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^Qyb

THE

ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY

WORKS BY FREDERIC SEEBOHM.

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THE

ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMTJMTY

EXAMINED IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE MANORIAL AND

TRIBAL SYSTEMS AND TO THE COMMON OR OPEN

FIELD SYSTEM OF HUSBANDRY

AN ESSAY IN ECONOMIC HISTORY

FBEDEKIC SEEBOHM

HON.LL.D.(EDO.). LlTT.D.(CAitB.)

D.Litt. (Oxford)

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DEDICATED BY PEBMISSION

SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON

PEEFACB.

When I had the honour to lay the two papers which
have expanded into this volume before the Society
of Antiquaries, it was with a confession and an
apology which, in publishing and dedicating to them
this Essay, I now repeat.

I confessed to having approached the subject not as
an antiquary but as a student of Economic History,
and even with a directly political interest. To learn
the meaning of the old order of things, with its
6 community ' and ' equality ' as a key to a right
understanding of the new order of things, with its
contrasting individual independence and inequality,
this was the object which in the first instance
tempted me to poach upon antiquarian manors, and
it must be my apology for treating from an economic
point of view a subject which has also an antiquarian
interest.

To statesmen, whether of England or of the new
Englands across the oceans, the importance can
hardly be over-estimated of a sound appreciation of

viii Preface.

the nature of that remarkable economic evolution
in the course of which the great English speaking
nations have, so to speak, become charged in our
time with the trial of the experiment — let us hope
also with the solution of the problem — of freedom
and democracy, using the words in the highest political
sense as the antipodes of Paternal Government and
Communism.

Perhaps, without presumption, it may be said that
the future happiness of the human race — the success
or failure of the planet — is in no small degree
dependent upon the ultimate course of what seems,
to us at least, to be the main stream of human pro-
gress, upon whether it shall be guided by the fore-
sight of statesmen into safe channels or misguided,
diverted, or obstructed, till some great social or
political convulsion proves that its force and its direc-
tion have been misunderstood.

It may indeed be but too true that, in spite of the
economic lessons of the past-?—

The weary Titan ! with deaf
Ears, and labour dimmed eyes,
Regarding neither to right
Nor left, goes passively by,
Staggering on to her goal ;
Bearing on shoulders immense,
Atlantean, the load,
Wellnigh not to be borne,
Of the too vast orb of her fate.

And she may continue to do so, however clearly
and truthfully the economic lessons of the past may
be dinned into her ear. But still the deep sense I

Preface. ix

have endeavoured to describe in these few sentences
of the importance of a sound understanding of English
Economic History as the true basis of much of the
practical politics of the future will be accepted, I
trust, as a sufficient reason why, ill-furnished as I
have constantly found myself for the task, I should
have ventured to devote some years of scant leisure
to the production of this imperfect Essay.

It is simply an attempt to set English Economic
History upon right lines at its historical commence-
ment by trying to solve the still open question
whether it began with the freedom or with the serf-
dom of the masses of the people — whether the village
communities living in the ' hams ' and ' tons ' of
England were, at the outset of English history, free
village communities or communities in serfdom under
a manorial lordship ; and further, what were their
relations to the tribal communities of the Western
and less easily conquered portions of the island.

On the answer to this question depends funda-
mentally the view to be taken by historians (let us
say by politicians also) of the nature of the economic
evolution which has taken place in England since the
English Conquest. If answered in one way, English
Economic History begins with free village communities
which gradually degenerated into the serfdom of the
Middle Ages. If answered in the other way, it begins
with the serfdom of the masses of the rural popula-
tion under Saxon rule — a serfdom from which it has
taken 1,000 years of English economic evolution to
set them free.

x Preface.

Much learning and labour have already been ex-
pended upon this question, and fresh light has been
recently streaming in upon it from many sides.

A real flash of light was struck when German
students perceived the connexion between the widely
prevalent common or open field system of husbandry,
and the village community which for centuries had
used it as a shell. Whatever may be the ultimate
verdict upon G. L. von Maurer's theory of the German
' mark,' there can be no doubt of its service as a
working hypothesis by means of which the study
of the economic problem has been materially ad-
vanced.

A great step was taken as regards the English
problem when Mr. Kemble, followed by Mr. Freeman
and others, attempted to trace in English constitu-
tional history the development of ancient German
free institutions, and to solve the English problem
upon the lines of the German ' mark.' The merit oi
this attempt will not be destroyed even though doubt
should be thrown upon the correctness of this
suggested solution of the problem, and though other
and non-German elements should prove to have been
larger factors in English economic history. The
caution observed by Professor iStubbs in the early
chapters of his great work on English Constitutional
History may be said to have at least reopened the
question whether the German ' mark system ' ever
really took root in England.

Another step was gained on somewhat new lines
when Professor Nasse, of Bonn, pointed out to English

Preface. xi

students (who hitherto had not realised the fact) that
the English and German land systems were the same,
and that in England also the open-field system of
husbandry was the shell of the mediaeval village com-
munity. The importance of this view is obvious,
and it is to be regretted that no English student has
as yet followed it up by an adequate examination of
the remarkably rich materials which lie at the dis-
posal of English Economic History.

A new flash of light at once lit up the subject
and greatly widened its interest when Sir Henry S.
Maine, carrying with him to India his profound insight
into ' Ancient Law,' recognised the fundamental
analogies between the ' village communities ' of the
East and the West, and sought to use actually sur-
viving Indian institutions as typical representatives
of ancient stages of similar Western institutions. Un-
doubtedly much more light may be looked for from
the same direction.

Further, Sir Henry S. Maine has opened fresh
ground, and perhaps (if he will permit me to say so)
even to some extent narrowed the area within which
the theory of archaic free village communities can
be applied, by widening the range of investigation in
yet another direction, in his lectures on the ' Early
History of Institutions ' he has turned his telescope
upon the tribal communities, and especially the ' tribal
system* of the Brehon laws, and tried to dissolve
parts of its mysterious nebulas into stars — a work in
which he has been followed by Mr. W. F. Skene
with results which give a peculiar interest to the third

Niii Preface.

volume of that learned writer's valuable work on
' Celtic Scotland.'

Lastly, under the close examination of Dr. Landau
and Professors Hanssen and Meitzen, the open-field
system itself has been found in Germany to take
several distinct forms, corresponding, in part at least,
with differences in economic conditions, if not directly
with various stages in economic development, from
the early tribal to the later manorial system.

It is very much to be desired that the open-field
system of the various districts of France should be
carefully studied in the same way. An examination
of its widely extended modern remains could hardly
fail to throw important light upon the contents of the
cartularies which have been published in the ' Collec-
tion de Documents Inedits sur l'histoire de France,'
amongst which the ' Polyptique d'lrminonj with
M. Guerard's invaluable preface, is pre-eminently
useful.

In the meantime, whilst students had perhaps been
too exclusively absorbed in working in the rich mine
of early German institutions, Mr. Coote has done
service in recalling attention in his ' Neglected Fact
in English History ' and his ' Romans of Britain ' to
the evidences which remain of the survival of Roman
influences in English institutions, even though it may
be true that some of his conclusions may require re-
consideration. The details of the later Roman pro-
vincial government, and of the economic conditions
of the German and British provinces, remain so
obscure even after the labours of Mommsen, Mar-

Preface. xiii

quardt, and Madvig, that he who attempts to build
a bridge across the gulf of the Teutonic conquests
between Eoman and English institutions still builds it
somewhat at a venture.

It is interesting to find that problems connected
with early English and German Economic History are
engaging the careful and independent research also
of American students. The contributions of Mr.
Denman Eoss, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and
Professor Allen, of the University of Wisconsin, will
be welcomed by fellow-students of these questions in
the old country.

It has seemed to me that the time may have
come when an inquiry directed strictly upon
economic lines, and carefully following the English
evidence, might strike a light of its own, in the
strength of which the various side lights might
perhaps be gathered together and some clear result
obtained, at least as regards the main course of
economic evolution in England.

The English, like the Continental village com-
munity, as we have said, inhabited a shell — an open-
field system — into the nooks and corners of which it
was curiously bound and fitted, and from which it
was apparently inseparable.

The remains of this cast-off shell still survive m
parishes where no Enclosure Act happens to have
swept them away. The common or open field system
can even now be studied on the ground within the town-
ship in which I am writing as well as in many others

xiv Preface.

Men are still living who have held and worked farms
under its inconvenient rules, and who know the
meaning of its terms and eccentric details. Making
use of this circumstance the method pursued in this
Essay will be, first, to become familiar with the little
distinctive marks and traits of the English open-
field system, so that they may be readily recognised
wherever they present themselves ; and then, pro-
ceeding from the known to the unknown, carefully
to trace back the shell by searching and watching
for its marks and traits as far into the past as evi-
dence can be found. Using the knowledge so
acquired about the shell as the key, the inquiry will
turn upon its occupant. Examining how the mediaeval
English village community in serfdom fitted itself into
the shell, and then again working back from the
known to the unknown, it may be perhaps possible
to discern whether, within historical times, it once
had been free, or whether its serfdom was as old as
the shell.

The relation of the ' tribal system ' in Wales, in
Ireland, and in Germany to the open-field system,
and so also to the village community, will be a
necessary branch of the inquiry. It will embrace
also both the German and the Roman sources of
serfdom and of the manorial system of land manage-
ment.

It may at least be possible that Economic History
may sometimes find secure stepping stones over what
may be impassable gulfs in constitutional history ;

Preface. xv

and it obviously does not follow that a continuity
lost, perhaps, to the one may not have been pre-
served by the other. The result of a strictly economic
inquiry may, as already suggested, prove that more
things went to the ' making of England ' than were
imported in the keels of the English invaders of
Britain. But whatever the result — whatever modifi-
cations of former theories the facts here brought
into view, after full consideration by others, may
suggest — I trust that this Essay will not be regarded
as controversial in its aim or its spirit. I had rather
that it were accepted simply as fellow-work, as a
stone added at the eleventh hour to a structure in
the building of which others, some of whose names I
have mentioned, have laboured during the length
and heat of the day.

In conclusion, I have to tender my best thanks
to Sir Henry S. Maine for the kind interest he has
taken, and the sound advice he has given, during the
preparation of this Essay for the press ; also to Mr.
Elton, for similar unsolicited help generously given.
To my friend George von Bunsen, and to Professor
Meitzen, of Berlin, I am deeply indebted as regards
the German branches of my subject, and to Mr. T.
Hodgkin and Mr. H. Pelham as regards the Eoman
side of it. For the ever ready assistance of my
friend Mr. H. Bradshaw, of Cambridge, Mr. Selby, of
the Eecord Office, and Mr. Thompson, of the British
Museum, in reference to the manuscripts under their
charge, I cannot be too grateful. Nor must I omit

xvi Preface.

to acknowledge the care with which Messrs. Stuart
Moore and Kirk have undertaken for me the task of
revising the text and translations of the many ex-
tracts from media3val documents contained in this
volume

F. Seebohm.

The Hermitage, HrrcHor:
May, 1883

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

TOE ENGLISH OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM EXAMINED IN ITS
MODERN REMAINS.

PAQK

1. The distinctive marks of the open-field system . . 1

2. Scattered and intermixed ownership in the open fields . 7

3. The open fields were the common fields of a village com-

munity or township under a manor .... 8

4. The wide prevalence of the system through Great

Britain ......... 13

CHAPTER II.

THE ENGLISH OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM TRACED BACK TO THE DOMES-
DAY SURVEY IT IS THE SHELL OF SERFDOM— THE MANOR

WITH A VILLAGE COMMUNITY IN VILLENAGE UPON IT.

1. The identity of the system with that of the Middle

Ages ......... 17

2. The Winslow Manor Rolls of the reign of Edward III.

- — example of a virgate or yard-land . . . .22

3. The Hundred Rolls of Edward I. embracing five

Midland Counties 32

4. The Hundred Rolls (continued). — Relation of the virgate

to the hide and carucate ...... 36

6. The Hundred Rolls (continued). — The services of the

villein tenants * .♦,... 40

xviii Contents.

PAOH

6- Description in Fleta of a manor in the time of Edward I. 45

7. S.E. of England — The hide and virgate under other

names (the records of Battle Ahbey and St. Paul's) . 49

8. The relation of the virgate to the hide traced in the

cartularies of Gloucester and Worcester Abbeys,

and the custumal of Bleadon in Somersetshire . . 55

9. Cartularies of Kewminster and Kelso, thirteenth cen-

tury — The connexion of the holdings with the
common plough team of eight oxen .... 60

10. The Boldon Book, a.d. 1183 68

1 1 . The ' Liber Niger ' of Peterborough Abbey, a.d. 1125 . 72

12. Summary of the post-Domesday evidence . . .76

CHAPTER III.

THE DOMESDAY SURVEY (A.D. lOSC).

1. There were manors everywhere 82

2. The division of the manor into lord's demesne and land

in villenage ........ 84

3. The free tenants on the lord's demesne .... 86

4. The classes of tenants in villenage .... 89

5. The villani were holders of virgates, &c. ... 91

6. The holdings of the bordarii or cottiers .... 95

7. The Domesday survey of the Villa of Westminster . 97

8. The extent of the cultivated land of England, and how

much was included in the yard-lands of the villani . 101

CHAPTER IV.

HIE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM TRACED IN SAXON TIMES — TTIE
SCATTERING OF THE STRIPS ORIGINATED IN THE METHODS
OF CO-ARATION.

1. The village fields under Saxon rule were open fields . 105

2. The holdings were composed of scattered strips . .110

3. The open-field system of co-aration described in the

ancient laws of Wales . . . . . .117

Contents.

xix

CHAPTER V.

MANORS AND SERFDOM UNDER SAXON RULE.

1. The Saxon 'bams ' and 'tuns' were manors with village

communities in serfdom upon them .

2. The ' Rectitudines Singularum Personarum '

3. The thane and his services .....

4. The geneats and their services ....

5. The double and ancient character of the services of the

gebur — Gafol and week-work ....

6. Serfdom on a manor of King Edwy

7. Serfdom on a manor of King Alfred

8. The theows or slaves on the lord's demesne .

9. The creation of new manors .....

10. The laws of King Ethelbert — There were manors in

the sixth cent my ......

1 1. Result of the Saxon evidence ....

126

129
134
137

142
148
1G0
164
160

173
175

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRIBAL SYSTEM (iN WALES).

1. Evidence of the Domesday Survey .... 181

2. The "Welsh land system in the twelfth century . .186

3. The "Welsh land system according to the Welsh laws . 189

4. Land divisions under the Welsh Codes . . .199

5. Earlier evidence of the payment of "Welsh gwestva, or

food-rent 208

CHAPTER VII.

THE TRIBAL SYSTEM {continued).

1. The tribal system in Ireland and Scotland . . .214

2. The tribal system in its earlier stages . . . .231

3. The distinction between the tribal and agricultural

economy of the West and South-East of Britain was
pre-Roman, and so also was the open-field system . 245

xx Contents.

CHAPTER VIII.

CONNEXION BETWEEN THE ROMAN LAND SYSTEM AND
THE LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM.

PASIi

1. Importance of the Continental evidence . . . 252

2. The connexion between the Saxon ' ham,' the German

'heim,' and the Frankish 'villa' . . . .253

3. The Roman ' villa,' its easy transition into the later

manor, and its tendency to become the predominant
type of estate ........ 2G3

4. The smaller tenants on the ' Ager Publicus ' in Roman

provinces — The veterans ...... 272

5. The smaller tenants on the ' Ager Publicus ' (continued) —

the < lajti ' 280

6. The ' tributum ' of the later Empire .... 289

7. The ' sordida munera ' of the later Empire . . . 295

8. The tendency towards a manorial management of the

' Ager Publicus/ or Imperial domain . . . 300

9. The succession to semi-servile holdings, and methods

of cultivation ....... 308

10. The transition from the Roman to the, later manorial

system 31 G

CHAPTER IX.

TnE GERMAN SIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE.

1. The German tribal system and its tendency towards the

manorial system . . . . . . .336

2. The tribal households of German settlers . . , 346

CHAPTER X.

Till; CONNEXION BETWEEN THE OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM AND
SERFDOM OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ROMAX PROVINCES OF
GERMANY AND GAUL.

1. The open-field system in England and in Germany com-

pared 368

2. The boundaries or ' marchse ' 375

Contents. xxi

PAOK

3. The three fields, or ' zelgen ' 376

4. The division of the fields into furlongs and acres . . 380

5. The holdings— the ' yard- land ' or ' hub ' . . . 389

6. The hide, the « hof,' and the ' centuria ' . . . .395

7. The gafol and gafol-yrth 399

8. The boon-work and week- work of the serf . . . 403

9. The creation of serfs and the growth of serfdom . . 405

10. The confusion in the status of the tenants on English

and German manors . . . • . .407

1 1. Result of the comparison ...... 409

CHAPTER XI.

RESULT OP THE EVIDENCE.

1. The method of the English settlements . . • .412

2. Local evidence of continuity between Roman and

English villages 424

3. Conclusion 437

APPENDIX 443

INDEX and GLOSSARY - 455

LIST OF MAPS AND PLATES.

1. Map of Hitchin Township, &c.

2. Map of Part of Pgrwell Field .

3. Sketch of ' Linces ' .

4. Hitchin, Purwell Field .

5. a normal vlrgate or yard-land .

6. Domesday Survey, Distribution of Sochmanni,

Liberi Homines, Servi, Bordarii, and Villani ,

7. Manor of Tidenham, &c ,

8. Group of Puttchers on the Severn near Tidenham ,

9. Maps of an Irish ' Bally ' and ' half-Bally ' ,

10. Examples of Divisions in a Townland . . ,,

11. Distribution in Europe of Local Names ending

in 'heim,' 'ingen,' &c ,

12. Map of the Neighbourhood of Hitchin . ,

13. Map of the Parish of Much Wymondley and

Eoman Holding ,

14. Eoman Pottery found on ditto . . . .

face title

■page

•

p. 2

•

6
26

85
148
152
224
228

256
426

432

134

^S^^OS^^PISOSMM

THE

ENGLISH VILLAGE COMMUNITY.

CHAPTER I.

THE ENGLISH OPEN FIELD SYSTEM EXAMINED
IN ITS MODERN REMAINS.

I. THE DISTINCTIVE MAEKS OF THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM.

The distinctive marks of the open or common field Chap - l
system once prevalent in England will be most easily
learned by the study of an example.

The township of Hitchin, in Hertfordshire, will Open fields
answer the purpose. From the time of Edward the Manor.
Confessor — and probably from much earlier times —
with intervals of private ownership, it has been a
royal manor. 1 And the Queen being still the lady
of the manor, the remains of its open fields have
never been swept away by the ruthless broom of an
Enclosure Act.

Annexed is a reduced tracing of a map of the

1 The lesser manors included in I for the present purpose do not de-
it are clearly only sui-nianors, and [ stroy its original unity.

2 The English Village Community.

Chap. i. township without the hamlets, made about the year
1S16, and showing all the divisions into which its

* CD

fields were then cut up.

It will be seen at once that it presents almost the
features of a spiders web. A great part of the town-
sliip at that date, probably nearly the whole of it in
earlier times, was divided up into little narrow strips.
Divided These strips, common to open fields all over Eng-

raseUraS, land, were separated from each other not by hedges,
b*'Ks ^ut ^7 green balks of unploughed turf, and are of
great historical interest. They vary more or less in
size even in the same fields, as in the examples given
on the map of a portion of the Hitchin Pur well field.
There are ' long ' strips and ' short ' strips. But tak-
ing them generally, and comparing them with the
statute acre of the scale at the corner of the map, it
will be seen at once that the normal strip is roughly
identical with it. The length of the statute acre of
the scale is a furlong of 40 rods or poles. It is 4
Form of rods in width. Now 40 rods in length, and 1 rod in
width make 40 square rods, or a rood ; and thus, as
there are 4 rods in breadth, the acre of the scale with
which the normal strips coincide is an acre made up
of 4 roods lying side by side.

Thus the strips are in fact roughly cut ' acres,' of
the proper shape for ploughing. For the furlong is
the ' furrow long,' i.e. the length of the drive of the
plough before it is turned ; and that this by long
custom was fixed at 40 rods, is shown by the use of
the Latin word ' quarentena ' for furlong. The word
' rood ' naturally corresponds with as many furrows in
the ploughing as are contained in the breadth of one
rod. And four of these roods lying side by side made

the acre.

To /ace page 2.

PART OP
PURWELL FIELD,

HITOHIN.

H. & C. GRAHAM L T °, LIJH "V LONDON. S E.

The Hitchin Open Fields. 3

the acre strip in the open fields, and still make up Chap - i -
the statute acre. very an-

This form of the acre is very ancient. Six hundred
years ago, in the earliest English law fixing the size
of the statute acre (33 Ed. I.), it is declared that
' 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth make an acre.' *
And further, we shall find that more than a thousand
years ago in Bavaria the shape of the strip in the open
fields for ploughing was also 40 rods in length and .4
rods in width, but the rod was in that case the Greek
and Eoman rod of 10 ft. instead of the English rod of
161 ft.

But to return to the English strips. In many Half acres
places the open fields were formerly divided into half-
acre strips, which were called 'half-acres.' That is to
say, a turf balk separated every two rods or roods in
the ploughing, the length of the furrow remaining
the same.

The strips in the open fields are generally known
by country folk as ' balks,' and the Latin word used
in terriers and cartularies for the strip is generally
' selio, corresponding with the French word ' sillonj
(meaning furrow). In Scotland and Ireland the same
strips generally are known as ' rigs,' and the open
field system is known accordingly as the ' run-rig '
system.

The whole arable area of an uninclosed township
was usually divided up by turf balks into as many
thousands of these strips as its limits would contain,
and the tithing maps of many parishes besides Hitchin,
dating sixty or eighty years ago, show remains of

1 Statutes, Record Coin. Ed. i. p. 20G.
B 2

4 The English Village Community.

Chap. i. them still existing, although the process of ploughing
up the balks and throwing many strips together had
gradually been going on for centuries.

shots or Next, it will be seen that the strips on the map lie

or nuann- side by side in groups, forming larger divisions of
the field. These larger divisions are called ' shots,'
or ' furlongs,' and in Latin documents ' quarentence.'
being always a furrow-long in width. Throughout
their whole length the furrows in the ploughing run
parallel from end to end ; the balks which divide
them into strips being, as the word implies, simply
two or three furrows left unploughed between them. 1
The shots or furlongs are divided from one another
by broader balks, generally overgrown with bushes.

This grouping of the strips in furlongs or shots is
a further invariable feature of the English open field
Headlands, system. And it involves another little feature which
is also universally met with, viz. the headland.

It will be seen on the map that mostly a common
field- way gives access to the strips ; i.e. it runs along
the side of the furlong and the ends of the strips. But
this is not always the case ; and when it is not, then there
is a strip running along the length of the furlong inside
its boundaries and across the ends of the strips compos-
ing it. 2 This is the headland. Sometimes when the strips
of the one furlong run at right angles to the strips of
its neighbour, the first strip in the one furlong does

1 Bale is a "Welsh word ; and
•when the plough is accidentally
turned aside, and leaves a sod of
grass unturned between the fur-
rows, the plough i.s said by the

Welsh ploughman speaking Welsh,
to 'bale ' (balco).

2 See the map of a portion of
the Purwell held.

The Hitchin Open Fields. 5

duty as the headland giving access to the strips in the Chap. i.
other. In either case all the owners of the strips in a
furlong have the right to turn their plough upon the
headland, and thus the owner of the headland must
wait until all the other strips are ploughed before he
can plough his own. The Latin term for the headland
is i forera\ i the Welsh, 'pen tir ; ' the Scotch, ' head-
rig ; ' and the German (from the turning of the plough
upon it), ' anwende.'

A less universal but equally peculiar feature of Lynches,
the open field system in hilly districts is the ' lynch,'
and it may often be observed remaining when every
other trace of an open field has been removed by
enclosure. Its rig;ht of survival lies in its indestructi-
bility. When a hill-side formed part of the open
field the strips almost always were made to run, not up
and down the hill, but horizontally along it ; and
in ploughing, the custom for ages was always to
turn the sod of the furrow downhill, the plough
consequently always returning one way idle. If the
whole hill-side were ploughed in one field, this would
result in a gradual travelling of the soil from the top
to the bottom of the field, and it might not be noticed.
But as in the open field system the hill-side was
ploughed in strips with unploughed balks between
them, no sod could pass in the ploughing from one
strip to the next ; but the process of moving the sod
downwards would go on age after age just the same
within each individual strip. In other words, every
year's ploughing took a sod from the higher edge of
the strip and put it on the lower edge ; and the result
was that the strips became in time long level terraces
one above the other, and the balks between them

The English Village Community.

Chap. I.

Butts.

Gored
acres.

No man's
land.

grew into steep rough banks of long grass covered
often with natural self-sown brambles and bushes.
These banks between the plough-made terraces are
generally called lynches, or linces ; and the word is
often applied to the terraced strips themselves, which
go by the name of ' the linces.' 1

Where the strips abruptly meet others, or abut
upon a boundary at right angles, they are sometimes
called butts.

Two other small details marking the open field
system require only to be simply mentioned.
Corners of the fields which, from their shape, could
not be cut up into the usual acre or half-acre strips,
were sometimes divided into tapering strips pointed
at one end, and called ' gores,' or ' gored acres.' In
other cases little odds and ends of unused land re-
mained, which from time immemorial were called ' no
man's land,' or ' any one's land,' or ' Jack's land,' as
the case might be.

Thus there are plenty of outward marks and
traits by which the open common field may be recog-
nised wherever it occurs, — the acre or half-acre

1 Striking examples of these
lynches may he seen from the rail-
road at Luton in Bedfordshire, and
hetween Cambridge and Ilitchin,
as well as in various other parts of
England. They may he seen often
on the steep sides of the Sussex
Downs and the Chiltern Hills.
Great numbers of them are to be
noticed from the French line be-
tween Calais and Paris. In some
cases on the steep chalk downs, ter-
races for ploughing have evidently

been artificially cut; but even in
these cases there must always have
been a gradual natural growth of
the lynches by annual accretion from
the ploughing. In old times, in
order to secure the turning of the
sod downhill, the plough, after cut-
ting a furrow, returned as stated
one way idle ; but in more recent
times a plough called a ' turn-wrist '
plough ' came into use, which by re-
versing its share could be used both
ways, to the great saving of time.

H1TCHI
PURWELL t

PROPRIETORS

WITH TUl'IC

N U M B E B

'/:, face page 6.

Byda, Esq.
Carter. Esq.
Mrs. Simpson
Rev. Mr. Whitekursi

Mr. Kd. THstram '

Late Mr. Gravely Hi

Mr. Charles Baron

Jno.Bxuicliffc.Esq

Wm.Lueas Brewer

Late Thomas Smiti

Mrs. Ann Newman

Tiamuis Goldsmith

Thomas Lyle

Francis Th.vtch.ei

Mr Jiu'- Fast ci

Mrs. Field

M'- Vincent

Mr. W m.Male£n.

Late Wm.Lucas

Betyrt. Dobbi

Mr Ransom,

Mr Warbe

Late Widow Paternos

James Jqyner

Mr. James

Mr.Jno. Colimson

Late Andrew Oakle\

WnuDimsey

Mr Collins

Mrs. B arrina to n

Charity Land

Mr. Bradley

Mr. Capreol

Mr. Cooper

Mr. Lane

Mr Feirsorv

Late Mr. Turner

Mr Jno- Turner

Mr Gray

Widow Jevis

Mr.Jno. Overitt

Mr. Palmer

Mr. Warner Green.

Mrs. Flack

Late Hurst

Widow Vobbs

Mr Hatton

Mr. Win. Thomas

HITCH IN
FURWELL FIELD

PROPRIETORS NAMES
NUMB i. B 9

By&a, £>■/ i

ft* .V- Wfctfefoowf i

Afi Rd IWrtxtm :.

toe Bfi <,,,„.■',- ffunn B

iron '

Jrux RaJi-titT,- , B*q. - 8

[ffn 1 u, , *;,■.„■.■-• . a

Mr. GiUou

Mr Bradley

Mr Capreol -1

Ifi / :

Mr i*«r*or<
Xute Mr Turn.-,

MrJno .Ov,-ntt

H Bdwt •

3/r lfi>i-n.v Ooan

Line Bur tt .
Widow Vobb* ...
Mr Batten

M, V

iThnm

ft&

,i ..;,<.■ ii hum made earh •■■ •!■■■■■ •■■■u.i

The Hitchin Open Fields. 7

strips or selio?ies, the gored shape of some of them, Chap. i.
the balks and sometimes lynches between them, the
shots or furlongs (quarentence) in which they lie in
groups, the headlands which give access to the
strips when they lie off the field-ways, the butts, and
lastly the odds and ends of ' no man's land.'

II. SCATTERED AND INTERMIXED OWNERSHIP IN THE
OPEN FIELDS.

Passing from these little outward marks to the Scattered
matter of ownership, a most inconvenient peculiarity m i X ed
presents itself, which is by far the most remarkable ownershl P-
and important feature of the open field system wher-
ever it is found. It is the fact that neither the strips
nor the furlongs represented a complete holding or
property, but that the several holdings were made up
of a multitude of strips scattered about on all sides of
the township, one in this furlong and another in that,
intermixed, and it might almost be said entangled
together, as though some one blindfold had thrown
them about on all sides of him.

The extent to which this was the case in the
Hitchin common fields, even so late as the beginning
of the present century, will be realised by reference
to the map annexed. It is a reduced tracing of a
map showing the ownership of the strips in one divi-
sion of the open fields of Hitchin called the Purwell
field. The strips are numbered, and correspond with
the owners' names given in the tally at the side.
The strips belonging to two of the owners are also
coloured, so as at once to catch the eye, and the area
of each separate piece is marked upon it. The num-

The English Village Community.

Chap. i. ber of scattered pieces held by each owner is also
given in the note below ; and as the map embraces
only about one-third of the Hitchin fields, it should be
noticed that each owner probably held in the parish
three times as many separate pieces as are there
described ! 1 Further, at the side of the map of the
Hitchin township, is a reduced tracing of a plan of
the estate of a single landowner in the townfields of
Hitchin, which shows very clearly the curious scatter-
ing of the strips in a single ownership all over the
fields, notwithstanding that the tendency towards
consolidation of the holdings by exchanges and pur-
chases had evidently made some progress.

III. THE OPEN FIELDS WERE THE COMMON FIELDS OF A
VILLAGE COMMUNITY OR TOWNSHIP UNDER A MANOR.

The next fact to be noted is that under the
English system the open fields were the common
fields — the arable land — of a village community or
township under a manorial lordship. This could
hardly be more clearly illustrated than by the Hitchin
example.

1 The number of parcels

held by

each owner was as follow

s: —

Owner Parcels

Owner

Parcels

Owner Parcels

Owner

Parcels

No. 1 .

No. 14 .

. 5

.27.

No. 39 .

. 1

15 .

. 8

28.

40.

. 1

16 .

. 7

29.

41 .

. 6

4 .

17 .

. 2

30.

42 .

. 3

18 .

31 .

43 .

. 2

44 .

. 1

20 .

. 1

33.

45.

. 1

21 .

. 3

34.

46.

. 2

22 .

. 1

35.

47.

. 7

10.

23 .

. 4

36.

48.

. 1

11 .

24 .

37.

12.

25 .

38.

Total

289

13.

26 .

. 1

e
boundaries.

The Hitchin Open Fields. 9

The Hitchin manor was, as already stated, a royal Chap. i.
manor. The Court Leet and View of Frankpledge
were held concurrently with the Court Baron of the
manor. Periodically at this joint court a record was Periodical
made on the presentment of the jurors and homage menTof
of various particulars relating to both the manor and^t^" 8

and tOWnship. homage of

x the manor.

The record for the year 1819 will be found at
length in Appendix A, and it may be taken as a com-
mon form.

The jurors and homage first present that the manor
comprises the township of Hitchin and hamlet of
Wals worth, and includes within it three lesser manors ;
also that it extends into other hamlets and parishes.

They then record the boundaries of the township £jj
(including the hamlet of Walsworth) as follows, viz. : —

' From Orton Head to Burford Ray,

and from thence to a Water Mill called Hide Mill,
„ „ „ Willberry Hills,

„ „ „ a place called Bossendell,

„ „ „ a Water Mill called Purwell Mill,

„ „ „ a Brook or River called Ippollitt's Brook,

„ „ „ Maydencroft Lane,

„ „ „ a place called Wellhead,

„ „ ,, a place called Stubborn Bush,

„ „ „ a place called Offley Cross,

„ „ „ Five Borough Hills [Five Barrows],

„ „ back to Orton Head, -where the boundaries

commenced.'

The form in which these boundaries are given is
of great antiquity. It is a form used by the Eomans
two thousand years ago, and almost continuously
followed from that time to this. 1 Its importance for

1 Hyginus de Condicionibus Agro- i 114. ' Nam invenimus ssepe in pub-
rum. Die Schriften der Romischen licis instruments significanter in-
Feldmesser (Lachmann, &c), i. p. I scripta territoria, ita ut ex colliculo

cers

10 The English Village Community.

Chap. i. the purpose in hand will be manifest as the inquiry

proceeds.
The courts. The jurisdiction of the Court Leet and View of
Frankpledge is recorded to extend within the fore-
going boundaries, i.e. over the township, that of the
Court Baron beyond them over the whole manor,
which was more extensive than the township. The
Court Leet is therefore the Court of the township,
the Court Baron that of the manor.

It is then stated that in the Court Leet at Michael-
mas the jurors of the king elect and present to the
lord —
The offi- Two constables,

Six headboroughs (two for each of the three
wards),

Two ale-conners,

Two leather-searchers and sealers, and

A bellman, who is also the watchman and crier of
the town.

All the foregoing presentments have reference to
the township, and are those of ' the jurors of our
lord the King (i.e. of the Court Leet), and the homage
of the Court ' [Baron] of the manor.
Jeiiefs, Then come presentments of the homage of the

Court of the Manor alone, describing the reliefs of free-
holders and the fines, &c, of copyholders under the
manor, and various particulars as to powers of leasing,

qui appellator ille ad flumen Mud, et i qui appellator ille, et inch deorsum

super Jlumen illud ad rivum ilium aut \ versus ad locum ilium, ct indc ad

mam illam, et per mam illam ad in- compitum illius, et inde per monu-

fima montis illius, qui locus appel- mentum illius, ad locum unde pri-

latur ille, et inde per jugum montis mum ccepit scriptura esse.' See as

illius in summum, et super summum an early example, ' Sententia Mirm-

montis per divtrgia aqua: ad locum, cioruin,' Corpus Inscript. Lat. i. 199-

fines, &c.

The Uitchin Open Fields. 11

forfeiture, cutting timber, lieriots, &c. ; the freedom Chap. i.
of grain from toll in the market, the provision by the
lord of the common pound and the stocks for the use Pound
of the tenants of the manor, and the right of the
lord with the consent of the homage to grant out
portions of the waste by copy of court roll at a rent
and the customary services.

Next the commons are described.

(1) The portions coloured dark green on the map Green
are described as Green Commons, and those coloured Lammas '
light green as Lammas Meadows ; 1 and every occupier meadows -
of an ancient messuage or cottage in the township

has certain defined rights of common thereon, the
obligation to find the common bull falling upon the
rectory, and a common herdsman being elected by
the homage at a Court Baron.

(2) The common fields are stated to be — Common

v ' J fields.

Purwell field,
.Welshman's croft,
Burford field,
Spital field,
Moremead field,
Bury field ;

and it is recorded that these common fields have
immemorially been, and ought to be, kept and culti-
vated in three successive seasons of tilth grain, etch The three
grain, and fallow : Purwell field and Welshman's rotation of
croft being fallow one year ; Burford field and Spital erops '
field the next year ; Moremead field and Bury field
the year after, and so on in regular rotation.

1 The lammas meadows are I laud for the purpose of the hay
divided into strips like the arable I crop.

The English Village Community.

Chap. I.

Common
rights over
the open
fields when
not under
crop.

Hamlet.

Copyholds
and free-
holds
inter-
mixed.

It is stated that every occupier of unenclosed land
in any of the common fields of the township may pas-
ture his sheep over the rest of the field after the
corn is cut and carried, and when it is fallow. If
he choose to enclose his own portion of the com-
mon field he may do so, but he then gives up
for ever his right of pasture over the rest. It is
under this custom that the strips and balks are gradu-
ally disappearing.

The ancient messuages and cottages in the hamlet
of Walsworth had their separate green common and
herdsman, but (at this date) no common fields, be-
cause they had already been some time ago enclosed.

It will be seen from the map how very small a
proportion of the land of the township was in meadow
or pasture. The open arable fields occupied nearly
the whole of it. The community to which it be-
longed, and to whose wants it was fitted, was evi-
dently a community occupied mainly in agriculture.

Another feature requiring notice was the fact that
in the open fields freehold and copyhold land were
intermixed ; some of the strips being freehold, whilst
the next strip was copyhold, instead of all the free-
hold and all the copyhold lying together. And in
the same way the lands belonging to the three lesser
or sub-manors lay intermixed, and not all apart by
themselves. The open field system overrode the
whole.

Thus, if the Hitchin example may be taken as a
typical one of the English open field system, it may
be regarded generally as having belonged to a village
or township under a manor. We may assume that the
holdings were composed of numbers of strips scattered

The Hitcldn Open Fields. 13

over the three open fields : and that the husbandry Chap. i.
was controlled by those rules as to rotation of crops
and fallow in three seasons which marked the three-
field system, and secured uniformity of tillage
throughout each field. Lastly, whilst fallow after
the crop was gathered, the open fields were pro-
bably everywhere subject to the common rights of
pasture. The sheep of the whole township wandered
and pastured all over the strips and balks of its
fields, while the cows of the township were daily
driven by a common herdsman to the green com-
mons, or, after Lammas Day, when the hay crop of
the owners was secured, to the lammas meadows.

IV. THE WIDE PREVALENCE OF THE SYSTEM THROUGH
GREAT BRITAIN.

But before the attempt is made to trace back the
system, it may be well to ask what evidence there is
as to its wide prevalence in England, and with what
reason the particular example of the Hitchin town-
ship may be taken as generally typical.

In the first place, an examination into the details Enclosure
of an Enclosure Act will make clear the point that °^^
the system as above described is the system which
it was the object of the Enclosure Acts to remove.
They were generally drawn in the same form, com-
mencing with the recital that the open and common
fields lie dispersed in small pieces intermixed with
each other and inconveniently situated, that divers
persons own parts of them, and are entitled to rights
of common on them, so that in their present state
they are incapable of improvement, and that it is

The English Village Community.

Chap.x desired that they may be divided and enclosed, a
specific share being set out and allowed to each
owner. For this purpose Ed closure Commissioners
are appointed, and under their award the balks are
ploughed up, the fields divided into blocks for the
several owners, hedges planted, and the whole face of
the country changed.

The common fields of twenty-two parishes within
ten miles of Hitchin were enclosed in this way be-
tween 1766 and 1832. All the Acts were of the

Number of same character. 1 And as, taking the whole of Eng-
land, with, roughly speaking, its 10,000 parishes,
nearly 4,000 Enclosure Acts were passed between 1760

1 These Enclosure Acts -were as follows : —

Date of Enclosure
Acts

Karnes of Parishes whose open fields were
thereby enclosed

1766

1795
1796
1797
1797
1797
1802

1802

1804
1807

I SOS

1809

1810

1811

1827
1832

Hexton [Herts].

Ilenlow [Beds].

Norton [Herts].

Carnpton-cum-Shefford [Beds].

King's Walden [Herts!.

Weston [Herts].

Hinxworth [Herts],
f Shitlington [Beds].
JHolwell [Beds].

Arlsey [Beds].

Offley [Herts],

Luton [Beds],

Barton-in-the-Clay [Beds].
Codicote [Herts].

Welwyn [Herts].

Knebworth [Herts].

Pirton [Herts].
[Great Wymondley [Herts],
j Little Wymondley [Herts].
llppollitts [Herts].

Langford | Beds],

Clifton [Beds].

The Hitch in Open Fields. 15

and 1844, 1 it will at once be understood how gene- Chap, l
rally prevalent was this form of the open field system
so late as the days of the grandfathers of this gene-
ration.

The old 'Statistical Account of Scotland,' ob-
tained eighty years ago by inquiry in every parish,
shows that at its date, under the name of ' run-rig,'
a simpler form of the open field system still lingered

on here and there more or less all over Scotland, wide ex-
tent of
Traces of it still exist in the Highlands, and there open field

are well-known remains of its strips and balks also SJS

in Wales. The run-rig system is still prevalent in

some parts of Ireland. But at present we confine

our attention to the form which the system assumed

in England, and for this purpose the Hitchin example

may fairly be taken as typical.

Now, judged from a modern point of view, it will

readily be understood that the open field system, and

especially its peculiarity of straggling or scattered

ownership, regarded from a modern agricultural point Unecono-

r ° ° x niical ;

of view, was absurdly uneconomical. The waste of
time in getting about from one part of a farm to
another ; the uselessness of one owner attempting
to clean his own land when it could be sown with
thistles from the seed blown from the neighbouring
strips of a less careful and thrifty owner ; the
quarrelling about headlands and rights of way, or

1 Porter's Pi

Off)

ess

the Nation )

146

: —

1760-69 .

. 385

1820-29 .

. 205

1770-79 .

. 660

1830-39 .

. 136

1780-89 .

. 246

1840-44.

. 66

1790-99 .

. 469

1800-9 .

. 847

3,867

1810-19

•

. 853

16 The English, Village Community.

Chap. I. paths made without right ; the constant encroach-
ments of unscrupulous or overbearing holders upon the
balks — all this made the system so inconvenient, that
Arthur Young, coining across it in France, could
hardly keep his temper as he described with what
perverse ingenuity it seemed to be contrived as
though purposely to make agriculture as awkward
and uneconomical as possible,
but must But these now inconvenient traits of the open

meaning ne ^ system must once have had a meaning, a
once. use? an( j even a convenience which were the cause of
their original arrangement. Like the apparently
meaningless sentinel described by Prince Bismarck
uselessly pacing up and down the middle of a lawn in
the garden of the Eussian palace, there must have been
an originally sufficient reason to account for the
beginning of what is now useless and absurd. And
just as in that case, search in the military archives dis-
closed that once upon a time, in the days of Catherine
the Great, a solitary snowdrop had appeared on the
lawn, to guard which a sentinel was posted by an
order which had never been revoked ; so a similar
search will doubtless disclose an ancient original
reason for even the (at first sight) most unreasonable
features of the open field system.

CHAPTER n.

THE ENGLISH OPEN FIELD SYSTEM TRACED BACK
TO THE DOMESDAY SURVEY— IT IS THE SHELL
OF SERFDOM— THE MANOR WITH A VILLAGE COM-
MUNITY IN VILLENAGE UPON IT.

I. THE IDENTITY OF THE SYSTEM WITH THAT
OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

That this open field system, the remains of which chap. ii.
have now been examined, was identical with that which
existed in the Middle Ages might easily be proved
by a continuous chain of examples. But it will be
enough for the present purpose to pick out a few
typical instances, using them as stepping-stones.

It would be easy to quote Tusser's description of Tussor.
' Champion Farming ' in the sixteenth century. In
his 'Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry' he
describes the respective merits of ' several,' and
' champion ' or open field farming. But as he describes
the latter as a system already out of date in his time,
and as rapidly giving way to the more economical
system of ' several ' or enclosed fields, we may pass
on at once to evidence another couple of centuries
earlier in date.

Plowman.

18 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. Of the fact that the open field system 500 years

ago (in the fourteenth century), with its divisions into
furlongs and subdivision into acre or half-acre strips,
existed in England, the ' Vision of Piers the Plowman '
may be appealed to as a witness.

Piers the What was ' the faire felde ful of folke,' in which

the poet saw ' alle maner of men ' ' worchyng and
wandryng,' some 'putten hem to the plow,' whilst
others 'in settyng and in sowyng swonken ful harde 'P 1
A modern English field shut in by hedges would not
suit the vision in the least. It was clearly enough
the open field into which all the villagers turned
out on the bright spring morning, and over which
they would be scattered, some working and some
looking on. In no other ' faire felde ' would he see
such folk of all sorts, the ' [husjbondemen,' bakers
and brewers, butchers, woolwebsters and weavers of
linen, tailors, tinkers, and tollers in market, masons,
dikers, and delvers ; while the cooks cried ' Hote pies
hote ! ' and tavern-keepers set in competition their
wines and roast meat at the alehouse. 2

Then as to the division of the fields into furlongs ;
remembering that the wide balks between them and
along the headlands were often covered with ' brakes
and brambles,' the point is at once settled by the
naive confession of the priest who scarce knew per-
fectly his Paternoster, and could ' ne solfe ne synge '
'ne seyntes lyues rede,' yet knew well enough the
4 rymes of Robyn hood,' and how to ' fynde an hare
in B.fourlonge. iS

1 Prolog us, lines 17 to 21. * Prologus, 2 1 to end.

8 Pauus, v. 400 to 428.

Earlier Traces. 19

Further, a chance indication that the furlongs Chap, il

were divided into half-acre strips occurs most natu-
rally in that part of the story where the folk in the
fair field, sick of priests and parsons and other false
guides, come at last to Piers the plowman, and beg
him to show them the way to truth ; and he replies
that he must first plow and sow his ' half- acre : '

I have an half acre to erye ' bi the heighe way :
Hadde I eried this half acre ■ and sowen it after,
I wolde wende with you * and the way teche. 1

And if there should remain a shadow of doubt
whether Piers' half-acre must necessarily have been
one of the strips between the balks into which the
furlongs were divided, even this is cleared up by the
perfect little picture which follows of the folk in the
field helping him to plow it. For in its unconscious
truthfulness of graphic detail, after saying, —

Now is perkyn and his pilgrymes • to the plowe faren :
To erie his halue acre ■ holpyn hym manye,

the very first lines in the list of services rendered
explain that —

Dikeres and delueres ■ digged up the balkes. 2

This incidental evidence of ' Piers the Plowman' is Temer of

, Cambridge

fully borne out by a manuscript terrier of one of the open fields
open fields near Cambridge, belonging to the later fourteenth
years of the fourteenth or beginning of the fifteenth cenLur y-
century. 3 It gives the names of the owners and
occupiers of all the seliones or strips. They are

1 Passus, vi. 4 to 6.

2 Passus, vi. 107-9.

8 I am indebted to Mr. Brad-

shaw for having called my attention
to this MS., which is now in the
Cambridge University Library.

The English Village Community.

The

system
already
decaying.

Chap. n. divided by balks of turf. They lie in furlongs or
quarentence. They have frequently headlands or
forerce. Some of the strips are gored, and called
gored acres. Many of them are described as butts.
Indeed, were it not that the country round Cam-
bridge being Hat there are no lynches, almost every
one of the features of the system is distinctly visible
in this terrier.

But this terrier also contains evidence that the
system was even then in a state of decay and disin-
tegration. The balks were disappearing, and the
strips, though still remembered as strips, were becom-
ing merged in larger portions, so that they lie thrown
together sine balca. The mention is frequent of iii.
seliones which used to be v., ii. which used to be
iv., iii. which used to be viii., and so on. Evidently
the meaning and use of the half-acre strips are already
gone.

It will be well, therefore, to take another leap, and
at once to pass behind the Black Death — that great
watershed in economic history — so as to examine the
details of the system before rather than after it had
sustained the tremendous shock which the death in
one year of half the population may well have given
to it.

A remarkably excellent opportunity for inquiry is
presented by a complete set of manor rolls during
the reign of Edward III. for the Manor of Winslow in
Buckinghamshire, preserved in the Cambridge Uni-
versity Library. 1

Winslow
Manor
rolls of
Ed. III.

1 MS. Dd. 7. 22. I am much indebted to Mr. Bradshaw for the loan
of this MS. i'rom the Library.

Earlier Traces. 21

No evidence could possibly be more to the pur- Chap. ii.
pose. Belonging to the Abbey of St. Albans, the rolls
were kept with scrupulous accuracy and care. Every
change of ownership during the long reign of Edward
III. is recorded in regular form ; and the year
1348-9 — the year of the Black Death — occurring. in
the course of this reign, and occasioning more changes
of ownership than usual, the MS. presents, if one may
appropriate a geological expression, something like
an economic section of the manor, revealing with un-
usual clearness the various economic strata in which
its holdings were arranged.

Before examining these holdings it is needful only The open

& # & J field.

to state that here, as in the later examples, the fields
of the manor are open fields, divided into furlongs,
which in their turn are made up with apparently
almost absolute regularity of half-acre strips. When-
ever (with very rare exceptions) a change of owner-
ship takes place, and the contents of the holding are
described, they turn out to be made up of half-acre
pieces, or seliones, scattered all over the fields.

The typical entry on these rolls in such cases is Half-acre
that A. B. surrenders to the lord, or has died holding, & rips
a messuage and so many acres of land, of which a
half-acre lies in such and such a field, and often in
such and such a furlong, between land of C. D. and
E. F., another half- acre somewhere else between two
other persons' land, another half-acre somewhere
else, and so on. If the holding be of 1J acres it is
found to be in 3 half-acre pieces, if of 4 acres, in 8
half-acre pieces, and so on, scattered over the fields.
Sometimes amongst the half-acres are mentioned still
smaller portions, roods and even half-roods or doles

The English Village Community.

Chap. IJ.

(chiefly of pasture or meadow land), belonging to the
holdings, but the division into half-acre strips was
clearly the rule.

There can be no doubt, therefore, of the identity
of the system seen at work in these manor rolls with
that of which some of the debris may still be exa-
mined in unenclosed parishes to-day.

Demesne
and villen-

affe.

II. THE WINSLOW MANOR ROLLS OF THE REIGN OF
EDWARD III. — EXAMPLE OF A VIRGATE OR YARD-
LAND.

Starting with the fact that the fields of the manor
of Winslow and its hamlets l were open fields divided
into furlongs and half- acre strips, the chief object of
inquiry will be the nature of the holdings of its
various classes of tenants.

In the first place the land of the manor was
divided, like that of almost all other manors, into two
distinct parts — land in the lord's demesne, and land in
villenage.

The land in demesne may be described as the
home farm of the lord of the manor, including such
portions of it as he may have chosen to let off to
tenants for longer or shorter terms, and at money
rents in free tenure.

The land in villenage is also in the occupation of
tenants, but it is held in villenage, at the will of the
lord, and at customary services. It lies in open fields.
These are divided into three seasons, according to the

1 The MS. is beaded ' Extracta
Rotuloruui de Ilalimotis tentis apud
Manerium de AVviiselowe teuqrore
Edwardi tercii a Con uestu ' and it

embraced Wynselowe, Horehcode,
Greneburglt, Shipton, Nova Villa de
Wynselouc, Onyiuj, and Muston.

The Winslow Manor Rolls. 23

three-field system. There is a west field, east field, Chap, ii.
and south field. The demesne land lies also in these Three-field
three fields, 1 probably more or less intermixed, as in 8ys
many cases,' with the strips in villenage, but some-
times in separate furlongs or shots from the latter.

Throughout the pages of the manor rolls, in record-
ing transfers of holdings in villenage, the common
form is always adhered to of a surrender by the old
tenant to the lord, and a re-grant of the holding to
the new tenant, to be held by him at the will of the
lord in villenage at the usual services. Where the
change of holding occurs on the death of a tenant, the
common form recites that the holding has reverted to
the lord, who re-grants it to the new tenant as before
in villenage.

Further examination at once discloses a marked
difference in kind between some classes of holdings
in villenage and others.

In some cases the holding handed over is simply virgates
described by the one comprehensive word ' virgata Y i rgil tes.
(the Latin equivalent for ' yard-land '), without any
further description. The ' virgate ' of A. B. is trans-
ferred to C. D. in one lump ; i.e. the holding is an
indivisible whole, evidently so well known as to need
no description of its contents.

In other cases the holding is in the same way
described as a ' half -virgate,' without any details being
needful as to its contents.

But in the case of all other holdings the contents
are described in detail half-acre by half-acre, each
half- acre being identified by the names of the holders

1 See entry under 44 Ed. III.

The English Village Community.

What is a
virgate or
yard-land ?

Chap. ii. f the strips on either side of it. They vary in size
from one half-acre to 8 or 10 or 12 half-acres, and in
a few cases more. The greater number of them are,
however, evidently the holdings of small cottier
tenants. A few cases occur, but only a few, where
a messuage is held without land.

But the question of interest is what may be the
nature of the holdings called virgates and half-vir-
gates — these well-known bundles of land, which, as
already said, need no description of their contents.
Fortunately in one single case a virgate or yard-land
— that of John Moldeson — loses its indivisible unity
and is let out again by the lord to several persons in
portions. These being new holdings, and no longer
making up a virgate, it became needful to describe
their contents on the rolls. 1 Thus the details of which
a virgate was made up are accidentally exposed to view.

Putting the broken pieces of it together, this vir-
gate of John Moldeson is found to have consisted of
a messuage in the village of Shipton, in the manor of
Winslow, and the following half-acre strips of land
scattered all over the open fields of the manor.

The vir-
gate or
yard-land
of John
Moldeson.

Where situated.

£ acre in Clayforlong.

£ acre in Brereforlong.

| acre at Anamanlond by the Icing's

highway (juxta regiaru viain).
£ acre at Lof thorn.
4 acre at le Wawes.
h acre at Michelpeysforlong.
\ acre above le Snoute.
£ acre in le Snouthalc.
£ acre above Livershulle.
£ acre above Narowe-aldemed.

Betioeen the Land of

John Boveton and William Jo?iynges.
Richard Lif and John Mayn.

John Watehyns and John Mayn.
John Hikkes and Henry Warde.
Henry Warde and John Watehyns
John Watehyns and John Mayn.
John Watehyns and Henry Warde.
John Watehyns and Henry Warde.
Joint Watehyns and Henry Warde.

' Sub anno 35 Ed. III.

The Winslow Manor Rolls.

Where situated.

acre in Shiptondene.

acre in Waterforough.

roods below Chircheheigh.

acre at Fyveacres.

acre at Sherdeforlong.

acre at Thorlong.

acre (of pasture) in Farnhames-

den.
acre (of pasture) in three parcels,
acre (of pasture) below Estatte-

more.
acre (of pasture) at Brodemore.
acre (of meadow) at Iiisshemede.
doles (of meadow) in Shrovedoles.
acre below le Knolle.
acre above Brodealdemade.
acre above Brodelangelonde.
acre at Merslade.
acre above Langebenehullesdene.
acre above Hoggestonforde.
acre at Clayforde.
acre at Narivelanglonde.
acre at Wodexoey.
acre Benethenhystrete.

$ acre
£ acre
A acre
£ acre
£ acre
i acre
£ acre
£ acre
| acre
& acre
£ acre
^ acre
£ acre
^ acre
A acre
| acre
£ acre
£ acre
J acre

Benethenhystrete.

at Langeslo.

at Loice.

at Ze Knolle.

above Brodealdemede.

at Shortslo.

at Eldeleyen.

above Langeblakgrove.

at Blakeputtis.

above Medeforlong.

at Ze Thorn.

above Overlitellonde.

above Ze Brodelitellonde.

above Overlitellonde.

above Medeforlong.

at /e Thorn.

at Hoggestonforde.

above Eldeleyes.

above Cokivell.

Between the Land of

John Hikkes and «/b^n Hoiveprest.
John Watekyns and Jb/m Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and «7t>A« Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.

Chap. IL

The vir-
gate or
yard-land
of John
Moldeson,
continued.

John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns aud Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
William Jonynges and Henry Bo-

viton.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Janekyns,
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and Henry Warde.
John Watekyns and John Mayn.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

Where situated.

h acre at Brodefarnham.
\ acre at Langefarnham.
£ acre above Farnhamshide.

\ acre at Hoiveshamme.
£ acre at Stonysticch.
£ acre at Coppedemore.
£ acre at Brerebuttes.
£ acre at Wodeforlonge.
£ acre at Porteiceye.
$ acre at Litebenhulle.

h acre at MichUblakegrove.

h acre at Litelbtakegrove.

h acre at Brodereten.

£ acre at Brodeliteklon.

£ acre at Stoteford.

£ acre at Brodelangelonde.

£ acre above Litelbelesden.

£ acre in Anamaneslonde.

h acre at Litelpeisaere.

1 rood in /e Trendel.

£ acre at Merslade.

£ acre at Brodelitellonde.

£ acre below Ze Knolle.

£ acre above /e Brodealdemede.

Between the Land of

John Watekyns
John Watekyns
Henry Boveton

Halle.
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
Henry Boveton

Lane.
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns
John Watekyns

and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Richard Atti

and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and John Mayn.
and John Mayn.
and Matthew attt

and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and John Mayn.
and John Mayn.
and John Mayn.
and John Mayn.
and John Mayn.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and Henry Warde.
and John Mayn.

Summary Thus the virgate or yard-land of John Moldeson

ofthe j / j

contents of was composed of a messuage and

avirgate

« r >' ard - 68 half-acre strips of arable land,

n " 3 rood strips of arable land,

2 doles,

1 acre of pasture,

3 half-acres of pasture, and
1 half-acre of meadow,

scattered all over the open fields in their various
furlongs.

But it may be asked, how can it be proved that
the other virgates were like the one virgate of John

C . GH AH AM L T .<\ LlTH «*s, LONPOF4.S £

A NORMAL
VIRGATE cmYARDLAND

-C

The Wirislow Manor Rolls. 27

Moldeson thus by chance described and exposed to Chap. ii.
view on the manor rolls ? Is it right to assume that
this virgate may be taken as a pattern of the rest ? The
answer is, that in the description of its 72 half-acre
strips the 144 neighbouring strips are incidentally in-
volved. And as 66 of its strips had on one side of
them 66 other strips of another tenant, viz. John
Watekyns, and on the other side 43 of the next strips
belonged to Henry Warde, and 23 to John Mayn, Rotation
and 8 of the strips only had other neighbours, it is ord e r e f
evident that the virgate of John Moldeson was one of a the strI P s -
system of similar virgates formed of scattered half-acre
strips, arranged in a certain regular order of rotation,
in which John Moldeson came 66 times next to John
Watekyns, and two other neighbours followed him,
one 43 and the other 23 times, in similar succession.

Thus the Winslow virgates were intermixed, and a virgate
each was a holding of a messuage in the village, and \IS\ S * a
between 30 and 40 modern acres of land, not con- ™ ndle ° f

* 7 60 or 40

tiquous, but scattered in half-acre pieces all over the acres in

/» 7 11-.0- • j • i scattered

common fields. The half- virgate consisted in the same acre or
way of a messuage in the village with half as many s trips. Cr
strips scattered over the same fields. The intermixed
ownership complained of in the Inclosure Acts, and
surviving in the Hitchin maps, need no longer sur-
prise us.

We know now what a virgate or yard-land was. The
We shall find that its normal area was 30 scattered virgate
acres — 10 acres in each of the three fields. Using JJ*^ S#
again the map of the Hitchin fields, we may mark
upon it the contents of a normal virgate by way of
impressing upon the eye the nature of this peculiar
holding. It must always be remembered that when

28 The English Village Community .

Chap. ii. the fields were divided into half-acres instead of acres
the number of its scattered strips would be doubled.

It is not possible to ascertain from a mere record
of the changes in the holdings precisely how many of
these virgates and half-virgates there were in the
manor of Winslow. But in the year of the Black
Death it may be assumed that the mortality fell with
something like equality upon all classes of tenants,
153 changes of holding from the death of previous
holders being recorded in 1348-9. Out of these,
28 were holders of virgates and 14 of half-virgates.
The virgates and half-virgates of these holders who
died of the Black Death must have included more
than 2,400 half-acre strips in the open fields; and add-
ing up the contents of the other holdings of tenants
Two-thirds w h di ec [ t na t year, it would seem that about two-

of the land . .

heidinvir- thirds of the whole area which changed hands in
haif-vir- that memorable year were included in the virgates
84168 and half-virgates. It may be inferred, therefore, that
about the same proportion of the whole area of the
open fields must have been included in the virgates
and half-virgates whose holders died or survived.
Clearly, then, the mass of the land in the open fields
was held in these two grades of holdings. 1

Thus much, then, may be learned from the Win-
slow manor rolls with respect to the virgates and half-
They are virgates. Not only were they holdings each com-
vMenage. posed of a messuage and the scattered strips belonging
to it in the open fields, not only did they form the

1 The number of tenants with
smaller holdings was considerably
larger than the number of holders of I acreage than the other class,
virgates and half-virgates, but their

holdings were so small that in the
aggregate they held a much smaller

The Winslow Manor Rolls.

two chief grades of holdings with equality in each Chap. ii.
grade, but also they were all alike held in villenage.
They were not holdings of the lord's demesne land,
but of the land in villenage. The holders, besides
their virgates and half-virgates, often, it is true, held
other land, part of the lord's demesne, as free tenants
at an annual rent. But such free holdings were no
part of their virgates. The virgates and half-virgates
were held in villenage. Of these they were not free
tenants, but villein tenants. So also the lesser cottage
holdings were held in villenage. But the holders of
virgates and half-virgates were the highest grades in
the hierarchy of tenants in villenage. They not only
held the greater part of the open fields in their bundles
of scattered strips ; the rolls also show that they almost
exclusively served as jurors in the ' Halimot,' or Court
of the Manor ; though occasionally one or two other
villein tenants with smaller holdings were associated
with them. 1

It is possible that just as villein tenants could hold The villein
in free tenure land in the lord's demesne, so free men < viiiam','
might hold virgates in villenage and retain their per- tcripu '
sonal freedom ; but those at all events of the holders 9lch<B -
of virgates who were nativi, i.e. villeins by descent
were adscripti glebai. They held their holdings at
the will of the lord, and were bound to perform the
customary services. If they allowed their houses to

1 Out of 43 jurymen who bad
served in 1346, 1347, and 1348,
27 died of the Black Death in
1348-9. Out of these 27 who died,
and whose holdiugs therefore can he
traced, 16 held virgates, 8 held

half-virgates, and of the other 3 one
held 1 messuage and 2 cottages,
another a messuage and 15 acres in
villenage (equivalent to a half-vir-
gate), and the third 8 acres arable
and 2£ of meadow.

The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. get out of repair they were guilty of waste, and the
jury were fined if they did not report the neglect. 1

Yet the entries in the rolls prove that their hold-
ings were hereditary, passing by the lord's re-grant
from father to son by the rule of primogeniture, on
payment of the customary heriot or relief. 2

Widows had dower, and widowers were tenants by
the curtesy, as in the case of freeholds. The holders
in villenage, even ' nativi,' could make wills which
were proved before the cellerarius of the abbey, and
had done so time out of mind, while the wills of free
tenants were proved at St. Albans. 3

These things all look like a certain recognition of
freedom within the restraints of the villenage. But
if the ' nativi ' married without the lord's consent they
were fined. If they sold an ox without licence, again
they were fined. If they left the manor without
licence they were searched for, and if found arrested
as fugitives and brought back. 4 If their daughters
lost their chastity 5 the lord again had his fine. And

1 Cases of this are numerous
after the Black Death. See in 27
Ed. III. one case, in 28 Edward III.
11 cases, in 30 Ed. III. five cases.

2 All the 153 holdings which
changed hands on the death of the
tenants of the Black Death were
re-granted to the single heir of the
deceased holder or to a reversioner,
or in default of such were retained
by the lord. In no case was there a
subdivision by inheritance. The
heriot of a virgate was generally an
ox, or money payment of its value.
But the amount was often reduced
' propter paupertateui ; ' and some-

times when a succeeding tenant
could not pay, a half-acre was de-
ducted from the virgate and held by
the lord instead of the heriot.

3 See under 23 Ed. III. a record
of the unanimous finding of the jury
to this e fleet.

4 The instances of fugitive vil-
leins are very numerous for years
after the Black Death ; and inquiry
into cases of this class formed a
prominent part of the business trans-
acted at the halimotes.

5 There were 22 cases of • Lere-
wyt' recorded on the manor rolls
in the first 10 years of Edward III.

The Winslow Manor Rolls. 81

in all these cases the whole jury were fined if they Chap. n.
neglected to report the delinquent.

Their services were no doubt limited and defined
by custom, and so late as the reign of Edward III.
mostly discharged by a money payment in lieu of the
actual service, but they rested nominally on the will of
the lord ; and sometimes to test their obedience the
relaxed rein was tightened, and trivial orders were
issued, such as that they should go off to the woods
and pick nuts for the lord. 1 In case of dispute a court
was held under the great ash tree at St. Albans,
and the decision of this superior manorial court at
head-quarters settled the question. 2 This villenage of
the Winslow tenants was, no doubt, in the fourteenth
century mild in its character ; the silent working of
economic laws was breaking it up ; but it was villenage But their
still. It was serfdom, but it was serfdom in the last trS^g 8
stages of its relaxation and decay. u p-

Already, any harking back by the landlord upon
older and stricter rules — any return, for instance, to
the actual services instead of the money payments
in lieu of them — produced resentment and insubordi-
nation amongst the villein tenants. Murmurs were
already heard in the courts, and symptoms appear
on the rolls in the year following the Black Death
which clearly indicate the presence of smouldering
embers very likely soon to burst into flame. 3 The
rebellion under Wat Tyler was, in fact, not far ahead.
But in this inquiry we are looking backwards into
earlier times, in order to learn what English serfdom
was when fully in force, rather than in the days when

1 See a case in 25 Ed. III. 2 See a case of this in 6 Ed. III.

3 See under 6 Ed. III.

32 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. it was Dreaking up. Iu the meantime the practical
knowledge gained from the Winslow manor rolls,
how a community in serfdom fitted as it were into
the open field system as into an outer shell, and still
more the knowledge of what the virgate and half-vir-
gate in villenage really were, drawn from actual
examples, may prove a useful key in unlocking still
further the riddle of earlier serfdom.

III. THE HUNDEED ROLLS OP EDWARD I., EMBRACING
FIVE MIDLAND COUNTIES.

The facts thus learned from the Winslow Manor
Eolls throw just that flash of light upon the otherwise
dry details of the Hundred Eolls of Edward I. which
is needful to make the picture they give in detail of
the manors in parts of five midland counties vivid and
clear.

English economic history is rich in its materials ;
and of all the records of the economic condition of
England, next to the Domesday Survey, the Hundred
Surveys of Eolls are the most important and remarkable. The
in five second volume, in its 1,000 folio pages, contains inter
l°D. n i27'9. a ^ a a t rue and clear description of every manor in a
large district, embracing portions of Oxfordshire, Berk-
shire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Cambridge-
shire, in about the year 1279 ; and as in most cases the
name of every tenant is recorded, with the character
of his holding and a description of his payments and
services, the picture of each manor has almost the
detail and accuracy of a photograph. Turning over
its pages, the mass of detail may at first appear con-
fused and bewildering, and in one sense it is so, because

The Hundred Rolls. 33

it relates to a system which, however simple when Chap, n
fully at work, becomes broken up and entangled
whilst in process of disintegration. But the key to it
once mastered, the original features of the system may
still be recognised. Even the broken pieces fall into
their proper places, and the general economic outlines
of the several manors stand out sharply and clearly
marked.

Speaking generally, in its chief economic features
every manor is alike, as in the record itself one
common form of survey serves for them all. Hence They are
the Winslow example gives the requisite key to the winslow
whole. Bringing to the record the knowledge of how fcyre '
the open fields were everywhere divided into furlongs,
and acre or half-acre strips, and that virgates and
half-virgates were equal bundles of strips scattered
all over the fields, the description of the manors in
the Hundred Eolls becomes perfectly intelligible.

In the first place the manor consists, as in the
Winslow example, of two parts — the land in demesne
and the land in villenage.

The land in demesne consists of the home farm,
and portions, irregular in area, let out from it to what
are called free tenants (libere tenentes), some of them
being nevertheless villeins holding their portions of
the demesne lands in free tenure at certain rents in
addition to their regular holdings. .

The land in villenage, as in the Winslow manor, is virgates
held mostly in virgates and half-virgates, and below y° r g a te 8 .
these cottiers hold smaller holdings, also in villenage.

In describing the tenants in villenage there is first
a statement that A. B. holds a virgate in villenage at
such and such payments and services, which are often

o 1

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

Cottier
tenants.

With ex-
ceptional

variations
ibe manors
ar< .ill of
one type.

very minutely described. The money value of each
service and the total value of them all is in many
cases also carefully given. This description of the
holding and services of A. B. is then followed by a list
of persons who also each hold a virgate at the same
services as A. B.

Secondly, there is a similar statement in detail that
C. D. holds a half -virgate in villenage, and that such
and such are his payments and services, followed by
a similar list of persons who also each hold a half-
virgate at the same services as C. D.

Then follows a list of the little cottier tenants, and
their holdings and services. Amongst some of these
cottage holdings there is equality, some are irregular,
and some consist of a cottage and nothing else.

These holdings are all in villenage, but, as before
mentioned, the names of the villein tenants often
occur again in the list of free tenants {liber e tenentes)
of portions of the lord's demesne or of recently
reclaimed land {terra assarta).

This may be taken as a fair description of the
common type of manor throughout tbe Hundred Kolls,
with local variations.

The chief of these is that in many places in Cam-
bridgeshire and Huntingdonshire the holdings of the
i-illani, instead of being described as virgates and
half-virgates, are described by their acreage. There
are so many holders of 30, 20, 15, 10, or other
number of acres each. They are not the less in
grades, with equality in each grade, but the holdings
bear no distinctive name.

There is also in these counties a class of tenants,
partly above the villani, called sochemanni, which we

The Hundred Rolls. 35

shall find again when we reach the Domesday Survey. CtIAP - n -
But upon exceptional local circumstances it is not
needful to dwell here.

The fact is, then, that in the Hundred Kolls of
Edward I. there is disclosed over the much wider
area of five midland counties almost precisely the
same state of things as that which existed in the
manor of Winslow late in the reign of Edward III.
That manor was under the ecclesiastical lordship of
an abbey, but here in the Hundred Eolls the same
state of things exists under all kinds of ownership.
Manors of the king or the nobility, of abbeys, and
of private and lesser landowners, are all substantially
alike. In all there is the division of the manpr into
demesne land and land in villenage. In all the mass
of the land in villenage is held in the grades of hold-
ings mostly called virgates and half-virgates, with
equality in each grade both as to the holding and the
services. In all alike are found the smaller cottage
holdings, also in villenage ; and lastly, in all alike
there are the free tenants of larger or smaller por-
tions of the demesne land.

If the picture of a manor and its open fields and The open
virgates or yard-lands in villenage — i.e. both of the tern is the
shell and of the community in serfdom inhabiting the a er e f,j °m.
shell — drawn in detail from the single Winslow
example, has thrown light upon the Hundred Eolls,
these latter, embracing hundreds of manors in the
midland counties of England, give the picture a
typical value, proving that it is true, not for one
manor only, but, speaking generally, for all the
manors of central England.

They also give additional information on the rela-

T) 2

36 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. tion of the holdings to the hide, and reveal more
clearly than the Winslow manor rolls the nature of the
serfdom under which the villein tenants held their
virgates. Before passing from the Hundred Rolls it
will be worth while to examine the new facts they
give us, and to devote a section to an examination of
the services.

IV. THE HUNDRED ROLLS [continued) — RELATION OF THti
VIRGATE TO THE HIDE AND CARUCATE.

Before passing to the villein services described in
the Hundred Eolls, evidence may be cited from them
showing the relation of the virgate or yard-land —
which is now known to be the normal holding of the
normal tenant in villena^e — to the hide and carucate. If
to the knowledge of what a virgate was, can be added
an equally clear understanding of what a hide was,
another valuable step will be gained.

In the rolls for Huntingdonshire a series of entries
occurs, describing, contrary to the usual practice of
the compilers, the number of acres in a virgate, and the
number of virgates in a hide, in several manors.

These entries are given below, 1 and they show
clearly —

(1) Tli at the bundle of scattered strips called a
virgate did not always contain the same number of
acres.

(2) That the hide did not always contain the
same number of virgates.

But at the same time it is evident that the hide in

1 For Table of entries see next page.

The Hundred Bolls.

Chap. II.

The nor-
mal hide
four vir-
gates or
120 acres;
the double
hide of 240
acres : but

Huntingdonshire most often contained 120 acres or
thereabouts. It did so in twelve cases out of nineteen.
In one case it contained the double of 120, i.e. 240
acres. In six cases only the contents varied irregu-
larly from the normal amount.

Taking the normal hides of 120 acres, five of
them were made up of four virgates of thirty acres locaivarL
each, which we may take to have been normal vir- tlons *
gates. In one case there were eight virgates of fifteen
acres each in the hide. In other places these probably
would have been called half- virgates, as at Winslow.

There were occasionally five virgates and sometimes
six virgates in the hide, and the fact of these varia-
tions will be found to have a meaning hereafter ; but
in the meantime we may gather from the instances
given in the Hundred Eolls for Huntingdonshire, that
the normal hide consisted as a rule of four virgates
of about thirty acres each. The really important

Rot. Hund.

No. of virgates in
each hide

Acres in a virgate

Acres in a hide

VI.

240

II. p. 629

VI.

168

IV.

192

631

VI.

180

655

VI.

150

636

,IV.

It.

120

125

637

VIII.

120

640

rv.

120

640

125

645

IV.

120

64 G

130

648

IV.

120

653

IV.

120

654

IV.

120

656

VI.

144

658

125

600

125

661

VT.

120

38 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. consequence resulting from this is the recognition of
the fact that as the virgate was a bundle of so many-
scattered strips in the open fields, the hide, so far as it
consisted of actual virgates in villenage, was also a
bundle — a compound and fourfold bundle — of scat-
tered strips in the open fields.

Whilst, however, marking this relation of the vir-
gate to the hide, regarded as actual holdings in villen-
age, it is necessary to observe also that throughout
the Hundred Eolls the assessed value of the manors
The an- * s generally stated in hides and virgates ; and that,
cientind- m j-^g es timate thus given of the hidaqe of a manor

age or o &

assessment as a whole, the demesne land as well as the land in
tion. villenage is taken into account. In this case the hide

and virgate are used as measures of assessment, and
it does not follow that all land that was measured or
estimated by the hide and virgate was actually
divided up by balks into acres, although the demesne
land itself was in fact, as we have seen, often in the
open fields, and intermixed with the strips in villen-
age. Distinction must therefore be made between
the hide and virgate as actual holdings and the hide
and virgate as customary land measures, used for re-
cording the assessed values or the extent of manors,
just as in the case of the acre.

The virgate and the hide were probably, like the
acre, actual holdings before they were adopted as
abstract land measures. It may be even possible to
learn or to guess what fact made a particular number
of acres the most convenient holding.
The sc«*- In the Hundred Eolls for Oxfordshire there is

frequent reference to the payment of the tax called
scutage. The normal amount of this is assumed

The Hundred Rolls. 39

to be 40s. for each knights fee, or scutum. And it Chap. ii.
appears that the knight's fee was assumed to contain
four normal hides. There is an entry, ' One hide
gives scutage for a fourth part of one scutum.' And
as four virgates went usually to each hide, so each
virgate should contribute -^ of a scutum. There are
several entries which state that when the scutage is
40s. each virgate pays 2s. 6c?., which is -^ of 40s. 1

And these figures seem to lead one step further, Connexion
and to connect the normal acreage of the hide of acreage of
120a., and of the virgate of 30a., with the scutage of andth?
40s. per knight's fee ; for when these normal acreages coina s e "
were adhered to in practice the assessment would be
one penny per acre, and the double hide of 240 acres
would pay one pound. In other words, in choosing
the acreage of the standard hide and virgate, a num-
ber of acres was probably assumed, corresponding
with the monetary system, so that the number of
pence in the ' scutum ' should correspond with the
number of acres assessed to its payment. We shall
find this correspondence of acreage with the coinage
by no means confined to this single instance.

But there remains the question, why the acreage
in the virgate and hide as actual holdings, and the

1 Hundred Rolls, Oxon.

II. 703. Every virgate gives scutage 2s. 6d. when the scutage is 40s.

„ 40s.

40s.
40s.
„ 40s., &c.

40s.
40s.
II. 830. 1 hide gives scutage for a fourth part of a scutum.

From these instances it is evident that normally 4 virgates = 1 hide, and
4 hides make a knight's fee.

2 virgates give

5s.

1 virgate gives

2s. 6d.

4 virgates give

10s.

2 » »

5s.

II. 709.

* V J)

8s.

5 „ 1,

lis. 5d.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

Carucate,
or land of
a plough
team, used
instead of
the hide
for later
taxation,

and varied
according
to the soil.

number of virgates in the hide, were not constant.
Their actual contents and relations were evidently
ruled by some other reason than the number of pence
in a pound.

A trace at least of the original reason of the vary-
ing contents and relations of the hide and virgate is
to be found in the Hundred Eolls, as, indeed, almost
everywhere else, in the use of another word in the place
of hide, when, instead of the anciently assessed hidage
of a manor, its more modern actual taxable value is
examined into and expressed. This new word is
' carucate ' — the land of a plough or plough team, —
' caruca ' being the mediaeval Latin term for both
plough and plough team.

The Hundred Eolls for Bedfordshire afford several
examples in point. In some cases the carucate seems
to be identical with the normal hide of 120 acres, but
other instances show that the carucate varied in
area. 1 It is the land cultivated by a plough team ;
varying in acreage, therefore, according to the light-
ness or heaviness of the soil, and according to the
strength of the team.

V. THE HUNDRED EOLLS {continued) — THE SERVICES
OF THE VILLEIN TENANTS.

Services j n th e Hundred Eolls for Bedfordshire and

often com- , . ,

muted into Buckinghamshire the services of the villem tenants

money
payments.

1 Hundred Eolls, Beds.

II. 321. Carucate of ]20 acres.

324 „ 80 „

325 „ 100 „

326 „ 120 „

If. 328. Caracal e of 200 acres.
329 „ 80 „

332 „ 100 „

The Hundred Bolls.

are almost always commuted into money payments. Chap. ii.
From each virgate a payment of from 16s. to 20s. is
described as due, or services to that value (vel opera
ad valorem), showing that the actual services have
become the exception, and the money payments the
rule. But in many cases distinguishing marks of
serfdom still remained in the fine upon the marriage
of a daughter, the heriot on the death of the holder,
and the restraint on the sale of animals. 1

In Huntingdonshire and Oxfordshire, on the other
hand, the services, whilst often having their money
value assigned, are mostly given in great detail, as
though still frequently enforced.

Speaking generally, the chief services, notwith-
standing variations in detail, may be classed under
three different heads.

(1) There is the iveekly work at ploughing, reap-
ing, carrying, usually for two or three days a week,
and most at harvest-time. In other cases there are
so many days' work required between certain dates.

(2) There are precaria?, or ' boon-days,' some- Precaria?.
times called bene works — special or extra services
which the lord has a right to require, sometimes the

lord providing food for the day, and sometimes the
tenant providing for himself.

(3) There are payments in kind or in money at Fixed dues
specified times, such as Christmas, Easter, Martinmas, r ITS.
and Michaelmas dues : churchshot, an ancient ecclesias-

Of three
kinds.

Week
work.

1 Hundred Rolls, Bedfordshire.
— ' Et sunt illi villain ita servi quod
non possunt maritare filias nisi ad
voluntatem domini ' (II. 329).

'Nee pullos sibi pullatos mas-

(II. 328).

Buckinghamshire. — ' Sunt ad
voluntatem domini, et ad alia iaci-
enda quae ad servilem conditionem
pertinent ' (II. 335-6). And so on.

The English Village Community .

Chap. ii. tical due ; besides contributions towards the lord's
taxes in the shape of tallage or scutage.

Sometimes the services are to be performed with
one or two labourers, showing that the cottier tenants
were labourers under the holders of virgates, or indi-
cating possibly in some cases the remains of a slave
class.

The chief weekly services were those of plough-
ing, the tenants sometimes supplying oxen to the lord's
plough team, sometimes using their own ploughs, two
or more joining their oxen for the purpose. This
co-operation is a marked feature of the services, and
is found also in connexion with reaping and carrying.

The cottier tenants in respect of their smaller
holdings often worked for their lord one day a week,
and having no plough, or oxen, their services did not
include ploughing.

Annexed are typical instances of the services of
both classes of tenants. They are taken from three
counties, and placed side by side for comparison.

EXAMPLES OF VILLEIN SERVICES.

Oxfordshire

HUNTINGDON.-IIIRE

Cambridgeshire

Of a Villanus holding a
Virgate}

A. B. holds a virgate, and
owes —

82 days' work [about 8. d.
2 days a week] be-
tween Michaelmas
and June 24, valued
at $d. = . .35

1 1 ^ days' work
[rather more than
2 days a week] be-

Of a Villanus holding
a Virgate?

A. B. holds 1 virgate
in villenage —

By paying \2d. at
Michaelmas.

By doing works from
Michaelmas to Eas-
ter, with the excep-
tion of the fortnight
after Christmas, viz.
2 days each week,

Of a Villanus

holding £ Virgate

of 15 acres. 3

A. B. holds a &
virgate of cus-
tomable land
containing 15
acres, and does
3 days' work
each week
throughout the
year, and 3
precarise, with

1 II. 744 b.

2 II. G42o.

3 II 5546.

The Hundred Rolls.

Examples of Villein Services — continued.

Chap. II.

Oxfordshire

Of a Villanus holding a
Virgate.

tween June 24 and s. d.

August 1, valued

at Id. = . . 1H

19 days' work [2|
days a week] be-
tween August 1
and Michaelmas,
valued at l±d. = . 2 4i

6 precariae, with one
man, valued at . 12

1 precaria, with 2
men, for reaping,
with food from the
lord, valued at . 2

Half a carriage for
carrying the wheat 1

Half a carriage for
the hay . . 1

The ploughing and
harrowing of an
acre ... 6

1 ploughing called

1 graserthe'' . . 1A

1 day's harrowing of
oat[land] . . 1

1 horse [load] of
wood ... A

Making 1 quarter of
malt, and drying it 1

1 day's work at wash-
ing and shearing
sheep, valued at . \

1 day's hoeing . . \

3 days' mowing . 6

1 day's nutting . \

1 day's work in carry-
ing to the stack . \

Tallage once a year
at the lord's will.

HUNTINi:l)ONSHIKK

Of a Villanus holding
a Virgate.

with one man each
day.

Item, he shall plough
with his own plough
one selion and a hall
on every Friday in
the aforesaid time.

Item, he shall harrow
the same day as
much as he has
ploughed.

He shall do works
from Easter to Pen-
tecost, 2 days each
week, with one man
each day.

And he shall plough
one selion each Fri-
day in the same time.

He shall do works
from Pentecost till
August 1, for 3 days
each week, with one
man each day, either
hoeing the corn, or
mowing and lifting
(levand).

He shall do works
from August 1 till
September 8, for 3
days each week,
with two men each
day.

He shall make 1 ' love-
bonum ' with all his
family except his
wife, finding his
own food. And
from September 8
to Michaelmas he
works 3 days each
week, with one man
each day. He shall
carry [with a horso
or horses] as far as
Bolnhurst, and

from Holnhurst to
Torneye.

Cambkiik;i ■shirk

Of a Villanus

holding £ Virgate

of 15 acres.

meals found by
the lord, and
gives at Martin-
mas Id., and a
hen at Christ-
mas, and 8 eggs
at Easter ; and
the same works
and customs if
' adfirmam ' are
valued at 9s. per
annum.
(20 others each
hold 15 acres
with like ser-
vices.)

Chap. II.

44 The English Village Community.

Examples of Villein Services — continued.

OXFORDSHIRE

Of a Cotarius. 1

A. B. holds one croft, and
owes from .Michaelmas to
-f 1, each workable
week, one day's work of what-
ever kind the lord requires.

Huntingdon-shire Cambrtogeshibb

Of a VUlanns holding
a Virgate.

Also he gives £ bushel
of corn as ' bensed '
in winter-time.

Also 10 bushels of
oats at Martinmas
as ' fodderkorn?

Also Id. as ' loksiherj
that is for 2d. a loaf,
and 5 hens.

Also Id. on Ash- Wed-
nesday, as 'Jispeni '
(fishpenny),
lso~~

Also 10 eggs on
St. Botolph's Day
(June 17).

Also in Easter week
2d. towards digging
the vineyard.

Also in Pentecost week
Id. towards uphold-
ing the mill-dam
(stagnum) of Newe-
tone.

If he sell a bull calf he
shall give the lord
abbot 4rf., and this
according to custom.

He gives ' merchetum '
and ' herietum,' and
is tallaged at Mi-
chaelmas according
to the will of the
said abbot.

He gives 2d. as
' sumetcode silver ' at
Christmas.

Of a Cotarius. 2

A. B. holds 1 acre at
12(7., and works 4
days in autumn
with one man.

Heia tallaged ' quando

Of a Cotarius. 3

A. B. is a cota-
rius, and holds 1
cottage and 1
acre, for which
he gives —

1 II. 758 a.

2 II. 613 b.

3 II. 535 b.

The lluinlrril Rolls.

Examples of Villein Services —com

Chap. U.

Oxfordshire

Hi NTlNcnoNSHIRE

OAMBMDS]

Of a Cotarius.

At Martinmas gives 1 cock
and 3 hens for churchshot,
and ought to drive to certain
places, and to carry writs. 1
his foo 1 being found by the
lord; also to wash and shear
sheep, receiving a loaf and a
half, and being partaker of
the cheese with the servi;
and to hoe. In the autumn,
to work and receive like as
each servus works and re-
ceives for the whole week. 2

(10 cottiers do like ser-
vices).

Of a Cotarius.
Hex talliat burgos

SUOS.'

lie gives ' gar shaves'
each year for pigs
killed and sold, viz.
for a pig a vear old,

And when there is
pannage in the lord'

wood he gives for
apigofayearold. Yd.
And if he keeps his
pigs alive beyond
a year, he gives
nothing.

Of a Cotariu •.

1 day's work
on Monday in
every week un-
less a festival
prevents him.

1 hen at
Christmas.

5 eggs at

Easter.

VI. DESCRIPTION IN FLETA OF A MANOR IN THE TIME OF
EDWARD I.

Contemporary in date with the Hundred Eolls is
the anonymous work bearing the title of ' Fleta,' which
may be described as the vade mecum of the landlords
of the time of Edward I. It was designed to put
them in possession of necessary legal knowledge ; and
mixed up with this are practical directions regarding
the management of their estates. The writer advises Landlords
landlords on taking possession of their manors to have ™n ° a
a survey made of their property, so that they may
know the extent of their rights and income.

If in the Hundred Rolls we have photographic,
details of hundreds of individual manors surveyed

1 In another manor in Hunt- 1 2 The Latin text is badly

ingdonshire certain cottiers ought printed here, but the original has
to make summonses. II. 616. I been inspected.

The English Village Community .

Chap. ii. for purposes of royal taxation, so here is a picture
of an ordinary or typical manor — a generalisation
of the ordinary features of a manor — drawn by a
contemporary hand, and regarding all things from a
landlord's point of view.

The manor as described in Fleta is a territorial
unit, with its own courts and local customs known
only on the spot. Therefore the extent is to be
taken upon the testimony of ' faithful and sworn
tenants of the lord.' And inquiry is to be made l —

Survey of
h. manor.

Free

tenants.

(1) Of castles and buildings in the demesne (intrinsecis) within and

without the moat, with gardens, curtilages, dovecotes, fish-
ponds, &c.

(2) What fields (camjn) and culture there are in demesne, and how

many acres of arable in each cultura of meadow and of pasture.

(3) What common pasture there is outside the demesne (forinseca),

and what beasts the lord can place thereon [he, like his tenants,
being as to this limited in his rights by custom].

(4) Of parks and demesne woods, which the lord at his will can culti-

vate and reclaim (assartare).

(5) Of woods outside the demesne (forinsecis), in which others have

common rights, how much the lord may approve.

(6) Of pannage, herbage, and honey, and all other issues of the forests,

woods, moors, heaths, and wastes.

(7) Of mills [belonging to the lord, and having a monopoly of grinding

for the tenants at fixed charges], fishponds, rivers (ripariis), and
fisheries several and common.

(8) Of pleas and perquisites belonging to the county, manor, and forest

courts.

(9) Of churches belonging to the lord's advowson.

(10) Of heriots, fairs, markets, tolls, day-works (operationes), services,

foreign (forinseci) customs, and gifts (exhenniis).

(11) Of warrens, liberties, parks, coneyburrows, wardships, reliefs, and

yearly fees.

Then regarding the tenants, —

(1) De libere tenentibus, or free tenants, how many are intrinscci and
how many forinseci; what lands they hold of the lord, and

1 Fleta, lib. 2, c. 71. Compare also ' Extenta Manerii :' Statutes of
the Realm, i. p. 242.

Fleta. 47

what of others, and by what service ; whether by socage, or by ^ HAP - "<
military service, or by fee farm, or ' in eleemosynam ' ; who hold
by charter, and who not ; what rents they pay ; which of them
do suit at the lord's court, &c. ; and wliat accrues to the lord
at their death.
(2) De custnmariis, or villein tenants ; how many there are, and what Villein
is their suit; how much each has, and what it is worth, both tenants
de antiquo dominico and de novo perquisito ; to what amount
they can be tallaged without reducing them to poverty and
ruin; what is the value of their ' opcrationes' 1 and ' consuetudines''
— their day-works and customary duties — and what rent they
pay; and which of them can be tallaged ' ratione sanguinis
nativi,' 1 and who not.

Then there follows a statement of the duties of officers,
the usual officials of the manor.

First there is the seneschal, 1 or steward, whose The sene-
duty it is to hold the Manor Courts and the View of steward";
Frankpledge, and there to inquire if there be any
withdrawals of customs, services, and rents, or of
suits to the lord's courts, markets, and mills, and as
to alienations of lands. He is also to check the
amount of seed required by the propositus for each
manor, for under the seneschal there may be several
manors.

On his appointment he must make himself ac-
quainted with the condition of the manorial ploughs
and plough teams. He must see that the land is pro- who ar-
perly arranged, whether on the three-field or the two- ploughing
field svstem. If it be divided into three parts, 180 H " dt ^

J * plough

acres should go to each carucate, viz. 60 acres to be teams -
ploughed in winter, 60 in Lent, and 60 in summer for
fallow. If in two parts, there should be 160 acres
to the carucate, half for fallow, half for winter and
Lent sowing, i.e. 80 acres in each of the two ' fields.'

1 Fleta, lib. 2, c. 72.

48 The English Village Community

Chap. ii. Besides the manorial ploughs and plough teams

he must know also how many tenant or villein ploughs
(carucce adjutrices) there are, and how often they are
bound to aid the lord in each manor.

He is also to inquire as to the stock in each
manor, whereof an inventory indented is to be drawn
up between him and the serjeant ; and as to any
deficiency of beasts, which he is at once to make
good with the lord's consent.

The seneschal thus had jurisdiction over all the

2SET manors of the lord. But each single manor should
have its own propositus.

The best husbandman is to be elected by the vil-
lata, or body of tenants, as propositus, and he is to be
responsible for the cultivation of the arable land. He
must see that the ploughs are yoked early in the
morning — both the demesne and the villein ploughs —
and that the land is properly ploughed (pure et con-
junctim) and sown. He is a villein tenant, and acts
on behalf of the villeins, but he is overlooked by the
lord's bailiff.

The bailiff. The bailiff's 1 duties are stated to be — To rise
early and have the ploughs yoked, then walk in the
fields to see that all is right. He is to inspect the
ploughs, whether those of the demesne or the villein
or auxiliary ploughs, seeing that they be not un-
yoked before their day's work ends, failing which lie
will be called to account. At sowing-time the bailiff',
propositus, and reaper must go with the ploughs
through the whole day's work until they have com-
pleted their proper quantity of ploughing for the day,

1 Flela, lib. 2. c. 73.

Battle Abbey and St. Pmtl's. 49

which is to be measured, and if the ploughmen have Chap.il
made any errors or defaults, and can make no ex-
cuses, the reaper is to see that such faults do not go
uncorrected and unpunished.

Such is the picture, given by Fleta, of the manorial
machine at work grinding through its daily labour on
the days set apart for service on the lord's demesne.

The other side of the picture, the work of the
villani for themselves on other days, the yoking of
their oxen in the common plough team, and the
ploughing and sowing of their own scattered strips ;
whether this was arranged with equal regard to
rigid custom, or whether in Fleta's time the co-opera-
tion had become to some extent broken up, so that
each villein tenant made his own arrangements by
contract with his fellows, or otherwise — this inferior
side of the picture is left undrawn.

In the meantime, returning to the question of the
holdings in villenage, an additional reason for the
variations in their acreage is found in the statement
already alluded to, viz. that the extent of the actual
carucate, or land of one plough team, was dependent,
among other things, upon whether the system of
husbandry was the two-field or the three-field system,
each plough team being able to cultivate a larger
acreage on the former than on the latter system.

vii. s.e. of england — the hide and vlrgate under
other names (the records of battle abbey and
st. paul's).

Passing now to the south-eastern counties, there Battle
are in the Eecord Office valuable MSS. relating to the j v .

The English Village Community.

Surveys of
1284-7.

Chap. ti. estates of Battle Abbey. 1 There are two distinct
surveys of these estates, made respectively in the
reigns of Edward I. and Henry VI.

The date of the earliest MS. is from 12 to 15
Edward I. (1284-7). It is, therefore, almost contem-
poraneous with the Hundred Eolls. The estates lay
in various counties ; but wherever situated, the same
general phenomena as those already described are
found.

Confining attention to the regular grades of hold-
ings in villenage, the following are examples from the
Battle Abbey estates.

The abbot had an estate at Brichwolton (or
Brightwalton), in Berkshire. In the survey of it 10
holders of a virgate each are recorded as virgarii, and
in the MS. of Henry VI., 5 holders of half- virgates are
in the same way called dimidii virgarii.

There was another estate at ' Apeldreham,' in
Sussex. Here, under the heading ' Isti subscripti
dicuntur Yherdlinges,' there is a list of 5 holders of
virgates, 4 holders of 1|> virgates each, and one of h a
virgate.

At ' Alsiston,' in Sussex, a manor nestling under
the chalk downs, the holdings were as follows : —

i hides
and wistas.

1 wista and 1 great wista.

£ hide.

1 hide.

£ hide and 1 wista.

3 wistas and 1 great wista.

£ hide.

i hide.

£ hide.

J hide.

1 wista.
£ hide.
£ hide.
\ hide.
1 wista.
\ hide.

The propositus 1 wista
(without services).

1 Augmentation Office, Miscellaneous Books, Nos. 56 and 57.

Battle Abbey and St. Paul's. 51

In the description of the services, those for each
half-hide are first given, and then there follows a note
that each half-hide contains two wistas ; wherefore the
services of each wista are half those above mentioned.

There is another manor (Blechinton, near the
coast), where there were—

2 holdings of half-hides,

9 of wistas,

6 of half-wi9tas,

and two other manors where the holders were in one
case 5, all of half-hides ; and in the other case one of
a hide and 4 of half-hides.

These are valuable examples of hides and half-hides,
as still actual holdings in villenage, whilst apparently
instead of virgates in some of these Sussex manors a
new holding — the wista — occurs. And among the
documents of Battle Abbey given by Dugdale there
is the following statement, viz., that 8 virgates = 1
hide, and 4 virgates = 1 wista (great wista?). Sup-
posing the virgate here, as mostly elsewhere, to have
been, normally, a bundle of 30 acres, it is clear that
in this hide of 8 virgates we get another instance
of the double hide of 240 acres; whilst the 'great The double
wista ' of 4 virgates would correspond with the single 24o e a cres.
hide of 120 acres, and the wista would equal the ordi-
nary half-hide of two virgates.

We pass to another cartulary, and of earlier date. Domesday
In 1222 a visitation was made of the manors belong- p au f SiAiI) ,
ing to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, London. 1222 -
The register of this visitation is known as the ' Domes-
day of St. Paul's.' l The manors were scattered in

1 The Domesday of St. Paul's, edited by Archdeacon Hale, Camden
Society, 1858.

e 2

The English Village Community.

CnAP. ii. Herts, Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey — all south-east-
ern counties.

In the survey of Thorp, 1 one of the manors in
Essex, after a list of tenants on the demesne land, and
others on reclaimed land (de essarto), there follows a
list of tenants in villenage who are called hy davit. As
in the Battle Abbey records the virgarii were holders
of virgates, so these hydarii were probably, as their
name implies, groups of villani holding a hide.
But the holdings had in fact become subdivided and
irregular. Nevertheless, those belonging to each
original hide are bracketed together ; and adding
together their acreage, it appears that the hide is
assumed to contain 120 acres. The following examples
will make it clear that the holdings were once hides
of four virgates of 30 acres each.

Hides and
virgates.

Moldings.

= 30n.

= 30 a.
= 60 a.

= 30«.">
= 30 a

xx. a.

x. a.

xxx. a.

\ hide

xxx. a.
xxx. a.

xv. a. } _

xv. a [

v. a

V. a

vii.i a

v. a,

vii.£ a. I

And so on

= hide of 120 acres.

30 a.

= 30 a.

y. -- hide of 1 20 acres.

The services also were reckoned by the hide, and

from which it will

an abstract of them is here given

Services
reckoned
by the

hid e. be seen that for some purposes the tenants of the now

divided hide still clubbed as it were together to

Pp. 38 ct seq.

Battle Abbey and St. Paul's. 53

perform the services required for the hide ; whilst for Chap. ii.
others ' each homestead (domus) of the hide ' had its
separate duties to perform.

The following were the services on the manor of
Thorp : 1 —

Each of the hidarii ought to plough 8 acres, 4 in winter and 4 in Lent.

Also to harrow and sow with the lord's seed.

After Pentecost each house (domus) of the hide has to hoe thrice.

And to reap 4 acres, 2 of rye (siligine), and 2 of barley and oats.

