Another book that is very helpful in showing the relationships that existed between a great abbey and its various tenants is the _Rentalia et Custumaria_ of Glastonbury, printed a few years ago by the Somerset Record Society. Some of these West-country tenants had to find part of their rent in labour, and part in kind or in payment. There are payments in kind of salmon, eels, and honey, whilst not a few who worked direct for the abbey had stated wages. Even in cases where the villein had to do as much as three days’ work a week from Michaelmas to Midsummer, and five days’ work a week during harvest-time, he held in recompense several acres of arable land that he cultivated for himself during the free days, and had a small share of every acre of corn that he reaped or grass that he cut for the lord. The smaller cottagers had a variety of curious customary services in lieu of rent, mostly of a trifling character. Thus a woman named Alice held her cottage and half-an-acre of land by the service of sharpening the reapers’ sickles and bringing them water at harvest-time. Whilst at work for the abbot the labourers were, as a rule, entertained at common meals, and they met at Christmas in the great hall for a special feast. It may, in short, be taken as a fact, that the best farming and the greatest degree of fair dealing and generous treatment were to be found on the monastic lands. The more this subject is studied, the more thoroughly are such facts established. Nor are the reasons why this should be the case far to seek. However unworthy the superior or the leading officials of an abbey or priory may occasionally have been, the system at all events secured a succession of resident lords for the most part of high moral and religious character, or of diligently supervised granges where the estates were at some distance from the central house. There were no protracted wardships or minorities; the lords were not frequently absent at wars, or with the court; and the actual character of the administration could not possibly have fluctuated in a like way as on secular estates. The heads of religious houses, and the chief obedientiaries or officials, had almost invariably some experience of manual labour as well as of agricultural farming, and could sympathise with the toil of the one and the anxiety of the other. Not infrequently in the larger houses special lands were appropriated to the support of the burdens of a particular part of the monastic life, and where this was the case, the almoner, the sacrist, or the cellarer, as the case might be, gave his immediate attention to the cultivation and the produce of such small estates. Hence came about a continuous contact between the religious and the tenants of various classes.