第 5 页

This being so, we encounter some difficulty if we would put just the right interpretation on a remarkable fact that is visible in Essex. The description of that county tells us not only how many villani, bordarii and servi there are now, but also how many there were in King Edward's day, and thus shows what changes have taken place during the last twenty years. Now on manor after manor the number of villeins and bordiers, if of them we make one class, has increased, while the number of servi has fallen. We take 100 entries (four batches of 25 apiece) and see that the number of villani and bordarii has risen from 1486 to 1894, while the number of servi has fallen from 423 to 303. We make another experiment with a hundred entries. This gives the following result: --

1066 1086 Villani 1273 1247 Bordarii 810 1241 Servi 384 312

This decrease in the number of servi seems to be pretty evenly distributed throughout the county.(39*) We shall not readily ascribe the change to any mildheartedness of the lords. They are Frenchmen, and in all probability they have got the most they could out of a mass of peasantry made malleable and manageable by the Conquest. We may rather be entitled to infer that there has been a considerable change in rural economy. For the cultivation of his demesne land the lord begins to rely less and less on the labour of serfs whom he Reeds, more and more upon the labour of tenants who have plots of their own and who feed themselves. From this again we may perhaps infer that the labour services of the villani and bordarii are being augmented. But at any rate it speaks ill of their fate, that under the sway of foreigners, who may fairly be suspected of some harshness and greed, their inferiors, the true servi, are somewhat rapidly disappearing. However, it is by no means impossible that with a slavery so complete as that of the English the體 the Normans were not very familiar in their own country.(40*)

NOTES:

1. Hist. Eng. Law, i. 398.

2. D. B. i. 34, Limenesfeld.

3. D. B. i. 132 b, Hiz.

4. D. B. i. 132 b, Waldenei.

5. D. B. i. 136, Sandone.

6. AEthelb. 26.

7. Tacitus, Germ. c. 25: 'Caeteris servis non in nostrum morem, descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penates regit. Frumenti modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis ut colono iniungit, et servus hactenus paret.'

8. Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 202.

9. See on the one hand Maurer, K. U. i. 410, on the other a learned essay by Jastrow, Zur strafrechtlichen Stellung der Sklaven, in Gierke's Untersuchungen zur Deutsche Geschichte, vol. i. Maurer holds that the Anglo-Saxon slave is in the main a chattel, that e.g. the master must answer for the delicts of his slave in the same way that the owner answers for damage done by his beasts, and that this liability can be clearly marked off from the duty of the lord of free retainers who is merely bound to produce them in court. Jastrow, on the contrary, thinks that even at a quite early time the Anglo-Saxon slave is treated as a person by criminal law; he has a wergild; he can be fined; his trespasses are never compared to the trespasses of beasts; the lord's duty, if one of his men is charged with crime, is much the same whether that man be free or bond. Any theory involves an explanation of several passages that are obscure and perhaps corrupt.

10. Cnut, ii. 45-6.

11. Schmid, Appendix v. (Of Ranks); Pseudoleges Canuti, 60 (Schmid, p. 431).

12. Leg. Hen. 76 sect. 7: 'Differentia tamen weregildi multa est in Cantia villanorum et baronum.'

13. Ibid. 76 sect. 2.

14. Ibid. 76 sect. 3.

15. Ibid. 76 sect. 3.

16. Ibid. 77; see Hist. Eng. Law, i. 405.

17. Ibid. 78 sect. 2. The difficult strublum we leave untouched.

18. Ibid. 78 sect. 2 from Cnut, ii. 20. On this see Jastrow's comment, op. cit. p. 80.

19. Ibid. 70 sect. 5.

20. Ibid. 70 sect. 1; 76 sect. 4.

21. Ibid. 69 sect. 2.

22. Leg. Hen. 70 sect. 4: 'Si liber servum occidat similiter reddat parentibus 40 den. et duas mufflas et unum pullum [al. billum] mutilatum.' The mufflae are thick gloves. Compare Ancient Laws of Wales, i. 239, 511; injured he receives a saraad; the bondman has no galanas (wergild) but if 'the saraad of a bondman is twelve pence, six for a coat for him, three for trousers, one for buskins, one for a hook and one for a rope, and if he be a woodman let the hook-penny be for an axe.' If we read billum instead of pullum the English rule may remind us of the Welsh. His hedger's gloves and bill-hook are the arms appropriate to the serf, 'servitutis, arma'. cf. Leg. Hen. 78 sect. 2. As to the man-b髏 see Liebermann, Leg. Edwardi, p. 71.

23. In Leg. Hen. 81 sect. 3 (a passage which seems to show that by his master's favour even the servus may sometimes sue for a wrong done to him) we have this sum: -- villanus: cothsetus: servus:: 30: 15: 6.

