Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [30]
If the villein wished to leave the manor, he could do so with the payment of a yearly fee, at Elton usually two chickens or capons. This payment, known as chevage, was not always easy to collect. Some villagers paid regularly—Henry atte Water, Richard in the Lane, Richard Benyt who had left “to dwell on a free tenement,” Simon son of Henry Marshal. Others balked, such as Henry Marshal’s son Adam, dwelling at Alwalton with his three sisters in 1300. They were “to be distrained if they come upon the fee,” but in 1308 they were still living outside the manor.23 Another Marshal brother, Walter, refused to pay and in 1308 Robert Gamel and John Dunning, who had stood surety for him, were fined twelve pence and twelve capons “because the same Walter has not yet paid to the lord two capons which he is bound to pay him each year at Easter while he dwells with his chattels outside the fee of the said lord, and because they are in arrears during the four years past.”24
Even more intractable was John Nolly, who was recorded as living “outside the lord’s fee” in 1307. John was arrested in 1312 “in the custody of the reeve and beadle, until he finds security to make corporeal residence upon the lord’s fee with his chattels, and to make satisfaction to the lord for five capons which are in arrears.” The record added: “And because the bailiff witnesses that he is excessively disobedient and refuses to pay the said capons, and that he owes five capons in arrears for the space of five years, it is commanded that he be arrested until he pays the aforesaid capons, and henceforth he is to make corporeal residence upon the lord’s fee.” In 1322, however, the court was still calling for the arrest of John, “a bondman of the lord, who withdraws himself with his chattels from the lord’s fee without license.” The chattels—in legal theory the lord’s property—were usually mentioned along with the villein himself; he “withdrew himself with his chattels” and was ordered to return and bring them back, or to pay the annual fee.25
The fourth class of villein obligation, deriving from the lord’s monopolies, included the common mill, the common oven, his sheepfold, and his manorial court.
Next in the Hundred Rolls’ list of tenants were the abbot’s twenty-eight cotters, who in Elton were also villeins in legal status (though on other manors cotters might be free), but who held little or no land and consequently owed little labor. Each held a cottage and yard theoretically “containing one rod,” in return for which they helped with the haying, harvesting, sheep-shearing, and threshing but not the plowing (they lacked plows and plow beasts), and paid tallage, merchet, and a small rent. Four had besides their cottage and farmyard a croft of half an acre, but eight had only half a rod of yard, two had a sixth of a rod, and one, paying a minimum rent of sixpence a year, only a “messuage,” a house and yard with no specification of its size. Like most cotters, they scraped a precarious livelihood by turning their hand to any kind of labor they could find. Most worked as day laborers, but some had craft skills. Among their suggestive names are Comber, Shepherd, Smith, Miller, Carter, and Dyer.
Last on the Hundred Rolls’ list came the rector, who held as a free tenant a virgate of land pertaining to the church and another ten acres for which he paid the abbot a yearly rent of half a mark. Four cotters were settled on his land. One was Roger Clerk (Clericus), probably the curate. The other three were all from the same family, and may have been the rector’s servants.
Not mentioned in the Hundred Rolls survey, though present in the twelfth-century Ramsey Abbey extent, was a special category of tenant in Elton and some of the other abbey villages, the akermen or bovarii, descendants