46 ENGLISH RURAL LIFE 



described as copyholders. But the recording of services 

 was looked on with suspicion by the peasantry. They 

 could, indeed, have had very little voice in preparing 

 these records and must have constantly doubted their 

 accuracy. It is interesting to note that in the rising in 

 1381 the manorial records were, we are told, constantly 

 searched for and destroyed by the peasants. 



In considering the position of all the peasants below 

 the rank of independent farmers, it is important to 



remember that their serfdom involved them 

 Serfdom and __ TM 



the restric- m manv serious restrictions. These men 



tions which were at that time astricted : they belonged 

 accompani< tQ ^ estat6j so t j lat a bondsman had no 



right to leave the manor in which he lived 

 without the lord's consent. Indeed, so long as the lord 

 depended on forced labour for the cultivation of his 

 land, for which he in his turn had to provide some 

 form of rent or tribute, or render services to the king 

 or to his feudal superior, he could not very well allow 

 the villeins and cotters, the workers on his land, to 

 leave at their pleasure ; he might then soon be 

 without labour to work his land, and thus unable 

 to discharge his own duties and obligations. Men did, 

 however, arrange to leave in some cases, and then a 

 special tax called * chevage,' which took the form of 

 either a lump sum down or an annual payment, had 

 to be provided. It was this right to keep the man in 

 the manor, combined with the right to his labour, that 

 made him a serf, and the manor, even if it were a home 

 for the bondsman, was in some sense also a prison. 

 Moreover, the lord had control over the peasantry 

 and their sons and daughters in other ways ; for 

 example, before the marriage of a daughter, and some- 



