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

VIII. THE EXTENT OF THE CULTIVATED LAND OF ENGLAND, AND HOW MUCH WAS INCLUDED IN THE YARD-LANDS OF THE VILLANI.

Knowing now that the virgate or yard-land was the normal holding of the villanus, though some villani held hides and half-hides, i.e. more virgates than one, and others half-virgates; and knowing that the normal holding of the villanus, whether called a yard-land or a husband-land, or by any other name, was a bundle of scattered strips, containing normally thirty acres; and knowing also the number of villani in the several counties embraced in the Survey, it becomes perfectly possible to estimate, roughly no doubt, but with remarkable certainty, the total area contained in their holdings.

Area in yard-lands of villani.

The total number of villani in these counties was 108,407.[125] If each villanus held a yard-land or virgate of 30 acres, then about 3,250,000 acres were [p102] contained in their holdings. The number of villani holding half-virgates was, however, probably greater than the number holding half-hides and hides; so that the average holding would perhaps hardly be equal in acreage to the normal holding of 30 acres. Taking the average holding at 20 acres instead of 30, we should probably under-estimate the acreage. It would even then amount to 2,168,000. We shall be safe if we say that the villani held in their bundles of strips 214 millions of acres.[126]

Area in the holdings of cottiers,

We must add the holdings of the 82,000 bordarii and of the 6,000 or 7,000 cottier tenants.[127] If these lesser holdings averaged three acres each, we must add another quarter of a million acres for them. The total of two and a half millions of acres can thus hardly be an over-estimate of the acreage of the arable strips in the open fields held by the villani and bordarii in villenage. What proportion did this bear to the whole cultivated area of these counties?

and of free tenants.

To include the total acreage under the plough, the holdings of the sochmanni and liberi homines of the Danish district must be added, and also the arable land (ploughed mainly by the villani) on the lord's demesne. The 23,000 sochmanni[128] can hardly have held as little as a similar number of villani—say half a million acres. The 12,000 liberi homines may have held another half-million. And one or two million acres can hardly be an excessive estimate for the arable portion of the lord's demesne.

Total about five million acres, nearly one-half of what is now arable.

Putting all these figures together, the evidence of the Domesday Survey seems therefore to show that [p103] at its date about five million acres were under the plough, i.e. from one-third to one-half of the acreage now in arable cultivation in the same counties of England.[129]

This is not mere conjecture. It rests upon facts recorded in detail in the Survey for each manor upon the oath of the villani themselves; with no chance of exaggeration, because upon the result was to be founded a tax; with little chance of omission, because the men of the hundred, who also were sworn, would take care in their own interests that one place was not assessed more lightly than others. The general opinion was that 'not a single hide or yard-land was omitted.'

The acreage under arable cultivation at the time of the Survey, and twenty years earlier in the time of Edward the Confessor, was thus really very large. And the villani in their yard-lands held nearly half of it, and together with the bordarii fully half of it, in villenage. It must be borne in mind also that by their services they tilled the greater part of the rest.

Tilled by serf labour.

This was the economic condition in which England was left by the Saxons as the result of the 500 years of their rule. The agriculture of England, as they left it, was carried on under the open field system by village communities in villenage. It was under the system of Saxon serfdom, with some little help from the actual slaves on the lord's demesne, that the land was tilled throughout all those counties which the Saxons had thoroughly conquered, with some partial exception [p104] as regards the Danish districts, where the sochmanni and liberi homines were settled.

This is the solid foundation of fact firmly vouched for by the Domesday Survey, read in the light of the evidence leading up to it.

From this firm basis the inquiry must proceed, carefully following the same lines as before—working still from the known to the unknown—tracing the open field system, its villani, and their yard-lands still farther back into the earlier periods of Saxon rule.

The question to be answered is, how far back into the earlier Saxon times the open field system and its yard-lands can be followed, and whether the serfdom connected with them was more or was less complete and servile in its character in the earlier than in the later period.

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