Part 18

We turn over a few pages. Hardouin of Eschalers has a manor rated at 5-1/2 hides[574]. It contains land for 8 teams. In demesne are 2 hides less 20 acres, and 3 teams; 11 _villani_ with the priest and 5 _bordarii_ have 5 teams. There are 4 cottagers and 6 serfs. It is worth £9; in the Confessor's day it was worth £10. Who held this manor in the past? Nine sokemen held it. Rather a large party of joint lords, we say; but still, families will grow. Howbeit, we must finish the sentence:--'Of these, one, Sired by name, was the man of Earl Harold and held 1 hide and 3 virgates for a manor; another, Alfred, a man of Earl Ælfgar, held 1-1/2 hides for a manor; and the other seven were sokemen of King Edward and held 2 hides and 1 virgate and they supplied the sheriff with 9 pence a year or 2-1/4 _averae_ (carrying services).' No, we have not been reading of the joint holders of a 'manor'; we have been reading of peasant proprietors. Two of them were substantial folk; each of the two held a _manerium_ at which geld was paid; the other seven gelded at one of the king's _maneria_ under the view of his bailiffs. _Maneria_ there have been everywhere; but 'manors' we see in the making. Hardouin has made one under our eyes.

[The small _maneria_.]

We hear the objection that, be it never so humble, a manor is a manor. But is that truism quite true? If all that we want for the constitution of a manor is a proprietor of some land who has a right to exact from some other man, or two or three other men, the whole or some part of the labour that is necessary for the tillage of his soil, we may indeed see manors everywhere and at all times. Even if we introduce a more characteristically medieval element and demand that the tillers shall be neither menial servants nor labourers hired for money, but men who make their living by cultivating for their own behoof small plots which the proprietor allows them to occupy, still we shall have the utmost difficulty if we would go behind manorialism. But suppose for a moment that we have a village the land of which is being held by nine sokemen, each of whom has a hide or half-hide scattered about in the open fields, and each of whom controls the labour of a couple of serfs, shall we not be misleading the public and ourselves if we speak of nine manors or even of nine 'embryo manors'? At any rate it is clear enough that if these estates of the sokemen are 'embryo manors,' then these embryos were deposited in the common fields. In that case the common fields, the hides and yard-lands of the village are not the creatures of manorialism.

[The Danes and freedom.]

We have seen free villages; we have seen a free hundred. We might have found yet freer hundreds had we gone to Suffolk. We have chosen Cambridgeshire because Cambridgeshire can not be called a Danish county, except in a sense in which, notwithstanding the wasted condition of Yorkshire, about one half of the English nation lived in Danish counties. When men divide up England between the three laws, they place Cambridgeshire under the Danelaw; but to that law they subject about one half of the inhabitants of England. There may have been many men of Scandinavian race in Cambridgeshire; but we find hundreds not wapentakes, hides not carucates, while among the names of villages there are few indeed which betray a Scandinavian origin. The Wetherley hundred was not many miles away from the classic fields of Hitchin[575].

[The Danish counties.]

But in truth we must be careful how we use our Dane. Yorkshire was a Danish county in a sense in which Cambridgeshire was not Danish; it was a land of trithings and wapentakes, a land without hides, where many a village testified by its name to a Scandinavian settlement. And yet to all appearance it was in the Confessor's day a land where the manors stood thick[576]. Then we have that wonderful contrast between Yorkshire and Lincolnshire which Ellis summed up in these figures:--

Sochemanni Villani Bordarii Lincolnshire 11,503 7,723 4,024 Yorkshire 447 5,079 1,819

Perhaps this contrast would have been less violent if Yorkshire had not been devastated: but violent it is and must be. It will provoke the remark that the 'faults' (if any faults there be) in a truly economic stratification of mankind are not likely to occur just at the boundaries of the shires, whereas so long as each county has a court from which there is no appeal to any central tribunal, we may expect to find that lines which have their origin in fiscal practice will be sharp lines and will coincide with the metes and bounds of jurisdictional districts.

[The contrast between villeins and sokemen.]

