Hilton - The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (1st. Ed.)
Hilton - The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (1st. Ed.)
Hilton - The Decline of Serfdom in Medieval England (1st. Ed.)
PUBLISHED
E. L. Jones The Development of English Agriculture, 1815-1873
J.D. Marshall The Old Poor Law, 1795-1834
G. E. Mi'ngay Enclosure and the Small Farmer in the Age of the
Industrial Revolution
R. B. Outhwaite Inflation in Tudor and Early Stuart
England, 1470-1630
S. B. Saul The Myth of the Great Depression, 1873-1896
IN PREPARATION
A. S. Milward The Impact of World Wars on the British Economy
R. S. Sayers Monetary Policy in the 1920s
A. J. Taylor Laissez-Faire and State Intervention in Nineteenth-
Century Britain
The Decline of Serfdom
in Medieval England
Preparedfor
The Economic History Society by
R. H. HILTON
Professor of Medieval Social History
Universziy of Birmingham
Palgrave Macmillan
The Economic History Society 1969
PulJlished by
MACMILLAN AND CO LTD
Little Essex Street wc2
and also at Bombay Calcutta and Madras
Macmillan South Africa (PulJlishers) Pty Ltd Johannesburg
The Macmillan Company of Australia Pty Ltd Melbourne
The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd Toronto
StMartin's Press Inc New York
With H. Fagan
The English Rising of 1581
A2 H.D.S,
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Ag.H.R. Agricultural History Review
Ec.H.R. Economic History Review
E.H.R. English Historical Review
V.C.H. Victoria County History
T.R.H.S. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
8
The Early History of Medieval Serfdom in Europe
IN the long history of pre-industrial societies one of the constant
features has been the existence of social groups whose members
were unfree. The freedom which they lacked was not, of course,
an absolute quality of social existence. It is a truism which needs
no elaboration that in most societies men's freedom of action is
limited by the authority of the state, by the power of the rich and
by the customary pressures of social groups. And, just as there
were always numerous variations in the opportunities, that is the
freedoms, of men who were called free, there were similarly
many variations in the forms of unfreedom. The view expressed
in a Carolingian capitulary that non est amplius nisi fiber et
servus1 might have been convenient for the serf-owners, but at
that particular time completely misrepresented the great com-
plexity of contemporary social conditions. Yet the complex
variations in the grades of unfreedom that were to be found in
ancient, medieval and later societies should not lead us to mini-
mise the fact of unfreedom for many human beings, often the
majority, in these societies. Even if we ignore the limitations on
freedom resulting from the poverty, lack of opportunity, lack of
influence and lack of power which has always been the lot of most
men and women, we could not ignore the fact that, in medieval
as well as in ancient societies, these practical limits on freedom
were openly institutionalised as hereditary juridical servitude.
Hereditary servile status in medieval Europe was the lot, by
and large, of the bulk of the peasantry. There were also unfree
persons in administrative posts (ministeriales) and in industrial
occupations, but these were a small minority of the total servile
population and need not be considered here. The term normally
employed by modern historians for unfree peasants is 'serfs',
although many other terms were used in different countries and
at different times during the European Middle Ages. The word
distinguishes this social type from the slave, a usage which is
paradoxical since the word 'serf' comes from the Latin servus,
1 'there is none other than free or serf': M. Bloch, Melanges His-
toriques' I (1963) p. 438. It was also a Roman law maxim.
9
'slave', while the word 'slave' is thought to have been derived
from the fact that the early medieval (as distinct from the ancient)
slave trade was to a considerable extent supplied by the Slavonic
victims of the eastward expansion of the Germans, who sold their
captives in western slave markets.
Although some slaves in antiquity were by no means completely
without property, the distinction between slaves and serfs is
based on the fact that, on the whole, slaves were the chattels of
their masters, employed as instruments of production in agri-
culture or industry, receiving food, clothing and shelter from the
master and possessing nothing. Since the medieval serfs were
mostly peasants, their actual material conditions were quite
different in that they possessed, even if they did not own, the
means of production of their own livelihood. These means of
production were the farm buildings, agricultural equipment,
lands and common rights that made up the peasant holding. The
peasant families might have received these as grants from a
landowner, who thus became the peasants' lord, but they are just
as likely to have possessed them from time immemorial, before
falling under the domination of a lord who used his power to
establish legal ownership of the peasants' lands.
The early history of medieval serfdom is very complex. In all
of the European countries this complexity is reflected in the
varied nomenclature of the servile peasant class, as used more
particularly in private documents of the period up to the twelfth
century. Some peasants were descended from the coloni of the
late Empire, who, whatever legal disabilities and encumbrances
they might have suffered, were not then classed as slaves, but
sank into serfdom under the heavy weight of the obligations
imposed on them by the estate owners and the state. In so far as
the estate structure of the late Empire persisted into the barbarian
successor states, the history of this group was fairly straight-
forward, for their obligations and disadvantages under Imperial
law were much the same as they were to be at the time when the
surveys or polyptyques of the big estates in the Carolingian
period were drawn up. Other peasants were the descendants of
full slaves, some of their ancestors having been slaves under the
Roman Empire, others having been enslaved during the wars of
the Dark Ages. What distinguished these serfs from their slave
ancestors was, of course, the fact that they were now servi casati,
provided with their own holdings from the landowner's estate.
10
Other medieval peasant serfs were descended from free men who
had entered into various forms of dependence under lords. Some
gave up their holdings and their status in return for the protection
of powerful laymen; others became serfs of the Church for the
same reason; others who were landless became serfs in order to
acquire a holding. The tendency was, even as early as the tenth
century, for the differences within the servile peasant class to be
ironed out, though this process of simplification was by no means
complete by that date, partly because there were probably still
many free peasants yet to be enserfed.
