Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776Reilly, S. A.
History
Our Legal Heritage: King AEthelbert - King George III, 600 A.D. - 1776
Reilly, S. A.
Law -- England -- History
The smaller room was the lord and lady's bedroom. It had a
canopied bed, chests for clothing, and wood frames on which clothes
could be hung. Life on the manor revolved around the larger room, or
hall, where the public life of the household was passed. There, meals
were served. The daily diet typically consisted of milk, soup,
porridge, fish, vegetables, and bread. Open hospitality accompanied
this communal living. There was little privacy. Manor household
villeins carried the lord's sheaves of grain to the manor barn, shore
his sheep, malted his grain, and chopped wood for his fire. At night
some slept on the floor of the hall. Others, who were cottars and
bordars, had their own dwellings nearby.
The manor house of lesser lords or knights was still built of
wood, although it often had a stone foundation.
About 35% of the land was arable land, about 25% was common
pasture land (for grazing only) or meadow land (near a stream or river
and used for hay or grazing), and about 15% was woodland. There were
these types of land and wasteland on each manor. The arable land was
allotted to the villeins in strips to equalize the best and worst land
and their distance from the village where the villeins lived. There was
three-way rotation of wheat or rye, oats or barley, and fallow land.
Cows, pigs, sheep, and fowl were kept. The meadow was allocated for hay
for the lord's household and each villein's. The villeins held land of
their lord for various services such as agricultural labor or raising
domestic animals. The villeins worked about half of their time on their
lord's fields [his demesne land], which was about a third of the
farmland. This work was primarily to gather the harvest and to plough
with oxen, using a yoke over their shoulders, and to sow in autumn and
Lent. They threshed grain on barn floors with flails cut from holly or
thorn, and removed the kernels from the shafts by hand. Work lasted
from sunrise to sunset and included women and children. The older
children could herd geese and pigs, and set snares for rabbits. The
young children could gather nuts and berries in season and other wild
edibles, and could pick up little tufts of wool shed by sheep. The old
could stay in the hut and mind the children, keep the fire going and
the black pot boiling, sew, spin, patch clothes, and cobble shoes. The
old often suffered from rheumatism. Many people had bronchitis. Many
children died of croup [inflammation of the respiratory passages]. Life
expectancy was probably below thirty-five.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account