Life in a Medieval Village - Frances Gies [83]
A condemned prisoner in a royal court had a single avenue of appeal, that of royal pardon. His hope of getting one depended on one of two aids: a powerful protector with influence at court, or an ongoing war. In the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the king’s expeditions against the Scots saved many English felons from the scaffold.82
Historically, medieval justice stood somewhere between the ancient system of family-and-clan justice by which an offender was punished or protected by his kin, and the modern system of state-organized police and prosecution. Perhaps it resembled other systems in the discrepancy in outcomes between serious felonies, so often unpunished, and minor offenses against the custom of the manor, so frequently pursued and penalized, though rarely beyond a fine of sixpence.
10
THE PASSING
OF THE
MEDIEVAL VILLAGE
EARLY IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY THE POPUlation of England probably surpassed four million, as compared with the Domesday figure of a million and a half to two million.1 By far the greater part of the increase came from the villages, “the primary seedbeds of population.”2 The Europewide demographic surge was halted by a series of calamities that began with the floods and famine of 1315-1317. Two catastrophic harvests in succession, possibly related to a long-term climatic change, sent grain prices to levels “unparalleled in English history,” and, accompanied by typhoid, hit poor families especially hard.3 The lords added to the misery by cutting down their alms-giving, reducing staff, and halting livery of grain to their famuli, like latter-day governments and business firms responding to business depression by laying off workers and reducing purchases. Severe murrain and cattle disease added to the calamity. Thefts of food and livestock rose sharply, and bodies of paupers were found in the streets. Dogs and cats disappeared, and cannibalism was rumored.4
By the time the next, even worse disaster struck, three long-term changes in agriculture and rural life were already evident: a discernible shift from crop farming toward sheep grazing; a general return by lords to farming out their demesnes; and a growth in the proportion of peasant cultivation as opposed to demesne cultivation.5 The lord was slipping from his role as producer-consumer to being merely a consumer, a “rentier,” albeit one with a large appetite.
In Elton in the agricultural year of 1349-1350, three different villeins held the office of reeve, for which there was suddenly little enthusiasm.6 The Black Death, sweeping through England in the summer of 1349 via the rats that infested houses, barns, and sheds, left so many holdings vacant that it was impossible to collect rents or enforce services. The manorial accounts read like a dirge: “Twenty-three virgates in the hand of the lord [vacant].”7 “Rent lacking from eleven cottages…by reason of the mortality in the preceding year.” “Of the rent of…Robert Amys…nothing here for the cause abovesaid. Of the rent of John Suteer…and William Abbot…nothing here for the cause aforesaid. And [the reeve answers for] two shillings sixpence from Robert Beadle for twelve acres of demesne land formerly of Hugh Prest lately deceased.”8 “From the fulling mill nothing because it is broken and useless.”9 “Of divers rents of tenements which are in the hand of the lord owing to the death of the tenants…”10 “Three capons and no more this year because those liable to chevage are dead.”11
The following year things were no better: “Of the farm of one common oven…nothing this year because it is ruinous. Second common oven…nothing for the same cause.” “And for sixpence from the smithy this year because it fell down after All Saints and from then on was empty.”12 “Of chevage nothing because all the chevagers are dead.”13
Expenses were up because of the shortage of villeins doing labor service: “In divers workmen hired by the day to mow and lift the lord’s hay, seventeen shillings five pence by tally.”14