For instance, in the will of a reeve named Abba of Kent (about A.D. 833)[271] is the gift of a ‘half swulung’—i.e. what elsewhere would have been described as a half hide—and with that land were to go four oxen, two cows, and fifty sheep, that is two oxen and one cow and twenty-five sheep to each gioc or yardland.
Glastonbury.
And again, the Inquisition of Glastonbury (A.D. 1189)[272] describes the holder of a yardland almost in the same terms as those used in the ‘Rectitudines’ in the description of the gebur. He is said to hold a yardland for 32d. (probably 1d. per acre), and every Monday he must plough a half-acre and harrow it, and he works every day in the week but on Sunday. He has from his lord one heifer (averum) and two oxen and one cow and seven acres of corn sown and three acres of oats (to start with)—ten acres in all sown—and six sheep and one ram. King Ine made grants of land, as we have seen, to Glastonbury, and it is interesting to find the custom of allowing two oxen, one cow, and six sheep to the yardland as described in the ‘Rectitudines’ still going on in West Wales five hundred years after Ine’s time on the estates of the Abbey.
Winchester.
Take again the charter MLXXIX. mentioned by Kemble (i. p. 216). This charter shows that the Bishop of Winchester (A.D. 902) had leased fifteen hides of land to a relative of the Bishop, requiring that he must settle there (inberthan)[273] men who would be fixed (hamettan) to the place. He himself had ‘hamet’ Lufe and her three bairns, and Luhan and his six bairns, and these must remain on the land whoever might hold it. There were also three witetheows burbærde and three more theowbærde belonging to the Bishop, with their descendants (and hire team). At this date the settling of new tenants (may we not say?) some of them as geburs and some as theows was still going on in Wessex A.D. 902.
It is quite true that the holders of these yardlands are not everywhere always described as geburs. But we are dealing with the thing, not the name. The word gebur, however, was of much wider use than merely in one or two localities.
Tyddenham.
It is not only in the ‘Rectitudines’ that the gebur and his services are mentioned. On the Tyddenham Manor of King Edwy on the ‘geset-land’ there were ‘geburs’ with yardlands (gyrdagafollandes)—as mentioned in the former volume (p. 150). And other examples may be quoted.
Shaftesbury. Hatfield.
In the will of Wynfled[274] there is mention of lands at Shaftesbury and ‘the geburs that on those gafollands sit’ (þara gebura di on þam gafollandes sittað). And as incidental evidence that the geburs became in course of time adscripti glebæ, it is worth while to remember that early in the eleventh century the monks of Ely in connection with their Manor of Hatfield kept record of the children of the geburs on their estate who had married with others of neighbouring manors, so that they might not lose sight of them and their rights over them. And the importance with which their rights were regarded is emphasised by the fact that the record was kept upon the back of an ancient copy of the Gospels belonging presumably to the altar of St. Etheldreda.[275]