The husbandman rose early to go about his tasks; 20 percent of the fatal accidents involving adult males occurred at dawn before breakfast. After a midmorning decrease they rise again at noon (17.7 percent), when workers were tired and hungry, and dropped to 7.5 percent in the afternoon, suggesting that they took a nap following the big meal of the day, as nineteenth-century farm workers often did. Working into the evening, their accidents went up to 18.9 percent around vespers. Blundering about in the dark, however, was most dangerous, and '33.9 percent died of accidents at night. But few people were about at midnight, and so only 2.4 percent lost their lives in accidents in the middle of the night.
The grain was separated from the stalks with flails. The flail was a man's implement. [The British Library, Luttrell Psalter.]
To men fell the task of gathering wood by hook or by crook. [Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 24, fol. 2.]
Wage laborers, if they were engaged in agrarian work, had a seasonal work pattern similar to that of the husbandman. Pay for field labor varied considerably with the demographic trends and regional demands. For instance, in a comparison of wages for threshing and winnowing on Winchester and Westminister manors, laborers near London commanded a higher wage than those in the country. Wages rose in 1310-1319 because of famine and again in 1349-1359 because of plague. Wages continued to rise in Winchester until 1409, when they stabilized at a high rate; but in Westminister they fell gradually until 1399, when they again rose. Wages doubled with the plague, and the demand for unskilled labor was so great that while in 1300-1309 a carpenter's wage was twice that of a laborer, by the fifteenth century it was only a quarter more. Comparative wages did not return to the earlier proportion until the early sixteenth century. In addition to daily wages the laborer might get a meal, the right to sleep on the barn floor, or a sheaf of wheat.9 Wage labor could be a profitable supplement, and many skilled laborers and townsmen put down their tools and worked at harvest-to increase their income. Living by agrarian wage labor alone, however, was hard in the years prior to the Black Death because the work was seasonal and competition for wages high. With the precipitous population decline, however, living by wage labor became more desirable and harvest work could be supplemented with other jobs during the winter.
Laborers were hired in several ways. Manor bailiffs or prosperous smaller proprietors including wealthy peasant cultivators, would hire servants and laborers by the year. A manor would hire plowmen, carters, stablemen, a dairymaid, and some domestic servants. Such people could expect wages in food and money and often slept on the premises. They were not necessarily youths (who will be treated in more detail in a later chapter), but might be married and have their own cottage. Simon of Langnoe, who was servant to the prior of Caldwell and milked the priory cows, was described as a "cottager and clerk of the chapel." People who worked as servants for a major establishment would spend their lives in this capacity and might do quite well in their jobs, eventually setting up their children in land or education. But most laborers were hired for briefer periods. Outside harvest time an unskilled man took what work he could find. A pauper accepted a job gathering wood and driving a cartload of it with broken-down horses. The cart overturned. Another labourer, Arnold of Tyringham, stood at a cross in Bedfordshire to indicate that he was available for hire. It was January, and the best job he could get was carting manure to the fields. He was married, and his wife was the one who later found him under the overturned cart. Such temporary positions were paid for by the piece rather than by the day.10
Villages contained a variety of people pursuing an occupation in addition to agriculture. Pursuit of another craft accounted for 3 percent of men's fatal accidents. Most villages had a mill that employed a miller and some lads as assistants. The mills were dangerous and caused thirtythree fatal accidents (1 percent), but as they were used year-round the accidents did not accumulate in harvest season. Millers got caught up on the sails of windmills and dropped, fell from mills while repairing them, drowned in mill ponds, and, worst of all, got pulled into the gears and mill wheels." But the miller. was a necessary member of the community and the pay and opportunities for profit were very good, as Chaucer's Miller in The Canterbury Tales indicates.
