§ 5. The Growth of Seignorial Power.

Subjection of free men.

We now return to our original theme, the subjection to seignorial power of free land-holders and their land, for we now have at our command the legal machinery, which, when set in motion by economic and social forces, is capable of effecting that subjection. Let us suppose a village full of free land-holders. The king makes over to a church all the rights that he has in that village, reserving only the trinoda necessitas and perhaps some pleas of the crown. The church now has a superiority over the village, over the ceorls; it has a right to receive all that, but for the king’s charter, would have gone to him.

The royal grantee and his land.

In the first place, it has a right to the feorm, the pastus or victus that the king has hitherto exacted. We should be wrong in thinking that in the ninth century (whatever may have been the case in earlier times) this exaction was a small matter. In 883 Æthelred ealdorman of the Mercians with the consent of King Alfred freed the lands of Berkeley minster from such parts of the king’s gafol or feorm as had until then been unredeemed. In return for this he received twelve hides of land and thirty mancuses of gold, and then in consideration of another sixty mancuses of gold he proceeded to grant a lease of these twelve hides for three lives[1101]. The king had been deriving a revenue from this land ‘in clear ale, in beer, in honey, in cattle, in swine and in sheep.’ In Domesday Book a ‘one night’s farm’ is no trifle; it is all that the king gets from large stretches of his demesne[1102]. Having become entitled to this royal right, the church would proceed to make some new settlement with the villagers. Perhaps it would stipulate for a one night’s farm for the monks, that is to say, for a provender-rent capable of supporting the convent for a day. In the middle of the ninth century a day’s farm of the monks of Canterbury comprised forty sesters of ale, sixty loaves, a wether, two cheeses and four fowls, besides other things[1103]. When once a village is charged in favour of a lord with a provender-rent of this kind, the lord’s grip upon the land may easily be tightened. A settlement in terms of bread and beer is not likely to be stable. Some change in circumstances will make it inconvenient to all parties and the stronger bargainer will make the best of the new bargain. The church will be a strong bargainer for it has an inexhaustible treasure-house upon which to draw. We, however, concerned with legal ideas, have merely to notice that the law will give free play to social, economic and religious forces which are likely to work in the lord’s favour.

Provender rents and the manorial economy.

But a village charged with a ‘provender-rent’ may seem far enough removed from the typical manor of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the one we see the villagers cultivating each for his own behoof and supplying the lord at stated seasons with a certain quantity of victuals; in the other the villagers spend a great portion of their time in tilling the lord’s demesne land. In the latter case the lord himself appears as an agriculturist: in the former he is no agriculturist, but merely a receiver of rent. The gulf may seem wide; but it is not impassable. One part, the last part, of a process which surmounts it is visible. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the lords, though they have much land in demesne, still reckon the whole or part of what they are to receive from each manor in terms of ‘farms’; the king gets a one night’s farm from this manor, the convent of Ramsey gets a fortnight’s farm from that manor[1104]. But we can conceive how the change begins. The monks are not going to travel, as a king may have travelled, from village to village feasting at the expense of the folk. They are going to live in their monastery; they want a regular supply of victuals brought to them. They must have an overseer in the village, one who will look to it that the bread and beer are sent off punctually and are good. In the village over which they already have a superiority they acquire a manse of their very own, a mansus indominicatus as their foreign brethren would call it. When once they are thus established in the village, piety and other-worldliness will do much towards increasing their demesne and strengthening their position[1105].

The church and the peasants.

We have argued above that in the first instance it was not by means of the petty gifts of private persons that the churches amassed their wide territories. The starting point is the alienation of a royal superiority. Still there can be little doubt that the small folk were just as careful of their souls as were their rulers. They make gifts to the church. Moreover, the gift is likely to create a dependent tenure. They want to give, and yet they want to keep, for their land is their livelihood. They surrender the land to the church: but then they take it back again as a life-long loan. Thus the church has no great difficulty about getting demesne. But further, it gets dependent tenants and a dependent tenure is established. Like enough on the death of the donor his heirs will be suffered to hold what their ancestor held. Very possibly the church will be glad to make a compromise, for it may be doubtful whether these donationes post obitum[1106], or these gifts with reservation of an usufruct, can be defended against one, who, not having the fear of God before his eyes, will make a determined attack upon them. Gradually the church becomes more and more interested in the husbandry of the village. It receives gifts; it makes loans; it substitutes labour services to be done on its demesne lands for the old feorm of provender. It is rash to draw inferences from the fragmentary and obscure laws of Ine; but one of them certainly suggests that, at least in some district of Wessex, this process was going on rapidly at the end of the seventh century, so rapidly and so oppressively that the king had to step in to protect the smaller folk. The man who has taken a yard of land at a rent is being compelled not only to pay but also to labour. This, says the king, he need not do unless he is provided with a house[1107].

