vill2 [79]
certain dues once or several times a year; the peasant ceased to be a tool in the husbandry arrangements of his master. The change made itself especially felt when the commutation took place in regard to entire villages:(3*) the new arrangement developed into the custom of a locality, and gathered strength by the number of individuals concerned in it, and the cohesion of the group. In order not to lose all power in such a township, the lords usually reserved some cases for special interference and stipulated that some services should still be rendered in kind.(4*) Again, the conversion of services into rents did not always present itself merely in the form just described: it was not always effected by the mere will of the lord, without any legally binding acts. Commutation gave rise to actual agreements which came more or less under the notice of the law. We constantly find in the Hundred Rolls and in the Cartularies that villains are holding land by written covenant. In this case they always pay rent. Sometimes a villain, or a whole township, gets emancipated from certain duties by charter,(5*) and the infringement of such an instrument would have given the villains a standing ground for pleading against the lord. it happened from time to time that bondmen took advantage of such deeds to claim their liberty, and to prove that the lord had entered into agreement with them as with free people.(6*) To prevent such misconstruction the lord very often guards expressly against it, and inserts a provision to say that the agreement is not to be construed against his rights and in favour of personal freedom.(7*) The influence of commutation makes itself felt in the growth of a number of social groups which arrange themselves between the free and the servile tenantry without fitting exactly into either class. Our manorial authorities often mention mol-land and mol-men.(8*) The description of their obligations always points one way: they are rent-paying tenants who may be bound to some extra work, but who are very definitely distinguished from the 'custumarii,' the great mass of peasants who render labour services.(9*) Kentish documents use 'mala' or 'mal' for a particular species of rent, and explain the term as a payment in commutation of servile customs.(10*) In this sense it is sometimes opposed to gafol or gable -- the old Saxon rent in money or in kind, this last being considered as having been laid on the holding from all time, and not as the result of a commutation.(11*) Etymologically there is reason to believe that the term mal is of Danish origin,(12*) and the meaning has been kept in practice by the Scotch dialect.(13*) What immediately concerns our present purpose is, that the word mal-men or mol-men is commonly used in the feudal period for villains who have been released from most of their services by the lord on condition of paying certain rents. Legally they ought to remain in their former condition, because no formal emancipation has taken place; but the economical change reacts on their status, and the manorial documents show clearly how the whole class gradually gathers importance and obtains a firmer footing than was strictly consistent with its servile origin.(14*) In the Bury St. Edmund's case just quoted in a footnote the fundamental principle of servility is stated emphatically, but the statement was occasioned by gradual encroachments on the part of the molmen, who were evidently becoming hardly distinguishable from freeholders.(15*) And in many Cartularies we find these molmen actually enumerated with the freeholders, a very striking fact, because the clear interest of the lord was to keep the two classes asunder, and the process of making a manorial 'extent' and classifying the tenants must have been under his control. As a matter of fact, the village juries were independent enough to make their presentments more in accordance with custom than in accordance with the lord's interests. In a transcript of a register of the priory of Eye in Suffolk, which seems to have been compiled at the time