| 1066 | 1086 | |
| Villani | 1273 | 1247 |
| Bordarii | 810 | 1241 |
| Servi | 384 | 312 |
This decrease in the number of servi seems to be pretty evenly distributed throughout the county[99]. We shall not readily ascribe the change to any mildheartedness of the lords. They are Frenchmen, and in all probability they have got the most they could out of a mass of peasantry made malleable and manageable by the Conquest. We may rather be entitled to infer that there has been a considerable change in rural economy. For the cultivation of his demesne land the lord begins to rely less and less on the labour of serfs whom he feeds, more and more upon the labour of tenants who have plots of their own and who feed themselves. From this again we may perhaps infer that the labour services of the villani and bordarii are being augmented. But at any rate it speaks ill of their fate, that under the sway of foreigners, who may fairly be suspected of some harshness and greed, their inferiors, the true servi, are somewhat rapidly disappearing. However, it is by no means impossible that with a slavery so complete as that of the English theów the Normans were not very familiar in their own country[100].
§ 3. The Villeins.
The boors or coliberts.
Next above the servi we see the small but interesting class of buri, burs or coliberti. Probably it was not mentioned in the writ which set the commissioners their task, and this may well be the reason why it appears as but a very small class. It has some 900 members; still it is represented in fourteen shires: Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Warwick, Shropshire—in short, in the shires of Wessex and western Mercia. Twice over our record explains—a piece of rare good fortune—that buri and coliberti are all one[101]. In general they are presented to us as being akin rather to the servi than to the villani or bordarii, as when we are told, ‘In demesne there is one virgate of land and there are 3 teams and 11 servi and 5 coliberti, and there are 15 villani and 15 bordarii with 8 teams[102].’ But this rule is by no means unbroken; sometimes the coliberti are separated from the servi and a precedence over the cotarii or even over the bordarii is given them. Thus of a Wiltshire manor it is written, ‘In demesne there are 8 teams and 20 servi and 41 villani and 30 bordarii and 7 coliberti and 74 cotarii have among them all 27 teams[103].’ Again of a Warwickshire manor, ‘There is land for 26 teams; in demesne are 3 teams and 4 servi and 43 villani and 6 coliberti and 10 bordarii with 16 teams[104].’ A classification which turns upon legal status is cut by a classification which turns upon economic condition. The colibertus we take to be an unfreer man (how there come to be degrees of freedom is a question to be asked by and by) than the cotarius or the bordarius, but on a given manor he may be a more important person, for he may have plough beasts while the cotarius has none, he may have two oxen while the bordarius has but an ox.
The Continental colibert.
The English boor.
In calling him a colibertus the Norman clerks are giving him a foreign name, the etymological origin of which is very dark[105]; but this much seems plain, that in the France of the eleventh century a large class bearing this name had been formed out of ancient elements, Roman coloni and Germanic liti, a class which was not rightless (for it could be distinguished from the class of servi, and a colibertus might be made a servus by way of punishment for his crimes) but which yet was unfree, for the colibertus who left his lord might be pursued and recaptured[106]. As to the Englishman upon whom this name is bestowed we know him to be a gebúr, a boor, and we learn something of him from that mysterious document entitled ‘Rectitudines Singularum Personarum[107].’ His services, we are told, vary from place to place; in some districts he works for his lord two days a week and during harvest-time three days a week; he pays gafol in money, barley, sheep and poultry; also he has ploughing to do besides his week-work; he pays hearth-penny; he and one of his fellows must between them feed a dog. It is usual to provide him with an outfit of two oxen, one cow, six sheep, and seed for seven acres of his yardland, and also to provide him with household stuff; on his death all these chattels go back to his lord. Thus the boor is put before us as a tenant with a house and a yardland or virgate, and two plough oxen. He will therefore play a more important part in the manorial economy than the cottager who has no beasts. But he is a very dependent person; his beasts, even the poor furniture of his house, his pots and crocks, are provided for him by his lord. Probably it is this that marks him off from the ordinary villanus or ‘townsman,’ and brings him near the serf. In a sense he may be a free man. We have seen how the law, whether we look for it to the code of Cnut or to theLeges Henrici, is holding fast the proposition that every one who is not a theówman is a free man, that every one is either a liber homo or a servus. We have no warrant for denying to the boor the full wergild of 200 shillings. He pays the hearth-penny, or Peter’s penny, and the document that tells us this elsewhere mentions this payment as the mark of a free man[108]. And yet in a very true and accurate sense he may be unfree, unfree to quit his lord’s service. All that he has belongs to his lord; he must be perpetually in debt to his lord; he could hardly leave his lord without being guilty of something very like theft, an abstraction of chattels committed to his charge. Very probably if he flies, his lord has a right to recapture him. On the other hand, so dependent a man will be in a very strict sense a tenant at will. When he dies not only his tenement but his stock will belong to the lord; like the French colibert he is mainmortable. At the same time, to one familiar with the cartularies of the thirteenth century the rents and services that this boor has to pay and perform for his virgate will not appear enormous. If we mistake not, many a villanus of Henry III.’s day would have thought them light. Of course any such comparison is beset by difficulties, for at present we know all too little of the history of wages and prices. Nevertheless the intermediation of this class of buri or coliberti between the serfs and the villeins of Domesday Book must tend to raise our estimate both of the legal freedom and of the economic welfare of that great mass of peasants which is now to come before us[109].
Villani, bordarii, cotarii.