And find a waggon (carrwn) with 2 men to carry the hard grain, and
another to carry the soft grain ; and each waggon (plaust?-um)
shall have 1 sheaf.
Each house of the hide has to mow 3 half-acres.
Each house of the hide has to provide a man to reap until the third

[day], if aught remains.
Each house of the hide and of the demesne allotted to tenants has to

provide the strongest man whom it has for the lord's l precaricc ' in

autumn, the lord providing him meals twice a day.
All men, both of the hide and of the demense, have to provide their own

ploughs for the lord's ' precaries/ the lord providing their meals.
And each hide ought to thresh out seed for the sowing of 4 acres after

Michaelmas Day.
Each hide must thresh out so much seed as will suffice for the land

ploughed by one team in winter and in Lent.
Each house of the whole village owes a hen at Christmas and eggs at

Easter.
These 10 hides oueht to repair and keep in repair these houses in the

demesne, viz. the Grange, cowhouse, and threshing house.
Each of these hidarii owes 2 doddce of oats in the middle of March.

And 14 loaves for ' mescinga ' (?).

And a ' companagium ' (flesh, fish, or cheese).
Each hide owes 5s. by the year, and ought to make of the lord's wood 4

hurdles of rods for the fold.

The instance of another manor of St. Paul's
(Tillingham), in Essex, 2 may be cited as further evi-
dence that sometimes, even where the holdings (as at
Winslow) were virgates and half-virgates, their original
relation to the hide was not yet forgotten. For after
giving the list of tenants in demesne, and of 19

1 P. 42. 8 P. 64.

54 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. tenants holding 30 acres each, who ' faciunt magnas
operationes,' i.e. do full service, there is a statement
that in this manor 30 acres make a virgate, and 120
acres a hide ; l so that here also there are 4 virgates to
the hide. But there was further in this manor a double

Soianda,oi hide, called a ' solanda,' 2 presumably of 240 acres.

hide. A double hide called a solanda is also mentioned in

Sutton in Middlesex, 3 and another in Drayton ; 4
and the term solanda is probably the same as the
well-known ' sulking ' or ' solin ' of Kent, meaning a
c plough land.'

It will be remembered that in the Huntingdon-
shire Hundred Eolls a double hide of 240 acres was
noticed.

The It may also be mentioned that in Kent 5 the division

suiiungs of the sullung, or hide, was called a yoke, instead of
yo a yard-land or virgate ; suggesting that the divisions
of the plough land in some way corresponded with
the yokes of oxen in the team.

On the whole little substantial difference appears
between the grades of holdings in the south-east of
England and those of the midland counties. We may
add also that here, as elsewhere, the humbler class of
cottier tenants are found beneath the regular holders
of hides and virgates, and that on the demesne lands
there appears the constantly increasing class of libere
tenentes. Also passing from the holdings in villen-
age to the serfdom under which they were held,

of a ' solanda qua? per 66 habet
duashidas' (p. !>:;).

4 Draitone, 'cum una hida de
solande ' (p. 99).

5 For the sullung of Kent, see
Mr. Elton's Tenures of Kent.

1 ' In manerio isto sexcies xx.
acre faciunt hidam, et xxx. acre
faciunt virgatam ' (p. G4).

2 ' Cum vi. hidis trium solan-
darum' (p. 58).

3 Sutton, where mention is made

Gloucester and Worcester Records. 55

and speaking generally, the description obtained from Chap. 11
the Hundred Rolls of the services might with little
variation be applied to the different area embraced
in this section.

VIII. THE RELATION OF THE VIRGATE TO THE HIDE
TRACED IN THE CARTULARIES OP GLOUCESTER AND
WORCESTER ABBEYS, AND THE CUSTUMAL OP BLEADON,
IN SOMERSETSHIRE.

Further facts relating to the hide and the virgate
are elicited by extending the inquiry into the west of
England. Turning to the cartulary of the monastery
of St. Peter at Gloucester, 1 there are several ' extents ' Gloucester

surveys of

of manors in the west of England of about the year 1266.
1266, which give valuable evidence, not only of the
existence of the open fields divided into three fields or
seasons, furlongs, and half-acre strips, but also as re-
gards the holdings.

The virgates in this district varied in acreage,
some containing 48 acres, others 40, 38, 36, and
28 acres respectively. 2 In one case it is inciden-
tally mentioned that 4 virgates make a hide. 3 We
have thus in these extents evidence both of the pre-
valence and of the varying acreage of the virgate in
the extreme west of England, to add to the evidence
already obtained in respect of the midland counties.

So also the register of the Priory of St. Mary, Worcester
Worcester, 4 dated 1240, affords still earlier evidence 1240.
for the west of England of a similar kind.

1 Published in the Rolls Series.

2 iii. p. cix.

3 iii. p. 55. ' Quatuor virgatte
terroe continentes unam hidain.'

4 Edited by Archdeacon Hale,
in the Oamden Society's Series,
18G5.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

In the first manor mentioned therein the customary
services of the villeins are described as pertaining to
each pair of half-virgates, i.e. to each original virgate. 1
In the next manor there were 35 holdings in half-vir-
gates, and so in other manors. 2 It is sometimes men-
tioned how many acres in each field belong to the
several half-virgates, thus showing not only the
division of the fields into seasons, but the scattered
contents of the holdings.

Finally, with local variations serfdom in these two
western counties was almost identical with that in
other parts of England.

Two examples of the services of holders of vir-
gates and half-virgates respectively are appended as
before for comparison with others, and also examples
of the services of cottier tenants. The list given in
the note below of the 4 common customs ' of the
villein tenants of one of the manors of Worcester
Priory, describes some of the more general incidents
of villenage, and shows how thorough a serfdom it
originally was. 3

1 P. 10 b.
a P. 14 b.

3 Worcester Cartulary, p. 15 a.
Of the common customs of the vil-
leins on the manor of Newenham —
to give ' Thac ' on Martinmas Day ;
for pigs ahove a year old (sows
excepted), \d., and for pigs not
ahove a year, hd. ; to sell neither
ox nor horse without licence; to
give Id. toll on selling an ox or
horse ; also ' aid ' and ' leyrwite '
(fine for a daughter's incontinence) ;
to redeem his sons, if they leave
the laud ; to pay ' germma ' for Ins

daughters ; no one to leave the
land, nor to make his son a clerk,
without licence ; natives coming of
age, unless they directly serve their
father or mother, to perform 3 ' berv-
ripee'\ and 'forinseci' (i.e. villeins
not horn in the manor) shall do
likewise ; to carry at the summons
of the ' servient ' (hailiff or Ser-
jeant) besides the worjt : and if he
carry 'ex necessit'ite," 1 to be quit of
[a day's] work ; to give at death
his best chattel (eatallum) ; the suc-
cessor to make a fine, as he can ;
the widow to stay on the laud as

Gloucester and Worcester Records.

To this evidence from the counties of Worcester C " AP - n -
and Gloucester we may add the evidence of the Cus- Custumai
tumal of Bleadon, in Somersetshire, also dating from inSomer-
the thirteenth century. 8etshire -

The manor belonged to the Prior of St. Swithin, at
Winchester. There were very few libere tenentes. The
tenants in villenage werevirgarii, or holders of virgates,
and dimidii-virgarii, or holders of half-virgates. There
were also holders of fardels or quarter-virgates,
and half-fardels, or one-eighth-virgates, and other
small cottier tenants. Four virgates went to the hide.
And the services were very similar to those of the
Gloucester and Worcester tenants. They are de-
scribed at too great length to be inserted here. We
may, however, notice the importance amongst other
items of the carrying service or averagium — a service
often mentioned among villein services, but here
defined with more than usual exactness. 1

In short, without going further into details, it is
obvious that the open field system and the serfdom
which lived within it were practically the same in
their general features in the west and in the east of
England.

The following are the examples of the services in
Gloucestershire and Worcestershire : —

long as she continues the service ;
all to attend their own mill ; ' Cot-
manni ' to guard and take prisoners
[to jail].

1 ' Et idem faciet averagium apud
BristolT et apud Wellias per totum
annum, et apud Pridie, et post
hokeday apud Bruggewauter, cum
affro suo ducente bladum domini,
caseum, et lauam, et cetera omnia

quae sibi serviens prnecipere voluerit,
et habebit unam quadrantem et
dayuam suam quietam. Et debet
facere averagium apud Axebrugge
et ad navem quotiens dominus
voluerit, et nichil habebit propter
idem averagium.' — Proceedings of
Archaeological Institute, Salisbury,
p. 203. App. to Notice of the Cus-
tumai of Bleadon, pp. LS-J-l'IO.

58 The English Village Community.

VILLEIN SERVICES.

Gloucestershire

Worcestershire

Services of a Virgate. 1

Services of a Half-virgate?

A. B. holds 1 virgate of 8. d.

Of the villenage of Neweham,

48 acres (in the manor

with appurtenances (or mem-

of Hartpury), with mes-

bers), and of the villeins' works

suage, and 6 acres of

and customs.

meadow land.

In this manor are 35 half-vir-

From Michaelmas till Au-

gates with appurtenances, ex-

gust 1 he has to plough

clusive of the half-virgate be-

one day a week, each

longing to the ' propositus?

day's work being valued

Each half-virgate ad censum pays

at . 3£

on St. Andrew's Day \2d.

And to do manual labour

(November 30) ; on Annun-

3 days a week, each day's

ciation Day, \2d. (March 25) ;

work being valued at . \

on St. John's Day, \2d. (June

On the 4th day to carry

24).

horse - loads (swnma-

From June 24 till August 1,

giare), if necessary,

each villein to work 2 days a

to Preston and other

week, and, if the serjeant (ser-

manors, and Gloucester,

viens) shall so will, to continue

each day's wot»k being

the same work till after Au-

valued at . .1

gust 1.

Once a year to carry to

From August 1 to Michaelmas —

Wick, valued at . .3

To work 4 days a week.

To plough one acre called

To do 2 ' benripce ' (reapings at

' Eadacre? 2 and to thresh

request), with 1 man.

the seed for the said

To plough about Michaelmas

acre, the ploughing and

a half-acre, to sow it with

threshing being valued at 4

his own corn, and to har-

To do the ploughing called

row it.

' beneherthe ' with one

Also to plough for winter corn,

meal from the lord,

spring corn, and fallowing, for

valued ultra cibum at . 1

1 day, exclusive of the work,

To mow the lord's meadow

and it is called 'benhcrthe.'

for 5 days, and more if

To give on February 2 one

necessary, each day's

quarter of oats, and 2§d. as

work being valued ultra

Jisfe ' (fish-fee).

opus manuale at . .1

To hoe as [one day's] work after

To lift the lord's hay for

June 24.

5 days .... 2^

All to mow as [one day's] work,

To hoe the lord's corn for

and each to receive on mowing

one day (besides the

day as much grass as lie can

customary labour), with

lift with his scythe, and if his

one man, valued at . A

scythe break he shall lose his

To do 1 ' bederipa ' before

grass and be amerced.

autumn with 1 man,

All to receive Gel. for drink.

valued at . . 1£

1 Gloucester Cartulary, vol. iii.
p. 78.

2 'JRadacre 1 in other places, pp.

80, 116.

3 Worcester Cartulary,]). 14 b.

Gloucester and Worcester Records.

Villein Services— continued.

Gloucestershire

Services of a Virgate.

To work in the lord's har- s. d.
vest 5 days a week with
2 men, from August 1 to
Michaelmas, valued per
week at . . .13

To do 1 ' hederipa] called
' bondenebedripaj with 4
men, valued at .6

To do 1 harrowing a year,
called ' londegginge,'
valued at . . . 1

To give at Michaelmas an
aid of . , . .33

To [pay] ' pannage] viz. for
a pig of a year old . 1

For a younger pig that can
be separated ^

If he brew for sale, to give
1 4 gallons of ale as toll.

To sell neither horse nor
ox without licence.

Seller and buyer to give 4d. as
toll for a horse sold within
the manor.

To redeem son and daughter at
the will of the lord.

If he die, the lord to have his
best beast of burden as heriot,
and of his widow likewise, if
she outlive her husband.

Services of a Lundinarius. 1

A. B. holds one ' lundi-
narium ' (in the manor
of Highnam), to wit, a
messuage with curtilage,
4 acres of land, and a
half-acre of meadow,
and has to work one day
a week (probably Mon-
day, Lunse-dies, Lundi,
whence the title of the
holding), from Michael-
mas to August 1, and
each day's work is
vil lei at

Worcestershire

Services of a Half-virgate.

In this manor 8 gallons of beer
are given as toll, besides the
toll of the mills.
Each half-virgate, if ad opera-
tionem, from Michaelmas till
August 1, to work 2 days a
week.

To plough and sow with
its own corn half an acre,
and to harrow the same.
To plough and harrow one
day in winter, and the
prior to provide the seed;
and, if necessary, each
virgate to harrow as [a
day's work] till ploughing
time.
To plough one day in spring.
And to plough for fallowing
for 1 day (warrectare) as
above.

Services of a Cottarius! 1

In the manor of Neweham are
10 cottiers (omitting William
the miller and Adam de Newe-
ham), each holding 1 mes-
suage with appurtenances, and
6 acres.
[If ad opcrationem] each to work
2 days a week (excepting
Easter, Pentecost, and Christ-
mas weeks).

To drive, take messages, and

bear loads.
To give 'thac,' 1 thol/ aid,
and such like.

1 Gloucester Cartulary, vol. iii.
p. 118.

Worcester Cartulary, p. 15 «.

60 The English Village Community.

Villein Services — continued.

Gloucestershire

WORCESTERSII IRE

Services of a Lundinarius.

Services of a Cottarius.

To mow the lord's ruea- s

But they give neither oats

dow for 4 days if neces-

nor 'Jisfe.' 1

sary, and a day's mow-

If ' ad jirmamf to render at

ing is valued at

each quarter-day (terminum)

To aid in cocking 1 and

6d.

lifting- the hay for 6 days

• ' least, and the day's

work is valued at .

To hoe the lord's corn for 1

day, valued at

To do 2 ' bederipae ' before

August 1, valued at

From August 1 to Mi-

chaelmas to do manual

labour 2 days a week,

and each day's work is

valued at

1£

To gather rushes on

August 1, valued at

JL
2

And in all other ' condi-

tions ' he shall do as the

customers.

The total value of the ser-

vice of a 'lundinarius' is 6

To give Ad. as aid at Mi-

chaelmas.

(15 other ' lundinarii ' hold on a

like tenure.)

IX. CARTULARIES OF NEWMINSTER AND KELSO (XIII.
CENTURY) — THE CONNEXION OF THE HOLDINGS WITH
THE COMMON PLOUGH TEAM OF EIGHT OXEN.

Passing to the north of England, substantially
the same system is found, along with customs and
details which still further connect the gradations of
the holdings in villenage with the plough team and
the yokes of oxen of which it was composed.

North of the Tees, in the district of the old North-
umbria, virgates and half-virgates were still the

Newminster and Kelso Records. Gl

usual holdings, but they were called ' husband-lands.' Chap - n -
The full husband-land, or virgate, was composed of Novates or
two bovates, or oxgangs, the bovate or oxgang being
thus the eighth of the hide or carucate.

In the cartulary of Newminster, 1 under date 1250,
amongst charters giving evidence of the division of
the fields into ' seliones,' or strips, 2 the holdings of
which were scattered over the fields, 3 as everywhere
else, is a grant of land to the abbey containing 8
bovates in all, made up of 4 equal holdings of two
bovates each.

In the ' Rotulus Reditwim ' of the Abbey of Kelso, Husband
dated 1290, 4 the holdings were ' husband-lands.' In [™* ao{
one place 5 — Selkirk — there were 15 husband-lands, b °vates.
each containing a bovate. In another G — Bolden — the
record of which, with the services of the husband-
lands, is referred to several times in the document as
typical of the rest, there were 28 husband-lands,
owing equal payments and services. The contents
are not given, but as the services evidently are
doubles of those of Selkirk, it may be inferred that
the husband-lands each contained 2 bovates {i.e. a
virgate), and that so did the usual husband-lands of
the Kelso estates. This inference is confirmed by
the record for the manor of Eeveden, which states
that the monks had there 8 husband-lands, 7 from each
of which were due the services set out at length at
the end of this section ; and then goes on to say that
formerly each ' husband ' took with his ' land ' his l^^
stuht, viz. 2 oxen, 1 horse, 3 chalders of oats, 6 bolls two oxen.

1 Surtees Society, p. 57. : Club, 1846.

2 p. 57. . s p 59_ s Vol. ii. p. 462.

4 Published by the Baunatsue I 6 P. 461. 7 P. 455

62 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. of barley, and 3 of wheat. ' But when Abbot Richard
commuted that service into money, then they returned
their stuht, and paid each for his husband-land 18s.
per annum.' The allotment of 2 oxen as stuht,
or outfit, to the husband-land evidently corresponds
with its contents as two bovates.

If the holding of 2 bovates was equivalent to
the virgate, and the bovate to the half-virgate or
one-eighth of the hide, then the hide should con-
tain 8 bovates or oxgangs ; and as the single oxgang
had relation to the single ox, and the virgate or ' two
bovates ' to the pair of oxen allotted to it by way of
' stuht,' or outfit, so the hide ought to have a similar
relation to a team of 8 oxen. Thus, if the full team
of 8 oxen can be shown to be the normal plough
team, a very natural relation would be suggested
between the gradations of holdings in villenage, and
tne number of oxen contributed by the holders of
them to the full plough team of the manorial plough.
And, in fact, there is ample evidence that it was so.
Full caruca In the Kelso records there is mention of a ' caru-
t°e r am°of gh cate >' or ' plough-land ' l (' plough ' being in these re-
eight oxen, cords rendered by ' caruca ') ; and this plough-land
turns out, upon examination, to contain 4 husband-
lands i.e. presumably 8 bovates.

Further, among the ' Ancient Acts of the Scotch
Parliament ' there is an early statute 2 headed ' Of
Landmen telande with Pluche,' which ordains that ' ilk
man teland with a pluche of viii. oxin ' shall sow at the
least so much wheat, &c. : showing that the team of
8 oxen was the normal plough team in Scotland.

1 P. 361 9 P. 18.

Newminster and Kelso Records. 63

Chap. II.

Again, among the fragments printed under the head-
ing of ' Ancient Scotch Laws and Customs,' without
date, occurs the following record : l —

' In the first time that the law was made and or-

* dained they began at the freedom of " halikirk,"

* and since, at the measuring of lands, the " plew-land "
1 they ordained to contain viii. oxingang, &c.'

Even so late as the beginning of the present cen-
tury, we learn from the old ' Statistical Account of
Scotland' that in many districts the old-fashioned
ploughs were of such great weight that they re-
quired 8, 10, and sometimes 12 oxen to draw them. 2

Information from the same source also explains
the use of the word ' caruca ' for plough. For the
construction of the word involves not 4 yoke of
oxen, but 4 oxen yoked abreast, as are the horses in F ^ e r d oxen
the caruca so often seen upon Eoman coins. And the abreast.
' Statistical Account ' informs us that in some dis-
tricts of Scotland in former times ' the ploughs were

* drawn by 4 oxen or horses yoked abreast : one trod
' constantly upon the tilled surface, another went in
' the furrow, and two upon the stubble or white land.
' The driver walked backwards holding his cattle by
' halters, and taking care that each beast had its equal

* share in the draught. This, though it looked awk-
1 ward, was contended to be the only mode of yoking

* by which 4 animals could best be compelled to exert
' all their strength.' 3

The ancient Welsh laws, as we shall see by-and- So also in

Wales.

by, also speak of the normal plough team as consist-
ing from time immemorial, throughout Wales, of 8

1 Acts of Parliament of Scot- I 9 Analysis, p. 232.
land, App. V. p. 387. I s Id. p. 232.

64 The English Village Community.

Chap ii. oxen yoked 4 to a yoke. The team of 8 oxen seems
further to have been the normal manorial plough
team throughout England, though in some districts
still larger teams were needful when the land was
heavy clay.

In the ' Inquisition of the Manors of St. Paul's ' :
it is stated of the demesne land of a manor in Hert-
fordshire, that the ploughing could be done with two
plough teams (carucce), of 8 head each. And in
another case in the same county ' with 2 plough
'teams of 8 heads, "cum consuetudinibus villatas"
« — with the customary services of the villein tenants.' 2
In another, ' with 5 ploughs, of winch 3 have 4 oxen
1 and 4 horses, and 2 each 6 horses.' In another,
' with 3 ploughs of 8 heads.'

In manors in Essex, on the other hand, where the
land is heavier, there are the following instances : 3 —

4 plough

teams.

, 10 in each.

8 „

1 „

team,

10.

3 „

teams

, 8 oxen and 2 horses.

2 „

10 oxen and 10 horses for the two,

2 „

12 oxen and 8 horses the two.

2 „

4 horses and 4 oxen in each.

2 „

10 each.

1 „

team,

6 horses and 4 oxen.

In two manors in Middlesex the teams were as
under : 4 —

1 of 8 heads.

2 of 8 oxen and 2 horses.

1 Domesday of St. Paul's, p. 1. a Id. pp. 28, 33, 48, 53, 86.

2 Id. p. 7. I . * Id. pp.09, 104.

Newminster and Kelso Records. 65

In the Gloucester cartulary l there are the follow- Chap - il
j.ng instances : —

To each plough team 8 oxen and 4 over.
» >f 12 „ 1 „

» ft L " » 1 »

All these instances are from documents of the Normal
thirteenth century, and they conspire in confirming plough
the point that the normal plough team was, by general eight oxen,
consent, of 8 oxen ; though some heavier lands re-
quired 10 or 12, and sometimes horses in aid of the
oxen.

Nor do these exceptions at all clash with the
hypothesis of the connexion of the grades of holdings
with the number of oxen contributed by the holders
to the manorial plough team of their village ; for as
the number of oxen in the team sometimes varied
from the normal standard, so also did the number of
virgates in the hide or carucate.

So that, summing up the evidence of this chapter,
daylight seems to have dawned upon the meaning of
the interesting gradation of holdings in villenage in
the open fields. The hide or carucate seems to be Connexion
the holding corresponding with the possession of a Jje ^oxen
full plough team of 8 oxen. The half-hide corre- and the

r o holdings.

sponds with the possession of one of the 2 yokes
of 4 abreast ; the virgate with the possession of a
pair of oxen, and the half-virgate or bovate with the
possession of a single ox ; all having their fixed rela-
tions to the full manorial plough team of 8 oxen.
And this conclusion receives graphic illustration when
the Scotch chronicler Winton thus quaintly describes

1 Gloucester Cart. pp. 55, 61, 64.
F

66 The English Village Community.

Chap. ii. i\ ]e efforts of King Alexander III. to increase the
growth of corn in his kingdom : —

Yhwmen, pewere karl, or knawe

That wes of mycht an ox til have

He gert that man hawe part in pluche :

Swa wes corn in his land enwche:

Swa than begouth, and efter lang

Of land wes mesure, ane oxgang.

Mychty men that had ma

Oxyn, he gert in plnchys ga.

Be that vertu all his land

Of corn he gert be abowndand. 1

Not that Alexander HE. was really the originator
of the terms ' plow-land ' and ' oxgate,' but that he
attained his object of increasing the growth of corn
by extending into new districts of Scotland, before
given up chiefly to grazing, the same methods of
husbandry as elsewhere had been at work from time
immemorial, just as the monks of Kelso probably
had done, by giving each of their villein tenants
a ' stuht ' of 2 oxen with which to plough their
husband-lands.

One point more, however, still remains to be ex-
plained before the principle of the open field system
can be said to be fully grasped, viz. why the strips of
which the hides, virgates, and bovates were composed
were scattered in so strange a confusion all over the
open fields.
Sen-ices In the meantime the following examples of the

services of the villein tenants of Keho husband-lands
and bovates are appended for the purpose of com-
parison with those of other districts : —

1 Winton, vol. i. p. 400 (a.d. 1249-92).

on Kelso
manors.

Kelso Records.

BOLDEX

At Bolden—
The monks have 28 ' husbands '-
lands in the villa of Bolden,
each of which used to render
6s. 8d. at Pentecost and Mar-
tinmas, and to do certain ser-
vices, viz. :

To reap in autumn for 4
days with all his family,
himself and wife.

To perform likewise a fifth
day's work in autumn
with 2 men.

To carry peat with one
waggon for one day from
Gordon to the ' pullis.'

To carry one waggon-load
of peat from the ' pullis '
to the abbey in summer,
and no more.

To carry once a year with
one horse from Berwick.

And to have their meals
from the abbey when
doing this service.

To till 1£ acre at the grange
of Neuton every year.

To harrow with one horse
one day.

To find one man at the
sheepwashing and an-
other man at the shear-
ing, without meals.

To answer likewise for
foreign service and for
other suits.

To carry corn in autumn with
one waggon for one day.

To carry the abbot's wool
from the barony to the
abbey.

To find him carriage over
the moor to Lessemaha°:u.

Reveden *

At Reveden —
The monies have 8 'husbands '-
lands and 1 bovate, each of
which performed certain ser-
vices at one time, viz. :

Each week in summer the
carriage with 1 horse to
Berwick.

The horse to carry 3 ' bollce '
of corn, or 2 'bollce' of
salt, or 1 £ ' bollce ' of coals.

In winter the same carriage,
but the horse only carried
2 ' bollce ' of corn, or 1£
' bollcB ' of salt, or 1
' bolla ' and 'ferloth ' of
coal.

Each week, when they came
from Berwick, each land
did one day's work ac-
cording to order.

When they did not go to
Berwick, they tilled 2
days a week.

In autumn, when they did
not go to Berwick they
did 8 days' work.

At that time each ' husband '
took with his land 'stuhtf
viz. :

2 oxen, 1 horse,

3 ' celdrae ' of oats,
6 ' bollse ' of barley,
3 ' bollse ' of corn.

And afterwards, when Ab-
bot Richard commuted
that service into money,
they returned their
' stuht,' and each one
gave for his land 18s. a
year.

Chap. II.

1 Hut. Red. Kelso, p. 461.

2 lb. p. 456.

f 2

Chap. II.

68 The English Village Community.

X. THE BOLDON BOOK, A.D. 1183.

We are now in a position to creep up one step
nearer to the time of the Domesday Survey, and in
the Boldon Book to examine earlier examples of
North Country manors.

The Boldon Book is a survey of the manors
belonging to the Bishop of Durham in the year 1183,
nearly a century earlier than the date of the Hundred
Eolls.
Survey of The typical entry which may be taken as the

Boldon. common form used throughout the record relates to
the village of Boldon, from which the name of the
survey is taken.

It is as follows : 1 —

The ser- ^ n Boldon there are 22 villani, each holding 2 bovates, or .30 acres,

rices of and paying 2s. 6d. for ' scat-penynges ' [being in fact Id. per acre], a

villain. half l shaceldra' of oats, ]6rf. for ' averpenynges ' [in lieu of carrying

service], 5 four-wheel waggons of ' woodlade ' [lading of wood], 2 cocks,

and 10 eggs.

They work 3 days a week throughout the year, excepting Easter

week and Pentecost, and 13 days at Christmas.
In autumn they do 4 dayworks at reaping, with all their family
except the housewife. Also they reap 3 roods of ' averypej and
plough and harrow 3 roods of ' averere.'
Also each villein plough-team ploughs and harrows 2 acres, with
allowance of food (' coi-rodium ') once from the bishop, and then
they are quit of that week's work.
When they do ' magnas precationts] they have a food allowance
(corrodium) from the bishop, and as part of their works do
harrowing when necessary, and 'faciunt ladas 1 (make loads?).
And when they do these each receives 1 loaf.
Also they reap for 1 day at Octon till the evening, and then they

receive an allowance of food.
And for the fairs of St. Cuthbert, every 2 villeins erect a booth ;
and when they make ' logia:' and 'wodolade' (load wood), they are
quit of other labour.

1 P. 56G.

The Boldon Book. 09

There are 12 ' cotmanm, 1 each of whom holds 12 acres, and (hoy work Citap. II.

throughout the year 2 days a week except in the aforesaid

feasts, and render 12 hens and 60 eggs.
Robertus holds 2 hovates or 36 acres, and renders half a mark.
The Punder holds 1 2 acres, and receives from each plough 1 ' trave '

of corn, and renders 40 hens and 500 eggs.
The Miller [renders] 5i marks.
The ' Villani'' are, if need be, to make a house each year 40 feet long

and 15 feet wide, and when they do this each is quit of Ad. of his

'averpenynges.'
The whole ' villa ' renders 17s. as ' cornagium ' (i.e. tax on horned

beasts), and 1 cow ' de metride.' 1
The demesne is at farm, together with the stock for 4 ploughs and

4 harrows, and renders for 2 ploughs 16 ' celdrse ' of corn, 16

' celdrse ' of oats, 8 ' celdrae ' of barley, and for the other 2 ploughs,

10 marks.

Here then at Boldon were 22 villani, each hold- They hold

ing two bovates or 30 acres, equivalent to a virgate JJ ^ and8

or yard-land. In another place (Quycham) there are bovates <

t z. . . . or s,n g' e

said to be thirty-live ' bovat-villanij each of whom bovates.

held a bovate of 15 acres, and performed such and

such services. 1 These correspond with holders of

half-virgates.

Below these villani, holding one or two bovates,
as in all other similar records, were cottage holdings,
some of 12 acres, some of 6 acres each. There seems
to have been a certain equality in some places, even
in the lowest rank of holdings.

Here then, within about 100 years of the Domes-
day Survey, are found the usual grades of holdings in
villenage. The services, too, present little variation
from those of later records and other parts of England.

From the Boldon Book may be gathered a few
points of further information, which may serve to
complete the picture of the life of the village com-
munity in villenage.

1 P. 579.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

Manor

sorm'
farmed by

villani.

Village
officials :

Tho

punder.

The

- -

The unity of the ' villata ' as a self-acting com-
munity is illustrated by the fact that in many instances
the services of the villani are farmed by them from
the monastery as a body, at a single rent for the whole
village 1 — a step in the same direction as the commuta-
tion of services and leasing of land to farm tenants,
practices already everywhere becoming so usual.

The corporate character of the ' villata ' is also
illustrated by frequent mention of the village officials.
The faber 2 or blacksmith, whose duty it was to keep
in repair the ironwork of the ploughs of the village,
usually held his bovate or other holding in respect of
his office free from ordinary services. The carpenter 3
also held his holding free, in return for his obligation
to repair the woodwork of the ploughs and harrows.

The punder 4, (pound-keeper) was another official
with a recognised position. And, as a matter of course,
the villein tenant holding the office of propositus
for the time being was freed by virtue of his office
from the ordinary services of his virgate or two
bovates, 5 but resumed them again when his term of

1 P. 5G8. ' Villani de Southby-
iyk tenent villani suam ad firniam et
redduntv. libra?, etinvenient viii xx -
homines ad metendum in autumpno
et xxxvi. quadrigas {i.e. waggons)
ad quadriganda blada apud Octo-
nam ' (i.e. a neighbouring village
where was probably the bishop's
chief granary) (5G8n).

2 ' Faber (de Wermouth tenet)
xii. acras pro ferramentis carucse et
carbonea invenit ' ('0070).

' Faber (de Query ndonshire) te-
net xii. acras pro ferramento carucse
fabricando ' (696 b),

' Faber 1 bovat' pro euo ser-
vicio ' (669 a\

Compare Hundred Rolls, p. 551 a,
and Domesday of St. Paul's, p. G7.

3 ' Carpentarius (de Wermouth)
qui senex habet in vita sua xii. acras
pro carucis et herceis (i.e. harrows)
faciendis' (5G7 a).

4 ' Punder (de Neubotill) tenet
xii. acras et habet de unaquaque
carucade Neubotill, de Bydyk etde
Ileryngton (i.e. three villatae) unam
travam bladi et reddit xl. (vel lx.)
gallinas et ccc. ova ' (p. 568 a).

5 (In Seggefeeld). ' Johannes
praepositus habet ii. bovatas pro
servicio suo et si servicium praeposi-
turse dimiserit, reddit et operatur
sicut alii Firniarii ' (570a).

The Boldon Book. 71

office ceased, and another villein was elected in his C,,A ' "•
stead.

In addition to the ordinary agricultural services
in respect of the arable land, there is mention, in the
services of Boldon and other places, of special dues Comage.
or payments, probably for rights of grazing or posses-
sion of herds of cattle. This kind of payment is
called ' cornagium,' either because it is paid in horned
cattle, or, if in money, in respect of the number of
horned cattle held.

There are also services connected with the bishop's Drcngago.
hunting expeditions. Thus there are persons holding
in ' drengage,' who have to feed a horse and a dog,
and ' to go in the great hunt' {magna caza) with two
harriers and 15 ' cordons,' &C 1

So of the villani of ' Aucklandshire ' 2 it is recorded Hunting
that they are ' to furnish for the great hunts of the serv,ce<
' bishop a " cordon " from each bovate, and to make
' the Bishop's hall (aula) in the forest, sixty feet long
' and sixteen feet wide between the posts, with a
' buttery, a steward's room, a chamber and " privat."
' Also they make a chapel 40 feet long by 15 wide,
' receiving two shillings, of charity ; and make their
fc portion of the hedge (haya) round the lodges {logice).
' On the departure of the bishop they have a full tun
' of beer, or half a tun if he should stay on. They
' also keep the eyries of the hawks in the bailiwick of Booths at
' Eadulphus Callidus, and put up 18 booths (botlias) of %™ n
' at the fairs of St. Cuthbert.' Cuthbert.

The last item, which also occurs in the services
of Boldon, is interesting in connexion with a passage
in a letter of Pope Gregory the Great to the Abbot

1 P. 572. 2 P. 575.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II. Mellitus (a.d. 601), in which he requests the Bishop
Augustine to be told that, after due consideration of
the habits of the English nation, he (the Pope) deter-
mines that, ' because they have been used to slaughter
' many oxen in the sacrifices to devils, some solemnity
' must be exchanged for them on this account, as that
' on the day of the dedication, or the nativities of the
' holy martyrs, whose relics are there deposited, they
' may build themselves huts of the boughs of trees,
1 about those churches which have been turned to
' that use from temples, and celebrate the solemnity
' with religious feasting, and no more offer beasts to
1 the devil, but kill cattle to the praise of God in their
' eating, it being impossible to efface everything at
1 once from their obdurate minds : because he who
* tries to rise to the highest place rises by degrees or
' steps, and not by leaps.' 1

The villeins of St. Cuthbert's successor are found
500 years after Pope Gregory's advice still, as a
portion of their services, yearly putting up the booths
for the fairs held in honour of their patron saint — a
fact which may help us to realise the tenacity of local
custom, and lessen our surprise if we find also that
for the origin of other services we must look back
for as long a period.

XI. THE ' LIBER NIGER ' OF PETERBOROUGH ABBEY,
A.D. 1125.

Fifty or sixty years earlier than the Boldon Book,
was compiled the ' Liber Niger ' 2 of the monastery
of St. Peter de Burgo, the abbey of Peterborough.

1 Bede, bk. i. r.xxx. I Society, 1840, as an appendix to

* I'uLli.shed by the Oamden I the Chronicon Pctroburgense.

77te ' Liber Niger' of Peterborough. 73

This record is remarkably exact and full in its CnAP - n -
details. Its date is from 1125 to 1128 ; and its evidence
brings up our knowledge of the English manor and
serfdom — the open field and its holdings — almost to
the threshold of the Domesday Survey, i.e. within
about 40 years of it.

The first entry gives the following information : ' —

In Kateringes, which is assessed at 10 hides, 40 villani beld 40 yard-
lands {virgas terrae, or virgates), and there were 8 cotsetes, each holding
5 acres. The services were as follows :

The holders of virgates for the lord's work plough in spring 4 acres
for each virgate. And besides this they find plough teams {carucae)
three times in winter, three times for spring plowing, and once in
summer. And they have 22 plough teams, wherewith they work. And
all of them work 3 days a week. And besides this they render per
annum from each virgate of custom 2s. l^d. And they all render 50 hens
and 640 eggs. One tenant of 13 acres renders \Qd., and [has] 2 acres
of meadow. The mill with the miller renders 20s. The 8 cotsetes
work one day a week, and twice a year make malt. Each of them gives
a penny for a goat, and if he has a she-goat, a halfpenny. There is a
shepherd and a swineherd who hold 8 acres. And in the demesne of
the manor {curiae) are 4 plough teams with 32 oxen {i.e. 8 to each
team), 12 cows with 10 calves, and 2 unemployed animals, and 3 draught
cattle, and 300 sheep, and 50 pigs, and as much meadow over as ia
worth 16s. The church of the village is at the altar of the abbey church.
For the love-feast of St. Peter 2 [they give] 4 rams and 2 cows, or 5s.'

This entry may be taken as a typical one.

Here, then, within forty years of the date of the Holdings,
Domesday Survey is clear evidence that the normal Inl naif-
holding of the villanus was a virgate. Elsewhere vir £ ates -
there were semi-villani with half-virgates. 3

1 P. 157.

2 The love-feast {caritas) of St.
Peter may possibly, like the fairs

8 In the next place mentioned
20 men hold 20 virgates, and 13
hold 6^ virgates among them, or

of St. Outhbert, be a survival of half a virgate each ; and so on. In
ancient pagan sacrifices allowed to one place 8 villani hold 1 hide
continue by the permission of Pope and 1 virgate among them {i.e.
Gregory the Great. See Hazlitt ; 2 prohably hold virgates, and 6 of
under 'Wakes' and 'Fairs.' And them half-virgates), and 2 others
Du Cange under ' Caritas.' hold 1 virgate each. In another,

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

The mano-
rial plough
team of

eight oxen.

Smaller

■
the villani

Further, throughout this record fortunately the
number of ploughs and oxen on the lord's demesne
happens to be mentioned, from which the number of
oxen to the team can be inferred. And the result is
that in 15 out of 25 manors there were 8 oxen to a
team ; in 6 the team had 6 oxen, and in the remaining
4 cases the numbers were odd.

So far as it goes, this evidence proves that, as a
rule, 8 oxen made up the full normal manorial plough
team in the twelfth as in the thirteenth century. But
it should be observed that this seems to hold good
only of the ploughs on the lord's demesne — in dominio
curiae. The villani held other and apparently smaller
ploughs, with about 4 oxen to the team instead of
S, and with these they performed their services. 1

20 pleni villani [of 1 virgate each]
and 29 semi-villani [of half-virgate
each] hold in all 34 virgates and
a half. In another, 8 villani hold
8 hovates, and 3 novates are waste.

In the rest of the record it is
generally assumed that the 'pleni
villani' have a virgate each, and
the ' dimidii villani ' half a virgate
each.

1 The following are instances of the villein plough teams :■
The holders of 40 virgates hold 22 plough teams.

There seems to have been as
nearly as possible one plough team
to each two virgates, which at two
oxen the virgate would give four
oxen to the plough instead of eight.
Speaking generally, it may there-
fore be said that there were on the
Peterborough manors the greater
ploughs of the lord's demense with
their separate teams of ei<rht oxen
belonging to the lord, and the lesser
ploughs of the villani, to work
which two clubbed together, for
which four oxen made a sufficient

team ; and it would seem, further,
that not only had the villani to
work at the great manorial ploughs,
but also to do service for their lord
with their own lesser ploughs in
addition. This seems to explain the
expressions used in the Gloucester
cartulary that the demesne land of
this or that manor can be ploughed
with so many ploughs of eight head
of oxen in the team ' cum consuetu-
dinibus cillata;' and also the men-
tion in Fleta of the ' carucce ad-
jutrices ' of the villani.

The ' Liber Niger ' of Peterborough. 75

But this fact does not appear to clash with the CiIAP - n -
supposed connexion between the hide of 8 bovates
and the manorial plough with its team of 8 oxen.
It probably simply shows that the connexion between
them on which the regular gradation of holdings in
villenage depended had its origin at an earlier period,
when a simpler condition of the community in villen-
age existed than that to be found in those days im-
mediately following the Domesday Survey. There
were, in fact, many other symptoms that the community
in villenage had long been losing its archaic simplicity
and wandering from its original type.

One of these symptoms may be found in the fact Symptoms
observed in the later evidence, that the number of breaking
irregular holdings increased as time went on. In the serfdom.
' Liber Niger,' with the exception of the peculiar and
local class of ' sochmanni ' found in some of the
manors, these irregular holdings seldom occur — a
fact in itself very significant.

Another symptom may be noticed in the circum-
stance mentioned in the Boldon Book, and also in
other cartularies, of the land in demesne being as a
whole sometimes let or farmed out to the villani.
Another was the fact, so apparent in the Hundred
Rolls and cartularies, of the substitution of money pay-
ments for the services. There is no mention in the
* Liber Niger ' of either of these practices.

All these are symptoms that the system was not a
system recently introduced, but an old system gra-
dually breaking up, relaxing its rules, and becoming
in some points inconsistent with itself.

The English Village Community.

Chap. II.

Manors
every-
where.

Land in

and in
villenage.

Open field
system.

Villani
with yard-
. &c.

XII. SUMMARY OF THE POST-DOMESDAY EVIDENCE.

To sum up the evidence already examined, and
reaching to within forty years of the date of the
Domesday Survey, it is clear that England was
covered with manors. And these manors were in
fact, in their simplest form, estates of manorial
lords, each with its village community in villenage
upon it. The land of the lord's demesne — the home
fa tin belonging to the manor-house — was cultivated
chiefly by the services of the villata, i.e. of the village
community, or tenants in villenage. The land of this
village community, i.e. the land in villenage, lay round
the village in open fields. In the village were the
messuages or homesteads of the tenants in villenage,
and their holdings were composed of bundles of
scattered strips in the open fields, with rights of pas-
ture over the latter for their cattle after the crops were
gathered, as well as on the green commons of the
manor or township.

The tenants in villenage were divided into two
distinct classes.

First, there were the villani proper, whose now
familiar holdings, the hides, half-hides, virgates, and
bovates, were connected with the number of oxen
allotted to them or contributed by them to the ma-
norial plough team of 8 oxen, the normal holding,
the virgate or yard-land, including about 30 acres in
scattered acre or half-acre strips.

And further, these holdings of the villani were
indivisible bundles passing with the homestead which

Post- Domesday Evidence.

formed a part of them by re-grant from the lord from Chap - n -
one generation of serfs to another in unbroken regu-
larity, always to a single successor, whether the
eldest or the youngest son, according to the custom
of each individual manor. They possessed all the
unity and indivisibility of an entailed estate, and were
sometimes known apparently for generations by the
family name of the holders. 1 But the reason under-
lying all this regular devolution was not the preser-
vation of the family of the tenant, but of the services
due from the yard-land to the lord of the manor.

Below the villani proper were the numerous Bordarii,

„ , or cottiers.

smaller tenants of what may be termed the cottier
class — sometimes called in the ' Liber Niger,' as it is im-
portant to notice, bordarii 2 (probably from the Saxon
' bord,' a cottage). And these cottagers, possessing
generally no oxen, and therefore taking no part in the
common ploughing, still in some manors seem to
have ranked as a lower grade of villani, having small
allotments in the open fields, — in some manors 5 acre
strips apiece, in other manors more or less.

Lastly, below the villeins and cottiers were, in some slaves,
districts, remains, hardly to be noticed in the later
cartularies, of a class of servi, or slaves, fast becoming

1 ' Galfridus Snow tenet quod-
dam tenementum nativum vocaturn
Snotves. . . . Willelmus Biesten
tenet tenementum nativum voca-
tum Biestes, 1 and so on.

Extent of ' Byrchsingeseie,' near
Colchester.

Leger Book of St. John the Bap-
tist, Colchester.

Wrest Park MSS., No. 57.

I am indebted to Earl Cowper

for the opportunity of referring
to this interesting MS., containing
valuable examples of extents of
manors from the reign of Edward I.,
and of the services of the tenants.
See particularly the extent of
' Wycham; 17 Ed. I., as a good ex-
ample of the three field system and
serfdom.

2 Pp. 162-4, &c.

The English Village Community.

Open fiold

■

of serfdom

Chap. ii. merged in the cottier class above them, or losing
themselves among the household servants or labourers
upon the lord's demesne.

Thus the community in villenage fitted into the
open field as into its shell — a shell which was long to
survive the breaking up of the system of serfdom
which lived within it. The debris of this shell, as we
have seen, still remains upon the open fields of some
English villages and townships to-day ; but for the full
meaning of some of its features, especially of the
scattering of the strips in the yard-lands, we have
to look still farther back into the past even than
the twelfth century.

Passing from the shell to the serfdom which lived
within it, we have found it practically alike in the
north and south and east and west of England, and
from the time of the Black Death back to the
threshold of the Domesday Survey. Complicated as
are the numerous little details of the services and pay-
ments, they fall with great regularity under three
distinct heads : —

Analysis
of the

Bi rvi.H s.

W< ek-

work.

Boon-
wozk.

GafoL

1. Week-ivork — i.e. work for the lord for so many days a week, mostly

three days.

2. Precarice, or boon-xoork — i.e. special work at request (' ad precem '

or 'at bene'), sometimes counting as pai't of the week-work,
sometimes extra to it.

3. Payments in money or kind or work, rendered by way of rent or

'Gafol'; and various dues, sucb as Kirkshot, Hearth-penny,
Easter dues, &c.

The first two of these may be said to be practically
quite distinct from the third class, and intimately
connected inter se. The boon-work would seem to be a
necessary corollary of the limitation of the week-work.
If the lord had had unlimited right to the whole work

Post-Domesday Evidence. 79

of his villein tenant all days a week, and had an un- CnAr - JI
restricted choice as to what kind of work it should
be, week-work at the lord's bidding might have
covered it all. But custom not only limited the
number of days' work per week, but also limited the
number of days on which the work should consist of
ploughing, reaping, and other work of more than
usual value, involving oxen or piece-work, be^nd the
usual work of ordinary days.

The week-work, limited or otherwise, was evidently
the most servile incident of villenage.

The payments in money or kind, or in work of
the third class, to which the word gafol, or tribute,
was applied, were more like modern rent, rates, and
taxes than incidents of serfdom.

Comparing the services of the villani with those
of the cottiers or bordarii, the difference evidently
turns upon the size of the holdings, and the possession
or non-possession of oxen.

Naturally ploughing was a prominent item in the Cottiers'
services of the villanus holding a virgate, with his
' stuht,' or outfit of two oxen. As naturally the ser-
vices of the bordarius or cottager did not include
ploughing, but were limited to smaller services.

But apparently the services of each class were
equally servile. Both were in villenage, and week-
work was the chief mark of the serfdom of both.

Besides the servile week- work and ( gafol,' &c,
there were also other incidents of villenage felt to be
restrictions upon freedom, and so of a servile nature.
Of these the most general were —

The requirement of the lord's licence for the marriage of a daughter,
and fine on incontinence.

SO The English Village Community.

Chap. II. lhe prohibition of sale of oxen, &c, without the lord's licence.

The obligation to use the lord's mill, and do service at his court.

The obligation not to leave the land without the lord's licence.
6ervile <*

incidents.

It was the week-work of the villanus, and these
restrictions on his personal liberty, which were felt to
be serfdom. 1
ah limited But these servile incidents were limited by custom,
7 ° '" and this limitation by custom of the lord's demands,
as well as the more and more prevalent commutation
of services into money payments in later times, were,
as has been said, notes and marks of a relaxation of
the serfdom. The absence of these limitations would
be the note and mark of a more complete serfdom.

Thus, in pursuing this economic inquiry further

back into Saxon times, the main question will be

whether the older serfdom of the holder of yard-lands

was more or less unlimited, and therefore complete,

than in the times following upon the Norman conquest.

The evi- I n the meantime the Domesday Survey is the

fed D u eh to S next evidence which lies before us, and judging from

the Domes- the tenacity of custom, and the extreme slowness of

day Sur- J . .

rej, economic changes m the later period, it may be

approached with the almost certain expectation that
no great alteration can well have taken place in the
English open-field and manorial system in the forty

1 The question of the personal incidents (except the merchetum on
status of the villein tenant is a dif- marriage of a daughter) and yet
ferent one 'roni that of villein tenure. : personally be free, as contrasted
Sir II. S. Maine (Early Law ami with the nativi' or villeins by
Custom, p. 333) and Mr. 1'. Pollock blood. Compare Bracton f. 4b with
(in his Notes "ii Early English Land f. 2G a and 208 b. The question of

Law, ' Law Mag. and lleview ' for
May L882) have pointed out that,

according to Bracton, f'rt-r men might
be subject to villein tenure and its

the origin of the confusion of status
in serfdom will be referred to here-
after.

Post-Domesday Evidence. 81

years between its date and that of the Liber Niger Chap - n -
of Peterborough Abbey.

If this expectation should be realised, the
Domesday Survey, approached as it has been by
the ladder of the later evidence leading step by step
up to it, ought easily to yield up its secrets.

If such should prove to be the case, though losing and must
some of its mystery and novelty, the Domesday jJJ 'to it,
Survey will gain immensely in general interest and
importance by becoming intelligible. The picture it
gives of the condition of rural England will become
vivid and clear in its outlines, and trustworthy to a
unique degree in its details. For extending as it does,
roughly speaking, to the whole of England south of
the Tees and east of the Severn, and spanning as it
does by its double record the interval between its
date and the time of Edward the Confessor, it will
prove more than ever an invaluable vantage-ground
from which to work back economic inquiries into
the periods before the Norman conquest of Eng-
land. It may be trusted to do for the earlier Saxon
records what a previous understanding of later records
will have done for it.

CHAPTEE in.

THE DOMESDAY SURVEY (a.d. 1086).

The
manor.

I. THERE WERE MANORS EVERYWHERE.

Chap. iii. In the Domesday Survey, as might be expected from
the evidence of the foregoing chapter, the unit of
inquiry is everywhere the manor, and the manor was
a landowner's estate, with a township or village com-
munity in villenage upon it, under the jurisdiction of
the lord of the manor.

But the same person was often the lord of many
manors.

1,422 manors were in the ancient demesne of the
Crown at the date of the Survey, 1 and most of them
had also been Crown manors in the time of Edward
the Confessor. Thus, for centuries after the Conquest,
the Domesday book was constantly appealed to as
evidence that this manor or that was of • ancient
demesne,' i.e. that it was a royal manor in the time
of Edward the Confessor ; because the tenants of these
manors claimed certain privileges and immunities
which other tenants did not enjoy.

Manors of
the king,

1 Ellis's Introduction, i. p. 225.

The Domesday Survey. 83

The monasteries also at the time of Edward the C,TAP - Iri
Confessor were holders of many manors, often in of the

, , , monastic

various counties, and the Survey shows that they houses,
were generally permitted to retain them after the
Conquest.

Earls and powerful thanes were also at the time of a , nd of

*- thanes.

Edward the Confessor possessors of many manors, and
so were their Norman successors at the date of the
Survey. The resident lord of a manor was often the
mesne tenant of one of these greater lords. However
this might be, every manor had its lord, resident, or
represented by a steward or reeve (villicus).

Sometimes the Survey shows that a village or Elided

J t ° manors.

township, once probably under a single lord, had
become divided between two or more manors ; and
sometimes again, by what was called subinfeudation,
lesser and dependent manors, as in the Hitchin
example, had been carved out of the original manor,
once embracing directly the whole village or township.

But these variations do not interfere with the
general fact that there were manors everywhere, and
that the typical manor was a manorial lord's estate,
with a village or township upon it, under his jurisdic-
tion, and in villenage.

Further, this was clearly the case both after the
Conquest at the date of the Survey, and also before
the Conquest in the time of Edward the Confessor.

What land was extra-manorial or belonged to no
township was probably royal forest or waste. At
the date of the Survey this unappropriated forest, as
well as the numerous royal manors already alluded
to, was included in the royal demesne. Whatever
belonged to the latter was excluded from the jurisdic-

The English Village Community.

chap. hi. tion of the courts of the hundreds. It acknowledged
no lordship but that of the king, and was described
in the Survey as terra regis.

Terra

regis.

Hides ad
geldum.

Actual
caruccB or
plough

II. THE DIVISION OF THE MANOR INTO LORD'S DEMESNE
AND LAND IN VILLENAGE.

Not only were there manors everywhere, but
throughout the Domesday Survey the division of the
land of the manor into lord's demesne and land in
villenage was all but universal, both in the time of
Edward the Confessor and at the later date. It was
so equally in the case of manors both in royal and in
private hands.

The record generally begins with the number of
hides or carucates at which the whole manor was
rated according to ancient assessment. Generally,
except in the Danish district of England (where the
carucate only is used), the word hide (though often
originally meaning, a.s already mentioned, the same
tiling as a carucate, viz. the land of one plough) was
used in the Survey exclusively as the ancient unit of
assessment, while the actual extent of the manor was
described in carucates, and thus the number of hides
often fell far short of the number of carucates.

In the Inquisitio Eliensis the Huntingdonshire
manors of the abbey are described as containing so
many hides ' ad geldum,' and so many carucates ' ad
arandum,' thus exactly explaining the use of the
terms.

In Kent the ancient assessment was, consistently
with later records, given by the number of solins —

The Domesday Survey. 85

sulung being an old word used both long before and , '" u - IM -
afterwards, as we have seen, in the south-east of
England for 'plough land.'

Generally, whatever the terms made use of, the
basis of the assessment seems to have been the number
of plough teams at the time it was made, and (except
in the west of England) this probably had been the
case also as regards the ancient one quoted in the
Survey. The actual circumstances of the manors had
at the date of the Survey wandered far away from
those at the date of the ancient assessment, and
therefore it was needful to state the present actual
number of carucates {carucatce) or plough teams
(carucce). 1 The devastations of the Norman Con-
quest had not been wholly repaired at the date
of the Survey, and therefore after the number of
actual plough teams in demesne and in villenage
it is often stated that so many more might be
added.

The total number of plough teams being given,

information is almost always added how many of

them were in demesne and how many belonged to in demesne

. . , anc * in

the villeins. And it is to be noticed that the plough villenage.

teams of the villeins were smaller than the typical
manorial plough team of 8 oxen, just as was the case
on the Peterborough manors, according to the Liber
Niger.

There were on an average in most counties about
half as many ploughs in villenage as there were vil-
leins ; so that, roughly speaking, two villeins, as in

1 Unfortunately the same contracted form serves in the Survey for
both carucata and caruca.

SQ The English Village Community.

chap. hi. the Peterborough manors, seem to have joined at each
villein plough, which thus can hardly have possessed
more than -A oxen in its team.

III. THE PEEK TENANTS OX THE LORD S DEMESNE.

In the Domesday Survey for the greater part of
England there is no mention of free tenants, whether
' liberi homines ' or ' libere tenenl - '

Nor, considering the extreme completeness of the

ov. is it easy to explain their absence on any

other hypothesis than that of their non-existence. 1 A

glance at the map will show that throughout those

1 An •'...' rate argument was
raised by Archdeacon Hale in the
valuable introduction to the Cam-
den Society's edition of the D
day of St. Paul's, to show that the
•■on at the e entry

manor in the Dom
Sur\ - he rents of free

tenants. He based his view on the
fact that iu two cases quoted by
him the amount of the value so
I by 1 he amount
which the manor, in thes
- let * ad tirmam ; ' and. further.
upon a comparison i : sday

the manors of St. Paul's
with • rded ' Suninia? : .

riorum' in 1181, and 'Tei
rent*' in 1322. But the fig

.bly a sufficient refu-
-.nuch
as though the latter have a a

with the
Domesday values in ah.

'.here

must have been a falling off in the
number and value of the ter.

fca between the two periods.
The falling off for the whole of the
IS manors must have been in this
case from 15-5/. \Qs. t.b.e., and
1571. 13-5. id. t.b.w., of Domesday
amounts, to Hi'.', ltv. id. in 1181,
and 126t 10.5. Sd. in 1222. The
true reading of the--. _ - '.here
can hardly be a doubt, is that the

ant of tenants' rents alone at the
late had become in :
val nearly as great as the ichole
of the manors (including the
land both in demesne and in vil-
I the time of the Domes-
day Survey. There is abundant
evidence of the rapid growth of
popul

- oi free I ween the

eleventh and t':. I h century.

The value of manors is given in
many cases in the Hundred Rolls
for QxJ . .. ....ling demesne

The Domesday Survey.

counties of England most completely under Danish Cnxr. in
influence there were plenty of liberi homines and of the uj^T"
allied class of sochmanni, but nowhere else. And J|T
that these two classes were distinctly and exceptionally manTli in
Danish there is evidence in a passage in the laws of district
Edward the Confessor, in which the ' Manbote in ° n y *
' Danelaga ' is given separately and as different from
that of the rest of England, viz. * de vilano et soche-
* man xii. oras : de Uteris hominibus iii. marcas.' l

That the existence of these classes in a manor was
local and quite exceptional is also confirmed by the
place in which they are mentioned in the list of classes
of tenants, the numbers of whom were to be recorded.
They are placed last of all, even after the ' servi.'
Inquiry was to be made, ' quot villani, quot cottarii,
' quot servi, quot liberi homines, quot sochemanni.'
These were the words used in the statement of the in-
quiry to be made in the manors of the monks of Ely,

land rents and services), and the
figures in the following six cases in
which the comparison is complete

show a large rise in value, as might
be expected :

Domesday Sum

Hundred

Rolls

Name

Value

Name

Value
£ s. d.

P. 156 b.

Lineham

(t.r.e.

) 12

modo 10

P. 743.

Lvnham

27 8 4

P. 157 a.

Henestan

„ 18

P. 739.

Ennestan

. 38 19 2

P. 158 b.

Esthcote

„ 8

P. 730.

Estcot .

. 32 3 4

P. 158 b.

Fulebroc

„ 16

P. 744.

Folebrok

. 28 7 7

P. 159 a.

Ideberie

,, 12

P. 734.

Iddebir .

. 31 12 10J

P. 159 6.

Caningeham

»»

12
£77

„ 15
„ £79

P. 733.

Keyngham

. 37 4 2

£195 15 5^

It is thus almost certain that
both surveys were taken on the
same plan, and embrace the value

of the whole manor in each c as&.

1 Ancient Laics, §c, of Eng-
land, Thorpe, 192.

The English Village Community.

Chap. hi. w hich manors lay in the Danish district ; and the two
last-mentioned classes were added out of order at the
end of a common form, to meet its special needs. 1

It is remarkable, however, that by common law

(which generally represents very ancient custom) the

existence of free tenants was essential to the Court

Baron of a manor. Without some freemen, according

to the old law books, it could not be held. 2 And

there is a curious instance, in the Survey, of three

sochmanni being lent by one lord to another, so that

he might hold his court. 3

Norman This being so, it is curious and important to notice

ofKbrd tnat tlie survey of the manors of the monks of Ely

, was to be taken upon the oaths of the sheriff of the

manor and x

men of the county, and of all the barons and of their Norman
associates (eorum Fra?icigenarum), and of the whole
hundred (tocius centuriatus)^ the priests, praspositi,
and six villani of each manor (villa).*

The sochmanni and liberi homines must here be
included either among the ' Norman associates ' or the
4 whole hundred.'

It may be concluded, therefore, that the liberi
homines and sochmanni were of Danish or Norman
origin, as also probably was the Court Baron itself;
whilst in those districts of England not so much under
Danish or Norman influence, the demesne lands were
not let out until a later period to permanent freehold-
ing tenants. Upon the lord's demesne, and perhaps

1 Inquisitio Eliensis, f. 497 a.

2 Ellis, i. 237.

3 Ibid. i. 237, note. Domesday,
I. 1986. Orduudle.

4 Ellis, i. 22. See, as to Fran-
citjeiicc, Laics of W. Conq. iii. Nos.

III. and IV. Thorpe, p. 211. As
to the ' centuriatus,' see Capitulars
de Villis Caroli Magni, s. 62 — 'Quid
de liberis hominibus et centeiris.'
Monumenta Germanics Historica,
Hanover, 1881, p. 89.

The Domesday Survey. 89

in the manorial hall, may have been the ' Francigence ClIAK m
eorum ' belonging to the ' Comitatus,' not necessarily
holders of land, but more or less dependants of the
lord of the manor. Out of the Danish district nearly
all the population on the manor seems clearly to have
been tenants in villenage or slaves.

IV. THE CLASSES OF TENANTS IN VILLENAGE.

We turn now to the tenants in villenage, who
formed the bulk cf the population, and with whom
this inquiry has most to do.

The terms of the writ ordering the survey to be
made on the Ely manors show clearly what classes
of tenants in villenage were expected to be found on
the manors. The jury were to inquire —

(1) Quot villani.

(2) Quot cotarii.

(3) Quot servi.

The three classes of tenants in villenage actually
mentioned in the Survey are almost universally the —

(1) Villani.

(2) Bordarii [or cottarii].

(3) Servi.

As regards the servi, the map will show that The servi.
whilst only embracing nine per cent, of the whole popu-
lation of England, they were most numerous towards
the south-west of England, less and less numerous as
the Danish districts were approached, and absent

90 The English Village Community.

Chap. hi. altogether from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, and border-
ing districts.

Even when most numerous they were hardly
tenants in villenage. They seem to have held no
land, and often to have been rather household thralls
of the lord of the manor than tenants in any ordinary
sense of the word. 1

Thus the real tenants in villenage were confined
mainly to the two classes of villani and bordarii, or
cottiers.

The cot- Taking the bordarii or cottage tenants first, the

map will show how evenly they were scattered over
the whole country. They embraced 32 per cent. —
roughly one-third — of the whole population in their
number, and in no county were there less than 12 per
cent, of them.

Thaviiiani. But the villani were evidently at the date of the
Survey, and at the earlier date of Edward the Con-
fessor, as they were afterwards, by far the most im-
portant and typical tenants in villenage.

They were at the date of the Survey even more
numerous than the cottier class below them. They
embraced 38 per cent, of the whole population, and,
except where partially displaced by the sochmanni of
the Danish district, were pretty evenly dispersed all
over England. Except in Norfolk and Suffolk, they
were seldom less than one-third of the popula-
tion. And if at the time of the Survey they were
holders of virgates and half-virgates, as their suc-
cessors were afterwards, then it follows that they held
by far the largest proportion of the land of England

1 The servi are mentioned I and sometimes at the end of the
sometimes as on the lord's demesne, I tenants in villenage.

The Domesday Survey. 91

m their holdings. But before we assume this, some Chap - m

proof may fairly be required that it was so. In the Same

meantime it is clear that the classes of tenants in tenants'™

villenage bore the same names at the time of the Survey llfterwards -
as they did afterwards. The presumption evidently
is that they held similar holdings.

V. THE VILLANI WERE HOLDERS OP VIRGATES, ETC.

The compilers of the Survey were not in the habit
of describing in detail the character of the holdings
of the villani. Whilst recording how many villain
there were in a manor, the Domesday Survey does
not, like the Hundred Eolls, usually go on to state
how many of them held a virgate and how many a
half-virgate each.

Still, notwithstanding this general silence of the The hold-
Survey on this point, treating the matter manor by ^ ° ; x
manor, and taking for example the Peterborough l»<Jes,viiv

7 o sr c gates, and

manors, it might be inferred almost with certainty half-vir-

gates.

that as the villani of the Liber Niger in 1125 were
holders of virgates and half-virgates, so their fathers
and grandfathers before them must also have held
virgates and half-virgates at the time of the Domes-
day Survey and of Edward the Confessor. And such
an inference would be strengthened by the occasional
use in the Survey of the terms integri villani 1 and
villani dimidii, 2 answering no doubt to the same
terms, and to the pleni virgarii and semi-virgarii of
the Liber Niger and the Battle Abbey records.

1 Survey, i. f. 252. 3 Ibid. i. ff. 162, 168, 169 b, 252.

92 The English Village Community.

That the land was really held at the date of the
Survey in hides and virgates may also be gathered
from the well-known statement of the Saxon Chronicle
that ' nces an wlpig hide ne an gyrde landes ' was
omitted from the Survey — a statement which does not
mean that not a hide nor a yard of land was omitted,
but not a hide or a yard-land, i.e. a virgate. 1 So that
it might fairly be inferred from this passage that the
virgate was the normal or typical holding of the vil-
lanus, and this inference might well cover the whole
area of the Survey.

But there is more direct evidence than these

general inferences. It so happens that there are a few

local exceptions to the general silence of the Survey

as regards the holdings of the villani.

Examples The most remarkable exception to the general

in survey . . «••»«- -t -n 1

of Middle- reticence occurs in the survey tor Middlesex, the
compilers of which go out of their way fortunately to
give precisely the desired information. And wherever
they do so the holdings are found to be in the now
familiar grades of hides, half-hides, virgates, and half-
virgates.

The following are a few examples : —

(P. 127 a.)—Hcsa.

The priest holds 1 hide.

3 milites hold G£ hides.

2 villani „ 2 „ [i.e. a hide each].

12 „ „ G ,, [i.e. h hide each].

20 „ „ 5 „ [i.e. % hide each, or virgate].

40 „ „ 5 „ [i.e. J hide each, or £ virgate].

16 „ „ 2 „ [i.e. \ hide each, or £ virgate].

1 Sub anno MLXXXV. Rolls Edition, by Thorpe, i. p. 353.

8CX.

The Domesday Survey. 93

Chap. III.
(F. 128 a.) — In Villa ubi sedet JEcclesia Sti. Petri ( Westminster),

9 villain each of a virgate.
1 villanus of 1 hide.
9 villani each of i virgate.
1 cotarius of 5 acres.
41 cotarii with gardens.

(F. 128 b.) — Hermodesworde.

1 miles holds 2 hides.

2 villani hold 1 hide each.

2 „ of 1 hide (i.e. £ hide each).
14 „ each of 1 virgate.
6 J-

6 bordarii each of 5 acres.

7 cotarii.
6 servi.

And so on throughout the survey for the county.

As might be expected, most of the villani held
virgates and half-virgates, but there are a sufficient
number of cases of hides and half-hides to show con-
clusively the relation to each other of the four grades
in the regular hierarchy of villenage.

Another local and solitary exception occurs in the ,.

J % l Examples

record for Sawbridgeworth, in Hertfordshire. The in Herts,
holdings in this case were as follows : —

(F. 139 b.) — Sabrixteworde.

The propositus holds a £ hide.

The priest holds 1 hide.

14 villani hold each 1£ virgate.

35 villani hold each £ virgate, and among them

1| virgate with 9 acres, paying 17s. k\d.
46 bordarii hold each 8 acres.

2 bordarii hold 10 acres (i.e. 5 acres each).
20 cotarii hold 26 acres (i.e. among them).

A few other exceptional cases occur in the TAber

94 The English Village Community.

Chap. hi. Eliensis. The abbey had three manors in Hert-
fordshire, and in these the holdings were as follows :

(P. 509-10.) — In Oedwinestreu Hundred.

Hadmn. 1 ' villanus ' of 1 virgate.

18 ' villani,' each of £ virgate.
7 ' cotarii ' of £ virgate (i.e. together).

In tiie two Hundreds op Bradeutre.

Hat fi rid. 18 'villani' each of 1 virgate.
The priest of ^ hide.
4 ' homines ' of 4 hides (i.e. a hide each).

In Odeseie Hundred.

ChyUesseUa. 2 villani of £ hide (i.e. 1 virgate each).

10 villani of 5 virgates (i.e. $ virgate each).
9 hordarii of 1 virgate (i.e together).
7 servi.

in the Fen The monks of Ely also had several manors in the
Fen country, but the holdings in this district seem to
have been peculiar. Instead of being ' each of a
virgate,' or ' each of a half- virgate,' they are ' each of
so many acres,' as was also found to be the case in
some districts of Cambridgeshire in the Hundred
Rolls. The Fen district seems to have had its own local
peculiarities, both in the eleventh and in the four-
teenth centuries, just as Kent also had. But here
was no exception to the rule that the villani were
classed in grades, each grade with equal holdings.

These accidental instances in the Domesday Survey
in which the required information is given are nu-
merous enough to make it clear that at the date of
the Survey the holdings of the villani were generally

The yard- . . .

land the hides, half-hides, virgates, and half- virgates. The
holding ot virgate or yard-land was the normal holding, as it was
ianus' 1 " afterwards. And this being so, it may reasonably be

The Domesday Survey. 95

concluded also that the virgates and half-virgates ClIAP - m -
were themselves what they were afterwards — bundles
of strips scattered over the open fields, and having
some connexion not yet fully explained, but clearly
indicated, with the number of oxen allotted to their
holders or contributed by them to the manorial
plough team of eight oxen.

VI. THE HOLDINGS OF THE B0RDARII OR COTTIERS.

It has already been noticed that in the Inquisitio
Eliensis the particulars to be recorded as regards the
tenants were —

1. Quot villani.

2. Quot cottarii.

3. Quot servi, &c.

And that with few exceptions throughout the
Survey the three classes actually found in the Survey

were—

1. Villani.

2. Bordarii.

3. Servi.

From this fact alone it would not be wrong to
conclude that to a great extent the words bordarii
and cottarii were interchangeable.

This inference gains much weight from the fact
that a great many bordarii as well as cottarii are
found even in the Inquisitio Eliensis itself. The
facts, however, when collected together are some-

The English ViUnrje Community.

Cottiers
and bor-
darii very
much alike.

Chap. iit. w hat curious, as a reference to the note below will
show. 1

In a few cases there are both bordarii and cottarii
mentioned, which would lead to the conclusion that
they were distinct classes. But in most cases there
are either one or the other of the two classes men-
tioned, but not both. Examining their holdings there
seems to be no difference between them.

There are bordarii holding so many acres each,
generally five, but varying sometimes from one to ten.
There are cottarii with all these variations of holdings.
There are ' bordarii with their gardens,' and there are
likewise ' cottarii with their gardens.' There are both
bordarii and cottarii who, as their holdings are not
described at all, may, for anything we know, have
held cottages only, and no land or gardens.

Comparing these Cambridgeshire examples with
those in Hertfordshire, and others in the Domesday
Survey for Middlesex, we may conclude that for all

1 In the Inquisitio Eliensis the instances
In Cambridgeshire are as follows : —

iiii. hor.
viii. bor.
iv. hor.
iiii. hor.

xv. bor. cum suis ortis.
xv. bor. et iii. cot.
x. bor. et iii. cot.
ix. bor. et iii. cot.
xviii. bor. et x. cot.
iii. bor. de xv. ac.
(i.e. 5 a. each),
viii. cot.
iii. cot. de ortis.
iv. quisq. de v. ac.
ii. bor. et iv. cot. quisq.
de x. a.

iii. cot.

iii. bor.

ii. bor.

iiii. bor.

vi. bor.

ii. bor.

xiiii. bor. de suis ortis.

ii. bor.

v. bor.

v. bor. de v. acris.

v. bor. de v. ac.

vii. bor.

iii. bor. de iii. ac.

iiii. bor.

iii.bor.dex, ac. quisq ue.

v. bor.

of bordarii and .cottarii

xii. bor. et ix. cot.
ix. cot. de ortis suis.
viii. cot.
i.

iiii. cot.
viii. cot.
ii. cot.

viii. cot. de i. a.
v. cot.
iiii. cot.

x. cot. quisq. de i. a.
x. cot.
ix. cot.
iiii. cot.

vi. cot. et iiii. bor. quisq.
de v. a.

The Domesday Survey. 97

practical purposes the bordarius was a cottier — some- ClIAP IIJ
times with no land, sometimes with a garden, some-
times with one solitary acre strip in the open fields,
sometimes with more, even up to 10 acres, but that
the typical bordarius was a cottager who held, in ad-
dition to his cottage, 5 acres in the open fields. His
was, therefore, a subordinate position to that of the
villanus proper in the village hierarchy, and he dif-
fered from the villanus probably most clearly in this,
that he put no oxen into the village plough teams,
and took no part in the common ploughing.

His services were no less servile than those of the
villanus, but of a more trivial kind. He was above
the servus, or slave, but his was the class which most
easily would slide into that of the modern labourer,
and in which the servus himself in his turn might most
easily merge. The word ' bordarius ' was noticed in the
Liber Niger of Peterborough, but though so universal
in the Domesday Survey it soon slipped out of use ;
and as ' bord ' gave place to ' cottage ' in the common
speech, so the whole class below the villani came to
be known as cottagers.

VII. THE DOMESDAY SURVEY OF THE VILLA OF
WESTMINSTER.

It may be worth while to test the value of the
key which the results of this inquiry have put into
our hand by applying it to the Domesday description
of a particular manor.

For this purpose the survey of the manor of

98 The English Village Community.

Chap. hi. Westminster may be chosen as one of great national
Survey of and historical interest. It is as follows : l —

Westmin-
ster. Iii the villa where is situated the church of St. Peter [i.e. the abbey]
the abbot of the same place holds 13£ hides [i.e. land rated at so much].
There is land for 11 plough teams.

To the demesne belong 9 hides and 1 virgate, and there are 4 plough
teams,

The villeins have 6 plough teams, and one more might be made.
There are 9 villain with a virgate each.
1 villanus with a hide.
9 villain with a half-virgate each.
1 cottier with 5 acres.
41 cottiers rendering a shilling each yearly for their gardens.
There is meadow for 11 plough teams,
Pasture for the cattle of the village,
"Wood for 100 pigs.
There are 25 houses of the abbot's soldiers and of other men, who
render 8s. per annum or 10/. in all ; when he received them, the
same ; in the time of King Edward, 12/.
This manor was and is in the demesne of the Church of St. Peter of

Westminster.
In the same villa Bainiardus holds 3 hides of the abbot. There is
land for 2 plough teams, and they are there, in demesne, and one
cottier. Wood for 100 pigs. Pasture for cattle. Four arpeuts
of vineyard newly planted. All these are worth 60s. ; when he
received them, 20s. ; in the time of King Edward, Gl. This land
belonged, and belongs, to the Church of St. Peter.

Theabbot's It is clear from this description that the village
which nestled round the new minster just completed
by Edward the Confessor, was on a manor of the
abbot. It consisted of 25 houses of the abbot's im-
mediate followers, 19 homesteads of villain, 42
cottages with their little gardens, and one of them
with 5 acres of land. There was also the larger
homestead of the sub-manor of the abbot's under-
tenant, with a single cottage and a vineyard of 4 half-
acres newly planted. There was meadow enough by
the river side to make hay for the herd of oxen

1 F. 128 a.

manor.

The Domesday Survey. 99

belonging to the dozen plough teams of the village, r " u - IJI -
and pasture for them and other cattle. Further round The open
the village in open fields were about 1,000 acres of
arable land mostly in the acre strips, lying no doubt
in their shots or furlongs, and divided by green turf
balks and field-ways. Lastly, surrounding the whole
on the land side were the woods where the swineherd
found mast for the 200 pigs of the place. On every
one of these points we have the certain evidence of
sworn eye-witnesses.

And so with little variation must have been the incidental
condition of things in all material points twenty years
earlier, 1 when King Edward lay on his death-bed and
wandered in his mind, and saw in his delirium two
holy monks whom he remembered in Normandy, who
foretold to him the coming disasters to the realm,
which should only be ended when ' the green tree,
after severance from its trunk and removal for the
space of three acres (trium jugerum spatio), should
return to its parent stem, and again bear leaf and
fruit and flower.' It may be that the delirious king
as ' he sat up in bed ' dreamily gazed through the
window of his chamber upon the open fields, and
the turf balks dividing the acres. The green tree
may have been suggested to his mind by an actual
tree growing out of one of the balks. The uneven
glass of his window-panes would be just as likely as not
as he rose in his bed to sever the stem from the root
to his eye, moving it apparently three acres' breadth
higher up the open field, restoring it again to its root
as he sank back on his pillow. The very delirium of

1 The value of the rentals had I village had not increased in the
decreased since T.R.E., so that the j interval.

a 2

100 The English Village Community.

Furf har

incidental

evidence.

Ch.*f. hi. f] ie dying king thus becomes the most natural thing
in the world when we know that all round were the
open fields, and balks, and acres. Without this
knowledge even the learned and graphic historian of
the Norman Conquest can make nothing of the ' trium
jugerum spatio,' and casts about for other renderings
instead of the perfectly intelligible right one. 1

Once more ; the contemporary biographer of
Edward the Confessor, with the accuracy of one to
whom Westminster was no doubt familiar, tells us
that ' the devout king destined to God that place, both

* for that it was near unto the famous and wealthy city
' of London, and also had a pleasant situation amongst
6 fruitful fields lying round about it, with the principal
1 river running hard by, bringing in from all parts of
' the world great variety of wares and merchandise of

* all sorts to the city adjoining ; but chiefly for the

* love of the apostle, whom he reverenced with a
' special and singular affection.' 2 Even the delicate
historical insight of the late historian of the abbey, to
whom all its picturesque surroundings were so dear,
failed to catch the full meaning of this passage. Whilst
referred to in a note it becomes paraphrased thus
in the text : — ' By this time also the wilderness of

* Thorney was cleared ; and the crowded river with

* its green meadows, and the sunny aspect of the island,
' may have had a charm for the king whose choice
' had hitherto lain in the rustic fields of Islip and
' Windsor.' 8 Yes, ' meadows of Thorney ' there were,

1 Freeman's Norman Conquest,
iii. ]2.

2 Contemporary Life of Edward
the Confessor in the Ilarleian MSS.,

pp. 980,9*5.

3 Memorials
Abhey, p. 15.

of Westminster

The Domesday Survey. 101

on which the oxen of a dozen plough teams were C,IAI - '"
grazing, but the contemporary writer's ' fruitful fields
lying round about the place ' were the 1,000 acres of
corn land of which Dean Stanley was unconscious.
No blame to him, for what economic student had
sufficiently understood the Domesday Survey to tell
him that every virgate of the villani of the ' villa ubi
sedet AUcclesia Sancti Petri ' was a bundle of strips of
arable land scattered all over the three great fields
stretching away from the village, and the river, and
the ' meadows of Thorney ' for a mile or two round ?

VIII. THE EXTENT OF THE CULTIVATED LAND OP ENGLAND,
AND HOW MUCH WAS INCLUDED IN THE YARD-LANDS OP
THE VILLANI.

Knowing now that the virgate or yard-land was the
normal holding of the villanus, though some villani
held hides and half-hides, i.e. more virgates than one,
and others half-virgates ; and knowing that the
normal holding of the villanus, whether called a yard-
land or a husband-land, or by any other name, was a
bundle of scattered strips, containing normally thirty
acres ; and knowing also the number of villani in the
several counties embraced in the Survey, it becomes
perfectly possible to estimate, roughly no doubt, but
with remarkable certainty, the total area contained in
their holdings.

The total number of villani in these counties was
108,407. l If each villanus held a yard-land or virgate
of 30 acres, then about 3,250,000 acres were con-

x See Ellis's Introduction, vol. ii. p. 514.

102 The English Village Community.

Chap. iti. tallied in their holdings. The number of villain

Area in holding half-virgates was, however, probably greater

ofTiilari. 8 than the number holding half-hides and hides; so

that the average holding would perhaps hardly be

equal in acreage to the normal holding of 30 acres.

Taking the average holding- at 20 acres instead of 30,

we should probably under-estimate the acreage. It

would even then amount to 2,168,000. We shall be

safe if we say that the villain' held in their bundles of

strips 2\ millions of acres. 1

Area in We must add the holdings of the 82,000 bordarii

ing 8 of " and of the 6,000 or 7,000 cottier tenants. 2 If these

cottiers, i esser holdings averaged three acres each, we must add

another quarter of a million acres for them. The

total of two and a half millions of acres can thus hardly

be an over-estimate of the acreage of the arable

strips in the open fields held by the villani and

bordarii in villenage. What proportion did this bear

to the whole cultivated area of these counties ?

and of free To include the total acreage under the plough,

tenants. . ° . , . \

the holdings of the sochmanni and kberi homines of
the Danish district must be added, and also the
arable land (ploughed mainly by the villani) on the
lord's demesne. The 23,000 sochmanni* can hardly
have held as little as a similar number of villani —
say half a million acres. The 12,000 liberi homines
may have held another half-million. And one or two
million acres can hardly be an excessive estimate for
the arable portion of the lord's demesne.

Putting all these figures together, the evidence of

O DO 7

the Domesday Survey seems therefore to show that

1 Ellis, ii. p. 611. 2 Id. s Ibid. p. 514.

The Domesday Survey. 103

at its date about five million acres were under the Chap - m -
plough, i.e. from one-third to one-half of the acreage Totaiabout
now in arable cultivation in the same counties of

England l nearlyone-

This is not mere conjecture. It rests upon facts what is

° *- dow arable.

recorded in detail in the Survey for each manor
upon the oath of the villani themselves ; with no
chance of exaggeration, because upon the result was
to be founded a tax ; with little chance of omission,
because the men of the hundred, who also were sworn,
would take care in their own interests that one place
was not assessed more lightly than others. The
general opinion was that ' not a single hide or yard-
land was omitted.'

The acreage under arable cultivation at the time
of the Survey, and twenty years earlier in the time
of Edward the Confessor, was thus really very large.
And the villani in their yard-lands held nearly half of
it, and together with the bordarii fully half of it, in
villenage. It must be borne in mind also that by their
services they tilled the greater part of the rest.

This was the economic condition in which England
was left by the Saxons as the result of the 500 years
of their rule. The agriculture of England, as they left
it, was carried on under the open field system by village
communities in villenage. It was under the system Tilled by
of Saxon serfdom, with some little help from the i^ our<
actual slaves on the lord's demesne, that the land was
tilled throughout all those counties which the Saxons
had thoroughly conquered, with some partial excep-

1 The arable acreage in these counties in 1879 was about twelve
million acres.

104 The English Village Community.

Chap. hi. i[ on as regards the Danish districts, where the
sochmanni and liberi homines were settled.

This is the solid foundation of fact firmly vouched
for by the Domesday Survey, read in the light of
the evidence leading up to it.

From this firm basis the inquiry must proceed,
carefully following the same lines as before — working
still from the known to the unknown — tracing the
open field system, its villani, and their yard-lands still
farther back into the earlier periods of Saxon rule.

The question to be answered is, how far back into
the earlier Saxon times the open field system and its
yard-lands can be followed, and whether the serfdom
connected with them was more or was less complete
and servile in its character in the earlier than in the
later period.

CHAPTER IV.

THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM TRACED IN SAXON TIMES
—THE SCATTERING OF THE STRIPS ORIGINATED IN
THE METHODS OF CO-ARATION.

I. THE VILLAGE FIELDS UNDER SAXON EULE WERE
OPEN FIELDS.

We have learned from a long line of evidence, leading Chap - iv -
backwards to the date of the Domesday Survey, Traces of
that the community in villenage fitted into the open fieidnT
field system as a snail fits into a shell. Let us now, f^° s n
following the same method, and beginning again with
the shell, inquire whether its distinctive features can
be traced on English fields in early Saxon times from
the date of the Domesday Survey, and of Edward the
Confessor, backwards.

And first it will be convenient to find out whether
traces can be found of the ' strips,' and the ' furlongs,'
'headlands,' 'finches,' 'gored acres,' 'butts,' and odds
and ends of ' no-man's-land,' the remains of which
are still to be seen wherever the open fields are un-
enclosed.

It will be remembered that the strips upon exami-
nation were found to be acres laid out for ploughing

100 The English Village Community.

In the
Saxon
translation
of the
Gospels.

Chap. iv. on ^he open fields. They were, in fact, the original
actual divisions, from the general dimensions of which
the statute acre, with its four roods, was derived.

Bearing this in mind, the Anglo-Saxon translation
of the Gospels may be quoted in proof that the fields
round a Saxon village were open fields, and generally
divided into acre strips in the tenth century, just as
the vision of Piers Plowman was quoted in proof that
it was so in the fourteenth century.

The Saxon translator of the story of the disciples
walking through the corn-fields describes them as
walking over the * ceceras.'

Obviously the translator's notion of the corn-fields
round a village was that of the open fields of his own
country. They were divided into ' acres,' and he who
walked over them walked over the ' acres.'

But by far the best evidence occurs in the multi-
tudes of charters, from the eighth century down-
wards, so many of which are contained in the cartu-
laries of the various abbeys, and more than 1,300 of
which are collected in Kemble's Codex Diplomaticus.

These charters are generally in Latin. They most
often relate to the grant of a whole manor or estate
with the village upon it. And to the charters is
generally added in Saxon a description of the bound-
aries as known to the inhabitants. These descriptions
are in precisely the same form as the description of
the boundaries on the Hitchin manor rolls as pre-
sented by the homage in 1819. 1

The boundary is always described as starting at

In Saxon
charters.

1 The boundaries of the charters
contained in first two volumes of
the Codex L)iv. ait- collected in the

Appendix to vol. iii. After this
they are given with the charters.

boundaries.

The Saxon Open Field System. 107

some well-known point — perhaps a road or stream — Cl,AP - IV -
as passing on from it to some other, and so on, from in the
point to point, till the starting-place is readied again.
The chance of finding out from these boundaries
whether they contained within them open fields lies
simply in the possibility that some one or another of
the distinctive features of the system may happen to
occur at the edge of the estate or township, and so to
be mentioned among the links in the chain of objects
making up the boundary.

The fact is that this happens very often.

By way of example, the boundaries of Hordicell Example
in Hampshire may be taken. They are appended to well.
a charter 1 by which King Edward, the son of King
Alfred, gave the estate to the Abbey of Abingdon,
and they are as follows : —

Metes de Jlordwetta.

An Swinbroc aerest, thaet up of i On Swinbroc first, thence up
Swinebroce in on riscslsed, of thaes from Swinbroc on to rusli-slade,
riscslaedes byge foran ongean Hord- ; from this rush-slade's corner fore-
wylles weg, thaet andlang thaes against Hord well-way, thence along
weges oth hit cymth to Iecenhilde this way until it comes to the
wege, thonne of thaeni wege, up on j Icknild way, then from these ways
thone ealdan wude weg, thonne of i upon the old wood-way, then from
thaen wude waga be eastan Telles- ; that wood-way by east Tellesburg
byrg on aenne garan, thonne of to a corner, then from that corner

thaem garan on nasne garaecer, thaet
andlangs thsere furh to anum and-
heafdnm to anre forierthe, and sio
forierth gaeth in to tham lande,
thanne on gerihte to tham stane on
hricg weg, thanon west on anne

to a goreacre, thence along its fur-
row to the head of a headland, and
which headland goes into the land,
then right on to the stone on ridge
way, then on west to a gore along
the furrow to its head, then adown

goran, andlanges thaere furh to to fernhiils slade, thence on a furrow
anum anheafdum, thanon of dune j in the acre nearer the lince, then on
on fearnhylles slaed, thaet thanon on that lince at fernhiils slade south-

1 Hist. Monasteriide Abingdon, vol. i. p. 57.

10S The English Village Community.

Chap. IV. ane furh an eecer near thaern hlince,

thonne on thast hlinc set fearn-

hylles slaede suthewearde, of thaem
hlince on anon beafde, forth thser
on ane furh, on ane stanraewe,
thanon on gerihte on hricgweg thget
thanone on ane garaecer on anon
heafde, and se garaecer in on thaet
land, thanone andlanges anre furh
oth hit cymth to anum hyg, thanone
of thaem hyge forth on ane furh oth
hit cymth to anre forierthe, and sio
forierth into tham lande, thonne on
Icenhilde weg be Telleshurh westan,
thanone north ofer Icenhilde weg
on sican wylle, thast hthweres ofer
an furlang on gerihte on an aelrbed
on haeghylles broces byge, anlang
thaes broces oth hit cymth to twam
garaecer, and than garaeceras in on
thaet land, thanon on ane forierthe
on anon heafde, thanon on gerihte
on readan clif on Swinbroc, thonne
audlang thaes broces on thaet risc-
slaed.

ward from that lince to its bead,
forward tben on a furrow to a
stonerow, then right on to the
ridge-way, thence thereon to a gore-
acre at its head, the goreacre being
within that land, thence along a
furrow till it comes to a corner,
thence from that corner forward on
a furrow till it comes to a head-
land, which headland is within the
land, then on the Ickenild way by
Tellesburg west, thence north over
the Ickenild way to Sican-well,
thence . . . over a furlong right
on to an alder-bed at hedgehill's
brook corner, along this brook till
it comes to two goreacres, which
goreacres are within that land,
thence on a headland to its head,
then right on to Redcliffe on Swin-
brook, then along this brook on
that rush-slade.

All the
marks are
found

In this single instance there is mention of acres or
strips, of gores or gored-acres, of headlands, of fur-
longs, and of linches.

Scores of similar instances might be given from the
Abingdon charters, ' Liber de Hyda,' and the ' Codex
Diplomaticns,' showing that the boundaries constantly
make mention of one or another of the distinctive
marks by which the open field system may be recog-
nised. 1

1 Codex Dip. cclxxii. ' grenan
hlinc,'' cccliii. ' Minces,' ccclxxvii.
' ealde gare quod indigenae nane
monnes land vocant.' (See also
dl.vx. ' nanemannes land'), cccxcix.
'furlang' ccccvii. 'forlang,' ' heued

lande,' ccccxiii. 'furlang,' l Minces,'
ccccxiv. ' mar Minces,' ccccxvii.
'forerth akere,' ccccxviii. 'furlanges,'
ccccxix. and xx. 'foryrthe,' ' great-
I an Minces,' and so on. Instances
are equally numerous in the Abing-

The Saxon Open Field System. 100

There can, therefore, be no doubt that the CtIAP " 1V "
fields of Saxon manors or villages were open fields
divided into furlongs and strips, and having their
headlands and linches. Even the little odds and i»oooy««"

:igo.

ends of ' no man's land ' are incidentally found to
have their place in the Saxon open fields 1,000 years
ago.

But how far back can these Saxon open fields be
traced ? The answer is, as far back as the laws of
King Ine can be held to reach into the past.

These laws were republished by King Alfred as
1 The Dooms of Ine,' who came to the throne in a.d.
688. In their first clause they claim to have been
recorded by King Ine with the counsel and teaching
of his father Cenred, and of Hedde, his bishop (who
was Bishop of Winchester from a.d. 676 to 705), and
of Eorcenwold, his bishop (who obtained the see of
London in 675) ; and so, if genuine, they seem to re-
present what was settled customary law in Wessex
during the last half of the seventh century — the
century after the conquest of the greater part of
Wessex.

In these laws there occurs a section which so
clearly refers to open common fields divided into
acres, and to common meadows also divided into
strips or doles, that it would have been perfectly
intelligible and reasonable if it had been included
word for word in the record of the customs of the
Hitchin manor as regards the three common fields
and the green commons and Lammas land : —

don charters and those of the Liber \ 259, 284, 315, 341, 404. Liber de
de Hyda. For linces, see Hist. Hxjda, pp. 86, 103, 107, 176, 235.
Abingdon, i. pp. Ill, 147, 158, 188, I 239.

Ill) The English Village Community.

Of a Ceorle's grass-tun (mendoio).

(42) If ceorlshave common mea-
dow or other land divided into strips ~
to fence, and some have fenced
their strip, some have not, and . . .
[stray cattle (?)] eat their common
acres or grass, let those go who own
the gap, and compensate the others
who have fenced their strip. . . .

Chap. IV. g e Qeorles Gcers-iune}

(xlii.) Gir. ceoplar gaepr-tun
hsebben jemaenne. o]>J>e o'fiep
gebal-lanb to cynanne."] haebben
fume getyneb hiopa bael. rume
nnebban.^ . . . etten hiopa je-
maenan aecepar o]>]>e jaepr. 3&n
]>a ponne ]>e f seat ajan. ~\
gebete[n] ]»am oo'pum pe hiopa
bsel jetynebne. . . .

There is here in the smallest possible compass the
most complete evidence that in the seventh century
the fields of Wessex were common open fields, the
arable being divided into acres and the meadows into
doles 2 ; and as the system is incidentally mentioned as
a thing existing as a matter of course, it is not likely
to have been suddenly or recently introduced. The
evidence throws it back, therefore, at least to the
earliest period of Saxon rule.

II. THE HOLDINGS WERE COMPOSED OF SCATTERED
STRIPS.

The hold- Let us next ask whether there are traces of the

and scattered ownership — the scattering all over the open

yard-lands, fi^g f tne s t r ip S included in the holdings — which
was so essential a characteristic of the system ; and,
further, whether in tracing it back into early Saxon

1 Laws of King Ine. Ancient
Laws, fyc, of England, Thorpe, p.
55.

2 It will be remembered that
Lammas land is divided into strips
for the hay crop. In the Winslow
Rolls, in the list of strips included
in the virgate of John Moldeson
were some strips or dolei of meadow

— hence dtcl and geddl-land. That
gedal-land = open fields divided into
strips, see Hist. Abingdon (p. 304),
where there is a charter, a.d. 961,
making a grant of ' 9 mansas ' and
' thas nigon hida licggcad on gemang
othran gedal-landc, feldes genuine
and mreda genuine and yrthland
tremane.'

The Saxon Open Field System. Ill

times any clue to its original meaning and intention C,,AP - 1V -
can be found.

First, it may be stated generally that, when the
nature and incidents of the holdings are examined
hereafter, it will be found that throughout the period
of Saxon rule, from the time of Edward the Confessor
backward to the date of the laws of King Ine, 300
years earlier, the holdings were mainly the same as
those with which we have become familiar, viz. hides,
half -hides, and yard-lands, and that, generally speak-
ing, there were no other kinds of holdings the names
of which are mentioned.

That these Saxon hides and yard-lands were com- Holdings
posed of scattered strips in the open fields, as they Scattered
were afterwards, might well be inferred from the mere stnps *
fact that they bore the same names as those used after
the Conquest. It would be strange indeed if the same
names at the two dates meant entirely different things
— if the virgate or yard-land before the Conquest was
a thing wholly different from what it was after it.

But there is other evidence than the mere names
of the holdings.

There is a general characteristic of the numerous
Saxon charters of all periods, which, when carefully
considered, can hardly have any other explanation
than the fact that the holdings were composed not of
contiguous blocks of land, but of scattered strips.

It is this — that whatever be the subject of the
grant made by the charter, i.e. whether it be a whole
manor or township that is granted, or only some of
the holdings in it, the boundaries appended are the
boundaries of the whole manor or township. No
doubt the royal gifts to the monastic houses generally

112

The English Village Community .

Chap. IV.

The boun-
daries were
of whole
manors,

of which
they were
shares.

did consist of whole manors, and thus the boundaries
in most cases naturally were the boundaries of the
whole, and could not be otherwise. But it was not
always so. Thus, among the Abingdon charters
there are two of Edward the Martyr, one of vii.
hides (cassatos), in ' Cingestune,' and another of xiii.
1 mansas ' in ' Cyngestun,' one to the Church of St.
Mary at Abingdon, the other to a person named
JEXfstan\ x and to both charters are appended the same
boundaries in substantially the same words. And
these are the boundaries of the whole township}

There can hardly be any other explanation of this
peculiarity than the fact that the holdings were not
blocks of land, the boundaries of which could be
easily given, but, in fact, like the hides and virgates
after the Conquest, bundles of strips scattered over
the open fields, and intermixed with strips belonging
to other holdings. Indeed, there is in a charter of
King Ethelred (a.d. 982) among the Abingdon series
relating to five hides at ' Cheorletun,' a direct confes-
sion of the reason why in this case all boundaries
are omitted. Instead of the usual boundaries of the
whole township there is the statement that the estate
is ' the less distinctly defined by boundaries, quia
jugera altrinsecus copulata adjacent ' — because the
acres are intermixed. 3

On the hypothesis already suggested that the hides,
half-hides, virgates, and bovates were the shares in the
results of the ploughing of the village plough teams

1 Vol. i. pp. 349-862.

5 So also see Codex Diploma-
ticus, dii. and dxvi., and cccclxvii.
and ccexxxv.

8 Vol. i. p. 384. Compare also
the boundaries of Draitune, ' eecer
uncle?- cecer,' p. 248. Also the same
expression, pp. 3.j0 and 353.

The Sa.von Open Field System. 113

— in other words, the number of strips allotted to each Chap. iv.
holder in respect of the oxen contributed by him to
the plough team of eight oxen — it is perfectly natural
that in a grant of some only of the holdings the
boundaries given should be those of the whole town-
ship, viz. of the whole area, an intermixed share in
which constituted the holding.

There is another fact, which has, perhaps, never other eri-
yet been explained, but which is nevertheless per-
fectly intelligible on the same hypothesis.

It will be remembered that there was observed in
the Winslow example of a virgate a certain regular
turn or rotation in the order of the strips in the vir-
gates — that John Moldeson's strips almost always
came next after the strips of one, and were followed
by those of another, particular neighbour. Now this
fact strongly suggests that originally the holdings had
not always and permanently consisted of the same
actual strips, but that once upon a time the strips
were perhaps allotted afresh each year in the plough-
ing according to a certain order of rotation, the turn
of the contributor of two oxen coming twice as often
as that of the contributor of one ox, and so making
the virgate contain twice as many strips as the bovate.
This, and this alone, would give the requisite elas-
ticity to the system so as to allow, if necessary, of the
admission of new-comers into the village community,
and new virgates into the village fields.

So long as the limits of the land were not reached
a fresh tenant would rob no one by adding his oxen to
the village plough teams, and receiving in regular turn
the strips allotted in the ploughing to his oxen. In
the working of the system the strips of a new holding

114 The English Village Community

Chap. iv. won ]d De intermixed with the others by a perfectly
natural process.

Now, that something like this process did actually
happen in Saxon times is clear from the way in which
the Church was provided for under the Saxon laws.

The mode In the light which is given by the knowledge of

in u-h° h <D J O

tithes were what the open field system really was, there is nothing
intrinsically impossible even in the alleged but doubt-
ful donation by King Ethelwulf of one-tenth of the
whole land of England by one stroke of the pen to
the Church. It has been said that he could not do
it except on the royal domains without robbing the
landowners and their tenants of their holdings. It
would be so if the holdings were blocks. But there
is nothing impossible in the supposition that a Saxon
king should enact a law that every tenth strip
ploughed by the common ploughs throughout the
villages of England should be devoted to the Church.
It would create no confusion or dislocation anywhere.
And it would have meant just the same thing if
Ethelwulf had enacted that every tenth virgate, or
every tenth holding, should be devoted to the Church.
For the sum of every tenth strip ploughed by the
villagers, when the strips were tied, as it were, to-
gether into the bundles called virgates or hides, would
amount to every tenth virgate, or hide, as the case
might be. Nor would there be anything strange in
his freeing the strips thus granted to the Church from
all secular services. 1

The alleged donation may be spurious, the docu-
ments relating to it may be forgeries, but there is

1 See, with regard to this dona- I c. x. ; and Stuhbs' Const. Hist. L
Hon, Kerahle's Saxons in England, | pp. '202-71.

The Saxon Open Field System. 115

nothing impossible or unlikely in the thing itself. C|,AP - IV -
And the very fact of the forgery of such a grant is
evidence of its intrinsic possibility. And, whatever
may be said as to the donation of Ethelwulf, whether
it be spurious or not, there are other proofs that
something of the kind was afterwards effected.

