n8 RENTS AND SERVICES
serf could count on.1 But any figure is liable to mislead: we are
only justified in asserting that there is no evidence to support
the belief that the canon law was observed with any degree of
strictness. In every diocese the practice varied to some extent,
and every local area, as Lyndwood himself recognised, had its
own peculiarities and time-hallowed practices "according to the
custom of the country".2
Apart from these allowances for various reasons, the peasant
got few chances of rest from his weekly labours on his lord's
behalf. The only other relief he could expect was during the
holidays round about Christmas, Easter and Whitsun.3 At these
festivals a brief respite was allowed him, sometimes amounting
to as much as fifteen days at Christmas.4 Then the Yule celebra-
tions, and perhaps a special feast at the manor house, made that
season a memorable one. An account of such feastings will be
found in a later chapter,5 and here we need only note the occur-
rence of these periods of rest in the otherwise unending toil
demanded of the peasant, both by his lord and by the land itself.
One further service remains to be described, namely service in
time of war. As we shall see, this only gradually came to concern
the serf, but little by little the King demanded larger and larger
armies and cast his net more widely, until in the end it caught
even the peasant within its meshes. Unlike other services, how-
ever, this had nothing to do with his serfdom, so far as the King
was concerned (although undoubtedly lords used their power
over their serfs to compel them to serve), but was the result of the
growing demand for man power. It was so insistent that in time
the remotest village and its inhabitants were shaken from their
secluded life, and forced to take note of a much greater world.
For it must be remembered that to the majority of English
peasants their world was a very circumscribed affair. Their
village and the immediate surroundings were their all, and within
perhaps some fifteen or twenty miles of their cottages the great
1 This figure is the result of the examination of a large number of manorial
accounts before 1350, and is taken from different parts of England, both from
lay and ecclesiastical manors.
2 Lyndwood, op. cit. 101.
8 D./S.P. xxvn; Cunningham, op, cit. 585; Hatfield's Survey t 172; Sussex
Arch. Soc. LIU, 158; Levett, op. cit. 95.
4 Comb. Antiq. Soc. Proc. xxvn, 165; Ramsey Cart. I, 344.
* See below, p. 263.