Growth of the manorial system.

Now we are far from saying that the manorial system of rural economy is thus invented. From the time of the Teutonic conquest of England onwards there may have been servile villages, Roman villas with slaves and coloni cultivating the owner’s demesne, which had passed bodily to a new master. We have no evidence that is capable of disproving or of proving this. What we think more probable is that in those tracts where true villages (nucleated villages, as we have before now called them[1108]) were not formed, the conquerors fitted themselves into an agrarian scheme drawn for them by the Britons, and that in the small scattered hamlets which existed in these tracts there was all along a great deal of slavery[1109]. But, at any rate, the church was a cosmopolitan institution. Many a prelate of the ninth and tenth centuries, Bishop Oswald for one, must have known well enough how the foreign monasteries managed their lands, and, whatever controversies may rage round questions of remoter history, there can be no doubt that by this time the rural economy of the church estates in France was in substance that which we know as manorial. Foreign precedents in this as in other matters may have done a great work in England[1110]. All that we are here concerned to show is that there were forces at work which were capable of transmuting a village full of free landholders into a manor full of villeins.

Church-scot and tithe.

Besides the rights transferred to it by the king, the church would have other rights at its command which it could employ for the subjection—we use the word in no bad sense—of the peasantry. By the law of God it might claim first-fruits and tenths. The payment known as ciric-sceat, church-scot, is a very obscure matter[1111]. Certainly in laws of the tenth century it seems to be put before us as a general tax or rate, due from all lands, and not merely from those lands over which a church has the lordship. On the other hand, both in earlier and in later documents it seems to have a much less general character. In some of the earlier it looks like a due, we may even say a rent (ecclesiasticus census) paid to a church out of its own lands, while in the later documents, for example in Domesday Book, it appears sporadically and looks like a heavy burden on some lands, a light burden on others. The evidence suggests that the church had attempted and on the whole had failed, despite the help of kings and laws, to make this impost general. That in some districts it was a serious incumbrance we may be sure. On those estates of the church of Worcester to which we have often referred, every hide was bound to pay upon S^t. Martin’s day one horse-load (summa) of the best corn that grew upon it. He who did not pay upon the appointed day incurred the outrageous penalty of paying twelve-fold, and in addition to this a fine was inflicted[1112]. If the bishop often insisted on the letter of this severe rule, he must have reduced many a free ceorl to beggary. It is by no means certain that the duty of paying tithe has not a somewhat similar history. Though in this case the impost became a general burden incumbent on all lands, it may have been a duty of perfect obligation for the subjects of the churches, while as yet for the mass of other landowners it was but a religious duty or even a counsel of perfection. At any rate, this subtraction of a tenth of the gross produce of the earth is no light thing: it is quite capable of debasing many men from landownership to dependent tenancy.

Jurisdictional rights of the lord.

Another potent instrument for the subjection of the free landowners would be the jurisdictional rights which passed from the king to the churches and the thegns. At first this transfer would appear as a small matter. The president of a court of free men is changed:—that is all. Where the king’s reeve sat, the bishop or the bishop’s reeve now sits; fines which went to the royal hoard now go to the minster; but a moot of free men still administers folk-right to the justiciables of the church. However, in course of time the change will have important effects. In the first place, it helps to bind up suit of court with the tenure of land. The suitor goes to the bishop’s court because he holds land of which the bishop is the lord. If, as will often be the case, he wishes to escape from the burdensome duty, he will pay an annual sum in lieu thereof, and here is a new rent. Then again all the affairs of the territory are now periodically brought under the bishop’s eye; he knows, or his reeves know, all about every one’s business and they have countless opportunities of granting favours and therefore of driving bargains. Moreover it is by no means unlikely that the lord will now have something to say about the transfer of land, for it is by no means unlikely that conveyances will be made in court, and that the rod or festuca which serves as a symbol of possession will be handed by the seller to the reeve and by the reeve to the purchaser. We need not regard the conveyance in court as a relic of a time when a village community would have had a word to say if any of its members proposed to assign his share to an outsider. There are many reasons for conveying land in court. We get witnesses there, and no mere mortal witnesses but the testimony of a court which does not die. Then, again, there may be the claims of expectant heirs to be precluded and perhaps they can be precluded by a decree of the court. The seller’s kinsfolk can be ordered to assert their rights within some limited time or else to hold their peace for ever after, so that the purchaser will hold the land under the court’s ban[1113]. And thus the rod passes through the hands of the president. But ‘nothing for nothing’ is a good medieval rule. The lord will take a small fine for this land-cóp, this sale of land, and soon it may seem that the purchaser acquires his title to the land rather from the lord than from the vendor[1114].

