5

Family and household

Peasants, in the Middle Ages and in other periods, are often thought to have been rooted in their families, but they were much involved in their village and were conscious of the wider horizons of their region and country. Nonetheless, they were brought up in a household and felt a sense of attachment to their parents, siblings, and wider kin. The household worked together: the quality of the holding’s management and husbandry depended on the commitment of its members. The form that the peasant family took was partly its own creation, with some manipulation in such matters as marriage from the church and the aristocracy. This chapter examines the size and composition of peasant families and households in the west midlands; then it investigates the space that they occupied, including the size, layout, and quality of the house and its contents; finally it assesses the character and cohesion of families and households.

The size and composition of the household

There are no medieval censuses, but people were counted and listed on various occasions. In 1517–18 when commissions enquired into enclosures, conversion of arable to pasture, and depopulation they reported how many people had been displaced when a house was removed or a plough put out of action. The mean number of people living in an abandoned house in Gloucestershire was 4.9 (from ten villages), and in Warwickshire from sixty-six cases, the mean was 5.66. ¹ The figure was likely to include servants as well as tenants, wives, offspring, and relatives. Families can be examined in more detail from lists of serfs compiled by lords, again towards the end of the period. Lords felt the need to keep under observation those who were categorized as personal serfs (neifs by blood) and occasionally made records of the male serfs and their children. From five lists dated between 1474 and 1539, 126 families can be analysed, and they contained 299 children. ² Male offspring outnumbered females, and if this imbalance resulted from a bias in recording among the male juries and clerks, the numbers can be adjusted, assuming equal numbers of females, to rise to 354. The lists give the fathers’ names but omit the mothers, so a figure for them has to be added. On the basis of the children named in the lists, including the omitted wives, the mean family size was 4.37, and if the revision allowing for missing daughters is made, the figure is 4.81. These figures, unlike a census which records people living in the same house, are really genealogies of those who inherited servile status. But like a census they include families at different stages of their life cycle. Children who had left home would still be included, though at some stage (when the children were young) the whole family would have been living together. Wills provide rather similar information, because when the father made his bequests to his children, he would often mention those who were living away. The figures are not dissimilar, deriving from two samples, one of fifty-one and other of thirty-eight, suggesting uncorrected family sizes of 4.66 and 5.20, which could be corrected to 4.89 and 5.40 with an estimate of the missing daughters. ³ The wills are rather later in date than the serf lists, and tend to relate to wealthier people.

The figures in a good number of cases show the number of children after reproduction had been completed. Peasants could not choose the number of children, as those who survived depended on unpredictable mortality. A couple with two children may well have experienced six or seven pregnancies, and then suffered losses from miscarriage and infant and child mortality. A chequered history of the death of partners and remarriage disrupted the reproductive life of many couples, but resulted in the complication that the children in the household had different parents. Margery Gardiner of Claines (Worcestershire) in 1540 made bequests to her two daughters and son, but also mentioned her daughter Eleanor Broke, and asked her son to look after ‘my poor daughter Alice’. She had evidently had two or three husbands. ⁴ Within each marriage the period of fertility and the number of births would be influenced by the age at first marriage, which around 1300 at Halesowen has been calculated as between 18 and 22. The comparable figure for women in Worcestershire villages in the late sixteenth century lay between 22 and 26. ⁵ We do not know how or when this apparent shift in age occurred, but a rising age at first marriage may have been a factor in delaying recovery from the effects of successive epidemic diseases. Mothers could increase the intervals between births by prolonging breast feeding. Two women were accused before the Hartlebury church court in the fifteenth century of procuring or attempting abortions, but such practices may not have been widely prevalent. ⁶

A minority of households included relatives beyond the standard nuclear family of parents and children. Parents and parents-in-law would be most likely to be accommodated after surrendering their holding to a new tenant. The grain sometimes allowed for maintenance implies that the retired people usually had their own household, and the chamber or building they were allocated suggests that they lived separately (see ‘Individuals and communities’ in Chapter 10). This does not rule out the occasional integration of the older generation in the same household and at the same meal table, as is implied by a few maintenance contracts, wills, and entries in the poll tax.

Brothers or sisters sometimes shared the tenancy of a holding, and if a sibling was thought incapable of managing a holding (impotens was the word used) he or she might be awarded a promise of maintenance. There is no way to judge whether these arrangements resulted in brothers and sisters forming joint households or joining a tenant’s household. The will of John Harryes from Charingworth (Gloucestershire) of 1535 required three sons to live in a shared household (‘keep household together’) until they married, but we do not know if this unusual arrangement was put into effect. ⁷

The poll tax of 1381 for parts of Gloucestershire contains a large sample of households and refers to three-generational households, single person households, and other departures from the predominant conventional structure of parents and children. ⁸ The 1381 tax required that everyone should pay 1s, including parents, children over 15, and servants. The tax was met with hostility and obstruction, with a great deal of concealment, especially of the young, servants, and labourers. The authorities knew about the deception and corruption and ordered a reassessment, which found 478 people in forty-one villages who had been omitted. The two north Gloucestershire hundreds of Salmonsbury and Holford & Greston contained fifty-two villages and the towns of Stow-on-the-Wold and Winchcomb. The towns will be set aside to concentrate on the rural evidence. The tax was paid in the two hundreds by 2,662 people, of whom about a half were described as married couples, without mention of children, servants, or relatives. Many of these households could have included children or servants under 15 years, or the taxpayers hid the young people, or lied about their age. Dishonest under-recording is implied by the inclusion of 116 sons but only eighty-three daughters. A total of 254 households were assessed for tax with more than two members, or with two members, one of which was a relative or servant, not a spouse. Among these the predominant household type, of which there were 111, contained parents and children, mostly a single son or daughter.

A householder’s sister, brother, or mother was only occasionally present—four households contained a sister, and four a brother, and in six cases a mother was living with a married couple. Another three mothers each shared a household with a male who lacked a wife: perhaps a widower. Siblings and parents would not have been easily concealed, so there were probably not as many omissions as among the young sons, daughters, servants, and labourers. We can conclude that at least a minority of peasant households contained siblings or mothers, which might accord with the calculation from the detailed reconstitution of families at Halesowen that 16 per cent included such relatives. ⁹

Finally, the poll taxes record unusual households which contained two married couples. Four couples were apparently living with a son and his wife, and three households were employing a male servant who was married, so that his wife formed part of the household for tax purposes, and presumably in residential arrangements also. One large household consisted of a married couple, a mother, and two servants, one male and one female, and in a three-generational household at Toddington a single female head, Alice Lyngue, lived with her son John and Joan his wife (who had been married for at least fifteen years), and Cristina their daughter. ¹⁰

Servants often lived in their employers’ houses and were committed to work for a period of time, perhaps a year. When surveys were made of landed estates in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, peasants’ servants were already well established and of interest to the lords as a source of labour. Labour services on the lords’ demesnes were defined mainly as obligations of individual tenants, and on occasion lords specified that the work should be performed by the tenant himself, in propria persona. However on each day when the service was due a proportion of tenants would have been elderly, disabled, or ill. In addition most widows of tenants, though responsible for the rents and service, would have been unused to such heavy work as ploughing. In these circumstances, the tenant would send an able-bodied son or servant to do the work.

On the manors of Alvechurch, Hartlebury, and Hampton Lucy, tenants with full yardlands were expected to attend the bedrip with the whole household (tota familia). ¹¹ That phrase would include male and female servants as well as sons and daughters, but the tenant’s wife and the shepherd were exempt, as neither the house nor sheep could be left unsupervised. The work of the whole household would be the equivalent of that of two or three men, as is clearly stated in the customs of Atherstone (Warwickshire) in the early thirteenth century. ¹² The bedrip was an exceptional labour service owed on a few days of the year, but it gives us an insight into the normal labour needs of the holding. On the day after the household had attended the lord’s bedrip presumably the same group of workers assembled again to tackle the harvest on the yardland holding. Perhaps a peasant was fortunate enough to have two strong sons, but when the children were very young, or after the teenagers had left home, a servant or two would have been needed to fill the gap.

An occasion similar to the bedrip arose when a peasant contributed labour to the village community. John Huys of Claines (Worcestershire) in his will of 1536 wished to contribute to mending the roads in his parish by requiring his meyny to spend two days on the task. ¹³ Meyny meant a group, following, or household which would have included family members and servants.

The peasant households were expected to attend the lord’s fustale. This drinking session may have begun as a paternalistic celebration, binding together the lord and his subordinates, but by 1170 and later it had become a formal obligation, recorded as a manorial custom. Compulsory attendance was accompanied by a contribution to the cost of the drink. It continued sometimes for three days. On the bishop of Worcester’s manors wives accompanied their husbands, and at Kempsey in 1170 the famuli rusticorum (the servants of the peasants) were expected to attend and pay ½ d each. The Hartlebury fustale, also described in 1170, included adult sons and daughters (presumably if they were still living at home) and all male and female servants, though one would remain behind, to keep the house safe. ¹⁴ The customs of bedrip and fustale indicate that each household could commonly contain two or three working males, or their equivalents among females and the young, and it was presumed that peasants with larger holdings would be employing servants, including a specialist shepherd.

