Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [78]
All three cases were heard in 1300. In the first the villagers accused the bailiff and his assistants of having dug a ditch to enclose “a certain place which is called Gooseholm where they planted willows, which place is a common pasture for all the men of the whole village.” In the second case, they accused the bailiffs of encroaching on a furlong called Michelgrove by taking away from all the lands abutting on it “to the breadth of four feet.”50 Presumably the officials were doing their encroaching in the interests of the lord’s demesne, though there is no indication that they were acting under instructions.
The third case involved an exchange of complaints between the villagers and Hugh Prest, the claviger. First the jurors reported that “the bailiffs of the lord unjustly hinder the community of the vill of Elton from driving by the way which is called the Greenway all their draught-beasts and other animals, whereas they ought to have it for the common of their pasture.” In turn, Hugh Prest cited nine villagers, most of them virgaters, “because they drove their beasts by the way which is called Greenway when the furlongs of the lord abbot abutting thereupon were sown.” The jurors protested strongly: “And they say that they and all men of the vill of Elton ought by right to have the said droveway at all times of the year, inasmuch as all strangers passing by the same way can have a free droveway with their animals of all kinds without challenge or hindrance.”
Hugh Prest replied that although strangers were permitted to use the droveway, in the past “the said customary tenants and their partners have sometimes contributed four shillings to the use of the lord for having their droveway when the furlongs of the lord there had been sown.” The anger and indignation of the villagers is unmistakable in the reply recorded in the court rolls: “And the aforesaid customary tenants and all others of the vill, free tenants as well as others, and also the twelve jurors whose names are contained at the beginning of the roll, say and swear that if any money has been contributed by the customary tenants of the vill to have their droveway there, the said claviger has taken that money at his will by distraint and extortion and has levied it from them unjustly.” The steward, clearly embarrassed at “seeing the dissension and discord between the claviger demanding and the said men gainsaying him, was unwilling to pronounce judgment against the claviger”—as the united villagers clearly insisted. Instead he “left this judgment wholly to the disposition of the lord abbot, that the same lord, having scrutinized the register concerning the custom in the matter of this demand, should do and ordain as he should see ought to be done according to the will of God.”51
Although no further record of the case has survived, it seems unlikely that the abbot provoked further resentment by the villagers over a problem that touched his interests only lightly and vexed them so much. Homans perhaps exaggerates in claiming that “The lord, in his own court and in a case in which his interest was involved, was treated much like any other villager.”52 Nevertheless, the steward’s conciliatory attitude toward the angry Elton tenants is noteworthy. One peasant breaking a rule was easy to deal with; a whole village up in arms over what it deemed an infringement of village rights was something else.
The fact that few decisions in the hallmote went against the lord was less owing to pressure on the court exerted by his officials than to the basic relationship between lord and village. His rights, privileges, and monopolies made it unlikely for him to infringe legally on the villagers while making it easy for them to infringe on him.
In the endless small