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than uselessly massacred; and, in fact, we may readily believe that the land was continuously tilled "in the same fashion and chiefly by people of the same stock" from the time when the Romans came, or before it, till the close of the middle ages and the more modern changes in agriculture.1 It has been well observed that whereas the Roman settler always remained outside the life of the British village community, the Saxon forced his way into it, and the whole development of English social and industrial history is dominated by this fact-the intrusion of a conquering element into a conquered community. Thus the manor, as we shall see, presents to us two main elements, the seigneurial and communal, the relations of tenants to their lord and to each other. The only difficulty is to distinguish the origin of each.

§ 19. The Saxon Village and its Inhabitants.

For the present, let us glance at the inhabitants of the ordinary English village as we find them much later when the struggles of invader and invaded have ceased, and both are living peacefully together. It is at the village that we must look, not at the town, for the Saxon disliked urban life and was essentially a dweller in villages.

The divisions of its inhabitants have been admirably summarised by Mr York Powell in the following manner: First came the gentry, including the thegen (landlord or "squire") and parish priest. The thegen lived on his own land and paid for it by special duties to the king, to whose following (comitatus) he belonged; the priest also lived on the land—i.e., the glebe with which his patron (probably the thegen) had endowed the village church. Next came the farmer-class of yeomen or geneats, corresponding to Christian religion, on which, with others, Freeman and Cunningham also rely to prove the disappearance of the pre-Saxon population, means very little. Nothing is more frequent than change of religion by half-civilised peoples, as witness the triumphs of Islam, while, on the other hand, the Christian Church in Roman Britain was only the religion of the few, and the extent of its influence has been greatly exaggerated by the interested statements of ecclesiastical historians.

1 York Powell, ut supra. 2 Gomme, Village Community, pp. 41, 60, 147. * Cf. Vinogradoff, Villeinage, p. 303, who implies this, though not in so many words. Social England, Vol. I. p. 124.

tenant-farmers, freemen who farmed their own land, or perhaps farmed their lord's, working for the landlord as well as paying rent to him. Thirdly came the peasant class of cotsetlas, or cottagers, and geburs or copyholders, the former being labourers with five acres of land to support them instead of receiving wages, and the latter copyholders bound to heavy services or "task-work" for their lord. The fourth class were the labourers, such as herdsmen, barnkeepers, and woodwards, who were serfs, and were paid partly in food and clothes, and partly, if they were village officials, by certain perquisites and dues. Distinct from them were the free village tradesmen, such as the hunter, fowler, smith, carpenter, potter, pedlar, and travelling merchants,1 who either took service under a lord or pursued their occupation independently.

We have, therefore, here several classes whom we may classify as follow:

I. Gentry ("of gentle rank "), including (1) the thegen, (2) the priest.

II. Freemen, including (1) the geneat, and (2) the tradesmen.

III. Unfree men, including (1) the cotsetla, (2) the gebur, (3) the labourers and serfs.

To which we should add, as quite distinct from the others, the small class of slaves (not serfs), such as the women-servants and menials about the house of the squire or yeoman. These formed a small, and, as time went on, a diminishing class, though for centuries the export trade in slaves was a dismal feature of English commerce.

§ 20. Village Life.

The life of the villages was very much the same in Anglo-Saxon times as it has always been in agricultural districts, and must, in its broad features, always continue to be. We need only make allowances for differences of degree in agricultural progress. It is very fully pictured to us in the illuminated manuscripts of the period, and in

1 Those, of course, had their houses in some town, but travelled from village to village selling their wares.

the Bayeux tapestry. The early part of the year was taken up with ploughing, digging, and sowing, and the approach of the lambing season; then came the hay and grain harvest and sheep-shearing; while the autumn brought with it extensive preparations for winter in the way of killing and salting cattle for food in the winter months and storing wood for fires. During the winter itself threshing and winnowing went on, and most of the smith's and carpenter's work was postponed till then, while in the houses the women were busy weaving and making rough and homely garments for their men. The most noticeable features in rural life from these early times right up to the sixteenth century, and even later, were the absence of winter roots for cattle, and of coal for their masters. Roots, and even carrots and parsnips, were then unknown to the farmer,1 and it was consequently impossible for him to keep his cattle through the cold weather. Hence they had to be killed and salted, and could never attain to the excellence of our modern breeds. The absence of coal involved the use of large quantities of firewood in our cold climate, and hence there was a continual and increasing encroachment upon the forests. Fish and game were fortunately plentiful, and helped to relieve the monotony of salt meat, and eels were a very favourite food,2 being found in greater numbers then than now owing to the numerous fens and marshes that occupied so many districts. Though it was impossible to keep cattle in any great numbers through the winter, oxen were used for ploughing, and also for food, and sheep were valued for their wool, which, "from the earliest records," formed an article of export to Flanders, and was afterwards much more largely produced. Large numbers of swine were kept, since the rearing and maintenance of these was far more economical than that of cattle, as they could feed on 1 Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 78.