In the incomplete Gloucestershire poll tax lists for 1381 there is enough data from seventy-two villages to count 352 servants from a total of 2,982 taxpayers, or 12 per cent of the total. If taken at face value only a small minority of households employed servants and most employers confined themselves to a single servant. This must be an absolute minimum, omitting all servants under 15 years of age as the tax regulation allowed, and concealing illegally a proportion of older servants. Almost a century and a half later, in 1525, tax gatherers in Gloucestershire were again expected to identify servants. The law said that servants should be assessed at 4d each, on the understanding that their annual wage amounted to 20s. The 4d tax would be collected from the employers. This law was applied inconsistently, and servants can only be identified with any confidence in four hundreds (Table 5.1).

Table 5.1 Servants taxed in 1525 in four Gloucestershire hundreds (rural population only)

Servants made up between 17 per cent and 28 per cent of the taxpaying population in different hundreds in 1525. The taxpaying population who were not servants were mainly heads of households, so if an estimate is made for wives and children the servants amount to about 5 per cent of the whole population. This underestimates the total as servants who received less than 20s in wages (the younger ones for example) were exempt, and no women appear among the servants. The lists rarely link the servants with their employers, so after leaving aside the thirty or so who worked for a monastery and for gentry households, we are left with perhaps 200 servants spread rather thinly over the 400 wealthier peasant households in the sample. Allowing for the omissions, servants could well have accounted for 10 per cent of the population, and could have been employed in a third of all households.

The 1381 lists allow connections to be made between households and their servants. In 254 households which contained children and/or servants from the two sample hundreds in north Gloucestershire, 83 were said to contain servants, mostly only one. These figures are misleadingly small, but they give some useful information. A considerable number of households with servants, fifty-one, consisted of married couples with no recorded children. They may have been childless through infertility or the death of their children, but some may have had young children at the time of the tax, and needed the supplementary labour of a servant or two. Older peasants’ children might have left home, again leaving a vacancy that could be filled by a servant. Another twenty-three households with a single head (most likely a widow or widower) also lacked children but needed agricultural or domestic assistance. Not all servants were substitutes for working children, and some ambitious households may have recruited servants as part of a labour force necessary for a large scale of production. Henry Chandeler of Roel, known from other sources as an engrosser of land and owner of a very large flock of sheep, appears in the 1381 poll tax with his wife Alice, two sons called John and Richard, and John, a servant. The Malverne family of Naunton was also well supplied with labour, with a married couple, a son and his wife, a brother, and a female servant. ¹⁵

The inequalities of village society were probably enhanced by the tendency for the sons and daughters of smaller holdings to seek employment with the wealthier tenants. However, employment as a servant was not confined to the poor, and nor were employers of servants always to be found among the village elite. A period in service was commonplace in the lives of young peasants, and in the absence of apprenticeships in agriculture or housewifery, work in a household would be an opportunity for young men to acquire experience of husbandry, and for young women to learn skills in dairying, brewing, marketing, and household management. ¹⁶

Finally, peasant households might contain people who were neither relatives nor primarily contributors to the work of the holding. Occasionally the outsider was given formal legal recognition, as in the case of Robert Treweman of Hazleton (Gloucestershire) who in 1341 arranged for himself, his daughter Matilda, together with Richard Pecker to hold jointly (conjunctim) Robert’s yardland holding. Pecker was presumably about to become Matilda’s husband, and move into the house, but the agreement did not cover that prospect, nor make reference to residential arrangements. ¹⁷ More explicit was an agreement made at Stanton (Gloucestershire) in 1391, that Henry Broun would live with John and Joan Hewes. He had given the lord a fine to become the tenant of the half-yardland holding, which was a common procedure to secure the reversion of land. An unusual feature of the agreement was that Broun and the Hewes would form a single household, sharing the messuage ‘with goods and chattels not divided or separated’. If any of the three died, the goods would be shared equally by the survivors. If John Hewes died, Joan would occupy a ‘little house called bourhende and a small building near the gate with a curtilage’, so the joint household would come to an end and Broun would become the sole occupier of the messuage, perhaps with a wife, though his marriage was not mentioned. ¹⁸

Villagers were repeatedly alleged in manor courts to have taken into their houses strangers and malefactors, or to have been harbouring illegal gleaners. The Hartlebury church court was concerned by the keeping of concubines, and an ‘alien woman’. The parishioners were told to expel vagabonds from their houses in 1498. ¹⁹ The number of unwelcome residents is not given, but no doubt the fear of the unknown led to moralists exaggerating the scale of the problem. A likely explanation for a householder taking a stranger into the house was to gain a small income from a lodger, and this ‘suspicious’ person may well have been an artisan or labourer staying for a short time. Residents who were neither relatives nor servants added to the size of households in a small way.

Historians are tempted to see households in conventional stereotypes, and the model of a married couple, two or three children, and a servant or two can often be observed. However, apparently conventional households could be the result of the merger of two families after remarriage, leading to dilemmas for those deciding on hereditary succession. A woman often became the head of a household, usually as a widow, and such was the rate of mortality and resistance to remarriage, women accounted for 14 per cent of the tenants recorded in the Warwickshire Hundred Rolls of 1279, and 14 per cent also among Thornbury tenants in 1349, rising to 17 per cent of the tenants of the bishop of Worcester in 1299. Rentals compiled in the region after 1349 might record lower figures, below 10 per cent, but 14 per cent of Ombersley tenants in 1419 were female. Among those holding free land in Gloucestershire women appear as parties (often with their husbands) when land was transferred in the royal courts. In 1199–1250 23 per cent were single women or widows, and in the 1251–99 13 per cent, but this figure fell below 10 per cent subsequently. ²⁰ Many female landholders were widows, but not all women in charge of a holding had acquired it after the death of a husband. Felice Jones of Romsley, who first appears as a breaker of hedges in 1313, acquired a holding in 1321, and lost it in about 1333, but a husband is not mentioned. ²¹ The number of single-person households must have been significant, including those of people who never married, or young people who had left their parental home but had not married, and retired tenants who lived in cottages separate from their original holding. The two sample Gloucestershire hundreds in the 1381 poll tax listed 555 single people, about a fifth of the total, some of them detached from a household by unclear recording, and some who were young and poor and lacking their own dwelling.

This has focussed on the family and household as a ‘co-resident domestic group’, that is the people who shared a house, ate together, and contributed to the work of the holding and the house. Beyond that important group were a wide range of relatives. We know most about the sons and daughters who were working as servants in other houses, had been settled in nearby cottages, or had acquired land in the same village and had established their own households. They are not very fully documented, but even more difficult to discover are the more distant relatives, the cousins, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, and in-laws. The records need to be very full and complete, and the researcher has to be able to devote time and energy to connecting people, often from single oblique references. The work has been done meticulously in records for Halesowen, and it reveals that a high density of kin were living in the settlements of that large manor, but also that kin who moved elsewhere maintained contact with relatives in their original home village. The people in touch with a kin network were provided with useful support in pledging (acquiring guarantors) in court, and in dealing with problems such as indebtedness. For historians the existence of kin networks means that land transfers and maintenance agreements between people with different names and therefore apparently involving different families were really happening between relatives. If other villages followed the Halesowen model the kin networks were largest and most active for the middling and better-off tenants. They survived after the Black Death, but diminished in importance in the fifteenth century. ²²

Space for households

Were peasants’ houses effective functional spaces for working, eating, and sleeping, and did they also contribute to the quality of domestic life? Peasant households, whether they lived in villages, hamlets, or isolated settlements, occupied well-defined spaces called curtilages, tofts, or closes, but here the term plots will be used. Commonly they were roughly rectangular in shape, and were surrounded by hedges and ditches, fences, mudwalls, or stone walls. They sometimes originated as the ends of two or three selions or strips in the open fields, which were enclosed in the process of making a row of plots along a street. Less regular shapes with curved boundaries can be encountered more often in woodland settlements where the plot may have originated as an assart or an enclosure out of the waste. A conveyance of land will occasionally give dimensions, such as a grant to a tenant’s son at Willoughby (Warwickshire) in c.1250, of land for a new message which was 8 perches by 12 perches (40m by 60m). A plot at Longborough (Gloucestershire) in 1287 was long and narrow, resembling a burgage plot in a town, measuring 94m by 10m. ²³ They can also be measured on the ground in deserted settlements, for example, those in the Cotswolds where the boundaries are clearly marked by the earthworks left by collapsed wall foundations. They can be seen on modern maps where the original boundaries seem to have survived. The area calculated from fourteen settlements using landscape evidence varies between 900 and 4,500 sq m, with smaller plots measuring 60m by 15m, and larger ones 50m by 90m. The plots were likely to have been decided with some input from both lord and tenant (see ‘Lords and landscapes’ in Chapter 2). They were ideally large enough to contain at least a yard, a garden or orchard, and space for livestock as well as a dwelling house and barn, and sometimes other buildings (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1 Plans of house plots, selected to show shapes and sizes. a) earthworks of boundaries around a house at Hanbury, Worcs. (woodland); b) early map, Welford-on-Avon; Warw. (champion); c) earthworks of walls surrounding houses at Roel/Hawling, Glouc. (wold). The evidence is from the twentieth century; the boundaries are likely to be thirteenth century or earlier.