In No. XXV. 1 of the ' Excerptiones ' of Archbishop p 5 iest9

. . . r often have

Egbert (a.d. 735-766) it is ordained that 'to every yard-land*
' church shall be allotted one complete holding
' (mansa), and that this shall be free from all but
* ecclesiastical services.' This was simply putting the
priest in the position of a recognised village official,
like the propositus or the faber. They held their vir-
gates free of service, and perhaps their strips were
ploughed by the common ploughs in return for their
services without their contributing oxen to the
manorial plough team. The Domesday Survey proves
that, in a great number of instances at least, room
had in fact been made in the village community for
the priest and his virgate. 2

The following passages in the Saxon laws also Tithe taken

i i y» • n t in acres,

show that tor some time, at all events, the tithes were i.e. every
actually taken, not in. the shape of every tenth sheaf,
but exactly in accordance with the plan suggested by
the spurious grant of Ethelwulf, by every tenth strip
being set aside for the Church in the ploughing.
In the laws of King Ethelred 3 (a.d. 978-1016)

1 Thorpe, p. 328. 'Item—
Ut unicuique aecclesise vel una
mansa integra absque alio servitio
adtribuatur, et presbiteri in eis con-
stitute non de decimis, neque de ob-
lationibus fidelium,nec de domibus,
neque de atriis vel ortis juxta aec-
clesiam positis, neque de prsescripta

mansa, aliquod servitiuin faciant
praeter aecclesiasticum ; et si aliquid
amplius habuerint, inde senioribus
suis secundum patriae morein, de-
bitum servitium impendant.'

2 See especially tbe Survey
Middlesex, and supra pp. 92-95.

3 Thorpe, p. 146.

t 2

116

The English Village Community.

Chap. IV

tli ere is a command that every Christian man shall
{ pay his tithe justly, always as the plough traverses
1 the tenth " cecer." '

VII. A'nb pice cpipcenpa
manna jelipilc. f he hip Dpih-
cene hir eeoSunje. a ppa reo
julh pone ceofian aecep jeja.
pihchce jelffej-ce.be Eober milcpe. 1

And bo it known to every
Christian man that he pay to his
lord his tithe rightly always as the
plough traverses the tenth acre, on
peril of God's mercy.

Further, in a Latin law of King Ethelred there is
the folio win cr direction : —

Et prgecipimus, ut omnis homo
. . . det cyricsceattum et rectam
decimam suam, . . . hoc est, sicut
aratrum peragrabit decimam ac-

And we command, that every
man . . . give his churchshot and
just tithe, . . . that is, as the plough
traverses the tenth acre.

And that this applied to land in villenage as well
as to land in demesne is clear from a still earlier law
of King Edgar (a.d. 959, 975) : ' That every tithe be
' rendered to the old minster to which the district
4 belongs, and that it be then so paid both from a
8 thane's in-land and from ge?ieat-land, so as the plough
1 traverses it.'

1. These then are first: that
God's churches be entitled to every
right ; and that every tithe be ren-
dered to the old minster to which
the district belongs ; and that it be
then so paid, both from a thane's
in-land, and from geneat-land, so as
the plough traverses it.

1. Dsec pynbon ponne sepepc.
•pEobep cypican pyn selcer pihcep
pypfie. ~) man agfpe selce ceo-
■Sun^e Co ]>am ealban mynpcpe
pe reo hypner co-hyp<S. ~\ f> py
ponne ppa gelaepc. sejSep ge op
pejner m-lanbe je op geneac-
lanbe. ppa ppa bic peo pulh ge-
Sange. 3

There is very little reference in the Domesday
Survey to the churches and their tithes, but there
happens to be one entry at least in which there seems

1 Thorpe, p. 146. the plough traverses it.' Thorpe,

2 Ibid. p. 144. So also in the p. 150.

Laws of Onut, 'The tenth acre as 2 Ibid. p. 111.

The Saxon Open Field System.

117

to be a clear reference to this practice of the tithes CnA,v [V -
being taken in actual strips and acres. It relates to Acres oi
the church at Wallop, in Hampshire (the place from Domesday
which the family name of the Earls of Portsmouth is Survo >'-
derived), and it states that ' to the church there per-
1 tains one hide, also half of the tithes of the manor,
' also the whole kirkshot. And of the tithes of the

* villani xlvi. pence and half of the acres. There is in

* addition a little church to which pertain viii. acres
1 of the tithes' 1

It may be taken then as certain that the holdings
in villenage in the open fields of the Saxon ' hams '
and ' tuns ' were composed, like the virgate of John
Moldeson, in the manor of Winslow, centuries after-
wards, of strips scattered, one in this furlong and
another in that, all over the village fields ; and it may
be taken as already almost certain that the scattering
of the strips was in some way connected with the order
in which the strips were allotted in respect of the
oxen contributed to the village plough teams.

III. THE OPEN FIELD SYSTEM OF CO-ARATION DESCRIBED
IN THE ANCIENT LAWS OF WALES.

The law that every tenth strip as it was traversed strips
by the plough was to be set apart for the tithe is an order of
certainly the clearest hint that has yet been discovered rotatloD >
of the perhaps annual redistribution of the strips
among the holdings in a certain order of rotation,

1 D. i. 38 b. Wallope (Hants).
' Ibi secclesia cui pertinet una hida
' et medietas decimal manerii et
' totum Oirset, et de decima villa-

' norum XLVI. denarii et medietas
: a&Torum.'

' Ibi est adhuc recclesiola, ad quam
pertinent viii. acrse de decima.'

118 The English Village Community.

Chap. iv. though it is possible of course that a redistribution
being once made, to make room for the acres set
apart for the tithe, the same strips might always
thereafter be assigned to the tithe and to each parti-
cular yard -land year after year without alteration.

What is still wanted to lift the explanation already
offered of the connexion of the grades of holdings in
the open fields and the scattering of the strips in
each holding, with the team of 8 oxen, out of the
region of hypothesis into that of ascertained fact is
the discovery if possible somewhere actually at work of
the system of common ploughing with eight oxen, and
according the assignment of the strips in respect of the oxen to
contri- ' their several owners. Were it possible to watch such
an example of the actual process going on, there pro-
bably would be disclosed by some little detail of its
working the reason and method of the scattering of
the strips, and of the order of rotation in which they
seem to have been allotted.

Now it happens that such an instance is at hand,
affording every opportunity for examination under
The system the most favourable circumstances possible. We find
under the it in the ancient Welsh laws, representing to a large
J^of extent ancient Welsh traditions collected and codified
Wales. j n f] ie tenth century, but somewhat modified after-
wards, and coming down to us in a text of the four-
teenth century. In these laws is much trustworthy
evidence from which might be drawn a very graphic
picture of the social and economic condition of the
unconquered Welsh people, at a time parallel to the
centuries of Saxon rule in England. And amongst
other things fortunately there is an almost perfect
picture of the method of ploughing. Nor is it too

The Saxon Open Field System.

119

much to say that in this picture we have a key which CnAP - IV -
completely fits the lock, and explains the riddle of
the English open field system.

For the ancient Welsh laws describe a simple form
of the open field system at an earlier stage than that
in which we have yet seen it — at a time, in fact, when
it was a living system at work, and everything about
it had a present and obvious meaning, and its details
were consistent and intelligible.

Let us examine this Welsh evidence.

Precisely as the modern statute acre had its origin Tlie Wplsh

. ... erws, or

in the Saxon cecer, which was an actual division of the acre strips

fields, so that the Saxon ceceras were the strips divided

by balks — the seliones — of the open field system ; so

the modern Welsh word for acre as a quantity of land

is ' erw,' and the same word in its ancient meaning in

the Welsh laws was the actual strip in the open fields.

This is placed beyond a doubt by the fact that

its measurements are carefully given over and over

again, and that it was divided from its neighbours by Divided by

an unploughed balk of turf two furrows wide. 1

The Welsh laws describe the primitive way in
which the erw was to be measured. In one province
this was to be done by a man holding a rod of a cer-
tain length and stretching it on both sides of him to
fix the width, while the length is to be a certain mul-
tiple of its breadth. 2 In other provinces of Wales the
width was to be fixed by a rod equal in length to the

Measured
by a rod.

1 (5) The breadth of a boundary
(Jin) between two trevs, if it be of
land, is a fathom and a half. . . .

(7) Between two erws, two
furrows (Ancient Laws, fyc, of
Wales, p. 373). 'The boundary

(tervyn) between two erws, two
furrows, and that is called a balk
(synach).' (P. 525.)

2 Ancient Laws : Venedotian
Code, pp. 81 and 90. Leycs U'(d-
liccB, p. 831.

120 The English Village Community.

:hav. rv. i on g y fc e usec [ [ n ploughing with four oxen abreast. 1
The erw thus ascertained closely resembled in shape
the English strips, though it varied in size in different
districts, and was less than the modern acre in its
contents.

Next there was, according to the Welsh laws, a
certain regulated rotation of ownership in the erws
1 as they were traversed by the plough,' resulting from a
well-ordered system of co-operative ploughing. In
the Venedotian Code especially are elaborate rules
as to the ' cyvar ' or co-aration, and these expose the
system in its ancient form actually at work, with great
vividness of detail.

The chief of these rules are given below, 2 from

1 Ancient Laws, p. 263 (Dime-
tian Code) ; p. 374 (Giventian Code).

2 Ancient Laios, p. 153. ( Vene-
dotian Code.)

XXIV. Of Co-tillage this treats.

1. Whoever shall engage in co-
tillage with another, it is right for
them to give surety for perform-
ance, and mutually join hands;
and, after they have done that, to
keep it until the tye be completed :
the tye is twelve erws.

2. The measure of the erw, has
it not been before set forth ?

3. The first erw belongs to the
ploughman ; the second to the
irons ; the third to the exterior sod
ox; the fourth to the exterior
sward ox, lest the yoke should be
broken ; and the fifth to the driver:
and so the erws are appropriated,
from best to best, to the oxen,
thence onward, unless the yoke be
stopped between them, unto the
last ; and after that the plough erw,

which is called the plough-bote
cyvar ; and that once in the year

10. Every one is to bring his
requisites to the ploughing, whether
ox, or irons, or other things per-
taining to him ; and after every-
thing is brought to them, the
ploughman and the driver are to
keep the whole safely, and use
them as well as they would their
own.

The driver is to yoke in the
oxen carefully, so that they be not
too tight, nor too loose ; and drive
them so as not to break their
hearts : and if damage happen to
them on that occasion, he is to
make it good; or else swear that
he used them not worse than his
own.

12. The ploughman is not to
pay for the oxen, unless they be
bruised by him ; and if he bruise
either one or the whole, let him pay,

The Saxon Open Field System,

121

which it will be seen that in the co-tillage the team. Chap.iv.
as in England and Scotland, was assumed to be of Team of
eight oxen. And those who join in co-ploughing iTti!
must bring a proper contribution, whether oxen or aratlon -
plough irons, handing them over during the common
ploughing to the charge of the common ploughman
and the driver, who together are bound to keep and
use everything as well as they would do their own,
till, the co-ploughing being done, the owners take their
own property away.

So the common ploughing was arranged. But
how was the produce of the partnership to be divided ?
This, too, is settled by the law, representing no
doubt immemorial custom. The first erw ploughed flotation in

tit . erws ' ac-

was to go to the ploughman, the second to the irons, cording to
the third to the outside sod ox, the fourth to the out-
side sward ox, the fifth to the driver, the sixth,
seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh to the other
six oxen in order of worth ; and lastly, the twelfth was
the plough erw, for ploughbote, i.e. for the mainte-
nance of the woodwork of the plough ; and so, it is
stated, ' the tie of 12 erws was completed.' Further,

the oxon.

or exonerate himself. The plough-
man is to assist the driver in yoking
the oxen ; but he is to loosen only
the two short-yoked.

13. After the co-tillage shall he
completed, every one is to take his
requisites with him home.

16. If there should he a dispute
about bad tillage between two co-
tillers, let the erw of the plough-
man be examined as to the depth,
length, and breadth of the furrow ,

and let every one's be completed
alike.

28. Whoever shall own the
irons is to keep them in order, that
the ploughman and driver be not
impeded ; and they are to have no
assistance.

The driver is to furnish the
bows of the yokes with wythea ;
and, if it be a long team, the small
rings, and pegs of the bows.

See also Gwent.ian Code, p. 354 ;
and the Leges Wallice, p. 801.

122 The English Village Community.

Chap. iv. jf an y dispute should arise between the co-tillers as
to the fairness of the ploughing, the common-sense
rule was to be followed that the erw which fell to the
ploughman should be examined as to the depth,
length, and breadth of the furrows and every one's
erw must be ploughed equally well.

Here, then, in the Welsh laws is the clearest evi-
dence not only of the division of the common fields
by turf balks two furrows wide into the long narrow
strips called erws, or acres, and roughly corresponding
in shape, though not in area, with those on English
fields, but also of the very rules and methods by
which their size and shape, as well as the order of
their ownership, were fixed in Wales,
rt is the And this order in the allotment of the erws turns

division of out to be an ingenious system for equitably dividing
of^tiii- 8 y ear by y ear the produce of the co-operative ploughing
a s e - between the contributors to it.

Now, without entering at present into the question
of its connexion with the tribal system in Wales,
which will require careful consideration hereafter,
several interesting and useful flashes of light may be
drawn from this glimpse into the methods and rules
of the ancient Welsh system of co-operative plough-
ing.
The size of In the first place, ancient Welsh ploughing was
necessitates evidently not like the classical ploughing of the sunny
south, a mere scratching of the ground with a light
plough, which one or two horses or oxen could draw.
In the Welsh laws a team of eight oxen, as already said,
is assumed to be necessary. And hence the necessity
of co-operative ploughing. The plough was evidently
heavy and the ploughing deep, just as was the case in

c>-m]m ra-
tion,

The Saxon Open Field System. 123

the twelfth century, and probably from still earlier to C " AP - Iv
quite modern times in Scotland, where, as we have
seen, the plough was of the same heavy kind, and the
team of eight or of twelve oxen. And it is curious
to observe that the Welsh, like the Scotch oxen in
modern times, were driven four abreast, i.e. yoked
four to a yoke. So that, as already suggested, the
plough was aptly described by the monks in their
mediaeval Latin as a ' caruca,' and the ploughed land
as a 'carucate.'

But the most interesting point about the ancient and the

. .. stri ]

Welsh co-operative ploughing was the fact that the with the
key to a share in the produce was the contribution of °
one or more oxen to the team. He who contributed
one ox was entitled to one erw in the twelve. He
who contributed two oxen was entitled to two erws.
He who contributed a whole yoke of four oxen would
receive four erws, while only the owner of the full team
of eight oxen could possibly do without the co-opera-
tion of others in ploughing. Surely this Welsh evi-
dence satisfactorily verifies the hypothesis already
suggested by the term bovate, and by the allotment
of two oxen as outfit to the yard-land or virgate, and
by the taking of tithes in the shape of every tenth
strip as it was traversed by the plough, and lastly by
the order of rotation in the strips disclosed by the
Winslow example.

It explains how the possession of the oxen came
to be in Saxon, as probably in still earlier British or
Roman times, the key to the position of the holder,
and his rank in the hierarchy of the village com-
munity. And it points to the Saxon system of hides
and yard -lands having possibly sprung naturally out

124 The English Village Community.

Chap. IV.

Hence the
yard-land
became a
bundle of
scattered
strips.

The strip
the day's
ploughing.

of pre-existing British or Roman arrangements, rather
than as having been a purely Saxon importation.

It also suggests a ready explanation of how when
the common tillage died out, and the strips included in
a hide, yard-land, or virgate, instead of varying with
each } T ear's arrangements of the plough teams, became
occupied by the villein tenant year after year in per-
manent possession, there would naturally be left, as a
survival of the ancient system, that now meaningless
and inconvenient scattering of the strips forming a
holding all over the open fields which in modern
times so incensed Arthur Young, and made the En-
closure Acts necessary.

There is, lastly, another point in which the Welsh
laws of co-aration sug-gest a cnie to ^ ne reason an< ^
origin of a widely spread trait of the open field
system. Why were the strips in the open field system
uniformly so small? The acre or erw was obviously
a furrow-long for the convenience of the ploughing.
But what fixed its breadth and its area ? This, too, is
explained. According to the Welsh laws it was the
measure of a day's co -ploughing . This is clear from
two passages in the laws where it is called a ' cyvar J
or a ' co-ploughing.' 1 And it would seem that a day's
ploughing ended at midday, because in the legal
description of a complete ox it is required to plough
only to midday. 2 The Gallic word for the acre or
strip, 'journel,' in the Latin of the monks ' jumalisj and

1 Ancient Laws, fyc, p. 150, Vene-
dotian Code, 'the worth of ' winter
tilth of a cyvar two legal pence ; '
and so p. 2^0, Dimetian Code.

P. 153. ' The plough erw, which

is called the ploughbot <-\ v ar.
' 354, Gwentian Code.

~C J-..V

The

-. . — — _, »-™./l««« l, ™ ( " J- lie

worth of one day's ploughing is

two legal pence.'

2 Ancient Laws, eye, p. 134.

The Saxon Open Field System. 125

sometimes diurnalis, 1 also points to a day's ploughing ; ° HAP - iV
while the German word ' morgen ' for the same strips
in the German open fields still more clearly points to
a day's work which ended, like the Welsh ' cyvar,' at
noon.

1 See Du Cange under ' Diurnalis,' who quotes a passage of a.d. 704.

CHAPTER V.

MANORS AND SERFDOM UNDER SAXON RULE.

Chap. V.

The kams
find tuns
were
manors.

I. THE SAXOX ' HAMS ' AND ' TUNS ' WERE MANORS WITH
VILLAGE COMMUNITIES IN SERFDOM UPON THEM.

Having now ascertained that the open field system
was prevalent during Saxon, and probably pre-
Saxon times, we have next to inquire whether the
' hams ' and ' tuns ' to which the common fields be-
longed were manors — i.e. estates with a village com-
munity in serfdom upon them — or whether, on the
contrary, there once dwelt within them a free village
community holding their yard-lands by freehold or
allodial tenure.

Let us at once dismiss from the question the word
1 manor.' It was the name generally used in the
Domesday Survey, for a thing described in the Survey
as already existing at the time of Edward the Con-
fessor. The estate called a manor was certainly as
much a Saxon institution under the Confessor as it
was a Norman one afterwards.

The Domesday book itself does not always adhere
to this single word ' manor ' throughout its pages.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. 127

The word manerium gives place in the Exeter Survey Cl,AP - v
to the word villa for the whole manor, andmansio for
the manor-house ; and the same words, villa and
mansio, are also used in the instructions * given at
the commencement of the Inquisitio Eliensis. It is
perfectly clear, then, that what was called a manor or
villa, both in the west and in the east of England, was
in fact the estate of a lord with a village community
in villenage upon it.

In the Boldon Book also the word villa is used
instead of manor.

So in Saxon documents the whole manor or estate
was called by various names, generally ' ham ' or
1 tun.''

In King Alfred's will 2 estates in the south-east of Kin ?

. & . Alfred's

England, including the villages upon them, which by will.
Norman scribes would have been called manors, are
described as hams (the ham at such a place). In the
old English version of the will given in the ' Liber de
Hyda ' 3 the word ' twune ' is used to translate ' ham,*
and in the Latin version the word ' villa.' 4

In the Saxon translation of the parable of the Parable of
prodigal son, the country estate of the citizen — the gaifon. '
' burh-sittenden man ' — to which the prodigal was sent
to feed swine, and where he starved upon the ' bean-
cods ' that the swine did eat, was the citizen's ' tune.' 5

So that the ' hams ' and ' tuns ' of Saxon times
were in fact commonly private estates with villages
upon them, i.e. manors.

This fact is fully borne out by the series of Saxon

l. < — villani uniuscnjusque villa.
Deinde quomodo vocatur mansio '
(f. 497).

2 Liber de Hyda, p. 63.

8 Id. p. 68. 4 Id. p. 7±

4 Luke xv. 16.

12S The English Village Community.

Char V

Grants
whole

manors

Saxon
words.

charters from first to last. They generally, as already
said, contain grants of whole manors in this sense, in-
cluding the villages upon them, with all the village
fields, pastures, meadows, &c, embraced within the
boundaries given. And these boundaries are the
boundaries of the whole village or township — i.e. of the
whole estate.

Further, a careful examination of Anglo-Saxon
documents will show that the Saxon manors, not only
at the time of Edward the Confessor, as shown by
the Domesday Survey, but also long previously, were
divided into the land of the lord's demesne and the land
in villenage, though the Norman phraseology was not
yet used. The lord of the manor was a thane or
' lila ford? The demesne land was the thane's inland.
All classes of villeins were called geneats. The land in
villenage was the geneat-land, or the gesettes-land, or
sometimes the gafol-land. And further, this geneat-,
or gesettes-, or gafol-land was composed, like the later
land in villenage, of hides and yard-lands, whilst the
villein tenants of it, as in the Domesday Survey, were
divided mainly into two classes: (1) the geburs (villain
proper), or holders of yard-lands ; and (2) the cottiers
with their smaller holdings. Beneath these two classes
of holders of geneat land were the theows or slaves,
answering to the servi of the Survey. Lastly, there
is clear evidence that this was so as early as the
date of the laws of King Ine, which claim to repre-
sent the customs of the seventh century.

To the proof of these points attention must now
be directed.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom,

L29

II. THE RECTITUDINES SINGULARUM REKSOXARU-M.

Chap. V.

In order to make these points clear, attention must
be turned to a remarkable document, the Saxon ver-
sion of which dates probably from the tenth, and the
Latin translation from the twelfth century. 1

It is entitled the ' Rectitudines Singularum Person- Thl
arum, which may be translated ' the services due jrom tenth

j century.

various persons. J

It commences with two general sections, the first
relating to the services of the ' thane,' and the second
to those of the ' geneat.'

DeceNes lheu.

Dejenej- laju if ^
he ry hij- boc-pihcef
pypoe. ~} f he opeo
Sine of hip lanbe bo.
pypb-faepelb. 3 buph-
boce ~) bpyc-gepeopc.
Gac Of manejum lan-
bum mape lanb-pihc
apifc co cynijef je-
banne. fpilce if beop-
heje co cynijef hame.
~) fcopp co ppiS-fcipe.
3 fae-peapb. 3 heapb-
peapb. -] Fy]>^ _ P ea pb.
aelmef-peoh. ■] cypic-
fceac. 3 masnije
ooepemifchcebinjc '.•

TAINI LEX.

Taini lex est, ut sit
dignus rectitudine
testamenti sui, et ut
ita faciat pro terra
sua, scilicet, expedi-
tionem, burh-botam et
brig-botam. Et de
multis terris majus
landirectum exurgit
ad bannum regis, sic-
ut est deorbege ad
mansionem regiam et
sceorpum inhosticum,
et custodiam maris
et capitis, et pacis, et
elmesfeoh, id est pe-
ctinia elemosine et
ciricsceatum, et alie
res multimode.

THANE'S LAW.

The thane's law
is that he be worthy
of his boc- rights,
and that he do three
things for his land,
fyrd-faereld, burh-
bot, and brig-bot.
Also from many
lands more land-ser-
vices are due at the
king's bann, as deer-
hedging at the king's
ham, and apparel
for the guard, and
sea-ward and head-
ward and fyrd-ward
and almsfee and
kirkshot, and many
other various things.

Thane's

1 See Ancient Laics and Insti-
tutes of England, Thorpe, p. 185.
This document was the subject of a

special treatise by
Leo, Halle, 1842.

Dr. Heinrich

130 The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

Geneat's
or villein's
services.

Tot tier's
services.

neNeKTes riiit.

Ijeneat-pilicip nnp-
clic be 'Sam tie on
lanbe pcamt. On ru-
mon lie fceal lanb-
gapol pyllan ~\ jaqip-
rpyn on geape. "j pi-
ban "] auepian "j labe
la;ban. pypcan •] hla-
popb peopmian. 3 pi-
pan 3 mapan. beop-
hege heapan. ~\ paece
halban. by than. ~\
buph hegejian nige
papan to tune peccan.
cypic-pceac pyllan -]
a?lniep-peoh. Iieapob-
peapbe healban -)
hopp-peapbe. aepen-
bian. pyp ppa nyp.
I pa hpybep ppa him
moil co-ca?cS ••

VILLANI RECTUM.

Villani rectum est
varium et multiplex,
secundum quod in
terra statutum est.
In quibusdam terris
debet dare landga-
blum et gsersspin, id
est, porcum berbagii,
et equitare vel ave-
riare, et sumniagium
ducere, operari, et do-
minum suum firmare,
metere et falcare, de-
orhege cedere, et sta-
bilitatem observare,
edificare et circum-
sepire, novam faram
adducere,ciricsceatum
dare et almesfeob, id
est, pecuniam elemo-
sine, heafod-wardam
custodire et horswar-
dam, in nuncium ire,
longe vel prope, quo-
cunque dicetur ei.

GENEAT'S SER-
VICES.

The geneat's ser-
vices are various as
on the land is fixed.
On some he shaU
pay land-gafol and
grass-swine yearly,
and ride, and carry,
and lead loads ;
work and support
his lord, and reap
and mow, cut deer-
hedge and keep it
up, build, and hedge
the burh, make new
roads for the tun :
pay kirk snot and
almsfee : keep head-
ward and horse-
ward : go errands
far or near wher-
ever he is directed.

Then follow what really are sub-sections of the
latter clause, and they describe the services of the
various classes of geneats ; first of the cottiers.

KOT-SCTLKN RIHT. COTSETLE RECTUM.

Kote-petlan pihc.
be Sam Se on lanbe
iT.enr. On punion he
pceal aelce ODon-baeje
opep jeapej- pyppc hip
lapophe pypcan. 01SS
.111. bagap adcpe pu-
can on ha.'ppt']c.

Cotsetle rectum est
juxta quod in terra
constitutum est. Apud
quosdam debet omni
die Lune per anni
spatium operari do-
mino suo, et tribus
diebus unaquaque
septimanain Augusto.
Apud quosdam opera-
tur per totum Augus-
tum, omni die, et

COTTIER'S SER-
VICES.

The cottier's ser-
vices are what on
the land is fixed.
On some he shall
each Monday in the
year work for his
lord, and three days
a week in harvest.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom.

131

K0T-S6TLKN RIHT.

COTSETLE RECTUM.

imam acram avene
metit pro diurnale
opere. Et habeat gar-
bam suam quam prse-
positus vel minister
domini dabit ei. Non
dabit landgablum.
Debet habere quinque
acras ad perhaben-
dum, plus si consue-
tudo sit ibi, et parum
nimis est si minus
sit quod deservit, quia
sepius est operi illius.
Det super beorSpe-
nig in sancto die
Jovis, sicut omnis li-
ber facere debet, et
adquietet inland do-
mini sui, si submo-
nitio fiat de sewarde,
id est de custodia
maris, vel de regis
deorhege, et ceteris
rebus que sue men-
sure sunt ; et det
suum cyricsceatum in
festo Sci Martini.

COTTIER'S SEE-

VICES.

Chap. V.

ne Seapp he lanb-japol
pyllan. pirn £e-by-
piao" [.v.] aecepap co
habbanne. mape jyp
hie on lanbe Seap py.
-j co lycel hicbr5 beo
hie a laeppe. popoan
hip peopc pceal beon
opc-paebe. pylle hip
heopS-paenig on hal-
gan Dunpep baaj. eal
ppa selcan pjngean
men gebypeo'. ~\ pe-
pije hip hlapopbep in-
lanb. jip him man
beobe. aec pae-peapbe ~\
aec cynijepbeop-heje.
~] aec ppilcan Singan
ppilc hip mae'5 py. ■]
pylle hip cypic-pceac
co GOapcinup maep-
pan !•

Then the services of the gebur or holder of a
yard-land are described as follows : —

He ought not to
pay land-gafol. He
ought to have five
acres in his holding,
more if it be the
custom on the land,
and too little it is if
it be less : because
his work is often
required. He pays
hearth-penny on
Holy Thursday, as
pertains to every
freeman, and de-
fends his lord's in-
land, if he is re-
quired, from sea-
ward and from
king's deer-hedge,
and from such tit lugs
as befit his degree.
And he pays his kirk-
shot at Martinmas.

neBURes cgrihtg.

Eebup-jepihca pyn
miphce. jehpap hy
pyn hepije. gehpap eac
mebeme. on pumen
lanbe ip f he pceal
pypcan co pic-peopce
.II. bajap. ppilc peopc
ppilc him man caecS
opep jeapep pyppc.
aelcpe pucan. ~] on
haeppepc .in bajap co

GEBURI CONSUE-
TUDINES.

Geburi consuetu-
dines inveniuntur
multimode, et ubi
sunt onerose et ubi
sunt leviores aut me-
die. In quibusdam
terris operatur opus
septimane, n. dies,
sic opus sicut ei dice-
tur per anni spatium,
omni septimana ; et
K 2

GEBUR'S SER-
VICES.

The Gebur' s ser- Gebur's
vices are various, in services.
some places heavy,
in others moderate.
On some land he
must work at week-
work two days at
such work as he is
required through the
year every week,
and at harvest three

132

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

Week-
work.

Gafol.

Eene-
vork.

Gafol-
yrth.

ceBURes ceiiiHTe.

pic-peopce. y op Ean-
belmeeppe o5 (Baptpan
.III. gip lie apepao' ne
oeapp he pypcan 5a
hpile 8e li i p hopp ute
bio", pe fceal pyllan
on GOichaelep maeppe-
baeij .x. japol-p. y on
GCaptmup mappe-baej
.xxiii. pyjxpa bepep.
y. ii. henpujelap. on
Captpan an jeonj
pceap. oSfie .II. p. y
he pceal licjan op
CTaptinup moeppan oS
Gajtpan oec hlapopbep
palbe. ppa opt ppa him
to-bejaeS. y op Sam
cinuui 6'e man aepept
epeS oS GDapcinup
maeppan he pceal
selcpe pucan epian .1.
SBceji. y paeban pylp
■j) paeb on hlapopbep
bepne. to-eacan 6am
.in. aecepap to bene.
y .ii. to jaepp-ypoe.
gyp he mapan jaeppep
beSyppeo'onne eapmge
[epije ?] tSasr ppa him
man oapige. pip
jauol -yp5e .in. aecepap
epi^e y pape op hip
ajanum bepne. y pylle
hip heopS-ptenij. tpe-
gen ^ tpegen peban
tEiine heabop-hunb.
y a?lc gebup pylle .vi.
hlapap Sam in-ppane
cSoime he hip heopbe
CO maep-tene bpipe.
On (Nam pylpuni lanbe
tie Seor paeben on-
ptaencgebupe gebypeo'
•j< him man to lanb-

GEBURI CONSUE-
TUDINES.

in Augusto in. dies
pro septimanaliopera-
tione, et a festo Can-
delarum ad usque
Pascha III. Si ave-
riat, non cogitur ope-
rari quamdiu equus
ejus foris moratur.
Dare debet in festo
ScT Michaelis x. d. de
gablo, et ScT Martini
die xxin., et sesta-
rium ordei, et n. gal-
linas. Ad Pascha I.
ovem juvenem vel
n. d. Et jacebit a
festo ScT Martini
usque ad Pascha ad
faldam domini sui,
quotiens ei pertinebit.
Et a termino quo
primitus arabitur
usque ad festum ScT
Martini arabit una-
quaque septimana I.
acram, et ipse parabit
semen domini sui in
horreo. Ad haec in.
acras precum, et duas
de herbagio. Si plus
indigeat herbagio, ara-
bit proinde sicut ei
permittatur. De ara-
tura gabli sui arabit
III. acras, et semina-
bit de horreo suo et
dabit suum heorSpe-
nig ; et duo et duo
pascant unum molos-
sum. Et omnis ge-
burus det VI. panes
porcario curie quando
gregem suum minabit
in pastinagium. In
ipsa terra ubi bee

GEBUR'S SER-
VICES.

days for week- work,
and from Candle-
mas to Easter three.
If he do carrying
he has not to work
while his horse is
out. He shall pay
on Michaelmas Day
x. gafol-pence, and
on Martinmas Bay
xxiii. sesters of bar-
ley and two hens;
at Easter a young
sheep or two pence ;
and he shall lie
from Martinmas to
Easter at his lord's
fold as often as he
is told. And from
the time that they
first plough to Mar-
tinmas he shall each
week plough one
acre, and prepare
himself the seed in
his lord 1 s barn. Also
iii. acres bene- work,
and ii. to grass-
yrth. If he needs
more grass then he
ploughs for it as
he is allowed. For
his gafol-yrth he
ploughs iii. acres,
and sows it from
his own barn. And
he pays his hearth-
penny. Tioo and
two feed one hound,
and each gebur gives
vi. loaves to the
swineherd when he
drives his herd to
mast. On that land
where this custom

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom.

1i> o

EGBURCS CSRIHTe.

pecene pylle .11. oxan
•] .1. cu. •] .vi pceap.
■j .vii. aecepaj- jepa-
pene on hip jypbe
Ianbep. popSige opep -p
geap ealle jepihcu 8e
him co-jebypijean. -j
pylle him man col co
hip peopce -) anbla-
man co hip hupe.
Donne him popS-pio"
jebypije syme hip
hlapopb c5aep he laepe !■

Deop lanb-lagu
pcaenc on puman
lanbe. jehpaphicipppa
icaep cparS hepigpe jeh-
pap eac leohcpe. pop-
8am ealle lanb-pibane
pyn gehce. On pumen
lanbe gebup pceal
pyllan hunij-gapol. on
puman mece-japol. on
puman ealu - gapol.
pebepeSe jxipehealbe
■p he pice a hpaec
ealb lanb-paeben py.
"] hpaec Seobe Seap ;.

GEBURI CONSUE-
TUDINES.

consuetudo stat, moris
est ut ad terrain assi-
dendam dentur ei II.
boves et 1. vacca, et
vi. oves, et vn. acre
seminate, in sua vir-
gata terra. Post il-
ium annum faciat
omnes rectitudines
que ad eum attinent ;
et committantur ei
tela ad opus suum et
suppellex ad domum
suam. Si mortem
obeat, rehabeat do-
minus suus omnia.

Hsec consuetudo
stat in quibusdam
locis, et alicubi est,
sicutprediximus, gra-
vior, et alicubi levior ;
quia omnium terra-
rum instituta non
sunt equalia. In qui-
busdam locis gebur
dabit hunigablum, in
quibusdam metega-
blum, in quibusdam
ealagablum. Videat
qui scyram tenet, ut
semper sciat que sit
antiqua terrarum in-
stitutio, vel populi
consuetudo.

holds it pertains to

the gebur that he

shall have given to

him for his outfit ii. Outfit of

oxen and i. cow and two oxen

vi. sheep, and vii. \° - v ,''"'' '"

r ,. land.

acres soivn on his
yard-land. Where-
fore after that year
he must perform all
services which per-
tain to him. And
he must have given
to him tools for his
work, and utensils
Jor his house. Then
when he dies his lord
takes back what he
leaves.

This land-law
holds on some lands,
but here and there,
as I have said, it is
heavier or Ugh terfor
all land services are
not alike. On some
land the gebur shall
pay honey -gafol, on
some meat-gafol, on
some ale-gafol. Let
him who is over the
district take care
that he knows what
the old land-customs
are, and what are
the customs of the
people.

Then follow the special services of the beekeeper,
oxherd, cowherd, shepherd, goatherd, &c , upon which
we need not dwell here ; and the document concludes
with another declaration that the services vary ac-
cording to the custom of each district.

GEBUR'S SER-
VICES.

Chap. V.

134 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. This important document is therefore a general

description of the services due from the thane to the

kino, and from the classes in villenao;e to their mano-

Com ,_ rial lord. And it might be the very model from

spondence w hich the form of the Domesday Survey was taken.

with the J J

Domesday Both, in fact, first speak of the lord of the manor, and

Survey.

then of the villein tenants ; the latter being in both
cases .divided into the two main classes of villani and
cottiers ; for, as already stated, the Saxon thane
answered to the Norman lord, the Saxon gebur
answered to the villanus of the Survey, and the cot-
setle to the cottier or bordarius of the Survey. But
these various classes require separate consideration

III. THE THANE AND HIS SERVICES.

The , The ' Rectitudines ' begins with the thane or lord

thanes . °

'three of the manor ; and informs us that he owed his
military and other services (for his manor) to the
^) I king — always including the three great needs — the

trinoda necessitas ; viz. (1) to accompany the king in
his military expeditions, or fyrd ; (2) to aid in the
building of his castles, or burhbote ; (3) to maintain the
bridges, or brigbote.

Thanes The lord's demesne land was called the ' thane's

nd " inland.' So, too, in a law of King Edgar's al-
ready quoted, the tithes are ordered to be paid ' as
well on the thanes inland as on geneat land,' show-
ing that this distinction between the two was ex-
haustive.

So also in Scotland, where the old Saxon words
were not so soon displaced by Norman terms as in

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. 135

England, the lord of a manor was long called the C,,AP - v -
thane of such and such a place. In the chronicler
Wintoun's story of Macbeth, as well as in Shakespeare's
version of it, there are the ' thane of Fyfe ' and the
' thane of Cawdor.'

And the circumstance which, according to Win- Scotch

-Mr 1 i i i l c ■»«• i A« • example of

toun, gave rise to Macbeth s hatred of Macdun is Wrhbote.
itself a graphic illustration of the ' burhbote,' or aid
in castle-building due from the thane to his king :—

And in Scotland than as kyng

This Makbeth mad gret steryng

And set hym than in hys powere

A gret hows for to mak oft* were

Upon the hycht oft' Dwnsynane.

Tyrnbyr thare-till to draw and stane

Off" Fyfe and off Angws he

Gert mony oxin gadryd be.

Sa on a day in thare traivaile

A yhok off" oxyn Makbeth saw fayle,

Than speryt Makbeth quha that awcht

The yhoke that fayled in that drawcht.

Thai awnsweryd till Makbeth agayne,

And sayd, * Makduff off Fyffe the Thane

That ilk yhoke oft' oxyn awcht

That he saw fayle in to the drawcht.'

Than spak Makbeth dyspytusly,

And to the Thane sayd angryly,

Lyk all wythyn in hys skin,

Hys awyn nek he suld put in

The yhoke and gev hyrn drawchtis drawe. 1

But the military service was by far the most im- The tha . ne

i -i • -i asasoldier.

portant of ' the three needs or services due from the
thane to the king. The thane was a soldier first
of all things. The very word thane implies this.
In translating the story of the centurion who had
soldiers under him, the Saxon Gospel makes the

The Cronykil of Scotland, B. VI. c. xviii.

1 3G The English Village Community.

Chap. v. < Hundredes ealdor ' say, ' I have thanes under me '
(ic haebbe j?egnas under me). 1 And though the text
of the translation may not be earlier than the tenth
century, yet, as the meaning of words does not change
suddenly, it shows that the military service of the
thane dated from a still earlier period.

And just as in Norman times the barons and their
Norman followers (Francigence eorum) were marked
off from the population in villenage as companions or
associates of the king or some great earl, or as they
might now be called ' county men,' so the Saxon
thanes 400 years before the Norman Conquest were
1 Gesithcundmen,' in respect of their obligation to
' do fyrd-faereld,' i.e. to accompany the king in his
royal expeditions. But this association with the
king did not break the bond of service. By the laws
of King Ine 2 the gesithcundmen were fined and for-
feited their land if they neglected their ' fyrd : ' —

LI. Dip jepi'Scunb mon lanb-
ajenbe poppicce pypbe gepelle
.c.xx. rcill. 3 polie liip lanbep.

51. If a gesithcund man owning'
land neglect the fyrd, let him pay
cxx. shillings and forfeit his land.

Asa But the 'gesithcund' thanes were landlords as

well as soldiers. And King Ine found it needful
to enact laws to secure that they performed their
landlord's duties. They must not absent themselves
from their manors without provision for the cultiva-
tion of the land. When he /ceres, i.e. goes on long
expeditions, a gesithcundman may take with him on
his journey his reeve, his smith to forge his weapons,
and his child's fosterer, or nurse. 3 But if he have xx.
hides of land, he must show xii. hides at least of

1 Matt. viii. 9. a Ines Domtis, s. 61. Thorpe, p. 68.

8 Id. s. 63. Thorpe, p. 62.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. L37

gesettes land on his manor; if he have x. hides, vi.

. Chap. V.

hides of gesettes land ; and if he have hi. hides, one and —
a half hides of gesettes land before he absents himself
from his manor. 1

That ' geset land ' was a general and rather loose The
term meaning the same thing as ' geneat land ' is g g Tset!'ov
clear from a charter of a.d. 950, which will be re- 9 ^° l hind -
ferred to hereafter, wherein a manor is described as
containing xxx. hides, ix. of inland and xxi. of 'gesettes
land,' and the latter is said to contain so many yard-
lands (' gyrda gafol-landes '). This instance also helps
us to understand how gafol land, and gesettes land,
and geneat land were all interchangeable terms — all,
in fact, meaning ' land in villenage,' to the tenants on
which we must now turn our attention.

IV. THE GENEATS AND THEIR SERVICES.

It has been shown that the Saxon thane's estate Geneat
or manor was divided into thane's inland or demesne JJJDJ} ™
land, and geneat land or gesettes land, answering to the villena s e
land in villenage of the Domesday Survey. Let us
now examine into the nature of the villenage on the
geneat land under Saxon rule.

' Gesettes land ' etymologically seems to mean
simply land set or let out to tenants. In the parable
of the vineyard, the Saxon translation makes the
wingeardes hlaford 2 gesette' it out to husbandmen
(gesette Jxme myd eorS-tylion) before he takes his
journey into a far country, and the husbandmen are
to pay him as tribute a portion of the annual fruits.

1 Id. s. 63-6. Thorpe, pp. 62-3. s Matt. xxi. 33.

138 The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

Need of
husband-
men.

Settene
stuht, or
outfit of
gcburs.

Two oxen
to yard-
land.

In early times, when population was scanty, there
was a lack of husbandmen.

Kino- Alfred, in his Saxon translation of Boethius,
into which he often puts observations of his own, ex-
presses in one of the most often quoted of these inter-
polations what doubtless his own experience had
shown him, viz., that ' a king must have his tools to

* reign with — his realm must be well peopled — full

* manned.' Unless there are priests, soldiers, and
workmen — ' gebedmen. fyrdmen, and weorcmen' — no
king, he says, can show his craft. 1

We are to take it, then, that population was still
scanty, that a thane's manor was not always as well
stocked with husbandmen as the necessities of agri-
culture required. The nation must be fed as well as
defended, and both these economic needs were im-
perative. How, then, was a thane to plant new settlers
on his ' gesettes-land ' ?

We have seen the Kelso monks furnishing their
tenants with their outfit or ' stuht ' — the two oxen
needful to till the husbandland of two bovates ; also
a horse, and enough of oats, barley, and wheat for
seed. The ' Rectitudines ' shows that in the tenth
century this custom had long been followed by Saxon
landlords. It further shows that the new tenants so
created were settled on yard-lands, and called geburs.

It states that in some places it is the custom that
in settling the gebur on the land, there shall be given
to him ' to land setene ' {i.e. as ' stuht ' or outfit) two
oxen, one cow, six sheep, and seven acres sown on
his yard-land or virgate. Then after the first year

1 Boethius, c. xvii.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom.

139

he performs the usual services. Having been supplied
by his lord, not only with his stuht, but also even
with tools for his work and utensils for his house, it
is not surprising that on his death everything reverted
to his lord.

The gebur here answers exactly to the villanus of
post-Domesday times. 1 His normal holding is the
yard-land or virgate. His stuht, which goes with the
yard-land ' to setene,' or for outfit, is two oxen, one
cow, &c; i.e. one ox for each of the two bovates
which made up the yard-land.

That this was the usual outfit of the yard-land,
and that the yard-land at the same time was the one-
fourth part of the sulung or full plough-land, in still
earlier times than the date of the ' Rectitudines, re-
ceives clear confirmation from an An«;lo-Saxon will
dated a.d. 835, in which there is a gift of ' an half
swzdung,' and ' to Bern londe iiii oxan & ii cy & 1
scepa,' &c. 2 The half-sulung being the double of the
yard-land, it is natural that the allowance for outfit in

Chap, v

1 In the Codex Diplomaticus,
No. MCCCLIV., there is an in-
teresting document early in the
eleventh century, the original of
which is in the British Museum
(MS. Cott. Tib. B. v. f. 76 b),
written on the back of a much
older copy of the Gospels, and con-
taining particulars respecting the
geburs on the Hatfield estate in
Hertfordshire — their pedigrees, in
fact — showing that they had inter-
married with others of the follow-
ing manors in Hertfordshire, viz. :
— Tceceingawyrde ( Datch worth ) ,
Wealaden (King's or Paul's Wal-
den), Welugun (Welwyn), Wad-

tune (Watton), Munddene (Mun-
don), Wilmundeslea (VVymondley),
and Eslingadene (Essenden). The
fact that it was worth while to
preserve a record of the pedigree
of the geburs shows that they were
adscripts glebce. And there can be
no doubt of the identity of the
geburs of this document with the
villani of the Domesday Survey of
these various places. The pedigrees
of villani or natioi were carefully
kept in some manors even after the
Black Death.

2 Cotton MS. Augustus, ii. 04.
Fac-similes of Ancient Charters in
the British Museum, Part II.

140

The English Village Community .

Chap. \ t .

Services.

Gafol.

Gafol-
yrth.

Dene-work.

the bequest of oxen and cows should be just double
the outfit assigned by custom to the yard-land. It
is obvious that the allotment to the whole sulung
would be a full team of eight oxen.

The gebur, then, having been ' set ' upon his yard
land by his lord, and supplied with his setene or ' stuht,
had to perform his services.

What were these services?

An examination of them as stated in the ' Recti-
tudines ' will show at once their close resemblance to
those of the holders of virgates in villenage in post-
Domesday times.

They may be classified in the same way as these
were classified.

Some of them are called gafol ; i.e. they were
tributes in money and in kind, and in work at plough-
ing, &c, in the nature rather of rent, rates, and taxes
than anything else. They were as follows :

At Michaelmas x. gafol-pence.

At Martinmas xxiii. sesters of barley and ii. bens. 1

At Easter a young sbeep, or u.d.

Of gafol-ploughing (gafol-jrfi) to plougb tbree acres, and sow it from

bis barn.
Tbe beartb-penny.
With anotber gebur to feed a bound.
Six loaves to tbe swineherd of tbe manor, when be tabes tbe flock to

pasture.
In some places the gebur gives honey-gafol, in some mete-gafol, and in

some ale-gafol.

Next there were the precarice or bene-work, extra
special services :

To plougb three acres 'to bene' (adp)-ecem), and two to 'goersyro'e.' 2

1 This may be read 23d. and a
sester of barley; or, perhaps, 20d.
and three sestra3 of barley. But

the best reading seems to be that
in tbe text.

2 This is a word often used in

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. Ill

Lastly, the chief services were the regular week Cl,AP - v -
work (wic-weorc), generally limited to certain days a Week-
week according to the season.

' He shall work for week-work two days at such work as he is hid
' throughout the year, each week ; and in August three days' week-
' work, and from Candlemas to Easter three days.'

These were the services of the qebur or villanus. Thirt .y

u acres in

and we may gather that his yard-land embraced the yawl-land ;
usual thirty acres or strips, i.e. ten strips in each of field.
the three common fields of his village. This seems to
follow from the fact that his outfit included seven
acres sown' These seven acres were no doubt on the
wheat-field which had to be sown before winter. It
was seven acres, and not ten, because the crop on
the other three counted as ' gafolyrS ' to his lord,
and this was not due the first season. The oats or
beans on the second or spring-sown field he could
sow for himself. The third field was in fallow. The
only start he required was therefore the seven acres
of wheat which must be sown before winter.

So much for the gebur ; now as to the cottier.

The cottier tenant, in respect of his five acres Cottier's
(more or less), rendered similar services on an humbler fi ° e ^J e s,
scale. His week-work was on Mondays each week
throughout the year, three days a week at harvest.
He was free from land-gafol, but paid hearth-penny
and church-scot at Martinmas. The nature of his
work was the ordinary service of the geneat as re-

and his
services.

later documents, and seems to mean I yafol for the share in the Lammas
a certain amount of ploughing done meadows, and the gaful-yrth for th«
as an equivalent for an allowance arahle in the yard-land.
of grass. Grass-yrtli may he the |

142

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

quired by his lord from time to time ; only, having no
oxen, he was exempt from ploughing, as he was also
after the Norman Conquest.

Laws of
King Ine.

Geset-
land.

Yard-land.
Gafol and

V. THE DOUBLE AND ANCIENT CHARACTER OF THE SER-
VICES OF THE GEBUR GAFOL AND WEEK-WORK.

Eeturning to the services of the gebur, stress must
be laid upon their double character. Like the
later villanus he paid a double debt to his lord in
respect of his yard-land and outfit, or ' setene' — (1)
gafol; (2) week-work.

This is a point of great importance at this stage
of the inquiry ; for it gives us the key to the mean-
ing of an otherwise almost unintelligible passage in
the laws of King Ine, which bears directly upon the
matter in hand.

This passage immediately follows those already
quoted, requiring one-half or more of the land of the
absentee landlord to be ' gesettes land.'

It follows in natural order after this requirement,
because it evidently relates to the process of in-
creasing the number of tenants on the gesettes land,
so introducing new geburs or villain, with new yard-
lands or virgates, into the village community. The
clause is as follows :

B6 DYRDE L0NDE8.

liif mon jepinjao" ?ypbe
landep o)>]<e maepe co paebe-ja-
pole. -\ jeepCS. jip re hlapopb
him pile •$ lanb apaepan co
peopce ") co japole. ne peapr. he
him oiifon jip he him nan bocl
ne rel8. . . .

OF A YARD OF LAND.

If a man agree for a yard-
land or more at a fixed <jofol and
plough it, if the lord desire to
raise the land to him to work
and to gafol, he need not take it
upon him, if the lord do not give
him a dwelling. . . .

1 Laic* of Ine, s. 67. Thorpe, p. 03.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. 1 L3

The meaning of it apparently is that if a man C,IA '- v -
agree for a yard-land or more to ' raed-gafol ' (i.e.
at such gafol payments as have been described), and
plough it, still the lord cannot put the new holding
' to weorce and to gafole,' that is, make the holder
completely into a gebur or villanus, owing both gafol
and week-work to his lord, unless the lord also supply
the homestead (' botl ').

That the ' botl ' or homestead was looked upon as
the essential part of a man's holding is shown by

another law of King Ine

LXVIII. Ijip mon jej rScunbne
monnan abpipe. jropbpife ]»y
bocle. riser pgepe retene>

68. If a gesithcund man be driven
off", it must be from tbe botl, not
the setene.

Now the importance of these passages can hardly The manor
be exaggerated ; for, if we may trust the genuineness JSjJ*"
of the laws of Kinsj Ine, 1 they show more clearly than seventh

t , . century.

anything else could do, that in the seventh century
— 400 years before the Domesday Survey — the manor
was already to all intents and purposes what it was
afterwards. They show that at that early date part
of the land was in the lord's demesne and part let
out to tenants, who when supplied by the lord with
everything — their homestead and their yard-land —
owed, not only customary tribute or gafol, but also
' weorc' or service to the lord; and how otherwise
coidd this ' weorce ' be given then or afterwards

1 The opening clause of Ine's j counsel and teaching of his father
laws, as republished by King Cenred, who resigned his kiugship
Alfred with his own, states that | to Ine in a.d. 688.
they were recorded under the \

144 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. except in the shape of labour on the lord's demesne,
as is described in the ' Rectitudines ' ?

It is worth while to notice that while the double
debt of both gafol and week-work was due from the
gebur or villanus proper, and the week-work was the
most servile service, yet even the mere payment of
gafol was the sign of a submission to an overlordship.
It had a servile taint about it, as well it might, being
paid apparently part in kind and part in work. As
the class of free hired labourers had not yet been born
into existence under these early Saxon economic con-
ditions, in times when the theows were the servants,
so the modern class of farmers or free tenants at a
rent of another's land had not yet come into being.
It was the ' ceorl ' who lived on ' gafol land,' l and to
pay gafol was to do service, though of a limited kind.

The Saxon translators of the Gospels rendered
the question, ' Doth your master pay tribute ? ' 2 by
the words ' gylt he gafol ? ' And they used the same
word gafol also in translating the counter question,
* Of whom do kings take tribute, of their own people
or of aliens ? '

So when Bede described the northern conquest of
Ethelfred, king of the Northumbrians, over the Britons
in a.d. 603, and spoke of the inhabitants as being
either exterminated or subjugated, and their lands as
either cleared for new settlers or made tributary to
the English, King Alfred in his translation expressed

Gafol a

servile

tribute.

Bede

1 Alfred and Gut brum's Peace,
Thorpe, p. 0(>. ' "We hold all equally
dear, English and Danish, at viii.
half marks of pure gold, except the
" ccorle pe on gafolrlande sit, and

heora liesmgum " (lysingori) ; they
also are equally dear at cc. shillings,'
i.e. they are ' twihinde men.'
2 Matt. xvii. 25.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. 145

the latter alternative by the words ' set to gafol ' — to ClIA ''- v -
gafulgyldum gesette. 1

No doubt the Teutonic notion of a subjugated
people was that of a people reduced to serfdom or
villenage. They — the conquerors — were the nation,
the freemen. The conquered race were the aliens,
subjected to gafol and servitude.

Thus, recurring to the Saxon translation of the Parable
parable of 'the unjust steward,' one may recognise unjust 6
how perfectly naturally everything seemed to the steward -'
translators to transfer itself to a Saxon thane's estate,
and to translate itself into Saxon terms. 2

The ' hlaford ' of the ' tun ' or manor had his ' tun-
i gerefa ' or reeve, just as the Saxon thane had. The
land in villenage was occupied not by mere trade
debtors of the lord, as our version has it, but by
' gafol-gyldan ' — tenants to whom land and goods of
the lord had been entrusted, as Saxon tenants were
entrusted with their ' setene,' and who, therefore, paid
gafol or tribute in kind. The natural gafol of the
tenant of an olive-garden would be so many ' sesters '
of oil. The tenant of corn land would pay for gafol,
like the English tenant of a yard-land inter alia so

1 Bcda, i. c. 34 :—

Nemo enim in tri-
bunis, nemo in regibus
plures eorum terras,
exterminates vel sub-
jugatis indigenis, aut
tribut arias genti Ang-
lorum, aut habitabiles
fecit.

8 Luke xvi.

Ne pasr aeppe
aenig cyning ne eal-
bopman -p maheopa
lanba uce amaepbe -]
him co jepealbe un-
beppeobbe poppon fie
he hi co japulgylbum
gerecce on Kngel
Seobbe. oppe op
heopa lanbe abpap.

Never was there
ever any king nor
ealdorman that more
their lands extermi-
nated, and to liia
power subjected, for
that he them to gafol
set to the English
people, or else off their
land drove.

146 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. man y < mittan ' of wheat ; and it was the duty of the
unrighteous ' tun-gerefa,' or reeve of the manor, to
collect the gafol from these tenants, as it was the
duty of the Saxon thane's reeve to gather the dues
from his servile tenants.

How many otherwise free tenants hired yard -lands
without becoming geburs, and rendering the full week-
work as well as gafol, we do not know. Except in the
Danish district they seem to have left, as we have
seen, no trace behind them on most manors in the
Domesday Survey. The fact already mentioned, that
the yard-lands of geburs, who owed both gafol and
services, were sometimes called ' gyrda gafollandes^
shows how completely the gafol and the services had
become united as coincidents of a common villein
tenure. All villein tenants were apparently ' geneats '
and paid ' gafol,' and there is a passage in the laws of
King Edgar which states that if a geneat-man after
notice should persist in neglecting to pay his lord's
gafol, he must expect that his lord in his anger will
spare neither his goods nor his life. 1

Complete- On the whole, leaving out of notice doubtful

ness of the , . , ,,

evidence and exceptional tenants, as well we may, we are now

seventh * n a P os iti° n to state generally what were the main

?eatury. classes of villein tenants in early Saxon times, and

what were their holdings on the land in villenage,

whether it were known as geneat, or geset, or gafol

land.

First, the ' Bectitudines,' of the tenth century, de-
scribes, as we have seen, these tenants as all geneats
or villeins, and records their services in general terms.

1 Supplement to Edgar's Laws, i. Thorpe, p. 115.

The Saxon Manor and Serfdom. 147

It then divides them into classes, just as the Domes- c " u v
day Survey does. And the two chief classes of the
geneats are the geburs and the cottiers. These two
classes are evidently the villani and the bordarii or
cottiers of the Domesday Survey.

Secondly, the same document describes the hold-
ings of these two classes. It speaks of the cottiers
as holding mostly five acres each — sometimes more
and sometimes less — in singular coincidence with
the Domesday Survey and later evidence. And it
describes the gebur, as we have seen, as holding a
yard-land or virgate, the typical holding of the
Domesday villanus, and as having allotted to him as
' outfit ' two oxen, just as was the case with the Kelso
husbandmen.

Thirdly, the laws of King Ine bring back the evi-
dence to the seventh century by their incidental
mention of the yard-land as a typical holding on
geset-land; and also of half -hides 1 and hides, as well
as of geneats 2 and geburs, 3 with their gafol and
weorc.

When this concurrence of the evidence of the
tenth and the seventh century is duly considered,
it will be seen how complete is the proof that in the
seventh century the West Saxon estate, though called
a ' tun ' or a ' ham,' was in reahty a manor in the
Norman sense of the term — an estate with a village
community in villenage upon it under a lord's juris-
diction.

1 Thorpe, p. 53, where they are
mentioned as sometimes held hy
even Wilisc7nen,' 1 i.e. tenants not of

Saxon hlood.

2 Thorpe, p. 50.
8 Ibid. p. 46.

1 2

Chap. V.

Manor of
Tidenham.

Sax< n
since A.T).
577,

148 The English Village Community.

VI. SERFDOM ON A MANOR OF KING EDWY.

The evidence hitherto given on the nature of the
serfdom on Anglo-Saxon manors has been of a general
character.

We are fortunately able to confirm and illustrate
it by reference to actual local instances.

The first example is that of the manor of Tiden-
ham, and it derives a more than ordinary value from
its peculiar geographical position.

The parish of Tidenham comprises the wedge-
shaped corner of Gloucestershire, shut in between the
Wye and the Severn, where they join and widen into
the Bristol Channel ; while to the north-east, on its
land side, it was surrounded by the Forest of Dean.

In the belief of local antiquaries, the Eoman road
from Gloucester to Caerleon-upon-TJsk — the key to
South Wales — passed through it as well as the west-
ern continuation of the old British road of Akeman
Street from the landing-place of the Severn, opposite
Aust (where St. Augustine is said to have met the
Welsh Christians) to the further crossing-place on the
Wye. Lastly, upon it was the southern end of Ojfra's
Dyke, the mysterious rampart which, commencing
thus at the mouth of the Wye, extended to the mouth
of the Dee. 1

The manor probably has been in English hands
ever since about the time when, according to the
Saxon Chronicle, after Deorham battle in a.d. 577,
Bath, Gloucester, and Cirencester were wrested from

1 For the archaeology of Tiden-
ham see Vroceedimji of the Cottes-
wold Naturalists' Field Club, 1874-5,
and Mr. Ormerod*s Archaeological

Memoirs relating to the district
adjacent to the confluence of the
Severn and the Wye. London,
1861 (r.ot published).

THE MANOR OF

TIDENHAM

& C GRAHAh

Manor of King Edwy.

149

the Welsh by Ceawlin, king of the West Saxons. C,IAP - v -
According to the Welsh legends of the Liber Lan-
davensis 1 this was about the time when the tli<>-
of Llandaff was curtailed by the Wye instead of the
Severn becoming the boundary between the two king-
doms. It may therefore have been for nearly five
centuries before the Norman Conquest the extreme
corner of West Saxon England on the side of South
Wales.

Conquered probably by Ceawlin, or soon after wa8 »
the year 577, the manor of Tidenham seems to have mauor,
remained folkland or terra regis of the West Saxon
kings, till Offa conquered it from them and gave his
name to the dyke upon it. One of its hamlets bore,
as we shall find, the name of Cinges tune, and Tiden-
ham Chase remained a royal chase till after the
Norman Conquest.

The manor itself was granted by King Edwy in gfa'ffi
a.d. 956 by charter 2 to the Abbot of Bath, under a.d. 956, to
whose name it is registered in the Domesday Survey. f Bath.
It is in this charter of King Edwy that the descrip-
tion of the manor and of the services of the tenants
is contained. The services must be regarded, there-
fore, as those of a royal manor before it was handed
over to ecclesiastical hands.

The boundaries as appended to the charter are dar1es°stiii
given below, 3 and may still, with slight exceptions, be JJ ^
traced on the Ordnance Survey.

1 Pp. 374-6.

2 Kemble's Cod. Dip. COCOLII.

(vol. ii. p. 327).

3 Codex Dip. iii. p. 444 ; App.
CCCOLTI. ' Dis synd Sa landge-
mfera to Dyddenhanie. Of Waege-
mud'an to iwes heaidan; of iwes

heafuen on Stanraewe ; of Stan-
raewe on hwitan heal ; of hwitan
heale on iwdene ; of iwdene on
bradai. mor ; of bradan mor on
Twyfyrd ; of Twyfyrd on astege pul
ut innan Ssefern.'

150 The English Village Community.

Chap - y - The northern limit on the Severn is described

as Astege pul, now, after a thousand years, known as
Ashwell Grange Pill, the puis of 1,000 years ago and
the present pills being the little streams which wear
away a sort of miniature tidal estuary in the mud-
banks as they empty themselves into the Severn and
the Wye. Numbers of pills are marked in the Ord-
nance map, and as many ' puis ' are mentioned in the
boundaries of Saxon charters and those inserted in
the Liber Landavensis.

After the boundaries, under the heading ' Divi-
* siones et consuetudines in DyddanhammeJ l the docu-
ment proceeds to state that ' at Dyddanhamme are
inland and ' xxx. hides, ix. of inland and xxi. of gesettes land.'
C/ 5 The manor was therefore in the tenth century divided
into demesne land and land in villenage.

Next are stated separately the contents of each
hamlet on the manor, as follows : —

Yard- At Street are xii. hides — xxvii. gyrda gafoUandes, and on the Severn

l aQ ds. xxx. cytweras.

At Middeltun are v. hides — xiiii. gyrda gafoUandes, xiiii. cytweras
on the Severn, and ii. hsecweras on the Wye.
H(bc- and At the Cinges tune are v. hides — xiii. gyrda gafoUandes, and i. hide

cyt- weirs. above the dyke, which is now also gafolland ; and that outside the

hamme is still part inland and partgesett to gafol to 'scipwealan.'
At the Cinges tune on the Severn are xxi. cytweras, and on the
Wye xii.
At the Bishops tune are iii. hides, and xv. cytweras on the Wye.
At Landcawet are iii. hides and ii. hsecweras on the Wye, and ix.
cytweras.

Thus this manor, like the Winslow manor, had
hamlets or small dependencies upon it, and these are

1 Cod. Dip. iii. p. 450, where they are evidently misplaced.

Manor of King Bdwy. 151

still traceable on the map. Street is still Stroat on the CnAP - v
old Eoman street — the Via Julia (?) — from Glou- The ham-

lets.

cester to Caerleon. The Cinges tune, now Sudbury, lay
on the high wedge-shaped southern promontory above
the cliffs, between the Wye and Severn where they
join; and it lies as it did then, part on one side and
part on the other side of Offa's Dyke, as if the dyke
had been cut through its open fields. Its fisheries were
naturally some on the Severn and some on the Wye.
The ' Bishop's tune ' is still traceable in Bishton farm.
Lastly, Llancaut, the only hamlet on this Saxon manor
900 years ago with a Welsh name, bears its old name
still. This hamlet is surrounded almost entirely by
a bend of the Wye, and its situation backed by its
woods (coit=wood) may well have protected it from
destruction at the time of the Saxon conquest.

Next, it is clear that the geset land in the open
fields round each ' time ' or hamlet, except at Llan-
caut and Bishop's tune, was divided, as usual, into
yard -lands — gyrda gafollandes. These yard-lands and
the open fields have long since been swept away by
the enclosure of the parish.

Besides the vard-lands there were belonging to The fishing

j weirs.

each hamlet the numerous fisheries — cytweras and
hcecweras — some on the Severn and some on the Wye.
What were these ' cyt ' and ' hcee ' weirs ?

They certainly were not the ancient dams or
banks across the river which are now called ' weirs,'
over which the tidal wave sweeps, thus—

' Hushing half the habhling Wye.'

It is impossible that there can have been so many
of these as there were cytweras and hcecweras 900

152 The English Village Community.

Chap^v. years ago — as many as thirty together at Street,
fourteen at Middletune, and twenty-one at Cingestune.
The fact is that the old Saxon word wera meant any
structure for entrapping fish or aiding their capture.
And no doubt arrangements which would not be
called ' weirs ' now were so called then. The words
cyt and hose weras seem to point rather to wattled
basket and hedge weirs than to the solid structures
now called weirs.

But the best illustration of what they were may
be derived from the arrangements now at work for
catching salmon in the Wye and Severn.

Cytweras. The stranger who visits this locality will find here

and there across the muddy shore of the Severn struc-
tures which at a distance look like breakwaters ; but
on nearer inspection he will find them to be built up
of rows two or three deep of long tapering baskets
arranged between upright stakes at regular distances.
These baskets are called putts or butts or kypes, and
are made of long rods wattled together by smaller
ones, with a wide mouth, and gradually tapering
almost to a point at the smaller or butt end. These
putts are placed in groups of six or nine between
each pair of stakes, with their mouths set against the
outrunning stream ; and each group of them be-
tween its two stakes is called a ' puttcher.' The
word * puttcher ' can hardly be other than a rapidly
pronounced putts weir, i.e. a weir made of putts. If
the baskets had been called ' cyts ' instead of ' putts,'
the group would be a cytweir. So, e.g., the thirty
cytweras at Street would represent a breakwater such
as may be seen there now, consisting of as many putt-
chers. This use of what may be called basket weirs

r ■ *■■•

Manor of King Edwy. 153

Ohap. v.
is peculiar to the Wye and the Severn, and has been aacwerw
adopted to meet the difficulty presented by the un-
usual volume and rapidity of the tidal current.

Then as to the hcecweras there is nothing unusual
in the use of barriers or fences of wattle, or, as it is
still called, hackle, to produce an eddy, or to entrap
the fish. Thus a statute (1 Geo. I. c. 18, s. 14)
relating to the fisheries on the Severn and the Wye
uses the following words : 'If any person shall make,
1 erect, or set any bank, dam, hedge, stank, or net
4 across the same,' &c.

These wattled hedges or hackle -weirs are some-
times used to guide the fish into the puttchers, but
generally in the same way as more permanent struc-
tures on the Wye, now called cribs, to make an eddy
in which the fish are caught from a boat in what is
called a stop-net.

This mode of fishing is also peculiar to the Wye Salmon
and Severn. The boat is fixed by two long stakes
sideways across the eddy, and a wide net, like a bag
with its open end stretched between two poles, is let
down so as to offer a wide open mouth to the stream
which carries the closed end of the bag-net under the
boat. When a salmon strikes the net the open end is
raised out of the water, and the fish is taken out
behind. This clumsy process of catching salmon is
the ancient traditional method used in the Wye and
Severn fisheries, and so tenaciously is it adhered to
that the fishermen can hardly be induced to substi-
tute more efficient modern improvements.

So much for the cytweras and the lueciceras.

The fisheries are now almost exclusively devoted
to salmon. About the date of the Norman Conquest

154

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

the manor of Tidenham was let on lease by the Bishop
of Bath to Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1 and
as a portion of the rent reserved was 6 porpoises
(merswin) and 30,000 herrings, it would seem at first
sight that the main fisheries there were for herrings
rather than salmon, but it is more probable that the
lease was a mutual arrangement whereby the arch-
bishop's table was provided with salmon from the
west, and the monks of Bath with herrings from the
east.

Turning from the fisheries to the services, they are
described as follows : 2 —

General
services of
geneats.

Of Dyddankamme gebyreo'
micel weoi-craiden.

Se geneat sceal wyrcan swa on
lande, swa of lande, hweSer swa
him man byt, and ridan and aue-
rian, and lade kedan, drafe drifan,
and fela dSra ]>inga don.

To Tidenkam belong many
services.

Tke geneat skall work as well
on land as off land, wkickever ke
is bid; and ride, and carry and
lead loads, and drive droves, and do
otker things.

And after thus stating, to begin with, the general
services of all geneats, the document proceeds, like
the ' Rectitudines,' to describe the special services of
the gebur, or holder of a yard-land.

Services of

ijdiurs.

Week-
work.

Se gebur sceal his riht don.

He sceal erian healfne secer
to wiceworce, and rsecan sylf Sset
sa;d on klafordes berne gekalne to
cyrcscette, sa kweo'ere of kisagenum
berne.

To werbolde xl. masra 0(5o*e an
foxier gyrda; ofitieviii. geocu byld.
iii. ebban tyne. iEcertyninge xv.
g\rda, oftSe diclie fiftyne; and
dicie i. gyrde burkkeges, ripe doer
kealfke secer, mawe healihe; on
odran weorcan wyrce, a be weorces
maetSe.

The gebur shall do his ' riht!

He shall plough a half-acre as
week-work, and kimseif prepare
tke seed in tke lord's barn ready for
kirkskot, or else from kis own
barn.

For weir-building 40 large rods
or 1 load of small rods, or build
8 yokes and wattle 3 ebbs. Of
acre-fencing 15 yards, or ditck 15;
and ditck 1 yard of burk-kedge,
reap 1 acre and a kalf, mow kalf
an acre. At otker work, work as
tke work requires.

> Cod. Dip. DOCO., XXII.

2 Cod. Dip. iii. p. 4u0.

Manor of King Edwy. 155

These are the various details of his week-work. Chap, v,

Then follow the ^a/b^-payments.

Sylle vi. penegas ofer 6stre, Pay Qd. after Easter, half a Gafol.

healfne sester hunies to Hlaf- sester of honey (or mead ?) at
insessan. vi. systres inealtes to Mar- Lammas. 6 sesters of malt at Mar-
tines nioesse, an cliwen gddes nett- tinmas, 1 clew of good net-yarn. On
gernes. On (5am sylfum lande stent the same laud, if he has 7 swine, lie
se'Se vii.swyn hsebhe Saethesylleiii. pays 3, and so forth at that rate,
and swa for'S a Sset teoSe, and Soes and nevertheless give mast dues if
uaSuhes msestenrtedene Sonne . there be mast,
msesten hed. I

It will be observed that in their weeh-work the
geburs of Tidenham, in addition to strictly agricul-
tural services, had to provide the materials for the
puttchers and hedge-weirs, as well as other requisites
for the fisheries.

What the eight geocu to be built may have been is
doubtful ; but the tyning or wattling of three ebbs was
at once explained on the spot by the lessee of the
fisheries, who pointed out that when hackle weirs
were used, three separate wattled hedges would always
be needed, as, owing to the very various heights of
the tide, the hedge must be differently placed for the
spring tides, the middle tides, and the neap tides re-
spectively.

The ' week-work' was shown by the ' Rectitudines '
to be the chief service of the gebur, and this work,
added to the gafol, made the holder of the yard -land
into a gebur, according to the laws of Ine.

Two things are very striking about the week- work No K™ 4 *-
on the manor of Tidenham. (1) There is no limit to week-work
three days a week more or less, as in the ' Recti- days.
iudines.* (2) There is a clear adaptation of the week-

150

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

No benc-
work.

Gafol
chiefly in
produce :
honey, &c.

Compari-
son of
services in
the thir-
teenth
century.

work to local circumstances. In particular the fisheries
have a prominent regard in its arrangement. As
described in the ' Rectitudines,' the work varied accord-
ing to the customs of each place.

So much for the ' week-work.'

Next, there were at Tidenham no ' precarice,' or
1 bene ' works, which formed so prominent a feature
in the later services. When the week-work was not
limited to some days only, clearly there was no need
or room for these additional services.

Lastly, as to the gafol — this formed a prominent
feature of the weorc-rceden of the Tidenham yard-
land.

It consisted mainly of the produce of the land, like
the gafol of the gafolgylders in the Saxon translation
of the parable of ' the unjust steward.' Honey and
malt, or ale, and yarn and pork — these, as we shall see
by-and-by, were the chief products of this and the ad-
joining districts of Wales.

These, then, were the services of the geburs of
Tidenham in respect of their yard-lands in a.d. 950,
while the manor was still in royal hands just before it
was handed over to the Abbot of Bath.

Now let us compare these services with the
services on the same manor 350 years afterwards,
in the time of Edward I. An Inquisitio post mortem
of the 35th year of Edward I. enables us to make
this comparison. 1

The following is an abstract of the services of a
tenant who held a messuage and xviii. acres of land
in villenage (probably a half-virgate).

1 Record Office, Chancery Inquisitions post mortem, Anno 35 Edw. I.
No. 40 6. Gloucestria, § Manerium de Tudenham.

Manor of King Ed toy. 157

His week-work was — Chip. v.

6 days in every other week for xxxv. weeks iu the year from

Michaelmas to Midsummer, except the festival weeks ot Christmas,

Easter, and Pentecost ; 87£ works.
2£ days every week for 6 weeks from Midsummer to Gules of August ;

] 5 works.
3 days every week for 8 weeks from Gules of August to Michaelmas ;

24 works.
And of this week-work hetween Michaelmas and Christmas, 1 clay's

work every other week was to he ploughing and harrowing u.

half-acre. Each ploughing was accounted for a day's work.

Then as to his precaria?, —

He made 1 precaria called ' cherched,' and he ploughed and har-
rowed a half-acre for corn, and sowed it with 1 bushel of corn
from his own seed ; and in the time of harvest he had to reap
and bind and stack the produce, receiving one sheaf for himself
on account of the halt-acre, ' as much as can be bound with a binding
of the same corn, cut near the land.'

And he had to plough 1 acre for oats, and this was accounted for 2
days' manual work.

And he made another precaria, ploughing a half-acre with his own
plough for winter sowing with as many oxen as he possessed, so that
there should be a team of 8 oxen. But if he had no oxen he did
not plough.

And he made [several other precaria of various kinds].

Lastly came his gafol, &c.

He gave i. hen, which was called ' wodehen,' at Christmas.

And 5 eggs at Easter.

And Id. for every yearling pig, and \d. for those only of half-year,

by way of pannage.
He paid ... for every horse or mare sold.
And viii. gallons of beer at every brewing.
And he could not marry his daughter without licence.

Now, comparing the services on the manor of
Tidenham at these dates 300 years apart, at which
period was the service most complete serfdom? at
the later date, when the week-work of the villeins
was limited to two and a half or three days a week,
and in addition he made precaria? or extra works ; or
at the earlier date, when his week-work was unlimited

\9&

158 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. as to the days, and therefore there was no room for
the extra work?

Saxon ser- Surely the unlimited week-work marked the most

complete, complete serfdom. Surely the later services, limited
in their amount and commutable into money pay-
ments, were clearly a mitigated service fast growing
into a fixed money rent. In fact, the gebur or villa-
mis was fast growing into a mere customary tenant
in the time of Edward I. Indeed, he is not called in
the ' Inquisition ' a ' vittanus,' but a ' custumarius,' and
such he was. He was halfway on the road to free-
dom. Another sign of the times was this, that at the
later date, side by side with the customary tenants
on the land in villenage, a whole host of libere
tenentes had already grown up upon the lord's demesne,
not, as we have more than once observed, necessarily
liberi homines .at all, but some of them villein
tenants or custumarii holding additional pieces of free
land of the lord's demesne. Of these free tenants
there were none at the earlier period. So that the
gebur, with his weorc-rceden 100 years and more
before the Norman Conquest, was much more clearly
a serf, and rendered far more complete and servile ser-
vices than his successor in the thirteenth century,
with the Black Death and Wat Tyler's rebellion in the
near future before him.

Finally, let us look backward and ask how long
this more complete serfdom had lasted on the manor
of Tidenham.

They pro- If in the laws of K\n<x Ine are found, as we have

bably go l "

back to seen, the ' geset land' ana ' gyrd lands,' and the
first con- ' 9 a f ^ an d the ' weorc,' and the ' geneat,' and the
quest. 'gebur,' and the obligation not to leave the lord's

Manor of King Edwy. 159

land ; and if all these were incidents of what in the Chap. v.
' Rectitudines ' and in the charter of King Edwy just
examined was in fact serfdom — if the laws of Ine are
good evidence that this serfdom existed in full force
in the seventh century anywhere — they must surely
be good evidence that it existed on the manor of
Tidenham. For it was, as we have seen, a royal
manor of King Edwy, and most probably he had
received it through a succession of royal holders from
King Ine. There is no evidence of its having ceased
to be folcland, and so to be in the royal demesne
of the kings of Wessex or of Mercia, from Ine's time
to Edwy's. And if it was a royal manor of King
Tne's, surely the laws of King Ine may be taken to
interpret the serfdom on his own estate. Lastly,
looking further back still, as King Ine probably held
the manor in direct succession from Ceawlin, or
whoever conquered it from the Welsh, and cut it from
the diocese of Llandaff in a.d. 577 or thereabouts,
the inference is very strong indeed that the weorc-
ra?den had remained much the same ever since, 100
years before the date of King Ine's laws, it first fell
under Saxon rule.

The lesson to be learned from a careful tracing changes in
back of the customs of such a manor as Tidenham, t0 ms very
and we might add also the methods of fishing, and slow-
the construction of the ' cyt ' and ' ha?cweras,' surely
is, that in those early times changes in custom and
habit were slow, and not easily made. It would be
as unlikely that between the days of King Ceawlin
and those of King Ine great changes should have been
made in the internal economic structure of a Saxon
manor, as that in the same period bees should have
changed the shape of their hexagonal cells.

1G0

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

VII. SERFDOM ON A MANOR OF KING ALFRED.

Manor of The second example of a Saxon manor is that of

Hysse- x

burne, « Stoke-by-Hysseburne,' a royal estate in Hampshire. 1
belonged It had belonged in succession to King Egbert, King
EtSwuif, Ethelwulf, and King Alfred, and was by his son
^ , Edward given over to the monks of the ' old minster '

Alfred. &

at Winchester under the following curious circum-
stances.

King Alfred, towards the close of his reign, in his
anxiety for the better education of the children of his
nobles, called to his aid the monk Grimbald, from the
monastery of St. Bertin, near St. Omer in Picardy,
in which he himself had spent some time in his child-
hood on his way to Eome. It was the plan of Grim-
bald and King Alfred to build a new monastery (the
* new minster ') at Winchester where Grimbald should
carry out the royal object. But King Alfred died
before this wish was fully accomplished. He had
bought the land for the chapel and dormitory in

1 Mr. Kemble identifies this
place with Stoke near Hurstbourne
Priors, near Whiteehurch ; but it
may possibly be one of the Stokes
on the Itchin River near Win-
chester.

That the upper part of the Itchin
was called ' Hysseburne ' and ' Ticce-
burne,' see Cod. Dip. MLXXVII.,
CCCXLIL, MXXXIX. & OLVIII.
The boundaries in MLXXVII. of
' Hysseburiia' (beginning at Twy-
ford) correspond at a few points
with those of ' Hisseburne ' in
Abingdon, i. p. 318, and of Eastune
appended thereto, and of Eastune

in Cod. Dip. MCCXXX. The
position of Twyford and Easton
seems to fix this locality on the
Itchin. The parishes of Itchin Stoke
and Titch bourne (' set Hisseburne ')
still nearly adjoin those of Twyford
and Easton, but the parishes here
are intermixed, and the 'Hysse-
burne 'of the charters may have been
a district with different boundaries,
and may not be the Hysseburne of
King Alfred's will. Compare Domes-
day Survey, i. 40, where Twyford,
Eastune, and Sioches occur together
among the ' Terra Wintonensis
Episcopi?

Manor of King Alfred. 16]

the city, but the building and endowment of the Cm?, v.
monastery was left for his son King Edward to
complete. Grimbald, then eighty-two years old,
was the first abbot, but within a year died and
was canonised. The body of King Alfred lay en-
shrined in Winchester Cathedral, in the ' old minster '
of the bishop ; but the canons of the old foundation
having, according to the Abbey Chronicle, conceived
' delirious fancies ' thafe the royal ghost, roaming by
night about their cloisters, could not rest in peace,
the remains of Alfred and his queen were removed to
the ' new minster.' 1

Now, King Ethelwolf, when dying, having left
to King Alfred his son certain lands at ' Cyseldene '
and elsewhere, with instructions when he died to
give them over to the refectory of the old minster,
King Alfred in his will gave his land at that place to
the proper official at Winchester accordingly. In
other words, the body of King Alfred lay in the ' new
minster,' and this land given for the good of his soul
belonged to the ' old minster.' So it came to pass —
whether this time the ' delirious fancies ' of the super-
stitious canons had anything to do with it or not
cannot be told — that this property at Cyseldene, like
the royal donor's body, could not rest in the hands
of the ' old minster,' but must be transferred to the
' new minster.' So King Edward in the year 900
made an arrangement with the monks, whereby the
lands at Cyseldene were transferred to the ' new Granted to
minster,' and by charter he gave instead of them to minster*
the ' old minster ' ten holdings (manentes) at Stoke- cheater"

1 See Liber de Hyda, Mr. Edwards' Introduction.
M

1G2

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

The

' hiwisc,'
or family
holding,
equal here
to yard-
land.
Services.

Gafol and

gafol-

yrtke.

bu-Hisseburne, with all the men who were thereon, and
those at ' Hisseburne,' ivhen King Alfred died.

It is in the charter ! effecting this object that the
services are described. ' Here are written the gerihta
' that the ceorls shall do at Hyssebnrne.' From
every ' hiivisc ' such and such services. The hiwisce
or family holding seems from the services to have
been a yard-land of 30 acres. The services were as
follows : —

He"r synd gewriten fia gerihta
$re Sa ceorlas sculan don to Hysse-
burnan.

yErest ret hilcan hiwisce feor-
werti penega to herfestes ernuihte :
and vi. ciricmittan ealao" ; and iii.
ses'filar hlafhw£tes: and iii. receras
ge-erian on heora regenre hwile,
and mid heora agenan sreda gesa-
wan, and on hyra agenre [h]wile on
baerene gehringan : and ]n-6o pund
gauolhreres and healfne recer gauol-
mrede on hiora agienre hwile, and
?ia3t on hreace gebringan : and iiii.
fdSera aclofenas gauolwyda to
scidhrrece on hiora agenre hwile:
and xvi. gyrda gauoltininga eac
on hiora agenre hwile : and to
Eastran two ewe mid twam lam-
ban, and we [talafi] two geong
sceap to eald sceapan : and hi scu-
lan waxan sceap and sciran on hiora
agenre hwile.

Here are written the services
that the ceorls shall do at Hysse-
hurne.

From each hiwisc (family) AQd.
at harvest equinox, and 6 church-
mittans of ale, and 3 sesters of
bread-wheat: and plough 3 acres
in their own time, and sow it with
their own seed, and in their own
time bring it to the barn: and
3 pounds of gafol-barley, and a half-
acre of gafol-mowing in their own
time, and to bring it to the rick :
and split 4 fothers (loads) of gafol-
wood and stack it in their own
time, and 16 yards of gafol-fencing
in their own time ; and at Easter
two ewes with two lambs, and two
ynung sheep may be taken for one
old one : and they shall wash sheep
and shear them in their own time.

Here we have clearly, as in the ' Rectitudines' the
gafol, including the three acres of gafol-yrth or plough-
ing, as well as other gafol-work and payments in

1 Codex Dip. MLXXV1I. ; and the Winchester Cartulary (St.
Dngdale, Winchester Monastery, \ Swithin's) now in the British
Num. X. This charter is preserved Museum. Add. MSS. 10350, f. G06.
in a copy of the twelfth century in

Manor of King Alfred.

h;:;

kind. And if the services had stopped here, we might
have concluded that the ' ceorls ' of Hysseburne \wi e
gafolgelders, and not serfs. But there is another
clause which forbids such a conclusion — which shows
that, in the words of the laws of King Ine, they were
' set to work as well as to gafol.' It is this : —

Chap. v.

And every week do what work Week-
they are bid, except three weeks — work,
one at midwinter, the second at
Easter, and the third at ' Gang

And jelce wucan wircen <5set
hi man hate biitan ]>rim, an to
middan-wintra, oSeru to Eastran,
)>ridde to Gangdagan.

Comparing these services with the other examples,
they do not seem to be any more the services of free-
men, or any less those of serfs. They seem to plainly
bear the ordinary characteristics of what is meant by
serfdom wherever it is found. There is the gafol and unlimited.
there is the week-work ; and the latter is not limited
to certain days each week, as in the ' Bectitudines,' but
4 each week, except three in the year, they are to work.

AS THEY AEE BID.'

And these are the services — this is the serfdom —
on a manor which was part of the royal domain of
King Alfred, which for three successive reigns at least,
and probably for generations earlier, had been royal
domain, and now by the last royal holder is handed
over, with the men that were upon it, to the perpetual,
never-dying lordship of a monastery, as an eternal
inheritance.

Finally, the evidence of these Saxon documents — The chain
the ' Bectitudines ' and the charters of Tidenham and jJ^SjJJ 8
Hysseburne — read in the light of the later evidence
and of the earlier laws of King Ine, is so clear that it
seems needful to explain how it has happened that

M 2

164

The English Village Community.

Chap. V

there lias ever been any doubt as to the servile nature
of the services of the holders of yard-lands in Saxon
times. The explanation is simple. Mr. Kemble
quotes from all these documents in his chapter on
' Lcenland ; ' ] but for want of the clear knowledge what
a yard-land was, it never seems to have occurred to
him that in these services of the geburs or holders of
yard-lands we have the services of the later villani of
the Domesday Survey — the services of the holdings
embracing by far the greater part of the arable land
of England. Dr. Leo, in his work on the ' Reditu-
dines, confesses that he does not know what is meant
by the yard-land of the gebur. 2 It is only when, pro-
/ ceeding from the known to the unknown, we get a
/ firm grasp of the fact that the yard-land was the

y normal holding of the gebur or villanus, that it was a

r\ \ bundle of normally thirty scattered acres in the open

n ) fields, that it was held in villenage, and that these

were the services under which it was held of the

I manorial lord of the ham or tun to which it be-
longed — it is only when these facts are known and
their importance realised, that these documents be-
come intelligible, and take their proper place as links
in what really is an unbroken chain of evidence.

VIII. THE TIIE0WS OR SLAVES ON THE LORDS DEMESNE.

The theows, One word must be said of the theows or slaves on
class. the lord's demesne — the thane's inland — lest we should

1 Saxons in England, pp. 319
et. seq.

2 H. Leo, lirctitudiitrs. Halle,
1842, p. 231. ' Wenijjstens weisz

icb " on his gyrde landes " (auf seiner
rute des gutes, oder des landes) an
dieser stelle niclit andera zu er-
kliiren.'

The Theows or Slave Class.

L65

forget the existence of this lowest class of all, in con- ( ' ,m - v -
trast with whose slavery the geburs and cottiers on
the geneat land, notwithstanding their serfdom, were
i freeJ These latter were prsedial serfs 'adscript!
gleba3,' but not slaves. The theows were sla\
bought and sold in the market, and exported from
English ports across the seas as part of the commerci.-i 1
produce of the island. Some of the theows were slaves
by birth. But it seems to have been a not uncommon
thing for freemen to sell themselves into slavery under
the pressure of want. 1

The 'servi' of the Domesday Survey were no doubt The Sfrvi
the successors of the Saxon theows. And as in the Domes lay
Survey the servi are mostly found on the demesne
land of the lord, so probably in Saxon times the
theows were chiefly the slaves of the manor-house.
Most of the farm work on the thane's inland, espe-
cially the ploughing, was done no doubt by the ser-
vices of the villein tenants ; but as, in addition to
the villein ploughs, there were the great manorial
plough teams, so also there were theows doing slave
labour of various kinds on the home farm of the lord,
and maintained at the lord's expense.

In the bilingual dialogue of iElfric, 2 written in
Saxon and Latin late in the tenth century as an educa-
tional lesson, in the reply of the ' yrthling ' or plough-
man to the question put as to the nature of his daily
work, a touching picture is given of the work of a
theow conscious of his thraldom : —

1 See Kemble's Saxons in Eng-
land, i. p. 196.

2 British Museum Cotton MS.

Tib. A. III. f. 58 b. For the text of

this passage I am indebted to Mi
Thompson of the British Museum

166

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

Feelings of
the tlieow.

Hwaet saegest ]m yrjuinge ?

IIu begsest )m weorc ]>in ?

Eala leof hlaford ]>earle ic
deorfe ic ga ut on dasgraed ]>y-
wende oxon to felda and iugie big
to syl. Nys hyt swa stearc winter
]>set ic durre lutian aet liam for
ege hlafordes mines ac geiukodan
oxan and gefaestnodon sceare and
cultre mit J'aere syl aelce daeg ic
sceal erian fulne sej'er (aecer) o]>]>e
mare.

Haefst ]'u aenigne geferan ?

Ic kaebbe sumne cnapan ]>y wende
oxan mid gad isene ]>e eacswilce nu
has vs for cylde and breame.

Hwaet mare dest ]m on dseg ?

Gewyslice ]>aenne mare ic do.
Ic sceal fyllan binnan oxan mid
big and waeteriau big and sceasn
(scearn) beora beran ut. big big
micel gedeorf ys byt geleof micel
gedeorf bit ys forfam ic neom
freob.

What sayest tbou, plowman ?

How dost tbou do thy work ?

Ob, my lord, bard do I work.
I go out at davbreak driving the
oxen to field, and I yoke them to
the plough. Nor is it ever so hard
winter that I dare loiter at home,
for fear of my lord, but the oxen
yoked, and the ploughshare and
coulter fastened to the plough,
every day must I plough a full
acre, or more.

Hast tbou any comrade ?

I have a boy driving the oxen
with an iron goad, who also is
hoarse with cold and shouting.

What more dost thou in the
day?

Verily then I do more. I must
fill the bin of the oxen with hay,
and water them, and carry out the
dung. Ha ! ha ! hard work it is,
hard work it is ! because 1 am not
free.

Perhaps some day his lord will provide him with
an outfit of oxen, give him a yard-land, and make
him into a gebur instead of a theow. This at least
seems to be his yearning.

Folkland,
or terra
regis, in-
cluded
royal hams
:.r manors.

IX. THE CREATION OF NEW MANORS.

We have hitherto spoken only of the manors.
Are we therefore to conclude that there was no land
extra-manorial?

It may be asked whether ' folkland ' was not extra-
manorial.

Now in one sense all that belonged to the ancient
demesne of the Crown was folkland and extra-ma-
norial. All estates with the villages and towns upon
them, which had no manorial lord but the king,

Creation of New Manors. 1 67

were in the demesne of the Crown, as also were the Ohap.v.
royal forests.

Formerly, while there were many petty kings in
England, and before the kingship had attained its
unity and its full growth, i.e. before it had, as we are
told by historians, absorbed in itself exclusively the
sole representation of the nation, the term folkland
was apparently applied to all that was afterwards
included in the royal demesne. All that had not
become the hoc-land or private property either of
members of the royal house or of a monastery or of
a private person was still folkland. And it would
appear that the kings had originally no power to
alienate this folkland without the consent of the
great men of their witan.

But inasmuch as the royal demesne or folkland
included an endless number of manors as well as
forest, it cannot properly be said that it was neces-
sarily extra-manorial. More correctly it was in the
manor of the king. The king was its manorial lord,
and the geburs and cottiers upon it were geneats or
villani of the king. The Tidenham and Hysseburne
manors were both of them manors of the roya de-
mesne until they were granted by charter to their
new monastic owners.

Now, it is clear that in the course of time, after
that in a similar way grant after grant had been
made of ' ham ' after ' ham,' with its little territory —
its ager, or agellus, or ageUulus, as the ecclesiastical
writers were wont to describe it in the charters — to
the king's thanes or to monasteries, as boc-land or
private estate, the number of ' hams ' still remaining
folkland would grow less and less.

168

The English Village Community.

Chap. v. j n ^g meantime the royal forests were managed

by royal foresters under separate laws and regulations
of great severity, whilst the royal hams or manors
These were were put under the management of a resident steward,
inlaid to propositus or vilUcus — in Saxon ' tun-gerefaj — or
reward for were l et out f° r u ^ e as inland to neighbouring great
services. men or their sons, or to thanes in the royal service.
This granting of life-leases of folkland or hams
on the royal demesne seems to have been a usual mode
of rewarding special military services, and Bede
bitterly complained that the profuse and illegitimate
grants which were wheedled out of the king for pre-
tended monastic purposes had already in his time
seriously weakened the king's power of using the
royal estates legitimately as a means of keeping up
his army and maintaining the national defences. 1 To
be able to provide some adequate maintenance for
the thanes, on whose services he relied, was a king's
necessity ; for well might King Alfred enforce the
truth of the philosophy of his favourite Boethius by
exclaiming that every one may know how ' full miser-
able and full unmighty ' kings must be who cannot
count upon the support of their thanes. 2

But from the nature of the case it was inevitable
that the area of folkland or royal demesne must con-
stantly be lessened as each succeeding grant increased
the area of the hoc-land. In other words, to use the
later phrase, the tendency was not only for new

Tendency
for them to
pass into
private
hands.

1 Bede's letter to Bishop Egbert,
Smith, p. 309. ' Quod eiiiua turpe est
dicere, tot sub nomine monaslerio-
rum loca hi qui monacliicte vitse
prorsus sunt expertesin euam ditio-
neni acceperunt, sicut ipsi melius

nostis, ut omnino desk locus, ubijilii
yiobilium nut emeritorum militum
possessionem accipere posavnt, &c.

2 King Alfred's Boethius, c.
xxix. s. 10.

Creation of New Manors.

TOO

manors to be created out of the royal forests and Ciup.v
wastes, but also for more and more of the royal
manors to pass from the royal demesne into private
hands.

Now there is a remarkable passage in one of King
Alfred's treatises 1 which incidentally throws some sketch oi
light upon this process, and explains the way in !,f; pr
which new manors may have been created. He de-
scribes how the forest or a great wood provided every

a oew

ham.

1 Alfred's Blossom Gatherings
out of St. Augustine. British Mu-
seum, Vit. A. xv. f. 1 :— Gade-
rode me ponne Hgclas 3 stupan
sceaftas "j lohsceaftas 3 hylfa to
selcurn para tola |»e ic mid pircan
cufte j bohtiinbru 3 bolt timbru ~]
to selcuni para peorca pe ic pyrcan
cu'Se pa plitegostan treopo be fam
dele '5e ic aberan meibte. ne com ic
naj;er mid anre byrfiene ham ]>e me
ne lyste ealne]»anepudeham brengan
gip ic hyne ealne aberan meihte. on
selcum treopo ic geseah hyeet hpugu
pses pe ic ast bam beporfte. For
)»am ic Isere ajlcne Sara pe maga si
■j ma[nigne] paen hsebbe -p be nienige
to J»am ilcan puda par ic fias stutian
sceaftas cearf. Fetige hym par ma j
gefeftrige bys paenas mid fegruui
gerdum pat be mage pin dan manigne
smicerne pan j rnanig aenlic bus
settan j fegerne tun timbrian j para
"] peer murge ~j softe mid maege on-
eardian aegSer ge pintras ge sume-
ras spa spa ic nu ne gyt ne dyde. Ac
se pe me laerde fam se pudu licode
se maeg gedon j} ic softor eardian
aegSer ge on pisuni laenan stoclife be
pis paege o*a pbile pe ic on pisse
peorulde beo ge eac on pain becan
hame (5c he us gehaten hef6* purh

scanctus augustinus j scs gregorius
■] scanctus Ieronimus j purh manege
06'Sre balie faedras spa ic gelyfe. eac
■J) be gedo for heora ealra earnum ^e
segSer ge ]>isne peig gelimpfulran
gedo ponne be ser pissurn pes ge
hure mines modes eagan to pam on-
gelihte ■f ic mage ribtne peig aie-
dian to pam ecan hame ~] to pam
ecan are ~] to pare ecan reste pe ua
gehaten is purh pa hal^an fte-
deras sie spa. Nis hit nan pundor
peah m[an] sp[ylce] on timber ge-
pirce 3 eac on pae[re] lade ~\ eac
on paere bytlinge. ac aelcne man lyst
sio'fian he senig cotlyf on his hla-
fordes lsene myd his fultume getim-
bred haef'S ~p he hine mote hpilum
par ongerestan. ~j hunti^an. -j
fulian. 3 fiscian. -j his on gehpilce
pisan to paere laenan tilian seg] a r
ge on se ge on lande 00" oS pone
fyrst pe he bocland ~\ aece yrfe purh
his hlafordes miltsegeearnige. spage-
do se pile ga gidfola sefie eg<Vr
pilt ge pissa laenena stoclife ge J'ara
ecena hama. Se'6'e aegper gescop j
aegfieres pilt forgife me j) m<
aegSrum onhagige ge her nytpjrde
to beonne ge huru pider to cu-
mane. — For the texl of this passage
I am indebted to Mr. Thompson.