This continuing process of enserfment after the tenth century
was partly associated, especially in France and the western parts
of the Empire, with the growing strength of private jurisdictions.
Some historians have interpreted this development, as far as
aristocratic lordship over peasant dependants was concerned, as
an addition to the power of landowner over tenant, of the power
of sei'gneur over subject, sometimes described as the succession
of pouvoi'r banal to pouvoi'r domani'al. The relationship of private
to public jurisdiction and of feudal potentates to public authority
is of course an aspect of this subject into which we shall not enter.
But as far as the relationship between estate owners and peasants
was concerned, it is thought that one of the most important
reasons for this development was economic. In western Europe
as a whole, by the twelfth century, lords' demesnes had tended to
disintegrate, the traditional peasant tenure (the mansus) had
become so subdivided as no longer to be recognisable by estate
stewards, labour services had practically disappeared and money
rents had lost their value. The profitable exercise of private
jurisdiction, the exploitation of seigneurial monopolies (of the
wine press, the oven, the mill, etc.), the reimposition of certain
types of labour service (as a subject's duty rather than as tenant's
rent) all had an important financial side for lords whose straight
landed income was declining.
11
Early Serfdom in England
A L T H 0 UGH there are special features to the agrarian develop-
ment of medieval England, it should not be imagined that the
country was exempt from the general conditions which affected
the rest of medieval Europe, especially those parts nearest to it.
After all, in common with the whole of western Europe, England
had been a province of the Roman Empire and had become a
successor state governed by a Germanic aristocracy, with the
difference no doubt that the Germanic settlement was denser in
England than, for instance, in Gaul. During the Dark Ages there
had been abundant contact between the English ruling aristo-
cracies and those of continental Europe, abundant contact
between the English Church and Rome, and a volume of trade
which had made the fortune of such northern Frankish ports as
Quentovic. The almost complete replacement of the Old English
by a Norman-French aristocracy (with Flemish and Breton
supporters) by the time that 'Domesday Book' was compiled
naturally strengthened similarities of social structure, especially
since for over a century many English landowners possessed
estates in Normandy, and even after the loss of Normandy
had direct political contacts with the Continent through Gascony.
In continental Europe by the thirteenth century two different
types of division within the peasant class can be seen. First of all
there was a division in terms of economic resources, broadly
speaking, between those peasants who had sufficient land to feed
the family, which demanded the use of a plough and a plough
team of oxen or horses (in French, the laboureurs), and those who
had holdings which were too small for the adequate subsistence
of a family, and were cultivated by the spade and the hoe,
occasionally by a borrowed plough, and who had to labour for
others in order to gain their living (the manouvriers). The second
main division was in terms of personal status. Apart from such
peasants as had retained their free status, the servile peasants
were broadly divided into those who were the descendants of
slaves (servi) and those whose ancestry was not servile in the
strictest sense of the word, but whose subordination to their lords
12 9
was hardly distinguishable in type from that of the true serfs.
These were known as the vileins in France and the French-
speaking parts of the Empire. They were regarded at the time
as typical of the peasant class. Their supposed characteristics
supplied the courtly litterateurs with the adjective vilein and the
noun vileinie to imply everything that was base and opposed to
the virtues of chivalry. The two types of division of the peasant
class did not necessarily coincide, for well-to-do laboureurs could
either be seifs or vileins.
Similarly, in England, by the thirteenth century, there was
a recognisable division between the peasants with holdings of
twelve to fifteen arable acres (halfyardlanders) or more, and those
with small holdings which in a large number of cases must have
been under five acres. The former correspond to the continental
laboureurs and, without necessarily being affluent, had holdings
from which a family could be fed. This was not the case with the
smallholding cottars who had to find other ways of reinforcing
their incomes, including, of course, work for wages on the
demesne or on the bigger peasant holdings. The division into free
and servile did not correspond to this division. Nor did the divi-
sion of the servile as between the nativi (meaning servile by birth)
and the villani (not necessarily servile by birth) correspond either
to the division of economic resources or (at any rate clearly) to the
division which had been visible in the eleventh century between
the servi, whom we translate as 'slaves' rather than 'serfs', and
the villani, cottarzi" and bordarzi, whom we cannot assume
to have been legally unfree. The villani at any rate are definitely
stated, in the treatise known as 'The Laws of Henry I' (c. 1120?),
to be entitled to the free ceorl's wergild of 200s.l
The reasons for the difficulty of distinguishing by the thir-
teenth century between those members of the servile class who
were descended from slaves and those who were the descendants
of the free villeins of 'Domesday Book' are to be found in the
history of the relations between landlords and tenants since the
end of the eleventh century. But before we take the history of
these two centuries into account, we must remember that slavery
19
so that the juxtaposition of tenants of very different juridical
status and economic position would add considerably to the
tensions in the countryside. Thus the fen-edge villages on the
estate of the Lincolnshire Priory of Spalding were subject to
heavy villein labour services, while other fenland villages were
occupied by almost self-governing communities of free tenants.
Suffolk's free population was strengthened as a result of the early
industrialisation and commercialisation of the county, but the
villeins on the estates of the Abbey of Bury St Edmunds owed
considerable servile obligations. Sussex likewise presents a picture
of free tenure due to assarting, by the side of heavy villein
services on highly organised estates. Villeinage on the estates of
the Abbots of St Albans was complicated by the settlement of free
adventitii from London. The evidence from some lay estates in
Hampshire shows an increase in the free population between the
end of the eleventh and the end of the thirteenth century, from
a negligible amount to a proportion of nearly 30 per cent of the
tenant population. On the other hand the overall proportion of
free tenants on the Bishop of Winchester's estate was only 5 per
cent, though on one village only it was up to 25 per cent.
