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Medieval villagers rarely owned the land they farmed. In most cases the land belonged to a lord or lady, a person of noble status. Most such owners held many peasant farms, and often it happened that all the lands in a village belonged to the same person. The owner's entire estate-whether the whole village and its lands, or just part of it-was called a manor. The income from the manor or manors - for some nobles owned many - made the owner wealthy compared to the villagers and gave him or her great authority over them. The nobles of medieval Europe formed a small group of very important people who stood quite apart from the world of the villagers. Through their manors this tiny, exclusive, social group, or elite, controlled the lives and destinies of the millions of villagers to a degree hard to imagine today. The ways in which the nobles, or aristocracy, did this will be the subject of this chapter.
To understand the sweeping authority of the owner of the manor over the villagers, we must first know something of medieval government in general. Almost all medieval people were subject to a king. But monarchs seldom wielded direct authority in the rural villages. To most villagers, the king was just a name. He was a person whose birth and coronation they celebrated, for whom they prayed in church, and whose death they mourned. He was a shadowy, distant figure, awesome and unapproachable. Monarchs traveled frequently. But they confined their movements mainly to their own manors, to towns, and to castles that were important for the -defense of their kingdoms. The vast majority of villagers would never see a king in- the whole of their lifetime.
Cuxham, although close to a main London-to-Oxford road, has no record of a visit from a king. There is, however, evidence of visits from royal officials and 'of the heavy spending on food and drink to celebrate such occasions. We can well picture the local villagers looking on in awe from a distance at these finely dressed representatives of a king they never saw.
The weakness of the king's government in the rural areas was due to a shortage of funds. The king could not collect taxes from most of his subjects because the villagers had no money to pay. Without money, he could neither maintain great armed forces nor hire many officials. Aside from a few relatives, advisers, and bodyguards who lived with the king, his government amounted to little more than a scattering of royal officials throughout the kingdom. These officials presided at times over public courts, collected revenues from royal estates, and called up fighting men in their regions. In Cuxham the sheriff of Oxford, the capital of the county in which the village was located, represented the king. There are, however, few records of his presence in the village. Because the king was far away, he could not govern the villages effectively. Thus the person having the most land in any one region acted as local ruler. Living right there, such persons could protect near-by villagers the moment an emergency arose. They also had the force to impose their rule whether the villagers wished it or not. By the l1th century most of the villages of western Europe were under the control of these nobles. The manor system was established for centuries to come.
It is not known when and how a noble first gained rights over the manor of Cuxham and its villagers. By the time of the Norman conquest in 1066, an Anglo-Saxon named Wigod was its lord. In 1268, after changing hands several times, it came into the possession of Merton College, a part of the University of Oxford some 15 miles away (about 25 kilometers). From this time on the revenues from the village and lands of Cuxham helped support the studies of the students, or scholars, of the college. In those days even a college had no way of feeding and clothing its teachers and student by owning and farming land.
Cuxham formed just one part of a much larger network of farms, estates, and manors belonging to Merton College. In 1274 the college held lands in 13 different villages spread out over a 50-mile radius (a kilometers) -north, east, and south of Oxford. This situation was not uncommon in the Middle Ages. Many a lesser nobles of local importance held one or two manors only. But others were immensely wealthy with dozens of manors scattered over entire counties. The “lords” of Cuxham (Merton College) fell somewhere in between these two extremes, although they could scarcely be counted among the very rich of their day.
It is doubtful that it mattered very much to the villagers whether they lived under a great noble with many manors or under a noble who held only one or two. To be sure, the peasants of minor nobles knew them well and saw them often, because the noble lived in a village nearby. A noble with many manors obviously could live in only one or two of them. Such a landowner would be almost unknown to the other villagers. Such was the case with the scholars of Merton College. They lived in Oxford, not at Cuxham or at any of their other 12 manors. The day-to-day administration of the manor of Cuxham was in the hands-of one of the local villagers whom the scholars appointed as their reeve, or local official. At fixed times throughout the year, an official of Merton College came to the village to check on the, reeve and see that no one was cheating the college. But neither in Cuxham nor in many other similar villages is there reason to believe the absence of the lord or lady weakened his or her authority there.
Even when a noble lived on the manor, a very great distance separated the owner from the peasants. Landowners led a completely different kind of life from peasants. The peasants worked for the owner. The owner was accustomed to giving commands, not obeying them. Whereas the peasants toiled hard in their fields to eke out a living, a lord or lady was concerned with the business of overseeing the estate. In wartime, a lord gathered together his expensive armor and rode away on horseback to fight for the king or for his own lord. If the villagers ever served as fighters, it was only as humble, crudely armed foot soldiers. Nobles kept company only with members of their own class. They hunted with them and traveled with them, and entertained them in high style with fine dinners in the manor house. Even their elegant, richly styled clothes singled them out from ordinary villagers wearing poor, drab garments.
