186 MANORIAL ADMINISTRATION
stuff, with worn-out fingers and thick with muck. This man bemired
himself in the mud almost to the ancle, and drove four heifers before
him that had become feeble, so that men might count their every rib
so "sorry looking they were".
His wife walked beside him with a long goad in a shortened cote-
hardy looped up full high and wrapped in a winnowing-sheet to protect
her from the weather. She went barefoot on the ice so that the blood
flowed. And at the end of the row lay a little crumb-bowl, and therein
a little child covered with rags, and two two-year olds were on the other
side, and they all sang one song that was pitiful to hear: they all cried
the same cry—a miserable note. The poor man sighed sorely, and said
"Children be still!"1
With the cry of these children in our ears we may conclude
our survey of the manorial servants. They have comparatively
little need of our pity: here and there a harsh master may have
driven them hard, or fed them with sheep dead from the murrain
and hastily salted down for their use,2 but their lot in general
compared very favourably with all but the aristocracy of the
manorial peasantry. They had what few men of their class had—
comparatively little anxiety as to how they were to live from one
year's end to another. The great court of the manor house
sheltered them, and the lord's officials provided them with food
and drink, and enough spending silver to make them popular
at the village ale-house. Medieval life could offer little more to
men of villein stock who were "born in the yoke of servitude".
Mention has been made from time to time of the manorial
accounts, and these must now be considered. They were
generally returned by the reeve and it is possible that no part of
his duties caused him more trouble than did the compilation of
the annual accounts. The formidable nature of these is apparent
as soon as we glance at them, for they usually state in the
minutest detail every item of the manorial income and expendi-
ture. It is not easy to explain how the unlettered reeve managed
to have all this information available. He relied, no doubt,
mainly on tallies and notches on barn-posts, aided by a cultivated
memory. There are many living who can recall remarkable in-
stances of the ability of old shepherds and wagoners to account
for every detail of the property under their charge, although they
relied solely on their memories. I am told that in the early
1 Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, ed. Skeat (E.E.T.S.), i?>1. 420.
* Walter of Henley, 31; Fletat 167.