From the manorial point of view the whole village is responsible for the collection of duties. There are payments expressly imposed on the whole. Such is the case with the yearly auxilium or donum. The partition of these between the householders is naturally effected in a meeting of the villagers[770]. Most services are laid on the virgaters separately. But they are all held answerable for the regularity and completeness with which every single member of the community performs his duties. As to free holdings, it is sometimes noticed especially to what extent they are subjected to the general arrangement: whether they participate with the rest in payments, and whether the tenants have to work in the same way as the villains[771]. Very often the documents point out that such and such a person ought to take part in certain obligations but has been exempted or fraudulently exempts himself, and that the village community has to bear a relative increase of its burdens[772]. A Glastonbury formula orders the steward to make inquiries about people who have been freed from the performance of their services in such a way that their responsibility has been thrown on the village[773].
But it would be very wrong to assume that the rural community could act only in the interest of the lord. Its solidarity is recognised in matters which do not concern him, or even which call forth an opposition between him and the peasantry.
Village and manor.
I have already spoken of the curious fact that the village is legally recognised as a unit, separated from the manor although existing within it. When the reeve and the four men attend the sheriff's tourn or the eyre, they do not represent the lord only, but also the village community. Part of their expenses are borne by the lord and part by their fellow villagers[774]. The documents tell us of craftsmen who have to work for the village as well as for the lord[775]. On a parallel with services due to the landowner, we find sometimes kindred services reserved for the village community[776]. If a person has been guilty of misdemeanours and is subjected to a special supervision, this supervision applies to his conduct in regard both to the lord and to the fellow villagers[777]. No doubt the relations of the village to its lord are much more fully described in the documents than the internal arrangement of the community, but this could not be otherwise in surveys compiled for the use of lords and stewards. Even the chance indications we gather as to these internal arrangements are sufficient to give an insight into the powerful ties of the village community.
The village as a juristic person.
Indeed, the rural settlement appears in our records as a 'juridical person.' The Court Rolls of Brightwaltham, edited for the Selden Society by Mr. Maitland, give a most beautiful example of this. The village of Brightwaltham enters into a formal agreement with the lord of the manor as to some commons. It surrenders its rights to the lord in regard to the wood of Hemele, and gets rid in return of the rights claimed by the lord in Estfield and in a wood called Trendale[778]. Nothing can be more explicit: the village acts as an organised community; it evidently has free disposition as to rights connected with the soil; it disposes of these rights not only independently of the lord, but in an exchange to which he appears as a party. We see no traces of the rightless condition of villains which is supposed to be their legal lot, and a powerful community is recognised by the lord in a form which bears all the traits of legal definition. In the same way the annals of Dunstable speak of the seisin of the township of Toddington[779], and of a feoffment made by them on behalf of the lord.
I have only to say in addition to this summing up of the subject, that the quasilegal standing of the villains in regard to the lord appears with special clearness when they stand arrayed against him as a group and not as single individuals. We could guess as much on general grounds, but the self-dependent position assumed by the 'communitas villanorum' of Brightwaltham is the more interesting, that it finds expression in a formal and recorded agreement.
The village as a farmer.
We catch a glimpse of the same phenomenon from yet another point of view. It is quite common to find entire estates let to farm to the rural community settled upon them[780]. In such cases the mediation of the bailiff might be dispensed with; the village entered into a direct agreement with the lord or his chief steward and undertook a certain set of services and payments, or promised to give a round sum. Such an arrangement was profitable to both parties. The villains were willing to pay dearly in order to free themselves from the bailiff's interference with their affairs; the landowner got rid of a numerous and inconvenient staff of stewards and servants; the rural life was organised on the basis of self-government with a very slight control on the part of the lord. Such agreements concern the general management of manors as well as the letting of domain land or of particular plots and rights[781]. Of course there was this great disadvantage for the lord, that the tie between him and his subjects was very much loosened by such arrangements, and sometimes he had to complain that the conditions under which the land was held were materially disturbed under the farmer-ship of the village. It is certain, that in a general way this mode of administration led to a gradual improvement in the social status of the peasantry.