] Hyginus also says that the 'vectigal,' or tax, was taken in some provinces in a certain part of the crop, in some a fifth, in others a seventh.[625] In Italy the dues from the Agri Medietates perhaps surviving in the later métayer system, amounted sometimes to one-half. At any rate, the proportion varied.

Now the Saxon 'gafol-yrth' of the yard-land of thirty acres seems, according to the 'Rectitudines,' as we have seen, to have been the produce of three acres in the wheat-field, ploughed by the 'gebur' and sown with seed from his own barn. For it will be remembered that the first season after the yard-land was given there was to be no gafol, and in the gebur's outfit only seven out of the ten acres in the wheat-field [p403] were to be handed over to him already sown, leaving three unsown, i.e. probably the three which otherwise he must have sown for the gafol-yrth due to his lord. As ten acres of the yard-land were probably always in fallow, three acres of wheat was a heavier gafol-yrth than a fairly gathered tithe would have been.

It would therefore seem probable that as the 'gafol' in kind may be traced back to the Roman tributum, itself perhaps a survival of the tribal food-rents of the conquered provinces, so the 'gafol-yrth' may be traced back to the Roman decumæ, or other proportion of the crop due by way of land-tax or rent to the State. And this survival of the complex tribute or gafol, made up of its two separate elements, from Roman to Saxon times, becomes all the more striking when it is considered also that it was due from a normal holding with an outfit of a pair of oxen, both in the case of the Saxon yard-land and of the Roman veteran's allotment.