15

Summer and Autumn, 1349

The small-scale disputes and hard bargaining between the villagers of Walsham and their landlords and employers were repeated in thousands of manors across England as the survivors of the great pestilence struggled to gain some control over their dramatically changed circumstances. Although these squabbles might appear trivial and local, and often involved clashes of personality as well as interest, they were symptoms of what was to prove a long-term and dramatic shift of the balance of power in perhaps the most important economic and social relationship in the Middle Ages, that between lords and their tenants, between land and labor. But in the early days after the world was turned upside down, as contemporaries put it, the future was anything but clear for the survivors of the Black Death. Nor is it easy for historians to distinguish the general from the particular, as lords, their officials, and peasants were individuals who often reacted in different ways when facing the same or similar choices. Overall, however, the majority of lords acted with surprising flexibility, swiftly recognizing that it was better to offer concessions, albeit often of a temporary nature, than risk having large numbers of vacant holdings and untended fields and livestock.

From manorial and legal records, as well as the complaints of contemporaries, we can also see that lords, though unanimous in their support of legislation designed to control wages, disregarded these laws and competed with each other for laborers and tenants when it suited them. They commonly paid cash wages well above the levels prescribed by the ordinance and statute of laborers, routinely provided food and other perquisites prohibited by law, and rarely displayed any compunction about hiring workers who had broken contracts with former employers. When strangers appeared who were willing to take up land, the local stewards, reeves, and bailiffs who were charged by their lords with filling vacant holdings rarely bothered whether they had fled illegally from another lord, though they usually took steps to satisfy themselves about their creditworthiness.

There is abundant evidence of extraordinary wages being paid by landlords to harvest their crops in August and September 1349. According to Henry Knighton, author of one of the leading fourteenth-century chronicles, it was not possible to get reapers for less than 8d per day plus food or mowers for less than 12d plus food, whereas the customary rates had been 2d-3d and 5d respectively, and “therefore many crops rotted in the fields for lack of people to gather them.” Unfortunately, there are no reeves’ accounts for Walsham or High Hall, but close by at Fornham All Saints the costs of harvesting and mowing hay in 1349 were double what they had been in 1347 and 1348. Nor were landlords compensated by good yields. On the contrary, yields of all grains and pulses were exceedingly poor, doubtless due to the combination of neglect during the growing season (lack of weeding, trespass by animals, and so on), an acute shortage of labor during the harvest season, and extremely wet weather. There is much evidence of heavy and prolonged rainfall in late summer and that the harvest was consequently much delayed. Little can be discovered about yields on peasant holdings, but they may well have suffered less than those on the lords’ farms as their owners gave priority to their own lands over working for their lords.

Although their world had been badly shaken, Edmund de Welles and his sister Margery were determined to rise to the challenge, and as the pestilence waned so their administrative efforts waxed. Before the pestilence, things had moved more slowly, and conservative and cautious management had carried far fewer penalties, and less harsh ones too. But in the new age a host of complex problems arrived each day that directly challenged their lordship and threatened to drain their purse. Worst of all, few of the problems could be solved by applying the old methods. Who before ever had to deal with the loss of half of their tenants, an acute labor shortage, and querulous rustics seeking to usurp the authority that belonged to their betters?

Since they resided in High Hall, Edmund and Margery were able to keep a close eye on all that was happening on their little manor, and they urged their officers to keep them informed about every issue, however trivial. They interfered directly in many small matters, but the times demanded it. Observing with their own eyes what was going on, they learned much faster than the absent Lady Rose that advantages could be gained from compromising with the new power of the peasantry, if their demesne farm was to be run with some semblance of efficiency and their rent rolls secured.

Edmund and Margery did not have a hoard of cash to cushion them against hard times, for they had always spent as much, and sometimes even more, than they received in income. It was not that they were particularly profligate, as the gentry went, rather that their revenues were relatively modest and their lifestyle costly. Even in good years, they usually had little to spare after the personal and household expenditures essential to feed their appetites and support their status had been met. Taking one year with the next, High Hall usually provided less than £7 in cash, clear of expenses, which did not go very far, given the price of fine clothes, wines and spices, the costs of maintaining buildings, and the wages of household servants. Thus even in normal times the de Welles had been acutely vulnerable to shortfalls and interruptions in the flow of money and produce that their steward delivered to them, and now they were terrified that their harvest would be utterly ruined for want of labor, and that their tenants would carry out their threats to abandon their holdings and seek their fortunes elsewhere.

