Sins of the Blood

by Margaret Frazer

  There are no shops as such in the village, nor any formal market day. Prior Byfield has always been too small for that. The one on-going place is the alehouse where the alewife makes a living by brewing and selling ale to her neighbors and providing them with a gathering place when the day’s work is done. Otherwise, villagers practice various small crafts among themselves in their spare time, bartering and selling to one another as needed. For more highly skilled or time-consuming work, such as metal working by a smith or the making of wheels and barrels, a day’s travel all the way to the market town of Banbury may be necessary. Nearer to hand but outside the village on a hill to catch the wind, is the village mill, belonging to Lord Lovell and run by his miller, an unpopular man on principal because everyone in Prior Byfield must go there and pay to have their grain ground, no exceptions, and traditionally every miller is considered a cheat. (So valuable is the lord’s income from the mill that a household found with a grindstone of its own will be fined and the grindstone taken.)

  Over the centuries the village has grown by way of a few short sideways branching out for new houses, but on the whole the spread of the village has been restricted by the surrounding fields. Shared by the villagers in common, they are the dominant factor in the village’s life, because when crops fail, hunger comes and people die. So keeping the fields in good health and praying for right weather are the center of the village’s existence. Though systems of field use differ from place to place, here the three-field rotation is used, with one-third of the arable land left fallow each year to recover strength, one-third ploughed and planted in the autumn with wheat, rye, or barley, and one-third ploughed and planted in the spring with oats, barley, beans, and peas.

  The fields are divided into numerous long, narrow strips that are re-apportioned each year among the villagers. How many strips someone holds is determined by (and helps to determine) their place in the village hierarchy. Likewise, strict account is kept of how many animals someone is allowed to graze on the common pasture land, and how much share of the hay each villager has. Hay is as important as the rest because how much hay is harvested and stored (varying year by year, dependant on good weather or bad) determines how much livestock can be wintered over, rather than slaughtered or sold. A poor haying and the attendant loss of livestock can set a prospering villager badly back and ruin a poorer one.

  Also important to the village’s well-being are the extensive woodlands among its fields. The woodlands belong to the lord of the manor, but the villagers have the vital rights of hous-bote, haye-bote, and fire-bote (wood for house repairs, the mending of tools or hedges, and fuel for cooking fires, along with the gathering of all fallen deadwood and such as can be reached in a tree and brought down “by hook or by crook”). Just as assiduously as the villagers practice their rights in these matters, the lord of the manor’s officers guard the standing trees, a profitable and valuable resource. A villager in need of extensive wood for building and repairs must negotiate with the officers and pay accordingly, in services or money.

  Prior Byfield suffered less than many places from the first coming of the Great Death in the middle of the last century; only about a fourth of its people died. In some ways the next return of that particular plague was worse, because mostly children died of it. Born after the first visitation, they lacked the immunity many adults had gained by surviving the earlier attack. In the decades since then, though, outbreaks of illness have been of ordinary sorts and lesser plagues, and the population has slowly recovered but, will-ye-nil-ye, the entire structure of society is shifting, and the more ambitious among the villagers have eagerly taken advantage of the changes to better themselves. Serfdom is fading away, breaking the centuries of law and custom that bound common people to their lord and the land. A few lords still struggle to hold onto all their old rights of bondage and service, but most have realized the convenience of a money economy and have grown willing – even eager – to set aside the complicated record keeping that goes with who-owes-how-many-days-of-work-to-the-lord (including what specific work in deep detail, and has it been done or not, and has or hasn’t the villein paid his or her fine for any failures) in favor of simply accepting money instead. People can now hold their land for a money rent instead of by labor at the lord’s command. This gives the lord more cash in hand to spend as he chooses – including now having to pay workers to do the work they are no longer bound to do for him – while giving the workers greater freedom on how to run their lives.

  Of course this has led to arguments and sometimes outbreaks of violence in some places over fair wages, but there is no reversing the trend. It was well underway even before the Great Death made labor a seller’s market for the surviving workers. As money becomes more common, some people are using it to buy themselves altogether free of their lord, giving them the option to go elsewhere to try to better themselves, should they not choose to stay and rent a messuage where they have always lived. Sometimes a lord in particular need of money will even outright sell a property to someone prosperous enough to buy it. Serfdom is simply fading out of existence without ever a law being passed to abolish it.

  Despite the changes slowly coming, the village is still the central fact of life for everyone living there, free or unfree, and to a large degree the villagers are self-governing. Their lords’ stewards and bailiffs are only occasional visitors, often come only to collect money due or settle intractable disputes. The day-to-day managing of matters is up to the villagers themselves, and the village court is held at established intervals, with every householder expected to attend or else be fined. Generally, this means only men, but a woman who holds property in her own right is equally expected to be there and will be fined for absence like anyone else. In fact, women can choose to take a free and active part in running their own lives, either as widows with their own holding or as young women building up their dowry (or, for the more ambitious, independence) by working various jobs that let them acquire money and even property in their own name. The more severe strictures on women and their rights are some years in the future.

