Life in a Medieval Village

by Frances Gies

  In Elton, where a substantial number of the tenants were free, many of the sales recorded were by free men, some of whom sold consistently, some of whom bought, some of whom both bought and sold. Transactions were nearly all small. John Hering appears in the court rolls in 1292 selling two and a half rods to Alice daughter of Bateman of Clipsham,42 and again in 1300 selling an acre to Joan wife of Gilbert Engayne of Wansford and also half an acre to Richard of Thorpe Waterville.43 In 1312 Thomas Chausey sold half an acre to Reginald of Yarwell and two rods to Richard Carpenter.44 In 1322 Richard Fraunceys sold half an acre to John Smith and half an acre to Richard Eliot;45 Richard Eliot, meanwhile, acquired another two acres from John Ketel, who also sold a rod of land to Richard Chapleyn of Wansford;46 John Ketel at the same time bought half an acre of meadow from Clement Crane.47 Among the villeins, Muriel atte Gate and William Harpe each sold an acre to Nicholas Miller “without the license of the lord” and were fined sixpence each.48 The only sizable transaction before 1350 was that of Reginald Child and John son of Henry Reeve, who in 1325 divided between them a virgate of land that had belonged to John Wagge. Apparently because they had done so without license, they were fined two shillings “for having the judgment of the court,” though the transaction seems to have stood.49

  Anne De Windt, analyzing land transfers in the Ramsey Abbey village of King’s Ripton, where only one of the tenants was free, found 292 transfers among the unfree tenants between 1280 and 1397, the majority dealing with plots of between one-half and two and a half acres in the open fields, the others houses, auxiliary buildings, houseplots, and closes. Approximately one-third of the population participated at one time or another in the real-estate market. Thirty-six percent of the deals involved less than an acre of land, 57 percent from one to ten acres, 7 percent from ten to twenty acres. Some of the buyers were evidently newcomers to the village, purchasing holdings. Others apparently bought to satisfy the needs of daughters and younger sons. Still others leased the land they had acquired to subtenants, becoming peasant landlords. By the last half of the fourteenth century, a few families in nearly every English village had accumulated enough land to constitute an elite peasant class.50

  Land was not the only form of wealth. Few areas in the thirteenth century as yet put sheep- or cattle-raising ahead of crop farming, but many villagers owned animals. Information about village stock is scanty, but some has been gleaned from the records of royal taxes levied at intervals to finance war. Villagers were assessed on the basis of their livestock, grain, and other products. M. M. Postan has extracted valuable information from the assessment record of 1291, including data on five Ramsey Abbey villages. Elton was not among the five, but the figures may be taken as broadly typical of the region. They show the average taxpaying villager owning 6.2 sheep, 4.5 cows and calves, 3.1 pigs, and 2.35 horses and oxen. These figures do not mean that each villager owned approximately 16 animals. Exempt were the poor cotters who owned property worth less than 6 shillings 8 pence, about the value of one ox or cow. Furthermore, as Postan demonstrates, many taxpaying villagers owned no sheep, while a few rich peasants held a large fraction of the total village flock. Plow animals, cows, and pigs appear to have been distributed more evenly,51 though another scholar, speaking of England in general, asserts that “the bulk of the people owned no more working animals, cows, and sheep, than were necessary for their own subsistence.”52

  The Elton manorial court rolls of the early 1300s list numbers of villagers, mostly customary tenants with virgates, but also a few cotters, whose “beasts” or “draught beasts” had committed trespasses “in the lord’s meadow” or “in the lord’s grain.” In 1312 the beasts of twelve villagers grazed in the fields at a time prohibited by the village bylaws, or “trod the grain” of fellow villagers.53 A number of villagers are mentioned as having horses, many as having sheep or pigs.

