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

The præpositus.

The seneschal thus had jurisdiction over all the manors of the lord. But each single manor should have its own præpositus.

The best husbandman is to be elected by the villata, or body of tenants, as præpositus, and he is to be responsible for the cultivation of the arable land. He must see that the ploughs are yoked early in the morning—both the demesne and the villein ploughs—and that the land is properly ploughed (pure et conjunctim) and sown. He is a villein tenant, and acts on behalf of the villeins, but he is overlooked by the lord's bailiff.

The bailiff.

The bailiff's[45] duties are stated to be—To rise early and have the ploughs yoked, then walk in the fields to see that all is right. He is to inspect the ploughs, whether those of the demesne or the villein or auxiliary ploughs, seeing that they be not unyoked before their day's work ends, failing which he will be called to account. At sowing-time the bailiff, præpositus, and reaper must go with the ploughs through the whole day's work until they have completed their proper quantity of ploughing for the day, [p049] which is to be measured, and if the ploughmen have made any errors or defaults, and can make no excuses, the reaper is to see that such faults do not go uncorrected and unpunished.

Such is the picture, given by Fleta, of the manorial machine at work grinding through its daily labour on the days set apart for service on the lord's demesne.

The other side of the picture, the work of the villani for themselves on other days, the yoking of their oxen in the common plough team, and the ploughing and sowing of their own scattered strips; whether this was arranged with equal regard to rigid custom, or whether in Fleta's time the co-operation had become to some extent broken up, so that each villein tenant made his own arrangements by contract with his fellows, or otherwise—this inferior side of the picture is left undrawn.

In the meantime, returning to the question of the holdings in villenage, an additional reason for the variations in their acreage is found in the statement already alluded to, viz. that the extent of the actual carucate, or land of one plough team, was dependent, among other things, upon whether the system of husbandry was the two-field or the three-field system, each plough team being able to cultivate a larger acreage on the former than on the latter system.

VII. S.E. OF ENGLAND—THE HIDE AND VIRGATE UNDER OTHER NAMES (THE RECORDS OF BATTLE ABBEY AND ST. PAUL'S).

Battle Abbey Records.