The Ties That Bound
Page 10
The jurors agreed with Robert and he was given the land.24
Practical considerations led both lay and ecclesiastical authorities to take a lenient view of bastardy in order to preserve amicable arrangements and smooth succession to property. On many manors the bastard's rights might only be recognized if he were the sole heir, but he could be given land for his lifetime. If the family and the lord were satisfied with the arrangement for a bastard to inherit, there was no dispute. Common law and church law differed from customary law but were also generous in recognizing the legitimacy of children. If a marriage ended on the grounds of affinity or consanguinity, the children were considered legitimate. Even a child produced from an adulterous union in the fifteenth century was deemed legitimate, for, as one jurist put it, "Whoso bulleth my cow, the calf is mine."25
Although customs varied from manor to manor, the strong sentiment that property should descend to the person with the closest blood tie remained firm. In 1331, when William Totti died without heirs of his blood, his land was granted to another person "until the right heirs of the said William shall appear and satisfy the lord in court for what is due from the same."26 The force of inherited rights appears to have played an important role in the land market. On the manor of Kibworth (Leicestershire) between 1359 and 1419 preference for family land was so strong that young people were willing to rent land with an elderly tenant on it so that they could be considered the "adopted" heir. They could thereby avoid the risk of having an heir suddenly appear and dispossess them. Fears that a distant relative would appear with a claim to the land were not irrational, for the mortality of the post- 1348 plague encouraged more distant kin such as nieces and nephews to claim family land. Lords encouraged kin to take up vacant holdings by charging anyone with a blood tie to the land a lower entry fee than a person simply purchasing the right to it.27
While the peasantry had strong attachments to inheritance rights and knew the laws and customs that presumably governed devolution of property, a close look at the actual disbursement of land and goods shows enormous diversity. Peasants resorted to rules and customs only when a father failed to make his personal arrangements before death or when family feuds forced the issue into court. For the most part, peasants manipulated rules through settlements during their lifetime or arrangements made at their death, increasingly through wills.
Factors encouraging flexible land and wealth settlements included population decline and the consequent availability of land, opportunities for other employment, such as the tin industry in Cornwall, the amount of land a family possessed, the wealth the family unit had accumulated, the point in a member's life cycle, the number of children, the parents' personal preferences, and other opportunities such as education or wage labor. Macfarlane's suggestion that medieval Englishmen were not peasants because inheritance rules were often laid aside and because family land might be sold to non kin may not be taken as a serious explanation of the diversity of inheritance patterns one sees in the records.28
Let us begin with the demographic and economic changes, for they provided the constraints within which peasant families had to work. A study of the vicissitudes of real estate ownership over the course of two centuries for one Leicestershire village provides a convenient framework for discussing other village studies. Between 1280 and 1340 one finds complete continuity of surnames in ownership and five new names added to the rental lists. In most cases the descent was from father to son.29 While few studies show such remarkable consistency as Kibworth Harcourt, all indicate a tendency for the old families to stay on their lands through the 1340s. These same studies show that the Black Death in 1348 was the beginning of dislocations of old families and selling of whole tenements, both of which were features of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Plague and other diseases killed off families, and the new opportunities for wage labor and alternative landholdings led some survivors to seek additional or better land .3' Both the dearth of the early fourteenth century and the subsequent easing of demands for land brought adaptations to inheritance strategies but did not alter the importance of providing for family members.
The noted economic historian M. M. Postan argued that the land hunger in the early fourteenth century led to fragmentation of landholdings as individuals and families in the inexorably growing population purchased small parcels of land in their pursuit of survival." More detailed studies of landholding in the years of scarcity have demonstrated that what appeared at first as an active land market was often rentals. Some of the land transfers were really leases or exchanges, not sales, and would eventually revert back to the original holding. Such transactions permitted flexible adjustments to the family developmental cycle without involving permanent alienation of family land. Retired parents could lease a few acres until they died, or mature sons could be married and settled on rented land until the parents were ready to retire. Widows could lease land, rather than trying to cultivate it themselves, and take it back when their sons grew up. Most land that appeared on the market was in small units of a half acre to a few acres. These lands may have been pieces of assart that never belonged to a holding, or abandoned cotland, or simply temporary leases from a tenement. Even in periods of land scarcity, then, odd acres and leases of parts of tenements relieved the pressure to fragment family land permanently.32
With a reduced population after 1350, land became readily available. As a consequence, parents had a wide range of options in providing for themselves and inheritances for their children. Wealthy peasant parents could acquire vacant tenements to set up older children when they reached the age of marriage. Even younger -children in the family could look forward to receiving a full settlement rather than making do with what remained of family wealth. Young people whose parents were too poor to provide them with anything could spend a few years working as servants in order to acquire some land with their savings or could take on a retirement contract with an elderly neighbor. With these new opportunities, the dictates of customary rules for division of property became even weaker in the fifteenth century than they had been in the fourteenth. In Kibworth Harcourt, for instance, the average family size declined from 5 to 3.96, while family holdings increased from an average of twelve acres to twenty-four.33 Leighton Buzzard saw a flurry of land transfers to people outside the family from 1464 to 1508, and in the estates of the bishop of Worcester an active land market led to an increase in the size of landholdings. 34 In Kibworth Harcourt customary settlements remained strong in the early fifteenth century, but in King's Ripton the trend away from custom accelerated in the second half of the fourteenth century. By the fifteenth century, in most places the force of customary rules of inheritance weakened as land continued to be available.35
The demographic and economic variables over the course of two centuries did not alter the rules of inheritance; they simply provided fewer or greater options in dividing family wealth. In addition to these all-encompassing parameters on inheritance, individual solutions for passing on wealth depended on the family's circumstance.