Such examples could be multiplied. 1
However, in spite of the existence of very diverse tenurial
structures within the same area, it is possible to pick out broad
regional differences with regard to the greater or lesser incidence
of servile conditions. In the far north and north-west, customary
tenures predominated, often very ancient in character. The servile
nature of Northumbrian dreng and bond tenure is by no means
certain, although both were associated with the performance of
labour services. But the Northumbrian region was not univer-
sally manorialised, so in parts the equation between customary
tenure and servitude was vague. On the other hand, the
manorialising pressure of the Durham Bishopric and Priory
estate administrations resulted in a clearly servile villein popu-
lation within the Palatinate. The same sort of pressures may have
1 H. E. Hallam, Settlement and Society (1965) pp. 202--6; G. Unwin
in V.C.H. Suffolk, I; P. Wragge in V.C.H. Sussex, n; F. R. H. Du
Boulay, The Lordship of Canterbury (1966) pp. 173, 183; A. E.
Levett, Studies in Manorial History (1938) p. 191; V. M. Shillington
in V.C.H. Hants, v; J. Z. Titow, 'Land and Population on the Estates
of the Bishop of Winchester, 1209-1350' (unpublished Cambridge
Ph.D. thesis) pp. 97-8.
20
been at work in Lancashire on the de Lacy estates, for example.
Here was villeinage which was equated with servitude, but
without heavy labour services, for stock-raising rather than arable
farming was the main economic activity. Assarting, in the Forest
of Rossendale for example, did not lead to free tenure, but to
tenures at will as well as to villein tenures. Freer peasant con-
ditions in Yorkshire, on the other hand, have been shown to be
associated with the twelfth-century colonisation of the waste
(natural or man-made) but Yorkshire was also a land of feudal
and ecclesiastical landownership and of manorialisation (especially
in the Vale of York) leading to the development of villeinage. 1
In those parts of the east Midlands not covered by the 1279-80
'Hundred Rolls' there seems to have been a similar growth of
free tenures in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This was the
case with Lincolnshire, especially in the Fens, though the growth
in free tenures did not exclude a parallel development of villein-
age, with heavy labour services, on some of the big estates. In
Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire, too, free tenures
increased in importance in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,
particularly as a function of peasant assarting of the forests. This
was not altogether to the liking of some of the big estate owners.
Peterborough Abbey for instance attempted both to buy up free-
hold land in order to increase the area under demesne, and to
control the activity of its villeins who were attempting to enter
the freehold property market. The East Anglian counties under-
went a different experience from those of the east Midlands.
Already in 1086 they had a high proportion of free tenants (nearly
40 per cent). In some cases this may have been reduced by
manorialisation, but here the principal counteracting tendency
was the general development of production for the market and
in particular the industrialisation of many villages. East Anglia
like the Home Counties was also strongly affected by the pull of
London, a refuge as well as a market, for rural immigration into
the capital by the end of the thirteenth century was for the most
part from East Anglia. But production for the market could
1 J. E. A. Jolliffe, 'Northumbrian Institutions', E.H.R. XLI; F.
Bradshaw in V.C.H. Durham, II; Halmota Prioratus Dwzelmensis,
ed. W. H. Longstaffe and J. Booth (Surtees Society, 1889) passim; A.
Law in V.C.H. Lanes. II; G. H. Tupling, The Economic History of
Rossendale (1927) pp. 36-8, 70-1; T. A. M. Bishop, 'Manorial
Demesne in the Vale of York', E.H.R. XLIX (1934).
H.D.S. 21
strengthen manorial organisation, if estate owners chose to
expand demesne production, while village industrialisation
could work in the opposite direction. These opposite trends
affected East Anglia, Essex and Hertfordshire and the consequent
tensions had their outcome in 1581.1
Of the areas affected by the development of production for the
market, and particularly by London, the more interesting is Kent.
This has traditionally been thought of as the home of peasant
freedom, whose origins have been pushed back well into the Dark
Ages. It certainly seems to be the case that in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries the relative freedom of tenure in gavelkind,
the characteristic form of Kentish customary tenure, was generally
admitted. Now this is a very instructive case. Gavelkind was not
like ordinary free tenure. There were associated with it in the
thirteenth century some incidents elsewhere associated with
serfdom. Gavelkind holdings also owed labour services, though
these were light and not unlike the boon services owed by some
free tenants in other counties. It may be, in fact, that what
distinguished Kent from other parts of England where customary
tenures developed into servile villeinage was that the rich
Kentish peasants were strong enough to reject the exercise of
lordship which pushed down their fellows elsewhere. This idea
is summarised by a recent writer on Kentish history in the
following succinct phrase: 'It may be that the famous Kentish
freedom was a thirteenth-century concept which arose from the
practical power of Kent landholders to handle their own estates. ' 2
Although there was a clear difference between Kent and Sussex
with regard to peasant status, in that Sussex knew no gavelkind
and villein servility on manorialised estates was to be found there,
this was still a county with considerable numbers of free tenants.
These mostly existed as a function of the assarting of woodland.
The same conditions were probably true of the Wealden part of
Surrey. But as we move westwards we enter areas more com-
1 A. B. Wallis Chapman in V.C.H. Notts. IT; E. J. King, 'The Abbot
of Peterborough as Landlord' (unpublished Cambridge thesis),
chap. IV; V.C.H. Suffolk, IT; F. G. Davenport, The Economic Develop-
ment of a Norfolk Manor (1906); W. Hudson, 'Traces of Primitive
Agricultural Organisation', T.R.H.S. 4th ser. I; K. C. Newton,
Thaxted in the Fourteenth Century (1960); G. Williams, Medieval
London: from Commune to Capital (1963) pp. 138--40.
s Du Boulay, op. cit. p. 138.
