[53] It was highly desirable for the Abbot to maintain this distinction. In the King’s courts the villein had no case against his lord save for bodily injury. In practice it appears that the Abbot of St. Albans could inflict even bodily injury with impunity. See, for instance, the case of Nicholas Tybson, who, having been stripped, thrashed and wounded by the Abbot’s servants, brought an action for redress. The case was at once dismissed as a false appeal on the ground that Tybson was the born villein of the Abbot (Gesta Abbatum III, p. 39).
[54] T. W. Page: ‘End of Villeinage in England’ passim. See, too, Petit-Dutaillis’ introduction to Réville, where the views of Stubbs and Thorold Rogers on this subject are exploded. The period 1349–1381, it is proved, was not marked (as they believed) by the reduction to serfdom of men emancipated before the Black Death, or the re-assertion on the part of landlords of labour services already commuted for money payments. On the contrary, the process of commutation (which had not advanced nearly so far by 1349 as Stubbs thought) proceeded at an increasing rate after 1349.
[55] No manumissions occur in the records until more than a generation after the revolt: evidently the old system remained unprosperous but intact at St. Albans in 1381.
[56] Réville: Le Soulèvement des Travailleurs d’Angleterre en 1381, p. xxv. See also Gesta Abbatum II, p. 123 and III, pp. 39–41, Whethamstede II, pp. 324 and 333. At the cell of Tynemouth in 1378 there is no trace of commutation in the manor rolls; the old system still exists in its entirety; see Gibson: History of Tynemouth, Vol. II, Appendix, p. cxxi.
[57] Amundesham I, 163.
[58] Whethamstede II, Intro., p. xxxv.
[59] A few years earlier Abbot Heyworth had suppressed a similar rising at Barnet (Whethamstede I, 451–2).
[60] Oxford Studies in Social and Legal History, Vol. I, p. 177.
[61] See Utopia (Clarendon Press Edition), pp. 13–20.
[62] It is unfortunate that the surveys of the Commissioners in 1535 for Hertford have perished. At the same time the condition of monastic estates was wonderfully similar, and St. Albans was probably no exception.