Another feature of transition is perceivable in the history of the class of servants or ministers who collect and supervise the dues and services of the peasants. The feudal arrangement is quite as much characterised by the existence of these middlemen as modern life by the agreements and money dealings which have rendered it useless. In the period preceding the manorial age we see fewer officers, and their interference in the life of the community is but occasional. The gathering of tribute, the supervision of a few labour duties in addition, did not require a large staff of ministers. It was in the interest of the lord to dispense as much as possible with their costly help, and to throw what obligations there were to be performed on the community itself. It seems to me that the feudal age has preserved several traces of institutions belonging to that period of transition. The older surveys, especially the Kentish ones, show a very remarkable development of carriage duties which must have been called forth by the necessity of sending produce to the lord's central halls or courts, while the home farms were still few and small. The riding bailiffs appear in ancient documents in a position which is gradually modified as time goes on. They begin by forming a very conspicuous class among the tenants, in fact the foremost rank of the peasantry. These radmen, radulfs, rodknights, riders, are privileged people, and mostly rank with the free tenants, but they are selected from among the villagers, and very closely resemble the hundredors, whose special duties have kept up their status among the general decay. In later times, in the second half of the thirteenth century and in the fourteenth, it would be impossible to distinguish such a class of riding tenants. They exist here and there, but in most cases their place has been taken by direct dependents of the lord. Besides, as the home-farm has developed on every manor, their office has lost some of the importance it had at a time when there was a good deal of business to transact in the way of communicating between the villages and the few central courts to which rents had to be carried. And, lastly, I may remind the reader of the importance attached in some surveys to the supervision of the best tenants over the rest at the boon works. The socmen, or free tenants, or holders of full lands, as the case may be, have to ride out with rods in their hands to inspect the people cutting the corn or making hay. These customs are mostly to be found in manors with a particularly archaic constitution. They occur very often on ancient demesne. And I need hardly say that they point to a still imperfect development of the ministerial class. The village is already set to work for the lord, but it manages this work as much as possible by itself, with hardly any interference from foreign overseers.