22
pletely dominated by manorialised estates of ancient foundation.
Peasant conditions in Hampshire, Berkshire, Dorset, Wiltshire,
Somerset and Devon were largely formed under the direct or
indirect influence of such estate owners as the Bishops of Win-
chester and Bath, and the Abbots of St Swithun's (Winchester),
Abingdon, Malmesbury and Glastonbury, to mention only the
most outstanding. This does not mean that the pressure was
unrelieved. In Berkshire there were quite a number of privileged
tenants of the ancient demesne of the Crown. We have seen that
there were parts of Hampshire where free tenures increased in
number in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, perhaps as a
result of assarting, though when assarting was done within the
framework of a great estate, such as that of the bishops, it could
result in non-customary leasehold rather than free tenures. Even
in Devon, with its past history of slavery, there was a growth of
free tenures due to assarting, and the development of mining and
of new town foundations. 1
The same overall picture also applies in the west Midland
counties. Gloucestershire and W orcestershire were above all
areas of big, old, manorialised estates, mostly Benedictine, such
as those of the Bishops and Priors of Worcester, and the Abbots of
Evesham, Gloucester, Winchcombe and Cirencester (Augus-
tinian). Their influence produced a social structure somewhat
different from that of the adjacent central Midland counties of
Oxfordshire and Warwickshire where free tenure, though not
developed on the same scale as in some of the east Midland
counties, was nevertheless of considerable importance. It is true
that free tenures were associated with assart lands in such
woodland regions as Feckenham Forest in east W orcestershire,
but these were a small minority. Then the pattern changes again
as we move into the Marcher counties of Shropshire and Here-
fordshire. To the extent that a substratum of Welsh agrarian
custom remained, this could augment the numbers of both free
and unfree members of the rural population - there is no lack of
evidence for free tenants of Welsh descent. But it may be that the
availability of land for colonisation, the strong pastoral element in
the economy and the absence of large-scale early manorialisation
resulted in a high proportion of free tenants at the end of the
1 See works cited on p. 20, n. 1 above; J. S. Drew, 'Manorial Accounts
of St Swithun 's Priory, Winchester', E.H.R. LXII; E. C. Lodge in V.C.H.
Berks. II; H. P.R. Finberg, Tavistock Abbey (1951) pp. 68-75.
25
thirteenth century. Surveys of the manors on the estate of the
Bishop of Hereford before 1500 show that nearly 40 per cent
of the tenants were holding in free tenure and nearly 50 per cent
in burgage tenure. Many of these last must have been in
agricultural occupations.l
24
serfdom both in theory and in practice on the customary tenants?
Most interpretations of the end of villeinage in England con-
centrate only on the history of the villeins themselves. They
relate changes in villein status to such impersonal factors as the
fall in the population, the changed land-to-labour ratio, the long-
term fall in agricultural prices. In so far as they admit that any
role was played by the conscious action of the persons and classes
involved, it is the decision of the landlords to commute labour
services, lease out demesnes and lower the overall total of rent
demands which they consider to be alone important. Any action
on the part of the peasant, while not ignored, is considered to be
irrelevant. A recent writer, for instance, states that 'historians
are in general agreement that [the Peasant Revolt of 1381] was a
passing episode in the social history of the late Middle Ages' and
goes on to say that 'it did very little to speed up and nothing to
arrest the general movement towards commutation of labour
services and the emancipation of serfs' .1
The 1381 revolt, taken in isolation, certainly cannot be seen
as the initiating event in the decline of serfdom. It was, in fact,
by no means simply a peasants' rising. And as a peasant move-
ment it was an end rather than a beginning. For, as can be
shown without going much beyond source material in print,
smaller-scale peasant risings and other symptoms of unrest had
been common since the middle of the thirteenth century. 2 For
the purposes of our present argument, the important feature in
them was that they frequently involved the claim by the dis-
contented that they were not, and should not be, serfs but free
men. For tactical reasons they sometimes made less extensive
claims, such as that they were entitled to the treatment of the
privileged sokemen of the ancient demesne of the Crown, giving
them protection against increased rents and services and certain
privileges in real actions analogous to those of free tenure. a Now
there can be little doubt that this pressure by villein tenants was
1 M. M. Postan, Cambridge &anomie History of Europe, I (2nd
ed., 1966) p. 610.
2 R. H. Hilton, 'Peasant Movements Before 1381', in Essays in
Economic History, II (1962), ed. E. Carus-Wilson.
s The problems of ancient demesne are dealt with by P. Vino-
gradoff in Villeinage in England (1892); R. S. Hoyt, The Royal
Demesne in English Constitutional History (1950); and R. H. Hilton,
The Stoneleigh Leger Book (Dugdale Society, 1960), introduction.
25
strengthened by the coexistence with them in the countryside
of the large numbers of free tenants and tenants of ancient
demesne. The fact that many of the free smallholders had a
miserable existence on the edge of starvation is irrelevant. What
is an incontrovertible fact is the constant demand for freedom of
status, sustained until 1381 and reiterated then when the actual
economic advantages of free tenure were by no means so obvious
as they had been a century earlier.
51
Economic and Demographic Factors
in the Decline of Serfdom
THERE is little doubt about the direction of the general long-
term trend in the relationship between peasants and their lords
after the middle of the fourteenth century. Rents and such
incidents of villeinage as merchets and entry fines tended to fall
in value. Money rent almost universally replaced labour rent.