The buildings were the responsibility of the peasant, as is clear from the growing problem arising from the neglect of maintenance after 1349 when the lords put pressure on the tenants to repair and rebuild their houses. Lords sometimes helped, and the details of their work provide information about materials and construction. As early as 1286–7 the lord of Bourton-on-the-Hill in Gloucestershire paid for stone walls (probably foundations) and timber for walls of the house of a former reeve. ²⁴ In the fifteenth century, despairing at the persistence of tenants’ neglect, lords throughout the region offered help and inducements in the form of release from rents, cancellation of arrears, and offers of materials, especially the larger timbers from the lords’ woods. As a last resort they took on the work themselves, and at Whatcote (Warwickshire) in 1443–5, the duke of Buckingham paid almost £10 for building work on tenants’ houses and barns. ²⁵ These were buildings in peasant style, with no spending on the lime mortar or tiled roofs which would have been normal for the lord’s own buildings. A carpenter, mason, and other craftsmen were paid for constructing stone walls, timber roofs, and straw thatch roofs. Timber came from the lord’s wood at Great Wolford, and the local centre of the trade at Stratford-upon-Avon, involving cart journeys of 8 and 10 miles.

The peasants normally organized and paid for their own buildings, observing the technical traditions of their region. The conversation between the peasant and the carpenter about a new house would have centred on the design that could be delivered which would have been a timber frame, usually based on crucks, pairs of large curved principal timbers, either standing on or set into a stone wall. In special circumstances a box-frame could have been provided. The roof would have normally been thatched. A major consideration would have been the length, defined by the number of bays.

When manor courts required tenants to rebuild their dwelling houses the size was often specified in bays, varying in number between one and five. ²⁶ As a bay measured approximately 5m by 5m (15 feet by 15 feet using the unit of measurement of the time), this meant that the intention was to build houses between 5m and 25m in length, and about 5m. wide. The great majority were specified as two- or three-bay structures, so 10m to 15m long. An alternative way of defining size was to specify so many couples or forks, meaning pairs of crucks, so that a three-bay house was said to consist of four couples. These standard sizes were translated into real structures on site by builders who had to take account of such practical matters as the lie of the ground surface (some houses had to be terraced into a hillside) or the length of the available timbers. The excavated houses of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries accord approximately with the dimensions of the bays, with external length measurements of 11m and 13m at Pinbury, and 11m to 12m at Upton (Figure 5.2).

Figure 5.2 Plans of excavated houses. Upton AC was of two bays without apparent space divisions; at Pinbury three bays and two rooms; the Upton house (AE with AD as an addition) totalled three or four bays with a hall and chamber, and a room apparently used for an industrial process; K3 at Burton Dassett Southend was built in four bays with a hall, chamber, and service rooms. All have stone foundations except at Coton, which was based on vertical timber posts). The Upton houses belong to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; Pinbury thirteenth century; K3 early fourteenth century; Coton before c.1300 (sources: notes 27, 33).

A house at Bascote was recorded as 8m long, and the smallest house at Burton Dassett Southend reached only 7m, but most of the houses of that settlement varied between 10m and 14m (so 2 or 3 bays), and successive houses built between 1300 and 1450 on three of the excavated plots could have been constructed in four bays as they reached lengths of between 17m and 19m. ²⁷ Widths again agreed approximately with the standard bay, varying between 4m and 6m. The largest house excavated at Burton Dassett Southend, K3, which was built in the early fourteenth century, was almost 20m long and 7m. wide. A sample of twenty-four standing peasant buildings, dated between the early fourteenth and late fifteenth centuries, included eleven of three bays, with three of two bays and six of four bays. ²⁸ Later alterations made it difficult to be certain of the original size in some cases. As with the excavated houses, the outcome of the building operation did not produce a house precisely in line with the standard dimensions. Of the surviving houses those of two bays varied in length from 7m to 11m, three-bay buildings could be as small as 10m and as long as 16m, and four-bay structures ranged from 15m to 20m.

The size of the house would have depended on the resources and income of the tenants, and their ability to borrow money (as the cost would usually exceed any cash savings). Timber might be contributed by lords, or purchased, or reused from earlier buildings.

Houses were normally of one storey, but many had at least one upper room, such as four of the still standing houses at Stoneleigh (Warwickshire) and one at Ashow. At Hill Wootton in the same county, a house of the 1470s had a solar built above an end bay: both the ground floor room and the room above are thought to have been used as chambers. ²⁹ A number of standing houses had a cross-wing, that is, a two-storey structure arranged at right angles to the axis of the main house, usually containing two chambers. Cross-wings tended to be late additions, but one of the wings attached to a house at Southam (Warwickshire) seems to have been built at the same time as the main house, in 1418–19, and the same is found at Hanley Castle (Worcestershire) in 1457–8 ³⁰ (Figure 5.3). Two of the excavated houses at Burton Dassett Southend had been provided with stairs at one end, to gain access to an upper room. Documents mention first-floor rooms, using the phrase ‘lower and upper chamber’ at Shirehampton (Gloucestershire), and nearby Henbury in the fifteenth century. ³¹ In Worcestershire an upper chamber is implied at Crowle in 1406, when reference was made to a lower chamber. The documents also usefully indicate upper storeys rather earlier than is found in the surviving houses and excavated structures: a solar is mentioned at Stoke Prior in 1351, and at Halesowen in 1381. ³² The peasants who commissioned cross-wings, solars, or upper chambers, when most houses consisted of only two or three rooms on the ground floor, were choosing to make a considerable addition to the household’s accommodation.

Figure 5.3 Standing buildings. The plans and elevations are partly representing the buildings now visible, but include some element of reconstruction of their appearance when built (Stoneleigh is dated to 1480-2 and Defford is likely to be similar). In both cases, the fireplaces and chimneys were inserted in the early modern period. Both houses are of three bays and consist of three rooms (source: note 28).

Building materials and techniques would give the inhabitants a sense of security and well-being, as well as contributing to their comfort. In the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the inhabitants of Coton (Warwickshire) lived in quite small buildings (9m by 4m in one case) constructed by setting vertical timbers into the ground (earthfast). ³³ This type of timber building was widespread in the twelfth century, and examples have been excavated at Pinbury and Upton, but the inhabitants of those settlements adopted stone foundations with timber walls and roofs after 1200. The timber building tradition continued at Coton through the thirteenth century until the abandonment of the settlement by about 1300. The inhabitants of Coton had a generally low level of material culture, judging from their possessions as well as their houses. The place name, dating back before the twelfth century, refers to a settlement of cottages that seems to have persisted in relative poverty.

The builders of peasant houses in the west midlands (and in many other parts of England) increased the use of stone for walls in the thirteenth century. In the majority the walls were quite low (no more than five courses, up to a height of 30 cm) and narrow; their purpose was to provide a firm foundation for timber-framed walls infilled with wattle and daub panels. At Goldicote a house of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was built with notably thick stone walls (90–100cm), suggesting that they were intended to be high enough to support the roof. This is confirmed by pieces of stone window mullion and a door jamb which would have been fitted into a high stone wall. At Burton Dassett Southend a number of houses with wall thicknesses in excess of 55cm could have been built with stone up to the eaves and finds such as a stone door jamb suggest structures mainly of stone. ³⁴ These walls would have been constructed with earth mortar, not lime mortar, which would provide robustness at low cost, as long as the roof prevented rainwater from entering the wall. ³⁵ Among the late medieval peasant buildings still standing, one had high stone walls, at Oxhill (Warwickshire). ³⁶ Most surviving houses had low stone foundations, some supporting a sill beam on which the timber frame was built, but in some cases the base of the crucks rested on padstones. The financial accounts for the construction of tenant building at Whatcote in the 1440s also seem to suggest high stone walls, as both a carpenter and a mason were employed, and only roof timbers were used, rafters and laths, with no timbers for the walls.

To underline the quality of the Burton Dassett Southend houses, a minority had roofs of slate and ceramic tiles, in a region where thatch predominated. A ceramic tile roof occasionally features in the documents, for example in 1481 at Willoughby (Warwickshire). ³⁷ Peasant houses are often said to have been built from local materials, but the Burton Dassett slates had been carted for more than 20 miles.

What was the peasant household’s experience of living in their houses? To modern eyes they seem cramped and uncomfortable, with the small and unglazed windows leaving the inhabitants to suffer from cold and draughts, excessive smoke, a lack of light. However, windows and doors were regarded as important features. At Himbleton (Worcestershire) in 1420, a complaint was made to the manor court that doors and windows had been taken from a house, which shows that they were removable, portable, and of some value. ³⁸ Light-fingered neighbours or tenants terminating their connection with the holding were attracted by the iron fittings, and by the useful boards of which the doors and shutters were made. The ironwork is found when houses are excavated, including iron hinges, studs, and straps for doors, with smaller catches, hasps, hooks, and locks. Stone mullions, jambs, sills, and lintels were very unusual, so door and window openings were wooden. Over the centuries standing and still inhabited medieval houses have been modernized by their successive owners, resulting in the removal of their original fenestration. An important survival is the hall window of a house at Walcot in Haselor (Warwickshire) which measures 1.2m by 1.5m. ³⁹ This was not large by the standard of aristocratic houses, but it brought some light and air into the principal room of the house. Window glass was being introduced into peasant houses at the end of our period, with rare glass fragments at Burton Dassett Southend and a groove to receive glass on a mullion from Goldicote.

