This point brings us to consider the matter-of-fact conditions of the villeins during the feudal period, especially in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. As is shown by the Hundred Rolls and countless other records of the same kind, the customary condi tions of villeinage did not tally by any means with the identifica tion of villeinage with slavery suggested by the jurists. It is true that in nomenclature the word servi is not infrequently used (e.g., in the Hundred Rolls) where villani might have been mentioned, and the feminine nief (native) appears as the regular parallel to villanus, but in the descriptions of usages and services we find that the power of the lord loses its discretionary character and is in every respect moderated by custom. As personal dependents of the lord native villeins were liable to be sold, and we find actual sales recorded : Glastonbury Abbey, e.g., sells a certain Philipp Hardyng for zo shillings. But such transfers of human chattels occur seldom, and there is nothing during the English feudal period corresponding to the brisk trade in men characteristic of the ancient world. Merchet was regarded as a badge of serfdom in so far as it was said to imply a "buying of one's own blood" (servus de sanguine suo emendo). The explanation is even more characteristic than the custom itself, because fines on marriage might be levied and were actually levied on people of different condition, on the free as well as on the serf. Still the tendency to treat merchet as a distinctive feature of serfdom has to be noted, and we find that the custom spread for this very reason in consequence of the encroachments of powerful lords; in the Hundred Rolls it is applied indiscriminately to the whole rustic population of certain hundreds in a way which can hardly be explained unless by artificial extension. Heriot, the surrender of the best horse or ox, is also regarded as the common incident of villein tenure, although, of course, its very name proves its intimate connection with the outfit of soldiers (here-geatu).
Economically the institution of villeinage was bound up with the manorial organization—that is, with the fact that the country was divided into a number of districts in which central home farms were cultivated by work supplied by villein households. The most important of villein services is the week-work per formed by the peasantry. Every virgater or holder of a bovate has to send a labourer to do work on the lord's farm for some days in the week. Three days is indeed the most common standard for service of this kind, though four or even five occur some times, as well as two. It must be borne in mind in the case of heavy charges, such as four or five days' week-work, that only one labourer from the whole holding is meant, while generally there were several men living on every holding—otherwise the service of five days would be impossible to perform. In the course of these three days, or whatever the number was, many requirements of the demesne had to be met. The principal of these was ploughing the fields belonging to the lord, and for such ploughing the peasant had not only to appear personally as a labourer, but to bring his oxen and plough, or rather to join with his oxen and plough in the work imposed on the village; the heavy, costly plough with a team of eight oxen had to be made up by several peasants contributing their beasts and im plements towards its composition. In the same way the villagers had to go through the work of harrowing with their harrows, and of removing the harvest in their vans and carts. Carriage duties in carts and on horseback were also apportioned according to the time they took as a part of the week-work. Then came in
numerable varieties of manual work for the making and keeping up of hedges, the preservation of dykes, canals and ditches, the threshing and garnering of corn, the tending and shearing of sheep, and so forth. All this hand-work was reckoned according to customary standards as day-work and week-work. But besides all these services into which the regular week-work of the peas antry was differentiated, there were some additional duties. The ploughing for the lord, for instance, was not only imposed in the shape of a certain number of days in the week, but took sometimes the shape of a certain number of acres which the village had to plough and to sow for the lord irrespectively of the time employed. This was sometimes termed gafolearth. Ex ceedingly burdensome services were required in the seasons when farming processes are at their height—in the seasons of mowing and reaping, when every day is of special value and the working power of the farm hands is strained to the utmost. At those times it was the custom to call up the whole able-bodied popula tion of the manor, with the exception of the housewives, for two, three or more days of mowing and reaping on the lord's fields; to these boon-works the peasantry was asked or invited by special summons, and their value was so far appreciated that the villagers were usually treated to meals in cases where they were again and again called off from their own fields to the demesne. The liberality of the lord actually went so far, in exceptionally hard straits, that ale was served to the labourers.
By the 14th century this social arrangement, based primarily on natural economy, had given way; the time of commercial, con tractual, cash intercourse was fast approaching.
If we now turn to the actual stages by which this momentous passage from the manorial to the commercial arrangement was achieved, we have to notice first of all a rapid development of contractual relations. We know that in feudal law there was a standing contrast between tenure by custom—villein tenure—and tenure by contract—free tenure. While the manorial system was in full force this contrast led to a classification of holdings and affected the whole position of people on the land. Still, even at that time it might happen that a freeholder owned some land in villeinage by the side of his free tenement, and that a villein held some land freely by agreement with his lord or with a third person. But these cases, though by no means infrequent, were still exceptional. As a rule people used land as holdings, and those were rigidly classified as villein or free tenements. The interest ing point is that, without any formal break, leasing land for life and for terms of years is seen to be rapidly spreading during the 13th century, and many small tenancies are created which break up the disposition of the holdings. From the close of the 13th century countless transactions on the basis of leases for terms of years occur between the peasants themselves. Any suitably kept set of 14th century court rolls contains entries in which such and such a villein is said to appear in the halimote and to surrender for the use of another person named a piece of land belonging to the holding. The number of years and the conditions of payment are specified. Thus, behind the screen of the normal shares a number of small tenancies arise which run their economic concerns in independence of the cumbersome arrangements of tenure and service, and, needless to add, all these tenancies are burdened with money rents.