64 THE MANORIAL POPULATION
house.1 It is obvious that the 30-acre holder who owes his lord
manifold rents and services is in a different category from the
holder of some miserable pytel, who perhaps renders a couple of
hens once a year, or does a day's work at harvest as the sole pay-
ment required of him for his holding. Yet, in the Manor Court,
as in the King's Court, both are equal, and in certain circum-
stances, both are null: for both have the stain of serfdom upon
them, and may be called upon by their lord "to answer for their
villeinage as a villein ought".
The essential point to emphasise, however, is that so far as
the manor is concerned there was considerable differentiation
among the peasantry, and it is wrong to underestimate this. The
lord certainly did not. In his Manor Court he constantly em-
panelled certain men to act as a jury, and we find that these
generally included the large holders of the village. Again, it is
the large holders who have to find a plough of their own to work
on the lord's demesnes at certain seasons of the year: lesser
holders are allowed to come with a team made up by two, three
or more of them putting their resources together. Then again,
at harvest, the greater tenants are forced to act as overseers to the
rest of their fellows, and ride or walk about with white wands of
office in their hands.2 They provide carts and horses for carrying
services, and generally are used by the lord in proportion to their
holding and equipment. So with lesser men, according to their
capacities, until we reach a level at which the agricultural tools
the man has at his disposal are confined to spade, hoe, mallet and
the like. This indeed is a dividing line in the village, for now we
are dealing with the " poor labourers who live by their hands ",3
1 There seems to be little need to linger over the differences between
cottars, crofters and other lesser holders. They were all of the same class:
perhaps the cottars held rather larger pieces of land, and therefore were called
on to render greater services. The medieval clerks did not discriminate very
clearly. In the Ramsey Cart, (i, 397) some men are described as holding
crofts, but a few lines later they are called cottars. Cf. I, 489 ("viginti
quatuor cottarii, quorum quidam tenent croftas, quidam curtilagia", etc.);
VinogradofT, Villainage, 148: "Theconstant denomination for those who have
no part in the common arable fields, but who only hold crofts, or small plots
with their homesteads, is cotters"; and cf. p. 256. A special note, perhaps,
should be made of the Lundenarii, men who are bound to work for the lord on
one day a week (generally Monday) throughout the whole year.
2 Mon. Exon. 3526; Ramsey Cart, i, 309, 311; n, 47; Eynsham Cart, n, 8
and 29, etc.
8 Inquis. Nonarum, 13*2.