Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [22]
Cultivation of the demesne was accomplished by a combination of the villein tenants’ contribution of week-work and the daily labor of the demesne staff, the famuli. In England the tenants generally contributed about a fourth of the demesne plowing, leaving three fourths to the famuli. 48 At Elton these consisted of eight plowmen and drivers, a carter, a cowherd, a swineherd, and a shepherd, all paid two to four shillings a year in cash plus “livery,” an allowance of grain, flour, and salt, plus a pair of gloves and money for their Christmas oblation.49 Smaller emoluments were paid to a cook, a dairyman or dairymaid, extra shepherds, seasonal helpers for the cowherd and swineherd, a keeper of bullocks. a woman who milked ewes. and a few other seasonal or temporary hands.50 On some manors the famuli were settled on holdings, one version of which was the “sown acre,” a piece of demesne land sown with grain. Ramsey Abbey used the sown acre to compensate its own huge familia of eighty persons.51 Another arrangement was the “Saturday plow,” by which the lord’s plow cohort was lent one day a week to plow the holdings of famuli.52
The manorial plowman was responsible for the well-being of his plow animals and the maintenance of his plows and harness. Seneschaucie stressed the need for intelligence in a plowman, who was also expected to be versed in digging drainage ditches. As for plow animals, Walter of Henley judiciously recommended both horses and oxen, horses for their superior work virtues, oxen for their economy. An old ox was edible and, fattened up, could be sold for as much as he had cost, according to Walter (actually, for 90 percent of his cost, according to a modern scholar; in the 1290s, about 12 shillings). Pope Gregory III had proscribed horsemeat in 732, and though most of Europe ignored the ban, in the Middle Ages and long after, in England horsemeat was never eaten. Consequently an old plow horse fetched less than half his original cost of ten to eleven shillings.53
Elton’s bailiff or the Ramsey steward may have studied Walter of Henley, because the eight Elton demesne plowmen and drivers used ten stots (work horses) and eighteen oxen in their four plow teams. Horses and oxen were commonly harnessed together, a practice also recommended by Walter. In the Elton region (East Midlands) a popular combination was two horses and six oxen.54
Sheepfold. Man at center is doctoring a sheep, while woman on the left milks and women on the right carry jars of milk. British Library, Luttrell Psalter, Ms. Add. 42130, f. 163v.
Cattle being driven by herdsmen. British Library, Queen Mary’s Psalter, Ms. Royal 2B Vii, f. 75.
On every manor the tenants’ labor was urgently required in one critical stretch of the annual cycle, the boon-works of autumn and post-autumn. To get the demesne harvest cut, stacked, carted, threshed, and stored and the winter wheat planted before frost called for mass conscription of villeins, free tenants, their families, and often for recruitment of extra labor from the floating population of landless peasants. At Elton, two meiatores, professional grain handlers, and a professional winnower were taken on at harvest time.55
Threshing, done in the barn, was a time-consuming job, winnowing an easy one. Hired labor was paid a penny per ring of threshed wheat, a penny per eight rings winnowed.56
The staple crops at Elton were those of most English manors: barley, wheat, oats, peas, and beans, and, beginning in the late thirteenth century, rye. The proportions in the demesne harvest of 1286 were about two thousand bushels of barley, half as much wheat, and lesser proportions of oats, drage (mixed grain), and peas and beans.57 Yields were four to one for barley, four to one for wheat, a bit over two to one for oats, and four to one for beans and peas. The overall yield was about three and two-thirds to one, better