MONEY RENTS AND WAGES 39 



untilled waste had been enclosed, reduced to cultivation, and let 

 in separate farms to rent-paying leaseholders, and to copyholders, 

 who were admitted to their tenancies in the Court Baron and 

 entered as tenants on the court roll. " Many of the lordes," says 

 Fitzherbert, " have enclosed a great part of their waste grounds, 

 and straightened their tenants of their commons within." So also, 

 by withdrawing those parts of the cultivated demesne which lay in 

 the village fields, and letting them in small compact holdings, they 

 had reduced the area of cultivated land over which common of 

 pasture was enjoyed. Fitzherbert notes that " the mooste part of 

 the lordes have enclosed their demeyn landes and medows, and 

 kepe them in severaltie, so that theyr tenauntes have no comyn 

 with them therein." Finally, the tenants themselves followed the 

 example of their landlords. Wherever the custom of the manor 

 permitted the practice, tenants and partners in the village farms 

 accepted " licenses to enclose part of their arable land, and to take 

 in new intakes or closes out of the commons," or agreed with their 

 fellow-commoners to extinguish, temporarily or permanently, their 

 mutual rights to graze each other's arable and meadow lands after 

 the crops had been cleared. 



At first the holdings, whether separate or associated, were, as 

 has been previously described, rented by labour services or produce- 

 rents. But from the latter half of the thirteenth century onwards 

 a change had been taking place. Landowners, who were them- 

 selves exchanging their personal services for cash equivalents, 

 needed money not only to make the purchases required by an 

 advancing standard of living, but to satisfy the demands of the 

 royal tax-collectors. In their land they found a new source of 

 income. They still kept then* demesnes in hand ; but they pre- 

 ferred to cultivate these home farms by the contract services of 

 hired men, whether servants in husbandry or day labourers, instead 

 of relying on the compulsory labour of tenants, which it was difficult 

 and expensive to supervise. They were, therefore, willing to 

 commute for money payments the team dues, and, to a less extent, 

 the manual dues, by which much of the manorial land was rented 

 whether in the whole or in part, whether temporarily or permanently. 

 Those who owed the personal services were on their side eager to 

 pay the cash equivalents. The money payments freed them from 

 labour obligations which necessarily interfered with then 1 own agri- 

 cultural operations, and enabled them to devote themselves, con- 



