22y] THE FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS yi 



non fecerunt huiusmodi arrura causa reprisae. A similar note 

 occurs at Hambledon (Ecclesia) and at Fareham with the 

 further information that the ploughing was there performed 

 ad cibum domini. At Overton four virgates were excused their 

 ploughing quia reprisa excedit valorem.^ 



Miss Levett quotes these entries as an explanation for the 

 tendency to excuse services, forgetting that the lord could 

 usually demand a money equivalent for services not required 

 for any reason. We have here the reason why so few ser- 

 vices are demanded, but no explanation of the failure to 

 require money instead. The fundamental cause of the 

 worthlessness of the labor on the demesne is the fact which 

 accoimts for the absence of a money payment for the work 

 not performed. The demesne land was worn out, and did 

 not repay costs of cultivation ; the bond land was worn out, 

 and the villains were too poor to '* buy '' their labor. 



The profits of cultivating this unproductive land were so 

 small that a deficit arose when it was necessary to meet the 

 cost of maintaining for a few days the men employed on it. 

 It is not surprising that men who had families to support 

 and were trying to make a living from the soil abandoned 

 their worthless holdings and left the manor. The lord had 

 only to meet the expense of food for the laborers during the 

 few days when they were actually at work plowing the 

 demesne or harvesting the crop. How could the villain sup- 

 port his whole family during the entire year on the produce 

 of worse land more scantily manured? In this low pro- 

 ductivity of the land is to be found the reason for the con- 

 version of much of the demesne into pasture land, as soon 

 as the supply of servile labor failed. It was, of course, im- 

 possible to pay the wages of free men from the- produce of 

 soil too exhausted to repay even the slight cost incidental to 



1 Levett and Ballard, op. cit., p. 121. 