The lord and his man’s taxes.

Yet another turn is given to the screw, if we may so speak, when the state and the church begin to hold the lord answerable for taxes which in the last resort should be paid by the tenant[1115]. This, when we call to mind the huge weight of the danegeld, will appear as a matter of the utmost importance. Before the end of the tenth century—this is the picture that we draw for ourselves—large masses of free peasants were in sore straits and were in many ways subject to their lords. Many of them were really holding their tenements by a more or less precarious tenure. They had taken ‘loans’ from their lord and become bound to pay rents and work continuously on his inland. Others of them may have had ancient ancestral titles which could have been traced back to free settlers and free conquerors; but for centuries past a lord had wielded rights over their land. The king’s feorm had become the lord’s gafol, and this, supplemented by church-scot and by tithes, may have been turned into gafol and week-work. The time came for a new and heavy tax. This was a crushing burden, and even had the geld been collected from the small folk it would have had the effect of converting many of them from landowners into landborrowers[1116]. But a worse fate befell them. They were so poor that the state could no longer deal with them; it dealt with their lord; he paid for their land. It follows that in the eye of the state their land is his land. Less and less will the national courts and the folk-law recognize their titles; the lord ‘defends’ this land against all the claims of the state; therefore the state regards it as his. Hence what seems the primary distinction drawn by Domesday Book—that between the soke-man and the villanus. The villanus is not rated to the land-tax. Some men are not rated to the geld because they have but precarious titles; other men have precarious titles because they are not rated to the geld. A wide and a legally definable class is formed of men who hold land and who yet are fast losing the warranty of national law. When once the country is full of lords with sake and soke, a very small change, a very small exhibition of indifference on the part of the state, will deprive the peasants of this warranty and condemn them to hold, not by the law of the land, but by the custom of their lord’s court.

Depression of the free ceorl.

To this depth of degradation the great mass of the English peasants in the southern and western counties—the villani, bordarii, cotarii of Domesday Book—may perhaps have come before the Norman Conquest. There may have been no courts which would recognize their titles to their land, except the courts of their lords. We are by no means certain that even this was so; but they must fall deeper yet before they will be the ‘serf-villeins’ of the thirteenth century.

The slaves.

However, the conditions which would facilitate such a farther fall had long been prepared, for slavery had been losing some of its harshest features. Of this process we have said something elsewhere[1117]. What the church did for the slave may have been wisely and was humanely done; but what it did for the slave was done to the detriment of the poorer classes of free men. By insisting that the slave has a soul to be saved, that he can be sinned against and can sin, that his marriage is a sacrament, we obliterate the line between person and thing. On the other hand, in the submission of one person to the will of another, a submission which within wide limits is utter and abject, the church saw no harm. Villeinage and monasticism are not quite independent phenomena; even a lawyer could see the analogy between the two[1118]. And a touch of mysticism dignifies slavery:—the bishop of Rome is the serf of the serfs of God; an earl held land of Westminster Abbey ‘like a theow[1119].’ One of the surest facts that we know of the England of Cnut’s time is that the great folk were confounding their free men with their theowmen and that the king forbad them to do this. We see that one of the main lines which has separated the rightless slave from the free ceorl is disappearing, for the lord, as suits his interest best, will treat the same man now as free and now as bond[1120].

Growth of manors from below.

We might here speak of the numerous causes for which in a lawful fashion a free man might be reduced into slavery, and were we to do so, should have to notice the criminal law with its extremely heavy tariff of wer and wite and bót. But of this enough for the time has been said elsewhere[1121], and there are many sides of English history at which we can not even glance. However, lest we should be charged with a grave omission, we must explain that the processes which have hitherto come under our notice are far from being in our eyes the only processes that tended towards the creation of manors. We have been thinking of the manors as descending from above (if we may so speak) rather than as growing up from below. The alienation of royal rights over villages and villagers has been our starting point, and it is to this quarter that we are inclined to look for the main source of seignorial power. But, no doubt, within those villages which had no lords—and plenty of such villages there were in 1065—forces were at work which made in the direction of manorialism. They are obscure, for they play among small men whose doings are not recorded. But we have every reason to suppose that in the first half of the eleventh century a fortunate ceorl had many opportunities of amassing land and of thriving at the expense of his thriftless or unlucky neighbours. Probably the ordinary villager was seldom far removed from insolvency: that is to say, one raid of freebooters, one murrain, two or three bad seasons, would rob him of his precious oxen and make him beggar or borrower. The great class of bordarii who in the east of England are subjected to the sokemen has probably been recruited in this fashion[1122]. And so we may see in Cambridgeshire that a man will sometimes have half a hide in one village, a virgate in another, two-thirds of a virgate in a third. He is ‘thriving to thegn-right.’ Then, again, some prelate or some earl will perhaps obtain the commendation of all the villagers, and his hold over the village will be tightened by a grant of sake and soke, though, if we may draw inferences from Cambridgeshire, this seems to have happened rarely, for the sokemen of a village have often shown a marvellous disagreement among themselves in their selection of lords, and seem to have chosen light-heartedly between the house of Godwin and the house of Leofric as if they were but voting for the yellows or the blues. We fully admit that these forces were doing an important work; but they were doing it slowly and it was not nearly achieved when the Normans came. Nor was it neat work. It tended to produce not the true and compact manerio-villar arrangement, but those loose, dissipated manors which we see sprawling awkwardly over the common fields of the Cambridgeshire townships[1123].

