SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC HISTORY 



value is given as the same at all three periods ; some in which the T.R.E. 

 value is the lowest ; some in which the ' present value ' is the lowest ; some 

 in which the value ' when received ' is the same as the ' present value,' while 

 the T.R.E. is either higher or lower than the two others. All that we can 

 now say about these variations is that they are evidently not due to one 

 general cause, but are the expression of local circumstances, either of special 

 damage, or of negligence or lack of skill in the new occupier, or on the other 

 hand of superior skill and energy. In two or three cases ' waste ' is mentioned 

 and, as we shall see, some of the cultivable land was not under cultivation at 

 the date of the Survey, though this fact occasionally accompanies a rise 

 in value. 



It will be interesting next to discover what proportion of the land that 

 was returned as cultivable was actually under cultivation. There would 

 doubtless be a variable amount of land outside the common fields which is 

 indefinitely returned as woodland for the pannage of so many swine — an 

 amount variable in the sense that this land would sometimes extend beyond 

 the actual woodland as rough pasture. But there was certainly in many 

 places an amount of unused but cultivable arable. The cultivable arable is 

 estimated by the number of ploughs or plough-lands, a plough-land being the 

 area which eight oxen were expected to plough during the agricultural year. 

 The smaller properties are said to have half-a-plough (that is, four oxen) or 

 even less, while the larger properties have as many as eleven, fourteen, 

 sixteen, or even twenty. The total number of ' ploughs ' in the county at 

 the date of the Survey was returned at about seven hundred and ten, of which 

 352, or about half, were on the demesne lands of the chief tenants, the others 

 being in the hands of villeins or bordars. Besides the 710 'ploughs' actually 

 there, it is stated that some 192 more 'might have been there,' from 

 which we may infer that over one-fifth of the cultivable arable was out of 

 use. Of the 192 lacking 'ploughs' fifty-three were absent from the demesne 

 lands. How this number of ' ploughs ' would compare with that at the date 

 T.R.E. we have no data to enable us to determine. 



We come next to the personnel. The 388 assessed holdings (not 

 reckoning the lands held by the king) were in the hands of fifty-five 

 tenants in chief, besides certain burgesses of Bedford and bailiffs and alms- 

 men of the king. Under the tenants in chief come in many cases sub- 

 tenants ; and either directly under the tenants in chief or under the 

 sub-tenants come the villeins, bordars, and serfs. In 139 of the estates 

 there were no villeins, but in about thirteen of these estates the place of the 

 ' villeins appears to have been taken by sokemen, of whom there were sixty- 

 nine. Of most of these it is said that the same men were there in King 

 Edward's time. The total number of villeins mentioned in this county at the 

 time of the Domesday Survey is 1,865, of bordars 1,149, and of serfs 482. 

 The only corresponding figures belonging to King Edward's time which 

 we can compare with these are those of the sokemen, of whom 656 are 

 mentioned. 



Mention is rarely made of other domestic animals than oxen, or of 

 specific agricultural produce. At Langford there was pasture to feed 300 

 sheep, and rams are mentioned in two places as included in the proceeds 

 derived from woodlands. A load of oats, and iron for the ploughs, as well as 



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