2. The legal arrangement of commons depends on a customary arrangement, in which free and unfree tenants take equal part[572].
3. The feudal theory of the lord's grant is insufficient to explain the different aspects assumed by rights of common, and especially the opposition between lord and free commoners.
CHAPTER III.
RURAL WORK AND RENTS.
Arrangement of work and rent.
Our best means of judging of the daily work in an English village of the thirteenth century is to study the detailed accounts of operations and payments imposed on the tenants for the benefit of a manorial lord. Surveys, extents, or inquisitions were drawn up chiefly for the purpose of settling these duties, and the wealth of material they afford enables us to form a judgment as to several interesting questions. It tells directly of the burden which rural workmen had to bear in the aristocratical structure of society; it gives indirectly an insight into all the ramifications of labour and production since the dues received by the lord were a kind of natural percentage upon all the work of the tenants; the combination of its details into one whole affords many a clue to the social standing and history of the peasant classes of which we have been treating.
Operations:
Ploughing.