4

Peasants changing society

Peasants had some influence over the size and transfer of their holdings, although lords gave the impression that they were in control. Even serfdom could be ameliorated and eroded by peasants. This chapter addresses questions about peasant activities outside the framework of lordship. What use did peasants make of their life chances? How did they deal with their families, neighbours, and wider society? The selected themes highlight different dimensions of peasant lives: migration, social mobility, poverty, and the village community.

Migration

Many pressures combined to discourage medieval peasants from leaving their place of birth and upbringing. Lords would only release serfs from the manor with licence; families expected their offspring to work on the land and in the house; the expectations of inheritance gave sons an incentive to remain; village communities regarded incoming strangers (extranei) as a threat, and sought to retain workers in the harvest season. The state after 1349 ordered workers to accept contracts when offered, and forbade them to wander in search of higher paid employment. This array of social and institutional restraints on migration failed, and peasants in considerable numbers ignored the pressures and laws, moved away from their villages, and were replaced by incomers. The scale and pattern of movement can be appreciated in the turnover of names in the records. These show a frequent movement of people both before and after 1349. At Romsley (Worcestershire) with continuous manorial court rolls from 1280 to 1520, half of the surnames changed every twenty years between 1280 and 1340 (see Figure 4.1). The rate of recruitment of newcomers tended to diminish in the late fourteenth century, and after 1420 returned to the same level of mobility as before the plague. Only one name is found at the beginning and end of the series of records. Many similar calculations have been made over shorter periods, which reveal varying degrees of mobility, but never a majority of people remaining over many generations. Hartlebury (Worcestershire) retained some long-staying families (known elsewhere in a later period as ‘ancient inhabitants’), but they were a minority, as nine of them persisted through the fifteenth century, and five family names (7 per cent) from 1299 were still traceable among the village’s total of sixty-seven in c.1490. Henbury-in-the-Salt-Marsh on the Severn estuary had a similarly stable minority, with a third of the names in 1419 belonging to families holding land in 1299, and a fifth of the ninety-three names of 1432–41 still present around 1500. In most villages, less than 10 per cent of names survived over the whole fifteenth century, and sometimes not a single name from the thirteenth century can be found in the sixteenth. The Severn valley had a more stable population than villages in the Avon valley or on the Cotswolds. ¹

Figure 4.1 Continuity of surnames at Romsley, Worcestershire. Showing the numbers of names persisting, and those of newcomers, over twenty-year periods (source: CR Romsley).

Surnames are an imprecise source of evidence, and generalizations based on them need some caution. Firstly, although surnames were becoming more stable in the late thirteenth century and subsequently, we still find people with aliases and there were occasional changes of name. Secondly, counting surnames in court rolls includes visitors and workers staying for a particular job who would not be expected to be stable residents. If tenants are studied, a greater degree of continuity is found, especially if note is taken of hereditary succession to land through the female line which led to changes of surname. ² The statistics may therefore exaggerate discontinuity, but nonetheless movement of people was a frequent occurrence, as is demonstrated by the newcomers acquiring holdings through the land market, or by marrying widows.

Migrants in the thirteenth century, when many surnames were formed, could be identified by the name of their place of origin. After a move to Wolverton (Worcestershire) from Bransford in the same county, a distance of 7 ½ miles, Walter de Braunsford (or his father) acquired the name which is recorded in the tax list of 1275. ³ There was an element of chance in this, as the choice of name lay with neighbours who might use some other distinguishing feature, such as occupation. The record of names is confined to the villagers with sufficient goods to be liable to tax. After 1350, when surnames formed from place names provide less direct evidence for migration, the manorial authorities recorded the movements of serfs, another imperfect sample.

Even if they were only partially representative of the whole population, both the ‘locative’ surnames and the lists of serfs can give us insights into the ambitions, circumstances, and motives of some migrants: Where did they go? How far did they travel? Why did they move? What success did they have in their new destination? ⁴

From the names in the tax records for Warwickshire and Gloucestershire distances covered by rural migrants can be analysed (see Table 4.1). The people who moved exercised considerable caution if we focus on the 42 per cent who travelled at most 6 ½ miles to their new destination. On the other hand, an impressive 19 per cent (from Gloucestershire) and 13 per cent (Warwickshire) moved 25 miles or more from their homes. The serfs in the fifteenth century (Table 4.2) confirm the earlier evidence, because 40 per cent of them moved within 6 ½ miles, but they were a little more adventurous, because 20 per cent settled at a distance in excess of 25 miles.

Table 4.1 Distances between taxpayers’ locations, and the places from which their surnames derive, in Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, as recorded in the lay subsidies

Distances	Gloucestershire, 1327	Warwickshire, 1327 and 1332 (a)
0–5 km (0–3 miles)	63 (16%)	102 (17%)
5.5–10 km (3.5–6.5m)	99 (26%)	152 (25%)
10.5–15 km (7–9.5m)	39 (10%)	86 (14%)
15.5–20 km (10–12.5m)	25 (7%)	71 (12%)
20.5–30 km (13–19m)	50 (13%)	76 (12%)
30.5–40 km (20–25m)	33 (9%)	46 (7%)
40.5–80 km (26–50m)	52 (14%)	58 (9%)
More than 80 km (50m)	20 (5%)	23 (4%)
Total	381 (100%)	614 (100%)

Sources: P. Franklin, ed., The Taxpayers of Medieval Gloucestershire: An Analysis of the 1327 Lay Subsidy Roll with a New Edition of its Text (Stroud, 1993); W.F. Carter, ed., ‘Subsidy Roll of Warwickshire for 1327’, Transactions of the Midland Record Society 6 (1902); W.F. Carter, ed., The Subsidy Roll for Warwickshire of 6 Edward III (1332) (DS, 6, 1926).

(a) As two tax lists are available very near to one another in date, their data have been combined. Most names appear in both, but the sample includes the names which appear in only one.

Table 4.2 Distances from home manor to destinations of nativi reported as absent, in Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire, 1400–99

Distances
0–5 km (0–3 miles)	79 (21%)
5.5–10 km (3.5–6.5 miles)	71 (19%)
10.5–15 km (7–9.5 miles)	32 (9%)
15.5–20 km (10–12.5 miles)	32 (8%)
20.5–30 km (13–19 miles)	53 (14%)
30.5–40 km (19–25 miles)	33 (9%)
40.5–80 km (26–50 miles)	48 (13%)
More than 80 km (50 miles)	28 (7%)
Total	376 (100%)

Sources: Manorial court rolls of 46 manors.

The predominance of short movements is to be expected, and resembles the patterns in later centuries, but there is a surprising absence of evidence for a flow of migrants from the well-populated champion areas into the woodland landscapes that were the scene of assarting and expanding settlements in the twelfth and thirteenth century. In the Worcestershire tax list of 1275, compiled around the height of the colonization movement, a total of 237 surnames derive from place-names (excluding gentry names), and only seventeen names from the woodlands suggest that a taxpayer had originated in a champion settlement in the south-east of the county. Indeed, movement from the woodland to the champion was not uncommon, like the Bransford name at Wolverton mentioned earlier. Names from a sample of Warwickshire villages recorded between 1279 and 1332 (Figure 4.2) reflect a great variety of movements, with relatively few of them having made the journey across the great divide between Arden and Feldon. In the Forest of Dean, which was showing signs of dynamic growth both before and after 1300, few names suggest that settlers came from the obvious recruiting area in the Vale or wolds. After 1349 the pace of assarting and development was slowed or even halted in the woodlands. Industrial activity and pastoral farming might have attracted settlers from the shrinking villages of the champion, but this is not indicated by the movement of serfs.

Figure 4.2 Migration patterns in Warwickshire, 1279–1332. Sample villages with surname evidence for inward migration, selected to show a variety of settlements and movements (source: WHR; RBW; pp. 264–73; Carter, ed., ‘Subsidy Roll 1327’; Carter, ed., Subsidy Roll 1332).

Migration was evidently not a reckless pioneering leap into unfamiliar territory, but a move to take up opportunities in landscapes and agrarian economies with which the migrant was familiar. The people who made these cautious moves into places resembling their home village were not hungry paupers hoping for jobs as farmworkers or in woodland crafts, but members of landed families, perhaps looking for a holding.

