A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



Besides commutation of services various other movements brought about 

 a change in the manorial economy. The lay lords no longer lived on their 

 manors, but they had to a great extent become absentee landlords, either 

 belonging to the court nobility or else serving abroad in the French wars. 

 In either case money was needed rather than agricultural produce, and often 

 it was far more profitable to grant away part of the demesne to various 

 tenants than for the bailiff to farm the whole land. Hence not only had 

 the need for personal service disappeared, but the servile status of the villein 

 was unnecessary since the lord no longer needed to keep a closer control over 

 him than over a free tenant. At the end of the fourteenth century there was 

 but little difference between a villein and a free man. He cultivated his 

 own land without interference, and the Court Rolls by custom secured him 

 possession of his land. He had also gained recognition in the statutes and 

 laws of the realm ; the Statute of Winchester especially, which enforced 

 the duty of all men being trained to carry arms. To some extent it was a 

 revival of the fyrd, and made no distinction between the free and unfree in 

 regard to their responsibility for the defence of the nation. On the other 

 hand, no definite national act of manumission took place, and all the 

 restrictions on customary tenants were enforced, if they were profitable to 

 the lord. After the Black Death they were probably enforced even more 

 stringently than before, and in the manorial courts no opportunity was ever 

 missed of exacting heriots, merchets, fines for entry and for leaving the lord's 

 fee, and various other payments all causing greater discontent as the position 

 of the villeins in other ways improved. 



The heaviness of these fines was probably the foundation of the cry for 

 freedom raised in the Peasants' Revolt in 1381. If the poll-tax, which was 

 the first tax to fall directly on the serfs, led to the actual rising of the men of 

 Kent, in other parts of the country the demand for freedom was the main 

 rallying cry of the rebels. The men of Buckinghamshire do not seem 

 to have joined the revolt, although the rebels were numerous in the 

 neighbouring county of Hertford. The Court Rolls early in the reign of 

 Richard II show no evidence of any disturbance, nor do they record the 

 flight of more men than usual from the manor. Little effort seems to have 

 been made to reclaim the fugitives beyond distraining their relatives to 

 produce them at the next court, a course of action which seems to have 

 had singularly little effect. At Whaddon, the smith, a tenant whose rent 

 and services due from half a virgate of land were remitted, left the manor in 

 1381, and did not do the necessary blacksmith's work. That he joined the 

 revolt is a pure surmise, but if the Buckinghamshire villeins took any part in 

 it, it must have been in such isolated instances as that of John Beaufitz, 132 

 the smith of Whaddon. 



The emancipation of the serfs obtained at Smithfield from the young 

 king was repudiated by Parliament, and the hope of freeing themselves at one 

 stroke from the remaining disabilities of serfdom and customary tenure had 

 disappeared. The rebels in many places had burnt the Court Rolls of their 

 manors, considering that these were the only witnesses of their ancestry, but 

 it was to the rolls that finally they owed the security of their tenure. The 

 repudiation was carried out by the two houses of Parliament, composed 



'" P.R.O. Mins. Accts. bdle. 763, No. 8. 

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