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 servi

As regards the servi, the map will show that whilst only embracing nine per cent. of the whole population of England, they were most numerous towards the south-west of England, less and less numerous as the Danish districts were approached, and absent [p090] altogether from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and bordering districts.

Even when most numerous they were hardly tenants in villenage. They seem to have held no land, and often to have been rather household thralls of the lord of the manor than tenants in any ordinary sense of the word.[115]

Thus the real tenants in villenage were confined mainly to the two classes of villani and bordarii, or cottiers.

The cottiers.

Taking the bordarii or cottage tenants first, the map will show how evenly they were scattered over the whole country. They embraced 32 per cent.—roughly one-third—of the whole population in their number, and in no county were there less than 12 per cent. of them.

The villani.

But the villani were evidently at the date of the Survey, and at the earlier date of Edward the Confessor, as they were afterwards, by far the most important and typical tenants in villenage.

Same classes of tenants as afterwards.

They were at the date of the Survey even more numerous than the cottier class below them. They embraced 38 per cent. of the whole population, and, except where partially displaced by the sochmanni of the Danish district, were pretty evenly dispersed all over England. Except in Norfolk and Suffolk, they were seldom less than one-third of the population. And if at the time of the Survey they were holders of virgates and half-virgates, as their successors were afterwards, then it follows that they held by far the largest proportion of the land of England [p091] in their holdings. But before we assume this, some proof may fairly be required that it was so. In the meantime it is clear that the classes of tenants in villenage bore the same names at the time of the Survey as they did afterwards. The presumption evidently is that they held similar holdings.