A very important item in the work necessary for medieval husbandry was the business of carrying produce from one part of the country to the other. The manors of a great lord were usually dispersed in several counties, and even in the case of small landowners it was not very easy to arrange a regular communication with the market. The obligation to provide horses and carts gains in importance accordingly[605]. These averagia are laid out for short and long distances, and the peasants have to take their turn at them one after the other[606]. They were bound to carry corn to London or Bristol according to the size of their holdings[607]. Special importance was attached to the carriage of the 'farm,' that is of the products designed for the consumption of the lord[608]. In some surveys we find the qualification that the peasants are not obliged to carry anything but such material as may be put on the fire, i.e. used in the kitchen[609]. In the manor itself there are many carriage duties to be performed: carts are required for the grain, or for spreading the dung. The work of loading and of following the carts is imposed on those who are not able to provide the implements[610]. And alongside of the duties of carriage by horses or oxen we find the corresponding manual duty. The 'averagium super dorsum suum' falls on the small tenant who does not own either horses or oxen[611]. Such small people are also made to drive the swine or geese to the market[612]. The lord and his chief stewards must look sharp after the distribution of these duties in order to prevent wealthy tenants from being put to light duties through the protection of the bailiffs, who may be bribed for the purpose[613].
It would be hard to imagine any kind of agricultural work which is not imposed on the peasantry in these manorial surveys. The tenants mind the lord's ploughs, construct houses and booths for him, repair hedges and dykes, work in vineyards, wash and shear the sheep[614], etc. In some cases the labour has to be undertaken by them, not in the regular run of their services, but by special agreement, as it were, in consideration of some particular right or permission granted to them[615]. Also it happens from time to time that the people of one manor have to perform some services in another, for instance, because they use pasture in that other manor[616]. Such 'forinsec' labour may be due even from tenants of a strange lord. By the side of purely agricultural duties we find such as are required by the political or judicial organisation of the manor. Peasants are bound to guard and hang thieves, to carry summonses and orders, to serve at the courts of the superior lord and of the king[617].
Classification of labour-services.
In consequence of the great variety of these labour-services they had to be reduced to some chief and plain subdivisions for purposes of a general oversight. Three main classes are very noticeable notwithstanding all variety: the araturae, averagia, and manuoperationes. These last are also called hand-dainae or daywerke[618]; and the records give sometimes the exact valuation of the work to be performed during a day in every kind of labour. Sometimes all the different classes are added up under one head for a general reckoning, and without any distinction as to work performed by hand or with the help of horse or ox. Among the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury[619], for instance, we find at Borle '1480 work-days divided into 44 weeks of labour from the virgaters, 88 from the cotters, 320 from the tofters holding small tenements in the fields.' In Bockyng the work-days of 52 weeks are reckoned to be 3222. It must be added, that when such a general summing up appears, it is mostly to be taken as an indication that the old system based on labour in kind is more or less shaken. The aim of throwing together the different classes of work is to get a general valuation of its worth, and such a valuation in money is commonly placed by the side of the reckoning. The single day-work yields sometimes only one penny or a little more, and the landlord is glad to exchange this cumbrous and cheap commodity for money-rents, even for small ones.
Payments in kind.
We must now proceed to examine the different forms assumed by payments in kind and money: they present a close parallel to the many varieties of labour-service. Thirteenth-century documents are full of allusions to payments in kind—that most archaic form of arranging the relations between a lord and his subjects. The peasants give corn under different names, and for various reasons: as gavelseed, in addition to the money-rent paid for their land[620]; as foddercorn, of oats for the feeding of horses[621]; as gathercorn, which a manorial servant has to collect or gather from the several homesteads[622]; as corn-bole, a best sheaf levied at harvest-time[623]. Of other provender supplied to the lord's household honey is the most common, both in combs and in a liquid form[624]. Ale is sometimes brewed for the same purpose, and sometimes malt and braseum furnished as material to be used in the manorial farm[625]. Animals are also given in rent, mostly sheep, lambs, and sucking-pigs. The mode of selection is peculiar in some cases. In the Christ Church (Canterbury) manor of Monckton each sulung has to render two lambs, and the lord's servant has the right to take those which he pleases, whereupon the owner gets a receipt, evidently in view of subsequent compensation from the other co-owners of the sulung[626]. If no suitable lamb is to be found, eight pence are paid instead of it as mail (mala). On one of the estates of Gloucester Abbey a freeman has to come on St. Peter's and Paul's day with a lamb of the value of 12d., and besides, 12 pence in money are to be hung in a purse on the animal's neck[627]. Poultry is brought almost everywhere, but these prestations are very different in their origin. The most common reason for giving capons is the necessity for getting the warranty of the lord[628]: in this sense the receipt and payment of the rent constitute an acknowledgment on the part of the lord that he is bound to protect his men, and on the part of the peasant that he is the lord's villain. 'Wood hens' are given for licence to take a load of wood in a forest; similar prestations occur in connexion with pasture and with the use of a moor for turbary[629]. At Easter the peasantry greet their protectors by bringing eggs: in Walton, a manor of St. Paul's, London, the custom is said to exist in honour of the lord, and at the free discretion of the tenants[630]. Besides all those things which may be 'put on the fire and eaten,' rents in kind sometimes take the shape of some object for permanent use, especially of some implement necessary for the construction of the plough[631]. Trifling rents, consisting of flowers or roots of ginger, are sometimes imposed with the object of testifying to the lord's seignory; but the payers of such rents are generally freeholders[632]. I need not dwell long on the enumeration of all the strange prestations which existed during the Middle Ages, and partly came down to our own time: any reader curious about them will find an enormous mass of interesting material in Hazlitt's 'Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors.'
