The Enclosures in England: An Economic Reconstruction

by Harriett Bradley Fitt

Land holding was regarded as a misfortune in the fourteenth century. The decline in fertility had made it impossible for a villain to support himself and his family and perform the accustomed services and pay the rent for his land. Sometimes heirs were excused on account of their poverty. Page has made note of the prevailing custom of fining these heirs for the privilege of refusing the land:

In 1340 J. F., who held a messuage and half a virgate, had to pay two shillings for permission to give up the land, because he was unable to render the services due from it. Three other men at the same time paid six pence each not to be compelled to take up customary land ... at Woolston, 1340, R. G. gave up his messuage and half virgate because he could not render the necessary services; whereupon T. S. had to pay three shillings three pence that he might not be forced to take the holding, and another villain paid six shillings eight pence for the same thing.[[58]]

Miss Levett mentions the fact that cases were fairly frequent at the Winchester manors in the fourteenth century where a widow or next of kin refused to take up land on account of poverty or impotence;[[59]] and three villains of Forncett gave up their holdings before 1350 on account of their poverty.[[60]]

In case no one could be found who would willingly take up the land, the method of compulsion was tried. The responsibility for providing a tenant in these cases seems to have been shifted to the whole community. A villain chosen by the whole homage had to take up the land. At Crawley in 1315 there were two such cases. A fine was paid by one villain for a cottage and ten acres "que devenerunt in manus domini tanquam escheata pro defectu tenentium & ad que eligebatur per totam decenuam." At Twyford in 1343-1344, J. paid a fine for a messuage and a half virgate of land, "ad que idem Johannes electus est per totum homagium."[[61]] In other entries cited by Page, the element of compulsion is unmistakable: the new holder of land is described as "electus per totum homagium ad hoc compulsus," a phrase which is frequently found also in the entries of fines paid on some of the Winchester manors after the Black Death.[[62]]

This method of compulsion was useful to some extent, but there were limits beyond which it could not be pushed. Five men of Therfield in 1351 were ordered to take up customary land, and several of them left the manor rather than obey. "Vendiderunt quod habuerunt et recesserunt nocitante."[[63]] At Nailesbourne, in the same year, "Robertus le Semenour compulsus finivit et clam recessit et ea tenere recusavit."[[64]] The problem which confronted landowners during the Black Death was not so much an absolute lack of men on the manors, as a stubborn unwillingness on the part of these men to hold land. There were enough men left by the pestilence, but they were determined to avoid taking up the tenements whose holders had died. The pressure which was brought upon the villains to induce them to take up land and to prevent them from leaving the manor could not prevent the desertions, which had begun before the pestilence, and which took away the men who would naturally have supplied the places of those who died. The whole village must have been anxious to prevent the desertion of these men, for the community was held responsible for the services from vacant tenements, when they failed to provide a tenant. At Meon, for instance, each of twenty-six tenants paid 1 d. in place of works due from a vacant holding, according to an arrangement which had been made before the Black Death,[[65]] and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains left the manor, their land was "tradita toto homagio ad faciendum servicia et consuetudines."[[66]] In spite of the deterring force which must have been exerted by public opinion under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive measures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture those who had fled, the records are full of the names of those who had been successful in making their escape. Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage from the Winchester manors. "Villeins were apt 'to go away secretly' and to be no more found."[[67]] Page describes a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf "recessit a dominio et dereliquit terram suam." At Chilton, between 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by night.[[68]] At Forncett, "Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tenements had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs especially who were relinquishing their land; for a larger proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements."[[69]] This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity of the land.

The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they had. They were excused of a part of their services in some cases, and in others all of the services were definitely commuted for small sums of money. When no tenants for vacant land could be secured who would perform the customary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to commute them. "'So and so holds such land for rent, because no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is that the money rent paid in these cases was always less than the value of the services which had formerly been exacted from the land; not only that, it was less than the money equivalent for which those services had sometimes been commuted, an amount far less than the market value of the services in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the traditional services, "quia nullus tenere voluit," he contracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than twenty-five shillings and included the church scot for one virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total services of one virgate valued at the rate at which they were ordinarily "sold" must have amounted to at least eighteen or twenty shillings. At Wargrave the services of thirty-two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and the same sum was paid by each of twenty-three virgates at Waltham.[[70]]

At Forncett and on the manors of the Berkeley estates commutation had little part in the disappearance of labor dues. The vacated land was leased in larger or smaller parcels at the best rents which could be obtained. This rent bore no relation to the value of the services formerly due from the land. The customary tenements which had been the units upon which labor dues were assessed were broken up, and the acres leased separately, or in new combinations, to other men.[[71]] At Forncett, as in the case of the Winchester manors where the services were commuted, the terms of the new arrangement can be compared with those of the old, and it is seen that the money rent obtained was less than the value of the services formerly due. The customary services were here valued at over two shillings per acre; the average rent obtained was less than one shilling an acre. The net pecuniary result of the change, then, was the same as though the services had been commuted for money at less than their value.

Another method of reducing rents in this period was the remission of a part of the services due. Miss Levett notes the extent to which this took place on the Winchester manors, and suggests that the Bishop wished to avoid the wastefulness and inefficiency of serf labor.[[72]] She overlooks the fact that he failed to exact the money payment in place of the services for which manorial custom provided. It was a well established custom that in case work owed by the tenants was not used they should pay money instead. The amount of work needed each year on the demesne varied according to the size of the harvest, etc., but the number of days' works for which the tenants was liable was fixed. The surplus of works owed above those needed were "sold" each year to the villains. Frequently the number of works sold exceeded the number performed, although formal commutation of dues had not taken place. At Nailesbourne (1348-1349), 4755 works were due from the villains, but nearly 4000 of these were sold.[[73]] If the Bishop had merely wished to avoid waste, then, in ceasing to require the performance of villain services on his manors, he would have required the payment of the money equivalent of these services. When the services were excused, and the customary alternative of a money payment also, the change was clearly an intentional reduction in the burden of villain tenure. This fact makes emphasis upon the payment of money as the distinguishing feature of the changed relations between landlord and tenant in this period misleading. There was every precedent for requiring a money payment in the place of services not wanted. When, therefore, a great many services were simply allowed to lapse, it is an indication that it was impossible to exact the payment. It makes little difference whether the services were commuted at a lower rate than that at which they had formerly been "sold" or whether the villain was simply held accountable for a smaller number of services at the old rate; in either case the rent was reduced, and the burden of the tenant was less.

The reduction of rent is thus the characteristic and fundamental feature of all of the changes of land tenure during this period. This fact is ignored by historians who suppose the chief factor in the commutation movement to have been the desire of prosperous villains to rid themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom. Vinogradoff, for instance, in his preface to the monograph from which most of the foregoing illustrations have been drawn, has nothing at all to say of the reduction of rent and the poverty of the tenants when he is speaking of the various circumstances attending the introduction of money payments.

In the particular case under discussion the cultural policy of William of Wykeham may have suggested arrangements in commutation of labour services and rents in kind. In other cases similar results were connected with war expenditures and town life. In so far the initiative in selling services came from the class of landowners. But there were powerful tendencies at work in the life of the peasants which made for the same result. The most comprehensive of these tendencies was connected, it seems to me, with the accumulation of capital in the hands of the villains under a system of customary dues. When rents and services became settled and lost their elasticity, roughly speaking, in the course of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, the surplus of profits from agriculture was bound to collect in the hands of those who received them directly from the soil, and it was natural for these first receivers to turn the proceeds primarily towards an improvement of their social condition; the redemption of irksome services was a conspicuous manifestation of this policy.[[74]]