Conditions of customary tenure approached those of free tenure
whether freehold or leasehold. Agricultural wages, which must
have been an important element in many middling and poorer
peasant family incomes, rose, particularly towards the end of the
fourteenth century. On such estates as still maintained manorial
demesnes worked for the lords, leasing out to farmers (often well-
off peasants) became a general policy, particularly from the
1370s. A jury from the Durham Priory village of Heworth
summed up the general situation in 1373: whereas before the
first pestilence each tenant had a separate holding, each now had
three.1 But whilst we too must be conscious of this important
change in the ratio between cultivable holdings and the number of
tenants available, we must also take into account many fluctua-
tions and cross-currents in the situation which had an important
bearing on the decline of serfdom.
One of the most significant features of the post-Black Death
situation was the great mobility of the rural population. It
affected tenant families and labourers alike - in so far as we can
separate these into different categories. As is well known, men
and women left their villages in search of high wages both in
agriculture and in industry. The demand for labour did not only
result from the shortages caused by the Black Death, however
important these may also have been. These shortages coincided
with the growth in the importance of peasant holdings of a size
which would demand the employment of labour additional to that
provided by the family. They often contained upwards of fifty
acres of arable. These were already becoming important before
1 Halmota ... Dwzelmensis, p. 121.
52 9
the end of the fourteenth century.l In addition it seems possible
that bifore the general leasing of demesnes there was a turnover
in some estates to a greater use of hired as against customary
labour, again putting up the demand.2 Whether this demand for
labour was significantly increased by the development of the
textile industry, especially in East Anglia and the south-west,
cannot be proved. The importance of urban and industrial
demand for labour in that period has been doubted. Nevertheless
such prosecutions under the Statutes of Labourers as have been
found, for Wiltshire and for Essex, for example, show that there
was a move of former workers in agriculture to industrial
villages and towns, and to a variety of non-agricultural occupa-
tions. The opportunities presented to peasants with inadequate
or barely adequate holdings must have been frequently taken
up. Such alternatives cannot but have had a great effect on the
relations between landlords and tenants. 3
The other main alternatives were better holdings at improved
terms of tenure elsewhere. There is, of course, no shortage of
corroborative evidence to that quoted from Durham which
indicated a surplus of holdings to tenants. Estate accounts show
large numbers of vacant holdings immediately after the first
plague, the immediate consequence of the heavy mortality. But,
as Miss Levett showed, for the estates of the Bishop of Winchester
these vacancies were often quite quickly refilled. This has been
confirmed for other manors in Wiltshire, for the manors of the
Ramsey Abbey estate in Huntingdonshire, for the estate of the
Cathedral Priory in Durham, for the Crowland Abbey estate in
Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, to quote only a few cases
which demonstrate the geographically widespread nature of the
phenomenon. This reoccupation was, however, deceptive. By
the end of the century a more permanent situation of unoccupied
holdings in the lords' hands is to be seen, and this, too, is very
1 A. E. Levett,' Notes on the Statute of Labourers', Ec.H.R. IV.
11 J. A. Raftis, The Estates of Ramsey Abbey (1957) p. 258. Dr I.
Keil notices the same phenomenon on tke estates of Glastonbury
Abbey, 'The Estates of Glastonbury Abbey' (unpublished Bristol Ph.D.
thesis).
3 N. Ritchie, 'Labour Conditions in Essex in the Reign of Richard
55
widespread geographically. In some cases this was due as much
to the flight of villein tenants as to a high death-rate. The
striking figures quoted from the records of the Earl of Norfolk's
manor of Forncett for the years 1576-8 show a lapse of 20 to
25 per cent of sokeman holdings and of 76 per cent of custom-
ary holdings. At that time in particular, but especially after
the 1570s and throughout the whole of the fifteenth century,
there was a steady drift of tenants to Norwich, to the coastal
towns and to some other places, many being villages within
a twenty-mile radius. In the 1590s Ramsey Abbey villagers
began to move around in greater numbers than ever before
until, around 1400, 'the trickle of emigration burst into a
veritable tide'. Not that there was a general exodus from the
countryside. The situation was rather that peasant families
moved around, perhaps not very far from their original homes,
perhaps even just moving from one holding to another in the
same village. In Thaxted (Essex), for instance, between 1548 and
1595, three-quarters of the holdings were taken up by new
families, though only 60 per cent of these new families came
from outside the village. In one Berkshire village between 1579
and 1594 there was a 64 per cent turnover in the names of families
occupying holdings, a mobility which continued in the fifteenth
century. This is found elsewhere as well. On six manors of the
Cathedral Priory of Worcester there was an 80 per cent turnover
of tenant family names between the beginning and the end of
the fifteenth century. A study of the same phenomenon in the
Sussex village of Alciston shows that between 1455 and 1489
there was a turnover of similar dimensions, only one-fifth of the
tenant families surviving the fifty-year period.1
Not all families disappeared through migration, of course.
There were the usual biological factors of no heirs, or no male
heirs. But a study of any manorial court roll for the last one
op. cit. pp. 217-18; Halmota ... Dunelmensis, pp. 109, 127-8; W. 0.
Ault, Open Field Husbandry and the Village Community (1965) p. 13.
2 Evesham Abbey Leases, Leigh MSS., Stratford on Avon Record
Office; Public Record Office, SC 2. 210/27.
58
The background to these incidents was, of course, the mobility
of the rural population to which we have referred, and fierce
competition between all types of employers of labour, ranging
from the powerful estate owners to the small master craftsmen
who were warned in 1576 not to take apprentices from any
township where there was a shortage of agriculturallabour. 1 The
Government was powerless to keep wages down indefinitely, in
spite of the enthusiastic and rigorous enforcement of the Statutes.
Wages of all workers rose, but it is interesting to note that the
more striking increase in real wages took place after 1580. The
following wage figures have been calculated in t ~ of wheat so
as to take into account the movement in food prices. 2
43
The Evolution of Peasant Tenures: Leasehold
NOW servile villeinage was historically rooted in customary
tenure. The new economic conditions caused two major changes
in this situation. First, a large amount of peasant land was with-
drawn from the area of custom and was turned into leasehold.
