like those of the chief manse, only poorer and made of wood, with ploughland and a meadow and perhaps a little piece of vineyard attached to it.  In return for these holdings the owner or joint owners of every manse had to do work on the land of the chief manse for about three days in the week.  The steward’s chief business was to see that they did their work properly, and from every one he had the right to demand two kinds of labour.  The first was field work:  every year each man was bound to do a fixed amount of ploughing on the domain land (as it was called later on), and also to give what was called a corvee, that is to say, an unfixed amount of ploughing, which the steward could demand every week when it was needed; the distinction corresponds to the distinction between week work and boon work in the later Middle Ages.  The second kind of labour which every owner of a farm had to do on the monks’ land was called handwork, that is to say, he had to help repair buildings, or cut down trees, or gather fruit, or make ale, or carry loads—­anything, in fact, which wanted doing and which the steward told him to do.  It was by these services that the monks got their own seigniorial farm cultivated.  On all the other days of the week these hard-worked tenants were free to cultivate their own little farms, and we may be sure that they put twice as much elbow grease into the business.

But their obligation did not end here, for not only had they to pay services, they also had to pay certain rents to the big house.  There were no State taxes in those days, but every man had to pay an army due, which Charlemagne exacted from the abbey, and which the abbey exacted from its tenants; this took the form of an ox and a certain number of sheep, or the equivalent in money:  ’He pays to the host two shillings of silver’ comes first on every freeman’s list of obligations.  The farmers also had to pay in return for any special privileges granted to them by the monks; they had to carry a load of wood to the big house, in return for being allowed to gather firewood in the woods, which were jealously preserved for the use of the abbey; they had to pay some hogsheads of wine for the right to pasture their pigs in the same precious woods; every third year they had to give up one of their sheep for the right to graze upon the fields of the chief manse; they had to pay a sort of poll-tax of 4_d_. a head.  In addition to these special rents every farmer had also to pay other rents in produce; every year he owed the big house three chickens and fifteen eggs and a large number of planks, to repair its buildings; often he had to give it a couple of pigs; sometimes corn, wine, honey, wax, soap, or oil.  If the farmer were also an artisan and made things, he had to pay the produce of his craft; a smith would have to make lances for the abbey’s contingent to the army, a carpenter had to make barrels and hoops and vine props, a wheelwright had to make a cart.  Even the wives of the farmers were kept busy, if they happened to be serfs; for the servile women were obliged to spin cloth or to make a garment for the big house every year.