Carting was also a common occupation for villagers. The local lords and religious houses kept carters in their pay regularly, but other men made their living by carrying loads of sea coal, casks of oil, wine and beer, logs and lumber, and other such bulky items. Various forms of transportation accounted for 43 percent of men's fatal accidents, and a quarter of the accidents involved carting specifically. Carting was done year-round, but, as we have seen, harvest brought a precipitous increase in accidents. Even for people who made their living as carters, accidents were common. Thus Robert of Swynarton, who was charioteer to the prior of the Hospital of St. John, was driving the carriage and six horses to the rectory when a shaft broke and the carriage overturned, killing him. Experienced carters were not immune from the risks of getting stuck on the road. One man who was using a beam to get a wheel out of a rut overturned his cart, and the casks he was carrying rolled off and crushed him. Other carters took advantage of the slow, monotonous journeys and napped, only to fall off their carts and under the wheels.12
Men did most of the carting and carrying and worked with the horses, oxen, and mules. In this illustration a man is carrying sacks of grain to the water mill. [Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 764, fol. 41 verso.]
In areas that had water, boating replaced carting and many men carried goods by punting in Norfolk and Cambridge and sailing larger vessels on the Humber in Lincolnshire. In a classic accident recognizable to anyone who has punted a boat, a forty-year-old man was boating on a river when he got his pole stuck on the bottom. Clinging to the pole as the boat drifted on, he slid down it to his death. In the larger boats people were swept off by sails, rudder handles, and storms.13
Selling ale out of the home and other products out of market stalls were occupations that could be done commercially to supplement the income. Women dominated home brewing, but in some communities men brewed as well." Alehouses, however, were usually run by men. All manor courts kept the provisions of the Assize of Bread and Ale, which regulated price and quality as well as measures. Carshalton manor court explicitly regulated the selling of ale. A post or ale staff had to be put up and ale could only be sold from the home. The men had to sell ale in measured containers not in cups and bowls. Baking was done in much the same way as the brewing with women predominating in production but with men also participating. Rather than selling out of the home, some men bought or rented market stalls to sell both their own household produce and that of their neighbors. William, son of Nicholas Carter, had a market stall at the fair of Woodkirk and supplied it with twenty gallon s of beer, worth 2s. 6d., cheeses worth 12d., a sack worth 8d., and utensils to contain these items. He sued the man who overturned his stall for 40s. in damages.15
Fishing and poaching were useful side occupations to combine with agriculture. As we shall see, boys fished with lines, but men used nets and weirs in mill ponds, rivers, and the sea. John Ball of Pynchbeck used a fish weir in a ditch to get fish in 1375. In manors that abutted onto forests, such as Brigstock in Northamptonshire or Wakefield in Yorkshire, poaching was a routine part of men's provisioning for the family."
A number of other craftsmen such as tinkers, carpenters, potters, and blacksmiths could service several villages in a locality. Pottery was a useful trade, whether it was for a local market or for a regional one. Most of the pottery was for cooking and eating, but tiles for roofs, at least around the vent for the fire, and floor tiles were also made. Bricks came into use in the mid-fourteenth century and became increasingly popular as a filler, replacing wattle and daub for walls. Until the advent of brickmaking, the heavy work of potting was digging the clay from pits. Like marl pits and turbaries, the sides could fall on the potter or his laborer. 17
Construction of various sorts occupied men with specialties in carp
entry, masonry, thatching, and wattle-and-daub work. Eleven percent of men's fatal accidents involved construction. Then, as now, construction followed the weather and more accidents occurred in the summer months than in the winter. There were dangers stepping off scaffolding, sawing planks, getting timber, digging in gravel and sand pits, and cutting stone. Some of the quarrying was rather sophisticated. One laborer was trying to raise two stones with a wheel and cable when his arm got caught in the wheel and was broken. 'I
Preparing hides for tanning and tanning itself were also side occupations for some villagers. A Lincolnshire man who lived on the coast took a cartload of hides to the sea to wash them in preparation for tanning. The waves came in and washed away him and his cart.19
