OTHER FORMS OF OPPRESSION 137
mentioned, and among these is the oven. The trouble which
might arise over this is thus stated:
It fell out that on Monday next after S. Andrew that M. wife of the
hayward and E. wife of a neighbour were baking at an oven, to wit
that of N., and a dispute arose between them about the loss of a loaf
taken from the oven, and the said old crones took to their fists and
each other's hair and raised the hue; and their husbands hearing this
ran up and made a great rout. Therefore by award of the court the
said women who made the rout and raised the hue are in mercy.
And so on with other cases as they arise.1
Both mill and oven, then, were common sights in the medieval
village and we may perhaps sum up this section of our enquiry
with Champion's verdict:
What rendered these monopolies so odious was not so much the
fixed tariff or the prohibition against crushing one's own grain with a
hand-mill or between two stones, and baking this meal at home, as the
compulsion to carry the corn for long distances, over abominable
roads, and then waiting two or even three days at the door of a mill
where the pool had run dry; or, again, of accepting ill-ground meal,
burned or half-baked bread, and of enduring all sorts of tricks and
vexations from the millers or bakers.2
Let us turn from these obligations of mill and oven to other
forms of oppression. In doing so we shall necessarily ignore a
number of burdens, similar to those already described, which
weighed upon the peasant. As we have already noted he could
not indulge in many of the most common actions without first
obtaining his lord's leave, and this was usually given only as the
result of a money payment. The fish in the rivers and the game in
the woods were not at his disposal; the doves, which ravaged his
crops and lived safely in the great dovecot at the manor house,
were things he might not touch. On all sides he saw rude plenty
—yet on all sides the lord's No was generally overwhelming.
It required famine or undue oppression to cause the ordinary
peasant to cry out with John Ball, "We are men formed in
Christ's likeness, and they treat us like beasts."
1 Selden Soc. rv, 73-
2 Champion, La France d'aprts les cakiers de 1789, 139, 142, quoted by
Coulton, Med. Village^ 58.