A Short History of English Agriculture | Page 6

W.H.R. Curtler
quality of it was not[29]; that is,
each one knew how many days he had to work, but not whether he was
to plough, sow, or harrow, &c. It is surprising to find, that on the
festival days of the Church, which were very numerous and observed as
holy days, the lord lost by no work being done, and the same was the
case in wet weather.
One of the most important duties of the tenant was the 'averagium', or
duty of carrying for the lord, especially necessary when his manors
were often a long way apart. He would often have to carry corn to the
nearest town for sale, the products of one manor to another, also to haul
manure on to the demesne. If he owned neither horse nor ox, he would
sometimes have to use his own back.[30]

The holding of the villein did not admit of partition by sale or descent,
it remained undivided and entire. When the holder died all the land
went to one of the sons if there were several, often to the youngest. The
others sought work on the manor as craftsmen or labourers, or
remained on the family plot. The holding therefore might contain more
than one family, but to the lord remained one and undivided.[31]
In the fourth class came the bordarii, the cotarii, and the coliberti or
buri; or, as we should say, the crofters, the cottagers, and the boors.
The bordarii numbered 82,600 in Domesday, and were subject to the
same kind of services as the villeins, but the amount of the service was
considerably less.[32] Their usual holding was 5 acres, and they are
very often found on the demesne of the manor, evidently in this case
labourers on the demesne, settled in cottages and provided with a bit of
land of their own. The name failed to take root in this country, and the
bordarii seem to become villeins or cottiers.[33]
The cotarii, cottiers or cottagers, were 6,800 in number, with small
pieces of land sometimes reaching 5 acres.[34] Distinctly inferior to the
villeins, bordarii, and cottars, but distinctly superior to the slaves, were
the buri or coliberti who, with the bordars and cottars, would form a
reserve of labour to supplement the ordinary working days at times
when work was pressing, as in hay time and harvest. At the bottom of
the social ladder in Domesday came the slaves, some 25,000 in number,
who in the main had no legal rights, a class which had apparently
already diminished and was diminishing in numbers, so that for the
cultivation of the demesne the lord was coming to rely more on the
labour of his tenants, and consequently the labour services of the
villeins were being augmented.[35] The agricultural labourer as we
understand him, a landless man working solely for wages in cash, was
almost unknown.
All the arrangements of the manor aimed at supplying labour for the
cultivation of the lord's demesne, and he had three chief officers to
superintend it:
1. The seneschal, who answers to our modern steward or land agent,

and where there were several manors supervised all of them. He
attended to the legal business and held the manor courts. It was his duty
to be acquainted with every particular of the manor, its cultivation,
extent, number of teams, condition of the stock, &c. He was also the
legal adviser of his lord; in fact, very much like his modern successor.
2. The bailiff for each manor, who collected rents, went to market to
buy and sell, surveyed the timber, superintended the ploughing,
mowing, reaping, &c., that were due as services from the tenants on the
lord's demesne; and according to Fleta he was to prevent their 'casting
off before the work was done', and to measure it when done.[36] And
considering that those he superintended were not paid for their work,
but rendering more or less unwelcome services, his task could not have
been easy.
3. The praepositus or reeve, an office obligatory on every holder of a
certain small quantity of land; a sort of foreman nominated from among
the villeins, and to a certain extent representing their interests. His
duties were supplementary to those of the bailiff: he looked after all the
live and dead stock of the manor, saw to the manuring of the land, kept
a tally of the day's work, had charge of the granary, and delivered
therefrom corn to be baked and malt to be brewed.[37] Besides these
three officers, on a large estate there would be a messor who took
charge of the harvest, and many lesser officers, such as those of the
akermanni, or leaders of the unwieldy plough teams; oxherds,
shepherds, and swineherds to tend cattle, sheep, and pigs when they
were turned on
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