Cloth production increasingly moved to the countryside during the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Women, of course, had always done the initial preparation of the thread, but they had usually sold it rather than turn it into cloth. Men dominated the cloth industry. The chief dangers in the pursuit of the craft came in dyeing the lengths of cloth. Large vats of water were brought to a boil before the dye and cloth were added, and dyers and their apprentices occasionally fell into the boiling water and were scalded.20
Mining was a regional side occupation. In Cornwall almost all tenants in the tin-producing region had some connection with mining and tin production, even if it only consisted of subleasing small parcels of land to miners and their families. Some tenants made rather large fortunes acting as middlemen in the tin industry.21 In the north of England coal and iron mining provided supplemental occupations. The coal and iron near the surface was easily removed, but by the late fourteenth century pit mining was being employed.22
A number of other occupations and casual chores fleshed out the agricultural income. Bell ringing, for instance, was highly skilled but hardly paid enough to be anything other than supplemental. One case, in which the bell ringer took his servant to the church to pick up some meat, suggests that he may even have been paid with food rather than money.23
Some examples of how and why a peasant successfuly combined his agricultural enterprises with other occupations might clarify the importance of a diversified economy for the peasants. The agricultural season had periodic lulls when the husbandman's attention was not taken up by cultivating the soil. While animals needed continued care, as we shall see, women and children took over this task. The head of the household and grown sons, therefore, had some seasonal time to pursue other occupations. In Cornwall the size of landholding per family was relatively small (five acres or less), and consequently some supplemental occupations were needed for survival. Tin, lead, and silver mining, in those regions with ore, provided an obvious side occupation that could be engaged in on a temporary basis. If there was a boom in tin, many men from the region temporarily moved to the mining districts. Tenants of the duchy of Cornwall who had some of the largest landholdingssuch as John de Pengelly, with one messuage and thirty-one acres plus twenty acres of waste, or the Bloyou family, with seven messuages and ninety-six acres-were also involved in the tin industry.24
For those with capital, such as the Bloyous, investments and management of resources were of the utmost importance. Like the less wealthy peasants who diversified their labor investment between agriculture and a side occupation, the wealthy peasants sought to diversify the way they utilized their capital assets. Thus, in Cornwall, tenants with large landholdings might invest in tin mining and also make shortterm leases to the workers for either a few acres of arable or pasture rights. They might also invest in livestock and perhaps buy part of the rights to a mill. Economic diversification was typical of peasants' investments. A group of four men jointly invested in a mill in Wakefield and agreed to pay 73s. 4d. for the mill; in another case eight men paid 20 marks for a mill. Others invested in livestock, particularly following the Black Death. Still others bought the expensive brewing equipment to set their wives to work in a lucrative trade. A brewer's inventory from a will showed that he had ,C14 1Os. I ld. tied up in brewing equipment.25
One avenue of investment was lending money or goods to fellow villagers. Substantial cultivators in Writtle, Essex, were creditors in 18 percent of the loans. These men lent their less fortunate neighbors plow teams, animals, tools, and even rented them parcels of land. As security they could demand labor or pasture rights from the small land-holder. The terms were unequal, for the creditor demanded three times the going rate for labor in exchange for extension of credit. Thus, when the pay for threshing was 4d. a day in the fifteenth century, the creditor required more than one day's work and in fact was requiring closer to 12d. in work. The arrangement assured the successful cultivator of labor when he needed it and kept the small cultivator continually in his debt. In the event of a complete default, the large cultivator might claim animals or land for settlement.26 Through these unbalanced credit relationships, the wealthy peasant could take advantage of the new economic conditions of the fifteenth century because he was able to exploit the limited labor supply. The imbalance meant that the rich peasant got richer and poor poorer during the course of the century.
