INTRODUCTION XV 



money payments within an estate so long as it was practi- 

 cally isolated and there was little regular trade. If the lord 

 did not sell his corn, he could have no silver with which to 

 pay labourers' wages ; if the villan did not sell some of the 

 produce of his holding, or earn a day's wages by working 

 now and then in his own time for the lord, he could not buy 

 his freedom from predial service by regular cash payments. 

 But as the estates lost their isolation, and the habit of selling 

 a large proportion of the produce became more common, 

 the conditions were present in which the lord could begin 

 to receive payments in lieu of service, and to hire labourers 

 to work his home farm if he preferred this system. There 

 was thus in the twelfth century a gradual approximation to 

 more modern conditions on many estates ; the home farm 

 was worked by hired labourers who received wages ; while 

 the villan s had bought themselves off from the obligation 

 of doing the customary work by paying a quit-rent. The 

 increase of the practice of selling produce off the land, and 

 of satisfying the mutual obligations of the dwellers on the 

 estate in cash, would go on together. Within the present 

 century the railway system has opened up facilities for trade 

 in dairy produce which did not previously exist, and allow- 

 ances in milk are less frequent than formerly. But it would 

 seem that the practice of commuting service for cash pay- 

 ments had begun to show itself in some places before the 

 Conquest ; l and it appears to have advanced steadily in all 

 parts of the country as the conditions became present which 

 rendered cash payments possible between the lord and the 

 labourers or tenants. 



Even if the obligations were rarely discharged in cash 

 by the villans in the time of the Confessor, the relation be- 

 tween their duties and money, i.e. the cash equivalent of 

 their services, could be stated with precision. In every 

 Domesday entry in turn we find an estimate of the worth 

 of the estate, which was, of course, mainly dependent on the 

 villans' obligations, and this is stated in terms of money. 



1 Domesday Book, I. 314, a. 2. Hotun in Yorkshire. 



