The English Village Community: Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)Seebohm, Frederic
History
The English Village Community: Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)
Seebohm, Frederic
Village communities -- Great Britain
How many otherwise free tenants hired yard-lands without becoming
_geburs_, and rendering the full _week-work_ as well as _gafol_, we
do not know. Except in the Danish district they seem to have left,
as we have seen, no trace behind them on most manors in the Domesday
Survey. The fact already mentioned, that the yard-lands of _geburs_,
who owed both gafol and services, were sometimes called '_gyrda
gafollandes_,' shows how completely the _gafol_ and the services had
become united as coincidents of a common villein tenure. All villein
tenants were apparently 'geneats' and paid 'gafol,' and there is a
passage in the laws of King Edgar which states that if a _geneat-man_
after notice should persist in neglecting to pay his lord's _gafol_,
he must expect that his lord in his anger will spare _neither his
goods nor his life_.[176]
«Completeness of the evidence to the seventh century.»
On the whole, leaving out of notice doubtful and exceptional tenants,
as well we may, we are now in a position to state generally what were
the main classes of villein tenants in early Saxon times, and what
were their holdings on the land in villenage, whether it were known
as _geneat_, or _geset_, or _gafol_ land.
_First_, the '_Rectitudines_,' of the tenth century, describes, as we
have seen, these tenants as all _geneats_ or villeins, and records
their services in general terms. [p147] It then divides them into
classes, just as the Domesday Survey does. And the two chief classes
of the geneats are the _geburs_ and the cottiers. These two classes
are evidently the _villani_ and the _bordarii_ or cottiers of the
Domesday Survey.
_Secondly_, the same document describes the holdings of these two
classes. It speaks of the cottiers as holding mostly five acres
each--sometimes more and sometimes less--in singular coincidence with
the Domesday Survey and later evidence. And it describes the _gebur_,
as we have seen, as holding a _yard-land_ or _virgate_, the typical
holding of the Domesday villanus, and as having allotted to him as
'outfit' two oxen, just as was the case with the Kelso husbandmen.
_Thirdly_, the laws of King Ine bring back the evidence to the
seventh century by their incidental mention of the _yard-land_ as a
typical holding on _geset-land_; and also of _half-hides_[177] and
_hides_, as well as of _geneats_[178] and _geburs_,[179] with their
_gafol_ and _weorc_.
When this concurrence of the evidence of the tenth and the seventh
century is duly considered, it will be seen how complete is the proof
that in the seventh century the West Saxon estate, though called a
'_tun_' or a '_ham_,' was in reality a _manor_ in the Norman sense
of the term--an estate with a village community in villenage upon it
under a lord's jurisdiction. [p148]
VI. SERFDOM ON A MANOR of KING EDWY.
The evidence hitherto given on the nature of the serfdom on
Anglo-Saxon manors has been of a general character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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