SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



scheme of demesne work for the year, we come across entries like the 

 following : l 



* 



205 winter works sold for . 80 (i.e. less than %d. each) 



176 autumn 



258 boon-days in harvest, without food 



32 with food 



9 ploughings .... 



67 .... 



56 .... 



I 2 O (i.e. ij</. ) 



112 3 (i.e. less than id. ) 



8 3 (3* ., ) 



I 10^ (2K ) 



II 2 (2</. ) 



9 4 (2</- ) 



Total 803 works sold for .... .4 12 10^ (average about i^d. ) 



Or again, taking the services in a lump, 3,675 winter-works (Michael- 

 mas to Midsummer) were sold at a halfpenny each, and 2,500 summer-works 

 at a penny.* 



By 1 345 a few of the tenants of Cheltenham were being allowed to 

 commute ploughing and harrowing services at a penny, and weeding at a 

 halfpenny a work ;* and in 1380 Brimpsfield was following the same course, 

 at very similar rates.* Land was, in fact, gradually coming to be considered 

 a thing that could be held as well for money as for labour, though, even 

 when commutation had taken place, older fashions were preserved in the 

 expression, 'tenure by the service of so much money.'* At Minchin- 

 hampton, about the same date, tenements were held by a mixed rent, 

 chiefly money, but with a few services included. For a messuage and 

 yardland, for instance, the rent was 1 2s. to 2os. in money, besides one or 

 two shillings-worth of labour.' (This, by the way, was a large sum, for at 

 the Templars' property of Newington, not very far from Minchinhampton, 

 the usual rent of such a holding in 1328 was 4_r.) 7 By the next reign, how- 

 ever, these proportions were reversed, 8 and the rental contains long lists of 

 labour service due from the tenants. This was probably part of the general 

 effort of landlords over all the country to re-enforce their villein services, 

 which had become once more the cheapest means of working their demesnes 

 since the rise of prices and wages consequent upon the Black Death. 



It is not easy to gather much information as to the ravages of this 

 terrible pestilence in the rural parts of Gloucestershire. At Bristol we know 

 that it raged with such fury in 1348 that 'the living were scarce able to 

 bury the dead,' and the Gloucester folk refused all intercourse with the 

 stricken city. 9 It is improbable, however, that the country people kept up 

 such a boycott, and on the estates of the religious houses, at least, we have 

 direct evidence of the effects of the plague. At Ham, near Berkeley, in 

 1349, as much land had escheated to the lord by deaths from pestilence as 



' Mins. Accts. bdle. 859, No. 19. ' Ibid. No. 21. 



Ibid. bdle. 851, No. 2-2. * Ibid. bdle. 850, No. 22. 



' Cf. Bisley Ct. R. 24 Edw. Ill, portf. 175, No. 7, m. *. 'A messuage and two acres let for the 

 service of is. a year.' * Rentals and Surv. R. 237. 



' C.C.C. Bursarj Books, 21, p. 4. This reference is to one of two volumes, kept in the Bursary of Corpus 

 Christi College, Oxford, which I was allowed to consult by the courtesy of the President and Fellows of the 

 College. They contain deeds relating to the lands of the college in Gloucestershire from Edw. Ill to Jas. I, 

 and are marked, Glouc. F. 1,21, and Glouc. F. 2, 22. 



1 Cf. rent of Ralph Deulee, the tenant quoted above (p. 6), whose labour service* amounted to the value 

 of loi., while his money-rent was only \s. id. Rentals and Surv. R. 238. 



Gasquet, The Great Pestilence, 86, 92. 



2 145 19 