24. Ibid. 75 sect. 4: 'suum peccatum est et dampnum.' See also 70 sect. 10, an exceedingly obscure passage.

25. Ibid. 59 sect. 23.

26. Ibid. 70 sect. 5; but for this our author has to go back as far as Ine.

27. Ibid. 59 sect. 25.

28. Leg. Hen. 59 sect. 24; 85 sect. 4: 'Solus furatur qui cum servo furatur.'

29. Ibid. 78 sect. 3; 59 sect. 25.

30. Hist. Eng. Law, i. 398, 402.

31. Hist. Eng. Law, ii. 457.

32. See Bath manumissions, Kemble, Saxons, i. 507 ff. Sometimes a pound or a half-pound is paid.

33. D. B. i. 26.

34. Chron. Petrob. 163.

35. D. B. i. 105 b, Devon: 'Rolf tenet de B[alduino] Boslie... Terra est 8 carucis. In dominio est 1 caruca et dimidia et 7 servi cum 1 caruca.' D. B. iv. 265; 'Balduinus habet 1 mansionem quae vocatur Bosleia... hanc possunt arare 8 carrucae et modo tenet eam Roffus de Balduino. Inde habet R. 1 ferdinum et 1 carrucam et dimidiam in dominio et villani tenent aliam terram et habent ibi 1 carrucam. Ibi habet R. 7 servos.' In the Exeter record these seven serfs seem to get reckoned as being both servi and villani. So in the account of Rentis, D. B. iv. 204-5, the lord is said to have one quarter of the arable in demesne and two oxen, while the villani are said to have the rest of the arable and one team; but the only villani are 8 coliberti and 4 servi.

36. See p. 59, note 2.

37. Ellis, Introduction, ii. 504-6.

38. See, for example, the following Herefordshire entry, D. B. i. 180 b: 'In dominio sunt 2 carucae et 4 villani et 8 bordarii et prepositus et bedellus. Inter omnes habent 4 carucas. Ibi 8 inter servos et ancillas et vaccarius et daia.'

39. Mr Round has drawn attention to the great increase of bordarii: Antiquary (1882) vi. 9. In the second of our two experiments the cases were taken from the royal demesne and the lands the churches. The surveys of Norfolk and Suffolk profess to enumerate the various classes of peasants T. R. E.; but commonly each entry reports that there has been no change. Without saying that we disbelieve these reports, we nevertheless say that a verdict which asserts that things have always (semper) been as they now are may easily be the outcome of nescience.