The living spaces of the aristocracy provide a model for interiors of medieval houses in general. People assembled for meals and social interaction in the hall, with its essential hearth; the more private chamber was reserved for the head of the household and the inner circle, mainly for sleeping. The service rooms at the ‘low’ end of the hall provided bread and drink for those eating in the hall. The kitchen might be at this end of the hall, or in a separate building nearby. ⁴⁰ Peasant houses are often said to have followed this arrangement, with some archaeological examples such as K3 at Burton Dassett Southend of the early fourteenth century, which was divided into three rooms. At Upton in the thirteenth century, a chamber reached by a ladder (the house AE was built on a slope) provided a clearly separate sleeping space at the high end. Most excavated houses have no obvious divisions at all, or they consisted of two rooms. Standing buildings have been commonly interpreted to have been divided into three, though the use of the service end is not always clear. In excavated peasant houses the ‘low’ end could have a specialized purpose: in an Upton house it was equipped with stone-built troughs. A similar arrangement was a feature of a Burton Dassett Southend house, suggesting the practice of a craft, perhaps processing sheepskins. A few buildings are found in documents to have had a byre at one end, following the ‘longhouse’ tradition most commonly encountered in the uplands of the south-west or north. In the west midlands the clearest examples came from the north Worcestershire woodlands, at Northfield and Wolverley, and probably also at Kempsey in the Severn valley. ⁴¹

The documents use the Latin word domus, which can be translated as either building or house, though the Middle English word ‘house’ could be applied to any building, as in carthouse or sheephouse. Dwelling houses were called ‘chief house’ or ‘insethouse’. ‘Hall’ is sometimes applied to the whole building, but the separate space occupied by the hall is suggested by orders to repair a ‘hall and chamber’. Commonly halls and chambers were identified as separate elements within the house in need of repair. Halls were of one or two bays; a chamber commonly consisted of a single bay, except that at Southrop (Gloucestershire) in 1425 a chamber had two bays. ⁴² A ‘hall and kitchen’ was specified at Castle Morton (Worcestershire) in 1470. ⁴³ A tripartite division could be implied by the three ‘rooms’ in a Wolverley house, unless rooms meant bays. ⁴⁴ Kitchens were rarely mentioned, but bakehouses appear forty-eight times in a sample of the structures mentioned in repair orders, compared with fifty-nine halls and twenty-two chambers. ‘Bakehouse’ seems to have come to mean ‘a building for the processing of food and drink’ and the terms kitchen and bakehouse could be interchangeable. In many houses cooking took place in the hall; if two hearths were used in the hall, they might require two roof openings for the smoke, as at Bishops Tachbrook in a house built in 1413/14. ⁴⁵ At Burton Dassett Southend small post holes and stake holes around a hearth in a hall suggest a structure for supporting cooking equipment. ⁴⁶

Hearths were found in excavations as a patch of burnt earth, but often as a more substantial structure of reddened stones. When located near the middle of a room, they help to identify a hall. In some standing buildings, traces of a louvre can be found in the roof, designed to aid the escape of smoke from a central hearth. At Burton Dassett Southend, hearths tended in the fifteenth century to be set against a wall, suggesting the presence of a smoke hood, a canopy of wattle and daub contrived to take the smoke out of the room. A standing building at Sutton Coldfield (Warwickshire) was provided with a smoke bay, another device for removing smoke from the hall. ⁴⁷ These measures would culminate eventually in fireplaces, chimneys, ceilings, and two-storey houses, but not in the west midland peasant houses in the period before 1540. The hall’s single open hearth was the only source of heat in the house, as is shown by the roof timbers blackened by soot from the hearth in surviving houses; the beams and rafters in the chamber remained relatively clean. The chamber was mainly used, as inventories reveal, for sleeping and storage.

The possessions, goods, and artefacts recorded from west midland peasant houses are guides to life within the buildings. They are found in such written sources as lists of principal goods, wills, and the hundreds of references in manor court records to objects lost, borrowed, stolen, pledged, seized, taken as heriots (death duties), and used as weapons. Finds from excavations are particularly useful because they include items which were of such low value that they are omitted from documents. ⁴⁸ These material traces of the peasant past throw light on the extent to which such terms as domesticity and comfort can be applied to households. ⁴⁹

For the inhabitants, one of the most important uses of houses was as the location for the preparation and consumption of food and drink. Food was promised to retired tenants, usually in the form of grain and legumes, but also occasionally preserved meat, and garden fruit. Grain as it was threshed was transferred from the barn to wooden chests in the house. The most valuable items of cooking equipment, prominent in the written sources, were copper alloy pots and pans; at least one was owned by almost every household. Vessels for brewing included a lead for heating water, and wooden vats, tubs, and barrels. Many households owned a handmill or quern, of which fragments occur quite frequently in excavations, and are occasionally mentioned in documents. They may have been intended to evade mill tolls at the lord’s mechanical mill, but could have had supplementary roles, for milling malt or replacing the lord’s mill if it broke down. ⁵⁰ Wooden kneading troughs for making bread figure in the written sources. Ovens are scarce in the archaeological evidence, with a small indoor example at Upton, and one built outside the house at Pinbury, but their absence elsewhere suggests the use of the common oven. This was a seigneurial monopoly, which might be evaded by tenants, or removed by negotiation. In some villages tenants built individual bakehouses, and the common oven was not enforced (see ‘Peasants and lords’ in Chapter 10, for a dispute over a seigneurial oven).

Excavations have produced numerous finds of knives, which had many purposes, included some used in the kitchen. More specialist items include a metal skimmer from Burton Dassett Southend, and the documents refer (rarely) to spits, mortars, and a frying pan. Mortars occur also as archaeological finds, and they reveal a more sophisticated dimension of peasant cookery, as ingredients for sauces were pounded and ground. Food could be served using pewter dishes, platters, saucers, and salt cellars. The documents show that they belonged to the wealthier village families, who could also own a few silver spoons. Pewter spoons have been found at Burton Dassett Southend. The main types of table ware were of wood (treen) and every household would serve meals on treen plates, dishes, and trenchers, with drinks in wooden cups and bowls.

The abundant ceramics from excavations (pottery is almost unnoticed in documents) provide a wealth of insights into culinary and domestic life. Among the mundane and practical pots and jars which account for the bulk of the pottery some probably were used for storage, but their role as cooking vessels carried indelible traces in the form of sooting from the fire and food residues on the inside of the pot. Shallow bowls probably had a role in dairying. More specialist kitchen wares included scarce dripping pans, used in roasting meat, and pipkins for preparing sauces. In the fifteenth century ceramic cups supplemented the traditional turned wooden drinking bowls; their frequency at Burton Dassett Southend perhaps reflects its semi-urban dimension. Pitchers and jug were in universal use, but in varying quantities. At relatively sophisticated Burton Dassett Southend they accounted for 20.9 per cent of the rim sherds. They were plentiful at Upton, representing a quite affluent house, but they were limited in number at Bascote. At the poorest site, Coton, where occupation ceased by c.1300, only 4 per cent of sherds came from these drink containers. Pitchers and jugs were designed to hold ale, and some had coloured glazes, especially those made at Brill and Boarstall on the western border of Buckinghamshire. West-midland peasants appreciated the splash of colour that they brought to the table. ⁵¹

Were members of the household bound together mainly by sharing food and drink? Was the household providing an environment that could be described as welcoming and offering any domestic comfort? The material arrangements of the house had an emphasis on security, with locked chests for storing clothing, kept in the most private of rooms, the chamber. The locks and keys from excavations, and the ditches, hedges, or walls around the house plot recall the precaution in the custumals that a household called to attend the lord should leave one of their number to protect the empty house. The chamber’s soft bedding and colourful coverlet contrasted with the rather bare hall, with its functional table on trestles that could be dismantled and moved, and its austere and portable benches and forms. Inventories do not include fixed furnishings, and halls could have had benches built against the walls (signs of these were noted at Burton Dassett Southend). At Halesowen in 1381 furnishings built into the structure of a solar were ‘pinned fast’ and ‘nailed fast’. ⁵² Rooms, and especially halls, may have had more space for relaxation than is conveyed by inventories. At Claines (Worcestershire) a ‘painted cloth’ was mentioned in 1538 and many halls must have been brightened by such decorative textiles. ⁵³

We receive inconsistent messages about the social tone of the hall. On the one hand it was a functional space where meals were eaten. A spinning wheel in a hall shows that it could serve as a workplace. On the other hand, lists of possessions in some houses include tablecloths, towels, and a basin and ewer, suggesting some modest ceremonial with a sense of dignity. ⁵⁴ The inequality within the household would mean that the head of the household or an inner circle would have washed their hands at the meal table, and the head would have had a prominent position at table sitting in a chair, not on a bench.

The excavated artefacts, such as those from Burton Dassett Southend, reveal relaxation, games, and entertainment among those gathered around the hearth after the meal, such as a dice, pegs from a musical instrument, and a design for a nine-mens’-morris board. The hall was also the scene of conversation, storytelling, and reminiscence. Some lively and informative conversation must have rewarded the curiosity of the villagers found listening under the eaves of neighbours’ houses, which was an offence occasionally reported in manor courts. Social life could have continued after dark, because peasants owned iron candleholders, and village traders sold tallow candles (sometimes at more than the regulated price). ⁵⁵

There were obvious echoes of life in a gentry or urban household in the peasant hall. The hall and chamber arrangement, hand-washing, and social hierarchy all suggest that peasants followed the aristocratic example. ⁵⁶ Perhaps we are observing different ranks of society, sharing in a common culture? However, many aspects of the peasant hall and house are located within a peasant way of life—cooking at the hall hearth, working in the hall, eating basic foods such as pottage and maslin bread—placing the peasant household at some distance from their social superiors.

