Fifty or sixty years earlier than the Boldon Book, was compiled the 'Liber Niger' [99] of the monastery of St. Peter de Burgo, the abbey of Peterborough. [p073]
This record is remarkably exact and full in its details. Its date is from 1125 to 1128; and its evidence brings up our knowledge of the English manor and serfdom—the open field and its holdings—almost to the threshold of the Domesday Survey, i.e. within about 40 years of it.
The first entry gives the following information:[100]—
In Kateringes, which is assessed at 10 hides, 40 villani held 40 yard-lands (virgas terræ, or virgates), and there were 8 cotsetes, each holding 5 acres. The services were as follows:
The holders of virgates for the lord's work plough in spring 4 acres for each virgate. And besides this they find plough teams (carucæ) three times in winter, three times for spring plowing, and once in summer. And they have 22 plough teams, wherewith they work. And all of them work 3 days a week. And besides this they render per annum from each virgate of custom 2s. 112d. And they all render 50 hens and 640 eggs. One tenant of 13 acres renders 16d., and [has] 2 acres of meadow. The mill with the miller renders 20s. The 8 cotsetes work one day a week, and twice a year make malt. Each of them gives a penny for a goat, and if he has a she-goat, a halfpenny. There is a shepherd and a swineherd who hold 8 acres. And in the demesne of the manor (curiæ) are 4 plough teams with 32 oxen (i.e. 8 to each team), 12 cows with 10 calves, and 2 unemployed animals, and 3 draught cattle, and 300 sheep, and 50 pigs, and as much meadow over as is worth 16s. The church of the village is at the altar of the abbey church. For the love-feast of St. Peter[101] [they give] 4 rams and 2 cows, or 5s.
This entry may be taken as a typical one.
Holdings, virgates and half-virgates.
Here, then, within forty years of the date of the Domesday Survey is clear evidence that the normal holding of the villanus was a virgate. Elsewhere there were semi-villani with half-virgates.[102] [p074]
The manorial plough team of eight oxen.
Further, throughout this record fortunately the number of ploughs and oxen on the lord's demesne happens to be mentioned, from which the number of oxen to the team can be inferred. And the result is that in 15 out of 25 manors there were 8 oxen to a team; in 6 the team had 6 oxen, and in the remaining 4 cases the numbers were odd.