To safeguard provisions that did not fall strictly within the inheritance rules or to ensure that land and goods would be divided as planned, the peasants had several legal instruments. The widow's rights, for instance, were assured when the couple married. The husband went to the manor court and surrendered his tenement into the lord's hands and took it back again in the name of both. Thus when the husband died, the wife could continue on the land without special permission and without paying entrance fines. Similar arrangements might be made with a son or daughter to pass on land during the lifetime of the father. In 1313 John Perus, Parnel, his wife, and John, his son, entered one acre of land. Inter vivos settlements for children were particularly important after the plague years when peasants took up new tenements, for it was one way to guarantee that the tenement would pass to the heir rather than being rented to another party.3fi Retirement contracts with children or provisions for the devolution of land to an heiress were also done
inter vivos in manorial court. Special arrangements could be made in a will, which was permissible for villeins and freemen alike. The villein could also call the bailiff or the whole manor court to dictate his final directions for the disposal of his lands and goods. In both manorial courts and common law, wills became increasingly popular in the fourteenth century to tailor property divisions to family needs and elude custom.37
Both the stage in the life cycle and the relative wealth of the family dictated property divisions and special arrangements. If the father had grown sons and extra land, he would try to establish them on land during his lifetime, with or without a retirement contract. Thus Robert, son of William of Denton, got a license to take seven acres and a barn from his father, but he would only have a half acre of that until his father died.38 Half an acre was not enough to feed a family, so Robert probably was unable to marry at that time. Gerbot de Alvirthorp, however, gave a bovate of land to two grown sons, Richard and John, while he still had a younger son at home. When he retired, he took the bovate back for his lifetime and paid each of the boys 3d. a year. Presumably they then got the home tenement.39 With a bovate between them they might have married. The extra bit of land to establish a grown son might come from land that the wife brought to the marriage. Thus Robert, son and heir of Emma, took up nine acres of land that she had received from her father.40 These examples from the late thirteenth century illustrate clearly the tight maneuvering necessary to establish mature sons. The contrast to the late fifteenth century is striking. Before Bartholomew Atkyn died in 1500, he had bought properties with which to endow his heirs. His son•John was to become a priest. If he did not, he would have the principal house but would have to care for two younger brothers. For his wife he had a tenement "lately bought from one called Bustard with the mill and all appurtenances." To his son Hugh he gave a tenement and two closes "lately bought from Henry Serle," and to his son Richard "the tenement bought from Malpasse."41
In poorer families sons would have to wait until their father died in order to marry, or they pursued an entirely different strategy. They might try to marry a widow with land who needed a husband to work it, but they would then find themselves in competition with second sons of the wealthier peasants. They could also try to establish themselves through wage labor. In the early fourteenth century, when population was high, this strategy was difficult; however, during the population stagnation such an approach could be very successful for both young men and women.
Wills provide the most readily accessible overview of the variety of inheritance arrangements. Out of 193 wills from Kibworth, thirty-three men died leaving chidren who were all minors. A small majority (42 percent) preferred to give the wife the tenement and residue to raise the family, although 39 percent jointly endowed the wife and a son and 18 percent bequeathed it all to the son even though the wife was still alive. When at least some of the children had reached the age of majority, the inheritance strategy changed. Men favored mature sons in 41 percent of their wills, while they left to the wife alone or the wife with a son the estate in 29 percent of the cases. In the eighteen cases in which the testator died childless he left his estate to his wife (81 percent) or to the wife and another kinsman (17 percent).42
What could children reasonably expect to receive as a settlement? The 376 lay testators in Bedfordshire gave their sons (405 in the sample) animals (17 percent), money (16 percent), land other than the home tenement (15 percent), household goods (12 percent), and the home tenement (8 percent). Other bequests included a house other than the home tenement, grain, trade tools or an educatipn, other goods such as clothing, and the residue of the estate.43 Some testators specified that they had already provided for their sons (3 percent of the sons in the sample) and probably more had been provided for inter vivos than are mentioned.
