Summary

This study of medieval peasant life in Milton Abbas focuses on landholding as a central element of the rural economy, impacting prosperity, legal status, and family inheritance. It highlights the inconsistency of land measurements (like hides, carucates, virgates, and ferlings) in the early 14th century, even between nearby manors like Milton Abbas and Branscombe.

The study notes that while Milton Abbas was a market town, the discussion centers on its agricultural estate. It estimates that around 40% of the land in the Milton Abbey estate was demesne (directly controlled by the lord) at the time of Domesday, a proportion that likely remained similar until the Custumal was written in the early 14th century..

The text explains the evolution of land measurement terms from fiscal units to more localized areas, emphasizing their variability. For example, a virgate, theoretically a quarter of a hide (around 30 acres), could range significantly in size. Most tenants in Branscombe held a ferling, estimated at 7.5-8.75 acres, suggesting small landholdings similar to quarter-virgates in Milton Abbas.

The author points out the existence of landless peasants not named in the custumal. Furthermore, the accuracy of land measurements in medieval documents is questioned, as standardization didn’t occur until much later. Despite potential inaccuracies, the Milton Abbey custumal for some manors lists field names with acreages, offering a potential avenue for modern comparison.

Introduction

Before the Conquest, the bishops and abbots held their lands in frank almoigne or pure alms, free from all secular services, except the trinoda necessitas, i.e. a supply for the wars, building of bridges, and repairing of castles, which were usually excepted in all grants of this nature. They enjoyed this privilege until 1070 when William I, the Conqueror, seised all church lands held in frank almoigne into his hands, and granted them back again to be held of him by Knight’s service in chief; and so turned their possessions into baronies and knight’s fees, appointing the number of soldiers they should provide in time of war.(Hutchins, 3, 4, 383) Over the two centuries after the Conquest the knights’ fees gradually became obsolete and changed to a more regular form of taxation called a scutage, generally levied by the king at his will with the approval of his barons. By the early fourteenth century this scutage was usually charged at one mark or one pound per knight.

When lands were granted by frank almoigne no service other than religious services such as prayers, processions and masses were obligated, and only a church or monastery or man of religion could hold land by this tenure, such grants of land were ideal for the monasteries who were more than willing to provided the required prayers in perpetuity. Most monasteries, including Milton Abbey, were ‘perpetual institutions’ at least until Henry VIII put an end to them. Prior to the Dissolution some smaller monasteries and ‘alien’ priories had been closed. Grants to the church and monasteries of frank almoigne effectively came to an end in a statute of 1290 under Edward I.(Holdsworth 1927,  24)

With the grant of a piece of land it should have been necessary to define it in some way. Since Anglo-Saxon times many charters of land grants were accompanied by a description of its boundaries, although that is not the case for Athelstan’s grant to Milton Abbey  This led to later perambulations, and disputes between adjacent landholders. Milton Abbey had just such a dispute with Abbotsbury Abbey over land at Hilton leading to a settlement and description of the boundary.(DHC D-357/1/C dated 1257-1273)

The land granted by King Athelstan to Milton Abbey in 934 had remained intact from the original grant, through Domesday and into the fourteenth century. This contrasts with some monasteries which continued to be granted land by noble benefactors, and others where some manors had been removed, or lost. For example the Cistercian Stanley Abbey(VCH Wiltshire 3, 269-275) a  monastery which gained land, and the Benedictine Tavistock Abbey which had been endowed with lands in three counties but only amounted to 25 hides compared with Milton Abbey’s 120 hides, and it lost nearly half of this after the Conquest, down to 16 hides, as well as having fifteen knights’ fees imposed. Nevertheless it was still the best endowed monastery in Devon and Cornwall.(Finberg 1951) 