Migrations were calculated and planned. Peasants might move between villages on the same landed estate, like the tenant named Geoffrey de Offchurch who was living at Wasperton in 1279. ⁵ Both places, 7 miles apart, belonged to the Warwickshire estate of Coventry Cathedral Priory. Perhaps those who managed the estate encouraged or compelled a move from one manor to another. However, the tenants may have taken the initiative on hearing news of a vacant holding or a marriageable widow that could be carried across the estate by officials or carters. Villages were evidently in contact with one another because they were sited on main roads, or because they visited the same market. The Severn estuary was a corridor along which contacts were made, hence the presence in 1266 of William de Fromptone, most likely from Frampton-on-Severn, at Maisemore to the north of Gloucester, a move of over 10 miles. ⁶ Long distances could be faced with more confidence if a bold villager made the initial move, and then encouraged others, often relatives, to join him. In 1413 two serfs from Cleeve Prior (Worcestershire), William Holder and Richard Symondes had moved to the distant but high-profile settlement of Wigmore in Herefordshire—had one made an adventurous journey and encouraged the other to follow? ⁷ The women who formed a sizeable minority of migrating serfs often worked initially as servants, and again presumably had contacts with towns or other villages to inform them of opportunities. Many of the men and women settling in smaller towns came from the hinterland within 7 miles and would have therefore been familiar with the place from journeys to the market (see ‘Peasant migration into towns’ in Chapter 8).

If people took the risks of migration to better themselves, were they successful? The clearest indications come from those young people who left to acquire education and training, like the sons of serfs attending school who were supposed to obtain permission from the lord. Peasants are known to have featured among the hundreds of clergy ordained by bishops of Worcester in the early fourteenth century, because their names can be traced back to the villages where their families lived. ⁸ Many other young serfs who left the manor became servants or apprentices, working for a variety of artisans, such as bakers, brewers, carpenters, shoemakers, and weavers. We find those who became servants, many of them young women, living in the households of clergy, gentry, and a Worcester merchant. Employment as a servant could have been a dead end, but with good fortune it would lead to marriage and relative prosperity. Margery Roberd of Harvington (Worcestershire) was reported in 1458 to have moved to Chipping Campden (Gloucestershire) and married a butcher. She is likely to have begun her time in the market town 8 miles from her home village as a servant, and encountered her future husband. ⁹

Those who moved to gain land can be found as established members of their adopted community, farming, selling ale, and holding office in the manorial administration. John Reve, a serf of Netherton (Worcestershire), who had acquired land at neighbouring Elmley Castle by 1432, kept at least one pig, and some sheep. He owned a cart. He brewed ale, or at least paid the amercements when his wife Agnes brewed and sold ale. He served intermittently until 1470 on the jury of the manor court. From the late 1460s he was repeatedly reported for neglecting repairs of his buildings, and in the 1470s in his old age faded out of the records. ¹⁰ George Underhill, a serf of Hampton Lovett, gained 12 acres at Hartlebury and in the 1480s and 1490s became a leading figure in his village, with a variety of trades as a brewer, baker, and butcher over a twenty-year period. He served on the manorial jury, and as a churchwarden. He infringed the rules by enclosing a croft, neglecting building repairs, and keeping a woman of doubtful morality in his house, but these were characteristic transgressions among villagers, not just immigrants. ¹¹

Migration was a normal feature of peasant life. People wished to move, and the inhabitants of the villages in which they settled were willing to receive and accept them. Especially in the fifteenth century tenants and labour were in short supply, and a newcomer like Underhill could bring a talent for retail trade that provided a useful service. Knowledge of farming methods or new styles of building, both in domestic houses and churches, could have spread through migration. Beyond the village, when we can identify the town tradesmen and high-status households in which young peasants found a niche, we gain the impression that peasants were kept informed through networks, and some could benefit from patronage. The ambitions of peasant migrants and their attempts to better themselves throws light on their mentality. We can gather stories of success, but some migrants did not find gainful employment, well-off husbands, land, or a place among the village elite.

Social mobility

Whether peasants relocated themselves, or stayed in their native village, could they achieve social mobility? Disapproval of those who attempted to advance themselves was expressed in legislation against the wearing of expensive clothing by the lower orders. The aristocracy would emphasize the importance of birth and inheritance, which excluded upwardly mobile individuals. However, as well as moving from one rank to another, there could be some internal mobility within social groups, including the peasantry. ¹²

Thousands of lives were changed by the acquisition of smallholdings in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Domesday recorded many slaves, especially in Gloucestershire where there were 2,140 in 1086, but in subsequent decades they disappeared, to be replaced by smallholders. The slaves had become tenants. At Pinbury in Gloucestershire, for example, nine slaves in 1086 were succeeded by six bovarii, four cottars, and three maid servants by c.1110. ¹³ They were burdened with a heavy work commitment, and no doubt their status was still very low, but the few acres held by the ox-men (bovarii) and cottars gave them a toe hold in landed society. The holdings granted to former slaves passed through the generations, and can still be traced in later centuries. On the manors of the bishopric of Worcester in 1299 the holdings were called enchelondi, with distinctively heavy obligations such as manning the lord’s ploughs.

New smallholdings also resulted from the movement to clear land on heaths, moors, and woodland. The assarting movement had only just begun on the manor of Alvechurch in north Worcestershire in c.1170, when seven assarts were recorded, but by 1299 twelve tenants held assarts, twenty had ‘plots’, and another eight had provided themselves with both plots and assarts, or with ‘new lands’. Some had occupational names, such as Richard le Coupere or Thomas le Webbe, which suggests that artisans were seeking the security of smallholdings, and others may have been wage workers, either developing land for themselves or buying newly cleared parcels. ¹⁴ By gaining land and cottages, whether on their own initiative or by grants, they had added to their security and standing in society as property holders, if only on a small scale. There were many other routes to smallholding, including receiving a parcel for building a cottage on the edge of a messuage (with or without the lord’s permission), as a sublet parcel, or from pieces of a freeholding when it was subdivided among daughters, or when fragments were sold (see ‘Holding land before 1349’ in Chapter 3).

The proliferation of smallholdings in the thirteenth century is often represented as a development that threatened peasant welfare, by encouraging the new tenants to embrace a false promise of security. A marriage might be contracted and a new household formed on the basis of a small parcel of land which could provide little security in the event of unemployment or a bad harvest. A strong demand for smallholdings suggests that many people thought the risk was worth taking. New smallholdings continued to be acquired by the landless after 1349, such as the servant at Moor (Worcestershire) who was granted a cottage and an acre in 1379; and the three selions let on a short term to Richard, servant of William Offenham at Cleeve Prior in 1395. In 1497 John Reve, a servant of Alveston (Warwickshire), obtained the reversion of a cottage. ¹⁵ After 1349 wage earners could afford the rent and could aspire to establish themselves as tenants, though few did so compared with the thousands of new cottagers and smallholders in the period 1200–1320.

Did the tenants of larger holdings experience social mobility? Many tenants owing labour services on their yardlands lost status and incurred financial penalties when their servile status was defined around 1200, but although they were dragged into an inferior legal category, they kept their holdings and remained in the top layer of wealth and responsibility in village society. For example, at Atherstone (Warwickshire) in the early thirteenth century the lord expected customary (servile) tenants with yardlands to fill a supervisory role in the harvest field, attending ‘in his own person’ for the whole day with all the members of his household (except his wife) ‘with an iron fork, and to see that the work is done well’. ¹⁶

In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, the more substantial tenants had the opportunity to acquire extra land, helped by an expanding market for agricultural produce. Deeds sometimes reveal increases in property among free tenants, such as six transactions at Hanley Castle in Worcestershire by Richard Magote in the later years of the thirteenth century and up to 1319, sometimes in association with Richard Ody, once with Richard Apsolon, and sometimes jointly with Agnes, his wife. The amount of land and meadow is not stated, except ‘nine selions and their headlands’ were conveyed on one occasion. These were clearly sales, as ‘a certain sum of silver’ was mentioned in three of the transactions, and in 1304 12s was paid for a lease of a parcel of meadow. ¹⁷ Producers could accumulate ‘sums of silver’ in good times, but also were aided in acquiring land by bad harvests which induced those in financial difficulties to put their holdings on the market. At the time of the Great Famine in 1316–17 at Tardebigge (Worcestershire), eight deaths of tenants are recorded in an incomplete series of records, and twenty-three parcels of lands were surrendered and taken by new tenants, reflecting a tendency for the better-off to take advantage of neighbours’ hardship. ¹⁸ These composite holdings according to long term land market studies tended not to last very long, as they were divided by inheritance and sales.

