

ELEVENTH-CENTURY FARMING 213 



were employed only two or three days a week, the demesne 

 required certain servants who would devote their whole time 

 to their lord's work. The bailiff would be about the farm all 

 day and every day ; he was usually one of the villans who 

 was released from his other services during his year of office ; 

 ploughmen, too, would be employed every day, for when they 

 were not engaged in driving the manorial plough they would 

 have to be looking after the plough-oxen ; a shepherd was 

 necessarily employed all the year round, and his work was 

 the more necessary in those days when the sheep were at 

 liberty to wander over a whole parish ; a dairyman must be 

 employed during the summer, and a swineherd during the 

 autumn ; but all of these, in the thirteenth century, were paid 

 by allowances of corn. In the eleventh century some of these 

 services would be performed by the slaves, who lived in the 

 curtilage of the manor-house, and were maintained by the 

 lord ; but where slaves were lacking or insufficient, as in 

 many manors, free labour would have to be hired, and this 

 would be obtained from the bordars or from some of the 

 members of the villans' families. 



Lord and villan were alike bound by the custom of the 

 vill, and the processes of cultivation on the demesne differed 

 only in magnitude from the cultivation of the poorest villan ; 

 but in those counties where some tenants were bound to fold 

 their sheep on the lord's land, the latter would produce bigger 

 crops than those of his tenants. 



