We may draw some illustrations of the life of these rural communities from the “Black Book” of Peterborough, in which the manors belonging to the abbey were described about the year 1125. On the manor of Thorp there were twelve “full villeins” holding eleven acres each, and working on the demesne three days a week; there were also six half villeins who did the like in proportion to their holdings. All these paid of custom ten shillings annually, besides five sheep for eating, ten ells of linen cloth, ten porringers, and two hundred loaves for the love-feast of S. Peter; moreover they all ploughed sixteen acres and a half for their lord. Six _bordarii_ paid seven shillings a year; and they all rendered twenty-two bushels of oats for their share of the dead wood, twenty-two loaves, sixty-four hens, and one hundred and sixty eggs.[176] At Colingham twenty villeins worked each one day a week, and three boon-days in August; they brought sixty waggon-loads of wood to the manor-house, dug and carried twenty loads of turf and twenty of thatch, harrowed all the winter-ploughing, and paid annually four pounds in money. There were also fifty sokemen who paid twelve pounds a year, ploughed, harrowed and reaped eighteen acres, besides ploughing with their own ploughs three times in Lent; each of them worked three days in August, and served of custom six times a year in driving the deer for the abbot’s hunting.[177] At Easton twenty-one villeins holding a virgate each worked twice a week throughout the year and three boon-days in August; they had twelve ploughs with which they worked once in winter and once in spring, and then harrowed; they ploughed fifteen acres and three roods, whereof five acres and one rood were to be sown with their own seed; in spring they had to plough ten acres and a half and sow twenty and a half with their own seed; in summer, for fifteen days, they had to do whatsoever the lord commanded. They also made seventy-three bushels of malt from the lord’s barley; and they paid seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. A man named Toli held one virgate at a rent of five shillings a year; and eleven sokemen held thirteen virgates and a half by a payment of twelve shillings, two days’ work in summer and winter, and fifteen days in summer at the lord’s bidding. The miller, with a holding of six acres of arable land and two of meadow, rendered one mark of silver to the lord.[178] [176] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), pp. 158, 159. [177] _Liber Niger Petrob._ (Stapleton), p. 159. [178] _Ib._ pp. 159, 160.