170 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. requisite of building, shafts and handles for tools, bay
timbers and bolt timbers for house-building, fair rods
(gerda) with which many a house (hus) may be con-
structed, and many a fair tun timbered, wherein men
may dwell permanently in peace and quiet, summer
and winter, which, writes the king with a sigh, ' is
more than I have yet done ! ' There was, he said,
an eternal ' ham ' above, but He that had pro-
mised it through the holy fathers might in the mean-
time make him, so long as he was in this world, to
dwell softly in a log-hut on lamland (' Icenan stoclif' 1 ),
waiting patiently for his eternal inheritance. So we
wonder not, he continued, that men should work
in timber-felling and in carrying and in building, 2
for a man hopes that if he has built a cottage on
kenland of his lord, with his lord's help, he may be
allowed to lie there awhile, and hunt and fowl and
fish, and occupy the lam as he likes on sea and land,
until through his lord's grace he may perhaps some
day obtain hoc-land and permanent inheritance. Then
finally he completes his parable by reverting once
more to the contrast between ' thissa laenena stoclife '
and ' thara ecena hama ' — between the log hut on ken-
land and the permanent freehold ' ham ' on the boc-
la?id, or hereditary manorial estate.

It is true that in this passage King Alfred does
not suggest distinctly that the lord would make the
actual holding of kenland into boc-land, thus convert-
ing a clearing in his forest into a new manor for his
thane ; but, on the other hand, there was a good reason

1 ' Stoc-lif,' literally staJce-hut. i stead in Essex.
The logs were put upright, as in the | 2 ' Bytlinge ; ' hence the house
cast; of the Saxon church at Green- was a ' botl?

Creation of New Manors. 171

for this omission, seeing that such a suggestion would ( '"
have just overreached the point of his parable.

Be this as it may, the vivid little glimpse -\ve gel
into the modus operandi of the possible growth of a
Saxon manorial estate, out of folkland granted first as
lamland, and then as hoc-land, or out of the woods
or waste of an ealdorman's domain, may well be
made use of to illustrate the matter in hand.

The typical importance in so many ways of the The roa,
gyrd, or rod, or virga in the origin and growth of the %^ ?«
Saxon ' tun' or ' ham' is worth at least a moment's of 6 /^' 11
notice. ham -

The typical site for a new settlement was a clear-
ing in a w r ood or forest, because of the ' fair rods '
which there abound. The clearing was measured
out by rods. An allusion to this occurs in Notker's
paraphrase of Psa. lxxviii. 55 — 'He cast out the
' heathen before them, and divided them an inherit-
1 ance by line.' The Vulgate which Notker had
before him was ' Et sorte divisit eis terrain in funi-
' culo distributionis ;' and he translated the last clause
thus — ' teilta er daz lant mit mazseile,' — to which he
added, ' also man nu tuot mit ruoto,' as they now do
it with rods, i.e. at St. Gall in the tenth or eleventh
century. 1

So in England the typical holding in the cleared
land of the open fields was called a yard-land, or
in earlier Saxon a gyrd landes. or in Latin a virgata
terras ; yard, gyrd, and virga all meaning rod, and all
meaning also in a secondary sense a yard measure.
The holdings in the open fields were of yarded or

1 Schilteri Thesaur. Antiq. Tent i. p. 158. Ulm, 1723.

the forest

172 The English Village Community.

Chap - v - rooded land — land measured out with a rod into
acres four rods wide, each rod in width being there-
fore a rood, as we have seen.

Again, the whole homestead was called a tun or a
worth, because it was tyned or girded with a wattled
fence of gyrds or rods. And so, too, in the Gothic
of Ulfilas the homestead was a ' gard.' So that in the
evident connexion of these words we seem to get
confirmation of the hint given by King Alfred of the
process of the growth of new manors,
it begins The young thane, with his lord's permission,

clearing in makes a clearing in a forest, building his log hut and
then other log huts for his servants. At first it is
forest game on which he fives. By-and-by the cluster
of huts becomes a little hamlet of homesteads. He
provides his servants with their outfits of oxen, and
they become his geburs. The cleared land is measured
out by rods into acres. The acres ploughed by the
common plough are allotted in rotation to the yard-
lands. A new hamlet has grown up in the royal
forest, or in the outlying woods of an old ham or
manor. In the meantime the king perhaps rewards
his industrious thane, who has made the clearing in
his forest, with a grant of the estate with the village
upon it, as his boc-land for ever, and it becomes
a manor, or the lord of the old manor of which
it is a hamlet grants to him the inheritance, and the
hamlet becomes a subject manor held of the higher
lord

So we seem now to see clearly how new tuns and
hams or manors were always growing up century
after century, on the royal demesne and on private
estates or manors, as in a former chapter it became

Laws of King Ethelbert. 17.°,

clear incidentally how new geburs with fresh yard Chap, v,
lands could be added to the village community, and
the strips which made up the yard-lands intermixed
with those of their neighbours in the village fields.

X. THE LAWS OF KING ETHELBERT — THERE WTERE

MANORS IN THE SIXTH CENTURY.

We have seen that not only the general descrip- Tuns and
tion of serfdom contained in the ' Rectitudines,' but fj™? the
also the two examples we have been able to examine ^ thelLtrt .
of serfdom upon particular manors in Saxon times,
testify clearly to the existence of a serfdom upon
Saxon manors as complete and onerous as the later
serfdom upon Norman manors. And we have seen
that, connecting this evidence with that of the laws of
King Ine, the proof is clear of the existence of manors
and serfdom in the seventh century, i.e. 400 years
before the Norman Conquest. There remains to be
quoted the still earlier though scanty evidence of the
laws of King Ethelbert, a.d. 597-616 ; which, if
genuine, bring us back to the date of the mission of
St. Augustine to England.

The evidence of these laws is accidental and in-
direct, but taken in connexion with that already con-
sidered, it seems to show conclusively that the ' hams *
and ' tuns ' of that early period were already manors.
Upon one point at least it is clear. It goes so far in single
as to indicate that they were in the ownership of
individuals, and not of free village communities.

The following passages occur : —

174

The English Village Community.

Chap. V.

with se?ni-
servile
tenants or
* laets.'

m. Eip cyninj sec mannep
ham bpincsefi, Sec.

v. Eif in cyninjej- nine man
mannan opplea, &c.

xiii. Eip on eoplep nine man
mannan opplajhtS, &c.

xvii. Eip man in manner cun
aepejx jeipneS, &c.

3. If the king drink at a man's
ham, Szc.

5. If in the king's tun a man
slay another, &c.

13. If in an earl's tun a man
slay another, &c.

17. If a man into a man's tun
enter, &c.

If there be any doubt as to the manorial charac-
ter of these ' hams ' and ' tuns,' it lies not in the point
of the single ownership of them, but in other points,
whether they were worked and tilled by the owners'
slaves, or by a village community in serfdom.

The only classes of tenants which are mentioned
in the laws of Kim* Ethelbert are the three grades of
lasts referred to in the following passage :

xxvi. Eip [man] laec opplaehS
pone peleptan.lxxx. pcill. popgelbe.
Eip pane oSepne opplaeho - . lx.
pcillinjum popgelbe. ]>ane ppib-
ban. xl. pciEingum popgelben.

26. If [a man] slay a Icet of the
best [class], let him pay lxxx. shil-
lings : if he slay one of the second,
let him pay lx. shillings: of the
third, let him pay xl. shillings

The word last is of doubtful meaning in this pas-
sage. It might have reference to the Eoman lasti, or
people of conquered tribes deported into Eoman
provinces at the end of a war ; or it might refer to
the liti or lidi — the servile tenants mentioned in so
many of the early Continental codes. We are not
yet in a position to decide. But in any case these
lasts of King Ethelbert's laws were clearly of a semi-
servile class here in Kent, as were the lidi in Frankish
Gaul, 1 for their ' wergild ' was distinctly less than that
of the Kentish freemen. 2 Whether they were a dif-

1 SeeM. Gue>ard's Introduction I pp. 250-75.
to the Polyptyque del Abb6 Irminon, \ 2 The leod-geJd or wer-yild of a

Result of Saxon Evidence.

175

ferent class from the geburs or villani, or identical c,,Ar - v *
with them, it is not easy to decide.

XL RESULT OP THE SAXON EVIDEXCE.

The evidence of the earliest Saxon or Jutish laws
thus leaves us with a strong presumption, if not actual
certainty, that the Saxon ham or tun was the estate of
a lord, and .not of a free village community, and that
it was so when the laws of the Kentish men were first
codified a few years after the mission of St. Augustine.

It becomes, therefore, all but impossible that the The . ,

1 manorial

manorial character of English hams and tuns can have system not
had an ecclesiastical origin. The codification of the asticai "
laws was possibly indeed the direct result of eccle- origin '
siastical influence no less than in the case of the Ala-
mannic, and Bavarian, and Visigothic, and Burgundian,
and Lombardic codes. In all these cases the codifi-
cation partook, to some extent, of the character of a
compact between the king and the Church. Eoom
had to be made, so to speak, for the new ecclesiastical
authority. A recognised status and protection had
to be given to the Church for the first time, and this
introduction of a new element into national arrange-
ments was perhaps in some cases the occasion of the
codification. This may be so ; but at the same time
it is impossible that a new system of land tenure can
have been suddenly introduced with the new reli-

' man ' was 200 shillings (see men-
tion of the half leod-geld of c. shil-
lings, s. 21). As regards the three
grades of Icet.s, there were also three
grades of female theows of the king

(see 8. 10-11), the cup-bearer, the
grinding-theow, and the lowest class.
See also s. 10, where again there is
mention of three classes of theows,
each with its value.

176 The English Village Community.

ChakV. gion. The property granted to the Church from the
first was already manorial. A ham or a tun could
not be granted to the Church by the king, or an earl,
unless it already existed as a manorial estate. The
monasteries became, by the grants which now were
showered down upon them, lords of manors which
were already existing estates, or they could not have
been transferred.

Further, looking within the manor, whether on the

royal demesne or in private hands, it seems to be

The hold- clear that as far back as the evidence extends, i.e. the

yard-lands time of King Lie, the holdings — the yard-lands — were

eSfdom ne ^ m villenage, and were bundles of a recognised

number of acre or half-acre strips in the open field,

handed down from one generation to another in single

succession without alteration.

Now let it be fully understood what is involved in
this indivisible character of the holding, in its devolu-
tion from one holder to another without division
among heirs. We have seen that the theory was that
as the land and homestead, and also the setene, or
outfit, were provided by the lord, they returned to the
lord on the death of the holder. The lord granted
the holding afresh, most often, no doubt, to the eldest
son or nearest relation of the landholder on his pay-
ment of an ox or other relief in recognition of the
servile nature of the tenure, and thus a custom of
primogeniture, no doubt, grew up, which, in the
course of generations — how early we do not know —
being sanctioned by custom, could not be departed
from by the lord. The very possibility of this per-
manent succession, generation after generation, of
a single holder to the indivisible bundle of strips

Result of Saxon Evidence. 177

called a yard-land or virgate, thus Beems to have '"^ v -
implied the servile nature of the holding. The lord became
put in his servant as tenant of the yard-land, and pul
in a successor when the previous one died. This ^V* 10
seems to be the theory of it. It was probably ore- ' 1 , lv ^"»" f

ii . allodial

cisely the same course of things which ultimately pr< fty

duced primogeniture in the holding of whole manors.
The king put in a thane or servant of his (sometimes
called the ' king's geneat'), or a monastery put in a
steward or villicus to manage a manor. When he
died his son may have naturally succeeded to the
office or service, until by long custom the office became
hereditary, and a succession or inheritance by primo-
geniture under feudal law was the result. The bene-
fice, or lam, or office was probably not at first generally
hereditary; though of course there were many cases
of the creation of estates of inheritance, or boc-lawl.
by direct grant of the king. As we have seen from
the passage quoted from Bede, the loen of an estate
for life was the recognised way in which the king's
thanes were rewarded for their services.

Thus it seems that in the very nature of things
the permanent equality of the holdings in yard-lands
(or double, or half yard-lands), on a manor, was a
proof that the tenure was servile, and that the com-
munity was not a free village community. For imagine
a free village community taking equal lots, and holding
these lots, as land of inheritance, by allodial tenure,
and with (what seems to have been the universal cus-
tom of Teutonic nations as regards land of inheritance)
equal division among heirs, how could the equality
be possibly maintained? One holder of a yard-land
would have seven sons, and another two, and another

178 The English Village Community.

Chap. v. one> How could equality be maintained generation
after generation ? What could prevent the multipli-
cation of intricate subdivisions among heirs, breaking
up the yard-lands into smaller bundles of all imagin-
able sizes ? Even if a certain equality could be
restored, which is very unlikely, at intervals, by a
re-division, which should reverse the inequality pro-
duced by the rule of inheritance, what would become
of the yard-lands? How could the contents of the
yard-land remain the same on the same estate for
hundreds of years, notwithstanding the increase in
the number of sharers in the land of the free village
community ?

We may take it, then, as inherently certain that
the system of yard-lands is a system involving in
its continuance a servile origin. The community of
holders of yard-lands we may regard as a community
of servile tenants, without any strict rights of in-
heritance — in theory tenants at the will of their lord,
becoming by custom adscripti glebce, and therefore
tenants for life, and by still longer custom gaining a
right of single undivided succession by primogeniture,
or something very much like it.

Result of Now we know that the holdings were yard-lands

the Saxon ° °

evidence, and the holders geburs, rendering the customary gafol
and week-work to their lords, in the time of King Ine,
if we may trust the genuineness of his ' laws.' There
was but an interval of 100 years between Ine and
Ethelbert ; whilst Ine lived as near to the first con-
quest of large portions of the middle districts of
England as Ethelbert did to the conquest of Kent.

The laws of Ethelbert, taken in connexion with
the subsequent laws of Ine, and the later actual in-

Result of Saxon Evidence. 170

stances of Saxon manors which have been examined, (1,u - v -
form a connected chain, and bring back the links of ffo"

the evidence of the manorial character of Saxon
estates to the very century in which the greater part l^Zu,\-
of the West Saxon conquests took place. The exist-

x * afterwards

ence of earl s and king's and men's hams and tuns ^ i,ik into
in the year of the codification of the Kentish laws,
a.d. 602 or thereabouts, means their existence as a
manorial type of estate in the sixth century ; and with
the exception of the southern districts, the West
Saxon conquests were not made till late in the sixth
century. Surely there is too short an interval left
unaccounted for to allow of great economic changes
— to admit of the degeneracy of an original free vil-
lage community if a widely spread institution, into a
community in serfdom. So that the evidence strongly
points to the hams and tuns having been manorial in
their type from the first conquest. In other words,
so far as this evidence goes, the Saxons seem either
to have introduced the manorial system into Eng-
land themselves, founding hams and tuns on the
manorial type, or to have found them already existing
on their arrival in Britain. There seems no room for
the theory that the Saxons introduced everywhere
free village communities on the system of the German
' mark,' which afterwards sank into serfdom under
manorial lords.

But before we can be in a position to understand
what probably happened we must turn our attention
to those portions of Britain which were not manorial,
and where village communities did not generally exist.
They form an integral part of our present England,
and English economic history has to do with the

M 2

ISO The English Village Community.

Chap.v. economic growth of the whole people. It cannot,
The tribal therefore, confine itself to facts relating to one ele-
JJJJJbe went only of the nation, and to one set of influences,
investi- merely because they became in the long run the
paramount and overruling ones. And, moreover, the
history of the manorial system itself cannot be pro-
perly understood without an understanding also of the
parallel, and perhaps older, tribal system, which in
the course of many centuries it was destined in some
districts to overrule and supplant ; in others, after cen-
turies of effort, to fail in supplanting.

181

CHAPTER VI.

THE TRIBAL SYSTEM {IN WALES).
I. EVIDENCE OP THE DOMESDAY SURVEY.

The Saxon land system has now been examined. No Chap.vi
feature has been found to be more marked and general \
than its universally manorial character ; that is to
say, the Saxon ' ham ' or ' tun ' was an estate or
manor with a village community in villenage upon
it. And the services of the villein tenants were of a
uniform and clearly defined type ; they consisted of
the combination of two distinct things — fixed gafol
payments in money, in kind, or in labour, and the
more servile week-work.

It is needful now to examine the land system
beyond the border of Saxon conquest.

A good opportunity of doing this occurs in the
Domesday Survey.

The Tidenham manor has already been examined.
It afforded a singularly useful example of the Saxon
system. Its geographical position, at the extreme
south-west corner of England, on the side of Wales,
enabled us to trace its history from its probable
conquest in 577, or soon after, and to conclude
that it remained Saxon from that time to the date of

182

The Tribal System.

of the
Wye.

Chap. vi. the Survey ; and distinctly manorial was found to be
West side the character of its holdings and services.

Now, the neighbouring land, on the west side of
the Wye, was equally remarkable in its geographical
position. For as long as Tidenham had been the
extreme south-west corner of England, so long had
the neighbouring land between the Wye and the
Usk been the extreme south-east corner of un-
conquered Wales.

It was part of the district of Gwent, and it seems
to have remained in the hands of the Welsh till
Harold conquered it from the Welsh king Grunydd,
by Harold. a f ew y ears on ]y before the Norman Conquest.

Harold seems to have annexed whatever he
conquered between the Wye and the Usk — i.e. in
Gwent — to his earldom of Hereford ; and after the
Norman Conquest it fell into the hands of William
EitzOsborn, created by William the Conqueror Earl
of Hereford and Lord of Gwent. 1

It was he 2 who built at Chepstow the Castle of
Estrighoiel, the ruins of which still stand on the west
bank of the Wye, opposite Tidenham. His son, Roger
FitzOsbern, succeeded to the earldom of Hereford
and the lordship of Gwent ; and, upon his rebellion

G^vent.

Remained
Welsh till
conquered

1 Liber Landavensis, p. 545.
Ordertixis Vitalis, ii. 190. It may
have been conquered iu 1049, after
Gruffydd and Irish pirates had, ac-
cording to Florence, crossed the
Wye and burned 'Dymedham'
(see Freeman's Norman Conquest,
ii. App. P) ; but most likely
shortly before a.d. 1065, under
which date is the following entry
in the Saxon Chronicle : —

1 A. 10G5. In this year before

Lammas, Harold the Eorl ordered a
building to be erected in Wales at
Portskewith after he had subdued it,
and there he gathered much goods
and thought to have King Edward
there for the purpose of hunting ;
but when it was all ready, then
went Cradock, Griffin's son, with
the whole force which he could pro-
cure, and slew almost all the people
who there had been building.'
2 Domesday, i. 102 a.

The Domesday Survey in Wales.

183

and imprisonment, this region of Wales became terra ( '" AI ' VI
regis, and as such is described in the Domesday Sur-
vey, mostly as a sort of annexe to Gloucestershire, 1
but partly as belonging to the county of Hereford. 2

Nor is Gwent the only district very near to s ? a '. 80 t>i«
Tidenham whose Welsh history can be traced down Arc]
to the time of the Domesday Survey. There was
another part of ancient Wales, the district of Ergyng,
or Archerifield, — which included the ' Golden Valley '
of the Dour. It lay, like Gwent — but further north —
between the unmistakable boundaries of the Wye and
the Usk, and it remained Welsh till conquered by
Harold ; and this is confirmed by the fact that the
district of i Arcenefelde ' is brought within the limits
of the Domesday Survey 3 as an irregular addition
to Herefordshire, just as Gwent was an annexe to
Gloucestershire.

Here, then, we have two districts, one to the
west .and the other to the north of Tidenham, both
of which clearly remained Welsh till conquered by
Harold a few years before the Norman Conquest, and
both of them are described in the Domesday Survey. Both
Further, it so happens that because they had been iScxSed
but recently conquered, and had not yet been added j» the ,

J * J Domesday

to any English county, and because also their cus- Surrey,
toms differed from those of the neighbouring English
manors, the services of their tenants, quite out of
ordinary course, are described.

So that, by a convenient chance, we are able to
bring together upon the evidence of the Domesday

1 Ibid. 162 a et seq.

8 1856. See also Freeman's

Norman Conquest, ii. App. SS, p.
685.

3 Domesday, i. 179 a.

184

The Tribal System.

ClIAP VI.

Gwent.

Archcn-
field.

Survey the land systems of a district which for five
hundred years before the Norman Conquest had been
the extreme south-east edge of Wales, and of a dis-
trict which for the same five hundred years had been
the extreme south-west corner of Saxon England,
beyond the Severn.

We have seen what was the Saxon land system
on one side of the Wye, which divided the two dis-
tricts ; let us now see what was the Welsh land
system on the other side of the river, so far as it is
disclosed in the Survey.

Part of theWelsh district of Gwent is thus described
in the Domesday annexe to Gloucestershire : —

' Under Waswic, the propositus, are xiii. villo ; under [another pro-
positus] xiiii. villo, under [another prsepositus] xiii., under [another pro-
positus] xiiii. {i.e. 54 in all). These render xlvii. sextars of honey, and
xl. piprs, and xli. cows, and xxviii. shillings for hawks. 1 . . .

' Under the same propositi are four villse wasted hy King Cara-
duech.' 2

Again, a little further on, this entry occurs : —

' The same A. has in Wales vii. villa which were in the demesne of
Count William and Roger his son {i.e. Fitz-Osbern, Earl of Hereford
and Lord of Gwent). These render vi. sextars of honey, vi. pigs, and x.

shillings.' 3

Passing to the Domesday description of the dis-
trict of Archeiifield, we find a similar record.

The heading of the survey for Herefordshire 4 is
as follows : ' Hie annotantur terras tenentes in Here-

1 See Ltycs Wallice, p. 812.
' De qualihet villa rusticaua debet
habere ovem fetarn vel 4 denarios in
cibos accipitrum.' The 54 villse
at Ad. each would make xviii s.

(? whether xxviii. by an extra x. in
error).

' Domesday, i. 1G2 a.

3 Domesday, i. 1G2 a (last entry).

* F.179a.

The Domesday Survey in Wales. ISO

fordscire et in Arcenefelde et in Walis.' And further Chap. vi.
on 1 we learn that —

'In Arcenefelde the lung has 100 men less 4, who with their men
have 73 teams, and give of custom 41 sextars of honey and 20s. instead
of the sheep which they used to give, and 10s. for fumayium ; nor do
they give geld or other custom, except that they march in the king's
army if it is so ordered to them. If a liber homo dies there, the king
has his horse, with arms. From a vittanus when he dies the king has
one ox. King Grifin and Blein devastated this land in the time of King
Edward, and so what it was then is not known.' Layademar pertained
to Arcenefelde in the time of King Edward, &c. There is a manor [at
Arcenefelde] in which 4 liberi homines with 4 teams render 4 sextars of
honey and 16d. of custom. Also a villa with its men and 6 teams, and
a forest, rendering a half sextar of honey and 6d.

There are other instances of similar honey rents,
e.g.—

In Chipeete 57 men with xix. teams render xv. sextars of honey and
x. shillings.

In Cape v. Welshmen having v. teams render v. sextars of honey,
and v. sheep with lamhs, and xd.

In Mainaure one under-tenant having iv. teams renders vi. sextars of
honey and x. s.

In Penehecdoc one under-tenant having iv. teams render vi. sextars of
honey and x. s.

In Hidla xii. villani and xii. bordarii with xi. teams render xviii.
sextars of honey.

The distinctive points in these descriptions of the Food rents
recently Welsh districts west and north of Tidenham tens of ^
are obviously (1) the prevalence of produce or food v ^ e s r
rents — honey, cows, sheep, pigs, &c. — honey being propositus.
the most prominent item ; (2) the absence of the
word ' manor,' used everywhere else in the survey of
Gloucestershire and Herefordshire ; (3) the remark-
able grouping in the district of Gwent of the ' villas '
in batches of thirteen or fourteen, each batch under a
separate propositus.

1 F. 181 a. i

1S6 The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. ft i s clear that on the Welsh side of the Wye
Welsh instead of Saxon customs prevailed, and that
these were some of them. 1 So much we learn from
these irregular additions of newly conquered Welsh
ground to the area of the Domesday Survey.

The meaning of the peculiarities thus indicated
will become apparent when the Welsh system has
been examined upon its own independent evidence.

II. THE WELSH LAND SYSTEM IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

There is no reason why, in trying to learn the

nature of the Welsh land system, the method followed

throughout, of proceeding backwards from the known

to the unknown, should not be followed.

Open-field ft nas already been shown that such arable fields

system in J

Wales. as there are in Wales, like the Saxon arable fields,
were open fields. They were shown to be divided by
turf balks, two furrows wide,' 2 into strips called erws
— representing a day's work in ploughing. The
Welsh laws were also found to supply the simplest
and clearest solution given anywhere of the reason
of the scattering of the strips in the holdings, as well
as of the relations of the grades of holdings to the
number of oxen contributed by the holders to the
common plough team of eight oxen.

In fact, the Welsh codes clearly prove that, as
regards arable husbandry, the open field system was
the system prevalent throughout all the three dis-
tricts of Wales.

1 So f. 185 b: 'In Castelkria
de Carlton . . . iii. Walenses leije
Waltnsi vi rentes cum iii. car. et

ii. Lord, cum dim. car. et reddunt
iiii. sextar. mellis.'

2 Ancient Laics of Wales, p, .'17-i.

Giraldus Cambrensis. 187

But partly from the mountainous nature of the Cha?. m
country, and partly from the peculiar stage of Th.-w'.-Mi
economic development through which the Welsh JJJJjJi
were passing, long after the Norman Conquest they
were still & pastoral people. Cattle rather than com
claimed the first consideration, and ruled their habits ;
and hence the Welsh land system, even in later times,
was very different from that of the Saxons.

In fact, the two land systems, though both using
an open-field husbandry, were in their main features
radically distinct. In those parts of Wales which
were unconquered, and therefore uncivilised, till the
conquest of Edward I., we look in vain in the early
surveys for the manor or estate with the village
community in villenage upon it.

The Welsh system was not manorial. Its unit No manors

•in • i i> orviU

was not a village community on a lord s estate.

As late as the twelfth century Giraldus Cambrensis l Scattered

. . green

described the houses of the Welsh as not built either timber
in towns or even in villages, but as scattered along
the edges of the woods. To his eye they seemed
mere huts made of boughs of trees twisted together,
easily constructed, and lasting scarcely more than a
season. They consisted of one room, and the whole
family, guests and all, slept on rushes laid along the
wall, with their feet to the fire, the smoke of which
found its way through a hole in the roof. 2 The Welsh ,
in fact, being a pastoral people, had two sets of home-
steads. In summer their herds fed on the higher
ranges of the hills, and in winter in the valleys. So
they themselves, following their cattle, had separate

1 Description of Wales, chap, cxvii. 2 C. x.

1SS

The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. lmts for summer and for winter use, as was also the
custom in the Highlands of Scotland, and is still the
case in the higher Alpine valleys. Giraldus Cam-
brensis describes the greater part of the land as in
pasture and very little as arable ; and accordingly the
food of the Welsh he describes, just as Ceesar had
described it eleven centuries earlier, as being chiefly
the produce of their herds — milk, cheese and butter,
and flesh in larger proportions than bread. 1 The
latter was mostly of oats.
Welsh The Welsh ploughed for their oats in March and

p oug ing. April, an( j f or w heat in summer and winter, yoking to
their ploughs seldom fewer than four oxen ; and he
mentions as a peculiarity that the driver walked
backward in front of the oxen, as we found was the
custom in Scotland. 2

Another marked peculiarity of the Welsh was
their hereditary liking and universal training for war-
like enterprise. They were soldiers as well as herds-
men ; even husbandmen eagerly rushed to arms from
the plough. 3 Long settlement and the law of division
of labour had not yet brought about the separation
of the military from the agricultural population of
Wales even so late as the twelfth century. And here
we come upon traces of their old tribal economy.
For the facts that they had not yet attained to settled
villages and townships, that they had not yet passed
from the pastoral to the agricultural stage, that they
were still craving after warfare and wild enterprise — all

Love of
war.

1 C. viii. The district of Snow-
don afforded the hest pasturage
and Anglesey the best corn-grow-
ing land.

2 C. viii. and xvii. In the Isle of
Man lour oxen were yoked ahreast
to the plough, Train's Isle of Man.
ii. p. 241. 3 0. viii.

Ancient Laws of Wales. ISO

these are traces of tribal habits still remaining. And Chap. vi.
a still clearer mark of the same thing was the stress ... n ,;^.'
they laid upon their genealogy. Even the common
people (he says) keep their genealogies, and can not
only readily recount the names of their grandfathers
and great-grandfathers, but even refer back to the
sixth or seventh generation, or beyond them, in this
manner: Rhys, son of Gruff hjdh, son of Rhys, son of
Theodor, son of Eineon, son of Owen, son of Bowel,
son of Cadelh, son of Roderic Mawr, and so on. 1

Thus in the twelfth century there were in Wales Survivals
distinct survivals of a tribal economy. Instead of a tribaT
system like the Saxons, of village communities and system "
townships, the Welsh system was evidently a tribal
system in the later stages of gradual disintegration,
tenaciously preserving within it arrangements and
customs pointing back to a period when its rules had
been in full force.

But the Welsh codes must be further examined
before the significance of the Domesday entries can be
fully appreciated.

III. THE WELSH LAND SYSTEM ACCOKDING TO THE WELSH

LAWS.

The Welsh version of the ancient laws of Wales
contains three several codes : The Venedotian of North
Wales, the Dimetian and Gwentian of South Wales.
They profess to date substantially from Howel dda, Laws of
who codified the local customs about the middle of thetenth
the tenth century. They contain, however, later centur ^-

1 C. xvii.

190

The Tribal System.

Chap. VI

Saxon and

Welsh
systems
contempo
rary.

Free

tribesmen
of tribal
blood.

additions, and the MSS. are not earlier than the end
of the thirteenth century. There is a Latin version
of the Dimetian code in MS. of the early part of the
thirteenth century, which is especially valuable as
giving the received Latin equivalent of the Welsh
terms used in the laws. And there are also, apart
from these codes, triads of doubtful date, but profess-
ing to preserve traditional customs and laws of the
Welsh nation before the time of the Saxon conquest
of Britain. 1

For the present purpose the actual date of a law
or custom is not so important as its own intrinsic
character. We seek to gain a true notion of the
tribal system, and an economically early trait may
well be preserved in a document of later date.

There is no reason why we should be even tempted
to exaggerate the antiquity of the evidence. The
later the survival of the system the more valuable for
our purpose. The Saxon and Welsh systems were
contemporary systems, and it is best to compare them
as such.

It would appear that under this tribal system a
district was occupied by a tribe (cenedl) under a petty
king (brenhin) or chief.

The tribe was composed of households of free
Welshmen, all blood relations ; and the homesteads of
these households were scattered about on the country
side, as they were found to be in the time of Giraldus
Cambrensis. They seem to have been grouped into
artificial clusters mainly, as we shall see, for purposes
of tribute or legal jurisdiction.

1 Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales. Record Commission, 1841.
iSbu preface by Aneurin Owen.

Ancient Laws of Wales.

191

But all the inhabitants ofWales were not members Chap. vi.
of the tribes. Besides the households of tribesmen i >f
blood relations and pure descent, there were hanging
on to the tribes or their chiefs, and under the over-
lordship of the latter, or sometimes of tribesmen,
strangers in blood who were not free Welshmen; r -
also Welshmen illegitimately born, or degraded for jj^ ui
crime. And these classes, being without tribal or M "" !
family rights, were placed in groups of households
and homesteads by themselves. If there were any
approach to the Saxon village community in villenage
upon a lord's estate under Welsh arrangements, it
was to be found in this subordinate class, who were
not Welshmen, and had no rights of kindred, and were
known as aillts and taeogs of the chief on whose land
they were settled. Further, as there was this marked
distinction between tribesmen and non-tribesmen, so
also there was a marked and essential distinction
between the free tribe land occupied by the families
of freeWelsh tribesmen, called l tir gwelyawg,' or family
land, and the 'caeth land' or bond land of the taeogs
and aillts, which latter was also called ' tir-cyfrif or
register land, and sometimes ' tir-kyllydus ' or geldable
land (gafol-land?). 1

The main significance of the Welsh system, botli
as regards individual rights and land usages, turns

1 Venedotian Code. Ancient
Laws of Wales, pp. 81-2, and see
pp. 644-6 {Welsh Laws). Mr.
Skene, in his chapter on The Trihe
in Wales in his Celtic Scotland, Hi.
pp. 200, 201, does r.ot seem to have
grasped fully the distinction hetween
ihe- free tribesmen and their family

land on the one hand and the Aillts
and Taeogs with their geldable or
register land on the other. Every-
thing, however, turns upon this.
Compare Welsh Laws, xiv. s. .'!!
and s. 32 (pp. 739-741), where
the distinction is again clearly
stated.

102 The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. on this distinction between the two different classes of
persons and the two different kinds of land occupied
by them. They will require separate examination.

Let us first take the free tribesmen (' Uchelwyrs '
or ' Breyrs ') and their ' family land.'
The free jf the professed triads of Dyvnioal Moelmud mav

tribesmen. l ' i • i

be taken to represent, as they claim to do, the con-
dition of things in earlier centuries, the essential to
membership in the cenedl, or tribe, was birth within
it of Welsh parents.

Free-born Welshmen were ' tied ' together in a
' social state ' by the three ties of —

(1) Common defence (cyvnawdd).

(2) Common tillage (cyvar).

(3) Common law (chyvraith). 1

Every free Welshman was entitled to three
things : —

(1) Five free erws (or acre strips).

(2) Co-tillage of the waste (cyvar gobaith).

(3) Hunting. 2

The home- ^ e f ree tribesman's homestead, or tyddyn. con-

fctead or ° u

tyddyn. sisted of three things : —

(1) His house (ty).

(2) „ cattle-yard (bu-arth).

(3) „ corn-yard (yd-arth). 3

And the five free strips, afterwards apparently

1 Ancient Laivs of Wales, p. I 2 Id. 651 (s. 83).
638 (8. 45). I 3 P. 639 (s. 51).

Ancient Laws of Wales. 19g

reduced to four, of each head of a house— free, Chap. \i
possibly, in the sense of their having been freed
from, the common rights of others over them, as well
as being free from charges or tribute — we may pro-
bably regard as contained in the tyddyn, or as Lying
in croft near the homesteads.

The Gwentian, Dimetian, and Venedotian codes all Thc h " 1 ' 1 -
represent the homestead or tyddyn and land of the of a
free Welshman as & family holding. So long as thc orftmUy.
head of the family lived, all his descendants lived
with him, apparently in the same homestead, unless
new ones had already been built for them on the
family land. In any case, they still formed part of
the joint household of which he was the head. 1

When a free tribesman, the head of a household,
died, his holding was not broken up. It was held by
his heirs for three generations as one joint holding ;
it was known as the holding of * the heirs of So-and-
so.' 2 But within the holding there was equality of
division between his sons ; the younger son, however,
retaining the original tyddyn or homestead, and
others having tyddyns found for them on the family
land. All the sons had equal rights in the scattered
strips and pasture belonging to the holding. 3

Thus, in the first generation there was equality Equality

, , , , ... within the

between brothers ; they were co-tenants in equal family

1 Pp. 81-2.

2 See the surveys in the Record
of Carnarvon (14th century), where
the holdings are sometimes called
' WelesJ thus : — ' In eadem villa
sunt tria Wele libera, viz. Wele
Yarthur ap Ruwon Wele Joz. ap
Ruwon and Wele Keneth ap Ru-

won. Et sunt heredes predicte Wele
de Yarthur ap Ruwon, Eign. ap
Qriffiri and Hoell. ap Grifl'ri et alii
coheredes sui;' and so on of the other
Weles (p. 11). This is the common
form of the survey passim.

3 Ancient Laics, fyc, of W<i','$,
p. 741.

10 4

The Tribal System.

to second

cousins.

Chap. vr. shares of the family holding of which they were
co-heirs.

When all the brothers were dead there was, if
desired, a re-division, so as to make equality between
the co-heirs, who were now first cousins.

When all the first cousins were dead there might
be still another re- division, to make equality between
the co-heirs, who were now second cousins.

But no one beyond second cousins could claim
equality ; and if a man died without heirs of his
body, and there were no kindred within the degree
of second cousins, the land reverted to the chief who
represented the tribe. 1

The great-grand father was thus always looked
back to as the common ancestor, whose name was
still given to the family holding of his co-heirs. The
family tie reached from him to his great-grandchildren,
and then ceased to bind together further genera-
tions.' 2

We have seen that even in the twelfth century
the household all used one couch, extending round
the wall of the single room of the house ; this couch
was called the ' gwely.' The ' tir gwelyawg ' was
thus the land of the family using the same couch ;
and the descendants of one ancestor living together
were a ' gweli-gordd.' 3 As late as the fourteenth
century, in the Record of Carnarvon, the holdings

Greats
grand-
fin lii-r the
common
aucestor.

The Gwely
or family

;ouch.

1 Id. pp. 82 and 740.

2 The fullest description of the
rules of 'family land ' are those in
the Venedotian Code, c. xii., The
Law of Brothers for Land, pp. 81 et

seq. See also Welsh Laws, Book
IX. xxxi. p. 536 ; also Book XIV.
xxxi. pp. 739 et seq.

3 Ancient Laics, fyc, of Wales,
Glossary, p. 1001.

Ancient Laws of Wales. 195

are still called ' Weles ' and ' Gavells.' They are r,,AF - V1
essentially ' family ' or tribal holdings. 1

And now as to the tenure upon which these
holdings of the free tribesmen were held.

It was a free tenure, subject to the obligation to The
pay Gwestva, or 'food rent,' to the chief, and to some or foil™
incidents which marked an almost feudal relationship '
to the chief, viz. : —

(1) The Amobr, or marriage fee of a female.

(2) The Ebediw, 2 or death payment (heriot).

(3) Aid in building the king's castles.

(4) Joining his host in his enterprises in the
country whenever required, out of the country six
weeks only in the year. 3

These were the usual accompaniments of free
tenure everywhere, and are no special marks of
serfdom.

Several homesteads were grouped together in Thebaic

° x ° pound in

' maenols ' or ' trevs ' for the purpose of the payment of lieu of it,
the Gwestva, as we shall see by-and-by. This consisted
in Gwent, of a horse-load of wheat-flour, an ox, seven
threaves of oats, a vat of honey, and 24 pence of
silver. 4 And as the money value of the Gwestva was
always one pound, so that its money equivalent was
known as ' the tunc pound,' holdings of family land
were spoken of, as late as the fourteenth century, as
* paying tunc ' 5 — the gwestva, or tunc pound in lieu

1 The Record of Carnarvon,
passim. Thus * the Wele of So-
and-so, the son of So-and-so, and
the heirs of this Wele are So-and-
so.'

2 This was not payable if an

investiture fee had been paid by the
person dying.

3 Ancient Laws, §c, p. 92 and
93.

4 Id, p. 375.

5 Book of Carnarvon, passi)>i.

o 2

196

The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. of it. beinsr the distinctive tribute of the free tribes-

A free
tribal

tenure.

men.

Such was the tenure of the family land, and these
were the services of the free tribesmen.

There is no trace here of villenage, or of the
servile week-work of the Saxon serf. The tribesmen
had no manorial lord over them but their chief, and
he was their natural and elected tribal head. So,
when Wales was finally conquered, the tunc was paid
to the Prince of Wales, and no mesne lord was inter-
posed between the tribesman and the Prince.

Thus the freedom of the free tribesman was
guarded at every point.

The aittts

or taeogs.

Their

tyddynn

and

ploughs.

Turning now to the other class, the aillts or
taeogs — who in the Latin translations of the laws are
called villani — the key to their position was their
non-possession of tribal blood, and therefore of the
rights of kindred. They were not free-born Welsh-
men ; though, on the other hand, by no means to be
confounded with caeths, or slaves. They must be
sworn men of some chieftain or lord, on whose land
they were placed, and at whose will and pleasure they
were deemed to remain. 1 Each of these taeogs had
his tyddyn — his homestead, with corn and cattle yard.
In his tyddyn he had cattle of his own. In South
Wales several of these taeogs' homesteads were
grouped together into what was called a taeog-trev.
Further, the arable fields of the ' taeog-trev ' were
ploughed on the open-field system by the taeogs'

1 Sometimes an 'vuthelwr' or
tribesman had taengs under him.
Ancient Laws, fyc, pp. 88, 33f>. and

673. See also Id. p. G4G.
Laws.

WvMi

Ancient Laws of Wales.

197

common plough team, to which each contributed Chap. vi.

oxen.

But the distinctive feature of the taeog-trev was Bqwiitj

7 7 7' '" ''"'

that an absolute equality ruled, not between brothers taeoj
or cousins of one household, as in the case of the
family land of the free tribesmen, but throughout the
whole trev. Family relationships were ignored. All
adults in the trev — fathers and sons, and strangers in
blood — took equal shares, with the single exception
of youngest sons, who lived with their fathers, and had
no tyddyn of their own till the parent's death. This
principle of equality ruled everything. 1 The common
ploughing must not begin till every taeog in the trev
had his place appointed in the co-tillage. 2 Nor could
there be any escheat of land in the taeog-trev to the
lord on failure of heirs ; for there was nothing heredi-
tary about the holdings. Succession always fell (except
in the case of the youngest son, who took his father's
tyddyn) to the whole trev. 3 When there was a death
there was a re-division of the whole land, care, how-
ever, being taken to disturb the occupation of the
actual tyddyns only when absolutely needful. 4

The principle upon which the taeog's rights rested Per capita

_ Tr , , no account

was simply this : where there was no true Welsh f blood
blood no family rights were recognised. In the ab- jJip. lon
sence of these, equality ruled between individuals ;
they shared ' per capita,' and not ' per stirpes.'

The land of a taeog-trev was, as already said, The,r

o j ' register

called ' register land ' 5 — tir cyfrif. land.

1 Id. pp. 82 and 536. Welsh
Laws, s. xxxii.
- Id. p. 376.
3 Id. p. 82.

4 Id. p. 82.

5 It was sometimes called ' tir
kyllidin,' or geldable land, as before
stated.

198

The Tribal System.

Chap. VI.

Incidents
to their
tenures.

Food-
rents.

There were other incidents marking off the taeog
from the free "Welshman. He might not bear arms ; x
he might not, without his lord's consent, become a
scholar, a smith, or a bard, nor sell his swine, honey,
or horse. 2 Even if he were to marry a free Welsh
woman, his descendants till the fourth, and in some
cases the ninth degree, remained taeogs. But the
fourth or ninth descendant of the free Welsh woman,
as the case might be, might at last claim his five free
strips, and become the head of a new kindred. 3

Even the taeog was, however, under these laws,
hardly a serf. With the exception of his duty to
assist the lord in the erection of buildings, and to
submit to kylch, i.e. to the lord's followers, being
quartered upon him when making a ' progress,' and to
dovraith, or maintenance of the chief's dogs and ser-
vants, there seems to have been no exaction of menial
personal services. 4

The taeogs' dues, like those of free Welshmen,
consisted of fixed summer and winter contributions
of food for the chiefs table. In Gwent they had to
provide in winter a sow, a salted flitch, threescore
loaves of wheat bread, a tub of ale, twenty sheaves
of oats, and pence for the servants. In summer, a
tub of butter and twelve cheeses and bread. 5

These tributes of food were called ' dawnbwyds,'
gifts of food , or ' board-gifts,' and from these the
taeog or register land is in one place in the Welsh
laws called tir bwrdd, or ' board-land ' (terra mensalia.

1 Aivcient Laws, eye, p. 673.

2 Pp. 36-7 and 212-13.

3 Id. pp. 88 and GIG.

4 Pp. 93 and 376.
* P. 375-6. Giuentian Code, 11,
x.vxv.

Ancient La ws of Wa li 'S . 100

or ' mensal land '*), a term which we shall find again '"
when we come to examine the Irish tribal system.

Lastly, it must not be forgotten that beneath the
taeogs, as beneath the Saxon geneat and gebur, were
the ' caeths,' or bondmen, the property of their
owners, 2 without tyddyn and without land, unless
such were assigned to them by their lord. These
caeths were, therefore, not settled in separate trevs,
but scattered about as household slaves in the tyddyns
of their masters.

IV. LAND DIVISIONS UNDER THE WELSH CODES.

There were, then, these two kinds of holdings — ■
those of the free tribesmen, of ' family land,' and those
of the taeogs, of ' register land.' There remains to
be considered the system on which the holdings were
clustered together.

The principle of this it is not very easy at first to ti
understand, and the difficulty is increased by a con- grouped
fusion of terms between the codes. But there is one mlXof
fact, by keeping hold of which the system becomes ^ t f °° r d *
intelligible, viz., that the grouping seems to have been tmw
based upon the collective amount of the food-rent.
The homesteads, or tyddyns, each containing its four
free erws, were scattered over the country side. But
they were artificially grouped together for the purpose
of the payment of the food-rent, or tunc pound in lieu
of it. And by following the group which pays the

pound.

1 Ancient Laws, fyc, p. 697.
3 P. 294 (Dimetian Code). ' The
c.aeth — there ia no galanas (death-

fine) for hiru, only payment of his
" wertb " to his master Wee the
" icerth " of a beast. 11

200

The Tribal System.

Chap - tl ' tunc pound ' as the unit of comparison, the at first
conflicting evidence falls into its proper place.

In the Venedotian Code the maenol is this unit.
In the Dimetian and Gwentian Codes this unit is the
trev.

According to the Venedotian Code of North Wales, 1

In North
Wales the
maenol the
unit for
food-rent.

4 erws
4 tyddyns
4 randirs
4 gavaels
4 treys

12 maenols and 2 supernumerary trevs
2 cyniwds

= 1 tyddyn.

= 1 randir

= 1 gavael.

= 1 trev.

= 1 maenol.

= 1 cymwd (or comote).

= 1 cantrev (100 trevs).

Th l^ wd The cymwd was thus a half-hundred, and each

hundred of cymwd had its court, and so was the unit of legal

maenols. jurisdiction. At its head was a maer and a canghellor,

the two officers of the chief who had jurisdiction over

it.

The twelve maenols in the cymwd were thus dis-
posed : —

1 free maenol for the support of the office of maer.

1 free maenol for the support of the office of canghellor.

6 occupied by ' uchelwrs,' or tribesmen.

Making 8 free maenols of ' family land/ from each of which a
gwestva or tunc pound was paid.
The other 4 maenols were ' register land ' occupied by aillts or
taeogs, paying 'dawn bwyds.'

12 in the ' cyrnwd.' 2

Now, it must be admitted that all this singular
system, arranged according to strict arithmetical rules,
looks very much like a merely theoretical arrange-
ment, plausible on paper but impossible in practice.

It will be found, however, that there is more

1 Ancient Laws, 8fc. t pp. 00-1.

Id. p. 01, s. 14.

Ancient Laws of Wales. 201

probability, as well as reason and meaning in it, than ° HAP< VI
at first sight appears.

In the first place, as regards the twelve maenols
making up the cymwd, there is no difficulty ; four of
them were taeog maenols and eight were free maenols.
But there is an obvious difficulty in the description of
the contents of each maenol. Taken literally, the
description in the Venedotian Code seems to imply
that every maenol was composed of four trevs, each
of which contained four gavaels composed of four
randirs, each of which contained four tyddyns com-
posed of four erws. But in this case the maenol would Threescore

• -, pence of

contain nothing but tyddyns — nothing but home- the tunc
steads! — there would be no arable and no pasture, eachtrev.
This cannot be the true reading. A clue to the real
meaning is found in a clause which, after repeating
that from each of the eig\ht free maenols in the
cymwd the chief has a gwestva yearly, c that is a
pound yearly from each of them,' goes on to say,
' Threescore pence is charged on each trev of the four
that are in a maenol, and so subdivided into quarters in
succession until each erw of the tyddyn be assessed.' l
Now, from this statement it may be assumed that
there must be some correspondence between the
number of pence in the tunc pound and the number
of erws in the maenol, otherwise why speak of each
erw being assessed ? But, according to the foregoing
figures, there would be 1,024 erws in the maenol. 2

1 Id. p 91, s. 15. In Leges
Wallice, p. 825, 'score pence' or
1 score of silver ' is translated ' uncia
argenti;' .\ 3 uncie agri should
equal a ' trev.' See Liber Landa-
vensis, pp. 70 and 317.

2 4 erw = tyddyn.
16 „ = randir.
04 „ = gavael.
250 „ = trev.
1024 „ = maenol.

202 The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. Each trev, which thus contains 256 erws, is to pay
Four threescore pence. How can 256 erws be divided
hoiTngsTn into quarters till each erw is assessed ? Dividing the
each trev. trey ^ f Qur we g et t j ie gavael of sixty-four erws, and

threescore pence divided by four is sixty farthings.
It is evident that sixty farthings cannot be divided
between sixty-four erws. But if we suppose each
trev to contain four homesteads or tyddyns, then
the gavael 1 of sixty-four erws would be the single
holding belonging to a tyddyn or homestead, and the
four erws in the actual tyddyn (which are to be free
erws) being deducted, then the sixty farthings exactly
correspond with the remaining sixty erws forming the
holding of land appendant to the tyddyn, and each
erw would pay one farthing. We may take it then
as possible that each Venedotian maenol contained
four trevs, paying sixty pence each, and that each
trev was a cluster of four holdings of sixty erws
each, in respect of which the holders paid sixty
farthings each to the gwestva, holding their actual
tyddyns free.
a group of In other words, each of the eight free maenols
honS" contained sixteen homesteads, which sixteen home-
steads steads were first classified in groups of four called

paid the ° .

tunc trevs. Or, to put the case the other way, the eight

free maenols, were divided into quarters or trevs, and
these trevs again each contained four homesteads.

It is evidently a tribal arrangement, clustering
the homesteads numerically for purposes of the pay-
ment of gwestva, and probably the discharge of other

1 The word Oabailsi ill in Scotch Gaelic retains its meaning of a farm.
The word is pronounced ' ijao'-uU

Ancient Laws of Wales.

203

public duties, and not a natural territorial arrangement ° HAP - VI -
on the basis of the village or township.

Turning now to theDimetian and Gwcntian Codes, In s " u " 1

1 ' • IP! WalM ,1 '"

according to which the free trev instead of the maenol in.
is the gwestva-paying unit -} there is first the group gwestva.
of twelve trevs (instead of twelve maenols) under a
single maer, and under the name of maenol instead
of cymwd ; but apparently all the trevs in the group
of twelve 2 are free trevs. There are other groups of
seven taeog-trevs making a taeog-maenol, and the
maenol (instead of the cymwd) has its court, and
becomes the unit of legal jurisdiction. 3

Confining attention to the free maenol, the first
thing to notice is that each of the twelve free trevs
of which it was composed paid its gwestva, or tunc
pound in lieu of it. The trev, therefore, was the
gwestva-paying unit.

And as to the interior of the trev we read, —

' There are to be four randirs in the trev, from which the king's gwestva
shall be paid.'

' 312 erws are to be in the randir between clear and brake, wood and
field, and wet and dry, except a supernumerary trev [the upland has in
addition].' 4

In this case the * tunc pound ' of 240c?. was paid
by each trev of 4 randirs, each randir containing 312
erws, and the trev 1,248 erws in all. The trev in
South Wales is, therefore, slightly larger than the

1 Ancient Laws, pp. 261. ' Four
randirs are to be in the trev from
which the king's gwestva is to be
paid' (s. 5).

2 In upland districts there were
13 trevs in the maenol, p. 375.

3 There were seven taeog-trevs
intaeog-maenols, and each contained

three randirs, in two of which t here
were three taeog-tyddyns to each,
the third being pasture for the
other two. There were therefore
six taeog holdings in each taeog-
trev. Ancient Laws, 8[C, pp. 37 o
and 829.

* Pp. 374-5.

204

The Tribal System.

Chap. VI.

The trev a
cluster of
twelve
holdings,
each

paying an
ounce or
score of
silver, so
between
them the
tunc
pound.

Venedotian maenol. Here we are bound by no law
that the pence in the gwestva should exactly corre-
spond with the number of erws. But in the other
versions the 12 odd erws in the randir are stated to
be for ' domicilia,' * or buildings, and 12 erws would
allow of 3 tyddyns of the requisite 4 erws each.

This fixes for us the number of homesteads or
tyddyns in the trev. There were 3 tyddyns to each
randir, and 4 randirs to the trev, and so there were
12 tyddyns in each trev, and to each tyddyn there were
appendant 100 erws in the arable, pasture, and waste.

The trev which paid its tunc pound of 240c?. was
thus made up of 12 holdings, each paying a score
pence. And as in the Latin version of the Dimetian
Laws (p. 825) a score pence is translated uncia argenti,
the connexion is at once made clear between the
system of grouping the holdings so as to pay the tunc
pound, and the monetary system which prevailed in
Wales, viz., that according to which 20cZ. made an
ounce, and 12 ounces one pound. The 12 holdings
each paying a score of pence, or ounce of silver, made
up between them the tunc pound of the trev.

This curious geometrical arrangement or classifi-
cation of tyddyns and trevs, with an equal area of land
to each, is at first sight entirely inconsistent with the
division of the family land among the heirs of the
holder, inasmuch as the greatgrandchildren when they
divided the original family holding must, one would
suppose, have held smaller shares than their great

1 P. 829. ' In randir continen-
ts ccc. et xii. acre : ut in ccc. acris,
araturam, et pascua et focalia pos-
sessor habeat; hide xii. domicilia.'

See also p. 7'JO. ' Id est xii. domi-
cilia.' The Dimetian Code has it
' space for buildings on the 12 erws '
(p. 263).

Ancient Laics of Wales, 20r>

grand father. And there is only one answer to this. It Chap - vr

would have been so if the tribe, and the families com-
posing it, were permanently fixed and settled on the
same land, and pursuing a regular agriculture, with
an increasing population within certain boundaries.
But the Welsh were still a pastoral people, and, as we
shall see when we come to examine the Irish tribal The tribal
system, while the homesteads and land divisions were shitted
fixed, the occupants were shifted about by the chiefs ESS
from time to time, each sept, or clan, or family receiv-
ing at each rearrangement a certain number of tyddyns
or homesteads, according to certain tribal rules of
blood relationship of a very intricate character.

This permanence of the geographical divisions
and homesteads, and shifting of the tribal households
whenever occasion required it, was only possible with
a pastoral and scanty population. Long before the
fourteenth century the households were settled in
their homesteads, geometrical regularity had ceased,
and the land was divided and subdivided into irre-
gular fractions. This is the state of things disclosed
in the Record of Carnarvon. But in the tenth cen-
tury, according to the Welsh laws, the old tribal rules
were apparently still in force.

Without pretending to have mastered all the The clus-

mi j.i toring of

details of these obscure tribal arrangements, the households
point to be noted is that the scattering of the tyddyns ^ ct ^ a
all over the country side, and the clustering of them [JJ*jjL
by fours and sixteens, or twelves, into the group system.
which was the unit paying the gwestva or tunc pound,
and again into clusters of twelve or thirteen 1 under a

1 ' There are to be thirteen trevs I of these is the supernumerai y trev.'
in every maenol, and the thirteenth I Gwentian Code, p. 3~o.

206

The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. m aer, as the unit of civil jurisdiction, were obviously-
distinctive features arising from the tribal holding of
land, and that the system was adopted apparently to
facilitate the division of the land among the families
in the tribe somewhat in the same way as in the open
field system the division of the arable land by turf
balks into actual erws facilitated the division of the
ploughed land among the contributors to the plough
team.

Latin

equivalent

of tribal

■words

in the

Domesday

Survey.

Bearing this in mind we may now turn back to
the Domesday Survey, and compare its description of
the land system of Gwent and Archenfield with the
results obtained from the Welsh laws.

In order, however, to make this comparison the
Welsh terms must be translated into Latin, otherwise
it will be difficult to recognise the trev, and maer,
and maenol, and gwestvain the Domesday description.

The before-mentioned Latin version of the Dimetian
Code, the MS. of which dates from the early thirteenth
century, will do this for us. 1

It translates trev, the unit of the tunc pound, by
villa. It takes the Welsh word ' maenol ' as equivalent
to manor, and indeed it did resemble the Saxon and
Norman manor in this, that it was the unit of the
jurisdiction of each single steward or villicus of the
chief. This officer was called in Welsh the maer,
which was translated into the Latin propositus. He
did to some extent resemble the English propo-
situs, but he differed in this — that instead of being
set over the ' trev ' or ' villata ' of a single manor,

1 Leyes Walliee, Ancient Laws, SfC, p. 771 et seq.

The Domesday Survey in Wales. 207

the Welsh maer was, as we have seen, set over a r " Ar VI
number of ' villas ' or trevs — thirteen free trevs or
seven taeog-trevs, in Gwent — each free trev of which
rendered its 'tunc pound' or 'gwestva,' and each
taeog or villein-trev its ' dawn-bwyd ' of food.

Now, this is precisely what is described in the
Domesday Survey of Gwent.

There are four groups of thirteen or fourteen The,
1 villas ' or trevs, each group under a ' propositus ' or
maer ; and these four groups, which were in fact mapoafau
Gwentian ' maenols,' rendered as gwesta a food-rent JSient
amounting to 47 sextars of honey, 40 pigs, 41 cows,
and 28 shillings for hawks.

In the district of Archenfield the clusters of trevs
do not appear, but the food-rents were similar — honey
being a marked item throughout.

In the Welsh gwestva, also, honey was an important Honey
element. It is mentioned as such in the Welsh codes,
and it is conspicuous also in the Domesday Survey
both of Gwent and Archenfield.

Its importance is shown by the fact that in the import-
Gwentian Code a separate section was devoted to honey.
' The Law of Bees.' It begins as follows : — ' The
origin of bees is from Paradise, and on account of
the sin of man they came from thence, and they were
blessed by God, and, therefore, the mass cannot be
without the wax.' *

The price of a swarm of bees in August was equal
to the price of an ox ready for the yoke, i.e. ten or
fifteen times its present value, in proportion to the ox.

Honey had, in fact, two uses, besides its being the

1 Ancient Laivs, fyc, p. 360.

208 The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. substitute for the modern sus;ar — one for the making
of mead, which was three times the price of beer ; the
other for the wax for candles used in the chief's house-
hold, and on the altar of the mass. 1 The lord of a
taeog had the right of buying up all his honey ; 2 and in
North Wales, according to the Venedotian Code, all
the honey of the king's aillts or taeogs was reserved for
the court. 3 The mead brewer was also an important
royal officer in all the three divisions of Wales.

It is not surprising, then, that the tribute of honey,
which formed so important a part of the Welsh
gwestva, should be retained as an item in the tribute
of the trevs of Gwent after their conquest by Harold.

V. EARLIER EVIDENCE OF THE PAYMENT OF WELSH
GWESTVA, OR FOOD-RENT.

From the combined evidence of the Domesday
Survey and the 'Ancient Laws of Wales,' the fact has
now been learned that in the eleventh century, as it
had done previously probably for 400 years, the river
Wye separated by a sharp line the Saxon land, on which
the manorial land system prevailed, from the Welsh
land, on which the Welsh tribal land system prevailed.
On the one side of the river, at the date of the Sur-
vey, clusters of scattered homesteads of free Welsh-
men contributed food-rents in the form of gwestva to
the conqueror of their chief, and taeogs their dawn-
bwyds. On the other side the villata of geneats
and geburs, besides paying gafol, performed servile
week-work upon the demesne lands of the lord of the

1 Ancient Laws, 8,-c, p. 326. 2 Id. p. 213. 3 Id. p. 92 (s. 5).

Early Welsh Evidence. 209

village or manor. It may be well, however, to seek Chap. vj.
for some earlier evidence of the payment of gwestva
on the Welsh side of the river.

Documentary evidence of the manorial system on
the Saxon side was forthcoming as early as the
seventh century, in the laws of King Ine. How far
back can documentary evidence be traced of the
Welsh system ?

In the possession of the church of Llandaff there The Book
was long preserved an ancient MS. of the Gospels in chtrtersof
Latin, called the Book of St. Chad. 1 This MS. tf»«ghtii

7 century

appears to date back to the eighth century. And it mention

rr ,. , , & . . food-rent.

was ior long the custom to enter on its margin a
record of solemn compacts sworn upon it, as in the
similar case of the Book of Deer. It thus happens to
contain (inter alia) two short records of grants to the
church of St. Teilo (or Llandaff). One of these gifts
is as follows : 2 —

' This writing showeth that Ris and the family of
' Grethi gave to God and St. Teilo, Treb guidauc. . .
' and this is its census : 40 loaves and a wether sheep
' in summer ; and in winter, 40 loaves, a hog, and 40
* dishes of butter. . . .'

Another is in these words : —

' This writing showeth that Eis and Hirv ....
' gave Bracma as far as Hirmain Guidauc^ from the
' desert of Gelli Irlath as far as Camdubr, its " hichet "
1 [food-rent ?], 3 score loaves and a wether sheep,

1 Liher Landavensis, p. 271,
App., and p, 615.

2 For the translation see p. 616.
For the original, p. 272, as follows :
' Ostendit ista scriptio quod de-
derunt Ris et luith Grethi Treb

guidauc i malitiduck Cimarguich,

et hie est census ejus, douceint
torth hamaharuin in irhain, hadu-
ceint torth in irgaem, ha liuch, ba
douceint rnannudenn deo et sancto
elindo. . . .

210 The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. « an( j a vessel of butter. Aud then follow the wit-

' nesses,' ]
Evidently Khys ap Ithael, the donor in these two cases, was

trevs. e ° S " king of the district of Glewyssig in the middle of the
ninth century, about the time of Alfred the Great.
Now, a king or chief would hardly be likely to transfer
to the church of Llandaff a free trev and the gwestva
paid therefrom. This would have involved the sever-
ance of free members of the tribe from the tribe, to put
them under an ecclesiastical lordship. We should ex-
pect then to find that the Trev ' Guidauc ' was a taeog-
trev on the chiefs own land, and according to the
description given in the grants, the census corresponds
not with the gwestva of a free trev under the Welsh
laws, but with the ' dawn-bwyd ' of the taeog-trev.

The food tribute in these grants was divided into
summer and winter payments, and so, as we have seen,
were the dawn-bwyds of the taeogs in the Welsh laws ;
the scores of loaves, the sow, the wether sheep, and
the tubs of butter, correspond also with the food-gifts
from the taeog-trevs, as described in the laws, though
with varying quantities. 2

These grants in the margin of the Book of St.
Chad may, therefore be taken as evidence that the
system of food -rents was prevalent in Wales in the
middle of the ninth century.
Survival There is still earlier evidence of the prevalence

customs in of the system of food-rents where we should little
expect to find it, viz., in the laws of King Ine. Ine
being King of Wessex, and Wessex shading off as it

1 For the translation see p. 617;
for Uie original, p. 272.

3 bee Leijea Wullice, ii. 14,

' De Daunbwyt ' [Dono Cibi]. An-
cient Luivs, i5)-c, of Widen, p. 700.

Early Welsh Evidence.

211

were into the old British districts both south and easl '"*'•• VI -
of the Severn, it was but natural that some old Welsh
or British customs should have survived in certain
places ; as Walisc men here and there survived
amongst the conquering English. These Welshmen
were allowed under Lie's laws to hold half-hides and
hides of land. We have only to examine the Domesday-
Survey for Gloucestershire and Herefordshire to find
traces even at that date of survivals of Welsh and
Saxon customs in exceptional cases, even outside
those districts which had only just been conquered.

In some places where Saxon customs had long
prevailed a little community of Welshmen remained
under Welsh customs. In other places the customs
were partly Welsh and partly English. 1

1 Fol. 162 b. ' In Cirencester
hundred King Edward had five
hides of land. In demesne v.
ploughs and xxxi. villani -with x.
ploughs, xiii. servi and x. bordaiii,
&c. The Queen has the wool of the
sheep. T. R. E. : this manor ren-
dered iii.i modii of corn, and of
barley iii. modii, and of honey vi.^
sextars, and ix.l. and v.s., and 3,000
loaves for dogs.'

This is very much like a sur-
vival of the Welsh food-rents at
one of the cities conquered by the
Saxons in 577.

In some other places out of
Archenfield there was a mixture of
Welsh and English customs.

The manor ofWestwode (f. 181)
was held by St. Peter of Glouces-
ter. It contained vi. hides, ' one
of which had Welsh custom, the
others English.' A Welshman in

this manor had half a carucate, and
rendered i. sextar of honey.

And at Clive (f. 179 b), 8 Welsh-
men had 8 teams, and rendered x.i
sextars of honey and vi.s. v.d., and
in the forest of the king was land
of this manor, which T. R. E. had
rendered vi. sextars of honey, and
vi. sheep with lambs.

These instances are sufficient to
show that in Herefordshire, as in
Gloucestershire, in the newly con-
quered districts, the old Welsh dues
of honey, sheep, &c, remained un-
disturbed ; while in the districts
which had long been under Saxon
rule, in some few cases there was a
mixture of services, and in others
the Saxon services of ploughing on
the lord's demesne had become
general.

It may be assumed that when
the services were thus described

212

The Tribal System.

Chap. vi. j n precisely tlie same way survivals such as these
Food-rents must have existed in King Ine's time. There must
intheiaws have been then, as 400 years afterwards, at the date
thp^" venth °f tne Survey, places in Wessex where Welshmen pre-
century. dominated and Welsh customs survived. There must
have been, in other words, manors which paid Welsh
gwestva instead of Saxon services. There is a remark-
able passage in King Ine's laws which can only be
thus explained. On the same page, and in the next
paragraph but two to the law about the yard-land
set to ' gafol ' and to ' weorc,' 1 there is a clause appa-
rently out of place, which begins abruptly with this
heading : ' ^Et x. hidum ro pcvprpe.' 2 In the Latin
version this is rendered ' De x. hides ad corredium.' 3
Now, there is a passage in a charter of Louis VII. of
France, anno 1157, given by Du Cange under the
word ' Corredium,' in which certain ' villas ' are
freed from the exaction of * quEedam convivia, quaa
vulgo Coreede vel Giste vocantur.' This definition
of corredium and of ' giste,' as a contribution of
food exacted from tenants, corresponds exactly to the
Welsh ' gwestva.' And the Saxon word fostre also
means food. So that this heading to the passage in
question may be translated — ' from x. hides paying
gwestva.' And so interpreted the following list be-

contrary to the usual routine of the
Domesday surveyors, it was because
there was something unusual about
them ; and that in the majority of
instances where Saxon customs pre-
vailed, no description was deemed
needful. Compare the Domesday
survey of Dorsetshire — a portion
of the ' West Wales ' — where the

manors in the royal demesne are
grouped SO that each group renders
a 'firma unius noctis,' or a ' firma
dimidite noctis.'

1 Laws of Ine, No. G7. Thorpe,
p. G3.

2 Id. No. 70. Thorpe, p. 63.

3 Id. p. 504.

Early Welsh Evidence. 213

comes perfectly intelligible, for it describes what the Cap. vi.
gwestva consisted of.

From 10 hides —
x. dolia of honey,
ccc. loave3.

xii. amphora of Welsh ale.
xxx. of clear [do.]
ii. oxen or x. wethers.
x. geese.
xx. hens.
x. cheeses.

A full amphora of butter.
v. salmons of xx. pounds weight.
c. eels.

Now, if the system of gwestva payment or food-rent
described in this passage of the laws of King Ine be
evidence of the survival of the Welsh custom after
the Saxon conquest, it is at the same time equally
clear documentary evidence of the seventh century
that the system of gwestva or food-rents was prevalent
outside Wales in the west of Britain before the Saxon
conquest. 1

1 For much curious information I tenures, see Taylor's History of
respecting the Welsh system of I Gavel-kind. London. 1003.

CHAPTEE VH.

THE TRIBAL SYSTEM {continued),

I. THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN IRELAND AND SCOTLAND.

Chap. VII.

Irish land
divisions
closely
resemble
the Welsh.

The Welsh evidence brings us back to a period
parallel with the Saxon era marking the date of King
Ine's laws. The Welsh land system was then clearly-
distinguished from the Saxon by the absence of the
manor with its village community in serfdom, and by
the presence instead of it of the scattered homesteads
(tyddyns) of the tribesmen and taeogs, grouped to-
gether for the purpose of the payment to the chief of
the food-rents, or their money equivalents.

Further light may possibly be obtained from obser-
vation of the tribal system in a still earlier economic
stage, though at a much later date, in Ireland.

Now, first — without going out of our depth as we
might easily do in the Irish evidence — it may readily
be shown, sufficiently for the present purpose, that
the system of land divisions, or rather of the group-
ing of homesteads into artificial clusters with arith-
metical precision, was prevalent in Ireland outside
the Pale as late as the times of Queen Elizabeth and

The Irish Evidence. 215

James L, when an effort was made to substitute Chap.vu.

English for Irish customs and laws.

There are extant several surveys of parts of Ire-
land of that date in which are to be recognised
arrangements of homesteads almost precisely similar
to those of the Welsh Codes. And further, the
names of the tenants being given, we can see that
they were blood relations like the Welsh tribesmen,
with a carefully preserved genealogy guarding the
fact of their relationship and consequent position in
the tribe.

The best way to realise this fact may be to turn
to actual examples.

According to an inquisition l made of the county of
Fermanagh in 1 James I. (1603), the county was
found to be divided into seven equal baronies, the
description of one of which may be taken as a
sample.

'The temporal land -within this barony is all equally divided into Clusters cf
7\ huUybetagh.es [literally victuallers' towns, 2 or units for purposes of the iaifl< " ?
food-rents like the Welsh trevs], each containing 4 quarters, each of & ^ ne
those quarters containing 4 tathes [corresponding with the "Welsh
tyddyns'], and each of those tathes aforesaid to be 30 acres country
measure.'

Of ' spiritual lands ' there are two parish churches, one having 4 quar-
ters, the other 1 quarter.

Also there are 'other small freedoms containing small parcels of land,
eome belonging to the spiritualty, and others being part of the memal
lands allotted to Macgwire (the chief).'

This exactly corresponds with the arrangement
for the purposes of the gwestva of the Welsh tyddyns
in groups of 4 and 16, as in the Venedotian Code.

1 Inquisitiones Cancellarice Hi-
hernia, ii. xxx. iii.

2 Proceedings of the Royal Irish

Academy, vii. p. xiv., p. 474. Paper
by the Rev. W. Reeves, D.U.

21G

The Tribal System.

Chap. VII.

Exnmple
in Co.
Monaghan.

There is also a Survey of County Monaghan in
33 Elizabeth l (1591), in which the names of the
holders of the tates in each bailebiatagh, or group of
16, are given. Thus, again, to take a
example, —

single

Balleclonangre, a ballibeatacb containing xvi. tates.

To Breine McCabe Fitz Alexander
„ Edrnond McCabe Fitz Alexander
„ Cormocke McCabe .
„ Breine Kiagb McCabe
„ Edmond boy, McCabe
„ Rosse McCabe McMelagken
„ Gilpatric McCowla McCabe
„ Toole McAlexander McCabe
„ James McTirlogh McCabe
„ Arte McMelaghlin Dale McMabon

5 tates.

1 tate.

2 tates.

1 tate.

1 „

1 ,,

1 n
_1_ „
16

A fresh survey of the same district was made by
Sir John Davies in 1607 ; 2 the record for this same
bailebiatagh is as follows : —

II. Lissenarte.
2. Cremoyle.
3. Sharagbanadan.
4. Nealoste.
5. Tirebannely.

Patrick M'Edniond M'Cabe Fitz- Alexander, in) „ n , . ,

' [ 6. Curleigne.
demesne, 1 tate

Cormock M'Cabe, in demesne, 2 tates .
Rosse M'Arte Moyle, in demesne, 2 tates .
James M'Edniond boy M'Cabe, in demesne, 1

7. Aghenelogh.

8. Derraghlin.

Ben age.
Cowlerasack.

f 9 '
110.

tate

11. Tolladieisce.

Colloe M'Art Oge M'Mabowne, in demesne, l), n -n.

' fl2. Dromegeryne.

tate v . . , , . . }

1 Inqumtiones Cancellarice Jii-
bernite, ii. p. xxi.

2 Calendar of State Papers, Ire-
land, 1006-8, p. 170.

The Irish Evidence. 217

Patrick M'Art Oge M'Mahowne, in regard there \ Cnw. V] I

is good hope of his honest deserts, and that i no ~

., ,. . , . ,. i ■ ... .' , M3. Corevanane.

the farst patentee disclaimeth, in demesne, 1 1

tate j

Toole M'Toole M' Alexander M'Cabe, in demesne, ) , . „,

ltate fl4. Turrgher.

James M'Tirleogh M'Cabe, in demesne, 1 tate . 15.

Brian M'Art Oge M'Mahowne, in demesne, 1) 7 „
tate J

Now, by comparison' it will be seen that at botli
dates there were sixteen tates in the bailebiatagh, and relations.
that the holders were evidently blood relations. In
some cases the name of a son takes the place of his
father (the genealogy being kept up), and in others
new tenants appear.

There is also reason to suppose that these tates Thotates
were family homesteads (like the tyddyns of the holdings.
Welsh ' family land '), with smaller internal divisions,
and embracing a considerable number of lesser house-
holds. The fact that one person only is named as
holding the tate, or the two tates, as the case may
be, suggests that he is so named as the common an-
cestor or head of the chief household representing all
the belongings to the tate. Within the tate the sub-
division of land seems to have been carried to an
indefinite extent. The following extract from Sir
John Davies' report will probably give the best
account of the actual and, to his eye, somewhat con-
fused condition of things within the tates, as he found
them. It relates to the county of Fermanagh, and is
in the form of a letter to the Earl of Salisbury, dated
1607 r 1 —

1 Appended to Sir John Davies' Discovery, of Ireland, in some of the

early editions.

218 The Tribal System.

Chap. VII. For the several possessions of all these lands we took this course to find
; them out, and set thein down for his lordship's information. We called

•J 1 .°, n unto us the inhabit ants of every barony severally. . . We had present cer-
description ^ am of the clerks or scholars of the country, who know all the septs and
of the families, and all their branches, and the dignity 1 of one sept above another,

Bepts. an( j w h a t families or persons tvere chief of every sept, and who were next,

and who were of a third rank, and so forth, till they descended to the most
inferior man in all the baronies ; moreover, they took upon them to tell
what quantity of land every man ought to have by the custom of their
country, which is of the nature of gavelkind. Whereby, as their
septs or families did multiply, their possessions have been from time to
time divided and subdivided and broken into so many small parcels as
almost every acre of land hath a several owner, which termeth himself a
lord, and his portion of land his country : notwithstanding, as McGuyre
himself had a chief ry over all the country, and some demesnes that did
ever pass to him only who carried that title ; so was there a chief of
every sept who had certain services, duties, or demesnes, that ever
passed to the tannist of that sept, and never was subject to division.
When this was understood, we first inquired whether one or more septs
did possess that barony which we had in hand. That being set down,
we took the names of the chief parties of the sept or septs that did pos-
sess the baronies, and also the names of such as were second in them, and
so of others that were inferior unto them again in rank and in possessions.
Then, whereas every barony containeth seven ballibetaghs and a half, we
caused the name of every ballibetagh to be written down ; and there-
upon we made inquiry what portion of land or services every man held
in every ballibetagh, beginning with such first as had land and services ;
and after naming such as had the greatest quantity of land, and so de-
scending unto such as possess only two taths ; then we stayed, for lower
we could not go, 2 because we knew the purpose of the State was only to
establish such freeholders as are fit to serve on juries; at least, we had
found by experience in the county of Monaghan that such as had less than
two taths allotted to them had not 40s. freehold per annum ultra repri-
salem ; and therefore were not of competent ability for that service ; and
yet the number of freeholders named in the county was above 200.

Sir John Davies, in the same report, also gives a
graphic description of the difficulty he had in ob-

1 Compare the words of Tacitus,
' Agri pro numero cultorum ab uni-
versis vicis occupantur, quos rucx
inter se secundum dignationem par-

2 In Monaghan Sir J. Davies
had found tates with GO acres each.
Here there were only 80 acres in
a tate, so he kept to his old rule,

tiuntur. Germania, xxvi. j and took 2 tates as his lowest unit

The Irish Evidence.

219

taming from the aged Brehon of the district the roll Ohap.vh.
on which were inscribed the particulars of the various
holdings, including those on the demesne or mensal
land of the chief. 1

It is difficult to form a clear conception of what
the tribes, septs, and families were, and what were
their relations to one another. But for the present
purp.ose it is sufficient to understand that a sept con-
sisted of a number of actual or reputed blood relations,
bearing the same family names, and bound together by
other and probably more artificial ties, such as com-
mon liability for the payment of eric, or blood fines.

A curious example of what is virtually an actual
sept is found in the State Papers of James I.

In 1606 a sept of the ' Grames,' under their Example
chief 'Walter, the gude man of Netherby,' being beriand
troublesome on the Scottish border, were trans- 8ept *
planted from Cumberland to Eoscommon ; and in
the schedule to the articles arranging for this transfer,
it appears that the sept consisted of 124 persons,
nearly all bearing the surname of Grame. They
were divided into families, seventeen of which were
set down as possessed of 201. and upwards, four of
10/. and upwards, six of the poorer sort, six of no
abilities, while as dependants there were four servants
of the name of Grame, and about a dozen of irregular
hangers on to the sept. 2

The sept was a human swarm. The chief was
the Queen Bee round whom they clustered. The
territory occupied by a whole sept was divided

1 This may be found also in
Ancient Laws of Ireland, iii. Pre-
face, xxxv. G.

2 Calendar of State Paper*, Irc-
land, 1603-G, p. 554; and 1606 8,
p. 492.

220

The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. among the inferior septs which had swarmed off it.
And a sort of feudal relation prevailed between the
parent and the inferior septs.

There can probably, on the whole, be no more
correct view of the Irish tribal system in its essence
and spirit than the simple generalisation made by
Sir John Davies himself, from the various and, in
some sense, inconsistent and entangled facts which
bewildered him in detail. 1

First, as regards the chiefs, whether of tribes or
septs, and their demesne lands, he writes : 2 —

' 1. By the Irish custom of tanistry the chieftains of every country
and the chief of every sept had no longer estate than for life in their
chieferies, the inheritance whereof did rest in no man. And these
chieferies, though they had some portions of land allotted unto them, did
consist chiefly in cuttings and coscheries and other Irish exactions,
whereby they did spoil and impoverish the people at their pleasure. And
when their chieftains were dead their sons or next heirs did not succeed
them, hut their tanists, who were elective, and purchased their elections
by show of hands.'

Next, as to tribesmen and their inferior tenan-

Tho chiefs
and the
tanists.

Division of
holdings
among
tribesmen.

cies

' 2. And by the Irish custom of gavelkind the inferior tenancies were
partible amongst all the males of the sept ; and after partition made, if
any one of the sept had died his portion was not divided among his sons,
but the chief of the sept made a new partition of all the lands belonging
to that sept, and gave every one his part according to his antiquity.'

The These two Irish customs (Sir John Davies con-

andcha""- tinues) made all their possessions uncertain, being
mg'and shuffled and changed and removed so often from one

frequent °

redibtribu- to another, by new elections and partitions, ' which

tioiis.

uncertainty of estates hath been the true cause of
desolation and barbarism in this land.'

1 The evidence by which he
was gradually informed may be
traced in detail in the above-men-

tioned Calendars.

2 Sir John Davies' Discovery
of Ireland, 1012, pp. 167 et seq.

The Irish Evidence.

22]

These were obviously the main features oi an Ci.m-.vii.
earlier stage of the tribal system than we have seen
in Wales. It was the system which fitted easily into
the artificial land divisions and clusters of home-
steads. And this method of clustering homesteads,
in its turn, not only facilitated, but even made possible
those frequent redistributions which mark this early
stage of the tribal system.

The method of artificial clustering was apparently
widely spread through Ireland, as we found it in the
various divisions of Wales.

It also was ancient; for according to an early Thei
poem, supposed by Dr. Sullivan l to belong ' in sub-
stance though not in language to the sixth or seventh
century,' Ireland was anciently divided into 184
' Tricha Ceds ' (30 hundreds [of cows]), each of which
contained 30 bailes (or townlands) ; 5,520 bailes in
all.

The baile or townland is thus described : —

' A baile sustains 300 cows,
Four full herds therein may roam.

The poem describes the bailes (or townlands) as and pas-
divided into 4 quarters, i.e, a quarter for each of the
4 herds of 75 cows each.

The poem further explains that the baile or town- Baiiys and
land was equal to 12 ' seisrighs' (by some translated quai
' plough-lands '), and that the latter land measure is 120
acres, 2 making the quarter equal to three ' seisrighs '

1 Manners and Customs of the
Ancient Irish, E. O'Curry. Dr.
Sullivan's Introduction, p. xcvi.
See also Skene's Celtic Scotland,

iii. 154.

2 Skene, iii. 155.
p. xcii.

Sullivan,

222

The Tribal System.

Chap. vn. or 360 acres. But this latter mode of measurement
is probably a later innovation introduced with the
growth of arable farms. The old system was division
into quarters, and founded on the prevalent pastoral
habits of the people. In the earliest records Con-
naught is found to be divided into ballys, and the
ballys into quarters, which were generally distinguished
by certain mears and bounds. 1 The quarters were
sometimes called ' cartrons,' but in other cases the
cartron was the quarter of a quarter, i.e. a ' tate.'
O'Kelly's county in 1589 was found to contain 665J
quarters of 120 acres each. 2

Lastly, it may be mentioned that in the re-allot-
ment of the lands in Eoscommon to the sept of the
Grames on their removal from Cumberland each family
of the better class was to receive a quarter of land
containing 120 acres. 3

The evidence as regards Scotland is scanty, but
Mr. Skene, in his interesting chapter on ' the tribe in
' Scotland,' has collected together sufficient evidence to
show that the tribal organisation in the Gaelic dis-
tricts was closely analogous to that in Ireland. 4
and in the There are also indications that the Isle of Man was
Man" anciently divided into ballys and quarters. 5

The system
in Scotland

1 Skene, iii. 158, quoting a tract
published in the appendix to Tribes
and Customs of Ily Fiachraich, p.
453.

2 Id. p. 160, quoting the Tribes
and Customs of Hy Many.

3 Calendars of State Papers, Ire-
land, 1606-8, pp. 491-2.

4 Skene's Celtic Scotland, iii. c.

vi.

6 In a poem of the sixteenth

century (1507-22), in Manks, given
in Train's Isle of Man, i. p. 50,
occur the lines —

' Ayns dagh treen Bailey ren eh
unnane
D'an sleih shen ayn dy beet dy
gbuee,'

alluding to St. Germain ; trans-
lated thus by Mr. Train : —

The Irish Evidence.

223

The old tribal division of the ballys into ■ quar-
ters ' and * tates ' has left distinct and numerous tra<M B
in the names of the present townlands in Ireland.

Annexed is an example of an ancient bally divided
into quarters. It is taken from the Ordnance Survey
of county Galway. Two of the quarters, now town-
lands, still bear the names of ' Cartron ' and ' Carrow,'
or 'Quarter,' as do more than 600 townlands in
various parts of Ireland. 1 This example will show
that the quarters were actual divisions.

Scattered over the bally were the sixteen ' tates '
or homesteads, four in each quarter ; and in some
counties — Monaghan especially — they are still to be
traced as the centres of modern townlands, which bear
the names borne by the ' tates ' three hundred years
ago, as registered in Sir John Davies' survey. There
is still often to be found in the centre of the modern
townland the circular and partly fortified enclosure 2
where the old ' tate ' stood, and the lines of the pre-
sent divisions of the fields often wind themselves
round it in a way which proves that it was once their
natural centre.

Moreover, the names of the ' tates ' still preserved
in the present townlands bear indirect witness to the

Chap.vh.

' For each four quarterlands he
made a chapel
For people of them to meet in
prayer.'

For the ' quarterlands ' see Statute
of the Tinwald Court, 1645. Also
Feltham's Tour, Manx Society, p.
41, &c.

1 That in many cases the quar-

ters had become townlands as early
as the year 1683, see Tribes and
Customs of Hy Many, Introd.p. 454.
See also Dr. Reeve's paper ' On the
Townland Distribution of Ireland,'
Proceedings of the JRoyal Irish
Academy, 1861, vol. vii. p. 483.

2 Many thousands of these cir-
cular enclosures are marked on the
Ordnance Map of Ireland.

Chap. VII.

2tU The Tribal System.

reality of the old tribal redistributions and shillings
of the households from one ' tate ' to another. They
seldom are compounded of personal names. They
generally are taken from some local natural feature.
The homestead was permanent. The occupants were
shifting.

Again, an example taken from the Ordnance Sur-
vey — from county Monaghan — will most clearly illus-
trate these points, and help the reader to appreciate
the reality of the tribal arrangements.

In the survey of the barony of ' Monoughan ' 1
made in 1607, the ' half ballibetogh called Correskallie '
is described as containing eight ' tates,' the Irish
names of which are recorded. They are given below,
and an English translation of the names is added 2 in
brackets to illustrate their peculiar and generally
non-personal character.

Tn the half ballibetogh called Correskallie (Round Hill of the Story-
tellers) —

f Corneskelfee (? Correskallie).
J Correvolen (Round Hill of the Mill).
4 tates < Corredull (Round HiU of the Black Fort),
t Aghelick (Field of the Badger).
f Dromore (the Great Ridge).
J Killaghamane (Wood of the Heap).
4 tates < Fedowe ( Black Wood).

( Clonelolane (Lonan's Meadow).

A reduced map of this ancient ' half-ballibetogh,'
as it appears now on the large Ordnance Survey, is
appended, in which the names of the old ' tates '
appear, with but little change, in the modern town-
lands. The remains of the circular enclosures mark-

1 Calendars of State Papers, I 2 Taken from Shirley's Hist of
Ireland. 1607, p. 170. I Monayhan, part iv. pp. 480-482.

ff-

**%

.-■£'"

.GRAHAM t_ r -

The Irish Evidence. 225

ing the sites of the old ' tates' are still to be traced Chap.vji

in one or two cases. The acreage of eacli townland
is given on the map in English measures. It will be
remembered that in Monaghan 60 Irish acres were
allotted to each tate instead of the usual 30.

This evidence will be sufficient to prove that the
arithmetical clustering of the homesteads was real, and
that, as in Wales, so in Ireland, under the tribal sys-
tem the homesteads were scattered over the country,
and not grouped together in villages and towns. 1

Passing to the methods of agriculture, it is obvious,
that, even in a pastoral state, the growth of corn
cannot be wholly neglected. We have seen that in
Wales there was agriculture, and that, so far as it ex-
tended, the ploughing was conducted on an open-
field system, and by joint-ploughing.

It was precisely so also in Ireland, and it had been
from time immemorial.

It is stated in the ' Book of the Dun Cow ' (Lebor Openfioids.
na Huidre), compiled in the seventh century by the
Abbot of Clanmacnois, known to us in an Irish MS. of
the year 1100, that ' there was not a ditch, nor fence,
' nor stone wall round land till came the period of the
' sons of Aed Slane [in the seventh century], but only
' smooth fields.' Add to this the passage pointed out
by Sir H. S. Maine 2 in the ' Liber Hymnorum ' (a MS.
probably of the eleventh century), viz. —

1 ' Neither did any of them in
all this time plant any gardens or
orchards, enclose or improve their
lands, live together in settled vil-
lages or towns.' — Discovert/ of Ire-
land, p. 170. Compare this with
the description of the Germans
by Tacitus. It was, as Sir John

Davies remarks, a condition of
things ' to be imputed to those
[tribal] customs which made their
estates so uncertain and transitory
in their possessions ' (id.).

2 Early History of Institutions
p. 113.

226

Tlie Tribal System.

Chap. VII.

The run-
rig or
Hundale
system in
Ireland
and Scot-
land.

' Very numerous were the inhabitants of Ireland at this time [the
time of the sons of Aed Slane in the seventh century], and their number
was so great that they only received in the partition 3 lots of 9 ridges
[immaire] of land, namely 9 ridges of bog land, 9 of forest, and 9 of
arable land.'

Taking these two passages together, and noting
that the word for ' ridges ' (immaire) is the same word
(imire, or iomair x ) now used in Gaelic for a ridge of
land, and that the recently remaining system of strips
and balks in Ireland and Scotland is still known as
the 'run-rig ' system, it becomes clear that whatever
there was of arable land in any particular year lay in
open fields divided into ridges or strips.

There are, further, some passages in the Brelion
Laws which show that at least among the lower
grades of tribesmen there was joint-ploughing. And
this arose not simply from 'joint-tenancy' of un-
divided land by co-heirs, 2 but from the fact that the
tribesmen of lower rank only possessed portions of
the requisites of a plough, 3 just as was the case with
Welsh tribesmen and the Saxon holders of yard-lands.

There can be little doubt, therefore, that we must
picture the households of tribesmen occupying the
four ' tates ' in each ' quarter ' as often combining
to produce the plough team, and as engaged to some
extent in joint-ploughing.

1 Skene's Celtic Scotland, iii. p.
381.

2 As to joint-tenancy between
co-heirs, see tract called ' Judg-
ments of Co-tenancy.' Brehon
Laws, iv. pp. 09 et seq.

3 See the tract ' Crith Gablach.'
Brehon Laws, iv. pp. 300 et seq.
One grade has ' a fourth part of a
ploughing apparatus, i.e. an ox, a
plough-straw, a goad, and a bridle '

(p. 307) ; another ' half the means
of ploughing' (p. 309) ; another 'a
perfect plough ' (p. 311) ; and so on.
And the size of their respective
houses and the amount of their food-
rent is graduated also according to
their rank in the tribal hierarchy.
There is a reference to ' tillage in
common ' in the ' Senchus Mor.'
Brelion Laws, iii. p. 17.

The Irish Evidence.

227

At first, what little agriculture was needful would Ohap.YH
be, like the Welsh 'coaration of the waste,' the joint-
ploughing of grass land, which after the year's crop,
or perhaps three or four years' crop, would go back
into grass. 1 But it would seem from the passa
quoted above, that the whole quarter of normally
120 Irish acres was at first divided into 'ridges' —
possibly Irish acres — to facilitate the allotment
among the households not only of that portion which
was arable for the year, but also of the shares in the
bog and the forest. No doubt originally there was
plenty of mountain pasture besides the thirty, or
sometimes sixty scattered acres or ridges allotted in

1 The following appeared in the
dthenceum, March 3, 1883, under
the signature of Mr. Q. L. Gornme :
— ' The 312 acres in possession of
the Corporation of Kells (co. Meath)
are divided into six fields, and thus
used. The fields are broken up in
rotation one at a time, and tilled
during four years. Before the field
is broken the members of the Cor-
poration repair to it with a sur-
veyor, and it is marked out into
equal lots, according to the existing
number of resident members of the
body. Each resident freeman gets
one lot, each portreeve and bur-
gess two lots, and the deputy sove-
reign five lots. A portion of the
field, generally five or six acres, is
set apart for letting, and the rent
obtained for it is applied to pay the
tithes and taxes of the entire. The
members hold their lots in severalty
for four years and cultivate them as
they please, and at the expiration

of the fourth year the field is laid
down with grass and a new one is
broken, when a similar process of
partition takes place. The other
five fields are in the interim in pas-
ture, and the right of depasturing
them is enjoyed by the members of
the Corporation in the same pro-
portion as they hold the arable
land ; that is to say, the deputy
sovereign grasses five heads of
cattle (called " bolls ") for every
two grazed by the portreeves and
burgesses, and for every one grazed
by the freemen ; with this modifi-
cation, however, that the widow of
a burgess enjoys a right of grazing
to the same extent as a freeman,
and the vaidow of a freeman to half
that extent. The widows do not
obtain any portions of the field in
tillage. I should note that the first
charter of incorporation to Kells
dates from Richard I.'

ft2

228 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. ' run-rig ' to each ' tate ' or household. In the
seventh century, as we have seen, the complaint was
made that the pressure of population had reduced
the shares to twenty-seven ridges instead of thirty.

Finally, when we examine in the Highlands of
Scotland as well as in Ireland the still remaining
custom known as the ' Rundale ' or ' run-rig ' system,
whereby a whole townland or smaller area is held
in common by the people of the village, and shared
among them in rough equality by dividing it up into
a large number of small pieces, of which each holder
takes one here and another there ; we see before us
in Scotland as in Ireland a survival of that custom of
scattered ownership which belonged to the open-field
system all the world over ; whilst we mark again the
absence of the yard-land, which was so constant a
feature of the English system. The method is even
applied to potato ground, where the spade takes the
place of the plough ; and thus instead of the strip, or
acre laid out for ploughing, there is the ' patch '
which so often marks the untidy Celtic townland.

Existing maps of townlands, whilst showing very
clearly the practice still in vogue of subdividing a
holding by giving to each sharer a strip in each of
the scattered parcels of which the old holding con-
sisted, hardly retain traces of the ancient division of
the whole ' quarter ' into equal ridges or acres. But
they show very clearly the scattered ownership which
has been so tenaciously adhered to, along with the old
tribal practice of equal division among male heirs.
An example of a modern townland is annexed, which
will illustrate these interesting points. The confusion
it presents will also illustrate the inherent incompati-

I
3 of >►/,. ■
•',.„„ (/ , different .

Sanample of divisions and TuiUinpt in •• TSawnTanH, antheBaofli^sysdan t
/7Y>/7i Report of Devon Gmtmissicm.see L<<t\i Thif&vi.'s&iAEinujratwn \

i .-. ,,.

.y trSork&Bombm

The Irish Evidence. 229

bility in a settled district of equal division among Ohap.vh
heirs with anything like the yard-land, or bundle of
equal strips handed down unchanged from generation
to generation.

Mr. Skene, in his interesting chapter on the ' Land
Tenure in the Highlands and Islands,' 1 has brought
together many interesting facts, and has drawn a
vivid picture of local survivals of farming communi-
ties pursuing their agriculture on the run-rig system,
and holding their pasture land in common. And the
traveller on the west coast of Scotland cannot fail to
find among the crofters many examples of modified
forms of joint occupation in which the methods of the
run-rig system are more or less applied even to newly
leased land at the present time.

Thus whilst the tribal system seems to be the
result mainly of the long-continued habits of a pas-
toral people, it could and did adapt itself to arable
agriculture, and it did so on the lines of the open
field system in a very simple form, extemporised
wherever occasion required, becoming permanent
when the tribe became settled on a particular territory.

Eeturning now to the main object of the inquiry The Irish
we seem, in the perhaps to some extent superficial and system in
too simple view taken by Sir John Davies of the Irish stagou'ian
tribal arrangements, to have found what we sought — the Welsh.
to have got a glimpse in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries of an earlier stage in the working of the
tribal system than we get in Wales nearly 1,000
years earlier. In this stage the land in theory was still
in tribal ownership, its redistribution among the tribes-

1 Celtic Scotland, iii. c. x. See I the Estate of Sutherland.' By James
also 'Account of Improvements on | Locb. London, 1826.

230 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. men was still frequent, and arable agriculture was
still subordinate to pasture. Lastly, the arithmetical
clustering of the homesteads was the natural method
by which the frequent redistributions of the land
were made easy ; while the run-rig form of the open-
field system was the natural mode of conducting a
co-operative and shifting agriculture.

But whilst gaining this step, and resting upon it
for our present purpose, we must not be blind to the
fact that in another way the Irish system had become
more developed and more complex than the Welsh.

Sir John Davies sometimes dwells upon the fact
that the chief was in no true sense the lord of the
county, and the tribesmen in no true sense the free-
holders of the land. The land belonged to the tribe.
But, as we have seen, he found also that, as in Wales,
the chiefs and sub-chiefs had, as a matter of fact,
rightly or wrongly, gradually acquired a permanent
occupation of a certain portion of land — so many
townlands — which, using the English manorial phrase,
he speaks of as ' in demesne' Upon these the chief's
immediate followers, and probably bondservants,
lived, like the Welsh taeogs, paying him food-rents
or tribute very much resembling those of the taeogs.
The com- This land, as we have seen, he calls ' mensal land'

described probably translating an Irish term ; and we are re-
Brchon minded at once of the Welsh taeog-land in the Regis-
Laws. t er trevs, which also, from the gifts of food, was called
in one of the Welsh laws * mensal land.'

Further, besides these innovations upon the
ancient simplicity of the tribal system, there had
evidently, and perhaps from early times, grown up
artificial relationships, founded upon contract, or even

The Irish Evidence. 231

fiction, which, so to speak, ran across and complicated Chap. vii.
very greatly the tribal arrangements resting upon
blood relationship. This probably is what makes the
Brehon laws so bewildering and apparently inconsist-
ent with the simplicity of the tribal system as in its
main features it presented itself to Sir John Davies.

The loan of cattle by those tribesmen (Boaires)
who had more than enough to stock their proper share
of the tribe land to other tribesmen who had not cattle
enough to stock theirs, in itself introduced a sort of
semi-feudal, or perhaps semi-commercial dependence
of one tribesman upon another. Tribal equality, or
rather gradation of rank according to blood relation-
ship, thus became no doubt overlaid or crossed by an
actual inequality, which earlier or later developed in
some sense into an irregular form of lordship and
service. Hence the complicated rules of ' Saer ' and
' Daer ' tenancy. There were perhaps also artificial
modes of introducing new tribesmen into a sept with-
out the blood relationship on which the tribal system
was originally built. These complications may be
studied in the Brehon laws, as they have been studied
by Sir Henry Maine and Mr. Skene, and the learned
editors of the ' Laws ' themselves ; but, however
ancient may be the state of things which they de-
scribe, they need not detain us here, or prevent our
recognising in the actual conditions described by Sir
John Davies the main features of an earlier stage of
the system than is described in the ancient Welsh laws.

II. THE TRIBAL SYSTEM IN ITS EARLIER STAGES.

The comparison of the Gaelic and Cymric tribal
systems has shown resemblances so close in leading

232 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. principles, that we may safely seek to obtain from
some of the differences between them a glimpse into
earlier stages of the tribal system than the Welsh
evidence, taken alone, would have opened to our view.
Outside in- Two powerful influences had evidently already
Rome, ' partially arrested the tribal system in Wales, and
it yi md"" turned it as it were against its natural bent into fixed
£sticai e " an( ^ nar °^ enec ^ grooves, before it assumed the shape in
system. which it appears in the Welsh laws. These two
powerful influences were (1) Eoman rule and (2)
Christianity. Their first action was to some extent
exercised singly and apart, though concurrently in
point of time. But their separate influences were
afterwards surpassed and consolidated by the remark-
able combination of them both which was presented
in the ecclesiastical system.

