Alterations in the Temire of Land. 221 



as he now came to be called, was, on the other hand, agreeably 

 attracted to any arrangement which would allow him to culti- 

 vate his own land at the most seasonable times of the year. 

 Instead, therefore, of in future consuming his allowance of 

 bread and beer, and sticking his sickle into the largest sheaf 

 that it would hold each day that he laboured to harvest his 

 lord's corn, he commuted such services by means of a money 

 arrangement with his employer. A record was necessary of 

 all such commutations, which therefore became henceforth 

 entered on the manor rental. In this way the base and un- 

 certain services of the villein regardant were exchanged for 

 the more stable tenure in villeinage ; and whoever obtained a 

 copy of the Court Eoll could prove a prescriptive right to his 

 occupancy. Theoretically he was still a tenant at will, bound 

 to surrender his lands into the lord's possession before any 

 alienation of the copyhold could be completed; nor was it 

 until the reign of Edward IV. that a copyholder could bring 

 an action for trespass against his lord for dispossession. 



The villein in gross was at the same time growing into the 

 free labourer. The clergy, though slow to emancipate their 

 own serfs, were ever preaching emancipation to the layman, 

 and since naturally their influence was most powerful at the 

 death-bed, many a serf owed his freedom to that same half- 

 superstitious, half-pious spirit which in modern times endows 

 our public charities with so much wealth. Others fled their 

 native lands, for by law a villein could obtain his freedom 

 provided he could prove a year's residence in a walled town, 

 and many a slave thus escaped at one and the same time his 

 master's vigilance and his master's fetters. It was indeed such 



o 



an incident which made the Kentish commons' blood boil over, 

 and sent them to join forces with the Essex peasants, when 

 Sir Simon Barley sought to recapture an escaped servant living 

 at Gravesend. 



This was a very curious period in the relationship between 

 agricultural labour and capital. It was a transition stage in 

 which the position of the farmer, who in modern times comes 

 between the land owner and the land labourer, and combines 

 in his person the capital of the former with the technical skill 