  In their court, the villagers deal with problems among their fellow villagers (decisions are made easier by the fact they all know each other so well and can judge by character as well as apparent facts and likelihood). Greater crimes covered by the king’s laws and such things as unexpected deaths must, of course, be given into the hands of royal officers, beginning with summoning the often-distant coroner, but lesser everyday matters are settled here, as well as rules made concerning matters important to everyone. Extensive village records exist and include such matters as judgments and fines: “Richard Bacon puts himself in mercy for trespass in the grain with a certain heifer” and is fined 1d.; “It is ordered to distrain Margaret daughter of Slore to redeem her pledge taken because she gathered herbage in the standing grain contrary to the prohibition...” but it is acknowledged that she “has nothing”; “John de Stoke puts himself in mercy for trespass in the [common] pasture with his sheep,” fined 1d. These charges grow out of the bylaws passed by the villagers for regulating village life, such as: “All the customary tenants have a day to make and repair their road through the middle of the town before the next court to be held here and this under pain for each man of 12d.” “It is ordered that no one shall work in autumn on the days or on the eves of feasts [of saints].” “It is ordered by common consent that no one of them shall pasture with his beasts in the stubble in time of autumn until forty selions in a furlong shall be fully carted and gotten in under pain for each of them in default of paying 4d.,” as well as ones about gleaning before it is allowed (as Margaret above) or trespassing with your beasts (as Richard and John had done) against the common good.

  Rules such as these are expected to be enforced by the reeve but even in a small place like Prior Byfield there are issues of authority. For one thing, the manor of Prior Byfield – its people, village, and fields – is divided between two lords, with some of the people holding their land from St.
Frideswide’s priory and others from the present Lord Lovell. In this, the manor is more fortunate than some places that, by inheritances or other issues, may be split among many lords, as at another place where the male heir’s death at age twenty-four split that manor into four pieces among his sisters and their husbands until a number of years later when three of the separate pieces came to be held by the son of one of the sisters, while the fourth part remained separate for decades longer. So Prior Byfield is fortunate to have only two lords, and one of them a nunnery that will stay a single entity forever.

  The village is even more fortunate to be spared visitations from a swarm of lords’ stewards and bailiffs, because agreement has been made that the nunnery’s steward, Master Naylor, being nearby, is to oversee village matters on Lord Lovell’s behalf as well as the nunnery’s, reporting to Lord Lovell’s higher officers as required while at the same time working closely in day-to-day matters with the village’s own officers.

  The reeve is first among these. He is charged with overseeing everything concerning the lord’s rights and profits on the manor, including making a yearly report after the harvest of all monetary matters connected with the village for the past year: Rents received and services done; what the land and livestock have produced; money collected in the manor court; what he has spent in performing his office. All in great and justifying detail. In return, he receives some payment in money, but the office’s benefits are greatest in kind. Details vary from manor to manor; at Prior Byfield his yearly rent is reduced to a fourth its usual amount while he is reeve, all of his customary duties owed to the lord are suspended, and he has special grazing rights for his livestock. These make the burden of the office worth his while. Interestingly, in early days the choice of reeve was unilaterally the lord’s, but through the centuries this has shifted to choice by the villagers themselves. Since they are choosing a man who will have great control over village life, it behooves them to choose sensibly. Which, mostly, they do and, having found someone both willing and excellent, tend to keep him in office year after year, as with the esteemed Simon Perryn who worked well for years with the priory’s Master Naylor for the good of the village and both its lords.

  The hayward is next in importance and a man extremely busy. He takes his title from the meadows where the hay is cut, but he is also charged with watching over the crops' ploughing and sowing times through harvest and the gleaning and grazing on the stubbled fields that comes afterward. He is to oversee that the workers do their work properly and to keep constant watch that nothing is stolen or misused, then is to patrol the fields at night during harvest to be sure none of the harvest is stolen, and with all of that he provides the reeve with much of the detailed information that goes into the reeve’s yearly report. It is the custom at Prior Byfield that his job is combined with what could have been the separate office of constable, making it his additional duty to arrest and bring before the manor court such wrong-doers as he does find and seize. For all this he is paid in much the same way as the reeve, and like the reeve is elected by his fellow-villagers who – from long familiarity – can judge well the kind of man they will have to deal with and hopefully choose wisely, for everyone’s good.