There were many motives for the nobility to grant land to monasteries, for example piety – it was the morally right thing to do and was repaid by the monks saying prayers for the donor and his family, thus shortening their time in purgatory, or they may have wished to be buried in the abbey church close to the altar so that could be among the first to rise on Judgement day. Land grants also gave the donor social status and prestige, it was a way of being remembered for their wealth, sometimes given in their wills, so that their inheritors would remember their generosity to the church and perhaps expedite the entrance of ‘spare’ heirs into the church: many such entrants rose in the church hierarchy and were well rewarded. For those without heirs the donation of land to the perpetual institution of the church avoided the land being taken into crown lands and avoid feudal obligations. The lands which had been granted were often widely scattered making management costly but perhaps providing new resources for the monastery. The land grants were documented in charters which were meticulously copied and added to the monastery’s cartulary. Such donors were often commemorated with their heraldic arms in stained glass, or in monuments or memorial stones within the church. The land which had been donated was frequently held by knight’s fee which meant that the monastery had to pay the scutage due.

Monasteries also bought land, and received land by forfeiture or escheat. If this land was held by knight’s fee then the monastery had to pay the scutage. Alternatively the monastery could lease the land and the tenant would pay the knight’s fee, or the monastery could find and pay a  mercenary to carry out the knight’s service.

According to a decretal of the council of Chalcedon in 451, which was still being used by the monastery of Tavistock as late as the fifteenth century, once monasteries had been dedicated with the consent of bishops they had to remain monasteries; and their possessions had to remain as  belonging to the monastery. They could never become secular holdings.(Morgan 1946, 10) This did not, however, prevent some lords, or even the king from disputing the abbey’s landholdings and taking them to court.

The eleventh and twelfth centuries were a time of prodigious growth of landholding of monasteries, most of this was for the reformed monasteries of Cluniac, Cistercian and Carthusian monks and smaller Benedictine monasteries generally did not benefit from large land grants. Many of the nobility gave such grants of land to these new reformed monastic orders which emerged in England in the twelfth century and the friars (Dominican and Franciscan) which emerged in the early thirteenth century.

Remembering that the abbot and the donors were high status individuals who shared many of the same interests and met often at the abbot’s table, donors probably took advantage of the hunting opportunities available at Milton Abbas in the deer park.

Following the Norman Conquest, King William imposed a universal system of a quota of knight service for all land holders. The number of knights being arbitrarily imposed by the king, for example Peterborough Abbey was assessed at 60 knight fees, whereas the Dorset monasteries of Cerne, Sherborne and Milton Abbey had to  provide two knights fees, and Abbotsbury  one.(Traskey 1978, 53) The ‘knight’s fee, surprisingly, was a quota of land or unit of land tenure, which like most medieval land units varied from place to place. The tenant holding by knight’s fee had to provide a specified number of knights (or fractions of knights!) with equipment for the service of his lord. This could be for a specified number of days per year, usually forty, but over the centuries was commuted to money payments called scutage. Milton Abbey of course had to pay money to the king for their two knights fees.

It has been said that almost every possible kind of land ownership and relationship between owners and occupiers have at some time existed in England.(Pollock 1896, 1) There were attempts in the reign of Henry II 1154-1189 to bring some degree of resolution to the existing common and statute laws, and a legal expert, Henry de Bracton, a judge on the King’s Bench, tried to make sense of the legal tangles with his work ‘De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliæ’ (On the Laws and Customs of England available online) which incorporated aspects of Roman law. No matter what the statutes stated, they  had to be administered through judges and lawyers, who had their own agendas and thoughts, preferring that to what Parliament and king intended.

Landholding was everything in the medieval rural economy. It determined the prosperity of tenant and lord and a balance had to be struck between the two. It determined the peasants’ legal status and which courts he or she could and could not use. And not just the tenant but his family too. 

The Milton Abbey custumal focuses on the landholdings of the tenants – how much land they held and how much they had to pay for it in terms of cash rent, gifts and labour services. A problem with landholdings in the early fourteenth century is that they were not consistent in either name or area. We will be comparing the terminology of the Milton Abbey custumal of 1317-1322 with a rental and custumal from Branscombe, Devon of 1339. Adjacent parishes had entirely different proportions of arable, meadow, pasture, commons, woodlands and waste. The land areas of hide, virgates, half-virgates and cottages also differed considerably as did the numbers of free, villein and famuli peasants.

