284 THE ROAD TO FREEDOM
found when he approached his lord. Indeed, but for the need of
money and the changing conditions in England as the centuries
wore on, the serf might long have continued to desire freedom
without more than a few of his number ever gaining it. But the
growing luxury of the aristocracy and their retainers, the Royal
exactions for personal and general purposes, the wars at home
and overseas, and the constant difficulty of all medieval landlords
in finding ready money all helped the serf. We frequently find
lords entering into agreements with their serfs which relieve
them of all their servile duties for an annual cash payment. By
this means villages won for themselves what practically amounted
to emancipation; for, although the lord sometimes reserved cer-
tain services, as at South Biddock in 1183, where the serfs have
to find 160 men to reap in autumn and 36 carts to carry the corn
to Houghton, yet otherwise they are their own masters, when
once the yearly rent is paid.1 In the same way, the register of the
Priory of St Mary Worcester shows that by the mid-thirteenth
century the serfs on many of the manors had bought off a great
deal of their services and payments by contributing a lump sum
annually.2 At Carthorpe in Yorkshire an inquisition of 1245
tells us that the villeins did no work but had farmed the manor
from the lord for a fixed rent.3 Again a document of about 1270
says there are no serfs on the lands of John FitzWarin because
the heir's father sold to them all his villein rights,* and so on.5 No
doubt it was of mutual advantage to the parties to make such
arrangements as these, and we cannot but believe that these
changes encouraged men on neighbouring manors to strive for
like privileges as they observed what freedom or quasi-freedom
others had won. Occasionally it so happened that a body of serfs
would be given their freedom outright, as in the mid-thirteenth
century, when Herbert de Chaury freed fifteen men and women,
for which they paid one mark of silver and submitted to an annual
increase of fourteen pence in their rents, and promised to plough
atthree fixed seasonsfor one day, so long as they had plough teams
1 JBoldon Book (Surtees Soc.), 47.
a Wore. Priory Reg. xxm and passim. Cf. Gloue. Cart, ni, 37.
8 Yorks Inquis. I, 3; and cf. Cal. Inquis. Misc. I, Nos. 43, 60, 846.
1 Cal. Inquis < Misc. I, No. 416.
B For other examples, see Reg. T. de Cantilupe, 22; E.H.R. xv, 35; Yorks
Inqms. i, 216; Cal. Pat. Rolls^ 6 Ed. Ill, 2; Econ. Docs. (Tawney), 81-3.