The influences of Christianity, and of the later
ecclesiastical system, were powerfully exerted in
Ireland also ; but the Irish tribal system differed
from the Welsh in its never having passed directly
under Eoman imperial rule.

The Brehon laws of Ireland perhaps owe their
form and origin to the necessity of moulding the old
traditional customs to the new Christian standard
of the ecclesiastics, under whose eye the codification
was made. So, also, the Welsh laws of Howell the
Good, and the Saxon laws of Ine and his successors,
all reflect and bear witness to this influence, and had
been no doubt moulded by it into softer forms
than had once prevailed. At least the harshest thorns
which grew, we may guess, even rankly upon the tribal
system, must, we may be sure, have been already
removed before our first view of it.

Its Earlier Stages. 233

In fact, nearly all the early codes, whether those of ClIAI '- Vil -
Ireland, Wales, or England, or those of German tribes
on the Continent, bear marks of a Christian influence,
either directly impressed upon them by ecclesiastical
authorship and authority, or indirectly through con-
tact with the Eoman law, which itself in the later
edicts contained in the Codes of Theodosius and
Justinian had undergone evident modification in a
Christian sense.

So far as the Welsh tribal system is concerned, it
is quite clear that whatever had been the influence
upon it of direct Eoman imperial rule and early
Christianity, it submitted to a second and fresh in-
fluence in the tenth century.

This appears when we consider the avowed motives
and object of Howell the Good in making his code.
Its preface recites that he ' found the Cymry per-
verting the laws and customs, and therefore sum-
moned from every cymwd of his kingdom six men
practised in authority and jurisprudence ; and also
the archbishop, bishops, abbots, and priors, imploring
grace and discernment for the king to amend the
laws and customs of Cymru.' It goes on to say that,
' by the advice of these wise men, the king retained
some of the old laws, others he amended, others
he abolished entirely, establishing new laws in their
place;' special pains being taken to guard against
doing anything ' in opposition to the law of the Church
or the law of the Emperor.' 1

Finally, it is stated in the same preface that Howell
the Good went to Eome to confirm his laws by papal

1 Ancient Laws, &c., of Wales, p. IGo.

division
among
male heirs
survives

234 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. authority, a.d. 914, and died a.d. 940. It may be
added that the reference to the ' law of the Emperor'
was no fiction, for ' Blegewryd, Archdeacon of Llandav,
' was the clerk, and he was a doctor in the law of the

* Emperor and in the law of the Church.'

The tribal In connexion with this ecclesiastical influence

there is a curious exception which proves the rule,
in the refusal of Howell the Good to give up the tribal

these in- Yu \ e f equal division among sons, which lay at the

fluences.

root of the tribal system, and to introduce in its place
the law of primogeniture.

' The ecclesiastical law says that no son is to have the patrimony
but the eldest born to the father by the married wife : the law of
Howell, however, adjudges it to the youngest son as well as to the oldest,
[i.e. all the sons] and decides that sin of the father or his illegal act is
not to be brought against a son as to his patrimony.' '

And so tenaciously was this tribal rule adhered to
that even Edward L, after his conquest of Wales, was
obliged for the sake of peace to concede its continu-
ance to the Welsh, insisting only that none but lawful
sons should share in the inheritance. 2

The fixing of the gwestva dues, and their commu-
tation into the tunc pound from every free trev, may
well have been one of the emendations needful to
bring the Welsh laws into correspondence with the
' law of the Emperor,' if it was not indeed the result
of direct Eoman rule, under which the chiefs paid a
fixed tributum to the Eoman State, possibly founded
on the tribal food-rent. 3

1 The Venedotian Code. An- , Laws, p. 872.

dent Laws, fyc, p. 86. s The pound of 12 ounces of

2 See the last clause in the 20 pence used in codes of South

• Statuta de J&othelan? Record of j Wales seems to have been the
Carnarvon, pp. 128-9, and Ancient ' pound used in Gaul in Roman

Its Earlier Stages.

230

The special Welsh laws which relieve the free Chu-.vh
trevs of ' family land ' from being under the maer (or Buty~~
villicus) and canchellor, and from hjlch (or progress), •*J 5tioM
and from dovraeth (or having the king's officers quar- license on

i , v t ° ,. . , . , ' the pari of

tered upon them), and even limit the right of the thochiofs.
maer and canchellor to quarter on the taeogs to three
times a year with three followers, and their share in
the royal dues from the taeogs to one-third of the
daiunbwyds? look very much like restrictions of old
and oppressive customs resembling those prevalent in
Ireland in later times, made with the intention of
bringing the tribesmen and even the taeogs within the
protection of rules similar to those in the Theodosian
Code protecting the coloni on Eoman estates.

The probability, therefore, is that the picture
drawn by Sir John Davies of the lawless exactions
of the Irish chieftain from the tribesmen of his sept
would apply also to early Welsh and British chieftains
before the influence of Christianity and later Eoman
law, through the Church, had restrained their harsh-
ness, and limited their originally wild and lawless exac-
tions from the tribesmen. The legends of the Liber
Landavensis contain stories of as wild and unbridled
license and cruelty on the part of Welsh chieftains as
are recorded in the ancient stories of the Irish tribes.
And Cassar records that the chiefs of Gallic tribes had
so oppressively exacted their dues (probably food-
rents), that they had reduced the smaller people almost
into the condition of slaves.

times. ' Juxta Gallos vigesima
pars uncise denarius est et duode-
cira denarii solidum reddunt . . .
duodecim uncitB libram xx. solidos
continentem efficiunt. Sed veteres

solidum qui nunc aureus dicitur
nuncupabunt.' De mensuris
cerpta. Gromatiei Veteres. Lach-
mann, i. pp. 373-4.

1 Ancient Laics, S(C. } p. 761.

236 The Tribal System.

Chap. vn. The close resemblance of the Welsh system of
clustering the homesteads and trevs in groups of four
and twelve or sixteen, to that prevalent in Ireland,
points to the common origin of both. It confirms
the inference that both in Wales and in Ireland this
curious practice found its raison d'etre in a stage of
tribal life when the families of free tribesmen did not
as yet always occupy the same tyddyn, but were
shifted from one to another whenever the dying out
of a family rendered needful a redistribution to
ensure the fair and equal division of the tribal lands
among the tribesmen, ' according to their antiquity '
and their rank under the tribal rules.
Redi-d- This occasional shifting of tribal occupation within

shifting of the tribe-land was still going on in Ireland under the
holdings. e y eg Q f g^ r JqJjjj D a vies, and it seems to have survived

the Eoman rule in Wales, though it was there pro-
bably confined within very narrow limits.

It seems, however, to have been itself a survival
of the originally more or less nomad habits of pastoral
tribes.
Semi- So, also, the frailty of the slightly constructed

habit s 1C homesteads of the Welsh of the thirteenth century,
theKoman wn i cn seemed to Giraldus Cambrensis as built only to
rule - last for a year, may be a survival of a state of tribal

life when the tribes were nomadic, and driven to move
from place to place by the pressure of warlike neigh-
bours, or the necessity of seeking new pastures for
their flocks and herds. But the nomadic stage of
Welsh tribal life had probably come to an end
during the period of Eoman rule.

Putting together the Irish and Welsh evidence in

Its Earlier Stages.

a variety of smaller points, a clearer conception may Chap. VI]
perhaps be gained than before of the character and iw^dei

relations to each other of the three or four orders in ,ribl1

into which tribal life seems to have separated peoples

— the chiefs, the tribesmen, the taeogs, and under all

these, and classed among chattels, the slaves.

The chief evidently corresponds less with the later

lord of a manor than with the modern king. He is

the head and chosen chief of the tribesmen. His

office is not hereditary. His successor, his tanist or

eclling, is chosen in his lifetime, and is not necessarily

his son. 1 The chieftains of Ireland are spoken of in

mediasval records and laws as reguli — little kings.

When Wales (or such part of it as had not been

before conquered and made manorial) was conquered

by Edward I. the chieftainship did not fall into the

hands of manorial lords, but was vested directly in

the Prince of Wales. 2

The tribesmen are men of the tribal blood, i.e. of The tribes-
men.

equal blood with the chief. They, therefore, do not
at all resemble serfs. They are more like manorial
lords of lordships split up and divided by inheritance,
than serfs. They are not truly allodial holders, for
they hold tribal land ; but they have no manorial lord
over them. Their chief is their elected chief, not their
manorial lord. When Irish chieftains claim to be
owners of the tribal land in the English sense, and
set up manorial claims over the tribesmen, they are
disallowed by Sir John Davies. When Wales is con-

1 This presents a curious ana-
logy to the method followed by
' adoptive ' Roman emperors.

2 See the surveys in the Record
of Carnarvon, and compare the
Statute of Rothelan.

238

The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. quered, the tunc pound is paid by the free tribesmen
direct to the Prince of Wales, the substituted chieftain
of the tribe, and the tribesmen remain freeholders,
with no mesne lord between him and them. 1 So it
would have been also in Ireland if the plans of Sir
John Davies had been permanently carried out. 2

Thetaeogs. The taeogs are not generally the serfs of the free
tribesmen, but, if serfs at all, of the chief. They are
more like Eoman coloni than mediaeval serfs. But
they are easily changed into serfs. In Ireland the
mensal land on which they live is allowed by Sir
John Davies to be (by a rough analogy) called the
chief's demesne land. In Wales they are called in
Latin documents villani ; but they become after the
Conquest the villani, not of manorial lords, but of
the Prince of Wales, and they still live in separate
trevs from the tribesmen. 3

The slaves. These, then, are the three orders in tribal life;
while the slaves in household or field service, and
more or less numerous, are, like the cattle, bought
and sold, and reckoned as chattels alike under the
tribal and the manorial systems.

And we may go still further. These three tribal
orders of men, with their large households and cattle
in the more or less nomadic stage of the tribal system,
move about from place to place, and wherever they

1 See the surveys in the Record
of Carnarvon. The tunc pound in
some districts of Wales is still col-
lected for the Prince of Wales. Id.
Introduction, p. xvii.

2 See Sir John Davies' Discovery,
&c, the concluding paragraphs.

And for further information on this
point, see my articles in the Fort-
nightly Review, 1870, and the
Nineteenth Century, January 1881,
' On the Irish Land Question.'

3 See the surveys in the Record
of Carnarvon.

Its Earlier Stages

239

go, what may be called tribal houses must be erected Chap, vii
for them.

The tribal house is in itself typical of their tribal
and nomadic life. It is of the same type and pattern
for all their orders, but varying in size according to
the gradation in rank of the occupier.

It is built, like the houses observed by Giraldus The tribal
Cambrensis, of trees newly cut from the forest. 1 A
long straight pole is selected for the roof-tree. Six well-
grown trees, with suitable branches apparently reach-
ing over to meet one another, and of about the same
size as the roof-tree, are stuck upright in the ground
at even distances in two parallel rows — three in
each row. Their extremities bending over make a
Gothic arch, and crossing one another at the top each
pair makes a fork, upon which the roof-tree is fixed.
These trees supporting the roof-tree are called gavaels,
forks, or columns, 2 and they form the nave of the
tribal house. Then, at some distance back from these
rows of columns or forks, low walls of stakes and
wattle shut in the aisles of the house, and over all is
the roof of branches and rough thatch, while at the
ends are the wattle doors of entrance. All along the
aisles, behind the pillars, are placed beds of rushes,

1 To make a royal house more
pretentious the bark is peeled off,
and it is called ' the White House.'
See Ancient Laws, §c, pp. 164 and
303.

2 See Ancient Laios, 8fc, p. 142.
— Hall of the chief. 40d. for each
gavael supporting the roof, i.e. six
kohmon, 80d. for roof. Hall of
nchelwe or tribesman, 20d. each
gavael supporting the roof, i.e. six

colonen, 40d. the roof. House of
aillt or taeog, lOd. for each gavael
supporting the roof, i.e. six kolovyu.
P. 351. — Worth of winter house,
30c?. the roof-tree, 30c?. each furck
supporting the roof-tree. P. 676. —
Three indispensables of the summer
bothy (btod havodicr) — a roof-tree
(nen bren), roof-supporting forks
(nen fyrch), and wattling (baugor).
See also p. 288.

240 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. called gwelys (lecti), on which the inmates sleep.
Thegweiys, The footboards of the beds, between the columns,
or lecti. form t k eir geats m t jj e daytime. The fire is lighted

on an open hearth in the centre of the nave, between
the middle columns, and in the chieftain's hall a screen
runs between these central pillars and either wall,
so partially dividing off the upper portion where the
chief, the edling, and his principal officers have their
own appointed places, from the lower end of the hall
The house- where the humbler members of the household are
hold ' ranged in order. 1 The columns, like those in Homeric
houses and Solomon's temple, are sometimes cased in
metal, and the silentiary, to call attention, strikes
one of them with his staff. The bed or seat of the
chieftain is also sometimes covered by a metal canopy. 2
In his hand he holds a sceptre or wand of gold, equal
in length to himself, and as thick as his little finger.
He eats from a golden plate as wide as his face, and
as thick as the thumb-nail of a ploughman who has
handled the plough for seven years. 3

The kitchen and other outbuildings are ranged
round the hall, and beyond these again are the corn
and the cattle-yard included in the tyddyn.

The chieftain's hall is twice the size and value of
the free tribesman's, and the free tribesman's is twice

1 Compare description of Irish used, and especially the position of

houses in Dr. Sullivan's Introduc- the beds in the walls or in the rough

tion, cccxlv. et seq., with the Vcne- aisles. — Mitchell's Past in the Pi-e-

dotian Code. Ancient Laics, §c, of sent, Lecture III. Compare Dr.

Wales, p. 5, s. vi. — ' Of Appro- Guest's description of the Celtic

priate Places.' Compare also the houses. Orujines Celticee, ii. 70-83.

curious resemblances in the etruc- 2 Id.

ture of stone huts in the Scotch 3 Ancient Laws, 8fC, p. 3.
islands where trees could not be

Its Earlier Stages. 241

that of the taeog. But the plan is the same. They Ohap. vii.
are all built with similar green timber forks and roof-
tree and wattle, 1 with the fireplace in the nave and
the rush beds in the aisles. One might almost con-
jecture that as the tabernacle was the type which
grew into Solomon's temple, so the tribal house built
of green timber and wattle, with its high nave and
lower aisles, when imitated in stone, grew into the
Gothic cathedral. Certainly the Gothic cathedral, Liken«s
simplified and reduced in size and materials to a tribal
rough and rapidly erected structure of green timber the Gothic
and wattle, would give no bad idea of the tribal cathedraL
house of Wales or Ireland. It has been noticed in a
former chapter that the Bishop of Durham had his
episcopal bothy, or hunting hall, erected for him
every year by his villeins, in the forest, as late as the
time of the Boldon Book. This also was possibly a
survival of the tribal house. 2

In this tribal house the undivided household of The tribal

. household.

free tribesmen, comprising several generations down
to the great-grandchildren of a common ancestor,
lived together ; and, as already mentioned, even the
structure of the house was typical of the tribal family
arrangement.

In the aisles were the gwelys of rushes, and the
whole household was bound as it were together in
one gwellygord. The gwelys were divided by the

1 See Ancient Latvs, fyc, p. 142.

2 Compare Strabo's description
of the Gallic houses, ' great houses,
arched, constructed of planks and
wicker and covered with a heavy
thatched roof ' (iv. c. iv. s. 3). Also
for the early stake and wattle Ger-

man houses, see Tacitus (Ge)-»imria,
xvi.), and the interesting section
(Bk. i. s. 4) on the subject in Dr.
Karl von Inama-Sternegg's Deut-
sche Wirthschaftsgescliichte. Leipzig,
1879.

242

The Tribal System.

Chap, vii central columns, or gavaels (Welsh for * fork '), into
four separate divisions ; so there were four gavaels
in a trev, and four randirs in a gavael. And so in
after times, long after the tribal life was broken up,
the original holding of an ancient tribesman became
divided in the hands of his descendants into gavells
and gwelys, or weles. 1

Another point has been noticed. In the old
times, when the tribesmen shifted about from place
to place, their personal names by necessity could not
be given to the places or tyddyns they lived in. The
local names in a country where the tribal system pre-
vailed were taken from natural characteristics — the
streams, the woods, the hills, which marked the site.
This was the case, for instance, with the townlands
and tates of Ireland. Most of them bear witness, as
we have seen, by their impersonal names, to the shift-
ing and inconstant tenancy of successive tribesmen. 2

It was probably not till the tribes became sta-
tionary, and, after many generations, the same families
became permanent holders of the same homesteads,
that the Welsh gwelys and gavelh became permanent
family possessions, known by the personal name of
their occupants, as we find them in the extents of
the fourteenth century. 3

Another characteristic of the tribal system in its
early stages was the purely natural and tribal charac-
ter of the system of blood-money, answering to the

The tribal
blood-
money.

1 See the Record of Carnarvon,
Introduction, p. vii. Wele, Gwele,
or Gvoely in Welsh signifies a bed,
and accordingly in these extents it
is often called in Latin Lectus.
See pp. 'JO, 05-99, 101.

8 See supra, and the lists given
of the names of townlands and
their meanings in Shirley's Hist, of
Co. Monayhan, pp. 392-542.

3 Record of Carnarvon, passim.

Its Earlier Stages. 243

Wergelt of the Germans. It was not an artificial Qup.vn,
bundling together of persons in tens or tithings, like
the later Saxon and Norman system of frankpledge^
but strictly ruled by actual family relationship. The
murderer of a man, or his relations of a certain degree,
and in a certain order and proportion, according to
their nearness of blood, owed the fixed amount of
blood-money to the family of the murdered person,
who shared it in the same order and proportions on
their side. 1 The same principle held good for insults
and injuries, between not only individuals, but tribes.
For an insult done by the tribesman of another tribe
to a chief, the latter could claim one hundred cows
for every cantrev in his dominion {i.e. a cow for
every trev), and a golden rod. 2

The tribesmen and the tribes were thus bound Tenacity
together by the closest ties, all springing, in the first hawS* 1
instance, from their common blood-relationship. As
this ruled the extent of their liability one for another,
so it fixed both the nearness of the neighbourhood of
their tyddyns, and the closeness of the relationships of
their common life. And these ties were so close, and
the rules of the system so firmly fixed by custom and
by tribal instinct, that Roman or Saxon conquest,
and centuries of Christian influence, while they modi-
fied and hardened it in some points, and stopped its
actual nomadic tendencies, left its main features and
spirit, in Ireland and Wales and Western Scotland,
unbroken. It would seem that tribal fife might well
go on repeating itself, generation after generation,
for a thousand years, with little variation, without

1 See Dimetian Code,B. II., c. i. Ancient Laivs, Sfc, pp. 197 et seq.
3 Id. p. 3.

R 2

244 The Tribal System.

Chap. vii. really passing out of its early stages, unless in the
meantime some uncontrollable force from outside of it
should break its strength and force its life into other
grooves.

Nor was the tenacity of the tribal system more
remarkable than its universality. As an economic
stage in a people's growth it seems to be well-nigh
universal. It is confined to no race, to no continent,
and to no quarter of the globe. Almost every people
in historic or prehistoric times has passed or is passing
through its stages.
Wide pre- Lastly, this wide prevalence and extreme tenacity
thMribaf °f tne tribal system may perhaps make it the more
syetem. eaS y to understand the almost equally wide preva-
lence of that open-field system, by the simplest forms
of which nomadic and pastoral tribes, forced by cir-
cumstances into a simple and common agriculture,
have everywhere apparently provided themselves
with corn. It is not the system of a single people
or a single race, but, in its simplest form, a system
belonging to the tribal stage of economic progress.
And as that tribal stage may itself take a thousand
years, as in Ireland, to wear itself out, so the open
field system also may linger as long, adapting itself
meanwhile to other economic conditions ; in England
becoming for centuries, under the manorial system, in
a more complex form, the shell of serfdom, and leaving
its debris on the fields centuries after the stage of
serfdom has been passed ; in Ireland following the
vicissitudes of a poor and wretched peasantry, whose
tribal system, running its course till suddenly arrested
under other and economically sadder phases than
serfdom, leaves a people swarming on the subdivided

Eastern Britain not Tribal. 245

land, with scattered patches of potato ground, held in ClIAP - VIL
' run-rig ' or ' rundale,' and clinging to the ' grazing '
on the mountain side for their single cow or pig,
with a pastoral and tribal instinct ingrained in their
nature as the inheritance of a thousand years.

Such in its main features seems to have been the
tribal system as revealed by the earliest Irish and
Welsh evidence taken together.

There remains the question, What was the rela-
tion of this tribal system to the manorial system in
the south-east of England and on the continent of
Europe ?

III. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE TRIBAL AND AGRI-
CULTURAL ECONOMY OF THE WEST AND SOUTH-EAST
OF BRITAIN WAS PRE-ROMAN, AND SO ALSO WAS THE
OPEN-FIELD SYSTEM.

The manorial system of the east and the tribal The south

J and east

system of the west of Britain have now been traced Britain

i -i • -r» • • i l r 1 D0t tr '' )a l

back, m turn, upon British ground, as iar as the butmainij
direct evidence extends, i.e. to within a very few tf r ™ u "
generations of the time of the Saxon conquest ; and jf fore

in neither system is any indication discernible of a conquest.
recent origin.

So far as the evidence has hitherto gone, the two
systems were, and had long been, historically dis-
tinct. The tribal system probably once extended as
far into Wessex as the eastern limits of the district
long known as West Wales, i.e. as far east as Wilt-
shire ; and within this district of England the
manorial system was evidently imposed upon the
conquered country, as it was later in portions of

246 The Tribal System.

chap. vii. Wales, leaving only here and there, as we have
found, small and mainly local survivals of the earlier
tribal system.

But no evidence has yet been adduced leading to
the inference that before the Saxon invasion the
Welsh tribal system extended all over Britain.

Indeed, the evidence of Ceesar is clear upon the
point that the economic condition of the south-east of
Britain was quite distinct from that of the interior
and west of Britain even in pre-Roman times.
Evidence Caasar describes the south and east of Britain,

which he calls the maritime portion, as inhabited by
those who had passed over from the country of the
Belgse for the purpose of plunder and war, almost
all of whom, he says, retain the name of the states
(civitates) from which they came to Britain, where
after the war they remained, and began to cultivate
the fields. Their buildings he describes as exceedingly
numerous, and very like those of the Gauls. 1 The
most civilised of all these nations, he says, are those
who inhabit Kent, which is entirely a maritime dis-
trict ; nor do they differ much from Gallic customs. 2

He speaks, on the other hand, of the inland in-
habitants as aborigines who mostly did not sow corn,
but fed upon flesh and milk. 3

Now, we have seen that the main distinctive mark
of the tribal system was the absence of towns and
villages, and the preponderance of cattle over corn.

When corn becomes the ruling item in economic
arrangements, there grows up the settled homestead
and the village, with its open fields around it.

1 Lib. v. c. 12. a 0. 14. 3 0. 14.

Eastern Britain not Tribal. 247

Crcsar, therefore, in describing the agriculture and Chap, vrr
buildings of the Belgic portion of England, and the
non-agricultural but pastoral habits of the interior,
exactly hit upon the distinctive differences between
the already settled and agricultural character of the
south-east and the pastoral and tribal polity of the
interior and west of Britain.

Nor was this statement one resting merely upon A corn -

l • i /-n i • J l growing

hearsay evidence. Caesar himself found corn crops country
ripening on the fields, and relied upon them for the during aD
maintenance of his army. Nay, the reason which ^J° an
led him to invade the island was in part the fact
that the Britons had given aid to the Gauls. Further,
he obtained his information about Britain from the
merchants, and the news of his approach was carried
by the merchants into Britain, thus making it evident
that there was a commerce going on between the
two coasts, even in pre-Eoman times. 1

We know that throughout the period of Eoman
occupation Britain was a corn-growing country.

Zosimus represents Julian as sending 800 vessels, E f v ^ denee
larger than mere boats, backwards and forwards to mua.
Britain for corn to supply the granaries of the cities
on the Ehine. 2

Eumenius, in his ' Panegyric of Constantine ' (a.d. Eumenius
310), also describes Britain as remarkable for the
richness of its corn crops and the multitude of its
cattle. 3

Pliny further describes the inhabitants of Britain Hiny.
as being so far advanced in agriculture as to plough

1 Book iv. c. xx. and xxi. I p. lxxvi., a.d. 358.

8 Book iii. c. v. Mon. Brit. | s Mon. Brit. p. Ixix.

248

The Tribal System.

Tacitus.

Chap. vii. in marl in order to increase the fertility of the
fields. 1

Tacitus? in the same way (a.d. circa 90), speaks
of the soil of Britain as fertile and bearing heavy
crops (patiens frugum), and describes the tricks of
the tax gatherers in collecting the tributum, which was
exacted in corn. 3

Strabo 4 " (b.c. 30) mentions the export from Britain
of ' corn, cattle, gold, silver, iron, skins, slaves, and
dogs.'

Diodorus Siculus 5 (b.c. 44) describes the manner
of reaping and storing corn in England thus : —

They have mean habitations constructed for the most part of reeds

or of wood, and they gather in the harvest by cutting off the ears of corn

and storing them in subterraneous repositories ; they cull therefrom

daily such as are old, and dressing them, have thence their sustenance.

.... The island is thickly inhabited.

Pytheas. Lastly, we have been recently reminded by Mr.

Elton that Pytheas, ' the Humboldt of antiquity,' who
visited Britain in the fourth century B.C., saw in the
southern districts abundance of wheat in the fields,

Strabo.

Diodorus
Siculus.

1 Pliny (Monument. Hist,. Brit.,
pp. viii. ix.) : ' Alia est ratio, quam
Britannia et Gallia invenere alendi
earn (terrain) ipsa: quod genus
vocant " maryam." . . . Omnis
autem marga aratro injicienda est.'

Pugh'e Welsh Diet., p. 328:
' Marl, earth deposited by water, a
rich hind of clay (with many com-
pounds).'

See Chron. Monas. Abinydon.
II. xxx. P. 147, 'on tha lam-
pyttes ; ' p. 402, ' on thone lampyt '
('lam,' loam, mud, clay. — Bos-
worth, p. 41 b). Pp. 150 and

404, ' on tha cealc seathas ' (chalk-
pits).

See Liber de Hyda, p. 88,
' caelcgrafan ' (chalk-pits).

Compare Pliny (ubi supra) with
Abinydon, ii. p. 294 : ' Totam ter-
rain quse nimis pessima et infruc-
tifera erat tarn citra aquam quam
ultra compositione terrae quse vulgo
"Maria" dicitur, ipse optimam et
fructiferam fecit.' ( Colne in Essex.)

2 In his Ayricola, xii.

3 Ayricola, xix.

4 Strabo, Bk. IV. c. v. s. 2.
8 Mon. Brit. Excerpta, ii

Eastern Britain not Tribal. 249

ana observed the necessity of threshing it out in Chap, vn
covered barns, instead of using the unroofed thresh-
ing-floors to which he was accustomed in Marseilles.

* The natives,' he says, « collect the sheaves in great

* barns, and thresh out the corn there, because they
1 have so little sunshine that our open threshing-places

* would be of little use in that land of clouds and

* rain.' l

It is clear, then, that in the south-east of Britain a
considerable quantity of corn was grown all through
the period of Roman rule and centuries before the
Roman conquest of the island. And if so, that differ-
ence between the pastoral tribal districts of the in-
terior and the more settled agricultural districts of the
south and east, noticed by Caesar, was one of long
standing.

The tribal system of Wales furnishes us, there-
fore, with no direct key to the economic condition of
South-eastern Britain.

But, on the other hand, the continuous and long-
continued growth of corn in Britain from century to
century adds great interest to the further question,
Upon what system was it grown 2

Upon what other system can it have been grown The com
than the open-field system ? The universal prevalence g™wn on
of this system makes it almost certain that the fields ^ d ^'
found by Caesar waving with ripening corn were tem -
open fields. The open-field system was hardly first
introduced by the Saxons, because we find it also in
Wales and Scotland. It was hardly introduced by
the Romans, because its division lines and measure-

1 Elton's Origins of English History, p. 32.

250 The Tribal System.

CnAP. vit. ments are evidently not those of the Eoman agrimen-
sores. The methods of these latter are well known
from their own writings. Their rules were clear and
definite, and wherever they went they either adopted
the previous divisions of the land, or set to work on
their own system of straight lines and rectangular divi-
sions. We may thus guess what an open field would
have been if laid out, de novo, by the Eoman agrimen-
sores ; and conclude that the irregular network or
spider's web of furlongs and strips in the actual open
fields of England with which we have become familiar
is as great a contrast as could well be imagined to
what the open field would have been if laid out
directly under Eoman rules.

We happen to know also, from passages which
we shall have occasion to quote hereafter, that the
Eoman agrimensores did find in other provinces — we
have no direct evidence for Britain — an open-field
system, with its irregular boundaries, its joint occupa-
tion, its holdings of scattered pieces, and its common
rights of way and of pasture, existing in many dis-
tricts — in multis regionibus — where the red tape rules
of their craft had not been consulted, and the land
was not occupied by regularly settled Eoman colonies. 1
The open-field system in some form or other we
may understand, then, to have preceded in Britain
even the Eoman occupation. And perhaps we may
go one step further. If the practice of ploughing
marl into the ground mentioned by Pliny was an
early and local peculiarity of Britain and of Gaul, as
it seems to have been from his description, then clearly

1 SiculusFlaccus, De Conditio- I Lachmann. P. 152. The passage
71)7*/'.'! Agronim. Gromatici veteres. | will be given in full hereafter.

Eastern Britain not Tribal. 251

it indicates a more advanced stage of the system than Ctaip.vn.

the early Welsh co-aration of portions of the waste.
The marling of land implies a settled arable farming
of the same land year after year, and not a ploughing
up of new ground each year. It does not follow that
there was yet a regular rotation of crops in three
courses, and so the fully organised three-field system ;
but evidently there were permanent arable fields
devoted to the growth of corn, and separate from the
grass land and waste, before Eoman improvements
were made upon British agriculture.

But the prevalence of an open-field husbandry in waa the
its simpler forms was, as we have been taught by the manorial ?
investigation into the tribal systems of Wales and
Ireland, no evidence of the prevalence of that parti-
cular form of the open-field husbandry which was
connected with the manorial system, and of which
the yard-land was an essential feature. In order
to ascertain the probability of the manorial system
having been introduced by the Saxons, or having
preceded the Saxon conquest in the south and east of
Britain, it becomes necessary to examine the manorial
system in its Continental history, so as if possible,
working once more from the known to the unknown
— this time from the better known Eoman and
German side of the question — to find some stepping-
stones at least over the chasm in the English evi-
dence.

CHAPTER Vm.

CONNEXION BETWEEN THE ROMAN LAND SYSTEM
AND THE LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM.

Chap.
VIII.

The ques-
tion a
complex
one.

I. IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTINENTAL EVIDENCE.

In now returning to the question of the origin of the
English manorial system it is needful to widen the
range of the inquiry, and to seek for further light in
Continental evidence.

The question itself has become a complex one.
There may have been manors in the south-eastern
districts of Britain before the Saxon conquest, while
Britain was a Eoman province, or the Saxons may
have introduced the manorial system when they con-
quered the country. These remain the alternatives
now that we have seen that the tribal system in
Britain was evidently not its parent. But even if the
Saxons introduced the manorial system, the further
question arises whether it was a natural growth
from their own tribal system, or whether they had
themselves adopted it from the Eomans ? It is
obvious, therefore, that no adequate result can be
obtained without a sufficiently careful study (1) of
the Roman provincial land system and (2) of the

The Ham, Heim, arid Villa. 253

German tribal system. Not till both these have 0**?.
been examined can it be possible to judge which VJH '
of the two factors contributed most to the manorial
system, and to what extent it was their joint pro-
duct.

The question must needs be complicated by the The two
fact that during the whole period of the later empire [j^'man
a large portion of Germany was included within the liind va-
lines of the Eoman provinces ; or, to state the point the Ger-
more exactly, that a large proportion of the inhabitants ™ 8 Jei[ lba
of these Eoman provinces were Germans. It will be
seen in the course of the inquiry how much depends
upon the full recognition of this fact. Indeed, the
very first step taken will bring it into prominence,
and put us, so to speak, on right geographical lines,
by showing that the nearest analogies to the English
manor were to be found in those districts precisely
which were both Eoman and German under the
later empire.

In studying, therefore, the land system in Eoman
provinces, we must not forget that we are studying
what, though Eoman, may have been subject to
barbarian influences. In studying, on the other hand,
the German tribal system, it is no less important
to remember that some German customs may betray
the results of centuries of contact with Eoman rule.

II. THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE SAXON ' HAM,' THE
GERMAN ' HEIM,' AND THE FEANKISH ' VILLA.'

It would be unwise to build too much upon a mere
resemblance in terms, but we have seen that the Saxon
words generally used for manor were 'Aam' and 'torn.'

254 The Roman Land System.

Chap. We have seen how Kincr Alfred, in the remarkable

win. . . °

passage quoted in an earlier chapter, put in contrast

the temporary log hut on lrenland with the permanent
hereditary possession — the ' ham ' or manor. This
latter was, as we have seen, the estate of a manorial
lord, with a community of dependants or serfs upon
it, and not a village of coequal freemen. Hence the
word ham did not properly describe the clusters of
scattered homesteads in the Welsh district. In King
Alfred's time Cornwall, Devon, Somerset, and even
parts of Wiltshire were still, as already mentioned,
regarded as Welsh. They formed what was known as
West Wales. The manorial system had encroached
far into them, but it would seem that the phraseology
of the earlier system had not yet wholly disappeared.
King Alfred in his will carefully abstained from ap-
plying the word ham to his numerous possessions in
these districts.

He disposed in his will of more than thirty sepa-
rately named estates in this West Welsh district, but
he invariably used, in describing them, the word
* land ' — the land or the landes at such and such a
place ; — and he concluded this part of his will with
the statement, ' These are all that I have in Wealcyne,
except in Truconshirie'' (in Cornwall). Then in the
rest of his will King Alfred disposed of nearly as
many estates in the south-east or manorial districts of
England, and here he immediately changed his style.
It was no more the land at this place and that, but the
ham at such and such a place. 1 In the old English
translation of the will given in the Liber de Hyda

1 Liber de Hyda, p. 63.

The Ham, Heim, and Villa.

255

* land ' is rendered by ' lond ' and « ham ' invariably Chap.

VIII

by 'twune.' 1 Thus without saying that the words 1

ham and ftm always were used in this sense, and could
be used in no other, they were generally at least
synonymous with manor.

As late as the time of Bede, the suffix ' ham ' or
1 tun ' was not yet so fully embodied with the names
of places as to form a part of them. In the Cam-
bridge MS. of his works 'ham' is still written as a
separate word.

It is a curious fact that the suffix ' ton ' or ' tun '
was practically used nowhere on the Continent in the
names of places ; but the other manorial suffix, ' ham,' Thr '

man h im,

in one or other of its forms — 'hem,' 'heim,' or ' haim'
— was widely spread. And as in those districts where
it was found most abundantly, it translated itself, as
in England, into the Latin villa, its early geographical
distribution may have an important significance.

On the annexed map is marked for each county Geogra-
the per-centage of the names of places mentioned in nitration
the Domesday Survey ending in ham. 2 This will give ° nd ".-
a fair view of their distribution in Saxon England.
It will be seen that the ' hams ' of England were in Eng-
most numerous in the south-eastern counties, from
Lincolnshire and Norfolk to Sussex, finding their
densest centre in Essex. 3

Passing on to the Continent, very similar evidence, in K-

. curdy.

but of earlier date, is afforded for a small district
surrounding St. Omer, in Picardy, by a survey of the

1 Liber de Hyda, pp. 67 et seq.

8 The per-centage is under-esti-
mated, owing to the repetition of
various forms of the same name
having heen excluded in counting

those ending in ham, but not in
counting the total number of places.
3 In Essex the h is often
dropped, and the suffix become?
' am.'

256

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

In the
various
abbey
cartu-
laries.

Heim»
most
numerous
in the
Roman
province
of Germa-
nia Prima.

estates of the Abbey of St. Bertin, taken about the
year 850. The ' villas ' there mentioned as ' ad
fratrum usus pertinentesj and which were distinctly
manors, are twenty-five in number, and the names of
fifteen of them ended in ' hem.' l

Similar evidence is given for various districts in
Germany in the list of donations to the abbeys, the
abbots of which possessed estates in different parts
of Germany — sometimes whole manors or villages,
sometimes only one or two holdings in this or that
place.

On the accompanying map are marked the sites
of places mentioned in the cartularies of the Abbeys
of Fulda, 2 Corvey, 3 St. Gall, 4 Frising, 5 Wizenburg, 6
Lorsch, 7 and in other early records, ending in heim in
the various districts of Germany. The result is re-
markable. It shows that these helms were most
numerous in what was once the Eoman province of
Germania Prima, on the left bank of the upper Ehine,
the present Elsass, and on both sides of the Ehine
around Mayence — districts conquered by the Frankish
and Alamannic tribes in the fifth century, but in-
habited by Germans from the time of Tacitus, and
perhaps of Cassar, and so districts in which German
populations had come very early and continued long
under Eoman rule. In this district the heims rose in

1 Chartularium Sithiense, p.
97.

2 Traditiones et Antiquitates
Fuldenses. Dronke, Fulda, 1 844.

3 Traditiones Corbeienses. Wi-
gand, 1843.

4 Urkundenbuch der Abtei St.
Galten, a.d. 700-840. Wartuiaua,

Zurich, 1863.

5 Historia Frising ensis, Mei-
chelbeck, 1729.

6 Traditiones possessionesque
Wizenburyenses. Spirse, 1842.

7 Codex Lnureshamensis Diplo-
mat icus, 1768.

b o

The Ham, ffeim, and Villa. 257

number to 80 per cent, of the places mentioned in ^\]\-
the charters.

There were many, but not so many, heims in the
valley of the Neckar ; but everywhere (with small
local exceptions) they faded away in districts outside
the Roman boundary, except in Frisia, where the
proportion was large.

Now, the question is, what do these heims repre-
sent ?

We have already said that they interchange like /r-immi
the English < ham' with the Latin < villa.' The dis- ££"■
tricts where they occur most thickly, where they
formed 80 per cent, of the names of places in the
time of the monastic grants, and which had formed
for several centuries the Roman province of Upper
Germany, shade off into districts which abounded with
local names ending in villa.

They did so a thousand years ago, and they do so
now. It is only needful to examine the Ordnance
Survey of any part of these districts to see how, even
now, the places with names ending in ' heim ' are
mixed with others ending in ' villa,' or ' wilare,' or wuan,
the Germanised form of the word, ' weiler,' or ' wyl ; ' wyk '
and further, how the region abounding with ' heims '
shades off into a district abounding with names end-
ing in ' villa,' or i wilare,' and we may add the equally
manorial Latin or Romance termination curtis, or
■ court,' and its German equivalent ' hof,' or * hoven.'
And such was the case also at the date of the earliest
monastic charters.

This fact in itself at least suggests very strongly
that here, as in England, * ham ' and ' villa ' were
synonyms for the same thing, sometimes called by its

258

The Roman Land System.

ClTAF.

VIII.

Latin and sometimes by its German name. Indeed,
actual instances may be found in the charters of these
districts in which the name of the same place has
sometimes the suffix villa or wilare&nd sometimes heim. 1

Moreover, these places which are thus called
* villas ' or ' heims ' in the monastic charters were to
all intents and purposes manors as far back as the re-
cords allow us to trace them.

The earliest surveys of the possessions of the
abbeys leave no doubt as to their manorial character. 2

And the earliest charters prove that they were
often at least manorial estates before they were handed
over to the monks.

Indeed, a careful examination of the Wizenburg
and Lorsch charters and donations leads to the result
that these ' heims ' and ' villas ' were often royal
manors, ' villas fiscahs ' on the royal domains, just as
Tidenham and Hysseburne were in England. They
seem to have often been held as benefices by a dux

1 The following are examples of
the interchange of villa and heim
in the names of places mentioned
in the charters of the Ahhey of
Wizenburg in the district of Spires.
The numbers refer to the charters
in the Traditiones Wizenburgenses.

Ratanandouilla (9).
Batanantesheim (28)

Hariolfesuilla (4).
Hariolueshaim (55).

Lorencenheim (141).
Lorenzenuillare (275).

Modenesheim (2).
Moduinouilare (52).

Moresuuilari (189).
Moresheitn (181).

Munifridesheim (118).
Munifridouilla (52).

Radolfeshamomarca (90).

Ratolfesham, p. 241.

Radolfouuilari, Radulfo villa (71
and 73). So also, among the manors
of the Abbey of St. Bertin, ' Tat-
tinga Villa' granted to the abbey
in a.d. 648 {Chart. Sithiense, p. 18),
called afterwards ' Tattingaheim '
(p. 158). See also Codex Dip. ii.
p. 227, ' Oswaldingvillare ' inter-
changeable with ' Oswaldingtune,'
in England. See also Codex Lau-
reshatnensis, iii. preface.

3 See Traditiones Wizenburgen-
ses, pp. 269 et seq. Codex Laures-
hameri8is, iii. pp. 175 et seq.

The Bam, Heim, and Villa.

259

or a comes, or other beneficiary of the king, just afi
Saxon royal manors were held by the king's than<
* ken-land.' x

Thus the royal domains of Frankish kings were
apparently under manorial management, and practi-
cally divided up into manors. The boundaries or
'marchas' of one manor often divided it from the
next manor ; 2 while one ' villa' or ' heim ' often had
sub-manors upon it, as in the case of Tidenham. 8

Thus the 'villa,' 'heim,' or 'manor,' seems to
have been the usual fiscal and judicial territorial
unit under Frankish rule, as the manor once was
and the parish now is in England. And this alone
seems to afford a satisfactory explanation of the use
of the word villa ' in the early Frankish capitularies,
and in the Salic laws. It is there used apparently for
both private estates and the smallest usual territorial
unit for judicial or fiscal purposes. 4

When a law speaks of a person attacking or taking
possession of the ' villa ' of another, the ' villa ' is
clearly a private estate. But when it speaks of a

Ckap.

\ in

1 See among the Lorsch char-
ters that of Hephenheim (a.d. 773).
' Hanc villam cura sylva habuerunt
in beneficio Wegelenzo, pater Wa-
rini, et post eurn Warinus Comes
filius ejus in ministerium habuit ad
opus regis et post eum Bougolfus
Comes quousque earn Carolus rex
Sancto Nazario tradidit ' (I. p. 16).

2 See again the case of Hephen-
heim. ' Limites. Inprimis incipit a
loco ubi Gernesheim marcha adj un-
gitur ad Hephenheim marcham,' &c.

8 'Villam aliquam nuncupatam
Hephenheim sitam in Pago Re-
nense, cum omni merito et solidi-

tate sua, et quicquid ad eandem
villain legitime aspicere vel perti-
nere videtur.' See also the case of
the Manor of ' Sitdiu,' with its
twelve sub-estates upon it, granted
to the Abbot of St. Bertin a.d. 6481
Chartularium Sithiense, p. 18.

4 Lex Salica,xxxix. (cod. ii.), 4.
'Nomina bominum et viUarvm
semper debeat nominare.'

xlv. (De Migrautibus). When
any one wants to move from one
' villa ' to another, he cannot do so
without the licence of those ' qui in
villa consistunt ; ' but if he has re-
moved and stayed in another' villa '

2G0

The Roman Land System.

Chap.

vnr.

Ham and
villa in the
Salic laws,

crime committed ' between two villas,' the word seems
to be used for a judicial jurisdiction, just as if we
should say ' between two parishes.'

This double use of the word becomes intelligible
if ' villa ' may be used as ' manor,' and if the whole
country — the terra regis with the rest — were divided
in the fifth century into ' villas ' or ' manors,' but
hardly otherwise.

The remarkable passage in the Salic laws ' De
MigrantibusJ which provides that no one can move
into and settle in another ' villa ' without the license
of those ' qui in villa consistunt,' but that after
a twelvemonth's stay unmolested he shall remain
secure, ' sicut et alii vicini,' seems at first sight to
imply a, free village. 1 But another clause which per-
mits the emigrant to settle if he has the royal ' prse-
ceptum ' to do so, 2 suggests that the ' villa ' in ques-
tion was one of the royal ' villas ' — a ' villa fiscalis '
in the demesne of the Crown. 3

The Salic law has come down to us in Latin
versions, but the Malberg glosses contain some in-
dications that the word villa was used as a translation
of variations of the word ham, then applied by the
Franks to both kinds of villas in the manorial sense.

The old tradition recorded in the prologue to the

twelve months, ' securus sicut et alii
vicini maueat.'

xiv. 'Si quis villa aliena adsa-
lierit. . . .'

xlii. v. ' Si quis villain alienam
expugnaverit. . . .'

C'apitularc Ludovici Primi, ix.
* De eo qui v ill am alterius occu-
paverit ' (Hessels and Kern's edition,
p. 419).

Chlodovechi Regis Capitula
(id. p. 408), a.d. 500-1. < De
hominem inter duas villas occisum/

1 Lex Saliea, xlv.

2 Id. xiv.

3 This inference is drawn by Dr.
P. Roth, Geschichte des Heneficialwe-
sens, p. 74. See also Waitz, V. G.
ii. 31.

The Ham, Hei/n, and Villa. 261

later versions of the Salic laws, whatever it be worth, Ob*r

attributes their first compilation to four chosen men, -

whose names and residences are as follows : — Uuiso-
gastis, Bodogastis, Salegastis, Uuidogastis, in loca
nominancium, Bodochamjp, Salchamse, Uuidochama\

In another version of the prologue instead of the
words ' in loca nominancium' the reading is ' in
vittis,' and the termination of the names is ' chem,'
'hem,' and ' em.' 1

Dr. Kern, in editing the Malberg glosses, points and in the
out that the gloss in Title xlii. shows that ' ham ' giowa?
might be used by the Franks in the sense of ' court '
— king's court,' — just as in some parts of the Nether-
lands, especially in the Betuwe, ' ham ' is even now a
common name for ancient mansions, such as in me-
diaeval Latin were termed ' curtes.' Thus he shows
that the Frankish words ' chami theuto ' (the bull of
the ham) were translated in Latin as ' taurum regis,'
cham being taken to mean king's court. 2 Possibly the
lord of a villa provided the ' village bull,' just as till re-
cent times in the Hitchin manor, as we have seen, the
village bull was under the manorial customs provided
for the commoners by the rectorial sub-manor.

So in another place the word ' chamesialia ' seems
to be used in the Malberg gloss for 'in truste do-
minical the ' cham' again being taken in a thoroughly
manorial sense.

That there were manorial lords with lidi and tri-
butarii — semi- servile tenants — as well as semi, or
slaves, under them, is clear from other passages of the
Salic laws. 4

1 Hessels and Kern's edition,
pp. 422-3.

2 By the authors of the Lex

Emendata. Note 39, p. 451.
3 Note 216, p. 628.
* Tit. xxvi. (1) 'Si quia lidum

Lc2 T, : fit ion La v

Bat the a:;. ;: tie V : -/cerz -" :sses seems to
have had sometimes at least the :':ritslord. And

this brings as again to the double use in the Salic

s lithe word 'YiHaJ I: seems, as we nave said,
to have been ased not only for a ■ villa' in pri"
hands, but alsc in a wider sense :or the usual hscal
or judicial territorial unit, whether under the juris-
:-n of a manorial lord, or of the * villicus ' or
*;uiex.' :r cenezriary :: :"_e kin;:.

Lj strj, the early late of the Salic laws bringing
the Prankish and Boman provincial rule into such close
pre ximiry . irresisti c ly raise s the question 1 whether
there may rot have been an actual continuhj. first
between :_t J: man and Frankish villa, and secondly,
between the Eoman system of management of the
imperial provincial domains during the later empire,
and the Frankish 575: em of manorial management of
the • terra rerls ' or ■ viDae fiscalee ' after :Le Frahk-
>nq o est If this should turn out to have been the
case, then the further question will arise whether under
the tribal system of the Germans the beginnings of
manorial tendencies can be ac far traced as to explain
the ease h Prankish and Saxon conquerors

:: the old Eoman provinces fell into manorial w
and adopt 1 I the manor as the normal type of estate.

This is the line of inquiry which it is now pro-
posed to follow.

zsZLz=. i:~lzisrii -— .' ;;: \\ z . ':'

iix r.e:-- :•:: i^: : ._____• r — Tier; — r:e also Roman tribo-

-, ■ - - - -- : '■_-_-_ : _ r'i.; .-.: ~:I :irv: li: ill Si : _ii P. :~ -.zz—

c. :_: : .L.T:.r. t: :.-.:-.-r i> ::.' .-.^.r.-Z- ::::i-::z. ::: i
; -.._i : •:." -i" . 7 - ~-: - ^ . :z zz^i -■: — '.'--

-±ii .-z.:.z_ ::-: :- --.- -.: . 1

The Roman Villa.

HI. THE ROMAN c VILLA,' ITS BAST TRANSITION DTTO THE
LATER MANOR, AM) ITS TENDENCY TO BBC :HB

PREDOMINANT TYPE OF ESTATE.

The Eoman piZZa was, in fact, exceedingly

a manor, and, moreover, becoming more and more ?f2ttei
so in the GalHc and German provinces, at Least r maaar -

the later empire as time went on.

The villa, as described by Varro and Columella, a* estate.
before and shortly after the was a farm

— a fundus. It was not a mere residence, but. like
the villa of the present day in Italy, a territory or
estate in land.

The lord's homestead on the villa ? - rounded The «rtu.
by two enclosed ■ cohortes,' or courts, from which
was derived the word ' curtis.' so often applied
later manor-house. 1

At the entrance of the outer cour: le abode He

of the ' milieus ' — a strictly manorial officer, as -
seen — generally a slave chosen for his gooi - -

Xear this was the common kitchen, wha
the food was cooked, but also the slaves performed
their indoor work. Here ak Dais md

granaries for the storing of produc-.-. I
were the night quarters of 1 - - the under-

ground ■ :. ; with its narrow

and out of reach, w - 1 slaves i

in chains lived, worked, w bed; for

1 Varro. i. 13.
; Ca.:?. i?. i?. 2. Colum
£. L S-8. AL Guerard =avs . ; - ■ - - '.- i:=_ :. .- . - . m ...'
meBB I Poljfptique dlrmiiwn, i - .

264 The Roman Land System.

Chap, in the erqastulum was revealed the cruel side of the

VIII

1 system of slave labour under Eoman law. Columella

says that the cleverest slaves must oftenest be kept in
chains. 1 Cato, according to Plutarch, advised that
slaves should be incited to quarrel amongst them-
selves, lest they should conspire against their master,
and considered it to be cheaper to work them to death
than to let them grow old and useless. 2

In the inner ' cohort ' were the stalls and stables
for the oxen, horses, and other live stock ; and all
around was the land to be tilled.

Thus the Eoman villa, if not at first a complete
manor, was already an estate of a lord (dominus)
worked by slaves under a villicus.

Sometimes the whole work of the estate was done
by slaves ; and though the estimates of historians
have varied very much, there is no reason to doubt
that in the first and second centuries the proportion
of slaves to the whole population of the empire was
enormous.
The decu- But even the management of slaves required

slaves. organisation. The anciently approved Roman method
of managing the slaves on a villa was to form them
into groups of tens, called decurioz, each under an
overseer or decurio. 8

The villicus, or general steward of the manor, was
sometimes a freedman. And there was a strong
reason why a freedman was often put in a position of
trust, viz. that if he should be dishonest, or show

1 Columella, De Re Rustica, i. 8. i quam denuni horninuni faciunda?,

2 Plutarch, Cato, c. 21. See Cod, quas decurias appellaveruut antiqui
Theod. IX. xii. et maxiuie probaveruut.' — Colll-

' Classes etiaui uon luajores mella, i. 9.

The Roman Villa. 265

ingratitude to his patron, he was liable to be degraded Chap.

again into slavery. There is an interesting fragment 1

of Koman law which suggests that the decurio of a
gang of slaves was sometimes zfreedman, and that it
was a common practice to assign to the freedman a
portion of land and a decuria of slaves, and no doubt
oxen also to work it, thus putting him very much in
the position of a colonus with slaves under him. The
result of his betrayal of trust, in the case mentioned
in the fragment, was his degradation, and the re-
sumption by his patron of the decuria of slaves. 1
Thus we learn that the lord of a villa might, in
addition to his home farm worked by the slaves in
his own homestead, have portions of the land of his
estate let out, as it were, to farm to freedmen, each
with his decuria of slaves, and paying rent in produce.

There was nothing very peculiarly Eoman in this Gronps of
system of classification in tens. The fact that men ten8,
everywhere have ten fingers makes such a classifica-
tion all but universal. But the Eomans certainly did
use it for a variety of purposes — for taxation and
military organisation as well as in the management of
the slaves of a villa. And M. Guerard, probably
with reason, connects these decuria? of the Eoman
villa with the decania?, or groups of originally ten
servile holdings, under a villicus or decanus, which
are described on the estates of the Abbey of St. Ger-
main in the Survey of the Abbot Irminon about a.d.
850. 2 So possibly a survival of a similar system may
be traced also in the much earlier instances men-
tioned by Bede under date a.d. 655, in one of which

1 Fragment Jur. Rom. Vatic. I a Polyptique d'Irminun, i. pp.
272. Huschke, p. 774. I 45 and 456.

266

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

The coloni.
on a villa.

King Oswy grants to the monastery at Hartlepool
twelve possessiunculos, each of ' ten families ; ' and in the
other of which the abbess Hilda, having obtained a
'possession of ten families,' proceeds to build Whitby
Abbey. 1 In all these cases of the Eonian freedman
and his decuria, the Gallic decanus and his decania,
and the Saxon possessiuncula of ten families, there is
the bundle of ten slaves or semi-servile tenants with
their holdings, treated as the smallest usual territorial
division. 2

But to return to the Roman villa. The organisa-
tion of decurios of slaves was not the only resource of
the lord in the management of his estate.

Varro speaks of its being an open point, to be
decided according to the circumstances of each farm,
whether it were better to till the land by slaves or
by freemen, or by both. 3 And Columella, speaking
of the families or ' hands ' upon a farm, says ' they
' are either slaves or coloni ; ' 4 and he goes on to say,

* It is pleasanter to deal with coloni, and easier to get
1 out of them work than payments. . . . They will
' sooner ask to be let off the one than the other. The
' best coloni,' he says, ' are those which are indigeni,
' born on the estate and bound by hereditary ties

* to it.' Especially distant corn farms, he considers.
are cultivated with less trouble by free coloni than
by slaves under a villicus, because slaves are dishonest
and lazy, neglect the cattle, and waste the produce ;

1 Bede, III. c. xxiv. ' Singulae
possessions decern erant fauiili-
aruui.'

2 See also the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle, anno 777, where mention

is made of ' 10 honde lands ' given
to the monks at Medeshampstede.

3 Varro, i. xvii.

4 Columella, i. vii.

The Roman Villa.

2G7

whilst coloni, sharing in the produce, have a joint Chap.
interest with their lord. '.

That the coloni sometimes were indigeni upon the Adscript
estate, and were sometimes called originarii, shows (jU a '
the beginning at least of a tendency to treat them as
adscripti gleboz, like the mediseval ' nativi.' Indeed,
we find it laid down in the later laws of the empire
that coloni leaving their lord's estate could be re-
claimed at any time within thirty years. 1 And nothing
could more clearly indicate the growth of the semi-
servile condition of the colonus, as time went on, than
the declaration (a.d. 531) that the son of a colonus
who had done no service to the ' dominus terrae '
during his father's lifetime, and had been absent more
than thirty or forty years, could be recalled upon his
father's death and obliged to continue the services
due from the holding. 2

We know from Tacitus that the typical colonus
had his own homestead and land allotted to his use,
and paid tribute to his lord in corn or cattle, or other
produce. And there is a clause in the Justinian
Code prohibiting the arbitrary increase of these tri-
butes, another point in which the coloni resembled
the later villani. 3

A villa under a villicus, with servi under him Likeness
living within the ' curtis ' of the villa, and with a
little group of coloni in their vicus also upon the
estate, but outside the court, would thus be very much
like a later manor indeed. And Frontinus, 4 describing

1 ' Si quia colonus originrtis
vel inquiiinus ante hos triginta an-
cos de possessione discessit,' &c.
—Cod. Theod. v. tit. x. 1.

2 Cod. Just. xi. tit. xlvii. 22.

3 Cod. Just. xi. tit. xlix. 1.

4 Frontini, Lib. ii. De confro-
versiis Agrorum. Lachmann, p. 6iJ.

268

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Village
round a
villa.

The villa
becoming
the preva-
lent type
of estate.

the great extent of the latifundia, especially of pro-
vincial landowners, expressly says that on some of
these private estates there was quite a population
of rustics, and that often there were villages sur-
rounding the villa like fortifications. It would seem
then that the villas in the provinces were still more
like manors than those in Italy.

It is now generally admitted that indirectly, at
least, the Eoman conquest of German territory — the
extension of the Eoman province beyond the Ehine
and along the Danube — added greatly to the number
of semi-servile tenants upon the Eoman provincial
estates, and so tended more and more to increase
during the later empire the manorial character of
the ' villa ; ' whilst at the same time the pressure
of Eoman taxation within the old province of Gaul,
and beyond it, was so great as steadily to force more
and more of the free tenants on the Ager Publicus to
surrender their freedom and swell the numbers of
the semi-servile class on the greater estates ; so that
not only was the villa becoming more and more
manorial itself, but also it was becoming more and
more the prevalent type of estate.

As regards the first point, during the later em-
pire there was direct encouragement given to land-
owners to introduce barbarians taken from recently
conquered districts, and to settle them on their estates
as coloni, and not as slaves. These foreign coloni
became very numerous under the name of tributarii
and perhaps ' lseti ; ' so that the proportion of coloni to

' Frequenter in provinces ....
habent autem in baltilms privati
non exiguuin populuin plt-leium el

vicos circa villain in modum inuui-
tionum.'

The Roman Villa.

209

slaves was probably, during the later period of Roman
rule, always increasing, and the Roman villa under its
villicus was becoming more and more like a later
manor, with a semi-servile village community of coloni
or tributarii upon it in addition to the slaves. 1

As regards the second point, the evidence will be
given at a later stage of the inquiry.

Chap.
VIII.

Confining our attention at present to the Roman
villa, and the slaves and semi-servile tenants upon it,
we have finally to add to the fact of close resem-
blance to the later manor and manorial tenants proof
of actual historical connexion and continuity in dis-
tricts where the evidence is most complete.

A clear and continuous connexion can be traced in
many cases, at all events in Gaul, between the Roman
villa and the later manor.

In the letters of Sidonius Apollinaris the Visi-
gothic and Burgundian invaders are described as
adapting themselves roughly and coarsely to Roman
habits in many respects. He speaks of their being
put into the ' villas ' as ; hospites.' Indeed, it is well
known that these Teutonic invaders settled as in- German
vited guests, being called hospites or gasti ; 2 that villas,
they shared the villas and lands of the Romans on
the same system as that which was adopted when
Roman legions — often of German soldiers — were
quartered on a district, according to a well-known

1 Cod. Theod. v. tit. iv. 3,
a..d. 409. By this edict liberty is
given for landowners to settle upon
their property, as free coloni, people
of the recently conquered ' Scyras '
(a tribe inhabiting the present

' Moravia ').

2 Sid. Apol. Epist. ii. xii. He
complains that a governor partial
to barbarians 'implet villas hospi-
tifats.'

270

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Villas
given to
the
Church.

passage of the ' Codex Theodosianus.' 1 They took
their sortes, or fixed proportions of houses and lands
and slaves, and, sharing the lordship of these with
their Eoman ' consortes,' they must have sanctioned
and adapted themselves to the manorial character of
the villas whose occupation they shared, ultimately
becoming themselves lords of villas probably as ma-
norial as any Eoman villas could be. 2

Dr. P. Eoth has shown that in Frankish districts
many of the wealthy provincials remained, under
Frankish rule, in unbroken possession of their former
estates — their numerous ' villae.' Amongst these the
bishops and abbots were conspicuous examples. He
shows that thousands of ' villae ' thus remained un-
changed upon the widely extended ecclesiastical
estates. 3

Gregory of Tours speaks of the restitution by King
Hildebert of the ' villas ' unjustly seized under the law-
less regime of Hilperic. 4 He also relates how bishops
and monasteries were endowed by the transfer to them
of villas with the slaves and coloni upon them.

Under the year 582, he mentions the death of
a certain Chrodinus, also the subject of a poem by
Fortunatus, a great benefactor of the clergy, and
describes him as ' founding villas, setting vineyards,
4 building houses [domos], making fields [culturas],'
and then, having invited bishops of slender means to

1 Cod. Theod. lib. vii. tit. viii.
h. Compare as regards the Bur-
guvdian settlement the passages in
the Burffundifin Lares, carefully
commented upon in Binding's ' Das
Burgundiech-Romaniiiche Konig-
reich, von 448 6m 632 a.d.,' 1, c. i.

s. ii. et seq.

2 Binding, p. 36. And they
called them villas. Leges Burg.
T. 38-9.

3 Roth's Geschichte des Benefi-
cialwesens, p. 81.

4 Hist. Francoru?n f f. 344.

The Roman Villa.

271

his table, after dinner ' kindly distributing these
* houses, with the cultivators and the fields, with the
1 furniture, and male and female servants and house-
' hold slaves [ministris et famulis], saying, " These are
1 " given to the Church, and whilst with these the
1 " poor will be fed, they will secure to me favour
«" with God."' 1

Here, then, after the Frankish conquest, we have
the word villa still used for the typical estate ; and the
estate consists of the domus, with the vineyards and
the fields, and their cultivators.

Turning to the earliest monastic records we have
seen that the ' villas ' or ' heims ' of the abbeys of
Wizenburg and Lorsch were in fact manors.

The donations to the Abbot of St. Germain-des-
Pr^s, 2 in the neighbourhood of Paris, commenced in
the year 558, and in the survey of the estates of the
Abbey made in the year 820, there are described
villas still cultivated by coloni, leti, &c. — villas which
grew into villages which now bear the names of the
villas out of which they sprang : —

Levari Villa, now LevaviUe (p. 90).
Landulfi Villa, now Zandonville (p. 94).
Aneis Villa, now Anville.
Gaudeni Villa, now Grinville (p. 99).
Sonani Villa, now Senainville (p. 100).
Villa Alleni, now Allainville (p. 102).
Ledi Villa, now Laideville (p. 102).
Disboth Villa, now Bouville (p. 104).
Mornane Villare, now Mainvilliers (p. 112).
And bo on in numbers of instances.

The chartulary of the Abbey of St. Bertin also

Chap.
VIII.

Villas be-
come vil-

1 Hist. Francwum, f. 295.

2 Polyptique d'lrminon. Large
donations were made to the abbey

as early as A.D. 558 by the Frank-
ish King Hildebert, See M. Gue-
rard's Introduction, p. 35.

272

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

and ' hems
which are

contains instructive examples. By the earliest charter
of a.d. 648 the founder of the abbey granted to the
monks his villa called * Sitdiu,' and it included within
it twelve sub-estates, one of them, the Tattinga Villa,
which later is called in the cartulary Tatting aheim}

The chief villa with these sub-estates was granted
to the abbey ' cum domibus, cedijiciis, terris cultis et
i incultis, mansiones cum silvis pratis pascuis, aquis
1 aquarumve decursibus, seu farinariis, mancipiis, acco-
' labus, greges cum pastoribus,' &c. &c, and therefore
was a manor with both slaves (mancipia) and coloni,
or other semi-servile tenants (accola?) upon it, as indeed
were the generality of villas handed over to the
monasteries.

There seems, therefore, to be conclusive evidence
not only of a remarkable resemblance, but also in
many cases of a real historical continuity between
the Roman ' villa ' and the later Frankish manor.

Tenants
on the
Ager
l'ublicus.

IV. THE SMALLER TENANTS ON THE AGER PUBLICTJS IN
ROMAN PROVINCES — THE VETERANS.

Passing from that part of the land m Roman
provinces included in the villas, or latifundia, of the
richer Romans, and so placed under private lordship,
we must now turn our attention to the wide tracts of
4 Ager Publicus,' and try to discover the position and
social economy of the tenants, so to speak, on the
great provincial manor of the Roman Emperor.

Care must be taken to discriminate between the

Chartularium Sithiense, pp. 18 and 168.

votorans.

The Small Holdings. 273

different classes of these tenants, some of them being Cha*.
of a free and some of them of a semi-servile kind. 1

First, there were the veterans of the legions, who, The
according to Eoman custom, were settled on the
public lands at the close of a war, by way of pay
for their services.

For the settlement of these, sometimes regularly Regular
constituted military colonice were founded ; and in
this case, where everything had to be started de novo,
a large tract of land was divided for the purpose by
straight roads and lanes — pointing north, and south,
and east, and west — into centurice of mostly 200 or
240 jugera, which were then sub-divided into equal
rectangular divisions, according to the elaborate
rules of the Agrimensores, 1 the odds and ends of land,
chiefly woods and marshes, being alone left to be used
in common by the ' vicini,' or body of settlers.

But in other cases the settlement was much more
irregular and haphazard in its character.

Sometimes the veteran received his pay and his
outfit, and was left to settle wherever he could find un-
occupied land — c vacantes terrce ' — to his mind. Under
the later empire, owing to the constant ravages of
German tribes, there was no lack of land ready for
cultivators, without the appliance of the red-tape
rules of the Agrimensore*. The veterans settled
upon this and occupied it pretty much as they liked,
taking what they wanted according to their present
or prospective means of cultivating it. Lands thus holding"
taken were called ' agri occujoatorii,' and were irre-

1 Mr. Coote lias pointed out
many remains of this centuviation
in Britain ; and the inscriptions

on many centurial stones are given
in Hiibner'8 collection.

274

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VHI.

Outfit of
oxen and
seed of two
kinds.

Single or

double

tuga.

gular in their boundaries and divisions, instead of
being divided into the rectangular centurice}

It is to these more irregular occupations of terri-
tory that the chief interest attaches.

When, under the later empire, veterans were
allowed to settle upon ' vacantes terrce,' they had
assigned to them an outfit of oxen and seed closely
resembling the Saxon ■ setene ' and the Northumbrian
' stuht.'

Those of the upper grade, whether so considered
from military rank or special service rendered by
them to the State, were provided, according to the
edicts of a.d. 320 and 364, with an outfit of two pairs
of oxen and 100 modii of each of two kinds of
seed. Those of lower rank received as outfit one pair
of oxen and fifty modii of each of the two kinds of
seed. 2 And the land they cultivated with these
single or double yokes of oxen was perhaps called
their single or double jugum. Cicero, in his oration

1 Siculus Flaccus, Lachmann
and Rudorff, i. pp. 136-8.

8 Cod. Theod. lib. vii. tit. xx.
3. a.d. 320. ' Constantinus ad
universos veteranos.' ' Let veterans
according to our command receive
vacant lands, and hold them " im-
munes " for ever ; and for the need-
ful improvement of the country let
them have also 25 thousand folles,
a pair of oxen {bourn quoque par},
and 100 modii of different kinds of
grain, &c. (fruffum).'

lb. 8. 8. ' Valentinianus et Va-
lcns ad universos provinciates,' a.d.
o<;4. 'To all deserving veterans
we give what dwelling-place (pn-
triam) they wish, and promise per-

petual "immunity. r

' Let them have vacant or other
lands where they chose, free from
stipendium and annual " praestatio."
Further, we grant them for the cul-
tivation of these lands both animals
and seed, so that those who have been
protectores (body-guards) should re-
ceive two pairs of oxen {duo bourn
porta) and 100 modii, of each of the
two kinds of corn (/ruffes) — others
after faithful service a single pair of
oxen (singula paria bourn) and 50
modii of each of the two kinds of
corn, &c. If they bring male or
female slaves on to the land, let
them possess them " immune* " for
ever.'

The Small Holdings. 275

against Verres, speaks of the Sicilian peasants as Chap.

mostly cultivating ' in singulis jugis.' ! During the L

later empire the typical holding of land — the hypo-
thetical unit for purposes of taxation — as we shall Theju 3 um
see, came to be the jugum, but the assessment no
longer always corresponded with the actual holdings.

But to return to the holding of the Eoman veteran.
It is not impossible to ascertain roughly its normal
acreage from the amount of seed allotted in the out-
fit, as well as from the number of oxen.

A single pair of oxen was, as we have seen, allotted of about
under Saxon rules as outfit to the yard-land of Jugera '
thirty acres, of which, under the three-field or three-
course system, ten acres would be in wheat, ten in
oats or pulse, and ten in fallow. With the single
pair of oxen was allotted to the veteran fifty modii
of wheat seed, and fifty of oats or pulse. Five
modii of wheat seed, according to the Roman writers
on agriculture, commonly went to the jugerum ; 2 so
that the veteran with a single yoke of oxen had seed
for ten jugera of wheat, and thus was apparently as-
sumed to be able to cultivate, if farming on the
three-course system, about thirty jugera in all, like
the holder of the Saxon yard-land. The veteran to
whom was assigned the double yoke of four oxen
and 200 modii of seed — 100 modii of each kind —
would have about 60 jugera in his double holding.

Of course, too much stress should not be placed
upon any close correspondence in the number of
jugera ; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly natural

1 In Verrem, Actio 2, lib. iii. 27. I Columella, ii. 9. Ouerard, Irminon,

2 Varro, De Re liustica, i. 44. | i. 1.

T 2

276 The Roman Land System.

Chap, that, in the theory of these outfits, seed should be

1 given for a definite area, and that this should be

some actual division of the centuria of the Agri-
mensores.

Siculus Flaccus, who wrote about a.d. 100, and
chiefly of Italy, describes how, in the regular allot-
ments by the Agrimensores, one settler, according to
his military rank, would receive a single modus,
another one and a half, and another two modii,
whilst sometimes a single allotment was given to
Normal several people jointly. He mentions also that the
centuria centuria? varied in size, being sometimes 200 jugera

200 and ' ° ° ,°

240jugera. and sometimes 240 ; the smaller lots also sometimes
varying in size, even in the same centuria, according
to the fertility or otherwise of the land. 1

All we can say is that the centuria of 240 jugera
would be divisible into single and double holdings
of thirty and sixty jugera respectively, just as the
English double hide of 240 acres, or single hide of
120 acres, was divisible into yard- lands of thirty
acres. The centuria of 200 jugera would be divisible
into holdings of fifty and twenty-five jugera respec-
tively. 2

Passing from the outfit and the holdings, it may

1 Siculus Flaccus, De Conditio- quinquagenis jugeribus,' the ' ager

nibus Agrorum. Laehmann and
Rudorff, i. pp. 154-6.

2 In the division of the land
between the Romans and Visigoths

meridianus in xxv. jugeribus.' Laeh-
mann, i. 247. Here we have the
normal divisions of the centuria of
200 jugera into holdings of 25 and

the amount allotted 'per singula 00 jugera. On the other hand, the
aratra' was to be 50 aripennes (i.e. Lex Thoria,n.c. Ill, fixed 30 jugera

25 jugera). Lex Visigothorum, x.
1, 14 (a.d. G50 or thereabouts).

The Liber Coloniarum I. de-
pcribes the ' ager jugarius ' as ' in

as the largest holding to be recog
nised on the public lands. Rudorff,
p. 213 (Corp. Jur. Lot. 200, 1. 14).

The Small Holdings.

277

be asked, what was the system of cultivation ? was it Chap.

J VIII.

an open field husbandry ?

It is obvious that formal centuriation in straight
lines and rectangular divisions, by the Agrimensores,
produced something entirely different from the open Traces of
field system as we have found it in England. But fieid P hus-
Siculus Flaccus records that in some cases, when greases.
vacant districts were occupied by settlers without
this formal centuriation, as ' agri occupatorii ' — the
settlers taking such tracts of land as they had the
means or expectation of cultivating — the boundaries
were irregular, and followed no rules but those of
common sense and the custom of the country. 1 And
he gives as an instance of such a common-sense rule
the custom about ' supercilia,' or linches, the sloping SuperdUa
surface of which, where they formed boundaries
between the land of two owners, should be kept the
same number of feet in width, the slope always
belonging to the upper owner, because otherwise it
would be in the power of the lower owner, by
ploughing into the slope, to jeopardise the upper
owner's land. 2 This, he says, is the reason of the
rule that the land of the owner of the upper terrace
generally descends to the bottom of the slope. 3

Here, in this mention of linches and irregular The hoid-
boundaries, traces seem to turn up of an open-field times
husbandry ; and a few pages further on the same oHcS^
writer makes another observation which shows clearly t ® red

J pieces.

that frequently the holding, like the yard-land, was

1 P. 142. * Quam maxitne se-
cundum consuetudinem regionum
omnia intuenda sunt.'

a P. 143. See also Frontinus,

p. 43, and Hyginus, p. 115, and p.
128 on the same point.
3 P. 162.

278 The Roman Land System.

Chap, composed of scattered pieces in open fields, and that

this scattered ownership, as in England, was the

result of an original joint occupation, and probably
of a system of co-operative ploughing.

He says x that in many districts were to be found
possessores whose lands were not contiguous, but
made up of little pieces scattered in different places,
and intermixed with those of the others, the several
owners having common rights of way over one
another's land to their scattered pieces, and also to
the common woods, in which the vicini only have
common rights of cutting timber and feeding stock.

This reference to the common woods and rights
of way belonging only to the ' vicini ' seems to show
that the scattering of the pieces in the holdings had
arisen as in the later open-field system, from an origi-
nal co-operation of ploughing or other cultivation.
The result Connecting these statements with the previous
occupa- one, that sometimes land was assigned to a number
of settlers jointly, and that sometimes settlers took
possession, without centuriation, of so much land as
they could cultivate, and transferring these same
methods from Italy, where Flaccus observed them,
to transalpine provinces, where larger teams were

1 Siculus Flaccus, Lachmann, sumus. Quorundam agri servitu-
p. 152. ' Prseterea et in multia tern possessoribus ad particulas suas
regionibus comperimus quosdam . eundi redeundique praestant. Quo-
possessores non continuas habere i rundam etiam vicinoruni aliquas
terras, sed particulas quasdam in ; silvas quasi publicas, iiumo proprias
diversis locis, intervenientibus com- ' quasi vicinorum, esse comperimus,
plurium possessionibus : propter nee quemquam in eis cedendi pas-
quod etiam complurea vicinales ; cendique jus habere nisi vicinoa quo-
viae sint, ut unusquisque possit ad rum sint : ad quas itinera saspe, ut
particulas suas jure pervenire. Sed supra diximus, per alienos agros
et de viarum conditionibua locuti dantur.'

The Small Holdings.

279

needful for ploughing, it would seem that we may ClIAP-
rightly picture bodies of free settlers on the ' ager VI1J -
publicus' as frequently joining their yokes of oxen
together to plough their allotments on the open-
field system. And if this was done by retired
veterans on public land, they were probably only
following the common method adopted by the coloni
on the villas of the richer Eoman landowners in the
provinces. If they did so, they probably simply
adopted the custom of the country in which they
settled, and followed a method common not only to
Gaul and Germany, but also to Europe and Asia. 1

Even in the case of the regular centuriation, there The
was an opportunity, apparently, for joint occupation,
and probably often a necessity for joint ploughing.

Hyginus, describing the mode of centuriation,
speaks first of the two broad roads running north
and south and east and west ; and then he says the
' sortes ' were divided, and the names recorded in tens
{per decurias, i.e. per homines denos), the subdivision
among the ten being left till afterwards. 2 It does
not follow, perhaps, that the subdivision was always
made in regular squares. There may sometimes
have been a common occupation and joint plough-
ing ; but of this we know nothing.

The retired veterans were a privileged class, and The

. ° veterans a

specially exempted from many public burdens ; 3 but privileged
in other respects there is no reason to suppose that
in their methods of settlement and agriculture, and

method of
centuria-
tion.

1 Teams of six and of eight
oxen in the plough are mentioned
in the Vedas. ' Altindisches Leben,'
H. Zimmer. Berlin, 1879, p. 237.

8 Hyginus, Lachmann and Ru-
dorff, i. 113.

3 See Codex Theodosianus, vii.
tit. xx. s. 9, a.d. 306.

280 The Roman Land System.

^J in the size of their holdings proportioned to their

single or double yokes, they differed from other

free settlers or ancient original tenants on the ager
publicus. We may add that, following the usual
Roman custom, these settlers probably as a rule
lived in towns and villages, and not on their farms. We
may assume that, having single or double yokes of
oxen and outfits of two kinds of seed, they were
arable and not pasture farmers, with their home-
steads in the village and their land in the fields around
it — in some places under the three-field system, in
others with a rectangular block of land on which
they followed the three-course or other rotation of
crops for themselves.

Groups of settlers may therefore be regarded as
sometimes forming something very much like a free
village community upon the public land of the
Empire, with no lord over it except the fiscal and
judicial officers of the Emperor.

V. THE SMALLER TENANTS ON THE 'AGER PUBLICUS '

(continued) — the l^eti.

The Lati In the second place, there were settlers of quite

servile another grade — families of the conquered tribes of
the 8 We£h Germany, who were forcibly settled within the limes
tu J*- of the Roman provinces, in order that they might
repeople desolated districts or replace the other-
wise dwindling provincial population — in order that
they might bear the public burdens and minister to
the public needs, i.e. till the public land, pay the

The Small Holdings.

281

public tribute, and also provide for the defence of ^ nAp -

the empire. They formed a semi-servile class, partly 1

agricultural and partly military ; they furnished corn
for the granaries and soldiers for the cohorts of the
empire, and were generally known in later times by
the name of ' Lceti,' or ' Liti.' 1 They were somewhat
in the same position as the Welsh ' taeogs ' or ' aillts.''
They were foreigners, without Eoman blood, and
hence a semi-servile class of occupiers distinct from,
and without the full rights of, Eoman citizens 2 — a
class, in short, upon whom the full burden of taxation
and military service could be laid.

Probably this system had been followed from the Mostly
time of Augustus, as a substitute for the earlier and Germans,
more cruel course of sending tens of thousands of
vanquished foes to the Eoman slave market for sale ;
but it became a more and more important part of
the imperial defensive policy of Eome during the
later empire, as the inroads of barbarians became
more and more frequent.

There is clear evidence, from the third century, system of
of the extension of this kind of colonisation over emigration
a wide district. It is important to realise both its J™?ed°dTs-
extent and locality.

In order fully to comprehend the meaning and
consequences of this German colonisation of Eoman
provinces, it must be borne in mind that the rich
lands on the left bank of the Ehine, between the
Vosges mountains and the river,

tricts.

had been settled

1 Id Cod. Theod. vii. xx. s. 10,
a.d. 369/ lseti ' are mentioned ; and
in s. 12, a.d. 400, ' laetus Alaman-
nus Savmata, vagus, vel filius
veterani/ are mentioned together.

8 Compare the Welsh aillt, or
alltud (Saxon althud, foreigner),
and the Aldiones of the Lombardic
laws, with the Lceti.

282

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

A German
population
already in
Rhaetia,
the Agri
Decumates,
and in
Elsass.

The Ala-
manni.

The Limes,
or ' Pfuhl-
qraben'

by Germans before the time of Tacitus. Strabo 1 dis-
tinctly says that the Suevic tribes, who in his day
dwelt on the east bank of the Rhine, had driven out
the former German inhabitants, and that the latter
had taken refuge on the west bank. Tacitus de-
scribes three German tribes as settled in this district
(now Elsass). 2 Further, the large extent of country
to the east of the Rhine, within the Roman lines,
reaching from Mayence to Regensburg, included in
the Agri Decumates and the old province of Rhsetia
(i.e. what is now Baden, Wirtemberg, and Bavaria),
had by the third century become filled with strag-
gling offshoots from various German and mostly
Suevic tribes who had crossed the ' Limes ' — a mixed
population of Hermunduri, Thuringi, Marcomanni,
and Juthungi, with a sprinkling of Franks, Vandals,
Longobards, and Burgundians, — some of them
friendly, some of them hostile to the empire and
gradually becoming absorbed in the greater group of
the ' Alamanni.'

Further, it should be remembered that in the third
century offshoots from the Alamanni and the Franks
attempted to spread themselves over the country on
the Gallic side of the Rhine, assuming, during
periods of Roman weakness, a certain independence
and even over-lordship, so that Probus found sixty
cities under their control. Probus completely re-
duced them once more into obedience, and again
made the Roman authority supreme over the ' Agri
Decumates,' and Rha^tia as far as the ' Limes.' 3

1 B. iv. c. iii. s. 4.

2 Germania, 28i

3 The importance of the Limes

or Pfahlyraben as marking the ex-
tent of Roman rule to the east of
the Rhine, has recently been fully

The Small Holdings. 283

A few years before, Marcus Antoninus, after he Chap.

had conquered the Marcomanni in this district, had .

deported many of them into Britain. 1

Probus followed his example, and deported also ^rceA

colonist"

into Britain such of the Burgundians and Vandals tioninBri-
from the ' Agri Decumates ' as he could secure alive Beigfc"
as prisoners, ' in order that they might be useful as GauL
security against revolts in Britain.' 2

He also colonised large numbers of Germans in of L<Bti .

i t>i • - n / t t • ' n Belgic

the Jtthme valley (where he introduced, it is said, the Gaul and
vine culture), and some of them in Belgic Gaul. In vaney. se
his report to the Senate he described his victory as
the reconquest of all Germany. He boasted of the
subjection of the numerous petty kings, and declared
that the Germans now ploughed, and sowed, and
fought for the Eomans. And, as he himself had de-
ported Germans into Britain, his words cover the
British as well as the Gallic and German provinces. 3
This victory over the Alamannic tribes and colonisa-
tion of them in Britain and Gaul, by Probus, was in
a.d. 277.

Very soon afterwards the same policy was again
followed in dealing with the Pranks, who were plun-
dering and depopulating the Belgic provinces of Gaul
further to the north, and ravaging the coasts of Britain.

realised. See Wilhelm Arnold's
Deutsche Urzeit, c. iii. ' Der
Pfahlgraben und seine Bedeutung.''
See also ' Allgemeine Geschichte in
Einzeldarstellungen ' (Berlin, 1882),
Abth. 48, c. viii. And Mr. Hodg-
kin's interesting paper on ' The
Pfahlgraben' in Archceologia A?li-

ana, pt. 25, vol. ix. new series, i 252.

Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1882.

1 Gibbon, c. ix., quoting Dion.
Cos., lxxi. and lxxii.

2 Zosimus, i. p. 68. Excerpta,
Mon. Brit. lxxv.

3 Wietersbeim's Geschichte der
Vblkerwanderung (Dabn), i. 215.
Guerard'a I'olypt. cTIrminuii, i. p.

284

The Roman Land System.

Chap.

VilJ.

Further
deporta-
tions of
Franks,
Frisians,
and Cha-
mavi.

In 286, Carausius, who was put in charge of the
Eoman fleet, and whose business it was to guard the
Gallic and British shores infested by the Saxons and
Franks, revolted and proclaimed himself Emperor,
defending himself successfully against the Emperor
Maximian, and leaguing himself with the Franks and
Saxons. In 291, Maximian, after directing his arms
against the Franks, deported a number of them and
settled them as laeti on the vacant lands of the
Nervii and Treviri, in Belgic Gaul and in the valley
of the Moselle. 1

The further steps taken by his co-Caesar Constan-
tius to put an end to the revolt of Carausius are very
instructive. He first recovered the haven of Gesori-
acum (Boulogne), and cut off the connexion of the
British fleet with Gaul. Then he turned northward
again upon the districts from whence the Frankish
and Saxon pirates had been accustomed to make their
ravages upon Britain and Gaul. They were, as has
been said, in league with the British usurper, but
succumbed to the arms of Constantius. The first
use he made of his victory over them was to repeat
the policy of his predecessors — to deport a great
multitude into those very Belgic districts which
they had depopulated by their ravages. This was
the time when the districts around Amiens and Beau-
vais, once inhabited by the Bellovaci, and further
south around Troyes and Langres, where the Tricassi
and Lingones had dwelt, were colonised by Franks,

1 ' Tuo, Maximiane Auguste, nu-
tu, Nervioniui et Treveroruni arva
jacentia Lsetus postliminio restitu-
tio et rcceptus in leges Fraucua ex-

coluit.' Eumen. Taneyyr. Con-
stant™ Cas. } c. 21. Guerard, i.
250.

The Small Holdings. 285

Chamavi, and Frisians ; and Eumenius, 1 in his Pane- C ! 1U

gyric, represented them, as Probus had described the

Alamanni, as now tilling the fields they had once
plundered, and supplying recruits to the Roman
legions. A ' pagus Chamavorum ' existed in the ninth
century in this district, and so bore witness to the
extent and permanence of this colony of Chamavi 2
Similar evidence for the other districts, as we
shall have occasion to see hereafter, is possibly to be
found in the names of places with a Teutonic termi-
nation remaining to this day, though the language
spoken is French.

A recent German writer, in a sketch of the reign
of Diocletian, makes the pregnant remark that when
account is taken of all the masses of Germans thus
brought into the Eoman provinces, partly as colonists
and partly as soldiers, it becomes clear that the
northern districts of Gaul were already half German
before the Frankish invasion. These German settlers
were valuable at the time as tillers of the land, payers
of tribute, and as furnishing recruits to the legions ; but
in history they were more than this, for they were,
partly against their will, the pioneers of the German
* Volkerwanderung.'*

We have seen that Probus had deported Ala- Alamanni

„ . in Britain,

manni into Britain in pursuance 01 this continuous

1 Eumen. Paneg. Comtantio, 9.
Guerard, i 252.

2 Zeuss, Die Deutschen und die
Nachbarstamme, pp. 582-4, quoting
the will of St. Widrad, Abbot of
Flavigny in the eighth century :
'In pago Commavorum* 'in pago

' Ammaviorum.' 1 In the Notitia I

Occidentis, cxl., there is mention of
Lceti from this district — Prcefectus
Lcetorum Lingonensium. Boeking,
p, 120.

3 Kaiser Diocletian und seine
Zeit, von Theodor Preuss. Lein
zig, 1869 (pp. 54-5).

28G

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

policy. It is curious to observe that when Constan-
tius soon after (in a.d. 306) died at York, and Con-
stantine was proclaimed Emperor in Britain, one of
his supporters was Crocus or Erocus, 1 a king of the
Alamanni, proving that there were Alamannic soldiers
in Britain under their own king — probably, more
properly speaking, a sept or clan under its own chief
— at that date.

But it was not long before both the Alamanni
and the Franks again became troublesome in the
Rhine valley. Under the year 357, in the history of
Ammianus Marcellinus, there is a vivid description of
the struggle of Julian to regain from the Alamanni
the cities on the Lower Rhine which the latter had
occupied, as in the time of Probus, within the Roman
province of Lower Germany. After the decisive
battle of Strasburg, Julian crossed the Rhine at
Mayence and laid waste the country between the
Maine and the Rhine, ' plundering the wealthy farms
1 of they.' crops and cattle, and burning to the ground
' all the houses, which latter in that district were built
' in the Roman fashion.' 2 He then restored the
fortress of Trajan which protected this part of the
1 Limes.' The next year, the Salian Franks having
taken possession of Toxandria, on the Scheldt, Julian
pounced down upon them and recovered possession,
and then set himself ' to restore the fortifications of
1 the cities of the Lower Rhine, and to establish afresh
1 the granaries which had been burned, in which to stow

1 ' Quo [Constantio] mortuo,
cunctia qui aderunt adnitentibus,
Bed praecipue Eroco Alamannorum
p _"•, auxilii gratia Constantium
comitate, imperium capit.' Mon.

Brit. Excerpta. Ex Sexti Aure-
lii Victoria Epitome (p. lxxii.).

2 Ammianus Marcellinus, bk.
xvii. c. i. 7.

The Small Holdings.

287

* the corn usually imported from Britain.'' x This was c»ap.

the occasion on which, according to Zosimus, 800 1

vessels, more than mere boats, were employed in
going backwards and forwards bringing over the
British corn, thus proving both the extent of British
agriculture and the close connexion between Britain

and the province of Lower Germany.

The aggressions of the Alamanni, however, con- Buceno-
tinued, and again we find Ammianus Marcellinus deported
describing how, at the close of a campaign, Valen - Jjjj Br "
tinian, in a.d. 371, deported into Britain the Buceno-
bantes, a tribe of the Alamanni from the east banks
of the Ehine, immediately north of Mayence. He
made them elect Fraomarius as their chief, and then,
giving him the rank of a tribune, sent him with his
tribe of Alamannic soldiers to settle in Britain, as
probably Crocus or Erocus had been sent before him. 2

This policy of planting colonies of German colo- The policy
nists — even whole clans under their petty chiefs — in ne, and
the Belgic provinces and Britain, with the double Sed! D "
object of keeping up the supply of corn for the
empire and soldiers for the legions, was therefore
steadily adhered to for several generations. And a
further proof of the extent to which the system
was carried turns up later in the numerous co-
horts of Lseti mentioned by Ammianus, 3 and in the

* Notitia,' 4 as having been drawn from these colonies

1 Am. Marc. bk. xviii. c. ii. s. 3.
a Id. xxix. c. iv. 7.

3 Id. bk. xx. c. viii. 13.

4 Among the ' Prcefecti Lcsto-
rum et Gentilium ' there is mention
ot the Prsefectus Lsetorum Teuto-

nicianorum, Batavorum, Franco-
i~um, Linffonensium, Nerviorum,
and Lagensium. Notitia Occ. cxl.
Booking, p. 120. See also the valu-
able annotation ' De LcBtis. 1 Book-
ing, 1044 et seq.

288 The Roman Land System.

Crap, and placed as garrisons all over Gaul and Germany,

VIII

but especially on the banks of the Ehine.

It has been necessary to dwell upon this subject
because it is needful for the present purpose that it
should be fully understood that throughout the Ger-
man provinces of Rhcetia, the Agri Decumates, Upper
and Lower Germany, in Belgic Gaul, and in Britain,
there were large numbers of German semi-servile
settlers upon the Ager Publicus interspersed among
the free coloni and veterans ; and that most of the
settlers, whether free coloni, veterans, or keti, were
engaged in agriculture. Some of them, no doubt,
especially since the encouragement said to have been
given by Probus to vine culture, may have occupied
vineyards in Southern Gaul, or in the valleys of the
Ehine and its tributaries.

Lastly, it must also be remembered that there may
have been intermixed among the privileged veterans
and the overburdened ' laeti,' on the public lands,
dwindling remains of original Gallic inhabitants,
and other free coloni or tenants, not privileged like the
veterans, but subject to the various public burdens.
Some of these were scarcely to be distinguished, per-
haps, in point of law and right from the owners of
villas. They may have been holders of slaves, and have
had possibly sometimes even free coloni of their own,
though varying very much in the size of their hold-
ings, and falling far below the owners of latifundia in
social importance. Be this as it may, we shall pre-
sently find the free class of landholders, whoever
they might be, sinking steadily into a semi-servile
condition under the oppression of the Imperial fiscal
officers and the burden of the taxation and services

The ' Tributum: 289

imposed upon them — the tributum and sordida munera y^J

— the oppressive exaction of which during the later

empire was forcing them gradually to surrender their
freedom, and to seek the shelter of a semi-servile posi-
tion under the patrocinium, sometimes of the fiscal
officer himself, sometimes of the lord of a neighbour-
ing * villa.'

VI. THE ' TRIBUTUM ' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

Passing now to the system of taxation and forced
services during the later empire, it will be found to
be of peculiar importance, not only because of its
connexion with the growing manorial tendencies, but
also because the taxation resembled so closely the
system of ' hidation ' prevalent afterwards in Saxon
England, and some of the forced services actually
survived in the manorial system.

The system of taxation was modified by the Em-
peror Diocletian at the very time when the policy of
forced colonisation described in the last chapter was
being carried out.

It was known as the taxation ' juqatione vel eapi- fhej-ugatto

J J -* or assess-

tatione' — the tribute or stipendium of so much l'or mentby

tha jugum

every j ugum or caput. or caput.

1 Jugum ' and ' caput ' were names for a hypo-
thetically equal, if not always the same, unit of
taxation. 1

The 'jugum ' was probably originally taken from
the area which could be cultivated by the single or
double yoke of oxen allotted to the settler, and may

1 Cod. Theod. vii. 6, 3. Per
viginti juga sea capita conferant
vesietTm . .

Id. xi. 16, 6. Pro capitibus

seujugis suis. . .

290 The Roman Land System.

Ch "'- have been a single or double one accordingly. But

VIII. & . .

a person holding a fraction of a jugum or caput

was said to hold only a '"portio^ 1 and paid, in conse-
quence, a proportion only of the burdens assessed
upon the whole juguin.

Noav, if the taxation had continued at actually
so much per yoke of oxen, the system would have
been simple enough ; and it would be easy to under-
stand how, whilst the jugum represented the unit of
taxation for land, the caput might be the unit corre-
sponding in value with the jugum, but applying to
other kinds of property, such as slaves and cattle,
and including the capitation tax levied in respect of
wives and children. And this, probably, may be
the meaning of the double nomenclature — jugum vel
caput. At any rate, we know from the Theodosian
Code, that the members of a veteran's family were
constituent parts of his ' caput.' 2

The subject is obscure, but the reform of Diocletian
seems to have aimed at an equalisation of the taxation
according to the value of property.
The jugum ij.^- seems to have involved an assessment of

became a

unit of various kinds of land in hypothetical juga, of the
same value (said to be fixed at 2,000 solidi) ; and this
involved a variation in the acreage of the hypo-
thetical jugum, according to the richness or other-
wise of the land, just as according to Flaccus was
the case also as regards the actual centurias and
allotments.

In one instance in which the figures have been

1 Cod. Theol. zi, 17, 4. 'Universi j nis que ad hsec muma coarctentur.'
pro j"i tioiicMia: I'u.-M-Monisjugatio- I 2 Cod. Theod. lib. vii. tit. xx. 4.

The ' Tributum: 291

preserved, viz. for Syria, under the Eastern Empire, Chap.
the assessment was as follows under the system of

Diocletian : 1 — t^ ied

ill illL.A,

Of vine-land . . 5 jugera, or 10 pletbra or half-acrea.

Arable, first class . 20 „ 40 „ „

Arable, second class 40 „ 80 „ „

Arable, tbird class . 60 „ 120 „ „

In the east, therefore, sixty jugera, or 120 Greek
plethra or half-acres, of ordinary arable land, were
assessed as ajugum.

This instance makes it clear that while originally
the actual allotment to a single or double yoke of
oxen may have been taken as the basis of taxa-
tion, the 'jugum ' had already become a hypothetical
unit of assessment, just as, by a similar process,
was the case with the English hide. Property had
come to be assessed at so many jug a under the
jugation, without any attempt to make the assessment
accord with the actual number of yokes employed.

The assessment was revised every fifteen years at
what was called the Indiction. 2

We have seen that the nominal acreage of the
typical holding assigned to the single yoke of two
oxen under Eoman law on the Continent resembled
very closely that of the Saxon yard-land, which also
had two oxen allotted with it. 3

The In-
diction.

1 See Syrisch-Romisches Itechts-
buch aus dem Fun/ten Jahrhundert
(Bruns und Sacban), Leipzig, 1880,
p. 37; and M arquardt's Staatsver-
waltuwj, ii. 220. See also Hy-
ginus, De Limitibus Constituendis,
Lacbmaun, &c, p. 205, wbere there

is mention of ' arvum primum, se-
cundum, 1 &c, in Pannonia.

2 Marquardt, ii. 237.

3 Not that the Roman jugerum
was equal in area to the Saxon acre.
It was much smaller, and of quite a
different shape, at least in Italy.

292

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Analogy of
ihejuffiim
and cen-
turia to
the yard-
land and
bide.

We have also seen that the twenty-five or thirty
jugera of the single yoke were probably fixed as an
eighth of the Eoman centuria^ as the yard-land was
the eighth of a double hide.

The common acreage of the centuria was, as we
have seen, 200 or 240 jugera. The latter number may
be the simple result of the use of the long hundred of
120 ; or it may have resulted, as suggested above,
from the necessity of making the centuria of the
free citizen's typical estate divisible into four double
holdings of 60 acres, or eight single holdings of 30
acres each.

Be this as it may, the centuria, or typical estate
of a free citizen in a regularly constructed Eoman
colony, seems to have stood to the single or double
holding of the common and often semi-servile settler
in the same arithmetical relation as the Saxon larger
hide of 240 acres did to the yard-land. 1

We have, then, two kinds of holdings : —

1. The one or more centuriod embraced in the

The acreage of the jugum no doubt
varied very much, as did also the
acreage of the yard-land.

1 It is even possible and pro-
bable that the Gallic coinage in
Roman times, mentioned in the
Pauca de Mensuris (Lachmann and
Rudorff, p. 373), ' Juxta Gallos
vigesima pars unciae denarius est
. . . duodecies unciae libram xx.
solidos continentem efficiunt, sed
veteres solidum qui nunc aureus dici-
tur nuncupabant,' — the division of
the pound of silver into 12 ounces,
and these into 20 pennyweights —
with which we found the Welsh

tunc pound to be connected, may also
have had something to do with the
contents of the centuria and jugum.
At all events, the division of the
pound into 240 pence was very con-
veniently arranged for the division
of a tax imposed upon holdings of
240 acres, or 1 20 acres, or 60 acres,
or 30 acres, or the 10 acres in each
field. In other words, the coinage
and the land divisions were remark-
ably pur (did in their arrangement,
as we found was also the case with
the scutage of the Hundred Rolls,
and the scatt penny of the villani
in the Boldon Book.

