The English Village Explained: Britain’s Living History Read Online Free PDF Page A

described. Within this band were specialist workers like the blacksmith, the reeve (who was responsible for collecting rent), and even the priest of a poorer parish. At the bottom were cottars, who were judged on their smallholding of land or worst of all, if they tenanted land from one of their neighbours rather than the lord. This group could include those who did the ploughing and herding on the demesne land or looked after the lord’s wood and grain.
    The village as a community would agree at regular meetings which crops should be grown in which field and at what time; the inevitable disagreements and disputes would be heard at the Manor Court and some of the records (or court rolls) still exist. It would also be part of a hundred or wapentake, a subdivision of a shire, which was taking shape in the early 11th century. Each hundred would have its own court where the freemen from the villages would meet to resolve local disputes and matters of law and order. In 1279, Edward I ordered a survey of villages to ascertain who held which land within each hundred. Known as the Hundred Rolls, it was more comprehensive than the Domesday Book but, unfortunately, the returns for only five counties survive.

    FIG 2.10 EXEMPLAR VILLAGE c.1200: In our first trip to this imaginary village, new houses are being built in the foreground around a green which will hold regular markets, a development planned by the lord of the manor whose house stands in the background next to the church his predecessors had erected to serve the old estate. This village will continue to grow through the next century. However, the population was unlikely to foresee the cracks that were already appearing in the rapidly overstretched agricultural system, the approaching storm clouds that would savagely open them up and the plague that would decimate their families. The story of these events and the resulting decline of villages like this will unfold in the next chapter .

C HAPTER 3
Declining Fortunes
    The Later Middle Ages
     
      1300–1550  

    FIG 3.1: The later Middle Ages were a time of great contrasts, as in this view with larger houses and a new tower on the church paid for by the successful members of the community but with abandoned and rundown plots in the foreground. What were the events that caused this and how did it shape villages during this period?
    T he storm clouds which were gathering finally broke over England in the early 14th century. Firstly there was a climatic downturn, often referred to as the Little Ice Age, which was to last until the 17th century, producing bitter, cold winters and wet, ruinous summers.Harvests were poor and widespread famine affected the country, particularly between 1315 and 1317. Yet worse was to come as rats from Asia which carried fleas infected with bubonic plague spread the disease across Europe, entering England from the south coast in the summer of 1348. By December of the following year it is estimated to have claimed the lives of between a third and a half of the population. It did not matter if you were rich or poor, the appearance of small black buboes on your body (hence the ‘Black Death’, the common name for this first outbreak) meant you probably had only days to live. The plague revisited these shores numerous times over the following three centuries, and the population did not begin to grow again until the 1500s. The fear and foreboding the plague created can be seen in the monuments, tombs and church carvings of the period.

    FIG 3.2 ASHWELL CHURCH, HERTS: Incredibly, this graffiti carved into the soft stone on the inside of the church tower was scrawled in the aftermath of the Black Death. Part of the Latin text shown here translates as ‘… pitiable fierce violent (plague departed)’ and ‘… a wretched populace survives to witness…’, relating to the plague and the survivors witnessing a terrible storm which struck in 1361 .
The countryside
    The worsening climate in the early 14th