Secondly, customary tenure itself, without being legally en-
franchised, is once more found without the taint of servility and
becomes copyhold, liable to be held not merely by free men but
by gentry.
Leases for terms of years, for life, or at the will of the lessor,
were not new, of course, in the relations between landowners
and tenants. Furthermore, even when the bulk of peasant
land held from manorial lords was still governed by customary
rules the tenants themselves were often engaged in subletting,
usually for short terms among themselves. Although it did not
provoke such dire reactions as outright purchases of free land by
villeins, this subletting was either forbidden by lords, or they
attempted to control it. But the vetoes and attempts at control
were not particularly successful, and in many villages there must
have been quite a traffic in land among the tenants. This traffic,
of course, involved a purely economic relationship between lessor
and lessee, in contrast to the relationship between lords and
peasants which involved an element of non-economic compulsion.
But when lords increased the number of leases of a non-customary
character, they too tended to be determined by market considera-
tio:Hs, particularly since the rent was usually in money.
One of the obvious reasons for the increase in non-customary
lettings in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was that
land became available to which customary rules either did not
apply, or could best be let on non-customary terms. Such land
came from the lords' demesnes and from lapsed tenements which
remained in the lords' hands. There were many varieties of
demesne lease. Sometimes the demesne was divided into small
parcels and let out piecemeal; sometimes it was let out whole
to the community of the villagers who might then divide it
amongst themselves; in the later Middle Ages it was commonly
44 9
let as a whole to single individuals or to two partners, who were
quite often well-to-do peasants of villein status. This sequence of
leasing policy was not invariable. At Forncett, for instance, the
demesne was at first leased as a whole together with the farm
buildings to two bondmen (1376-8), but after 1400 piecemeal.
Much could be written about demesne leases, but, from the point
of view of their influence in the erosion of customary tenure,
their main features were that they were almost invariably for
terms of years so that the rent and other conditions of tenure
could be adjusted according to market conditions at the end of
the term. The rent was not necessarily in cash since leasing lords
often wished to keep the demesne as a direct source of grain and
stock for their larders. In addition to the land, the live and dead
stock were usually leased too, and where relevant the remaining
labour services of the customary tenants.
As an example, we may quote a useful cross-section of types
of demesne lease from a Coventry Cathedral estate document of
1411.1 We are given information about the leases existing at that
date, of eleven demesnes in Warwickshire and Leicestershire.
The length of the leases varies as follows: eight years; twenty-
two years; sixty years; fourteen years; three years; twelve years;
then there are three tenancies at will; one whose duration is not
specified; and one where the lord seems to be under duress- the
demesne at Packington having been taken over by the tenants
without any payment of rent. Other features of these leases
present almost as much variety. Six leases provide for a rent in
kind, five of them being fixed amounts payable by single
individuals, who are named. The sixth is leased for one-third of
the grain crop. The three leases at will are for money rent, and
one of the farmers is stated to be a nativus. The lease whose
duration is not specified gives no detail either of tenant or rent.
And as we have seen, at Packington the demesne was not so much
leased as appropriated. Individual parcels of demesne were also
let at will or for terms. On the Leicester Abbey estate parcels of
demesne were already leased at will, or rather at pleasure (ad
placitum) by 1341. Later the demesnes were leased as a whole.
As mentioned above, at Forncett, the piecemeal leasing came after
the leasing en bloc. From about 1400 onwards these were leases
first of all for six or seven years, later for twelve, twenty or forty
49
Church of Worcester in pre-Conquest times. We find here, as
elsewhere, in the second half of the fourteenth century an
increase in leases for life and term of years, and opportunities
for inter-tenant deals such as surrenders to use and the sale of
reversions. A claim by a reversioner in 1412 was proved by the
production in court of his copy of the court roll, so perhaps copy-
hold tenure was on its way. But the lord does not seem to have
been willing to see serfdom by blood disappear. A man and his
son who were nativi de sanguine had to pay 20d in 1444 for per-
mission to stay for five months in a village hardly ten miles away.
In 1478 the relatives of a neif living in near-by Pershore were
ordered to bring him in under a penalty of 20d. Merchet was
being paid in 1495 and 1498, and neifs by birth are still referred
to in 1509. This is true of the Bishop of Worcester's estate also,
where in 1503 a man described as a nativus domini de sanguine
was taking a customary holding of half a nook at the high entry
fine of 10s. In contrast, at no distance from either Elmley Castle
or from the Bishop's manors on the outskirts of Worcester, there
was another manor for which we have a continuous series of
court rolls. This was the so-called liberty of Tardebigge, a
Feckenham Forest manor of Bordesley Abbey. Life for the
peasants here was no doubt hardly idyllic, holdings were small,
and the Abbot was still trying to get boon works in 1460. But
although tenures are described as customary throughout the
Middle Ages, there is no hint of servile villeinage, and the
number of surrenders by one tenant for the benefit of another
(ad opus) suggests a fair degree of unrestricted land transactions
between tenants.
