Arrangement of work and rent

Our best means of judging of the daily work in an work and English village of the thirteenth century is to study the detailed accounts of operations and payments imposed on the tenants for the benefit of a manorial lord. Surveys, extents, or inquisitions were drawn up chiefly for the purpose of settling these duties, and the wealth of material they afford enables us to form a judgment as to several interesting questions. It tells directly of the burden which rural workmen had to bear in the aristocratical structure of society; it gives indirectly an insight into all the ramifications of labour and production since the dues received by the lord were a kind of natural percentage upon all the work of the tenants; the combination of its details into one whole affords many a clue to the social standing and history of the peasant classes of which we have been treating.

Operations: Ploughing

Let us begin by a survey of the different kinds of labour duties performed by the dependent holdings which clustered round the manorial centre. Foremost stands ploughing and the operations connected with it. The cultivation of the demesne soil of a manor depended largely on the help of the peasantry. By the side of the ploughs and plough-teams owned by the lord himself, the plough-teams of his villains are made to till his land, and manorial extents commonly mention that the demesne portion has to be cultivated by the help of village customs, ‘cum consuetudinibus villae.’