CHAPTER III
THE MANORIAL POPULATION
Now that we have considered the very complicated web
within which the medieval peasant lived and moved and
had his being we may turn to the man himself. And first,
in thinking of the manorial population, we must be careful to
differentiate between the many grades that even this humble
society comprised. We are apt to rest content with the lawyer's
easy division of free and serf; but, while this is an obvious
difference which needs no labouring here, it is necessary to insist
again that, if we pay overmuch attention to such a classification, we
shall be ignoring equally important considerations of an economic
rather than of a juridical nature. We must think of the manorial
population as a body of people whose material circumstances
were of the most varied nature. A man might well be a free man
and yet possess only a mere two or three acres, and his only
hope of keeping body and soul together was to find employ-
ment—probably on the holding of one of these despised villeins
who had more land than he could work without help. True he
could cease to work whenever it pleased him, with the knowledge
that no one could compel him to return—until hunger drove
him forth once again to seek his bread. But, in fact, it is clear
that such men were no more free then than is the mill operative
or the typist now: to throw down his tools may be the privilege
of a free man, but it is one he but sparingly uses if he is prudent.
Even if we omit any question of free or serf, a glance at any
cartulary shows us that there were many subdivisions, even among
the servile population. First, we have the aristocracy, as it were,
of the peasantry: men holding 30 or sometimes 60 acres in the
common fields, followed by others holding only half this "full
land" of 30 acres. Others again have to be content with
"fardels" or "furlongs " of 10 or 15 acres, and below them come
the cottars, and crofters, and " pytel-holders" who eke out an
existence as best they can, for their land is only an acre or two,
or sometimes only the bare croft or garden about their little"