they were all to join in haymaking and in washing and shearing the lord's sheep, to pay pannage for their pigs, to take their turn of service as reeve and tithingman, and to carry the lord's victuals and baggage on his departure from Witney as the natives were formerly wont to do.[75] This example, taken at random, is typical of the continuance of conditions which should make the historian hesitate before adopting the view that the social condition of the peasants was improved by the new arrangements made as to the bulk of their services and rents. But more than that, the terms of the new arrangements are not those which would be offered by well-to-do cultivators in whose hands the profits from the soil had accumulated. In all of these cases the new terms were advantageous to the tenants, not to the lord, and advantageous in a strictly pecuniary way. The lord had to grant these terms because the tenants were in the most miserable poverty, and could no longer pay their accustomed rent. Neither the Black Death, whose effects were evanescent, nor the desire of prosperous villains to free themselves of the degrading marks of serfdom was an important cause in the sequence of agrarian changes which took place in the fourteenth century. Serfdom as a status was hardly affected, but a thousand entries record the poverty and destitution which made it necessary to lighten the economic burdens of the serfs. At Brightwell, for example, the works of three half-virgaters were relaxed, the record reads, because of their poverty (1349-1350).[76] Some villains had no oxen, and were excused their plowing on this account, or were allowed to substitute manual labor for carting services.[77] At Weston, in 1370, a tenant "_non arat terram domini causa paupertate_."[78] At Downton, in 13766-1377, no money could be collected from the villains in place of the services they owed in haymaking.[79] Frequently when services were commuted for money, the record of the fact is accompanied by the statement that the change was made on account of the poverty of the tenants. At Witney, for instance, the works and services of all the native tenants were commuted at fixed payments (_ad certos denarios_) by favour of the lord as long as the lord pleases, on account of the poverty of the homage.[80] The reduction in rent in this case was at least a third of the total. The value of the customary services commuted was at least ten shillings six pence per acre, and they were commuted at six shillings eight pence. Other explicit references to the poverty of the tenants as the cause of commutation are quoted by Page: