From this payment, and all that it implied, the
free tenants were exempt.
Predial services, on the other hand, might be rendered as well by free
tenants as by villeins. This is shown by an entry in Domesday:
"De hac terra [Longedune] tempore Regis Edwardi tenebant ix liberi
homines xviii hidas et secabant uno die in pratis domini sui et
faciebant servitium sicut eis precipiebatur."
Much would depend on the capital possessed by the free tenant, who might
elect to make good any deficiency by corporal labour. The villein had no
capital, and was simply an instrument, like the cattle of which he had
charge, in the working of the estate. He was bound to the soil with
which all his interests were linked; and he was regarded in the light of
an investment, in which the lord had a perpetual stake. It was the lord
who furnished him with the means of gaining a livelihood, and, in return
for this accommodation, the lord demanded from him, and his children
after him, lifelong service.
From the "Rectitudines Singularum Personarum," an eleventh-century
document, we learn that the _cotsetle_, for his holding of about five
acres, was required to labour for his lord on one day a week all through
the year,[17] and this was known as _week-work_. He had also to give
what was called _boon-work_--namely, three days a week in harvest.
Another type of unfree tenant was the _gebur_, who held a yardland of
some thirty or forty acres, which, upon his entrance, was stocked with
two oxen, one cow, six sheep, tools and household utensils.
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