So, painful as it was, they felt they had no choice but to use all means to try and minimize the fall in their revenues, even if it meant temporarily weakening their customary rights and principles. Margery soon persuaded Edmund that it was better to pay out extra money in high wages than to risk the corn being choked by weeds or left rotting in the fields. With the help of her reeve, she calculated that the additional outlay in wages would easily be recouped by higher receipts from the sale of corn, just as she knew instinctively that it was better to receive a lower rent or a reduced fine than none at all. Thus they gave leave for their officials to reach compromises with tenants, servants, and laborers over the levels of rents, fines, services, wages, and many other things, believing that these concessions would be temporary and could be revoked when the world returned to normal.

Shamed by the chaotic court session held in late May, when John Talbot, vicar of Rickinghall, had presided on their behalf with unforgivable incompetence, Edmund and Margery were determined to restore their reputation for good governance. To this end, they thoroughly prepared for the court they intended to hold toward the end of July, and they were greatly helped by the fact that only four of their tenants had died since the end of May. The pestilence was now definitely over. They knew that business had to be attended to in a particularly systematic fashion during these uncertain times, and so they decided the first task was to check all the information which had been noted at the May court, in order to rectify that which was inaccurate and supply that which was missing. Edmund and Margery spent long hours carefully going through the records of the last court, instructing their clerk to place marks against incomplete entries or matters, as reminders that all major items were to be followed through to a conclusion. It was essential for their officials to continue finding and confirming heirs, vetting guardians for those children who were too young to occupy their inheritances, and establishing precisely what land each tenant held and what payments and services they ought to render.

The initiatives by Edmund and Margery met with some immediate success. Almost all of the heirs missing from the May court were identified, most of them without too much difficulty. But the lord and lady soon discovered that naming heirs was one thing, ensuring that they took up their tenancies on acceptable terms was quite another. William Isabel’s ten acre farm had been unoccupied since his death sometime after Easter, and the search for his heir was complicated because the pestilence had killed all the immediate family members living in Walsham. Finally it was shown that Sarah Flintard, living some distance away, was next in the bloodline. But when the hayward summoned her, she refused to come to Walsham. A large number of other successions on their small manor also proved troublesome, often because both husband and wife had died and their surviving children were too young to assume their inheritances. It was also frustrating for Edmund and Margery that not one of the successions to the holdings made vacant by the four deaths since the last court proved to be straightforward. Robert Banlone was a particular nuisance, for although he was quite prepared to farm his father’s smallholding, he adamantly refused to pay an entry fine for doing so. As for the other three holdings: the heir of Robert Sare, a free tenant, had not yet paid the 19d due as relief; the heir to Adam Angerhale’s ten acre holding was his four-year-old nephew, and for the time being the farm remained vacant; and nobody had been found who was willing to take Walter Osbern’s tiny enclosure.

The court, which was held on Thursday, July 23, with Edmund de Welles presiding and his sister sitting beside him, did not get off to a good start. They had hoped to intimidate Robert Banlone into paying an acceptable entry fine by having him appear before them in full court, but when called by the hayward he once again refused to pay anything whatsoever. Asked by his lord to explain himself, Banlone repeated that he was perfectly willing to take the land but would not pay an entry fine for doing so. Edmund, acting on Margery’s advice, loudly asserted that Banlone was in contempt of his lords’ authority and the ancient customs of the manor, and ordered the hayward to evict him forthwith from the holding in question. This action shocked Banlone, and he attempted to protest but was curtly dismissed. This show of seigneurial strength made an impression on the skeptical tenants who were gathered in the manor barn, and soon the fruits of Edmund and Margery’s administrative hard work became evident as many of the gaps and inaccuracies in the proceedings of the previous court were systematically rectified. Whereas in May the court had been told only that John and Peter Goche “held certain tenements from the lord in villeinage,” now it was reported that they had each held half of a messuage and six acres of land before their death, that a calf and a young unsheared ewe had been taken as heriots, that John Goche’s heirs were his sons Walter and John, ten years old and two years respectively, and that Peter Goche’s heir was his son John who was four. It was further reported that Robert Man and his wife Catherine were willing and able to act as custodians of Peter’s holding and guardians of his young son, and they were formally appointed to occupy the tenement until the boy was old enough to assume his inheritance.