Nor should it escape remark that the names by which a grand distinction is expressed are in their origin very loose terms and etymologically ill-fitted to the purpose that they are serving. In English the _villanus_ is the _túnesman_ or, as we should say, the villager. And yet to all seeming the sokeman is essentially a villager. What is more the land where the sokemen and 'free men' lived was a land of true villages, of big villages, of limitless 'open fields,' whereas the hamleted west was servile. Then again _sokeman_ is a very odd term. If it signified that the man to whom it is applied was always the justiciable of the lord to whom he was commended, we could understand it. Even if this man were always the justiciable of a court that had passed into private hands, we could still understand it. But apparently there are plenty of sokemen whose soke 'is' or 'lies' in those hundred courts that have no lord but the king. The best guess that we can make as to the manner in which they have acquired their name is that in an age which is being persuaded that some 'service' must be done by every one who holds land, suit of court appears as the only service that is done by all these men. They may owe other services; but they all owe suit of court. If so we may see their legal successors in those freeholders of the twelfth century who are 'acquitting' their lords and their villages by doing suit at the national courts[577]. But when a new force comes into play (and the tribute to the pirate was a new and a powerful force) new lines of demarcation must be drawn, new classes of men must be formed and words will be borrowed for the purpose with little care for etymological niceties. One large and widely-spread class may find a name for itself in a district where the ordinary 'townsmen' or villagers are no longer treated as taxpayers responsible to the state, while some practice peculiar to a small part of the country may confer the name of 'sokemen' on those tillers of the soil who are rated to the geld. We are not arguing that this distinction, even when it first emerged, implied nothing that concerned the economic position of the villein and the sokeman. The most dependent peasants would naturally be the people who could not be directly charged with the geld, and the peasants who could not pay the geld would naturally become dependent on those who would pay it for them; still we are not entitled to assume that the fiscal scheme accurately mirrored the economic facts, or that the varying practice of different moots and different collectors may not have stamped as the villeins of one shire those who would have been the sokemen of another[578].

[Free villages.]

Be this as it may, any theory of English history must face the free, the lordless, village and must account for it as for one of the normal phenomena which existed in the year of grace 1066. How common it was we shall never know until the material contained in Domesday Book has been geographically rearranged by counties, hundreds and vills. But whether common or no, it was normal, just as normal as the village which was completely subject to seignorial power. We have before us villages which, taken as wholes, have no lords. What is more, it seems obvious enough that, unless there has been some great catastrophe in the past, some insurrection of the peasants or the like, the village of Orwell--and other villages might be named by the dozen--has never had a lord. Such lordships as exist in it are plainly not the relics of a dominion which has been split up among divers persons by the action of gifts and inheritances. The sokemen of Orwell have worshipped every rising sun. One has commended himself to the ill-fated Harold, another to the ill-fated Waltheof, a third has chosen the Mercian Ælfgar, a fourth has placed himself under the aspiring Archbishop; yet all are free to 'withdraw.' We have here a very free village indeed, for its members enjoy a freedom of which no freeholder of the thirteenth century would even dream, and in a certain sense we have here a free village community. How much communalism is there? Of this most difficult question only a few words will now be said, for our guesses about remote ages we will yet a while reserve.

[Village communities.]

In the first place, we can not doubt that the 'open field system' of agriculture prevails as well in the free villages as in those that are under the control of a lord. The sokeman's hide or virgate is no ring-fenced 'close' but is composed of many scattered strips. Again, we can hardly doubt that the practice of 'co-aration' prevailed. The sokeman had seldom beasts enough to make up a team. It is well known that the whole scheme of land-measurements which runs through Domesday

## Book is based upon the theory that land is ploughed by teams of eight

oxen. It is perhaps possible that smaller teams were sometimes employed; but when we read that a certain man 'always ploughed with three oxen[579],' or 'used to plough with two oxen but now ploughs with half a team[580],' or 'used to plough with a team but now ploughs with two oxen[581],' we are reading, not of small teams, but of the number of oxen that the man in question contributed towards the team of eight that was made up by him and his neighbours. When of a piece of land in Bedfordshire it is said that 'one ox ploughs there,' this means that the land in question supplies but one ox in a team of eight[582]; and here and not in any monstrous birth do we find the explanation of 'terra est dimidio bovi et ibi est semibos[583]':--there is a sixteenth part of a teamland and its tenant along with some other man provides an ox. There may have been light ploughs as well as heavy ploughs, but the heavy plough must have been extremely common, since the term 'plough team' (_caruca_) seems invariably to mean a team of eight.

