Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [59]
Carting. British Library, Luttrell Psalter, Ms. Add. 42130, f. 173v.
obligations would have to come.47 If he was required to pay cash in place of his labor obligation, he would need to make up the difference by sale of poultry or wool, or through earnings of wife or sons. As Fernand Braudel observes, “The peasants were slaves to the crops as much as to the nobility.”48
Harvest time was subject to more bylaws than all the rest of the year together. “The rolls of the manor courts are peppered with fines levied for sheaf stealing in the field, and a close watch had to be kept in the barn as well,” says Ault.49 The small size of the medieval sheaf, twenty to a bushel, contributed to temptation, Seneschaucie mentioning as familiar places of secreting stolen grain “bosom, tunic, or boots, or pockets or sacklets hidden near the grange.”50
Another communal agreement was needed for post-harvest grazing of the stubble. Sometimes a common date was set, such as Michaelmas, for having everybody’s harvest in. Bylaws might specify that a man could pasture his animals on his own land as soon as his neighbors’ lands were harvested to the depth of an acre. This was easy to do with cows, which could be restrained within a limited space. Sheep and hogs, on the other hand, had to wait until the end of autumn.51
The lord’s threshing and winnowing were followed by the villagers’, with whole families again joining in. Winter was the slack season, at least in a relative sense. Animals still had to be looked after, and harness, plows, and tools mended. Fences, hurdles, hedges, and ditches, both the lord’s and those of the villagers, had to be repaired to provide barriers wherever arable land abutted on a road or animal droveway. Houses, byres, pens, and sheds needed maintenance. So did equipment: “The good husbandman made some at least of his own tools and implements.”52
The true odd-job men of the village were the cotters. They rarely took part in plowing, having neither plows nor plow beasts, but turned to “hand-work” with spade or fork, sheep-shearing, wattle-weaving, bean-planting, ditch-digging, thatching, brewing, even guarding prisoners held for trial. They were commonly hired by wealthier villagers at harvest time, getting paid with an
Threshing, using jointed flail. British Library, Luttrell Psalter, Ms. Add. 42130, f. 74v.
eleventh, a fifteenth, or a twentieth sheaf. Cotters’ wives and daughters were in demand for weeding and other chores.53
Yet though they occupied the lowest rung on the village ladder, even cotters were capable of asserting their rights, as a remarkable entry in the Elton court rolls of 1300 testifies. Among the few service obligations of the Elton cotters was that of assisting in the demesne haymaking. A score of cotters, including three women, were prosecuted
because they did not come to load the carts of the lord with hay to be carried from the meadow into the manor as formerly they were wont to do in past times, as is testified by Hugh the claviger. They come and allege that they ought not to perform such a custom save only out of love (amor), at the request of the serjeant or reeve. And they pray that this be inquired into by the free tenants and others. And the inquest [a special panel of the court] comes and says that the abovesaid cotters ought to make the lord’s hay into cocks in the meadows and similarly in the courtyard of the lord abbot, but they are not bound to load the carts in the meadows unless it be out of special love at the request of the lord.
That left the lord’s hay sitting in haycocks in his meadow and the cotters in the manor courtyard waiting for it to be brought to them. The steward confessed himself unable to resolve the dispute without