The duction of sugar was as needful for household pur- tide.2 The labour-roll of two manors will best enable us to realize what these services really were. At Hurstbourn, in Ælfred's day, each hide paid forty pence to the lord at autumn-tide, and he received from the manor six church-mittan of ale and three horseloads of white wheat with two ewes and lambs at Easter. His men had out of their own time to plough three acres of the demesne, and sow them with their own seed, to mow half an acre of the rent-meadow, and split four loads of wood for the rent-hedging. Besides this they were to do any work that might be called for from them in every week save three in the year. At Dyddenham in the Severn valley the lord's men had a less easy life. "At Dyddenham," runs its labour-roll, "the services are very heavy. The geneat 3 1 Thorpe, "Anc. Laws," 437. At the head of the servants, in social rank, stood the smith, next to him the ploughman, after him the oxherd and cowherd, shepherd, goatherd, and swineherd, all in places of trust. 2 Ibid. 433. 3 Kemble, "Sax. in Engl." i. 321. CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955 988. Labourrents. CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955988. Manor of Cranborne. must work, on the land and off the land, as he is In the same way the survey of a single manor will best bring before us the new rural society. That of Cranborne was one of the most extensive in Dorset: it stretched over ten thousand acres, of which nearly six thousand remained woodland, while three thousand furnished a rough common pasturage. The land actually under cultivation was then but some twelve hundred acres of ploughland with twenty of meadowland, and its population numbered some forty males. 1 Construction of weir or place for catching fish. (Kemble.) 2 Let him build eight yokes in the weir, and close three ebban. What these geocu and ebban are I cannot say. (Kemble.) 3 Cod. Dip. 461. 4 Eyton, "Dorset Domesday," 62. The manor was a royal manor: two-fifths of its whole area remained "in demesne," and in the ordinary cultivation of this two ox-teams of eight oxen each and ten serfs were commonly employed. The serfs of the demesne were strictly serfs; at Cranborne they formed about a fourth of the whole population, elsewhere through Dorset they numbered from an eighth to a thirtieth. But at harvest-tide and on given days through week and year the lord called for additional service in his demesne from the villeins who held by this labour-tenure the other three-fifths of the estate. Of these eight were villeins, twelve boors, and seven cottars, who seem to have been distinguished from their fellow-villeins simply by their smaller holdings.1 Though the villein was not free in a political sense, though he had no share in the general citizenship, and his lord "stood for him" in hundred-moot or shiremoot, he was in a social sense practically as free as the common peasant of to-day. But beneath the serf or villein lay the actual slave," the "theow," who passed in the sale of an estate with its sheep and oxen and swine, and who was bought and sold as freely. "Herein is declared," runs the record of such a sale, "that Ediwic, the widow of Sawgels, bought Gladu at Colewin for half-a-pound, for the price and the toll; and Ælword the port-gerefa took the toll." The toll on slave-sales formed one of the most lucrative of the market dues. At Lewes the reeve levied a farthing on every sale of an ox, but fourpence on CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955 988 Slaves. CHAP. VII. The Great Ealdormen. 955. 988. 2 the sale of a man.' The position of the slave indeed 1 Sharon Turner, "Hist. Angl.-Sax." iii. 79, 80. 3 "Non licet homini a servo tollere pecuniam quam ipse labore suo acquisierit" (Councils, iii. 202). "Thus Edric bought the perpetual freedom of Sægyfa, his daughter, and all her offspring. So, for one pound, Elfwig the Red purchased his own liberty; and Sawi Hagg bought out his two sons. Godwin the Pale is also notified to have liberated himself, his wife, and children, for fifteen shillings. Brihtmær bought the perpetual freedom of himself, his wife Elfgyfu, their children and grandchildren, for two pounds." Sharon Turner, "Hist. Angl.-Sax." iii. 83. Manumission became frequent in wills, as the clergy taught that such a gift was a boon to the soul of the dead. At the Synod of Chelsea the bishops bound themselves to free at their decease all serfs on their estates who had been reduced to serfdom by want or crime. Usually the slave was set free before the altar or in the church-porch, and the Gospel-book bore written on its margins the record of his emancipation. Sometimes his lord placed him at the spot where four roads met, and bade him go whither he would. In the more solemn form of the law his master took him by the hand in full shire-meeting, showed him open road and door, and gave him the lance and sword of the freeman. CHAP. VII. Ealdormen. 955. 988. It was this agricultural society that practically Inland trade. made up the nation. the nation. In the tenth century England could hardly claim to be a trading country at all. Its one export was that of slaves, its imports mainly of such goods as an agricultural people could not produce for itself. Its inland towns were mere villages that furnished markets for the sale of produce from the country round; wares from more distant points were few. The most important perhaps was salt, for as there was little winter-fodder for cattle, a large part of them were slain at the end of autumn, and salted meat formed the bulk of the food till the coming of spring. The saltworks of Worcestershire, which had been worked under the Romans, were still busy, while the boundless supply of fuel from the 1 Acts of Council of Celchyth, an. 816, cap. x. Stubbs and Haddan, "Councils," vol. iii. p. 583. On "Celchyth," see same vol. pp. 444, 445. (A. S. G.) 2 Cod. Dip. 67, 68. |