The spaciousness of a peasant house can be measured scientifically by calculating floor areas. The two-, three-, and four-bay houses recorded in the documents, assuming a bay of roughly 5 m by 15 m would range between 42 and 85 square metres. Standing buildings varied between 37 and 135 square metres but most attained about 90. The excavated buildings at Burton Dassett Southend enable changes in average size to be traced through time: 41 square metres in the thirteenth century, 59 in the fourteenth, and 76 in the fifteenth. This would give space for individuals varying between 8 and 18 square metres if the household contained five people, but if there were seven, allowing for servants and others outside the nuclear family a two-bay house would provide 6 square metres per person. These figures are not dissimilar from those for Indian rural housing in the twentieth century, or for the late medieval south of France. ⁵⁷ The calculation presumes that people were spread evenly over the house, but we have already seen that the chamber, the sleeping room, was often in the region of 5m by 5m. Perhaps the whole household slept in an overcrowded chamber, or alternatively servants and children might have been sent at night to temporary spaces around the house—in the hall for example, or in an outbuilding. In urban, aristocratic, and monastic housing, and in hospitals and almshouses, in this period private accommodation was increasingly being provided, with individuals being assigned lodgings or small chambers. This tendency in peasant houses led to the addition of upper chambers or solars, or crosswings, though this was much further advanced in south-east England.

The character of family life

The wills that survive from the end of our period expressed eloquently some strong opinions about the duties of family members. They saw the family as a hierarchy, in which children should be brought up in discipline and obedience. John Edmunds of Westbury-on-Trym (Gloucestershire) imagined his family after his own death, urging his wife to provide ‘diligent and godly overseeing’ of the children, and to bring them up in ‘knowledge of God’s laws’ and in ‘honest behaviour and conversation’. ⁵⁸ He expected that his children would be obedient in the context of the family, but would also behave as good neighbours in the parish and village. A stronger disciplinary tone was struck by Richard Freman of Todenham (Gloucestershire) who in 1535 expected that his daughters when contemplating marriage would be ‘ruled, ordered and guided’ by their mother and by friends (which at this period and in this context meant relatives). Roger Heritage of Burton Dassett in 1495 was more harsh in his language, expecting that his daughters would be ruled by his executor in their marriages, and would lose their cash inheritances if they showed an ‘evil will or disposition’. His sons would also not receive a cash bequest if they were ‘wasters’ or ‘of evil condition’. ⁵⁹ The younger generation was clearly expected to be respectful of their elders, and there is evidence of regard for the wisdom of seniors when they were asked to use their memories to resolve disputes and matters of custom. Will makers were not entirely preoccupied with the obedience of children, and their bequests seemed to be motivated by affection and goodwill.

The testators were repeating commonplace and conventional phrases that would be found in contemporary sermons. They were not spontaneously expressing their personal opinions as the words would have come from the clerics who wrote the wills. The wills can still be a guide to the attitudes of the time as the better-off villagers would have accepted phrases that reflected their attitudes. Conventional ideas, merely because they were conventional, could still have real meaning. The emphasis in by-laws on discipline, good order, and sober and responsible behaviour suggest a body of widely held ideas, so evidently the jury of the manor court would have disapproved of ‘wasters’ just as much as the wealthy farmer Roger Heritage. The values that are found in the wills and the by-laws were judged to be necessary for the co-operative functioning of a family, and an orderly succession between generations.

The church advocated that a valid marriage depended on mutual consent, and the process began with a trothplight agreement made by the couple in which both expressed a commitment to marry. Ideally these exchanges would take place in public, before witnesses, but private expressions of willingness to marry were legally acceptable. ⁶⁰ In the later Middle Ages solemnization of marriage at the church door became a requirement, but such a religious ceremony was a confirmation of a marriage already agreed and publicly acknowledged. The church’s emphasis on consent was designed to establish its authority, as an alternative to the normal practice of negotiating marriages between families. Peasants seem to have accepted the need for the consent of the couple, though they continued to make marriage contracts in which brides were accompanied by dowries of clothing and household goods, and agreements were made about land and inheritance. Families seem to have made oral settlements over marriages which leave little obvious trace in written documents. An exception is an enigmatic legal dispute from Blackwell in 1325 arising from a gift, later withdrawn, of a dress to a bride, Eva de Hockeley. ⁶¹ Wills often mention that the marriage of daughters needed to be funded, with sums such as £5 and £10 being mentioned.

By their licensing of the marriage of female serfs, lords were drawn indirectly into the negotiations. They might attempt to influence the choice of marriage partners by offering a reduced marriage fine if the husband was one of their serfs, and would prefer a husband from the same village. The abbots of Halesowen in the 1370s and 1380s required servile women who married outside Halesowen to lose their claim to inherit land within the manor. ⁶² Lords also supervised the behaviour of widows, who under the rules of free bench forfeited their former husband’s lands if they engaged in sexual relations. Peasants resented marriage fines, but they and lords both favoured rules that established clearly the succession to land. Courts were occasionally asked to resolve the rival inheritance claims of children from successive marriages, and doubts about the validity of marriages would threaten the whole system.

Attitudes towards marriage and family are displayed in the proceedings of church courts, one held by a rural dean for a number of north Worcestershire parishes in 1300; a visitation of parishes for west Gloucestershire, including the Forest of Dean, in 1397; and the series for 1401–1527 from the peculiar court of Hartlebury parish. They heard some matrimonial cases, but most of their business was taken up with accusations of fornication and adultery. Of course these sins were related to the church’s teaching on marriage as fornication was defined as sexual relations outside marriage, and adultery was the result of breaking marriage vows. The local laity assisted the church in enforcing the rules by informing the courts of their neighbours’ behaviour, just as they did in the manor court. The ‘parishioners’ acted as a jury of local men, shared some of the values of the canon lawyers and clergy, partly because they were well-versed in Christian morality, and partly because of their interest as possessors of land subject to inheritance, and as responsible heads of households based on the collective commitment of wives, children, and servants.

The laity did not habitually flout conventional morality (Table 5.2). The number of offenders were small, seen in the context of the whole population; at Hartlebury there were about two cases reported each year, from 500 parishioners. Of course, not every offence was noticed.

Table 5.2 Moral offences reported to west midland church courts, 1300–1527

There is no strong impression that marriage was under great threat, and the male parishioners seem to have been willing to defend wives against ill treatment by their husbands. John Michel of Hartlebury was said in 1481 with disapproval to have not allowed his wife to make a will. In west Gloucestershire three husbands were reported to have expelled their wives, and four others were accused of depriving their wives of food and clothing. ⁶³ Wives were evidently being abused, but voices were raised among the laity to protect them.

Stable marriage was valued in a flexible way, so that when John Waterlade of Hartlebury was accused in 1412 of fornication with Joan Shapster, the couple claimed that they had agreed a trothplight (a secular contract to marry). They were reminded to solemnize the bond in a church ceremony, as if the court was expressing approval of their decision to regularize their relationship. ⁶⁴ In the manor courts a similar situation arose when a widow was accused of being ‘corrupt’, but her holding was not forfeit if the man with whom she was accused became her husband, and he paid a fine to take on his new wife’s land. A widow often acted as her husband’s executor, and also took over the holding which she had already helped to manage. Her subsequent remarriage was regarded in the community as desirable because a productive and well-run holding benefitted from a partnership of husband and wife. The short time, often a matter of months, that separated the husband’s death from the widow’s remarriage demonstrates practical and realistic attitudes. ⁶⁵

The authorities expected the heads of households to pay taxes and rents on behalf of the holding, but also to exercise some supervision over their families and servants. The head had legal responsibility for the mainpast, which meant that he should ensure that his wife, children, and servants kept the peace. A head of a household might be presented to the manor court for offences committed by the mainpast, such as damage caused to hedges in gathering firewood. A married woman’s brewing fines would be paid by her husband, without her name being mentioned. Employers were sometimes expected to pay taxes on behalf of servants. The head of household might have been held responsible if his son or servant was not ‘sworn in assize’, that is, failing to take the oath (to be included in a tithing) to keep the peace on reaching the age of twelve. John Maryote of Willoughby (Warwickshire) in 1504 had to pay 2d because his servant Henry had not taken the oath, and another 2d for harbouring him against the peace. An extreme example was demonstrated by the killing at Huddington in Worcestershire of Richard Penne by Henry le Palmer, recorded in 1275. Henry was not in a tithing, but was reported to be in the mainpast of Richard le Palmer, his father. ⁶⁶

The head of the household took on a leadership role when the lord required a day’s harvest services from the whole familia. At Atherstone (Warwickshire) in the early thirteenth century the tenant of a large holding attended in the harvest field with an iron fork to symbolize his office, ‘to see that the work is done well’. He was rewarded with a meal of bread, ale, and meat or fish. In a similar description of harvest works at Wellesbourne Mountford in 1279 it was said that the tenant acting as a supervisor would eat with the lord, reinforcing the status and authority of the man who was ‘above the workers’ (ultra operarios). The lord aimed to promote hierarchy among his peasants, but the policy may not always have been welcomed by those assigned responsibilities. ⁶⁷

Wives lived under their husband’s shadow. They had limited legal status; for example, they were not expected to take the oath to keep the peace. They could bring litigation to the manor court, but did so less often than men. On some manors it became more common during the fourteenth century (Eldersfield, Worcestershire, for example) for land to be held jointly by husband and wife, so a widow’s rights to hold the land were assured, and she was not restricted by the rules of ‘free bench’. When a wife inherited land, her husband gained rights over it, and could sell it. Some apparent safeguards protected the wife’s interest, and she was asked in private (‘examined sole’) to give her consent. This was not primarily to safeguard her rights, but to reassure the purchaser of the land that there would be no subsequent claim. ⁶⁸

