10 SELF-SUFFICINa FAEMING 



like Chaucer's ploughman, had ' catel ' of his owu. He 

 was obliged to contribute, at the rate of an ox for each 

 half-virgate, to the manorial plough-team, which almost 

 universally consisted of eight oxen. So tenacious was 

 agricultural custom, that in the eighteenth century, what- 

 ever the soil or the weight of the plough, few farmers 

 ploughed with less than this number. Villeins were dis- 

 tinguished from the inferior orders of their class by this 

 obligation, and their uncertain services were gradually 

 limited to boon-days or precations, and finally commuted 

 for money. The continuous work of the farm fell to the 

 inferior peasants, such as bordars and cottars, or actual serfs. 

 The bordars were holders of a homestead, possibly a small 

 croft of land near the village, and sometimes small pieces 

 of the common arable fields. They aided the villein in culti- 

 vating the demesne, but were not owners of oxen. Their 

 obligatory services were more continuous, more trivial, and 

 more servile than those of villeins. Probably in actual labour 

 the serf was not worse off than the bordar, and, like him, 

 he might hold land ; but .his tenure was bondage, not 

 prgedial service. Out of these three orders sprang the small 

 freeholder, the copyholder, and the wage-earning labourer. 

 The obligations of the peasantry varied not only with 

 customs, but with seasons. Their most important services 

 were the autumnal and Lenten seed-ploughings. Fallows 

 were broken up about Hoketide, and ploughed and dunged 

 for sowing wheat and rye about Michaelmas. Land was 

 ploughed for oats, barley, and peas, after Epiphany ; the 

 crops sown and harrowed in March or April. The plough- 

 man held the principal hale of the plough in his left hand, 

 in his right a beetle to break the clods. A ' Dover-court ' 

 beetle was a necessary implement upon a farm in the time 

 of Tusser ; and Plot, whose ' Natural History of Oxford- 



