Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [18]
These officials, in fact, constituted the lord’s material presence in the village. Three of them, the steward, the bailiff, and the reeve, were the key executives of the manorial system.
Originally a household servant or majordomo, the estate steward (sometimes called a seneschal) had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries accomplished a progression paralleling that of Joseph, the Pharaoh’s cupbearer who became chief administrator of Egypt. On estate after estate the steward became the lord’s deputy, chief executive officer for the vast complex of lands, rights, and people. Bishop Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253), author of another widely read treatise, Rules of St. Robert, defined the steward’s duty as to guard and increase the lord’s property and stock “in an honest way,” and to defend his rights and franchises.18 A slightly later writer, the anonymous author of Seneschaucie, stipulated legal knowledge as a principal qualification, since the steward now represented the lord in court both on and off the estate. His main function, however, was supervision of all the manors of the estate, which he did primarily by periodic visitation.19 It was hardly possible for a lord to be too careful in his choice, thought the author of Seneschaucie: “The seneschal of lands ought to be prudent and faithful and profitable, and he ought to know the law of the realm, to protect his lord’s business and to instruct and give assurance to the bailiffs.” It was useless to look for wisdom from “young men full of young blood and ready courage, who know little or nothing of business.” Wiser to appoint from among those “ripe in years, who have seen much, and know much, and who…never were caught or convicted for treachery or any wrongdoing”20—something that often befell officials, according to many sermons and satires.
Typically the steward of a great lay lord was a knight, that of a great ecclesiastical lord was a cleric. In the latter case, he was sometimes known as the cellarer, the traditional title of the person in charge of a monastery’s food and drink supply. At least two stewards of Ramsey Abbey in the late thirteenth century were monks.21 Where a knight-steward received his compensation from his fee (land holding), a clerk-steward usually received his from his living, a parish church whose services were conducted by a vicar. Like most such officials, the steward of Ramsey Abbey, in company with his clerk, made periodic tours of the abbey’s manors to review the management of the demesne. He did not, as many stewards did, himself audit the manorial accounts. This function was performed on Ramsey manors by a separate clerk of the account who made his own annual tour and who in a hand that reflected an excellent education recorded the details of the year’s transactions. This clerk, who received a rather modest stipend of five shillings, thus provided an independent check for the abbot on the management of his estate.22
The steward appeared in each village only at intervals, usually no more than two or three times a year, for a stay of seldom more than two days. The lord’s deputy on each manor throughout the year was the bailiff. Typically appointed on the steward’s recommendation, the bailiff was socially a step nearer the villagers themselves, perhaps a younger son of the gentry or a member of a better-off peasant family. He could read and write; seigneurial as well as royal officialdom reflected the spread of lay literacy.23
The bailiff combined the personae of chief law officer and business manager of the manor. He represented the lord both to the villagers and to strangers, thus acting as a protector of the village against men of another lord. His overriding concern, however, was management of the demesne, seeing that crops and stock were properly looked after and as little as possible stolen. He made sure the manor was supplied with what it needed from outside, at Elton a formidable list of purchases: millstones, iron, building timber and stone, firewood, nails, horseshoes, carts, cartwheels, axles, iron tires, salt, candles, parchment,