I have already spoken of the curious fact that the village is legally recognised as a unit, separated from the manor although existing within it. When the reeve and the four men attend the sheriff's tourn or the eyre, they do not represent the lord only, but also the village community. Part of their expenses are borne by the lord and part by their fellow villagers.(10*) The documents tell us of craftsmen who have to work for the village as well as for the lord.(11*) On a parallel with services due to the landowner, we find sometimes kindred services reserved for the village community.(12*) If a person has been guilty of misdemeanours and is subjected to a special supervision, this supervision applies to his conduct in regard both to the lord and to the fellow villagers.(13*) No doubt the relations of the village to its lord are much more fully described in the documents than the internal arrangement of the community, but this could not be otherwise in surveys compiled for the use of lords and stewards. Even the chance indications we gather as to these internal arrangements are sufficient to give an insight into the powerful ties of the village community.
Indeed, the rural settlement appears in our records as a 'juridical person.' The Court Rolls of Brightwaltham, edited for the Selden Society by Mr Maitland, give a most beautiful example of this. The village of Brightwaltham enters into a formal agreement with the lord of the manor as to some commons. it surrenders its rights to the lord in regard to the wood of Hemele, and gets rid in return of the rights claimed by the lord in Estfield and in a wood called Trendale.(14*) Nothing can be more explicit: the village acts as an organised community; it evidently has free disposition as to rights connected with the soil; it disposes of these rights not only independently of the lord, but in an exchange to which he appears as a party. We see no traces of the rightless condition of villains which is supposed to be their legal lot, and a powerful community is recognised by the lord in a form which bears all the traits of legal definition. in the same way the annals of Dunstable speak of the seisin of the township of Toddington,(15*) and of a feoffment made by them on behalf of the lord.
I have only to say in addition to this summing up of the subject, that the quasi-legal standing of the villains in regard to the lord appears with special clearness when they stand arrayed against him as a group and not as single individuals. We could guess as much on general grounds, but the self-dependent position assumed by the 'communitas villanorum' of Brightwaltham is the more interesting, that it finds expression in a formal and recorded agreement.
We catch a glimpse of the same phenomenon from yet another point of view. It is quite common to find entire estates let to farm to the rural community settled upon them.(16*) In such cases the mediation of the bailiff might be dispensed with; the village entered into a direct agreement with the lord or his chief steward and undertook a certain set of services and payments, or promised to give a round sum. Such an arrangement was profitable to both parties. The villains were willing to pay dearly in order to free themselves from the bailiff's interference with their affairs; the landowner got rid of a numerous and inconvenient staff of stewards and servants; the rural life was organised on the basis of self-government with a very slight control on the part of the lord. Such agreements concern the general management of manors as well as the letting of domain land or of particular plots and rights.(17*) Of course there was this great disadvantage for the lord, that the tie between him and his subjects was very much loosened by such arrangements, and sometimes he had to complain that the conditions under which the land was held were materially disturbed under the farmership of the village. It is certain, that in a general way this mode of administration led to a gradual improvement in the social status of the peasantry.
One great drawback of investigations into the history of medieval institutions consists in the very incomplete manner in which the subject is usually reflected in the documents. We have to pick up bits of evidence as to very important questions in the midst of a vast mass of uninteresting material, and sometimes whole sides of the subject are left in the shade, not by the fault of the inquirer, but in consequence of disappointing gaps in the contemporary records. Even conveyancing entries, surrenders, admittances, are of rare occurrence on some of the more ancient rolls, and the probable reason is, that they were not thought worthy of enrolment.(18*) As for particulars of husbandry they are almost entirely absent from the medieval documents, and it is only on the records of the sixteenth and yet later centuries that we have to rely when we look for some direct evidence of the fact that the manorial communities had to deal with such questions.(19*)And so our knowledge of these institutions must be based largely on inference. But even granting all these imperfections of the material, it must be allowed that the one side of manorial life which is well reflected in the documents -- the juridical organisation of the manor -- affords very interesting clues towards an understanding of the system and of its origins.
Let us repeat again, that the management of the manor is by no means dependent on capricious and one-sided expressions of the lord's will. On the contrary, every known act of its life is connected with collegiate decisions. Notwithstanding the absolute character of the lord with regard to his villains taken separately, he is in truth but the centre of a community represented by meetings or courts. Not only the free, but also the servile tenantry are ruled in accordance with the views and customs of a congregation of the tenants in their divers classes.
