We must place in the same category all measures intended to prevent directly or indirectly the passage of the peasantry from one place to the other. The instructions issued for the management of the Abbot of Gloucester's estates absolutely forbid the practice of leaving the lord's land without leave.(56*)Still, emigration from the manor. from time to time the could not be entirely stopped, inhabitants wandered away in order to look out for fieldwork elsewhere, or to take up some craft or trade.
In this case they had to pay a kind of poll-tax (chevagium), which was, strictly speaking, not rent: very often it was very insignificant in amount, and was replaced by a trifling payment in kind, for instance, by the obligation to bring a capon once a year.(57*) The object was not so much to get money as to retain some hold over the villain after he had succeeded in escaping from the lord's immediate sway. There are no traces of a systematic attempt to tax and ransom the work of dependents who have left the lord's territory nothing to match the thorough subjection in which they were held while in the manor. And thus the lord was forced in his own interest to accept nominal payments, to concentrate his whole attention on the subjects under his direct control, and to prevent them as far as possible from moving and leaving the land. In regulations for the management of estates we often find several paragraphs which have this object in view. Sometimes the younger men get leave to work outside the lord's possessions, but only while their father remains at home and occupies a holding. Sometimes, again, the licence is granted under the condition that the villain will remain in one of his lord's tithings(58*), an obligation which could be fulfilled only if the peasant remained within easy reach of his birth-place, Special care is taken not to allow the villains to buy free land in order to claim their freedom on the strength of such free possession.(59*) Every kind of personal commendation to influential people is also forbidden.(60*)Notwithstanding all these rules and precepts, every page of the documents testifies to frequent migrations from the manors in opposition to the express will of the landowners. The surveys tell of serfs who settle on strange land even in the vicinity of their former home.(61*) It is by no means exceptional to find mention of enterprising landlords drawing away the population from their neighbours' manors.(62*) The fugitive villain and the settler who comes from afar are a well-marked feature of this feudal society.(63*)The limitations of rights of property have left as distinct traces in the cartularies as the direct consequences of personal unfreedom. These two matters are connected by the principle that everything acquired by the slave is acquired by his master; and this principle finds both expression and application in our documents. On the strength of it the Abbot of Eynsham takes from his peasant land which had been bought by the latter's father.(64*) The case dates from the second half of the fourteenth century, from a time when the social conflict had become particularly acute in consequence of the Black Death, and of the consequent attempts on the part of landlords to stretch their rights to the utmost. But we have a case from the thirteenth century: the Prior of Barnwell quotes the abovementioned rule in support of a confiscation of his villain's land.(65*) -- In both instances the principle is laid down expressly, but in other cases peasants were deprived of their property without any formal explanation.
Of course, one must look upon such treatment as exceptional.