Theories which connect the English manor with the Roman villa.

We have been endeavouring to show that the legal, social and economic structure revealed to us by Domesday Book can be accounted for, even though we believe that in the seventh century there was in England a large mass of free landowning ceorls and that many villages were peopled at that time and at later times chiefly by free landowning ceorls and their slaves. We have now to examine the evidence that is supposed to point to a contrary conclusion and to connect the English manor of the eleventh century with the Roman villa of the fifth. Two questions should be distinguished from each other—(1) Have we any proof that during those six centuries, especially during the first three of them, the type of rural economy which we know as ‘manorial’ was prevalent in England? (2) Have we any proof that the tillers of the soil were for the more part slaves or unfree men? We will move backwards from Domesday Book.

The Rectitudines.

In the first place reliance has been placed on the document known as Rectitudines Singularum Personarum[1124]. Of the origin of this we know nothing; we can not say for certain that it is many years older than the Norman Conquest. Apparently it is the statement of one who is concerned in the management of great estates and is desirous of imparting his knowledge to others. It first sets forth the right of the thegn. He is worthy of the right given to him by his book. He must do three things in respect of his land, namely, fyrdfare, burh-bote and bridge-work. From many lands however ‘a more ample landright arises at the king’s ban’: that is to say, the thegn is subject to other burdens, such as making a deer-hedge at the king’s hám, providing warships[1125] and sea-ward and head-ward and fyrd-ward, and almsfee and church-scot and many other things. Then we hear of the right of the geneat. It varies from place to place. In some places he must pay rent (land-gafol) and grass-swine yearly, and ride and carry and lead loads, work and support his lord[1126], and reap and mow and hew the deer-hedge and keep it up, build and hedge the burh and make new roads for the tún, pay church-scot and almsfee, keep head-ward and horse-ward, go errands far and near wherever he is directed. Next we hear of the cottier’s services. He works one day a week and three days in harvest-time. He ought not to pay rent. He ought to have five acres more or less. He pays hearth-penny on Holy Thursday as every free man should. He ‘defends’ or ‘acquits’ his lord’s inland when there is a summons for sea-ward or for the king’s deer-hedge or the like, as befits him, and pays church-scot at Martinmas. Then we have a long statement as to the services of the gebúr. In some places they are heavy, in others light. On some land he must work two days a week and three days at harvest by way of week-work. Besides this there is rent to be paid in money and kind. There is ploughing to be done and there are boon-works. He has to feed dogs and find bread for the swine-herd. His beasts must lie[1127] in his lord’s fold from Martinmas to Easter. On the land where this custom prevails the gebúr receives by way of outfit two oxen and one cow and six sheep and seven sown acres upon his yard-land. After the first year he is to do his services in full and he is to receive his working tools and the furniture for his house. We then hear of the special duties and rights of the bee-keeper, the swine-herd, the follower, the sower, ox-herd, shepherd, beadle, woodward, hayward and so forth.

Discussion of the Rectitudines.

