Of course in the early fourteenth century perhaps eighty percent of the population of England lived in the countryside and were tenants or servants of the lord of the manor, renting land and buildings from him. Over half of these rural tenants could be called ‘servile’, ‘villeins’ or ‘unfree’ (an even greater proportion on the Milton Abbey manors) and bound to the lord, providing services by ‘custom’. Another class were the famuli or servants employed directly by the lord and holding no land or property, at the great Benedictine Abbeys such as Milton, the number was high, perhaps 100-200, some served in the Abbey, and others were workers on the demesne. Serfdom, also known as villeinage, was common, though not universal, throughout much of western Europe (1) and imposed legal restrictions on peasants’ rights to travel, to marry, to inherit, to build property, to justice, and so on. The lord of the manor held some land as his own, called the demesne. The customs included all the agricultural tasks required on the lord’s demesne as well as maintaining hedges and ditches, and much else besides, as we will see on the landed manors of Milton Abbey. Customs included payments in cash and in kind such as eggs, cheese, chickens, gathering firewood, and most onerously carting, all specified in our custumal as to time of giving and amounts. Customs varied from manor to manor, even to those with the same lord such as the Milton Abbey manors where the lord of the manor was of course the Abbot, although much of the administrative work was carried out by his reeve or steward. Customs also varied with time as many of the customs would be commuted for cash payment, this process began in 1300 and would continue for centuries. The Benedictine Abbeys were particularly resistant to this change and preferred to maintain the services owed to them, they could be called conservative in this respect. They were also powerful landlords, whereas many smaller landlords preferred the cash payment and relinquished the management of services. One of the most irritating aspects of villeinage was that as bound tenants legally they only had access to the court of the lord of the manor on the issue of property rights. Freemen, in contrast, could access the king’s courts. However in practice villeins had some resort to the latter.

In  the mid thirteenth century, after the reign of King John and during the reign of Henry III, existing records of the Plea Rolls and the eyres show just how unjust the system of villeinage was with many reports of extreme exploitation by some lords of their unfree tenants, using their own courts and gaols to intimidate. As one example the lord of the manor of Coleby imprisoned one of his tenants and ‘so flagellated him that by compulsion he recognised that he held his temement by villeinage.'(3) 

It has been estimated that in England around 1300 the population was around five million, with two million in villeinage. About twenty percent of the population lived in towns, although most of these were quite small as Milton Abbas was at 650-750 inhabitants. By 1400 the number of villeins in England was down to one million (1), mostly due to the changes in labour relations following the Black Death, and by 1500 it had virtually ceased. Tenancy agreements were changing to become ‘copyhold’, although this occurred at different times in different places, mostly after the Black Death and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381,  and our knowledge of the process is limited. It does not help that manorial records are scattered across many repositories, some of which are in private hands. The issue is further complicated because in many cases it was the land which came with villeinage rather than the person, a freeman could buy a tenancy which had customary dues and he still had to carry out those dues, if a woman held a tenancy by custom and married a freeman the dues still had to be carried out despite the husband and wife both being free. Similar problems arose with inheritance so that the legal issues took up much time in manor and other courts. 

Although any lord of the manor could act ruthlessly, in practice this was an unusual occurrence. In cases where violent disputes did break out between tenants and lords, such as the abbot of the Benedictine convent of Bury St Edmunds, the villeins invariably lost in the King’s Courts, but the lord generally learned his lesson not to push his tenants beyond their limits. The best documented of such disputes are with Benedictine monasteries, although none have been found concerning Milton Abbey. The customs of the manor limited the arbitrary rule of the lord and made the transfer and inheritance of land tenure reasonably secure for the villein. Considering how important villeinage and custom was for the smooth running of the medieval state it is surprising that historians have generally not devoted themselves to how it changed greatly from 1300 to 1500, and what caused the decline. Perhaps because the documents of the time do not specifically mention these changes. The best source to examine villenage at this time are the plea rolls.(2)

Villeinage had developed as a legal instrument since the reign of Henry II, with the attempted definition of common law in England concerning title ot land. Disputes over land held on free tenure could be established in the royal courts of law, whereas that held on villeingage was established in the manorial courts under the practical jurisdiction of the lord of the manor. Thus it came to be title to land rather than personal status that determined villeinage, and the villein and villein land could be forfeit to that lord. A freeman could hold land in villeinage, and have to perform services according to the customs of the manor. He might, of course, pay someone else to carry out those services. He had to deal with his free land and his villein land in different ways. 

With regard to the peasant, they could be classified as free or unfree, and their status was determined at birth, the status of legitimate children depended on the status of the father. Bastard children who had a father of unknown status were assumed to be free. The children who inherited servile status were called serfs from the Latin servi, or neifs from the Latin nativi. Legally, personal status could be independent of the status of landholding. Now all this seems straightforward, however when land came to be alienated or a new tenant took possession they were frequently a family member, brother, wife, child, uncle, aunt, cousin etc, whose status may have been different. Taken together with customary law, there seem to be plenty of complications which kept both royal and manor courts busy, and legislation attempted to clarify the situation but inevitably did not.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the lord of the manor had absolute control of his villein tenants. He could remove them from their tenancies ‘at will’, leaving them destitute, and there are examples in the Plea Rolls where the lord granted land to his own family as marriage portions, evicting his villein tenants. He could also sell his villeins as chattels.(2) The villein could not leave his tenancy, unlike a freeman, nor could he travel without his lord’s permission, for example on pilgrimage. There are cases where a lord ejected his tenant due to the non-performance of his customary duties.

Contrarily, in examining the prolific fourteenth century manor court rolls there are very few, if any, evictions noted. Even if villeins were amerced in court and unable to pay, they may have had some of their goods seized. Even if they had no goods to seize they do not appear to have been evicted.(4) It may be that the church and its courts had had an influence on the way villeins were treated at this time.

References

1. The Decline of Serfdom in Late Medieval England, Mark Bailey, Boydell, 2014
2. Kings, Lords and Peasants: The Common Law and Villeinage in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Paul R Hyams, OUP, 1980
3. Henry III 1258-1272, David Carpenter, Yale UP, 2023
4. Worfield in the Fourteenth Century: A Translation of the Manor Court Rolls of Worfield, , Part 1 1327-1375, Jane Smith, JS Books, 2022