TJie ' Tributum: 293

latifimdia or villas of the large landowners, which, <*!**•

however, when tilled by their coloni, and not by

slaves, might well be subdivided into holdings of
sixty or thirty acres each.

2. The double and single holdings of the smaller
settlers on the ' ager publicus ' of fifty or sixty and
twenty-five or thirty acres each.

And we may conclude that the system of taxation
called the ' jugatio'' was founded upon these facts,
though in order to equalise its burden the assessment
of an estate or a territory in juga became, under
Diocletian, a hypothetical assessment, corresponding
no longer with the actual number of yokes, just as the
Saxon hide ad geldam, at the date of the Domesday
Survey, no longer corresponded with the actual caru-
cate ad arandum.

Another resemblance between the Eoman juga-
tion and the Saxon hidage was to be found in the
method adopted when it became needful to reduce
the taxation of a district.

Thus, the land of the iEdui had been ravaged
and depopulated. It had paid the tributum on
32,000 juga ; 7,000 juga were released from taxa-
tion. In future it was assessed at 25,000 juga only ;
and so relief was granted. 1

Further, as the English manorial lord paid the ihetriim-
hidage for the whole manor, so the lord of the villa, by"th^ ld
under Eoman law, paid the tributum not only for his ^ v }°

' r » claimed

own demesne land, but also for the land of his coloni tribute
and tenants. Just as the servile tenants of a Saxon tenants, or
thane were called his ' gafol gelders,' so the semi- *" tanu

1 Eumenius, Pan. Constantini, Marquardt, S. V., ii. 222.

294

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

CoJoni and
tributarii

in Britain.

The Ro-
man ' tri -

Lutum'
and the
Saxon
' gafol.'

servile tenants of a Eoman lord were called his
tributarii. In both cases they paid their tribute to
their lord, whilst the lord paid the imperial tributum
for himself and for them. 1

In a decree of the year 319, issued by Constan-
tine to the ' Vicar of Britain,' words are used which
prove that there were coloni and tributarii 2 on British
estates. 3

Putting all these things together, the analogy
between the Roman ' jugation ' and the later English
hidage can hardly be regarded as accidental.

But to return, at present, to the tribute and the
service due from each jugum or caput.

The tribute was generally paid part in money
and part in produce, and was, in fact, a tax. It
was a separate thing from the tithe of produce, ren-
dered as rent to the State on the tithe-lands of the
Agri decumates and of Sicily, though all these various
annual payments in produce may have been confused
together under the term annonce. The tribute proper
survived probably, as we shall see, in the later
manorial ' gafol.' The tithe, or other proportion taken
as rent — for the proportion was not always a tenth 4
— more nearly resembled the manorial ' gafol-yrth.

» Cod. Theod. lib. xi. tit.i. 14.

2 See also Ammianus. xxvii. 8,
7. Coote, 131.

3 Cod, Theod. lib. xi. tit. vii. 2.
Idem A ad Pacatianum Vicarium
Britanniarum. Unusquisque de-
curio pro ea portione conveniatur,
in qua vel ipse vel colonus vel tri-
butariue ejus convenitur et collijrit ;
neque onniino pro alio decurione

vel territorio conveniatur. Id enim
prohibitum esse manifestum est et
observandum deinceps, quo[d] juxta
hanc nostram provisionem nullus
pro alio patiatur injuriam. Dat.
xii. Kal. Dec. Constantino A. et
Licinio 0. Coss. (319).

4 Hyginus. Lachmann, &c, L
205.

The ' Sordida Munera*

295

But we are not quite ready yet to trace the actual
connexion between these Eoman and later manorial
payments.

ClTAP.
VIII.

VII. THE ' SORDIDA MUNERA ' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

In addition to the payments in kind or rents in The
produce, called annonce, there were other personal munera.
services demanded from settlers in the provinces.
They were called 'sordida munera,'' and strangely
resembled the base services of later manorial tenants.

There is a special title of the ' Codex Theodo-
sianus ' on the ' base services ' exacted under Eoman
law ; ' so that there is evidence of the very best kind
as to what they were.

By an edict of a.d. 328 there was laid upon the
rectores of provinces the duty of fixing the burden
of the services according to three grades of holdings 0f t , hree

. G grades ol

— those of the greater, the middle, and the lowest holdings.
class — as well as the obligation of seeing that the
services were not exacted at unreasonable times, as
during the collection of crops. Further, the rectores
were also ordered to record with their own hand
' what is the service and how to be performed for
' every " caput" [or jugum], whether so many angaries
' or so many operce, and in what way they are to be
* rendered for each of the three grades of holdings.' 2

1 Cod. Theod. lib. xi. tit. xvi
De Extraordinariis sive Sordidis
Muneribics. See also Godefroy's
notes.

2 Lib. xi. t. xvi. 4. ' Ea forma
servata, ut prirno a potioribus, dein-

de a mediocribus atque infiniis, quae
sunt danda, preestentur.' ' Manu
autem sua rectores scribere debe-
bunt, quid opus sit, et in qua ne-
cessitate, per singula capita, vel
quantse angarise vel quantse operse,

296 The Roman Land System.

Chap. Certain privileged classes were specially exempted

'- from these ' base services,' and it happens that edicts

expressly mentioning Rhoetia specify from what ser-
vices they shall be exempt, and so reveal in detail
what the services were.

The province of Rhastia lay to the south of the
Eoman Limes, and east of the ' Agri decumates ' of
Tacitus, whilst also extending into the Alpine valleys
of the present Graubunden. The chief city in
North Rhsetia, of which we speak (Vindelicia), was
Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), and Tacitus de-
scribes the German tribes of the Hermunduri, north
of the Limes, as engaged in friendly commerce with
the Romans, and as having perfectly free access not
only to the city, but also to the Roman villas
around it. 1
what they We have seen that in this district south of the

were in

Rhaeiia. Danube, and in the Agri decumates between the
Danube and the Rhine, there were large numbers of
German as well as Roman settlers, occupying land
probably as free ' coloni ' and ' keti,' paying tribute
to the State, in addition to the usual tenth of the
produce and personal services, according to their
grades of holding Edicts of a.d. 382 and 390 2
represent the tenants and settlers in this Roman pro-
vince as liable with others to render, in addition to
the tithe of the produce in corn, &c. {annonos), inter
alia, the following ' base services ' {sordida munera),
viz. : —

M'\ quae aut in quanto modo prse- I fimos observando.'

bendte sint, ut recngnovisse se ecri
bant; cxaclionis, nraedicto ordine
Inter ditiorea, niediocres, atque in-

1 Qermania, xli.

2 Cod. Thcod. xi. ] 6, and 13.

The ' Sordida Munera*

297

(1) The ' cur a pollinis conjiciendi, e.xcoctio panis,
and obsequium pistrini,' i.e. the preparation of flour,
making of bread, and service at the bakehouse.

The supply of so many loaves of bread is a very
common item of the later manorial services every-
where.

(2) The prcebitio paraveredorum et parangaria-
rum. These also were services found surviving,
in fact and in name, amongst the later manorial ser-
vices. The angaria l and the veredi 2 were carry-
ing services, with waggons and oxen or with pack-
horses, on the main public Eoman roads. The
parangaria? and paraveredi were extra carrying
services off the main road. There is a special title
of the Codex Theodosianus ' De Cursu Publico, An-
gariis et ParangariisS 3 in which, by various edicts,
abuses are checked and the services restrained within
reasonable limits, both as to the weight to be carried
and the number of oxen or horses required.

Carrying services also are familiar in manorial
records under the name of ' averagium.' In the
Hundred Rolls and the Cartularies, and in the
Domesday Survey, they occur again and again ; and
in the Anglo-Saxon version of the * RectitudinesJ in
describing the services of the ' geneat' or ' villanns,*
the Latin words ' equitare vel averiare et summagiura

Ctt*p.
VIII.

Supply of
bread.

1 From angarius = ayyapos, a
messenger or courier. The word is
probably of Persian origin.

' Nothing mortal travels so fast
as tbese Persian messengers. The
entire plan is a Persian invention. . .
The Persians give the riding post
the name of " angarum." ' — Hero-

dotus, bk. viii. 98.

See also the Cyropa-dia, bk. viii.
c. 17, where the origin of the post-
horse system is ascribed to Cyrus.

2 From the Latin veredus, a
post-horse.

8 Cod. Thend. lib. viii. t. v.

29S

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Various
opera.

ducere,' are rendered ' riiban -] auejiian *j lafce taban.'
Also, in the record of the services of the Tidenham
1 geneats ' the words run, ' ridan, and averian, and lade
' losdan, drafe drifan,' &C. 1 At the same time, on the
Continent the word * angaria? ' became so general a
manorial phrase as to be almost equivalent to ' villein
services ' of all kinds. 2

The carrying and post-horse services, more strictly
included in the manorial angaria? and averagium^
extended over Britain, Gaul, and the German pro-
vinces.

(3) The * obsequia operarum et artificum diver-
sorum' — the doing all sorts of services and labour
when required — like the Saxon ' boon-work,' which
formed so constant a feature of manorial services
in addition to the gafol and regular week-work. How
could the words be better translated than in the
Anglo-Saxon of the Tidenham record — ' and sela odra

1 The ' veredus ' or post-horse,
from which the paraveredus or
extra post-horse, sometimes par-
hippus (all these words occur in the
Codex Justin, xii. 1. [li.], 2 and 4,
De Cursu Publico), may have been
equivalent to the later ' averius' or
' aff'rus ' by which the averagium
was performed. Cf. ' Parhippus
vel Avertarius ' (Cod. Theod.
VIII. v. xxii.) and see Id. xlvii.,
1 avertarius = a horse carrying
'averta' or saddlebags. Hence,
perhaps, the base Latin avera,
averiee, averii, affri, beasts of
burden, oxen, or farm horses, and
the verb ' averiare ' (Saxon of
10th century ' averian , ) ) and lastly
the noun 'averagium' for the
service. See also the Gallic Ep-v-

redice (men of the horse-course)
mentioned by Pliny iii. 21 (Dr.
Guest's Originea Celtica, i. 381),
and compare this word with para-
veredi. In modern Welsh ' Rhed '
= a running, a course.

2 Compare the careful para-
graphs on these words in M.
Guerard's Introduction to the Po-
lyptique de VAbbe Irminon, pp. 793
et seq. The sense of the word as
implying a compulsory service is
shown in the Vulgate of Matt. v. 4 :
' Et quicunque te angariaverit mille
passus: vade cum illo et alia duo.'

The same word is used in Matt.
xxvii. 32, and Mark xv., where
Simon ia compelled to bear the
cross.

The ' Sordida Munera: 299

J?ingad6n,' ' and shall do other things] qualified by the Chap.
previous words, ' swa him man byt,' ' as he is bid ' ? * '.

(4) The ' obsequium coquenda? calcis ' — lime-burn- Lime
ing. This was one of the specially mentioned ser- burnin e-
vices of the servi of the Church in Frankish times,
under the Bavarian laws, in this very district of
Ehsetia, as we shall see by-and-by.

(5) The prosbitio materia?, lignorum, et tabulorum ; Building,

77 . 7 7 . 7 &c, and

eura puoLicarum vet sacrarum osdium construend- support of
arum atque reparandarum ; cur a Itospitalium domo- ™& T0& 3
rum et viarum et pontium ' — the supply of material, brid e e8 -
wood, and boarding for building, repairing, or con-
structing public and sacred buildings, and the keeping
up of inns, roads, and bridges. Here we have two
out of the ' three needs ' marking in England the
higher service of the Saxon thane.

Such were the chief c sordida munera ' of the
settlers in Ehastia and other Eoman provinces. But
servile as they were, and like as they were to the
later manorial services, we must not therefore con-
clude that the settlers from whom they were due —
whether German or Eoman, in Eomano- German pro-
vinces — were under Eoman law necessarily serfs. They
were, as we have said, ' free coloni ' or ' lasti,' and
below them were the ' servi.' The three grades in
which they were classed, ' ditiores, mediocres, atque
injimij marked gradations of wealth, — probably ac-
cording to the number of yokes of oxen held, or the
size of their holdings — not necessarily degrees of
freedom. 2

1 Supra, p. 154. I ' servi fisci? See Decretio C/tlo-

2 There were probably servi on tharii regis, a.d. 511, 65S. Man.
the ' ager publicus ' as there were Germ. Hist. Legum Sectio, ii. p. 6.
on the Frankish public lands, called |

300

The Roman Land System,

Chap.
VIII.

The Im-
perial mili-
tary and
fiscal
officers.

nil. THE TENDENCY TOWARDS A MANORIAL MANAGE-
MENT OF THE 'AGER PUBLICUS,' OR IMPERIAL DOMAIN.

Having now examined into the character of the
holdings, tribute, and * sordida mimera ' of the
tenants on what may be called the great provincial
manor of the Eoman emperor, it may perhaps be pos-
sible to trace some steps in the process by which these
tenants became in some districts practically serfs on
the royal villas or manors of the Teutonic conquerors
of the provinces.

The beginning of the process can be traced appa-
rently at work during the later empire.

The German and Gallic provinces had for long
been considered as in an especial sense Imperial pro-
vinces, and their ' ager publicus ' and tithe-lands had
become regarded to a great extent as the personal
domain of the emperors. They were under the
personal control of his imperial procuratores, or
agents. 1

In fact there had grown up strictly imperial
classes of military and fiscal officers with local juris-
diction over larger or smaller areas. There were the
' duces,' or ' magistri militum,' and ' comites,' and
* vicarii,' 2 whilst in the lowest rank of ' procuratores,'
possibly controlling smaller fiscal districts or sub-

1 Compare Dr. J. N. Madvig's
JHe Verfasmng und Verwaltung
(Jph Romisehen Staates (Leipzig,
1882), ii. p. 408.

9 Madvig, ii. p. 573 ; and Cod.
Just. xii. 8-14, and Cod. Theod.
xii. i. 38. See also the Notitia
Dignitntum, passim.

Manorial Tendencies.

301

districts, were the ' ducenarii' and ' centenarii. n They C " A,> -

, VIII.

seem to have combined military, and judicial, and

fiscal duties with functions belonging to a local police.

Whatever at first the exact position and autho
rity of these military and fiscal officers of the
Emperor may have been, there is evidence that they
easily assumed a kind of manorial lordship over the
portion of the public domains under their charge in
two distinct ways.

In the first place, the ' villa ' in which a mili- Were a P fc
tary or fiscal officer lived was the fiscal centre of a sort of
his district. He was the 'villicus' by whom the their du- in
' annonse,' tribute, and ' sordida munera ' were exacted. toct#
In some instances the services seem to have been ren-
dered in the form of work on his ' villa,' or on the
villas of ' conductores,' by whom the special products
of some districts were sometimes farmed. 2 And there
are passages in the Codes which complain of the
tendency in these Imperial officers of higher and
lower rank to oppress those under their jurisdiction,
even sometimes using their services on their own
estates, and thus arrogating to themselves almost the
position of manorial lords, whilst reducing their fiscal
dependants to the position of semi-servile tenants. 3

1 With regard to the procura-
tores, ducenarii, and centenarii
see Madvig, ii. p. 411. See also
Cod. Just., xii. 20 (De agentibus
in rebus), where a certain ' magister
officiorum ' is forbidden to have
under him more than 48 ducenarii
and 200 centenarii. Also Cod.
Just., xii. 23 (24). Mr. Coote
(Romans in England, p. 317 et
seq.), identifies the ' centenarii '

with the ' stationarii,' or police of
the later provincial rule. Com-
pare this with the distinctly police
duties of the ' centenarii ' of the
« Becret.io Clotharti' (a.d. 611-558),
Man. Germ. Hist. — Oapitularia, p. 7.

8 Madvig, ii. 432, and the
authorities there quoted.

3 Ccd. Theod., xi. tit. 11. L
' Si quis eorum qui provinciarum
Rectoribus exequuntur, quique in

302

The Roman Land System.

CCAP.

VIII.

Take per-
sons and
villages
under their
patro-
cinium.

Iii the second place, the practice also was com-
plained of by which the fiscal officers, using their in-
fluence unduly, induced tenants on the public lands
of their district, and sometimes even whole villages, to
place themselves under their ' patrocinium,' thereby
practically converting themselves into semi-servile
tenants of a mesne lord who stood between them and
the emperor. 1

The question would be well worth a more careful
consideration than can be given here how far these
tendencies towards the gradual establishment under

diversis agunt olHciis principalis,
et qui sub quocurnque prsetextu
luuneris publici possunt esse terri-
biles, rusticano cuipiam necessita-
tem obsequii, quasi mancipio sui
juris, hnponat, aut servurn ejus aut
bovem in usus proprios necessitatis-
que converterit. . . ultimo subjugatur
exitio.' Quoting the above Le-
huerou observes: — 'Les dues, les
cointes, les recteurs des provinces,
institues pour resister aux puis-
sants et aux forts, n'userent plus
de l'autorite' de leur charge que pour
se rendre redoutables aux petits
et aux faibles, et se firent un hon-
teux revenue de la terreur qu'ila
r^pandaient autour d'eux. Us en-
levaient sans scrupule, tantot le
boeuf, tantot l'esclave du pauvre, et
quelquefois le malheureux lui-meme
avec sa femnie et ses enfants, pour
les employer tous ensemble a la
culture de \eurs villce' (p. 140). See
also Cod. Theod. viii. t. v. 7 and
15.

1 Cod. Theod., xi. tit. 24, De Pa-
tmciniis vicorum. ' Quicumque ex
tuo oiliciu, vel ex quocurnque ho-
niinum ordine, vicus in suum detecti

fuerint patrocinium suscepisse, con-
stitutas luent pcenas. . . . Quos-
cumque autem vicos aut defensionis
potentia, aut multitudine sua fretos,
publicis muneribus constiterit ob-
viari, ultioni quam ratio ipsa dicta-
bit, conveniet subjugari.'

' Censemus ut qui rusticis pa-
trocinia praebere temptaverit, cu-
juslibet ille fuerit dignitatis, sive

MAGISTRI TJTRITJSO.UE MILITIA, sive

comitis, sive ex pro-consulibus, vel
vicariis, vel augustalibus, vel tri-
bunis (C. J. xii. 17, 2), sive ex
ordine curiali, vel cujuslibet alterius
dignitatis, quadraginta librarian
auri se sciat dispendium pro singu-
lorum fundorum prsebito patroci-
nio subiturum, nisi ab hac postea
temeritate discesserit. Omnes ergo
sciant, non modo eos memorata
multa l'erendos, qui clientelam sus-
ceperint rusticorum, sed eos quoque
qui fraudandorum tributorum causa
ad patrocinia solita fraude confuge-
rint, duplum defiuitLB multse dispen-
dium subituros.' ^Dat. vi. Id. Mart.
Constantinop., Theodoro v. c. Coss.
39iJ). See also Lehuerou, p. 13G
139, and Cod. Just., xi. 54.

Manorial Tendencies.

303

the later empire of a manorial relation between the Chap.
'coloni ' and ' laeti ' on the crown lands, and the fiscal VLLL
officer of the district in which they lived, were the
beginnings of a process which ended in the division of
the crown lands practically into ' villas,' or districts
appendant to the villa of the fiscal officer, which in
their turn may have been the prototypes of the villas
or manors on the ' terra regis ' of Frankish and Saxon
kings. 1

As we have said, the use of the word ' villa ' Frankish
: n the Salic laws and early capitularies, for the Regis**
smallest general territorial unit as well as for the f^vuics
v villa ' of a private lord, would thus perhaps be most or Manor »-
easily accounted for. And possibly the continuity
which such a result would indicate between Roman
and Frankish institutions might, after all, be confirmed
by the seeming continuity, in name at least, between
the fiscal officers of the later empire and those of the
Salic and Ripuarian, and other early barbarian codes.
The appearance of the dux and the comes and the
centenarius in these codes, and in the early capitularies,
as the military, fiscal and judicial officers of the Frank-
ish kings, is at least suggestive of continuity in fiscal
and judicial arrangements, though of course it does
not follow that many German elements may not have
been directly imported into institutions which, even
under the later Roman rule in the Romano-German
provinces, already indirectly and to some extent were

1 Madvig, ii. 432. ' Wie lange
die Ackersleute auf den Kaiser-
:ichenGrundstiicken {Coloni Ccesaris
Dig. vi. 6, s. 11, i. 19, 3) erne
grossere personliche Freiheit be-

wahrten, und seit welcher Zeit das
spiitere Kolonatsverhaltniss gait,
lasst sich nicht bestimmen, da der
Uebergaug schrittweise vor sich
ging.'

304 The Roman Land System.

chap, no doubt the compound product of both Eoman and

1 German ingredients. 1

The settlement of these difficult points perhaps

belongs to constitutional rather than to economic

history.

The pro- Having noticed the evident tendencies of the fiscal

oommen- district of the later empire to approach the manorial

dation tvpe, and to become a crown villa or manor with

commenced J r '

under dependent holdings upon it, we must pass on to
rule. a further important effect of the oppression of

the imperial officers. We have noticed the edicts
intended to prevent the tenants on the imperial
domain from putting themselves under their direct
' patrocinium.' These edicts did not prevent the over-
burdened and oppressed tenant from putting himself
under the ' patrocinium ' of the lord of a neighbour-
ing villa, thereby becoming his semi-servile tenant, in
order to escape from the cruel exactions of the tax-
gatherer.

This process was called ' commendation,' and it
was carried out on a remarkable scale. It consisted
in the surrender by the smaller tenants on the public
lands of themselves and their property to some richer
landowner ; so parting with their inheritance and
their freedom whilst receiving back a mere occu*
pation of their holding by way of usufruct only as a
* prcecarium,' or for life, as a servile tenement, paying

1 In the Ripuarian Laws, tit li.
(53) ' Grafio ' = 'comes ' = 'judex Jl-
scahs,' and the mallus was sometimes
held 'ante centenarium vel coini-
tem, seu ante Ducem Patricium vel
Regem,' tit. 1. (52). So in the Salic
Laivs, tit. lxxv. ' debet judex, hoc
est, comes aut grafio} &c, but this

occurs in one of the additions to the
' Lex Antiqua! Compare the ' cen-
tenarius ' in his relation to his
superior, the ' comes,' and in his
positiou of 'judex' in the mallus
with the •' centenarius ' under Cod.
Just., vii. 20, 4.

Manorial Tendencies. 305

to their lord the fixed census or ' gafol ' of the servile Caw.

& VIII.

tenant.

By this process they rapidly swelled the number ^ nd 80 ,

^ r j r j ^ hastened

of servile tenants on villas of the manorial type, and on ma-
hastened the growing prevalence of the manorial tendencies
system. 1

This process of commendation was nothing new. Commen-

r § o d.ition

It was an old tribal practice at work long before very
Roman times in Gaul, and destined not only to outlast
the Roman rule, but also to receive a fresh impulse
afterwards from the German invasions. And as its
progress can be traced step by step from Roman
times, through the period of conquest into the times
of settled Frankish rule, and its history is closely
mixed up with the history of the growth of the
Roman villa into the mediasval manor, and with the
change of the ' sordida munera ' from public burdens
into manorial services, it presents useful stepping-
stones over a gulf not otherwise to be easily crossed
with security.

Csesar describes how in Gaul, even before the Cssar.
Roman conquest, the free tribesmen, overburdened toV^over-
by the exactions of chieftains and the tributes imposed JJj'
upon them (probably by way of ' gwestva ' or food- e sca P e
rents), surrendered their freedom, and became little opprtssioi
more than ' servi ' of the chiefs. And so far had this
practice proceeded that he describes the people of
Gaul as practically divided into two classes — the
chiefs, whom he likened to the Roman ' equites ; '

1 M. Lehuerou observes, ' II y a
deja des seigneurs, cache's encore
sous l'ancienne et familiere denomi-
nation de patrons. Cela est si vrai

que, non settlement la cho.se, inais
le mot se trouve dans Libanius : —
n.ept ru>v TT])0(TTafjiQ>v (ten K&fiat fif-
yakai, 7ro\Xc5i' iku<jti) Seanoriiv.

306

TJie Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Tacitus.

Gregory of
Tours.

and the common people, who were in a position little
removed from slavery. 1

Further, there is the evidence of Tacitus himself
that oppressive Roman exactions were forcing free
tribesmen, even in Frisia, to surrender their lands
and their children into a condition of servitude. 2

Again, Gregory of Tours 3 describes how, in a
year of famine, the poor surrendered their freedom — -
subdebant se servitio — to escape starvation.

1 De Bello Oallico, vi. c. xiii.-
xv. ' In omni Gallia eorum homi-
num qui aliquo sunt numero atque
honore genera sunt duo. Nam
plebes poene servorum habetur loco,
quae per se nihil audet et nulli ad-
hibetur consilio. Plerique, quum
aut sere alieno aut magnitudine tri-
butorum aut injuria potentiorum
premuntur, sese in servitutem di-
cant nobilibus. In hos eadem
omnia sunt jura quae dominis in
servos. . . . Alterum genus est
Equitum. Hi, quum est usus, atque
aliquod bellum incidit (quod ante
Caesaris adventum fere quotannis
accidere solebat, uti aut ipsi injurias
inferrent aut illatas propulsarent),
omnes in bello versantur: atque
eorum ut quisque est genere copiis-
que amplissimus / ita plurimos cir-
cum se ambactos clientesque babet.
Hanc unam gratiam potentiamque
noverunt.'

2 Tacitus, Annuls, iv. 72. ' In
the course of the year the Frisians,
a people dwelling beyond the
Rhine, broke out into open acts of
hostility. The cause of the insur-
rection was not the restless spirit
of a nation impatient of the yoke;

they were driven to despair by
Roman avarice. A moderate tri-
bute, such as suited the poverty of
the people, consisting of raw hides
for the use of the legions, had been
formerly imposed by Drusus. To
specify the exact size and quality
of the hide was an idea that never
entered into the head of any man
till Olennius, the first centurion of
a legion, being appointed governor
over the Frisians, collected a quan-
tity of the hides of forest bulls, and
made them the standard both of
weight and dimensions. To any
other nation this would have been
a grievous burden, but was alto-
gether impracticable in Germany,
where the cattle running wild in
large tracts of forest are of prodi-
gious size, while the breed for do-
mestic uses is remarkably small.
The Frisians groaned under this
oppressive demand. They gave up
first their cattle, next their lands ;
and finally were obliged to see their
wives and children carried into
slavery by way of commutation.
Discontent arose, and they rebelled,'
&c.

■ Hist., f. 3G9.

Manorial Tendencies. 307

Lastly, in the fifth century (a.d. 450-90) Saivian ! Chai

describes at great length the process by which Roman

freemen were in the practice of surrendering their JSjJjJj
possessions to great men and becoming tributary to j ° ^
them, in order to escape the exactions of the officers centurj.
who collected the ' tributum.' He narrates how
the rich Romans threw upon the poor the weight
of the public tribute, and made extra exactions of
their own ; how multitudes in consequence deserted
their property and became bagauda? — rebels and out-
laws ; — how, in districts conquered by the Franks and
Goths, there was no such oppression ; how Romans
living in these districts had their rights respected ;
how people even fled for safety and freedom from the
districts still under Roman rule into these Teutonic
districts ; and he expresses his wonder why more did
not do this.

Many (he says) would fly from the Roman districts
if they could carry their properties and houses and
families with them. As they cannot do this (he goes The effect

J v ° ol surren-

on to say), they surrender themselves to the care and derstoan
protection of great men, becoming their dediticii or
semi-servile tenants. And the rich (he complains)
receive them under their ' patrocinium ' or overlord-
ship, not from motives of charity, but for gain : for they
require them to surrender almost all their substance,
temporary possession only being allowed to the parent
making the surrender during his life, 2 while the heirs
lose their inheritance. And this (he adds) is not all.

1 Saivian, De Gubematione Dei,
ib. v. s. vi.-viii.

2 ' Hoc enim pacto aliquid paren-

tibus temporarie attribuitur, ut in
future- totum filiis auferatur'—
Saivian, 8. viii.

x 2

308

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

The poor wretches who have surrendered their pro-
perty are compelled nevertheless to pay tribute for it
to these lords, as if it were still their own. Better is the
lot of those who, deserting their property altogether,
hire farms under great men, and so become the free
coloni of the rich. For these others not only lose
their property and their status, and everything that
they can call their own ; they lose also themselves and
their liberty. 1

This evidence of Salvian proves that the surrender
by freemen of themselves and their property to an
overlord was rapidly going on in Roman provinces
during the fifth century, and this as the result of
Roman misrule, not of German conquest.

IX. THE SUCCESSION TO SEMI-SERVILE HOLDINGS; AND
METHODS OP CULTIVATION.

From the evidence of Salvian we can pass at once,
crossing the gulf of Teutonic conquest, to that of
the Alamannic and Bavarian laws and the monastic
cartularies, in which we shall find the process de-
scribed by Salvian still going on under German rule,
and thereby holding after holding, which had once
been free, falling under the manorial lordship of the
monasteries.

1 The above is only an abridged
summary of tlie lengthy declama-
tion of Salvian. See Gregory of
T0UT8, ' -De Minn nils S. Martini,'
iv. xi. (1 122), where a surrender is
mentioned. 'Tradid't ei eminent

possessionem suam, dioens : "Sint
hsec omnia penes S li - Martini ditio-
nem quse habere videor, et hoc tan-
tum exinde utar, ut de his dum
vixero alar-" '

Semi-servile Holdings.

309

But before we do so it may be worth while to Chap.

VIII

inquire further into the position, under Eoman rule, .
of the class of semi-servile tenants into which a free
possessor of land descended when he made the sur-
render of his holding. We may ask, What was the
rule of succession to semi-servile holdings ? and what
were the customary methods of cultivation followed
by semi-servile tenants, whether upon the villa of a
lord or upon the imperial domains ?

Salvian distinctly states, as we have seen, that The rule
upon the death of the person making the surrender sL^esffon
to a lord, the right of inheritance was lost to his J-oaaerriie

~ _ holding.

children. The holding became, on the surrender, a
1 prascarium ' — a tenancy at the will of the lord by
way of usufruct only. This being so, any actual
succession to the holding must naturally have been,
not by inheritance, but, in theory at all events, by
regrant from the lord to the successor — generally a
single successor — for, under the circumstances, the
rule of single succession would be likely to be adopted
as most convenient to the landlord.

The tenants produced by commendation were,
nowever, hardly a class by themselves. They most
likely sank into the ordinary condition of the large
class of * coloni,' &c, on the great provincial estates.
And there is a passage in the ' Institutes of Justinian '
which incidentally seems to imply that the ordinary The , ater
' colonus ' of the later empire was very nearly in the ? olo u n ^. uc
position of the ' usufructuarius,' and held a holding fcuarii.'
which, in legal theory at least, ended with his life. 1

1 Lib. ii. Tit. i. 36. « Is ad quern
ususfructus fundi pertinet, non
aliter fructuum dominus efficitur,

quam si ipse eos perceperit ; et ideo,
licet maturis fructilms nonduni
tauieu perceptis decesserit, ad here-

310 The Roman Land System.

Chap. And if this was the generally received theory of the

status of semi-servile tenants on the great estates, the

probability is that the practice of single succession by
regrant may have followed as a matter of conveni-
ence and as an all but universal usage.

Further, if we may suppose this to have been the

case on the private estates of provincial landowners,

the question remains whether the semi-servile classes

of tenants on the imperial domains may not have

been subject to the same customary rules.

Tenants on Now it must be remembered that the legal theory

Pandsto as regards that part of the provincial land which was

theory not centuriated and allotted to the soldiers of the

usufruc-

tuarii.' conquering Eoman army as a ' colonia,' but left in
the possession of the old barbarian inhabitants, was
that the latter were merely usufructuary tenants,
paying tribute for the use of the land which belonged
now to the conquerors. 1 And although quasi-rights
of inheritance, founded perhaps more upon barbarian
usage than direct Eoman law, probably grew up
generally in the more settled districts of Gaul and the
two Germanies, yet there may well have been grades
of tenants, some with rights of inheritance and some
without them. It may well be questioned whether,
in the case of the ' lseti ' and other semi-servile tenants,
hereditary rights were generally recognised. If we
take into account the tendency we have noticed in
the management of the provincial domains towards
manorial methods and usages, it seems at least pro-
bable that the semi-servile classes of tenants under

drn ejus non pertinent, sed domino I fere etde colono dicuntur.
poprietatis adquiruntur. Eadem\ l Rudoril) ii. 317.

Semi-servile Holdings. 311

the imperial military and fiscal officers were placed Chap.

much in the same position as the coloni on private 1

villas ; that, in fact, their tenure was only a usufruct prevalence
for life or at will — a tenure to which, by custom, °^ l ! 16 , rul9

' J ' of single

the single succession would be a natural incident. succession

Passing now specially to the tenants on the ' Agri The
Decumates ' and other tithe lands north of the Alps, fj™^
and asking what were their rules of succession and themselves

° _ to existing

methods of husbandry, perhaps sufficient stress has usages.
not always been laid upon the elasticity with which
Roman provincial management adopted local customs
and adapted itself to the local circumstances of a
widely extended empire. We know little of the
methods and rules adopted in the management of the
1 tithe lands,' but if the foregoing considerations be
sound, it may be that but little change was needful
to convert their tenants into serfs on a manorial estate .
They may have had but little to gain or to lose, or
even to alter in their habits, in exchanging the rule
of the imperial fiscal officers for the lordship of the
later manorial lord.

It is much to be hoped that more light may ere Manage
long be thrown upon this obscure subject by students JJJJ of
of provincial law and the barbarian codes. In the jjjjjj"
meantime it may be possible, perhaps — so slowly do Eastern
things change in the East — that an actual modern
example taken from thence of the customary mode of
managing public tithe lands at the present moment
in what was once a Eoman province might be a better
guide to a correct conception of what went on 1,500
years ago on the * Agri Decumates ' than we could
easily get in any other way.

The Eoman province of Syria is peculiarly in-

ol2 The Roman Land System.

chap, teresting, because the Roman code 1 applying to it
in the fifth century happens to remain, and to afford

Jode^f rian interesting evidence of adaptation to local customs in
fifth a district unique in the advantage that its usages, little

century, - 1 ° .

altered by the lapse of time, can be studied as well

in the parables of the New Testament as on its

actual fields to-day.

The Sir Henry S. Maine 2 has recently referred to the

theii ' in parable of the ' Prodigal Son ' as illustrating the

fnBavaria custom still followed in Turkey of sons taking their

ofEoman portions during the parent's lifetime, leaving one

home-staying son to become the single successor to

the remainder, including the family homestead and

land.

The Syrian code, 3 following Roman Law, 4 insisted
upon three-twelfths of a man's property going to his
children equally, and left him at liberty to dispose of
the remaining nine-twelfths among them at his plea-
sure. But an emancipated son had no claim to a
share in the three-twelfths. 6 These local or Roman
usages have an interesting connexion with the per-
mission which, as we shall see in the next section, was
given by the Bavarian code of the seventh century,
to free possessors of land ' after they had made division
with their sons ' to surrender their ' own portion, by
way of commendation, to the Church. 8

1 Syrisch-Rbmisches Rcditsbuch.
Aus dem funften Jahrhundert.
Leipzig, 1880.

Syrian Code, s. 3.

6 See also Lex Burgundiorum,
i. 2, ' Si cum iiliis deviserit et por-
Enrly Law and Customs, p. 260. I ticmem suam tulerit, . . .' and id.
3 S. 1, s. 9, and s. 27. x.xiv. 5 and li. 1 and 2. Also

* Inst. Just. ii. xviii. 53, and ' Urkunden ' of St. Gall, No. 360.
compare Saudara' note on this pas- ' Quicquid contra filios meos in por-
tage, tionem et in meam swascarain

Semi-servile Holdings.

313

It is remarkable that, to the present day, in those
districts of Bavaria where the Code Napoleon has
not superseded ancient custom and law, the ' Pfiicht-
theil ' of not less than one-half or one-third, as fixed
by the later Eoman law, still remains inalienable from
the heirs, whilst a custom for the father to hand over
the whole or a part of the family holding to a son
during his lifetime also occurs. 1

These coincidences between customs of Syria and
Bavaria — both once Roman provinces — refer to land
of inheritance. But there were also in Syria as
elsewhere in the fifth century, between the freeholders
and the slaves, a class of semi-servile tenants —
adscriptitii — who were, in a sense, the property of a
lord. 2 And besides these, again, from the time of
the New Testament 3 to the present, there have been
tenants paying a tithe or other portion of the pro-
duce in return for a usufruct only of public or
private lands.

There is no direct reference to public tithe lands
in the Syrian code, but the following description
of present customs as regards such lands may be
valuable in the absence of earlier evidence. It de-
scribes the tenants of the Crown tithe lands in
Palestine as having only a usufruct, expiring at their
death, and as conducting their husbandry upon an
open-field system, which being so widely spread is no
doubt very ancient, and likely enough to resemble

Chap
VIII.

accepi.' See also Sir H. Maine's
Ancient Law, pp. 198, 224, 228.

1 Report* on Tenure of Land,
1869-70, p. 226. Just. Nov. 18.

2 See Syrian Code, s. 50.

3 See the parable of ' The unjust
steward,' and supra, p. 145.

314

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Land sys-
tem in
Palestine.

Tithe
lands let to
villages,
and

worked
under the
open-field
6ystem.

more or less closely local methods followed on the
1 Agri Decumates ' under Roman rule. 1

Laud tenure in Palestine is of three kinds : —

I. Ard tain, 9 or taxed Crown laud.

In this class are included nearly all the large and fruitful plains like
those of Jaffa, Ramleh, and Esdraelon. These lands are leased by the
Government to various individuals, or sotnetimes to a whole village. The
lessee pays a tenth of the produce of the soil for his right of cultivation.
Miri land, therefore, cannot be sold by the leasee, nor has he the power to
transfer it ; he merely possesses the right of cultivation for a given time,
and this only holds good during the lifetime of the lessee. In the event of
his death, the contract he has made becomes null and void, even though
its term be not expired.

II. Ard wakuf, or glebe-land. . . .

III. Ard mtdk, or freehold, is chiefly composed of small pieces of
ground in the neighbourhood of the villages, such as fig and olive planta-
tions, gardens, and vineyards. . . .

It has been already mentioned that by far the greater part of the
cultivated land is not private, but Government property, either miri or
wakuf, and that the cultivator is merely the holder. Each district has
certain tracts of such lands, and after the rains they are let to the different
inhabitants in separate plots. The division is decided by lottery. Herr
Schick has given an account of the manner in which this lottery takes
place. All those who are desirous of land assemble in the sdha (an open
place generally in front of the inns). The Imam, or khatib, who is writer,
accountant, and general archivist to the whole village, presides over this
meeting. The would-be cultivators notify how many ploughs they can
muster. If a man has only a half-share in one, he joins another man with
a like share. Then the whole number is divided into classes. Supposing
the total number of ploughs to bo forty, these would be divided into four
classes of ten, and each class would choose a Sheikh to represent them.
The land of course varies in quality, and this division into classes makes
the distribution simpler. Say there are four classes, the land is divided
into four equal portions, so that each class may have good as well as bad.
When the Sheikhs have agreed that the division is fair, the lots are drawn.
Each of the Sheikhs puts some little thing into the khatiVs bag. Then the
khatib calls out the name of one of the divisions, and some passing child is

1 Journal of the Palestine Ex-
ploration Society, January 1883.
' Life, Habits, and Customs of the
Fellahin of Palestine,' by the Eev.
F. A. Klein. From the Zeitschrift

of the German Palestine Explora-
tion Society.

9 Shortened form of ard e»w'/t—
land of the Emir.

Semi-servile Holdings. 315

made to draw out one of the things from the hag, and to whichever Sheikh Chap.
it belongs, to this class belongs the division named by the khatib. This VI11 -
decided, the Sheikhs have to determine the individual distribution of the
land. In the case of ten ploughs to a class, they do not each receive a
tenth piece of the whole, but, in order to make it as fair as possible, the
land is divided into strips, so that each portion consists of a collection of
strips in different parts of the village lands. The boundaries are marked
by furrows or stones, and to move a neighbour's laudmark is still accounted
an ' accursed deed,' as in the days of ancient Israel (Deut. xix. 4). . . .

The measure by which the Fcliahin divide their land is the fedddn. It
is decided by the amount which a man with a yoke of oxen can plough per
day, and is therefore a most uncertain measure.

This description of the mode in which public Was it so
land in Palestine is often let to individual tenants or Roman
to whole villages at a rent of a tenth of the produce, {Jjjjj, t
and further, the picture it gives of the cultivation of
the land let to a village by those villagers who supply
oxen for the ploughing on an open-field system so
like that of Western Europe, at least may suggest the
possibility of a somewhat similar system having been
adopted in the management of the tithe lands of the
' Agri Decumates.'

The allusion to the division of the fields into
strips, and to the unit of land measurement being the
day's work of a pair of oxen, and, we may add, the
use of the same unit of measurement throughout
the Turkish Empire, 1 may at least prepare us to find

1 The standard measure of land
throughout the Turkish Empire is
called a deunum, and is the area
which one pair of oxen can plough
in a single day ; it is equal to a
quarter of an acre, or a square of
forty arshuns (nearly 100 feet).

found in 1 Sam. xiv. 14, where the
exploit of Jonathan and his armour-
bearer is described : twenty of the
enemy are stated to have fallen
within a space of ' a half-acre of
land ' of ' a yoke of oxen,' an ex-
pression better rendered ' within

There seems to be but one allusion j the space of half a deunum of land.'
to this fact in the Scriptures j it is This measure is referred to in

316 The Roman Land System.

Cha*. indications of a somewhat similar system of cultiva-

vni. .

tion on the tithe lands on the Danube and the Rhine

when we come to examine their conditions under the
early Alamannic and Bavarian laws.

And, lastly, this Eastern illustration of the modern
management of ' tithe lands ' may help us to give due
weight to the suggestion of Sir H. S. Maine l that
not only on the ' ager publicus,' but even on the
Roman provincial villa itself, in the organisation of
the mostly barbarian and servile tenants, and of
the husbandry, many features may well have been
borrowed from ordinary and wide-spread customs of
barbarian communities, thus partially explaining
what must again and again strike us in this investi-
gation, viz., the ease with which Roman and bar
barian elements combined during the later Roman
rule of the provinces and afterwards in producing a
complex and joint result — the typical manorial estate.

X. THE TRANSITION FROM THE ROMAN TO THE
LATER MANORIAL SYSTEM.

Lawsof The Alamannic conquest of the province of Ger-

Aiamanni, mania Prima, including what is now Elsass and the
l.d. 622. wes t ern p ar t of the 'Agri Decumates,' may be de-
scribed as almost a passive one. The population had
long been partly German, and Roman provincial usages
can hardly have been altogether supplanted in the fifth
century. It was not till the Alamanni were themselves

ancient profane writers, so that no I Bible Lands, i. 75.

change has occurred in this respect. ' Early Law and Custom, p

Van Lenuere Bible Customs in I 332,

Growth of the Minor. 317

conquered by the Franks (who had in the meantime Chap.

become nominally Christian) that their laws were L

codified. When this took place in the year 622 it was
with special reference to the interests of the Church
that the laws were framed, just as in the case of the
first codification of Anglo-Saxon laws on King Ethel-
bert becoming a Christian.

Tb2 very first provision of the Alamannic laws Permission
was a direct permission to any freeman, without dwiothe
hindrance from { Dux ' or ' Comes,' to surrender his Church -
property and himself to the Church by charter exe-
cuted before six or seven witnesses ; and it provided
further that if he should surrender his land, to re-
ceive the usufruct of it back again during life as a
benefice charged with a certain tribute or census,
his heir should not dispute the surrender. 1

In the Bavarian laws of slightly later date there
is a similar permission to any freeman, from his own
share, after he has made division with his sons, to
surrender to the Church villas, lands, slaves, or other
property, to be received back as a benefcium in the
same way, 2 and neither ' rex,' ' dux,' nor ' any other
person ' is to prevent it.

1 Lex Alamannorum Chlotharii. est, et post haec ad pastorern ecclesiae
] . ' Ut si quis liber res suas vel seraet- ' ad beneficium susceperit ad victua-
ipsum ad ecclesiam tradere volu- ! lem necessitatem conquirendam. die-

erit, nullus habeat licentiam con-
tradicere ei, non dux, non comes, nee
ulla persona, sed spontanea volun-
tate liceat christiano bomine Deo
servire et de proprias res suas semet-
ipsum redemere. . . .

2. Si quis liber, qui res suas ad
ecclesiam dederit etpercartam firmi-

bus vitse suae : et quod spondit per-
solvat ad ecclesiam censum de ilia
terra, et hoc per epistulam firmitatis
fiat, ut post ejus discessum nullus
de heredibus non contradicat.' —
Pertz, Leyum, t. iii. pp. 45-6.

2 Lex Baiuwarix>rum. Textus
Legis primus.

tatem fecerit, sicut superius dictum 1. 'Ut si quis liber persona

318

The Roman Land System.

Chap. Who are the people thus permitted to surrender

L their possessions to the Church ? Clearly they are

the free possessores or tenants on the public lands,
now become ' terra regis,' under the fiscal officers who
are still called duces and comites.

Here, then, is still going on, but in the interest of
the Church, precisely the process described by Sal-
vian, and with precisely the same results.

Further, these results can be traced with remark-
able exactness ; for in the charters of St. Gall and
Lorsch and Wizenburg there are numerous instances
of surrenders made under this law.
instances l n the ' Urkundenbuch ' of the Abbey of St. Gall,

tier in the under date a.d. 754, 1 there is a charter by which a
possessor of land in certain ' villas ' in the neighbour-
hood of St. Gall hands over to the monastery all that
lie possesses therein, with the cattle, slaves, houses,
fields, woods, waters, &c, thereon, together with
two servi and all their belongings ; and (it proceeds)
' for these things I am willing to render service every
1 year as follows : — viz. xxx. seglas of beer (cervesa),
' xl. loaves and a sound spring pig (frischenga), and
'xxx. mannas, and to plough 2 jugera 2 (jochos) per

St. Gall
iharters.

roluerit et dederit res suae ad ec-
olesiam pro redemptione animse
suae, licentiam habeat de portione
sua, postquam cum filiis suis par-
tivit. Nullus eum prohibeat, non
rex, non dux, nee ulla persona ha-
beat potestatem prohibendi ei. Et
quicquid donaverit, villas, terras,
mancipia, vel aliqua pecunia, om-
nia qusecumque donaverit pro re-
demptione animse suae, hoc per
^pistolam confirmet propria manu

sua ipse. . . .

' Et post haec nullam habeat po-
testatein nee ipse nee posteri ejus,
nisi defensor ecclesiee ipsius bene-
ficium praestare voluerit ei.' — Pertz,
Legum, t. iii. pp. 269-70.

1 Urkundenbuch der Abtei St.
G alien, i. p. 22.

2 Compare with the Kentish
' yokes ' and ' ioclets.' The yoke
here is, however, evidently the

juger, not ihe jugum.

Growth of the Manor. 319

* annum, and to gather and carry the produce to Chap.
1 the yard, also to do post service (angaria) when 1

* required.'

Here we have not only the public tributum con-
verted into a manorial census or ' gafol,' but also the
sordida munera transformed into manorial services.

In another charter, a.d. 759, is a surrender of all a
man's possessions in the place called Heidolviswilare,
to the Abbey, ' in this wise that I may receive it back

* from you per precariam, and yearly I will pay

* thence census, i.e. xxx. siclas of beer, xl. loaves,

* a sound spring frisginga, 3 day-works (operas) of
4 one man in the course of the year ; and my son

* Hacco, if he survive me, shall do so during his life.' 1

In another, a.d. 761, 2 the monks of St. Gall re-
grant a ' villa ' called ' Zozinvilare ' to the original
maker of the surrender at the following census, viz.
xxx. siclas of beer and xl. loaves, a friscinga, and
two hens, with this addition — 'In guisqua sicione 3
' thou shalt plough saigata una (one selion ?) and
4 reap this and carry it into [the yard], and in one
4 day (jurno) 4 thou shalt cut it, and in another gather
4 it and carry it, as aforesaid.'

In the surrender of a holding ' in villa qui dicitur
4 Wicohaim, 5 the census is . . . siclas of beer, xx.
4 maldra of bread and a frisginga, and work at the
4 stated time at harvest and at hay-time, two days in
4 reaping the harvest and cutting the hay, and in
' early spring one "jurnalis" at ploughing, and in
4 the month of June to break up [brachan] another,

1 Urhundenbuch, pp. 27-8.

8 Id. p. 33.

3 See also id. pp. 76 and 90.

4 Hence ' jurnal' for acre
8 Id. p. 41.

320 The Roman Land System.

Chap. < and in autumn to plough and sow it — this is the

VIII. .

* census for that villa.'

Like those These grants were clearly surrenders by freemen

described ° J . ...

bjSaivian. like those described by Salvian, which carried witli
them whatever coloni or servi there were upon the land

Thus, under date 77 1, 1 a priest gives to the
monks all his property in villa Ailingas and another
place, except two servi and five yokes of land ; and
in another place he gives ' servum unum cum hoba
1 sua et jiliis suis et cum uxore sua.'' The hoba was
clearly the ' hub ' or yard-land of the serf, and it,
he and his wife and children were all granted over
by their lord to the abbey.

In the same year 771 2 a man named Chunibertus
and his wife surrendered an estate called Chunibertes-
wilari, and it is described as including just what a
Roman villa would include, i.e. the villa itself (casa),
surrounded by its court [curte circumclausa), together
with buildings, slaves, arable land, meadows, fields,
&c, &c. And yet in this case also he retains posses-
sion ' sub usu fructuario ' during his life, paying the
same kind of census as in the other cases — xx. siclas
of beer, a maldra of bread, and a frisking.
Likeness Now, it will at once be seen how like is the census

6 and described in these charters to the Saxon gafol of the
' Rectitudines,' and of the manors of Tidenham or
Ilysseburne. There is distinctly the qafoL and in

and 'gafol- J " *> » ■

yrth.* many cases the gafolyrth also, but no mention of the
week-work. Add this, and there would be an almost
exact likeness to Saxon serfdom.

But it will be remembered that even under the

census
services to

the Saxon

Urkundenbuch , p. 59. * Id. p. GO.

Growth of the Manor. 321

laws of Ine the week-work was not added to the uafol Chap.

Y I 1 1

unless the lord provided not only the yard-land, but

also the homestead. These surrenders were sur-
renders by freemen of their own land and home-
steads. It was hardly likely that the more servile
week-work should be added to their census. How
it would fare with their children when they sought
to succeed their parents in the now servile holding
is quite another thing.

There is, indeed, apparently an instance, under Now serf
date 787, 1 of the settlement of a new serf — the and«week
grant of a fresh holding in villenage from the Abbot JJjjJ^
of St. Gall to the new tenant. The holding, if we
may use the Saxon terms, is ' set ' both ' to gafol and
to week-work ;' for the tenant binds himself (1) to pay
to the abbey as census [i.e. as gafol) yearly vii. maldra
of grain and a sound spring frisking, to be de-
livered at the granary of the monastery ; and (2) to
plough every week {i.e. as week-work) 2 at their nearest
manor [curtem) a 'jurnal '(or acre strip) in every zelga 3
(i.e. in each of the three fields) ; and also six days in
a year when work out of doors is needed, whether in
harvest or hay-mowing, to send two ' mancipii ' for
the work : also, when work is wanted in building or
repairing bridges, to send one man with food to the
work, who is to stop at it as long as required. And
to these payments and services the new tenant bound

* himself, his heirs, and all their descendants lawfully

* begotten.'

1 Urkundenbuch, p. 106.

2 ' Et ad proximani curtem ves-
tram in unaquaque zelga ebdome-
darii jurnalein arare debeanius "
(p. 107).

3 Waitz speaks of the three
groat fields under the ' Dreifelder-
ivirthschaft ' as ' Zelgen.' — Ver-
faSHung der Deulschen I'iilkcr, i.
120. And see infra, chap. x. s. iii.

32*2 77/t' Roman Land System.

Chap. This surely is a distinct case of the settlement of

V T T F

1 a new serf upon the land, rendering in Saxon phrase

both gafol and week-work ; and the serfdom created
is as nearly as possible identical with that of an
English manor of the same date.
Surrender g ut t0 re j- urn to the surrenders. It is clear from

oi whole

villus or the instances quoted that some of these owners who

of holdings

on villas, surrendered their holdings were holders of whole villas
or heims, some of them of portions of villas or helms.
And yet they placed themselves by the surrender, as
Salvian described it, in a servile position, lower, as he
says, than that of the colonl of the rich, for they merely
retained the usufruct during their life. The inherit-
ance was lost. And they still had a tribute to pay
to their lord, though free from tribute to the public
purse. The Frankish kings now stood in the place
of the Eoman Emperor. The old Eoman tributum
apparently remained, but was payable to the Frankish
king. When under the Alamannic laws these sur-
renders were made to the Church, the tribute also
was transferred from the king to the Church.

We have seen that when such a surrender had
been made under Eoman rule to a rich Eoman land-
owner, the latter became responsible to the public ex-
chequer for the tributum, but he exacted tribute in
his turn from his tenant, who thus, as Salvian said,
though parting with his inheritance, still paid tribute
to his lord. But this tribute can hardly have been
the full tributum at which the holding was assessed
to the jugatio. It seems to have been rather a fixed
and typical gafol or census, marking a servile con-
dition. For in the Alamannic laws there are clauses
making the following remarkable provisions : —

Growth of the Manor.

323

Leges Alamannorum Hlotharii ' (A.D. 022).

XXII.

(1) Servi enitn ecclesise tributa
eua legitime reddant, quindecira
siclas de cervisa, porco valente [al.
porcum valentem] tremisse uno,
pane [al. panem] modia dua, pullos
quinque, ova viginti.

(2) Antilles autem opera in-
posita sine neglecto faciant.

(3) Servi dirnidiam partem sibi
et dirnidiam [al. dimidium] in domi-
nico arativum reddant. Et si super
hsec est, sicut servi ecclesiastici ita
faciant, tres dies sibi et tres in
dominico.

xxm.
De liberis autem ecclesiasticis,
quod [al. quos] colonos vocant,
omnes sicut coloni regis ita reddant
ad ecclesiam.

XXII.

(1) Let servi of the Church pay
their tribute rightly, viz., 16 sichu
of heer, with a sound spring pig, oi
bread two modia, five fowls, twenty
eggs-

(2) Let female servi do services
required without neglect.

(3) Let servi do ploughing, hall
for themselves and half in the de-
mesne. And if there be other
services, let them do as the servi
of the Church — three days for
themselves and three days in the
demesne.

XXIII.

Concerning the freemen of the
Church who are called ' coloni,' let
all pay to the Church just as the
coloni of the kin<r.

These clauses seem to establish clearly three
facts : —

(1) That the slavery of the slaves or servi on the
ecclesiastical estates had already, in a.d. 622, become
modified and restricted as a matter of general eccle-
siastical custom to a three days' week-work.

(2) That the proper tribute (or gafol) of persons
becoming servi of the Church by surrender under
this edict was to be as stated ; the resemblance of the
details of this tribute with those mentioned in the
St. Gall surrenders showing the servile nature of the
status into which those making the surrender placed
themselves thereby.

(3) Freemen of the Church called ' coloni' were

Chap
VIII.

Tribute,
services,
and three
days'
' week-
work '
under the
AJaman-
nic law.

1 Pertz, Leyum, iii. pp. 51, 52.
r 9

324 The Roman Land System.

Chap, to pav to the Church as the coloni on the terra reqis
viii. . .
. did to the king.

In other words, a whole villa or manor, with the
village community of ' free coloni ' and the * servi '
upon it, might be handed over as a whole to the
Church : in which case the free coloni were to re-
main free and pay tribute to the Church as they
would have done to the king if they had been ' coloni '
on the terra regis.

After thus becoming ' free coloni ' of the Church
they might, if they chose, by a second act surrender
their freedom and become servi of the Church, just
as ' free coloni ' on royal villas or on the terra regis
might do under this edict.

This evidence relates, it will be remembered, to
the district on the left bank of the Ehine, which so
abounded with ' heims ' and ' villas,' as well as to that
portion of the ' Agri Decumates ' which was included
in the province of Germania Prima.

There is still clearer evidence for the district to
the east of the ' Agri Decumates,' comprehended in
the Eoman province of Bhastia.

Khastia, it will be remembered, was the province,
in edicts relating to which the ' sordida munera ' were
most clearly defined. We have seen traces of some
of these ' base services,' especially the boon-work and
the ' angaria?,' in the St. Gall charters. Still clearer
traces of them are found in the services described in
the early ' Bavarian laws ' of the seventli century.
These laws, as has been seen, expressly allowed ' sur-
renders ' by freemen of their property to the Church,
and the services of the servi and coloni of the Church
are described with remarkable clearness.

Growth of the Manor.

325

The section is headed-

Chap.

VIII.

Lex Baimvn riorum, text us legis primus. 1

13.

De colonis vel servis ecclcsice, qua-
liter serviant vel quale [_al.
qualia] tributa reddant.

Hoc est agrario secundum esti-
mationem iudicis; provideat hoc
iudex secundum quod habet donet :
de 30 modiis 3 modios donet, et
pascuario dissolvat secundum usuni
provinciae. 2 Andecenas legitimas,
hoc est pertica [al. perticam] 10
pede 9 habentein, 4 perticas in trans-
verso, 40 in longo arare, seminare,
claudere, colligere, trahere et re-
condere. A tremisse unusquisque
accola 3 ad duo modia sationis excol-
ligere, seminare, colligere et re-
condere debeat ; et vineas plantare,
fodere, propaginare, prsecidere, vin-
demiare. Reddant fasce [al. fascem]
de lino [al. ligno] ; de apibus 10
vasa [al. decimum vas] ; pullos 4,
ova 15 reddant. Parafretos [al.
palafredos] donent, aut ipsi vadant,
ubi eis iniunctum fuerit. Angarias
cum carra faciant usque 50 lewas
[al. leugas] ; amplius non minentur.

Ad casas dominicas stabilire
[al. stabiliendas], fenile, granica vel
tunino recuperanda, pedituras ra-
tion abiles accipiant, et quando ne-
cesse fuerit, omnino componant.

13.

Concerning the coloni or servi of the Tribute

Church, what services and tributes services

they are to render. * nd f hree

9 days

This is the tribute for arable, ' -week-
according to the estimation of the wo y-
judge. The judge must look to it 5°^^
that according to what a man has laws,
he must give ; for 30 modia he
must give 3 modia. And for pas-
turage he must pay according to
the custom of the province. Legal
andecenae (the perches being of 10
feet), 4 perches in breadth and 40
in length, [he is] to plough, to sow,
to fence, to gather, to carry, and to
store. For spring crops every
cultivator to prepare for two modia
of seed, and sow, gather, and
store it. And to plant vinos, tend,
graft, and prune them, and gather
the grapes. Let them render a
bundle of flax, of honey the tenth
vessel, 4 fowls, and 15 eggs. Let
them give post-horses, or go them-
selves wherever they are told. Let
them do carrying service with wag-
gons as far as 50 leugas. They
cannot be compelled to go farther.

In keeping up the buildings in
the demesne, in repairing the hayloft,
the granary, or the ' tun,' let them
take reasonable portions, and when
needful let them compound to-

1 Pertz, Legum, t. iii. pp. 278-
280.

a Compare Chlotharii II. Prcs-
ceptio (684-628) s. 11. ' Agraria,
pascuaria vel decinias porcorum
ecclesiae pro fidei nostras devotione

concedimus, ita ut actor aut deci-
mator in rebus ecclesiae nullus acce-
dat.' — Mon. Germ. Hist. Capitu-
laria, I. i. p. 19.

3 This word ' accola ' is often
used in charters for ' free coloni.'

326

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Gafol-yrth
or plough-
ing of
andecena
or acre
strips,
probably
for the
tenths on
the ' tithe-
lands.'

Calce furno [al. calcefurno], ubi
prope fuerit, ligna aut petra [al.
petras] 60 homines faciant, ubi
longe fuerat [al. fuerit], 100 ho-
mines debeant expetiri, et ad civi-
tatem vel ad villain, ubi necesse
fuerit, ipsa calce trahantur [al.
ipsam calcein trabant].

gether. To the limekiln when
near let 50 men, and when it is far
let 100 men be found to supply
wood or [lime-]stone, and where
needful let the lime itself be carried
to city or villa.

These are the services of the coloni or accolm ot
the Church. Next as to the servi : —

Servi autem ecclesise secundum
possessionem suain reddant tributa.
Opera vero 3 dies in ebdomada in
doininico operent [al. operentur], 3
vero sibi faciant. Si vero dominus
eius [al. eorum] dederit eis boves
aut alias res quod habet [al. quas
habent], tantum serviant, quantum
eis per possibilitatem impositum
fuerit; tamen iniuste neminem
obpremas [al. opprimas].

Let the servi of the Church pay
tribute according to their holdings.
Let them work 3 days a week in the
demesne, and 3 days for themselves.
But if their lord give them oxen or
other things they have, let them do
as much service as can be put upon
them, yet thou shalt oppress no
one unjustly.

In the face of this evidence it seems impossible to
ignore either the continuity of the tribute and services
under Roman and German rule on the one hand, or
their identity with the gafol, the gafol-yrth, and the
iveek-work of the English manor on the other hand.
There is first the tenth of the chief produce due as of
old from these occupants of the ' Agri Decumates ' of
Tacitus, closely connected with the tribute of plough-
ing — the Saxon gafol-yrth noticed above in the St.
Gall charters. This is to be rendered in lawful
andecenos, and this measure of the plough-work is
reckoned by the Roman rod of ten feet, and takes
the precise form, four rods by forty, which belongs
to the English acre of four roods; 1 and this is the

In the Glosses this andeceua is called a ' s/iarwoi-k.'

' Sordida
munera.'

Growth of the Manor. 327

strip to be sown, gathered, and stored, just as in the Chap.

VIII.

case of the Saxon ' gafol-yrth' 1

The tending of vines is peculiar to the country.
The tenth bundle of flax, the tenth vessel of honey,
and the fowls and eggs are also familiar items of the
census or gafol, both in the charters of St. Gall and
in the services of Saxon manors.

Then there are the pack-horse services (parafreti)
and the carrying services ('angaria? cum carta'), the
keeping up of buildings, supply of the limekiln,
and the carriage of lime to the villa — all which once
public services ('sordida munera'), due to the Roman
Emperor on whose tithe lands the coloni were settled,
were now the manorial services of ' coloni ' of the
Church. They were called in the Codex Theodo-
sianus ' obsequia,' and are almost identical with the
Saxon ' precarioB ' or boon-works.

Lastly, it has been observed that the coloni or
accolos did not give ' week-work' This was, as has
been seen, the distinctive mark of serfdom here in
Rhgetia, as for centuries afterwards throughout the
manors of mediaeval Europe.

In other words, in the seventh century there are
two classes of tenants on ecclesiastical manors — (1)
the coloni or accola?, to use the Saxon terms of King
Ine's laws, set to gafol ; and (2) the servi, set to gafol
and to week-work.

Throw the two classes together, or let the remain-
ing Roman coloni sink, as the result of conquest or
otherwise, down into the condition up to which the
slaves have risen in becoming serfs, and the serfdom
of the mediaeval manorial estate is the natural result.
At the same time an explanation is given of the per-

;2S

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

Transition
from

slavery to
serfdom.

Scores of
free-
tenants on
a single
manor
make sur-
renders
to the
Abbey cf
Lorsch.

sistently double character of the later services, which
apparently was a survival of their double origin in the
union of the public tribute and sordida munera of the
Boman colonus with the servile work of the Roman slave.

On the estates of the Church in the early years
of the seventh century the humanising power of
Christian feeling had silently raised the status of the
slave. It had dignified labour, and given to him a
property in his labour, securing to him not only one
day in seven for rest to his weary and heavy-laden
limbs, but also three days in the week wherein his
labour was his own. From slavery he had risen into
serfdom. And this serfdom of the quondam slave
had become, in the eyes of the still more weary and
heavy-laden free labourers on their own land, so light
a burden compared with their own — such was the
lawless oppression of the age — that they went to the
Church and took upon them willingly the yoke of
her serfdom, in order that they might find rest under
her temporal as well as spiritual protection.

Such an impulse did this rush for safety into
serfdom on ecclesiastical or monastic estates receive
from the unsettlement and lawlessness of the period
of the Teutonic invasions, that by the time of Charles
the Great a large proportion of the land in these
once Roman provinces had become included in the
manorial estates of the monasteries.

In the thickly peopled Romano-German lands on
both sides of the Rhine, including the present Elsass
on the one side, and the district between the Rhine
and the Maine (the present Baden and Wirtemberg)
on the other, so strong was the current in this direc-
linn that we find in the Traditiones of the monasteries

Growth of the Manor.

329

of ' Lorsch ' and ' Wizenburg ' scores of surrenders
taking place sometimes in a single village. And
these cases are of peculiar interest because G. L. von
Maurer relies almost solely upon them as the earliest
examples available in support of his theory of the
original German mark and free village community.
His only early instances are taken from the Lorsch
Cartulary. 1 He cites 107 surrenders to the Abbey
of Lorsch in ' Hantscuhesheim ' alone, 2 and concludes
that there must have been at least as many free holders
resident there in earlier times. In Loeheim there
were eight surrenders ; in other heims thirty-five, five,
twenty-three, ten, forty, five, and so on. These must,
he concludes, have formed part of originally free
village communities on the German mark system. 3

Now these surrenders to the abbey go back to the
reign of Pepin ; and the question is, What were these
freemen who made these surrenders ? Were they
indeed members of German free village communities?

In the first place, they lived in a district which
for many centuries had been a Roman province.
The manners of the people had long been Eomanised.
Even across the Maine for generations the homesteads
had been built in Roman fashion. 4 And it is significant
that the fragments surrendered in this district, which
since the time of Probus had become devoted to the
vine culture, were mostly little vineyards ; e.g. ' rem
' meam, hoc est vineam, i. in Hantscuhesheim,' * and so

Chap.
VIII.

1 Ge8chichte der Dorfverfassung
in Deutschland, i. pp. 6 et seq.

2 Traditiones in Pago Rhinensi.
Codex Lauresham. pp. 357 et seq.

3 Dorfverfassung, pp. 15 et seq.

4 Ammianus Marcel! inus, bk.
xvii. c. i., a.d. 357.

5 Codex Lauresham. pp. 326,
362, 369, 375 and passim.

were
manors

330 The Roman Land System.

CnAP. on. These vineyards were often composed of so many

1 ' scamelli,' or little scamni — ridges or strips marked out

by the Roman Agrimensores. All this is thoroughly
Roman. What looks at first sight so much like a
German free village community, was once a little
Roman ' vicus ' full of people, with their vineyards on
the hills around it. They look like German settlers
or ' free coloni ' on the public domains, who had be-
come appendant to the villa of the fiscal officer of the
district, which had in fact by this time become to all
intents and purposes a manor.

A little further examination will confirm this view.
The villas Turning to the record of the earliest donation to

the abbey, in a.d. 763, 1 we find a description of a
whole villa or heim — ' Hoc est, villam nostram quce
' dicitur Hagenheim, cum omni integritate sua, tenuis
* domibus cedijiciis campis pratis vineis silvis aquis
1 aquarumve decursibus fai inariis litis libertis conlibertis
' mancipiis mobilibus et immobilibus, cf*c.'

Here there clearly is a villa or manor, and the
tenants of this manor are liti, liberti, coliberti, 2 and
mancipii or slaves. There are charters of other
estates which are just as clearly manors with servile
tenements and slaves upon them.

In the similar records of surrenders to the Abbey
of St. Gall, as we have seen, there are also donations
of little free properties in ' heims ' and ' villares,' but
by far the greater number of the earliest donations
are distinctly of whole manors or parts of manors,
with coloni and mancipii upon them.

1 Codex Lduresham. p. 3. counties of England in tbe Doines-

2 It is curious to notice lliat day Survey.
' coliberti ' appear also in the western

instance.

Growth of the Manor. 331

The heims of this Komano-German district were f '.""'■
therefore distinctly manors. They were also ' marks* —

In 773 Charles the Great gave to the Abbey of Another
Lauresham the ' villa ' called * Hephenheim,' ' in pago
' Binense, cum omni merito et soliditate sua cum terris
' do mi bus aidijiciis accolis mancipiis vineis sylvis
' campis pratis, fyc.' — that is, the whole manor — ' cum
* omnibus terminis et marchis suis.' And then follow
the marchos sive terminus silvos, which pertained to
the same villa of Hephenheim, ' as it had always
' been held sub ducibus et regibus ex tempore antiquo.*
It was then a ' villa ' or manor belonging to the
Royal domain, and it was then held as a benefice by
a ' comes,' whose predecessor had also held it, and
his father before him, of the king. 1

This is clearly a grant of a whole manor with
the tenants and slaves upon it, and a manor of
long standing ; and the word mark is simply the
base Latin word for boundary, like the Saxon word
' gemasre.' Further, the boundaries are given exactly
as in the Saxon charters, in the form described in
the writings of the Eoman Agrimensores.

In 774, 2 Charles the Great made a similar grant to
the abbey in almost identical terms of the ' villa ' called
' Obbenheim,' in the district of Worms, ' cum omni merito
' et soliditate sua, Sfc, accolis, mancipiis, fyc.,' just as
before. This was another whole royal manor granted
with its tenants and slaves to the abbey. Yet in 788 s
the holder of a vineyard (\j petiam de vinea ') in this
same Obbenheim surrenders it to the abbey. In 782 4

1 Codex Lauresham. i. pp. 15-
16.

2 Id. i. pp. 18 and 19.

s Id. i. p. 297.
* Id. i. p. ^03.

332

The Roman Land System.

Chap.
VIII.

The ' free
coloni '
■were
manorial
tenants.

Surren-
ders by
' free
3oloni.'

there is another grant. In 793 x there is a similar
grant of five vineyards, and another 2 of three vine-
yards ; and scores of other donations of vineyards
occur in the reigns of Charles and of his predecessor
Pepin. 3

It is obvious, then, that these surrenders or dona-
tions, which were exactly like those of Hantscuhes-
heim, were made by ' free coloni ' of the manor, who
in the time of Pepin, while the lordship remained in
the king, as well as afterwards when the manor had
been transferred to the abbey, surrendered their
holdings to the abbey, thus converting them either
into tenancies on the demesne land, or into servile
holdings under the lordship of the abbey. They
were not members of a German free village com-
munity, for they were tenants of a manor when they
made their surrenders. Nor were they slaves
(mancipii). The only other class mentioned in
the charter was that of the accolce, the word used
for ' free coloni ' in the Bavarian laws. These accolce,
it seems, then, were ' coloni ' or free tenants upon a
royal manor, part of the old ager publicus, now
4 terra regis.' And as such under the Frankish law
it seems that they had power to transfer themselves
from the lordship of the king to that of the Church.
The Alamannic laws were enacted or at least con-
firmed after the Frankish conquest, and probably
were in force over this particular district at the date
of these surrenders. These laws, as we have seen,
expressly forbade the comes under whom they lived

1 Codex Lauresham. i. p. .347. ' Id. i. pp. 319-350.

s Id. ii. pp. 232 et seq.

Growth of the Manor.

333

to prevent free tenants from making such surrenders c,up -
for the good of their souls. 1

Indeed, among the St. Gall charters there is one
exactly in point.

It is dated a.d. 766, 1 and. by it the sons of a person Example
who had surrendered his land to the Abbey under
these laws by this charter renewed the arrangement,
' in this wise, that so as we used to do service to
' the king and the comes, so we shall do service
1 for that land to the monastery, receiving it as a
* benefice of the same monks per cartidam precariam.'

This view of the case may be still further con-
firmed. In the Lorsch records are contained in some
cases descriptions of the services of the two kinds of
tenants on the manors surrendered to the Abbey.
There are free tenants and servile tenants, and it is a
strong confirmation of the continuity of the services
from Roman to mediaeval times to find some of them
so closely identical with the ' sordida munera ' of the
Theodosian Code and the services described in the
Bavarian laws.

To take an example : In Nersten the services of
each mansus ingenualis may be thus classified : 2 —

(1) As census, 5 niodii of barley, 1 pound of flax, at Easter 4d., 1

fowl, 10 eggs, 2 loads of wood.

(2) As work, 4 weeks a year whenever required.

(3) As ' gafolyrth? to plough 1 acre in each of the [three] fields

(sationes), and to gather and store it.

(4) As ' precaria] or sordida munera —

3 days' work at reaping.
2 days' work at mowing.

1 Urkundenbuch of St. Gall, i.
p. 50.

2 Codex Laureshamensis, iii.

212. See also the services at
Winenheim (iii. 205), a manor near
Heppenbeim.

Roman
connexion

334 The Roman Land System.

p„ vr 2 days' work at binding and 2 loads of carrying'.
VIII. The tenant gives a parafredum.
Attends in the host.

Carts 5 loads of lime to the kiln.

Carts o loads of wood.

Goes messages ' infra regnum ' whenever required.

Each mansus servilis rendered, on the other hand —

(1) As census, 1 uncia, 1 fowl, 10 eggs, a frisking worth id.

(2) As boon work, t facit moaticum et bracem et picturas in sepe et in

grania.' In addition the tenant : —
Ploughs 4 days, and all demesne land.
Feeds for the winter 5 pigs and 1 cow.

(3) As week-ivork, 3 days a week whenever required.

For women's work, 1 uncia, 1 load of wood, 1 of grass, 10 eggs.

In total there were eighty-seven ' mansi et sortes.'
Their It is evident that these mansi and sortes were not

allodial lots in the common mark of a free village
community, but the holdings of two grades of semi-
servile and servile tenants on a manor; and it is evident
that some of the services were survivals of the sordida
munera exacted under Roman law. Surely the con-
tinuity in the mode of surrender and in the services
and tribute on these South German manors, traced
from the Theodosian Code to the Alamannic and Bava-
rian laws, and found again in the surrenders (identical
with those described by Salvian) made under those
laws, and also in the later surveys of the monastic
estates, excludes the probability of their having been
original settlements of German free village communi-
ties on the German mark system, such as G. L. von
Maurer assumes that they were.

These curious and numerous instances on which
this writer relied as evidence of the mark-system,
and as remains of a once free German village com-
munity, turn out in fact to be further instances of

Growth of the Manor. ;!:!-"i

the progress under Frankish rule, within a once Roman Chap.

province, of the practice described by Salvian — a 1

practice which continued from century to century,

helping on the threefold tendency (1) in the villa to Manorial

become more and more manorial, i.e. more and more f n t he DCy

an estate of a lord with a village community in serf I; " ,,,V1

J land-

dom upon it; (2) for all land to fall under some system,
manorial lordship or other, whether royal, eccle-
siastical, monastic or private, and so to become part
of a manorial estate ; (3) for the originally distinct
classes of ' free coloni ' on the one hand, and slaves
or servi on the other hand, to become merged in the
one common class of medieval serfs.

We have yet, however, to examine the German
side of this continental economic history as carefully
as we have examined the Roman side of it, before we
shall be in a position to use continental analogies as the
key to the solution of the English economic problem.

It may be that direct and important German ele-
ments also entered as factors in the manorial system,
both during the period of Roman rule in the German
provinces, and also after their final conquest by the
German tribes.

Chap. IX.

Caesar's
descrip-
tion of the
German
tribal
system.

CHAPTER IX.

THE GERMAN SIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL
EVIDENCE.

I. THE GERMAN TRIBAL SYSTEM, AND ITS TENDENCY
TOWARDS THE MANORIAL SYSTEM.

The description given of the Germans by Csesar is
evidently that of a people in the same tribal stage of
economic development as the one with which Irish
and Welsh evidence has made us familiar.

' Their whole life is occupied in hunting and warlike enterprise. . . .
They do not apply much to agriculture, and their food mostly consists of
milk, cheese, and flesh. Nor has anyone a fixed quantity of land or
defined individual property, but the magistrates and chiefs assign to
tribes and families who herd together, annually, and for one year's occu-
pation, as much land and in such place as they t'ink fit, compelling them
the next year to move somewhere else.' 1

He also alludes to the frailty of their houses, 2
another mark of the tribal system in Wales, which

1 De Bella Gallico, lib. vi. c. cognationibusque hominum, qui una

21 and 22. ' Neque quisquam agri coieruut, quantum eis et quo loco

modum certum aut fines habet visum est agri attribuunt, atque

proprios, sed magistratus ac prin- anno post alio transire cogunt.'
dipes in annos Bingulos geiitibus 2 Id. lib. vi. c. 22.

The ' Germania ' of Tacitus. 337

indeed was a necessary result of the yearly migration Chap. ix.
to fresh fields and pastures.

Now what were the tribes of Germans with whom
Caesar came most in contact ?

His chief campaigns against the Germans were (1) The Suevi.
against the Suevi, who were crossing the Rhine north of
the confluence with the Moselle, and (2) against Ario-
vistus in the territory of the Sequani at the southern
bend of the Rhine eastward. And it is remarkable
that the Suevi were prominent again among the tribes
enlisted in the army of Ariovistus. 1 So that it is
easy to see how the Suevi, coming into close contact
with Caesar at both ends, came to be considered by
him as the most important of the German peoples.

He describes the Suevi separately, and in terms
which show over again that they were still in the early
tribal stage 2 in which an annual shifting of holdings
was practised. Indeed, their semi-nomadic habits
could not be shown better than by the inadvertently
mentioned facts that the Suevi who were crossing the
Rhine to the north brought their families with them ;
and that the Suevi and other tribes forming the army
of Ariovistus to the south had not had settled homes
for fourteen years, 3 but brought their families about
with them in waggons wherever they went, the
waggons and women of each tribe being placed
behind the warriors when they were drawn up by
tribes in battle array. 4

This statement of Caesar that the Germans of his

1 Be Bella Gallico, lib. i. c. 51.

9 Id. lib. iv. c. 1. 'Sed privati
ac separati agri apud eos nihil est,
neque longius aimo renianere uno in

loco incolendi causa licet.'

3 Id. lib. i. c. 36.

4 Id. lib. i. c. 51.

338

The German Land System.

Chap. ix. time were still in the early tribal stage of economic
development in which there was an annual shifting
of the households from place to place needs no cor-
roboration or explaining away after what has already
been seen going on under the Welsh and Irish tribal
systems. The ease with which tribal redistributions
were made under the peculiar method of clustering
homesteads which prevailed in Wales and Ireland,
makes the statement of Cassar perfectly probable.

But how was it 150 years later, when Tacitus
wrote his celebrated description of the Germans of
his time ?

The ' Germania ' was obviously written from a
distinctly Roman point of view.

The eye of the writer was struck with those points
chiefly in which German and Eoman manners differed.
The Romans of the well-to-do classes lived in cities.
City life was their usual life, and those of them who
had villas in the country, whilst sometimes having
residences for themselves upon them, as we have seen,
cultivated them most often by means of slave-labour
under a villicus, but sometimes by coloni.

What struck Tacitus in the economy of the
Germans (and by Germans he obviously meant the
free tribesmen, not their slaves) was that they did
not live in cities like the Romans. ' They dwell ' (he

The

' Germa-
nia' of Ta-
citus.

The
scattered

settle-
ments of
the free
tribesmen.

says) ' apart and scattered, as spring, or plain, or
' grove attracted their fancy.' 1 Of whom is lie speak-
ing? Obviously of free tribesmen or tribal house-
holds, not of villagers or village communities, for he

1 'Oolunt dificreti ac diversi, ut fons, ut campus, ut nemus placuit.' —
Gcninmia, .\vi.

The ' Germania ' of Tacitus. 339

immediately afterwards, in the very next sentence, Cuap. ix.
speaks of the Germans as avoiding even in their
villages (vici) what seemed to him to be obviously
the best mode of building, viz. in streets with con-
tinuous roofs. ' Their villages ' (he says) * they The
8 build not in our manner with connected and at- StSSr
' tached buildings. There is an open space round j""™ 1 *
' every one's house.' And this he attributes not to
their fancy for one situation or another, as in the
first case, but ' either to fear of fire or ignorance of
' how to build.' *

It is obvious, therefore, that the Germans who
chose to live scattered about the country sides, as
spring, plain or grove attracted them, were not the
villagers who had spaces round their houses. We
are left to conclude that the first class were the chiefs
and free tribesmen, who, now having become settled
for a time, were, in a very loose sense, the landowners,
while the latter, the villagers, must chiefly have been
their servile dependants. And this inference is con-
firmed when Tacitus comes to the second point and
tells us that the servi of the Germans differed
greatly from those of the Eomans. There were some
slaves bought and sold in the market, and free men
sometimes sank into slavery as the result of war
or gambling ventures ; but in a general way (he
says) their slaves were not included in the tribes-
men's households or employed in household service,
but each family of slaves had a separate home-

1 ' Vicos locant non in nostrum
niorern, connexis et cohjerentibus
aedificiis : suam quisque domum

spatio circumdat,siveadversus casus
ignis remediuni, sive inscitia aedi-
i licandi.' — Germania, xvi.

z 2

340

The German Land System.

Chap. ix. stead. 1 They had also separate crops and cattle ;
for ' the lord (dominus) requires from the slave a
' certain quantity of corn, cattle, or material for
' clothing, as in the case of coloni. To this modi-
8 fied extent (Tacitus says) the German servus is
1 a slave. The wife and children of the free tribes-
* man do the household work of his house, not slaves
1 as in the Roman households.'

Clearly, then, the vicus — the village — on the land
of the tribesman who was their lord, was inhabited
by these servi, who, like Roman coloni, had their
own homesteads and cattle and crops, and rendered
to their lord part of their produce by way of tribute
or food-rent.

The lords — the tribesmen — themselves (as Tacitus
elsewhere remarks) preferred fighting and hunting to
agriculture, and left the management of the latter to
the women and weaker members of the family. 2
a later Now, if we could be sure that the tribal home-

suge than stead was a permanent possession, and that the village
described, of serfs around it had a single tribesman for its lord,
the settlement would practically be to all intents and
purposes a heim or manor with a village in serfdom
upon it. It was evidently in a real sense the tribes-
man's separate possession, for, after speaking of blood
relationships which bind the German tribesman's
family and home most strongly together, Tacitus
adds, ' Everyone's children are his heirs and successors

1 ' Ceteris servia non in nos-
trum inorem descriptis per familiatn
ministeriis utuntur. Sutim quisque
SL'dem, 8uos penates regit. Fru-
uienti modutu douiiuiia aut pecoris

aut vestis ut colono injungit, et
servus hactenus paret : cetera
doinus officia uxor ac liberi ex-
sequuntur.' — Gcrmania,
2 I'd. xiv. awl xv.

The ' Ger mania ' of Tacitus. 341

1 without his making a will ; and if there be no Chap. ix.
* children, the grades of succession are brothers, Division
4 paternal uncles, maternal uncles.' 1 beir" g

But then this was also the case in Wales and
Ireland. There was division among male heirs of the
family land. And yet this family land was not a
freehold permanent estate so long as a periodical
redistribution of the tribe land might shift it over to
someone else.

The embryo manor of the German tribesman, Th f

J embryo

with its village of serfs upon it, might therefore, if manor,
the same practice prevailed, differ in three ways from
the later manor. It might become the possession of
a tribal household instead of a single lord ; and also
it possibly might, on a sudden redistribution of the
tribal land, fall into the possession of another tribes-
man or tribal household, though perhaps this is not
very likely often to have happened. Finally, it might
become subdivided when the time came for the unity
of the tribal household to be broken up as it was in
Wales after the final redivision among second cousins.
It must be remembered that land in the tribal
stages of economic progress was the least stable and
the least regarded of possessions. A tribesman's
property consisted of his cattle and his serfs. These
were his permanent family wealth, and he was rich
or poor as he had more or less of them. So long as
the tribe land was plentiful, he as the head of a tribal
household took his proper share according to tribal
rank ; and so long as periodical redistributions took
place, even when the tribal household finally was

1 Germania, xx.

342 The German Land System.

Chap. ix. broken up, room would be found for the new tribal
households on the tribal land. But when at last the
limits of the land became too narrow for the tribe, a
portion of the tribesmen would swarm off to seek
new homes in a new country. Frequent migrations
were, therefore, at once the proofs of pressure of
population and the safety-valve of the system.
Fresh The emigrating tribesmen in their new home

meni" would form themselves into a new sept or tribe, take
possession of fresh tracts of unoccupied land, and
perhaps, if land were plentiful, wander about for a
time from place to place as pasture for their cattle
might tempt them. Then at last they would settle :
each tribesman would select his site by plain, wood
or stream, as it pleased him. He would erect his
stake and wattle tribal house, and daub it over with
clay * to keep out the weather. He would put up his
rough outbuildings and fence in his corn and cattle
yard. Round this tribal homestead the still rougher
homesteads of his serfs, each with its yard around it,
would soon form a straggling village, and the likeness
to the embryo manor would once more appear.
The h d Indeed, when we turn to the famous passage in
passage of which the German settlements and their internal
describing economy are described, the words used by Tacitus
? g e r r S- seem m themselves to indicate that lie had in his eye
ture. precisely this process which the example of the Welsh
and Irish tribal systems has helped to make intelli-
gible to us. Tracts of country (agri), he says, are
' taken possession of [pccupantur) by a body of tribes-
man [ab universis) who are apparently seeking new

1 (•'(■> mania, xvi.

The ' Germania ' of Tacitus,

?,r,

homes ; and then the agri are presently divided among Chap. ix.
them.

This passage, so often and so variously construed
and interpreted, is as follows : —

' Agri pro numero cultorum ab universis vicis [or in or per vices] l
occupantur, quos mox inter se secundum dignationein partiuntur : facili-
tates partiendi camporum spatia praestant.

' Arva per annos mutant, et superest ager : nee enim cum ubertate et
amplitudine soli labore contendunt, ut pomaria conserant et prata
separent et hortos rigent : sola terras seges imperatur.' '-

It is unfortunate that the first few lines of this
passage are made ambiguous by an error in the texts.
If the true reading be, as many modern German
critics now hold, ' ab universis vicis ' — by all the vici
together, or by the whole community in vici — there
still must remain the doubt whether the word vicus
should not be considered rather as the equivalent of
the Welsh trev than of the modern village. The
Welsh * trev ' was, as we have seen, a subordinate
cluster of scattered households. Tacitus himself
probably uses the word in this sense in the passage
where he describes the choice of the chiefs, or head
men (principes) ' qui jura per pagos vicosque reddunt.' 3
The vicus is here evidently a smaller tribal subdivi-
sion of the pagus, just as the Welsh trev was of the
' cymwdj and not necessarily a village in the modern
sense. 4

1 The Bamberg Codex has ' ab
universis vicis} and this is followed
by Waitz ( Verfassungsgeschichte,
Kiel, 1880, i. 145). The Leyden
Codex has ' in vicem.' Others ' per
vices,' which earlier critics con-
sidered to be an error for 'per
vicos.' See Wietersheim's Ge-

schichte der Vblkenvanderung, with
Dahn's notes, i. p. 43. Leipzig,
1880.

8 Germania, xxvi.

3 Id. xii.

4 The Welsh 'trev' and Ger-
man 'dorf probably are from the
same root.

and
divided

under tri-
bal rules.

344 The German Land System.

Chap. ix. If, on the other hand, the true reading be * ab
Fresh agri universis in, or per, vices or invicem, the meaning pro-
session' of bably is that fresh tracts of land (agri) are one after
another taken possession of by the tribal community
when it moves to a new district or requires more
room as its numbers increase.

The new agri, the passage goes on to say, are soon
divided among the tribesmen or the trevs, ' secundum
dignationem,' according to the tribal rules, the great
extent of the open country and absence of limits
making the division easy, just as it was in the in-
stance of Abraham and Lot.

In any case it is impossible to suppose that Tacitus
meant by the words in vices or invicem, if he used
them, that there was any annual shifting of the tribe
from one locality to another, for it is obvious that
the very next words absolutely exclude the possibility
of an annual movement such as that described by
Ccesar. ' Arva per annos mutant et super est ager.'
They change their arva or ploughed land yearly, i.e.,
they plough up fresh portions of the ager or grass
land every year, and there is always plenty left over
(SituHMs wmcn nas never been ploughed. 1 Nothing could de-
aco-ara- scribe more clearly what is mentioned in the Welsh

Hon of J

fresh triads as ' co-aration of the waste.' The tribesmen have

the. waste their scattered homesteads surrounded by the lesser
homesteads of their ' servi.' And the latter join in
the co-tillage of such part of the grass land as year
by year is chosen for the corn crops, while the cattle
wander over the rest.

1 * "A(/er " dictus qui a divisori-
bus agroruru relictus est ad pascen-
diuii communiter vicinie.' Isodorus,

De Ayris. Lachmann and Rudorff,
i. p. 869.

The l Ger mania ' of Tacitus. 345

Tins seems to have been the simple form of the Chap - ix -
open field husbandry of the Germans of Tacitus.

And this is sufficient for the present purpose ; for
whichever way this passage be read, it does not modify
the force of the previous passages, which show how
manorial were the lines upon which the German tribal
system was moving even in this early and still tribal
stage of its economic development, owing chiefly to
the possession of serfs by the tribesmen. It gives us
further a clear landmark as regards the use by the
Germans of the open-field system of ploughing.
Tacitus describes a husbandry in the stage of * co-ara-
tion of the waste.' It has not yet developed into a
fixed three-course rotation of crops, pursued over and
over again permanently on the same arable area, as
in ' the three-field system ' afterwards so prevalent in
Germany and England.

These are important points to have gained, but Theten-
the most important one is that, notwithstanding the the Ger-
strong resemblances between the Welsh and German gyJJ,mun-
tribal arrangements, there was this distinct difference w^®
between them. The two tribal systems were not wards the
working themselves out, so to speak, on the same
lines. The Welsh system, in its economic develop-
ment, was not directly approaching the manorial
arrangement except perhaps on the mensal land of
the chiefs. The Welsh tribesmen had as a rule no
servile tenants under them. The taeogs were mostly
the taeogs of the chiefs, not of the tribesmen. Thus,
as we have seen, when the conquest of Wales was
completed, the tribesmen of the till then unconquered
districts became freeholders under the Prince of Wales,
and with no mesne lord over them. The taeogs be-

346

The German Land System.

Chap. IX.

The Ger-
man and
Roman
elements
easily com-
bined to
make the

came taeogs of the Prince of Wales and not of local
landowners. So that the manor did not arise. But
even in the time of Tacitus the German tribesmen
seem to have already become practically manorial
lords over their own servi, who were already so nearly
in the position of serfs on their estates that Tacitus
described them as' like coloni.'

The manor — in embryo — was, in fact, already in
course of development. The German economic
system was, to say the very least, working itself out
on lines so nearly parallel to those of the Eoman
manorial system that we cannot wonder at the silent
ease with which before and after the conquest of
Roman provinces, German chieftains became lords
of villas and manors. The two systems, Roman and
German, may well have easily combined in producing
the later manorial system which grew up in the Roman
provinces of Gaul and the two Germanies.

Were there
other
kinds of
settle-

B DOt

^ i mano-
rial ?

II. THE TRIBAL HOUSEHOLDS OF GERMAN SETTLERS.

Now, if we were to rely upon this evidence of
Tacitus alone, the conclusion would be inevitable that
the German and Roman land-systems were so nearly
alike in their tendencies that they naturally and
simply joined in producing the manorial system of
later times. And there can be little doubt that,
speaking broadly, this would be a substantially
correct statement of the case.

But before we can fairly and finally accept it as
such, it is necessary to consider another branch of
evidence which has sometimes been understood to
point to a kind of settlement not manorial.

Tribal Households. 347

The evidence alluded to is that of local names Chap. ix.

ending in the remarkable suffix ing or itujas. It is The
needful to examine this evidence, notwithstanding its JS ca
difficult and doubtful nature. It raises a question jjgj
upon which the last word has by no means yet been names,
spoken, and out of which interesting and important
results may eventually spring. The impossibility of
arriving, in the present state of the evidence, at a
positive conclusion, is no reason why its apparent
bearing should not be stated, provided that sugges-
tion and hypothesis be not confounded with verified
fact. At all events, the inquiry pursued in this essay
would be open to the charge of being one-sided if it
were not alluded to.

The reader of recent literature bearing upon the
history of the English conquest of Britain will have
been struck by the confidence and skill with which,
in the absence of historical, or even, in some cases,
traditional evidence, the story of the invasion and
occupation of England has been sometimes created
out of little more than the combination of physical ?° they f
geography with local names, on the hypothesis that clau
local names ending in Hng," or its plural form 'ingas,' ments?
represent the original clan settlements of the German
conquerors. Writers who rely upon G. L. Von
Maurer's theory of the German mark-system have
also naturally called attention to local names with
this suffix as evidence of settlements on the basis of
the free village community as opposed to those of a
manorial type.

Local names with this suffix, it is hardly needful
to say, are found on the Continent as well as in
England.

148

The German Land System.

Chap. IX.

What Ger-
mans did
Tacitus
describe ?

Those

within the
limes.

Northern
tribes out-
side it.

How, it may well be asked, does the evidence they
afford of clan settlements or free village communities
comport with the thoroughly manorial character of
the German settlements on the lines described by
Tacitus?

Now, in order to answer this question, it must
first be considered how far the description of Tacitus
covers the whole field — whether it refers to the
Germans as a whole, or whether only to those tribes
who had come within Eoman influences, and so had
sooner, perhaps, than the rest, relinquished their
earlier tribal habits to follow manorial lines.

So far as his description is geographical it is very
methodical.

(1) There are the Germans within the Roman
limes. 1 These included the tribes who, following up
the conquests of Ariovistus, had settled on the left
bank of the Rhine in what was then called the pro-
vince of Upper Germany, including the present Elsass
and the country round the confluence of the Rhine
with the Maine and Moselle. These tribes were the
Tribocci, Nemetes and Vangiones. 2 Further, there
were the tribes or emigrants, many of them German,
gradually settling within the limits of the ' Agri
Decumates.' Lastly, there were the Batavi and
other tribes settled in the province of Lower Germany
at the mouths of the Rhine, shading off into Belgic
Gaul.

(2) There were the Northern tribes outside the
Roman province, 3 some of them tributary to the

1 Go-mania, xxviii. and xxix.

2 These tribes are mentioned by
Caesar as forming part of the army

of Ariovistus. De Bello Gallico,
lib. i. c. 61.

* Germania, xxx.-xxxvii.

Tribal Household*. 349

Romans and some of them hostile, the Frisii, the Cha*. ix.
Chatti (or Hessians), and other tribes, reaching from
the German Ocean to the mountains, and occupying
the country embracing the upper valleys of the
Weser and the Elbe, some of which tribes afterwards
joined the Franks and Saxons.

(3) There were the Suevic tribes 1 so familiar to The Suevh
Caesar, and amongst whom were the Angli and Varini, the bor-
the Marcomanni and Hermunduri, always hovering ers "
over the limes of the provinces from the Rhine and
Maine to the Danube : some of them hostile and some

of them friendly ; some of whom afterwards mingled
with the Franks and Saxons, but most of whom were
absorbed in the Alamannic and the Bavarian tribes
who finally, following the course of the previous
emigration, passed over the limes and settled within
the ' Agri Decumates ' in Rhajtia, and in the Roman
province of Upper Germany.

(4) Behind all these tribes with whom the Romans Distant

* / . tribes.

came in contact were others vaguely described as
lying far away to the north and east.

The habits of which of these widely different
classes of German tribes did Tacitus describe ?

Probably it would not be safe to go further than The Suevio
to say that the Germans whose manners he was most ^ ost m \^ 3
likely to describe were those chiefly Suevic tribes ™ a 1 J 1 y_ pro '
hovering round the limes of the provinces, especially
of the ' Agri Decumates,' with whom the Romans
had most to do. It is at least possible that he left out
of his picture, on the one hand, those distant northern
or eastern tribes who may still have retained their
early nomadic habits, and on the other hand those

1 Germania, xxxviii.-xlv.

350 The German Land System.

Chap. ix. Germans who had silently and peaceably settled
within the limes of the Eoman provinces, and so had
become half Eoman. 1

But to what class are we to refer the settlements
represented by the local names with the supposed
patronymic suffix?

The previous study of the Welsh and Irish tribal

patrony- r J

inic local system ought to help us to judge what they were.

impiv fixed In the first place we have clearly learned that in
tracing the connexion of the tribal system with local
names, the fixing of a particular personal name to
a locality implies settlement. It implies not only a
departure from the old nomadic habits on the part of
the whole tribe, but also the absence within the terri-
tory of the tribe of those redistributions of the tribes-
men among the homesteads — the shifting of families
from one homestead to another — which prevailed
apparently in Wales and certainly in Ireland to so late
a date.

Following the parallel experience of the Irish and
Welsh tribal system we may certainly conclude that
in the early semi-nomadic and shifting tribal stage
described by Caasar the names of places, like those
of the Irish townlands, would follow local peculiarities
of wood or stream or plain, and that not until there
was a permanent settlement of particular families
in fixed abodes could personal names attach them-
selves to places, or suffixes be used which in them-
selves involve the idea of a fixed abode.

Then with regard to the nature of the tribal
settlements which these local names with a patronymic

1 lie regarded the ' Agri Decuniates' as ' hardly in Germany.'

Tribal Households. >~>\

suffix may lepresent, surely the actual evidence of Chap. lx.
the Welsh laws and the 'Record of Carnarvon,' as to They an
what a tribal household was, must be far more likely |
to guide us to the truth than any theoretical view of t r / ' al , ,,

° g J household.

the ' village community ' under the German mark-
system, or even actual examples of village communities
existing under complex and totally different circum-
stances at the present time, valuable as such examples
may be as evidence of how the descendants of tribes-
men comport themselves after perhaps centuries of
settlement on the same ground.