Although Milton Abbas was a market town with two weekly markets and two three-day annual fairs in the early fourteenth century, the following discussion concentrates on the agricultural character of the Milton Abbey estate.

Crown land

All land at this time was considered to the king’s land, even if it had been previously granted by the king to the church or a tenant-in-chief. By the fourteenth century the crown lands were legally considered inalienable, that is it was the crown’s rather than the king’s. Some lands were part of the estate of the king’s consort, that is the queen. The king could, and did, change the tenancy of granted land. Crown land was under the king’s personal control and provided him with income, indeed his primary source of royal revenue. The crown estates realised money rents and feudal dues which paid for the expenses of the royal household, personal expenses, civil administration and the cost of wars. Villeinage did not exist on crown lands.(Whittock 2009, 31) The crown lands were not at all static: they could be enhanced by forfeiture (there are several examples of this during Edward II’s reign – particularly of Mortimer, Gaveston and Despenser lands), escheats when there were no legal heirs to inherit which then reverted to the crown, conquests – particularly Edward I’s conquests in Wales, appanages – lands gifted by the king to family members, and other gifts of land as royal favours, and wardship – when the inheritor was underage the king took the land and gave it to a ward. Milton Abbey’s lands appear to remain essentially the same from the time of its first charter, 934 to its Dissolution, other monastic estates did suffer from land taken by the king – particularly those of the ‘alien’ that is French monasteries during the Hundred Years War.

Demesne land

The demesne land could be managed by the lord in two ways: the simplest was for the lord to let the land to a lessee or ‘farmer’ for a fixed annual rent, or to manage it himself. Here the meaning of farmer is the original of a person who leases the right to collect a tax or duty and retain the whole of the revenue, in return for paying a fixed sum for the privilege.(OED). A farmer and farming did not only include agriculture but also other income such as market tolls and taxes. The system no doubt led to much corruption. Of course, the lord did not actually manage it himself but used an agent to run the estate on his behalf., paying him a fee plus expenses. If the agent was a villein on the manor, as it often was on the Milton Abbey manors, he would have his rent reduced as well as his customary services, but receive no fee.  Demesne farming, as it is known to historians, is an unfortunate terminology, for in medieval times ‘farm’ was rent, and a ‘farmer’ a lessee, and neither related to agriculture. The balance between farming and direct management changed over time. The advantages of farming were that the lord had a fixed income, without the fear of loss in bad harvest years, and knew what his income would be for years in advance, also, he did not have to bother with accounting and management. The disadvantages were that there might be more profit in some years by direct management. The agent managing the demesne, when a villein tenant, was known as a reeve, if he was a free tenant or outsider he was known as a bailiff, or occasionally, serjeant.(Harvey 1976, 12) The responsibility of the reeve or bailiff was onerous, he had to account to the lord of the manor and auditors for any discrepancies, and make up for them out of his pocket, there are many instances when his expenses were not allowed by the auditors. Nevertheless, on some manors he was employed for many years, so it seems likely that he might have some unrecorded income – one thinks of bribery or corruption – using his powers to pressurise tenants, although this goes undocumented of course. In addition, he had responsibility for providing and maintaining equipment of the lord’s, such as carts, ploughs, and buying consumables such as tar and grease for treating sheep, and for each sort of livestock he

had to account for the number entrusted to him, report how many had died, how many had been sold, what young animals had been born, and what happened to other produce such as the wool, the milk, and the eggs, that is consumed or sold.(Harvey 1976, 14) An example of the detail on sixty or so Winchester Cathedral manors for just one year – 1310-11 – can be seen in a 470 page book.(Page 1996) This provides information on the prices of many goods and services and the costs involved in producing them at around the time of the Milton Abbey custumal, thus giving insight into the yields and economics of early fourteenth century agriculture.

