Taking the normal hides of 120 acres, five of them were made up of four virgates of thirty acres each, which we may take to have been normal virgates. 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 variations will be found to have a meaning hereafter; but in the meantime we may gather from the instances given in the Hundred Rolls for Huntingdonshire, that the normal hide consisted as a rule of four virgates of about thirty acres each. The really important [p038] 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 scattered strips in the open fields.
Whilst, however, marking this relation of the virgate to the hide, regarded as actual holdings in villenage, it is necessary to observe also that throughout the Hundred Rolls the assessed value of the manors is generally stated in hides and virgates; and that, in the estimate thus given of the hidage of a manor as a whole, the demesne land as well as the land in 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 villenage. Distinction must therefore be made between the hide and virgate as actual holdings and the hide and virgate as customary land measures, used for recording 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.
In the Hundred Rolls for Oxfordshire there is frequent reference to the payment of the tax called scutage. The normal amount of this is assumed [p039] to be 40s. for each knight's fee, or scutum. And it 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 116 of a scutum. There are several entries which state that when the scutage is 40s. each virgate pays 2s. 6d., which is 1 16 of 40s.32
And these figures seem to lead one step further, and to connect the normal acreage of the hide of 120A., and of the virgate of 30A., with the scutage of 40s. per knight's fee; for when these normal acreages 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 number 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 [p040] 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 varying contents and relations of the hide and virgate is to be found in the Hundred Rolls, 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 mediæval Latin term for both plough and plough team.
The Hundred Rolls 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.33 It is the land cultivated by a plough team; varying in acreage, therefore, according to the lightness or heaviness of the soil, and according to the strength of the team.
In the Hundred Rolls for Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire the services of the villein tenants [p041] are almost always commuted into money payments. 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.34
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, notwithstanding variations in detail, may be classed under three different heads.
(1) There is the weekly work at ploughing, reaping, 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 precariæ, or 'boon-days,' sometimes 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 specified times, such as Christmas, Easter, Martinmas, and Michaelmas dues; churchshot, an ancient ecclesiastical [p042] 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 indicating possibly in some cases the remains of a slave class.
The chief weekly services were those of ploughing, 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.
Oxfordshire | ||
|---|---|---|
| Of a Villanus holding a Virgate.35 | ||
A. B. holds a virgate, and owes— |
s. |
d. |
82 days' work [about 2 days a week] between Michaelmas and June 24, valued at 12d. = |
3 |
5 |
1112 days' work [rather more than 2 days a week] between June 24 and August 1, valued at 1d. = |
1112 | |
19 days' work [212 days a week] between August 1 and Michaelmas, valued at 112d. = |
2 |
412 |
6 precariæ, 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 'graserthe' |
112 | |
1 day's harrowing of oat[land] |
1 | |
1 horse [load] of wood |
12 | |
Making 1 quarter of malt, and drying it |
1 | |
1 day's work at washing and shearing sheep, valued at |
12 | |
1 day's hoeing |
12 | |
3 days' mowing |
6 | |
1 day's nutting |
12 | |
1 day's work in carrying to the stack |
12 | |
Tallage once a year at the lord's will. | ||
| Of a Cotarius.36 | ||
A. B. holds one croft, and owes from Michaelmas to August 1, each workable week, one day's work of whatever kind the lord requires. | ||
At Martinmas gives 1 cock and 3 hens for churchshot, and ought to drive to certain places, and to carry writs,37 his food 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 receives for the whole week.38 | ||
(10 cottiers do like services). | ||
Of a Villanus holding a Virgate.39
Of a Cotarius.40
Of a Villanus holding 12 Virgate of 15 acres.41
Of a Cotarius.42
Contemporary in date with the Hundred Rolls 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 on taking possession of their manors to have 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 [p046] 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 made43—
Then regarding the tenants,—
Then there follows a statement of the duties of the usual officials of the manor.
First there is the seneschal,44 or steward, whose duty it is to hold the Manor Courts and the View of 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 præpositus for each manor, for under the seneschal there may be several manors.