With pedantic attention to detail, Edmund and Margery insisted on the precise terms of tenure of an acre of land, made vacant by the death of young William Cranmer, the grandson of old William Cranmer, being read out, so the hayward recited that each year a hen, twenty eggs, a day’s plowing, a day’s harvesting, and 2d in cash were due. The brother and sister smiled with satisfaction as the acre was accepted with enthusiasm by Hilary and Olivia Cranmer, who added it to the plentiful lands they had inherited from their father and grandfather within Walsham manor. Next, it was the turn of Alice Helpe, who had come with her sister-in-law, Agnes Chapman, to have the court formally register her accession to her recently deceased husband John’s holding. Alice was comforted by Agnes as she swore fealty to her lord and lady. But administrative efficiency alone could not fill holdings that nobody was willing to occupy, and Edmund and Margery reluctantly had to take Walter Osbern’s small enclosure into their hands as no heir could be found. Finally, after it was confirmed that the reeve and the hayward were to take what profits they could from the other vacant holdings, an announcement was made that John Wodebite had been granted a license to remarry. This was the first that Agnes Chapman had heard of John’s betrothal, and she found it difficult not to show her distress.

Although the court had been a great improvement on its predecessor, Edmund and Margery were far from satisfied when they met with their clerk and the hayward the next day to complete the fair copy of the proceedings. Although all the outstanding items of business from the previous court had been raised as planned, many still awaited an acceptable resolution. The rent roll had shrunk appreciably, there were far too many vacant acres going to waste, and too many empty cottages were falling into disrepair. Most of all, Edmund was distressed at his inability to control events. It took much reassurance from Margery to persuade him that, until the world was righted, as it soon must surely be, it would be best to follow the path of conciliation and compromise. However painful it might be to barter with rustics, she said, it was preferable to risking an even sharper fall in their income by demanding the last penny from them when they were in no mood to give it. Reluctantly Edmund agreed to accept his sister’s advice, and that of the hayward too, when he asked permission to continue paying whatever it cost to hire enough farmworkers to keep the demesne in reasonable shape and to make small advance payments to good and reliable workers to ensure that they would turn out promptly to gather in the harvest in a few weeks’ time. Margery nodded her assent when the hayward proposed that he should listen to any reasonable offers for the vacant farms, and that his lord and lady should be prepared to make significant further concessions on their rents and services in order to get them occupied. Margery further assured him, to his surprise, that he also had permission, if there were no other offers, to let vacant holdings on very short leases or even to use them as rough pasture if there were no better alternative.

In the event, the hayward soon found the latter option to be the most popular. Demand for pasture was rising in Walsham as many farmers were choosing to increase the numbers of livestock they kept. Cutting back on arable made good sense, for not only could livestock be bought very cheaply and looked after relatively easily, they were capable of producing better profits than ever before. Peasants with money in their pockets were eating more meat and cheese, and drinking more milk. No villagers showed greater initiative than Hilary and Olivia, the Cranmer sisters. The pestilence had made them wealthy by endowing them with an abundance of land on the death of their father, grandfather, and all their brothers. Now they created a stir in the village by seeking to make even more money, instead of mourning. On their extensive lands they pastured large numbers of good cattle that they purchased cheaply, and it proved such good business that they rented additional acres from the hayward. Alice Pye was no less entrepreneurial, and eagerly used the proceeds from the booming trade in her alehouse to build up a large flock of sheep, knowing there would be a ready market for their wool and meat.

Rose, lady of Walsham manor, fretting in her manor house many miles away, was made of sterner stuff than the de Welles siblings, and was considerably wealthier too. In spite of losing her second husband and two of her sons in the pestilence, and having lived more than seventy years, she was determined to continue to take a close personal interest in her financial affairs and the running of her estate. At home she had been struggling, albeit without much success, to fill the gaps in her household staff caused by the death of pages, maids, grooms, esquires, scullions, and cooks, as well as trusted advisers. And she found it extremely irksome having to train inexperienced and ill-educated replacements to do jobs they were not well equipped to carry out. So she had come to rely more heavily on John Blakey, her long-serving steward, for a range of household as well as estate duties.

