217] -^^^ FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS 6l 



paid I d. in place of works due from a vacant holding, ac- 

 cording to an arrangement which had been made before the 

 Black Death/ and at Burwell, in 1350, when three villains 

 left the manor, their land was " tradita toto homagio ad 

 faciendum servicia et consuetudines." ^ In spite of the de- 

 terring force which must have been exerted by public opinion 

 under these conditions, and in spite of the aggressive meas- 

 ures taken by bailiffs to prevent desertion and to recapture 

 those who had fled, the records are full of the names of 

 those who had been successful in making their escape. 

 Throughout the latter half of the fourteenth century and 

 the first part of the fifteenth there was a gradual leakage 

 from the Winchester manors. " Villeins were apt ' to go 

 away secretly ' and to be no more found." * Page describes 

 a similar tendency on the part of villains of the manors 

 whose records he has examined. At Weston, three villains 

 deserted in 1354. At Woolston in 1357 a serf ^^ recessit 

 a dominio et dereliquit terram suamJ' At Chilton, be- 

 tween 1356 and 1359, eleven men and two women fled, some 

 of whom were recaptured. At Therfield in 1369 a man who 

 held twenty-three acres of land fled with his whole family. 

 In the same year at Abbot's Ripton a man escaped with his 

 horses, and three years later another villain left Weston by 

 night.^ At Forncett, " Before 1378 from 60 to 70 tene- 

 ments had fallen into the lord's hands. It was the serfs 

 especially who were relinquishing their land; for a larger 

 proportion of the tenements charged with week-work were 

 abandoned than of the more lightly burdened tenements." ^ 



1 Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 85. 2 Page, op. cit., p. 340. 



3 Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 135. * Page, op. cit., p. 344, note 2. 



^ Davenport, Decay of Villainage, p. 127. For further evidence of the 

 voluntary relinquishment of land in this periodi, see Seebohm, Eng. Vil- 

 lage Community (London, 1890), p. 30, note 4, and Davenport, Economic 

 Development of a Norfolk Manor, pp. 91, 71, 72. 