Benedictine monasteries were conservative and before the Black Death generally managed their manors themselves, after all they had free labour to oversee accounts and management using their monks or obedientiaries. Their records of annual income and expenses for each manor were recorded in the manorial accounts and for some monasteries these survive in prodigious archives – Winchester Cathedral being the best known and best studied example. It is unfortunate that the survival of such accounts for Milton Abbey before the Black Death is poor, with a few now lodged in Winchester College Archives mostly for the manor of Sydling St Nicholas, and one Reeve’s account for the manor of West Compton for 1338 in the Dorset History Centre.(D-MCY/5647)

We can estimate the proportion of demesne land at the time of Domesday from the number of hides held by the lord over the seventeen manors listed in the Milton Abbey estate: in demesne 45.5, and villein 68, that is approximately 40% in demesne. Concerning the arable land which was ploughed there were 20 and 68 ploughs respectively, or roughly 30% in demesne. For the manor of Milton Abbas itself there were 9.75 hides in demesne and 14.25 in villein tenure, (Traskey 1978, 206) roughly 40% in demesne, and just two ploughs in demesne and 13 in villeinage – or only 15%, this might be because much of Milton Abbas manor was given over to sheep downland. It seems that for the Milton Abbey estate these land areas did not change much from Domesday to the time of the custumal. This is not the case on some other ecclesiastical estates, and the trend after the Black Death was to lease out demesne land.(Campbell 2000, 59) 

Common land

Discussing the commons, excluding those of the Royal Forest, in medieval England the common was an integral part of the manor, and was thus part of the estate held by the lord of the manor. Commons are mentioned in the Domesday survey, although not for Milton Abbas. Still today there are over 8000 commons registered. In medieval times perhaps as much as 50 percent of the land was given as commons, These were open and common lands, over which many persons had rights of putting sheep and cattle to graze, of cutting underwood for the use of their homes, for fishing, cutting turf or peat (turbary), allowing pigs to roam (pannage), and the right to take sufficient wood for the commoner’s house or holding; usually limited to smaller trees, bushes, such as gorse or fallen branches (estovers). On most commons, the rights for each commoner were closely defined by number and type of animal, and by the time of year when certain rights could be exercised. For example, the occupier of a particular cottage might be allowed to graze fifteen cattle, four horses, ponies or donkeys, and fifty geese, whilst the numbers allowed for their neighbours would probably be different. Manor court records are full of transgressions of these limits and ammercements are recorded of between 2d and 6d to be paid to the court, sometimes another person pledged for the payment of these fines  There is a popular conception that this common land could be used by everyone, or at least by the whole village community. But this is a highly misleading perspective, The rights of commons were understood by the tenants and generally recorded as the custom of the manor. The Milton Abbas custumal is full of such rights.

Common waste land was uncultivated land and in the case of Milton Abbas it would have been grassland for sheep and cattle pasture. Common arable land was assigned as commons after the harvest when it could then be used by cattle and sheep on the stubble and weeds. Common meadow was land liable to flooding. On occasion the villeins were allowed pasture rights for their cattle or sheep after the crops had been harvested, that is after Lammas on that field. Originally these rights of commons would have applied to a whole class of peasants, or perhaps the whole vill.(Pollock 1896, 6) But in the Milton Abbey custumal these rights are specified for individual tenants along with the number of sheep or cattle they could graze. These rights as recorded in custumals would have been jealously guarded by the villagers, and any trespasses by neighbouring villages would be brought to the manor court and the culprits amerced, although it was extremely difficult to get the tenants of one manor to attend the court of another manor. The manorial court rolls of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England are full of occurrences of trespass, although trespass seems to have had a wider meaning then, including poaching on the lord’s land, and of course, included damage caused by straying cattle, sheep and pigs. For example in Walsham-le-Willows between 1316 and 1345 the manor court rolls give 79 cases or trespass on the demesne and 874 cases of damage to the demesne with 88 cases of trespass on village land.(Kilby 2015, 69-72) Clearly the manor court spent much time and effort on such cases. In the Sydling St Nicholas account roll for 1316 the total court amercements for the year were £6 3s, thus an important contribution to the income of Milton Abbey.(WCM 18215)

During the thirteenth century the population pressure on many estates was such that assarting was common. This did not seem to bother the landowners who benefited from extra tenants and their rents and labour services. The peak of population seems to have been around the year 1300.

