A HISTORY OF WORCESTERSHIRE 



The ' bovarii ' of Worcestershire, to resume, were connected with 

 the plough teams on the lord's demesne, two 'bovarii' having charge 

 of the team of eight oxen. I have rendered ' bovarii,' therefore, by 

 ' oxmen,' forming the word by analogy from the ' horsemen ' of the 

 modern farm. They had, probably, small holdings of five to ten acres 

 each (though possibly, in Worcestershire, half a virgate), and we may 

 further gather, from the Peterborough evidence, that some were still of 

 servile status,' though others were free and paid 'chevage,'* The same 

 evidence suggests that it may have been their wives' duty to winnow the 

 lords' corn. 



On the border-land of servitude and freedom was ' the small but 

 interesting class of buri^ burs, or coliberti.'' ^ Though Worcestershire, 

 apparently, had only nine of them, the Powick entry concerning them 

 is important as containing the word ' coliberti ' interlined above ' buri,' 

 which implies the identity of the two. One should perhaps place next 

 the cotmanni and cotarii of the Survey, for the typical Domesday cotter, 

 though he held some five acres, appears to have had no concern with 

 the all-important plough-oxen.* Professor Maitland has drawn attention 

 to the fact that the Worcester Register distinguishes between the cotmanni 

 and cotarii, so that the Domesday terms must be slightly different in 

 meaning.* 



It has been argued, with some elaboration, that the number of 

 serfs and bondwomen ('ancills') recorded by Domesday in Worcester- 

 shire was due to the proximity of the county to Wales, and that the 

 members of this servile class, especially its female members, had been 

 actually acquired by the monks of Worcester and other holders of land 

 within the shire in the course of ' forays against the Welsh.'* But the 

 problems raised by the existence of this servile population require for 

 their solution a wider outlook than a single county can afford. They 

 have to be studied in the light of the valuable Domesday maps compiled 

 for Mr. Seebohm's work' from the calculations of Ellis, who gave, in 

 his Introduction to Domesday, the number respectively of ' servi ' and 

 ' ancills ' for every county in which they occur. Mr. Seebohm ob- 

 serves that, as shown by his map, the serfs ' were most numerous towards 

 the south-west of England, less and less numerous as the Danish districts 

 were approached, and absent altogether from Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, 

 and bordering districts.' * The two best studies on the subject are those 



' Compare the lOth century dialogue of ^Ifric : 'Oh, my lord, hard do I work. I go 

 out at daybreak driving the oxen to field, and I yoke them to the plough . . . every day 

 must I plough a full acre or more. . . . Verily then I do more. I must fill the bin of 

 the oxen with hay, and water them, and carry out the dung . . • hard work it is, 

 because I am not free ' (Sir E. M. Thompson's Translation). 



^ 'bovarii liberi ' are mentioned in Herefordshire (fo. 183^). 



* Maitland's Domesday Book and Beyond, pp. 36-8, where the character of this class is 

 discussed. 



* See, for the cotters, Andrews' Old English Manor, pp. 170-5. 



* Domesday Book and Beyond, p. 40. ® Architectural Societies' Reports, XXII. 102-105. 

 '' The English Village Community (1883). « Ibid. p. 89. 



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