The Abbey's Peasants and Its Use of Their Resources

The basic pattern of peasant labor services rendered on the estate was already in place in the early twelfth century.^[57] Topographical studies of Northamptonshire charters show that the headlands and furrows of field systems had extended to parish boundaries by the twelfth century.^[58] The agrarian landscape had taken on its medieval shape, and lordship had staked its claims to human resources within this developed landscape. In what ways had labor services become part of the political ecology of the estate of Peterborough Abbey?

Peasants owed week work and ploughing services to the Abbey. Ploughing services were a greater capital investment for the peasant, since they required not only their time but their ploughs and plough animals. The survey of 1125 defines ploughing services differently on different manors of the estate. On some manors ploughs of the village appeared for the Abbey a specified number of times for winter, spring, summer, and fallow ploughings; or the ploughs had to plough so many acres. Sometimes these types of ploughing services were combined on manors.

When ploughing services were expressed in acres, a virgater commonly had to plough one acre. At Eye and Boroughbury, tenants had to plough two acres and four acres respectively. The Abbot also reserved the right to call for ploughing boons (precaria ), or days where all ploughs were expected to work for him, at his call. The number of precaria owed to the lord varied from manor to manor.

A specific example best illustrates how the Abbey matched human resources with the requirements of managing its arable resources. On the manor of Kettering, the manor with the most peasant ploughs in 1125, and a heavy burden of three days of week work, the Abbey expected twenty-two village ploughs to plough four acres (1.6 ha)

each for summer sowing. This service amounted to ploughing 88 acres (35.6 ha). The Abbey also required its peasants at Kettering to plough thrice in winter, thrice at the summer sowing, and thrice in the summer. Estimating the amount ploughed per day in the heavier winter and spring ploughing at 3.5 rods, the villagers cultivated then 115.5 acres (46.7 ha).^[59] Thus, in total, the Abbey had 225.5 acres (91.3 ha) of demesne ploughed by its peasants at Kettering. This figure comes reasonably close to the sown area of the Kettering demesne over the period 1280-1310 when the Abbey planted a mean acreage of 271 acres (109.7 ha) in a winter-spring rotation of rye and oats.

The Abbey could convert its labor resources into cash as a way of collecting them. The patterns of commutation reflect both management decisions and differences in wealth and demand for labor on individual manors. On those manors where the Abbey had already commuted much peasant labor for cash payments, peasants worked only one or two times a week, except during the busy days of August, and they rarely ploughed. The Abbey charged higher rents per virgate on such manors: Thurbly, 4.12s .; Collingham, 4.00s .; Scotter, 3.18s .; and Fiskerton, 2.67s . As early as the turn of the twelfth century the Abbey decided that cash commutation was cheaper than surveillance when considerable distances were involved. The manors of Scotter (68 miles—110 km), Collingham (49 miles—79 km), and Fiskerton (45 miles—73 km) were each not less than forty-five miles (73 km) distant from the Abbey. Thurlby, located only thirteen miles from the Abbey, is an exception to this rule; but the Abbey viewed Thurlby as part of its staging system to the north and treated it as a northern manor.

These four manors do not exhaust the list of manors with weekly labor services of less than three days. Three other manors, Tinwell, Great Easton, and Fletton, also fell into this category. Peasants on these manors paid middle-range rents of 1.21s ., 0.83s ., and 0.71s . respectively. In addition to two days of week work, peasants at Tinwell owed light ploughing services of one acre (.40 ha) per virgate. Here soil conditions influenced the calculation for commuting labor services. Tinwell was located on lighter soils of the Lincolnshire limestone, and the Abbey itself kept plough teams composed of only six oxen, instead of the normal complement of eight. The rent per virgate at Tinwell is probably lower, since there was less actual labor

in the arable sector to commute. Great Easton and Fletton provide an alternative picture of rent and labor services. Peasants owed light week work, but the Abbot still collected a form of ploughing service that was unique to these two manors. Peasants had to sow a portion of the area that they ploughed with their own seed. The cost of seed increased the cost of ploughing services for peasants and probably accounted for the lower rent per virgate on these two manors.

The remaining manors owed to the Abbey the heavy render of three days of week work. Rents varied from 2.13s ., per virgate to a low of .35s . The variation in rent on manors with three days of labor service may be explained by variations in wealth on the different manors and by differences in the additional labor extracted by the Abbot. For instance, Kettering, with the highest rent of 2.13s . for the manors with heavy week work, has every appearance of being one of the Abbey's wealthiest manors. The forty Kettering villeins are full virgaters, and they had the highest ratio of villeins to villein ploughs (1 : 0.55). Kettering villeins owed no labor services beside week work and ploughing services, according to the 1125 survey. Their high rent reflected their wealth and also masked commuted carrying services. Manors where peasants paid low rent per virgate, such as Glinton (0.35s .), owed heavy carrying services to the Abbey. Peasants at Glinton had to ferry the Abbot where he wished, and for every plough they had to carry three carriages of timber (lignum ) to Peterborough. They also dried two carriages of firewood and transported them to the Abbey. The Abbey collected carrying services from its nearby manors; therefore those rents were lower.

The pattern of labor services recorded in the 1125 survey highlights the Abbots's logic of resource use. By 1125 the Abbey had already established basic expectations for consuming labor services. Within these limits the Abbey could play off collecting them in cash or in actual service. The costs of supervision clearly bothered the Abbey. On those manors some distance to the north, it collected the labor services mostly in their cash equivalent. The Abbey could increase labor services further only by defining the amount of work to be accomplished within a unit of time—a Tayloresque piecework approach—or by defining the given units of time more closely, that is, that a day of work required service from a specified starting time to a specified stopping time.^[60] If the Abbey wished to increase its total units of labor service collected, it could do so only by increasing

human resources on the estate. The Abbey's growing need to consume labor would, therefore, affect the demography of its peasantry.