THE REGULATION OF NUMBERS 279 



there was little prospect of marriage. 1 The estimates of the 

 number of religious celibates are too vague and conflicting to be 

 worth analysing. It can only be regarded as a secondary factor 

 representing the most extreme result of the working of the 

 pressure which we are about to describe. 



7. The following sketch is in the main confined to conditions 

 in England since the thirteenth century, and we may first notice t . 

 that in that century ' almost every one not only possessed land, N 

 but cultivated it '. 2 Yet the serf, in addition to the pressure to 

 postpone marriage which was felt by all cultivators, was definitely 

 restricted with regard to marriage. Besides being unable to 

 move away from his manor, * the serf was disabled from marrying 

 his daughter without licence and fine. Very numerous instances 

 are found of these kinds of payment, under the name of mercheta, 

 in the earliest times. Similarly fines are paid for marrying 

 a daughter outside the manor, for marrying a nief , i. e. a female 

 serf, who was possessed of property, and men of another manor 

 for marrying a female serf from her lord's manor. I have found 

 traces of this custom/ says Rogers, ' though they become very 

 infrequent far on into the fifteenth century.' 3 Such facts are 

 to be regarded as the legal enforcement among serfs of that 

 amount of postponement which was on the average enforced by 

 circumstances upon cultivators in general. As villein tenements 

 were usually indivisible, the question arises as to what happened 

 when there was more than one son. * The indivisibility of villein 

 tenements is chiefly conspicuous in the law of inheritance ; all 

 the land went to one of the sons if there were several ; very often 

 the youngest inherited ; and this custom, to which mere chance 

 has given the name of Borough English, was consfdered as one 

 of the proofs of villeinage. It is certainly a custom of great 

 importance, and probably it depended on the fact that the elder 

 brothers left the land at the earliest opportunity and during their 

 father's life. Where did they go to ? It is easy to guess that 

 they sought work out of the manor as craftsmen or labourers ; 

 that they served the lord as servants, craftsmen and the like ; 

 that they were provided with holdings, which for some reason 

 did not descend to male heirs ; that they were endowed with 

 some demesne land, or fitted out to claim land from the waste. 



1 See Marshall, Principles of Economics, p. 186. 2 Rogers, Six Centuries, 



vol. i, p. 47. 3 Ibid., p. 45. 