Social mobility was not a matter of the rise and fall of wages which are well documented. In the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries labourers received a low rate of pay with its purchasing power limited by the high cost of basic foodstuffs. After about 1340 the daily wage in cash rose, and food, especially after 1375, became relatively cheap, but there are doubts about the annual earnings of day labourers. It has been proposed that household incomes were quite high in the fifteenth century because of the combined earnings of the adult male wage earner, wife, and children. ¹⁹ Those with land were able to increase the size of their holdings, but they needed skilful management to make profits from their acres at a time of low cereal prices. Individuals could raise their standard of living, but the hierarchy was not transformed. Those cottagers who increased their income still occupied the lower end of village society, and the yardlanders who gained another yardland were still peasants. The relative positions of the top and bottom of village society may have changed, but the gap was still there, as also was the much larger gulf that separated the peasant elite and the lower ranks of the gentry.

Ambitious peasants were provided with new opportunities from the end of the fourteenth century when a growing number of lords, with both large and small estates, gave up direct management and preferred a regular income in the form of the farm (fixed annual rent) paid by a leaseholder. They were encouraged to make this move by the demand among the aspiring farmers, many of whom were peasants, who seem not to have been daunted by the prospect, having previously lived on 30 or 60 acres of land, of taking on the management of a much larger area. John Mannyng and his mother, whose family holding consisted of two yardlands, in 1475–6 leased the 400-acre demesne of Horsley (Gloucestershire) for a rent of £6. ²⁰ Around 1400 lords and farmers typically committed themselves cautiously to quite short terms, for seven to ten years. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the terms lengthened to 60 years or even more, and the rent tended to be reduced. The rents were not high, so that for the large demesne of 400 acres at Horsley the farmer was paying about 3d–4d per acre. Such rents made it possible for the farmer to make a profit, and peasants found themselves in competition with gentry, clergy, and merchants for the tenancies. Even after 1500 the majority of farmers were of peasant origin, especially in the case of manors (about a tenth of the total) where the demesne was split up into smaller parcels which were attractive to peasant lessees. Even when the formal indentures recorded grants to a gentleman or clerical farmer, other sources suggest that the land was being sublet to local peasants, though of course subtenants would be less likely to make large profits. ²¹

The new farmers pursued land management in different ways. To take two Warwickshire examples, one was Roger Heritage of Burton Dassett in 1495 who ran a mixed farm with a strong pastoral dimension, as he cultivated at least a hundred acres of corn, but kept 12 horses, 40 cattle, and 860 sheep, with a rabbit warren in addition. The other was an entirely livestock enterprise managed by Richard Buller in 1527 at Weston-juxta-Cherrington, with 130 cattle and 1,640 sheep. Both demesnes had been mainly arable before 1400 ²² (for Weston, see ‘Peasants, lords, and the changing landscape after 1350’ in Chapter 2).

The wealth of farmers is reflected in their contributions to state taxes. In the poll tax of 1379 the authorities laid down that farmers (among other categories such as franklins) should pay more than the standard tax of 4d. In Warwickshire a handful were identified, most paying 12d, but a few contributed 3s 4d and 6s 8d. From the taxes of 1524 and 1525 (and the assessments included in the military survey of 1522) we gain a more precise valuation of farmers’ possessions. They appear at the top of the village hierarchy, paying on goods valued at between £13 and £100 when most taxpayers were rated at £1 to £12. Richard Colchester of Lark Stoke (Warwickshire), for example, had goods valued at £100 in 1522, and £24 in 1525 (the decline probably reflected his skill in negotiating with the tax assessors). Like many farmers he was recruited from outside the village where he held his lease, and by the 1520s was probably specializing in sheep. ²³

The farmers were the richest people in the village, often being ranked as yeomen when the other villagers were rated no higher than husbandmen and labourers. They kept their distance from their neighbours, and did not participate easily in village life. The demesne farm in one Warwickshire village was said in 1480 to be occupied as if it belonged to one manor and the village to another. ²⁴ Taking on a lease was a path to a higher income and limited social advancement, but farmers did not easily progress into the gentry. A few peasant families were able to climb over the fences that protected the exclusive club of the gentry from upstarts. John Dey from about 1440 acquired parcels of land, some of it freehold, in nine Arden villages, and became lessee of the demesne of the manor of Drakenage. He grew corn, managed a fishpond, and held a mill on lease, but his core activity was grazing cattle at a time of high demand for beef. He was able to style himself as a gentleman in 1471, perhaps helped by the freeholds, and his son Thomas who died in 1489 was also known as a gentleman. ²⁵

Successive generations of the Andrewes family made money in Warwickshire from grazing livestock, but in the north-east Feldon. Between 1391 and 1444 they acquired land in six villages, but their main residence was a free yardland tenement at the hamlet of Sawbridge. When Thomas Andrewes died in 1496 he held a long lease on Charwelton just across the boundary in Northamptonshire, which he developed as a large sheep pasture. The status of the Andrewes seems to have wavered, as although the two brothers John and Thomas were called gentlemen in 1465, Thomas was being described as a grazier twenty years later, and was even called a husbandman. No doubt conscious of standing at an insecure social boundary, they asserted themselves by outward displays, originally by building a pretentious house at Sawbridge in 1449. Thomas and his wife were commemorated in Charwelton church by a large and high-quality memorial brass around 1496. The family resorted to concocting a fake pedigree and false seal in order to claim a distinguished ancestry, but Thomas Andrewes the second secured an incontrovertible claim to gentry status when he became lord of the manor of Harlestone in Northamptonshire in 1500. ²⁶

A more frequently travelled path to social advancement took boys to schools, which could have been initiated and were certainly managed by the villagers themselves. Five Worcestershire villages (Hanley Castle, Hartlebury, King’s Norton, Rock, and Yardley) are known to have had schools, usually with a chantry priest who acted as schoolmaster, and either the school or the chantry was endowed with land by the early sixteenth century. The endowments consisted of small parcels and rents granted by parishioners, and they were administered by feoffees who collected the rents and paid the schoolmaster. The donors and the feoffees can usually be identified as better-off peasants. ²⁷ More informal arrangements are found at earlier dates, such as the education available at Elmley Castle revealed in 1385 when Robert Pygun was said not to have paid the school fees he owed to Richard the chaplain. ²⁸ Young men who had acquired some learning were tonsured and hoped to gain employment as clergy or even to hold benefices, if they could call on the aid of a patron. Some remained in the secular world, and found advantages in engaging in commercial activities if they could read and write, if only in English.

Peasants could seek to improve themselves by moving into towns. Some may have taken to the town knowledge of a craft that they practised in the country, but others moved to become servants and labourers, and acquired skills and experience in the long term. Some achieved wealth and prominence: in Shipston Thomas de Maddeleye, who had probably come from Staffordshire, became lessee of the Shipston mills in 1315 within fifty years of the town’s foundation, and became a leading figure. ²⁹ In Coventry, the largest town in the region apart from Bristol, property owners c.1300 had names derived from their rural background, such as Geoffrey de Donechirche (Dunchurch) who came from a village a few miles to the east of the city. ³⁰ A few of these migrants can be shown to have reached a high level in the trading hierarchy. William de Wikwan and Anketell de Wykwane are recorded in the 1230s; their unusual name shows that they came from Wickhamford or Childswickham on Worcestershire’s border with Gloucestershire. ³¹ They were merchants with some ambition, as they were selling wine, a consumer luxury, and William was also trading in London. People like the Wikwanes no doubt brought to their new role some commercial acumen, but they also needed resources of cash or credit which may have come initially from their rural background.

Social mobility is usually judged by changes in landholding, income, occupation, and status, but we also ought to take into account such matters as esteem, leadership, and suitability to hold office. Perhaps peasants were trusted to take on administrative tasks by those in authority, and sometimes were selected by their peers, using judgements of their qualities of character and competence rather than just their wealth (see the section on the village community in this chapter).

Poverty

Turning from people who moved up the social hierarchy, to those who lost land and livelihood, the scale of poverty needs to be assessed, and also its causes and possible remedies.