Women contributed to the production of the holding by working on the garden and looking after poultry, and they could show enterprise in marketing the produce. Agnes Longeman of Cleeve Prior owned seven geese in 1357: these were more than her household would consume and they and their goslings would have been intended for sale. ⁶⁹ Women’s dairying and brewing was partly for household consumption and partly to gain cash. They could profit from the surplus of their gardens like the beans, peas, and apples sold by women on the streets of Bristol in 1282–4. ⁷⁰ They also worked in the fields on such tasks as harvesting, weeding, and planting beans, which were traditionally ‘women’s work’. Once harvested, the corn was threshed by men and winnowed by women. When the Ordinance of Labourers was enforced in 1350 at Blackwell (Warwickshire) husbands and wives were named together and their illegally high joint wage (10d per day) showed that each couple worked as a team. ⁷¹ Women appeared before the courts for offences committed while milking cows, gathering firewood, and picking peas and beans in the fields. Women can sometimes be found doing ‘men’s work’ such as mowing hay (for which a heavy scythe was normally used): this happened at Madresfield in Worcestershire in 1387. ⁷²

Joint tenancy between husband and wife could be seen as giving some official recognition of the partnership within a household, and in a rare example of a contemporary assessment of the efficiency of a peasant farm, the tenants at Admington (Warwickshire) in 1341, speaking as a body, praised the ‘improvement’ achieved in running a holding by Nicholas and Petronilla Shad. ⁷³ Wives’ experience of working with their former husbands is suggested by their ability to manage holdings as widows.

Work on the holding by sons and daughters was taken for granted and therefore rarely recorded. They gathered firewood, sometimes damaging their neighbours’ hedges as they did so. At Hallow (Worcestershire) a woman was helped by ‘boys’ in gathering fuel in 1315, and at Southrop (Gloucestershire) in 1381 a son joined his mother in carrying off firewood. In 1395 at Middleton (Warwickshire) the mainpast of each of four tenants, wives, children, and servants, were said to be collecting wood from hedges. ⁷⁴

Through the agricultural seasons some jobs were well-suited to young people, such as shepherding, milking, harvesting, and hay making, progressing to the full range of heavy jobs in ploughing, carting, and ditching. At North Cerney (Gloucestershire) in 1381 Richard Reve was described as ‘son and servant’ of Thomas Reve and his wife Joan, who were judged by the tax assessors as being capable (potens) cultivators of land. In the same village a shepherd, John Lomherde, and his wife Beatrice had a son, William, also called a ‘son and servant’. ⁷⁵ Perhaps those compiling the tax list were implying that the young people worked primarily for their parents, though they might also have earned wages from part-time employment with neighbours. The ultimate meaning of the phrase ‘son and servant’ is apparent from an agreement made at Romsley (Worcestershire) in 1398. Thomas Puttewey surrendered his holding to the lord, who granted it back to be held by Thomas, and it would remain to Thomas his son. Thomas junior’s elder brother Richard had recently inherited land from his mother, so Thomas junior was being nominated to succeed to his father’s holding. This transaction cost Thomas senior 13s 4d for a fine. It was worth the money because Thomas junior would live with his father and ‘faithfully serve him’ for life. The father would feed and clothe him ‘as befits the estate of servant’. Thomas senior had been troubled by the acute labour shortage following the drop in population in the late fourteenth century, and binding his son by contract guaranteed that he would have a worker on call for the rest of his life. The agreement, which was giving formal expression to the normally unwritten understanding between parents and children, shows that ‘the cohesive family’ could not be taken for granted. Thomas senior must have been uncertain of the loyalty of his son, and was binding him not to leave home to work elsewhere. Such details as the quality of the son’s promised food and clothing do not suggest that the son was being treated very generously (though servants’ food and clothes were improving at this time). Thomas junior’s attitude to all this must be left to conjecture. He apparently inherited the land in 1418 and was still alive in 1444. ⁷⁶

Young women recorded as ‘daughter and servant’ could have done many tasks, but dairying was regarded as a female specialism, though they would also have been useful participants in brewing. In the long run, as arable output fell and peasant holdings developed a pastoral economy, demand may have grown for more female labour, though wives as well as daughters could have done the work.

Parents commonly found ways to provide younger sons and daughters with at least a small amount of land (see ‘Holding land before 1349’ in Chapter 3), by granting a building plot carved out of the family holding, or by acquiring a parcel by purchase or by assarting, which could be given to a younger son as acquisitions were not included in the main inheritance. A subtenancy would be another way of providing land, though this would not have been a secure holding. Money could be used to fund a good marriage for a daughter, or to purchase land. Fathers would apportion money or goods to demonstrate his intention to treat all children equally: John Edmunds of Westbury (Gloucestershire) in 1538 left £20 each to five children, and William Puffe of nearby Henbury (1540) wished each of his six children to receive £5. The same equality in goods was the ideal of Thomas Dyer of Blockley, who bequeathed to each of his four children a beast and 10 sheep. ⁷⁷

Cash bequests of £10 and £20 were not immediately affordable, and the testator was obliging his main heir to find the money out of the land in succeeding years. It might seem unjust treatment of the other children to select one son to inherit all of the land, but that son might be burdened with his father’s debts and bequests. A first-born son, or in some circumstances a younger son selected by the parents to receive the holding on a reversion, was taking on heavy obligations as well as assets. An eldest son might have preferred to buy a holding of his own, and not take on the financial commitments imposed by his father.

To add to the problems of the heir, the transition between the generations was by no means straightforward. A son had to pay attention to the claims of his mother, who could keep the whole holding under the custom of free bench while the son waited. A son who had been living with his parents might continue to share the house with his mother after the father’s death. More often the mother occupied the family holding, while the son obtained land or employment elsewhere. In 1536 Richard Freman of Todenham left his son John land at Upper Quinton, 8 miles from Todenham. ⁷⁸ Fathers might leave livestock and farm implements to a son implying that he had some land, and such bequests are recorded often enough to suggest that it was not unusual for sons to have obtained a holding.

Inheritance involved complex discussions, with much of the negotiation hidden from our view. In theory the courts operated within a framework of customary law, but a full and clear code of rules did not exist. The twelve jurors arrived at conclusions showing some regard for earlier cases, which were recorded in the court rolls, and with a sense that they were applying general principles derived from local customs and the common law. They also had notions of fairness in particular cases, as they knew the people who would be affected by the decision. The judgements were appropriate to particular circumstances, but also had general significance in establishing a new custom. ⁷⁹

Families, and particularly the heads of households, made plans and thought ahead, devising ‘inheritance strategies’, or using ‘estate planning’ to borrow a modern phrase. Their plans were much influenced by personal preferences rather than general principles. An example will suggest the complexity of the manoeuvres within a family after the death of a tenant. In 1315 at Broadwas (Worcestershire) John Tom’s widow, Letice, acquired her husband’s holding of two nooks, but surrendered it to the lord. A nook was a quarter-yardland of about 7 acres, so together these were equivalent to a half-yardland, a holding of middling size. Two children, Walter and Lucy, had some claim; Walter surrendered his rights, leaving Lucy as the heir, so male primogeniture, inheritance by the eldest son, had been set aside. Lucy paid a fine so that Letice could keep the land for life, after which Lucy would succeed. Letice had backed out of taking the land immediately after her husband died, but had she followed the conventional path of free bench, Walter might have succeeded on her death, and Lucy would have been left with nothing. Meanwhile Lucy was arranging to marry William atte Well, so that he would eventually become the tenant of the land. Lucy’s prospects of acquiring land made her a very attractive marriage partner. Perhaps this was all a sequence of accidents and impulsive personal decisions, but we suspect that it was planned ahead. Walter Tom could have been persuaded to give up his claim with money, or a promise of maintenance, or perhaps he had acquired land elsewhere. An agreement between John, Walter, Letice, Lucy, and William atte Well could have been made before John died. The lord went along with the project. He received a fine, and had the prospect of a future active male tenant. The community was not directly involved, as the jury was not required to make any difficult judgements. The assembled tenants would have watched and heard the transfers of land and surrender of claims being made in open court, and presumably objections would have been voiced if the transactions were thought irregular. ⁸⁰

Servants had in theory a contractual relationship with their employers, unlike the unwritten and unspoken duties and rewards of family members. In practice informal understandings usually required that the servant should be engaged for a fixed period, often a year or a term, which was a half-year either in winter or in summer. Their pay consisted of a combination of cash (rarely more than 10s per annum and often much less), food, clothing, and accommodation. They worked in both agricultural and domestic tasks. ⁸¹ They took on responsible jobs requiring some skill, strength, and judgement, like Richard, servant of Henry Sprot of Blackwell who in 1379 drove his employer’s cart. ⁸² A servant did not necessarily work entirely for his or her principal employer, though whether the initiative to take another job came from the servant or his master is not clear. For example, William, servant of William Tony was employed as common herdsman by the vill of Charlton in 1419, to which William Tony gave his consent. ⁸³ Servants took on the role of serving as substitutes for children who were lacking, as was evident from households in the poll tax. This went further than performing tasks that would ordinarily have fallen to children, as when Richard Brocke took on a 2-acre holding at Thornbury (Gloucestershire), which was to be held by himself, his wife, and Alice their servant, showing that in practice she had been adopted as their daughter and heir. ⁸⁴

Families and households were supposed to work together and support one another, but frictions and human failings were occasionally exposed. Some households were ‘badly governed’ and contained prostitutes and suspicious strangers. Court rulings over inheritance might reveal bad feelings and resentments within families. A case at Lindridge (Worcestershire) in 1315 created dissensions in the whole village. ⁸⁵ A jury decided that John le Bolt son of Margery le Bolt should inherit his mother’s cottage, contradicting an earlier decision that the holding should go to Agnes, Margery’s niece. John would seem to most observers to have been the obvious heir, but other views prevailed, and local opinion was sharply divided, as seven men were amerced by the court for contempt, objecting to the decision.

