SEEDS OF DECAY VISIBLE a; 



out of the question. As may be imagined, the great number 

 of strips all mixed together often led to great confusion, 

 sometimes 2 or 3 acres could not be found at all, and disputes 

 owing to careless measurement were frequent. 



It is not surprising that the services by which the villeins 

 paid rent for their holdings to the lord very early began to be 

 commuted for money ; it was much more convenient to both 

 parties ; and with this change from a ' natural economy ' to 

 a ' money economy ' the destruction of the manorial system 

 commenced, though it was to take centuries to effect it. 



The first money payments apparently date from as early as 

 9OO, 1 but must then have been very few, and services were the 

 rule in the thirteenth and earlier centuries, though at the be- 

 ginning of the twelfth we find a great number of rent-paying 

 tenants. 2 In the fourteenth century money began to be more 

 generally available, and the process of commutation grew 

 steadily ; a process greatly accelerated by the destruction of 

 large numbers of tenants who paid rent in services by the Black 

 Death of 1348-9, which forced lords of manors to let their lands 

 for money or work them themselves with hired labour. Before 

 that visitation, however, it appears that commutation of labour 

 services for fixed annual payments had made very little 

 progress. 3 



When these services were commuted for money in the thir- 

 teenth and fourteenth centuries they were put at id. a day in 

 winter, and zd. a day in summer, and rather more in harvest ; 4 

 and we may put the ordinary agricultural labourers' wages from 

 1250-1350 all the year round at id. a day, and from 1350- 



1 Cunningham, Industry and Commerce, i. 117. 



2 Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, p. 307. On the Berkeley estates in 

 1189-1220 money was so scarce with the tenants that the rents, appa- 

 rently even where services had been commuted, were commonly paid in 

 oxen. Smyth, Lives of the Berkeley s, i. 101. In the thirteenth century 

 the labour services of the villeins were stricter than in the eleventh. 

 Vinogradoff, op. cit. 298. 



3 Page, End of Villeinage, p. 39. 



4 Thorold Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices, i. 82. 