Now we have seen that the tribal household in The joint

holding of

Wales was the joint holding of the heirs of a common a family
ancestor from the great-grandfather downwards, with second
redistributions within it to make equality, first between cousins -
brothers, then between cousins, and finally between
second cousins ; the youngest son always retaining
the original homestead in these divisions. The Weles,
Givelys, and Gavells of the 'Record of Carnarvon ' were
late examples of such holdings. They were named
after the common ancestor and occupied by his heirs.
Such holdings, so soon as there was fixed settlement
in the homesteads, were obviously in the economic
stage in which, according to German usage, the name
of the original holders with the patronymic suffix
might well become permanently attached to them. 1

We may then, following the Welsh example, fairly The dm-
expect the distinctive marks of the tribal household to "°° n g es e t
be joint holding for two or three generations, and then g^jjjjj^
the ultimate division of the holding among male heirs, homestead.
the youngest retaining the original ancestral homestead.

1 This result did not follow in Wales, because in Welsh local i.ames
suffixes are not usual.

352

The German Land System.

We know how persistently the division among

male heirs was adhered to in Wales and in Ireland

under the custom of Gavelkind, 1 though of the
peculiar right of the youngest son to the original
homestead we have no clear trace in Ireland.
Possibly St. Patrick was strong enough to reverse in
this instance a strong tribal custom. But in Wales the
succession of the youngest was, as we have seen, so
deeply ingrained in the habits of the people that it
was observed even among the taeogs. The elder sons
received tyddyns of their own in the taeog trev in their
father's lifetime, whilst the youngest son remained in
his father's tyddyn, and on his death succeeded to it.

The persistence in division among heirs and the
right of the youngest were very likely therefore to
linger as survivals of the tribal household.

Now it is well known that in the south-east of
England, and especially in Kent, the custom of Gavel-
kind has continued to the present day, retaining the
division among male heirs and historical traces of the
right of the youngest son to the original homestead.
In other districts of England and in many parts of
Europe and Asia the division among heirs has passed
away, but the right of the youngest — Jungsten-Eecht
— has survived.

Mr. Elton, in his ' Origins of English History,' has
carefully described the geographical distribution in
Western Europe of the practice, not so much of
division among heirs, as of the right of the youngest to

Survival of
this equal
division
and the
right of the
youngest.

1 (Gavelkind may be derived
from gabel, a fork or branch, and
the word ie used in Ireland as well

as in Kent. Irish yabal, yabal-cined
(Gavelkind). Manners, §c. of the
Ancient Irish. O'Curry, iii. p. 581.

Tribal Households. 353

inherit the original homestead, the latter having sur- Chap. ix.
vived in many districts where the other has not.

In England he finds the right of the youngest in Wales

mid S F

most prevalent in the south-east counties — in Kent, England -
Sussex, and Surrey, in a ring of manors round London, < &ixon
and to a less extent in Essex and the East Anglian shore -'
kingdom, — i.e. as Mr. Elton describes it, in a district
about co-extensive with what in Eoman times was
known as the Saxon shore. A few examples occur in
Hampshire, and there is a wide district where the
right of the youngest survives in Somersetshire, which
formed for so long a part of what the Saxons called
' Wealcyn.' l

Further, as the custom is found to apply to copy-
hold or semi-servile holdings, it would not be an im-
possible conjecture that previously existing original
tribal households were, at some period, upon con-
quest, reduced into serfs, the division of the holdings
among heirs being at the same time stopped, so as to
keep the holdings in equal ' yokes,' or ' yard-lands,'
thus leaving the right of the youngest as the only
point of the pre-existing tribal custom permitted to
survive.

A similar process, perhaps in connexion with the Survival of
Frankish conquest of parts of Germany, possibly ofthe
had been gone through in many continental districts. J n u t n if e eb
Mr. Elton traces the right of the youngest in the Cuntinent -
north-east corner of France and in Brabant, in Fries-
land, in Westphalia, in Silesia, in Wirtemberg, in the
Odenwald and district north of Lake Constance, in
Suabia, in Elsass, in the Grisons. It is found also in

1 Origins of English History, pp. 188-9.
A A

354 The German Land System.

chap. ix. the island of Borneholm, though it seems to be absent
in Denmark and on the Scandinavian mainland. 1

Attention has been called to this curious survival
of the right of the youngest because it forms a possible
link between the Welsh, English, and continental
systems of settlements in tribal households.

We now pass to the more direct consideration of
the local names with the supposed patronymic suffix.

These peculiar local names are scattered over a
wide area ; the suffix varying from the English ing
with its plural ' ingas,' the German ing or ung with
its plural ingas, ingen, ungen, ungun, and the French
' ign ' or igny, to the Swiss 2 equivalent ikon, the
Bohemian ici, 3 and the wider Slavonic itz or witz.

It seems to be clear that the termination ing, in its
older plural form ingas, in Anglo-Saxon, not by any
means always, 4 but still in a large number of cases,
had a patronymic significance.

We have the evidence of the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle itself that if Baldo were the name of the
parent, his children or heirs would in Anglo-Saxon
be called Baldings 5 (Baldingas).

There is also evidence that the oldest historical
form of settlement in Bohemian and Slavic districts

Wide ex-
tension
and mean-
ing of the
patrony-
mic suffix
'ing,' &c.

1 Origins of English History,
pp. 197-08.

- Arnold's Ansiedelungen, p. 89.

" Palacky's Geschichte von Boh-
men, Pmch ii. c. 6, p. 169.

4 ' Ing ' also meant a low mea-
dow by a river bank, as ' Clifton
lngsl near York, Sec. Also it was
sometimes used like ' ers,' as ' Och-
rinyen,' dwellers on the river ' Ohra.'

In Denmark the individual strip in
a meadow was an ' ing,' and so the
whole meadow would be ' the ings.'
5 See Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
sub anno 522. ' Cordic was Ele-
sing, Klesa was Esling, Esla was
Ge wising,' and so on. See also
Bede's statement that the Kentish
kings were called Oiscings, after
their ancestor Oisc. Bede, bk. ii. c. 6.

Tribal Households. 355

was in the tribal or joint household — the undivided Ckaf.ix
family sometimes for many generations herding to-
gether in the same homestead (dediny). 1

And the number of local names ending in ici, or
owici, changing in later times into itz and witz, taken
together with the late prevalence of the undivided
household in these semi-Slavonic regions, so far as it
goes, confirms the connexion of the patronymic ter-
mination with the holding of the co-heirs of an
original holder. 2

The geographical distribution of local names with
the patronymic termination is shown on the same
map as that on which were marked the position of
the ' hams ' and ' heims.'

First, as regards England, the map will show that in Eng.
in the distribution of places mentioned in the Domes-
day survey ending in ing, the largest proportion occurs
east of a line drawn from the Wash to the Isle of
Wight : just as in the case of the ' hams,' only that in
Sussex the greatest number of ' ings ' occurs instead of
in Essex.

It is worthy of notice that names ending in ingham
or ington are not confined so closely to this district,
but are spread much more evenly all over England. 3
Further, it will be observed that the counties where
the names ending in ing occur without a suffix are re-
markably coincident with those where Mr. Elton has
found survivals of the right of the youngest, i.e. the old
' Saxon shore.'

1 Palacky, pp. 168-9. Com-
pare the word with the Welsh
tyddyn, and the Irish fate or tath.

2 See Meitzen's Ausbreitung der

A A 2

DeutscJien, p. 17. Jena, 1879.

3 See Taylor's Words and
Places, p. 131.

356

The German Land System.

In the

Moselle

valley

and round

Troyesaud

Langres.

In Frisia.

Chap. ix. Next, as to the opposite coast of Picardy, the ings
inPicardy. an d hems are alike, for very nearly all the hems in the
Survey of the Abbey of St. Bertin of a.d. 850 are pre-
ceded by ing, i.e. they are inghems. The proportion
was found to be sixty per cent. 1 In this north-east
corner of France the right of the youngest, as we
have seen, also survives.

There are also many patronymic names of places
in the Moselle valley and in Champagne around Troyes
and Langres. 2

Next, as to Frisia, eight per cent, of the names
mentioned in the Fulda records end in ' inga,' two
and a half per cent, in ingaheim, and three per cent,
in ing with some other suffix, making thirteen and a
half per cent, in all. In Friesland also there are
survivals of the right of the youngest.

Over North Germany, outside the Eoman limes,
the proportion is much less, shading off in the Fulda
records from six to three, two, and one per cent.

But the greatest proportion occurs within the
Eoman limes in the valleys of the Neckar and the
Upper Danube, where (according to the Fulda records)
it rises to from twenty to twenty-four per cent., 3 shad-
ing off to ten per cent, towards the Maine, and in
the present Elsass, and to nine per cent, southwards
in the neighbourhood of St. Gall. 4

In Ger-
many most
densely in
the old
Eoman
provinces
of the'Agri
Decu-
mates.'

1 It is curious to observe that,
taking all the names in the Cartu-
lary (including many of later date),
only 2 per cent. «nd in ing or ing a,
per cent, in inghem or ingahem :
making 8 per cent, in all.

2 Taylor's Woi-ds and Places, pp.
4U0 et sey.

3 Out of 119 places named in
the charters of the Abbey of Fri-
singa earlier in date than a.d. 800,
24 per cent, ended in inge, and only
1 per cent, in heim. — Meichelbeck.
passim.

4 In the St. Gall charters, out
of 1,920 names, 9 per cent, end in

Tribal Households. 357

This chief home of the ' ings ' was the western Chap. ix.
part of the district of the 'Agri Decumates ' of Tacitus
and the northern province of Rhaatia, gradually oc-
cupied by the Alamannic and Bavarian tribes in the
later centuries of Roman rule.

Whether they entered these districts under cover
of the Roman peace, or as conquerors to disturb
it, the founders of the 'ings' evidently came from
German mountains and forests beyond the limes.

North of the Danube names with this suffix extend North of
chiefly through the region of the old Hermunduri cMeflyin
into the district of Grapfeld and Thuringia, where ^j^ 1 .
they were in the Fulda records six per cent. rin £i a -

This remarkable geographical distribution in Ger-
many suggests important inferences.

(1) The attachment of the personal patronymic to They sug-
the name of a particular locality implies in Germany EJU* e
no less than in Ireland and Wales a permanent settle-
ment in that locality, and so far an abandonment 01
nomadic habits and even of the frequent redistribu-
tions and shifting of residences within the tribal terri-
tory.

(2) The occurrence of these patronymic local within
names most thickly within the Roman limes and near p^ovSIces,
to it, points to the fact that the Roman rule was the
outside influence which compelled the abandonment

of the semi-nomadic and the adoption of the settled
form of life.

(3) The addition in some eases — most often in possibly
Flanders and in England, which were both Roman

inga, 3£ per cent, in inchova. The I are either wilare or wanya ; only
most common other terminations | 2 per cent, end in heim.

S58

The German Land System.

Chap. IX.

Offshoots
from Sue-
vie tribes
who be-
came Ala-
manni.

Forced
settlement
of Ala-
manni in
Belgic
Gaul,

provinces — of the suffix ham to the patronymic local
name, although most probably a later addition, and
possibly the result of conquest, at least reminds us of
the possibility already noticed that even a villa or
ham or manor, with a servile population upon it,
might be the possession of a tribal household, who
thus might be the lords of a manorial estate.

(4) Considering the geographical distribution of
the patronymic termination, beginning in Thuringia
and Grapfeld, but becoming most numerous in Rhgetia
and the ' Agri Decumates,' it is almost impossible to
avoid the inference that it is in most cases connected
with settlements in these Roman districts of offshoots
from the old Suevic tribe of the Hermunduri — viz.
Thuringi, Juthungi, and others who, settling in these
districts during Roman rule, became afterwards lost in
the later and greater group of the Alamanni.

-This inference might possibly be confirmed by
the fact that the isolated clusters of names ending in
' ing ' on the west of the Rhine, correspond in many
instances with the districts into which we happen to
know that forced colonies of families of these and
other German tribes had been located after the ter-
mination of the Alamannic wars of Probus, Maximian,
and Constantius Clorus. These colonies of Iceti
were planted, as we have seen, in the valley of the
Moselle, and the names of places ending in ' ing ' are
numerous there to this day. They were planted in
the district of the Tricassi round Troyes and Langres,
and here again there are numerous patronymic names.
They were planted in the district of the Nervii round
Amiens close to the cluster of names ending in ' ing-
ahem,' so many of which in the ninth century are

Tribal Households. 359

found to belong to the Abbey of St. Bertin. Lastly — Chap. ix.
and this is a point of special interest for the present andpos-
inquiry — we know that similar deportations of tribes- Sand
men of the Alamannic group were repeatedly made
into Britain, and thus the question arises whether
the places ending in ' ing ' in England may not also
mark the sites of peaceable or forced settlements of
Germans under Eoman rule.

They lie, as we have seen, chiefly within the
district of the Saxon shore, i.e. east of a line be-
tween the Wash and the Isle of Wight, just as was
the case also with the survivals of the right of the
youngest.

If evidence had happened to have come to hand
of a similar deportation of Alamannic Germans into
Frisia instead of Frisians into Gaul, the coincidence
would be still more complete.

The suggestion is very precarious. Still, it might Such

be asked, where should clusters of tribal households ments

of Germans resembling the Welsh Weles and Gavells "* Sum/

be more likely to perpetuate their character and JjJJJjJ® 1 ' 1 '

resist for a time manorial tendencies than in these slaves.

cases of peaceable or forced emigration into Roman

provinces ? Who would be more likely to do so than

troublesome septs (like that of the Cumberland

' Grames ' in the days of James I.) deported bodily to

a strange country, and settled, probably not on private

estates, but on previously depopulated public land,

without slaves, and without the possibility of acquiring

them by making raids upon other tribes ?

Now, according to Professor Wilhelm Arnold, the Nofc , ne f? 8 "
' ° s iniy Aia-

German writer who has recently given the closest mannic.

attention to these local names, the patronymic suffix

360

The German Land System.

Chap. ix. ' ingen ' is one of the distinctive marks of settlements
of Alamannic and Bavarian tribes, and denotes that
the districts wherein it is found have at some time
or another been conquered or occupied by them.
The heims, on the other hand, in this writer's view,
are in the same way indicative of Frankish settle-
ments. 1

The view of so accurate and laborious a student
must be regarded as of great authority. But the
foregoing inquiry has led in both cases to a some-
what different suggestion as to their meaning. The
suffix heim is Anglo-Saxon as well as Frankish, and
translating itself into villa and manor seems to re-
present a settlement or estate most often of the
manorial type. So that it seems likely, that what-
ever German tribes at whatever time came over
into the Roman province and usurped the lordship
of existing villas, or adopted the Roman villa as
the type of their settlements, would probably have
called them either weilers or helms according to
whether they used the Roman or the German word
for the same thing.

And in the same way it also seems likely, that
whatever tribes, at whatever time, by their own choice
or by forced colonisation, settled in house communities
of tribesmen with or without a servile population under
them, would be passing through the stage in which
they might naturally call their settlements or home-

1 Arnold's Amiedelungen unci
Wanderungen deutscher Stamme.
Marburg, 1881. See pp. 166 et seq.
He considers that the Alamanni
were a group of German peoples
who had settled in the Rhine

valley and the Agri Decumates,
including among them the Juthungi,
who had crossed over from the
north of the limes late in the third
century.

Tribal Households.

361

steads after their own names, using the patronymic Chap. ix.
suffix ing.

It is undoubtedly difficult to obtain any clear in-
dication of the time 1 when these settlements may
have been made. Nor, perhaps, need they be referred
generally to the same period, were it not for the re-
markable fact that the personal names prefixed to the
suffix in England, Flanders, the Moselle valley, round
Troyes and Langres, in the old Agri Decumates (now
Wirtemburg), and in the old Khaetia (now Bavaria),
and even those in Frisia, were to a very large extent
identical.

This identity is so striking, that if the names were, The names
-. . are not

as some have supposed, necessarily clan-names, it might dan names,

be impossible to deny that the English and continental S onai per

districts were peopled actually by branches of the same name8

dans. But it must be admitted that, as the names to

1 In the ErMdrung der Peutin-
gei- Tafel, by E. Paulus, Stuttgart,
1866, there is a careful attempt to
identify the stations on the Roman
roads from Brigantia to Vindonissa,
and from Vindonissa to Regino.
The stations on the latter, which
passed through the district abound-
ing in ' ings,' are thus identified ;
the distances between them, except
in one case (where there is a dif-
ference of 2 leugen), answering to
those marked in the Table (see p.
35):—

Vindonissa (Windisch), Tene-
done (Heidenschloschen), Juliomago
(Hiifingen), Brigobanne (Rottweil),
Arisjlavis (Unter-Iflingen), Samulo-
cennis ( Rottenberg ), Grinario
(Sindelfingen), Clarenna (Caris-
statt), Ad lunam (Pfahlbronn;

Aquileia (Aalen) [up to which
point there is a remarkable change
of names throughout, but from
which point the similarity of names
becomes striking], Opie (Bopfin-
gen), Septemiaci (Maihingen), Lo-
sodica (Oettingen), Medianis (Mark-
hof), Iciniaco (Ttzing), Biricianis
(Burkmarshofen), Vetonianis (Nas-
senfels), Germanico (KSsching)
Celeuso (Ettling), Abusena (Abens-
berg), Regino (Regensburg). But
these names in ing and ingen, and
Latin iaci, do not seem to be patro-
nymic. So also in the case of the
Roman ' Vicus Aurelii' on the Ohra
river, now ' Oehringen.' Is it not
possible that many other supposed
patronymics may simply mean such
and such or So-and-so's ' ings ' or
meadows ?

362

The German Land System.

Chap. ix. which the peculiar suffix was added were personal
uanies and not family or clan names — John and
Thomas, and not Smith and Jones — it would not be
safe to press the inference from the similarity too far.
Baldo was the name of a person. There may have
been persons of that name in every tribe in Germany.
The Baldo of one tribe need not be closely related
to the Baldo of another tribe, any more than John
Smith need be related to John Jones. The households
of each Baldo would be called Baldings, or in the
old form Baldingas ; but obviously the Baldings of
England need have no clan-relationship whatever to
the Baldings of Upper Germany. 1 Nevertheless, the
striking similarity of mere personal names goes for
something, and it is impossible to pass it by un-
noticed. The extent of it may be shown by a few
examples.

In the following list are placed all the local names
mentioned in the Domesday Survey of Sussex, be-
ginning with the first two letters of the alphabet in
which the peculiar suffix occurs, whether as final
or not, 2 and opposite to them similar personal or local

But the
identity
of the
names
through-
out is very
remark-
able.

1 The occasional instances in
which the patronymic termination
is added to the name of a tree or
an animal, has led to the hasty con-
clusion that the Saxons were ' to-
temists,' and believed themselves de-
scended from trees and animals ;
e.g. that the Buckings of Bucks
thought themselves descendants of
the beech tree. The fact that per-
sonal names were taken from trees
and animals — that one person called
himself ' the Beech,' another ' the

Wolf 1 — quite disposes of this argu-
ment, for their households would
call themselves ' Beechings ' and
' Wolfings' in quite a natural course,
without any dream of descent from
the tree or the animal whose name
their father or great-grandfather
had borne.

2 The resemblance is equally
apparent whether the comparison
be made between names without
further suffix or whether those with
it are included. See the long list

Tribal Households.

names taken from the early records of Wirtembercf, Chap. ix.
i.e. the district of the Khine, Maine, and Neckar, for
merly part of the ' Agri Decumates.'

In Sussex

Sussex.
Achingeworde
Aldingeborne
Babintone

Basingekam

Bechingetone

Beddingesjham

Belingeham

Berchinges

Bevringetone

Bollintun

Botingelle

Brislinga

Wirtemberg.
Acco, Echo, Eccho, Achelm
Aldingas
Babinberch, Babenhausen,

Bebingon
Besigheim
Bechingen
Bedzingeswilaeri
Bellingon, Bollingerhof
Bercheim

Bollo, Bollinga

Bottinger

Brisgau

As regards the supposed patronymic names in inPicardy.
the district between Calais and St. Omer, Mr. Taylor
states that 80 per cent, are found also in England. 1

We may take as a further example the resemblance in the

i f i o .. > Moselle

between names of places occurring in Spruner s maps va u ey .
of i Deutschlands Gaue ' in the Moselle valley and those
of places and persons mentioned in early Wirtemberg
charters.

Moselle Valley.
Beringa
Eelingis
Frisingen
Gundredingen
Heminingsthal
Holdingen
Hasmaringa
Lukesinga

Wirtemberg.
Beringerus
Esslingen
Frieso, Frisingen
Gundrud
Hemminbah
Holda

Hasmareeheim
Lucas, Lucilunburch

of patronymic names in England, 496-513.

Germany, and France in Taylor's 1 Taylor's Words and Places, pp.

Words and Places, App. B, pp. 131-4, and App. B, p. 491.

364

The German Land System.

Chap. IX.

In Cham-
pagne.

Moselle Valley.
M under ckinga

Ottringas
Putilinga
Uffeninga
Uttingon

Wirtemberg.
Mundricheshuntun, Mun-

derkingen
Oteric, Otrik
Pettili, Pertilo
Ufeninga
Uto, Uttinuuilare

The following coincidences * occur in the modern
Champagne, which embraces another district into
which forced emigrants were deported.

Champagne.

Autigny

Effincourt

Euffigneux

Alincourt

Arrigne

Orhigny

Attigny

Etigny

Bocquegney

Bettigny

England.

Edington

Effingbam

Uffington

Allington

Arrington

Orpington

Attington

Ettingball

Buckingham

Beddington

Wirtemberg.

Eutingen
Oeffingen
Oinngen

Erringhausen

Erpfingen

Atting

Oettinger

Bochingen

Bottingen

And so on in about forty cases.

A comparison of the fifteen similar names in
Frisia occurring in the Fulda records, with other
similar names of places or persons in England and
Wirtemberg, gives an equally clear result.

Ln Frisia. Frisia?

Auinge

Baltratingen

Belinge

Bi ittingo

Wirtemberg}

Au, Auenhofen
Baldhart, Baldingen
Bellingon

Bottingen

England.

rAvington (Berks and
\ Hants)

Beltings (Kent)
/ Bellingdon "i Several
\Bellings J counties
f Boddington(Gloucester,
\ Northampton)

1 See the lists given in Taylor's
Words and Places, Appendix B, pp.
■VM) et seq. Taylor says that there
are 1,100 of the patronymic names
in France, of which 250 are similar
to those in England. See pp. 144
*t seq.

2 Taken from Traditiones Fuld-
ensis, Dronke, pp. 240-243. The
above list includes all the names in
Frisia with a patronymic and no
other suffix.

3 Taken from the Wirtem-
bergische Urkundenbuch.

Tribal Households.

:;<;.-,

Frisia,

Creslinge

Gandiugen

Gutinge

Hustinga

Huchingen

Husdingun

Rochinge

Suettenge

Wacheiinge

Wasginge

Weiugi

Wirtemberg.

"Oreglingen, ('hrez- 1
. zingen J

fHuchiheitn 1
\Huc = HugoJ

Roingus, Rohinc
Suittes, Suitger
Uuachar
Uuassingun
Wehingen

England.

rCressing (Essex)
t.Cressinghain (Norfolk)

f Guyting (Glouce.-ter)
IGetingas (Surrey)

Hucking (Kent)

Rockingham (Notts)

Wakering (Essex)
Washington (Sussex)

Chap. L\.

It is impossible to follow out in greater detail these The infer-
remarkable resemblances between the personal names draw,, °
which appear with a patronymic suffix in the local ^^y.
names in England and Frisia, and certain well-defined
districts west of the Ehine, and the local and personal
names mentioned in the Wirtemberg charters. The
foregoing instances must not be regarded as more
than examples. And for the reasons already given it
would also be unwise to build too much upon this
evident similarity in the personal names, but still it
should be remembered that the facts to be accounted
for are — (1) The concentration of these places with
names having a supposed patronymic termination in
certain defined districts mostly within the old Eoman
provinces. (2) The practical identity throughout all
these districts of so many of the personal names to
which this suffix is attached.

The first fact points to these settlements in tribal
households having taken place by peaceable or forcible
emigration during Eoman rule, or very soon after, at
all events at about the same period. The second fact
points to the practical homogeneity of the German
tribes, whose emigrants founded the settlements which

366

The German Land System.

The settle

ments in

tribal

household;

may have

been

manors.

Chap. ix. in England, Flanders, around Troyes and Langres,
on the Moselle, in Wirtemberg, in Bavaria, and also
in Frisia, bear the common suffix to their names.

The facts already mentioned of the survival to a
great extent in the same districts, strikingly so in Eng-
land, of the right of the youngest, and in Kent of the
original form of the local custom of Gavelkind, point
in the same direction.

Taking all these things together, we may at least
regard the economic problem involved in them as one
deserving closer attention than has yet been given to it.

In conclusion, turning back to the direct relation
of these facts to the process of transition of the
German tribal system into the later manorial system,
it must be remembered that the holdings of tribal
households might quite possibly be, from the first,
embryo manors with serfs upon them. They might be
settlements precisely like those described by Tacitus,
the lordship of which had become the joint inheritance
of the heirs of the founder. As a matter of fact, the
actual settlements in question had at all events become
manors before the dates of the earliest documents.
We have seen, e.g., that the villas belonging to the
monks of St. Bertin, with their almost invariable suffix
' ingahem,' were manors from the time of the first
records in the seventh century, and they may never
have been anything else. We have seen that in the year
645 the founder of the abbey gave to the monks his
villa called Sitdiu, and its twelve dependent villas
{Tatinga villa, afterwards Tatingahem, among them) 1
with the slaves and coloni upon them. They seem to

1 Chartularium Sithiense, p. 18.

Tribal Households. 3f>7

have been, in fact, so many manorial farms just like C " AP - IX -
those which, as we learned from Gregory of Tours,
Chrodinus in the previous century founded and handed
over to the Church.

We have not found, therefore, in this inquiry into They at
the character of the settlements with local names mately bl-
ending in the supposed patronymic suffix, doubtful as m^oriai.
its result has proved, anything which conflicts with the
general conclusion to which we were brought by the
manorial character of the Roman villa and the mano-
rial tendency of the German tribal system as described
by Tacitus, viz. that as a general rule the German
settlements made upon the conquest of what had once
been Roman provinces were of a strictly manorial
type. If the settlements with names ending in ing
were settlements of Iceti or of other emigrants during
Roman rule, taking at first the form of tribal house-
holds, they at least became manors like the rest during
or very soon after the German conquests. If, on
the other hand, they were later settlements of the con-
querors of the Roman provinces, or of emigrants fol-
lowing in the wake of the conquests, they none the les
on that account soon became just as manorial as those
Roman villas which by a change of lordship and
translation of words may have become German heims
or Anglo Saxon hams.

It is certainly possible that during a short period,
especially if they held no serfs or slaves, tribal
households may have expanded into free village
communities. But to infer from the existence of
patronymic local names that German emigration at
all generally took the form of free village communities
would surely not be consistent with the evidence.

.-- vjj^vg

CHAPTER X.

THE CONNEXION BETWEEN TEE 0PEX-F1ELD SYSTEM
AND SERFDOM OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ROMAN
PROVINCES OF GERMANY AND GAUL.

Chap. X.

Under the
manorial
system, th'
open-field
system the
shell of
serfdom.

I. THE OPEX-FIELD SYSTEM IX EXGLAXD AXD IN
GERMAXY COMPARED.

We now return to the English manorial and open-
field system, in order, taking it up where we left it,
to trace its connexion with the similar Continental
system, and to inquire in what districts the closest
resemblances to it are to be found — whether in the
un-Romanised north or in the southern districts so
long included within the limes of the Roman provinces.
The earliest documentary evidence available on
English ground left us in full possession of the Saxon
manor with its village community of serfs upon it.
inhabiting as its shell the open-field system in its most
organised form, i.e. with its (generally) three fields,
its furlongs, its acre or half-acre strips, its headlands,
its yard-lands or bundles of normally thirty acres, scat-
tered all over the fields, the yard-land representing the
year's ploughing of a pair of oxen in the team of

The Open-Field System. 3C9

eight, and the acre strip the measure of a day's plough- Chap. x.
work of the team.

This was the system described in the ' Rectitudines*
of the tenth century, and the allusions to the * gebur,'
the * yard-land,' the ' setene,' the ' gafol,' and the
' week-work ' in the laws of Ine carried back the evi-
dence presumably to the seventh century.

But it must not be forgotten that side by side Simpler
with this manorial open-field system we found an open-field
earlier and simpler form of open-field husbandry underTh?
carried on by the free tribesmen and taeogs of Wales. trxh ? ]

J o system.

This simpler system described in the Welsh laws
and the ' triads ' seemed to be in its main features
practically identical with that described also in the
Germania of Tacitus. It was an annual ploughing
up of fresh grass-land, leaving it to go back again
into grass after the year's ploughing. It was, in fact,
the agriculture of a pastoral people, with a large
range of pasture land for their cattle, a small portion
of which annually selected for tillage sufficed for their
corn crops. This is clearly the meaning of Tacitus,
* Arva per annos mutant et super est ager.' It is clearly
the meaning of the Welsh ' triads,' according to which
the tribesman's right extended to his ' tyddyn,' with
its corn and cattle yard, and to co-aration of the
waste.

Nor can there be much mystery in the relation
of these two forms of open-field husbandry to each
other. In both, the arable land is divided in the
ploughing into furlongs and strips. There is co-opera-
tion of ploughing in both, the contribution of oxen
to the common team of eight in both, the allotment
of the strips to the owners of the oxen in rotation,

B B

370

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

Three-field
syst< m
produced

three-
course ro-
tation of
crops.

The yard-
land the
mark of
serfdom.

producing the same scattering of the strips in both.
The methods are the same. The difference lies in the
application of the methods to two different stages of
economic growth. The simple form is adapted to
the early nomadic stage of tribal life, and survives
even after partial settlement, so long as grassland is
sufficiently abundant to allow of fresh ground being
broken by the plough each year. The more complex
and organised form implies fixed settlement on the
same territory, the necessity for a settled agri-
culture within a definite limit, and the consequent
ploughing of the same land over and over again for
generations. The three-field system seems to be simply
the adaptation of the early open-field husbandry to a
permanent three-course rotation of crops.

But there is a further distinguishing feature of
the English three-field system which implies the
introduction of yet another factor in the complex
result, viz. the yard-land. And this indivisible bundle
of strips, to which there was always a single succession,
was evidently the holding not of a free tribesman
whose heirs would inherit and divide the inheritance,
but of a serf, to whom an outfit of oxen had been
allotted. In fact, the complex and more organised
system would naturally grow out of the simpler form
under the two conditions of settlement and serfdom.

Now, turning from England to the Continent, we
have in the same way various forms of the open-field
system to deal with, and in c omparing them with the
English system their geographical distribution becomes
very important.

Happily, very close attention has recently been
given to this subject by German students, and we are

in England and Germany.

371

able to rely with confidence on the facts collected by Chap. x.
Dr. Landau ,* by Dr. Iianssen, 2 and lastly by Dr. August Ge
Meitzen in his Ausbreitung der Deutschen in Deutsch- ftotn oritiw
land, 8 and in his still more recent and interesting German
review of the collected works of Dr. Hanssen. 4

Whilst Ave learn from these writers that much
remains to be done before the last word can be said
upon so intricate a subject, some general points seem
at least to be clearly made out.

In the first place there are some German systems
of husbandry which may well be weeded out at once
from the rest as not analogous to the Anglo-Saxon
three-field system in England.

There is the old ' Feldgraswirthschaft,' analogous TheFeid-
perhaps to the Welsh co-ploughing of the waste and Shaft!**
the shifting ' Arva ' of the Germans of Tacitus, which
still lingers in the mountain districts of Germany and
Switzerland, where corn is a secondary crop to grass. 5

There are the ' Einzelh'dfe ' of Westphalia and other The Em-
districts, i.e. single farms, each consisting mainly of zelhofe -
land all in one block, like a modern English farm,
but as different as possible from the old English open-
field system, with its yard-lands and scattered strips. 6

Further, there is a peculiar form of the open-field
system, chiefly found in forest and marsh districts, in
which each holding consists generally of one single

1 ' Die Territorien in Bezug auf
Hire Bildung und Hire Entwiclclung, 1
Hamburg and Gotha, 1854.

2 Dr. Hanssen's various papers
on the subject are collected in
his Agrarhistorische Abhandlungen,
Leipzig, 1880.

8 Jena, 1879.

4 ' Georg Iianssen, als Agrar-
Etstoriker.' Von August Meitzen,
1881. Tubingen.

s See Hanssen's chapter, 'Die
Feldgraswirthschaft deutscher Ge-
biry&gegenden] in his Agrarhist*
AbhandL, pp. 132 et seq.

6 Landau, pp. 1G 20.

B a

372 The Open-Field System

Chap. x. \ 01l g s trip of land, reaching from the homestead right
Forest and across the village territory to its boundary. 1 This
lystem. system, so different from the prevalent Anglo-Saxon
system, is supposed to represent comparatively modern
colonisation and reclamation of forest and marsh land ;
and though possibly bearing some analogy to the Eng-
lish fen system, is not that for which we are seeking.
Passing all these by, we come to a peculiar
method of husbandry which covers a large tract of
country, and which is adopted under both the single
farm system and also the open-field system with scat-
tered ownership, but which nevertheless is opposed
to the three-field system. It is especially important
for our purpose because of its geographical position.
The one- ^11 over the sand and bog district of the north of

field sys-

tem Germany, crops, mostly of rye and buckwheat, have

for centuries been grown year after year on the same
land, kept productive by marling and peat manure,
on what Hanssen describes as the ' one-field system.' 2
This system is found in Westphalia, East Friesland,
Oldenburg, North Hanover, Holland, Belgium, Den-
mark, Brunswick, Saxony, and East Prussia. Over
parts of the district under this one-field system the
single-farm system prevails, in others the fields are
divided into ' Gewanne ' and strips, and there is
scattered ownership.

Now, possibly this one-field system, with its
marling and peat manure, may have been the
system described by Pliny as prevalent in Belgic
Britain and Gaul before the Eoman conquest,

1 See the interesting examples i 2 See Hanssen's chapter on the
(riven in Meitzen's Ausbreitxmg, 'EinfMwirth&chaft} Agrarhist. Ab-
with maps. I handl. pp. iGO et seq.

in England and Germany. 373

but certainly it is not the system prevalent in Chap. x.
England under Saxon rule. And yet this district . Nor(h
where the one-field system is prevalent in Germany Germany,
is precisely the district from which, according to the
common theory, the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain
came. It is precisely the district of Germany where
the three-field system is conspicuously absent. So
that although Nasse and Waitz somewhat hastily
suggested that the Saxons had introduced the three-
field system into England, Hanssen, assuming that
the invaders of England came from the north, con-
fidently denies that this was possible. ' The Anglo-
' Saxons and the Frisians and Low Germans and
' Jutes who came with them to England cannot [he
' writes] have brought the three-field system with
1 them into England, because they did not themselves
' use it at home in North-west Germany and Jutland.
He adds that even in later times the three-field
system has never been able to obtain a firm footing
in these coast districts. 1

There remains the question, where on the Conti- The thre*-
nent was prevalent that two- or three-field system te e m sys
analogous to the one most generally prevalent on the
manors of England ?

The result of the careful inquiries of Hanssen,
Landau, and Meitzen seems to be, broadly speaking,
this, viz., that setting aside the complication which
arises in those districts where there has been a Slavic
occupation of German ground and a German re-occu-
pation of Slavic ground, 2 the ancient three-field
system, with its huben of scattered strips, was most

1 Hanssen, p. 496. I tion, see especially Meitzen's Aus-

8 As to this part of the ques- | breitumj.

374 The Open-Field System

Chap. x. generally prevalent south of the Lippe and the

in the old Teutoberger Walcl, i.e. in those districts once occu-

Kon.an" pied by the Suevic tribes located round the Eoman

districts. U meSi and still more in those districts within the

Eoman limes which were once Eoman province —

the ' Agri Decumates,' Ehsetia, and Germania Prima —

the present Baden, Wirtemberg, Swabia, and Bavaria,

on the German side of the Ehine, and Elsass and the

Moselle valley on its Gallic side. 1

These once Eoman or partly Eomanised districts
were undoubtedly its chief home. Sporadically and
later, it existed further north but not generally.

This general geographical conclusion is very im-
portant. But before we can fairly assume either a
Eoman or South German origin, the similarity of the
English and South German systems must be examined
in their details and earliest historical traces. Further,
the examination must not be confined to the shell.
It must be extended also to the serfdom which in
Germany as in England, so to speak, lived within it.

In previous chapters some of the resemblances
between the English and German systems have inci-
dentally been noticed, but the reader will pardon
some repetition for the sake of clearness in the state-
ment of this important comparison.

1 Landau, ' Die Tcrriturieu,' pp. o2 et seg.

in England and Germany. 375

< IP. x.
II. THE BOUNDARIES, OR ' MARCH. E.'

First as to the whole territory or ager occupied The boun -

. . claries, or

by the village community or township. This, by man .
the presentment of the homage of the Hitchin Manor,
was described in the record by its boundaries — from
such a place to such a place, and so on till the start-
ing-point was reached again.

In the ' gemceru ' of the Saxon charters the same
form was used.

In the ' mar dim ' of the manors surrendered to
the abbey of Lorsch in the seventh and eighth cen-
turies, the same form was used in the Rhine valley.

It is, in fact, as we have seen, a form in use
before the Christian era, and described by the Roman
' Agrimensores ' as often adopted in recording the
'■limites'' of irregular territories, to which their rect-
angular centuriation did not extend.

Now, when we consider this method, it implies
permanent settlements close to one another, where
even the marshes or forests lying between them have
been permanently divided by a fixed line, or it im-
plies that a necessity has arisen to mark off the occu-
pied territory from the ager publicus. It may have
been derived from the rough and ready methods of
marking divisions of tribe-land during the early and
unsettled stages of tribal life. But the German
settlements described by Tacitus seem to have been
without defined boundaries. * Agri ' were taken pos-
session of according to the number of the settlers,
pro numero cultorum. Not till some outside influence
compelled final settlement would the necessity for

376 The Open-Field System

Chap. x. well-marked boundaries of territories arise. And we
have seen that the evidence of local names strongly
points to the Eoman rule as this settling influence.

In the Lorsch charters the districts included
within the ' marchse ' are often, as we have seen,
called ' marks.'

III. THE THREE FIELDS, OR ' ZELGEN.'

The three Next as to the division of the arable land into

fields — generally three fields l — representing the
annual rotation of crops.

The homage of the Hit-chin Manor presented that
the common fields within the township had im-
memoriably been and ought to be kept and cul-
tivated in three successive seasons of —

(1) Tilth-grain,

(2) Etch-grain, and

(3) Fallow.

The three fields are elsewhere commonly known
as the —

(1) Winter corn,

(2) Spring corn, and

(3) Fallow.

Universally, the fallow ends at the autumn
sowing of the wheat crop of the next season, which
is hence called ' winter corn.'

The word etch, or eddish, or edish, occurs in
Tusser, and means the stubble of the previous crop

1 Sometimes in Germany, as in I Seelianssen'schaptersonthe'Zfm-,
England, there were two or more. | Vier- und Fiinffelderwirthachaft!

in England and Germany. 377

of whatever kind. Thus, in the ' Directions for Chap. x.
February,' he says,— Etch-grain

sown on
' Eat etch, ere ye plow, the Btobble

With hog, sheep, and cow.' ' °f a P re "

vious crop.

This is evidently to prepare the stubble of the last
year's corn crop for the spring sown bean or other
crop ; for under the same month he says, —

Go plow in the stuhble, for now is the season
For sowing of vetches, of beans, and of peason. 2

In the directions for the October sowing are the
following lines : —

Seed first go fetch
For edish, or etch.
"White wheat if ye please,
Sow now upon pease. 3

And again, —

Wben wheat upon eddish ye mind to bestow
Let that be the first of the wheat ye do sow.

White wheat upon pease-efeA doth grow as he would,
But fallow is best if we did as we should.

When peason ye had and a fallow thereon,

Sow wheat ye may well without dung thereupon.*

' Etch-grain ' is therefore the crop, generally Tilth-grain
oats or beans, sown in spring after ploughing the the fallow,
stubble of the wheat crop, which itself was best
sown if possible upon the fallow, and so was called
the ' tilth-grain.'

The oats or beans grown on the wheat stubble Breach-
were sometimes called ' Breach-corn, and Breach-
land was land prepared for a second crop. 6

1 Tusser, ' February Abstract.'

2 Id. ' February Husbandry.'
8 Id. ' October Abstract.'

Id. ' October Husbandry.'
Ilalliwell, sub voce.

378

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

Names for
the three
fields,
' 1'elder,'
'Sitiones,
' Zelgen.

' Esch,'
and the
Gothic

' Atti.sk.'

Where shall we find these words and things on
the Continent?

Looking to the Latin words used for the three
fields, it is obvious that these were sometimes regarded
as three separate ploughings — araturce, or cultures^ —
or as so many sowings — sationes?- — just as in the
north of England they are called ' falls,' or ' fallows,'
which have to be ploughed.

In North Germany, where they occur, they
are generally simply called *J "elder ; ' 2 in France
around Paris they were called in the ninth century
' sationes ;' 3 but in South Germany and Switzerland
the usual word for each field is Zelg, which Dr
Landau connects with the Anglo-Saxon ' tilgende '
(tilling), and the later English ' tilth, 7 one of the
Hitchin words. And he says that Zelg strictly means
only the ploughed field 4 (aratura), though used for
all the three. The three fields were thus spoken of
as three tilths. The word ' Zelg ' we have already
found in the St. Gall charters in the eighth century,
and Dr. Landau points out other instances of the
same date of its use in the districts of Swabia, the
middle Ehine, and later in the Inn Valley.

On the other hand, in Westphalia, in Baden, and
especially in Upper Swabia and Upper Bavaria, as
far as the river Isar, and also in Switzerland, the
word Esch is the one in use, 5 the word being used in

1 ' Campis Sationalibus'' Char-
ter, a.d. 704. B. M. Ancient
Charter, Cotton MS. Augustus, ii.
82. ' Tuican lioin ' (Twickenham,
in Middlesex).

2 Landau, 53.

3 Gtierard's Polyp. (TIrminon.
'Arat inter tres sationes pertica trea t '

pp. 134, &c. ; and see Glossary, p.
45G.

4 Landau, p. 54.

5 Landau, p. 54. ' Die alte Form
dieses Wortes i3t czzisc, ezzisca,
czzisch (gothisch atisk), und wird in
don Glossen durch scyetes erkliirt.'

frichte.'

in England and Germany. 379

Westphalia, also for the whole arable area. 1 Esch Chap. x.
also was in use at the date of the earliest form of
the Bavarian laws (in the seventh century). The
hedge put up in defence of the sown field is there
called an ' ezzisczun.' 2 Still earlier, in the fourth
century, further East the open fields seem to have
been called ' attish ; ' for Ulphilas, in his translation
of Mark ii. 23, speaks of the disciples walking over the
1 attish ' — i.e. over the ' etch,' or ' eddish ' — instead of
as in the Anglo-Saxon translation over the ' cecera.'
Here, therefore, we have another of the Hitchin
words.

In Hesse, according to Dr. Landau, the three «Brach-
fields are spoken of as —

(1) In der Lentzen.

(2) In der Brache.

(3) In der Rure.

On the Main, in the fifteenth century, they were
spoken of as —

(1) Lenz frichte.

(2) Brack frichte.

(3) .Rot frichte.

In Elsass, in the fourteenth century, and on the
Danube —

(1) Brochager (Brach field)

(2) Rurager (Fallow field)

were used, and Dr. Landau says that Esch is sometimes
put in contrast with ' Brack.'' 3 Whatever may be

1 Hanssen's chapter, ' Zur Ge- Periz, p. 309. In id. x. 21 the

schichte der Feldsysteme in Deutsch- words ' Semites convicinales ' are

land,' in his Agrarhistorische Ab- used of open fields. In the Bur-
handlungen, p. 194. I gundian Laws ' Additamentuin Pri-

8 'Si ilium sepem eruperit vel mum,' tit. 1, ' Agri communes.'
dissipaverit quem Ezzisczun vocant,' 3 Landau, pp. 54-5.

&c. Textus Legis Primus, x. 16.

380

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

These
words
point to
connexion
with South
Germany.

the exact meaning of the word Brack — whether
referring to the breaking of the rotation or the
breaking of the stubble — there can be no doubt of
the identity of the word with the English Breach and
Breach-corn.

It appears, therefore, that in South Germany,
and especially in the districts once Soman province,
the three fields representing the rotation of crops
for many centuries have been known by names closely
resembling those used in England.

■shot.'

Gewann.'

Headland.

IV. THE DIVISION OF THE FIELDS INTO FURLONGb
AND ACRES.

Passing next to the divisions of the open fields,
we take first the Furlongs or Shots (the Latin
Quarentenaz).

The word ' Shot ' probably is simply the Anglo-
Saxon ' sceot,' or division ; but it is curious to find in
a document of 1318 mention of ' imam peciam,
quod vulgariter dicitur Schoet ' at Passau, near the
junction of the Inn with the Danube. 1

The usual word in Middle and South Germany '
is ' Gewende,' in Lower Germany ' Wande ' or ' Wanne,'
or ' Gewann ' — words which no less than the Furlong 2
refer to the length of the furrow and the turning of
the plough at the end of it.

The headland, on which the plough was turned,

1 Passau received its name from
a Roman legion of Batavi having
been stationed there.— Mon. Boica,
xxx. p. 83. Landau, p. 49.

2 In East Friesland, under the
one-field system, the word 'flagyen '
is used for ' furlongs.' Hanssen, p.
198.

in England and Germany.

381

is also found in the German three-field system as in Chap.x.
England.

In a Frankish document quoted by Dr. Landau, it 'Vorackcr. 1
is called the ' VorackerJ elsewhere it is known as the
' Anwdnder ' (versura), or ' Vorwart! 1

In the English system the furlongs were divided
into strips or acres by turf balks left in the plough-
ing, and, as we have seen, on hill-sides, the strips
became terraces, and the balks steep banks called
' linces.' It will be remembered that these were The Lince
produced by the practice of always turning the sod f^jj # .
downhill in the ploughing. There are many linces
as far north as in the district of the 'Teutoberger
Wald,' 2 and they occur in great numbers as far south
as the Inn Valley, all the way up to St. Mauritz and
Pontresina. Although in many places the terraces
in the Engadine are now grass-land, it is well known
to the peasantry that they were made by ancient
ploughing.

The German word for the turf slope of these
terraces is c Rain, and, like the word balk, it means
a strip of unploughed turf. 3 It is sometimes used for
the terrace itself. Precisely the same word is used
for the similar terraces in the Dales of Yorkshire,
which are still called by the Dalesmen ' reeans ' or
' reins' 4 Terraces of the same kind are found in

1 Landau, p. 32.

2 There are great numbers to be
Been from tbe railway from Ems as
far as Nordbausen on the route to
Berlin.

3 Thus Rainbalken is the turf
balk left unploughed as a boundary.

4 Halliwell. 'Rain} a ridge
(north). See also Studies, by

Joseph Lucas, F.G.S., c. viii.,
where there is an interesting de-
scription of the ' Reins ' in Nidder-
dale. These terraces occur in
the neighbouring dale3 of Billsdale,
Bransdale, and Furndale ; and also
in Wharf dale and the valley of tbe
Kibble, &c.

382

The Open-Field System

The Celtic
Elian.

Citap. x. Scotland ; and when Pennant in 1772 asked what
they were called, he was told that they were ' baulks' l
Both words suggest a wider than merely German
origin. ' Balk ' is as thoroughly a Welsh word 2 as
it is English and German. 'Eain' can hardly be
other than the Welsh ' Rhan ' (a division), or * Rhyn*
and ' grwn ' (a ridge), with which the name of the
open-field system in Ireland and Scotland — ' run-rig '
— is no doubt connected. The English word lince or
linch, with the Anglo-Saxon ' Mine ' and ' hlince,' is
perhaps allied to the Anglo-Saxon ' Hlynian,' or
* Hlinian,' to lean, making its participle ' hlynigende ;'
and this, and the old High German ' hlinen,' are
surely connected with the Latin and Italian l in-
clinare' and the French ' enclin. 1 As we have seen,
the Roman ' Agrimensores ' called these slopes or
terraces ' super cilia.'

The acre
strip a
day's work.

Next let us ask, whence came the English acre
strip itself?

It represented, as we have seen, a day's work at
ploughing. Hence the German Morgen and Tagwerk,
in the Alps Tag wan and Tag wen ; and hence also, as
early as the eighth century, the Latin 'jurnalis ' and

1 Pennant's Tour in Scotland,
p. 281. ' Observed on the right
several very regular terraces cut on
the face of a hill. They are most
exactly formed, a little raised in the
middle like a firm walk, and about
20 feet broad, and of very consider-
able length. In some places were
three, in others five nights, placed
one above the other, terminating
exactly in a line at each end, and

most precisely finished. I am told
that such tiers of terraces are not un-
common in these parts, where they
are called baulks.'

2 See Pugh's Welsh Dictionary :
Bale, a break in furrow land.
Balcia, a breaking of furrows.
Balcio, to break furrows.
Balciog, having irregular furrows.
Balciwr, a breaker of furrows.
And see supra, p. 4.

in England and Germany. 383

1 diurnalis.' 1 In early Koman times Varro describes Chap.x.

the jugerum [or jugurn] — the Roman acre — as ' quod
'juncti boves uno die exarare possint.' 2

The division of arable open fields into day-works
was therefore ancient. It was also widely spread, and
by no means confined to the three-field system. It was
common to the co-aration of both free tribesmen and
' taeogs ' in Wales ; and the Fellahin of Palestine to
this moment divide their open fields into day-works
for the purpose of easy division among them, accord-
ing to their ploughs or shares in a plough. 3

In the Irish open-field system, as we have seen,
the land was very early divided into equal ' ridges,'
for in the passage quoted, referring to the pressure of
population in the seventh century, the complaint was,
not that the people received smaller ridges than in
former times, but fewer of them. These ridges, how-
ever, may or may not have been ' day-works.'

But perhaps, outside of the three-field system, a
still more widely spread practice was that of dividing
the furlongs or larger divisions into as many strijis as
there were sharers, without reference to the size of the
strips. This practice seems to be the one adopted in
many parts of Germany, in Eussia, and in the East, and
it is in common use in the western districts of Scotland
to this day whenever a piece of land is held by a
number of crofters as joint holders. 4

1 So in the St. Gall charters,
quoted above. Thus also Dronke,
Traditiones et Antiq. Fuldenses, p.
107, ' xx. diurnales hoc est quod
tot diebus arari poterit.' — Landau,

3 See supra, chapter viii.

4 I have found it in use on the
coast opposite the Isle of Skye.
Several crofters will take a tract of
land, divide it first into larger

45. . divisions, or ' parks,' and then divide

2 Varro, Be Re Rustica,\. 10; the parks into lot9, of which each
and see Plin. Hist. Nat. 18. 3. 15. ! takes one.

384

The Open-Field System

Chap. x. it J s doubtful whether the division into acre strips
representing day-works, and divided from their neigh-
bours by ' raine ' or balks, was one of the features of
the original German system of ploughing. It is
chiefly, if not entirely, in the districts within or near
to the Eoman ' limes,' or colonised after the conquest
of the Eoman provinces, that it appears to have been
prevalent. 1

With regard to the word ' acre,' it is probably of
very ancient origin.

The German ' acker ' has the wider sense of
ploughed land in general, but sometimes in East
Friesland, 2 and also in South Germany and German
Switzerland it has still the restricted meaning of the
acre strip laid out for ploughing. 3

Roman
jugerum.

We now pass to the form of the acre strip or
day's work in ploughing.

The Eoman actus or furrow length was 120 feet,
or twelve 10-feet rods. The actus quadratus was
120 feet square. The jugerum was composed of two
of these actus quadrati. It was therefore in length
still an actus or furrow of 120 feet, and it was twice
as broad as it was long ; whilst the length of the
English acre is ten times its breadth.

Thus the English acre varied much in its shape

1 I am indebted for this informa-
tion to Professor Meitzen, who in-
forms me that he doubts whether it
waa a feature of the old purely
German open fields. In undisturbed
old German districts the ' Gewanne '
and strips are of irregular and
arbitrary size, and are not separated
by permanent turf ' raine ' or balks.

2 Hanssen, p. 198.

3 In the Engadine, in reply to
the question what the flat strips
between the linches were called,
the driver answered, ' acker. 1 When
it was pointed out that they were
grass, the reply was, ' Ah 1 but
a hundred years ago they were
ploughed.'

in England and Germany. 385

from the Roman jugerum. Its exact measurements CuAV - x
are found in the mappa, or measure of the day-work of strips of
the tenants of the abbot of St. Eemy at Rheims, which fo^fStiw
is described in the Polyptique of the ninth century SfjjJ 1
as forty perches in length and four in width. 1 It 1Vl '" ml

J l , ° in Biivana

occurs again in the ' napatica ' of the Polyptique of ia tho
the abbey of St. Maur, near Nantes, which was of century.
precisely the same dimensions. 2 And we have seen
that the ' andecena,' or measure of the day's work of
ploughing for the coloni and servi of the Church, was
described by the Bavarian laws in the seventh cen-
tury as of precisely the same form as the English
acre, forty rods in length and four rods in width, only
that the rods were Roman rods of 10 feet.

We have to go, therefore, to Bavaria in the seventh
century for the earliest instance of the form of the
English acre. And in this earliest instance it had a
distinctly servile connexion, as it had also in the
French cases quoted. In all it fixed the day's task-
work of semi-servile tenants.

Further, the Bavarian ' andecena,' if the spelling
of the word may be trusted, may have another curious
and interesting connexion with the Saxon acre, to
which attention must be once more turned.

We have seen that the tithes were to be paid in
Saxon times in the produce of ' every tenth acre as it

1 M. Guerard's Introduction to , is given to the abbey ' cum sedecim

the Polyptique d'Irminon, p. 641.

2 Id. p. 641 ; and Appendix,
i. p. 285. The Irish acre is of the
same form as the English— 4 rods

porcionibus terra qua? lingua eorum
"acres" nominantur' (a.d. 1061-
1075). In Normandy, in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, there were

by 40— but the rod is 21 feet. See acres of four roods, ' vergtSes.' Id.

the Cartulaire de liedon in Brittiiny, p. cccxi. Compare also the form of

No.cccxxvi.(p.277),whereachurch the Welsh erw.

C C

3SG

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

The form
in which

the ' agra-
rium' or
tithe-rent
Mas taken.

is traversed by the plough.' The Roman land-tribute
in Rhsetia and the ' Agri Decumates ' also consisted of
tithes. If these latter tithes were paid as the Saxon
ecclesiastical tithes were, by every tenth strip being
set aside for them in the ploughing, the words of the
Bavarian law have an important significance. The
judex or villicus is required by the laws to see that
the colonus or serous shall render by way of agra-
n'/tm or land tribute according to what he has, from
every thirty modii three modii (i.e. the tenth) — 'lawful
' andecence (andecenas legitimas), that is (the rod having
4 ten feet) four rods in width and forty in length, to

* plough, to sow, to hedge, to gather, to lead, and to
' store.' 1

Now why is the peculiar phraseology used ' from

* 30 modii 3 modii ' ? Surely either because three
modii, according to the ' Agrimensores,' went to the
juger, or because the actual acre of the locality was
sown with three modii of seed, 2 so that in either case it
was a way of saying ' from every ten acres one acre.'
Further, the form and measure of the acre is de-
scribed, and it is called the ' lawful andecena.' The
word itself in its peculiar etymology possibly contains
a reference to the one strip set apart in ten for the
tithe. Be this as it may, here again, in another point
connected with the ' acre,' we find the nearest and
earliest analogies in South Germany within the old
Roman province.

1 Pertz, 278. Lex Baiuwario-
rum tcxtus leyis primus, 13.

2 The Agrimensores reckoned 3
modii of land to the jugerum. Gro-
matici Vcteres, i. p. 359 (13). In
general u modii of wheat seed was

sown on the jugerum, but the ' Imo
ful andecena, 1 being only about
three-fifths of a jugerum, would re-
quire only 3 modii of wheat seed to
sow it.

in England and Germany. 387

Lastly, we have still to explain the reason of the Chap. x.

difference between the form of the Roman 'actus'

and 'jugerum' and that of the early Bavarian and

English acre.

The Egyptian arura was 100 cubits square. 1
The Greek ir\49pov was 10 rods or 100 feet square. 2
The Roman actus was 12 rods or 120 feet square.
The Roman ' jugerum ' was made up of two

' actus ' placed side by side, and was the area to be

ploughed in a day.

In all these cases the yoke of two oxen is assumed, Form of

and the length of the acre, or ' day-work,' is the fayVwoHc

length of the furrow which two oxen could properly

connected
wit h the

plough at a stretch. 3 '"""' ' c oi

° oxen in

The reason of the increased length of the Bavarian the team.
and the English acre was, no doubt, connected with
the fact of the larger team. 4

If the Bavarian team was of eight oxen, like that
of the English and Welsh and Scotch common plough,
it would seem perfectly natural that with four times
the strength of team the furrow might also be assumed
to be four times the usual length. In this way the
Greek and Roman furrow of 10 or 12 rods may na-
turally have been extended north of the Alps into the
' furlong ' of forty rods.

1 Herod, ii. 168. j 11, 27.

2 According to Suidas it was 4 The Rev. W. Denton, in his
equal to four apovpat, and Homer Servia and the Servians, p. 135,
mentions rerpuyvov as a usual field mentions Servian ploughs with six,
representing a day's work. (Od. , ten, or twelve oxen in the train.
xviii. 374.) Hence rerpayvov = ' as See also mention of similar teams
much as a man can plough in a day.' of oxen or buffaloes in Turkey —

3 ' Sulcum autem ducere longi- I Reports on Tenures of Land, 1800-
orem quam pedum centumviginti 70, p. 306.

contrarium pecori est.' — Col. ii.

c c 2

388 The pen-Field System

Chap. x. Now, there is a remarkable proof that long furrows,

and therefore probably large teams, were used in
Bavaria, then within the Eoman province of Rhretia,
as early as the second century. The remains of the
Bavarian ' Hochacker ' are described as running un-
interruptedly for sometimes a kilometre and more,
i.e. five times the length of the English furlong.
And a Roman road with milestones, dating as early
as a.d. 201, in one place runs across these long fur-
rows in a way which seems to prove that they were
older than the road. 1
The Professor Meitzen argues from this fact that these

''hocIi-™ 'Hochacker' with long furrows are pre-German
acker' ami [ n these districts, and in the absence of evidence of

their long '

furrows, their Celtic origin he inclines to attribute them to the
husbandry of officials or contractors on the imperial
waste lands, who had at their command hundreds of
slaves and heavy plough teams.

This may be the solution of the puzzling question
of the origin of the Bavarian ' Hochacker,' but the
presence of the team of eight oxen in Wales and
Scotland as well as in England, and the mention of
teams of six and eight oxen in the Vedas 2 as used
by Aryan husbandmen in the East, centuries earlier,
makes it possible, if not probable, that the Romans,
in this instance as in so many others, adopted and
adapted to their purpose a practice which they found
already at work, connected perhaps with a heavier
soil and a clumsier plough than they were used to
south of the Alps. 3

1 ' Dcr dlteste Anbau der Deut- I 3 There are two other points
'then' Von A. Meitzen, Jena, 1881. which bear upon the Roman con-

2 Zimuier'a Altindisches Lcbcn, nexion with the acre.

p. 237. | (1) If the length of the furrow

in England and Germany.

389

V THE HOLDINGS — THE YARD-LAND OR HUB.

We now pass from the strips to the holdings.
The typical English holding of a serf in the open
fields was the yard-land of normally thirty acres (ten

Chap. X.

was to be increased, it would be na-
tural to jump from one well-known
measure to anotber. Tbe stadium,
or lengtb of tbe foot race, was one-
eigbtb of a mile, and was com-
posed of ten of tbe Greek afijia.
The ' furlong ' is also tbe one-eigbtb
of a mile, and contains ten chains.
But tbe stadium contaiued 625
Roman feet or 600 Greek feet —
about 607 English statute feet.
How does this comport witb its
containing 40 rods ? The fact is,
tbe rod varied in different provinces,
and the Romans adopted probably
the rod of the country in measuring
tbe acre. ' Perticas autem juxta
loca vel crassitudinem terrarum,
prout provincialibus placuit videmus
esse dispositas,quasdam decimpedas,
quibusdam duos additos pedes, ali-
quas vero xv. vel x. et vii. pedum
diffinitas.' — Pauca de Mensuris,
Grom. Vet., Lachmann, &c, p. 371.
Forty rods of 10 cubits, or 15 feet
eacb, would equal the 600 feet of
the Greek stadium. In fact, the
Englisb statute furlong is based
upon a rod of 16i feet. There is
also tbe further fact that the later
Agrimensores expressly mention a
' stadialis ager of 625 feet ' (Lach-
mann, Isodorus, p. 368 ; De Men-
suris excerpta, p. 372). So that it
Beems to be clear that the stadium,
like tbe furlong, was used not only

in measuring distances, but also in
tbe division of fields.

(2) We have seen that the acre
strips in England were often called
' balks,' because of tbe ridge of un-
broken turf by which they were
divided the one from the other. We
have further seen that tbe word
' balk ' in Welsh and in Englisb
was appUed to tbe pieces of turf left
unplougbed between tbe furrows
by careless ploughing. There is a
Vedic word which has the same
meaning.

The Latin word ' scamnum ' had
precisely this meaning, and also it
was applied by tbe Agrimensores
to a piece of land broader than it3
length. The ' scamnum ' of tho
Roman ' castrum ' was the strip
600 feet long and 50 to 80 feet
broad — nearly the shape of tho
Englisb and Bavarian • acre ' — set
apart for the ' legati ' and ' tribunes.'
Tbe fields in a conquered district,
instead of being allotted in squares
by ' centuriation,' were divided into
' scamna' and ' striga;' and the fields
thus divided into pieces broader
than their length were called ' agri
scamnati,' while those divided into
pieces longer than their breadth
were called ' agristrigati.' Lengtb
was throughout reckoned from
north to south ; breadth from east
to west. Frontinus states that the

390

The Open- Field System

Chap. x. scattered acres in each of the three fields), to which
an outfit of two oxen was assigned as ' setene ' or
' stuht,' and which descended from one generation to
another as a complete indivisible whole.

The German word for the yard-land is hof or hub ;
in its oldest form huoba, huba, hova. 1 And Aventinus,
writing early in the sixteenth century of the holdings
in Bavaria in the thirteenth century, distinguishes the
hof as the holding belonging to a quadriga, or yoke
of four oxen, taxed at sixty * asses,' from the hub or
holding of the biga or yoke of two oxen, and taxed

The hub
or yard-
land.

' arva publica ' in the provinces were
cultivated ' more antiquo ' on this
method of the ' ager per strigas et
per scamna divisus et assignatus,"
whilst the fields of the 'colonial
of Roman citizens or soldiers planted
in the conquered districts were
' centuriated.' See Frontinus, lib.
i. p. 2, and fig. 3 in the plates, and
also fig. 199 ; and see Rudorff's ob-
servations, ii. 290-298. The whole
matter is, however, very obscure,
and it is difficult to identify the
' ager scamnatus ' with the Romano-
German open fields. Frontinus
was probably not specially ac-
quainted with the latter.

1 The meaning of ' hub ' is
perhaps simply 'a holding,' from
' haben.'

The term ' yard-land,' or ' gyrd-
landes,' seems to be simply the
holding measured out by the ' gyrd,'
or rod ; just as gyrd also means a
'rood.' Compare the 'vergee' of
Normandy.

The Roman ' pertica ' was the
typical rod or pole used by the
AgTimensores, and on account of its

use in assigning lands to the mem-
bers of a colony, it is sometimes
represented on medals by the side
of the augurial plough. By trans-
ference, the whole area of land
measured out and assigned to a
colony was known to the Agri-
mensores as its 'pertica' (Lach-
mann, Frontinus, pp. 20 and 26;
Hyginus, p. 117 ; Siculus Flaccus,
p. 159 ; Isodorus, p. 369).

The Latin 'virga,' used in later
times instead of 'pertica' for the
measuring rod, followed the same
law of transference with still closer
likeness to the Saxon ' gyrd.' Both
'virga' and 'gyrd' = a rod and a
measure. Both ' virga terrse ' and
' gyrd landes ' = (1) the rood, and
(2) the normal holding — the virgate
or yard-land. The word ' virgate,
or ' virgada,' was used in Brittany
as well as in England. In the
Cartulaire de Itedon it is, however,
evidently the equivalent of the
Welsh 'Randir.' See the twelve
references to the word ' virgada '
in the index of the Cartulary.

in England and German)/. 393

at thirty * asses.' 1 If the tax in this case were one Ohap.x.
' as ' per acre, then the hof contained sixty acres, and
the hub thirty acres. So that, as in the yard land,
ten acres in each field would go under the three field
system to the pair of oxen.

The hub of thirty morgen seems to have been the wide pre-
typical holding of the serf over a very wide area, JjJ j
according to the earliest records. Whilst as a rule thir,v """"•

° gen in

absent from North Germany, Dr. Landau traces it in Middle
Lower Saxony, in Engern, in Thuringia, in Grapfeld, Germany.
in Hesse, on the Middle Ehine and the Moselle, in
the old Niederlahngau, Eheingau, Wormsgau, Lob-
dengau and Spiergau, in Elsass, in Swabia, and in
Bavaria. 2

The double huf of sixty morgen also occurs on
the Weser and the Ehine in Lower Saxony and in
Bavaria. 3 The word ' huf first occurs in a document
of a.d. 474. 4

The passage in the Bavarian laws of the seventh
century, already referred to, declaring the tithe to
be ' three modii from every thirty ' modii — or one
' lawful andecena' from each ten that, in the typical
case taken, ' a man has ' — would seem to suggest that
ten andecence or acre strips in each field (or thirty in
all) was a typical holding, whilst the use of the
Eoman rod of ten feet points to a Eoman influence.

Further, the fact of the prevalence of the double
and single huf or hub of sixty and thirty acres over
so large an area once Eoman province, irresistibly
suggests a connexion with the double and single yoke

1 Du Cange, under ' Huba.' I 4 In the will of Perpetuus.

2 Landau, p. 86. 3 Id -?-8. J Meitzen, Auxbrdtung, &c, p. 14.

392

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

The double
' hub ' of
6ixty mor-
gen. The
outfit of
oxen.

of oxen given as outfit to the Roman veteran, with
such an allowance of seed as to make it probable,
as we have seen, that the double yoke received
normally fifty or sixty jugera, and the single yoke
twenty-five or thirty jugera.

It is worth remembering, further, that in the Bava-
rian law before quoted, limiting the week-work of the
servi on the ecclesiastical estates to three days a week,
an exception is made allowing unlimited week-work
to be demanded from servi who had been supplied
with their outfit of oxen de novo by their lord. So
that there is a chain of evidence as to the system of
supplying the holders of ' yard-lands,' ' huben,' and
' yokes,' with an outfit of oxen, of which the Kelso
' stuht,' the Saxon ' setene,' the outfit of the servus
under this Bavarian law, and that of the Roman
veteran, are finks. 1

It is hardly needful to repeat that it does not
follow from this that the system of allotting about
thirty acres (varying in size with the locality) to the
pair of oxen was a Roman invention. The clear fact
is that it was a system followed in Roman provinces
under the later empire, as well as in Germany and
England afterwards ; and, as the holding of thirty
acres was found to be the allotment to each ' tate ' or
household under the Irish tribal system, it may
possibly have had an earlier origin and a wider
prevalence than the period or extent of Roman rule.

The scattering of the strips composing a yard-
tripscom- land, or hub, over the open fields should also be once

posing t L

them. more mentioned in comparing the two. It was not

1 The practice was long continued in what was called the 'steel
bow tenancy ' of later times.

Bo tt( ring
of the

in England and Germany.

o'Jo

confined to the ' yard-land ' or ' hub.' It arose, as we Chap. x.
have seen, in Wales, from the practice of joint plough-
ing, and was the result of the method of dividing the
joint produce, probably elsewhere also, under the
tribal system. It is the method of securing a fair
division of common land in Scotland and Ireland and
Palestine to this day, no less than under the English
and German three-field system. And the remarkable
passage from Siculus Flaccus has been quoted, which
so clearly describes a similar scattered ownership,
resulting probably from joint agriculture carried on
by ' vicini,' as often to be met with in his time on
Roman ground. This passage proves that the Roman
holding (like the Saxon yard-land and the German
hub) might be composed of a bundle of scattered
pieces ; but this scattering was too widely spread from
India to Ireland for it to be, in any sense, distinc-
tively Roman. It perhaps resulted, as we have seen,
from the heaviness of the soil or the clumsiness of the
plough, and the necessity of co-operation between free
or semi-servile tenants, in order to produce a plough
team of the requisite strength according to the cus-
tom of the country ; and this necessity probably
arose most often in the provinces north of the Alps.

Another point distinctive of the ' yard-land ' and The single
the ' hub ' was the absence of division among heirs, J© thT"
the single succession, the indivisibility of the bundle ' ( y^ d '- Hnd
of scattered strips in the holding. And this finds its land:
nearest likeness perhaps-, as we have seen, in the
probably single succession of the semi-servile holder,
or mere ' usufructuarius ' under Roman law, and
especially under the semi-military rule of the border
provinces.

194

The Open-Field System

Chap X.

The Saxon
' Gebur '
and the
High Ger-
man
•Gipur.

Lastly, before leaving the comparison between the
yard-land and hub it may be asked why the serf who
held it in England was called a Gebur.

The word villanus of the Domesday Survey is
associated with other words, such as villicus, villata,
ville?iage, all connected with serfdom, and all traceable
through Romance dialects to the Roman ' villa. 1

But the Anglo-Saxon word was ' Gebur.' It was
the Gebars who were holders of yard-lands.

We trace this word Gebur in High German dia
lects. We find it in use in the High German trans-
lation of the laws of the Alamanni, called the ' Speculi
Suevici,' where free men are divided into three
classes : —

(1) The ' semperfrien ' = lords with vassals under
them.

(2) The ' mittlerfrien ' = the men or vassals of the
lords.

(3) The ' geburen ' = liberi incolce, or ' fri-lant-
ssezzen' [i.e. not slaves]. 1

The word ' gebur ' or ' gipur ' occurs also in the
High German of Otfried's ' Paraphrase of the Gos-
pels,' 2 of the ninth century, and in the Alamannic
dialect of Notger's Psalms for vicinus. 8

Here, again, the South German connexion seems
to be the nearest to the Anglo-Saxon.

1 Juris Prov. Alemann. c. 2,
Schilteri editio.

3 Ot.fri.Ml, v. 4, 80; ii. 14,215.

3 Notger, Psalm xliii. 14;

lxxviii. 4 ; brix. 7.

in England and Germany

395

Chap. X

VI. THE HIDE, THE HOP, AND THE CENTUETA.

From the yard-land, or hub, the holding of a serf, The 'hide,
we may pass to the typical holding of the full free i£2£
landholder, connected in England with the full team and ', hi *

° wise.

of eight oxen.

The Saxon hide, or the fawilia of Bede, was Latin-
ised in Saxon charters into 'casatum.' We have found
in the St. Gall charters the word ' casa ' used for
the homestead. The present Eomanish word for
house is ' casa' and for the verb ' to dwell,' ' casar*
And there is the Italian word ' casata' still meaning
a family. Thus the connexion between the * familia '
of Bede and the ' casatum ' of the charters is natural
Bede wrote more classical Latin than the ecclesiastical
scribes in the charters. The hide was the holding
of a family. 1 Hence it was sometimes, like the yard-
land or holding of a servile family, called a ' hiwisc,'
which was Anglo-Saxon, and also High German for
family. 2 But the Saxon hide, also, was translated into
ploughland or carucate, corresponding with the full
team of eight oxen.

Generally in Kent, and sometimes in Sussex, Tiie'ca™
Berks, and Essex, we found in addition to or instead lun?,' or""
of the hide or carucate, or ' terra unius aratri,' solins,
sullungs, or swullungs — the land pertaining to & l suhl,'
the Anglo-Saxon word for plough. This word is

plough-
land.

1 Compare Cod. Theod. IX. tit.
xlii. 7 : ' Quot mancipia in pnediis
occupatis . . . quot sint casarii vel
coloni, &c.

2 See Ancient Laws of Emjland.,
Thorpe, p. 79, under wcr-gilds, s.

vii., where ' hiwisc ' = ' hide.' See
also ' hiwisJci,' 'hiwisehi,' for familia}
in ' St. Paules Glossen,' sixth or
seventh century. Braune's Althoch-
deutsches Lesebuch, p. 4.

396

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

Tbe 'gioc,'
or'jugum.'

surely of Roman rather lhan of German origin. The
Piedmontese ' sloira,' and the Lombardic ' sciloira,'
and the Old French ' sillec-ire,' are surely allied to the
Romanish ' suilgj and the Latin ' sulcus.'

Again, in Kent the quarter of a ' sulung ' (answer-
ing to the yard-land or virgate of other parts) is
called in the early charters a ' gioc,' ' ioclet,' or

* iochlet,' l i.e. a yoke or small-yoke of land. We have
seen in the St. Gall charters, also, mention of ' juchs '
or 'jochs,' which, however, were apparently jugera.
This word gioc is surely allied to the Italian ' giogo,'
and the Latin jugum.

The 'hide' Here, then, we have the hide the typical holding
taria^the of a free family, as the centuria was under Roman
hoid C in g frec l aw - A free Saxon thane might hold many hides, and
so might and did the lord of a Roman villa hold more
than one ' centuria ' within its bounds. Still Columella
took as his type of a Roman farm the ' centuria ' of 200
acres, 2 and calculated how much seed, how many
oxen, how many opera, or day-works of slaves, or

* coloni ' were required to till it. The hide, double
or single, was also a land measure, and contained
eight or four yard-lands, and so also was the ' centu-
ria ' a land measure divisible into eight normal hold-
ings allotted with single yokes. Both also became, as
we have seen, units of assessment. But in England
the hide was the unit. Under the Roman system of
taxation the jugum was the unit.

1 B. M. Ancient Charters, ii.
Cotton MS. Aug. ii. 42, a.d. 837.
The Welsh short yoke was that
of two oxen, i.e. a fourth part of
the full plough team.

3 Columella, ii. 12. The calcu-
lation in this passage, how many
opera or day-works a farm requires
shows striking resemblance to tho
later manorial gystem.

hidjition'
and the

in England and Germany. 397

This variation, however, confirms the connexion. Chap. x.
The Eoman jugum, or yoke of two oxen, made a "

complete plough. Nothing less than the hide was
the complete holding in England, because a team
of eight oxen was required for English ploughing
The yard-land was only a fractional holding, incom-
plete for purposes of ploughing without co-operation.
Hence it would seem that the complete plough was
really the unit in both cases.

How closely the English hidation followed the The Saxon
lines of the Eoman 'jugatio ' has already been seen
When to the many resemblances of the hide to the Eoman
'centuria,' and of the 'jugum' to the virgate, re- ' jugat10-
garded as units of assessment, are now added the
other connecting links found in this chapter, in things,
in figures, and in words, between the Saxon open-
field system, and that of the districts of Upper
Germany, so long under Roman rule, the English
hidation may well be suspected to go back to
Eoman times, and to be possibly a survival of the
Eoman jugation. When Henry of Huntingdon, in
describing the Domesday Survey, instead of saying
that inquiry was made how many hides and how
many virgates there were, uses the words ' quot
jugata et quot virgata terrce,' l he at any rate used
the exact words which describe what in the Codex
Theodosianus is spoken of as taxation 'per juga-
tionem.' 2

Not, as already said, that the Eomans intro-
duced into Britain the division of land according to
plough teams, and the number of oxen contributed

1 Du Cange, ' Jugatuin.' I 2 See Marquardt, ii. 226 n.

398 The Open-Field System

chap. x. to the plough team. It would grow, as we have
seen, naturally out of tribal arrangements whenever
the tribes settled and became agricultural, instead of
wandering about with their herds of cattle. It was
found in Wales and Ireland and Scotland, in Bohemia,
apparently in Slavonic districts also and further east. 1
It is much more likely that the Eomans, according to
their usual custom, adopted a barbarian usage and
seized upon an existing and obvious unit as the basis
of provincial taxation.

The Frisian tribute of hides was perhaps an ex-
ample of this. The Frisians were a pastoral people, and
a hide for every so many oxen was as ready a mode
of assessing the tribute as counting the plough teams
would be in an agricultural district. The word ' hide,'
which still baffles all attempts to explain its origin,
may possibly have had reference to a similar tribute.
Roman Even in England it does not follow that it was in its
to Frisk origin connected with the plough team. Its real
hides 1 " equivalent was the familia, or casatum — the land of
a family — and in pastoral districts of England and
Wales the Eoman tribute may possibly have been, if
not a hide from each plough team, a hide from every
family holding cattle ; just as in A.D. 1175 Henry II.
bound his Irish vassal, Eoderic O'Connor, to pay
annually ' de singulis animalibus decimum corium
placabile mercatofibus ' — perhaps a tenth of the hides
he himself received as tribute from his own tribes-
men. 2 The supposition of such an origin of the con-
nexion of the word ' hide ' with the ' land of a family :

1 Sfeitzen, Ausbrcitung, pp. 21 I 2 Food. vol. i. p. 31. Robertson's

tnd 33. I Historical Essays, p. 1D3.

in England and < 7er many. 399

or of a plough team is mere conjecture ; but the fact Chap. x.
of the connexion is clear. All these liner things,
the hide, the hiwisce, and the milling, and their sub-
division the yard-land, were the units of British
' nidation,' just as the centuria and the jugum were
the units of the Eoman 'jugatio.'

VII. THE GAFOL AND GAPOL-TRTH.

Passing now to the serfdom and the services
under which the ' yard-lands ' and the ' huben ' were
held, it may at least be said that their practical
identity suggests a common origin.

We learned from the Rectitudines and from the
Laws of Ine, to make a distinction between the two
component parts of the obligations of the ' gcbur ' in
respect of his yard-land.

There was (1) the gafol, and (2) the week-
worh.

The gafol was found to be a semi-servile incident
to the yard-land. The week-work was the most
servile one.

A man otherwise free and possessing a homestead
already, could, under the laws of Ine, hire a yard-
land of demesne land and pay gafol for it, without in-
curring liability to week-work. But if the lord found
for him both the yard-land and the homestead, then
he was a complete ' gebur ' or * villanus,' and must
do week-work also.

Taking the gafol first, and descending to details, The Saxon
it was found to be complex — i.e. it included gafol and'gafol-
and gafol-yrth.

400

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

Possible
connexion
with
Roman

tributunt.

The gafol of the ' gebur,' as stated in the Rec-
titudines, was this : —

For gafol -proper : —

(10c?. at Michaelmas.
23sestersofbeer 1 At Martinmas#
2 fowls J

1 lamb at Easter, or 2d.
For gafolyrth: — the ploughing of 3 acres, and sowing of
it from the ' gebur's ' own barn.

Comparing the gafol proper with the census of the
St. Gall charters, and the tribute of the ' servi ' of the
Church under the Alamannic laws of a.d. 622, the
resemblance was found to be remarkably close.

The tribute of the ' servi ' of the Church was thus
stated in the latter : —

15 siclse of beer.
A sound spring pig.
2 modia of bread.
5 fowls.
20 eggs.

As regards this tribute in kind the likeness is
obvious, and it further so closely resembles the food-
rent of the Welsh free tribesmen as to suggest that
it may have been a survival of ancient tribal
dues — a suggestion which the word ' gafol ' itself
confirms. It seems to be connected with the Abgabe,
or food gifts of the German tribesmen. 1

We saw that the word gafol was the equivalent
of tributum in the Saxon translation of the Gospels.
1 Does your master pay tribute ? ' ' Gylt he gafol? '

Further, the French evidence seems to show

1 Diez, p. 150. ' Gabella, 1 For- j Italian ' gabellan,' to tax, from v. b.
tuguese, Spanish, and Provencal gifan, Goth, giban.
»«tax. French gabellc = sal I -tax. I

in England and Germany. 401

that the later manorial payments in kind and services Chap, x.
upon Frankish manors were, to some extent, a sur-
vival of the old Eoman exactions in Gaul. 1 And
the tribute of the Alamannic and Bavarian laws, and
of the St. Gall and other charters, was found to be
equally clearly a survival of the Eoman tributura
in the German province of Rhastia and the ' Agri
Decumates.'

But in addition to the ' gafol ' in kind, there was The Saxon
the gafol-yrth ; and of this also we found in the St. yftV" and
Gall charters numerous examples. In the many cases « t it^? mai1
where the owner of homesteads and land surrendered r . iu , m ' or

tithe-rent.

them to the Abbey, and henceforth paid tribute to
the Abbey, there was not only the tribute in kind,
but also the ploughing of so many acres, sometimes
of one, sometimes of two, and sometimes of one in
each zelga or field — to be ploughed, and reaped, and
carried by the tenant. The combination of the dues
in hind and in ploughing, with sometimes other
services, made up the tributura in servitium — i.e. the
gafol of the tributarius, or i gafol-g elder,' which he
paid under the Alamannic laws to his lord, the latter
thenceforth paying the public tributum for the
land to the State.

Perhaps we may go one step further.

From the remarkable resemblance of the English Not always
gafol-yrth and its South German equivalent the in-
ference was drawn that this peculiar rent taken in
the form of the ploughing of a definite number of
acres, was probably a survival of the Roman tenths,

1 See Guerard's Polyptique (Tlr- | M. Vuitry's Etudes sur U Rfyime
minon, i. chap. viii. Also Lehuerou's i Financier de la France, Premiere
Institut. Meroving. liv. ii. c. 1 ; and I Etude.

D D

402

The Open-Field System

Chap. x. or other proportion of produce claimed as rent from
settlers on the ager publicus of the ' Agri Decumates,'
and of Rhsetia. Indications were found that the
agrarium, or tenth of the arable produce, may have
been taken in actual acres like the Saxon tithes — i.e.
in the produce of so many ' andecena?,' the ploughing,
sowing, reaping, and garnering of which were done
by the tenant.

But under Eoman usage the proportion taken
was not always a tenth. The State rent was nominally
a tithe. But it was in fact so extortion ately gathered
as sometimes in Sicily to treble the tithe. 1 Hyginus
also says that the ' vectigal,' or tax, was taken in
some provinces in a certain part of the crop, in some
a fifth, in others a seventh. 2 In Italy the dues from
the Agri Medietates perhaps surviving in the later
metayer system, amounted sometimes to one-half. At
any rate, the proportion varied.

Now the Saxon * gafol-yrth ' of the yard-land of
thirty acres seems, according to the ' Rectitudines,' as
we have seen, to have been the produce of three acres
in the wheat-field, ploughed by the 'gebur' and sown
with seed from his own barn. For it will be remem-
bered that the first season after the yard-land was given
there was to be no gafol, and in the gebur's outfit
only seven out of the ten acres in the wheat-field

1 So Cicero asserted against
Verres. The seed, he argued, was
fairly to he taken at ahout a me-
dimnus to each jugerum. Eight nie-
dimni of corn per acre would he a
good crop ; ten would be the out-
Blde thai under all possible favour
of the pods the jugerum could yield.
Therefore the tithe might not to

exceed at the highest estimate one
medinmus per jugerum. But the
tax-gather had taken three medimni
per jugerum, and so by extortion had
trebled the tithes. — In Verrem, act.
ii. lib. iii. c. 47, 48, 49.

2 Ilygini de Limit ibus Const i-
tuendis, p. 204.

in England and Germany. 403

were to be handed over to him already sown, leaving Chap. x.
tnree unsown, i.e. probably the three which other-
wise he must have sown for the gafol-yrth due to
his lord. As ten acres of the yard-land were pro-
bably always in fallow, three acres of wheat was a
heavier gafol-yrth than a fairly gathered tithe would
have been.

It would therefore seem probable that as the
' gafol ' in kind may be traced back to the Roman
tributurn, itself perhaps a survival of the tribal food-
rents of the conquered provinces, so the ' gafol-yrth '
may be traced back to the Roman decuma?, or other
proportion of the crop due by way of land-tax or
rent to the State. And this survival of the complex
tribute or gafol, made up of its two separate elements,
from Roman to Saxon times, becomes all the more
striking when it is considered also that it was due
from a normal holding with an outfit of a pair of
oxen, both in the case of the Saxon yard-land and of
the Roman veteran's allotment.

VIII. THE BOON-WORK AND WEEK- WORK OP THE SERF.

Proceeding still further, besides the gafol and The Saxon
gafol-yrth, and yet distinct from the week-work, was ^ b X" an d
the liabilitv of the serfs on the Saxon manor to cer- ^ Bom*"

•J , . * sordida

tain boon-work or services ad preces ; sometimes in munera.'
ploughing or reaping a certain number of acres of the
lord's demesne land in return for grass land or other
advantages, or without any special equivalent;
sometimes in going errands or carrying goods to
market or otherwise, generally known as averagium.
1 He shall land-gafol pay, and shall ridan and averian

D D 2

404 The Open-Field System

Crap. x. ' and lade Icedan ' for his lord. So this boon-work in
addition to ' gafol ' is described in the ' Rectitudines.'
The various kinds of manorial ' averagium '
were, as we have seen, often called in mediaeval Latin
angaria?, a going on errands or postal service ; para-
veredi, or packhorse services ; and carroperce, or
waggon services.

We have seen how these services resembled the
angaria? and the parangarioz and paraveredi, which
were included among the ' sordida munera ' or ' obse-
quies ' of the Theodosian Code in force in Rhsetia in
the fourth century, found still surviving, though
transformed into manorial services, in the same dis-
tricts in the seventh century and afterwards, under
the Bavarian laws and in the monastic charters. The
carrying services and other boon-work on Saxon
manors closely resembled those of the Frankish
charters and the Bavarian laws, and probably
therefore shared their Roman origin.
The week- There remains to complete the serfdom its most
work of the serv ii e incident, the week-work — that survival of the
originally unrestricted claim of the lord of the Eoman
villa to his slave's labour which, limited, as we have
seen, according to the evidence of the Alamannic
laws, under the influence of Christian humanity by
the monks or clergy, in respect of the servi on their
estates, to three days a week, became the mediaeval
triduanum servitium. The words of the Alamannic
law are wortli re-quoting.

' Servi diniitliiiin partem sibi et
dimidiam in dominico arativum red-
dant. Et. si super hcec est, SICUT
BEKVJ BCOLESIABTIOl ita faciunt,tres
diet sibi et trcs in dominico.'

Let servi do plough service, half
for themselves and half in demesne.
And if there be any further [service]
let them work as the servi of the
Church, three days for themselves,
and three in demesne.

in England and Germany. 405

This remarkable passage in the Alamannic code Chap.X
of a.d. 622 seems to be the earliest version extant
of the Magna Charta of the agricultural servus, who
thus early upon ecclesiastical estates was transformed
from a slave into a serf.

IX. THE CREATION OF SERFS AND THE GROWTH OP

SERFDOM.

There is yet another point in which the corre Serfdom
spondence between British and Continental usages is from
worth remarking. below!"" 1

The community in serfdom on a lord's estate was
both by Saxon and Continental usage recruited from
above and from below.

Free men from above, by voluntary arrangement Free-men
with a lord, could and did descend into serfdom. ser fs.
The Saxon free tenant could, by free contract,
arrange to take a yard-land, and if he were already
provided with a homestead and oxen, he became a
' gafol-gelder,' or tributarius of his lord, without in-
curring the liability to the more servile ' week-work,'
just as was the case when, under the Alamannic laws,
free men made surrender of their holdings to the
Abbey of St. Gall. In both cases, as we saw, week-
work was added if the lord found the homestead and
the outfit.

On the other hand, whenever a lord provided his slaves be-
come serfs

slave with an outfit of oxen, and gave him a part in
the ploughing, he rose out of slavery into serfdom.
To speak more correctly, he rose into that middle
class of tenants who, by whatever name they were

406

The Open-Field System

Chap. X.

Grades in
serfdom
during the
period of
transition.

• Tribu-
tarii,'
' coloni,'
and ' liti.'

Slaves
made into
these.

The laets
of the laws
of Ethel-
bert.

known at first, afterwards became confounded together
in the ranks of mediawal serfdom.

There were, in fact, grades in the community in
serfdom not only like those of the Saxon geburs and
cottiers, but also corresponding to the historical
origin of the serfs. Thus, as we have seen in the
' Polyptique dTrminon ' and in many other cartularies
and surveys of monastic estates, there are coloni and
liti among the serfs, names bearing witness to the
historical origin of the serfs, though the difference
between them had all but vanished.

There is a passage in the Eipuarian laws, ' If any
one shall make his slave into a " tributarius," or a
" litus," &c.' l The ' lidus ' of the ' Lex Salica ' was
under a lordship, and classed with ' servi,' and by a
legal process he could be set free. 2 We have noticed
the passage in the Theodosian Code which speaks of
' coloni ' and ' tributarii ' on British estates, and also
the mention by Ammianus Marcellinus of ' tributarii'
in Britain. We have noticed also the three grades of
' la3ts,' the only class of tenants mentioned in the laws
of Ethelbert.

Now, whatever doubt there might be as to what
were the ' lsets ' on Kentish ' hams ' and ' tuns ' in the
sixth century, if they stood alone as isolated pheno-
mena ; taken together with the ' tributarii ' and ' coloni '
and 'Hti' on Continental manors, there can be hardly
any doubt that they belonged to the same middle

1 Tit. lxii.

* Lex Salica, tit. xxxviii. ' De
homicidiis servoi-um et ancillarum.
v. Si quis homo ingenuus lidum
alienum expoliaveiit,' &c. See also
tit. xvi. See also tit. xxvi. ' De

libertis extra consilium Domini sui
diwissis ' (xxxv. ' De libertis di-
missis iDgenuis '). ' Si quis alienum
Icetum ante rege per dinarium m-
yenuum demiserit,' &c.

in England and Germany. 407

class of semi-servile tenants to which allusion has Chap. x.
been made. Their presence on the manorial ' hams ' SurTi^u
and 'tuns' of England revealed in the earliest his- "J^ of
torical record after the Saxon Conquest, taken in toanaition

. , , l in Britain.

connexion with the many other points brought
together in this chapter, makes the inference very
strong indeed that they, like the 'coloni,' ' tributarii,'
and 'liti' on Continental manors, were a survival from
that period of transition from Eoman to German rule,
during which the names of the various classes of
semi-servile tenants, afterwards merged in the common
status of media3val serfdom, still preserved traces of
their origin.

X. THE CONFUSION IN THE STATUS OF THE TENANTS
ON ENGLISH AND GERMAN MANORS.

In one sense both in England and Germany the Serfs free
holders of the ' yard-lands ' and ' huben,' though serfs, unfree m
were free. As regards their lords they were serfs. tenuxe -
As regards the slaves they were free. In this respect
they resembled very closely the Eoman ' coloni ' on a
private villa.

On the Frankish manors there were two classes of Grades of

manorial

these semi-servile tenants — ' mansi ingenuiles, who tenant.
were free from the ' week-work ; ' and • mansi serviles,'
from whom ' week-work ' was due. Probably owing
to the nature of the Saxon conquest the first of these
classes seems to have practically become absorbed in
the other. The laws of Ine, indeed, mention the gafol-
gelder who, providing his own homestead, did not
become liable to ' week-work ' like the ' gebur.' But

408 The Open-Field System

Chap. x. in the statements of the services on the manors of
Hisseburne and Tidenham no such class appears.
In the ' Eectitudines ' there is no class mentioned be-
tween the thane, who is lord of the manor, and the
1 geneats ' — i.e. the ' gebur ' and the ' cotsetl.' In the
Domesday Survey there are no tenants above the
villain, as a general rule, except in the Danish dis-
tricts, where the ' Sochmanni ' and the ' liberi ho-
mines ' appear.

Comparing the status of English and German
holders of ' yard-lands ' and ' huben,' the resemblances
are remarkable, and they confirm the suggestion
of a common origin. Both are ' adscript! glebse.' In
both cases there is the absence of division among
heirs. In both the succession is single, and in theory
at the will of the lord. In both there are the gafol
and customary services.

In both cases there is the distinction in grade of
serfdom between the man who freely becomes the
holder of a yard-land or hub by his own surrender, or
by voluntary submission to the semi-servile tenure,
and the man who is a nativus or born serf.

In both cases there is a regular contribution to-
wards military service or the equipment of a soldier,
and apparently no bar in status from actual service,
though doubtless in a semi-menial position.
The con- In all these points we have noticed strong analogies

haps between the semi-free and semi-servile conditions of
MinVvid the various classes of tenants on Eoman villas, and on
the Eoman public lands, which we have spoken of as
provincia] the great provincial manor of the Eoman Empire.

conditions. «-,,-,.. , ,

And the natural inference seems to be, that even the
curious confusion of the free and servile status may

in England and Germany. 409

be, in part, a survival of the like confusion in the Ohap. x.
Eoman provinces. It naturally grew up under the
semi-military rule of the German provinces, and pos-
sibly in Britain also ; whilst the Saxon conquest of
the latter, no doubt, as we have said, tended to reduce
the confusion into something like simplicity by fusing
together classes of semi-servile tenants of various
historical origins, in the one common class of the later
' geneats ' or ' villani,' in whose status the old confu-
sion, however, survived.

XL RESULT OF THE COMPARISON.

To sum up the result of the comparison made in strong evi-
this chapter between the English and the Continental connexion
open-field system and serfdom. The English and BrifcuTand
South-German systems at the time of the earliest Q e e r ^ th
records in the seventh century were to all intents provinces

. during

and purposes apparently identical. Roman

The mediaeval serf, judging from the evidence of serfdom
his gafol and services, seems to have been the com- open-field
pound product of survivals from three separate system

tr r r which was

ancient conditions, gradually, during Eoman pro- its shell.
vincial rule and under the influence of barbarian
conquest, confused and blended into one, viz. those of
the slave on the Eoman villa, of the colonus or other
semi-servile and mostly barbarian tenants on the
Eoman villa or public lands, and of the slave of the
German tribesman, who to the eyes of Tacitus was
so very much like a Eoman colonus.

That peculiar form of the open-field system,
which was the shell of serfdom both in England and
on the Continent, also connects itself in Germany

110 The Open- Field System

Chap. x. distinctly with the Romano-German provinces, whilst
at the same time conspicuously absent from the less
Romanised districts of Northern Germany.

It seems therefore inconceivable that the three-
field system and the serfdom of early Anglo-Saxon
records can have been an altogether new importation
from North Germany, where it did not exist, into
Britain, where it probably had long existed under
Eoman rule.
The Saxon We have already quoted the strong conclusion of
from ifanssen that the Anglo-Saxon invaders and their

Germany Frisian Low-German and Jutish companions could not
hardly introduce into England a system to which they were
the ihree- not accustomed at home. It must be admitted that
Byshm the conspicuous absence of the three-field system
iaid. Eng " fr° m tne North of Germany does not, however,
absolutely dispose of the possibility that the system
was imported into England from those districts ol
Middle Germany reaching from Westphalia to Thu-
ringia, where the system undoubtedly existed. It is
at least possible that the invaders of England may
have proceeded from thence rather than as commonly
supposed, from the regions on the northern coast.
But if it be possible that a system of agriculture imply-
ing long-continued settlement, and containing within
it numerous survivals of Eoman elements, could be
imported by pirates and the emigrants following
in their wake, the possibility itself implies that the
immigrants had themselves previously submitted to
long-continued Roman influences.

On the whole we may adopt as a more likely
theory the further suggestion of Hanssen, that if the
three-field system was imported at all into England,

in England and Germany.

411

the most likely time for its importation was that same Chap, x.
period of Eoman occupation during which he con-
siders that it came into use in the Roman provinces
of Germany. 1

Nor is there anything inconsistent with this The

it '1-r-iTi Romans

suggestion in the irregular lines of the English open probably
fields and their divisions, so different from those ihe^hree-
produced by the rectangular centuriation of Roman ^™ e r f °"
' Agrimensores.' We must not forget that the open cro P a -
field system in its simpler forms was almost certainly
pre-Roman in Britain as elsewhere ; so that what the
Romans added to transform it into the manorial
three-field system probably was rather the three-course
rotation of crops, the strengthening of the manorial
element on British estates, and the methods of
taxation by 'jugation,' than any radical alteration
in the land-divisions or in the system of co-operative
ploughing. 2

1 ' Soil die Dreifelderwirthschaft
nach England importirt sein, so
bliebe wohl nur iibrig an die
Periode der romischen Okkupation
zu denken, wie ich eine ahnliche
Vermuthung, die sich freilich aucb
nicht weiter begriinden lasst, fiir
Deutschland ausgesprochen habe
(p. 153). Einfacher ist es den
selbsts'andigen Ursprung derDrei-
felderwirthschaft in ganz versckie-
denenen Landernals einen auf einer
gewissen wirtbschaftlicben Kultur-
stufe wie von selber eintretenden

Fortscbritt sich zu denken ' (Agrar-
hist. Abhand. p. 497).

* Mr. Coote has adduced ap-
parently clear evidence of centuri-
ation in many parts of England ;
but we have already seen that only
the land actually assigned to the
soldiers of a colonia was centuriated.
There would seem to be no reason
to suppose that they disturbed the
generally existing open fields still
cultivated by the conquered popu-
lation.

CHAPTER XI.

RESULT OF THE EVIDENCE.

Chap. XI.

The tribal
system in
Wales and
Germany.

Co-aration
of the
on

:rly
iield
bybtem.

I. THE METHOD OF THE ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS.

It may perhaps now be possible to sum up the
evidence, without pretending to more certainty in
the conclusion than the condition of the question
warrants.

At the two extreme limits of our subject we have
found, on one side, the tribal system of Wales and
Ireland, and, on the other side, the German tribal
system.

In the earliest stage of these systems they were
seemingly alike, both in the nomadic habits of the
tribes, and the shifting about of the households in a
tribe from one homestead to another. Sir John Davis
describes this shifting as going on in Ireland in his
day, and Ccesar describes it as going on in Germany
1,700 years earlier.