A pattern of troubles affected households in the west midlands in the period after 1349, when peasants were facing general disruption. Some problems were the direct effects of high mortality. Fathers died, leaving a small child or no direct heir. Children died leaving parents without assistance and with no immediate successors. Servants and labourers were depleted in numbers, and the survivors expected high pay and better working conditions. An indirect effect of long-term population decline was a higher degree of absenteeism, as vacant land and employment opportunities opened in neighbouring villages. At Southrop (Gloucestershire) in 1381 eleven people gave the lord annually a capon for licence to live outside the tithing (which implied absence from the village). In 1463 at Ombersley twenty-two tenants had sublet their holdings and were living elsewhere, even as far as Bristol. Agnes Meryell claimed in 1477 inheritance of a cottage and croft, although she was living at Lutterworth in Leicestershire. ⁸⁶ When a tenant of Cleeve Prior, Richard Freman, neglected his yardland holding in 1378, he explained his absence by stating that his wife ‘would not live within the lordship’. ⁸⁷ Young people, among them many serfs, were leaving their manors, including potential workers and potential heirs. The fall in transfers of land between family members reached such an extreme level in the mid to late fifteenth century on some manors that few or no sons chose to take their parents’ holding and preferred to live elsewhere. It became difficult to persuade heirs to take an inheritance. At Blackwell in 1397 Constance Jacken inherited a holding when her mother died, but immediately surrendered it to the lord. We will never know why such a decision was made, but it was not uncommon. ⁸⁸

In these circumstances relations between the generations might be expected to have deteriorated. As the evidence is anecdotal the proposition could not be proved, and it would be naïve to suppose that family life was harmonious before 1349. The tensions, especially when connected with the problems of inheriting land, the pressure on children to work, and care for the elderly, would always be latent within the peasant family. Maintenance agreements providing for the needs of retired or disabled tenants, both before and after 1349, were registered formally in the court because the parties were distrustful of one another. On occasion, the heir or successor had to be reminded by the lord or the community of their obligations. Loyalties within families were not enough to ensure the social security of the parents, showing that the peasant family was not as strong or as caring as is sometimes imagined (see ‘Individuals and communities’ in Chapter 10). We find after 1349 some surprisingly frank admissions of troubles. In 1352 at Blackwell (Warwickshire) Osbert le Carter decided to accommodate his mother separately after a period when they lived in the same house, but there was so much ‘discord and contumely’ between them that he feared that his goods might be damaged and his soul would be in danger. ⁸⁹ Agnes Kyng of Badminton (Gloucestershire) took over her husband’s messuage and half-yardland when he died in 1352. After two years she surrendered the land to her son John, but the lord required him not to ‘behave badly towards his mother’. ⁹⁰ This could have been a reference to John’s obligation to provide maintenance, but the unusual wording might refer to some past history of friction.

Finally, did households have problems in dealing with the non-relatives under their roofs, the servants? They have some characteristics in common with the children as they were young and might both be involved in those youthful sports and diversions which caused so much disapproval: football, handball, tennis, and dice might all lead to disputes, diverted energy, and lost sleep, all of which attracted the disapproval of employers. They tended to appear in court records accused of illicit fishing or raiding their neighbours’ hedges, and in church court records they unsurprisingly encountered disapproval of their sexual behaviour.

The more precise indications of discontent among servants come firstly from the individual complaints that employers did not keep to their side of their contracts by paying them adequately and promptly, and providing clothing and good quality food. For example, John Hyckes of Alveston (Warwickshire), who was employing Alice Swyppe, the daughter of a fellow tenant, was said in 1396 not to have supplied her with linen and woollen cloth for her clothes. ⁹¹ Parents took employers to court with complaints on behalf of sons and daughters. Employers resented the tendency for servants to break their contracts and fail to serve for a full year. A typical case was Alice, servant of William Myche of Bilton (Warwickshire), who began her term in Michaelmas 1381 but left before the year was complete. ⁹² Servants moved from one employment to another, like early modern ‘servants in husbandry’, to express a sense of independence, but in the case of Henry atte Mule’s servant at Horsley (Gloucestershire) in 1354, a rival employer offered inducements to move. ⁹³

Conclusions

Better-off families in the Middle Ages are understood in general to have lived in households consisting of parents and two or three children with one or two servants. West-midland peasant families accord with that generalization, but qualifications must be made to remember the variants, in particular the many households headed by women, the smaller households of the cottagers, the occasional one-person households, and the complex combinations that included the older generation, siblings, and more than one married couple. This lack of a stereotype does not alter the importance of the household, whatever its composition, as a basic unit of production and consumption.

The space occupied by the household underlines its productive role, because the plots were large enough to accommodate a variety of useful activities such as gardening, with yards and buildings for animals, and the house sufficient to contain between five and seven people. The developing quality and size of houses show peasants investing in a space for working (including crafts), and for accommodating workers. The house was a centre of consumption in that food and drink were prepared and served there, but again the rising quality of the building, and some of its contents, resulted from a greater emphasis on domestic comfort.

A cosy domesticity does not describe adequately the relationships within the household. The prevailing aim was to maintain order and discipline, with a wife as a manager and partner, and children as a workforce. There was limited sentiment, but members had a sense of obligation to one another. The tension between the welfare of others and self-interest could lead to conflict and difficulties in maintaining adequate amounts of labour and securing an orderly hereditary succession. It was on the basis of a rather stern sense of collective welfare that the household conducted the farming, industry, and exchange that will be the subject of the following chapters.

Peasants Making History: Living in an English Region 1200–1540. Christopher Dyer, Oxford University Press. © Christopher Dyer 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198847212.003.0005

¹ Based on a translation by Spencer Dimmock, using new MS sources, and also I.S. Leadam, ed., The Domesday of Inclosures 1517–18 (Royal Historical Society, 1897); I.S. Leadam, ed., ‘The Inquisition of 1517: Inclosures and Evictions, part 3’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, new series, 8 (1894), pp. 251–331, especially pp. 280–97.

² C. Dyer, Lords and Peasants in a Changing Society. The Estates of the Bishopric of Worcester 680–1540 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 230–2; WCL, E 92 (Worcester Priory manors, 1508–9): GA, Badminton muniments, D2700/MJ9/1–2 (Rockhampton, 1474).

³ Dyer, Lords and Peasants, p. 394; C. Dyer, A Country Merchant 1495–1520: Trading and Farming at the End of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2012), p. 44. The imbalance between sons and daughters may be explained by factors other than the simple omission of females: M. Kowaleski, ‘Medieval People in Town and Country: New Perspectives from Demography and Bioarchaeology’, Speculum 89 (2014), pp. 573–600.

⁴ WA, ref. 008:7, BA3540 1540/25.

⁵ Z. Razi, Life, Marriage and Death in a Medieval Parish: Economy, Society and Demography in Halesowen 1270–1400 (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 58–64; A.D. Dyer, The City of Worcester in the Sixteenth Century (Leicester, 1973), pp. 36–7.

⁶ R.N. Swanson and D. Guyatt, eds., The Visitation and Court Book of Hartlebury, 1401–1598 (WHS, new series, 24, 2013), pp. 165, 244.

⁷ TNA, PROB 11/25, fo.311r.

⁸ PT, part 1, pp. 260–314.

⁹ Z. Razi, ‘The Myth of the Immutable English Family’, P&P 140 (1993), pp. 3–44, especially p. 6.

¹⁰ PT, pt 1, p. 271.

¹¹ RBW, pp. 206, 233, 277.

¹² M. Chibnall, ed., Select Documents of the English Lands of the Abbey of Bec (Camden Society, 3rd series, 73, 1951), p. 103.

¹³ WA, ref. 008:7, BA 3585, 1536/211.

¹⁴ RBW, pp. 85, 206–7.

¹⁵ PT, part 1, pp. 263, 269; C. Dyer, An Age of Transition? Economy and Society in England in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 2005), pp. 76–7.

¹⁶ On servants in general, J. Whittle, ed., Servants in Rural Europe 1400–1900 (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 1–15.

¹⁷ GA, D678/M1/1/1.

¹⁸ GA, D678/98C.

¹⁹ Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book of Hartlebury, p. 251.

²⁰ P. Franklin, ‘Peasant Widows’ “Liberation” and Remarriage before the Black Death’, EcHR, 2nd series, 39 (1986), pp. 186–204, especially p. 188; WHR; RBW; R.H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1975), p. 99; C. Elrington, ‘Women Landowners in Medieval Gloucestershire as Seen in Feet of Fines’, in Archives and Local History in Gloucestershire, edited by J. Bettey, BGAS (2007), pp. 7–16.

²¹ CR Romsley, pp. 55, 67, 99.

²² Z. Razi, ‘Family, Land and the Village Community in Later Medieval England’, P&P 93 (1981), pp. 3–36; Razi, ‘Immutable Family’.

