up a mawkin with it and set it up there on the Topp of Bon-Fyre. This happened on Monday, December the 11t 1688, and this is all the mischief they did, besides breaki the lamp and carrying away the Sanctus bell.'

In other respects East Hendred has not differed fro other villages in the development of its social a economic life. Every medieval village was a sma world to itself. Means of communication with neig bours were few, and rarely used. Each village produc almost all that it needed. It consumed the food that grew. Except salt and iron, it bought little, and th little by barter. Coin seldom changed hands. B isolation had its dangers. Too weak to enforce the la the central government was powerless to safeguard t enterprise, the property, or even the life of individua A small man could not stand alone; unprotected, tempted violence. With less personal freedom and ind pendence than the towns, rural communities we similarly organised for mutual protection and respon bility. Municipal charters, guilds merchant and tra guilds, stood between individual citizens and oppressio In a somewhat similar way the organisation of t Manor protected individual villagers. The lord mig be, perhaps often was, a domestic tyrant; but at lea he shielded his tenants from the rapacity of othe Nor did his powers, even over the unfree, long rema entirely arbitrary. The rights which he exercised, t services that he exacted, were gradually defined a regulated by customs of which the occupiers of the lan as judges, witnesses, or jurors of the Manorial Cour were themselves the guardians.

Behind the door of the peasants few gleams of lig penetrate. But of his economic life in the mediav village, the records of manorial administration supp many details. Few general statements can be made which exceptions may not be found. Yet in the midst endless variations the trend of development is unifor In all the records, and the Court Rolls of the Manor the Eystons at East Hendred here and there confirm th truth of the statement, may be traced a moveme towards personal freedom and, up to a certain poir towards a firmer hold upon the land.

ght

eval oply

Le to

st of

orm

or

of

the

nent

oint

The group of persons who were gathered within the bounds of rural manors were, in the most literal sense of the word and to a peculiar degree, communities. Externally cut off from the outside world, their dwellings not scattered but huddled together, they were united in a singularly close relationship. Their farming, on which all depended for daily food, was their common enterprise. Each individual took the produce of his own holding, but the whole body of partners cultivated the plough-land collectively. Their arable lots lay in strips intermixed with those of their neighbours; they cooperated in their labours for the lord of the manor; they grazed the pastures in common; they shared the meadows, often annually by lot; when the hay and corn were cleared, their combined flocks and herds roamed over the land together. In the tithings, in which all were enrolled, the members were responsible for the behaviour of one another. In the Manor Courts the tenants gathered, many of them, when documentary evidence begins, still distinguished only by such local identifications as Richard atte Lane, John le Longe, Peter le Fraunk, Thomas atte Grene, Roger atte Wode, William atte Watere, meeting as judges, jurors, suitors, or witnesses, to assist in the regulation of their economic and social life. The degree of external isolation and of internal unity, interdependence, and mutual responsibility, in which they stood to one another, may have stunted enterprise and starved opportunity. But, for good as well as evil, it allowed no room for the exaggerated individualism and feverish competition of modern life.

Efficiency in so complex an organisation as a rural manor required careful account-keeping and frequent meetings of the Manor Courts for the discharge of their miscellaneous business. The receipts and payments for which the steward or bailiff accounts were extremely various. But here their interest lies mainly in the light that they throw on the advance of the unfree tenants towards practical freedom. The wages bill of the lord of a medieval manor, whether his land still lay in intermixed strips in the open fields or was consolidated into

compact Home Farm, was extremely small. His bondtenants supplied the team-labour and most of the manual labour. At one period, they, their services, and

all that they possessed, had been, really as well
theoretically, at his will and mercy. They were bou
to the land; their live-stock could be distrained to me
his debts; they rendered whatever services he demande
they could neither buy nor sell freely; they were subje
to his arbitrary taxation; they could neither mai
their daughters nor apprentice their sons without
licence. In the eye of the law the position of the bo
tenants might remain unaltered. But before the mid
of the 13th century custom had modified the severity
legal theory. Rents in money, produce, or labour we
no longer indeterminate; they had become fixed a
certain. The men held land as customary tenants, a
were on their way to become copyholders. It was
this position that they stood when, in 1276, the do
mentary evidence begins at Banstead. Subseque
stages in the advance from personal dependence on t
lord to the financial relations of landlord and tena
were accelerated by the Black Death. The pestiler
shook the manorial organisation to its foundatio
Already the process of commuting personal liabilit
and services into fixed annual payments had begi
The Survey of the Manor of Banstead in 1325, f
instance, shows that the lord had surrendered his rig
of arbitrary taxation for a fixed yearly 'tallage' assess
on the acreage of the holding. After 1349 the proce
went on apace. Numbers of tenants had been swe
away by the Plague; their empty tenements could n
be re-let on the old terms. They either remained vo
or they were let on lease and the labour services lo
Fifteen years after the Plague, the accounts show the
seventeen holdings stood vacant at Banstead. To su
plement the depleted staff, labour had to be hired and
wages paid in cash. Money was provided by commuting
into coin a number of services, such as those of malti
the lord's barley, carting his timber, hoeing his corn,
the Winter and Lenten ploughings. The form which t
transaction takes illustrates the tenacity of the leg
theory of serfdom. The labour of the men belongs to the
lord; they buy, and he sells, the use of their muscles.

