SERVICE AS REEVE 169
this service from his men. His free tenants were insistent on their
exemption from serving as reeve, and rightly, for if a man could
be proved to have served as reeve, the lawyers thought them-
selves well on the way to proving him to be a serf. Self-interest
and self-respect were at the back of the free man's claim for
exemption, so that the free men of Bisley in Gloucestershire, on
being ordered by the steward to elect a reeve, protested that "by
ancient custom the reeve must be of villein blood",1 and that,
therefore, they were exempt. This was the general attitude of
free men throughout England, but, nevertheless, some lords
were insistent enough to force this service from their free men.2
This was extremely rare, however, and the luckless serfs had
to bear the burden among themselves, even though some of their
number were able to escape, for it generally happened that only
the larger holders in the village were liable for this duty. This
was but natural, for it would not have been easy for the peasant
with only his cot and close to have been set above another man
who held perhaps 30, perhaps 60 acres, and who probably gave
employment to the cottar from time to time. Hence, as Miss
Neilson has shown at Sutton in Warwickshire, "the men of the
bondage with one virgate were liable to be officers of the King or
lord, as was pleasing; but men with half a virgate, or a nocata,
or a cottage, were liable only to be beadles or tithing-men". She
quotes also further examples from various parts of England in
confirmation of this.8
The reeve was chosen once a year, generally at Michaelmas.
An examination of the methods adopted for his election reveals
to us such diversity of practice as we should expect. Autocratic
selection by the lord; preliminary selection by the peasants and
final selection by the lord; democratic election by the peasants:
all these methods were in use on various manors and at
various times. There seems to have been a general movement
from autocratic selection by the lord to democratic election by
the peasants, but we must beware of introducing order where all
is disorder. Certainly, some of our earliest existing records show
the lord exercising his absolute right to elect whomsoever he
1 V.C.H. Glos. n, 136.
2 Gale, Honour of Richmond, 66; Davenport, op. cit. 51,
3 Oust. Rents, 101, 102.