第67章

English medieval documents often refer to the privileged mill, to which all the villains and sometimes the freemen of the Soke were bound to bring their corn.(78*) there is also the manorial fold in which all the sheep of the township had to be enclosed.(79*)In the latter case the landlord profited by the dung for manuring his land. Special attention was bestowed on supervising the making of beer. Court-rolls constantly speak of persons fined for brewing without licence. Every now and then we come across the wondrous habit of collecting all the villagers on fixed days and making them drink Scotale,(80*) that is ale supplied by the lord -- for a good price, of course.

Let us pass now to those aspects of manorial usage which are directly connected with the mode of holding land. I may repeat what I said before, that it would be out of the question to draw anything like a hard and fast line between these different sides of one subject. How intimately the personal relation may be bound up with the land may be gathered, among other things, from the fact that there existed an oath of fealty which in many places was obligatory on villains when entering into possession of a holding. This oath, though connected with tenure, bears also on the personal relation to the lord.(81*) The oath of fealty taken by the tenant in villainage differed from that taken by the freeholder in that it contained the words, 'I will be justified by you in body and goods;' and again the tenant in villainage, though he swore fealty, did no homage; the relationship between him and his lord was not a merely feudal relationship; the words, 'I become your man,' would have been out of place, and there could be no thought of the lord kissing his villain. But however intimate the connexion between both aspects of the question, in principle the tenure was quite distinct from the status, and could influence the condition of people who were personally free from any taint of servility.

The legal definition of villainage as unfree tenure does not take into account the services or economic quality of the tenure, and lays stress barely on the precarious character of the holding.(82*) The owner may take it away when he pleases, and alter its condition at will. The Abingdon Chronicle tells us (83*) that before the time of Abbot Faritius it was held lawful on the manors of the Abbey to drive the peasants away from their tenements. The stewards and bailiffs often made use of this right, if anybody gave them a fee out of greed, or out of spite against the holder. Nor was there any settled mode of succession, and when a man died, his wife and children were pitilessly thrown out of their home in order to make place for perfect strangers.

An end was put to such a lawless condition of things by Faritius'