46 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



years,* a process which went on all over England ; and thus we 

 have the origin of the modern tenant farmer. A fact of much 

 importance in connexion with the Peasants' Revolt, soon to take 

 place, was that the average money rent of land per acre in 

 Forncett in 1378 was lod., while the labour rents for land, where 

 they were still paid by villeins who had not commuted or run 

 away, were, owing to the rise in the value of labour, worth two 

 or three times this. We cannot wonder that the poor villeins 

 were profoundly discontented. 



On this manor, as on others, some of the villeins, in 

 spite of the many disadvantages under which they lay, man- 

 aged to accumulate some little wealth. In 1378 and in 1410 

 one bond tenant had two messuages and 78 acres of land ; in 

 1 441 another died seized of 5 messuages and 5a acres; some 

 had a number of servants in their households, but the majority 

 were very poor. There are several instances of bondmen 

 fleeing from the manor ; and the officers of the manor failed to 

 catch them. This was common in other manors, and the ' with- 

 drawal ' of villeins played a considerable part in the disappear- ^ 

 ance of serfdom and the break-up of the system.^ The follow- 

 ing table shows the gradual disappearance of villeins in the 

 Manor of Forncett : 



There is no event of greater importance in the agrarian 

 history of England, or which has led to more important conse- 

 quences, than the dissolution of this community in the culti- 

 vation of the land, which had been in use so long, and the 



^ This had been done before, but was now much more frequent. 

 Hasbach, op. cit. p. 17. 



^ * After the Black Death the flight of villeins was extremely common.' 

 — Page, op. cit. p. 40. 



