Another series of momentous changes took place in the arrange ment of services. Even the manorial system admitted the buying off for money of particular dues in kind and of specific perform ance of work. A villein might be allowed to bring a penny instead of a chicken, or to pay a rent instead of appearing with his oxen three times a week on the lord's fields. Such rents were called mal or mail in contrast with the gafol, ancient rents which had been imposed independently, apart from any buying off of custom ary services. There were even whole bodies of peasants called Molmen, because they had bought off work from the lord by set tling with him on the basis of money rents. As time went on these practices of commutation became more and more frequent. There were, for both sides, many advantages in arranging their mutual relations on this basis. The lord got clear money—a much-coveted means of satisfying needs and wishes of any kind—instead of cumbrous performances which did not come always at the proper moment, were carried out in a half-hearted manner, yielded no immediate results, and did not admit of convenient rearrangement. The peasant got rid of a hateful drudgery which not only took up his time and means in an unprofitable manner, but placed him under the arbitrary control of stewards or reeves and gave occasion to all sorts of fines and extortions.
With the growth of intercourse and security money circulated more freely and the number of such transactions increased in pro portion. But it must be kept in mind that the conversion of serv ices into rents went on very gradually, as a series of private agreements, and that it would be wrong to suppose, as some scholars have done, that it had led to a general commutation by the middle or even the end of the i4th century. The 14th century was marked by violent fluctuations in the demand and supply of labour, and particularly the tremendous loss in population caused in the middle of this century by the Black Death produced a most serious crisis. No wonder that many lords clung very tenaciously to customary. services, and ecclesiastical institutions seem to have been especially backward in going over to the system of money rents. There is evidence to show, for instance, that the manors of the abbey of Ramsey were managed on the system of enforced labour right down to the middle of the 15th century, and, of course, survivals of these customs in the shape of scattered services lived on much longer. A second drawback from the point of view of the landlords was that commutation for fixed rents gradually lessened the value of the exactions to which they were entitled. Money not only became less scarce but it became cheaper, so that the couple of pence for which a day of manual work was bought off in the beginning of the 13th century did not fetch more than half of their former value at its end. As quit
rents were customary and not rack rents, the successors of those who had redeemed their services were gaining the whole surplus in the value of goods and labour as against money, while the successors of those who had commuted their right to claim services for certain sums in money lost all the corresponding difference. These inevitable consequences came to be perceived in course of time and occasioned a tendency to revert to services in kind which could not prevail against the general movement from natural economy to money dealings, but was strong enough to produce social friction.
The economic crisis of the i4th century has its complement in the legal crisis of the i5th. At that time the courts of law began to do away with the denial of protection to villeins which, as we have seen, constituted the legal basis of villeinage. This is effected by the recognition of copyhold tenure (see COPYHOLD).
It is a fact of first-rate importance that in the 15th century customary relations on the one hand, and the power of govern ment on the other, reached a stage of development at which the judges of the king began to take cognizance of the relations of the peasants to their lords. The first cases which occur in this sense are still treated not as a matter of common law, but as a manifestation of equity. As doubtful questions of trust, of wardship, of testamentary succession, they were taken up not in the strict course of justice, but as matters in which redress was sorely needed and could only be given by the exceptional power of the court of chancery. But this interference of 15th century chancellors paved the way towards one of the greatest revolutions in the law; without formally enfranchising villeins and villein tenure they created a legal basis for it in the law of the realm. In the formula of copyhold—tenement held at the will of the lord and by the custom of the manor—the first part lost its significance and the second prevailed, in downright contrast with former times when, on the contrary, the second part had no legal value and the first expressed the view of the courts. One may almost be tempted to say that these obscure decisions rendered unneces sary in England the work achieved with such a flourish of trumpets in France by the emancipating decree of Aug. 4, 1789.
The personal condition of villeinage did not, however, disappear at once with the rise of copyhold. It lingered through the 16th century and appears exceptionally even in the i7th. Deeds of emancipation and payments for personal enfranchisement are often noticed at that time. But these are only survivals of an arrangement which has been destroyed in its essence by a com plete change of economic and political conditions.