Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [55]
The regulation of grazing rights was fundamental to the operation of open field farming. The lord’s land was especially inviolate to beastly trespass: “Robert atte Cross for his draft-beasts doing damage in the lord’s furlong sown with barley, [fined] sixpence.”9 On some manors grazing rights were related to the size of the holding. A Glastonbury survey of 1243 found the holder of a virgate endowed with pasture enough for four oxen, two cows, one horse, three pigs, and twelve sheep, calculated as the amount of stock required to keep a virgate of land fertile.10
The open field system was thus not one of free enterprise. Its practitioners were strictly governed in their actions and made to conform to a rigid pattern agreed on by the community, acting collectively.
Neither was it socialism. The strips of plowed land were held individually, and unequally. A few villagers held many strips, most held a few, some held none. Animals, tools, and other movable property were likewise divided unequally. The poor cotters eked out a living by working for the lord and for their better-off neighbors who held more land than their families could cultivate, whereas these latter, by marketing their surplus produce, were able to turn a profit and perhaps use it to buy more land.
How much of his time a villager could devote to cultivating his own tenement depended partly on his status as free or unfree, partly on the size of his holding (the larger the villein holding, the larger the obligation), and partly on his geographical location. In England “the area of heavy villein labor dues—say two or more days each week—was relatively small,” consisting mostly of several counties and parts of counties in the east.11 In the rest of the country, though rules varied from manor to manor, the level of villein obligations tended to be lower. In several counties in the north and northwest they were very light or nonexistent.
Huntingdonshire, containing Ramsey Abbey and Elton, was in the very heart of the heavy-labor region, where the obligation was basically two days’ work a week. In Elton, the dozen free tenants owed very modest, virtually token service. The cotters owed little service because they held little or no land. Only the two score villein virgaters owed heavy week-work, amounting to 117 days a year (the nine half-virgaters owed fifty-eight and a half days).12 In addition, the Elton virgater owed a special service, the cultivation of half an acre of demesne land summer and winter, including sowing it with his own wheat seed, reaping, binding, and carrying to the lord’s barn.13
Some question exists about the length of the work day required of tenants. A Ramsey custumal for the manor of Abbot’s Ripton stipulates “the whole day” in summer “from Hokeday until after harvest,” and “the whole day in winter,” but during Lent only “until after none (mid-afternoon).”14 In some places a work day lasted until none if no food was supplied, and if the lord wanted a longer day, he was obliged to provide dinner. Another determinant of the length of the working day may have been the endurance of the ox (less than that of the horse).15
The annual schedule of week-work at Elton divided the year into three parts:
From September 29 (Michaelmas) of one year to August 1 (Gules of August) of the following year, two days’ work per week (for a virgater).
From August 1 to September 8 (the Nativity of the Blessed Mary), three days’ work per week, with a day and a half of work for the odd three days. This stretch of increased labor on the demesne was the “autumn works.”
From September 8 to September 29, five days’ work a week, known as the “after autumn works.”16
Thus the autumn and post-autumn works for the Elton virgater totaled thirty-one and a half days, half of the two critical months of August and September, when he had to harvest, thresh, and winnow his own crop.
The principal form of week-work was plowing. Despite employment of eight full-time plowmen and drivers on the