Daughters (274 in the sample) could also expect to receive animals as their share of the family wealth (26 percent). In addition, 21 percent received money; 14 percent, household goods; 11 percent, grain; 9 percent, land other than the home tenement; and 4 percent, other goods. Other provisions included a house other than the home tenement, trade or education, and the residue.44 Seven percent of the daughters were the sole heirs and received the home tenement.
The bare numerical breakdown of bequests in wills does not adequately capture the wide range of strategies that peasants used to endow children. A few examples better indicate the pains a father took to make equitable divisions of the wealth accumulated during his stewardship of family lands. Edward Colyn of Stapulford died in 1509. He gave each of his children sixteen sheep. The eldest son and his heirs were given a house called Hogeyard with a garden and four acres of land, and the younger son was given the testator's house and land after the death of his mother, with the provison that ,E10 be taken from the estate and divided equally among the testator's five children.45 Bartholomew Atkyn was considerably wealthier, having silver spoons and other luxuries to disperse. He was very desirous that his eldest son, John, become a priest; but if he did not, he would get the home tenement and would have to pay the other legacies out of it. The other children got various pieces of land along with money and some household goods. But, to be sure that fair division continued, he provided that "if any child die, his portion to go to him who shall then have the greatest need."46 One can detect some agonizing scrupulousness in being fair even when the testator knew that a bequest was going to a child who was a spendthrift.47
The Russell family wills permit us to observe the careful planning for one large family. Hugh Russell had six sons and three daughters to provide for in the late fifteenth century. He gave four sons tenements, arable land, and meadows. Two brothers, William and Thomas, Sr., were tgJive side by side. Thomas was settled in a cottage with a forge. William and Thomas Russell, Jr., were to take over two tenements that were being held by their brothers-in-law when they reached the age of majority. Apparently the three daughters had as part of their dowries the right to use the land until their brothers matured. The wife was to remain on the home tenement with two younger boys who each got 40s., but she was to make a will and provide for them. The arrangement was sealed with the sons-in-law witnessing and acting as executors. 48
Evidence from manorial courts and wills shows peasant parents juggling resources to meet the constraints of keeping family land intact and providing all members of the immediate family with some share of the goods and chattels. In this delicate balancing of claims the peasants might try to honor local inheritance rules, but they certainly did not feel bound by them. Economic opportunities, age of children and parents, children's talents, and favoritism might be more important in determining inheritances. Thus a father might decide to educate a bright son or set up an older one during his lifetime then bequeath the family land to a younger _son. Or, rather than a completely equal division, a father might favor the elder son with the family land and the elder daughter with a good dowry. The younger children would receive some lesser payment from their favored brother, or perhaps nothing if the family was poor. Beyond the immediate family, kin claims on land and goods were weak. A young testator might revert his lands and goods back to his family. Old testators who had already distributed the family wealth had the freedom to give their remaining personal effects to extended family and friends. A testator dying without immediate family usually did not leave his land to brothers or cousins, but ordered that it be sold for the benefit of his soul.49 After the parents had made their settlements with their children, the children apparently felt no further sense of material obligation to brothers or sisters, even if they died childless themselves. The parents' division was binding for that generation. Such strong identity with the nuclear family and its fortunes raises questions about the attitudes toward extended family that we will investigate in the next chapter.
Claims to family land and chattels seldom moved beyond the immediate hearth or out of the bloodline, but in matters other than the dispersal of material goods, what bonds did kinship imply? Eng
lish peasant kinship was bilateral-that is, individuals traced their descent from both father and mother. Marriage brought them into the kinship network of their spouse's family as well. Thus each individual had a unique set of kinship relations. These relations could be extended through fictive kinship by the selection of godparents. In a society with high mortality, remarriage regularly created stepparents and stepchildren. Thus the English peasant was hardly kin-poor, but how much did this extended kinship mean in terms of living arrangements, marriages, loyalties, and affections?
Several approaches have proved useful for providing insights into family cohesion. Kinship terminology has long been popular, naming patterns have been exploited more recently, and a knowledge of family history can be indicative of familial identity.
Kinship terminology in English is not very diversified. Anthropologists expect to find rather elaborate kinship terminology in socieites where kinship plays an important part in an individual's life, but even Anglo-Saxon had few words to describe any ties but those to the nuclear family. They did not even have a word for cousin until the introduction of French. This paucity of kinship terms is in startling contrast to the continent, which had extensions to fourth cousins. The minimal kinship terms already common in the seventh and eighth centuries in England did not appear on the continent until after the Black Death.'
Anglo-Saxon kin terminology had an easy flexibility, with the same word used for grandson and nephew, granddaughter, and niece. The interchangeability of terms suggest that the modes of behavior toward these family relationships were similar. Nuclear-family terms were virtually the only ones that were important, and compounds based on them formed lineal ascent and descent. The only extended family member meriting a unique appellation was the father's brother, indicating a special relationship with the spear-side uncle.2