The poor often appear in documents as an anonymous crowd, like those who received food from monastic almonries. The larger monasteries all had programmes of distributing alms, on a scale which confirms that many paupers were available to receive them, but they and the smaller almshouses and hospitals, like St Mark’s at Bristol, were located in towns and aimed to relieve urban poverty. A poor peasant might move to a town to gain access to charity, like John Roose of Kempsey (Worcestershire) who in 1445 gave up his land and went to live on alms in nearby Worcester. ³² In 1535 rural monasteries like the priory at Great Malvern, or the Cistercian houses of Combe and Stoneleigh (both in north Warwickshire), gave out large allowances of cash and food. ³³ As monasteries as wealthy as these were scarce in the countryside, and unevenly distributed, the quantity of alms did not match the numbers likely to be in need.

Individuals experiencing poverty can be investigated because the manorial authorities would release named individuals from fines, heriots, and especially amercements, ‘because he (or she) is poor’. They would have arrived at this conclusion with advice from the peasant officials in the court, in particular the affeerers who helped to fix financial penalties, using their local knowledge. From the manorial court records of the west midlands, we can extract the names of eighty-eight people who were regarded as too poor to pay sums of money, or who through poverty had to surrender land, or were unable to take on a holding. There were more men than women, sixty-one males compared with twenty-seven females, which reflects the courts’ prejudice rather than social reality. In fact, the numbers were probably near to equality because many of the men were married, and their wives shared in their condition. Cases of poverty were scattered quite evenly over the region, but unequally in time, with almost half recorded before 1350, and relatively few in the fifteenth century.

The majority of named paupers, seventy-four in all, are known to have held lands, both before and after they were identified as poor. Their holdings are analysed in Table 4.3.

Table 4.3 Holdings of land linked with those identified as paupers in manorial records, 1200–1540

These people had not been entirely dependent on agriculture, and a handful of them were linked to a craft, two as bakers, one a cloth maker, and two quarried stone. In their participation in crafts, as well as the distribution of land among them, the sample represents a cross-section of rural society, and is not notably tilted towards smallholders. The human factor was more likely to lead people into poverty than structural imbalances in landholding, climate change, or epidemic disease. They encountered problems at various stages of their life cycle. A youth, John Templer of Middleton (Warwickshire) in 1303 was not admitted to his tithing (which normally happened at the age of 12, when boys became legally responsible), because of his poverty. ³⁴ Young men were sometimes unable to inherit land because they could not afford the entry fine. A greater number could not keep their holdings because they were too poor in their old age. Richard Pytwey of Romsley, said to be poor in 1438, had appeared in the court records for the previous 45 years, so he was probably aged at least 65. ³⁵ Six of the sample were surrendering their land in exchange for a promise of maintenance, either in the form of grain, or a small portion of the holding. Widows figure among these apparently elderly tenants arranging their retirement. Some of those advancing in age were suffering from ‘nuclear poverty’, because their children did not help them in their declining years, so at Grimley (Worcestershire) in 1326 two tenants, Agnes de Ruggeweye and Adam Atehelme, gave up their holdings in a state of poverty, but no relative came forward to succeed them. ³⁶

Peasants could encounter difficulties in their middle years, when their children needed to be fed, but were not yet old enough to work. Richard Pleydemore of Northfield (Worcestershire) began an active life in 1424, but met with ill-fortune in 1443 when he surrendered the holding because he was ‘impotent’ (disabled). ³⁷ As the term life cycle implies, poverty might be temporary, and Agnes Bovetoun of Oversley was judged in 1322 to be too poor to pay an amercement for failing to grind her corn in the lord’s mill, but by 1327 she was able to pay 12d for the king’s taxes. ³⁸

Poverty could result from inadequacies, which were not specific to any age group. Thomas Robertes of Admington (Warwickshire) seems to have managed his farming badly, so although he held 40 acres of good land (a yardland) the lord found in 1452 that his buildings were in a ruinous state, and he was unable ‘to support the burden of the holding’. He was pushed into surrendering the land and moving to another manor on his lord’s estate at Sherborne (Gloucestershire). ³⁹ John Muryell of Chaddesley Corbett (Worcestershire) also began his landholding career with a yardland, but surrendered it and moved into a more manageable half-yardland. He did not make a success of that holding either and in 1405 when his widow gave up her tenancy two years after his death the buildings were badly decayed. ⁴⁰ Ruinous buildings were a not infrequent prologue to a tenant giving up land and being identified as poor.

The homeless, wandering paupers make little impact in our records as named individuals, though Simon Lacy of Snowshill (Gloucestershire) in 1342 was said to be wandering about after abandoning his smallholding. Some remained in their community, like Margaret Sterveyn of Elmley Castle, described as a beggar, who in 1385 broke the by-laws by gleaning in the corn field. ⁴¹ Others identified as poor were also offending against social norms, by, for example incurring the penalty of leirwite for sexual misconduct, and then pleading an inability to pay because of poverty. Contemporary moralists and legislators had much to say about vagabonds and beggars, who were seen to be numerous and to have volunteered to be poor through their idleness. The leading figures in the villages shared some of these negative attitudes toward the wandering poor, who were seen as part of the problem of scarce labour, leading the jurors of Ombersley (Worcestershire) to order the constable in 1496 to supervise vagabonds (see ‘Peasants and the state’ in Chapter 10).

The great majority of the known poor were not social outcasts or an anonymous underclass, but were members of society who had encountered some misfortune, or through age, infirmity, or widowhood could no longer manage their daily lives. Their payments of amercements and other dues were condoned, perhaps through compassion, but also based on realism. Many people went through the same life cycle and experienced problems similar to those appearing as pauper in the official records, but were able to avoid destitution. The maintenance contract by which an old or inadequate person could surrender their land for a promise of food and accommodation was an effective method of securing a steady income. However, this form of social security was only available to those with a landholding. Debt could be a cause of poverty, or a means of gaining temporary relief from it, which may have been the case for Cecilia Rogers of Cleeve Prior in 1320 who owed a relative 27s 6d. Subtenancy could be a means of obtaining an income from land that was difficult for the poor tenant to cultivate, and we find Agnes Bovetoun of Oversley subletting her land when she was experiencing difficulties. ⁴² Some people afflicted by poverty could themselves become subtenants.

Various practices and measures helped to alleviate poverty. Rectories had an obligation to donate alms to the parochial poor. At Bledington (Gloucestershire) in 1403, after the monastery at Winchcomb acquired the revenues of the rectory, the bishop stipulated that in Lent each year the poor of the parish should be given 8 bushels of wheat and 8 bushels of barley. The bishop felt the need to put the commitment in writing, perhaps because the practice was under threat when a remote religious house took over a parish. The local alms distribution in this case offered no more than a temporary alleviation of hunger—too little was given, and it was a token gesture rather than a targeted response. The date of distribution was based on liturgical priorities, not the time of likely hardship. ⁴³

The lay congregation rather than the clergy may well have contributed more effectively to poor relief: holy loaves were made available after church services throughout the year, and the poor benefited from handouts of money or food at funerals and weddings. The laity of the parish could maintain a ‘common box’ to keep funds for charitable purposes, as recommended by Bishop Carpenter of Worcester in 1451, such as the church box at Hagley (Worcestershire) valued at £4 10s 0d in 1522. ⁴⁴ Those making wills could take some specific and practical steps to help the poor, like William Churchyard of Claines (Worcestershire) who in 1513 bequeathed enough money to provide the poor in winter with fifty pairs of shoes. John Edmunds of Westbury-on-Trym in 1538 wanted poor householders (so not vagrants) to benefit from money to fund the marriages of poor young men and maidens. ⁴⁵ A community aim to relieve poverty can be found in the by-laws which allowed the poor to glean in the harvest field, and to pick green peas and beans growing in the common fields. Safeguards were attempted to ensure that only those in genuine need should benefit. At Welford-on-Avon (Warwickshire) in 1414 the law reiterated the old principle that ‘no-one may collect pescoddes in the corn field’ if they could work for a day for 1d and food. A more elaborate version of these rules at Weston Subedge in 1398 defined those qualifying as ‘indigent paupers’, forbade collecting peas and beans at night, or selling them at the nearby town of Chipping Campden, or using them to feed pigs. ⁴⁶

The survival of the poor may have been helped by the rather patchy provision of parish, village, and individual charity, but much depended on their own efforts, which as well as gleaning involved the practice of a ‘cottage economy’, as it was described in the nineteenth century, in which many small sources of income were brought together to sustain a family: commons could be scoured for useful and saleable produce such as fuel, fruits and nuts, small birds, rushes, and bracken; modest earnings could be gained from tasks such as spinning in which the elderly and the very young could participate; seasonal work for the short term was available, not just in the harvest but in tasks such as drawing straw, clod breaking, and bird scaring. This can be seen in operation in the early fourteenth century at Bitton in Gloucestershire where the court was concerned that the rushes and gorse on the common were being over exploited; the gathering of rushes for sale was seen as a particular problem. ⁴⁷