Now, according to our reading of this document, there stand below the thegn, but above the serfs (of whom but few words are said[1128]) three classes of men—there is the geneat, there is the gebúr and there is the cotsetla. The boor and the cottier are free men; the cottier pays his hearth-penny, that is his Romescot, his Peter’s-penny, on Holy Thursday as every free man does; but both boor and cottier do week-work. On the other hand the geneat does no week-work. He pays a rent, he pays a grass-swine (that is to say he gives a pig or pigs in return for his pasture rights), he rides, he carries, he goes errands, he discharges the forinsec service due from the manor, and he is under a general obligation to do whatever his lord commands. He bears a name which has originally been an honourable name; he is his lord’s ‘fellow[1129].’ His services strikingly resemble those which S^t. Oswald exacted from his ministri, his equites, his milites[1130]. Almost every word that is said of the geneat is true of those very substantial persons who took land-loans from the church of Worcester. The geneat (who becomes a villanus in the Latin version of our document that was made by a Norman clerk of Henry I.’s reign) is a riding-man, radman, radcniht, with a horse, a very different being from the villanus of the thirteenth century[1131]. On the other hand, in the gebúr of this document we may see the burus, who is also the colibertus of Domesday Book[1132], and he certainly is in a very dependent position, for his lord provides him with cattle, with instruments of husbandry, even with the scanty furniture of his house. We dare not indeed argue from this text that the villanus of Domesday Book does not owe week-work, for the writer who rendered geneat by villanus was quite unable to understand many parts of the document that he was translating[1133]; but when we place the Rectitudines by the side of the survey we can hardly avoid the belief that the extremely dependent gebúr of the former is represented, not by the villanus, but by the burus or colibertus of the latter. However, over and over again the author of the Rectitudines has protested that customs vary. He will lay down no general rule; he does but know what goes on in certain places[1134].

The Tidenham case.

In 956 King Eadwig gave to Bath Abbey thirty manses at Tidenham in Gloucestershire[1135]. A cartulary compiled in the twelfth century contains a copy of his gift, and remote from this it contains a statement of the services due from the men of Tidenham. It is possible, but unlikely, that this statement represents the state of affairs that existed at the moment when the minster received the gift; to all appearance it belongs to a later date[1136]. It begins by stating that at Tidenham there are 30 hides, 9 of inland and 21 ‘gesettes landes,’ that is 9 hides of demesne and 21 hides of land set to tenants. Then after an account of the fisheries, which were of importance, it tells us of the services due from the geneat and from the gebúr. The geneat shall work as well on the land as off the land, whichever he is bid, and ride and carry and lead loads and drive droves ‘and do many other things.’ The gebúr must do week-work, of which some particulars are stated, and he also must pay rent in money and in kind. Here again a well marked line is drawn between the geneat and the gebúr. Here again the geneat, like the cniht or minister of Oswaldslaw, is under a very general obligation of obedience to his lord; but he is a riding man and there is nothing whatever to show that he is habitually employed in agricultural labour upon his lord’s demesne. As to the gebúr, he has to work hard enough day by day, and week by week, though of his legal status we are told no word.

The Stoke case.

In a Winchester cartulary, ‘a cartulary of the lowest possible character,’ there stands what purports to be a copy of the charter whereby in the year 900 Edward the Elder gave to the church of Winchester 10 manentes of land ‘æt Stoce be Hysseburnan’ together with all the men who were thereon at the time of Alfred’s death and all the men who were ‘æt Hisseburna’ at the same period. Edward, we are told, acquired the land ‘æt Stoce’ in exchange for land ‘æt Ceolseldene’ and ‘æt Sweoresholte [Sparsholt].’ At the end of the would-be charter stand the names of its witnesses. Then follows in English (but hardly the English of the year 900) a statement of the services which the ceorls shall do ‘to Hysseburnan.’ Then follow the boundaries. Then the eschatocol of the charter and the list of witnesses is repeated[1137]. On the face of the copy are three suspicious traits: (1) the modernized language, (2) the repeated eschatocol, (3) the description of the services, for the like is found in no other charter. This is not all. Two other documents in the same cartulary bear on the same transaction. By the first Edward gave to the church of Winchester 50 manentes ‘æt Hysseburnan’ which he had obtained by an exchange for land ‘æt Merchamme[1138].’ By the second he gave to the church of Winchester 50 manentes ‘ad Hursbourne’ and other 10 ‘ad Stoke[1139].’ The more carefully these three documents are examined, the more difficult will the critic find it to acquit the Winchester monks of falsifying their ‘books’ and improving Edward’s gift. Therefore this famous statement about the ceorls’ services is not the least suspicious part of a highly suspicious document. It is to this effect:—‘From each hiwisc (family or hide), at the autumnal equinox, forty pence and six church mittan of ale and three sesters of loaf-wheat. In their own time they shall plough three acres and sow them with their own seed, and in their own time bring it [the produce of the sown land] to barn. They shall pay three pounds of gafol barley and mow half an acre of gafol-mead in their own time and bring it to the rick; four fothers of split gafol-wood for a shingle-rick in their own time and sixteen yards of gafol-fencing in their own time. And at Easter two ewes with two lambs, but two young sheep may be counted for an old one; and they shall wash and shear sheep in their own time. And every week they shall do what work they are bid, except three weeks, one at Midwinter, one at Easter and the third at the Gang Days.’ Here no doubt, as in the account of Tidenham, as in the Rectitudines, we see what may fairly be called the manorial economy. The lord has a village; he has demesne land (inland) which is cultivated for him by the labour of his tenants; these tenants pay gafol in money or in kind; some of them (the geneat of Tidenham, the geneat of the Rectitudines) assist him when called upon to do so; others work steadily from day to day; in many particulars the extent of the work due from them is ascertained; whether they are free men, whether they are bound to the soil, whether the national courts will protect them in their tenure, whether they are slaves, we are not told.