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2 So much so that rent was often paid by a stipulated quantity of eels. Social England, Vol. I. p. 207.

3 Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 78, and see also Macpherson, i. 288. 'P. H. Newman in Social England, Vol. I. p. 213, and see the illumination in the Cottonian MSS.

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the acorns and beech-mast found in unlimited quantities in the forests. Pannage," or food for swine, is frequently mentioned in Domesday, being given as for over thirty thousand hogs in Hertfordshire and over ninety thousand in Essex. Beekeeping was an important industry, the honey being used both for mead and flavouring.1

§ 21. Methods of Cultivation.

As regards agriculture, it is noticeable that at one time extensive culture was common,2 as at Lauder, but it gradually was given up in favour of the intensive system. Special fields were set apart for cultivation in common as permanent arable land on the open field system, and numerous survivals thereof are found in England even to the present day, as at Laxton in Notts, in Cambridgeshire, and elsewhere. Both the two-field and the three-field system were employed, one field lying fallow and the other being under crop according to the former method, while, under the latter, two out of three fields were under crops and the third lay fallow. Though the two-field system, or a modified form of it," was not uncommon, the threefield one became eventually more usual. The crops grown included wheat, rye, oats, and barley, with beans and pease. The fields were not enclosed, except by temporary fences, which were removed after harvest so that the cattle might feed, and strips of land belonging to various owners and tenants lay intermingled with those occupied by the others, being only marked off by "balks" of untilled land. A villein generally possessed a pair of oxen along with his holding, but probably the various small tenants combined their teams in order to do their ploughing more effectively, the normal team being, as we saw, of eight oxen.9 Most of the operations of agriculture were performed in common, 1 York Powell, Soc. Eng., Vol. I. p. 124; for swine, cf. ib., p. 213.

2 Cunningham, i. p. 20. 3 So Cunningham, but cf. Gomme, V. C., p. 150. *Seebohm, Village Community, 1-13.

5 See the diagram and explanation in Cunningham, i. 71.

"At least in Germany, cf. Hanssen, Agrarhist. Abh., i. 178. In some districts of England also both systems existed side by side.

7 Laws of Ine, 42 (Thorpe, i. 129).

9 Seebohm, V. C., p. 388.

8 Cunningham, i. 73.

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or by men whom the village community as a whole paid, or rather supported, and who did certain work, such as thatching, swine-herding, or ploughing, in return for their keep.1 This common system of agriculture naturally produced only poor results, and prevented improvement by individual enterprise, but it sufficed for the simple requirements of those days, and was in harmony with the economic ideas of the age.

§ 22. Isolation of Villages. Crafts and Trades.

Each of the separate communities living in these villages, or in the small towns that were now growing up, was on the whole very much cut off from its neighbours. Partly because of the disunion and conflicts that for many years prevailed among the various Saxon conquerors, and partly owing to the difficulties of intercommunication when the Roman roads were no longer kept up, and from many other causes, the villages were very much disinclined for mutual intercourse, and endeavoured to be, as far as possible, each a self-sufficing economic unit, obtaining their food and clothing, coarse and rough though it generally was, from their own flocks and herds and from their own land. Hence only the simplest arts and domestic manufactures were carried on by the people at large, such as the crafts of the iron and coppersmith, the shoemaker, and the carpenter. It is, however, proper to notice the important part which the monasteries played as centres of industrial life. The larger monasteries, such as those of St Edmunds or Glastonbury, were great industrial centres, and it was the monks, or the foreign workmen introduced by them, who brought to a high degree of perfection the arts of embroidery and weaving, and of glass and metal work for ornamental purposes.* . St. Dunstan, among others, is said to have encouraged metal work. But the great mass of,

the people cared little for such arts.

3

1 Cunningham quotes instances from Saxon and Welsh sources on p. 74 of vol i., Growth of English Industry.

On the growth of towns, see later, p. 86 et seq.

3 A. L. Smith in Social England, Vol. I. p. 207. Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 78.

Will. of Malm., Vita S. Dunstani, ch. ix. p. 262; Stubbs' Memorials of St Dunstan (ed. 1874).

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