²³ Magdalen College, Oxford, Willoughby 61; C.R. Elrington, ed., Abstracts of Feet of Fines Relating to Gloucestershire, 1199–1299 (GRS, 16, 2003), p. 179. The same source on p. 182 refers to a plot 200 by 100 feet, so c.60m by 30m.

²⁴ WAM, 8238.

²⁵ SRO, D641/1/2/270, 271, 272.

²⁶ R.K. Field, ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings, Household Goods and Farming Equipment in the Later Middle Ages’, Med Arch 9 (1965), pp. 105–45, especially 112–17; C. Dyer, ‘English Peasant Buildings in the Later Middle Ages’, Med Arch 30 (1986), pp. 19–45, especially pp. 23–4.

²⁷ S. Litherland, E. Ramsay, and P. Ellis, ‘The Archaeology of the Severn Trent Southern Area Rationalisation Scheme, Warwickshire’, TBWAS 112 (2008), pp. 73–124 (Bascote); N. Palmer and J. Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, Warwickshire: A Medieval Market Village (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph, 44, 2022), pp. 56–71, 73–138; K3 is on pp. 73, 171–6; J. Hart, A. Mudd, E.R. McSloy, and M. Brett, Living Near the Edge: Archaeological Investigations in the Western Cotswolds (Cotswold Archaeology Monograph, 9, 2016), pp 158–93, 208–12 (Pinbury); R.H. Hilton and P.A. Rahtz, ‘Upton, Gloucestershire, 1959–1964’, TBGAS 85 (1966), pp. 70–146; P.A. Rahtz, ‘Upton, Gloucestershire, 1964–1968. Second Report’, TBGAS 88 (1969), pp. 74–126.

²⁸ F.W.B. Charles, Medieval Cruck Building and its Derivatives (Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph Series, 2, 1967), pp. 26–32; N.W. Alcock and D. Miles, The Medieval Peasant House in Midland England (Oxford, 2013); N.W. Alcock and D. Miles, ‘An Early Fifteenth-Century Warwickshire Cruck House using Joggled Halvings’, Vernacular Architecture 43 (2012), pp. 19–27.

²⁹ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, HIW-A; ASH-A; STO-C;STO-D; STO-F, STO-G (the codes refer to the CD Rom attached to the book).

³⁰ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, SOU-A; Hanley Castle house: Vernacular Architecture 51 (2020), p. 143; Charles Archive in the Archaeology Data Service, York.

³¹ WA, ref. 009:1, BA 2636/165/92225 4/8.

³² WCL, E45; E 214; BAH, 3279/346369A.

³³ A. Maull and others, ‘Excavations of the Deserted Village of Coton at Coton Park, Rugby’ (unpublished report by Northamptonshire Archaeology, 1998).

³⁴ P. Thompson and S. Palmer, ‘Iron Age, Romano-British and Medieval Settlements Excavated on the Transco Newbold Pacey to Honeybourne Gas Pipeline in 2000’, TBWAS 116 (2012), pp. 72–139; Palmer and Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, pp. 160–5.

³⁵ S. Markley, ‘The “Unseen Seen”—Earth Mortared Stone Construction, a Reilluminated Historic Construction Technique in Britain’, Construction History 33 (2018), pp. 23–43.

³⁶ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, OXH-A.

³⁷ Magdalen College, Oxford, Willoughby 45/11.

³⁸ WCL, E48.

³⁹ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, WAL-A.

⁴⁰ M. Gardiner, ‘Vernacular Buildings and the Development of the Later Medieval Domestic Plan in England’, Med Arch 44 (2000), pp. 159–79; M. Gardiner, ‘An Archaeological Approach to the Development of the Late Medieval Peasant House’, Vernacular Architecture 45 (2014), pp. 16–28; C. Dyer, ‘Living in Peasant Houses in Late Medieval England’, Vernacular Architecture 44 (2013), pp. 19–27.

⁴¹ Field, ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings’, pp. 115, 134; Dyer, ‘English Peasant Buildings’, p. 25.

⁴² GA, D11718/61/B1.

⁴³ WAM, 21165.

⁴⁴ Field, ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings’, p. 132.

⁴⁵ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, BIT-A.

⁴⁶ Palmer and Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, p. 171.

⁴⁷ Alcock and Miles, Peasant House, SUT-A.

⁴⁸ B. Jervis, C. Briggs, and M. Tompkins, ‘Exploring Text and Objects: Escheators’ Inventories and Material Culture in Medieval English Rural Households’, Med Arch 59 (2015), pp. 168–92.

⁴⁹ For an urban dimension, F. Riddy, ‘“Burgeis” Domesticity in Late Medieval England’, in Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England, edited by M. Kowaleski and P.J.P Goldberg (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 14–36.

⁵⁰ S.V. Smith, ‘Towards a Social Archaeology of the Medieval Peasantry: Power and Resistance at Wharram Percy’, Journal of Social Archaeology 9 (2009), pp. 391–416.

⁵¹ M. Mellor, ‘A Synthesis of Middle and Late Saxon, Medieval and Early Post-Medieval Pottery in the Oxford Region’, Oxoniensia 59 (1994), pp. 111–40.

⁵² BAH, 3279/346369A.

⁵³ WA, ref. 008:7, BA3585,1538/370.

⁵⁴ Field, ‘Worcestershire Peasant Buildings’, pp. 142–3.

⁵⁵ Candle selling was regularly reported at Kempsey in 1475–82, WA, ref. 705:4, BA 54.

⁵⁶ Emulation is a theme discussed by M. Johnson, English Houses, 1300–1800: Vernacular Architecture, Social Life (Harlow, 2010), pp. 1–17.

⁵⁷ Dyer, ‘English Peasant Buildings’, p. 42; Palmer and Parkhouse, Burton Dassett Southend, p. 171.

⁵⁸ WA, ref. 008:7, BA 3585,1538/46.

⁵⁹ TNA, PROB 11/26, fos 26r-27v; PROB 11/10, fo 231v.

⁶⁰ P. Schofield, Peasant and Community in Medieval England (Basingstoke, 2003), pp. 90–130.

⁶¹ WCL, E10.

⁶² Razi, ‘Family, Land and the Village Community’, p. 25.

⁶³ Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, p. 227; Bannister, ed., ‘Visitation Returns’, pp. 448, 451, 452.

⁶⁴ Swanson and Guyatt, eds., Court Book, pp. 169–70.

⁶⁵ Franklin, ‘Peasant Widows’, pp. 193–4.

⁶⁶ Magdalen College, Oxford, EP 67/14; J. Röhrkasten, ed., The Worcester Eyre of 1275 (WHS, new series, 22, 2008), pp. 366, 447.

⁶⁷ Chibnall, ed., Abbey of Bec, p. 103; WHR, p. 165; J.R. Birrell, ‘Peasants’ Eating and Drinking’, AgHR 63 (2015), pp. 1–18.

⁶⁸ R.M. Smith, ‘Coping with Uncertainty: Women’s Tenure of Customary Land in England c. 1370–1430’, in Enterprise and Individuals in Fifteenth-Century England, edited by J. Kermode (Stroud, 1991), pp. 43–67; J. Whittle, The Development of Agrarian Capitalism. Land and Labour in Norfolk, 1440–1580 (Oxford, 2000), pp. 131–2.

⁶⁹ WCL, E18.

⁷⁰ M. Sharp, ed., Accounts of the Constables of Bristol Castle in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (Bristol Record Society, 34, 1982), p. 11.

⁷¹ WCL, E16.

⁷² [no editor] Excerpta e Scrinio Maneriali de Madresfield in Com Wigorn (1873), 18 (four of the offenders were wives and one a servant).

⁷³ GA, D678/M1/1/1.

⁷⁴ Hereford Cathedral Library, R1162; GA, D11718/61/B1; UNMSC, MiM 131/32.

⁷⁵ PT, part 1, p. 305.

⁷⁶ CR Romsley, pp. 156, 158, 196.

⁷⁷ WA, ref. 008:7, BA 3585, 1538/46; 1540/63; 1538/119.

⁷⁸ TNA, PROB11/26, fos 26r–26v.

⁷⁹ L. Bonfield, ‘What Did English Villagers Mean by “Customary Law”?’, in Medieval Society and the Manor Court, edited by Z. Razi and R.M. Smith (Oxford, 1996), pp. 106–9; J.S. Beckerman, ‘Towards a Theory of Medieval Manorial Adjudication: The Nature of Communal Judgements in a System of Customary Law’, Law and History Review 13 (1995), pp. 1–22; L. Poos and L. Bonfield, eds., Select Cases in Manorial Courts 1250–1530: Property and Family Law (Selden Society, 114, 1998), pp. xxvii–xlix.

⁸⁰ WCL, E7.

⁸¹ Whittle, ed., Servants in Rural Europe.

⁸² WCL, E29. The servant was held responsible for the death of a pig with which the cart collided.

⁸³ WCL, E48.

⁸⁴ SRO, D641/1/4C/7.

⁸⁵ WCL, E6.

⁸⁶ GA, D11718/61/B; WA, ref 705:56, BA 3910/27(xi);/27(xvii).

⁸⁷ WCL, E28.

⁸⁸ WCL, E39.

⁸⁹ WCL, E17.

⁹⁰ GA, Badminton Muniments, GA 2700/MAI/1.

⁹¹ WCL, E38.

⁹² E. Kimball, ed., Rolls of the Warwickshire and Coventry Sessions of the Peace 1377–1397 (DS, 16, 1939), p. 125.

⁹³ TNA, SC2 175/63.