We get an idea of the life led by the majority of the inhabitants of Stratford and its vicinity in the 12th and 13th centuries from the ecclesiastical records of the various services and payments rendered as rent. Many of the large estates outside of the town had been let as "knight's fees," that is, on condition of certain military services to be performed by the holders. Some of the villeins within the village had become "free tenants," or free from serfdom, and were permitted to cultivate their land as they pleased on payment of a fixed rental in money, with little or no labor service in addition. But most of the inhabitants were still villeins or cottagers, from whom labor service was regularly exacted. "Villeins who owned sixty acres had to supply two men for reaping the lord's fields, and cottagers with thirty acres supplied one. On a special day an additional reaping service was to be performed by villeins and cottagers with all their families except their wives and shepherds. Each of the free tenants had then also to find a reaper, and to direct the reaping himself.... The villein was to provide two carts for the conveyance of the corn to the barns, and every cottager who owned a horse provided one cart, for the use of which he was to receive a good morning meal of bread and cheese. One day's hoeing was expected of the villein and three days' ploughing, and if an additional day were called for, food was supplied free to the workers.... No villein nor cottager was allowed to bring up his child for the church without permission of the lord of the manor. A fee had to be paid when a daughter of a villein or cottager was married. On his death his best wagon was claimed by the steward in his lord's behalf, and a fine of money was exacted from his successor--if, as the record wisely adds, he could pay one. Any townsman who made beer for sale paid for the privilege." In 1197 the inhabitants obtained for the town from Richard I. the privilege of a weekly market, to be holden on Thursdays, for which the citizens paid the bishop a yearly toll of sixteen shillings. The market was doubtless held at first in the open space still known as the Rother Market, in the centre of which the Memorial Fountain, the gift of Mr. George W. Childs of Philadelphia, now stands. _Rother_ is an old word, of Anglo-Saxon origin, applied to cattle, which must have been a staple commodity in the early Stratford market. The term was familiar to Shakespeare, who uses it in _Timon of Athens_ (iv. 3. 12):-- "It is the pasture lards the rother's sides, The want that makes him lean."