[The villagers as co-owners.]

Then one notable case meets our eye in which the ownership of land, of arable land, seems to be attributed to a village community. In Goldington, a village in Bedfordshire, Walter now holds a hide; there is land for one team and meadow for half a team. 'The men of the vill held this land in common and could sell it[584].' Apparently the men of the vill were Ælfwin Sac a man of the Bishop of Lincoln who held half a team-land and 'could do what he liked with it,' nine sokemen who held three team-lands between them, three other sokemen who held three team-lands, and Ælfmær a man of Asgil who held three team-lands[585]. How it came about that these men, besides holding land in severalty, held a tract in common, we are left to guess. Nor can we say whether such a case was usual or unusual. Very often in Little Domesday we meet an entry which tells how _x_ free men held _y_ acres and had _z_ teams; for example, how 15 free men held 40 acres and had 2 teams[586]. In general we may well suppose that each of them held his strips in severalty, but we dare not say that such a phrase never points to co-ownership.

[The waste land of the vill.]

Then as to such part of the land as is not arable:--Even in the free village a few enclosed meadows will probably be found; but the pasture ground lies open for 'the cattle of the vill.' At the date of the survey, though several Norman lords have estates in one vill, the common formula used in connexion with each estate is, not 'there is pasture for the cattle of this manor, or of this land,' but 'there is pasture for the cattle of the vill.' Occasionally we read of 'common pasture' in a context which shows that the pasture is common not to several manorial lords but to the villeins of one lord[587]. In the hundred of Coleness in Suffolk there is a pasture which is common to all the men of the hundred[588]. But, as might be expected, we hear little of the mode in which pasture rights were allotted or regulated. Such rights were probably treated as appurtenances of the arable land:--'The canons of Waltham claim as much wood as belongs to one hide[589].' If the rights of user are known, no one cares about the bare ownership of pasture land or wood land:--it is all one whether we say that Earl Edwin is entitled to one third of a certain wood or to every third oak that grows therein[590].

[Co-ownership of mills.]

Sometimes the ownership of a mill is divided into so many shares that we are tempted to think that this mill has been erected at the cost of the vill. In Suffolk a free man holds a little _manerium_ which is composed of 24 acres of land, 1-1/2 acres of meadow and 'a fourth part of the mill in every third year[591]':--he takes his turn with his neighbours in the enjoyment of the revenue of the mill. We may even be led to suspect that the parish churches have sometimes been treated as belonging to the men of the vill who have subscribed to erect or to endow them. In Suffolk a twelfth part of a church belongs to a petty _manerium_ which contains 30 acres and is cultivated by two bordiers with a single team[592]. When a parish church gets its virgate by 'the charity of the neighbours[593],' when nine free men give it twenty acres for the good of their souls[594], we may see in this some trace of communal action.

[The system of virgates in a free village.]

Incidentally we may notice that the system of virgate holdings seems quite compatible with an absence of seignorial control. In the free village, for example in Orwell, we shall often find that one man has twice, thrice or four times as much as another man:--the same is the case in the manorialized villages of Middlesex, where a villein may have as much as a hide or as little as a half-virgate; but all the holdings will bear, at least in theory, some simple relation to each other. Thus in Orwell the virgates are divided into thirds and quarters, and in several instances a man has four thirds of a virgate. In Essex and East Anglia, though we may find many irregular and many very small holdings, tenements of 60, 45, 40, 30, 20, 15 acres are far commoner than they would be were it not that a unit of 120 acres will very easily break into such pieces. Domesday Book takes no notice of family law and its 'vendere potuit' merely excludes the interference of the lord and does not imply that a man is at liberty to disappoint his expectant heirs. Very possibly there has been among the small folk but little giving or selling of land.

[The virgates and inheritance.]

