48 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



after arrears of labour, and to try to get money for them. This 

 would naturally lead to the total money value of all the services being 

 added up, and to commutation being effected by the more prosperous 

 and ambitious villeins. Yet the lords were not equally indifferent 

 with regard to all services, as to whether they received money or 

 labour. The extra labourers needed at the busy seasons could not 

 so easily be obtained for hire; and consequently we find that in most 

 cases the lords retain the precariae and exceptional services long after 

 the week-work has disappeared. Commutation was carried on very 

 gradually over the country. In the middle of the thirteenth century 

 it does not seem to have been effected in any case on the estates of 

 Ramsey Abbey; nor was it, apparently, often the practice on the 

 estates of Gloucester Abbey twenty years later, or of Battle Abbey 

 even at the end of the century, though the value of the services is 

 given in money. 



3. The more prosperous the free tenants and customary tenants 

 became, the more eager they would be to get rid of the obligation of 

 furnishing labour, even if only at certain seasons. This would be 

 especially irksome for the smaller customary tenants and cotters, who 

 might in many cases have to leave their own acres at the time when 

 they were most anxious to attend to them. There would be a tend- 

 ency, therefore, for all services to be commuted for money payments, 

 with which the bailiff could hire labourers more easily controlled. 



4. Now it is evident that the lord would not have consented, first 

 to partial and then to complete commutation, had he not been able 

 to hire labourers either for regular service during the whole or part 

 of the year, or at specially busy seasons. These changes, then, imply 

 that a class of labourers had come into existence; a class of men, that 

 is to say, who, although they undoubtedly often had pieces of land 

 even two 01 three acres yet had not enough land to occupy their 

 whole attention, and were partially dependent upon wages. But this 

 body of labourers must as yet have been comparatively small. There 

 are several lists extant of the permanent servants on a manor. They 

 seem to have been few in number a reaper, two or three ploughmen, 

 a carter, a woodward or swineherd, one or two shepherds, one or two 

 oxherds or cowherds, and a dairywoman. Some of these, such as the 

 shepherds and oxherds, were probably descended from the slaves of 

 the demesne; while the mesor, or reaper, seems to have been an officer 

 little inferior to the reeve. It does not appear that commutation had 

 the effect of greatly increasing the number of permanent hired servants 

 on the demesne. 



