A Short History of English Agriculture

by W. H. R. Curtler

The holding of the villein did not admit of partition by sale or descent, it remained undivided and entire. When the holder died all the land went to one of the sons if there were several, often to the youngest. The others sought work on the manor as craftsmen or labourers, or remained on the family plot. The holding therefore might contain more than one family, but to the lord remained one and undivided.[31]

In the fourth class came the bordarii, the cotarii, and the coliberti or buri; or, as we should say, the crofters, the cottagers, and the boors.

The bordarii numbered 82,600 in Domesday, and were subject to the same kind of services as the villeins, but the amount of the service was considerably less.[32] Their usual holding was 5 acres, and they are very often found on the demesne of the manor, evidently in this case labourers on the demesne, settled in cottages and provided with a bit of land of their own. The name failed to take root in this country, and the bordarii seem to become villeins or cottiers.[33]

The cotarii, cottiers or cottagers, were 6,800 in number, with small pieces of land sometimes reaching 5 acres.[34] Distinctly inferior to the villeins, bordarii, and cottars, but distinctly superior to the slaves, were the buri or coliberti who, with the bordars and cottars, would form a reserve of labour to supplement the ordinary working days at times when work was pressing, as in hay time and harvest. At the bottom of the social ladder in Domesday came the slaves, some 25,000 in number, who in the main had no legal rights, a class which had apparently already diminished and was diminishing in numbers, so that for the cultivation of the demesne the lord was coming to rely more on the labour of his tenants, and consequently the labour services of the villeins were being augmented.[35] The agricultural labourer as we understand him, a landless man working solely for wages in cash, was almost unknown.

All the arrangements of the manor aimed at supplying labour for the cultivation of the lord's demesne, and he had three chief officers to superintend it:

1. The seneschal, who answers to our modern steward or land agent, and where there were several manors supervised all of them. He attended to the legal business and held the manor courts. It was his duty to be acquainted with every particular of the manor, its cultivation, extent, number of teams, condition of the stock, &c. He was also the legal adviser of his lord; in fact, very much like his modern successor.

2. The bailiff for each manor, who collected rents, went to market to buy and sell, surveyed the timber, superintended the ploughing, mowing, reaping, &c., that were due as services from the tenants on the lord's demesne; and according to Fleta he was to prevent their 'casting off before the work was done', and to measure it when done.[36] And considering that those he superintended were not paid for their work, but rendering more or less unwelcome services, his task could not have been easy.

3. The praepositus or reeve, an office obligatory on every holder of a certain small quantity of land; a sort of foreman nominated from among the villeins, and to a certain extent representing their interests. His duties were supplementary to those of the bailiff: he looked after all the live and dead stock of the manor, saw to the manuring of the land, kept a tally of the day's work, had charge of the granary, and delivered therefrom corn to be baked and malt to be brewed.[37] Besides these three officers, on a large estate there would be a messor who took charge of the harvest, and many lesser officers, such as those of the akermanni, or leaders of the unwieldy plough teams; oxherds, shepherds, and swineherds to tend cattle, sheep, and pigs when they were turned on the common fields or wandered in the waste; also wardens of the woods and fences, often paid by a share in the profits connected with their charge; for instance, the swineherd of Glastonbury Abbey received a sucking-pig a year, the interior parts of the best pig, and the tails of all the others slaughtered.[38] On the great estates these offices tended to become hereditary, and many families did treat them as hereditary property, and were a great nuisance in consequence to their lords. At Glastonbury we find the chief shepherd so important a person that he was party to an agreement concerning a considerable quantity of land.[39] There were also on some manors 'cadaveratores', whose duty was to look into and report on the losses of cattle and sheep from murrain, a melancholy tale of the unhealthy conditions of agriculture.

The supervision of the tenants was often incessant and minute. According to the Court Rolls of the Manor of Manydown in Hampshire, tenants were brought to book for all kinds of transgressions. The fines are so numerous that it almost appears that every person on the estate was amerced from time to time. In 1365 seven tenants were convicted of having pigs in their lord's crops, one let his horse run in the growing corn, two had cattle among the peas, four had cattle on the lord's pasture, three had made default in rent or service, four were convicted of assault, nine broke the assize of beer, two had failed to repair their houses or buildings. In all thirty-four were in trouble out of a population of some sixty families. The account is eloquent of the irritating restrictions of the manor, and of the inconveniences of common farming.[40]

It is impossible to compare the receipts of the lord of the manor at this period with modern rents, or the position of the villein with the agricultural labourer; it may be said that the lord received a labour rent for the villein's holding, or that the villein received his holding as wages for the services done for the lord,[41] and part of the return due to the lord was for the use of the oxen with which he had stocked the villein's holding.