vill2 [81]
on which I have been insisting till now. Commutation was undoubtedly a most powerful agency in the process of emancipation; our authorities are very ready to supply us with material in regard to its working, and I do not think that anybody will dispute the intimate connexion between the social divisions under discussion and the transition from labour services to rent. Yet a money rent need not be in every case the result of a commutation of labour services, although such may be its origin in most cases. We have at least to admit the possibility and probability of another pedigree of rent-paying peasants. They may come from an old stock of people whose immemorial custom has been to pay rent in money or in kind, and who have always remained more or less free from base labour. This we should have to consider as at all events a theoretic possibility, even if we restricted our study to the terminology connected with rent; though it would hardly give sufficient footing for definite conclusions. But there are groups among the peasantry whose history is less doubtful. There are at the British Museum two most curious Surveys of the possessions of Ely Minster, one drawn up in 1222 and the other in 1277,(22*) In some of the manors described we find tenants called 'hundredarii.' Their duties vary a good deal, but the peculiarity which groups them into a special division and gives them their name is the suit of court they owe to the hundred.(23*) And although the name does not occur often even in the Ely Surveys, and is very rare indeed elsewhere,(24*) the thing is quite common. The village has to be represented in the hundred court either by the lord of the manor, or by the steward, or by the reeve, the priest, and four men.(25*) The same people have to attend the County Court and to meet the King's justices when they are holding an eyre.(26*) It is not a necessary consequence, of course, that certain particular holdings should be burdened with the special duty of sending representatives to these meetings, but it is quite in keeping with the general tendency of the time that it should be so; and indeed one finds everywhere that some of the tenants, even if not called 'hundredarii,' are singled out from the rest to 'defend' the township at hundred and shire moots.(27*) They are exempted from other services in regard to this 'external,' this 'forinsec' duty, which was considered as by no means a light one.(28*) And now as to their status. The obligation to send the reeve and four men is enforced all through England, and for this reason it is prima facie impossible that it should be performed everywhere by freeholders in the usual sense of the word. There can be no doubt that in many, if not in most, places the feudal organisation of society afforded little room for a considerable class of free-holding peasants or yeomen.(29*) If every township in the realm had to attend particular judicial meetings, to perform service for the king, by means of five representatives, these could not but be selected largely from among the villain class. The part played by these representatives in the Courts was entirely in keeping with their subordinate position. They were not reckoned among the 'free and lawful' men acting as judges or assessors and deciding the questions at issue. They had only to make presentments and to give testimony on oath when required to do so. The opposition is a very marked one, and speaks of itself against the assumption that the five men from the township were on an equal standing with the freeholders.(30*) Again, four of these five were in many cases especially bound by their tenure to attend the meetings, and the reeve came by virtue of his office, but he is named first, and it does not seem likely that the leader should be considered as of lower degree than the followers. Now the obligation to serve as reeve was taken as a mark of villainage. All these facts lead one forcibly to the conclusion that the hundredors of our documents represent the village people at large, and the villains first of all, because this class