SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 43 



but in England he paid his rent principally by performing labor 

 for the lord. 1 



The land of the manor was not all let to tenants. Certain por- 

 tions, called the demesne lands, were held and farmed directly 

 by the lord himself or under his general management, and they 

 were cultivated by the labor of the villeins and smaller tenants. 

 These smaller tenants were called bordars, crofters, cotters, etc., 

 and held very small tracts, usually about five acres. Upon the 

 demesne land kept by the lord for his own use crops were sown, 

 harvested, and threshed by the labor of these tenants. Each vil- 

 lein was compelled to work two or three days a week through- 

 out the year for his lord, besides certain special days in harvest 

 time. There were a number of other duties enforced upon the 

 villeins, all of which were more or less profitable to the lord. 

 The villein was obliged, for example, to take his grain to the 

 lord's mill to be ground, to take his cows to the lord's bull, to 

 allow his sheep to lie a part of the time on the lord's land for 

 the sake of the manure. Sometimes special contributions of 

 honey, one of the most important articles of luxury of that 



1 The following description (from Ashley's English Economic History, Part 

 I, p. 6) gives an excellent picture of an English manor: 



There was a village street, and along each side of it the houses of the cultivators of 

 the soil, with little yards around them : as yet there were no scattered farmhouses, such as 

 were to appear later. Stretching away from the village was the arable land, divided usu- 

 ally into three fields, sown one with wheat or rye, one with oats or barley, while one was 

 left :! allow. The fields were again subdivided into what were usually called " furlongs," 

 and each furlong into acre or half-acre strips, separated, not by hedges, but by " balks " 

 of u; [ploughed turf ; and these strips were distributed among the cultivators in such a 

 way that each man's holding was made up of strips scattered up and down the three 

 field ;, and no man held two adjoining pieces. Each individual holder was bound to cul- 

 tivate his strips in accordance with the rotation of crops observed by his neighbors. 

 Besi ies the arable fields there were also meadows, inclosed for hay harvest, and divided 

 into portions by lot or rotation or custom, and after hay harvest thrown open again for 

 the ( attle to pasture upon. In most cases there was also some permanent pasture or 

 wood, into which the cattle were turned, either "without stint" or in numbers propor- 

 tion! d to the extent of each man's holding. . . . 



Supposing such fields and meadows were owned in common by a group of freemen, 

 the Condition of things would be what is called the mark system. But the manorial sys- 

 tem was something very different ; for in a manor the land was regarded as the property, 

 not of the cultivators, but of a lord. 