  The village poor are specifically identified many times in the court rolls when they are forgiven their fines for offenses. Most are cotters. The coroners’ rolls record the small tragedies of destitute villagers who “went from door to door to seek bread.” Beatrice Bone, “a poor woman,” was begging in Turvey, Bedfordshire, in 1273 when she “fell down because she was weak and infirm and died there…between prime and tierce,” to be found two days later by a kinswoman.54 Joan, “a poor child aged five,” walked through Risely begging for bread, fell from a bridge, and drowned.55

  Perhaps as important as either legal status or wealth to most villagers was their standing among their neighbors, their place in the community. As in two other Ramsey Abbey villages studied by Edward Britton (Broughton)56 and Edwin De Windt (Holywell-cum-Needingworth),57 Elton shows evidence of a village hierarchy, signaled by the repeated service of certain families in village office, as reeve, beadle, jurors, ale tasters, and heads of tithings. All these officials were chosen by the villagers themselves. All the offices were positions of responsibility, served under oath, and subject to fines for dereliction. A total of over two hundred Elton families can be identified by name in the records between 1279 and 1346.* Of these two hundred families, only forty-nine are recorded as providing village officials. The service of these elite families, moreover, was unevenly distributed:

  8 families had four or more members who served in a total of 101 offices

  14 families had two members who served in a total of 39 offices

  27 families had one member who served in a total of 41 offices

  Thus eight families, 3.5 percent of the total village households, filled well over half the terms of office. The number of terms per individual officeholder varied from one to six.

  Most of Elton’s families who were active in public service, including all eight very active families, were villein virgaters. Four members of the In Angulo family (literal translation: in the nook or corner, English equivalent unknown), accounted for a total of fourteen offices: Geoffrey, listed in the Hundred Rolls of 1279 as a villein and a virgater, served as juror in 1279; Michael as juror in 1294, 1300, 1306, 1307, and 1312; Hugh as juror in 1300, 1307, 1312, and 1331, as reeve in 1323-1324 and again in 1324-1325; and William as juror in 1318 and 1322. Five members of the Gamel family served: Roger as juror in 1279 and 1294, ale taster in 1279; Robert as juror in 1292 and 1308; Philip as juror in 1300, ale taster in 1312; John as juror in 1308 and 1312 and ale taster in 1331; and Edmund as juror in 1342 and ale taster the same year. Four members of the Brington family served as juror, Reginald three times. Four of the Child family served in eight offices, three as jurors, William Child three times as reeve. Four Abovebrooks were jurors, and one was also an ale taster. Four atte Crosses served, Alexander four times as juror and once as reeve. The Goscelins contributed jurors, two reeves, and a beadle. The Reeves were jurors, ale tasters, and, naturally, reeves.

  That these same families also figure prominently in the court rolls for quarrels, suits, infractions, and acts of violence is a striking fact, corroborating Edward Britton’s observations to the same effect about Broughton. Members of three of the most active families were fined and assessed damages in 1279 when Alexander atte Cross, Gilbert son of Richard Reeve, and Henry son of Henry Abovebrook “badly beat” the son of another virgater, Reginald le Wyse.58 In 1294 Roger Goscelin “drew blood from Richer Chapeleyn,” while the wives of two of the In Angulo men quarreled and Michael’s wife, Alice, “did hamsoken” on Geoffrey’s wife, also named Alice—that is, assaulted her in her own house; Michael’s wife paid a fine and also gave sixpence for “license to agree” with her sister-in-law. Richard Benyt, twice a juror, “badly beat Thomas Clerk and did hamsoken upon him in his own house.” John son of John Abovebrook, both father and son officeholders, “took the beasts of Maud wife of John Abovebrook,” apparently his stepmother, “and drove them out of her close.”59

  In 1306 what sounds like a free-for-all involving the members of several of the elite families occurred. John Ketel, twice juror and twice ale taster, “broke the head” of Nicholas son of Richard Smith and badl
y beat Richard Benyt, “and moreover did hamsoken upon him”; John son of Henry Smith, four times juror, “struck Robert Stekedec and drew blood from him,” while his brother Henry Smith “pursued John [Smith]…with a knife in order that he might strike and wound him.”60

  Members of the elite families sued each other for debt, accused each other of libel, and committed infractions such as coming late to the reaping in the fall or not sending all of their household or “not binding the lord’s wheat in the autumn as [their] neighbors did.” Their daughters were convicted of “fornication”: in 1303, Matilda daughter of John Abovebrook;61 in 1307, Athelina Blakeman;62 in 1312, Alice daughter of Robert atte Cross;63 in 1316, two women of the In Angulo family, Muriel and Alice.64

  In short, a handful of village families were active leaders in village affairs, on both sides of the law. Their official posts may have helped them maintain and improve their status, which in turn perhaps lent them a truculence reminiscent of the Tybalts and Mercutios of the Italian cities, with somewhat similar results.