Land measures

Carucates, ploughlands and hides were originally fiscal units used for taxation. They were reckoned as land sufficient for one plough team of eight oxen to plough in one year, or enough land to support one free family. These were common terms in Domesday books 1086. Of course, this ill-defined area of land might be dependent on soil type, climate and topography, and even upon crop rotation of two-field or three-field. It is generally considered to be equivalent to about 120 acres although 140 acres has also been estimated.(Torrance 2012, 69). After Domesday the hides  became divided up into areas called virgates, being ¼ hide or roughly 20-30 acres, although in many cases the virgate was given as anywhere between 12 and 40 acres, at Branscombe the ‘ferling’ is estimated at either 7.5 or 8.75 acres, and the majority of tenants, 70 percent, held this amount of land with a messuage.(Torrance 2012, 69) Thus, these were mostly small landholdings equivalent to a quarter virgate in the Milton Abbey custumal.

The only surviving rental for the manor of Branscombe, Devon, was sworn by the manor court jury in 1339 and written down for the visitation of two of the canons of Exeter Cathedral.(Torrance 2012, 67) Branscombe was one of the manors of the Bishop of Exeter.and is in east Devon, only about 40 miles from Milton Abbey as the crow flies and about 12 miles south of Milton Abbey’s most westerly manor of Stockland. In Domesday, Branscombe had 16 ploughlands. 1 lord’s plough team and 15 tenants’ plough teams and this manor was allotted for the support of the canons.(VCH Devon, 1, 417) In 1339 Branscombe had 8 free tenants, 75 villeins holding land and 7 cottars, comparable to the home manor of Milton Abbey with its 9 free tenants, 10 life tenants, 50 villeins holding land and 106 cottars and 20 hides. It is comparable to Milton Abbas with similar population and area. Here the landholdings are given in carucata, ferling’  and acr’.(Torrance 2012, 69; Morshead f23) Note that at Branscombe the word virgate is not mentioned, whereas in the Milton Abbas custumal it is used over 200 times and is the major determinant of specifying a landholding, including half-virgates and quarter-virgates.

These words for land measures are borrowings from Latin, such as virgata, carucata, or are Old English terms such as hide, which in turn was borrowed from German, and acre which originated in Old Frisian.(OED) An acre as a measure of land in Anglo-Saxon England was considered to be as much as a yoke of oxen could plough in a day. 

We cannot be certain from the records as to the amount of land which went with a messuage or a cottage, possibly an acre or two or as small as a courtyard. The messuage can be estimated from the excavations at Holworth as approximately 100 feet by 100 feet, and the curtilage as an additional 100 feet by 300 feet or 0.9 acres, 3700 m² (Rahtz 1960) The LiDAR DTM maps of Elston, or Eliston/Elyston, a deserted hamlet in Sydling St Nicholas, and Lyscombe, all former Milton Abbey manors, show similar tenement sizes from boundary hedges and ditches. The tenants holding a messuage are generally referred to in the Milton Abbey custumal as cottars. All the landholders, free and villein, were named in the custumal but we must not forget that there were also unknown numbers of peasants living on the Milton Abbey estate without land that were not named in the custumal – the servants and famuli, and of course, the children, wives, grandmothers, live-in family, lodgers etc.

Furthermore It is possible in medieval Latin documents that the landholding terms were either not recorded accurately or mistakenly applied or even misspelled. Further difficulties occur with the term acre for a measured area of land, rather than a fiscal unit. The acre was not standardised across England until Georgian times and we cannot expect the acre in medieval documents to be measured in feet, yards, rods, poles, perches or any other measure. There is a text dated sometime between 1266 and 1303 which specifies a statute that an acre was 40 perches in length and 4 in breadth though whether this was commonly known by scribes of rentals, farmers or monks cannot be determined. Having said this, in a rental of Sydling St Nicholas 1342 there are indications that there was an attempt at accurate land area measurement as ‘In Buryfurlang 45 acres 1 rood 34½ perches..’.(WCM 18383)

In the Milton Abbey custumal for the manor of Osmington a virgate is given as 24 acres. The Latin words used in the custumal are ferlyng, virgatum, carucata, hydam and acra – these have been translated as ferlyng, virgate, carucate, hide and acre respectively.

