Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [26]
The unfreedom of the villein or serf was never a generalized condition, like slavery, but always consisted of specific disabilities: he owed the lord substantial labor services; he was subject to a number of fines or fees, in cash or in kind; and he was under the jurisdiction of the lord’s courts. In Maitland’s words, the serf, or villein, remained “a free man in relation to all men other than his lord.”5
The very concepts of “free” and “unfree” involved a tangle of legal subtleties. On the Continent, nuances of freedom and servility developed early, and with them an array of Latin terms for the unfree: mancipium, servus, colonics, lidus, collibertus, nativus.6 In England, terminology became even more complicated. The variety of nomenclature in Domesday Book, which derived in part from regional patterns of settlement, multiplied in the two subsequent centuries to a point where in Cambridgeshire in 1279 villagers were described by twenty different terms, some meaning essentially the same thing, some indicating slight differences. A few miles north, in southern Lincolnshire, eight more designations appeared. To what Edward Miller and John Hatcher call a “positive jungle of rules governing social relationships” was added the fact that land itself was classified as free or villein, meaning that it owed money rents or labor services. Originally villein tenants had held villein land, but by the thirteenth century many villeins held some free land and many free men some villein land.7
But if legal status was clouded by complexity, economic status tended to be quite clear, visible, and tangible: one held a certain number of acres and owned a certain number of cattle and sheep. Georges Duby, speaking of the Continent, observes, “Formerly class distinctions had been drawn according to hereditary and juridical lines separating free men from unfree, but by 1300 it was a man’s economic condition which counted most.”8 In England the shift was perhaps a little slower, but unmistakably in the same direction. A rich villein was a bigger man in the village than a poor free man.
In the relations among villagers, what might be called the sociology of the village, much remains obscure, but much can be learned through analysis of the rolls of the manorial courts, which recorded not only enforcement of manorial obligations but interaction among the villagers, their quarrels, litigation, marriages, inheritance, sale and purchase of land, economic activities, and crimes.
Just at this moment a major aid in identification of individuals and families of villagers made its historic appearance: the introduction of surnames. A survey of Elton of about 1160 included in the Ramsey Abbey cartulary and listing current tenants, their fathers, and their grandfathers, gives only a handful of surnames. Where these occur they are taken from place of origin (Ralph of Asekirche, Ralph of Walsoken, Gilbert of Newton); from occupation (Thurold Priest [Presbyter], Thomas Clerk [Clericus], Gilbert Reeve [Praepositus], Ralph Shoemaker [Sutor]); or from paternity (Richard son of Reginald). But most of the villagers are listed only by their first names: Walter, Thomas, Ralph, Roger, Robert, Edward.9
A century later, manorial court rolls and a royal survey attach surnames to nearly all the Elton tenants. Some are in Latin, like the given names, some simply in English: Robertus ad Crucem (Robert at the Cross) and Henricus Messor (Henry Hayward), but lohannes Page (John Page), Henricus Wollemonger (Henry Woolmonger), and Robertus Chapman (whose Old English name, meaning merchant, is cited in Latin elsewhere in the records as Robertus Mercator). Often it is difficult to tell whether the Latin represents a true surname or merely a trade or office: thus “Henricus