Nor is a law which gives the dead man's land to all his sons as co-heirs a sufficient force to destroy the system of hides and virgates when once it is established by some original allotment. In the higher ranks of society we see large groups of thegns holding land in common, holding as the Normans say 'in parage.' We can hardly doubt that they are co-heirs holding an inheritance that has not been physically partitioned[595]. Sometimes it is said of a single man that he holds in parage[596]. This gives us a valuable hint. Holding in parage implies that one of the 'pares,' one of the parceners,--as a general rule he would be the eldest of them--is answerable to king and lord for the services due from the land, while his fellows are bound only to him; they must help him to discharge duties for which he is primarily responsible[597]. This seems the import of such passages as the following--'Five thegns held two bovates; one of them was the _senior_ (the elder, and we may almost say the lord) of the others[598]'--'Eight thegns held this manor; one of them Alli, a man of King Edward, was the _senior_ of the others[599]'--'Godric and his brothers held three carucates; two of them served the third[600]'--'Chetel and Turver were brothers and after the death of their father they divided the land, but so that Chetel in doing the king's service should have help from Turver his brother[601]'--'Siwate, Alnod, Fenchel and Aschil divided the land of their father equally, and they held in such wise that if there were need for attendance in the king's host and Siwate could go, his brothers were to aid him [with money and provisions]; and on the next occasion another brother was to go and Siwate like the rest was to help him; and so on down the list; but Siwate was the king's man[602].' No doubt similar arrangements were made by co-heirs of lowlier station[603]. The integrity of the tenement is maintained though several men have an interest in it. In relation to the lord and the state one of them represents his fellows. When the shares become very small, some of the claimants might be bought out by the others[604].

[The farm.]

But, to return to the village, we must once more notice that the Canons of St Paul's have let their manor of Willesden to the villeins[605]. This leads us to speculate as to the incidence and collection of those great provender rents of which we read when royal manors are described. In King Edward's day a royal manor is often charged with the whole or some aliquot share of a 'one night's farm,' that is one day's victual for the king's household. Definite amounts of bread, cheese, malt, meat, beer, honey, wool have to be supplied; thus, for example, Cheltenham must furnish three thousand loaves for the king's dogs and King's Barton must do the like[606]. Then too Edward the sheriff receives as the profits of the shrievalty of Wiltshire, 130 pigs, 32 bacons, certain quantities of wheat, malt, oats, and honey, 400 chicken, 1600 eggs, 100 cheeses, 100 lambs, 52 fleeces[607]. Between the king and the men of the manor, no doubt there stands a farmer, either the sheriff or some other person, who is bound to supply the due quantity of provender; but to say that this is so does not solve the problem that is before us. We have still to ask how this due quantity is obtained from the men of the village. It is a quantity which can be expressed by round figures; it is 3000 dog-cakes, or the like. We do not arrive at these pretty results by adding up the rents due from individuals. Again, just in the counties which are the homes of freedom we hear much of sums of money that are paid to a lord by way of free will offering[608]. In Norfolk and Suffolk the villagers will give a yearly _gersuma_, in Lincoln they will pay a yearly _tailla_, and this will be a neat round sum; very often it is 20 shillings, or 40 or 10.

[Round sums raised from the villages.]

In this particular we seem to see an increase of something that may be called communalism, as we go backwards. Of course in the cartularies of a later age we may discover round sums of money which, under the names of 'tallage' or 'aid' are imposed upon the vill as a whole; but in general we may accept the rule that tributes to be paid by the vill as a whole, in money or in kind, are not of recent origin. They are more prominent in the oldest than in other documents. As examples, we may notice the 'cornage' of the Boldon Book--one vill renders 20 shillings, another 30 shillings for cornage[609]; also the contributions of sheep, poultry, bread and cloth which the vills of Peterborough Abbey bring to the monks on the festival of their patron saint--one vill supplying ten rams and twenty ells of cloth, another four rams, five ells of cloth, ten chicken and three hundred loaves[610]. But then we have to notice that a village which has to pay a provender rent or even a _tailla_ or _gersuma_ is not altogether a free village. Its communal action is called out by seignorial pressure.

[The township and police law.]