THE SMALL HOLDERS 6s
and whose small holdings are quite insufficient to keep them
however intensively they are cultivated. These men are the
"undermanni", the "crofters'* and the like, and their history is
as important as it is difficult to unravel.
Many years ago Vinogradoff drew attention to "the rernark-
able history of the small tenants", and added that this had
"hardly been appreciated rightly by modern scholars". fj^
years that have intervened since this was written have left the
position but little changed. Mr Lipson in his Economic History
of England has devoted some attention to the problem, but little
else seems to have been done, although some writers in the
Victoria County Histories have shown themselves aware of the
importance of the small tenant in the manorial economy. Such
neglect is the more surprising, for it seems clear that we shall
not understand the daily life of the medieval village with any
clarity all the while we ignore this section of its population
Naturally the number and importance of these small tenants
varied from manor to manor, but everywhere they were to be
found working as an essential part of the manorial organisation
Modern scholars, however, may plead in justification, that
these men were equally neglected by their contemporaries. The
clerks, who drew up the medieval extents and customals, spent
but little time on such small fry. They held but small parcels of
land—five acres seem to have been a cgmmon maximum, and
often a beggarly two or three acres, or even a toft, is all the stake
they have in a manor.1 Hence the payments and services they
were called upon to render were commensurately small, and the
customals rapidly recite their meagre commitments in a few
words after they have dealt with the greater tenants. All this is
clear enough: small tenants, small services—but what is not so
clear (because it was no business of the lord's clerks to make it
so) is how these men managed to exist. Their holdings, in them-
selves, were insufficient to support them—even five acres, it is
certain, could not do so—and they had to find other means of
support. Hence their importance: they provided that pool of
free or semi-free labour which was constantly available to all
who could afford to pay for it by one means or another. The
1 Econ. Hist. Rev. vol. v, No. 2, p. 37 n. i, gives an excellent analysis of the
average size of villein holdings in Cambridgeshire Manors.