Lady Rose did not like what she learned from her steward about the condition of Walsham, her most valuable manor, any more than she liked what her treasurer told her about affairs in her own household. Much as she was loath to spare Blakey, she knew that he was needed urgently in Walsham to supervise the harvest, as well as attend to a host of other pressing matters there. So, in late July, after hearing that Edmund de Welles was about to hold another court, she dispatched him with detailed instructions on how to improve the running of the manor and appoint a competent reeve and hayward. Before he departed, Blakey took great care to gather information confirming that Walsham and its locality were entirely free of pestilence, and on his arrival in the west Suffolk village he was pleased to learn that his informants had been correct. The deaths had petered out soon after his last visit in mid-June, and none had occurred since the first week of July.

There were other things that pleased Blakey when he was briefed. Geoffrey Rath and his assistants had been making considerable progress in clearing up matters left outstanding when he had hurriedly departed more than five weeks earlier. Acceptable tenants had been found for four of the holdings left vacant on his last visit, and willing heirs had been found to take up the farms of all the five tenants who had died since his departure. It was a particular triumph that John Fraunceys, who had refused Blakey’s direct order to take over his dead sister’s lands at the last court, had finally agreed to do so, and that he had paid a small but symbolic fine for entry. John Terwald, a prominent villager, was also helping the situation by mopping up various plots of vacant land. But even more successful was the policy agreed between the steward and his lady of encouraging outsiders to take over holdings for which heirs could not be found. During Blakey’s absence, three residents of neighboring villages had come forward to occupy holdings in Walsham which were proving difficult to let, including two villein holdings burdened with all the customary works and services. Since these outsiders were not well known in Walsham, they had to be carefully vetted, and the hayward had to be persuaded to act as a pledge for their good behavior. Having passed these tests, William, the son of John the smith of Ixworth, moved into Adam Hardonn’s cottage and garden, Roger Hamund of Langham moved into Juliana Deneys’s cottage and garden, and Alexander the baker of Thurston took up residence in John Taylor’s former tenement called Chequers.

But things took a turn for the worse when Blakey viewed the demesne farm the next morning. His first task was to inspect the stacks of hay mowed in the meadows a few weeks before. Despite his low expectations he still found them disappointingly small. But it was the sorry state of his lady’s cornfields that shocked him most. He had taken care to warn Lady Rose that she should not expect the forthcoming harvest to be anything but poor, because of the turmoil and neglect caused by the pestilence, but when he inspected the fields he realized it would turn out far worse than feared. The weather had been very wet throughout the spring and early summer, and exceptionally heavy downpours in the last few weeks had left the corn beaten down and slow to ripen. However, it was not just the rains that had damaged the crops. Neglect had allowed weeds to flourish, and in many parts they entirely crowded out the corn or left it thin and wispy. Furthermore, because broken hedges and fences had not been repaired, large numbers of untended animals had trespassed onto the fields, trampling the shoots. After a quick appraisal, Blakey estimated that much of the crop was already lost, and the remainder could only be saved if the weather improved and prompt and plentiful supplies of labor could harvest the fields after a decent spell of warm sunshine. But, judging by his recent experiences trying to hire decent workers on reasonable terms, that was not likely to happen. Moreover, the prospects of the next year’s crop of wheat had already been severely damaged because, as Geoffrey Rath explained, the scarcity of farm servants had made it impossible for the summer plowing of the fallow to be completed.

The steward was furious that the good advice and stern instructions he had given on his last visit about obtaining sufficient labor for the lady’s demesne farm had not been followed. Neither the full-time farm servants on annual contracts nor the casual laborers hired by the day or week nor the days that her tenants owed had been managed well. In fact, all had fallen far short of what was required and what should have been delivered. Angrily, Blakey accused the remaining manorial officers, including Geoffrey Rath, of incompetence or fraud. But to his surprise, they made a spirited defense, claiming that none of them carried the responsibilities or the status of reeve. Although they had ordered the lady’s tenants to labor for her and no one else whenever she required them, on pain of the loss of their tenancies as the law of the manor required, and threatened laborers who demanded excessive wages or simply would not work with the force of the king’s ordinance, few had heeded them.