  From the terse wording of the court records, a few village personalities emerge. One is that of Henry Godswein, virgater, ale taster, and juror, who in 1279 was fined “because he refused to work at the second boon-work of the autumn and because he impeded said boon-work by ordering that everyone should go home early and without the permission of the bailiffs, to the lord’s damage of half a mark.”65 Another is that of John of Elton the younger, whose troubles with his neighbors recur with regularity: a quarrel with his free tenant, John of Langetoft in 1292;66 one with Emma Prudhomme in 1294;67 a conviction of adultery in 1292 with Alice wife of Reginald le Wyse;68 then an accusation of trespass by John Hering in 1306;69 and finally an episode in 1306 in which John attacked one of his own tenants, John Chapman, “drove him out of his own house,” and carried off the hay of Joan wife of Robert Chapman.70

  Not all the troublemakers were from the elite families. One family that never appeared in the lists of officials but often in the court rolls was the Prudhommes, of whom William was one of John of Elton’s cotters and Walter a free virgater. Walter’s wife Emma and Matilda, possibly William’s wife, appear a number of times, quarreling with their neighbors, suing or being sued, or as brewers. The family produced the only murderer among the Elton villagers to be named in the court rolls (homicides were judged in royal courts): Richard Prudhomme, who in 1300 was convicted of killing Goscelyna Crane.71 The Sabbes, also, were prominent mainly for their participation in quarrels and violence, and one of their members, Emma, was fined for being a “fornicatrix” and “as it were a common woman,” a whore.72

  Through the formulas and the abbreviated Latin of the court rolls, the villagers’ speech echoes only remotely. Prudence Andrew, in The Constant Star, a novel about the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381, follows a popular tradition by recording her hero’s speech as on an intellectual level just above that of the donkey with whom he sometimes sleeps. No reliable real-life source exists for the everyday speech of the English peasantry (though Chaucer yields hints), but the Inquisition records for the village of Montaillou, in the Pyrenees, roughly contemporary with the court records of Elton, cast valuable light.73 The Montaillou peasants talk freely, even glibly, about politics, religion, and morality, philosophizing and displaying lively intelligence, imagination, humor, and wisdom. The Elton court records give us a single glimpse of peasants in an informal dialogue. The villagers were gathered in the churchyard on the Sunday before All Saints, when three people belonging to the elite families, Richer son of Goscelin and Richard Reeve and his wife, confronted Michael Reeve “with most base words in front of the whole parish.” They accused Michael of a number of corrupt practices often imputed to reeves: “that he reaped his grain in the autumn by boon-works performed by the abbot’s customary tenants, and plowed his land in Eversholmfield with the boon plows of the village; that he excused customary tenants from works and carrying services on condition that they leased their lands to him at a low price”; and finally “that he had taken bribes from the rich so that they should not be censuarii, and [instead] put the poor ad censum.”

  Michael sued for libel, and the jurors pronounced him “in no article guilty,” fined Richard Reeve and Richer Goscelin two shillings and 12 pence respectively, and ordered Richard Reeve to pay Michael the substantial sum of ten shillings in damages. Michael later forgave all but two shillings of the award.74

  5

  THE VILLAGERS:

  HOW THEY LIVED

  ALL THE VILLAGERS OF ELTON, FREE, VILLEIN, AND of indeterminate status, virgaters, half-virgaters, cotters, servants, and craftsmen, lived in houses that shared the common characteristic of impermanence. Poorly built, of fragile materials, they had to be completely renewed nearly every generation. At Wharram Percy, nine successive transformations of one house can be traced over a span of little more than three centuries. The heir’s succession to a holding probably often supplied an occasion for rebuilding. For reasons not very clear, the new house was often erected adjacent to the old site, with the alignment changed and new foundations planted either in postholes or in continuous foundation trenches.1

  Renewal was not always left to the tenant’s discretion. The peasant taking over a holding might be bound by a contract to build a new house, of a certain size, to be completed within a certain time span. Sometimes the lord agreed to supply timber or other assistance.2 The lord’s interest in the proper maintenance of the houses and outbuildings of his village was sustained