The noble and his
warriors are prepared to join together in battle. Weaponry used were spears, slings and boulders, the crossbow,
flails, clubs, and bows and arrows.
Nobles could lead a life of ease and plenty because they had more land than any villager. Land was the most important source of wealth in a society where money was scarce and little used. The landowner got from the fields the things that in the modern world we must buy in stores. The great titled nobles -the counts and countesses, dukes and duchesses -with their scores of manors and their tens or even hundreds of thousands of acres of land, stood far above the lesser nobles who held only a manor or two and a few hundred acres. It scarcely need be said that even these two groups did not move in the same circles. They did not intermarry and seldom mingled socially. Still, even the most modest owner of a single manor seemed rich to the villagers, so great was the difference between any noble's wealth and theirs.
A casual observer would not have seen how much larger was the landowner's domain (the acres held for the landowner's own use) than the land of any one villager. The owner's strips were norm ally intermingled with those of the villagers and were in no way different from theirs. But it was not uncommon for the noble to own a full half of all the village lands. in Cuxham, the lord's share was unusually large. In the 13th century he owned about 270 acres (about 110 hectares) in the three great fields. All the other village families together had only 107 acres (about 43 hectares). Few facts show so clearly the gulf that separated nobles from tenants.
Another sign of a noble's wealth was the residence, or manor house. The manor house was set in a spacious courtyard larger than any of the villagers' small plots, or tenements. It dwarfed all the villagers' houses in size and elegance. The greater nobles dwelt in massive castles with many rooms and towers, fortified by high walls and protected by moats. But even the more numerous, minor nobles had impressive' manor houses. Cuxham, where a lord was not even resident after 1268, is a good example. Nothing remains today of the medieval manor house, but its general layout can be reconstructed from written records (see maps)
The manor house was a group of buildings, surrounded by a stone wall with two gates. After gaining admittance through the main oaken gate with its two locks, a visitor would see buildings on all sides. As its name suggests, the lord's private quarters (called "the lord's room" on the map) served as the main residence. It adjoined the hall used for banquets or other meals. Two separate buildings nearby housed the kitchen, the bakehouse, the dairy, and the food and wine cellars. To the north of the lord's room were the farm buildings. There were two barns, a granary, a strawhouse, a hayhouse, a pigsty, and a cowbarn. All these were arranged around the barnyard. In the courtyard was a fishpond, which supplied fish for the lord's table. Two pigeon- houses furnished another delicacy. There were two large vegetable gardens, and orchards of apple, pear, and cherry trees. As we will see later, none of the villagers of Cuxham had houses or barns remotely approaching this in size or luxury.
Farming an estate of this size was a major undertaking. The noble landowner could call on the villagers to do almost all the work. Most nobles maintained a number of families at the manor house itself. The lord or lady housed them and provided their food and clothing. The men devoted all their working time to farming the noble's domain. The women did the cooking, mending sewing, weaving, and other kinds of household tasks. These families had no farms of their own. From six to nine men formed the full-time manorial labor force at Cuxham. When farm work was especially heavy, the lord hired extra workers. In all parts of medieval Europe there were always many landless, unemployed wanderers looking for work.
The settled families of the village who had farms of their own also helped farm the noble's lands. They worked in the domain strips and carted the produce to the noble's barns or to regional markets. The amount of required work varied from a few days a year to two, and sometimes three, days each week all year long. In the 13th century the villagers of Cuxham, for instance, owed two days of work a week throughout the year. This type of labor was called week works. Most male villagers had to perform these duties as part of their obligation to their lord or lady. They were not paid for these services but had, in return, the use of their own land. These services quite obviously limited, sometimes severely, the time the villager could spend on his own strips. But without this peasant work the nobility could never have kept up its usual style of life.
Castles built in the early Middle Ages usually served as
defense fortresses. Those built during
the later Middle Ages were primarily private shelters and served as symbols of
power, strength, and wealth of ownership.
In addition to the work they were required to do on the owner's land, the peasants had to pay various taxes and land and crop rents. The noble charged for protecting the villagers from danger. Fees were collected from those who traveled to help keep up the roads. Then there were various poll, or head, taxes and inheritance taxes. (The villagers could also be required to entertain the landowner and the owner's men and put them up for the night. ) Some of these charges were fixed in by custom. Others, like the head tax, could vary according to the circumstances at the time. Lacking money, villager paid most of them in kind, that is, in produce.
