THE LIFE OF LABOUR 71
letters from the lord or his officials; and, indeed, so long as it was
something that could be conveniently super dorsum they were
commonly pressed into service. If the journey should be un-.
usually long they received a small payment, but otherwise it
merely counted as one of the duties they owed to the lord.1
We see then that the manorial population was a complex social
group. The comparatively easy circumstances of the larger
holders have to be set against the struggles of the undermanni, and
every manor was a world of change, and rising and falling for-
tunes—not at all the ordered static affair we read of in the ex-
tents. And this state of things was common whatever else varied.
It is true that in different parts of the country certain conditions
varied a great deal. For example, the men on many Yorkshire
manors were principally occupied in driving and tending their
sheep, while their brethren on more southern manors were
mainly engaged with plough, harrow and reap-hook. The life of
the peasant on the Lincolnshire fens was very different in some
ways from that of his fellow on the edge of the great Wealden
forest. The prevailing occupation of any area—agricultural or
pastoral—naturally made a great deal of difference as to how a
man spent his day; but, nevertheless, for our purpose, it is
sufficient that there rested on all these men, in their degree, the
curse pronounced on Adam: "Cursed is the ground for thy
sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat of the
herb of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till
thou return unto the ground."
It is with this in our minds that we may turn to study in some
detail the everyday life of the medieval peasant on whatever
manor he found himself, and in so doing we shall be deliberately
limiting ourselves to a certain extent, for we shall be forced to
ignore something of what was happening in many parts of
England where the manorial system had but partially and
sporadically obtained a hold. Recent investigations have con-
siderably modified the views of Seebohm and Vinogradoff con-
cerning the origin and development of the manor. They formed
their conclusions mainly from evidence taken from the centre of
1 Oust. Rents, 66; D.S.P. 27, 68; Ramsey Cart. I, 302; Sussex Rec. Soc.
xxxi, 20, 27, 36, 74, 82.