Inferences from these cases.

That such an arrangement was common in the eleventh century we know; a solitary instance of it comes to us professedly from the first year of the tenth, and certainly from a cartulary that is full of lies. To draw general inferences from a few such instances would be rash. What should we believe of ‘the English village of the eleventh century’ if the one village of which we had any knowledge was Orwell in Cambridgeshire[1140]? What should we believe of ‘the English village of the thirteenth century’ if our only example was a village on the ancient demesne? The traces of a manorial economy that have been discovered in yet remoter times are few, slight and dubious. A passage in the laws of Ine[1141] seems to prove that there were men who had let out small quantities of land, ‘a yard or more,’ to cultivators at rents and who were wrongfully endeavouring to get from their lessees work as well as gafol. The same law may prove the highly probable proposition that some men had taken ‘loans’ of manses and were paying for them, not only by gafol, but by work done on the lord’s land. That already in Ine’s day there were many free men who were needy and had lords above them, that already the state was beginning to consecrate the relation between lord and man as a security for the peace and a protection against crime is undoubted[1142]. But this does not bring us very near to the Roman villa. Nor shall we see a villa wherever the dooms or the land-books make mention of a hám or a tún, for the meanest ceorl may have a tún and will probably have a home of his own[1143]

The villa and the vicus.

It is said that the England of Bede’s day was full of villae and that Bede calls the same place now villa and now vicus[1144]. But before we enter on any argument about the use of such words, we ought first to remember that neither Bede nor the scribes of the land-books were trained philologists. London is a villa[1145], but it is also a civitas, urbs, oppidum, vicus, a wíc, a tún, a burh, and a port. When we see such words as these used promiscuously we must lay but little stress upon the occurrence of a particular term in a particular case. Suppose for a moment that in England there were many villages full of free landholders: what should they be called in Latin? They should, it is replied, be called vici and they should not be called villae, for a villa is an estate. But it is part of the case of those who have used this argument that at the time of the barbarian invasions the Roman world was full of villae, so full that every or almost every vicus was situated on and formed part of a villa[1146]. We are therefore exacting a good deal from Bede, from a man who learnt his Latin in school, if we require him to be ever mindful of this nice distinction. We are saying to him: ‘True it is that a knot of neighbouring houses with the appurtenant lands is habitually called a villa; but then this word introduces the notion of ownership; the villa is an unit in a system of property law, and, if your village is not also an estate, a praedium, then you should call it vicus and not villa.’ To this we must add that, while the word villa did not until after the Norman Conquest force its way into English speech, the word vicus became an English word at a very early period[1147]. It became our word wick and it became part of a very large number of place-names[1148]. The Domesday surveyors found herdwicks and berewicks in many parts of the country[1149]. Moreover we can see that in the Latin documents villa is used in the loosest manner. London is a villa; but a single house, a single ‘haw,’ in the city of Canterbury or the city of Rochester is a villa[1150].

Notices of manors in the charters.

If we carefully attend to the wording of the land-books, we shall find the manorial economy far more visible in the later than in the earlier of them. The Confessor gives to Westminster ‘ða cotlife Perscore and Dorhurste’ with all their lands and all their berewicks[1151]. He gives the cotlif Eversley and all things of right belonging thereto, with church and mill, with wood and field, with meadow and heath, with water and with moor[1152]. From 998 we have a gift of a ‘heafod-botl,’ a capital mansion, we may say, and its appurtenances[1153]. In earlier times we may sometimes find that the subject matter of the royal gift is spoken of as forming a single unit; it is a villa, or it is a vicus. But rarely is the thing that is given called a villa except when the thing that is given is just a single hide[1154]. If a charter freely disposes of several villae, meaning thereby villages, we shall probably find some other reasons for assigning that charter, whatever date it may bear, to the eleventh, the twelfth or a yet later century[1155]. Sometimes in old books the king will say that he is giving a vicus, a vicus of five or eight or ten tributarii[1156]. Much more frequently he will not speak thus; he will not speak as though the subject matter of his gift had a physical unity and individuality. ‘I give,’ he will say, ‘so many manentes, tributarii, or casati in the place known as X,’ or ‘I give a certain part of my land, to wit, that of so many manentes, tributarii, or casati at the spot which men call Y.’ Such language does not suggest that the manses thus given are subservient to one dominant and dominical manse or manor; it is very unlike the language of the twelfth century[1157]. Such words as fundus and praedium are conspicuously absent, and ager usually means but a small piece of land, an acre. Foreign precedents would have suggested that when an estate was to be conveyed it should be conveyed cum servis et ancillis, or cum mancipiis et accolabus; such clauses are rare in our English land-books[1158].