Village community

Historians who are impressed by the capacity of peasants to organize themselves, regard villages communities as a practical means of advancing the common good. ⁴⁸ The origins of local government, popular politics, and even democracy have been seen in the creative self-coordination of the medieval and early modern ‘community of the vill’. ⁴⁹ An alternative view might be to see village administration as an imposition by those in authority. Lords pushed peasants into taking over the farm of the manor (see ‘Peasants and the making of the landscape’ in Chapter 2) and used them to collect dues such as tallage among themselves. The state made the vill responsible for the assessment and collection of the main direct tax, the lay subsidy, from 1334, and from an early date gave the villagers a range of duties in enforcing law and order, and in military recruitment. The church also gave the parish responsibilities in managing local churches (see ‘Peasants and the state’ and ‘Peasants and religion’ in Chapter 10). In fact, the two views are not incompatible; if the villagers managed common assets effectively, above all the fields, outsiders noticed, and took advantage of these administrative capabilities. The peasants co-operated partly because they were compelled, but they also saw advantages in being able to bargain on behalf of the village, and as individuals they hoped to gain in status and sometimes wealth from collaboration.

The village community at work can be seen through the prism of the lord’s courts, taking those held by Winchcomb Abbey for 1341–2 (a mainly Gloucestershire estate) as the example, and we can appreciate how the villagers and the lord sometimes pursued similar objectives, but also diverged. ⁵⁰ The lord expected the villagers of Honeybourne to help in dealing with Roger Herman who had trespassed, probably with livestock in the lord’s crops. Herman was required to pay an unusually high amercement of 6s 8d, and ‘the whole homage’ of Honeybourne were appointed as pledges. The homage (meaning the twelve jurors, or perhaps everyone in court) were being threatened with money penalties to make their neighbour pay, and behave better. Herman was confined in the stocks on the orders of a much-annoyed lord. The homage was in charge of this form of imprisonment, and appear to have taken pity on him, and ‘freed him from the shackles’, provoking the lord to amerce them the outrageous sum of 13s 4d. The incident demonstrates the community’s ability to make collective decisions, and to stand up to pressure from above. The lord knew that they could raise money, and expected them to maintain order among themselves, but underestimated their capacity to oppose him.

In the Winchcomb records of 1341–2, a routine example of enforced cooperation between community and the lord arose in the village of Yanworth where ‘all of the customers’ (a very high proportion of the whole population) were required to stand surety for the repair of buildings which had come into the hands of a widow after the death of her husband. In theory they would have to pay for the repairs if the widow failed. In the third case at Admington (Warwickshire) a problem of non-payment of taxes revealed a three-cornered relationship between lord, the state, and the village. The ‘community of the vill’ acting as a collective body brought a plea of debt against Gilbert Ricardes for him to pay 3 ½d as his contribution to the lay subsidy (direct tax). The vill was responsible to the local officials of the royal government for both the assessment and collection of this tax, and the lord of the manor was allowing his court to be the means of disciplining a reluctant payer. A fourth decision of the court shows how the community could be involved in managing a land transfer. Winchcomb Abbey, like many lords in the 1340s, was reducing the size of its demesne by renting out parcels to tenants. At Stanton a total of 41 acres was to be granted collectively to all yardlanders and half-yardlanders (the majority of the tenants), not to be held as a single unit under collective management (as is sometimes recorded), but divided among them ‘in proportion to the land and tenements that they hold’. Finally, the Winchcomb courts of 1341–2 recorded collective amercement. It was sometimes a straightforward punishment, as at Roel where 12d had to be paid by all of the customary tenants together for ‘contempt’. At Stanton a round sum of 3s 4d could be demanded from ‘all customers’, and at Sherborne 4s from ‘all tenants’ because of trespasses committed by their animals, which were normally charged on individuals, but in these cases they were given the collective chore of gathering the money. The Sherborne payment was to apply to both the West End and East End, showing in the case of this divided nucleated village, as for the scattered farms and hamlets in areas of dispersed settlement, that inhabitants had responsibilities to the whole vill. For individual villagers the community was requiring them to pay for collective obligations, but this probably did not seem as oppressive as direct demands from some lord’s official, and the community protected them to some extent by bargaining over the payments.

The courts provided an important service for individual villagers because they could bring litigation and thereby settle disputes. In the same series of Winchcomb Abbey courts, there were dozens of pleadings relating to debts, trespasses, unjust detention, and broken contracts. John de Clyve of Admington could recover 3s that he was owed by Robert Prestes for a mare he bought; Robert Colin of Twyning had agreed to provide Henry le Taillour’s bullock with winter pasture but failed to do so. In the same village John Huwet obtained a licence to agree with Agnes le Newemon over a debt of 12d. These pleas were a contribution to harmony in the community, as they allowed disputes to be aired and resolved, and they often ended in a ‘licence to agree’ when the parties could attend a love day and settle their differences. The lord gained some profit from small payments made by the litigants, but the whole community could avoid prolonged quarrels among neighbours.

A primary function of the village community was the management of resources, to ensure that the farming system was balanced and disciplined. Much of the regulation must have been the result of following routines well-established before the appearance of the first detailed records in the late thirteenth century. The important decision to begin planting in the open fields, which in return required securing the fences and hedges round the fields, was presumably made in some village meeting hidden from our view. Through the year similar oral deliberations, perhaps conducted very informally, dealt with such matters as the timing of hay making and the beginning of the harvest (see ‘Fields and their regulation’ in Chapter 6).

The framework of regulation in which the peasants conducted their farming was based on customs transmitted from villager to villager by word of mouth. The rules were sometimes revealed when they were broken, as happened in 1336 at Teddington (Gloucestershire) when Thomas Alvert and John le Reve were said to hold twelve sheep ‘beyond the common limit’, which shows that the pasture was stinted, and a maximum number of animals permitted. The stint for Teddington is not known at this time, but typically thirty or forty sheep and a dozen larger animals would be allowed for a yardland holding. ⁵¹

Sometimes unwritten customs were reiterated, strengthened, supplemented, or altered by formal ordinances or by-laws agreed in the manor court. Some apparently new harvest regulations were announced in the courts of ten manors on the Worcester Priory estate in July 1337, in anticipation of the coming harvest. ⁵² The appearance of these by-laws in almost identical form in a succession of manors shows that they were being proposed by the estate officials, though they protected the crops and the welfare of tenants as well as the lord, so peasants may have had a say in their framing. The by-laws were neither new, nor peculiar to the estate or the region, as very similar provisions were made in courts in other parts of the country as early as the 1270s. ⁵³

One objective of the package of harvest laws was to control gleaning. The practice of allowing the village poor to collect ears of corn left by the harvesters was well-established, though as a concession to help those genuinely in need, not a right. The villagers sought to prevent strangers coming to collect grain. The poor should do their own gleaning, and not employ others. ‘Bad gleaning’ was prohibited, perhaps referring to gleaners taking ears from the harvested sheaves. Able-bodied potential workers should not glean but accept employment for a penny per day. These were employers’ measures, to maximize the size of the labour force, and to reduce harvesters’ wages. The producers feared that a proportion of the crop was being stolen. It was accordingly forbidden to pay workers with sheaves, as thieves might claim to be harvesters. These measures were not just directed against the poor and wage earners, as tenants were suspected of dishonesty, hence the law preventing the carting of corn from the fields at night, or on feast days, when honest people would not be working. Villagers were forbidden to have gates, styles, and paths leading into the field from the rear of their closes, lest they use them to steal corn.

The support that this legislation received from the community is shown by the actions of tenants serving as court officials who were responsible for a flurry of presentments after July 1337 for bad gleaning and other harvest offences. These harvest by-laws demonstrate the underlying ambiguities of the village community, which can be identified in all villages over centuries. On the one hand, the laws were represented in the official record as the unanimous will of the people: at Middleton (Warwickshire) in 1312 an order for the repair of the churchyard wall was issued ‘by common assent of all of the vill’. ⁵⁴ On the other hand the laws exposed divisions among the peasants. The leading villagers were ready to join with the lord in making laws that protected their interests, and played a part in enforcement. They were very ready to correct the behaviour of the poor, strangers, and wage earners, but they were reluctant to enforce any curbs on the behaviour of the better-off. Thomas Alvert (or Alvard) of Teddington exceeded the stint of the village’s pastures in 1336. In 1327 he was the second highest ranking taxpayer in his village, no doubt already owning a large number of livestock. ⁵⁵ Such a prominent villager would surely not have been eager to observe the rules and reduce his sheep flock.