“Have all humble rustics become rebels overnight?” Blakey queried, sarcastically. Rath responded immediately, “For a brief time a few workmen were cowed by news of the king’s command, but most were angered, and the former soon gained the strength to resist by seeing others continuing to break the law with impunity. And who is to stop them? Everywhere you look in Walsham, and in the villages and towns all around, you will find farmers and others willing to pay almost anything to get men and women to work for them. What I am allowed to offer is simply not attractive enough. While some of our farm servants are pleased to have a secure job, a couple have run away, despite the bonuses, extra food, clothing, and other bribes you allowed me to give them. I cannot replace them, for there are scarcely any capable servants who are willing to enter into long contracts. Instead they choose to work by the day, and then only when they feel like it.”

Geoffrey was now waxing eloquent: “These lowly folk, who lack any real skills, are receiving from others outrageously high wages and extravagant free meals. I have seen them many times sitting under trees taking an early dinner and a nap, with trenchers piled high with large slices of lean meat, and pots of good ale to wash it down with. All provided by their employers.”

“What about the day works owed by our lady’s tenants?” asked Blakey, wearily, as if he already knew the answer.

“They find any excuse not to perform their obligations, and laugh at your threats of fines or eviction. You will find, sir, that not only Lady Rose’s law but the king’s law is held in contempt by laborers and peasants, and also by the lords who hire them.”

It was then that Rath reported that Edmund de Welles was prominent among the multitude of employers in Walsham and the surrounding villages who were surrendering to demands from lazy and unreliable laborers, and lavishing excessive rewards on the undeserving. John Blakey was stunned into silence. He waved Rath away and swiftly dispatched a letter to Lady Rose explaining that Edmund de Welles was the chief cause of the sorry conditions on her estate in Walsham. He claimed to have proof that Sir Edmund weakly gave in to the rustics’ illegal demands by offering lavish food, loans of farm equipment, and free pasturage and reduced rents, as well as excessive wages, and he advised that until Sir Edmund desisted little could be done to improve matters. As Blakey saw it, if Sir Edmund could be made to abide by the king’s ordinance and not compete with Lady Rose, then, as the major employers in Walsham, the two lords would each be able to secure adequate supplies of cheap labor. In his letter Blakey reminded his lady that, under the provisions of the ordinance, those who paid excessive wages were as guilty as those who took them. A week later, Blakey received back a note of agreement from Lady Rose, to which she added the hope that if Edmund de Welles could be persuaded to join with her in enforcing the new laws, their joint attention could be focused on stopping villagers from leaving Walsham for days and even weeks on end to wander around the country looking for the highest paid work wherever they could find it.

However, John Blakey soon found that self-interest made Sir Edmund and Lady Margaret very slippery to deal with. At the meetings he attended with Edmund and his managers, everyone enthusiastically agreed that they would all be much better off if the ordinance were strictly obeyed, and no rustic offered more than the old payments of three halfpence per day and no food. However, in private Edmund continued to tell his reeve and hayward that saving money on wages was all well and good, but the highest priority had to be to find enough workers to run his estate efficiently. If that meant paying them 3d or more and feeding them, then so be it.

There was no prison in Walsham or anywhere nearby, so Lady Rose’s steward decided that stocks would be built on the green in front of St. Mary’s church, and that every man or woman who refused to work for the old wages would be placed in them until they relented. But, much to his humiliation, he could not find any carpenter who was willing to make the stocks for less than twice the legal daily rate of pay because they were all so busy repairing Sir Edmund’s barns and fences. But even Sir Edmund balked at giving in to some of the more outrageous demands. A little old man from Essex who had lately taken up the life of an itinerant laborer caused much amusement as he passed through the village. Carrying a spade and pick on his back, he stood on the green and offered himself for hire. But only for light jobs, like digging up small trees, for which he asked 5d per day and two square meals. When he found few who were willing to hire him, he shrugged his shoulders and went on his way whistling (see figure 36).

Although he was making some progress, Blakey realized that his manorial administration required strengthening by the appointment of a new reeve as a matter of urgency to replace Walter Osbern, who had died in the plague. He appreciated that, for all his faults, Geoffrey Rath was the best he was likely to find. So he set about the distasteful task of trying to bribe him to accept the office. At first Geoffrey, who was in his fourth consecutive year of service in the office of manor hayward, was reluctant to accept the even more onerous position of reeve. Over the last few weeks, however, as some of the immediate turmoil had begun to subside, he had started to appreciate that, along with the hard work and abuse, being reeve might offer even greater opportunities for profit than he had enjoyed as hayward. So, when John Blakey pressed him again, increased the emoluments of the office, and promised him a fine outfit of clothes that had previously been worn by a footman in Lady Rose’s household, he agreed to allow his name to go forward. Blakey was delighted when Rath was duly elected reeve at the court held on August 1, together with a full complement of villagers to serve in all the other offices, including John Patyl as hayward and Peter Tailor as woodward.

