Villainage in England: Essays in English Mediaeval History

by Paul Vinogradoff

Payments to State and Church.

It is to be added that the payment is sometimes actually mentioned as a political one in direct connexion with 'forinsec' duties towards the king. The burdens which lay on the land in consequence of the requirements of State and Church appear not unfrequently in the documents. Among those the scutage and hidage are the most important. The first of these taxes is so well known that I need not stop to discuss it. It may be noticed however that in relation to the dependent people scutage is not commonly spoken of; the tax was levied under this name from the barons and the armed gentry, and was mostly transmitted by these to the lower strata of society under some other name, as an aid or a tallage. Hidage is historically connected with the old English Danegeld system, and in some cases its amount is set out separately from other payments, and the tenants of a manor have to pay it to the bailiff of the hundred and not to the steward. A smaller payment called ward-penny is bound up with it, probably as a substitute for the duty of keeping watch and ward[651]. In the north the hidage is replaced by cornage[652], a tax which has given rise to learned controversy and doubt; it looks like an assessment according to the number of horns of cattle, pro numero averiorum, as our Latin extents would say. The Church has also an ancient claim on the help of the faithful; the churchscot of Saxon times often occurs in the feudal age under the name of churiset or cheriset[653]. It is mostly paid in kind, but may be found occasionally as a money-rent.

Questions suggested by a survey of work and rents.

A survey of the chief aspects assumed by the work and the payments of the dependent people was absolutely necessary, in order to enable us to understand the descriptions of rural arrangements which form the most instructive part of the so-called extents. But every survey of terms and distinctions (even if it were much more detailed than the one I am able to present), will give only a very imperfect idea of the obligations actually laid on the peasantry. It must needs take up the different species one by one and consider them separately, whereas in reality they were meant to fit together into a whole. On the other hand it may create a false impression by enumerating in systematic order facts which belonged to different localities and perhaps to different epochs. To keep clear of these dangers we have to consider the deviations of practical arrangements from the rules laid down in the books and the usual combinations of the elements described.

Cases where the usual order was not adhered to.

When one reads the careful notices in the cartularies as to the number of days and the particular occasions when work has to be performed for the lord, a simple question is suggested by the minuteness of detail. What happened when this very definite arrangement came into collision with some other equally exacting order? One of the three days of week-work might, for instance, fall on a great feast; or else the weather might be too bad for out-of-doors work. Who was to suffer or to gain by such casualties? The question is not a useless one. The manorial records raise it occasionally, and their ways of settling it are not always the same. We find that in some cases the lord tried to get rid of the inconveniences occasioned by such events, or at least to throw one part of the burden back on the dependent population; in Barling, for instance, a manor of St. Paul's, London[654], of two feasts occurring in one week and even in two consecutive weeks, one profits to the villains and the other to the lord; that is to say, the labourer escapes one day's work altogether. But the general course seems to have been to liberate the peasants from work both on occasion of a festival and if the weather was exceptionally inclement[655]. Both facts are not without importance: it must be remembered that the number of Church festivals was a very considerable one in those days. Again, although the stewards were not likely to be very sentimental as to bad weather, the usual test of cold in case of ploughing seems to have been the hardness of the soil—a certain percentage of free days must have occurred during the winter at least. And what is even more to be considered—when the men were very strictly kept to their week-work under unfavourable circumstances, the landlord must have gained very little although the working people suffered much. The reader may easily fancy the effects of what must have been a very common occurrence, when the village householders sent out their ploughs on heavy clay in torrents of rain. The system of customary work on certain days was especially clumsy in such respects, and it is worth notice that in harvest-time the landlords rely chiefly on boon-days. These were not irrevocably fixed, and could be shifted according to the state of the weather. Still the week-work was so important an item in the general arrangement of labour-services that the inconveniences described must have acted powerfully in favour of commutation.

Relation between the customary system and the arbitrary authority of the lord.

