How can we account for the occurrence of regular 'shareholding' among the freeholders? Two possibilities have to be considered: the free character of the tenements may be newly acquired and the 'shareholding' may be a relic of a servile past;or, on the other hand, the freehold character of the tenements may be coeval with the 'shareholding,' and in this latter case we shall have to admit the existence of freeholds which from of old have formed an element in the village community. In the first of these cases again we shall have to distinguish between two suppositions: -- Servile tenements have become free; this may be due either to some general measure of enfranchisement, a lord having preferred to take money rents in lieu of the old labour services, and these money rents being the modern equivalent for those old services, or else to particular and occasional feoffments made in favour of those who, for one reason or another, have earned some benefit at the lord's hand. To put it shortly, we may explain the phenomenon either by a process of commutation such as that which turned 'workland' into 'molland,'
or by special privileges which have exempted certain shares in the land from a general scheme of villainage; or, lastly, by the existence of freeholds as normal factors in the ancient village community.
Let us test these various suppositions by the facts recorded in our surveys. At first sight it may seem possible to account for the freehold virgates by reference to the process which converted 'workland' into 'molland.' We have seen above that if a lord began to demand money instead of work, the result might, in some cases, be the evolution of new tenures which gradually lost their villain character and became recognised as genuine freeholds. And no doubt one considerable class of cases can be explained by this process. But a great many instances seem to call for some other explanation. To begin with, the mere acceptance of rent in lieu of labour did not make the tenement a freehold; servile tenements were frequently put ad censum,(70*)and it seems difficult to believe that many lords allowed a commutation of labour for rent to have the effect of turning villainage into freehold. Another difficulty is found on the opposite side. What force kept the shares together when they had become free? Why did they not accumulate and disperse according to the chances of free development? It may be thought that custom, and express conditions of feoffment, must have acted against disruption. I do not deny the possibility, but I say that it is not easy to explain the very widely diffused phenomenon of free shareholding by a commutation which tended to break up the shares and to make them useless for the purposes of assessment.
Still I grant that these considerations, though they should have some weight, are not decisive, and I insist chiefly on the following argument.
The peculiar trait which distinguishes 'molland' is the transition from labour service to money rent, and the rent is undoubtedly considered as an equivalent for the right to labour services which the lord abandons. It must be admitted that in some cases the lord may have taken less than the real equivalent in order to get such a convenient commodity as money, or because for some reason or another he was in need of current coin. Still I am not afraid to say that, in a general way, commutation supposes an exchange against an equivalent. Indeed the demand for money rents was considered rather as increasing than as decreasing the burden incumbent on the peasantry.(71*) Now, although it would be preposterous to try and make out in every single case whether the rent of the free virgate is an adequate equivalent for villain services or not, there is a very sufficient number of instances in which a rough reckoning may be made without fear of going much astray.(72*) And if we attempt such a reckoning we shall be struck by the number of cases in which the rent of the free virgate falls considerably short of what it yielded by the virgate of the villain. We have seen that in Ravenston, Bedfordshire, the villain service is valued at eight shillings per virgate, and that the free assessment amounts only to four shillings. In Thriplow, Cambridgeshire, the villains perform labour duties valued at 9s. 4d. per bovate, the freeholders are assessed variously; but there is a certain number among them which forms, as it were, the stock of that class, and their average rent is 5s. 6d. per bovate.(73*) In Tyringham, Buckinghamshire, the villain holding is computed at six acres and one rood, and its service at five shillings; the free virgates have a like number of acres and pay various rents, but almost without exception less than the villains.(74*) In Croxton, Cambridgeshire, there are customers with twenty acres, and others with ten acres; the first have to pay ten shillings and to assist at four boonworks. The free holders are possessed of plots of irregular size, and their rent is also irregular; but on the average much lower than that of the customers.(75*) Let it be noted that the customary tenants have commuted their labour services into money payments, and. in fact, they are to be considered as molmen in the first stage of development. Still, their payments are computed on a different scale from those of the free.