40. Hist. Eng. Law, i. 53-4.

3. THE VILLEINS

Next above the servi we see the small but interesting class of buri, burs or coliberti. Probably it was not mentioned in the writ which set the commissioners their task, and this may well be the reason why it appears as but a very small class. It has some 900 members; still it is represented in fourteen shires: Hampshire, Berkshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, Buckingham, Oxford, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Warwick, Shropshire -- in short, in the shires of Wessex and western Mercia. Twice over our record explains a piece of rare good fortune -- that buri and coliberti are all one.(1*) In general they are presented to us as being akin rather to the servi than to the villani or bordarii, as when we are told, 'In demesne there is one virgate of land and there are 3 teams and 11 servi and 5 coliberti, and there are 15 villani and 15 bordarii with 8 teams.'(2*) But this rule is by no means unbroken; sometimes the coliberti are separated from the servi and a precedence over the cotarii or even over the bordarii is given them. Thus of a Wiltshire manor it is written, 'In demesne there are 8 teams and 20 servi and 41 villani and 30 bordarii and 7 coliberti and 74 cotarii have among them all 27 teams.'(3*) Again of a Warwickshire manor, 'There is land for 26 teams; in demesne are 3 teams and 4 servi and 43 villani and 6 coliberti and 10 bordarii with 16 teams.'(4*) A classification which turns upon legal status is cut by a classification which turns upon economic condition. The colibertus we take to be an unfreer man (how there come to be degrees of freedom is a question to be asked by and by) than the cotarius or the bordarius, but on a given manor he may be a more important person, for he may have plough beasts while the cotarius has none; he may have two oxen while the bordarius has but an ox. In calling him a colibertus the Norman clerks are giving him a foreign name, the etymological origin of which is very dark;(5*) but this much seems plain, that in the France of the eleventh century a large class bearing this name had been formed out of ancient elements, Roman coloni and Germanic liti, a class which was not rightless (for it could be distinguished from the class of servi, and a colibertus might be made a servus by way of punishment for his crimes) but which yet was unfree, for the colibertus who left his lord might be pursued and recaptured.(6*) As to the Englishman upon whom this name is bestowed we know him to be a geb鷕, a boor, and we learn something of him from that mysterious document entitled 'Rectitudines Singularum Personarum.(7*) His services, we are told, vary from place to place; in some districts he works for his lord two days a week and during harvest-time three days a week; he Pays gafol in money, barley, sheep and poultry; also he has ploughing to do besides his week-work; he pays hearthpenny; he and one of his fellows must between them feed a dog. It is usual to provide him with an outfit of two oxen, one cow, six sheep, and seed for seven acres of his yardland, and also to provide him with household stuff; on his death all these chattels go back to his lord. Thus the boor is put before us as a tenant with a house and a yardland or virgate, and two plough oxen. He will therefore play a more important part in the manorial economy than the cottager who has no beasts. But he is a very dependent person; his beasts, even the poor furniture of his house, his pots and crocks, are provided for him by his lord. Probably it is this that marks him off from the ordinary villanus or 'townsman,' and brings him near the serf. In a sense he may be a free man. We have seen how the law, whether we look for it to the code of Cnut or to the Leges Henrici, is holding fast the proposition that every one who is not a the體man is a free man, that every one is either a liber homo or a servus. We have no warrant for denying to the boor the full wergild of 200 shillings. He pays the hearthpenny, or Peter's penny, and the document that tells us this elsewhere mentions this payment as the mark of a free man.(8*) And yet in a very true and accurate sense he may be unfree, unfree to quit his lord's service. All that he has belongs to his lord; he must be perpetually in debt to his lord; he could hardly leave his lord without being guilty of something very like theft, a abstraction of chattels committed to his charge. Very probably if he flies, his lord has a right to recapture him. On the other hand, so dependent a man will be in a very strict sense a tenant at will. When he dies not only his tenement but his stock will belong to the lord; like the French colibert he is mainmortable. At the same time, to one familiar with the cartularies of the thirteenth century the rents and services that this boor has to pay and perform for his virgate will not appear enormous. If we mistake not, many a villanus of Henry III's day would have thought them light. Of course any such comparison is beset by difficulties, for at present we know all too little of the history of wages and prices. Nevertheless the intermediation of this class of buri or coliberti between the serfs and the villeins of Domesday Book must tend to raise our estimate both of the legal freedom and of the economic welfare of that great mass of peasants which is now to come before us.(9*) That great mass consists of some 108,500 villani, some 82,600 bordarii, and some 6,800 cotarii and coscets.(10*) Though in manor after manor we may find representatives of each of these three classes, we can see that for some important purpose they form but one grand class, and that the term villanus may be used to cover the whole genus as well as to designate one of its three species. In the Exon Domesday a common formula, having stated the number of hides in the manor and the number of teams for which it can find work, proceeds to divide the land and the existing teams between the demesne and the villani -- the villani, it will say, have so many hides and so many teams. Then it will state how many villani, bordarii, cotarii there are. But it will sometimes fall out that there are no villani if that term is to be used in its specific sense, and so, after having been told that the villani have so much land and so many teams, we learn that the only villani on this manor are bordarii.(11*) The lines which divide the three species are, we may be sure, much rather economic than legal lines. Of course the law may recognise them upon occasion,(12*) but we cannot say that the bordarius has a different status from that of the villanus. In the Leges both fall under the term villani; indeed, as hereafter will be seen, that term has sometimes to cover all men who are not servi but are not noble. Nor must we suppose that the economic lines are drawn with much precision or according to any one uniform pattern. Of villani and bordarii we may read in every county; cotarii or coscets in considerable numbers are found only in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Middlesex, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset, Berkshire, Hertford and Cambridge, though they are not absolutely unknown in Buckingham, in Devon, in Hereford, Worcester, Shropshire, Yorkshire. We cannot tell how the English jurors would have expressed the distinction between bordarii and cotarii, for while the cot is English, the borde is French. If we are entitled to draw any inference from the distribution of the cottiers, it would be that the smallest of small tenements were to be found chiefly along the southern shore; but then there are no cotarii in Hampshire, plenty in Sussex, Surrey, Wiltshire and Dorset. Again, in the two shires last mentioned some distinction seems to be taken between the coscets and the cotarii, the former being superior to the latter.(13*) Two centuries later we find a similar distinction among the tenants of Worcester Priory. There are cotmanni whose rents and services are heavier, and whose tenements are presumably larger than those of the cotarii, though the difference is not very great.(14*) The vagueness of distinctions such as these is well illustrated by the failure of the term. bordarius (and none is more prominent in Domesday Book) to take firm root in this country.(15*) The successors of the bordarii seem to become in the later documents either villani with small or cottiers with large tenements. Distinctions which turn on the amount of land that is possessed or the amount of service that is done cannot be accurately formulated and forced upon a whole country. Perhaps in general we may endow the villanus of Domesday Book with a virgate or quarter of a hide, while we ascribe to the bordarius a less quantity and doubt whether the cotarius usually had arable land. But the survey of Middlesex, which is the main authority, touching this matter, shows that the villanus may on occasion have a whole hide,(16*) that is four virgates, and that often he has but half a virgate; it shows us that the bordarius, though often he has but four or five acres, may have a half virgate, that is as much as many a villanus;(17*) it shows us that the cotarius may have five acres, that is as much as many a bordarius,(18*) though he will often have no more than a croft.(19*) In Essex we hear of bordarii who held no arable land.(20*) Nor dare we lay down any stern rule about the possession of plough beasts. It would seem as if sometimes the bordarius had oxen, while sometimes he had none.(21*) The villanus might have two oxen, but he might have more or less. We may find that in Cornwall a single team of eight is forthcoming where there are(22*)