Noble landowners also enjoyed a series of monopolies that added to their incomes. Since individual villagers could rarely afford to build mills or winepresses or even ovens, these were usually constructed by the owners. A part of the flour or wine or bread was charged for their use.
Moreover, the aristocrats claimed most of the great European forests and woodlands as hunting preserves. The peasants were forbidden to hunt some or all game or to cut trees for firewood or building materials. The villagers were even charged when they grazed their pigs there. These private preserves sometimes reached giant proportions. In the later 11th century, English kings turned the New Forest in Hampshire into an enormous royal hunting ground of many square miles. People already living there were forced to leave. Severe penalties, among them loss of limbs or even death, awaited those careless or unlucky enough to be caught hunting there. The nobles also regarded nearby ponds, lakes, and rivers as their own. They either prohibited villagers from fishing in them or charged them for the privilege. The medieval villager rarely ate the wild game and fish that graced the tables of the nobles.
It is easy to see that in the great amount of land a noble farmed, and in the work and payments in kind that could be demanded from the villagers, the noble had a firm basis for power over the village. A noble also had various legal rights over the village people. One example was the right to prevent some of the villagers from leaving the land. Many were bound to reside on it under pain of arrest and punishment. They were, in effect, "slaves of the land," whom the owner could pursue, arrest, and bring to trial if they attempted to leave or escape. Land owners could also interfere in peasant marriages. They discouraged women from marrying men from outside the manor because the woman would normally go to live in her husband's village. Her village would then lose not only her labor but that of any. children she might bear. When landowners did not forbid such marriages, they charged a tax for permitting them.
The landowner's most important form of legal control over the villagers was the police and judicial power of the manor court. Wherever there were manors in medieval Europe, the owners had officials who policed the village lands. The landowner also held a court in which the law of the manor was proclaimed. Suspected evildoers were brought to trial there and those convicted of crime were punished. Manor courts came into session either when needed to try cases or at fixed times throughout the year. At Cuxham there were two meetings a year. Attendance was generally required of all men of the village. Thus a meeting of the manor court was a full-scale village assembly. The fords or one of their officials presided and conducted the hearing There were no law books, for the villagers could not write. The law was simply village custom. This meant that actions that had been considered, illegal in the past were still illegal. What was not customary was wrong, and vice versa. When a case was before it, the manor court appealed to the villagers, especially to the oldest, to find out what had been customary in the past as far back as people could remember. Thus in the case of a villager accused, for example, of plowing too soon in the fall, the court would ask the assembled villagers at what date plowing had begun in the past. Their answer decided the person's guilt or innocence. For the most part, the older the custom, the more binding it was.
Village laws were firmly rooted in the local community. As a result, rural custom varied from village to village and region to region. Individual communities thus kept a close control over their own affairs. Thus when later medieval and modern governments tried to impose uniform legal systems, the many varieties of justice were an obstacle.
In England-but not in all countries-the king succeeded for the most part in keeping authority over major crimes. As a result, most manor courts like that of Cuxham did not try crimes punishable by death. The Cuxham records, mostly from the later Middle Ages, give us examples of the kinds of cases tried. disputes over land made up a large part of the court's business. This might be expected in a farming community. In 1372 a villager was convicted of moving boundary stones in an attempt to extend his strip at the expense of his neighbor. In 1509 a village priest was a taking over a part of the lord's domain. One man in 1322, failed to keep his hedges intact. Another in 1393 neglected his fences and was fined. Other offenses included unauthorized use of village wasteland (1439), illegally cutting down trees (1385),'and destroying a stone bridge over the village stream (1326). Villagers accused of various forms of misconduct, such as drunkenness and adultery, were also brought to trial.
Whenever a crime or lesser misconduct was reported to the court by the victim, by a witness, or by the manor officials, the suspected culprit, if known, was summoned to the next session of the court. There he or she was formally charged by the accusers. If the court judged the charges to be well founded, the suspect was required to either to confess guilt or prove his or her innocence
Most minor crimes were punished by money fines. Medieval people rarely made use of the costly business of imprisonment. Evildoers were often put in a frame with holes for head and limbs, called a stock, where they faced public ridicule and humiliation. Harsh and sometimes ghastly punishments awaited those found guilty of the major crimes of robbery, arson, rape or murder. It is doubtful that mutilation of the living by cutting off limbs or gouging out eyes was less cruel than rapid execution by hanging. In any case, writings and paintings from the time show numerous crowded gallows outside towns and villages. They give the clear impression that a fairly large number of people came to this brutal end. Some were doubtless punished unjustly, and some for crimes no greater than petty thievery. And there was usually no appeal. Swift execution of the sentence, often the very same day, avoided long delays. But no doubt it sometimes snuffed out the lives of unlucky, innocent people. Bodies were left on the gallows to dangle and rot in full view to serve as a stern warning to others. Small wonder that the gallows had to be put up far from the nearest houses. The threat of a sudden, humiliating death for one small slip was just another of many cruel uncertainties in the daily life of medieval villagers.