Money-payments.
In opposition to labour and rents in kind we find a great many payments in money. Some of these are said in as many words to have stept into the place of labour services; of mowing, carrying, making hedges[633], etc. The same may be the case in regard to produce: barlick-silver is paid instead of barley, fish-silver evidently instead of fish, malt-silver instead of malt; a certain payment instead of salt, and so on[634]. But sometimes the origin of the money rent is more difficult to ascertain. We find, for instance, a duty on sheep, which is almost certainly an original imposition when it appears as fald-silver. Even so the scythe-penny from every scythe, the bosing-silver from every horse and cart, the wood-penny, probably for the use of wood as fuel, must be regarded as original taxes and not quit-rents or commutation-rents[635]. Pannage is paid in the same way for the swine grazing in the woods[636]. Ward-penny appears also in connexion with cattle, but with some special shade of meaning which it is difficult to bring out definitely; the name seems to point to protection, and also occurs in connexion with police arrangements[637].
Classification of money payments.
I must acknowledge that in a good many cases I have been unable to find a satisfactory explanation for various terms which occur in the records for the divers payments. An attentive study of local usages will probably lead to definite conclusions as to most of them[638]. From a general point of view it is interesting to notice, that we find already in our records some attempts to bring all the perplexing variety of payments to a few main designations. Annual rents are, of course, reckoned out under the one head of 'census.' Very obvious reasons suggested the advisability of computing the entire money-proceed yielded by the estate[639]. It sometimes happens that the general sum made up in this way, fixed as it is at a constant amount, is used almost as a name for a complex of land[640]. A division of rents into old and new ones does not require any particular explanation[641]. But several other subdivisions are worth notice. The rent paid from the land often appears separately as landgafol or landchere. It is naturally opposed to payments that fall on the person as poll taxes[642]. These last are considered as a return for the personal protection guaranteed by the lord to his subjects. Of the contrast between gafol as a customary rent and mál as a payment in commutation I have spoken already, and I have only to add now, that gild is sometimes used in the same sense as mál[643]. Another term in direct opposition to gafol is the Latin donum[644]. It seems to indicate a special payment imposed as a kind of voluntary contribution on the entire village. To be sure, there was not much free will to be exercised in the matter; all the dependent people of the township had to pay according to their means[645]. But the tax must have been considered as a supplementary one in the same sense as supplementary boon-work. It may have been originally intended in some cases as an equivalent for some rights surrendered by the lord, as a mál or gild, in fact[646]. In close connexion with the donum we find the auxilium[647], also an extraordinary tax paid once a year, and distinguished from the ordinary rent. It appears as a direct consequence of the political subjection of the tenantry[648]: it is, in fact, merely an expression of the right to tallage. Our records mention it sometimes as apportioned according to the number of cattle owned by the peasant, but this concerns only the mode of imposition of the duty and hardly its origin[649]. As I have said already, the auxilium is in every respect like the donum. One very characteristic trait of both taxes is, that they are laid primarily on the whole village, which is made to pay a certain round sum as a body[650]. The burden is divided afterwards between the several householders, and the number of cattle, and more particularly of the beasts of plough kept on the holding, has of course to be taken into account more than anything else. But the manorial administration does not much concern itself with these details: the township is answerable for the whole sum.