The custumal names the fields for the manors of Whitcombe, Osmington, Ringstead, Knowle, Holway, Hillfield, Sydling St Nicholas, Woolland, La Lee and Winterborne Stickland, but not for Lyscombe or Milton Abbas. With the field names are given their acreages so it might be possible to identify in some cases the field today. It is common, though not universal, for field boundaries to remain unchanged for centuries. Thus it might be possible to compare the acreages given to fields in the fourteenth century to modern acreages.

The medieval villein had to pay the lord of the manor an annual rent for his landholding; he had to provide payments in money or goods such as eggs, any number from 2 to 12 for the larder at Easter,  or any number from 2 to 8; provide labour services to the lord of the manor; payment of 1d to the county sheriff, (Neilson 1910, 6) and tithes to the church except at Milton Abbas where unusually tithes were never levied, although they were on its other manors. The wealthier also had to pay a lay subsidy whenever Parliament had agreed to the king’s request. This chapter concentrates only on the tenants’ landholdings.and the rent he had to pay for it. The labour services that tenants were bound to provide were mostly agricultural, which applied to the lord’s demesne land, or carrying services.

To add to our difficulties in comparing the manors on one estate or between estates there is no consistency, even on Benedictine estates which one might have hoped used some common terminology. The terminology used in the early fourteenth century seems to be of local derivation – for example landholdings in Kent were mostly freehold and given names not used elsewhere (Neilson 1910, 8) Thus the landholdings rents and labour services were ‘customary’ and had developed from those which had been used before ‘time out of mind’, probably since before the Norman Conquest. Not only is the terminology varied but the size of the landholdings, the rents and labour services are extremely varied and illogical, leading one author to call this a ‘considerable disequilibrium of the medieval countryside .. not just across time and between regions, but within villages and hamlets’.(Schofield, 2003)

Peasant status

In fourteenth century England, rural society was still largely structured by the feudal system, which defined individuals’ status and their relationship to the land. The two key categories of rural inhabitants were freemen and villeins, or bondsmen, as recognised in law. The freemen held their land by various forms of freehold tenure. This meant they essentially owned their land, or held it with significant rights that were legally recognized such as passing it on to inheritors without the need to go through the manorial court or requiring the grant of the lord. Their primary obligation was usually to pay rent (in money or kind) and sometimes to perform specified but minimal labour services for the lord. They had the right to move freely to another lord or manor, marry without the lord’s permission, they were protected by the courts of common law and had access to the King’s courts for legal recourse. Some freemen were relatively prosperous farmers who might employ others, to poorer individuals holding smaller plots. They held roughly 20% of the land of England.

The villeins who held land, despite their lowly and servile status and their work for the community and the lord, at least had the produce of their land to themselves except for church dues Iincluding tithes and other gifts) and lordly chevage.(Miller and Hacher 1978, 111) Legally the villeins were not protected by the courts of common law or the kings’s courts, but were subject to the manor court which was of course, the lord’s court. The amount of land the villein held did determine his status within the community, and during the turmoils of the fourteenth century, especially, but nor exclusively, the Great Famine and the Black Death, the wealthier tenants in terms of land and income increased their landholdings by purchasing vacant tenancies and especially of those who were in poverty who then became landless and had to work for others. There was an active trade in such land, the lords always requiring their land to be tenanted to avoid loss of income. As usual, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, and it was the immediate family unit who jointly profited at the expense of other families.

Peasant landholding 

In general, an aspect of feudalism was that a tenant,whether free or bound, not only paid rent and/or provided service to his lord, but also owed homage, fealty, personal service, allegiance and attendance at his court in exchange for holding land.(Pollock 1896, 30) The tenants of Milton Abbey and its manors certainly had these obligations owing to the Abbot and they are detailed in the custumal of 1317.

