The whole process has a social and not merely an economical meaning. Commutation, even when it was restricted to agricultural services, certainly tended to weaken the hold of the lord on his men. Personal interference was excluded by it, the manorial relation resolved itself into a practice of paying certain dues once or several times a year; the peasant ceased to be a tool in the husbandry arrangements of his master. The change made itself especially felt when the commutation took place in regard to entire villages:(3*) the new arrangement developed into the custom of a locality, and gathered strength by the number of individuals concerned in it, and the cohesion of the group. In order not to lose all power in such a township, the lords usually reserved some cases for special interference and stipulated that some services should still be rendered in kind.(4*)Again, the conversion of services into rents did not always present itself merely in the form just described: it was not always effected by the mere will of the lord, without any legally binding acts. Commutation gave rise to actual agreements which came more or less under the notice of the law. We constantly find in the Hundred Rolls and in the Cartularies that villains are holding land by written covenant. In this case they always pay rent. Sometimes a villain, or a whole township, gets emancipated from certain duties by charter,(5*) and the infringement of such an instrument would have given the villains a standing ground for pleading against the lord. it happened from time to time that bondmen took advantage of such deeds to claim their liberty, and to prove that the lord had entered into agreement with them as with free people.(6*) To prevent such misconstruction the lord very often guards expressly against it, and inserts a provision to say that the agreement is not to be construed against his rights and in favour of personal freedom.(7*)The influence of commutation makes itself felt in the growth of a number of social groups which arrange themselves between the free and the servile tenantry without fitting exactly into either class. Our manorial authorities often mention mol-land and mol-men.(8*) The description of their obligations always points one way: they are rent-paying tenants who may be bound to some extra work, but who are very definitely distinguished from the 'custumarii,' the great mass of peasants who render labour services.(9*) Kentish documents use 'mala' or 'mal' for a particular species of rent, and explain the term as a payment in commutation of servile customs.(10*) In this sense it is sometimes opposed to gafol or gable -- the old Saxon rent in money or in kind, this last being considered as having been laid on the holding from all time, and not as the result of a commutation.(11*) Etymologically there is reason to believe that the term mal is of Danish origin,(12*) and the meaning has been kept in practice by the Scotch dialect.(13*) What immediately concerns our present purpose is, that the word mal-men or mol-men is commonly used in the feudal period for villains who have been released from most of their services by the lord on condition of paying certain rents. Legally they ought to remain in their former condition, because no formal emancipation has taken place;but the economical change reacts on their status, and the manorial documents show clearly how the whole class gradually gathers importance and obtains a firmer footing than was strictly consistent with its servile origin.(14*)In the Bury St. Edmund's case just quoted in a footnote the fundamental principle of servility is stated emphatically, but the statement was occasioned by gradual encroachments on the part of the molmen, who were evidently becoming hardly distinguishable from freeholders.(15*) And in many Cartularies we find these molmen actually enumerated with the freeholders, a very striking fact, because the clear interest of the lord was to keep the two classes asunder, and the process of making a manorial 'extent'
and classifying the tenants must have been under his control. As a matter of fact, the village juries were independent enough to make their presentments more in accordance with custom than in accordance with the lord's interests. In a transcript of a register of the priory of Eye in Suffolk, which seems to have been compiled at the time of Edward I, the molmen are distinguished from villains in a very remarkable manner as regards the rule of inheritance, Borough English being considered as the servile mode, while primogeniture is restricted to those holding mol-land.(16*) Borough English was very widely held in medieval England to imply servile occupation of land,(17*) and the privilege enjoyed by molmen in this case shows that they were actually rising above the general condition of villainage, the economical peculiarities of their position affording a stepping-stone, as it were, towards the improvement of their legal status. It is especially to be noticed, that in this instance we have to reckon with a material difference of custom, and not merely with a vacillating terminology or a general and indefinite improvement in position. An interesting attempt at an accurate classification of this and other kinds of tenantry is displayed by an inquisition of 19 Edward I preserved at the Record Office. The following subdivisions are enumerated therein:
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Liberi tenentes per cartam.
Liberi tenentes qui vocantur fresokemen.
Sokemanni qui vocantur molmen.
Custumarii qui vocantur werkmen.
Consuetudinarii tenentes 4 acras terre.
