A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK 



lots before the hay-harvest and afterwards thrown open, and generally there 

 were pasture and wood in which lord and tenants had common rights. The 

 demesne, or portion directly under the lord's management, was originally 

 cultivated almost entirely by the labour due from his villein tenants. During 

 the busiest portion of the year, each holder of a villein tenement had to 

 devote several days a week to ploughing, sowing, and reaping his lord's land, 

 and to carrying the crops. During autumn he was liable to be called upon 

 for the additional service of ' boon-days ' or precariae. Free tenants and 

 socmen sometimes rendered services of this kind, but they are exceptional and 

 small in proportion to the money rent which represented the bulk of their 

 obligation. The molman occupied an intermediate position. He was a 

 villein who had been freed from the greater part of his services in considera- 

 tion of a money rent. 



These conditions were common to the whole of England. What was 

 peculiar to the eastern counties, and especially to Suffolk, was the large 

 number of small freemen who, though they tended to be subordinated to the 

 manorial system, could not be completely absorbed by it, and who by their 

 semi-independent status reacted strongly upon it so as to loosen its structure 

 at a comparatively early date. As the free holdings, never very large, grew 

 smaller by subdivision, the tenants would furnish an easily available source of 

 labour, and thus make the lord more inclined to allow the services of his 

 villeins to be commuted for money. In this way the villein, who very 

 frequently held more land than the free tenant, tended to become assimilated 

 to him in personal status. 



It will be well to examine the normal working of the manorial organi- 

 zation in a few typical cases before following the gradual process of its 

 dissolution. The manor of Hadleigh, held by the Prior of Christchurch, 

 Canterbury, of which we have a full account in 1304, seems to have under- 

 gone surprisingly little change since Domesday. About a hundred acres were 

 held in small holdings by a number of free tenants, about a third of the rest 

 was held by the lord in demesne, and two-thirds was parcelled out among the 

 villein tenants in what had originally been 27 uniform holdings, probably of 

 24 or 30 acres apiece. The farmhouse of the demesne stood between the 

 high road and the river, surrounded by 4 acres of curtilage, herbage, and a 

 garden in which apples, pears, and grapes were grown. There was a wind- 

 mill and a water-mill, one for milling cloth, the other for corn, which 

 together brought in annually ^Tg 8j-. 8^., a dove-house, and a small quantity 

 of separate pasture, meadow, and wood. 



The lord had the right to let out four score sheep on the common 

 pasture, and to fish the common fishery. The arable land of this demesne in 

 various fields amounted to 327 acres valued at 8^. an acre. ' And each acre 

 of suitable land can be sown with 2^ bushels of corn, with i\ bushels of 

 siliga, with 2 bushels of peas and beans, and with 4 bushels of oats, and 

 4 bushels of barley. And each plough ought to be yoked with 4 oxen and 

 4 heifers, and the plough can commonly plough one acre of land at the least 

 [a day].' 



Each tenant of a full villein holding at Hadleigh had to plough 6 acres 

 a year for his lord, 3 in winter for corn, and 3 at Lent for oats and barley. 

 Five of the 6 acres were called ' gafolearth,' and had to be sowed and 



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