On the Milton Abbey manors in the early fourteenth century, as elsewhere, there were three types of tenancies, although not all were on every manor. The custumal entry for a manor normally begins with the names of the jurymen (never women) who swore on their oath the truth of what was stated in the manor court and written in the document. After the jurymen’s names were listed then next were the free tenants, that is the higher status tenants, and then follows the tenants for life and then the villeins or bondsmen listed in decreasing amounts of land with the cottagers last. Those without land such as the servants were not listed in rentals, surveys of custumals..

Medieval England was extremely class conscious – the higher status were listed first in documents, they entered church first and were seated, or stood, nearest the altar. They would also be at the front of any procession.

Freeholders

Using evidence from the Hundred Rolls there were more free landholdings than unfree.(Kanzaka 2002) However, this data only covers a few counties of England, mostly eastern England, in one survey which was conducted in 1280, and these counties enjoyed many more free tenancies than bound. In the west country where these Hundred Rolls have not survived the reverse is the case. At Milton Abbas manor there were 19 freeholders and 156 customary tenants, that is only 11 percent freemen.

The freemen that are named in the Milton Abbey custumal paid money rent, paid ‘suit of court’, but generally had few customary services. In the Milton Abbas manor there were ten tenants in fee and ten tenants for life, most of these held only a messuage, with the exception of John Gervays who held two carucates and paid 32s rent. A John Gervays occurs in the 1332 Lay Subsidy Roll as the wealthiest taxpayer in Milton Abbas assessed at 7s.(Mills 1971, 20) Oddly, in the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll this name does not occur but a John Giffard pays 7s 2d tax, perhaps a mis-reading for Gervays?(Rumble 1971, 47) 

Tenants for life

Held their land for the period of their life only, and was not heritable by the tenant’s heirs. This was free tenure under the law. Tenants for life probably took these tenancies as investments rather than for their homestead, they may have been villeins looking for a route to become a freeman. This tenancy arrangement at least was not ‘at the will of the lord’, that is the tenant could not be evicted giving them some security. In a statute of Edward I, 1278, a tenant for life could be convicted of ‘waste’, that is allowing the land or property to fall into decay, and the tenant could be amerced for triple damages and forfeiture. However, the tenant for life could take ‘botes’ and ‘estovers’.(Holdsworth 1927, 61) On the death of the tenant the land reverted to the lord of the manor, who might have regranted it for an entry fine, or possibly added it to his demesne, depending on the financial needs of the time. This arrangement was different to that of the freemen whose land was inheritable. Later, these tenancies may have become ‘copyhold’ tenancies, although there is no evidence of this for the Milton abbey estates. Tenants for life were not usually ‘customary’ tenants but free. The only tenants for life listed are on the Milton Abbas and Sydling manors: at Sydling there were 2 free and one customary tenants for life and at Milton Abbas there were 9 free and 1 customary tenant for life.

Tenants at will

There were no tenants at will noted in the 1317 custumal.

Villeins

Villeins, also called serfs, bondsmen, customary tenants, or neifs were legally unfree peasants and were tied to the manor where they lived. Their tenure was customary, meaning their rights and obligations were based on the custom of the manor, rather than common law. They were, in many respects, considered attached to the land and under the jurisdiction of the lord’s manor court. They had to provide labour services on the lord’s demesne which often included week-work (working a set number of days per week) and boon-work (extra work at peak agricultural times). They also had to pay various dues and fines to the lord, such as heriot (inheritance tax, often the best animal), merchet (payment for permission to marry a daughter outside the manor), and tallage (a tax levied at the lord’s will). They were often restricted in their ability to sell livestock or have their sons enter the clergy without the lord’s consent, that is be educated by the monks. Whilst villeins were unfree, they were not slaves. They generally could not be bought and sold individually (though they could be transferred with the land). They had the right to cultivate their own strips of land to support themselves and their families and, importantly, had a degree of security of tenure as long as they fulfilled their obligations. The lord was also expected to provide protection and justice within the manor using his manor court. Villeins formed the majority of the rural population and their economic status varied, with some holding more land than others. Cottars were a poorer class of villeins with very small landholdings, often working mainly in exchange for a cottage and the right to cultivate a small plot.

