Oxford, York, Exeter, and Winchester; and Dover was also a place of considerable importance. But they were almost insignificant if we compare them with their modern dimensions. York had only some 1600 houses;1 Norwich boasted not more than 1320 burgesses; and it has been estimated that, generally speaking, from 7000 to 10,000 people in all was "the population of a first class town." They were, in fact, trading centres rather than seats of manufacturing industry. Although comparatively unimportant at the time of Domesday, they began to increase very much in prosperity soon afterwards. There are 9250 manors enumerated in Domesday, and all except the towns above mentioned were practically what we should now call villages of no great size.

§ 37. The Manors and Lords of the Manors.

Of course each of these manors, after the Norman Conquest, was held by a lord," who in turn held it more or less remotely from the King. It is, in fact, the distinguishing feature of the Conquest, that William the Norman made himself the supreme landowner of the country, so that all land was held under him.3 He himself also, as a private landowner, held a large number of manors, which were farmed by his bailiffs, and for each of these manors he was therefore in a double sense the lord. But the majority of the manors in the country were held by his followers, the Norman nobles, and nearly all of them had several manors each. Now it was impossible for a noble to look after all his manors himself, even if he had wished it, since by William's cautious policy their lands had been assigned to them in various widely separated districts, and some of them, again, had so many manors that personal supervision was impossible. Nor was it always advisable to leave them merely to the care of bailiffs, and, therefore, naturally the great landowners used to sub-let some of their manors to 1 Cunningham, Growth of Industry, i. 166.

Pearson, Hist. of Eng., i. 381.

3 Taswell-Langmead, Const. Hist., ch. ii. p. 49; Stubbs, I. ch. ix. p. 274. 4 Stubbs, i. P. 272.

5 Robert of Mortain held the largest number-viz., 793; but Odo of Bayeux had 439, and Alan of Brittany 442. The ancient demesne of the Crown consisted of 1422. Ellis, i. 225, 226.

other tenants—often to Englishmen who had submitted to the Norman Conquest. The nobles who held their land direct from the King were called tenants-in-chief, and those to whom they sub-let it were called tenants-inmesne. But when a noble let a manor to a tenant-inmesne, this tenant then for all practical purposes took his place, and became the "lord" of that manor. Thus, then, we find various kinds of manors-some owned directly by the King, others by the great nobles, and others again held by tenants-in-mesne. For instance, in the Domesday of Oxfordshire,1 we find that one Milo Crispin, a tenant-inchief, held a large number of manors from the King, but also let many to sub-tenants, that of Cuxham, e.g., being let to Alured, who was therefore its lord. So, too, in Warwickshire, the manor of Estone (now Aston) was one of those belonging to William Fitz-Ansculf, but he had let it to Godmund, an Englishman, who was therefore "lord of the manor of Estone." In many cases the lordship of a manor was vested to a monastery or abbey; in fact, it is said that the Church held rather more than one-fifth of the whole land of the kingdom.2

§ 38. The Inhabitants of the Manor.

The lord of the manor was a person of great importance, but of very varying social position. The great nobles, such as Odo of Bayeux, whose rent roll was well over £3000 a year (an enormous sum for those days), or Robert of Mortain, who numbered his manors not by the score but by the hundred, held, of course, a rank equal to the noblest and richest of the Dukes of the present day. But there was a large number of lesser nobles, whose income varied from £300 to £500 a year, and also many county gentlemen, as we should call them, who, though tenants-in-chief and lords of manors, had a comparatively small income.3

1 See the survey for Oxfordshire in any reprint.

2 Pearson reckons : the Crown held t, the Church , and the barons the remaining; Hist. of Eng., i. 383.

3 "Five to twenty pounds a year was no uncommon income for a gentleman" (Pearson, Hist. of Eng., i. 384), but this must be multiplied by 20 at least to give any idea of its value in modern figures.

Besides the lord himself (whether King, noble, or subtenant), with his personal retainers, and generally a parish priest or some monks, there were three distinct classes of inhabitants—(1) First came the villani or villeins, who formed about 38 per cent.1 of the total population recorded in Domesday, and were by far the most numerous and widely-spread class.2 Their holdings differed in size, but on the average we may take them as occupying a virgate or yardland, which is equivalent to some 30 acres of arable land, and, of course, their holdings were scattered in plots among the common fields of the manor. The villeins also had a house in the village, and were often called virgarii or yardlings, from holding a virgate of land. (2) Next to the villeins came the cottars, or bordars,3 a class distinct from and below the former, who probably held only some 5 or 10 acres of land and a cottage, and did not even possess a plough, much less a team of oxen apiece, but had to combine among themselves for the purpose of ploughing. They form 32 per cent. of the Domesday population. Finally came (3) the slaves, who were much fewer in numbers than is commonly supposed, forming only 9 per cent. of the Domesday population. Less than a century after the Conquest these disappear, and merge into the cottars. They should not be confused with either villeins or bordars, but Ellis is probably right in supposing that the servi correspond to the Saxon theow or esne, while the villeins correspond to the ceorls or churls, and that under the Norman system there was a continual approximation going on between them, the churls becoming degraded, and the position of the theows being improved, so that both were brought nearer together in the social scale.5

'The percentages are given by Seebohm, Village Community, p. 86. 2 Ellis tabulates 108,407 (Domesday, ii. 511).

