r 



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62 THE ENCLOSURES IN ENGLAND [218 



This, of course, is what we should expect, as the lighter 

 burdens of these holdings caused their tenants to feel less 

 severely than the ordinary serfs the declining productivity 

 of the land. 



The method of compulsion failed to keep the tenants on 

 the land. They ran off, and the holdings remained vacant. 

 It was necessary to make concessions of a material nature 

 in order to persuade men to take up land or to keep what they 

 had. They were excused of a part of their services in some 

 cases, and in others all of the services were definitely com- 

 muted for small sums of money. When no tenants for 

 vacant land could be secured who would perform the cus- 

 tomary services due from it, the bailiff was forced to com- 

 mute them. " * So and so holds such land for rent, because 

 no one would hold it for works,' is a fairly frequent entry 

 both before and after 1349," on the records of the Bishopric 

 of Winchester. The important point to be noticed here is 

 that theJnoneyLxeat paid in these cases was always less than 

 the value of the services which had formerly been exacted 

 from the lancf] not only that, it was less than the money 

 equivalent for which those services had sometimes been com- 

 muted, an amount far less than the market value of the ser- 

 vices in the fourteenth century at the prevailing rates of 

 wages. For instance, when Roger Haywood took up three 

 virgates and a cotland at a money rent instead of for the 

 traditional services, " quia nullus tenere voluit," he con- 

 tracted to pay rents whose total sum amounted to less than 

 twenty-five shillings and included the church scot for one 

 virgate and the cotland. On this manor, Sutton, the total 

 services of one virgate valued at the rate at which they were 

 ordinarily " sold " must have amounted to at least eighteen 

 or twenty shillings. At Wargrave the services of thirty- 

 two virgates were all commuted at three shillings each, and 