Legal status

The legal status of both tenant and land was neither simple, clear cut, consistent between manors nor stable and led to much debate in manor and shire courts, not to mention amongst historians.. The tenant, whether free or bound, had his status defined at birth, inheriting his father’s status.The lord of the manor always trying to maximise the villein holdings due to the greater customary services demanded. A free tenant could, and did, take on the tenancy of villein land but he would have to provide the customary service for that land. The land itself was bound, this was straightforward until that land was inherited or the tenancy passed on – did the previous free tenant have to pay a heriot? Again, the definition of a villein or bondsman varied and could be challenged – was it a person who payed tallage? or who payed heriot? or some other local custom of the manor? Thus tenant and the land he held were not clearly defined in status despite the best efforts of the law.Court cases could depend on the memory of witnesses called to swear whether the tenant or the land was free at some time in the past. To further complicate matters free men could, and did, marry villein wives and vice versa. Bastards took the status of their mother, although during the fourteenth century courts decided that all bastards were free. Newly formed agricultural land, assarts, were common in many districts – sometimes taken from woodland, draining fenland, reclaiming marshes and so on, they were considered to be bound land.(Miller and Hatcher 1978, 112-4) The lords encouraged assarting because it provided extra income from rents. There is no mention of assarts nor new closes in the Custumal.

Women’s tenure

Women inherited their husband’s or father’s land, and there are 31 named women in the Custumal on the Milton Abbas manor. The most common given name is Alice, 9, Maud or Matilda 5, Christine 4. As with any inheritance the customary tenants had to pay a heriot, generally of their ‘best beast’.

Transfer of Land

Freeholders had been able to buy and sell land since Anglo-Saxon times, but it was the developments in common law by Henry II (reigned 1154-1189) who systematically expanded the jurisdiction of the royal courts, making them more accessible and effective than local feudal or customary courts. This allowed freemen to bring their land disputes before the King’s judges and resulted in a market of land, and the survival of many deeds and charters show the level of marketing of free land Using Feet of Fines records from 1300-1500 it appears that these land transactions reached a peak around the year 1318, possibly as a result of the Great Famine. It has been calculated that the average price for land in Berkshire approximated ten to thirty times its annual value in the early fourteenth century, say twenty marks for less than 50 acres which was the majority of transactions.(Yates 2012) An enormous sum, well out of reach of most of the freeholders in Milton Abbey’s estates with the possible exception of John Gervays.

Customary land was held within the manor and was subject to the lord of the manor and his manor court. Most customary land was transferred by inheritance and this gave security  of tenure to the tenants, knowing that the land would be passed from husband to wife on his death, or from father or mother to their children. Although the lord could legally move a tenant out at his will, this was an extremely rare event, especially on ecclesiastical estates. Much has been written about the land market and land transactions during the fourteenth century because the Great Famine and Black Death resulted in many tenancies becoming vacant. These transactions were entered into the manor court rolls and some manors have a prodigious quantity of these and thus enable much analysis. See, for one example, Razi, 1981, a detailed analysis of Halesowen after the Great Famine. The surviving Milton Abbey Court rolls are sporadic and do not allow such examination.

Land use

Arable Land was used for producing grains such as wheat, barley, and rye and oats and mixtures of them such as dredge or maslin, for the staple foods of bread and ale, or for fodder for animals.

Pasture was grassland used for grazing the livestock, such as cattle, sheep, and horses, including draft animals.

Meadows were grasslands specifically managed for hay production. Hay was crucial for feeding livestock during the winter months when grazing was limited.The upland meadows of which Milton Abbas has a large area are chalk downlands especially suitable for sheep, but not cattle, grazing.

Forests and woods served several vital purposes:timber for building and repairing the houses, barns, fences, and for fuel for cooking and warmth, and foraging providing resources like nuts, berries, and sometimes game, and pasturage for pigs which were often allowed to forage for acorns at certain times of the year, known as pannage.