3 See Ellis, Domesday, ii. 511, and Birch, Domesday, pp. 141 and 154; also Ashley, Economic History, I. i. p. 18. Ellis tabulates 82,119 bordars, 1749 "coseets," and 5054 cotarii. The terms coseet, cotsedae, coscez, cozets, coteri, cotmanni, cotarii seem to be used more or less of the same class. The exact status of the bordar and cottar has been the subject of much discussion, but probably the real distinction between them was very slight. In Ellis (ii. 511), 25,156 servi.

5 Cf. Birch, Domesday, p. 170; Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. xi. p. 428.

§ 39. The Condition of these Inhabitants.

1

The chief feature of the social condition of these classes of people was that they were subject to a lord. They each depended upon a superior, and no man could be either lordless or landless, for all persons in villeinage, which included every one below the lord of the manor, were subject to a master, and bound to the land, except, of course, "free tenants (p. 75). But even against their lord the villeins had certain rights which were to be recognised; and they had, besides, many comforts and little responsibility, except to pay their dues to their lord. Moreover, it was possible for a villein to purchase a remission of his services, and become a "free tenant;" or he might become such by residing in a town for a year and a day, and being a member of a town gild, as long as during that period he was unclaimed by his lord. And in course of time the villein's position came to be this-he owed his lord the customary services (p. 75) whereby his lord's land was cultivated; but his lord could not refuse him his customary rights in return"his house and lands, and rights of wood and hay "3—and in relation to every one but his lord he was a perfectly free citizen. His condition tended to improve (at least in an economic sense), and by the time of the Great Plague (1348) a large number of villeins had become actually free, having commuted their services for money-payments.5 What these services were we shall now explain. But, finally, it should be pointed out that the state of villeinage and of serfage was practically the same thing in two aspects; the first implying the fact that the villein was bound to the soil, the second that he was subject to the master. A serf

3

1 Vinogradoff, V. in E., pp. 174, 176. The lord could even be fined for not fulfilling his village duties. Gomme, Vill. Comm., p. 117.

2 Stubbs, Const. Hist., I. ch. xi. p. 421.

3 Stubbs, II. xvi. p. 453.

Seebohm in Eng. Hist. Review, July 1892, vol. vii. 27, p. 457, who agrees with Thorold Rogers. Dr Stubbs and others hold a quite contrary view (Const. Hist., i. p. 427), but this is because they take into account only the legal status, not the economic condition of the villein.

5

Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 253. The process of commutation had probably begun before the Conquest. Ashley, Econ. Hist., I. ch. i. p. 22.

was not a slave; and, as we saw above, slaves became extinct soon after the Norman Conquest.

§ 40. Services due to the Lord from his Tenants in Villeinage.

Under the manorial system rent was paid in a very different manner from that in which it is paid to-day, for it was a rent not so much of money, though that was employed, as of services. The services thus rendered by tenants in villeinage, whether villeins or cottars, may be divided, although they present much variety, into weekwork,1 and boon-days or work on special days.2 The weekwork consisted of ploughing or reaping, or doing some other agricultural work for the lord of the manor for two or three days in the week, or at fixed times, such as at harvest; while boon-day work was rendered at times not fixed, but whenever the lord of the manor might require it, though the number of boon-days in a year was limited.3 When, however, the villein or cottar had performed these liabilities, he was quite free to do work on his own land, or, for that matter, on anyone else's land, as indeed the cottars frequently did, for they had not much land of their own, and, therefore, often had time and labour to spare. It was from this cottar class with time to spare that a distinct wage-earning class, like our modern labourers, arose, who lived almost entirely by wages. We shall hear more of them later on, but at the time of the Conquest not many such existed.

§ 41. Money Payments and Rents.

5

It was also usual for a tenant, besides rendering these servile services, to pay his lord a small rent either in money or kind, generally in both. Thus, on Cuxham manor, we find a villein (or serf) paying his lord d. on November 12th every year, and 1d. whenever he brews. He also pays, in

1 "Wic-weorce," Rectitudines, 375 (Schmid). 2 Seebohm, V. C., 41, 78. 3 At least by custom; Seebohm, p. 79. Thorold Rogers, Hist of Agric., ii. 329, with his customary completeness, gives many instances of rates at which these farm servants were hired, including ploughmen, carters, shepherds, gardeners, cowherds, &c., &c "Thorold Rogers, Six Centuries, p. 40.