Of course, the passage from one system to the other, however desirable for the parties concerned, was not to be effected easily and at once: a considerable amount of capital in the hands of the peasantry was required to make it possible, and another necessary requirement was a sufficient circulation of money. While these were wanting the people had to abide by the old labour system. The facts we have been discussing give indirect proof that there was not much room for arbitrary changes in this system. Everything seems ruled and settled for ever. It may happen, of course, that notwithstanding the supposed equality between the economic strength of the different holdings, some tenants are unable to fulfil the duties which their companions perform[656]. As it was noticed before, the shares could not be made to correspond absolutely to each other, and the distribution of work and payments according to a definite pattern was often only approximate[657]. Again, the lord had some latitude in selecting one or the other kind of service to be performed by his men[658]. But, speaking generally, the settlement of duties was a very constant one, and manorial documents testify that every attempt by the lord to dictate a change was met by emphatic protests on the part of the peasantry[659]. The tenacity of custom may be gathered from the fact that when we chance to possess two sets of extents following each other after a very considerable lapse of time, the renders in kind and the labour-services remain unmodified in the main[660]. One has to guard especially against the assumption that such expressions as 'to do whatever he is bid' or 'whatever the lord commands' imply a complete servility of the tenant and unrestricted power on the part of the lord to exploit his subordinate according to his pleasure. Such expressions have been used as a test of the degree of subjection of the villains at different epochs; it has been contended, that the earlier our evidence is, the more complete the lord's sway appears to be[661]. The expressions quoted above may seem at first glance to countenance the idea, but an attentive and extended study of the documents will easily show that, save in exceptional cases, the earlier records are by no means harder in their treatment of the peasantry than the later. The eleventh century is, if anything, more favourable to the subjected class as regards the imposition of labour-services than the thirteenth, and we shall see by-and-by that the observation applies even more to Saxon times. In the light of such a general comparison, we have to explain the above-mentioned phrases in a different way. 'Whatever he is bid' applies to the quality and not to the quantity of the work[662]. It does not mean that the steward has a right to order the peasant about like a slave, to tear him at pleasure from his own work, and to increase his burden whenever he likes. It means simply that such and such a virgater or cotter has to appear in person or by proxy to perform his week-work of three days, or two days, or four days, according to the case, and that it is not settled beforehand what kind of work he is to perform. He may have to plough, or to carry, or to dig trenches, or to do anything else, according to the bidding of the steward. A similar instance of uncertainty may be found in the expression 'without measure[663]' which sometimes occurs in extents. It would be preposterous to construe it as an indication of work to be imposed at pleasure. It is merely a phrase used to suit the case when the work had to be done by the day and not by a set quantity; if, for instance, a man had to plough so many times and the number of acres to be ploughed was not specified. It is true that such vague descriptions are mostly found in older surveys, but the inference to be drawn from the fact is simply that manorial customs were developing gradually from rather indefinite rules to a minute settlement of details. There is no difference in the main principle, that the dependent householder was not to be treated as a slave and had a customary right to devote part of his time to the management of his own affairs.

The holdings and the population.

Another point is to be kept well in view. The whole arrangement of a manorial survey is constructed with the holding as its basis. The names of virgaters and cotters are certainly mentioned for the sake of clearness, but it would be wrong to consider the duties ascribed to them as aiming at the person. John Newman may be said to hold a virgate, to join with his plough-oxen in the tillage of twenty acres, to attend at three boon-days in harvest time, and so forth. It would be misleading to take these statements very literally and to infer that John Newman was alone to use the virgate and to work for it. He was most probably married, and possibly had grown-up sons to help him; very likely a brother was there also, and even servants, poor houseless men from the same village or from abroad. Every householder has a more or less considerable following (sequela)[664], and it was by no means necessary for the head of the family to perform all manorial work in his own person. He had to appear or to send one workman on most occasions and to come with all his people on a few days—the boon-days namely. The description of the precariae is generally the only occasion when the extents take this into account, namely, that there was a considerable population in the village besides those tenants who were mentioned by name[665]. I need not point out, that the fact has an important meaning. The medieval system, in so far as it rested on the distribution of holdings, was in many respects more advantageous to the tenantry than to the lord. It was superficial in a sense, and from the point of view of the lord did not lead to a satisfactory result; he did not get the utmost that was possible from his subordinates. The factor of population was almost disregarded by it, households very differently constituted in this respect were assumed to be equal, and the tenacity of custom prevented an increase of rents and labour-services in proportion to the growth of resource and wealth among the peasants. Some attempts to get round these difficulties are noticeable in the surveys: they are mostly connected with the regulation of boon-works. But these exceptional measures give indirect proof of the very insufficient manner in which the question was generally settled.