The mansa and the manens.

But, it will be said, at all events the king is giving persons, men, as well as land; he is giving manentes, casati, tributarii. What is more these are foreign words and they describe the ‘semi-servile’ occupants of the soil. Now it is true that sometimes he gives manentes, casati, tributarii, though more often he gives either so many manses (mansas), or ‘the land of so many manentes, casati, tributarii,’ while in Kent he gives plough-lands or sullungs. But we think it plain that in England these Latin words were used simply to describe the extent, or rather the rateable extent, of land, without much reference to the number or the quality of its occupants. The terra unius manentis, even the unus casatus when that is the subject of a conveyance, is like Bede’s terra unius familiae, the unit known to Englishmen as the hiwisc, or hide[1159]. Hence it is that reference is so often made to repute and estimation. ‘I give,’ says Egbert, ‘a certain portion of land to the amount, as I estimate, of five casati,’ or (it may be) ‘of twenty manentes[1160].’ Nothing can be easier than to count whether there be four, five, or six ‘semi-servile’ households on a given piece of land. Far easier would it be to do this than to do what is habitually done, namely, to set forth the boundaries of the land with laborious precision. But there is already an element of estimation, of appreciation, in these units. Already they are units in a system of taxation. Hence also it is that so very frequently what the king gives is just exactly five, or some multiple of five, of these units[1161]. Rating is a rough process; five and ten are pleasant numbers.

The hide.

But against the argument which would see in every conveyance of ‘five manentes’ or of ‘the land of five casati’ a conveyance of five semi-servile households with their land we have another objection to urge. Here we will state it briefly; a fuller statement would take us far away from our present theme. If the land-books of the churches are to lead up to Domesday Book, the unit conveyed as terra unius manentis (casati, tributarii) is a hide with some 120 acres of arable land, the land appropriate to a plough-team of eight oxen. Had the semi-servile manens as a general rule 120 arable acres, a plough-team of eight oxen? We do not believe it, and those who have most strongly insisted on the servility or ‘semi-servility’ of the tillers of the soil, do not believe it. They would give the gebúr but a quarter of a hide and but two beasts of the plough. That being so, it should be common ground that the terra unius manentis (casati, tributarii) can not be construed as ‘the land occupied by one semi-servile tenant.’ An explanation of the fact that land is conveyed by reference to units so large as the hide of 120 acres and that these units are spoken of as though each household would normally have one of them must be sought elsewhere; we can not here pause to find it. But in any case these foreign terms should give us little trouble. When he hears such words as manens, casatus, tributarius, the man who has lived in Gaul may hear some undertone of servility or ‘semi-servility.’ We do not discuss this matter; it may be so. But look at the words themselves, what do they primarily mean? A manens is one who dwells upon land, a casatus is one to whom a casa has been allotted, a tributarius pays tributum; the free English landowner pays a tributum to the king[1162]. We must make the best we can of a foreign, an inappropriate tongue, and the best that we make is often very bad, especially when we have a taste for fine writing. And so England is full of villas which are Roman and satraps who, no doubt, are Persian.

The strip-holding and the villa.

And whence, we must ask, comes that system of intermixed ‘strip-holding’ that we find in our English fields? Who laid out those fields? The obvious answer is that they were laid out by men who would sacrifice economy and efficiency at the shrine of equality. Each manse is to have the same number of strips; the strips of one manse must be neither better nor worse than those of its neighbour and therefore must be scattered abroad over the whole territory of the village. That this system was not invented by men who owned large continuous tracts is plain. No such owner would for one moment dream of cutting up his land in this ridiculous fashion, and of reserving for his own manse, not a ring-fenced demesne, but strips lying here and there, ‘hide-meal and acre-meal’ among the strips of his serfs. That is not the theory. No one supposes that a Roman landowner whose hands were free allowed the soil of his villa to be parcelled out in accordance with this wasteful, cumbrous, barbarous plan. So his hands must not be free; the soil of which he becomes the owner must already be plotted out in strips, and these strips must be so tightly bound up into manses, that he scruples to overturn an existing arrangement, and contents himself with appropriating a few of the manses for his own use and compelling the occupants of the others to labour for him and pay him rents. In this there is nothing impossible; but we have only deferred, not solved the problem. Who laid out our English fields and tied the strips into manses? That this work was done by the Britons before they were brought under the Roman yoke does not seem very probable. Celtic rural economy, whenever it has had a chance of unfettered development, has made for results far other than those that are recorded by the larger half of the map of England. If throughout England the Romans found so tough a system of intermixed manses that, despite all its absurdities, they could not but spare it, then the Britons who dwelt in the land that was to be English were many centuries in advance of the Britons who dwelt in the land that was to be Welsh. To eke out this hypothesis another must be introduced. The Teutonic invaders of Britain must be brought from some manorialized province. So, after all, the model of the English field may have been ‘made in Germany.’ Somehow or another it was made in South Germany by semi-servile people, whose semi-servility was such a half-and-half affair that they could not be prevented from sacrificing every interest of their lords at the shrine of equality[1163].

