How many otherwise free tenants hired yard-lands without becoming geburs, and rendering the full week-work as well as gafol, we do not know. Except in the Danish district they seem to have left, as we have seen, no trace behind them on most manors in the Domesday Survey. The fact already mentioned, that the yard-lands of geburs, who owed both gafol and services, were sometimes called 'gyrda gafollandes,' shows how completely the gafol and the services had become united as coincidents of a common villein tenure. All villein tenants were apparently 'geneats' and paid 'gafol,' and there is a passage in the laws of King Edgar which states that if a geneat-man after notice should persist in neglecting to pay his lord's gafol, he must expect that his lord in his anger will spare neither his goods nor his life.[176]
Completeness of the evidence to the seventh century.
On the whole, leaving out of notice doubtful and exceptional tenants, as well we may, we are now in a position to state generally what were the main classes of villein tenants in early Saxon times, and what were their holdings on the land in villenage, whether it were known as geneat, or geset, or gafol land.
First, the 'Rectitudines,' of the tenth century, describes, as we have seen, these tenants as all geneats or villeins, and records their services in general terms. [p147] It then divides them into classes, just as the Domesday Survey does. And the two chief classes of the geneats are the geburs and the cottiers. These two classes are evidently the villani and the bordarii or cottiers of the Domesday Survey.
Secondly, the same document describes the holdings of these two classes. It speaks of the cottiers as holding mostly five acres each—sometimes more and sometimes less—in singular coincidence with the Domesday Survey and later evidence. And it describes the gebur, as we have seen, as holding a yard-land or virgate, the typical holding of the Domesday villanus, and as having allotted to him as 'outfit' two oxen, just as was the case with the Kelso husbandmen.
Thirdly, the laws of King Ine bring back the evidence to the seventh century by their incidental mention of the yard-land as a typical holding on geset-land; and also of half-hides[177] and hides, as well as of geneats[178] and geburs,[179] with their gafol and weorc.
When this concurrence of the evidence of the tenth and the seventh century is duly considered, it will be seen how complete is the proof that in the seventh century the West Saxon estate, though called a 'tun' or a 'ham,' was in reality a manor in the Norman sense of the term—an estate with a village community in villenage upon it under a lord's jurisdiction. [p148]
VI. SERFDOM ON A MANOR of KING EDWY.
The evidence hitherto given on the nature of the serfdom on Anglo-Saxon manors has been of a general character.
We are fortunately able to confirm and illustrate it by reference to actual local instances.