of stone or timber, brick being almost unknown. Round the hall clustered the houses of the villans or boors-who were small farmers holding their lands as tenants of the manor by fixed services-with mud walls, earthen floors, and thatched roofs, each standing in its "toft," with a little narrow acre strip of "croft" behind it, and the still ruder huts of the cottiers, and of the serfs who were sold with the land. The land, to a great extent, was held in common by the village community, and tilled by co-operative labour. The best land lay in great open arable fields, which were divided into narrow strips, acres and half acres, each strip about a furlong in length, and a perch or two perches in breadth. These little strips were separated by turf balks, and the holding of each villan was as a rulę either a bovate, or a virgate,* made up of a score or two of these strips scattered about the open arable fields, and usually amounting to from ten to thirty acres in all. He did not hold the same strips year by year, but every second or third year one division of the arable land was thrown into fallow, over which the cattle of the village had common rights of pasturage. Beyond the village and the arable fields were extensive wastes, rough pastures of coarse grass, overgrown with thin wood or brushwood, forming the summer pasturage of the sheep and cattle-upland pastures of wold, or down, for the sheep, and lowland pastures of undrained moors, locally called carrs or ings, for the cattle. One or two instances will show how vast were these common pastures, how widely separated were the hamlets, and how scanty was the population.

The parish of Pickering now contains 32,700 acres, which agrees roughly with the Domesday measurement of the manor. In the time of Edward the Confessor the enclosures were less than 400 acres, and about 7000 acres were tilled in open fields, leaving some 26,000 acres as moorland pasture. At the time of the Domesday Survey about 1200 acres were in tillage, and there were twenty villans, with six ploughs between them, the lord having one plough. The population of this vast tract, twenty miles by six, cannot have been much more than one hundred. It is now one of the most

sparsely peopled parts of Yorkshire, yet the population is over 5000.

The parish of Holme on Spalding Moor contains 11,514 acres. In the time of King Edward there were less than 1500 acres under plough, leaving 10,000 acres in moor and carr. At the time of the Survey about 600 acres only were tilled; there were eight villans and twelve cottagers (bordarii), with three ploughs, and the lord had half a plough. The population was about one hundred, and there were a church and a priest. The present population is over 2000.

* A bovate or ox-gang represented the tillage performed by one ox. A virgate, held by the owner of a yoke of oxen, was two bivates. Eight bovates made a carucate or ploughland, which was the tillage of an eight-ox plough.

These are extreme instances, where the soil was poor, and the wastes unusually extensive. As average cases we may take Heslerton, with 7120 acres, of which about half was tilled in the time of King Edward, and about a fourth at the time of the Survey. In the adjacent township of Knapton there are 2889 acres. In King Edward's time twenty acres were enclosed, and 1080 acres were tilled. In King William's time all was desolate; apparently there was not a single inhabitant.

The arable was divided between the lord and the tenants of the manor, who held in villanage. The land was tilled by huge ploughs, normally drawn by eight oxen, yoked four abreast. When the soil was light the teams were somewhat smaller, consisting of as few as four oxen, yoked two and two. This was called a half plough. But where the land was heavy, as many as ten or even twelve oxen were yoked to each plough. A villan usually possessed one yoke of oxen, each plough being drawn by the associated teams of four villans. Land was plentiful, and it was rather the possession of oxen for tillage than of land itself which constituted wealth. Hence we understand why the system of taxation recorded in Domesday is based on the number of ploughs rather than on the number of

acres.

We must dismiss the notion of the modern English system of letting farms at fixed annual rents. There were no farms or farmers in our sense of the word, a farmer being originally a tenant who was bound to supply feorm-food and entertainment—to the lord when he visited the manor. The occupation of a messuage, which descended from father to son on payment of a fine or heriot, carried with it a customary right to pasturage for a certain number of oxen, sheep, and swine, and to the produce of a certain number of " acres " in the arable fields. Rents were paid mainly in kind and by services. Manors were granted by the King in fee to his tenants in capite, chiefly the greater barons, who rendered military service in return. These barons sub-let their lands to their knights, who kept a portion in their own hands in demesne-as it is called-and let out the rest to the villans-the men of the vill, or township-in fee; that is, on certain fixed conditions of tenure, usually that the lord should have a fixed share of the produce-so many chalders of oats, so much malt and meal, the milk of so many cows, so much honey, so many hens and eggs, and so much cornage, a commutation for beeves and sheep; but the rents were chiefly paid in services; the tenants had to work so many days a week, generally two or three, with their oxen and ploughs, in tilling the lord's land, ploughing, harrowing, reaping, mowing, or leading stores, without payment. The villans could not be dispossessed so long as they rendered the customary dues, the rent could not be raised; their rights and obligations

passed, when it changed hands, with the land, of which they were, in fact, joint owners with the lord.

