Page:VCH Suffolk 1.djvu/720

 A HISTORY OF SUFFOLK lots before the hay-harvest and afterwards thrown open, and generally there were pasture and wood in which lord and tenants had common rights. The demesne, or portion directly under the lord's management, was originally cultivated almost entirely by the labour due from his villein tenants. During the busiest portion of the year, each holder of a villein tenement had to devote several days a week to ploughing, sowing, and reaping his lord's land, and to carrying the crops. During autumn he was liable to be called upon for the additional service of ' boon-days ' or precariae. Free tenants and socmen sometimes rendered services of this kind, but they are exceptional and small in proportion to the money rent which represented the bulk of their obligation. The molman occupied an intermediate position. He was a villein who had been freed from the greater part of his services in considera- tion of a money rent. These conditions were common to the whole of England. What was peculiar to the eastern counties, and especially to Suffolk, was the large number of small freemen who, though they tended to be subordinated to the manorial system, could not be completely absorbed by it, and who by their semi-independent status reacted strongly upon it so as to loosen its structure at a comparatively early date. As the free holdings, never very large, grew smaller by subdivision, the tenants would furnish an easily available source of labour, and thus make the lord more inclined to allow the services of his villeins to be commuted for money. In this way the villein, who very frequently held more land than the free tenant, tended to become assimilated to him in personal status. It will be well to examine the normal working of the manorial organi- zation in a few typical cases before following the gradual process of its dissolution. The manor of Hadleigh, held by the Prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, of which we have a full account in 1304, seems to have under- gone surprisingly little change since Domesday. About a hundred acres were held in small holdings by a number of free tenants, about a third of the rest was held by the lord in demesne, and two-thirds was parcelled out among the villein tenants in what had originally been 27 uniform holdings, probably of 24 or 30 acres apiece. The farmhouse of the demesne stood between the high road and the river, surrounded by 4 acres of curtilage, herbage, and a garden in which apples, pears, and grapes were grown. There was a wind- mill and a water-mill, one for milling cloth, the other for corn, which together brought in annually ^Tg 8j-. 8^., a dove-house, and a small quantity of separate pasture, meadow, and wood. The lord had the right to let out four score sheep on the common pasture, and to fish the common fishery. The arable land of this demesne in various fields amounted to 327 acres valued at 8^. an acre. ' And each acre of suitable land can be sown with 2^ bushels of corn, with i bushels of siliga, with 2 bushels of peas and beans, and with 4 bushels of oats, and 4 bushels of barley. And each plough ought to be yoked with 4 oxen and 4 heifers, and the plough can commonly plough one acre of land at the least [a day].' Each tenant of a full villein holding at Hadleigh had to plough 6 acres a year for his lord, 3 in winter for corn, and 3 at Lent for oats and barley. Five of the 6 acres were called ' gafolearth,' and had to be sowed and 640