240 EVERYDAY LIFE
0-147 per cent. Now if we imagine the average English village
to have been about 300 souls in number (i.e. some 60 families)
the rate of increase in the whole village was only 0-441 each
year. In other words the loss by death was so severe that it took
over two years to add one new individual to such a village
community.
From this it is easy to see how static conditions were in the
village, and what a limited number of young people there were
in any of them at any given time, and how limited the potential
list of marriageable men and women must have been. This was
by no means the only difficulty which faced the serf. The words
of Justice Belknap, in 1342, may serve to remind us of the con-
dition in which the vast majority of peasants found themselves
at this time and for some centuries earlier. "There is no service
in the world", he said, "which so quickly proves a man to be a
villain as making a fine for marriage."1 This fine went by the
name of "merchet", and Vinogradoff and others—notably L. O.
Pike—have discussed fully the origin of the term and the wide-
spread incidence of this service.2 We need not labour this fur-
ther, but may usefully note how very unevenly and with what
differing conditions "merchet" was enforced on various manors.
The serf being (in legal theory) a possession of the lord it
followed that all he possessed was also his lord's, and his off-
spring, in common with the offspring of his horses and cattle,
were both designated by the one word (sequela), and were looked
on as possessions. Hence they were all of some value to the lord,
and he often refused to allow man or woman (especially the
latter) to make any important decisions which might remove
them from his power without first obtaining (by payment in
general) his sanction.
As a preliminary we may usefully bear in mind that the sale of
marriage rights came to cover many possibilities in the course of
time. Merchet, strictly speaking, was a fine paid by a serf for the
marriage of a daughter within the manor. It was rapidly made
to cover the fine paid for such a marriage, either within or
without the manor, and also frequently was so stretched as to
include sons as well as daughters.
1 Y.B. 15 Ed. Ill (R.S.), xiii.
* Villainage, 153-6; YJ3. 15 Ed. Ill, xiv-xliiL