Wages, as the century advanced, continued to ris The medieval system of farming the demesne had brok down. Without personal superintendence the

method of farming with hired labour could not be made to pay. Large or absentee landowners retired from business, let their demesne lands on lease at yearly rents to tenant farmers, and, no longer needing labour services, accepted the cash equivalents from their copyholders, supplemented by payment of the quit-rents, heriots, and fines on transfer which were sanctioned by the customs registered in the Court Rolls. Naturally these changes advanced at a pace which varied with the conditions of each manor. At East Hendred, in Berkshire, the rate of progress was more leisurely than at Banstead, in Surrey. But the advance was made. In a Court Roll of the Manor of Arches belonging to the Eyston family, is the entry for 1410, that the lord granted his tenants permission to compound for manual labour at the rate of fourpence a man for the day. The relaxation of the old tenures meant an advance towards personal freedom. It meant that money payments had become more valuable to the lord than the number or the muscles of his men. It meant also that the barriers against competition and individualism were crumbling. The strongest and most enterprising begin to lay field to field; the weakest go to the wall and lose their grip on the land. At Saleby the manorial accounts at the end of the 15th century show that, while, in the aggregate, the money rents remained practically the same as in 1291, they were paid by half the number of tenants. The size of the holding was larger; the number of holders was smaller. It was not only the lease-holding farmers who were increasing; the landless class of wageearners, often itinerant, was multiplying.

So long as the manorial system flourished, the Courts were the centres of its efficiency. In practice the differences between the Court Baron, the customary Court, and the View, at which the tithing-men reported defaults and offences committed within their tithings, were not very strictly observed. In the days of their zenith they were entrusted with wide powers. At East Hendred, the Manor of the Carthusian Priory of Sheen, by express grant from Henry V, possessed criminal jurisdiction, including the privilege of a pillory, a tumbral, and a

The tumbral, otherwise called a trebuchet, a thewe or a cucking-stool, chair in which offenders, mostly women, were fastened. At Lynch

gallows for malefactors. Even when no direct authori was conferred, considerable powers were exercised Manor Courts in criminal and civil cases of minor i portance, such as assault, debt, trespass or slander. B the main business arose out of manorial rights and t conditions of the occupation and cultivation of the lar Through the Courts a lord of the manor maintained 1hold on bondmen. Here their flights were reporte steps ordered for their recovery, or licences paid for th residence outside the manor. On the other hand, t Courts helped the bondman in his passage to great freedom. Its records of rents and services first defin his precarious obligations, and then raised him from customary tenant to a copyholder by copy of the Cou Roll. Here were entered the terms of customary te ancies, their surrender, the admission of new tenan the payments of fines on entry. In 1804 it is by t 'Ancient Court Roll' of the House of John (sic)) Bethlem of Shine'-two and a half centuries after t Dissolution of the Priory—that the tenants of the Kin Manor at East Hendred established their title to cop holds of inheritance on a fine of one year's rent. On t same evidence they also admitted their liability to heriot of the best animal (or the best goods) belongi to a deceased tenant. Animals were valued by t members of the Court. At East Hendred in 1409 t right to a heriot is in transition from the delivery of t animal itself to the payment of its value. The Cou Roll of the Manor of Arches records a heriot of a bla horse, due from the estate of a deceased tenant. T animal was valued by the Court at 8s. At this price was bought back by the heir; but, as he could not once find the money, he was allowed to take the hor depositing as security for the payment a brass dish the value of 16s.

Other cases before the Courts arose out of oblig tions of the customary tenants, such as that of keepi their tenements in repair. The flimsy construction these wattle and daub structures is illustrated by t frequent reports of their ruinous condition, and by t mere, in Sussex, the Augustinian Priory had the right of 'thurset,' i.e.' sentencing to the thewe. The punishment was used for various offenc ranging from adultery to the sale of rotten fish.