On his appointment he must make himself acquainted with the condition of the manorial ploughs and plough teams. He must see that the land is properly arranged, whether on the three-field or the two-field system. If it be divided into three parts, 180 acres should go to each carucate, viz. 60 acres to be 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.' [p048]
Besides the manorial ploughs and plough teams he must know also how many tenant or villein ploughs (carucæ 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 manors of the lord. But each single manor should have its own præpositus.
The best husbandman is to be elected by the villata, or body of tenants, as præpositus, 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 conjunctim) 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's45 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 unyoked before their day's work ends, failing which he will be called to account. At sowing-time the bailiff, præpositus, and reaper must go with the ploughs through the whole day's work until they have completed their proper quantity of ploughing for the day, [p049] which is to be measured, and if the ploughmen have made any errors or defaults, and can make no excuses, 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-operation 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.
Passing now to the south-eastern counties, there are in the Record Office valuable MSS. relating to the [p050] estates of Battle Abbey.46 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 contemporaneous with the Hundred Rolls. 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 holdings 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 112 virgates each, and one of 12 a virgate.
At 'Alsiston,' in Sussex, a manor nestling under the chalk downs, the holdings were as follows:—
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—
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?). Supposing 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 wista' of 4 virgates would correspond with the single hide of 120 acres, and the wista would equal the ordinary half-hide of two virgates.
We pass to another cartulary, and of earlier date. In 1222 a visitation was made of the manors belonging to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's, London. The register of this visitation is known as the 'Domesday of St. Paul's.' 47 The manors were scattered in [p052] Herts, Essex, Middlesex, and Surrey—all south-eastern counties.
In the survey of Thorp,48 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 hydarii. 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.
| Holdings. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| xx. a. | = 30 a. | = hide of 120 acres. | ||
| x. a. | ||||
| xxx. a. | = 30 a. | |||
| 12 hide | = 60 a. | |||
| xxx. a. | = 30 a. | = hide of 120 acres. | ||
| xxx. a. | = 30 a. | |||
| xv. a. | = 30 a. | |||
| xv. a. | ||||
| v. a. | = 30 a. | |||
| v. a. | ||||
| vii.12 a. | ||||
| v. a. | ||||
| vii.12 a. | ||||
| And so on. | ||||
The services also were reckoned by the hide, and an abstract of them is here given, from which it will be seen that for some purposes the tenants of the now divided hide still clubbed as it were together to [p053] perform the services required for the hide; whilst for others 'each homestead (domus) of the hide' had its separate duties to perform.
The following were the services on the manor of Thorp:49—
The instance of another manor of St. Paul's (Tillingham), in Essex,50 may be cited as further evidence 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 [p054] 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;51 so that here also there are 4 virgates to the hide. But there was further in this manor a double hide, called a 'solanda,' 52 presumably of 240 acres. A double hide called a solanda is also mentioned in Sutton in Middlesex,53 and another in Drayton;54 and the term solanda is probably the same as the well-known 'sullung' or 'solin' of Kent, meaning a 'plough land.'
It will be remembered that in the Huntingdonshire Hundred Rolls a double hide of 240 acres was noticed.
It may also be mentioned that in Kent55 the division of the sullung, or hide, was called a yoke, instead of 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 villenage to the serfdom under which they were held, [p055] and speaking generally, the description obtained from the Hundred Rolls of the services might with little variation be applied to the different area embraced in this section.
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,56 there are several 'extents' of manors in the west of England of about the year 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 regards the holdings.
The virgates in this district varied in acreage, some containing 48 acres, others 40, 38, 36, and 28 acres respectively.57 In one case it is incidentally mentioned that 4 virgates make a hide.58 We have thus in these extents evidence both of the prevalence 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,59 dated 1240, affords still earlier evidence for the west of England of a similar kind. [p056]
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.60 In the next manor there were 35 holdings in half-virgates, and so in other manors.61 It is sometimes mentioned 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 virgates 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 '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.62 [p057]
To this evidence from the counties of Worcester and Gloucester we may add the evidence of the Custumal of Bleadon, in Somersetshire, also dating from the thirteenth century.
The manor belonged to the Prior of St. Swithin, at Winchester. There were very few libere tenentes. The tenants in villenage were virgarii, 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 described 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.63
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:— [p058]