The tenants mind the lord's ploughs, construct houses and booths for him, repair hedges and dykes, work in vineyards, wash and shear the sheep,(42*) etc. In some cases the labour has to be undertaken by them, not in the regular run of their services, but by special agreement, as it were, in consideration of some particular right or permission granted to them.(43*) Also it happens from time to time that the people of one manor have to perform some services in another, for instance, because they use pasture in that other manor.(44*) Such 'forinsec' labour may be due even from tenants of a strange lord. By the side of purely agricultural duties we find such as are required by the political or judicial organisation of the manor. Peasants are bound to guard and hang thieves, to carry summonses and orders, to serve at the courts of the superior lord and of the king.(45*)In consequence of the great variety of these labour-services they had to be reduced to some chief and plain subdivisions for purposes of a general oversight. Three main classes are very noticeable notwithstanding all variety the araturae, averagia, and ianuoperationes. These last are also called hand-dainae or daywerke,(46*). and the records give sometimes the exact valuation of the work to be performed during a day in every kind of labour. Sometimes all the different classes are added up under one head for a general reckoning, and without any distinction as to work performed by hand or with the help of horse or ox, Among the manors of Christ Church, Canterbury,(47*) for instance, we find at Borle '1480 work-days divided into 44 weeks of labour from the virgaters, 88 from the cotters, 320 from the tofters holding small tenements in the fields.' In Bockyng the work-days of 52 weeks are reckoned to be 3222. It must be added, that when such a general summing up appears, it is mostly to be taken as an indication that the old system based on labour in kind is more or less shaken. The aim of throwing together the different classes of work is to get a general valuation of its worth, and such a valuation in money is commonly placed by the side of the reckoning. The single day-work yields sometimes only one penny or a little more, and the landlord is glad to exchange this cumbrous and cheap commodity for money-rents, even for small ones.
We must now proceed to examine the different forms assumed by payments in kind and money: they present a close parallel to the many varieties of labour-service. Thirteenth-century documents are full of allusions to payments in kind- that most archaic form of arranging the relations between a lord and his subjects. The peasants give corn under different names, and for various reasons: as gavelseed, in addition to the money-rent paid for their land.(48*) as foddercorn, of oats for the feeding of horses (49*); as gathercorn, which a manorial servant has to collect or gather from the several homesteads.(50*) as corn-bole, a best sheaf levied at harvest-time.(51*) Of other provender supplied to the lord's household honey is the most common, both in combs and in a liquid form,(52*) Ale is sometimes brewed for the same purpose, and sometimes malt and braseum furnished as material to be used in the manorial farm,(53*) Animals are also given in rent, mostly sheep, lambs, and sucking-pigs, The mode of selection is peculiar in some cases. In the Christ Church (Canterbury) manor of Monckton each sulung has to render two lambs, and the lord's servant has the right to take those which he pleases, whereupon the owner gets a receipt, evidently in view of subsequent compensation from the other co-owners of the sulung.(54*) If no suitable lamb is to be found, eight pence are paid instead of it as mail (mala), on one of the estates of Gloucester Abbey a freeman has to come on St. Peter's and Paul's day with a lamb of the value of 12d., and besides, 12 pence in money are to be hung in a purse on the animal's neck.(55*)Poultry is brought almost everywhere, but these prestations are very different in their origin. The most common reason for giving capons is the necessity for getting the warranty of the lord:(56*) In this sense the receipt and payment of the rent constitute an acknowledgment on the part of the lord that he is bound to protect his men, and on the part of the peasant that he is the lord's villain. Wood hens' are given for licence to take a load of wood in a forest; similar prestations occur in connexion with pasture and with the use of a moor for turbary.(57*) At Easter the peasantry greet their protectors by bringing eggs: in Walton, a manor of St. Paul's, London, the custom is said to exist in honour of the lord, and at the free discretion of the tenants.(58*) Besides all those things which may be 'put on the fire and eaten,' rents in kind sometimes take the shape of some object for permanent use, especially of some implement necessary for the construction of the plough.(59*)Trifling rents, consisting of flowers or roots of ginger, are sometimes imposed with the object of testifying to the lord's seignory; but the payers of such rents are generally freeholders.(60*) I need not dwell long on the enumeration of all the strange prestations which existed during the Middle Ages, and partly came down to our own time: any reader curious about them will find an enormous mass of interesting material in Hazlitt's 'Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors.'