Did villages function on the basis of a complementary and harmonious relationship between peasants with holdings of varied size, or were they divided by frictions between the smallholders and their more substantial neighbours? We can analyse the interdependence between those employing labour, and those expecting to be employed. The problem is a complex one because each family went through a cycle of lacking labour in its early stages and becoming well-provided as children became old enough to work. Mortality could disrupt this cycle, as is visible in the village of Compton Verney (Warwickshire) in 1279, when eighteen of the forty-five tenants were women, most of them widows. An epidemic must explain so many deaths, which led to a great demand for the labour of the six male cottagers. ⁵⁶

Setting aside such special problems, a speculative calculation can be made of a specimen settlement, Honington in Warwickshire, for the year 1279. This was a large village with twenty-five tenants of larger holdings, one or two yardlands each of 32 acres, with nineteen half yardlands, and sixteen smallholders. The number of working days needed for the larger holdings can be calculated on the basis that an acre required fifteen days of work each year, and adding some labour services on the lord’s demesne. ⁵⁷ The annual total of between 9,000 and 12,000 person-days would have been required for the yardlands and double yardlands, of which about 6,000 could have been contributed by the tenants themselves. The smallholders could provide, perhaps 4,000 days, with some from the spare time of the half-yardlanders. The lord was cultivating a demesne of 200 acres each year, and the combination of labour services and the lord’s famuli (farm servants) would not have covered all of the tasks, creating yet more demand for wage workers. There would not have been a deficit, because household members, wives, children, and living-in servants between them would contribute thousands of person-days to the labour pool of the village.

Among other Warwickshire villages surveyed in 1279, the importance of the family and servant workforce is implied by the villages with many yardlanders and no cottagers at all, for example, at Gaydon and Ascott near Whichford. Priors Hardwick was clearly unbalanced, as it contained only five smallholders, with eight larger holdings and a large demesne and glebe generating a formidable demand for labour. To fill the gap, workers would have come from villages with many cottagers, an obvious candidate being nearby Priors Marston. ⁵⁸ At the other end of the range of unbalanced societies, were the woodland villages like Stareton with fourteen cottagers, and the ring of villages around Coventry with numerous smallholders. One of those, Binley, might have benefited from its large urban neighbour, but also from its extensive woods with their employment opportunities. ⁵⁹ The smallholding settlements underline the importance of non-agriculture work, and the necessity of those seeking wages to travel, if only within walking distance.

To sum up, the village community before 1349 served the administrative needs of the lords and the state, but also acted collectively in the interests of peasants, moderating the demands of superior authorities, and sometimes able to offer resistance. For the peasants, the prime function of the village was to manage common fields and co-ordinate farming. The different ranks within the village could have been interdependent, with smallholders working for the better-off, though the potential employers and employees were not always evenly balanced.

After 1349 the community was in danger of weakening. The field system was no longer under such pressure as farming was rebalanced, and harvesting became less contentious. There were signs of a loss of functions and authority, for example in the fifteenth century, the manor court ceased to hear so much litigation between tenants, and therefore was not playing such an important part in settling disputes. But in some respects, such as the increase in legislation, the village was becoming more active. Was a factor in the changes in the institution a sharper divide between the better-off tenants and the smallholders and landless? An elite with larger holdings may have been tempted to dominate village affairs.

In some respects, the court became more effective and developed new responsibilities. The fourteenth-century court rolls demonstrate the federal structure of the larger manors. Particularly in the western and southern parts of the region hamlets and small villages reported separately to the manor court, serving as tithings, that is groups with the responsibility of reporting on wrong-doing. At Hawkesbury, for example, Badminton, Kilcott, Stoke, Upton, and Woodcroft all had such a role. There were a dozen subdivisions in Chaddesley Corbett, seventeen at Ombersley, and Hartlebury’s business was divided between eight hamlets. Some by-laws applied to the whole territory, but on occasion a law or an ‘ordinance’ would be announced that applied only to one hamlet. The implication of this is that the inhabitants of each hamlet or tithing held separate meetings before they attended the court. Nucleated villages could be divided into ends, again with some measure of separate government. Broadway in Worcestershire and Sherborne (Gloucestershire) both had two ends. The tenants of Welsh End at Honeybourne (Gloucestershire) were charged with cleaning a pond ‘to water their beasts well and competently’. ⁶⁰ The leading villagers could exercise their influence both in the preliminary small meetings, and again when matters came to the main court.

As the number of by-laws increased, they seemed to become more inclusive, no longer confining themselves to the duties of tenants or the ‘homage’, but addressing themselves to everyone in the village: ‘inhabitants’, ‘householders’, ‘residents’. The ‘whole vill’ or the ‘whole community’ were expected to amend their behaviour, and ‘no-one’ was to pasture their sheep on the stubble at the wrong time, and ‘no-one’ should break hedges. The wide scope of the prohibition of hedge breaking (to obtain firewood) was necessary as this was an offence often committed by women, children, and servants.

As more people were required to obey the legislation, the scope of the community’s responsibilities expanded. Mending roads had always been a duty of the vill, mainly for the benefit of the inhabitants, but also for outsiders crossing the vill’s territory. The villagers were told to mend roads with increasing frequency after 1400. The instructions could be specific about the number of cartloads of stone to be carried by those who owned vehicles. At Teddington (Gloucestershire) in 1420, the roads were to be repaired with stone from Bredon Hill, 2 ½ miles away, with each tenant responsible for two cartloads. ⁶¹ Water courses attracted much attention, not just the frequent recurrence of orders to scour ditches and prevent roads being flooded, but also measures were taken to prevent the pollution of streams which provided a village’s drinking water. The washing of laundry, the disposal of sewage, the cleaning of sheep skins, the retting of flax and hemp, and allowing ducks to swim in the water were all forbidden. ‘Wardens of the stream’ were appointed in one village to enforce the rules, but repetition of the rules suggest that the laws were not observed. In particular, the ducks swam on. Serious problems of flood control on the shores of the Severn estuary; high tides, storm surges, and the effects of heavy rainfall posed a constant threat, which villages such as Rockhampton counteracted by insisting that gouts (channels with doors to prevent incursions by the sea) and other water control structures were maintained. Catastrophe could not be avoided in an extreme weather event, and in 1483 the peasants of Henbury-in-the-Saltmarsh (along with other villages undocumented) faced severe difficulties from the damage to their buildings, land, and livestock. However, they were able to recover within a few years, demonstrating the strength of the individuals and their collective spirit. ⁶²

The most striking and enduring achievement of village communities was to raise money to build and maintain parish churches. This responsibility had developed in the thirteenth century, but reached its height in the fifteenth and early sixteenth century with the ambitious perpendicular churches, often with a tall tower, aisles, clerestories, and porches, decorated with wall paintings and stained glass, and furnished with screens and roods. Modern observers are very ready to credit wool merchants and gentry with these buildings, and this was sometimes the case, but very often the peasants contributing collectively were an important source of cash. This expense was sustainable through skilful fundraising which harnessed community contributions by holding events such as church ales and dramatic entertainments in purpose-built church houses, which we see springing up at the end of our period (see ‘Peasants and religion’ in Chapter 10).