In both cases, such agriculture as was a necessity
even to pastoral tribes was carried on under the
open-field system in its simplest form — the ploughing
up of new ground each season, which then went
back into grass. The Welsh triads speak of it as a

The English Settlements. 413

co-aration of portions of the waste. Tacitus describes Cum. xi
it in the words, ' Arva per annos mutant, et superest
ager.' In neither case, therefore, is there the three-field
system, which implies fixed arable fields ploughed
again and again in rotation.

The three-field system evidently implies the sur- Tho throe-
render of the tribal shifting and the submission to ? n ' p d iL y 8 8tem

fixed settlement. Further, as wherever we can exa- fl ,'

settle-
mine the three-field system we find the mass of the ment ? and

holdings to have been fixed bundles, called yard-lands crops, "

or huben — bundles retaining the same contents from ^bab?™

generation to generation — it seems to follow either rJJjJJ

that the tribal division of holdings among heirs, which rule - The

was the mark of free holdings, had ceased, or that or hub

the three-field system was from the first the shell of semie*

a community in serfdom. tenants.

The geographical distribution of the three-field
system — mainly within the old Eoman provinces and
in the Suevic districts along their borders — makes
it almost certain that, in Germany, Roman rule was
the influence which enforced the settlement, and
introduced, with other improvements in agriculture,
such as the vine culture, a fixed rotation of crops.

In Wales the necessity for settlement did not
generally produce the three-field system with holdings
in yard-lands, 1 because, as the Welsh tribesmen,
though they may have had household slaves, as a
rule held no taeogs or prsedial slaves, it produced no
serfdom. But under the German tribal system, even
in the time of Tacitus, the tribesmen in the sftmi-

1 There are undoubtedly manors I but of later and English intro-
and yard-lands in some districts, I duction.

414

Result of the Evidence.

Chat. XI.

The Roman
villa an-
other fac-
tor and
gTev into
the manor.

Roman
and Ger-
man ele-
ments
combined.

Both 'ager
pnblicns '
nid 'tern
regis'
manorial.

Romanised districts, at all events, already had prsedial
slaves.

The manorial system, however, was not simply a
development from the tribal system of the Germans ;
it had evidently a complex origin. A Roman element
also seems to have entered into its composition.

The Roman villa, to begin with, a slave-worked
estate, during the later empire, whether from German
influence or not, became still more like a manor by
the addition of coloni and other mostly barbarian
semi-servile tenants to the slaves.

There may have been once free village communities
on the ' ager publicus,' but, as we have seen, the man-
agement of the public lands under the fiscal officers of
the Emperor also tended during the later Empire to
become more and more manorial in its character, so
much so that the word ' villa ' could apparently some-
times be applied to the fiscal district.

Whichever of the two factors — Roman or Ger-
man — contributed most to the mediaeval manor, the
manorial estate became the predominant form of land
ownership in what had once been Roman provinces.
And the German successors of Roman lords of villas
became in their turn manorial lords of manors ; whilst
the ' coloni,' ' liti,' and 'tributarii' upon them, wherever
they remained upon the same ground, apparently
became, with scarcely a visible change, a community
of serfs.

On the other hand, the fact that the terra regis
also was divided under Saxon and Frankish kings into
manors probably was the natural result of the growing
manorial management of the public lands under the
fiscal officers of the Emperor during the later Empire,

The English Settlements. 415

quickened or completed after the barbarian conquests. Chap. xi.
The fiscal districts seem to have become in fact royal
manors, and the free ' coloni,' ' liti,' and ' servi ' upon
them appear as manorial tenants of different grades
in the earliest grants to the monasteries.

The fact that as early as the time of Tacitus, the
German chieftains and tribesmen were in their own
country lords of serfs, in itself explains the ease with
which they assumed the position of lords of manors
on the conquest of the provinces.

The result of conquest seems thus to have been
chiefly a change of lordship, both as regards the
private villas and the public lands. The conquered
districts seem to have become in a wholesale way
practically terra regis. There is no evidence that the
modes of agriculture on the one hand or the modes
of management on the other hand were materially
changed. The conquering king would probably at
once put followers of his own into the place of the
Eoman fiscal officers. These would become quasi-
lords of the royal manors on the terra regis. Then
by degrees would naturally arise the process whereby
under lavish royal grants manors were handed one
after another into the private ownership of churches
and monasteries and favourites of the king, thus honey-
combing the terra regis with private manors.

This seems to have been what happened in the
Frankish provinces, and in the Alamannic and
Bavarian districts, where the process can be most
clearly traced. And the result seems to have been
the almost universal prevalence of the manorial
system in these districts. Even the towns came to
be regarded as in the demesne of the king. And

416 Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. gradually manorial lordship extended itself over the
free tenants as well as over the various semi-servile
classes who were afterwards confused together in the
general class of serfs.

The community of serfs was fed from above and
from below. Free ' coloni,' by their own voluntary
surrender, and free tribesmen, perhaps upon conquest
or gradually by the force of long usage, sank into
serfs. Slaves, on the other hand, by their lord's
favour, or to meet the needs of agriculture, were
supplied with an outfit of oxen and rose out of
slavery into serfdom.

But what was this serfdom ? It was not simply
the old praadial slavery of the Germans of Tacitus.
Nor was it merely a continuance of the slavery on
the Roman villa,
slavery For finally, in the period of transition from Roman

by Chrfs- to German lordship, a new moral force entered as a
manity" fresh factor in the economic evolution. The silent
humanising influence of Christianity seems to have
been the power which mitigated the rigour of slavery,
and raised the slave on the estates of the Church
into the middle status of serfdom, by insisting upon
the limitation of his labour to the three days' week-
work of the mediaBval serf.

Thus, from the point of view alike of the German
and the Roman ' servi,' mediceval serfdom, except
to the freemen who by their own surrender or by
conquest were degraded into it, was a distinct step
upward in the economic progress of the masses of the
people towards freedom.

Applying these results especially to England, we

The English Settlements. 1L7

have once more to remember that there was settled Chap - xl
agriculture in Belgic Britain before the Roman The pre -
invasion : that the fact vouched for by Pliny, that marl oJSSd
and manure were ploughed into the fields, is proof gjjdllii
that the simplest form of the open-field system — the
Welsh co-aration of the waste, and the German
shifting every year of the ' arva ' — had already given
place to a more settled and organised system, in
which the same land remained under tillage year
after year. Pliny's description of the marling of the
land, however, points rather to the one-field system of
Northern Germany than to the three-field system, as
that under which the corn was grown which Caesar
found ripening on British fields when he first landed
on the southern coast. 1

In the meantime Roman improvements in agri- Roman m-
culture may well have included the introduction into of the
the province of Britain of the three-course rotation
of crops. The open fields round the villa of the
Roman lord, cultivated by his slaves, ' coloni,' ' tribu-
tarii,' and ' liti,' may have been first arranged on the
three-field system ; and, once established, that system
would spread and become general during those cen-
turies of Roman occupation in which so much corn
was produced and exported from the island.

The Roman annonce — founded, perhaps, on the
earlier tribal food-rents — were, in Britain, as we know
from the ' Agricola ' of Tacitus, taken mostly in corn ;

coarse
rotation of
CXOJ ".

1 The ' one-Jield system ' of per-
manent arable must not be confused
with the improvement of the early
Welsh and Irish ' co-aration of the
waste,' by which the land was

E E

cropped perhaps two or three or
four years before it was left to yo
back into yrass. This resembles the
German Feldyrasrvirthschaft and
not the German one-held system.

418 Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. an d the trioutum was probably assessed during the

later empire on that system of jugation which was

found to be so like to the hidation which prevailed

after the Saxon conquest.

Conquest Putting aside as exceptional the probably peaceful

The in- but a ^ best obscure settlements in tribal households,

vadersbe- an( j re pr ar di n or conquest as the rule, the economic

come lords c & u

of hams or evidence seems to supply no solid reason for supposing
that the German conquerors acted in Britain in a
way widely different from that which they followed on
the conquest of Continental Eoman provinces. The
conquered territory here as elsewhere probably be-
came at first terra regis of the English, Saxon, or Jutish
kings. And though there may have been more cases
in England than elsewhere of extermination of the
old inhabitants, the evidence of the English open-field
system seems to show that, taking England as a whole,
the continuity between the Eoman and English system
of land management was not really broken. The
Eoman provincial villa still seems to have remained
the typical form of estate ; and the management of
the public lands, now terra regis, seems to have pre-
served its manorial character. For whenever estates
are granted to the Church or monasteries, or to thanes
of the king, they seem to be handed over as already
existing manors, with their own customs and services
fixed by immemorial usage.

It is most probable that whenever German con-
querors descended upon an already peopled country
where agriculture was carried on as it was in Britain,
their comparatively small numbers, and still further
their own dislike to agricultural pursuits and liking
for lordship, and familiarity with servile tenants in

The English Settlements. U9

the old country, would induce them to place the Chap.xl

conquered people in the position of serfs, as the
Germans of Tacitus seem to have done, making them
do the agriculture by customary methods. If in
any special cases the numbers in the invading hosts
were larger than usual, they would probably include
the semi-servile dependants of the chieftains and
tribesmen. These, placed on the land allotted to their
lords, would be serfs in England as they had been at
home.

At this point, as we have seen, the internal evi- Thoyar.!-

± _ land

dence of the open-field system, at the earliest date at this,
which it arises, comes to our aid, showing that as a
general rule it was the shell, not of household com-
munities of tribesmen doing their own ploughing like
the Welsh tribesmen by co-aration, but of serfs doing
the ploughing under an over-lordship.

Here the English evidence points in precisely the
same direction as the Continental. For, as so often
repeated, the prevalence, as far back as the earliest
records, of yard-lands and huben, handed down so
generally, and evidently by long immemorial custom,
as indivisible bundles from one generation to another,
implies the absence of division among heirs, and is
accordingly a mark of the servile nature of the holding.

Further, whenever a place was called, as so
many places were, by the name of a single person, it
seems obvious that at the moment when its name
was acquired it was under a land ownership, which,
as regards the dependent population upon it, was
a lordship. We have seen that in the laws of King and also
Ethelbert the ' hams ' and ' tuns ' of England are ,
spoken of as in a single ownership, whilst the men-

E E 2

420 Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. tion of the three grades of ' lasts ' shows that there
were semi-servile tenants upon them. And in the
vast number of instances in which local names con-
sist of a personal name with a suffix, the evidence
of the local name itself is strong for the manorial
The earlier character of the estate. When that suffix is tun, or
and^tuns' ham, or villa, with the personal name prefixed, the
manore. evidence is doubly strong. Even when connected
with an impersonal prefix, these suffixes in them-
selves distinctly point, as we have seen, to the
manorial character of the estate, with at least direct,
if not absolutely conclusive, force.

Whatever doubt remains is not as to the generally
manorial character of the hams and tuns of the
earliest Saxon records, or as to the serfdom of their
tenants ; as to this, it is submitted that the evidence
is clear and conclusive. Whatever doubt remains is
as to which of two possible courses leading to this
result was taken by the Saxon conquerors of Britain.
As regards the methods of their conquest, there
happens to exist no satisfactory contemporary evi-
dence. They may either have conquered and adopted
the Roman villas, whether in private or imperial hands,
with the slaves and ' coloni ' or ' tributarii ' upon them,
calling them ' hams,' or they may have destroyed
the Roman villas and their tenants, and have estab-
lished in their place fresh 'hams' of their own, which
in mediaeval Latin records, whether in private or
royal possession, were also afterwards called 'villas.'
In some districts they may have followed the one
course, in other districts the other course. Either
of the two might as well as the other have produced
manors and manorial serfdom.

The English Settlements. 121

But when the internal evidence of the Anglo-Saxon Chap, xr
land system is examined, even this doubt as to which Surmaii
of the two methods was generally followed is in part [[JJ^
removed. For it may at least be said with truth Germiin
that the hundred years of historical darkness during prove oon-
which there is a simple absence of direct testimony, aSTaJjin-
is at least bridged over by such planks of indirect £j.
economic evidence as the apparent connexion between miaatio,)
the Eoman ' jugation ' and the Saxon ' hidage,' the
resemblance between the Eoman and Saxon allot-
ment of a certain number of acres along with single
or double yokes of oxen to the holdings, the preva-
lence of the rule of single succession, the apparent
continuance of the Eoman tributum and annonce, and
even some of the sordida munera in the Saxon gafol,
gafol-yrth, averagium, and other manorial services ;
and, lastly, the fact that in Gaul and Upper Germany
the actual continuity between the Eoman villa and
the German heim can be more or less clearly traced.

The force of this economic evidence, it is sub- unless the
mitted, is at least enough to prove either that there were them-
was a sufficient amount of continuity between the fo^sed
Eoman villa and the Saxon manor to preserve the
general type, or that the German invaders who de-
stroyed and re-introduced the manorial type of estate
came from a district in which there had been such
continuity, and where they themselves had lived long
enough to permit the peculiar manorial instincts of
the Eomano-German province to become a kind of
second nature to them.

It is as impossible to conceive that this complex
manorial land system, which we have found to bristle
with historical survivals of usages of the Romano-

422

Result of the Evidence.

Chap. XI.

The large

extent of

folk-lard

evidence

against

extensive

allodial

allotments.

The in-
vaders
either
adopted
the natin
as serfs or
brought
Berfa with
thi mi.

German province, should have been suddenly intro-
duced into England by un-Romanised Northern
piratical tribes of Germans, as it is to conceive of the
sudden creation of a fossil.

The most reasonable hypothesis, in the absence of
direct evidence, appears therefore to be that the
manorial system grew up in Britain as it grew up in
Gaul and Germany, as the compound product of
barbarian and Eoman institutions mixing together
during the periods first of Roman provincial rule, and
secondly of German conquest.

This hypothesis seems at least most fully to
account for the facts. Perhaps, it is not too much to
say that whilst the large tracts of England remaining
folk-land or terra regis, in spite of the lavish grants to
monasteries complained of by Bede, are in themselves
suggestive of the comparatively limited extent of
allodial allotments among the conquering tribesmen,
the existence and multiplication upon the terra regis,
not of free village communities, but of royal manors
of the same type as that of the Frankish villas, with
a serfdom upon them also of the same type, and con-
nected with the same three-field system of husbandry
in both cases, almost amounts to a positive verifica-
tion when the historical survivals clinging to the
system in both cases are taken into account.

Even on the supposition that the Saxons really
exterminated the old population and destroyed every
vestige of the Roman system, it has already become
obvious that it would not at all follow that they
generally introduced free village communities ; for in
that ease the evidence would go far to show that
they most likely brought slaves with them and settled

The English Settlements. 423

them in servile village communities round their own Oh**, xi.
dwellings, as Tacitus saw the Germans of his time
doing in Germany. But, again, it must be remem-
bered that however naturally this might produce the
manor and serfdom, still the survivals of minute pro-
vincial usages hanging about the Saxon land system
would remain unaccounted for, unless the invaders of
the fifth century had already been thoroughly Ro-
manised before their conquest of Britain.

We cannot, indeed, pretend to have discovered English
in the economic evidence a firm bridge for all pur- !Si£7not
poses across the historic gulf of the fifth century, with ''

. J communi-

and to have settled the difficult questions who were ties but
the German invaders of England, whence they came, dom. S °
and what was the exact form of their settlements
in one district or another. But the facts we have
examined seem to have settled the practical econo-
mic question with which we started, viz. whether
the hams and tuns of England, with their open
fields and yard-lands, in the earliest historical times
were inhabited and tilled in the main by free vil-
lage communities, or by communities in villenage.
However many exceptional instances there may have
been of settlements in tribal households, or even free
village communities, it seems to be almost certain
that these ' hams ' and ' tuns ' were, generally speak-
ing, and for the most part from the first, practically
manors with communities in serfdom upon them.

It has become at least clear, speaking broadly, that ^d not d "
the equal ' yard-lands ' of the ' seburs ' were not the theaiiodiai

^ J D . allotment

' alods ' or free lots of ' alodial ' freeholders in a com- of a free
mon ' mark,' but the tenements of serfs paying ' gafol'
and doing 'week-work' for their lords. And this is

424 Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. equally true whether the manors on which they lived
were bocland of Saxon thanes, or folk-land under
the ' villicus ' of a Saxon king.

II. LOCAL EVIDENCE OP CONTINUITY BETWEEN ROMAN
AND ENGLISH VILLAGES.

There yet remains one test to which the hypothesis
of continuity between the British, Eoman, and Eng-
lish village community and open-field system may
be put.
Doubts as It has sometimes been inferred, perhaps too
termfna-" readily, that the English invaders of Eoman Britain
tionof the near ]y exterminated the old inhabitants, destroy-
popuiation ing the towns and villages, and making fresh settle-
Engiishin- ments of their own, upon freshly chosen sites. If this
were so, it would, of course, involve the destruction
of the open fields round the old villages, and the
formation of fresh open fields round the new ones.

The passage in Ammianus Marcellinus has some-
times been quoted, in which he describes the
Alamanni, who had taken possession of Strasburg,
Spires, Worms, Mayence, &c, as encamped outside
these cities, shunning their inside ' as though they had
been graves surrounded by nets.' 1 But this was in
time of war, and no proof of what they might do
when in peaceable possession of the country.

Mr. Freeman also has drawn a graphic picture of
Anderida, with the two Saxon villages of Pevensey and
West Ham outside of its old Roman walls, and no
dwellings within them. But it would so obviously be

1 Aram. Marc. xvi. c. ii.

vaders.

Continuity in English Villages. 425

much easier to build new houses outside the gates of Chap. xi.
a ruined city, or, perhaps, we should say rather
fortified camp, than to clear away the rubbish and
build upon the old site, that such an instance is far
from conclusive. Nor does the fact that in so many
cases the streets of once Eoman cities deviate from
the old Eoman lines prove that the new builders
avoided the ancient sites. It proves only that, in-
stead of removing the heaps of rubbish, they chose
the open spaces behind them as more convenient for
their new buildings, in the process of erecting
which the heaps of rubbish were doubtless gradually
removed.

But, in truth, cases of fortified cities are not to is there

ttti r- i i i • evidence of

the point. What we want to rind out is whether, in continuity
the rural districts, the British villages, with their open ^ua^ 1 ™ 1
fields around them, were generally adopted by the
Romans, and whether, having survived the Roman
occupation, the Saxons adopted them in their turn.

It may be worth while to recur to the district e.g. in the
from which was taken the typical example of the district.
open fields, testing the point by such local evidence
as may there be found.

Among the ancient boundaries of the township
of Hitchin, or rather of that part which included the
now enclosed hamlet of Walsworth, was mentioned
the Icknild way — that old British road which, passing The i e k-
from Wiltshire to Norfolk, here traverses the edge of °jJJ ^ r
the Chiltern hills. It sometimes winds lazily about ancient

roads.

uphill and down, following the line of the chalk
downs. In many places it is merely a broad turf
drift way. Here and there a long straight stretch of
a mile or two suggests a Roman improvement upon

42 G Pus i ih of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. its perhaps once more devious course. Here and
there, too, are fragments of similar broad turf lanes
leading nowhere, having lost the continuity which no
doubt they once possessed. Sometimes crossing it,
sometimes branching off from it, sometimes running
parallel to it, are also frequently found similar wind-
ing broad turf drift ways, or straight roads of appa-
rently British or Eoman origin. It crosses Akeman
Street at Tring, Watling Street at Dunstable, and
Irmine Street at Eoyston. Neither Dunstable nor
Eoyston, however, are examples of continuity, being
comparatively modern towns, neither of them men-
tioned in the Domesday Survey. Hitchin lies about
half-way between the cross-roads.
The dis- The district included in the annexed map, of

iteBeigic 1 which Hitchin is the centre, was a part of Belgic
kings. Britain. According to Caesar this had been under
the rule of the same king as Belgic Gaul, and upon
the evidence of coins and certain passages in Roman
writers, it is pretty well understood to have been,
soon after the invasion of Ceesar, under the rule of
Tasciovanus, 1 whose capital was Verulamium, and
after him of his son Cunobeline, whose capital was
Camulodunum. The sons of the latter (one of them
Caractacus) were prevented from succeeding him by
the advance of the Eoman arms. 2 The intimate
relations of the two capitals at Verulam and at Col-
chester explain the existence of the roads between
them.

The dykes which cross the Icknild way at in-

1 Evans' Ancient British Coins, p. 220 et scq.
* Ibid. p. 284 et seq.

xr.

iVil-

■d
>e-

,&c.

Continuity in English. Villages. 427

tervals, East of Eoyston — the Brent dyke, the Bals- Chap. xi.

ham dyke (parallel to the Via Devana), and the

Devil's dyke, near Newmarket — seem to indicate that
here was the border land between this district and
that of the Iceni (Norfolk and Suffolk).

Sandy (the Eoman Salince), at the north of the Coins of
district in the map, is known, from the evidence of nuJTndT
coins of Cunobeline, to have been an important British HnT be "
centre. A gold coin of Tasciovanus, and other
British coins, have been picked up on the Icknild
way, between Hitchin and Dunstable. A gold coin
of Cunobeline, and many fragments of Eoman pottery,
have been found about half a mile to the east of
Abington, a village a little to the north of the Icknild
way, near Eoyston. 1 Coins of Cunobeline have also
been found at Great Chesterford. A copper coin of
Cunobeline was picked up in a garden in Walsworth,
a hamlet of Hitchin, and British urns of a rude type
have been recently found on the top of Benslow Hill,
the high ground on the east of the town.

The map will show in how many directions the Pre -
district is cut up by Eoman roads, which, as they roads, &c
evidently connect the various parts of the domain
of the before-mentioned British kings, were probably,
with the Icknild way itself, British tracks before they
were adopted by the Eomans.

Almost every commanding bluff of the chalk
downs retains traces of its having been used as a hill
fort, probably in pre-Eoman times, as well as later,
while the numerous tumuli all along the route of the
Icknild way testify, probably, to the numerous battles
fought in its neighbourhood.

1 I am indebted to the Rev. W. G. F. Pigott for this information.

428

Result of the Evidence.

Chap. XI.

Tts Roman
conquest
under
Claudius
and Aulus
Plautius,
about
a.d. 43.

The Saxon
conquest
about a.d.
571.

Probably this district fell under direct Eoman
rule after the campaigns of Aulus Plautius and
Claudius, about a.d. 43. 1 The direction of the ad-
vance was probably across the Thames at Walling-
ford, and along the Icknild way, from which the de-
scent upon Verulam could well be made from Tring
or Dunstable down what were afterwards called
Akeman Street and Watling Street. Under the
tumulus near Litlington, called Limloe, or Limbury
Hill, skeletons were found, and coins of the reign
of Claudius, and of later date. It is possible that the
battle was fought here in a later reign which brought
the further parts of the district under Eoman rule.

The date of the Saxon conquest of this district
may be as definitely determined. It preceded the
conquest of Bath, Cirencester, and Gloucester by a
very few years. It may be pretty clearly placed at
about a.d. 571, when, according to the Saxon Chro-
nicle, ' Cuthwulf fought with the Brit-weals at Bed-
can-ford (Bedford), and took four towns. He took
Lygean-birg (Lenborough) and Aegeles-birg (Ayles-
bury), and Baenesingtun (Bensington) and Egones-
ham (Eynsham).' This was the time when Bedford-
shire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire fell into the
hands of tne West Saxons.

The old boundary of the ecclesiastical division of
the country before the time of the Norman conquest
included this district, with Bedford, in the diocese of
Dorchester. The boundary probably followed the
lines of the old West Saxon kingdom, and shut it off

1 See the paper on 'The Campaign of Aulus Plautius,' in Dr.
Guest's Origines Celticcc, vol. u.

Continuity in English Villages.

12'J

from Essex and the rest of Hertfordshire, which were Quf. XI
included in the diocese of London.

The district, therefore, seems to have remained
nearly 400 years under Eoman rule, and under the
British post-Koman rule another 100 years, till within
twenty-five or thirty years of the arrival of St.
Augustine in England, and the date of the laws of
King Ethelbert, and within little more than 100 years
of the date of the laws of King Ine, which laws pre-
sumably were founded upon customs of this district,
once a part of the West Saxon kingdom.

The question is whether the position of the Roman Do the
remains which have been discovered in this neigh- ^^"suj
bourhood points to a continuity in the sites of the f^° n ? "
present villages between British, Eoman, and Saxon
times. This question may certainly, in many in-
stances, and, perhaps, generally, be answered dis-
tinctly in the affirmative.

Take first the town of Hitchin itself. Its name The town
in the Domesday Survey was ' Hiz,' and there can be or 'Hi '
little doubt that it is a Celtic word, meaning ' streams
The position of the township accords with this name.
The river 'Hiz' rises out of the chalk at Wellhead,
almost immediately turns a mill, and, flowing through
the town, joins the Ivel a few miles lower down in its
course, and so flows ultimately into the Ouse. The
Orton 2 rises at the west extremity of the township, in

' l i.e. 'of the
streams.'

1 Compare supra, p. 161 : the
change of ' Hisse-burn ' or ' Icenan-
burn' into ' Itchin River,' and of
' set Icceburn' into 'Ticceburn,'
and ' Titchbourne.' May not Ick-
uild Way, or ' Icenan-hild-waeg,
mean highway 'by the streams,

and Ricknild Way mean highway
' by the ridge ' ? See map, supra, ch.
v., 3. v. They are sometimes parallel
as an upper and lower road.

2 Formerly 'Alton.' See Sur-
vey of the Manor of Hitchin. IGoO.
Public Record Office.

430

Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. a few hundred yards turns West Mill, and forms the
boundary of the parish till it meets the Hiz at Ickle-
ford, where the two are forded by the Icknild way.
The Purwell, rising from the south east, forms the
boundary between the parishes of Hitchin and Much
Wymondley, and then, after turning Purwell Mill,
and dividing Hitchin from Walsworth Hamlet, also
joins the Hiz before it reaches Ickleford. Thus two
of these three pure chalk streams embrace the town-
ship, and one passes through it giving its Celtic name
Hiz to the town. 1

It is not likely that either the Eomans or the
Saxon invaders gave it this Celtic name.

As already mentioned, on the top of the hill, to
the east of the town, British sepulchral urns have
been recently found.

A Eoman cemetery, with a large number of
sepulchral urns, dishes, and bottles, and coins of
Severus, Carausius, Constantine, and Alectus, was
turned up a few years ago on the top of the hill on
the opposite side of the town, in a part of the open
fields called ' The Fox-holes ' 2 — a plot of useless
ground being often used for burials by the Eomans.

Another Eoman cemetery, with very similar
pottery and coins, has been found on Bury Mead,
near the line where the arable part ceases and the

Its Celtic
name.

British and
Eoman re-
mains.

1 In Hampshire the old Celtic
or Belgic names of rivers in many
cases gave their names to places
upon them. The ' Itchin ' to Itch in
Stoke, Itchin Abhas, Itchbourne,
&c. The 'Meona' (Ccd. Dip.
clviii.) to Meon Stoke, East and
West Meon, &c The ' Candtfer '

(Cod. Dip. mcccix.) to three ' Cau-
dovers.' So also the Tarrant gives
its names to several places.

2 Now part of the garden of
Mr. W. T. Lucas, in whose posses-
sion many of them now remain.
Three skeletons, one of them of
great size, were found near the urns.

Continuity in English Villages. 431

Lammas meadow lands begin. Bury field itself {i.e. Chap, xl
the arable) has been deeply drained, but yielded no
coins or urns.

Occasional coins and urns have been found in
the town itself.

This, so far as it goes, is good evidence that
Hitchin was a British and a Roman before it was a
Saxon town.

In the sub-hamlet of Charlton, near Wellhead, the
source of the Hiz, small coins of the lower Empire
have been found. As already mentioned, a coin of
Cunobeline was found in the village of Walsworth.
In even the hamlets, therefore, there is some evidence
of continuity. At Ickleford, where the Icknild way
crosses the Hiz, Eoman coins have been found.

The next parish to the east, divided from Hitchin Much w y -
by the Purwell stream, is Much Wymondley.

The evidence of continuity, as regards this parish,
is remarkably clear. The accompanying map l sup-
plies an interesting example of open fields, with their
strips and balks and scattered ownership still remain-
ing in 1803. These open arable fields were originally
divided off from the village by a stretch of Lammas
land.

Between this Lammas land and the church in the R<™™

, -, holding

village he the remains of the little Eoman holding, of perhaps of
which an enlarged plan is given. It consists now of veteran.
several fields, forming a rough square, with its sides
to the four points of the compass, and contains, fill-
ing in the corners of the square, about 25 Eoman

1 For permission to reproduce
this map I am indebted to the
present lord of the manor, C. W.

Wilshere, Esq., of the Fryth, Wel-
wyn.

432

Result of the Evidence.

Chap. xi. jugera — or the eighth of a centuria of 200 jugera —
the extent of land often allotted, as we have seen,
to a retired veteran with a single pair of oxen. The
proof that it was a Roman holding is as follows : —
In the corner next to the church are two square
fields still distinctly surrounded by a moat, nearly
parallel to which, on the east side, was found a line
of black earth full of broken Roman pottery and tiles.
Near the church, at the south-west corner of the
property, is a double tumulus, which, being close to
the church field, may have been an ancient ' toot hill,'
or a terminal mound. In the extreme opposite corner
of the holding was found a Roman cemetery, contain-
ing the urns, dishes, and bottles of a score or two of
burials. Drawings of those of the vessels not broken
in the digging, engraved from a photograph, are
appended to the map, by the kind permission of the
owner. 1 Over the hedge, at this corner, begins the
Lammas land. 2

How many other holdings were included in the
Roman village we do not know, but that the village
was in the same position in relation to the open fields
that it was in 1803 is obvious.

Asimeii. Ashwell also evidently stands on its old site round

the head of a remarkably strong chalk spring, the
clear stream from which flows through the village
as the river Rhee, a branch of the Cam. Early
Roman coins and sepulchral urns have been found
in the hamlet called ' Ashwell End,' and a Roman road,
called ' Ashwell Street,' passes by the town parallel

1 Mr. William Ransom, of Fair-
field, near Hitchin.

' As regards Roman cemeteries,

as placed in the extreme corner of
a holding, see Lachmann, pp. 271-2;
De Sepulchris Dolabell. p. 303.

P L A N
of l)i«- Parish of

MICH WYMONDLEY

Reduced from a map made

in (1i.v--.ti IB03 in ill.

possession of (' .VV.WllsliriV Ks<|.

4C.OPAMAM LT°. UITH ■», LONDON, SE

Continuity in English Villages. 433

to the Icknild way. Near to the town is a camp, Chap. xi.
with a clearly defined vallum, called Harborough
Banks, where coins of the later Empire have been
found. A map of the parish, made before the enclo-
sure, and preserved in the place, shows that it pre-
sented a remarkably good example of the open-field
system.

An instance of continuity as remarkable as that Roman
of Much Wymondley occurs at Litlington, 1 the next cemetery,
village to Ash well, on the Ashwell Street. The church
and manor house in this case lie near together on the
west side of the village, and in the adjoining field and
gardens the walls and pavements, of a Roman villa
were found many years ago. At a little distance
from it, nearer to the Ashwell Street, a Roman ustri-
num and cemetery were found, surrounded by four
walls, and yielding coins of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius,
Quintillus, Carausius, Constantine the Great, Mag-
nentius, &c. A map of this village is appended.

When the Roman villa was discovered, the open
fields around the village were still unenclosed, and
the position of Ashwell Street was pushed farther
from the village at the time of the enclosure.

The tumulus called ' Limloe,' or 'Limbury Hill,'
lies at the side of the road leading from the Icknild
way across the Ashwell Street to the village, and im-
mediately under it skeletons with coins of Claudius,
Vespasian, and Faustina were found, as already men-
tioned.

A few miles further east than Royston are two ickieton
villages, Ickieton on the Icknild way, and Great terford!"*

1 Archaologia, vol. xxvi. p. 376.

F P

434

Result of the Evidence.

Chap. XI.

Hadstock.

Other in-
stances of
continuity
in the
sites of
villages.

Ancient
mounds
and earth
works.

Chesterford a little to the south of it. That both these
places are on Eoman sites the foundations and coins
which have been found attest. 1 There are remains of a
camp at Chesterford, and coins of Cunobeline as well
as numerous Eoman coins have been dug up there. 2

At Hadstock, a village near, in a field called
' Sunken Church Field,' Eoman foundations and coins
have been found. 3

Proceeding further east the list of similar cases
might be greatly increased. But keeping within the
small district, in the following other cases the finding
of Eoman coins in the villages seems to be fair proof
of continuity in their sites, viz.: — Sandy, Campton,
Baldock, Willian, Cumberlow Green, Weston, Ste-
venage, Hexton, and Higham Gobion.

Two remarkable instances of ancient mounds or
fortifications close to churches occur at Meppershall
and Pirton, of both of which plans are given. The
Pirton mound is called in the village the ' toot hill.'
These mounds in the neighbourhood of churches may
be much older than the Saxon conquest. Open air
courts were by no means confined to one race. 4 Eoman
remains have been found in the neighbourhood of
both these places, but how near to the actual village
sites I am unable to say. 6

Leaving out these two and many more doubtful
cases, and without pretending to be exhaustive, there
have been mentioned nearly a score in which Eoman

1 Journal of British Archceo-
Jogiced Association, iv. 356, and v.
64.

3 Archceologia, xxxii. p. 350.

8 Id., p. 352.

* See Mr. Gomme's interesting

work on Primitive Folkmotes, c. ii.
6 A remarkably fine glass funeral
urn was found about half a mile
below the Meppershall Hills in 1882
by the tenant of the neighbouring
farm.

triet.

Continuity in English Villages. 435

remains or coins have already been found on the Chap. xi.
present sites of villages in this small district.

So far the local evidence supports the view thai strong eri'
the West Saxons, who probably conquered it about eontinniiy
a.d. 570, succeeded to a long-settled agriculture ; and I",!! 118dlB *
further it seems likely that, assuming the lordship
vacated by the owners of the villas, and adopting the
village sites, they continued the cultivation of the open
fields around them by means of the old rural popula-
tion on that same three-field system, which had pro-
bably been matured and improved during Eoman
rule, and by which the population of the district had
been supported during the three generations between
the departure of the Eoman governors and the West
Saxon conquest.

But it may perhaps be urged thai these districts,
conquered so late as a.d. 570, may have been excep-
tionally treated. If this were so, it must be borne in
mind that the whole of central England — i.e. the coun-
ties described in the second volume of the Hundred
Eolls as to which the evidence for the existence of the
open-field system was so strong — was included in the
exception. Indeed, if the line of the Icknild way be
extended along Akeman Street to Cirencester, Bath,
and Gloucester, the line of the Saxon conquests which
were later than a.d. 560 would be pretty clearly
marked. The laws of Ine, pointing backwards as
they do from their actual date, reach back within
two or three generations of the date of the Saxon
conquest of this part of Old Wessex.

It would be impossible here to pursue the ques-
tion in detail in other parts of England. Perhaps it
will be sufficient to call attention to the many cases

F P 2

436

Result of the Evidence.

The

Hitchin

district

hardly
excep-
tional.

Chap. xi. mentioned in Mr. C. Koach Smith's valuable ' Collec-
tanea,' 1 in which Eoman remains have been found in
close proximity to the churches of modern villages,
and to his remark that a long list of such instances
might easily be made. 2

The number of such cases which occur in Kent is
very remarkable, and Kent was certainly not a late
conquest.

I will only add a passing allusion to the remark-
able case at Woodchester, in Gloucestershire, where
the church, present mansion, and Eoman villa are
close together, 3 and mention that in two of the ham-
lets on the manor of Tidenham — Stroat and Sedbury
(or Cingestun) — Eoman remains bear testimony to a
Eoman occupation before the West Saxon conquest. 4

The fact seems to be that the archseological evi-
dence, gradually accumulating as time goes on, points
more and more clearly to the fact that our modern
villages are very often on their old Eoman and some-
times probably pre-Eoman sites — that however much
the English invaders avoided the walled towns of
Eoman Britain, they certainly had no such antipathy
to the occupation of its villas and rural villages.

1 Vol. i. pp. 17, 66, 190; vol.
iii. p. 33; vol. iv. p. 155 ; vol. v.
p. 187 ; vol. vi. p. 222.

2 Collectanea, v. p. 187. The
recently discovered Roman villa
on the property of Earl Cowper,
at Wingham, near Canterbury,
is a striking instance. See Mr.
Dowker's pamphlet thereon. See

also Archceologia, xxix. p. 217, &c,
where Mr. C. Roach Smith men-
tions several other instances.

3 Account of the Roman An-
tiquities at Woodchester, by S.
Lysons. Lond.: mdccxcvii.

4 See Mr. Ormerod's Archa-w
lo(ji<:al Memoirs.

Conclusion. 437

Chap. XI.
III. CONCLUSION.

The economic result of the inquiry pursued in this Economic
essay may now be summed up in few words. result "

Its object was not to inquire into the origin of
village and tribal communities as the possible be-
ginning of all things, but simply to put English
Economic History on true lines at its historical be-
ginning, viz. : the English Conquest.

Throughout the whole period from pre-Eoman to Two rural
modern times we have found in Britain two parallel through-
systems of rural economy side by side, but keeping °"n~e be
separate and working themselves out on quite differ- pommnnitj

x ° - 1 in the east,

ent lines, in spite of Eoman, English, and Norman and the
invasions — that of the village community in the inanity in
eastern, that of the tribal community in the western
districts of the island.

Both systems as far back as the evidence extends Com-
were marked by the two notes of community and ana '
equality, and each was connected with a form of the Sth. lt " "
open or common field system of husbandry peculiar
to itself. These two different forms of the common Ead had
field system also kept themselves distinct throughout, opened j
and are still distinct in their modern remains or s y sicm -
survivals.

Neither the village nor the tribal community Both P r °-

• i i • t» • • j • Roman.

seems to have been introduced into Britain during a
historical period reaching back for 2,000 years at
least.

On the one hand, the village community of the The Eng.

,. -r, . 1 • l lish villa-'

eastern districts of Britain was connected with a community
settled agriculture which, apparently dating earlier I^J"* on

438 Conclusion.

Chap. xi. than the Roman invasion and improved during the

th^fieid Roman occupation, was carried on, at length, under

system. t i iat three-field form of the open-field system which

became the shell of the English village community.

The equality in its yard-lands and the single succession

which preserved this equality we have found to be

apparently marks not of an original freedom, not of

an original allodial allotment on the German ' mark

system,' but of a settled serfdom under a lordship

— a semi-servile tenancy implying a mere usufruct,

theoretically only for life, or at will, and carrying

with it no inherent rights of inheritance. But this

serfdom, as we have seen reason to believe, was, to

a step out the masses of the people, not a degradation, but a

toward^ 7 step upward out of a once more general slavery. Cer-

don/oTthe tainly during the 1,200 years over which the direct

new order English evidence extends the tendency has been to-
ot things. <-> J

wards more and more of freedom. In other words,

as time went on during these 1,200 years, the serfdom

of the old order of things has been gradually breaking

up under those influences, whatever they may have

been, which have produced the new order of things.

The tribal On the other hand, the tribal community of the

and?ts Dlty western districts of Great Britain and of Ireland, though

•run-rig* parallel in time with the village community of the

system. - 1 . .

eastern districts, was connected with an earlier stage
of economic development, in which the rural economy
was pastoral rather than agricultural. This tribal
community was bound together, perhaps, in a unique
degree, by the strong ties of blood relationship be-
tween free tribesmen. The equality which followed
the possession of the tribal blood involved an equal
division among the sons of tribesmen, and was main-

Conclusion. 439

tained in spite of the inequality of families by frequent (lIAP - xr -
redistributions of the tribal lands, and shiftings of the
tribesmen from one homestead to another according
to tribal rules. We have traced the curious method
of clustering the homesteads in arithmetical groups
mentioned in the ancient Welsh laws, and still prac-
tised in Ireland in the seventeenth century, and we
have found many survivals of it in the present names
and divisions of Irish townlands. We have found
the simple form of open-field husbandry used under
the tribal system, and suited to its precarious and
shifting agriculture, still surviving in the ' rundale '
or ' run-rig ' system, by which, to this day, is effected opposed to

. the new

in Ireland and western Scotland that infinite sub- order of
division of holdings which marks the tenacious ad-
herence to tribal instincts on the part of a people still
fighting an unequal battle against the new order of
things.

The new order has, no doubt, arisen in one sense Th , e new

. order op-

out of both branches of the old, but neither the posed to
manorial village community of the eastern district, an d
nor the tribal community of the west, can be said to e( i uallt y-
be its parent. Its fundamental principle seems to be
opposed to the community and equality of the old order
in both its forms. The freedom of the individual and
growth of individual enterprise and property which
mark the new order imply a rebellion against the
bonds of the communism and forced equality, alike
of the manorial and of the tribal system. It has
triumphed by breaking up both the communism of
serfdom and the communism of the free tribe.

Nor, it would seem, can the new order be regarded J w °j e g r 8 u
with any greater truth as a development from the range of

440

Conclusion.

Chap. XI

economic

develop-

ent.

The com-
munism of
the old
order a
thing of
the past,

germs of any German tribal or ' mark ' system im-
ported in the keels of the English invaders. It would
seem to belong to an altogether wider range of eco-
nomic development than that of one or two races. Its
complex roots went deeply back into that older world
into which the Teutonic invaders introduced new
elements and new life, no doubt, but, it would seem,
without destroying the continuity of the main stream
of its economic development, or even of the outward
forms of its rural economy.

This, from an economic point of view, is the
important conclusion to which the facts examined in
this essay seem to point. These facts will be ex-
amined afresh by other and abler students, and the
last word will not soon have been said upon some of
them. They are drawn from so wide a field, and
from lines reaching back so far, that their interest
and bearing upon the matter in hand will not soon
be exhausted or settled. But if the conclusion here
suggested should in the main be confirmed, what
English Economic History loses in simplicity it will
gain in breadth. It will cease to be provincial. It
will become more closely identified with the general
economic evolution of the human race in the past.
And this in its turn will give a wider interest to the
vast responsibilities of the English-speaking nations
in connexion with the progress of the new order of
things and the solution of the great economic pro-
blems of the future.

What are the forces which have produced, and
are producing, the evolution of the new order, and to
what ultimate goal the ' weary Titan ' is bearing
the ' too full orb of her fate,' are questions of the

Conclusion. Ill

highest rank of economic and political importance, Chap. xr.

but questions upon which not much direct light has
been thrown, perhaps, in this essay. Still the know-
ledge what the community and equality of the Eng-
lish village and of the Keltic tribe really were under
the old order may at least dispel any lingering wish
or hope that they may ever return. Communistic
systems such as these we have examined, which have
lasted for 2,000 years, and for the last 1,000 years
at least have been gradually wearing themselves out,
are hardly likely — either of them — to be the economic
goal of the future.

The reader of this essay may perhaps contemplate
the few remaining balks and linces of our English like tJie

n in i i • • i f ! open-field

common fields, and the surviving examples ol the system.
■ run-rig' system in Ireland and Scotland, with greater
interest than before, but it will be as historical sur-
vivals, not of types likely to be reproduced in the
future, but of economic stages for ever past.

APPENDIX.

THE MANOR OF HITCHIN (PORTMAN AND FOREIGN) IN THE
COUNTY OF HERTFORD.

'At the Court [Leet and] of the View of Frank pledge is is.
' of our Sovereign Lord the King with the General Court 0ct - 2l
' Baron of William Wilshere, Esquire, Lord Firmar of the
' said manor of his Majesty, holden in and for the manor
' aforesaid, on Thursday, the twenty-first day of October,
' One thousand eight hundred and nineteen, Before Joseph

* Eade, Gentleman, Steward of the said manor, and by ad-
journment on Monday, the first day of November ncxl
' following, before the said Joseph Eade, the Steward afore-
' said.

' The jurors for our Lord the King and the Homage of
' this Court having diligently enquired into the boundaries,

* extent, rights, jurisdictions, and customs of the said manor,
' and the rights, powers, and duties of the lord and tenants
' thereof, and having also enquired what lands in the town-
« ship of Hitchin and in the hamlet of Walsworth respectively

* within this manor are subject to common of pasture for the
' commonable cattle of the occupiers of messuages, cottages,
' and land within the said township and hamlet respectively,
' and for what descriptions and number of cattle, and at what
' times of the year and in what manner such rights of com-
' mon are by the custom of this manor to be exercised, and
' what payments are by such custom due in respect thereof,
' they do upon their oaths find and present as follows : —

'That the manor comprises the township of Hitchin and
•the hamlet of Walsworth, in the parish of Hitchin, the

444

Appendix.

Bounda-
ries.

Jurisdic-
tion.

* lesser manors of the Rectory of Hitchin, of Moremead,

* otherwise Charlton, and of the Priory of the Biggin, being

* comprehended within the boundaries of the said manor of

* Hitchin, which also extends into the hamlets of Langley

* and Preston in the said parish of Hitchin, and into the
' parishes of Ickleford, Ippollitts, Kimpton, Kingswalden,

* and Offley.

' That the following are the boundaries of the township
' of Hitchin with the hamlet of Walsworth (that is to say),
1 beginning at Orton Head, proceeding from thence to Bur-

* ford Pay, and from thence to a water mill called Hide Mill,
i and from thence to Wilberry Hills ; from thence to a place
1 called Bossendell, from thence to a water mill called Pur-
' well Mill, and from thence to a brook or river called Ippol-
' litts' Brook, and from thence to Maydencroft Lane, and
' from thence to a place called Wellhead, and from thence to
c a place called Stubborn Bush, and from thence to a place

* called Offley Cross, and from thence to Five Borough

* Hills, and from thence back to Orton Head, where the
' boundaries commenced. And that all the land in the
' parish of Hitchin lying on the north side of the river which

* runneth from Purwell Mill to Hide Mill is within the ham-

* let of Walsworth, and that the following lands on the south
4 side of the same river are also within the same hamlet of

* Walsworth (vizt.), Walsworth Common, containing about

* fourteen acres ; the land of Sir Francis Sykes called the
' Leys, on the south side of Walsworth Common, containing

* about four acres ; the land of William Lucas and Joseph

* Lucas, called the Hills, containing about two acres ; and
' nine acres or thereabouts, part of the land of Sir Francis
' Sykes, called the Shadwells, the residue of the land called
' the Shadwells on the north side of the river.

' That the lord of the manor of Hitchin hath Court Leet

* View of Frank pledge and Court Baron, and that the juris-
' diction of the Court Leet and View of Frank pledge ex-

* tendeth over the whole of the township of Hitchin and the
' hamlet of Walsworth. That a Court Leet and Court of the
4 View of Frank pledge and Great Court Baron are accus-
r tomed to be hold en for the said manor within one month

Appendix. \ L5

after the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel in every
year, and may also be holden within one month alter the
Feast of Easter. And that general or special Courts Baron
and customary Courts are holden at the pleasure of the lord
or of his steward.

* That in the Court Leet yearly holden after the Feast of
St. Michael the Archangel the jurors for our Lord the King
are accustomed to elect and present to the lord two con-
stables and six headboroughs (vizt.), two headboroughs for
Bancroft Ward, two for Bridge Ward, and two for Tilehouse
Street Ward (each such constable and headborough having
right and being bound to execute the office through the
whole leet), and likewise two ale conners, two leather
searchers and sealers, and a bellman who is also the watch-
man and cryer of the town. And they present that Ban-
croft Ward contains Bancroft Street, including the Swan
Inn, Silver Street, Portmill Lane, and the churchyard,
church and vicarage house, and the alley leading out of
Bancroft now called Quaker's Alley. That Bridge Ward
contains the east and north sides of the market place, and
part of the south side thereof to the house of John Whitney,
formerly called the Maidenhead Inn, Mary's Street, other-
wise Angel Street, now called Sun Street, Bull Street, now
called Bridge Street, to the river ; Bull Corner, Back
Street, otherwise Dead Street, from the south to the north
extremities thereof; Biggin Lane with the Biggin and
Hollow Lane. And that Tilehouse Street Ward contains
Tilehouse Street, Bucklersbury to the Swan Inn, and the
west side and the remainder of the south side of the market
place.

PRESENTMENTS OF THE HOMAGE.

< And the Homage of this Court do also further present
6 that freeholders holding of the said manor do pay to the
' lord by way of relief upon the death of the preceding tenant Reliefs.
' one year's quitrent, but that nothing is due to the lord
' upon the alienation of freehold.

' That the fines upon admissions of copyholders, whether Fines on
' by descent or purchase, are, and beyond the memory of *j^

Appendix.

PoVer of

leasing.

Forfeiture.

Heriots.

Woods and

trees.

man have been, certain (to wit), half a year's quitrent ; and
that where any number of tenants are admitted jointly in
one copy, no greater fine than one half year's quitrent is
due for the admission of all the joint tenants.

' The Homage also present that by the custom of the
manor the customary tenants may without licence let their
copyholds for three years and no longer, but that they may
by licence of the lord let the same for any term not ex-
ceeding twenty-one years ; and that the lord is upon every
such licence entitled to a fine of one year's quitrent of the
premises to be demised.

' The Homage present that the freehold tenants of the
said manor forfeit their estates to the lord thereof for
treason and for murders and other felonies ; and that the
copyholders forfeit their estates for the like crimes, and for
committing or suffering their copyholds to be wasted, for
wilfully refusing to perform their services, and for leasing
their copyholds for more than three years without licence.

' The Homage also present that by the custom of this
manor copyholds are granted by copy or court roll for the
term of forty years, and that a tenant outliving the
said term is entitled to be re-admitted for the like term
upon payment of the customary fine of half a year's quit-
rent.

' The Homage present that there are no heriots due or
payable to the lord of this manor for any of the tenements
holden thereof.

' The Homage also present that all woods, underwoods,
and trees growing upon the copyhold lands holden of the
said manor were by King James the First, by his Letters
Patent, under the Great Seal of England, bearing date the
fourteenth day of March, in the 6th year of his reign (in
consideration of two hundred and sixty-six pounds sixteen
shillings paid to his Majesty's use), granted to Thomas
Goddesden and Thomas Chapman, two copyholders of the
said manor, and their heirs and assigns, in trust to the use
of themselves and the rest of the copyholders of the said
manor; and that the copyhold tenants of the said manor
are by virtue of such grant entitled to cut all timber and

Appendix. 1 17

' other trees growing on their copyholds, and to dis]

* thereof at their will.

'The Homage also present that no toll has ever been Ghrain told

* paid or ought to be paid for any kind of corn or grain Bold '" "/'\

c • ii 1 » „,; , . J o market

in the market of Hitckin. toll free.

' They also present that from the time whereof the Common
'memory of man is not to the contrary, the lord of this ^''j" 1 ^
4 manor has been used to find and provide a common pound
' and stocks for the use of the tenants of this manor.

' And the Homage do further present that by the custom
' of this manor the lord may, with the consent of the Homage,
' grant by copy of court roll any part of the waste thereof, to
' be holden in fee according to the custom of the manor, at

* a reasonable rent and by the customary services, or may

* with such consent grant or demise the same for any lesser
' estate or interest.

COMMONS WITHIN THE TOWNSHIP OF HITCHIN.

* And the Homage of this Court do further present that
' the commonable land within the manor and township of
' Hitchin consists of —

' Divers parcels of ground called the Green Commons, 1st. Green
' the soil whereof remains in the lord of the said manor (that p ommons
is to say) : township

' Butts Close, containing eight acres or thereabouts ; of Hltchlu -
' Orton Mead, containing forty acres or thereabouts, exclu-

* sively of the Haydons, and extending from the Old Road

* from Hitchin to Pirton by Orton Head Spring west unto

* the way which passes through Orton Mill Yard east ; and
' that the Haydons on the east of the last mentioned way,

* containing four acres or thereabouts, are parts of the same
' common, and include a parcel of ground containing one
' rood and thirteen perches or thereabouts adjoining the
i river, which have been fenced from the rest of the common

* by Samuel Allen ; and the ground called the Plats lying

* between Bury Mead and Cock Mead, containing two acres

* or thereabouts, including the slip of ground between the
' river and the way leading to the mill of the said John

^48

Appendix.

2nd.

Lammas
Meadows.

3rd. Com-
mon
fields.

Right of

cummun.

Common
lull.

Ransom, lately called Burnt Mill, and now called Grove
Mill, which hath been fenced off and planted by John
Ransom.

' And of the lands of divers persons called the Lamrnas
Meadows in Cock Mead, which contain eighteen acres or
thereabouts, and in Bury Mead, which contains forty-five
acres or thereabouts, including a parcel of land of the Rev.
Woollaston Pym, clerk, called Old Hale.

' And of the open and unenclosed land within the several
common fields, called Purwell Field, Welshman's Croft, Bur-
ford Field, Spital Field, Moremead Field, and Bury Field.

' That the occupier of every ancient messuage or cottage
within the township of Hitchin hath a right of common for
such cattle and at such times as are hereinafter specified
upon the Green Commons and the Lammas Meadows, but
no person hath any right of common within this township
as appurtenant to or in resj)ect of any messuage or cottage
built since the expiration of the 13th year of the reign of
Queen Elizabeth, unless the same shall have been erected
on the site of an ancient messuage then standing.

* That any person having right of common in respect of
the messuage or cottage in his actual occupation may turn
on the Green Commons and the Lammas Meadows two
cows and one bullock, or cow calf under the age of two
years.

* That the rectors impropriate of the rectory of the parish
of Hitchin or their lessees of the said rectory are bound to
find a bull for the cows of the said township, and to go with
the herd thereof, and that no other bull or bull calf may be
turned on the commons.

* That Butts Close is the sole cow common from the 6th
day of April, being Old Lady-day inclusive, to the 12th day
of May also inclusive, and after that time is used lor col-
lecting in the morning the herd going out to the other
commons.

' That Orton Mead, including the Haydons, is an open
common upon and from the thirteenth day of May, called
Old May-day, till the fourteenth day of February, called
Old Candlemas Dav.

Appendix. 449

'That the Plats are an open common upon and from
' Whitsunday till the 6th day of April.

' That Cock Mead and Bury Mead became commonable
' on the thirteenth day of August, called Old Lammas Day,
4 and continue open till the 6th day of April.

4 That the common fields called Bury Field and Welsh -
4 man's Croft are commonable for cows only from the time
' when the corn is cut and carried therefrom until the twelfth
' day of November, called All Saints', and that the close of
4 Thomas Wilshire, gentleman, called Bury Field Close, is part
4 of the common field called Bury Field, and the closes of
4 John Crouch Priest, called Ickleford Closes, are part of
4 Welshman's Croft, and are respectively commonable at the
4 same times with the other parts of such respective common
* fields.

4 That every occupier of an ancient messuage or cottage
1 hath right of common upon the Green Commons, except
4 Butts Close, for one gelding from and after the thirteenth
4 day of August until the fourteenth day of February.

4 That no person entitled to common for his cattle may
4 turn or suffer the same to remain on any of the commons
4 between the hours of six in the evening and six in the
4 morning.

4 That it is the duty of the Homage at every Great Court
4 Baron holden next after the Feast of St. Michael to appoint
4 a herdsman for this township, and that every commoner
4 turning his cows upon the commons is bound to pay a
4 reasonable sum, to be from time to time assessed by the
4 Homage, for the expenses of scouring the ditches, repairing
4 the fences and hedges, and doing other necessary works for
4 the preservation of the commons and for the wages of the
4 herdsman. And the Homage of this Court assess and present
4 such payments at one shilling for every head of cattle
4 turned on the commons, payable by each commoner on the
4 first day in every year on which he shall turn his cattle
4 upon the commons, to be paid to the foreman of the Homage
4 of the preceding Court Baron, and applied in and towards
4 such expenses. And that the further sum of threepence be
4 paid on Monday weekly for every head of cattle which any

G G

450

Appendix.

commoner shall turn or keep on the commons for the wages
of the herdsman.

* That the cattle to be depastured on the commons ought
to be delivered or sent by the owners to Butts Close between
the hours of six and eight of the morning from the sixth
day of April to the eleventh day of October, both inclusive ;
and after the eleventh of October between the hours of
seven and nine of the morning. And that it is the duty of
the herdsman to attend there during such hours, and to
receive into his care the cattle brought to him, and to
conduct them to the proper commons, and to attend and
watch them there during the day, and to return them to
the respective owners at six o'clock in the evening or as
near thereto as may be ; but no cow which is not brought
to the herdsman within the hours before appointed for
collecting the herd is considered as part of the herd or tc
be under the herdsman's care ; and that no horned cattle
ought to be received into the herd without sufficient knobs
on their horns.

The com-
mon fields.

The three
seasons.

SHEEP COMMONS.

1 That every occupier of unenclosed land in any of the
common fields of the said township hath common of pasture
for his sheep levant and couchant thereon over the residue
of the unenclosed land in the same common field, in every
year from the time when the corn is cut and carried until
the same be again sown with corn, and during the whole of
the fallow season, save that no sheep may be depastured on
the land in Bury Field and Welshman's Croft between the
harvest and the twelfth day of November, the herbage
thereof from the harvest to the twelfth day of November
being reserved for the cows.

' That the common fields within the township of Ilitchin
have immemorially been and ought to be kept and culti-
vated in three successive seasons of tilthgrain, etchgrain,
and fallow.

' That the last fallow season of Purwell Field and Welsh-
man's Croft was from the harvest of 1816 until the wheat
Bowing in the autumn of 1817 ; and that the fallow season

Appendix. 451

* of those fields commenced again at the close of the last
4 harvest. That the last fallow season of Burford Field and
1 Spital Field was from the harvest of the year 1817 until the
' wheat sowing in the autumn of the year 1818. And the

* last fallow season of Moremead Field and Bury Field was

* from the harvest of 1818 until the wheat sowing of 1819.

* That no person hath any right of common for sheep on

* any of the Green Commons or Lammas ground within this

* township except on Old Hale and on the closes of John
4 Crouch Priest, called Ickleford Closes, which are comnmn-

* able for sheep at the same time with the field called Welsh-

* man's Croft.

'The Homage find and present that every owner and Right of
' every occupier of land in any of the common fields of this e r c ! 08Uro

. giving up

* township may at his will and pleasure enclose and fence right of

* any of his land lying in the common fields of this township comm °°-
' (other than and except land in Bury Field and Welshman's

* Croft), and may, so long as the same shall remain so enclosed
4 and fenced, hold such land, whether the same belong to one
4 or to more than one proprietor, exempt from any right or
4 power of any other owner or occupier of land in the said
4 township to common or depasture his sheep on the land so
4 enclosed and fenced (no right of common on other land
; being claimed in respect of the land so enclosed and fenced).

* The Homage also find and present that the commonable
4 lands in the hamlet of Walsworth within this manor con-
4 sist of —

4 A parcel of meadow ground called Walsworth Common, Walsworth
4 containing fourteen acres or thereabouts, the soil whereof Common
4 remains in the lord of the manor.

4 And of certain parcels of meadow called Lammas
' Meadow (that is to say), the Leys, part of the estate of Sir
4 Francis Sykes adjoining to Walsworth Common, and con-
4 taining four acres or thereabouts ; Ickleford Mead, contain-
ing two acres or thereabouts; Ralph's Pightle, adjoining
4 to Highover Moor, containing one acre or thereabouts,
4 Woolgroves, containing three acres or thereabouts, lying

* near to the mill of John Ransom, heretofore called Burnt

* Mill, and now called Grrove Mill.

e g 2

452 Appendix.

1 A close called the Hills, containing two acres or
thereabouts, on the west side of the road from Hitchin to
Baldock, and a parcel of land called the Shadwells on the
east side of the same road, and divided by the river, con-
taining twelve acres or thereabouts.

4 And they find and present that four several parcels of
land hereinafter described have been by John Ransom en-
closed and fenced out from the said Lammas ground called
Woolgroves, and are now by him held in severalty.

' And that the same are and always have been parts of
the commonable land of the said hamlet (to wit) : A piece
of land containing twenty-one perches or thereabouts on
the south-west side of the present course of the river, and
between the same and the old course ; a piece of land
containing twelve perches or thereabouts, now by the altera-
tion of the course of the river surrounded by water ; a piece
of land on the north-east side of Woolgroves, containing
one rood and twenty-two perches or thereabouts ; and a
piece of land at the south-east corner of Woolgroves, con-
taining one rood or thereabouts.

' And the Homage find and present that the occupier of
every ancient messuage or cottage within the hamlet of
Walsworth hath a right to turn and depasture on the com-
monable land thereof, in respect of arid as appurtenant to
his messuage or cottage, two cows and a bullock or yearling
cow calf upon and from the thirteenth day of May, called
Old May-day, until the sixth day of April, called Old Lady-
day, and one horse upon and from the said thirteenth day
of May until the thirteenth day of August, called Old
Lammas- day, and hath a right to turn the like number of
cattle upon the Lammas ground in Walsworth upon and
from Old Lammas-day until Old Lady-day. That no person
hath a right to common or turn any sheep upon the said
common called Walsworth Commons, and that no sheep
may be turned on the Lammas ground of Walsworth be-
tween Old Lammas-day and the last day of November.

' The Homage also present that it is the duty of the
Homage of this Court at every Great Court Baron yearly
holden next after the Feast of St. Michael, upon the appli-

Appendix. 453

* cation and request of any of the persons entitled to common
' the cattle upon the commons within the hamlet of Wals-
' worth, to appoint a herdsman for the said hamlet, and to
' fix and assess a reasonable sum to be paid to him for his
' wages, and also a reasonable sum to be paid by the com-
' moners for draining and fencing the commons.

* This Court was then adjourned to Monday, the first day
J of November next.

4 Signed Tnos. Jeeves (Foreman).

Samuel Smith.
John Marshall.
Willm. Dunnage.
Wm. Bloom.
Robt. Newton.
Willm. Hall.
Wm. Marten.
Thos. Waller.
Geo. Beaver,
w. sworder.
John Moore.

INDEX AND GLOSSARY.

ACR

A CRE, the 'selio,' or strip in the open

**• field (40 x 4 rods), 3, 106, 385. A
day's work in ploughing, 124. Rea-
son of its shape, 124. Welsh acre,
see ' Erw '

Agcr, agellus, agellulus, territory of a
manor, 167

Ager publicus, tenants on, 272-288.
Tendencies towards manorial methods
of management, 300, 308

Agri decumates, occupied by Alamannic
tribes, 282-288. Position of tenants
on, 311

Agri occupatorii, with irregular bound-
aries, 277, and sometimes scattered
ownership, 278

Agrimensores (Roman), methods of cen-
turiation, 250, 276, 279

Aillt, or altud. See ' Taeog.' Compare
Aldiones of Lombardic Laws and
Saxon 'althud ' = foreigner, 281

Alamanni, German tribes, offshoots of,
Hermunduri, Thuringi, &c, 282.
Some deported into Britain, 285.
Conquered by Julian, 286

Alfred the Great, his founding the New
Minster at Winchester, 160. Services
of serfs on his manor of Hysseburne,
162. His sketch of growth of a new
ham, 169. His Boethius quoted, 168

Amobr, fee on marriage of females under
Welsh laws, 195

Andecena, day work of serf under
Bavarian laws same shape as English
acre, 325, 386, 391

Angaria and parangarue, carrying or
post-horse services (sec Roman 'sor-
dida munera'), 297, and so any forced
service, 298. Manorial services, 324-
327

Anwander, German 'headland,' 381

Archenfeld, in Wales, survey of, in
Domesday Book, 182, 20G-7

GOV

Averagium manorial carrying servico
from avera or affri, beasts of burden,
298, ».;at Bleadon, 57

~DALK, the unploughed turf bel

two acre strips in the open fields,
4; in 'Piers the Plowman,' 19; in
Cambridge terrier, 20 ; in Welsh
laws, 119; a Welsh word, 382

Ballibetogh, cluster of 16 taths or
homesteads, 215-224

Bally, Irish townland, 221, 223

Battle Abbey Becords (a.d. 1284-7). 49

Bcde, complaint of lavish grants of
manors to monasteries, 168

Bees, Welsh Law of, 207

Bene-work or Boon-work. See Precarise

Black Death, 20 ; influence on villen-
age, 3 1

Boc-land, land of inheritance perma-
nently made over by charter or deed,
168, 171

Boldon Book (a.d. 1183), evidence of,
68-72

Book of St. Chad, Welsh charters in
margins of. 209

Booths, making of, by villani, for fairs
of St. Cuthbert. 71

Bordarii, or cottagers (from 'bord,' a
cottage), 76; in Domesday Survey,
95 ; normal holding about 5 acres,
97 ; mentioned in Liber Niger of
Peterborough, 97

Boundaries, method of describing, in
Hitchin Manor, 9 ; in S;ixon charters,
107,111. Manorof King Edwy(Tid-
enham), 149 ; in Lirsch charters,
331. Roman method, 9. See also, 37 6

Bovate (Bovata tcrnc), the half yard-
land contributing one ox to the team
of eight, 61. 2 bovates is Boldon
Book = virgate, 68

456

Index and Glossary.

BRE

Brchon Laws, 226, 231, 232
Breyr, free Welsh tribesman, 192
Britain, Belgic districts of, pre-Roman
settled agriculture in, 245. Exports
of corn during Roman rule, 247, 286.
The marling of the land described by
Pliny, 250. Analogous to ' one-field
system' of North Germany, 372
Bucenobantes, deported into Britain, 287
Butts, strips in open fields abutting
others, 6

ri.ESAR, description of British and

Belgic agriculture, 246. Ditto of

chiefs and tribesmen in Gaul, 305.

Description of Gerimin tribal system,

336-338

Cambridge, terrier of open fields of, in
fourteenth or fifteenth century, 19, 20

Carpenter, village official having his
holding free, 70

Caruca (see Carucate), plough team of
eight oxen, yoked four to a yoke, 62,
74, 123 ; caruca adjutrices, or smaller
teams of villeins, 48, 74, 85 ; variations
in team, 64, 74 ; of Domesday Survey,
85

Carucate, unit of assessment = land of a
caruca (see Caruca), connexion with
hide, 40. Used in Domesday Survey,
85

Ccntenarii, Roman and Frankish
officials, 300-303

Centuria, division of land by Roman
Agrimensores of 200 or 240 jugera,
276. Divided into eight normal sin-
gle holdings of 25 or 30, or double
holdings of 50 or 60 jugera, 276

Ctnturiation. See Agrimensores

C(orl= husbandman ; a wide term em-
bracing, like ' geneat,' the lower class
of freemen and serfs above the slaves,
110, 144

Chamavi, pagus chamaviorum, 285

Co-aration, or co-cperative ploughing
by contributors to team of eight oxen,
117. Described in Welsh Laws as
'Cyvar,' 118-124; in Ireland, 226;
in Palestine, 314; in Roman pro-
vinces, 278

Coloni, position of, on the later Roman
villa, 266. Right of lord to compel
son to continue his parent's holding
and services, 267. Often barbarians,
209. Like uritfmctuarii, 800, ». Pos-
sibly with single succession, 308-310

DRE

Commendation, surrender, putting a
freeman under the pairocinium or
lordship of another, instances of, 305.
Salvian's description of, 307. Effect
of, 307-310. Practice continues un-
der Alamannic and Bavarian laws,
allowing surrenders to the Church,
316-336

Continuity of English village sites, 424-
436

Cornage, cornagium, tribute on horned
cattle, 71

Co-tillage. See Co-aration

Cotsetla, or cottier, in ' Rectitudines,
= bordarius in Domesday Survey,
130; his services, &c, 130-131

Cottier tenants, holders in villenage of
a few scattered strips in open fields,
24, 29, 34, 69

Cyvar. See Co-aration

i T)AER' and ' Saer' tenancy in Ire*
-^ land, 231

Davies, Sir John, his surveys in Ireland
and description of the Irish tribal
system, 214-231

Dawnbwyd, food rent of Welsh taeogs,
198

Decuria, of slaves on Roman villa, 264

Dimetian Code of South Wales. See
'Wales, Ancient Laws of

Domesday Survey (a.d. 1086). Manors
everywhere, 82. Lord's demesne and
land in villenage, 84. Assessment by
hides and carucates, 84 ; in Kent by
solins, 85 ; liberi homines and toch-
manni in Danish district, 86-89.
Tenants in villenage, villani, bordarii
or cottarii, and servi, 89. The villani
holders of virgates or yard-lands, 91 ;
examples from surveys of Middlesex,
Herts, and Liber Elionsis, 92-94.
Bordarii hold about five acres each,
more or less, 95-97. Survey of Villa
of Westminster, 97-101 ; area of
arablo land in England, and how
much of it held in the yard-lands of
villani, 101-104. Survey of portions
of Wales, 182-184, 211

Doles, or Dsels, i.e. pieces or strips,
hence ' gedal-land,' 110; and run-
dale (or run-rig) system of taking
strips in rotation or scattered about,
228 (see also Doles of Meadow-land,
25)

Drengage, hunting service (Boldon
Book), 71

Index and Glossary.

157

ERE

ham

J^BEDIW, Welsh death payment or

heriot, 195
Edward the Confessor, his dying vision

of the open fields round Westminster,

100
Einzelhofe, German single farms in

Westphalia, 371
Enclosure Acts, 4,000 between 1760—

1844, 13
English settlements, methods of, 412-

423
Ergastulum, prison for slaves on Roman

villa, 264
Erw, Welsh acre, the actual strips

in open fields described in Welsh

Laws, 119
Etch, crop sown on stubble, 377
Ethelbcrt, Laws of, hams and tuns in

private ownership and mention of

laets, 173-174

TpABER, or village blacksmith, holds

his virgate free of services, 70
Fleta (temp. Ed. I.), description of

manor in, 45
Forera (Saxon foryrthe), or headland,

20, 108
Frankpledge, View of, 10
Franks, their inroads, 283 ; deported

into Belgic Gaul, 284
Frisians, 285. Tribute in hides, 306, n.
Furlong (shot, or quarentena), division

of open fields ' a furrow long,' divided

into strips or acres, 4 ; in Saxon

open fields, 108 ; German, Gewann,

380

C1AFOL (from German Gaben, Abga-
ben, food gifts under German
tribal system), tribute, 144, 145 ; in
money and in kind, of villein tenants.
Perhaps survival of Roman tributum
based upon tribal food rents {see
•Roman tributum,' and 'jugatio,'
' gwestva ') ; of villani, on English
manors, 78 ; of gcbur, on Saxon manors,
132, 140-142, 155, 162. Marked a
semi-servile condition, 146, 326

Gafol-land, 137. See Geneat-land

Gafol-gilder, payer of gafol or tribute,
145

Gafol-yrth, the ploughing of generally
three acre strips and sowing by the
gebur, from his own barn, and reap-
ing and carrying of crop to lord's

barn by way of rent; in ' Rcctitudines,'
132-140; on Hysseburno Manor of
King Alfred, 162; in South Gorm.iny
inseven th century, 326 etseq. PossiMy
survival of the agrarium or tenth of
produce on Roman provincial tithe
lands, 399-403

Gavael, the tribal homestead and hold-
ing in N. Wales, 200-202

Gavelkind, Irish gabal-cined, distin-
guished by equal division among
heirs, 220, 352

Gebur, villanus proper, or owner of a
yard-land normally of thirty acres
with outfit of two oxen and seed, ir.
' Rectitudines,' 131-133. Hisservices
described, 131-133, and 137-143;
his gafol and week-work in respect
of yard-land, 142; his outfit or
' setene,' 133, 143; in laws of Ine,
147. Services and gafol on Tidenham
Manor of King Edwy, 154. In High
German ' Gebur and Gipur ' = vicinus,
394, and compare 278

Gedal-land, land divided into strips
(Laws of Ine), 110. See Doles

Geneat, a wide term covering all tenants
in villenage, 129, 137, 154. Servile
condition of, liable to have life taken
by lord, 146

Geneat-land, land in villenage as
opposed to ' thane's inland,' or land in
demesne, 116. Sometimes called
' gesettes-land ' and ' gafol-land,
128, 150; 'gyrds of gafol-land,' 150

Geset-land, land set or let out to
husbandmen, 128. See ' Geneav-
land'

Gored Acres, 6trips in open fields
pointed at one end, 6, 20 ; in Saxon
open fields, 108

Gwely, the Welsh family couch (lectus),
also a name for a family holding,
195; in Record of Carnarvon, 194

Gwentian Code, of South Wales. See
' Wales, Ancient Laws of

Gwestva, food rent of Welsh tribesmen,
and tunc pound in lien of it, 195;
early evidence of, in Ine's laws, 209-
213

Gyrd (a rod-virga)

Gyrdland. See Yardland. See 169-
172

TJAM (hem, heim, haim), in Saxon,

like 'tun,' generally = villa or

manor, 126, 254. A private estate

458

Index and Glossary.

nEA

■with a village community in serfdom
upon it, 127. Geographical distribu-
tion of suffix, 255. See Villa

Headland, strip at head of strips in a
furlong on which the plough was
turned, 4. Latin 'forera,' Welsh
' penlir' Scotch ' headrig,' German
' antvander,' 5, 380. In Saxon open
fields, 108

Hide, normal holding of a free family
(hence Latin casatum and the familia
of Bede), but in later records corre-
sponding with the full plough team
of eight oxen, and so = four yard-
lands. Used as the unit of assess-
ment for early times, 38. Perhaps
from Roman times. Compare Roman
tributum, 290-294. Connexion with
carucate and yard-land, 36. Normal
hide, 120 a., 37. Double hide of,
240 a., 37, 39, 51, 54. Possible origin
of word, 398. The hide, the hof, and
the centuria compared, 395

Hitchin (Herts), its ' open fields,' 1-7-
Map of township and of an estate
therein, opposite title-page. Map of
Purwell field, 6. Its village com-
munity described in Manor Rolls of
1819, 8, and appendix. Boundaries,
9. Officers, 10. Common fields, 11.
Its Celtic name Hiz, 429. Roman
remains, 430. Continuity of villages
in Hitchin district from Celtic and
Roman and Saxon times, 424-436

Hiwisc, Saxon for family holding, 162,
395

Honey, Welsh rents in. See Gwestva,
207, 211-213

Hordwell, boundaries of, in Saxon
Charter, 107

Hundred Bolls of Edward I., a.d. 1279,
evidence of, as to the prevalence of
the Manor, the open-field system and
serfdom in five Midland Counties, 32,
et seq.

Husband-lands in Kelso and New-
minster Records = virgitte or yard-
land, 61

H'/darii, holders of hides, 52

bvme, .Manor of Stoko by, on the
river Itchin near Winchester, held by
King Alfred, 160. Serfdom and
services of ceorls on, 162

JNE, LAWS OF (a.d. 688), eridence
oi open-field system, 109. Acre

LEX

strips, 110. Yardlands, 142. Hides
and half hides, 147. Geneats, geburs,
gafol, week- work, 147. Welsh food
rents, 212-213

Ing, suffix to local names ; whether
denotes clan settlements and where,
found, 354-367

Inquisitio Elicnsis mentions liberi
homines and sochmanni, 87. Men-
tions villani as holding virgates, &c.
94. Mentions both bordarii and
cottarii, 96

Isle of Man, early division of land into
ballys and quarters, 222

JUGATIO. See Roman tributum
Jugerum, size and form of, 387

Jugum. (See Roman tributum.) Roman
unit of assessment, 289-295. De
scription of, in Syrian Code, 291.
Analogy to virgate and hide, and
sulung, 292

Jiingsten-Recht, right of youngest to
succeed to holding, 352-354. See
also under Welsh laws, 193, 197

J£ELSO, ABBEY OF, ' Botulus re-
dituum,' 1 stuht or outfit to tonants
of, 61

T AMMAS LAND, meadows owned
in strips, but commonable after
Lammas Day, in Hitchin Manor, 1 1 ;
:n laws of Ine, 110

Lcen-land, lands granted as a benefice
for life to a thane, 168

Leeti, conquered barbarians deported and
settled on public lands during later
Roman rule, chiefly in Belgic Gaul
and Britain, 280-289

Leges Alamannorum (a.d. 622), sur-
renders to Church allowed under,317 ;
services of servi and coloni of the
Church under, 323

Leges Baiuwariorum (7th century) sur-
renders under, 317. Services of coloni
and servi of the Church under, 325

Leges Rijmariorum, 304

Lex Salica, use of ' villa' in a manorial
sense, 259-262, 303

Lex Visigothorum (a.d. 650 about) in
division of land between Romans and
Visigoths, fifty aripounes allotted per
singula uratra, 276 n.

Index and Glossary.

459

LIB

(il E

Liber Niger of Peterborough Abbey
(a.d. 1125), nearest evidence to the
Domesday Survey, 72 et seq.

Libere tenentes, holders of portions of
demesne-land, i.e. land not in villi in-
age, 33. Villeins holding yard-lands
in villenage may be libere tenentes of
other land besides, 34. Increasing in
later times, 54. Absent from Domes-
day survey generally, 86 ; Archdeacon
Hale's theory of their presence dis-
proved, 86-87 n.

Liberi homines, of Domesday Survey in
Danish districts, 86, 102

Lince, or lynch, acre strip in open fields
formed into a terrace by always turn-
ing the sod downwards in ploughing
a hill side, 5 ; sketch of, 5 ; in
Saxon opeD fields, 108; in Yorkshire
'reean' and Germany 'rain' = toeeor
balk, 381

Lingones, 284

Lorsch (Laurcsham), instances of sur-
renders to the Abbey of, 329-333

Jj^AENOL, cluster of tribal home-
steads in Welsh laws, in North
Wales of sixteen homesteads paying
between them the tunc pound, 202.
In South Wales the maenol is a
group of twelve trevs, each paying
tunc pound, 203-4

Manor, or villa, in Saxon, ham or tun.
An estate of a lord or thane with a
village community generally in serf-
dom upon it Hitchin Manor and its
connexion with open-field system,
1-13. Manors before Domesday
Survey — Winslow, 22 ; Hundred
Eolls, 32 ; described in Fleta, 45 ;
Battle Abbey and St. Paul's 49 ;
Gloucester and Worcester, 55 ; Blea-
don, 57 ; Newminstor and Kelso, 60.
In Boldon Book, 68 ; in Liber Niger
of Peterborough, 72 ; summary, 76.
In Domesday Survey manors every-
where, 82 et seq. Westminster, 97.
Saxon ' hams ' and ' tuns ' were
manors, 126 et seq. Manor of Tiden-
ham, of King Edwy, 148. Hysse-
burne, of King Alfred, 160. Creation
of new manors, 166. Terra Regis
composed of manors, 167. 'Hams'
and ' tuns' in King Kthelbert's laws,
manors, i.e., in private ownership
with semi-servile tenants (Icets)

upon the m, 17.'!. There were m
in England before s '. !
arrival, 176 English and Prankish
identical, 253. V ilia of S die Laws
probably a manor on Te
259-203. Lib

to, 263-272 (see Roman ' Villa i.
Villas, or fiscal district of Imperial
officials, tend to become manors, 800
305. Transition from villa-
under Alamannic and Bavarian laws
in South Germany, 316-836. Frank-
ish manors, their tenants and ser-
vices, 333. Manorial tendencies of
German tribal system, 346
Monetary System, Gallic and Welsh
pound of 240 pence of silver di \
into twelve uncise each of a Bcore
pence, 204. The Gallic system in
Eoman times, 234, 292

jffERVII, 284

Neurminster Abbey, cartulary of, 60
No Man's Land, or 'Jack's Land,' odds

and ends of lands in open fields, 6.

In Saxon boundaries, 108

QP EN-FIELD System in England; re-
mains of open fields described, I,
et seq. Divided into acre or half-acre
strips, 2, and furloDgs or shots, I.
Holdings in bundles of scattered
strips, 7; i.e., hides, half-hides, yard-
lands, &c. (to which refer). Wi<!o
prevalence of system in England, 13.
The shell of a village community, 8-
13 — which was in serfdom, 76-80.
The English system, the thrcc-Jield
system, i.e., in three fields, repre-
senting three-course rotation of crops,
11. Traced back in Winslow manor
rolls (Ed III.), 20 et seq. ; in Glou-
cester and Worcester surveys, 66;
Battle Abbey and St. Paul's records,
49 ; Newminster and Kelso records,
60; Boldon Book, 68; Liber Niger
of Peterborough, 72. Summary of
post-Domesday evidence, 76. Pre-
valence in Saxon times, shown by
use of the word aeera, 100, and by
occurrence of gored acres, head -lands,
furl i 'in is. Unces, &c, in tho bound
appended to charters, 108. Evidence
of division of fields into acre strips
inseventh century in . .109-

110. Holdings in hides, half-

460

Index and Glossary.

PAR

and yard-lands, 110-117. Scattering
of strips in a holding the result of
co-operative ploughing, 117-125.
The three-field system would grow
out of the simple form of tribal sys-
tem, by addition of rotation of crops
in three courses, settlement, and serf-
dom, 368-370. Welsh open-field sys-
tem, 181, 213, with division into
' erws,' or acres, 119. Scattering of
strips in a holding arising from co-
aration, 121. The system 4 co-aia-
tion of the waste,' i.e. of grass land
which went back into grass, 192, 227,
244,251. Like that of the Germania
of Tacitus, 369, 412. No fixed 'yard-
lands' or rotation of crops, 251, 413.
Irish and Scotch open-field system
like theWelsh ; modern remains of, in
Rundale or Run-rig system, 214-231.
German open-field systems, 369-411;
different kinds of. Feldgraswirthschaft
resembling that described by Tacitus
and Welsh 'co-aration of waste,' 371.
One-field system of N. Germany, 372-
373. Forest and marsh system, 372.
Three-field system in S. Germany,
373. Comparison of, with English,
and connexion with Eoman province,
375-409. Absent from N. Germany,
and so could not have been introduced
into England by the Saxon invaders,
373, 409, 411. Rotation of crops,
perhaps of Koman introduction, 410,
411. Wide prevalence of forms of
open-field system, 249. Description
of, in Palestine, 314. Mention of,
by Siculus Flaccns, 278. Possibly in
use on Roman tithe lands, 315. Re-
mains of the simple tribal form of,
in modern rundale or run-rig of Ire-
land and Scotland, quite distinct from
the remains of the three-field form
in England, 437-439. Described by
Tusser as uneconomical, 17, and by
Arthur Young, 16

pAR ANGARIA?, extra carrying ser-
vices, see ' angariae '
Paraveredi, extra post-horses (see Roman

' BOrdida munera'), 297, from veredus

a post-horse, 298. Manorial Para-

fretus, 325-334
Patronnium. See ' Commendation '
Pfahl-graben, the Roman limes on the

side of Germany, 282

RAN

Pjlicht-theil, survival of late Roman
law, obliging a fixed proportion of a
man's property to go equally to his
sons. In Bavaria, 313. Compare
Bavarian laws of the seventh century,
317, and Syrian code of fifth century,
312

Piers the Plowman, his ' faire felde,' an
open field divided into half-acre strips
and furlongs, by balks, 18-19

Plough-bote, or Plough-env, the strips
set apart in the co-ploughing, for the
carpenter, or repair of plough, 121.
(See Carpenter)

Plough teanii normal English manorial
common plough team of 8 oxen (see
' Caruca'). Welsh do., also of 8 oxen,
121-2. Scotch also, 62-66. 6, 10,
or 12 oxen in Servia, 387 «. In
India, 388. Single yoke of 2 oxen in
Egypt and Palestine, 314, 387; and
in Sicily, 275, and Spain, 276

Polyptique d'Irminon, Abbot of St.
Germain des Pres, and M. Guerard's
Introduction quoted, 265, 298, 641

Propositus of a manor elected by
tenants, 48. Holds one wista with-
out service? at Alciston, 50. Holds
his two Lovates free (Boldon Book),
70. Word used for Welsh 'maer,' 184

Precaria, a benefice or holding at will
of lord or for life only, 319, 333

Precaria or Boon-works, work at will of
lord, 78. On Saxon Manors, 140,
157. In South Germany, 327.
Sometimes survivals of the Roman
'sordida munera,' 327, 403

Priest, his place in village community
often with his yard-land, 90-111,
115

Probus introduces vine culture on the
Rhine, 288. Deports Burgundians
and Vandals into Britain, 283.
Colonised with Lseti Rhine Valley
and Belgic Gaul, 283

Punder, keeper of the village pound,
69, 70

QUARENTENA. See Furlong. Length
« of furrow 40 poles long

J? A IN, German for 'balk ' as in York-
shire 'reean' = linch, 381
Randir, from rhan, a division, and tir,
land ; a share of land under Welsh

Index and Glossary.

4G1

REC

laws, 200. A cluster of three home-
steads in South Wales, 204 ; and four
randirs in the trev, 204 ; but in
North Wales a subdivision of the
homestead, 200

' Rectitudines Singularum Personarum'
(10th century?), evidence of, 129 et
seq. Dr. Leo's work upon, 164

Redon, Cartulaire de, quoted, 385

Rh&tia, semi-servile barbarian settlers
in, 288. Sordida munera in, 296-
299. Roman custom, in present
Bavaria as to land tenure, 313.
Transition from Roman to Mediaeval
manor in, 316-335

Rig, strip in Irish and Scotch open
fields, 3. Hence Run-rig system

Roman jugatio sive capitatio, 289, 295.
See Roman tributum

Roman ' sordida munera,' 295-299.
Some of them survive in manorial
services, 324, 325, 327, 334, 404

Roman tributum of later Empire, 289-
295. Roman jugatio and Saxon
hidage compared, id., and 397

Roman Veterans settled on ager pub-
licus with single or double yokes of
oxen and seed for about 30 or 60
jugera, 272-276

Roman Villa. See Villa

Run-rig or Eundale, the Irish and
Scotch modern open-field system, 3.
Survival of methods of tribal system
now used in subdivision of holdings
among heirs, 226, 230, 438-440

OT. BEE TIN, Abbey of Sitdiu at,
Grimbald brought by King Alfred
from thence, 160; Chartularium
Sithiensis, and surveys of estates of,
255-6; villa or manor of Sitdiu,
272, 366 ; suffix ' inghem ' to names
of manors, 356

St. Gall, records of Abbey, surrenders
to, 316-324

St. Paul's (Domesday of), a.d. 1222,
51

Salian Franks in Toxandria, 286

Scattered Ownership, in open fields, 7.
Characteristic of ' yard-land ' in
Winslow manor rolls, 23. In Saxon
open fields, 111. In Welsh laws, 118.
Resulted from co-ploughing, 121.
Under runrig system, 226-229

Scutage, \d. per acre or 11. per double
hide of 240 a., or 40s. per scutum, to

STU

which four ordinary hides contri-
buted, 38

8eliones,the acre or half-acre strips into
which the open fiolds wore diviil ad,
separated by turf balks, 2, 3, 19,
119

Scrvi (slaves), in Domesday Survey, 89,
93-95. Saxon Th, ow, 164-166, 175.
Welsh caeth, 199, 238. On Roman
Villa, 263. Arranged in decuricE,
264. Under Alamauuic and Bavarian
laws, 317, 323-326

Services of villain, chiefly of throe
kinds: (1) Gafol, (2) precariae or boon-
work, (3) week-work (refer to these
heads), 41. In Hundred Rolls, 41.
Domesday of St. Paul's, 53. Glou-
cester and Worcester records, 58. In
Kelso records, 67. Boldon Book,
68. Liber Niger of Peterborough, 73.
Summary of post-Domesday evi-
dence, 78. On Saxon manors, in
' Rectitudines,' 130, 137-147. On
Tidenham manor of King Edwy, 154.
On Hysseburne manor of King Alfred,
162. In Saxon ' ueork-raden,' 158.
Of cottiers (or bordarii) in Hundred
Rolls, 44. Gloucester and Worcester,
58, 69. Of Saxon ' cotsetle,' 130.
141. On German and English manors
compared, 399-405

Setcne, outfit of holder of Saxon yard-
land, 133, 139. SeeStuht

Shot, 4 {see furlong), Saxon ' sceot,' a
division, occurs at Passau, 380

Siculus Flaccus mentions open fields
irregular boundaries, and scattered
ownership, on agri occupatorii, 271-
278

Sochmanni, aclassof tenants on manors
chiefly in the Danish districts, 34.
Mentioned in Hundred Rolls in Cam-
bridgeshire, 34 ; in Domesday Survey,
87, 102

Solanda, in Domesday of St. Paul's =
double hide of 240 a., 54

Solin, sullu7ig, of Kent, plough land
from : Suhl,' a plough, 54 ; divided
into 'yokes' ( = yard-lands), 54; sul-
lung = 4gyrdlands and to £ Bnllnng,
outfit of four oxen, a.d. 835, 139. See
also, 395

Stuht, Kelso records, outfit of two
oxen, &c, with husband-land (yard-
iand), 61. Compare 'setene' of the
Saxon gebur with yard-land, 183 and
139, and outfit of Roman veteran,

462

Index and Glossary.

sue

274 ; and see under Bavarian Laws,
326

Succession to holdings, under the tribal
system to all sons of tribesmen
equally, 193, 234, 340 ; to yard-lands
and other holdings in serfdom single
by regrant, 23-24, 133, 176; so pro-
bably in the case of semi-servile
holdings of usufructuarii under
Eoman law, 308

Supercilia, or linches, mentioned by
Agrimensores, 277

Syrian Code of fifth century, 291-294

fJlACITUS, description of German
tribal system in the Germania,
338-343

Taeogs (or aillts), Welsh tenants with-
out Welsh blood or rights of inheri-
tance, not tribesmen — their 'regis-
ter land' (tir cyfrif), 191 ; arranged
in separate clusters or trevs with
equality within each, 197 ; their
'register land,' 197; their, dues to
their lord and other incidents, 198-
199

Tate, or Tath, the Irish homestead,
analogous to Welsh 'tyddyn,' 214,
231. See Tribal system, Irish

Thane, Lord of a ham. Thane's inland =
Lord's demesne land, 128. Thane's law
or duties in ' Kectitudines,' 129; his
services, 134; a soldier and servant
of king, 135; his ' fyrd,' 136; tri-
noda necessitas, 1 34

Thtcows, slaves on Saxon estates, 144 ;
their position, 164. Example from
' iElfric's Dialogue,' 165

Three-Field System. (See Open-field
system.) Form of the open-field
system with three-co.irse rotation of
crops

Tidenham, Manor of King Edwy.
Description of, and of services of
geneats and gcburs upon, A.n. 956,
148-159. Cytweras and hcecweras,
for salmon fishing, 152

Tir-bwrdd = terra mensalia, 198

Tir-gwelyawg , family land of Welsh
free tribesmen, 191

Tir-cyfr/f, register land of taeogs, 101

Tir-kyltydus, Welsh geldable land, 191

Tithes of Church under Saxon laws
taken in actual strips or acres 'as
they were traversed by the plough,'
114; acres of tithes in Domesday

TRI

Survey, 117; Ethelwulfs grant,
114

Tithe lands of Sicily, 275; of modern
Palestine, 314. (See ' Agri decuma-
tes.')

Trev, cluster of Welsh free tribesmen's
homesteads, four in North Wales,
200-202; twelve in South Wales,
204. Taeog trevs, 203

Treviri, 284

Tricassi, 284

Tribal System in Wales, 181-213.
Welsh districts and traces of, in
Domesday Survey, 182, 206-7. Food
rents in D.S., 185. Welsh land sys-
tem described by Giraldus Cambren-
sis, 186-189. In Ancient Laws of
Wales, 189 etseq. The free tribes-
men of Welsh blood, 190. Home-
steads scattered about, but grouped
into clusters for payment of food
rents, 190. Their family land (tir-
gwelyawg), 190-191. Their right to
a tyddyn (homestead), five free ' erws '
and co-tillage of waste, 192. The
tribal household with equality within
it among brothers, first cousins, and
second cousins, 193. The gwely or
family couch, 194. The gwestva, or
food rent, and tunc pound in lieu of
it, 195. Other obligations of tribes-
men, 195. The taeogs or aillts (see
these words) not tribesmen, their
tenure and rules of equality, 197.
Land divisions under Welsh Codes
connected with the gwestva and food
rents, 199-208. Early evidence of
payment of gwestva and of food
rents of taeogs, 208-213. Shifting
of holdings under tribal system, 205.
Cluster of twelve tyddyns in Gwent
and sixteen in N. Wales pay tunc
pound, 202, 203. In Ireland and
Scotland, 214-231. Clusters of six-
teen tates or taths (Welsh tyddyn)
215-217. Sir John Davies's surveys
and description of tribal system,
Tanistry, and Gavelkind, 215-220.
Example of a Sept deported from
Cumberland, 219. Ancient division
of Bally or townland into quarters
and tates, 221,224. Quarters and
names of tates still traceable on Ord-
nance Survey. 223-224. Names of
tates not personal, owing to tribal
distributions and shiftings of tribal
households from tate to tate, 224.

Index a^id Glossary.

4G3

TUN

Irish open-field system — rundale
or run-rig— 226-228. Similar sys-
tem in Scotland, 228-229. Tribal
system in its earlier stages, 231-245.
Tenacity with 'which tribal division
among sons maintained, 234. The
tribal house, 239. Blood money, 242.
Wide prevalence of tribal system,
244. Absent from S.E. or Belgic
districts of England at Roman con-
quest, 245. In Germany, description
of tribal system by Caesar, 336-337.
Description of, by Tacitus, 338-342.
Husbandry like Welsh co-tillage of
the waste for one year only, 343-345.
Manorial tendencies of German sys-
tem : tribesmen have their servi who
are 'like coloni,' 345-346. The
manor in embryo, 346. Tribal
households of German settlers — local
names ending in ' ing' — whether clan
settlements or perhaps as manorial
as others, 346-367

Tun, generally in Saxon = ham or
manor,"(to which refer), 255

Tunc pound, payment in lieu of Welsh
gwestva (to which refer) paid to the
Prince of Wales, 1 96

Tusser, his description of ' Champion '
Or open-field husbandry, 1 7

£yddyn, the Welsh homestead, 192-
193. Compare Irish ' tate' or ' tath'
and Bohemian 'dediny,' 355

TJCHELWYR, free Welsh tribesman,

T/ENEDOTIAN Code of North
Wales. See Wales, Ancient Laws
of

Veredus, post horse, derivation of word,
298

Villa, word interchangeable with
manor, ham, tun, 126, 254. Frankish
heim or villa on Terra. Regis was a
manor and unit of jurisdiction, 257,

262. The Eoman villa, an estate
under a villicus, worked by slaves,

263. Its c^tortea and ergostulum,
263-264. Slaves arranged in decurice,

264. Coloni, often barbarians on a
villa, 266. Likeness to a manor
increasing, 267-268. Burgundians
shared villas with Romans, 269.
Villas transferred to Church. 270.
And continued under German rule to

bevillas, 270. And became gradually
mediaeval manors with rillages npoq

them, 271. Villus surrendered under
Alamannic and Bavarian laws to the-
Church, 317 ct seq.

Village Community or Villata, under a
manor, 8. Hitchin example. See
Hitchin. Its common or open fields:
arable, 11 ; meadow and pasture,
11. Its officials, 10, 70

Villani, holders of land in villenage,
29. Sometimes nativi and adscripti
glebce, 29. Pay heriot or relief;
widows have dower ; make wills
proved in Manor Court, 30. The
yard-land the normal holding of full
villanus with two oxen, 27 (sec Yard-
land). Sometimes they hold the de-
mesne land at farm, 69. Sometimes
farm whole manor, 70. Phni-villani
and semi-villani, 74

Villenage. See Villani. Breaking up in
14th century, 31. Its death-blow
the Black Death and Wat Tyler's
rebellion, 31-32. Incidents of, in
Worcestershire, 56. General in-
cidents, 80. See Servius

Virgarii, holders of Virgates, 50

Virgate. See Yardland.

TJ/'ALES, Ancient Laws of, ascribed
fco Howel Dda (10th century),
189. Contemporary with Saxon
Laws, 190. -See 'Tribal System' of,
181-213. Parts of, mentioned in
Domesday Survey, 18-', 185

Wat Tyler's rebellion, 31

Week-work. The distinctive service of
the serf in villenage, 78 (and see for
details 'Services'), in Rectituc
week-work of gebur three days a
week, 131, 141. In services of Tiden-
ham unlimited, 155. So in those of
Hysseburne, 163. In laws of Ala-
manni (ad. 622) three days on estates
of Church, 323. So in Bavarian laws
(7th century), 326. Unless lord has
found everything, 326. On Lorsch
manors three days, 334. See also,
404

Wele, Welsh holding in Record of Car-
narvon. See 'Gwely,' 193-195

Westminster, description of its manor
and open nelds in Domesday Survey,
97-101

Winslow, Court Rolls of, 20-32

464

Index and Glossary.

WIS

Wista, in Battle Abbey records = £ hide

— the Great Wista = $ double hide,

50
Wizenburg, surrenders to Abbey of,

329. Interchange between villas and

helms in records of, 258

VARD-LAND (ggrd-landea, virgata
terra), normal holding of villanus
with two oxen in the common plough
of eight oxen — a bundle of mostly
thirty scattered strips in the open
fields = German 'hub.' Example of
yard-land in Winslow Manor rolls,
24. Rotation in the strips, 27. Large
area in yard-lands, 28. Held in
villenage by villani, 29. Evidence
of Hundred Rolls, 33. Variation in
acreage and connexion with ' hide,'
36, 55 = husband-land of two bovateo
in the North, 61, 67. Normal hold-

YOU

ing of villanus in Liber Niger of
Peterborough, 73. Normal holding
of villanus of Domesday Survey, 91-
95. Large proportion of arable land
of England held in yard-lands at date
of survey, 101. Saxon ' gyrd-lands,'
111, 117. In 'Rectitudines,' 133.
In 'Laws of Ine,' 142. A bundle of
scattered strips resulting from co-
operative ploughing, 117-125. With
single succession (see 'Succession')
which is the mark of serfdom of the
holders, 176, 370

Yoke of Land (mentioned in Domesday
Survey of Kent) = yard-land. Divi-
sion of the sullung or double hide in
Kent, 54. Compared with Roman
jugum. See Jugum

Yoke, short for two oxen, long for four
oxen abreast in Welsh laws, 120

Youngest son, custom for, to succeed to
holding. See Jiingsten-Recht

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