  Fourteenth-century peasant house, St. Mary’s Grove cottage, Tilmanstone, Kent. Originally of one story, the house has retained the studs of the medieval partition that divided it into two rooms, and the framing of the window wall. Upper story and chimney were added in the seventeenth century, and the walls have been largely rebuilt. Royal Commission on the Historic Monuments of England.

  by the manorial court. In Elton in 1306, Aldusa Chapleyn had to find pledges to guarantee that she would “before the next court repair her dwelling house in as good a condition as she received it.”3 Two years later, William Rouvehed was similarly enjoined to “repair and rebuild his dwelling house in as good a condition as that in which he received it for a gersum [entry fee],”4 and in 1331 three villagers were fined 12 pence each because they did not “maintain [their] buildings.”5

  All the village houses belonged to the basic type of medieval building, the “hall,” as did the manor house, the barns, and even the church: a single high-ceilinged room, varying in size depending on the number of bays or framed sections. In peasants’ houses, bays were usually about fifteen feet square.6

  The house of a rich villager such as John of Elton might

  Outline of foundation of house at Wharram Percy, with entry in middle of long side.

  consist of four or even five bays, with entry in the middle of a long side. Small service rooms were probably partitioned off at one end: a buttery, where drink was kept, and a pantry, for bread, dishes, and utensils, with a passage between leading to a kitchen outside. A “solar,” a second story either above the service rooms or at the other end, may have housed a sleeping chamber. A large hall might retain the ancient central hearth, or be heated by a fireplace with a chimney fitted into the wall. Early halls were aisled like churches, with the floor space obstructed by two rows of posts supporting the roof. Cruck construction had partially solved the problem, and by the end of the thirteenth century, carpenters had rediscovered the roof truss, known to the Greeks and Romans. Based on the inherent strength of the triangle, which resists distortion, the truss can support substantial weight.7

  A middle-level peasant, a virgater such as Alexander atte Cross, probably lived in a three-bay house, the commonest type. A cotter like Richard Trune might have a small one- or two-bay house. Dwellings commonly still lodged animals as well as human beings, but the byre was more often partitioned off and sometimes positioned at right angles to the living quarters, a configuration that pointed to the European farm complex of the fut
ure, with house and outbuildings ringing a central court.8

  Interiors were lighted by a few windows, shuttered but unglazed, and by doors, often open during the daytime, through which children and animals wandered freely. Floors were of beaten earth covered with straw or rushes. In the center, a fire of wood, or of peat, commonly used in Elton,9 burned on a raised stone hearth, vented through a hole in the roof. Some hearths were crowned by hoods or funnels to channel the smoke to the makeshift chimney, which might be capped by a barrel with its ends knocked out. The atmosphere of the house was perpetually smoky from the fire burning all day as water, milk, or porridge simmered in pots on a trivet or in footed brass or iron kettles. At night a fire-cover, a large round ceramic lid with holes, could be put over the blaze.10

  A thirteenth-century writer, contrasting the joys of a nun’s life with the trials of marriage, pictured the domestic crisis of a

  Woman stirs footed pot on central hearth while holding baby. Trinity College, Cambridge, Ms. B 11.22, f. 25v.

  Central hearth of house in reconstruction of Anglo-Saxon settlement at West ow.

  wife who hears her child scream and hastens into the house to find “the cat at the bacon and the dog at the hide. Her cake is burning on the [hearth] stone, and her calf is licking up the milk. The pot is boiling over into the fire, and the churl her husband is scolding.”11

  Medieval sermons, too, yield a glimpse of peasant interiors: the hall “black with smoke,” the cat sitting by the fire and often singeing her fur, the floor strewn with green rushes and sweet flowers at Easter, or straw in winter. They picture the housewife at her cleaning: “She takes a broom and drives all the dirt of the house together; and, lest the dust rise…she casts it with great violence out of the door.” But the work is never done: “For, on Saturday afternoon, the servants shall sweep the house and cast all the dung and the filth behind the door in a heap. But what then? Come the capons and the hens and scrape it around and make it as ill as it was before.” We see the woman doing laundry, soaking the clothes in lye (homemade with ashes and water), beating and scrubbing them, and hanging them up to dry. The dog, driven out of the kitchen with a basinful of hot water, fights over a bone, lies stretched in the sun with flies settling on him, or eagerly watches people eating until they throw him a morsel, “whereupon he turns his back.”12