As the villages developed their scope, to address their legislation to more people, and to concern themselves with a wider range of public issues, they can also seem to be more divisive, with a particular problem being posed by the shortage of labour. Wage earners had aroused suspicions before 1349, when they were criticized for leaving the village in the harvest for better pay. Those concerns were renewed after 1349, when the harvest by-laws were re-issued, and the manor courts briefly enforced the state legislation on wages and employment (see ‘Peasants and the state’ in Chapter 10). Servants were singled out for their behaviour, with accusations of breaking hedges at Middleton (Warwickshire), and cutting branches from trees at Ombersley. At Broadway in 1512 servants were said to be playing board games in the afternoon. Wage earners, many of them young, were liable to gamble in the alehouses, or waste their time and energy on games of football and handball. They were seen to be ‘badly governed’, and to ‘live suspiciously’. ⁶³

The castigations of feckless marginals probably expressed widely held opinions in the village, and do not justify a belief that villages were riven by sharp class divisions. A common judgement is that a wealthy elite were dominating the village institutions and especially the manor court, and pursuing a selfish agenda. Some by-laws discriminated against the smallholders, such as the limit at Ombersley on cottagers keeping more than four pigs ‘going at large’, and the restriction at Bredon and Hampton Lucy on cottagers on the common keeping more than one animal (usually a cow), or one large animal and a pig. ⁶⁴

One remedy for those seeking to employ labour, as the numbers of smallholders shrank was to provide potential workers with accommodation. Before 1349 cottars were encouraged to settle in villages and thus increase the pool of cheap labour. After 1349 as the cottages were surrendered by tenants acquiring land or employment elsewhere, tenants of large holdings added them to their portfolio of land. In 1496 John Felippes of Cleeve Prior (Worcestershire) surrendered his composite holding to Giles Felippes. He was passing on an accumulation which at first looks incongruous, consisting of a total of eight previously separate assets, which totalled three-quarters of a yardland, about 14 acres of land in the fields, described as acres, selions and butts, a croft, and three cottages. He could have been cultivating about 40 acres, but what use could he make of the cottages? He would surely have sublet them, and expect the tenants to pay rent, or make themselves available to work for him. In modern terminology, they were tied cottages. ⁶⁵

The influence of the large landholders should not be exaggerated. Office holding had to be spread widely because there were so many administrative tasks. Those who served in the manorial administration included not just the jurors, tithing men, affeerers, ale tasters, and others in the manor court, and the reeve, beadle, hayward, and woodward running the daily affairs of the manor, but also the harvest wardens, wardens of the stream, co-ordinators of highway maintenance, and those managing the religious institutions, notably the church wardens and the feoffees of the chantries. In addition to the sessions of the court, meetings were held in the hamlets or tithings. Dozens of men (and they were males almost without exception) spent many hours discussing the business of the village, manor, and parish.

At Hartlebury in each year between 1473 and 1485 there were thirty-two offices to fill. About a third of the adult males in the village were occupying these positions each year, and some served only for a year, so in time a considerable proportion experienced office holding. Government was oligarchic in the sense that individuals filled more than one office. Of the thirty-two who served as jurors in the manor court, twenty-two had been ‘parishioners’ in the church court. They also tended to be better-off, judged in terms of their land holding, as 79 per cent of the jurors held a yardland or two yardlands. However, the yardland at Hartlebury was an unusually small holding of 24 acres at most, and often below 20 acres, and 76 per cent of all tenants held a yardland or two. In any case a few smallholders held office, such as John Gadbury, tenant of a quarter-yardland who was churchwarden in 1472 and manor court juror in 1473. Some individuals from some prominent and well-heeled families as the Ballardes, Bests, and Walls did not hold office, perhaps because they chose not to burden themselves, or were thought unsuitable. The office holders of Hartlebury were not particularly rich, and represent a cross-section of the population, though tilted towards the better-off. ⁶⁶

Wealthier tenants tended to be involved in regulating agrarian matters, such as the harvest wardens or harvest reeves who were selected to report not just harvest offences, but agrarian by-laws in general. At Cleeve Prior between three and six of these wardens were elected at regular intervals, making twenty-seven individuals in all between 1375 and 1396. Most of them served for one year, but four appear four or more times. Richard Fisher was selected six times and Nicholas atte Yate five times. Sixteen of them (63 per cent) held 30 acres or more. Richard Fisher held only 15 acres, though Nicholas atte Yate was one of the largest landholders with 44 acres. Among the tenants of Cleeve Prior as a whole, 52 per cent held 30 acres or more, so in this influential group quite a high proportion had larger holdings.

These officials had an inconsistent record in their choice of offenders to be presented. Often they did not spare their peers, as in 1389 all of the six who had allowed their horses to stray were current or future harvest wardens, and in 1380 and 1392 harvest wardens (or soon to be harvest wardens) were prominent among those said to have allowed their geese to damage the tenants’ growing corn. The wardens could be criticized for neglecting their work in some years, as an absence of reported offences would be more likely to reflect the tolerant (or indolent) attitude of the officials. After a few years without much activity in the first years of the fifteenth century, in October 1405 the Cleeve Prior harvest wardens made a strenuous attempt to enforce the rules, naming nine offenders with pigs in the corn, seventeen who allowed their geese to trespass in the crops, and three whose beasts consumed the lord’s barley, amounting to 6 bushels. Another tethered his horse in the lord’s corn. Those who broke the rules included many leading villagers, though only one of the harvest wardens was named as an offender. The public exposures of the offences and the payments of amercements that resulted were evidently not trivial matters, as one of the accused, John Holder, who offended three times, responded with evident anger, ‘He condemned and contradicted the reeves of the harvest’. He was neither one of the elite nor a smallholder, as he held three-quarters of a yardland, but he had served as harvest warden in 1398 and 1399. The court supported the wardens who had named him in court by amercing him for his outburst the large sum of 3s 4d, but the quarrel did not last long, as a year later Holder was appointed as one of the harvest wardens. ⁶⁷

Such investigations of the role of the village in making laws and then attempting to enforce them reveal no systematic conspiracy among the wealthy landholders to manipulate the system to their own advantage. ⁶⁸ In a complex situation people no doubt believed in the ideals of community discipline and harmony, but in their everyday lives found it difficult to avoid infringing the rules.

Conclusion

The themes of this chapter all show peasants making decisions and changing their lives for themselves. They did not achieve general improvement, as migration did not always lead to the intended ‘betterment’, opportunities for social mobility were limited, failure of management could leave even a yardlander in poverty, and the village community could not always serve the interests of the ‘common good’. However, important changes followed from peasant choices, such as the flow of migrants into towns and the renewal of the population of villages as marriage partners and new tenants came in from outside. The movement of people may have been a channel for spreading ideas, in the realm of farming, house design, the style of parish churches and other innovations. The aim of social mobility was fulfilled for thousands of landless who gained at least a smallholding, hundreds of peasants’ sons who joined the ranks of the clergy. A handful of enterprising and ambitious peasants were able to make the transition to become merchants, and, crossing a more challenging frontier, to be accounted members of the gentry. Within peasant society, the demesne farmers and other large-scale accumulators of land lifted themselves out of routine village society. Those who fell into poverty might find the means to gain a living through a maintenance agreement, a loan, subletting land, or self-help, such as managing a ‘cottage eonomy’. Individuals and communities adopted measures for easing the lot of the poor. Village communities seem to have been beset by internal problems of the feckless marginal and selfish pursuers of profit, but at the end of the period most of them seem to have overcome their tribulations, and their fields and commons still functioned, the varied population tolerated one another, and they were capable of collective achievements such as renewed parish churches and new church houses.

Peasants Making History: Living in an English Region 1200–1540. Christopher Dyer, Oxford University Press. © Christopher Dyer 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198847212.003.0004

¹ RBW, pp. 191–202, 380–400; WA, ref. 009:1 BA2636/37 (iii), fos. 78–83;/185 92574b;/165/92226 4/4; C. Dyer, ‘Were Late Medieval Villages “Self-Contained”?, in The Self-Contained Village? The Social History of Rural Communities, 1250–1900 (Hatfield, 2007), pp. 6–27.

² Z. Razi, ‘Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England’, P&P 93 (1981), pp. 3–36.

³ J. Willis Bund and J. Amphlett, eds., Lay Subsidy Roll for the County of Worcester, circa 1280 (WHS, 1893), p. 25.

⁴ Headings for enquiry into migration were originally devised by Ravenstein. They are applied to the west midland evidence in C. Dyer, ‘Migration in Rural England in the Later Middle Ages’, in Migrants in Medieval England, c.500–c.1500, edited by W.M. Ormrod, J. Story, and E. Tyler (Oxford, British Academy, 2020), pp. 238–64.

⁵ WHR, p. 178.

⁶ Hist Glouc, 3, p. 166.

⁷ WCL, E46.

⁸ D. Robinson, ‘Priesthood and Community: The Social and Economic Background of the Parochial Clergy in the Diocese of Worcester to 1348’, Midland History 42 (2017), pp. 18–35.

⁹ WCL, E64; for servants in towns, P.J.P. Goldberg, Women, Work and Lifecycle in a Medieval Economy: Women in York and Yorkshire, c. 1300–1520 (Oxford, 1992), pp. 280–304.

¹⁰ CR Elmley, pp. 93–179.

