xii CONTENTS
Chapter VI Servile Burdens 127-150
The mill—The miller—The manorial oven—Other forms of oppression—
"Tallage at will"—Fixed tallage—Thejoyeux av&nement—Forced hospitality
—Heriot—Mortuary—"Worms feeding upon the corpse*'
Chapter VII Manorial Administration 151-192
The need for manorial officers—Manorial treatises—The administrators—
The steward—The bailiff—The reeve—Length of service—Election of
reeve—The reeve's duties—The reeve and the auditors—The reeve'a rewards
and privileges—The hayward—The beadle—The famuli—Their duties
and rewards—Pierce the Ploughman's Crede—The manorial accounts—The
auditors
Chapter VIII The Manor Court 193-221
Manorial jurisdiction—Excessive claims—The Coroner on the manors—
Seigneurial rights and regalities—Lack of uniformity in administration—
Frequency of courts—The obligation to attend—Notice of meeting—The
meeting place—Free and serf in court—The essoins--The "dooms"—
"Curia domini debet facere judicium et non dominus"—Jury—Juries o!'
presentment—Juries of inquisition—Duties of juries—The peasant before
the court—The business of the court—General conclusions
Chapter IX Everyday Life 223-256
Medieval houses—Methods of construction—Skilled labour—The village
craftsmen—Repair of houses—"By hook or by crook"—The peasant's
garden—His household goods—Food and drink—Meals—Family life—
Population—Difficulties of peasant marriages—Marriages, on and o(F the
manor—"Mixed" marriage—Compulsory marriage—Marriage ami Canon
Law—Leyrwite—Ecclesiastical courts and incontinency—Wills—The widow
—Old age arrangements—"Borough English"
ChapterX "Merrie England" 257*274
The peasant's lot—The unending struggle—Stow's picture—Christmas*
festivities—Ecclesiastical feasts—Birth, marriage and death—The "ales"—
The ale-house—Dancing—The countryside and the pleasures of the chune
Chapter XI The Road to Freedom ~75'-3*7
Widespread desire for freedom—Causes for this—Dislike of fixed services—
Hatred of seigneurial exactions—Attitude of the Church to serfdom- -Manu-
mission—Semi-manumission—The price of freedom•-"Constructive manu-
mission—Holy Orders and serfdom—Knighthood—The attraction of the
towns—Towns and freedom—Towns partially free—Town and village—The
new boroughs—"A year and a day"—Other limiting conditions—The gilda
and the peasant—The serf in the towns—Privileges of towns—The peasant's
immobility—-Leave of absence— Flight—The law and the fugitive—The
proceedings before the justices—Various types of writ used by lord and
peasant—The production of kin—Complications of pleading—Failure to
prosecute—Summary