第145章

One of two things, either the shares exist only as a survival of the servile arrangement out of which the free tenements may have grown, or else they exist primarily for the purpose not of assessing duties but of apportioning claims. In stating these possibilities I must repeat what I said before, that it would be quite wrong to bring all the observed phenomena under one head. Ido not intend in the least to deny that the freer play of economic and legal forces within the range of free ownership must have produced combinations infinitely more varying, irregular and complicated than those which are to be found in villainage. Alarge margin must be allowed for such modifications which dispersed and altered the duties that were originally proportioned to shares. But a few simple questions will serve to show that other elements must be brought into the reckoning. Why should the disruptive tendency operate so much more against proportionate assessment than against the distribution into shares itself; in other words, why are equal tenements so much commoner than equal rents? If shareholding and equal rents were indissolubly connected as the two sides of one thing, or even as cause and effect, why should one hold its ground when the other had disappeared, and how could the dependent element remain widely active when the principal one had lost its meaning? If the discrepancies between rent and shares had been casual, we might try to explain them entirely by later modifications. But these discrepancies are a standing feature of the surveys, and it seems to me that we can hardly escape the inference that shareholding has its raison d'etre quite apart from the duties owed to the lord, and in this case we have to look to the communal arrangement of proprietary rights for its explanation; it was a means of giving to every man his due. If this principle is granted, all the observable facts fall into their right places.

One can easily imagine how free holdings came to exist within the village community in spite of their loose connexion with the manor. In regard to duties, they were practically outside the community; not so as to proprietary rights and the agricultural arrangements proceeding from them, for example such arrangements as affected the rotation of crops, the use of commons and fallow pasture, the setting up of hedges, the repair of dykes, etc.

There is no real contradiction between the facts, that in relation to the lord every free shareholder was, as it were, bound by a separate and private agreement, while in relation to the village he had to conform to communal rule.

This last remark may require some further development. The striking differences between the duties of the several freeholders of one manor seem to show that these people were not enfeoffed by the lord at the same time and under the same conditions. If A is in every respect a fellow of B, and still has to pay twice as much as B, it is clear that his relation to the lord has been settled under different circumstances from those which governed the settlement of B's position. Now, from the point of view of later law this meant that the two freeholds were created each by a special feoffment. But this would be a very formal and inadequate way of considering the case. Very often the differences might be produced by subsequent arrangements which, though not giving rise to new title, destroyed the original uniformity of condition. Often again we may suspect that the relation between lord and tenant had its origin not really in a gift of land made by the former to the latter but in a submission made by the latter to the former. I make bold to prefer this view, chiefly on account of those trifling and indeed fictitious duties which are constantly found in the Surveys.(79*) They can only have one meaning -- that of 'recognitions'.(80*) Trifling in themselves, they establish the subordinate relation of one owner to the other; and although their imposition must be considered from the formal standpoint of feudal law as the result of a feoffment, it is clear that their real foundation must often have been a submission to patronage. The subject is a wide one and includes all kinds of free tenure, communal as well as other.

When a knight was enfeoffed by a monastery in consideration of some infinitesimal payment, there might be several reasons for such a transaction. The abbot may have thought it good policy to acquire the support of a considerable person, he may have been forced to give the land and only glad to obtain some recognition, however trifling, of the gift; or again, he may have made a beneficial feoffment in return for a sum of ready money paid by way of gersuma or fine, but he may also have extended his supremacy over a piece of land which did not belong to him originally at all. Even in feudal times this could be done by means of a fictitious lawsuit ending in 'a final concord'; or even simply by an instrument of quit claim and feoffment without any suit.(81*) At the time when feudalism was only settling itself, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, this must have been a common thing, even if we do not take into account the Saxon practice of 'commendation.' However this may be, the trifling duties imposed on freeholds lead to the inference that the agreement between lord and tenant had been made on the basis of the latter's independent right, and not on that of the lord's will and power. They testify to a subjection of free people and not to the liberation of serfs. And as they are found constantly allied with shareholding, we have to say that they imply manorial relations superimposed on a community which, if not entirely free, contained free elements within it. The manorial duties are more varied and capricious than are the shares just because they are a later growth.