¹¹ R.K. Field, ‘Migration in the Later Middle Ages: The Case of the Hampton Lovett Villeins’, Midland History 8 (1983), pp. 29–48.

¹² S. Carocci, ‘Social Mobility and the Middle Ages’, Continuity and Change 26 (2011), pp. 367–404.

¹³ HTC, pp. 34–5.

¹⁴ RBW, pp. 211–26.

¹⁵ WCL, E30, E38, E84.

¹⁶ M. Chibnall, ed., Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Camden Society, 3^rd series, 73, 1951), p. 103.

¹⁷ Rec Hanley, pp. 6–7, 10–11, 15.

¹⁸ WA, ref. b705:128, BA 1188/12. Land transfers were also stimulated among free tenants in Gloucestershire: M. Davies and J. Kissock, ‘The Feet of Fines, the Land Market and the English Agricultural Crisis of 1315 to 1322’, Journal of Historical Geography 30 (2004), pp. 215–30. On the phenomenon in general, P. Schofield, ‘Dearth, Debt and the Local Land Market in a Late Thirteenth-Century Village Community’, AgHR 45 (1997), pp. 1–17.

¹⁹ S. Horrell, J. Humphries, and J. Weisdorf, ‘Family Standards of Living Over the Long Run, England 1280–1850’, P&P 250 (2021), pp. 87–134.

²⁰ TNA, SC6/855/6;/856/4; SC2/175/67.

²¹ A useful study with examples from the region is B.F. Harvey, ‘The Leasing of the Abbot of Westminster’s Demesnes in the Later Middle Ages’, EcHR, 2^nd series, 22 (1969), pp. 17–27.

²² C. Dyer, ‘Were There Any Capitalists in Fifteenth-Century England?’, in Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England, edited by J. Kermode (Stroud, 1991), pp. 1–24; C. Dyer, A Country Merchant, 1495–1520: Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), p. 149.

²³ PT, part 2, pp. 647, 648, 649, 650, 651 etc.; R. Hoyle, ed., The Military Survey of Gloucestershire, 1522 (GRS, 6, 1993), p. 221; M. Faraday, ed., The Bristol and Gloucestershire Lay Subsidy of 1523–7 (GRS, 23, 2009), p. 414.

²⁴ Magdalen College, Oxford, Quinton 56.

²⁵ A. Watkins, ‘Cattle Grazing in the Forest of Arden in the Later Middle Ages’, AgHR 37(1989), pp. 12–25, especially 18–19; C. Carpenter, Locality and Polity: A Study of Warwickshire Landed Society, 1401–1499 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 646, 653.

²⁶ N.W. Alcock and P. Woodfield, ‘Social Pretension in Architecture and Ancestry: Hall House, Sawbridge, Warwickshire, and the Andrewes Family’, Antiquaries Journal 76 (1996), pp. 51–72; Carpenter, Locality and Polity, p. 136.

²⁷ Rec Hanley, pp. xv, xvii, xxvii, 69; D. Robertson, ed., The Old Order Book of Hartlebury Grammar School (WHS,1904), pp. 209, 218–19; G. Demidowicz and S. Price, King’s Norton: A History (Chichester, 2009), pp. 43–4; VCH Worcs, 4, pp. 327–8; V. Skipp, Medieval Yardley (Chichester, 1970), pp. 116–17.

²⁸ CR Elmley, p. 46.

²⁹ WCL, E7.

³⁰ P.R. Coss, ed., The Early Records of Medieval Coventry (British Academy Records of Social and Economic History, new series, 11, 1986), pp. 97, 99, 10, 101.

³¹ R. Goddard, Lordship and Medieval Urbanisation. Coventry, 1043–1355 (Woodbridge, 2004), p. 152.

³² WA, ref. 705:4 BA54.

³³ VE, vol. 3, pp. 54, 55, 241.

³⁴ UNMSC, MiM 131/2.

³⁵ CR Romsley, p. 189.

³⁶ WCL, E10.

³⁷ BAH, 518086.

³⁸ SCLA, DR5/2274; Carter, ed., Subsidy Roll, p. 29.

³⁹ GA, D678/62.

⁴⁰ SCLA, DR5/2737,/2750,/2753,/2755.

⁴¹ GA, D678/1/M1/1/2; CR Elmley, p. 47.

⁴² WCL, E9; SCLA, DR5/2274.

⁴³ W. Smith, ed., Register of Richard Clifford, Bishop of Worcester, 1401–1407 (Toronto, 1976), pp. 136–7.

⁴⁴ R.M. Haines, ‘Bishop Carpenter’s Injunctions to the Diocese of Worcester in 1451’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 40 (1967), pp. 203–7; M. Faraday, ed., Worcestershire Taxes in the 1520s (WHS, new series, 19, 2003), p. 19.

⁴⁵ WA, ref. 008:7, BA 3590/I, vol. 2, fo. 51; ref. 008:7, BA 3585, 1538/46.

⁴⁶ King’s College, Cambridge, WOA/9; Dorset History Centre, D10/M229/1–5.

⁴⁷ P. Thane, ‘Old People and their Families in the English Past’, in Charity, Self-Interest and Welfare in the English Past, edited by M. Daunton (London, 1996), pp. 113–38; Berkeley Castle Muniments, E1/2/7–E1/2/24; GCR, 137–156.

⁴⁸ M. Bourin and R. Durand, Vivre au Village au Moyen Age. Les Solidarités Paysannes du XIe au XIIIe siècle (Rennes, 2000).

⁴⁹ W.O. Ault, Open-Field Farming in Medieval England (London, 1972), pp. 64–78.

⁵⁰ GA, D678/M1/1/1–2.

⁵¹ WCL, E13.

⁵² WCL, E13.

⁵³ Ault, Open-Field Farming, pp. 81–6.

⁵⁴ UNMSC, MiM 131/7.

⁵⁵ WCL, E13; F.J. Eld, ed., Lay Subsidy Roll for the County of Worcester, 1 Edward I (WHS, 1895), p. 7.

⁵⁶ WHR, pp. 248–50.

⁵⁷ WHR, pp. 286–90. The numbers of days of work per acre come from C. Thornton, ‘The Determinants of Land Productivity on the Bishop of Winchester’s Demesne of Rimpton, 1208 to 1403,’ in Land, Labour and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity, edited by B.M.S. Campbell and M. Overton (Manchester, 1991), pp. 183–210; H.S.A. Fox, ‘Exploitation of the Landless by Lords and Tenants in Early Medieval England’, in Medieval Society and the Manor Court, edited by Z. Razi and R.M. Smith (Oxford, 1996), pp. 518–68, especially 544–9.

⁵⁸ WHR, pp. 185–6, 203–12, 295–7.

⁵⁹ WHR, pp. 73–5, 126–30.

⁶⁰ GA, D678/61.

⁶¹ WCL, E48.

⁶² C. Dyer, ‘Recovering from Catastrophe: How Medieval Society Coped with Disasters’, in Waiting for the End of the World? New Perspectives on Natural Disasters in Medieval Europe, edited by C. Gerrard, P. Forlin, and P. Brown (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph, 43, 2021), pp. 218–38, especially 222–7; GA, Badminton muniments D2700/MJ9/1–2.

⁶³ UNMSC, MiM131/32; WA, ref 705:56, BA 3910/22; TNA, SC2/210/33. On this type of case, M. K. McIntosh, Controlling Misbehavior in England, 1370–1600 (Cambridge, 1998).

⁶⁴ WA, ref. 705:56, BA 3910/22; C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society: The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester, 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), p. 325.

⁶⁵ WCL, E83. H.S.A. Fox, ‘Servants, Cottagers and Tied Cottages During the Later Middle Ages: Towards a Regional Dimension’, Rural History 6 (1995), pp. 125–54.

⁶⁶ R.N. Swanson and D. Guyatt, eds., The Visitation and Court Book of Hartlebury, 1401–1598 (WHS, new series, 24, 2013); WA, ref. 009:1, BA 2636/169, 192, 37(iii) 98, 306, fos 78–83; S. Dickson, ‘Land and Change 1550–1750: The Case of Hartlebury, Worcestershire’ (PhD dissertation, University of Birmingham,1999), pp. 93–100.

⁶⁷ WCL, E26–E38; C558.

⁶⁸ I. Forrest, Trustworthy Men. How Inequality and Faith Made the Medieval Church (Princeton, 2018), pp. 129–213.