VALUES AND RENDERS 233 



of these would go to increase the value of the demesne, by 

 diminishing the outgoings in the shape of wages, the gafol 

 could not have amounted to more than the gross produce 

 after allowing for the food of the villan and his family. The 

 gafol paid by the gebur of the Rectitudines was the produce 

 of 3 acres of land, 23^., and a sextar of barley, and two hens 

 at Martinmas, and a young sheep or 2d. at Easter. 1 The 

 gafol of a tenant holding 2 bovates at Boldon, in 1183, was 

 $s. lod. in money, half a chalder of oats, five waggon-loads 

 of wood, two hens, and ten eggs. 2 The Liber Niger states that 

 the villan tenant of a virgate at Kettering paid to the abbey 

 (about the year 1125) 2s. \\d. in cash, and one and a quarter 

 hen, and forty eggs ; 3 so that the abbot would receive slightly 

 less than 9^. from each teamland in the occupation of the 

 villans. In 1086 there were at Kettering one team in demesne 

 and ten teams of the tenants, and its value was 11, of which 

 the mills produced 2cxy. 4 If the tenant's gafol in 1086 was the 

 same as it was in 1125, it would amount to 4 ios. ; and thus 

 the value of the teamland in demesne would be 5 los. 

 This at first seems an exorbitant value for one teamland ; 

 but the Liber Niger shows that in 1125 the villans ploughed 

 1 60 acres of demesne, and lent their twenty-two teams to 

 the abbot seven times a year, or did 154 days' ploughing in 

 all. Hence the area of the cultivated part of the demesne was 

 the land of one team, say, 80 acres ( of 120), plus 160 acres 

 plus 154 acres (assuming that one team ploughed I acre in 

 one day), or 394 acres in all. Hence we see that the area 

 of the land in demesne and therefore its value depended 

 partly on the number of teams belonging to the demesne 

 farm and partly on the number of teams belonging to the 

 tenants. The greater the number of the tenants who per- 

 formed ploughing services, the greater the area of the demesne, 

 and therefore the greater its value. The Ramsey Chartulary 



1 L. 446. 2 D. B., IV. 566. 



3 Chron. Petrob., 157. 4 D. B., I. 221 b I. 