Judging by transactions in court rolls of the fifteenth century,
customary tenants whose servility was insisted upon did not
necessarily have to pay higher rents or entry fines than free men
taking copyhold land, though they still had to pay to marry off
their daughters or live out of the manors. One reason why lords
insisted in the fifteenth century on maintaining the institutions of
serfdom was no doubt because of deeply rooted ideas about social
status - the same system of ideas about status which also affected
peasants who wanted freedom, even if it gave no immediate
economic advantage. The social conservatism of the lords is
expressed in the oath which mid-fifteenth-century Spalding
Priory bond tenants had to swear when taking up holdings whose
labour services and tallages had been commuted for fixed money
50
rents: 'I xall fayth here to the lord of this lordeschep and justi-
fyable be in body, godys and in catell as his own Mann at his own
wyll. So helpe me God aile the holy doom and be this hoke.' The
other point of view was expressed by an elderly bondman of the
Abbot of Malmesbury in the 1450s who wished to be free before
he died, and his heirs and blood after him, 'and if he might bring
that aboute it wold be more joifull to him then any worlelie goode' 1
59
Select Bibliography
SERFDOM and villeinage have sometimes been the exclusive
subject-matter of books and articles, but these topics have usually
been dealt with, amongst other matters, in most works concerned
with medieval agrarian history. Consequently a bibliography of
medieval peasant serfdom could well be the same as one for the
whole agrarian history of the Middle Ages. The bibliography con-
tains the works most directly relevant to the matter in the text.
1. European Serfdom
Of the many works covering this topic the most useful for back-
ground reading are:
M. Bloch, articles on serfdom collected in his Melanges His-
toriques, I (Paris, 1965).
G. Duby (trans. Cynthia Postan), The Rural Economy and
Country Life in the Medieval West (1968), is the latest
synthesis on the subject.
M. M. Postan (ed.), Cambridge Economic History cif Europe,
I (2nd ed., Cambridge, 1966), contains articles on individual
countries (including England) of great importance.
L. Verriest, Institutions M edievales ( 1946), contains some effective,
though limited, criticism of Bloch's ideas.
J. Vicens Vives, Historia de los Remensas en el siglo XV (1945),
is a classic study of the impact of the problem of serfdom on
national politics.
64
Glossary
adventitius immigrant.
amercement payment to the lord of the court by a person
found guilty of some trespass in order to have
the lord's mercy. The equivalent of a fine in a
modern court.
ancient demesne of land which was the king's land at the time of
the Crown Domesday Book.
ancilla female slave.
assart land won for cultivation from wood or
waste.
67
Index
Abingdon Abbey (Berks.), 23 Cambridgeshire, 18, 19, 28, 33
Abload (Gloucs.), 46 Canterbury Cathedral Priory, 40,
Adams alias Candumer, Adam, 49
35n. Carter, Robert, 54
Richard, 35n. Castle Combe (Wilts.), 52
Margery, 35 n. Catalonia, 27
Joan, 35n. ceorl, 13
adventitii, 20 chartes-loi, 18
..t.Elfric's Colloquy, 14 Chertsey, Abbot of (Surrey), 53
Alciston (Sussex), 34, 43 chevage, 18
amercements, 24, 41 Cheyney, E. P., 29, 56
ancient demesne of the Crown, Church, 11
23,25,28,48 Cirencester, Abbot of (Gloucs.), 23
ancillae, 15 Clitheroe, Honor of (Lanes.), 48
Arley (Durham), 38 coloni, 10
assart, 17, 19, 21,23 Co=on pleas, court of, 27
Aylestone (Leics.), 19 co=on rights, 31,48
Commons in Parliament, 27
Ball, John, 40 co=utation, 24, 29, 30, 40
Bath, Bishop of, 23 copyhold, 44, 47 ff.
Bedfordshire, 18, 19 Corsham (Wilts.), 48
Berkshire, 23, 34, 35, 41, 43,47 cottarii, 13
Binham, Prior of (Norf.), 48 Courtenay, William, Archbishop
Bishop, John, 54 of Canterbury, 40
Blaby (Leics.), 19 Coventry Cathedral Priory
Black Death, 32 (Warws.), 45
Blakham (Sussex), 49 Crowland Abbey (Lines.), 33
Bologna, commune of, 27 Curia Regis, 16,17
boon works, 30, 41,42 custom, manorial, 35, 48
bordarii, 13, 14 cutlery trade, 35 n.
Bordesley Abbey (Worcs.), 35, 50
Botetourte, Sir John, 51 demesne, 11, 14, 15, 16, 29, 30,
Broadway (Worcs.), 38 32,44-5
Buckinghamshire, 18 Devon,23
burgagetenure,24 Doddington (Cambs.), 28
Burton Lazars (Leics.), 55 Domesday Book, 12, 13, 14,28
Bury St Edmunds Abbey (Suf- Dorset, 23
folk), 20 dreng, 20
69
Duby, Georges, 57 Harrison, William, 56
Durham, 55 Hartopp,Ric hard,55
Durham, Bishopric of, 20 Hawstead (Suffolk), 46
Priory of, 20, 52, 55, 58, 41, 46 Henry I, the laws of, 15
Herefordshir e, 23
East Anglia, 18, 21, 22 Hereford, Bishop of, 24
Egginton (Derbys.), 52 heriot,15,17 ,24,43,48,5 2
Elizabeth I, 51, 56 Herle, William de, 26
Elmley Castle (Worcs.), 41,49 Hertfordshir e, 22
Ely, Bishop of, 27-8, 55 Heworth (Durham), 32
Prior of, 52 Heynes, William, 52
entail, 55 Holmes, G. A., 36, 42
entry fine, 24, 52, 41, 42, 45, 48, Hundred Rolls of 1278-80, 18,
52 19,21
Erdington (Warws.), 48 Huntingdons hire, 18, 35
Essex, 22, 55, 48
Evesham, Abbot of (Worcs.), 25, Inge, Justice, 28 n.