As time went on, these services were more and more commuted into fixed money payments, but we still see survivals of these tenures -not only in copyholds, which mainly grew out of holdings in villanage, but in the existing tenures of the North of England, where, in addition to the money rent, the tenant is usually bound to furnish so many loads of straw, and so many days' service in carting for the landlord with horses, waggons, and men. My own glebe, by immemorial usage, is let on these terms, the rent being paid partly in money, partly in kind, and partly in services. At the time of the Conquest, the actual money rents or scatpennies as they were called-do not seem to have exceeded 1d. or 2d. an acre.

We gather from the Boldon Book of Durham and the Liber Niger of Peterborough, that even the village artificers, such as the carpenter who made the woodwork of the ploughs and harrows, the smith who made and repaired the ironwork, the marshall who shod the horses, the lorimer who made the bits and stirrups, as well as the bailiff, the mason, the pounder, the shepherd, the neatherd, the hogwarden, and the beekeeper, were paid for the services they rendered to the lord or to the community, not in money, but by the produce of a certain number of strips of arable in the open fields, usually amounting to eight, twelve, or fifteen acres, which they held rent free, and which were tilled for them by the ploughs of the villans, in addition to which they often had a right to their thraves, a certain number of sheaves of corn from each plough.

The villans had to grind their corn at the lord's mill, and the miller had his multure; he retained a certain proportion of the meal as his fee, and rendered a fixed payment in money or kind to the lord for the privilege. North country mills still grind on these terms; the miller keeps the bran, and makes no charge for grinding.

When certain special services, called precations or boon services, were performed, as in haytime or harvest, the villans were entitled to an allowance of food called a corrody. The corrody was no very luxurious repast, if we may judge from the modern etymological descendant of the word, the Northumbrian " crowdy," which denotes a sort of stirabout, consisting of oatmeal over which boiling water has been poured.

The priest was paid for his services, like the other village officials, by a share in the produce of the land. We may thus obtain some light on the disputed origin of tithes, and even of glebe. He had his thraves, consisting of every tenth sheaf, but in some instances it would seem that the produce of every tenth or twelfth acre (a tenth either by the small or large hundred) was allotted to him. Thus the laws of Ethelred and of Egbert ordain that every Christian man

re

shall his tithe justly, pay as the plough traverses the tenth acre." Apparently the whole arable field was tilled by the villans, and the produce of every tenth acre-strip belonged to the priest. Ultimately, when the land came to be held in severalty, instead of in community, these tenth strips became the parson's freehold, and he had to till them with his own oxen.

There are several townships in the East Riding, in which the ancient glebe can be actually shown to have consisted, not only of · an exact tenth of the whole Domesday arable, but of every tenth strip in the open fields, appropriated as ordained in the laws of Ethelred, the Church taking the produce of every tenth acre as the plough traversed the land.

The map of the township of Burton Agnes given on the next page indicates that the old glebe consisted of eighteen strips in the three fields, say twelve in the two fields which were in tillage at the same time. According to Domesday Book there were twelve carucates of arable,* and therefore the parson had one strip out of each carucate; his tenth acre as the plough traversed it, according to the laws of Ethelred. But the glebe strips are somewhat narrower than the others, because the others are eighths, each representing one ox-gang, the work of one ox in the eight-ox plough, while the parson had not an eighth but a tenth in each ploughland. The actual measure of the arable is 999a. Or. 18p., of which one-tenth would be 99a. 3r. 20p., whereas the eighteen strips of glebe only amount to 98a. 2r. 20p., falling short of the theoretical tenth by one and a quarter acres. This is accounted for by encroachments which are visible on the map. Some of the parson's neighbours do not seem to have ploughed quite fairly, thus gradually shaving off a part of some of the parson's strips.

The map of the adjacent township of Haisthorpe gives a similar result. In the three arable fields there seem to have been nine strips of glebe, and a bit over, averaging six strips in the two fields tilled in any one year. Domesday assigns six carucates to Haisthorpe. Thus, as in Burton Agnes, the parson had one strip out of each carucate, or one-tenth of the whole arable.

In other parishes, where the numeration was by the great hundred of six score, the priest had one-twelfth of the arable. At Foxholes he had half a carucate out of six, and at Kirby Underdale four ox-gangs out of forty-eight.

The churches were few and far between. In the East Riding only forty-eight are mentioned in Domesday, and these were chiefly on the lands of spiritual lords, the bishops and the great monasteries.

The way in which the ministrations of the Church were frequently

* The glebe strips are interesting as fixing the size and position of some of the Domesday carucates, as will be seen from the map.