Having made little headway with hiring laborers, Blakey tried to improve the turnout of his lady’s tenants to work their required days on her fields. Now that the immense disruption and confusion caused by the death of half the villagers had begun to die down, he was heartened by some rustics coming to their senses and accepting plots they had refused to inherit, realizing it was foolish to turn down decent cottages and farmland, and the security, sustenance, and income they provided. And while some persisted in their obstinacy, preferring the promise of quick rewards and the wayfaring life of casual laborers, it was becoming easier to find acceptable tenants from among the previously landless in Walsham and surrounding places, or even farther afield.

John Blakey’s instincts told him that he could now begin to put a little more pressure on the lady’s tenants to fulfill their obligations, without causing them to abandon their holdings. But he was mindful of Rath’s advice on the need for caution, for nobody could be certain how to act in these days. So, although he instructed his manorial officers to threaten tenants with large fines or even eviction should they fail to perform their required labor, he often came down on the side of clemency when they failed to turn up or send an adequate substitute. It was a game of cat and mouse, bluff and compromise. By giving offenders a second chance and reducing their fines well below what had been threatened, Lady Rose’s manorial officers were able to reach acceptable working relationships with the majority of occasional offenders, who usually undertook to mend their ways in the future. But persistent and impertinent rebels were another matter. The steward lost patience with John Bolle’s repeated brazen refusals to serve the lady and seized all his lands until he relented.

But John Blakey’s careful planning failed when it came to gathering in the harvest. Try as he might, he simply could not get anywhere near enough workers onto the fields when they were most needed. Time was always of the essence at harvest, and during the unprecedented wet autumn of 1349 it was crucial. There were precious few fine days in late August, and when the sun finally shone long enough in the second week of September to dry the grain, the tenants rushed to reap their own lands and gather in their own crops, and would not be threatened or bribed to work on the lady’s farm instead. When, on the steward’s orders, Geoffrey Rath and John Patyl chastised the delinquents, they were brazenly asked why they should neglect the crops in their own fields to save the lady’s. The fact that the law of the manor required them to, and that they and their predecessors had always done so, since time out of mind, no longer held sway, and the best they offered were substitutes who were too old or too young to be useful, or promises to work for the lady when their own harvest had been gathered in. With time running out to complete the harvest, it was a thankless task, and so was the effort involved in making those who eventually did turn up work diligently. Rath and his foremen were forced to spend much time wandering round the fields, where they repeatedly came across groups of idlers sitting on the ground drinking, singing, and playing games of chance in hidden corners of the fields, away from prying eyes. In desperation, as the grain rotted on the ground, Geoffrey had urged Blakey to relent and hire laborers to fill the gaps caused by absent and idle tenants. But since Lady Rose was among the least generous employers in Walsham, her corn was left to wait, and was duly drenched and flattened by further heavy rainfall. Blakey finally relented and sanctioned a modest cash bonus and improved refreshments, but at the end of September they were still trying to gather in the last remnants of crops with the least able workers. The harvest had been ruined, and Geoffrey was blamed.

With most of the stalks beaten down to the ground, and with intermittent rain disrupting the reaping, binding, and stacking of sheaves, the amount of grain harvested from Lady Rose’s fields was disastrously low. Instead of gathering the normal yield of around four times the wheat and barley seed that had been sown, Blakey and Rath estimated that the barn contained little more than twice the seed that had been scattered. And, as if that were not bad enough, when Geoffrey inspected the sheaves a couple of weeks later he found many of the damp husks were already showing signs of sprouting.