The landowner's role in the manor court was the decisive factor in his or her rule over the villagers. It is true that everyone in the village, including, in theory, the owner as well, was subject to village custom or law. The villagers as a group, together with the landowner, determined what the law was. But the owner's influence in the manor court was very great. The police officials of the manor were the noble's personal employees, responsible to no one else. The noble summoned suspects, and the appointed delegate presided over the court and directed its discussions. In cases that were doubtful, the owner decided what the custom of the manor was. The owner's officials carried out the sentence of the court and collected any fines that were assessed. In fact, the manor court was a rich source of income for the manor's owner.
Finally, in those disputes that involved a landowner personally with one or more of the villagers, the noble was in the lucky position of being at the same time both judge and accuser (or defendant). It was difficult indeed for an ordinary peasant to bring a suit against the lord or lady and win it. Many villagers must have feared to try. It is not hard to understand the great psychological value of the manor court to the landowner. The villagers were, from time to time, required to witness the trials and punishment of their fellows. They would certainly, as a result, have been more inclined to obey, even if they had considered it possible to resist the noble's will.
One form of punishment for small offenses was humiliation
in the stocks. Here, a friar and a
woman converse while serving time in the stocks
The social gap between the noble and the villagers was another important source of control over the villagers. It is clear that the, villager looked upon the landowner, and all other nobles, as people who must be obeyed quickly, completely, and without question. And this was so not just because nobles had the power to make a villager obey. It was the result as well of the nobles' vastly superior status, or social situation.
From earliest childhood a villager had learned that the landowner and the owner's family were people toward whom great respect must be shown in actions, manners, and speech. A village man was expected to take off his hat in front of his lord's wife and children, and step aside to let them pass. He was to address them humbly and respectfully with the titles customarily used by members of the aristocracy. Villagers themselves had no personal titles. When speaking to them, the landowner did not use a form of address like Mr. or Mrs. The noble referred to the villager either by a first or a family name, as "John" or "Woods" (in the case of a man named John Woods). In response, the villager would' politely say, "My Lord" or "My Lady”.
The noble families lived a life of leisure and pleasures. But the children were also taught social duties and graces. Girls had domestic training; boys had military training.
In a world like our own, sharp social distinctions no longer exist. It is therefore difficult for us to realize how great the gulf once was between the few -who ruled and the masses who were ruled. Landowner and peasants frequently came into one another's company. The noble often gave them instructions about work to be done. The noble attended church with them, and gave a festive village dinner celebrating the gathering of the harvest. In some cases, noble and villager must have developed a real liking for each other. But liking did not change the, fact that they came from, and lived in, two totally separate worlds.
Nobles came from families of distinguished ancestor. Nobles were persons of wealth, hence leisure. They did not dirty their hands with manual labor but instead gave orders to others who did. Their families, their education, and their wealth opened the possibility of attaining offices in government or church. They conducted their social lives with, and married their children into families of their own rank. The villagers lacked all these advantages. They spent their entire lives working with their hands in the fields and obeying the orders of others. Not for a moment could there be any question of a villager's associating with the lord or lady on a basis of equality, or of their children marrying.
It is hard to grasp how basic these differences once were. For many people today, it is even harder to understand how people then could have accepted a social system that elevated so few and kept so many down. How could the majority of people have been brought to believe in such a system? Most medieval village could not read or write, hence they left no written records to give us their views. Fortunately, however, indirect evidence fills in the gap quite well.
The villagers felt their own lowliness and the nobles’ superiority to be a part of the natural and traditional order of things. After all, from the earliest memories of childhood a villager had- known nothing else. Parents, relatives, neighbors, and friends had all accepted their status, as had their ancestors before them. The villager had been brought up, by their example, to do the same. Then, in church, it was said that the existing social order was of God's making. God had created some people to rule, and it was the Christian duty of the others to be content with their station in life. They should work hard at the tasks which had been given them and respectfully obey their betters. The Church thus lent the full weight -of its enormous prestige and authority to the existing situation. It made clear to the villagers that their lowly status was something right and proper because it was ordained by God.