The lords and the strips.

We are far from saying that wherever there is strip-holding, there liberty and equality have once reigned[1164]. It is very possible that where a barbarian chieftain obtained a ring-fenced allotment of conquered soil, he sometimes divided it into scattered strips which he parcelled out among his unfree dependants. But if he did this, he did it because his only idea of agriculture was derived from a village formed by men who were free and equal. The maintenance of a system of intermixed strip-holding may be due to seignorial power, and a great deal of the rigidity of the agrarian arrangements that we see in the England of the thirteenth century may be due to the same cause. Seignorial power was not, at least in origin, absolute ownership. It had to make the best it could of an existing system. For the lord’s purposes that system was at its best when it was rigid and no tenement was partible. But assuredly this plan was not originally invented by great proprietors who were seeking to get the most they could out of their land, their slaves and their capital.

The ceorl and the slave.

That we have not been denying the existence of slavery will be plain. Indeed we may strongly suspect that the men who parcelled out our fields were for the more part slave-owners, though slave-owners in a very small way. To say nothing of Welshmen, there was quite enough inter-tribal warfare to supply the ceorl with a captive. But it was not for the sake of slaves or serfs or ‘semi-servile’ folk that the system of intermixed strips was introduced.

The condition of the Danelaw.

Lastly, the theory which would derive the English manor from the Roman villa must face the grave problem presented to it by the account which Domesday Book, when speaking of the Confessor’s day, gives of the eastern and northern counties, of a large quarter of all England, and of just that part of England which was populous. We see swarms of men who are free men but who are subject, they and their land, to various modes and degrees of seignorial power. The modes are many, the degrees are gentle. Personal, tenurial, justiciary threads are woven into a web that bewilders us. Here we see the work of commendation, there the work of the land-loan, and there again what comes of grants of sake and soke. We see the formation of manors taking place under our eyes, and as yet the process is by no means perfect. In village after village there is nothing that our economic historians would consent to call a manor. Now, no doubt, the difference between the east and the west is, at least in part, due to Danish invasions and Danish settlements. But how shall we picture to ourselves the action of the Danes? Is it to be supposed that they found the Anglo-Roman manor-villa a prevalent and prosperous institution, that they destroyed it and put something else in its place, put in its place the village of free peasants who could ‘go with their land’ to what lord they pleased? If so, then we have to face the question why these heathen Danes acted in a manner so different from that in which their predecessors, the heathen Angles and Saxons, had acted. Surely one part of the explanation is that the inswarming barbarians checked the manorializing process that was steadily at work in Wessex and Mercia. We do not say that this is the whole explanation. We have seen how free were many of the Cambridgeshire villages and have little reason to believe that they had been settled by Danes[1165]. The west country is the country to which we shall naturally look for the most abundant traces of the Wealh theow. There it is that we find numerous servi, and there that we find rather trevs than villages. But also we have hardly a single land-book of early date which deals with any part of the territory that became the Danelaw. Many a book the Danes may have burnt when they sacked the monasteries. They sacked the monasteries, burnt the books and freed the land. But still we may doubt whether the practice of booking lands to the churches had gone far in East Anglia and the adjacent shires when they were once more overwhelmed by barbarism. No doubt in course of time the churches of the east became rich: Ely and St Edmunds, Peterborough and Ramsey, Croyland and Thorney. But, even when supplemented by legend and forgery, their titles to wide territories can seldom be compared for antiquity to the titles that might have been pleaded by the churches of Kent and Wessex and the Severn Valley. Richly endowed churches mean a subjected peasantry. And thus we may say of the Danes that if in a certain sense they freed the districts which they conquered, they in the same sense enslaved the rest of England. Year by year Wessex and Mercia had to strain every nerve in order to repel the pagans, to fit out fleets, build burgs and keep armies always in the field. The peasant must in the end bear the cost of this exhausting struggle. Meanwhile in the north and the east the process that makes manors has been interrupted; it must be begun once more. It was accomplished by men some of whom had Scandinavian blood in their veins, but who were not heathens, not barbarians: it was accomplished by Normans steeped in Frankish feudalism.