Exmoor /
LATE ANGLO-SAXON SOCIETY
Anglo-Saxon society was hierarchical and was also divided between free and unfree, and at least in the early period, between English and British. The British were treated as of less value than the English. A similar distinction was made after the Norman Conquest but this time it was the English who were regarded as inferior to the Normans.
THEGNS
In the late Anglo-Saxon period the highest rank of freemen was the thane or thegn. Originally royal servants who were granted estates by the king, often for service in battle, these were lords or members of a lord’s family. Traditionally they were supposed to hold at least 5 hides of land. They provide the knights needed to fight for the king as they could afford to spend time away from their estates. The fyrd (militia) of freemen would be summoned in an emergency, for example to repel the Danes, but could not be expected to spend too long away from their farms. We know little or nothing about the thegns of southern Exmoor. Many, such as the thirteen whose estates at Dulverton had been taken by the king, are unnamed in the Domesday survey. Apart from the foresters discussed above there were lords like Alnoth or Ednoth the Constable, who held one of the Anstey manors. He was a great landowner who was killed fighting against the sons of earl Harold c. 1068. His Devon estates passed to Hugh de Avranches, the king’s nephew. Ulf who retained his estate at Hawkwell in Dulverton, where he probably lived, may have been the Ulf whose estates elsewhere in Somerset were divided between Roger de Courcelles and William de Mohun. Ordwulf of Brushford may be the man who owned manors in Devon several of which, like Brushford, passed to the Count of Mortain, half brother of William I.
The lack of surnames or patronymics makes it difficult to distinguish between people with the same given name. Men like Aiulf at Exford or Wulfwen at Molland had namesakes with estates elsewhere. Most thegns were deposed as lords after 1066 and their whereabouts are unknown. A few appear to have been granted land elsewhere. Most probably became tenants of the new owners and held their farms of a new lord, English or Norman, who in turn held of a Norman overlord. Not all the English lost their estates after 1066. Ulf mentioned above held some of his land jointly with another Englishman Wulfmer. A lady called Aeleva or Aethelgifu and a man named Ednoth held estates in Exford under Roger de Courcelles. Ansger held estates at Anstey. Men like Roger de Courcelles who acquired many manors in Exford and Dulverton would have needed people to manage them. These officers and undertenants would almost certainly have been English but their names are unrecorded. As a class the thegns disappeared after the Norman Conquest.
FREEHOLDERS
The geneat or sokeman was a freeholder, a farmer who held his land freely and owed no labour services. Numbers of freeholders and the extent of their estates in the 11th century are unknown. They were often overlooked in the Domesday survey because their holdings added no taxable value to the local manor. Bicca, Brant, Hringa, Ealhmund, and Bucca who gave their names to Bickingcott and Praunsley in Twitchen, Ringcombe in West Anstey, and Almsworthy and Buckworthy in Exford may have been freeholders who carved out new farms. Many of those holdings, like Bickingcott, remained freeholds.[1]
VILLEINS
The gebur, later known as the villein, villan or villager, was a freeman but not a freeholder. He held his farm in return for services and so was tied to the land. If he went away and left his service unperformed he would forfeit his farm. In the Domesday survey villeins make up about half the recorded population and were the larger tenant farmers on the manor. Under the later manorial system the status of the villein declined as the burden of labour services became more onerous and he could lose his legal rights if he could not prove that he was a freeman. Tenants on former the royal estates, known as ‘ancient demesne’, which covered most of southern Exmoor, should not have been required to prove their free status. By the end of the Middle Ages the term villein was used to describe an unfree tenant, sometimes known as a neif.
BORDARS
The holding of a cotsetla tenant, also known as a bordar or smallholder, might be insufficient to keep his family. He would have supplemented his income by working as a part-time wage labourer for others. Bordars comprised about a third of the population of southern Exmoor in 1086. In France they were unfree but in England they were free. Their cottages might be clustered near the manor house or peasant farmsteads. In 1496 ‘bordland’ was recorded near Lyshwell by Molland Common, possibly settled by bordars.[2] It is not clear why there were more bordars than villeins on estates in Withypool and Exford unless they were employed as forest workers. The foresters would have had woodsmen, herdsmen, and huntsmen who would have needed some land to support themselves and their families.
Bordars may have included craftspeople, rarely mentioned in the Domesday survey. Smiths, carpenter, masons, shoemakers, and others would have needed a smallholding. The only specialist occupation recorded in southern Exmoor was the pigman at Anstey but in North Molton manor, which also included part of Twitchen parish, there were 4 ironworkers and 15 pigmen.
SERFS
Roman estates had slaves who may have remained unfree in post-Roman British society. Slaves were an important group in the Anglo-Saxon period. They were not only labourers but also house and personal servants. A criminal, a family that could not pay compensation it owed for a wrong to another family, a pauper, or a captive in war might be enslaved for a time or until ‘manumitted’ or set free. Many Anglo-Saxon slaves were probably Britons taken captive during periods of invasion and expansion. The word walh (Briton) was sometimes used as a synonym for slave. Slaves had some rights but could be bought and sold with their families and no compensation was payable to a slave’s family if he was killed. It was probably mainly due to the fact that the child of unfree parents was born unfree that a large class of serfs existed in the late 11th century, mainly agricultural workers and their families.
The Domesday survey tells us nothing about household servants and the layout of entries implies that the recorded serfs were all agricultural workers. The south-western counties had a high number of serfs, especially on the royal estates although small estates had none. Somerset manors usually had two for every demesne ploughteam as two men were needed to guide an 8-oxen team and its plough. In Devon and on royal estates there were usually three or four serfs to each plough on the demesne. The four Anstey manors, none of them large, totalled 19 serfs. The labour of the wives and children of serfs would also be owed to their lord. Tasks such as herding stock, making cheese, spinning and weaving, sewing, washing, and cleaning would probably be given to the members of servile families.[3]
After the Norman Conquest slavery declined in its Anglo-Saxon form and serfdom became confined to a section of the tenantry who were legally unfree but lived and worked on their own holdings. Landowners probably preferred to depend on the labour services of villein tenants and wage labour rather than keep serfs who had to be fed and housed with their families all the year round whether they worked or not.
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[1] TNA, SP 15/14/91; see R. Faith, ‘Cola’s tun: rural social structure in late Anglo-Saxon Devon’, in Evans, R, ed., Lordship and Learning: Studies in Memory of Trevor Aston (Woodbridge, 2004), 63—78, for a detailed analysis of Anglo-Saxon social structure in the South Hams of Devon.
[2] Lennard, R, Rural England 1086-1135 (Oxford, 1959), p. 342; R. Faith, R, The English Peasantry and the Growth of Lordship (London, 1997), pp. 70-4; Dyer, C, Making a living in the Middle Ages :the people of Britain, 850-1520 (2003), 38; DRO 248M M4 (Molland court rolls).
[3] Leahy, K, Anglo-Saxon Crafts (Stroud, 2003), 168-9; Dyer, Making a Living, 36.