34 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



of the lord and his bailiff; nevertheless they would 

 hold doggedly to such old customs as had not been 

 destroyed in the years directly following the Conquest. 



At the head of the peasants was still the reeve, at 

 that time sometimes called the 'provost' or 'praepositus,' 

 titles introduced by the Normans; below the reeve 

 there was still in most manors the hayward to manage 

 the husbandry, and in some manors a meadsman con- 

 tinued to look to the meadows, a wood-reeve to 

 supervise the woods, whilst a beadle collected rents ; 

 in large manors other officers might be found. 



Of the bondsmen there were two main groups, some- 

 what similar to the two classes of non-military peasant 

 farmers that lived in the villages before the Conquest. 

 The ' villeins,' z as the Normans nominated the unfree 

 peasant farmers of the upper section, formed the larger 

 of these groups. The extent of their land varied, but 

 thirty acres in the open field was the typical villein's 

 holding. The second group, the cotters, as it is con- 

 venient to call them, held less land than the villeins, 

 five acre strips being about the average. 



Amongst the peasantry were men who had special 

 positions in the village life, oxherds, shepherds, swine- 

 herds, gooseherds and beeherds, engaged in looking 

 after the oxen, sheep, pigs, geese and bees. With 

 them may be grouped such men as the thatchers, the 

 village ploughmen, and the ackermen or drivers of 

 oxen. These men were in a sense officials, and worked 



1 The title 'villein ' is often used in contemporary and modern 

 writings to describe the bondsmen, that is, the peasants of the 

 classes that lay between the freemen and the slaves ; it has in 

 this book been limited to the class that lay between freemen and 

 the cotters, in accordance with the division as a rule made iq 

 Domesday Book, 



