2iS History of the English Landed Interest. 



norial system by the loan of seignorial stock, both dead and 

 alive, for which a percentage of produce and labour was paid 

 as rent. Now, though this system still survives in its chief 

 features under the Continental metayer tenancy, and in a less 

 degree under the steel bow of Scottish law, it was thus early 

 recognised in England as antagonistic to the best interests of 

 the land. For estate produce was more profitably disposed of 

 by the cultivator than by the owner, and fixity of tenure 

 brought about such permanent impravements of the soil as 

 enabled the one party to demand and the other party to afford 

 a higher rate of rental per acre. Once more, then, it became 

 the practice for the villeinage, either as groups or individuals, 

 to supply their own carts, ploughs, and harness, and purchase 

 or breed their own horses and cattle. The granting of feu 

 charters and then leases became more frequent, and the adop- 

 tion of a money medium became more general throughout the 

 kingdom. 



It was in fact a silent, gradual, and bloodless revolution, in 

 no wa}'' expedited by such occurrences as the Black Death or 

 the great Peasant Rising of a later date. It probably began 

 before the time of the Domesday Survey ; and the entries 

 therein referring to the censores or coliberti no doubt repre- 

 sent the extent of its adoption at that period. It is not, 

 however, likely that there was any tenant entirely enfranchised 

 so as to be free from predial service in some form or other. 

 Mr. Ashley, in his Economic History^ has cited the Manor of 

 Beauchamp in Essex to show the progress of this process of 

 commutation. In this case, though no liberi tenentes are re- 

 corded in the Domesday Survey, their number in the lists of 

 1222 has reached thirty-four. From the same manorial re- 

 cords the increase of a new class, the tenants in demesne, is 

 noticeable, and the same author quoted above has attributed 

 this circumstance to the seignorial grants of small holdings to 

 the servi. 



These processes bring into use new terms coined to illustrate 

 the various steps in the social ladder, the topmost rung of 

 which represented absolute enfranchisement. The following 

 list out of an inquisition of 19 Ed. I., preserved at the Public 



