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A Peasant Lessee of Seigniorial Cattle, 1359

Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This note draws attention to an entry in the unpublished manorial court roll of Great Waltham (Essex) for 1359, now held by The National Archives UK. This names Ralph Warenger as the lessee of a herd of cattle formerly managed by his lord’s administration. The first two paragraphs supply historical context for this rare piece of information. The leasing agreement itself is then outlined, before more information on Warenger is provided. It is suggested that this record illustrates the ways in which peasant farmers in the second half of the fourteenth century took advantage of new opportunities for extensive participation in a commercialized rural economy. The seigniorial sector accounted for around a quarter of all agricultural land in England c. 1300.1 At the turn of the fourteenth century, most landlords managed their estates directly. This meant that their administrations used customary and/or hired labour to farm the manorial demesne, with the produce either used to supply the lord’s household or sold at market. After the Black Death (1348–9), and especially from c.1375, it became more common for lords to abandon direct cultivation and instead lease out demesne land or whole manors to peasant farmers. By the mid-fifteenth century, the direct management of aristocratic estates had been almost wholly abandoned. This shift to peasant rentier agriculture changed who farmed some of the most productive land in England, how this land was farmed, and who accrued the direct profits of commercial farming.2 After 1350, the cultivation of cattle offered substantial returns as demand for dairy products rose. At the same time, however, cattle husbandry involved substantial costs because it required significant capital investment and expenditure on labour, often live-in female servants, which became more expensive in real terms after the Black Death. Increasingly, lords therefore started to lease out herds of cows at a set rate per head of cattle, rather than managing herds directly.3 These leasing arrangements generally set out that the herd would continue to be grazed on demesne pastures but that the lessee would be responsible for calving, milking, cheese making, and butter making. This formed part of the more general shift away from direct aristocratic management. Although the rate at which cows were leased was often high (usually between three shillings and seven shillings per cow), lessees clearly hoped to be able to make a profit nonetheless by employing intensive management techniques to maximize returns from the sale of produce at market. Peasant agriculture had long been characterized by relatively intensive cattle husbandry and it has been calculated that the non-demesne peasant sector kept around twice as many cattle per acre as the demesne sector.4 It has generally been assumed that many of the lessees who took on the management of herds must have been peasants and there that, as B.M.S. Campbell put it, ‘Dairying thus became a “peasant” rather than seigniorial activity’.5 Information on the leasing of herds is usually given in accounts compiled annually by the lord’s administration. It is, however, extremely rare that accounts dating to the second half of the fourteenth century named the lessees who took on the day-to-day management of herds.6 Very unusually, a lease which did name the lessee was recorded on the manorial court roll (rather than in an account) of Great Waltham (Essex), a manor held by Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford and Essex, in September 1359.7 The record (written in Latin) is largely, although not wholly, legible. It set out an agreement made between John de Chersel, the earl’s constable of Pleshy Castle (the administrative centre of the Bohun estates in Essex) and Ralph Warenger. Acting on behalf of his lord, the constable demised (demisit) thirty-six cows (vaccas) from the lord’s manor of Great Waltham to Warenger from Michaelmas (29 September) 1359 in return for an annual rent of £10 16 s. payable in equal portions at the Feast of St John the Baptist (24 June) and Michaelmas (29 September). As set out in the agreement itself, this equated to 6 s. per head of cattle. The duration of this arrangement is not easily legible, but it was probably a ten-year lease. The herd was to be kept on the area of demesne pasture known as Absol Park, in the north of the manor of Great Waltham. Ralph Warenger was a peasant of Great Waltham. He was active in the local market for unfree land. In May 1352, Warenger and his wife, Alice, acquired a smallholding with one and one-quarter acres of land to hold on servile terms for them and their brood (sequela).8 In September 1356, they acquired an acre of unfree land and a small parcel of meadow in Great Waltham from John Havekyn to hold in return for customary services.9 On Christmas Day 1356, Ralph and Alice received another small plot of land on unfree terms.10 The fact that Warenger was apparently a serf did not prevent him from acquiring land on free terms too. Again in September 1356, Warenger was required to exhibit a charter to allow him to hold a messuage (a house with a small plot of land) and four small parcels of free land which he had acquired from Havekyn.11 A year later, Ralph exhibited another charter for six acres of free land he had received from Salkmus Laurence.12 In 1358, he agreed to render suit of court at meetings of the lord’s court for all the tenements he had acquired from Simon Steward.13 In 1358, he purchased six acres of land, one acre of meadow, and a rent of eight pence from John and Matilda Parker.14 Like many of his contemporaries, Ralph Warenger therefore expanded his holdings by taking advantage of the sudden availability of cheaper land which characterized the land market in the 1350s and 1360s. The leasing agreement of 1359 suggests that Warenger also sought to profit from commercial livestock husbandry. A herd of thirty-six cows was a substantial enterprise. Warenger would probably have needed to hire labour to help with the milking alone, which would have taken some fifteen hours a day (reckoned at twenty-five minutes per milking and one milking per day). Nor did cattle comprise the limit of Warenger’s pastoral farming activity. Warenger owned pigs: in September 1358, he was amerced 6 pence for allowing them to enter the lord’s park.15 Around the same time that he undertook to lease the lord’s cattle, Warenger was also found to have let a flock of 240 sheep stray onto the lord’s oats.16 This was a large flock by peasant standards and was undoubtedly a commercial enterprise geared towards the production of cheese and wool for sale.17 This rare instance of a peasant being named as the lessee of a demesne dairy herd provides some direct evidence in support of the assumption that commercial dairying became an enterprise of the peasanty in the late fourteenth century. Furthermore, when set within evidence for Ralph Warenger’s activity in the land market and in other areas of pastoral production, this court roll entry also allows Warenger to be seen as emblematic of the kind of intensive, commercialized peasant enterprise characteristic of late medieval England. Funding support for this article was provided by The Leverhulme Trust (ECF-2020-148).
DOI: 10.1093/notesj/gjae110
Author: Matt Raven
Language: English
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,461
OpenAlex ID: W4402955670
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