  On a larger manor there can be other formal officers overseeing large and complex matters, but Prior Byfield is small enough that while these duties are seen to, it is generally on a less formal basis, by men with other tasks in their lives. Principally there must be the ploughman – the man best skilled at supervising the men at their ploughing and seeing to it that the village oxen and plough are in good condition. The shepherd keeps care and watch over the village’s flocks at their grazing, seeing to their well-being and such things as the hurdles that keep them penned as they are moved around the pastures. Likewise there is a cowherd, and likewise a pigherd who is especially important in autumn when the village pigs are taken to graze in the woods for final fattening before winter slaughter. Also, importantly, the woodward keeps watch on the village’s woodland, seeing to its right uses and that both the lords’ and the villagers’ rights are maintained.

  But most importantly in the village’s life, for the good of their souls and the life to come, is their priest. His duties include saying daily Mass, with the whole community expected to attend at least on Sundays and the great saints’ days (although Communion is given to the people only once a year, at Eastertide); giving the sacraments as needed – those of baptism, marriage, and death being predominant; teaching everyone the Paternoster and the Ave as the basic prayers they must say; and, ideally, giving at least some education in reading and writing to the young. (After all, men like the reeve and hayward have to learn those skills somewhere if they are to do their offices well.)

  Yet much depends on how well (or ill) the priest and his people get on with one another. The people pay a set tithe to the church and so, in theory, to the priest, but in practice all too often the priest who serves them is only vicar to someone else who is the actual rector who has been given the living of the church by its secular or ecclesiastical lord and takes most of the profit of it, paying his vicar only a minor portion. Especially in a small parish like Prior Byfield, this leaves the priest who is only a vicar dependant of both the good will of his parishioners and what he can make by working whatever portion of land goes with the church in his village, meaning he is often extremely poor and working harder at subsistence than at his priestly duties. This can be complicated by him taking a “wife” and having a family, which is forbidden but nonetheless done and usually simply accepted by the villagers. Prior Byfield had such a priest several generations back, and while he was a good enough man in himself, he did lay a heavy hand when it came to wrenching every penny of the tithes that he could, earning ill-will among the villagers. At his death, his family, having no right to anything here, left. No one knows for where, or how they fared afterward. Or cares. Happily the next rector appointed was Father Clement who actually chose to serve his parish and took more care for his people than for his physical needs and so was better beloved and taken care of by his people than his grinding predecessor.

  Unfortunately in the fullness of time Father Clement died and since then matters have been less satisfactory. The church is in the gift of Lord Lovel, meaning that until he gifts the church to a new priest, its profits come to him and, alas, he tends to make no haste in appointing a new priest. The one he did finally appoint in the late 1430s, Father Edmund, shortly moved on. Fortunately, Father Henry, priest these many years at neighboring St. Frideswide’s, has willingly (with the nuns’ permission) taken on priestly duties in Prior Byfield, saving the people from spiritual sloth and the need to go seeking help from some neighboring village’s priest. This generosity is welcomed and valued by the villagers and helps to keep smooth their relations with the nunnery, to the benefit of both the priory and the village, their mutual energies saved for work and prayer rather than quarreling.

  Other Properties and Income of St. Frideswide

  Along with what it receives from its manor, the nunnery strives to maintain as much self-sufficiency as it can. It has its own kitchen garden and herb beds, and an orchard, and a large, artificially maintained fishpond to provide fresh fish for as much of the year as possible, reducing (but not eliminating) costly purchases of dried and salted fish to be brought all the way from the coast. And of course the nuns themselves do as much work around the cloister as they can, to keep the cost of servants to a minimum.

  Unfortunately, even all this does not suffice to meet the priory’s entire material needs, but then it was never expected to. As intended from the beginning, St. Frideswide’s has other sources of income. First are those from spiritualities. These are from various religious sources, the foremost being the tithes from two parish churches – one on the other side of the shire, the other in Warwickshire. The first was given to the nunnery by the wealthy widow who founded St. Frideswide’s. The second is from a family in King Richard II’s reign, proud of their daughter’s e
lection as prioress here. As rector of these churches, the nuns of course take their share of both churches’ tithes but have been scrupulous in their religious duties to them, appointing their vicars in timely fashion, unlike Lord Lovell with Prior Byfield’s church.

  Much though the nuns would like to increase their church holdings, attempts to persuade Lord Lovell (and, before him, his father and grandfather) to gift St. Frideswide’s with Prior Byfield’s church for the good of his soul (and the increased financial well-being of the nunnery) have so far been unavailing.

  Lesser amounts come in from other spiritualities, given over the decades as gifts large and small, some as permanent grants, others simply once. It is a pity the nunnery has no more than a finger bone of St. Frideswide for a relic. Treasured though it is, for the most part it only draws minor, local, occasional pilgrims and their gifts. Nor, being remote in the countryside, is the church a popular burial place with even its best patrons, which deprives it of the mortuaries that would otherwise come to it at funerals. Still, it receives alms from those who do visit, and is remembered in many wills, often generously, usually with a single monetary gift but sometimes with a permanent grant in coin or kind derived as a portion from some property. These perpetual grants, accrued from various people over the years, are carefully accounted for and collected, whatever their size or source.