46 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



bread and no drink a "dry repast" when black bread, when white, 

 when even meat, broth, and cheese, often enlivens the dull record 

 with a gleam of humour. In one place, indeed, we are told that on 

 the last two days of harvesting each labourer could bring a comrade 

 to supper. 



Of the other side of village life the labour of the tenants upon 

 their own virgates we have no knowledge; we can only conjecture 

 that it also was carried on by a system of joint labour, each holder 

 contributing oxen and men to the common ploughs, in proportion to 

 his holding, probably also joining his fellows in mowing hay and reap- 

 ing corn on some common plan. 



When we compare the comparative simplicity of Domesday Book, 

 in which, over the greater part of England, villeins, cotters or borders, 

 and slaves make up the whole of the population, with the elaborate 

 division into six, eight, or even ten classes in the custumals of the 

 latter part of the thirteenth century, the changes seem bewildering 

 in their complexity and variety. But it will be found that most of 

 them may be grouped under four heads: (i) the growth of a large 

 class of free tenants; (2) the commutation of the week-work for 

 pecuniary payments; (3) the commutation of the boon-days and 

 other special services; and (4) the appearance of a class of men 

 dependent wholly or in part on the wages they received for agricul- 

 tural labour. 



i. The rapid increase in the number of free tenants after the 

 Conquest is one of the most certain and important of facts. The 

 larger number of those known by the name libre tenentes were, clearly, 

 virgate-holding villeins or the descendants of such, who had commuted 

 their more onerous labour services of two or three days a week for a 

 fixed sum of money, and had been freed from what were regarded as 

 the more servile "incidents" of their position. In some manors it 

 was possible for the number of freeholdings to be raised by an increase 

 in the extent of cultivated land. Near most of the villages was a 

 stretch of "waste" land, covered with trees and bushes and used for 

 common pasturage. As the increase of population strengthened the 

 labour forces of the manor, it became the lord's interest to enclose 

 portions of the waste, and either add them to his demesne or let them 

 to the villagers. The grants seem almost invariably to have been 

 small; cases in which they are as large as ten or twelve acres are very 

 rare, and usually they are only five, four, three, or two acres, very 

 frequently one acre or even one rood; and they were always let at 