Land was another capital investment that a peasant might consider. Often the fluctations in landholdings coincided with phases in a man's life cycle. A young man did not need extra lands until his children were teenagers. He would then have a sufficient work force to help him provide for the family. After the children left home, a man might divest himself of the extra rented acres and retire. Two generations of this cycle may be seen at Kempsey. Thomas Bate, at his prime in 1450s, had a variety of holdings that amounted to eighteen acres, but by 1456 he was not working part of that land and twelve acres were declared forfeit. When he died eight years later he had only six acres to leave to his widow. Walter Bate, his son, was eighteen in 1456 when he took over the twelve acres that his father forfeited. In 1470 he took the six acres that had supported his widowed mother. He added other pieces from demesne leases when he was between the ages of thirty-two and thirtynine, as his family grew and he needed more land. As his children left home he too divested himself of the extra land, and when he died in 1500 at the age of sixty-two he had only six acres for his immediate support.27
Land was a valuable asset, and some peasants accumulated it even though they were not providing for a growing family. Land could be made to turn a profit in a variety of ways. Those who were sufficiently wealthy to rent substantial acreage subleased it to other peasants. In the fifteenth century, when population was low and land readily available, people accumulated land without the intention of cultivating it, but instead profited by putting large herds of sheep and cattle on it. On the other hand, those substantial cultivators who had made loans in exchange for labor could be assured of the cultivators they needed. Village studies have indicated that very few of the small holders were able to take advantage of the open land market in the fifteenth century. In Holywell-cum-Needingworth those few small holders who increased their lands were related by marriage or blood to the larger village holders and, therefore, had some help in acquiring more land. The land market of the fifteenth century again underscores the advantage of the rich peasant even in improved economic conditions.28
One of the most effective ways to get an edge in the acquisition of land was to work as a manorial official. Such a position not only gave the official advanced information about land coming onto the market, but also the lord often made very advantageous terms for a valued servant. Richard Bakhampton, steward of the Cornish estates, not only rented tenements but got leases for life. Other officials also did very well at land transactions on the duchy lands.29
In addition to the major supplements to family income, peasant men pursued a number of less substantial additions. Some supplemental activities, as we have observed, were outright thefts, but most were small encroachments on neighbors or the lord. Subterfuges of this sort seem endlessly varied, when one reads complaints in manorial court rolls, and are a credit to the cleverness of the peasant
s. A few examples will suffice. At the most petty level of theft were the men who sheared another's sheep in the field. Other activities brought greater rewards. Simon de Bothes, for instance, had a field without a fence. When cattle strayed onto it he impounded them and thus was effectively charging a levy. The court eventually ordered him to put up a fence as his neighbors had. The lord, who could legally impound animals that trespassed on his property, found that some of his tenants not only fed their cattle at his expense but were brazen enough to rescue them from the impounding. Encroaching on the village common land or on the lord's waste was another common ploy. Master Robert Carpenter of Wakefield, for instance, enclosed a piece of meadow with a ditch and palings so that the men of Thomes and Snaysethorp no longer had the right of common there. Sometimes the encroachments went beyond petty advantage. At Carshalton twenty-one men were charged with having horses, cows, pigs, oxen, and sometimes up to two hundred sheep on the lord's pasture. The trespass was well worth it for the peasants because the fines were only 2d. to 400
The maneuvers for advantage in court cases were also a way of settling disputes and may explain why there was so much theft directed against neighbors. For instance, a man in Wakefield came into court on a charge that he had stolen a cow worth 4s. He claimed, however, that he had taken it because the plaintiff owed him 4s. Thus some of the thefts were illegal ways of rectifying reciprocity arrangements that had gone awry and in that respect were akin to credit arrangements and debt litigation. But the litigation could go beyond settling old scores and become a form of aggression. For instance, William Wether complained that Thomas of Thodholm had seized from him land fourteen plowlengths long and three wide. Thomas denied the charge, but the jurors found him guilty. Thomas could certainly have afforded to rent the extra land, for in the same court he leased three and a half acres, but he would have gotten free land if he had succeeded in taking William's. His venture only cost him a fine of 6d. and so the risk was worth it." Although men had greater access to the court and usually pursued family matters there, women, as we shall see in the next chapter, also used the court to protect their rights.
The Ties That Bound Page 17