PLOUGHING SERVICES 107
manor, or whether his strips lay side by side with those of his
tenants, they had to be ploughed by the communal teams of the
villagers. Every holding had a certain duty imposed upon it. Some-
times this was expressed in the number of acres to be ploughed,
or in the number of days of ploughing to be given in the year;
sometimes the customal exacted a certain quantity of work from
a group of serfs and left it to them to make their own arrangements.
A few cases, taken from the manors of the Bishop of Chichester
in the middle of the thirteenth century, will illustrate the inci-
dence of these ploughing works. A virgater of Ferring is bound
every other week to attend with one of his fellows, and to do
whatever ploughing is needed,
unless a holy-day or rainy weather prevents. If the weather is rainy
so that he cannot plough, in that week he shall do another work; but
if he has ploughed two or three furrows, and then has to unyoke
owing to rainy weather, he shall do no other work that day, unless the
weather clears enough for him to plough.1
At Selsey, the virgater ploughs an acre and a half, if needed, every
other week between Michaelmas and Lady Day, and aids with
his plough team the ploughing and harrowing of the land before
barley is sown.2 At Sidlesham, the holder of two virgates ploughs
and harrows twelve acres in winter, and twelve acres in Lent, and
must do another acre in winter and Lent if so desired in place of
other work.3 And with this ploughing often went the associated
works of sowing and harrowing. A man has to fetch the seed
from the lord's granary, sometimes to be sown by the lord's
sower, sometimes to be sown by himself,4 or he may even be
sent to fetch it from another manor,6 either because of a shortage,
or because of a common belief that seed from another manor
would yield better than that produced and sown on the home
land.6
Besides work in the fields, repairs to the manor house and the
buildings around it were usually done by the peasants. Under
the care of expert carpenters or masons "they tore down old
1 Sussex Rec. Soc. xxxi, 71.
2 Op. cit. 16. 8 Op. cit. 23.
4 Op. cit. 88. 5 Op. cit. 89.
6 Walter of Henley, 19: " Change your seed every year at Michaelmas, for
seed grown on other ground will bring more profit than that which is grown
on your own."