As John Blakey prepared to return to Lady Rose, he knew that the disastrous harvest, the low price of grain, and the high cost of labor would combine to slash the profits of her demesne farm. This was going to be the worst year he had ever experienced as steward, and he doubted whether Lady Rose had ever had a poorer year in the seventy or more she had lived. However, this was far from being the only bad news he had to report to his lady. The plans he and she had hatched to bring Walsham’s tenants speedily to order were in disarray. In the hurly-burly of these days, his manorial officers were so overburdened with pressing matters that they were forced to turn a blind eye to many misdemeanors. And so manifold breaches of his lady’s rights, of the ancient customs of the manor, and even of good community bylaws went unpunished. Even when the perpetrators were brought to court and fined, many neglected to pay. As a consequence, paths were obstructed and boundaries transgressed, fences and hedges went unrepaired, cattle and sheep were not properly controlled and caused extensive damage to neighboring fields. More than this, Blakey and Rath suspected that not all of the damage was careless or accidental, and that some villagers were deliberately grazing their animals where they should not.

Then, just as Blakey was preparing to ride out, he learned that a group of unfree villagers were refusing to pasture their sheep on his lady’s fields. From time out of mind, Walsham’s villein farmers had obediently erected hurdles and folded all their sheep on their lady’s demesne fields after the harvesting had been concluded, so that her soil could be enriched with their manure before the winter plowing. But now, Rath told him, a number of prominent tenants were plotting to resist this ancient obligation by defiantly folding most of their sheep on their own lands. When Rath suggested turning a blind eye as long as these tenants folded a fair part of their flocks on the demesne, Blakey disagreed, saying that if others saw that it was possible to disregard the lady’s will without punishment, they too would be tempted to send only part of their flocks to the communal folds. But Rath remained adamant, saying that it would be foolish to try and force the rustics to obey in the face of such widespread defiance, and he warned that any attempt to coerce them was likely to provoke more serious conflicts in which he and his bailiffs might be assaulted. Blakey, shaken by this claim, reluctantly told Rath to await further orders from his lady.

The orders, when they came, were for Geoffrey and the hayward to crush the peasants’ resistance by seizing their sheep. Lady Rose, urged on by her son, Henry, had instructed her steward to toughen policies toward the villagers rather than seek the compromises the reeve advised. Put under increasing pressure, Geoffrey began to feel ever more uncomfortable in his position as both a member of the village community and an agent of their lady. Whatever he did, he found himself criticized either by Blakey, who constantly berated him for failing to produce satisfactory results, or by his fellow villagers, who chastised him for imposing unwelcome lordship on them, restricting their freedom, and denying them opportunities to prosper.

It did not take Geoffrey long to decide that henceforth he would make only a pretense of following every wish of his lady and every command issued by her steward. Actually he would plow his own furrow by opting for a quiet and profitable life, rather than an arduous, unpopular, and unrewarding one. He knew that Blakey, in addition to coming to hold the four courts each year, would visit Walsham only three or four times, and that on each visit he would stay only a week or so. Thus, for most of the time, Geoffrey reasoned, he would be unsupervised and left to follow his own inclinations. If he exercised cunning and took steps to cover his tracks, he could look after his own interests better than he looked after his lady’s, and do so without fear of retribution.

So, after Blakey’s departure, Geoffrey turned a blind eye when most of the villein tenants continued to refuse to fold all their sheep on the lady’s recently harvested fields and instead held them back to fertilize their own farms with their droppings. But that autumn the lady’s demesne farm suffered from far more than a lack of nutriment. When, at plowing time, the tenants once again made endless excuses for not performing their customary duties, ranging from feigned ill health to simple forgetfulness, Geoffrey and his local officers displayed a marked lack of enthusiasm in pursuing the absentees. Instead of draconian punishments, most defaulters were allowed to escape by promising to fulfill their duties conscientiously in the future, and those who committed multiple misdemeanors were often excused in return for a small bribe. Nor were Geoffrey’s efforts to hire plowmen and harrowers much more effective. Since the rates of pay and perquisites he was permitted to offer were comfortably exceeded by other employers, Geoffrey ended up hiring second- and third-choice people who had been rejected by others on the grounds of age, frailty, or incompetence, and sometimes all three. Consequently the lady’s plowing was both late and inadequately performed. Scarcely any acres received the benefits of double plowing, and the harrowing too was slipshod. Eventually, when severe damage had been done to the prospects of the next harvest, Blakey relented and gave the reeve permission to boost the workforce by hiring women for many jobs around the farm that had previously been done by men. But this made very little difference, for few women were willing to work for the wages Geoffrey was allowed to pay them (see figure 37).