2DO History of the English Landed Interest. 



taken up with, the cultivation of their own crops on the servile 

 land. Now a virgate or half virgate was not in itself sufficient 

 to employ the time throughout the year of one yoke of oxen, and 

 we may therefore conclude that the heavy ploughs of the de- 

 mesne drawn by eight oxen, and the service of the averagium, 

 or work for the lord's carts, were performed with the oxen 

 belonging to the villeinage. Even the more important imple- 

 ments in use on the servile lands were probably the property 

 of more than one individual. Occupiers of less land than a 

 whole virgate would scarcely possess more than one plough 

 beast, so that the system of cultivating the lands in villeinage 

 would still take that form of coaration which we have before 

 suggested was the custom in the tribal era of common field 

 husbandry. 



The princijml meals of the villeinage were dinner at 9 a.m. 

 and supper at 5 p.m. This class fared no doubt better in seed- 

 time and harvest, when the precationes and other miscellaneous 

 services on the demesne lands helped to eke out their own 

 private supplies of food. In fact, the regular weekly routine 

 of predial service never left them wholly dependent upon their 

 own food resources ; and there must have been times when the 

 meat broth, bread, cheese, and drink, which was apportioned 

 out according to each manorial custom on boon days, would be 

 the greatest godsend to the half-starved victims of a famine 

 year. To take an example, the daily allowance at Hawstead 

 included two herrings, milk from the manor dairy for cheese 

 making, and a loaf of bread, fifteen of which were made from 

 one bushel of wheat. Much of the corn grown by the lord 

 went in this way. It was the wages of every waggoner, 

 ploughman, and neatherd on the demesne, each of whom re- 

 ceived about one quarter every two months. They had also 

 land and stock of their own, and even the shepherd possessed 

 his special sheep. On the Wolrichston Manor, besides the two 

 herrings as a daily harvest allowance, there was a pig for sub- 

 division among all the farm labourers ; ^ and on many other 

 manors they were feasted after harvest, even being allowed to 

 bring a friend. These rights to sustenance and allotments of 

 ■ Rogers, Prices and Agriculture, vol. i., p. 17. 



