CHAPTER VI
SERVILE BURDENS
BUT when the peasant had performed all the ploughings and
carryings demanded of him, and had sown and mown, and
threshed and garnered for the lord, he was still under many
obligations. His lack of freedom showed itself in a host of ways:
he could neither brew nor bake where he would; he was not
allowed to grind his own corn, to sell his own beasts, to give his
own daughter in marriage, nor to do many other things without
his lord's permission "prayed and obtained". The lord's power
was about him on all sides: not only did he fear the occasional
visit of the steward—armed with powers of life and death as it
seemed—or the more frequent visits of the itinerant bailiff, whose
authoritative commands every one learnt to respect, but he also
came under the supervision of the local village officials—reeve,
messor, beadle, etc. All these were constantly influencing his
actions, and to some extent infringing on his freedom. If we
look at some of the ways in which the peasants were controlled
we shall quickly realise why they sought so passionately and
constantly to buy their freedom.
Let us start with the village mill. We may safely assume that
every village (and almost every manor) had one or more mills
where all kinds of grain could be ground,1 unless it were to the
lord's interest to concentrate the grinding at one mill and thus to
save working costs. These mills were either the property of the
lord, or had been so at some earlier date, until he found it worth
his while to accept a yearly rent for them, either from an indi-
vidual tenant, or less frequently from his men as a whole. Here,
as everywhere, we see the lord profiting from the needs of his
1 Both water-mills and windmills were to be found in medieval England.
The former were perhaps the more common throughout this period, for the
windmill was a comparatively late invention, and does not seem to have
appeared in Western Europe before the second half of the twelfth century.
Abbot Samson pulled down the molendinum ad ventum of poor deacon Herbert
in 1191, according to Jocelyn de Brakelond, and this is one of the earliest
records of a windmill (if not the earliest) known in England. (J. of Brakelond,
ed. Sir E. Clarke, 1907, p. 75.)