58 lngoldmells (Lines.), 49, 56
Abbey (Worcs.), 41 Islip, Simon, Archbishop of Can-
Excepcio villenagii, 27, 28 terbury, 40
Eynsham Abbey (Oxon.), 41
Jacquerie, 29
Fastolf, Sir John, 52 jurisdiction, private, 11, 16
Feckenham Forest, 23, 50
fenland, 20, 21 Kent, 22
Forncett (Norf.), 54, 42, 45, 45,46 Kett, Robert, 55
France, 27,29 Killerby (Durham), 42
kings of, 51 King, 28
freemen, free tenants, 11, 15, 16, King's bench, Court of, 27
18ff. Kyngesson, John, 54
free tenure, 17 ff.
Friskney (Lines.), 54 labour services, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18,
formariage, 18 24,29,30,36 ,40,41
labourers, 29, 33, 36, 37 and n.,
gavelkind, 22 38,40
Glastonbury Abbey (Som.), 25, Statutes of, 33, 36, 58, 39, 40
55n. justices of, 57, 38
Gloucester, 55 n. laboureur, 12, 13
Gloucester, Abbot of, 25 de Lacy, 21
Abbey, 46 Lancashire, 21
Gloucestersh ire, 25 Lancaster, Duchy of, 43, 49
land market, 35, 49
Hamble-le-R ice (Rants), 54 Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of Wor-
Hampshire, 20, 23 cester, 48
70
leases, 44 ff. Northumbria, 20
demesne, 52--5, 44-5 Norwich, 27-8,54
life, 47, 50 Nottinghamshire, 21
terminal, 45, 46, 50
See also tenure Odcombe (Som.), 42
Lee, Sir H., 56 Oddington (Gloucs.), 52
~ t t (Rants), 54 Otford (Kent), 40
Leicester Abbey, 45 Over (Gloucs.), 35n.
canon of, 26 oyer and terminer, 28
Leicestershire, 18, 19,45 Oxfordshire, 18, 19, 23
Levett, A. E., 33
Packington (Warws.), 45
leyrwite, 49
Page, T. W., 29
Lincolnshire, 18
Paris, Simon of, 53
London, 21, 22, 55
Parliament,27,28,29,53
'Lylton', 55 n.
Peace, Justices of the, 57
Peak Forest, 43
mainmorte, 18
Peasants' Revolt of 1581, 25 26
Malmesbury Abbey (Wilts.), 23, 56,42 ' '
51,52
Pecche, Bartholomew 26
Abbot of, 54
Pelham family, 55 '
malos usos, 57
estates, 46, 47
manouvrier, 12
Pershore (Worcs.), 50
manumission, 51-2
Abbot of, 58
March, Earl of, 42
Peterborough Abbey (Northants.)
Meaux, Robert, Abbot of (Yorks.), 21 '
37-8
Pipewell, Abbot of (Northants.)
merchet, 15, 17, 19, 26, 52, 42, 58 '
50,53
pouvoir banal, 11
Methley (Yorks.), 40,42 49
..
mmmg,23 ' domanial, 11
Putnam, Bertha, 56
ministeriales, 9
money rent, 32, 41, 45 Ramsey Abbey (Hunts.), 55, 54,
mort dancester, 26 57n., 41, 47,52
mortuary, 24 Rectitudines Singularum Person-
Mowsley (Leics.), 19 arum, 15
multure,24 remainder, 35
remensas, 27,57
nativi, nativi de sanguine' 15 , 1"1f'
A
reversion, 35, 50
45.47,49-50 Rogers, J. E. Thorold, 56
Necton (Norf.), 53 Rossendale, Forest of, 21
neifty, 14, 17,49
Norfolk, Earl of, 54 St Albans Abbey (Herts.) 20 5i
Northamptonshire, 21,55 41 ' ' '
Northfleet (Kent), 40 Mole, John, cellarer of, 41
71
Savine, A., 56 Umfraville, Gilbert, 54
servi casati, 10, 14 Unwin, George, 46
Sherard, Thomas, 55 Upleadon (Gloucs.), 35n.
Shropshire, 25 use, surrender to, 49, 50
slave, 9, 10, 12, 15, 14, 15, 56
smallholder, 24, 26 vilein, 13, 18
Smith, Sir Thomas, 56 villani, 13, 14
Smyth, John of Nibley, 51, 58 Vinogradoff, P., 29
sokemen, 19, 54 Vives, J. Vicens, 57
Somerset, 25, 41
Spalding Priory (Lines.), 20, 50
Spynk, Richard, 27-8, 55 wages,32,36,57,39,40
Stanes alias Smyth, Thomas, 55 Wainfleet (Lines.), 54
Stapleford (Leics.), 55 Walker,Henry,38
Star Chambers, Court of, 54 Warwickshire, 18, 23, 58,45
Stonor family, 47 Wawne (Yorks.), 38
Stratfield Saye (Rants), 51 Wayte, John, 54
Suffolk, 21, 41 Weald, 22
Surrey, 22, 41 Weistiimer, 18
Sussex, 20, 22, 35, 46, 48, 54 Welsh free tenants, 23
Wilson, Thomas, 56
tabernatio, 46 Wiltshire, 23, 35
tallage, 15, 19,24,26,53 Winchcombe, Abbot of (Gloucs.),
Talton (Worcs.), 38 25
Tardebigge, Liberty of (Worcs.), Winchester, Bishop of, 20, 25, 35,
35,50 59
TavistockAbbey (Devon), 46 Abbot of St Swithun's, 25
Tawney, R. H., 59 Wingham (Kent), 40
tenure at will, 21,45 Worcester, Bishop of, 23, 42, 50
life, 47 Cathedral Priory, 34, 45, 51
Thaxted (Essex), 34 Prior of, 23
theow, 14 Worcestershire, 23
Thorne, William atte, 26
toll, 15 York, Archbishop of, 52
Tony, Sir Robert, 53 Yorkshire, 21
towns, 23, 29, 53 East Riding, 37
72