This is not to say that all villagers calmly supported the social system. Some, persons doubtless felt shame and humiliation at their lowly condition and resented or even hated the nobles. On a few occasions, groups of villagers risked open resistance with force, especially in the trying times of the 14th century. Such uprisings, however, were rare. In any case, revolts were put down with a harshness and brutality that left no doubt as to who was in control. But it seems that the great majority of medieval villagers accepted society as it was. To them it seemed right and in harmony with God's wishes.
The relations between landowner and villagers seemed at the time to be permanent and changeless. Nonetheless, some changes began to take place in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages. The classic age of the manor system, the time when the nobles had the greatest power over their villagers, was the period of the central Middle- Ages from the 11th through the 13th centuries. From the 14th century on, new conditions slowly undermined the nobles' control. The system declined in the countries of western Europe with results of great importance to individual villagers. This decline took place in several ways. On the whole, it occurred so slowly that at the time people seem to have been unaware of it.
Perhaps most important was the gradual abolition of week works. As more money began to circulate, landowners found it more and more advantageous to hire labor to farm their own domains. Instead of working on the owner's land as part of the rent for their own strips, the villagers began to pay in money. When labor became scarce after the Black Death in the later 14th century, many owners began to rent out their domains to their own villagers, or to anyone who had the money to pay for a lease. Conditions on the manor of Cuxham followed this trend rather closely. Villagers ceased to perform labor services after the 1350's. At the same time, the lord started to rent out small parcels of the domain on short term leases. By the mid-15th century, some 100 acres (about 40 hectares) of the earlier total of 270 (about 110 hectares) of domain land had gone over to the possession of local villagers. Hired workers farmed the remaining 170 (about 70 hectares) of the lord's acres.
A need for money also caused many owners to grant charters of liberties to their villagers in return for money. These charters were known as franchises. The villagers still paid the rents and taxes to the noble. But the payments were now in one lump sum which the villagers themselves collected. Some franchises allowed the peasants to police the village and specifically excluded the noble's agents.
Many nobles also lost much of their judicial power over their peasants in the later Middle Ages. From the 12th century on, the royal governments of western Europe steadily grew in size and in the scope and efficiency of their activities. Chief among these activities were tax collecting and administering justice. Royal courts began to take cases from the manor courts when major crimes were involved. The landowners' courts were confined to dealing with lesser matters.
The effect of all these developments was a basic change in the relations between noble and villager. The end of personal labor services left the payment of rents and taxes as the peasant's chief duty to the lord or lady. When a charter of franchises was granted, those rents and taxes became fixed and could not be changed unless a new charter was granted. The noble could no longer impose new taxes at will on the villagers. This change, along with the decline of the noble's judicial powers, meant that a new type of landowner took the place of the all-powerful one of earlier times. The new owner was no longer ruler, police officer, judge, and guardian of the villagers. The noble's authority was largely reduced to the collection of taxes and rents.
In the Middle Ages, the peasants were expected to vow allegiance and service to their lord or lady. Those who hesitated were severely punished or sometimes simply ridiculed by having their beards and clothing cut.
Finally, it seems that even rents and taxes declined somewhat, in the later Middle Ages. Thus the burden of payments for the villagers was smaller. This was certainly true at Cuxham. Crop rents were abandoned in later 14th century, and the total amount of other rents due from the tenants fell drastically. But one has to be careful not to exaggerate these changes. Most took place very slowly over many years. The landowner's authority was still strong and effective until well after the end of the Middle Ages. Still, most villagers of the 15th century had come a long way from ancestors who were almost completely under the rule of their lords or ladies. Villagers had now become tenant farmers with a permanent claim to their land. They no longer rendered services or paid taxes that their fellows considered unworthy of free people.
No one can read about medieval villagers and fail to be impressed with the great influence nobles had over village life. The nobles owned the villagers' land. Thus they had a key voice in the villagers' farming and took a large share of what they produced. The villagers worked a noble's vast tracts of land at little cost to the owner. They gave the owner, as well, a significant part of the yield of their own fields. But the manor was more than just a collection of farms. It was a political, social, and religious unit as well: a complete human community. It was an entire way of life for its people. The owner's authority dominated the life of this community. It penetrated nearly every phase of the villagers' existence, from work in the fields to their social, political, and even family and private life. This may have been a heavy burden for many people. It was especially harsh when the manor's owner was brutal and dishonest and looked on the peasants as objects to be used for gain. There is evidence that some nobles were like that. Others were honest people who used their power with justice and mercy and kept their villagers safe from the lawlessness of outsiders. These people did much to lessen the. violence, as well as the fear and uncertainty that was so much a part of medieval life.